opportunity to help a good man and a man of ge

nius is a treasure

AUBIN.

Which not many men are good enough to value. But this is a thing which it is better not to say, even if quite true. And so I will not say it. For the soul gets embittered with saying bitter things. And then even good men may not find one another out, as I ought to remember from the way in which even you and I did not know one another for so long, and never should have done but for an accident, no, a providential event; for so it was for me.

MARHAM.

And for me, too, Oliver. But you suffered so strangely! Why, O, why did not I know of it, or guess it? And why did I let my foolish prejudices, foolish and worse

AUBIN.

No, dear uncle, uncle Stephen; do not talk so But let our not knowing one another be among the strange things of the world, and they are very many. Why they are allowed, we cannot tell always. But they are wisely allowed, no doubt. Why, why is this? But for any of us asking so, there is no special answer vouchsafed. The wheels of the universe do not stop for us to examine their mechanism; for if they did, there would be no progress; because, at every moment,

the self-will of some creature or other is in collision with that Divine will which is the mainspring of creation.

MARHAM.

It does my heart good, and it does my soul good, to see you so happy, Oliver, and so at peace with the world, after having been so hardly used in it.

AUBIN.

It would be a shame if I were not so; and the more I have suffered, the greater shame. Because, with a Christian, at the end of a grievous trial, and when the soreness of it is abating, there is a strange and sublime experience. There is the feeling of sorrow, and there is that of infinite goodness; and the two blend into a consciousness like that of having been just about to be spoken to by God. And this is not a deceptive feeling, though God is silent towards us all our lives; for with him a thousand years are as one day; and when he will justify himself to us, it will not be our fleshly impatience which he will address, but the calm estate of spirits everlasting like himself.

1

CHAPTER II.

The very spirits of a man prey upon the daily portion of bread and flesh; and every meal is a rescue from one death, and lays up for another; and the clock strikes, and reckons on our portion of eternity: we form our words with the breath of our nostrils, we have the less to live upon for every word we speak. —JEREMY TAYLOR.

All death in nature is birth, and in death appears visibly the advancement of life. There is no killing principle in nature, for nature through. out is life; it is not death which kills, but the higher life, which, concealed behind the other, begins to develop itself. Death and birth are but the struggle of life with itself to attain a higher form.-J. G. FICHTE.

MARHAM.

OUT of our hearts, and out of our reasons, many things are said to us about our immortality; but they would not be listened to believingly, if it were not for our Christian courage. Christ said,

that because he lives we shall live also. what emboldens our faith.

AUBIN.

This is

Twice did Christ enter this world, and twice did he depart from it, and so the other world and this were made to feel the nigher.

MARHAM.

Twice, did you say, that Jesus came into this

life?

AUBIN.

Once through his mother's womb and his moth

er's cares, and once from withinside the grave of the Arimathean. To and fro, between this and

the other world, Christ passed. So that to us believers this earth feels like the fore-court of heaven, and death like the door into eternity.

MARHAM.

At that door, threescore years and ten make a loud knocking for me; and old age is like an anxious waiting for the door to open. And awful waiting it would be, were it not for Christ inside. But for him, it would be dreadful leaving this known for the unknown world.

AUBIN.

But now, uncle, It feels known, be

This known world, you say. is it known? No, it is not. cause we feel foolishly. For every grain of sand is a mystery; so is every daisy in summer, and so is every snow-flake in winter. Both upwards and downwards, and all round us, science and speculation pass into mystery at last.

MARHAM.

We will say, then, that this world is little known, and the other still less..

Perhaps it is so.

AUBIN.

MARHAM.

Why, Oliver, how can you say perhaps, as though you were not sure?

AUBIN.

Nay, but, uncle, how can I be sure?

MARHAM.

Very easily, I should think; as you have lived thirty years in this world, and into the other have never had one glance.

AUBIN.

But, dear uncle, I think I may have had. For I am of two worlds, matter and spirit. With these gray eyes I have never known the world of spirit, but known it I have through certain feelings, very faintly, and yet plainly, as I think.

MARHAM.

But still, as you say, very faintly.

AUBIN.

And very little, too, is my knowledge of this world. It is not unlikely, I think, on my dying, that the other world will feel as familiar to me as this does. For body and breathing, table, chair, and house, are unfelt, and are nothing to me, while I am in thought; so that when I am in spirit they will not be much missed, perhaps. And then there are states of mind which will be as common to me hereafter as here, and more so; so that with them, at once, I shall be familiar. In prayer, the furniture of my room is forgotten, and praying hereafter in our Father's house, the fresh splendor of it will be forgotten. And I shall feel and be what I am now at times, but more purely, -a worshipper only. And other states of mind there will be, in which, at once, I shall feel as