at truth when he is only looking at the cap. Many a time I have looked down my microscope, and thought I was looking at the diatom for which I had long been searching, and found I had simply been looking at a speck of dust upon the lens itself. Many a man thinks he is looking at truth when he is only looking at the spectacles he has put on to see it with. He is looking at his own spectacles. Now, the common spectacles that a man puts on I suppose the creed in which he has been brought up —if a man looks at that, let him remember that he is not looking at truth: he is looking at his own spectacles. There is no more important lesson that we have to carry with us than that truth is not to be found in what I have been taught. That is not truth. Truth is not what I have been taught. If it were so, that would apply to the Mormon, it would apply to the Brahman, it would apply to the Buddhist. Truth would be to everybody just what he had been taught. Therefore let us dismiss from our minds the predisposition to regard that which we have been brought up in as being necessarily the truth. I must say it is very hard to shake one's self free altogether from that. I suppose it is impossible.

But you see the reasonableness of giving up that as your view of truth when you come to apply it all around. If that were the definition of truth, truth would be just what one's parents were it would be a thing of hereditary transmission, and not a thing absolute in itself. Now, let me venture to ask you to take that cap off. Take that cap off now, and make up your minds you are going to look at truth naked-in its reality as it is, not as it is reflected through other minds, or through any theology, however venerable.

Then, there is one thing I think we must be careful about, and that is besides having the cap off, and having all the lenses clean and in position-to have the instrument rightly focused. Everything may be right, and yet when you go and look at the object, you see things altogether falsely. You see things not only blurred, but you see things out of proportion. And there is nothing more important we have to bear in mind in running our eye over successive theological truths, or religious truths, than that there is a proportion in those truths, and that we must see them in their proportion, or we see them falsely. A man may take a dollar or a half-dollar and hold it to his eye so closely that he will hide the sun from him. Or he may so focus his telescope that a fly or a boulder may be as

large as a mountain. A man may hold a certain doctrine, very intensely a doctrine which has been looming upon his horizon for the last six months, let us say, and which has thrown everything else out of proportion, it has become so big itself. Now, let us beware of distortion in the arrangement of the religious truths which we hold. It is almost impossible to get things in their true proportion and symmetry, but this is the thing we must be constantly aiming at. We are told in the Bible to "add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge balance," as the word literally means-balance. It is a word taken from the orchestra, where all the parts the sopranos, the basses, the altos, and the tenors, and all the rest of themmust be regulated. If you have too much of the bass, or too much of the soprano, there is want of harmony. That is what I mean by the want of proper focus-by the want of proper balance-in the truths which we all hold. It will never do to exaggerate one truth at the expense of another, and a truth may be turned into a falsehood very, very easily, by simply being either too much enlarged or too much diminished. I once heard of some. blind men who were taken to see a menagerie. They had gone around the animals, and four of them were allowed to touch an elephant as they went past. They were discussing afterward what kind of a creature the elephant was. One man, who had touched its tail, said the elephant was like a rope. Another of the blind men, who had touched his hind limb, said, "No such thing! the elephant is like the trunk of a tree." Another, who had felt its sides, said, "That is all rubbish. An elephant is a thing like a wall." And the fourth, who had felt its ear, said that an elephant was like none of those things; it was like a leather bag. Now, men look at truth at different bits of it, and they see different things, of course, and they are very apt to imagine that the thing which they have seen is the whole affair — the whole thing. In reality, we can only see a very little bit at a time; and we must, I think, learn to believe that other men can see bits of truth as well as ourselves. Your views are just what you see with your own eyes; and my views are just what I see; and what I see depends on just where I stand, and what you see depends on just where you stand; and truth is very much bigger than an elephant, and we are very much blinder than any of those blind men as we come to look at it.

Christ has made us aware that it is quite possible for a man to have ears and hear nothing, and to have eyes and see

not. One of the disciples saw a great deal of Christ, and he never knew Him. "Have I been so long time with you, Philip, and yet hast thou not known Me?" "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father also." Philip had never seen Him. He had been looking at his own spectacles, perhaps, or at something else, and had never seen Him. If the instrument had been in order, he would have seen Christ. And I would just add this one thing more: the test of value of the different verities of truth depends upon one thing: whether they have or have not a sanctifying power. That is another remarkable association in the mind of Christ-of sanctification with truth-thinking and holiness not to be found in any of the sciences or in any of the philosophies. It is peculiar to the Bible. Christ said "Sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy Word is truth." Now, the value of any question the value of any theological question depends upon whether it has a sanctifying influence. If it has not, don't bother about it. Don't let it disturb your minds until you have exhausted all truths that have sanctification within them. If a truth makes a man a better man, then let him focus his instrument upon it and get all the acquaintance with it he can. If it is the profane babbling of science, falsely so called, or anything that has an injurious effect upon the moral and spiritual nature of a man, it is better let alone. And above all, let us remember to hold the truth in love. That is the most sanctifying influence of all. And if we can carry away the mere lessons of toleration, and leave behind us our censoriousness, and criticalness, and harsh judgments upon one another, and excommunicating of everybody except those who think exactly as we do, the time we shall spend here will not be the least useful parts of our lives.

