minds diverted and soothed. No one garment will fit all men, and no man's idiosyncracies are to be made binding on his neighbors.

Robertson gives some wholesome advice to one of his correspondents, which is not out of place here. He says,

* *

"I pray you to grasp my principles, not my rules: for to say this, that, and that are exciting, and leave nothing behind, is to give dead rules. Remember the spirit and philosophy of that which I say. The life you are now about to enter will be one of an exciting character. What you want in your other life is a corrective and emollient. It matters little that you avoid the theater and music, if in their stead you substitute Gavazzi, with his theatrical pose and voice, and his exciting orations. I do not say that under no circumstances it would be desirable to hear him. Were you for months in a dull country town, I should say it might be well to vary its monotony by such an excitement, and its exaggeration might even be wholesome as the counteractive of an extreme; but under present circumstances, if you are really in earnest to discipline your spirit, and get the peace which can alone come from watchfulness, I should say it is one of those indulgencies which must be pernicious.” *

IV. We lay down as one more principle that recreation should be under the control of Christian principle and be made subservient to holy living.

man.

In showing what claims this subject has upon our thoughts, we do not mean to concede that amusement is the chief end of "Whether ye eat or drink, [or abstain from eating and drinking], or whatever ye do, do all for the glory of God." This is the grand idea which is to be combined with every occupation. Whether we go into a desert place to rest awhile, or cross the ocean to wander in other lands; whether we mingle with our fellow-men in social festivities and holiday recreation, or lay aside our work and books for the enjoyments of the domestic circle, whatever the method by which we divert our minds from care and alleviate the load of responsibility, our aim must be to serve God and to become better fitted for our work. The spirit of worldliness is forgetfulness of God, an element that makes any amusement and any occupation sinful. That the people of God, while in the world, are in danger of worldliness is not to be forgotten or denied. This peril may come to them on the side of amusement, though not on that side alone. The fascination of billiards, or of dancing,

Life and Letters, 2. 27.

may be infatuating, but so may be the passion for stock gambling, or enthusiasm in politics. And those who, by long asceticism, have choked all desire for "vain recreations" and "frivolous employments," or who have a grudge against somebody for the restraints under which they have been compelled to live, may look with an exacting and censorious spirit on others who enjoy a larger freedom in respect to things indifferent, and find their recreation healthful and salutary. We are not without apprehension that the modern reaction in favor of amusements may be carried to an undesirable extreme. We would not rashly oppose the cherished sentiments of Christian men in claiming liberty of action for themselves, but we heartily agree with Dr. Adams that it is a perilous thing for a Christian to experiment how far he may go in the use of his liberty without infringing upon what is sinful. Still our security against these perils must be found not in unreasonable prohibitions, nor in tirades against two or three particular forms of worldliness, but in holding up to view the higher principles of holy living. We have not kept worldliness out of our churches by setting up some arbitrary distinctions by which a few specific amusements are tabooed. The objections drawn from a waste of time, extravagant expense and late hours, and most of the common arguments against dancing, are quite as applicable to parties and ordinary visiting in which few Christians refuse to participate. To make dancing, or card playing, or a game of billiards, or private theatricals, a disciplinable offense will not arrest them. It is not by that line of policy that we can best war against objectionable amusements. We must strike nearer the root, if we would eradicate worldliness from the Church. We must make the tree good, in order to have good fruit. We must cultivate the higher aspirations. To wash the outside of the cup and platter, does not suffice. "Christ did not teach from the outward to the inward, but from the inward to the outward. It is better to give a man a good principle than a good practice; it is better to be good, than merely to behave well; the one is character, the other is convenience."*

When good men come to the application of Christian prin

* Ecce Deus, p. 143.

ciple, we expect that they will differ.

