down below but a poor reflection of its previous activity prolonged a darkened life. But brighter than Olympus is that which this poor conception banished to a subterranean darkness; and the kingdom of the shades is to me already here the archetype of all reality. For such men the Godhead is beyond the world of time, and that man might behold and praise the Deity, they have freed him after death for ever from the limitations of time; but the spirit soars already above the temporal world, and to behold that is even here eternity, and the celestial enjoyment of everlasting songs. Begin, therefore, now thine eternal life in steady selfcontemplation-care not for what may pass away, but see to this, that thou losest not thyself, and weep if thou drivest on in the stream of time and carriest no heaven in thy soul."

Go with Ulysees and Æneas down beneath the earth into their fabled world of ghosts, and you find in the Elysium of the ancients such a pallid and poverty-stricken heaven as that of which Schleiermacher spake. It needed revelation to give man that very idea of a future state which the philosopher propounds as though the discovery were his own. In the book we learn, that the life unseen, the heaven for which we hope, is far more complete, more truly real, than the life below. That this life is rather the poor shadow of that than that of this. We learn, too, that our heaven must be begun and with us here in time, borne about within the breast, in the tastes and aspirations of a renewed nature. All that is true here we have in our Christianity. But let experience answer whether we can dispense with the hope of a life beyond the grave, less troubled and less maimed than this? Whether any soul can be truly satisfied with the heaven he can make for himself in his own mind while on the earth? Whether ceaseless self-contemplation will not rather make a hell than a heaven, for a faithful searcher into his own soul. All these faults and follies, this self contradiction, these defeated aims and desires, hungering, and still unfed-to be shut up with only this for his sole company-can such a life be heaven? Call it rather hell, if man fallen may not look to one more than man to raise him up. Yet in retirement, a flattering selfinspection may work some minds into a persuasion of peace, and they may think it blessedness to be possessors of themselves. This is easy. But how will they maintain that equanimity of reverie in the jostle and the stir of actual life? Will they retain that dear self-satisfaction amidst a thousand crosses and defeats, and countless thwarting proofs of fallibility and feebleness?

In that Schleiermacher says, concerning our estimate of ourselves there is the same mixture of truth and error. When he says, that we must judge ourselves, not by what we have accomplished or enjoyed, but by what we ARE, as above the accidents of failure or success, he utters in one sense a weighty truth. We are not answerable for the results as we are for the spirit of our efforts. Success is not the test of desert in many, very many cases. Some men have to labour, vainly as it seems, and others enter into their labours. The world shouts an applauding harvesthome to the reaper-God pronounces his well-done upon the sower and the reaper alike.

Yet it is no less true, that we know what we are, and what others are, by the nature, if not by the success, of our efforts,-by the character, if

not by the amount of our enjoyments. That pure motive and arduous endeavour should fail of all results-is the exception-the rare exception, not the rule. Such a temper and such an action may fail of large visible result, but there is an achievement therein which produces an undercurrent gradually working results hereafter. The unsuccessful attempt must be that the successful may follow and become what they are. We must estimate ourselves by the quality of our enjoyments. We must estimate ourselves by the aim and the strenuousness of our actions, and by their possible and probable results as judged by fair analogy, and not merely by the issues we ourselves can see.

What more likely than such a doctrine, as that advanced by Schleiermacher, if taken without this qualification, to foster that musing indolence which has deprived the world of so much service? It is so easy to imagine that we might accomplish this and that were we to try to estimate ourselves highly, according to the powers we suppose ourselves to possess, and while inactive and useless, to say-we are great, we are strong, but we measure that greatness and that strength, not by the work to which it prompts us, by the amount of what we are at least trying to do, but by the lofty form it assumes as we view it in imagination and think of all it might accomplish. How ready a resource, how sparing to our pride must it be to say, I have done nothing, it is true, but that not-doing is the world not I,-action or inaction are not myself, I am above and apart from all such trivial considerations-I, enshrined within my own being, and encompassed by the incense of my own applause!

Napoleon, whenever any one was recommended to him as likely to do great things, always asked, "what has he done?" Many men have gained a reputation as being extraordinary persons, possessing a vast range of information, unusual compass and power of thought, as though, if they had only tried, they could have shaken the world, and made after ages ring with their names. They think so-partial friends think so— but, for ourselves, we always enquire, what have they done? But to return to our young philosophers.

"This, I like," said Roger, fastening on a passage toward the end of the third Monologue; "if he means, by self-education, not a selfish æsthetic culture, but a building up of the nature to be of service to mankind :"

"Most men seek for an increase of outward possessions, more property, more knowledge, protection and assistance against destiny and misfortune, power strengthened by combination to limit others-this, man seeks, nowa-days, in friendship, in marriage, in their country, not an assistance and completion of the power to build up themselves, not some new gain for their own inner life."

"I think," continued Roger, "that, as he says, further on, we ought to endeavour to assimilate, to incorporate into our own being, some truth, some new lesson or element, from every event, and every character. This is to grow as we live, not only to acquire, by experience, more dexterity, but, as it were, more being;-a larger, fuller nature. I shall remember

that."

"But look here," said Louise; "he says, impossibility is only what I have resolved not to do or be. When I resolved to be such and not such

a man, from that time I gave up all that did not enter into that purpose; and what I thus exclude from myself I call impossible."

"I think this is more easily said than proved. Much that we wish is beyond our reach.”

