SKETCHES OF THOUGHT AND TRAVEL.

THE HOUSE OF JOHN KNOX.

THE house of John Knox, in Edinburgh, is exceedingly curious, not merely for its associations with the great Reformer, but for the curious things preserved in it. It is nearly four hundred years old, and I should think might stand four hundred more. The rooms are so low that you have to stoop in passing through the doors. Curious antique specimens are preserved hanging about the rooms. Two "branks" appear which were used as gags for scolding women-consisting of iron bands round the head with an iron tongue to project into the mouth. I tried one of them on in order to realize more sensibly the progress of civilization. Women were actually chained at the church doors with their heads encased in these horrid instruments. This was done under both English and Scotch law, and the practice in England did not cease entirely till about 1700. Two "Thumbikins" also hang up in John Knox's house. The thumbs by these were screwed tight and the victim stretched up and even hung up by his two thumbs, putting an agonizing strain upon the tendons of the wrists and arms and racking the joints. Also an iron band made to fit round the bodies of martyrs at the stake. It fastened behind, and at each side were gyves to fit round the wrists and make fast the hands and arms. These instruments for punishing heretics are relics of popery in Scotland fitly preserved in Knox's house, and they make us understand the nature of the warfare he waged against prelacy and popery and his denunciation of the Babylonian woe which Mary Stuart but for him would have brought back upon Scotland. The windows of the house are shown from which he used to harangue the people in the streets who thronged to catch his words. His preaching, whether in kirk or to the street, was decidedly sensational, and he was the only man whom Mary Stuart never befooled by her feminine arts and charms. Randolph, the English ambassador, wrote to Cecil," Where your honor exhorteth us to stoutness, I assure you that the voice of one man is able in an hour to put

more life in us than six hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears."

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MAJOR ANDRE'S STATUE, in Westminster Abbey, is an object of special interest. In the marble field under it the sculptor has wrought the scene of Andre petitioning Washington for a commutation of sentence, to be shot instead of hung. Washington stands in the front, with his staff near him. You observe a little ring around Washington's neck. His head has been twice broken off, and the ring shows the seam of its resetting. The beheading is a manifestation of British indignation for Andre's execution. It was certainly a very hard case, but much harder was that of the young, gallant, and accomplished Nathan IIale, taken as a spy within the British lines, and not only hung, but denied the use of a Bible, and treated with insult and ribaldry. There is no monument to Hale that we know of; but a more beautiful and touching instance of cheerful self-immolation for a great cause cannot be found. Andre's case cannot compare with it. He was ambitious, and sought glory. Hale gave himself to the cause of his country and mankind. His words were, as he went to the gallows tree, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." His story is affectingly told in a lecture by George. W. Greene, entitled "Martyrs of the Revolution," embodied in a volume of historical sketches, which that gentleman published a few years ago, depicting very graphically the spirit of our revolutionary times.

TWO WONDERS. "I have lately seen two wonders," writes Luther, when some of his friends were despairing of the cause of God: "first, as I looked out of the window, I saw the stars in the heavens, and the entire beautiful vault which God has raised; yet the heavens fell not, and the vault still stands firm. Now, some would be glad to find the pillars that sustain it, and grasp and feel them. The other was, I saw great thick clouds hanging above us, with such weight that they might be compared to a great sea; and yet I saw no ground on which they rested, and no vessel wherein they were contained; yet they did not fall upon us, but saluted us with a harsh look, and fled away. As they pass away a rainbow

shines on the ground and on our roof. All things are in the hands of God, who can cover the sky with clouds and brighten it again in a moment."

Voltaire said if there

VOLTAIRE AND STRAUSS seem to differ. was no God it would be necessary to make one. The people would have one, notwithstanding the philosophers. Strauss, in his latest work, "The Old Faith and the New," does not seem to see the necessity. "He touches and dissolves," says his reviewer in "The Index," "one after another the beliefs in Christ and immortality." He only believes in this life and this material universe, and thinks one should be content to be virtuous for the sake of virtue. Neither he nor his co-religionists seem to be aware that "to be virtuous for the sake of virtue" is very easy under the inspiration of faith in an endless life, and the consciousness of Divine presence and indwelling, -impossible without God and when wrapped up in one's own self-hood.

