Every day affords proof of this. Given an earnest, truthful boy and he will make an earnest, truthful Christian; given a faithful, unselfish girl, and she will make a faithful, unselfish Christian. Given a boy or girl without these traits and we know not what they will make. There is no greater folly than to undervalue character because existing in an unrenewed heart; it is not indeed the pure gold but it is a precious metal, and the touch of a divine hand can transmute it into gold. It happened to the writer, once, to stand on Mount Righi in Switzerland before the sunrise. In the distance were seen the snow-clad forms of the everlasting mountains the sweet valleys sleeping at their feet. There they were, grand and beautiful, but wearing a sombre aspect, as cold as they were white. The sun arose and touched them, and they were clothed with glory. So with the noble and beautiful in man. In many an unrenewed heart there are grand traits; they stand forth high and pure; we cannot deny it; we do not wish to deny it; but something is still wanting to their perfection. Let now the sun of righteousness arise "with healing in his wings," let his glad beams touch them, and in that instant they are bathed with a heavenly and immortal radiance.

We insist then, that a noble trait obtained before conversion, is of the same value as if obtained afterwards. It is even of greater value, for the earlier a good trait can be wrought into a child, the more it becomes a part of the substance of the soul. Revivals have their place; but the grandest work for God is to seek to build up character in those who are already converted, and in those who are to be converted. Shall He not have polished stones in His temple? Happy is the church that has wrought with steady purpose, till the homes in the parish, and the week-day schools, and the tone of public sentiment, and the Sunday school, and the Lord's-day services are all brought into line, and work together for "the use of edifying,” or in other words, for the upbuilding of character in the old and especially in the young.

This then, in our view, is the reason why St. Paul, in his letters of counsel to Christians, letters full of the longing that they should be about the Christian work, does not exhort them to get sinners about them converted and baptized, but always

to build men up in holy character. If it be said that the zeal to win converts was strong enough, in that day, without exhortation, this may be granted. And yet the zeal in that direction, if proportional and true, could not possibly have been stronger than the zeal to procure holy character in themselves and others. So that only the preeminent importance of the latter, together with the danger it was in of being neglected, can account for the stress laid upon it.

Many important considerations suggest themselves, more or less readily, as to what is involved in the work of edifying, and how skill in it is to be attained. We will only remark as to this that, in such a matter, desire tends to fulfill itself. Men do not in this world stumble into a great calling. The accomplished physician or lawyer is not, usually, one who happened into that good luck. Nor can we expect to acquire the art of being helpful to others in the matter of noble living unless we make it a constant aim and study. We are so far from this that the feeling of a majority of Christians would perhaps be, "it would be presumptuous in me to attempt such a thing."

But leaving this whole class of considerations, we will add a word in conclusion upon the wider bearings of this subject. Evidently the Christian's work in this aspect of it, covers everything that can be done towards the general uplifting of the community in intelligence and character. The folly of those who care to have a revival every winter, but neglect the home life, and leave the day schools to themselves, and take no heed to provide good reading and safe entertainment for the young, nor mind what is going on in yonder shop where the boys love to congregate; the folly of such, we say, is almost inconceivable.

If we yield to the practice of our churches, for which in truth much may be said, and wait for the period of youth with its broader outlook, before we expect the full evidence of conversion, let us at least recognize the fact that the foundations of character must be laid earlier than that, and let us guard every influence bearing upon those in early life, that they may be prepared, when they become Christians, to become the right sort of Christians.

Great wisdom is doubtless required in shaping these broader interests. A higher class of qualities is taxed, for it is not im

mediate results that are sought, but the best results in the end. Patience is needed, and a faith that can labor and wait. On the other hand such an enlargement of the Christian sphere can not fail, in the end, to prove helpful, and that in many ways, to the workers themselves. Few things wear out sooner than mere appeals to conscience and religious feeling. The attempt to lift a community to better things by the constant repetition of these, year after year, becomes very discouraging, as many a minister knows only too well; but if we understand it to be our part as Christians to help shape aright every influence that bears with effect on the character of the community, we have then a large and varied sphere, in some portion of which it is possible to be always working hopefully and with effect.

ARTICLE VI.-THE BACONIAN INFLUENCE IN

RELIGION.

FRANCIS BACON was neither a theologian nor a pastor; yet into religious thought and activity he introduced tendencies of a powerful kind.

It is an old story that he conceived at a very early age the idea of a reformation in philosophy. He found the scholastic corruption of the Aristotelian philosophy in full possession of the field. Aristotle himself had been one of the greatest observers of nature and one of the soundest of reasoners; he stands upon even the shorter lists of those who have been preeminent in intellectual power. But the aim of his philosophy was too purely spiritual to interest the great mass of mankind and its method was singularly infertile and liable to be abused. Both aim and method Bacon undertook to change.

Its aim was essentially noble. It sought "by the attainment of abstract truth to exercise, purify, and elevate the human faculties, and to carry the mind higher and higher toward the contemplation of the Supreme Good and the Supreme Beauty." Practical utility might happen to be attained in the work of raising the mind into these sublime regions of wisdom and virtue, but as an end it was unworthy of pursuit. The study of nature was at the most a means to the spiritual end. To Aristotle's successors such study became an object of not only contempt but distrust. They forgot their great master's reverence for facts and his desire to obtain them. They lost his hunger for truth. They allied themselves with an ecclesiastical system that could never admit its mistakes nor modify its conclusions. They left the greatest and most vital questions, to dispute about frivolous matters concerning neither the spiritual nor the physical welfare of man. They evolved the most astonishing answers out of the nature of things, and decided questions by the number of doctors that had given an opinion on either side.

Macaulay imagines Justinian, when he closed the schools of Athens, calling on the last few sages who still haunted the Portico to show their title to public veneration. A thousand years had elapsed since Socrates taught; "during those thousand years a large proportion of the ablest men of every generation have been employed in the constant effort to bring to perfection the philosophy which you teach; that philosophy has been munificently patronized by the powerful; its professors have been held in the highest esteem by the public; it has drawn to itself almost all the sap and vigor of the human intellect; and what has it effected? What profitable truth has it taught us, which we should not equally have known without it? What has it enabled us to do, which we should not have been equally able to do without it?" They have nothing to show. Against this indictment is set the record of the "new philosophy," beginning thus: "It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has extinguished diseases," and rehearsing the scientific and industrial achievements of the past three hundred years.

The old and the new philosophy were thus different in their aims. They were equally different in their method. The old method of reaching truth was what is sometimes called a priori or deductive. In other words, a theory was constructed in some department of knowledge and then put to the test of such facts as might seem to affect it; it was then corrected and stood accepted as truth. By the Baconian philosophy men were to come to facts without any preconceived theory, to construct a theory after comparing the facts and to make it cover the facts. This is sometimes called a posteriori or inductive reasoning. The deductive method might at first sight seem as good as the inductive, and it served well in the hands of such men as Aristotle. In the hands of his successors it became almost worthless, for they fixed their attention upon the construction of ingenious theories more than upon the testing of them by facts. The schoolmen grew more and more puerile in their speculations, more and more tenacious of their theories, more and more blind to facts that would necessitate a change of belief. With this there was allied the mischievous claim of the church to infallibility, by which, having once committed