faith imitate the tactics of the cuttle-fish,
and when pursued cast out their opaque fluid of sentimentality
to conceal their position. They mostly dabble in the shallows of
scepticism, never daring to venture in the deeps; and what they take
pride in as flashes of spiritual light resembles neither the royal
gleaming of the sun nor the milder radiance of the moon, but rather the
phosphorescence of corruption.

In the last article of the series referred to, entitled "Thou art a God
that Hidest Thyself," there is an abundance of fictitious emotion and
spurious rhetoric. From beginning to end there is a painful strain that
never relaxes, reminding us of singers who pitch their voices too high
and have to render all the upper notes in falsetto. An attempt is made
to employ poetical imagery, but it ludicrously fails. The heaven of the
Book of Revelation, with its gold and silver and precious stones,
is nothing but a magnified jeweller's shop, and a study of it has
influenced the style of later writers. At present Christian gushers
have descended still lower, dealing not even in gold and jewels, but in
Brummagem and paste. The word _gem_ is greatly in vogue. Talmage uses it
about twenty times in every lecture, Parker delights in it, and it often
figures on the pages of serious books. In the article before us it is
made to do frequent service. A promise of redemption is represented as
shining gem-like on the brow of Revelation, Elims _gem_ the dark bosom
of the universal desert, and the morning gleams on the _dew-gemmed_
earth. Perhaps a good recipe for this kind of composition would be an
hour's gloat on the flaming window of a jeweller's shop in the West End.

But let us deal with the purport and purpose of the article. It aims at
showing that God hides himself, and why he does so. The fact which it is
attempted to explain none will deny. Moses ascended Mount Sinai to see
God and converse with him, Abraham and God walked and talked together,
and according to St. Paul the Almighty is not far from any one of us.
But the modern mind is not prone to believe these things. The empire of
reason has been enlarged at the expense of faith, whose provinces have
one after another been annexed until only a small territory is left her,
and that she finds it difficult to keep. Coincidently, God has become
less and less a reality and more and more a dream. The reign of law
is perceived everywhere, and all classes of phenomena may be explai