experiences like those through which He passed. He must be born in us; and we must ever suffer with Him, rise with Him, and ascend with Him. Thus we follow our Head through the whole year. Throughout the Church Year, Christ is still living and acting in the Church, through his people. Thus is our life brought into harmony and sympathy with the life of our blessed Saviour. We not only think of Him, follow Him in His teachings, and imitate His example; but we live after Him, reproducing and repeating His life in our own.

At Advent, which begins the Sacred year, the Church is out with the Shepherds and Wise Men looking and waiting for the coming Christ, and preparing for the Christmas joy. When the season of His Passion draws on, through the Lenten season, Christ's people go about in silent penitence, and in sympathetic forebodings of sorrow, as amid the lonely shades of Gethsemane, and in the awful twilight which the blushing sun spreads solemnly over the scene of His sufferings.

Between His Passion, on Good Friday, and His Resurrection on Easter, His people are veiled in weeds. Like the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, they "walk and are sad." The Marys "stand at the sepulchre weeping;" and their sad countenaces seem to say to each other, and to all: "Tread softly around the place where He sleeps!" But hope brightens with the dawn of the third day. O, what joy thrills the hearts of all watching souls at the words of the Easter Heralds, who say: "He is not here; he is risen; come, see the place where he lay !" Then from Easter to Ascension-day, the Saints, during forty days, await visits from the risen, living Saviour. There are joyful meetings, blessed surprisals, here and there, now and then. He hovers, as it were, over the earth, neither belonging to it, nor yet having wholly departed from it. He is training the hearts of His people to ascend, sweetly tempting their spirits upwards, and at last, by His own visible ascension, shows them the way.

Then there is another waiting, for ten days, for the promised gift of the Holy Ghost. The time is spent in "prayer and supplication ;" and the morning of Pentecost finds all "with one accord in one place," when they are all filled with the Holy Ghost.

Now, with Trinity Sunday, we enter upon a long season consecrated to the cultivation of all christian virtues and graces; that thus we may put on Christ more and more, and walk in Him, and become conformed to His blessed image and life in all things, preparing for the coming Advent, which is to us a foreshadowing prophesy of His glorious second appearing, when He, who first came to save the world, comes again to judge it.

From all this we may see how well adapted is the whole order of the Church Year, to bring our whole life into harmony and sympathy with the life of Jesus, our Saviour.

The same object is also very essentially promoted by the fact that there is a beautiful harmony and sympathy between the Natural Year and the Sacred Year of the Church. Their course runs together, and there is a striking analogy between them at all points.

Christmas, the time when Christ entered upon a sad life in a cold world, comes near the winter solstice, in mid-winter, in a dark, cold and stormy time, when the night is longest and the day shortest. All life is

latent, introverted, buried in its roots and germs, while dreariness and bareness covers the face of the earth. What an impressive picture of the moral state of the world, as it was when Christ came as life in the midst of death. Christmas comes, moreover, just immediately after the solstice, when the sun begins to gain power-when the light begins to obtain the mastery over darkness-when the days begin to grow longer and the nights shorter; and this process goes on to increase till it breaks forth into full victory at Easter. This is a picture of Christ's life from His birth, when both the world of nature and the world of man, turned their cold, dark side toward Him, on through sufferings and sorrow, but ever triumphing more and more, till his life reached its deepest humiliation in the grave, and then also achieved its highest victory in the resurrection.

Easter comes with the Spring. Life begins to come forth from the bosom of Winter. The resurrection of nature is again in smypathy with the resurrection of nature's Lord and Restorer. Life around the sepulchre in the Garden struggles, in harmony with that life in the new tomb. The Spring joy is also the Easter joy; and, with the jubilee of the happy disciples around the empty tomb, the fields and the pastures sing, the trees clap their hands, and the little hills rejoice on every side. Nature echoes the song of joyful and victorious grace: "Lo, the Winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

Whitsuntide comes when all is bloom and beauty; when fragrance breathes over the fields and gardens, and hope and joy fill the heart of man. In the bloom which reigns around, we have the symbolic promise of the Spirit, and the beginning of His blessed fruits.

Then comes the long Summer season, when the heat and burden of the day must be borne, but during which at the same time all that has been given in the way of promise, beginning, and first fruits, is ripened, extending even into the golden Autumn, so that all may be fully perfected and gathered in.

Thus christianity does not contradict the natural order of the world, but falls in with it, permeating its seasons with its own higher renovating power. It does not destroy, but restore and fulfill. It takes up those feelings which nature, through its seasons, naturally inspires, elevates them, sanctifies and glorifies them in its grace. The gloominess of our Winter feelings are changed into gracious penitence; the hope of our Spring feelings are elevated into that lively hope unto which we are begotten by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; the joy of our early Summer feelings are glorified by the Holy Spirit, and become a religious joy. Thus nature too is conquered by grace, and as interpreted by grace, is made to lend its aid to the awakening of pious emotions, and the cultivation of a holy life.

Thus, as our Saviour by His Incarnation brought a new life down into our humanity, so the church creates for us a new world of grace, in the midst of the old world of nature. To the saint who lives really and truly in the spirit of the Church Year, the former things have passed away. He lives in the bosom of a new world, in the midst of new relations, sympathies and affinities, and his life progresses undernew powers.

