was so ample and unconditional that it covered the entire extent of his needs and even of his desires. What blessing could he ask which God had not promised ? That land of Canaan, so beautiful and so fertile, was promised to him and to his seed; it was intimated that he should be the father and founder of a vast and mighty nation, and that in some mysterious way the nation born of him and blessed of God should become the benefactors of the world--from it, as a living centre, should radiate Divine and beneficial influences to all the families of the earth. There is a grandeur, a breadth, a sweep about these promises which could not fail to satisfy the most soaring ambition. And if that lofty destiny contrasted strangely with the present poverty and danger of the fugitive, the yawning chasm between Bethel and the fulfilment of those promises was bridged over by the gracious assurance of God's perpetual presence and protection.

There were promises for the way, as well as for the end. He might be far from the haunts of man, but he had now a presence which more than compensated for the loss of human society : “Behold, I am with thee.” His path might be fall of snares and beset with perils, but he had an absolute guarantee of safety : “I will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.” He might long remain an exile in Pardan-aram, but he need not take a final farewell of Capaan's hills and vales : " I will bring thee again into this land." Humble, and unworthy, and sinful though he was, he might depend upon tbat beavenly Friend, he might rest upon that Divine promise, “For I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” What a well-spring of comfort this is in the desert! What an inspiration this promise must have been! In that strange country naught can harm him, for until he sets foot once more in Canaan his is a charmed life. “O Jacob! no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; no wild beast can lay thee low; no foo can stab in the dark ; no alien hand can snap the silver cord of thy life; no accidental stroke can break the golden bowl of existence; thou art shielded from danger by night and by day." Surely this promise must have been a star in Jacob's firmament, wbose piercing light shone through every cloud and lit up the gloom of darkest night. Surely it must have made sweet music in his bosom, and as he started out once more on his journey he might appropriately have sung:

“ Yes, for me, for me He careth

With a father's tender care ;
Yes, with me, with me He shareth

Every burden, every fear.

“ Yes, o'er me, o'er me He watcheth,

Ceaseless watcheth, night and day;
Yes, even me, even me, He snatcheth

From the perils of the way.”

ito heavenly, the very graveeds a g

That night vision, with its heavenly voice, filled Jacob with a comfort and a hope that attended him to the very grave.

Nor is that vision without significance to us. It sheds a gleam of light upon that strange and almost inexplicable subject-the philosophy of dreams. In general, they spring from some particular state of body or from some abnormal activity of the mind during the day. Our dreams are often the images of our waking thoughts and emotions and desires. We do not wonder that Jacob dreamt when he stretched himself on the ground at Bethel, weary and excited, with nerves strong to the utmost point of tension ; nor are we surprised at the form his vision took. The stony bill-side sloping far above him might well suggest the staircase reaching to heaven, while all day long his thoughts had rested on his painful loneliness and the stolen blessing, and now in his dream that blessing was endorsed by God, and a supporting presence was promised. In thus accounting for the form of this dream by tracing it to the operation of a natural law, we do not detract in the slightest degree from the supernatural element in it, or from the fact that God employed it to convey important truths to the patriarch's mind. Many dreams are the reproduction in pictorial form of our day thoughts, but not all; there are others, for the causes of which we search in vain.

Dreams reveal to us the possibility of mental action while the functions of the body are in a state of repose. And in not a few cases this mental action has been turned to good account. “ Sartini, a celebrated violin player, composed his famous . Sonata del Diavolo'while he dreamed that the devil challenged him to a trial of skill on his own violin. Coleridge's account of his wild composition, • Kubla Khan,' is very curious. He had been reading Purchas's Pilgrimage,' and fell asleep at the moment he was reading this sentence, . Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto.' He continued in profound sleep about three hours, during which he had a vivid confidence that he composed from two to three hundred lines ; if, as he says, that can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things with a parallel production of correspondent expressions. On awaking, he appeared to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and proceeded to write down the wonderful lines that are preserved, when he was interrupted, and could never afterwards recall the rest." * These examples, which might be multiplied, serve to show the activity of the mind during sleep. It is highly probable that the mind never sleeps, t and we know that its vigour and agility are sometimes marvellous when the bodily organisation is steeped in slumber. Surely, in view of such phenomena, it requires no stretch of credulity to believe that the mind will still exist and act when detached altogether by death from its outer covering of flesh. * Dr. Moore, in “ The Power of the Soul over the Body," pp. 125, 126.

+ M. Jouffroy. Quoted and endorsed by Sir William Hamilton.

We tread on debatable ground when we treat on the present-day utility of dreams. There can be no doubt but that in the olden times they were often employed by God to make known His will to men. Most of the prominent Scripture characters received disclosures of God's purposes through this medium. Is that door of communication closed between God and man? Do dreams never come to us as messengers of God charged to convey important truth? Are they never anything more than the idle vagaries of an excited imagination ? On this point men are widely divided in opinion. Some are extremely sceptical, and others again are extremely credulous. Some lay great stress upon their dreams; others, no stress at all. Perhaps the middle course is best. While admitting that the great mass of dreams seem purposeless, and while deprecating too much attention being paid to the phantasies that float through the brain during sleep, yet we maintain that God does occasionally impress men with certain truths and direct men to certain lines of conduct and reveal future events by means of dreams. Well-authenticated, instances of this are too numerous to be dismissed as mere coincidences. And while some dreams contain a Divine communication, others are useful as a mirror to reveal to us our moral condition. The weak point of character, the besetting sin, will often display itself more openly during sleep than when the volition is entrammelled by social influences; and this should lead to greater diligence in fortifying the nature at its weakest point, and in sternly repressing the insidious evil that larks within. Dreams may be of use to the man who is not too weak to become their slave, and who is thoughtful and wise enough to sift the significant from the frivolous, and to discern when they possess any serviceable meaning.

