distinct periods, now buried in the tomb of ages, we discover the solution of some particular part of the problem of humanity, bearing a definite and necessary relation to the progress of the race. The special part of any such period respectively, which is most important, as containing the germ of all that follows, is its epoch. This in each case furnishes an index to the specific nature of that part of the problem to be wrought out by that age. Thus the period of ancient Jewish history cultivated and developed the moral part of man's nature. The great Monarchies of the East inculcated and enforced respect for outward authority, in the form of despotic, absolute power. The laws of the Medes and Persians changed not, and the monarch received almost the homage of a god. To discover the ideal of creation, to draw out the essence of mind and ascertain its laws of action, was the province of that wonderful people, the classic Greeks. All the powers of life blended into one result, in the material uses, reduced to practical purposes, applying law, and creating a system of jurisprudence in the services of the State, was the Roman mission. Practical life is committed to the Anglo-Saxon race, in all its different branches and relations.

Or, in a different aspect, one period may be taken up with the process of bringing loose elements together, centralizing power and nationalization. Sometimes civil constitutions are to be formed or remodeled, as in the late revolutionary movements in Europe. The revival and cultivation of literature, the emancipation of mind from mental slavery and degradation, in the sphere of politics and religion, also marks a glorious period. Despotic power, political and ecclesiastical, had restrained the pent up freedom of man so long and so unduly, that when it did burst the shackles that held it enthralled, it fell into the opposite extreme of licentiousness. Hence we have the keals of society upheaved from their old moorings, and the social relations, as well as government, that grows out of these, have been at times convulsed, and torn up as it were, by the very roots. The want of proper vents in Church and State, has more than once agitated the world's quiet life and shaken the foundations of the strong pillars of society.

Action and reaction is a law of life, just as force and resistance are found in the momentum and gravity of matter. The radical revolutionary spirit of our age, therefore, that has shown itself so fierce of late years, is the natural consequence of antecedent causes. It need not alarm us unduly. Liberty deprived of its rights will assert them, in a sense true or false, according to previous fit training or neglect. Far be it from us to justify all that has been done in times of counter excitement in the sacred name of liberty. Excess is the necessary result of deprivation. Two sets of muscles of the same organic body in operation will rest each other, but one alone acting and the other's action repressed begets fatigue and convulsion. Neither freedom nor authority should exclude the legitimate action of the other. The same may be said of private judgment and general law, as well as the vital factors of humanity in the sphere of Church and State, politics and religion.

Absolutism, in any finite and human shape, is a dangerous extreme, be it democracy or monarchy, in the natural or spiritual order. It is always important that power, be it lodged where it may, should be checked by the imposition of constitutional restraint in the form of fundamental laws, within the prescribed limits and guarantied freedom of which it may legitimately act. All truly.free action, to be such, must be subject to responsibility. This is true in relation to Peter or Cæsar, the pope or the people. In a monarch, civil or ecclesiastical, the danger is the extreme of arbitrary will. With the people, it degenerates into licentious radicalism in the shape. of mobocratic violence. The people may endanger, or even destroy their natural liberty by committing suicide with their own power. The centralized one-man-power, beneficial as it may have been in some instances, when unbridled, can run into abuse of the rights it was called to protect.

Supremacy is thus, not supreme, except it be supremely right, which belongs not to finite, fallible man. A combination of these fallibilities cannot beget an infallibility. To say, then, that the people or the pope will do no wrong, because it is morally impossible, is a broad lie in the face of history. The power of free action, therefore, must come, as derived from its

divine source through mediate organs. Constitutional power must submit to fundamental laws. This is necessary in the right relation of its constituent elements to the very idea of any social, political, or religious organization. Its form of polity must not trangress its divine constitution. Hence, it is not true that he is most free who acts according to the arbitrary caprice of his own will. The freedom of our glorious Union is an obedience to the constitution; called by a British philosopher, "A treaty imposed by the people on their own government as on a conquered enemy.'

