ness of soul, to recognize the relative proportions of all truths, all duties, and all interests. When we meet persons thinking so, in whatever society or condition of culture, we feel respect for them. We draw near to them. They do us good. In all that they say, we feel the presence of serious things. We see that their life is earnest. They talk of what is important. They do not gossip about trifles, or dispute about insignificant matters. They make life seem worth living; they add interest to every hour. As they speak, our heart burns. within us; and, though they may not talk in sanctimonious phrase of religious subjects, we feel the profound religion which has its home in their souls; and so they bring us nearer to God, to immortality, and to heaven.

Nearer to heaven; for heaven, too, has its perspective laws. To us, living in a little point of time, on a little spot of space, heavenly things, as well as earthly things, must be seen, not as they really are, but as the laws of optics require. The heavens bend around us, and touch the earth, -a dome of deep azure by day, a dome of stars by night. But this is only appearance. The heavens everywhere extend into infinite distances, unbent and uniform. Before a north-east storm, the clouds form themselves into great fan-like diverging masses, rising from the north-east and south-west points of the sky. The vast auroral columns of fire, shooting toward their vanishing-point in the zenith above, seem converging to a point there.

But this is all a perspective illusion. The clouds which seem to converge are parallel; the auroral streamers which seem to converge are parallel: they only seem to converge and to bend.

And so the lines of love, which run parallel in this world, seem to have their vanishing-point in death. The cloudy and fiery pillars of Divine Providence seem to vanish in disaster and evil. The progress of truth, justice, and humanity, appears to vanish in the triumph of evil and wrong. But all this is only apparent. This is the perspective effect of our shortsighted vision. Loving hearts shall go on side by side for ever. Truth and justice shall move forward on their vast orbits through all space. Good shall be triumphant over evil, right over wrong, peace over war; and all things in heaven and earth shall work for good to those who love God.

IT

VIII.

"IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL."

John xii. 12: “ LORD, IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL."

T is curious how large a part of every man's life is passed in sleep; more than a quarter of it; probably, on an average, a third. So that, if a man lives to be seventy, he has slept for more than twenty years. He has slept as long as Rip van Winkle, only not all at once. No matter how industrious, how active, how ambitious, how full of enthusiasm for what he has to do; after every few hours he becomes unconscious of all these vivid purposes, and drops away into entire indifference and ignorance of them all. People may be as different as you please in character, taste, temper; but they must all sleep six hours out of the twenty-four. The rapt saint, just caught up into the seventh heaven in an ecstasy of prayer, comes back to earth, and goes to bed, and falls into some foolish dream. The most virtuous man in Boston, and the coarsest criminal in the penitentiary, at one o'clock to-night will be equalized in sleep; the good man having subsided into a merely

passive and negative virtue, and the sinner returned for a few hours to the innocence of childhood. Newton, just about to discover the great secret of the universe; Shakspeare, with "Hamlet" half written; Milton, with the music of paradise half sung; Stephenson, with the locomotive almost invented; Lord Bacon, with the "Novum Organon" nearly thought out; Rafaelle, with the final touch which is to charm the world in the Dresden "Madonna" not yet added,

must all go to sleep, and lose for six hours all consciousness of their great work and mission.

It seems a great loss.

Even the earth needs to go to sleep once a year. The earth around us, so full of activity and life a little while ago, folds its arms over its bosom, and sleeps the dreamless sleep of winter. The trees, which lately shook their multitude of leaves in the warm air, made sweet music in the rapid breeze, and lashed their branches angrily in the summer storm, now stand with all their life gone to sleep in their roots. But, amid this winter sleep, Nature is nursing her powers, and re-collecting her forces, and preparing to come forth anew in full and varied life with the next year. It seems like death; but it is only sleep. Had we never seen a spring, we should say that it was quite impossible for this dead grass ever to revive; for these cold, clattering branches to be covered again with tender, delicate leaves; for new blossoms and flowers to hang tender and fragrant on bush and tree; for the children to go out again, and

gather sweet fruits and berries from these dried-up and withered sticks. But as what seems like death in nature is only sleep; so that which we call death, Jesus called sleep.

Did you ever stand by night on a housetop, looking down upon the roofs of a sleeping city? Here and there, a light shows where men are still awake,some immersed in study; some lonely watchers by the bed of pain or death; some in gay, protracted revelry ; some obliged by poverty to cheat the body of its needed rest to supply food and clothing to starving children. All the rest of the vast population sleeps. From every height of wisdom and holiness they have gone down, from every depth of passion or sin they have come up, to this tranquil, neutral land of peaceful repose. The transcendental philosopher, who has been, in his lamp-lit cell, fathoming the last mysteries of being for his admiring disciples; the sublime poet, who has been weaving, with a smile, a tale of woe; the preacher, who has finished his best sermon for to-morrow; the orator, who has committed to memory the last fiery paragraph of the speech which is to shake a nation's soul, these have all gone down into that unconscious sphere, the only sphere of real democratic equality. There they lie, side by side, with the burglar, who has arranged his plans for robbing his neighbor's house; the disloyal editor, who has finished the paragraph which is another stab of his poisoned dagger at the heart of his struggling, tormented mother-land; the drunken child