The form of Jacob's dream heralded, in its own simple fashion, a great eternal truth for all the ages. That ladder finds its explanation in Christ. It was the shadow, but He the substance ; it was the figure, but He the fact. He indicated the application of this vision to Himself when He said to the “Israelite indeed,” • Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” The vision faded before the morning light, the reality remains. There is a way to heaven. “I am the way," says Christ. “God was in Christ reconciling the world onto himself.” And when Christ became incarnate, the human race was in a condition not unlike that of Jacob at Bethel. Mankind bad sought by its own scheming and by its moral obliquities to grasp blessedness, but it was full of disappointment and despair, lying helpless in the desert on a bed of stone. Humanity was at its lowest point, when God visited it in mercy.

The ladder was " set up on the earth." Christ assumed our nature, was born into poverty, stood on the lowest level of human life in its social aspect, was numbered with the transgressors, and died a death of ignoming and shame. Ho fathomed the lowest depths of humiliation, that from the depths men might rise through Him. “ The top

of the ladder reached to heaven." Christ ascended to the right hand of God, and opened heaven to all believers. He is the true ladder, by which the grace and blessings of God descend to us, and by which our prayers and thanksgivings and we ourselves ascend to heaven. He is the only but the all-sufficient way. If we live a life of spiritual poverty and grovelling eartbliness here below, or if we fail to enter heaven at last, it is because we forget or despise God's way of blessing and holiness. When we come to Christ, we begin to rise out of self and sin, and in Christ the whole bend of our life is toward the purity and bliss of heaven.

Closely connected with the mediation of Christ is the ministry of angels. “The angels of God were ascending and descending" upon this ladder. The ministry of angels is a fact frequently recorded in the Scripture. It was a common occurrence in the Old Testament times, for angels to visit the saints of God with some heavenly embassy. Nor was their intervention confined to the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations, for they often ministered to the Son of man and appeared in after years to His disciples. Angels were identified with every important stage of the Redeemer's life-His birth, His temptation, His agony, His resurrection, and His ascension into heaven. An angel of the Lord directed the steps of Philip into the wilderness, there to meet with the Ethiopian treasure ; instructed Cornelius to send to Joppa and seek the services of an apostle ; delivered Peter from the dungeon where he was confined between two soldiers; and cheered the heart of Paul amid the Adriatic tem pest.

And have they not also a ministry to all God's people ? " Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation ?”. Our natures are undoubtedly open to the play of unseen spiritual forces, and we are moved by them, as the surface of the ocean is moved by the winds of heaven. We receive inspiration from the Holy Spirit, and temptation comes to us from evil spirits. Why, then, should we disbelieve in a present ministry of angels ? Is there not much beauty in the thought that, wbile the suggestions of a fallen angel led man into the toils of evil, so the help of sinless angels is granted in his struggles to become pure and free? How much we owe to angelic assistance, and how powerful a factor it is in our lives, we cannot tell; but we know that the scheme of human redenuption is replete with interest to them, that they share the joy of God over every repentant soul, and that they encamp round about those who fear God and deliver them. How often when we are lonely, as Jacob, or fearfal, as Elisha's servant, if our eyes were opened we should be cheered by the vision of angelic attendants and guards! We see them not, for the sensuous in religion is left behind; but we know that as the messengers of God they give us strength in temptation, comfort in affliction, guidance in perplexity, and convoy in that last mysterious flight of the disembodied spirit to the bosom of its God. This ministration of angels depends entirely upon the mediation of Christ. They ascended and descended upon the ladder,

For all communication with the heavenlies through the mediation of Christ and the ministry of angels we are indebted to God the Father. Jehovah stood above the ladder. The God of grace is the God of providence. Having loved sinful men sufficiently to redeem them at unspeakable cost to Himself, and opened up a way of access to Himself and heaven, it were irrational to suppose that He now regards us without any active interest and desire for our welfare. Behind and above all the blind forces and natural laws of the universe there is the influence of a personal will and the pressure of an Almighty hand. He does not, cannot, violate any of His laws, but just as man first seeks to understand them, and then manipulates them, and makes them subservient to his own will, so with clear understanding and omnipotent might God performs His will in the realms of nature and of human life. We thus gain a double comfort, arising jointly from the stability and uniform action of natural law, and from the assurance that when Jehovah brings into operation higher and unknown laws it is for good. “We know "_because God is over all—" we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to thom who are the called according to His purpose.” His superintending care is minute as well as universal, His eye is upon the meanest and most insignificant of His creatures, and His hand touches the mainspring of every individual life. And if we surrender to His control, link our being with His, wherever we may roam a solitary pilgrim on life's pathway, we may enjoy His fellowship and guardianship, He will sanctify our life to His own glory, and lead us forward to the highest good.

UNCLE ABRAM'S MONEY. It was raining fast, with appa- | so little in it--only six pennies, a rently no prospect of stopping; the sample of calico, and one of her pavements were wet, the streets business cards. Myra seldom muddy, and as Myra Deane left the opened that small receptacle withhandsome house where she had out sighing, and now she hesitated been giving a music lesson, she a moment before stepping down looked about her in dismay. And into the street to hail a tramcar, no wonder, for her shoes were thin, wondering if she really ought to and so old that they were no pro- ride. There were so many uses tection against water, and she had for the pennies in that large houseno umbrella. She did not like to hold of which she was a member, go back into the house and ask to and she always saved wherever and borrow one; for the inmates were whenever she could. But it was the reverse of kind and obliging, as so wet to-day, and she remembered she knew from sad experience. So with a pang at her heart the she drew her shabby little porte-doctor's bill of the previous spring, monnaie from her pocket and when, on just such a day as this, opened it with a sigh. There was she had walked home, and, as a