"Yes, indeed," said Roger; "and I cannot say, with Schleiermacher, that my one desire is to become still more what I am already. I am not so certain that I might not become so much better as to be, in fact, another being. Some one says, the essence of genius is concentration. And, genius or no genius, the lesson is of service to every one. If we remember it we shall accomplish more, and cherish no vague desire inconsistent with our practicable purposes. Every man who would do much, must say, of a large sphere of objects, 'in making myself what I wish to be, I give up all those.' Others may enjoy them, but they are not for me. To do this with manliness, with decision, with constancy, how many querulous feelings would it suppress-what dissipation of energy it would prevent."

"I like what he says," observed Louise, "on love and friendship,that one of the two who is attached, is not to surrender his individuality to the other, but that each preserves his own character to the reciprocal advantage of each. There is to be union and yet distinctness. I am sure it is true of us, who are so different in many respects, and yet, I feel persuaded, so fitted for each other in that very diversity."

"Of that, I am sure," answered Roger. "Love does not require a monotonous uniformity in the natures which are blended by its influence. It is a prosperous commerce of souls which annihilates distance, fills even deserts with life, and tracks them with travelling hopes laden with, or to be laden with, inestimable gain, and exchanges the spices and the myrrh of the sunny orient, for the ermine and the steel of the bold and sterner north."

And here, had Roger had the poem, he would have quoted thus our laureate :

"For woman is not undeveloped man

But diverse could we make her as the man,

Sweet love were slain; whose dearest bond is this

Not like to like, but like in difference:

Yet in the long years liker they must grow;

The man be more of woman, she of man;

He gain in sweetness and in moral height,

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;

She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care:

More as the double-natured Poet, each:

Till at the last she set herself to man,

Like perfect music unto noble words;

And to these twain, upon the skirts of Time,

Sit side by side full-summed in all their powers,

Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,

Distinct in individualities,

But like each other even as those who love.

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men :

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm:

Then springs the crowning race of humankind!"

"Here is the last Monologue-Youth and Age;'" said Roger, rapidly

turning over the leaves and closing the book. "May we preserve our youth in our age. I will have some conversation with Dr. Heinrichs about these essays. I should like to know whether he can make more tangible to me this singular act of feeling as though you were not yourself, but as though Humanity were you; and how any one can be so sure of his being right, as to feel that he contains his future in himself, and will only be, in a fuller measure, what he is already; so that when his individuality is completely expressed and consummated, it is time to die.

This is new to me.'

"And to me also, and strange, and anything but what I want. I know I shall never be able to realize immortality in a rapture here, and to be indifferent to past and in an ecstatic present. This philosophy looks to me almost like some of St. Theresa's revelations rationalized, put into learned terminology and erected into a theory for the educated."

Then they went from Schleiermacher to Defoe, and Louise took up Robinson Crusoe, and showed Roger what progress she had made, with the help of dictionary and grammar.

"I have reached the print of the foot in the sand; and, two or three weeks ago, began to read what I have prepared, to the Doctor in the evening after supper, translating into German as I went along, till the readings were happily interrupted by your arrival. He is quite in love with the book, and says he shall be quite miserable if I do not read it through to him."

"He would admire the author still more than the book if he knew his history. I will tell him all about Defoe some day. He is a favourite hero of mine. Now let us go out for walk."

HOWBEIT OUR GOD TURNED THE CURSE INTO
A BLESSING.

WORK is the chief condition of temporal prosperity. It is a necessity under which most of the human family are born. They must work, or be wretched, or pine away in sickness, or starve. This necessity God has laid upon us, and a cheerful compliance with it forms a part of our religious duties. Work may be spoken of under three heads, according to the degree in which the powers of endurance are taxed in its performance. When it is a mere occupation of time in the pursuit of some decidedly agreeable object-an occupation that can be taken up and laid down at pleasure, renewed or suspended to suit the person's inclination or taste, then work is simply an interesting EMPLOYMENT. In this sense Adam was not exempted from work in the days of his innocence and perfect bliss. The Lord put him into the garden to dress it and to keep it. But work is seldom so indulgent to our tastes. It generally compels us to plod on in spite of inclination,-to engage in pursuits, which, for their own sakes, we should not prefer, and to persevere in them until the body and the mind are both wearied with fatigue. This is part of the curse which God inflicted upon man for his transgression. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." When a person is obliged to do things which are not altogether to his taste, or obliged to work at them longer than he feels a decided zest and pleasure in the occupation, and especially when his strength of body and energy of mind are taxed with prolonged or intense exertion, then work becomes LABOUR. There is a third, and more intensified form of work, which we commonly express by the word TOIL. When a man's energies are taxed to the uttermostwhen his work, like a heavy burden, is always pressing upon him, leaving him no adequate time for rest, allowing scarcely any relaxation-when it breaks down his spirits, depresses his heart and sours his temper, embitters his life, then work has become a TOIL. The Israelites were in this evil case when the Egyptians made them serve with vigour.

In the

It is work in the sense of labour, as distinguished, on the one hand, from mere employment, and, on the other, from grinding toil, that forms our present subject. We define it in the following terms:-earnest occupation, steadily pursued and directed to some useful end. Nearly all human labour engages, more or less, both the body and the mind. There are some occupations, indeed, which require but very little thought. The labour falls almost especially upon the muscles and the bones of man. But there are other occupations which invert this order, which leave the chief parts of the body at rest, while the mind is compelled to put forth all its energies. The various departments of human labour exemplify the co-operation of mind and body through all their degrees of modification and of mental subserviency. But work is work, whether it fall chiefly upon the body or chiefly upon the mind.

The necessity for fixed continued self-denying labour, under which most men are born and spend their days, is apt to be looked upon as one