It remains to be said, that the auroras of 1859 came after a period of drought, of quite remarkable duration. Such a period tends to exaggerate the difference that exists between the electrical condition of the earth and the atmosphere.

Lastly, All auroras are accompanied by clouds of that cirro-stratus shape which we have learnt to connect most intimately with electric action.

The first part of our inference is therefore clear. There can be no doubt of the electrical nature of the phenomenon. It appears when unusual amounts are present, and it influences every electrified body on the earth. So far, Arago had gone himself. M. de la Rive's theory of the actual character of the electric action remains to be exhibited.

All bodies, in their natural unelectrified state, are supposed to be filled, with unlimited but equal amounts of two impalpable fluids, which we call respectively positive and negative electricity. These fluids exactly neutralize one another. They are such that they each repel fluids of the same character, and attract those of the opposite. In nature there are two great classes of bodies-conductors, in which the separation of the two fluids is but slightly resisted, and non-conductors, which offer considerable opposition to it. A rod of glass will be a nonconductor of electricity. If we rub it briskly with dry silk, it will be found afterwards to have positive electricity in excess. If it be now brought into the neighbourhood of a conducting body not electrified, the part of the body nearest it will be found to have an excess of the opposite negative electricity, which has been attracted to the glass; the part away from it, to have an excess of the positive electricity, which has been repelled. This action is called induction. If the body be very light, it will perceptibly move towards the glass -the attracting fluids being nearer than the repelling ones. These general notions in electricity will be sufficient for our purpose.

At its surface the earth is found to be negatively electrified. The sea, on the contrary, especially at the equatorial regions, is positively electrified. These are facts-independent of hypothesis. M. de la Rive says that the sea is electrified positively through the chemical action which takes place when the infiltrating water, from the sea, meets those portions of the central mass of the globe, which are incandescent. The decomposition of the water would certainly be accompanied with the liberation of positive electricity. The question is whether the cause is sufficient to explain the magnitude of the effect. That, of course, must be left to the confirmation of new facts. We may notice, however, that almost all the rural springs exhibit extraordinary symptoms of agitation at the approach of storms, which is probably due to the electrical condition of the sources from which they derive their heat, and their rapport with the disturbed electrical condition of the atmosphere. Again, the volcanic vapours, which rise from Vesuvius, are always charged with strong positive electricity; so that, without any chemical decomposition, the water of the sea may merely conduct the positive

water, when it meets the incandescent mass, is to be found in this fact, that in the products of volcanic eruptions there are abundance of chlorates and of hydrochloric vapours, which could scarcely come but from the chlorine of the sea, It is farther singular, that the proportion of volcanoes near the sea is very much greater than we should expect, as compared with inland volcanoes...

Whatever may be the cause, the earth is a reservoir of negative, and the sea of positive electricity. The vapours that rise from the latter, generally carry up with them, therefore, positive electricity into the atmosphere. This effect is greater, of course, in the equatorial regions, where the immense surface of sea exposed to evaporation and the great heat combine. The currents, which correspond to trade-winds in the lower regions of the atmosphere, carry these positively electrified strata through the upper regions towards the north pole. As they get farther north, they cool, condense, and fall lower in the atmosphere every day. At or near the poles, the eternal ice that surrounds them condenses these strata to such an extent as to bring vapours, with the positive electricity due to the equatorial seas, very near the negatively electrified earth. The two electricities therefore re-combine; and as usual where they re-combine energetically, there is an electric discharge, just as in ordinary lightning. In our latitude, the process of recom bination is continually going on quietly, through the conducting aqueous particles in the air, without discharge. But after a season of drought, when this channel of combination is, as it were, choked up, the positive electricity accumulates in the upper air, until the attraction between it and the negative earth produces an electric discharge. The aurora is due to the continuous process of recombination which goes on in the polar regions, and especially, of course, round the magnetic pole. It is, in fact, the light which accompanies this discharge. Mr. Macquorn Rankine has shown that this light is not what is called polarized. Now, no light that has suffered reflections and refrac tions is free from traces of polarization. The light accompanying electrical discharge is free from them. The observation confirms the theory we are stating, and suffices to annihilate the old theory of reflections from the polar ice.

The air near the poles especially, and in the upper regions, is often filled with a sort of ice-drizzle,—a perfectly transparent cloud of ice-needles so small that, even close to them, they are scarcely visible, and that the cloud they form is perfectly transpa- || rent. But these particles suffice, when the electric discharge passes across them, greatly to increase the luminous effect.

We have seen these currents of air positively electrified descending towards the earth in the neighbourhood of the poles. The magnetic poles we define as the places where the entire magnetic action of the earth may be conceived to be concentrated. They are situate not far from the poles of the earth's rotation. The effects actually produced by the attraction of the earth's negative electricity will be all but perfectly imitated, therefore, by

the puny, that the likely and promising may have scope to grow up stalwart and conspicuous. So in the history of men, great events have appropriated certain days and years as their peculiar domain, and call them by their name. They stand associated each with its own time, so that, when the time is suggested, the event is also present to the

mind.

