“Let attention,” says the thoughtful John Miller in his Bampton Lectures, which deserve to be side by side with those of the lamented Van Mildert, “let attention be requested to what seems here an accessory sign of the adaptation of all our heavenly Father's dealings to that which he ‘knows to be in man’—I mean his merciful shortening of the term of this present natural life, subsequently to the period when all-seeing justice had been compelled to destroy the old world for its disobedience. “I call it merciful, because, though we can conceive no length of day which could enable man with his present faculties to exhaust all that is made subject to his intellect, yet observing the scarcely credible rapidity of some minds and the no less wonderful retention of others, we may well conceive a far severer, nay too severe a test of resignation and patience to arise from length of years. To learn is pleasant; but to be ‘ever learning, and never able to come to sure knowledge of the truth,’ (if it were only in matters of lawful and curious and ardent speculation,) is a condition which we may well imagine to grow wearisome by too great length of time. ‘Hope delayed’ might well ‘make the heart sick’ in many such cases. We may find an infidel amusing himself on the brink of the grave with many imaginary wishes for a little longer respite, that he might witness the result of this or that speculation; but I am persuaded that the heart which really loves knowledge most truly and most wisely will be affected very differently. From every fresh addition to its store (as far as concerns itself,) it will only derive increase to that desire wherewith it longs to become disentangled altogether from a state of imperfection, and to be present in the fulness of that light, wherein ‘every thing that is in part shall be done away.’ Here, then, in one of the most interesting and most important of all points (the shortening of human life) we find a representation in Scripture which may be accounted favourable to its credibility and divine authority on the safest grounds of reason and experience. For certainly, as to the bare matter of fact, such representation corresponds in the strictest manner (as far as we have known and have seen) with the state of life as at present existing; and accepting it as true, we can perceive at once, a satisfactory explanation of it by referring it, as a provision for man's well being, to the wisdom and mercy of an Omnipotent Spirit who knew, and knows ‘what is in man.’” * * * * * FRAGMENT OF SIXTH VOLUME. Reader, we are about to enter upon the sixth volume of this our Opus; and as it is written in the forms of Herkeru, Verily the eye of Hope is upon the high road of Expectation. Well begun, says the Proverb, is half done. Horace has been made to say the same thing by the insertion of an apt word which pentametrizes the verse,