MARHAM.

Awful, very awful proof of an hereafter! and yet most of us can guess at it, out of our own experience.

AUBIN.

So we can. In the very abasement of our nature, we are consciously immortal, and so we are in our highest moods.

MARHAM.

But in them we may be deceived; for they are our proudest.

AUBIN.

I was thinking of those only that are our purest.

MARHAM.

Right. And it is certain that, whether visible or not, all souls must have in them foretokens of their infinite continuance.

AUBIN.

Especially towards death; some souls, as it were, plainly going home, in going out of this world. And there are some who die, and are followed by their works, and not only by them, but by their righteous sufferings, witnesses that cry aloud, along with the souls of the martyrs under the altar, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge?" But judgment there will be, and the day of it is appointed; so we can be patient, and be earnest in getting ready for it.

MARHAM.

Oliver, what are those verses you repeated last night, when looking out of the window?

yet I like them.

AUBIN.

What I remember of a translation from Uhland. They are expressive of impatience for death; and They are what an old man might well say, looking up at the stars on an autumn night, with the leaves falling about him.

O golden legends writ in the skies!

I turn towards you with longing soul,
And list to the awful harmonies

Of the spheres, as on they roll.

O blessed rest! O royal night!

Wherefore seemeth the time so long,

Till I see yon stars in their fullest light,
And list to their loudest song.

In the day we do not see the stars, but night brings us in sight of them; and that night of nights, the night of death, will carry us up to them, and through them, and beyond them, and into the bosom of the Father, as we may well believe.

Amen! amen!

MARHAM.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

And is this all that man can claim?

Is this our longing's final aim?

To be like all things round, -no more
Than pebbles cast on Time's gray shore?

Can man no more than beast aspire
To know his being's awful Sire?
And, born and lost on Nature's breast,
No blessing seek but there to rest?

JOHN STERLING.

MARHAM.

I HAVE been reading at the window here, and I think, Oliver, in two books at once, perhaps. For my eyes have been straying, now and then, from this book of grace to the book of nature, outside. And, Oliver, I have been thinking, that it is only from my reading in the Scriptures that I find myself encouraged to draw nigh to God. In the book of nature there is little I can read to encourage me; or I should rather say, perhaps, there is very little encouragement there which I can read of myself. For I cannot doubt that to Jesus all nature was like the smile of God; and to the Psalmist it would appear, sometimes, to have been like God become plain about them. But they are only the true children of God, on whom nature does not frown as well as smile.

There have been times when almost I could have wondered, that, with the heavens to spread himself through, God should care about having a human heart for his temple. Oliver, I cannot wonder that some men have felt their own nothingness so painfully, as to have had misgivings too strong for their faith sometimes. The nothingness of man before the vastness of nature, it is only a wise faith that can bear it, with the weight with which it sometimes weighs on some minds. And there has been an unbelief, which has justified itself by asking scornfully what David would have asked with mingled feelings of humbleness, awe, and trust,- What is man, any man, that God should regard him, while there are stars shining in the heavens, and while there are the sun and moon of his making?

AUBIN.

Uncle, the stars do not glorify God, except through the mind of man. The sun and moon praise God only with such rays as can enter the temple of a man's soul.

MARHAM.

I do not understand you, Oliver; at least, I think I do not.

AUBIN.

There is no such thing as sound, outside of the ear. A noise is made by the air being made to vibrate; but the vibrations of the air become

sound only by their striking on the drum of the

ear.

MARHAM.

Yes; that is so, I suppose.

AUBIN.

And not in a bird's or a dog's, but only in a man's ear, is Handel's Messiah the sublime music which it is.

Well, that is true.

MARHAM.

AUBIN.

And now what was the world before it could shape itself in the intelligent mind of man? And before there was any ear at all, what was the world, all round? what else but silence? Brooks ran on noiseless beds, and rivers went over noiseless falls, and seas ebbed and flowed in silence. Breezes played without a whisper; and winds, high winds, blew over plains and through forests, and not a sound did they make. The world was a silent world, before the ear was made for hearing. And over the earth there was no beauty, till the human eye opened on it.

MARHAM.

Do you mean, in the same way as music is not music, except in a human ear?

AUBIN.

Yes, and for the same reason as the world was

a silent world before the ear was fashioned for the