He scarcely thinks of, or mentions the natural order of time. He does not say it is so long till Spring, or Summer, or Autumn, or Winter-so long till harvest, or till the new moon. This is the Pagan, Jewish, worldly mode of counting time, by the natural seasons. He says, so long till Advent, Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide. These are his places and way-marks in the flow of time. His thoughts and feeling cluster not around the natural order of the world, but around the sacred order, as it has been new-created in time, in Jesus Christ and the Church. His strongest associations bind him to the Church, in whose bosom all space centers in holy places, all persons are referred to holy persons, and all time centres around holy seasons; and where, in short, all things turn a bright and consecrated side toward faith and piety, and thus become sacred things.

Thus the world of associations, affinities and sympathies, in which profane and natural men live, move, and have their being, is not his world. He regards it as entirely subordinated while it lasts, and sees it also doomed to ultimate destruction with its suns, moons, seasons and years, when it shall be cast aside as a worn out garment. Not only does he live in the abiding consciousness that this will once be the doom of all things natural outside of grace, but even now he feels the process going on in and around him. The natural order of the world loses its power over him more and more, and its charm departs. It dies to Him. He dies to it. He sees the awfully glorious prophesy hastening to its fulfillment: "Whose voice then shook the earth; yet once more I shake not the earte only, but also heaven. And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain."

Yes, the natural vanishes in the presence and power of the supernatural. The world gives way to the Church. Earth yields to Heaven. The coming of the kingdom of God into the earth, as fast as it comes, makes all persons, places and times holy. The vision of St. John is coming to pass : "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away."

Living in the midst of such a divine order, the natural tide of the world loses its power over the hearts and lives of saints; and in the bosom of this kingdom of grace they live in full sympathy with the Saviour, follow Him, as time rolls on, through the Sacred year, re-producing and setting forth anew, in their own deep life of faith, all the scenes and experiences in His history, that they may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings; being made conformable unto His death, if by any means they may apprehend that for which also they are apprehended of Christ Jesus.

To celebrate these festivals properly, is to enter fully into the life and spirit of the facts which they commemorate. It is to surrender ourselves to the power of these facts, and have that power live in us. It is by faith, to transcend time and space, and to be present where these facts transpire, as living witnesses. It is to feel all that those felt who were actual witnesses of them; and thus to have our faith and life invigorated by the presence of these glorious realities. He who best attains this, best keeps holy days, and best celebrates holy seasons.

It is not merely the teaching we receive on these occasions in the way of sermons or of symbolical representations which benefits us; it is also the spirit of the occasion, into which we enter, and which, being adapted to the wants of our consciousness, powerfully moves our emotions, inspires and awakens various associations and feelings. It is not so much our minds, our reason, our understanding, that are moved, as that which is deeper, namely our life, our affections, our emotions and feelings, our joys or sorrows, our longings and hopes. These festival occasions bring us into a world of surroundings in which we rather feel than think; for reflection is not much needed, where we are in the very presence of the facts themselves. Their power reaches us not in a secondary way by reflection, but comes directly to our consciousness, and moves all the foundations of our life. This is alike the life and power of the fasts and the festival seasons of the Church.

From what has now been set forth, it will be readily seen that the Church Year is not an empty round of vain formalities, nor yet merely a beautiful theory of man's device, but that it is divine as growing out of the divine facts of our redemption; that it helps to make these real to us, and brings us into sympathy with them. Thus it helps to lay the foundations of our piety deep in the life of Jesus Christ, and perennially refreshes our devotion as from the fountains of life. It pours in upon our weary life, throughout the entire year, the varied, every new, blessings of manifold grace.

OUR dear native land-with a palace or cot-
Be the climate serene, or all frigid the spot-
'Mid Arno's green vales, or the desert's hot sand-
The sweetest of climes is our dear native land.
Though never so rugged, and wintry, and wild,
Who loves not the sod that he loved when a child?
Who loves not the wood, where in boyhood he strayed?
The green where he sported, the games that he played?

Oh, mem'ry paints raptures that manhood, in vain,
Would barter the wealth of the world to regain !
And clothes with a halo of beauty and truth,
The friends of his boyhood, the home of his youth.
Though life may have charms on a far foreign shore,
He sighs as he asks, "Shall I see them no more?"
An alien, 'mid scenes the most lovely and grand,
The heart has no home but its dear native land.

ORIGIN OF PLANTS.

CELERY originated in Germany; the chestnut came from Italy; the onion originated in Egypt; tobacco is a native of Virginia; the nettle is a native of Europe; the citron is a native of Greece; the pine is anative of America; the poppy originated in the East; oats originated in North Africa; rye came originally from Siberia; parsley was first known in Sardinia; the pear and apple are from Europe; spinach was first cultivated in Europe; the sun-flower was brought from Peru; the mulberry tree originated in Persia; the walnut and peach come from Persia; the horse-chestnut is a native of Thibet; the cucumber came from the East Indies; the quince came from the island of Crete; the radish is a native of China and Japan; peas are supposed to be of Egyptian origin; garden beans came from the East Indies; garden cress is from Egypt and the East; horseradish came from the south of Europe; hemp is a native of Persia and the East Indies; the cranberry is a native of Europe and America; the parsnip is supposed to be a native of Peru and Mexico; the currant and gooseberry came from Southern Europe; buckwheat came originally from Siberia and Tartary; millet was first known in India and Abyssinia; the gourd is probably an Eastern plant.

Writers of undeniable respectability state that the cereals, and others of these edible productions, grow spontaneously in that portion of Tartary east of the Belar Tagh, and north of the Himalaya mountains.