the sum total of his aspirations; and a tender bond of friendship was established between these two. The atmosphere of tranquillity without cynism, of content without affectation, of spirituality without ascetism, that pervaded. this house, made it a very haven of rest to the storm-tossed bark of the pilgrim. No one living with Aristos would have been struck by his piety or virtue, for his conduct seemed a necessary condition of his life; there was such a naturalness about his every act and word, that made one forget its divergence from the acts and words of others. His merit consisted, not in being an extraordinary man, but in being just exactly what a man ought to be; and the difference between him and other men consisted in this, that, while he possessed true manliness (virtue) the generality of men are not men in the true acceptation of the word.

Не

A mournful, but at the same time, exalted, circumstance put a period to the intercourse between these two men. Aristos, who had attended with tender care on a Hindu attacked by an infectious malady, had succeeded in restoring the sufferer to health, but he himself became a victim to the fell disease. Ruddy with health and unaffected by age, this glorious man became a martyr to his charity. died, while engaged in a work of love; or rather God took away his well-beloved, and appointed him a larger and more glorious sphere of usefulness. His last words expressed his happiness with his earthly career, his trust in the Eternal and Almighty and Loving God, and his hope of meeting the spirit of his Egeria, who had snatched him from a spiritual death. A great number of neighbours had gathered around his bed; and witnessing the happy dissolution of a happy man, they went away sobered, and encouraged to follow his example. A province mourned the death of their friend and benefactor, and when the last rites were performed over the abandoned tabernacle of this pure soul, all ranks and castes and creeds united in bearing testimony to the sanctity of the departed heretic.

Agathos had been entrusted with the execution of Aristos' will. The disposition of the property was simple enough. Not having any relatives, he had left his money to the poor, his books to the district library, established by himself, and his unpublished manuscripts to his friend Agathos, with full discretion to publish them or not. The latter has

made a selection of these papers, of which he sends a number forth into the world, with a sincere wish, that their perusal might have the effect of making the reader's life as peaceful, as content, as happy, as that of their author. Pax vobiscum! AGATHOS.

CHAPTER I.

IS THERE A GOD?

CAN we imagine that there is any one sure enough, even the most earnest disciple of Spinoza, or the most confirmed Atheist, in the infallibility and truth of his system, whose secret convictions do not raise continual doubts, and conscientious scruples, when he makes the bold statement, "there is no God." These deniers of Divinity are men caught in the net of insinuating sophisms; their arguments are contradictory, and their conclusions based upon aberrations of the intellect; for already the psalmist exclaims (Ps. xiv.): "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God!" They may appeal to the fact that there does not exist any positive proof of the existence of God, be it from the ethical, ontological, cosmological, or historical point of view; but not enough that the reasoning from these different points of view brings us to the very limit of certainty, the want of positive proof is not sufficient ground to deny the existence of God. There is many a hypothesis which we cannot prove, and which is nevertheless accepted as a well-established fact. So is, for instance, the belief of a child in his parents' love; so is the faith of a husband in his wife's fidelity. We might, indeed, follow a negative reasoning, and ask: "What proof is there against the assumption that there is a God?" Putting revelation entirely aside, we are well satisfied with the proofs of the existence of God which we possess, and which are convincing to every one but the purposely blind, while the deniers of God produce such weak and contradictory reasonings in support of their theories, as may be ignored by us altogether, and as will not even convince themselves.

The belief in the existence of God is the most general and ineradicable that humanity possesses.

It is a spiritual instinct, the very existence of which proves the existence of God, and which is as infallible as our animal instincts. We see that, since history commenced, from the very obscurity of mythical ages-whatever the depth of barbarism in which the nations were sunk at the time-they all professed faith in a Divinity of some kind or other, that is, they had this spiritual instinct, whatever name they went by, with regard to creed, nationality or philosophy. Cicero de legibus:-"Ipsisque in hominibus nulla gens neque tam immansueta, neque tam fera, quae non, etiam si ignoret qualem habere deum deceat, tamen habendum sciat ;" and Artemidorus says: "There is no people without a God, without a Supreme Ruler though some may worship him in the one, some in the other manner.' The Ancients have left us many remarks to the same effect; but even without them our own experience corroborates the point. Whether the nations called themselves Greeks, or Indians, or Chinese; whether their creeds went by the names of Monotheism, Polytheism, Dualism, Pantheism or Buddhism, it is always the same, they felt they could

not get on without the Supreme Being. And thus it is at this very time. The fetish worshippers of Central Africa, the Red Indians of America, were found to possess an approximate idea of the Divinity, although in everything else they hardly differed from the beast of the field. The term applied, or the name given, to a certain cultus, a certain creed, does not affect the certainty of a general consciousness of the existence of God; it only describes the characteristic feature of the view of God, and the manner of worshipping him. Moreover, these distinctions have not much importance, as on close examination it will be seen that each religion contains many points in common with the other. I need not examine the matter any further, simply because I, and the whole human race with me, at all times feel that the belief in God is not the effect of prejudice or education, but that it is part and portion of our own nature. How can we presume disputing a conviction which God himself planted. into our hearts, and without which we should not be "men"?

