Earth our Home.

Divine things are not put away into foreign realms of being and future reaches of time, attainable by no path of toil, no spring of effort, only by miraculous transport; but are met with every day, shining through the substance of life, and hid amid its hours * * * * * We do believe that the great change for which the secret religiousness of this age pines, and which it is sorely straitened till it can accomplish, is, the deliberate adoption page 24 into "heavenly places" of this world, its faculties and affairs, just as God has made them, and man's unfaithfulness has not yet spoiled them * * * * Men are tired of straining their thought along the diameter of the universe to seek for a holy of holies in whatever is opposite to their life. They find a worship possible, even irresistible at home; and on the roadside a place as fit to kneel as on the pavement of the Milky Way. The old antagonism between the world that now is, and any other that has been or is to come, has been modified for them, or has even entirely ceased. The earth is no place of diabolic exile, which the "prince of the power of the air" ever fans and darkens with his wings * * * * * It is not only the home of each man's personal affections, but the native country of his very soul; where first he found in what a life he lives and to what heaven he tends; where he has met the touch of spirits higher than his own, and of Him that is highest of all. It is the abode of every ennobling relation, the scene of every worthy toil, the altar of his vows, the observatory of his knowledge, the temple of his worship * * * * * He is set here to live, not as an alien, passing in disguise through an enemy's camp, where no allegiance is due and no worthy love is possible, but as a citizen fixed on a historic soil, pledged by honourable memories to nurse yet higher hopes. Here is the spot, now is the time, for the most devoted service of God. No strains of heaven will wake him into prayer, if the common music of humanity stirs him not.—Westminster Review.