Looking at the present phase of the world's history, we are brought by these considerations to expect some progress in the solution of the great problem. The right relation of the several factors may be more clearly determined. Certainly we do now know, that it is not found in hostile antagonism, nor in absolute independency, nor yet in unnatural union. The one must not usurp the powers of the other; neither may they encroach upon the ground severally assigned to each by their divine Author. The true genius of History may reveal to us something of the mutual relations of their interpenetration in free correspondence. Civil liberty will doubtless yet rejoice in the triumphs gained in the Eastern war, and Religion may be called to inaugurate a more glorious stage of Christian development. Whatever be the base passions now engaged in the field for selfish gratification, we have this consolation, that God will make all things work together for good.

Who knows the mystery of His providence by which those strange anomalous combinations have been formed? What means the recent awakenings to life in that long stagnant past of the Christian Church? What relation shall the Czar sustain to the Pope, the politico-religious monarch to the religiopolitical? These are the principals now in the war, whatever be the external combinations. What shall become of the false prophet's mixed system of truth and error, combined in the compound relation of the religious and political factors? These and such like questions are big with import in their practical answers. We anxiously look, even in our day, amid the smoke and din of battle, for a more satisfactory reply than has yet

been given. The commotion and strife every where, the stern buckling on of the armor even in our land, betokens a determined, spiritual contest, the result of which, we trust, will be the triumph of right and truth. God only knows what we may yet live to witness. May he grant, along with the power to do our part well, that we may wait patiently in faith, till he adjusts all difficulties by the Spirit and life of his Son! Pittsburg, Pa.

G. B. R.

ART. IV-THE CHEMISTRY OF FIRE.

OBJECTS of a striking character are most apt to attract the attention of man, on account of their departure from the usual course of nature, or because they exhibit some seeming anomalous deviation from her laws. The phenomena of nature, which hourly take place, in and about him, generally fail to command his attention, though he is ready to recognize the might of the great Ruler of all things, when bright flashes of lightning, accompanied with the pealing sound of its thunder appear in the skies above him. The little seed may show the wonderful powers possessed by its dormant vital force,-may send forth rootlets, which shall give the future plant a firm hold on the soil and enable it to gain sustenance from the same,—may develop the slender stalk and even grow up to the full maturity of a tree, but these, being every-day occurrences, regular manifestations of the laws of the vegetable kingdom, elicit but little attention or admiration from man. Again, the animal! -comprising still more that is wonderful than the plant;—its very existence being a constant warring of the vital force against a dying tendency of its component parts,-the physiological paradox, that to have life we must have constant death, the peculiar food needed to repair the effects of the wear and tear of the system, and the mysterious changes it undergoes before it can be fully adapted for this purpose,-the

regularity of the Circulation, bearing in one direction a vivifying current, and in another, one surcharged with noxious principles, the Respiration, conveying the peculiar substance which vivifies to the one current of the circulation and removing that which is detrimental to life from the other, the closing scene of life, when the power, which presents these very mysteries as proofs of its presence, leaves the vital frame and although there may remain,

Have swept the lives where beauty lingers,"

the rapture of repose, yet the decay of the particles, which previously formed the body, making it now loathsome to those who formerly delighted in its company :-all these are allowed to occur daily without exciting more than a passing notice from the world.

Even the principle, which we call Life, underlying the mysteries of the plant and manifesting its presence in it by growth, or in the animal adding to this manifestation that of feeling and instinct, or in man, the higher power of intellectuality and will, -even this fails to attract a modicum of that attention its importance demands.

All these afford striking examples of the consummate wisdom of their Creator, on account of their harmonious adaptation to the ends, for which they were created. They are examples of the normal operations of nature. Constant familiarity with them has caused us to forget, or at least to overlook them in our daily reflections, and it is only when some remarkable deviation from the rule presents itself,-some Aztec or Giant,that we pause to consider what constitutes the rule, and to investigate the nature and extent of the deviation.

There are many things also connected with the physical phenomena of nature, which rarely receive attention from us. Among these can be mentioned the four so-called elements of the Ancients, from which they supposed all matter was created. In the Earth, they saw the stable basis of the whole, applying the name to everything of a solid nature found in the planet on which we live; in the Air, they recognized a simple fluid which appeared to penetrate all space; in Water and Fire,