country, that is a heavenly;" we are "strangers and pilgrims;" "here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come;" "our citizenship is in heaven," and there also is our home. True, Christians do not carry out into daily life these phrases and thoughts of their creed, but in so much as they do not they are the less Christian, and the more imbued with the spirit of Rationalism. Rationalists they are, the vast majority, six days in the week, and are only Christians on the Sunday. To come out of, these old world dreams into Rationalism is like coming into the open air after a hothouse. Rationalism clears away the terrible God of orthodoxy, the fall, the serpent, the Saviour, the hell, the devil. "Work, toil, struggle," it cries to man; "the ills around you are not the appointment of God, not the effects of his curse; they arise from your own ignorance, and may all be cleared away by your own study, and your own effort. Salvation? Yes, you need saviours, but the saviours must save you from earthly woes and not from the wrath of God; save yourselves, by thought, by wisdom, by earnestness. Redemption? yes, you need redeeming, but the redemption you want is from vice, from ignorance, from poverty, and must be wrought out by human effort. Prayer? yes, you need praying for, but the prayer you want is work compelling the result; not crying out for what you desire, but winning it by labour and by toil. The world stretches wide before you, capable of paying you a thousandfold for all you do for it. Life is in your hands, full of all glorious possibilities; throw away your dreams of heaven, and make heaven here; leave aside visions of the life to come, and make beautiful the life which is." Full of hope, full of joy, strong to labour, patient to endure, mighty to conquer, goes forth the new glad creed into the sad grey Christian world; at her touch men's faces soften and grow purer, and women's eyes smile instead of weeping; at last, at last, the heir arises to take to himself his own, and the negation of the usurped sovereignty of the popular and traditional God over the world developes into the affirmation of the rightful monarchy of man. THE BEAUTIES OF THE PRAYER-BOOK. MORNING PRAYER. "HABIT, is second nature," saith a wise old saw, so it must be from custom that it has become natural to Church people to repeat placidly, week after week, the same palpable self-contradictions and absurdities. A sensible, shrewd man of business puts away his papers on the Saturday night, and apparently locks his mind up with them in his desk; certain it is that he "Goes on Sunday to the church, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach," and yet never discovers that his boys are repeating the most contradictory responses, while the parson is enunciating as axioms the most startling propositions.