"However rapidly a ball flies from the mouth of a cannon, it is the flight of a body only a 'few inches' in diameter . . . The earth contains a mass of matter equal in weight to at least 2,200,000,000,000,000,000,000, or more than two thousand trillions of tons, supposing its mean density to be only about two and a half times greater than water. To move this ponderous mass a single inch beyond its position were it fixed in a quiescent state, would require a mechanical force almost beyond the power of numbers to express. The physical force of all the myriads of intelligences within the bounds of the planetary system, though their powers were far superior to those of men, would be altogether inadequate to the production of such a motion. How much more must be the force requisite to impel it with a velocity 'one hundred and forty times swifter than a cannon-ball, or sixty-eight thousand miles an hour,' the actual rate of its motion in its course round the sun! . . . The ideas of 'strength' and 'power' implied in the impulsion of such enormous masses of matter through the illimitable tracts of space are forced upon the mind with irresistible energy far surpassing what any abstract propositions or reasonings can convey, and constrain us to exclaim, 'Who is a strong Lord like unto Thee? Thy right hand is become glorious in power! The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!'" * By T. Dick, L. L. D. And it was He whose Word could thus launch forth, and for thousands of years keep the world and the other planets whirling round the sun at a speed that baffles thought to conceive, it was He who deigned to inhabit a human form so helpless that a woman's weak arms were needed even to lift Him out of the manger in which that woman had laid Him! The thought is overpowering, we can but prostrate our souls in silent adoration. Well might the angels, bending over the manger, desire to look into such a mystery; "God was manifest in the flesh"! O blessed Redeemer, when even a faint glimpse of the riches of Thy glory falls on the mental eye, it seems to dazzle and blind; and yet, for our sakes, Thou didst become poor, so poor that the stable was Thy first earthly dwelling-place, and Thy cradle this manger! Grant unto us, feeble worms, the grace of Thy Holy Spirit, that we may be able to comprehend, at least in part, "what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge;" that love which is infinite as Thy power, and everlasting as Thy existence! [Illustration] XXXVIII. The Apostles' Net. THERE is a danger, especially to imaginative minds, when meditating on Scripture, to allegorize what ought to be taken literally, to lose the clear outlines of fact in a haze of fancy. May we be watchful against this! But the Bible is full of types and emblems, and many objects of which we read in Scripture naturally form themselves into such.