ment with this generation and shall condemn it; for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold a greater than Solomon is here."

A fine instance of the solemn and effective manner in which the Great Teacher was wont to turn a historical incident into a significant lesson, occurs in these words from Luke: "There were present at that season some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering, said unto them, 'Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem ? I tell you, Nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.""

Upon one occasion IIis persecutors demanded of Him when the kingdom of God should come? He replied with warnings from history: "As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all; even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed."

Two days before his death, surrounded by a malignant knot of casuists, who were trying to catch his words and confound him, he denounced upon them those scathing "woes," which he seldom used, but which, when he did use them, were doubtless remembered by his shrinking foes to their dying day and the final climax was this thunder-burst of malediction, which heaped upon them the consequences of all the martyrdoms history had recorded, from the first days down to their own: "That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the

blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar."

Such was the example of the "Author and finisher of our faith." To awaken his hearers-to explain his doctrines-to fortify and enforce his precepts-to make eternal things present and real,-he appealed to the vital force of facts. The grand sweep of his teaching gathered in metaphor, and allegory, and event by turns; but the favorite source of illustration was the field of history; from that field he drew the memorable instances, which were so startlingly transformed into arguments the most weighty, and admonitions the most solemn.

After all, however elaborate the sermon, we can but fall back on the recollection that it is only an instrument, and a human instrument, too. It is our part to give it the utmost completeness and efficiency within the compass of our endeavors; then leave it in the hands of God, to be used or not used, as His good pleasure may direct. We read of an apostolic discourse, preached in Jerusalem, which was followed by the conversion of no less than three thousand; but that result was the work of the Spirit, not of Peter. We read of a sermon preached two centuries ago in Scotland, whose fruits may be recorded side by side with the labors of the apostle. "Toward the close of the sermon," writes Fleming, "the audience, and even the preacher himself, were affected with a deep, unusual awe." There was a melting of multitudes. Five hundred converts united with the neighboring churches. A vast revival began, whose influence endured through the century. But it was due, not to the sermon, nor to young Livingstone the preacher, but to the Spirit of God. Paul may plant, Apollos may water, but the increase must come from God. Unless the Spirit accompany and enforce the preaching of the word, it must fall powerless upon the heart. How finely soever tempered and sharpened at the forge of the brain, without the Spirit to guide the stroke, it can never penetrate to the soul. When the Saracen Amron was asked to show the sword with which he had slain

so many Christians, he produced a common cimetar. "Alas," said the warrior, "the sword itself, without the arm of its master, is neither sharper nor more weighty than the sword of

Pharezdak the poet." Let us fashion the weapon with what skill God has given us; then entreat Him to take it and strike the blow. The most elaborate sermon is not finished till it has been laid on the altar of prayer. "To pray well," said Luther, "is the better half of study." It was the custom of Dr. Shepard of Cambridge to complete his preparation for the pulpit by Saturday noon, that he might spend the remainder of the day on his knees over the sermon, pleading for the blessing of the Holy Spirit upon its use. President Dwight used to charge. his graduating classes with such words of sober wisdom as these: "Young men, it is not great talent, it is not great learning, that is to enable you to do good, but abiding in Christ." It was the same profound sense of the futility of human endeavor, unblessed by the spirit, that led Bengel the commentator to commence his long tutorship at Denkendorf with an address to prove "The diligent pursuit of piety the surest method of attaining true learning," and to close it twenty-eight years after with an eloquent exhibition of "The beneficial influence of piety upon the studies of the rising generation." If we will listen to the voice of a later and more prominent actor on the stage of Europe, we shall gather a double testimony, at once to the value of the studies we have been considering, and to the admitted need of some higher motive than mere learning to inspire the human soul. In the Emperor's last letter to his son, dictated to Count Montholon during those last days of dreariness and feebleness at Longwood, occur these words of dying counsel: "Let my son often read and reflect on history. This is the only true philosophy. Let him read and meditate on the wars of the greatest captains. This is the only means of rightly learning the science of war. But all that you say to him, or all that he learns, will be of little use to him, if he has not in the depth of his heart that sacred fire and love of good, which alone can effect great things."

ARTICLE III.-EUROPEAN TRAVELING FROM THE PECUNIARY POINT OF VIEW.

OUR countrymen have given us, in their abundant records of European travel, ample information on every point but one, namely, what it costs. They are garrulous at times over mere trifles; they take us everywhere-and show us everythingbut the bills. A kind of shame makes them ignore the lucre. Once in a while a man like Bayard Taylor is bold enough to sit down with us in open, communication fashion, and impart his whole story, but the number of such is small. And yet we have hardly ever met a tourist who, in recounting his adventures, would not gravitate by an unswerving law, to the matter of dollars and cents. But in their books they baffle us. And we are not sure but that in the full knowledge which has been given us since tourists began to cross the Atlantic, the only real curiosity which readers now entertain, is as to the expense. Despite of the broad and sweeping assertions which have been thrown out by two or three very intelligent tourists of the clerical order, with pockets well lined with the gifts of loving and admiring congregations, that it needs five dollars a day, or six dollars a day, to travel over Europe; that it requires eleven hundred dollars, or fifteen hundred dollars, or two thousand dollars, to make the "grand tour," we venture to lay down a formula on the subject which will reduce the whole matter to mathematical limits and exactness. It is this: the necessary expense of traveling through a country is in direct ratio to the average daily wages of the inhabitants of that country. From this proposition we advance at a single stride to the result, that as the average daily wages of the inhabitants of the countries of Europe vary from one-half to two-thirds as much as with us, it follows that the expense of traveling is in the same ratio less what it is with us. For every element of expense is guaged directly by the average daily wages of a community, the price of food, of service, and

of transportation. This is so palpable that it is passing strange that our people generally believe that it costs nearly twice as much at the least calculation to travel in Europe as it does in the United States.

As we are writing for those who would rather be informed about the minimum than the maximum rates of expense in traveling through Europe, we may as well be honest and confess that we are much more competent to write on the former than the latter. We might, it is true, find a large field for the exercise of imagination in speaking of great disbursements; but this paper is scarcely the proper place for the display of a poet's resources. We can dimly conceive of the possibility of a gentleman or lady, making the tour of Europe, spending four or six months, and laying out the small fortune of two thousand dollars; but we may say that this idea rises before our mind with a kind of nebulous indistinctness. Such large numbers are overpowering; they seem to say, stand back, young man; do not venture to contemplate such magnificence of outlay. When we hear of larger sums, as once in a while is the case, of five thousand dollars for example, spent on a European tour, we stare in stupid amazement and no longer refuse to believe in ghost stories and table tippings. But when it comes to smaller figures, we feel more at home, and when some exulting friend tells us that he knows of a man who visted Europe and spent only four hundred dollars in six months, we answer, and we know of a man who, from the time when his feet touched Hamburg to the time when he left the quays of London Dock, spent one hundred and fortytwo dollars, and out of that he paid for instruction under Langenbeck the surgeon, and Graefe the oculist, bought instruments and books, and always had enough. He had more money at his command, but he only drew what he wanted, a hundred and forty-two dollars. The money needed to carry one across the Atlantic and back is the great drawback in taking the tour. If that large item could be dispensed with, the whole outlay might be reduced to dimensions which would alarm very few. We have conducted a party of six, three being ladies, from Cork, Ireland, to Berlin, Prussia, at an ex