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Many contemplative minds have been exercised on the immense amount of energy and time that are expended in the mere procuring of food and clothing; and the pious have bowed to the necessity as part of the curse under which the earth still groans on account of sin. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" was the righteous sentence on fallen man; and we know assuredly that if innocence had remained, other clothing would have been un-needed.

But possibly it may not have struck every one that almost as much of time and labour are consumed in cleansing away impurities. Our bodies, our garments, our furniture, our houses, our streets, are perpetually being cleaned: it is clean, clean, clean,-wash, scrub, scour, brush, sweep,-from morning to night, from week to week, from year to year, a constant unremitting war with ; a war hopeless because endless, a war with an enemy that may be kept in check, but can never be conquered. No sooner by herculean efforts have we made a successful onslaught on the foe, and apparently subdued him so that he cannot shew his face again, and begin to sit down in complacency, than lo! we descry his unsightly sappers and miners retaking all the points we thought we had secured, and we exclaim, in disappointment and despair;

I incline to think that this necessity is as much a judicial sentence as the other; that it also is part of the curse. It is true we may trace it to the laws of matter; to the excretions of living beings, the natural