altogether lost to the world, or even to retard the purposes which they were apparently designed to promote. The chain of material causes and effects does not depend on the motives and feelings which prompt an action, but solely on the action itself; and the purposes of mere physical existence would be as well, or better, promoted by an unerring mechanism, than by the agency of free beings. Nevertheless, if moral obedience be a reasonable service, it must have its result; if the reason which commands it be not an utterly vain delusion, its law must be fulfilled. That law is the first principle of our nature, and it gives us the assurance, our faith in which no difficulty can shake, that no moral act can be fruitless, no work of reason utterly lost. A chain of causes and effects, in which freedom is superfluous and without aim, cannot thus be the limit of our existence; the law of our being cannot be fulfilled in the world of sense ; there must then be a super-sensual world in which it may be accomplished. In this purely spiritual world, will alone is the first link of a chain of consequences which pervades the whole invisible realm of being; as action, in the sensual world, is the first link of a material chain which runs through the whole system of nature. Will is the active living principle of the super-sensual world; it may break forth in a material act which belongs to the sensual world, and do there that which pertains to a material act to do; but, independently of all physical manifestation, it flows forth in endless spiritual activity. Here human freedom is untrammeled by earthly obstructions, and the moral law of our being may find that accomplishment which it sought in vain in the world of sense. But although we are immediately conscious that our will, our moral activity, must lead to consequences beyond itself, we yet cannot know what those consequences may be, nor how they are possible. In respect of the nature of these results, the present life is, in relation to the future, a life in faith. In the future life we shall possess these results, for we shall then make them the groundwork of new activity, and thus the future life will be, in relation to the present, a life in sight. But the spiritual world is even now with us, for we are already in possession of the principle from which it springs. Our will, our free activity, is the only attribute which is solely and exclusively our own; and by it we are already citizens of the eternal world; the kingdom of heaven is here, or nowhere it cannot become more immediately present at any point of finite existence. This life is the beginning of our being; the outward world is freely given to us as a firm ground on which we may commence our course; the future life is its continuance, for which we must ourselves create a starting-period in the present; and should the aim of this second life prove as unattainable to finite power, as the end of the first is to us now, then the fresh strength, the firmer purpose, the clearer sight which shall be its immediate growth, will open to us another and a higher sphere of activity. But the world of duty is an infinite world; every finite exertion has but a definite aim; and beyond the highest point toward which our laboring being strives, a higher still appears ; and to such progression we can conceive no end. By -- free determination in the effort after moral perfection, we have laid hold on eternal life. In the physical world we see certain phenomena following each other with undeviating regularity. We cannot say that what we name cause has in itself any power over that which we call effect, that there is any relation between them except that of invariable sequence. We suppose a law under which both subsist, which regulates the mode of their existence, and by the efficiency of which the order of their succession is determined. So likewise, in the spiritual world, we entertain the firmest conviction that our moral will is connected with certain consequences, though we cannot understand how mere will can of itself produce such consequences. We here again conceive of a law under which our will, and the will of all finite beings, exists, in virtue of which it is followed by certain results, and out of which all our relations with other beings arise. So far as our will is simply an internal act, complete in itself, it lies wholly within our own power; so far as it is a fact in the super-sensual world—the first of a train of spiritual consequences, it is not dependent on ourselves, but on the law which governs the supersensual world. But the super-sensual world is a world of freedom, of living activity; its principle cannot be a mechanical force, but must itself possess this freedom this living activity. It can be nothing else than selfdetermining reason. But self-determining reason is will. The law of the super-sensual world must thus be a Will: - a will operating without material implement or manifestation; which is in itself both act and pro duct which is eternal and unchangeable; so that on it finite beings may securely rely, as the physical man does on the laws of his world, — that through it, all their moral acts of will, and these only, shall lead to certain and unfailing results. In this Living Will, as the principle of the spiritual world, has our moral will its first consequence, and through Him its energy is propagated throughout the series of finite beings who are the products of the Infinite Will. He is the spiritual bond which unites all free beings together: not immediately can they know or influence each other, for they are separated from each other by an impassable barrier; — their mutual knowledge comes through Him alone, to whom all are equally related. Our faith in duty, and in the objects of duty, is only faith in Him, in His wisdom, in His truth. He is thus the creator and sustainer of all things, for in Him alone all the thronging forms which people our dream of life, "live and move and have their being." All partake His essence material nature disappears, but its images are invested with a new reality. All our life is His life; and we are eternal, for He is eternal. Birth and the grave are no more, but, in their stead, undying energy and immortal youth. Of Him the Infinite One, of the mode of His being, we know nothing, nor need we to know; we cannot pierce the inaccessible light in which he dwells, but through the shadows which veil His presence from us, an endless stream of life and power and action flows around and about us, bearing us and all finite things onward to new life and love and beauty. "The ONE remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines; Earth's shadows fly; Stains the white radiance of Eternity, All death in nature is birth,-the assumption of a new garment, to replace the old vesture which humanity has laid aside in its progress to higher being. And serene above all change, the unattainable object of all finite effort fountain of our life home of our spirits, Thou art the One Being, - the I AM, for whom reason has no idea, and language no name. "Sublime and living Will, named by no name, compassed by no thought, I may raise my soul to Thee, for Thou and I are not divided. Thy voice is heard within me, mine is heard by Thee, and all my thoughts, if they are good and true, live in Thee alone. In Thee, the Incomprehensible, I myself, and the world in which I live, stand clear before me; all the secrets of my existence are laid open, and perfect harmony arises in my soul. "Thou art best known to the childlike, devoted, simple heart. To it Thou art the searcher of all hearts, who seest the minds of men; the ever-present true witness of their thoughts, who knowest if they are good, who knowest them though all the world know them not. Thou art the Father who ever desirest their good, who rulest all things for the best. To Thy will they resign themselves: Do with me,' they say, what Thou wilt; I know that it is good, for it is Thou who doest it.' The inquisitive understanding, which has heard |