One of the strongest proofs, and one that addresses itself with the greatest power to humanity, is that of the creation of the world, and the design manifested in every detail of nature. Looking upon the world around him, the observer has the question naturally presented to him-how all these things came into existence? The Darwinian theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life, does not solve the problem of original creation; no more are we satisfied by assuming that matter is eternal, and that it is ruled by laws for which there seems to be no law-giver. We perceive the effects of Almighty and intelligent power all around us, and we see ourselves placed in the world, intelligent and conscious beings, through an invisible cause-à cause invisible, but nevertheless certain. If we cannot see God that is no reason why we should deny him, for our soul we can also not see, but we know it to exist.-Marc Anton., XII.

Some things may be perceptible to one or several of our external senses, but imperceptible to others, still they do exist. For instance, the sense of smell is incapable of judging the flavour of an eatable and so on; and in like manner there are things that are not perceptible to the outer senses at all, but to the internal one, such as ideas and conceptions, for instance, virtue, vice, etc. Now, the existence of God originally an abstract conception, i.e., a perception of the internal sense, becomes evidenced by the effects of this activity, so that the external senses even can corroborate the spiritual instinct. Pusey has attempted to demonstrate at full length, and with great ability, how we are compelled to recognise an intelligent Maker for such a wonderfully and well-adapted piece of handiwork as nature; and having gone thus far, we have only to call this Maker by the name of "God," and our proof will be complete. It is inconceivable that chance should have produced the universe; for, if through accidental combination, through the attraction of atoms, such a beautiful world could be produced, how is it then that it never happened that by accidental combinations of letters, poetical effusions were produced, or that by means of atomic attraction artistic edifices. arose ?-(Cicero, de natura deorum, II., 37.) Kant says that all our

knowledge, derived from a study of nature, leads us back to the cause, the moving idea, and increases our belief in a superior power, until it amounts to an absolute conviction. Isaac Newton, A. von Humboldt, the great Pascal, and other bright luminaries in science express themselves in a like manner. The Pantheistic conception of the creative and organising power of the Kosmos itself is contradictory and unsatisfactory as wanting an original cause. It was probably this recognition of the practical, useful and complicated arrangement of nature that led men first to direct their glance to heaven, whence most of their blessings and calamities descended, in search of the invisible author of them. And this cause, this author, must be a conscious God, a personal God, for our own consciousness and the economy of nature demonstrates it. I conclude the cosmological portion of this question with quoting Psalm xiv.:-" The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork; day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge; there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard."

The existence of subjective reason proves the existence of God, for it supposes the existence of an objective reason, which we must call "God."

We do not originate the ideas of the good, the true and the beautiful; we conceive them only. They are not the product of our spirit, but of perfection in the abstract. Perfection, on being reflected on our minds, is reproduced in less or greater clearness, and acts upon our volition, so that all our aspirations towards morality are only an additional proof of the objective perfection, namely God. We can only think God, the highest conception we are capable of, because God does exist. He himself is the originator of our conception of him, and the fact of the existence of this conception is (Cartesius) therefore a proof of the existence of God. And as the fact of the conception so is also its quality, for what we think is not merely a shapeless idea, but it is the real God. Not to conceive him real, would be not conceiving him at all; we consequently, of necessity, infer the existence of God because (Anselmus) of our capacity to conceive him. Kant repudiates this reasoning, for he says that the conception of an idea does not necessarily imply the reality of what has been conceived, but here the distinction should be drawn between voluntary and involuntary or intuitive conceptions, which latter are beyond the control of our will. As Plato so forcibly teaches, the only thing having absolute reality are the ideas themselves; for the ideas constitute the reality of the external, the objective world.

The existence and the nature of conscience enforces on us the belief in a deity; for though it may be trained, educated and refined by means of education, it is not entirely an acquired quality. It was born with us, and it acts in contradiction to our will, so that he who denies its existence, while he denies it, is compelled to acknowledge its existence because he feels its workings. The conscience is entirely beyond the control of the human volition, for while we disobey it, it torments us; we cannot impose our command on it, but it imposes its commands on us. It is not placed under