wider, higher, sweeter, and more blissful reception of that Infinite. As I expect to be the same soul or being there as here, so I expect God will be the same, and conditions of advancement the same. The separation of the righteous and the wicked there will be only by the laws that separate them here; and there will be no fixed state in which one must stay there more than here.

Let him, then, who would learn how to live a life of bliss by and by learn to live a life of cleanliness, temperance, usefulness, courage, and efficiency here. The scholar who understands best the grade which he is in is best prepared for the grade into which he shall be promoted.

The child opens his eyes upon the wonder of the world, and comes to a knowledge of his powers little by little. In myself, I was never more a child, never more on the threshold of all possible good, than I am to-day. That which I have attained gives me no greater sense of completeness than that which I had as a child. The power to comprehend only reveals more and more to comprehend. The power to enjoy but reveals more and more to enjoy. The little country town of my childhood was as much to me as all New England to-day; and the New England of my childhood was as much as all the world of to-day. Slowly, by toil and pain, there has come to me a more sacred friendship, a deeper worship, a vaster thought, a more abundant delight. If this may continue; if the way may still conduct me into higher sensations, into greater knowledge, into more divine love; if the future shall open and open and open; if I may ever pursue something, as I have here; if joy shall forever go with good, and pain with evil, as here; if I may draw closer to better hearts, and draw out more of the fathomlessness of my being; if this may be, just this, step by step, little by little,—I shall not ask, for I cannot conceive, a more glorious destiny.t

In confirmation of Mr. Bisbee's testimony upon the relations between desire, activity, and happiness, comes Cowper's:

Lives spent in indolence, and therefore sad. . . .

Absence of occupation is not rest,

A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.

In idleness there is perpetual despair.

Thomas Carlyle.

If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty), my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty numbers of the Caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to

West Derby, Vt., overlooking an unusually grand landscape of lake, mountains, hills, and villages.

†To those who have heard the above discourse (of whom the writer was one) there is a peculiarly touching pathos in the peroration, "If this may continue," etc. A few months after its delivery, on the eve of an anticipated vacation, Mr. Bisbee preached with equal eloquence on a collateral theme, abridged the closing exercise including the benediction, descended the pulpit stairs, was stricken with apoplexy, and soon the meek and noble spirit was released to its more glorious destiny.'

add that many of them are due to the pleasing labor of the present composition.- Edward Gibbon.

The reference is to "Abdalrahman, the Just," who, not long before his death, A.D. 790, had assumed the title of King of Cordova. He testified:

I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call; nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen. O man, place not thy confidence in this world!

Gibbon's testimony is well supplemented by two women's:

For ages, happiness has been represented as a huge precious stone, impossible to find, which people seek hopelessly. It is not so. Happiness is a mosaic, composed of a thousand little stones, which separately and of themselves have little value, but which, united with art, form a graceful design- Mme. Emile de Girardin.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.— George Eliot.

Another ripe reasoner hereon, after defining heaven to consist of "heavenly knowledge, love, and action,” says of hell :

Suppose that each man is tested by a sliding scale, arranged, not only according to his goodness and wickedness, but also according to his opportunities and advantages. Then, it would follow that a pretty bad man, who had had no opportunities or poor opportunities, would go to heaven; and a pretty good man, who had not made equal use of his better opportunities, would go to hell. Then, hell would contain many people much better than those in heaven. This is the dilemma. If only good people are to go to heaven, and only the bad to hell, then those will be punished for not being good who have never had any opportunity of being so and who could not help being bad. But, if each man is rewarded or punished according to his efforts to do right, taking into account all the circumstances, then good and bad people will be mixed together in heaven, and other good and bad people will be mixed together in hell. If heaven be a place and hell another place, it is impossible to escape this difficulty. But if heaven be inward happiness and peace, and hell be inward dissatisfaction and unrest, then the difficulty disappears. Just so far as a man is true to his conscience and his heart, he enters into an inward heaven; just so far as he is false to it, he goes into an inward hell. The worm that never dies is conscience.

The conception Jesus had of God as a father is utterly opposed to the usual doctrine of probation. Could a good earthly father put his

children on trial in this way? Could he take his little ones and test them as a manufacturer tests his goods, and, fixing an arbitrary mark of excellence, reject all that do not come up to it? No! ten times no! Those who are low down and far off are the very ones the good earthly and heavenly Father cares for the most. The Son of God comes to seek and to save those who are lost.