A TALK ON BOOKS.

My object at this time is to give encouragement and help to the "duffers," the class of "hopeful duffers." Brilliant students have every help, but second-class students are sometimes neglected and disheartened. I have great sympathy with the "duffers," because I was only a second-rate student myself. The subject of my talk with you is

BOOKS.

A gentleman in Scotland who has an excellent library has placed on one side of the room his heavy, sombre tomes, and over

those shelves the form of an owl. On the other side of the room are arranged the lighter books, and over these is the figure of a bird known in Scotland as "the dipper." This is a most sensible division. The "owl books" are to be mastered, the great books, such as Gibbon's "Rome," Butler's "Analogy," Dorner's "Person of Christ," and text-books of philosophy and science. Every student should master one or two, at least, of such "owl books," to exercise his faculties and give him concentrativeness. I do not intend to linger at this side of the library, but will cross over to the " dipper books," which are for occasional reading — for stimulus, for guidance, recreation. I will be

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.

When I was a student in lodgings I began to form a library, which I arranged along the mantel-shelf of my room. It did not contain many books; but it held as many as some students could afford to purchase, and, if wisely chosen, as many as one could well use. My first purchase was a volume of extracts from Ruskin's works, which then in their complete form were very costly. Ruskin taught me to use my eyes. Men are born blind as bats or kittens, and it is long before men's eyes are opened; some men never learn to see as long as they live. I often wondered, if there was a Creator, why He had not made the world more beautiful. Would not crimson and scarlet colors have been far richer than green and browns? But Ruskin taught me to see the world as it is, and it soon became a new world to me, full of charm and loveliness. Now I can linger beside a ploughed field and revel in the affluence of color and shade which are to be seen in the newly turned furrows, and I gaze in wonder at the liquid amber of the two feet of air above the brown earth. Now the colors and shades of the woods are a delight, and at every turn my eyes are surprised at fresh charms. The rock which I had supposed to be naked I saw clothed with lichens patches of color marvellous organisms, frail as the ash of a cigar, thin as brown paper, yet growing and fructifying in spite of wind and rain, of scorching sun and biting frost. I owe much to Ruskin for teaching me to see.

Next on my mantel-shelf was Emerson. I discovered Emerson for myself. When I asked what Emerson was, one authority pronounced him a great man; another as confidently wrote him down a humbug. So I silently stuck to Emerson. Carlyle I

could not read. After wading through a page of Carlyle I felt as if I had been whipped. Carlyle scolded too much for my taste, and he seemed to me a great man gone delirious. But in Emerson I found what I would fain have sought in Carlyle; and, moreover, I was soothed and helped. Emerson taught me to see with the mind.

Next on my shelf came two or three volumes of George Eliot's works, from which I gained some knowledge and a further insight into many philosophical and social questions. But my chief debt to George Eliot at that time was that she introduced me to pleasant characters-nice people — and especially to one imaginary young lady whom I was in love with one whole winter, and it diverted my mind in solitude. A good novel is a valuable acquisition, and it supplies companionship of a pleasant kind.

Amongst my small residue of books I must name Channing's works. Before I read Channing I doubted whether there was a God; at least I would rather have believed that there were no God. After becoming acquainted with Channing I could believe there was a God, and I was glad to believe in Him, for I felt drawn to the good and gracious Sovereign of all things. Still, I needed further what I found in F. W. Robertson, the British officer in the pulpit - bravest, truest of men who dared to speak what he believed at all hazards. From Robertson I learned that God is human; that we may have fellowship with Him, because He sympathizes with us.

One day as I was looking over my mantel-shelf library, it suddenly struck me that all these authors of mine were heretics these were dangerous books. Undesignedly I had found stimulus and help from teachers who were not credited by orthodoxy. And I have since found that much of the good to be got from books is to be gained from authors often classed as dangerous, for these provoke inquiry, and exercise one's powers. Towards the end of my shelf I had one or two humorous works; chief amongst them all being Mark Twain. His humor is peculiar; broad exaggeration, a sly simplicity, comical situations, and surprising turns of expression; but to me it has been a genuine fund of humor. The humorous side of a student's nature needs to be considered, and where it is undeveloped, it should be cultivated. I have known many instances of good students who seemed to have no sense of humor.

I will not recommend any of my favorite books to another;