Bat in the matter of celebration, as elsewhere, there is a right and a wrong. There is an intelligent reminiscence and approval of the deeds we celebrate; and there is a thoughtless spirit that seizes this and all other chances of anything like revelry. We have sometimes admired how several millions of men could be hilarious and festive on a fixed day, with no other cause of being so than their own good pleasure and agreement to be in high spirits; as if men were of somewhat the same nature as those clocks that crow or coo or play a tune at certain hours each day. There is, however, an intelligent as well as an absurd celebration. An anniversary makes some of us historians in spite of ourselves,-sends us back to the events of which we were a part, or in which at least we are interested, with a force we would not resist. We can well understand the policy of Henry v. in addressing his soldiers before the battle of Agincourt, when he says:

"This day is called the Feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day, and live old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say to-morrow is St. Crispian :

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars." In such a celebration we are more than fancifully connected with the time we celebrate. We approve its deeds, wish we had been among the actors, hold our manhoods cheap if we could have been and were not. And in few instances may there be so reasonable a celebration as this by us in 1860, of the signal transactions of the Reformation.

Had it been our lot to live in the seventeenth century, and join in a celebration of the first centenary of the Reformation, we would have felt ourselves more distant from that event than we feel to-day. That year, men would be little disposed to deliver or to listen to congratulatory speeches on a revolution that seemed to have brought in its train so many calamities (glorious and honourable calamities, no doubt, but still calamities), and that had every prospect of being now finally checked and even reversed by the restoration of the Second Charles (May 29, 1660). And, in point of fact, the people of Scotland were very differently occupied. A spirit of joy indeed possessed them, but it was a wild licentious enthusiasm, that, far from leading their thoughts back in gratitude to the work their fathers had done, hurried them into excesses and follies that set them widely apart from the stern morality of the Covenant. But we have been born to better times; to times that make it easier for us than for probably any year that has yet been, to sympathize with the Reformers, and pass a judgment on their work. We live in an age which rivals, if it does not equal, that of the Re

formers in religious earnestness; in an age in which for the first time the seed sown by them seems to be bringing forth adequate fruit; in an age when, with less shame, we may publicly testify that what they did we heartily acquiesce in, and what they thought and declared we propagate and maintain; in an age that may with as much propriety be termed an age of revival as theirs an age of Reformation.

In speaking of a revival of religion, we could" wish it were more prominently and generally kept in view, that this revival is not a thing of a day or a year, but of more than half a century. Sudden and multiplied cases of conversion justly gratify the serious observer; but that which renders these cases chiefly gratifying (because it renders them chiefly trustworthy) is, that they have been brought about, so far as human agency is concerned in them, by influences that have been preparing, gathering strength, and combining for many years past. It is true recent occurrences have come upon us unexpectedly; but that is because there are among us few men of prophetic mind to detect the forces really working, and declare the effects they are fitted to produce. But now that these effects are visible, and matter of universal observation, it demands no deep penetration to trace their connexion with what has gone before; and it were unwise in us to separate them from this connexion, and judge of them as standing alone. So long as we do this, we may fear that these manifestations of earnestness may pass away, and leave the life of the Church languid and enfeebled. But we trust it shall not be so, for we believe that under these merely and manifestly temporary expressions of earnestness, there is a real and stedfast earnestness that is the growth of many years. Had this present intense interest suddenly and causelessly begun, we might justly fear that it would, in like manner, terminate abruptly and without effect. But we might just as reasonably suppose, that the Refor mation could have been suppressed after the year 1560, after martyrs had sealed the doom of their persecutors by their sufferings, after the eyes of men were opened to the profligacy and selfishness of their spiritual rulers, and their minds imbued with the doctrines of the Reformed. In both cases all that is most gratifying, all that we would fervently desire to see continuing, is the "long result of time," the effect of events that seemed in the doing insignificant, and of labour undergone by those who did not eat the fruit of the trees they planted. Time, that great physician, will correct much that offends the fastidious and pains the scrupulous; Time will justify his own work, acknowledge and mature his own child.