The sight of a heavenly Father who keeps bringing up the rearguard of humanity, and goes out to seek and save the lost sheep, has worked on the world to create a different civilization. It tends to unite men in a common mode of life. Out of the fatherhood of God comes the brotherhood of man. The new heavens make the new earth.-Dr. J. F. Clarke (Common Sense in Religion, p. 150).

A still more emphatic "No!" has been uttered as follows: This avenging God, rancorous torturer, who burns his creatures in a slow fire! When they tell me that God made himself a man, I prefer to recognize a man who made himself a god.— Alfred de Musset.

One horn of the dilemma propounded by Dr. Clarke recalls the declaration of "Father" Edward Taylor that, if Mr. Emerson was sent to perdition, the best people would migrate with him. Mr. Spurgeon's remark, "He that believeth shall be saved, let his sins be ever so many; he that believeth not shall be damned, let his sins be ever so few," suggests a passage in a Chicago clergyman's open letter to an earnest literalist:

You say that no sinner can be saved who does not actually appropriate the blood of Christ with the conscious acceptance of the imputed righteousness which he possesses; and this, though honest of purpose and doing the best he knows. Take the saved on these terms, even in this very city as a basis, and you will have to figure very liberally to make in Europe and America more than 40,000,000,

the present population of the United States. Now, America is said to contain about 85,519,000 human beings; Europe, 309,178,000; Asia, 824,548,000; Africa, 199,521,000; Australia and Polynesia, 4,748,000. In view of these figures, who rules the universe, God or the devil? Is this the best that the grace of God can do for mankind?- Dr. W. H. Ryder (Open Letter to Dwight L. Moody).*

Which recalls the remark reported to have been made by H. W. Beecher in a sermon at St. Paul, Minn., about the same date: "As to worshipping a God who damns men through all creation, I cannot worship the devil, and that is only a demoniacal God." Nevertheless, nobody who has lived through his (or her) teens will deny that a single folly-not to say sinwill for a lifetime remind one of the princess who could not

*See Art. xviii. of the Thirty-nine Articles as to who "are to be had accursed."

sleep on a hundred beds of down because of the little pebble underneath them all. There is a sense in which the Scotch literalist was not very illogical, though he may have chosen his premises inadvertently. But," said his friend, "according to your statement, nobody is likely to be saved except yourself and your brother Alexander!' "Aweel, I'm nae sae sure aboot Sandy, neither." This view of "the Eternal Goodness reminds New Englanders of the Hopkins "logic linked and strong" that made the test of a condition of salvation the being willing to be damned.* Welcome, Whittier!

I see the wrong that round me lies,

I feel the guilt within;

I hear with groan and travail cries
The world confess its sin.

Yet in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings:
I know that God is good!

Not mine to look when cherubim
And seraphs may not see;
But nothing can be good in him
Which evil is in me.

*See in the Christian Register of Jan. 4, 1883,, p. 5, an article by Dr. J. L. Withrow, on "The Unknown Number of the Lost," which perhaps indicates the most advanced "orthodox" thought on the subject. See also at page 2 therein an editorial by Samuel J. Barrows, quoting old "orthodox" utterances of Drs. Lewis Du Moulin, Nathanael Emmons, Jonathan Edwards, Enoch Pond, Charles Hodge, and others, and especially Krauth's "Acta" of the Synod of Dort.

CHAPTER XLIII.

PERPETUATION.

What are the Five Principal Arguments in Behalf of the Immortality of the Soul?

(1) THE metaphysical based on the immateriality, etc. Consciousness teaches that the soul is one and indivisible,- not made up of parts like the body. The body is multiform, the soul uniform.

The soul is never so hampered by its enthralment within the body as when it loves.-O. S. Fowler.

Some have conceived a metaphysical argument from our notions of time and space.

Eternity is a negative idea clothed with a positive name. It supposes in that to which it is applied a present existence, and is the negation of a beginning or of an end of that existence.— Archbishop William Paley.

(2) The teleological, based on the fact that the soul is adapted to perpetual progress, and has a corresponding desire and expectation. Not to Milton alone is welcome