So will I be in this, thy soul's extremity,

And sing the song thy lowly spirit deems not meet for thee;

Rise to thy rest, reward, rejoicing,

Even to the inner temple, where God's purest light is shining,

See and adore and love with sense all purified,

What the dim eye of earth may not conceive of,
And when thy soul hath slaked its first deep longing,
Take the credentials tendered thee for the mission,
Thou, in thy charity, greater than required
By the letter of the Word, didst pant for,

'To be the ministering spirit to the lost underworld.'
Ah! well I know the cause of thy untimely exit,

And as Achilles by Patroclus' death-bed
Vowed to avenge him, so do I thee, my own,

Twice slain, once by excess of care and labor

For the selfish world: then by the foul city's breath,

Made poisonous by sins, too mighty for thy cure,

Too monstrous for thy slackened power of life's continuance.

Man of the ages, mysterious and mighty,

Whose strong but tender ministering helped me

To soothe the weary frame, support the aching head,

With words of holy cheer to waft the passing spirit

To its upward haven, where no tossing, booming waves
Can make stern shipwreck of the richly-freighted soul-ship.
Was it for this, weird man, the ages, car-like,

Have borne thee to my dying one,

To be the sage and gentle fate by God appointed,

To cut the thread of life, worn to attenuation,

And close the eyes, couched for the skies' clear light,

More than for the cold, dim, smoky earth-air?

I would fain have pleaded with the sisters dread— "Spare him! O spare him yet a little longer! Pity me! O pity me! gentlest of the three!

Ye say, 'ye have learned to love the life, whose beauteous web
Charmed even thee, conversant with Infinity.""

But soft and low, with tender aspect, Parca whispers:
"I cannot, God commands, and while I snap the thread,
Cast your eye upwards and say, 'God speed you, brother!'
And half the pain will spend with thy submission."
Man of the ages, dear to the departed,

For thy truth of spirit and thy life, forever uprising,
For these, I too will garner thee in my treasury of jewels,
And if the key should ever rust, which would admit thee
To the sanctum of my friendship, only retouch it with the wand,
Left in thy hand by my ascending, saintly one,

And it will be the "Open Sesame"

To my most holy confidence.

O my deepest soul! how fares it with thee

In the rude shock, Time with his scythe hath dealt thee!
Hark! hear its answer low, but strong as life, and firm as destiny.

Gathering in, gathering in
Grain for the winnowing,
Gold for the purifying,
Gems for recrystallizing,
Trees for rejuvenating,
Flowers for retinting,

Humanity for renewing,

Heaven and earth for re-uniting.

After due care and observance, Ben Ezra left the remains of the dead to bid a more satisfactory farewell to Zoë, than she, in her impatient excitement, had allowed him. As he passed the quay, he saw a ship with its sails fully set, just sailing away into the thick mist, which at the hour of evening was enveloping the harbor. He inquired of a bystander its name and commander, and found it was the one in which she and Hilda had embarked. A double sense of desolation settled on his spirit. His dearest friend in the present scene of his lengthened experience had just departed, and now the hope, which had gilded his latest life, was fast fading away into the grave which the ages had been lowering and ever lowering. Thus he wailed out his lament:

"Gone! gone! another ray of sunshine over my pathway stealing. How long, O Lord, how long dost thou deny my heart's sore pleading!

Am I the sport of a blind destiny, the caprice of a stern fate?
Who ever answereth to my anguished cry for love-too late, too
late!

Enlighten me, O Father, upon the purpose of my wandering!
Unvail to me thy great designs on which I tire of pondering.
Give me, O give me life in love! that I, renewed for aye,
May ever worship God, through Christ, and toil for his humanity!

For lo! from age to age, phenomenal, I gather,

With the assemblies of the people-one with them-yet, alas!

another.

Give me, O give me life in love! that I, renewed for aye,
May ever worship God, through Christ, and toil for his humanity!

Zoë fades from my sight, like the mist of the night.

Call to me, Ocean, from thy deepest soundings,
Blow to me, breezes, from thy remotest boundings,
Stars, from your blue profoundest shine articulate,
Sun, with your melting beams, her love perpetuate !

No answer comes from them to my deep heart's appealing.

Speak to me, my deepest nature,

Reveal the presage of the future.

Hush all discordant whisperings,
Listen to its revealings.

No answer comes to me from its abysses.

Woe! woe is me! the oracle of all Time is dumb,
Lonely and sad I wander. God! do thou yet sustain!

Still be my light, my life's exceeding gain,

Ever I trust in Thee, though crash of worlds should come !

CHAPTER XXIII.

(Mrs. Liebenhoff dedicates her book, "THE WAY," to the children of Mr. Liebenhoff's Sunday-School.)

"I have been thinking, if there were any so simple and unlearned that I could dedicate my book to them, and it has come into my mind

that you, my little ones, may have preserved your childlike temper, so as to receive it in the spirit in which it was

written. There are plenty of shrewd and knowing people, who will tell me if it is formed according to the rules laid down for authors, if the sentences are too long, if the facts agree with the time stated, if the characters speak and act as they ought to, and make many other remarks upon it which you would not, and I hope, never will understand. But I wish to give it in charge to those who will love it for its spirit, its deepest meaning; so I come to you, and if a part of it is too old for you now to take a lively interest in it, you will, I hope, grow to like it better by-and-by.

"My children, you know all too well that we are left without his guidance, who was ever faithful and loving in his instructions to us, so we must be all the more true and earnest in laboring for ourselves. He loved each and all of you, little ones. It cheered him, each Sabbath morning, to come to you, and look into your sunny eyes, and mark your obedient attention when he spoke to you of God and Jesus. And when weighed down in spirit by the lack of interest of his older hearers in the truth he gave them, which was dearer than his own life to him, he would say: 'The children will drink into their young hearts its beauty and purity, and their souls will bud and bloom into sweet flowers for the garden of our God; and they will build a temple for his worship, and each of them shall be a living stone in it, polished to fittest grace and loveliness.'

"And now that he is gone, they say, ' we cannot rebuild our church, so we will leave it as it is, a wreck for passersby to gaze at, and, may-be, scoff for our lukewarmness.'

"My children, we will build the church, new and complete in every part, a fit offering to the great, good Father and our Redeemer. Come one, come all, Mary, and Freya, and Edgar, and Carl, and Gunhilda, and Louise, and Eva, and Fritz, and many more that I cannot name. We will dig stones from the quarry and fashion them into a glorious church, worthy of our Maker, and the souls he gave us; and the few faithful ones, who loved to teach and talk to