the Church, Providence does not see to. To keep silence on the non-intervention of Providence would be to connive at the fate of those who come to destruction by such dependence. "O mother, praying God will save Thy sailor! While thy head is bowed, His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave!" * See Westminister Gazette London Letter, November 19, 1895. True respect would treat God as though at the least he is a gentlemen. Christianity does not do this. No gentleman would accept thanks for benefits he had not conferred, nor would he exact thanks daily and hourly for gifts he had really made, nor have the vanity to covet perpetual thanksgivings. He who would respect God, or respect himself, must seek a faith apart from such Christianity. A divine, who excelled in good sense, said: "Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High. Our soundest knowledge is, to know that we know him not; _and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence_; therefore it be-hoveth our words to be wary and few."* Mrs. Barbauld may have borrowed from Richard Hooker her fine line: "Silence is our least injurious praise."** * Ecclesiastical Polity, book I., | 2. ** Charles Lamb was of this opinion when he remarked: "Had I to say grace, I would rather say it over a good book than over a mutton chop." Christians say grace over an indigestible meal. But perhaps they are right, since they need supernatural aid to assimilate it. An earnest Christian, not a religious man (for all Christians are not religious), assuming the professional familiarity with the mind of God, said to me: "Should the Lord call you to-day, are you prepared to meet Him?" I answered: Certainly; for the service of man in some form is seldom absent from my thoughts, and must be consonant with his will. Were I to pray, I should pray God to spare me from the presumption of expecting to meet him, and from the vanity and conceit of thinking that the God of the universe will take an opportunity of meeting me. Who can have moral longing for a religion which represents God as hanging over York Castle to receive the soul of Dove, the debauchee, who slowly poisoned his wife, and whose final spiritual progress was posted day by day on the Castle gates until the hour of the hangman came? Dove's confession was as appalling as instructive. It ran thus: "I know that the Eternal One, Upon His throne divine, Gorged with the blood of His own Son, No longer thirsts for mine. "Many a man has passed his life In doing naught but good, Who has not half the confidence I have In Jesus Christ, His blood."* * From a volume of verse privately circulated in Liverpool at the time, by W. H. Rathbone.