Circumstances alter

cases; what is lawful is not always expedient; and what is permissible to-day may be forbiden by the circumstances of tomorrow; but if "love is the best casuist," the instinct of Christian love will solve many questions which abstract reasoning cannot reach, and its solutions are not to be reviewed in any different spirit. Having taken the ground of individual responsibility in the use of individual liberty, we would leave each man to stand or fall to his own master, while we exhibit all the attractions of virtue, all the loveliness of virtue, and all the blessed influences of Christianity hallowing our domestic and social life. And so we would seek to make headway against the tide of worldliness in the church and out of it, not with sour faces and unfeeling hearts, but with sympathy for all that belongs to humanity, seeking in all our solemn and in all our festive hours, to do everything for the glory of God.

ARTICLE II.-OPENINGS FOR CHRISTIAN EFFORT IN CENTRAL AFRICA.

Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. By JOHN HANNING SPEKE. New York: Harper & Brothers. 8vo. pp. 590.

Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries; and of the Discovery of th: Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa. 1858-1864. By DAVID and CHARLES LIVINGstone. With Map and Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1866. 8vo. pp. 638.

The Albert Nyanza; Great Basin of the Nile, and Explorations of the Nile Sources. By SAMUEL WHITE BAKER. London: Macmillan & Co. 1866. 8vo. pp. 509.

A Journey to Ashango-Land; and Further Penetration into Equatorial Africa. By PAUL B. DU CHAILLU, Author of Explorations in Equatorial Africa. New York: 1867. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 501.

THE recent frequent travels in Africa have an interest for the Christian world, and not for Royal Geographical Societies alone. That country has long been the centre of curiosity, and the cause of numerous expeditions, both public and private, undertaken for the purpose of unraveling the mysteries connected with its formation and natural history. That land of torrid heat has for many years divided the attention of explorers with the regions of Arctic cold. By a sort of fascination men have been led to tempt, first the dangers of frost and then of fire. One week, a stout bark sails from its port for a two or three years' cruise among icebergs and ice-fields, perhaps to leave its splintered hull among them; and the next, a single stout-hearted man leaves his home for a three years' struggle with the fevers, the thorns, the reptiles, the wild beasts, and the society of the degraded natives of interior Africa. Which has the easi

er lot, or, rather, the more difficult-for in either case ease is out of the question-it would be hard to say.

But dangers and inconveniences do not daunt the brave explorer and such books, on the one hand, as Dr. Kane's, and, more recently, Dr. Hayes' Arctic Explorations, and the Travels of Barth, Burton, Speke, Du Chaillu, Baker, and the lamented Dr. Livingstone, on the other, seem only to kindle a new zeal for discovery. Let us look for a little at the moral and Christian side of these African explorations.

Glancing back almost a hundred years, we find James Bruce, the earliest of modern discoverers, landing in Alexandria, and setting out on his perilous journey seeking the head-waters of the Nile. His travels gave as the chief result some knowledge of Abyssinia, and the countries in northeastern Africa, and the course of one branch of the great river-the inmost secret of which, however, he was not permitted to learn. Twenty-five years more, and Mungo Park traverses the western region south of the Desert, and looks out on the broad Niger, destined on a subsequent expedition to become his grave. Burckhardt followed in 1813, and gave still fuller notions of Upper Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia; though death intervened, cutting off his intended expedition to seek the sources of the Niger,-itself, though in a less degree than its eastern counterpart, long a mystery to the scientific world. The journeys of Hugh Clapperton, twelve years later, added large stores to the knowledge of the regions on the mid course of that river; unfolding also to Europeans Lake Tsád, with its marshy borders, and opening a highway across the Desert into interior Africa. He too, like Burckhardt and Park, left his bones in the country he had sought to open to the world. So likewise did the Landers, whose successful researches in the same field, immediately followed and Laing, and many another; and now, it may be, the good and energetic Livingstone far away to the south.

It will be seen that at first the chief attention was long directed to unfolding Northern and Central Africa, and especially the great tract south of the Sahara. Following many other adventurers, Richardson, Barth, and their companions between the years 1845 and 1856 occupied the same field, and their labors gave the richest results. Large and important cities were