his thoughts was earthly and not heavenly, selfish and sensual, and not spiritual and pure.

I would not even lose the benefit of the dreams that visit my pillow, of which Charles Lamb said, more truly perhaps than he intended, "We try to spell in them the alphabet of the invisible world, and think we know already how it shall be with us." For what are they, and what do they mean? They are the motions of our involuntary machinery. By our voluntary powers we array about us such scenery as we will, and sit down amid sights and sounds that please and regale the senses. But when the voluntary powers are suspended, the involuntary are wide awake, and they paint a new scenery about us: they dip their pencils in our most secret desires, and in the colors of those desires they set all things in array about us. They are the Guidos and Raphaels of our inner world, and their shadings and colorings are often the true representations of the inner life. A man shall then find, perhaps, his most cherished plans and most secret inclinations out of him. He shall see his secret self projected in the images that float around, and form the skies and landscapes of this microcosmic and spirit realm, suggesting to us that sure and deep-working spiritual law by which the celestial and infernal scenery are produced, the heaven and hell hereafter, which are the exfigurations of a redeemed or a lost humanity. If therefore the objects of pursuit which these involuntary powers array before us are mainly wrong, and the scenery which they paint is prevailingly impure, we

may know that we need cleansing yet; for when our physical and spiritual natures are both brought into entire harmony with Divine laws, their involuntary motions even shall produce no images but those of white-robed innocence.

But there is another privilege which comes from the holy ministries of solitude and silence. It is solemn, devout, intense meditation. There is comparatively little of this. There is much reading and meeting-going, and hurrying to and fro on business, but little of the brooding spirit of thought. And yet without the latter there is hardly such a thing as thorough self-knowledge and repentance. Men are moved in masses, or trained to the observance of conventional rules, and think themselves tolerably good. But not till they get out of the crowd and go away, alone, and there study the Divine law, and apply it to their individual failings and proclivities, does the secret heart lie exposed, and the light of self-conviction flash down through all its windings, and the beauteous light break on them from afar for whose repose they inly sigh. We live in external things and seek external excitements. And thus the mind takes into itself so much of what is coarse and earthly. Modern Christendom has abundance of Pharisees and Sadducees, and formalism and sensualism are not likely soon to pass away. But where are its Essenes, who sit alone in the solemn shadows where contemplation explores the starry deeps? We need to pass alternately from the inward to the outward, and from the outward back again to the in

ward; for unless we seek these meditative moods, we sink lower and lower, till we are buried in sense. We lose all heavenly-mindedness, all clear intuition. We lose the tidings of immortality that float around us, and sound fainter and fainter within us. We lose that knowledge of ourselves which is the first condition of our regeneration, and without which all other knowledge is superficial. And we never ascend the glory-smitten summits whence a contemplative faith gazes full into the opening Paradise of God.

CHAPTER VI.

ANOTHER BOOK OPENED.

"The mind of man desireth evermore to know the truth according to the most infallible certainty which the nature of things can yield. The greatest assurance generally with all men, is that which we have by plain aspect and intuitive beholding. Where we cannot attain unto this, there what appeareth to be true, by strong and invincible demonstration, such as wherein it is not in any way possible to be deceived, thereunto the mind doth necessarily assent, neither is it in the choice thereof to do otherwise. And in case these both do fail, then which way greatest probability leadeth, thither the mind doth evermore incline." — HOOKER, ECC. POLITY, II. 7.

THERE are, we premise, two kinds of revelation from God to man. Truth may come to us through the deep and clear intuitions of the mind itself, when its dominions are given to the inward sense, reposing in the sunlight of peace like a landscape beneath the eye. Then we know the truth or the falsehood of a proposition, not by reasoning out its results, but by the way it affects our higher sensibilities and by "intuitive beholding." A human nature entirely uncorrupt and unperverted would need no other revelation. Never darkened by sin, never overclouded with hereditary evil, it would receive the Divine light and reflect the Divine charms in childlike innocence, "lying in Abraham's bosom all the year." Nature would always be an open page, and matter always the true and living symbol of spirit ;

for the "vis fervida mentis," the God glowing within, would be an ever-present interpreter to show a divine meaning in the humblest things. We infer from the earliest records, that such were the revelations made to primitive man. He had none other, and he needed none. His was the innocence which had no knowledge of good and evil by sorrowful experience, his the peace that had never been ruffled by sin. Consequently there was that constant revelation of God to man that comes through the inmost mind, and keeps it replenished with that mild wisdom which is better than sagacity, and those intuitions which are a surer guide than philosophy. No theologians were needed for creed-making, no logicians to prove a future life, since the voice of the Lord God was always audible, and the soul itself was full of immortality. The imagination, unpolluted by the imagery of sinful passion, unoccupied by the phantasma of error, might furnish a white ground on which heavenly things would copy themselves, and might become the picture-gallery of the glories of a higher world.

But when this state of innocence and purity is lost, the Divinity shines through our corruption with refracted and broken rays. Other instincts stir within us, and other voices speak than those which come from God. Yea, a long line of foul ancestry is speaking through us, and pouring the tides of its perverted life through our bosoms, tending thence to darken and to sensualize the reason. Instinct is no longer a safe guide, intuition no longer a revelation.