is easy, to think, difficult; and that great deeds spring from great thoughts. There are words that never grow silent, there are words that have changed the face of the earth, and the warrior's wreath of victory is entwined by the Muse's hand. The power of Athens is gone, her temples are in ruins, the Acropolis is discrowned, and from Mars' Hill no voice thunders now; but the words of Socrates, the great deliverer of the mind, and the father of intellectual culture, still breathe in the thoughts of every cultivated man on earth. The glory of Jerusalem has departed, the broken stones of Solomon's Temple lie hard by the graves that line the brook of Kedron, and from the minaret of Mount Sion the misbeliever's melancholy call sounds like a wail over a lost world; but the songs of David still rise from the whole earth in heavenly concert, upbearing to the throne of God the faith and hope and love of countless millions. And is not the Blessed Saviour the Eternal Word? And is not the Bible God's word? And is not the Gospel the Word, which, like an electric thrill, runs to the ends of the world? "Currit verbum," says St. Paul. "Man lives not on bread alone, but on every word that cometh forth from the mouth of God." Nay, there is life in all the true and noble thoughts that have blossomed in the mind of genius and filled the earth with fragrance and with fruit. Shall I be told that the intellectual cultivation and discipline, which gives to man control of his knowledge, the perfect use of his faculties, justness of perception with ease and grace of expression, cannot bring serviceable advocacy or defence to the cause of divine truth? What does truth need but to be known? And since to reach the mind and heart of man it must be clothed in words, what is so necessary to it as the garb and vesture, the form and color, the warmth and life, which shall so mark it that to be loved it needs but be seen? And who shall so clothe it, if not he who has the freest, the most flexible, the clearest, the best disciplined mind? In the apostolic age, when the manifestations of miraculous power accompanied the announcement of Christian doctrine, the lack of the persuasive words of human eloquence was not felt. Let him who can drink poison and touch scorpions, and not suffer harm, despise the aid of learning; but for us, who are not so assisted, no cultivation of mind or preparation of heart can be too great; and to appear in the garb of a savage were less unseemly than to speak the holiest and the highest truths in the barbarous tongue of ignorance. Our way here cannot be doubtful. Either we must hold with certain peculiar heretics that learning is a hindrance to the efficacious teaching of religious truth, or, denying this, we must hold, since mental culture is serviceable, that the best is most serviceable.