DREAMS. Somebody has broached a new theory about dreams. We only dream when going to sleep or waking up,- that is, the border land between asleep and awake is the land of dreams. Not so, we say. Every man has two brains, the cerebrum or voluntary brain, and the cerebellum or involuntary. The former sleeps, the latter never. When the former is quiescent, the lat ter works according to its own sweet will, and according to the treasure-house of your experience and memory unrolls a world of fairies or a world of hobgoblins. If you eat too much, or if you live an inverted life, very likely you will dream of standing on your head. If your aspirations are pure and ethereal, very likely you may fly heavenward when your involuntary brain has you in sole charge.

There is, however, a border land between asleep and awake, when the will is quiescent and the spontaneous mind is in full play, and you can watch the process of your own intellectual machinery, or be, as it were, a spectator of your inner man. Then the best thoughts come to us. Whole trains of thought stream forth of themselves, better than you can study out, because your painful self is not in them. Flashes of truth come like

nimble lightnings. Such hours, however, never come to lazy people. You must previously think and study and treasure up, and have the matter in you all ready. And then the spontaneous brain, in such quiescent hours, and when your voluntary machinery is all still, will fuse this matter, and draw it forth sometimes in better shapes than you could. And so many a time the hard student at night has given over his problem without solving it, but when first awake in the morning it has solved itself, or, rather, the Divine Power, working through our involuntary machinery, has done for us what we could not do by beating our voluntary brain from night till morning. Ministers would often find that better sermons come in this way than any of their own sheer manufacture.

DOWNWARD STEPS,-dissolving one's faith in Christ, God, and immortality. One step follows the next with the same necessity that water runs down hill. In Christ the Divine Personality and Fatherhood are full, refulgent, and tender, and they can never be lost. Out of Christ they become blurred, fade off into abstract terms, and finally represent an unknown and unknowable force. Then, the Divine Personality being lost, the human personality goes with it. Man is the product of material forces, and dissolves back into matter at the touch of death. Again and again we have seen these downward steps taken, as if one followed another with the necessity of fate. The other great religions — especially the Persian, the Jewish, and the Mohammedan - preserve the Divine Personality only as they have some conception and acknowledgment of the Logos, of which the Christ is supremely the impersonation.

E. H. S.

"MADE PERFECT IN ONE."

A SERMON. BY REV. A. M. KNAPP.

I SUPPOSE none of us need to be told that there is great popular ignorance, or at any rate a decided mistiness of thought, even among ourselves, as to the meaning of the word "Unitarianism," what it stands for, and of what ideas it is the representative.

This might be explained in some degree by the fact which has been so often insisted upon, that Unitarianism is a principle rather than a dogma, a tendency of thought more than a fixed body of thought, and therefore not susceptible of precise definition. But the difficulty lies even deeper than this: it lies in the fact that the name in the popular mind is no longer a distinctive one, is no longer sharply defined as over against an opposite, no longer expresses a real and living antagonism, no longer has aught to emphasize it, or to enable it to show manifest cause for its existence. The whole story is summed up in the fact that its old literal antagonist is dead.

Fifty years ago the Unitarian pulpits resounded with arguments and protests against the doctrine of the Trinity. The Unitarian literature dwelt mainly upon the proofs, from Scripture and reason, of the unity of the Godhead, as opposed to the strict statements of the Athanasian Creed. No one then was ignorant of the meaning of the word "Unitarian." It carried its meaning on its face. It had a real and well-known antagonist. It had a plain cause for existence. It had a real life to live. It was always uttered with an emphasis. But emphasis depends on antagonism, and when antagonism ceases, emphasis dies away. The antagonist of Unitarianism has disappeared, is practically dead. Hence the loss of meaning and expression in the word.

Its opponent, I say, is dead. Not that I would assume that the speculative doctrine of the Trinity is defunct, or that the controversy has lost its charm for students and philosophers, or that the name is not still the leading watchword upon the banners of a vast majority of churches, but as a practical, vital issue, entering into the lives and thoughts of the great body of Christians, it has