But what are the influences to which the events we are now in the midst of may be referred as their cause? In surveying what has already passed of this century, is there really found anything that warrants the above statements? In reading the history of the first half of the sixteenth century we see pretty distinctly Reformation in embryo; do we with some proportional distinctness see Revival progressing through the years we have passed through? We say, with some proportional distinctness, for no one can in justice demand equal distinctness. A Reformation cannot take

place without events that proclaim themselves and possess that outward significance that entitles them to a place in civil history. A Revival of Religion is of a much less obtrusive nature, escaping the observation of the most intelligent, being promoted mainly by persons who have little to do directly with public interests, and often by influences so secret and complex as to defy the most sagacious analysis. A Reformation, by its very name, teaches us to look for outward alterations which may, which in this case did, but which do not necessarily proceed from an inward renovation of spirit. A Revival is that inward renovation of spirit which fills the already existing forms with new life, restoring to them their original meaning; and which, if these do not suffice, creates new forms for its expression, A Reformation cannot escape notice, a Revival may. But the growing enlightenment, the increasing earnestness in matters spiritual which characterizes the Church of these latter years, has revealed itself strikingly at different points in its progress. In the earlier part of last century there seemed barely life enough in the Church to save her from the attacks of her enemies. In the period from 1696 (when Tindal published his Christianity without Mystery) to the death of David Hume in 1776, appeared all those disciples of Herbert and Hobbes that maintained for so long their influence in this country. During that period there lived and wrote, Collins and Bolingbroke, Morgan and Chubb, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, and Tindal, sufficient certainly to waken the Church if she were not sleeping in the sleep of death. Such assaults proved the very healing of the Church. The ability of able men was roused to action in her defence, and after her bulwarks had been so substantially built up that they serve for us with little alteration or repair, this roused ability sought further exercise in aggressive measures at home and abroad. And then there arose such men as Wesley and Whitfield, Carey and Wilberforce, the name of each suggesting a work that has made their age memorable, and that tells us to what energy of life the Church was being revived. We go to England to find the first evidences of Revival, taking a lesson in this also from the Reformation period, and believing that what is there done earlier is here more thoroughly wrought out. And in England we find these things that speak of an altogether new life in the Church-missionary effort, the extensive circulation of the Word of God, and consideration of the state of the masses. All these are the direct results of mindful love for those who are of one blood with us; and what is this love but the very spirit of Christianity? Wherever in this feeling an age is found to surpass those that have gone before it, then no one may hesitate to acknowledge a genuine practical revival. And this feeling having spread into Scotland, gathers

It is a noticeable thing that, while Butler, from being a Dissenter became a Churchman, so that his writings in defence of the faith came with greater weight and received a readier acceptance; Wesley, though brought up in the Church, left her communion, and thus attained the freedom that brought him in contact with those whom his preaching would not otherwise have reached.

strength to the present hour, and is discernible in rapid Church-extension and unwonted Evangelistic efforts. And what, we would ask, may be expected as the result of this energetic and maintained diligence of Christian operation, if not just what is now visible, the daily increase of the Church? Is not this the very effect that has for years been aimed at and worked towards? Are we not justified in concluding that what we hear and see to-day we have been preparing and prepared for?

We have said that in the Revival as in the Reformation the movement appeared earlier in England than in Scotland; we would add, however, this corrective, also derived from a survey of the Reformation period, that there is sometimes observable in various countries a simultaneous, or almost simultaneous movement, which does not pass from one country to another, but is produced in all by some common influence. It would be hard to tell in what country we find the earliest symptoms of Reformation, and even where one does take manifest precedence of another, the latter reformation cannot always be ascribed to the earlier as its cause. An instance of this simultaneity or close sequence in this Revival period, is the increased desire that exists for the knowledge of a living, personal Christ. It is matter of consent among those whose calling it is to know such things, that one of the leading characteristics and redeeming features of the teaching of Schleiermacher was the prominence he gave to the person of Christ. There may be difference of opinion as to the results of his teaching in his own country; but we think few would assert that it is to his influence that we are mainly to ascribe the prominence now given in our own preaching to the same grand object. Indeed, were there space, it would not cost a great deal of labour to produce convincing evidence that this holding to a personal Redeemer, though of subsequent, is not of conse quent development to any German idea or sentiment, but is of native growth. It is found gradually taking possession of the mind of Arnold, till it finds expression in such words as these:"One name there is, and one alone, one alone in heaven and earth, not truth, not justice, not benevolence, not Christ's mother, not His holiest servants, not His blessed sacraments, nor His very mystical body the Church, but Himself only, who died for us and rose again, Jesus Christ, both God and Man." And when among ourselves, Dr. John Brown says, "It is a growing conviction in my mind, that vital and influential Christianity consists much more than is ordinarily apprehended in an intimate personal acquaintance and friendship with our Lord Jesus Christ," he expresses the conviction which, perhaps more than any other, characterizes Christians of the present day. surely this is just another way of saying that ours is pre-eminently an age of Revival. No doubt there might be produced similar sentiments from the records of other ages; but they could not be produced as true samples of the characteristic state of the thought and feeling of any but our

own.

And

In what age (if the primitive be excepted) do we find this idea of Christ's personality so wrought into the hearts and minds of men? In