which Greece sunk. There is a self-deception in those feelings. The thrill and the sense of mystery, and the luxury of contemplation, and the impressions on the senses-all these lie very close to voluptuousness, enfeeblement of heart-yea, even impurity."

"This, too," he further adds, "is the ruinous effect of an education of accomplishments. The education of the taste and the cultivation of the feelings in undue proportion destroys the masculine tone of mind. An education chiefly romantic or poetical, not balanced by hard practical life, is simply the ruin of the soul."

But though in all this there is truth-important truthwhich may well claim our serious attention, and though it is still further true, as Herbert Spencer maintains, that "the activities we call play are united with the aesthetic activities, by the trait that neither subserve, in any direct way, the processes conducive to life," and that therefore æsthetic enjoyment is to the serious business of life what play is to work, a view also held by Plato, yet art is not without real value and use, which the abuse of it ought not cause us to depreciate or ignore.

The mission of Art, as has already been several times stated, is to minister to man's innate love of the beautiful. This love has been implanted in him by his Creator, and is an essential element of his being. To gratify it properly can, therefore, never be wrong, but on the contrary, must always be commendable. It is, indeed, necessary to the complete and harmonious development of his life. For as the body must suffer and sustain injury if its appetites and other requirements be not properly satisfied, so is it also as regards the soul. It is our duty to sow and to reap that our physical needs may be supplied, and for the same reason it is our duty likewise to engage in such other pursuits as the supply of our higher nature requires. In the fact alone, therefore, that we have been endowed with the capacity for enjoying its productions, Art may be said to have its full justification.

beautiful and sublime, throws the soul into a gentle or severe reverie that elevates it towards the infinite. The infinite is the common limit after which the soul aspires upon the wings of imagination as well as reason, by the route of the sublime and the beautiful, as well as by that of the true and the good. The emotion that the beautiful produces turns the soul from this world; it is the beneficent emotion that Art produces for humanity."

VIII.

SIMON BAR-JONA: THE STONE AND TI

BY MRS. T. C. PORTER.

CHAPTER III.-Concluded.

A PRECIOUS STONE.

*Ressed art fon Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood hath unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."-St. Matthew xvi. 17.

SECTION IV.

The Rejection of the Holy Ghost.

SINCE they believed not "the writings of Moses fused the baptism of John," what was left for the condemn the Son and reject the Spirit of God? their reasoning it never occurred to these Jews might be benefited by accepting baptism as a test ence, if nothing more; that as disobedience was fault of erring man, so obedience might be the fir required by God of returning man. Had they mer mitted to the baptism of water as an ordinance from they would have been able to receive their Messial John declared it was to make manifest to Israel. B not only rejected Jesus, and John and Moses. They di their much-vaunted "father Abraham." By that th what God's covenant with him was intended to bring a deliverance from the old sinful life of the first Adam, t of Moses to be written in their hearts, the renewing Spirit that David prayed for, awakening to their lost co as sinners by nature, and the conviction and accepta

their Messiah as a Saviour. They cast off Abraham himself by putting to death his promised Seed in whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed!

In betraying and murdering the Christ they were "to fill up the measure of their fathers." But that measure they were to exceed by the wilful rejection of the Holy Ghost, as He proceeded from the Father, and from the Son incarnate in Jesus while He was yet unsacrificed. God was drawing very near to the Jewish people. His Son had been sent to fulfil all His gracious promises from the beginning. His Spirit was striving to make them respond to the testimony of their Messiah, which they had not misunderstood. In spite of this they were rejecting even Him; and in so doing were destroying themselves as individuals and a nation; for the Holy Ghost, as He was in Christ just before His life was actually laid down, is next to the last and highest revelation of God to man under the old dispensation. There is but one [higheras He comes from Him characterized by His actual death. That rejected, there would be no hope for them; unless Christ should come again from the dead. But this, His resurrection, is the beginning of the new dispensation. Truly, in wickedness they surpassed their fathers! For though these did "always resist the Holy Ghost," it was the Spirit of the old covenant, who came from the Father, and from the Son unincarnate, and not, as then, embodied in the living Jesus. And as they began this sin by stifling their convictions and denying the Christ, so they crowned it by calling Him who dwelt in Jesus and was the author of all His wisdom and mighty works, "the Prince of the devils"-Him, who in the first creation, "moved" or "brooded" a upon the face of the waters," at the baptism of Christ was symbolized by the gentle dove, and in the triune life of man is imaged by the guileless little child! For without the woman and the child, perfect or representative man is not complete. Man reflects the Father, woman the Son, and the child the Holy Ghost. Of all the race, only two men could stand out, solitary and alone, as the