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In one of his essays upon the phenomena of nature, Bacon tells of a mountain so high that no storm ever disturbs its air. Its climate knows little vicissitude. The clouds cannot float so high. The sunshine is constant by day, and the night comes late and the morning comes soon. So peaceful is that summit that a traveller having written some words in the white ashes of his camp fire, found the words still there after a score of years had passed. What an Elysian field is that I far above tornado and lightning shafts, and the miasma of the marsh and the battlefields of men. A fable in part, but an emblem of those heights where dwell those mortals who have reached the widest and deepest education and affections and the purest ethics. As in classifying physical beauty we feel constrained to make distinctions between a violet and an oak, or between a cascade with its murmur and mist, and a cathedral with its spire and arches, and between a trailing vine and a range of mountains, and must change our words with the change of feeling in the soul, and to the rose say "beautiful," to the oak "grand," "pretty" to the violet, and " sublime" to the mountain, so we must divide into many parts the attractiveness of humanity, and must confess some to be witty, some pretty, some beautiful, some learned, and then when already the heart is full of admiration it perceives one more class rising above all other grades of mortality — those morally and mentally great. In this grouping all ages may meet. The infinite love of the Creator is in nothing more manifested than in this, that He has made this moral height accessible to all. Not all can be rich, beautiful, witty, young; but all can climb upward to the higher life. It is not the mere privilege of all, but the pressing duty of all. The heights are large, and voices full of mercy and of alarm are bidding those in the valley to "go up higher." God is represented as being in the holy mountains, and thither He expects His children to come. The heights are everywhere. They are seen in each profession and pursuit. There are merchants who grovel in the mire and whose gains stand for fraud, and there are merchants whose wealth tells of the industry, and growth, and welfare of the people. There are lawyers low and high — lawyers who are always upon the side of criminals, and concerning whose health and presence criminals are said to make inquiry before they plan a new crime; other lawyers, to whom men repair for help when they feel that their cause is just, and the points of law and equity must be placed clearly before jury or bench. There are writers low, and writers who are lofty. The former are witty and verbose in the defamation of character and in detailing the sins of society — these are the remains of human coarseness that are being slowly but steadily eliminated from all written thought, and therefore in greater multitude appear the writers of the pure school whose editorials, or essays, or books, or poems come into all homes as welcome as the beams of the morning sun... Said one of the greatest poets: " On every height there lies repose." This peace is not found elsewhere. It is not a sleep, not an easy existence of inaction, but a repose that comes from the sublimity of the landscape, and from the matchless purity of the air. It is not to be wondered at that the human mind, while sitting in the long past ages at the loom of thought, wove for the Deity such an attribute as " The Highest." And it is not robe wondered at, that when Christ came with His faultless words and deeds, with His boundless friendship and upper forms of thought, the admiring world felt that He was a Son of the Highest — figures of speech which should be taken up afresh by our far-off age. We have read in the ocean and in the storm and in the stupendous size of the universe, that the Creator has power. We have seen in the marvellous laws of mind and material that He has wisdom. We read the Divine love in the entire pageant of life, animal and rational, and we read the Divine eternity in the awful age of the universe, which drinks up millions of years as the sun dries up dewdrops; but we have omitted to ]earn from the high in thought, and industry, and art, from their eternal beauty and repose, that God is also " The Highest." Far above the sun, far above the suns to us unseen, is enthroned the world's God — the God of all worlds — on a height undreamed of by mortals. His mansions are there. Compared with this summit, the mount in the poetic philosophy of Lord Bacon sinks down and becomes a part of time's vale of tears. God is on the heights, and all those minds in this lower world which love the higher life arc steadily walking up the slope of this range, hidden now perhaps by mist, but covered with light beyond the clouds.

(David Swing.)

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KJV: He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:

WEB: He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David,