it did not make them so. The 'proving' of a gun is the cause, not of its being strong, but of our knowing it to be strong. And it is wonderful how prevalent in all subjects is the tendency to confound these two things together: e.g., Balak says to Balaam, 'I wot that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed.' And this must have been true, if Balaam was a true prophet; but the mistake was, to suppose that his curse or blessing brought on these results, when, in truth, it brought only the knowledge of the divine designs and

sentences.

Different kinds of adversity (and also of prosperity, for both are equally trials, though it is only adversity that is usually called such) differ in this respect from each other, some being more of the character of discipline, and others of trial.

Generally speaking, a small degree of persecution and oppression is more of a discipline for humanity than very great and long-continued. It is everywhere observed that a liberated slave is apt to make a merciless master, and that boys who have been cruelly fagged at school are cruel faggers. Sterne introduces a tender-hearted negro girl, of whom it is remarked that 'she had suffered oppression, and had learnt mercy,' as if this was a natural consequence. It would have been more

true to have said, 'Although she had suffered much oppression,' &c.

Most bitter

Most of the early Reformers were intolerant. was the persecution, in the Low Countries, of the Arminians by the Calvinists, who had very recently been delivered from persecution themselves.1 And a people who have been so long and so severely persecuted as the Vaudois, and yet retain, as they do, a mild and tolerant character, give strong evidence of the domination of a real christian principle.

The celebrated 'Pilgrim Fathers,' who fled from the tyranny of Laud and his abettors, to America, and are described as having sought only freedom to worship God,' had no notion of allowing the same freedom to others, but enacted and enforced the most severe penalties against all who differed from

1 See, in Mr. Macaulay's History, a case of most atrocious cruelty perpetrated by Presbyterians who had witnessed cruel persecution of themselves or their fathers. Vol. iv. p. 781.

them, and compelled the ever-venerated Roger Williams, the great champion of toleration, to fly from them to Rhode Island, where he founded a colony on his own truly christian system. One of the principal founders of the New England colony remonstrated with these persecutors, saying (in a letter given in a late number of the Edinburgh Review),'' Reverend and dear sirs, whom I unfeignedly love and respect, it doth not a little grieve my spirit to hear what sad things are reported daily of your tyranny and persecution in New England, as that you fine, whip, and imprison men for their consciences. First, you compel such to come into your assemblies as you know will not join you in your worship; and when they show their dislike thereof, or witness against it, then you stir up your magistrates to punish them, for such, as you conceive, their public affronts. Truly, friends, this your practice of compelling any, in matters of worship, to do that whereof they are not fully persuaded, is to make them sin; for so the Apostle (Romans xiv. 23) tells us; and many are made hypocrites thereby, conforming in their outward acts for fear of punishment. We pray for you, and wish you prosperity every way; hoping the Lord would have given you so much light and love there, that you might have been eyes to God's people here, and not to practise those courses in a wilderness which you went so far to prevent.' They replied, 'Better be hypocrites than profane persons. God part of his due-the outward man; but the giveth God neither outward nor inward man. if you think we came into this wilderness to practise those courses which we fled from in England. We believe there is a vast difference between men's inventions and God's institutions: we fled from men's inventions, to which we else should have been compelled; we compel none to men's inventions.'

Hypocrites give profane person You know not

About the same time Williams sent a warm remonstrance to his old friend and governor, Endicott, against these violent proceedings. The Massachusetts theocracy could not complain that none showed them their error: they did not persevere in the system of persecution without having its wrongfulness fully pointed out.

2

'Had Bunyan,' says the Reviewer, opened his conventicle

in Boston, he would have been banished, if not whipped; had Lord Baltimore appeared there, he would have been liable to perpetual imprisonment. If Penn had escaped with either of his ears, the more pertinacious Fox would, doubtless, have ended by mounting the gallows with Marmaduke Stephenson or William Leddra. Yet the authors of these extremities would have had no admissible pretext. They were not instigated by the dread of similar persecution, or by the impulse to retaliate. There was no hierarchy to invite them to the plains of Armageddon; there was no Agag to hew in pieces, or kings and nobles to bind with links of iron. They persecuted spontaneously, deliberately, and securely. Or rather, it might be said, they were cruel under difficulties. They trod the grapes of their wine-press in a city of refuge, and converted their Zoar into a house of Egyptian bondage; and, in this respect, we conceive they are without a parallel in history.'

On the other hand, a short or occasional oppression is a good discipline for teaching any one not very ill disposed to feel for others.

Mr. Macaulay beautifully illustrates this from the tale of the Fisherman and the Genie, in the Arabian Nights. 'The genie had at first vowed that he would confer wonderful gifts on any one who should release him from the casket in which he was imprisoned; and during a second period he had vowed a still more splendid reward. But being still disappointed, he next vowed to grant no other favour to his liberator than to chuse what death he should suffer. Even thus, a people who have been enslaved and oppressed for some years are most grateful to their liberators; but those who are set free after very long slavery are not unlikely to tear their liberators to pieces.'

Sickness is a kind of adversity which is both a trial and a discipline; but much more of a discipline when short, and of a trial when very long. The kindness of friends during sickness is calculated, when it is newly called forth, to touch the heart, and call forth gratitude; but the confirmed invalid is in danger of becoming absorbed in self, and of taking all kinds of care and of sacrifice as a matter of course.

Danger of death is another kind of adversity which has both characters; but it is much more of a wholesome discipline

when the danger is from a storm, or from any other external cause than from sickness. The well-known proverb, 'the Devil was sick,' &c., shows how generally it has been observed that people, when they recover, forget the resolutions formed during sickness. One reason of the difference-and perhaps the chief -is, that it is so much easier to recall exactly the sensations felt when in perfect health and yet in imminent danger, and to act over again, as it were, in imagination, the whole scene, than to recall fully, when in health, the state of mind during some sickness, which itself so much affects the mind along with the body. But it is quite possible either to improve, or to fail to improve, either kind of affliction.

And, universally, it is to be observed that, though in other matters there may be trials which are nothing but trials, and have no tendency to improve the subject tried, but merely to test it (as in the case of the proving of a gun alluded to above), this can never be the case in what relates to moral conduct. Every kind of trial, if well endured, tends to fortify the good principle. There are, indeed, many things which are more likely to hurt than to improve the moral character; and to such trials we should be unjustifiable in exposing ourselves or others unnecessarily. But these, if any one does go through them well, do not merely prove the moral principle to be good, but will have had the effect of still further fortifying it.

And the converse, unhappily, holds good also. Every kind of improving process-religious study, good example, or whatever else, if it does not leave you the better, will leave you the worse. Let no one flatter himself that anything external will make him wise or virtuous, without his taking pains to learn wisdom or virtue from it. And if any one says of any affliction, 'No doubt it is all sent for my good,' he should be reminded to ask himself whether he is seeking to get any good out of it. 'Sweet,' says the poet, are the uses of adversity;' but this is for those only who take care to make a good use of it.

Most carefully should we avoid the error of which some parents, not (otherwise) deficient in good sense, commit, of imposing gratuitous restrictions and privations, and purposely inflicting needless disappointments, for the purpose of inuring

children to the pains and troubles they will meet with in afterlife. Yes, be assured they will meet with quite enough, in every portion of life, including childhood, without your strewing their path with thorns of your own providing. And often enough will you have to limit their amusements for the sake of needful study, to restrain their appetites for the sake of health, to chastise them for faults, and in various ways to inflict pain or privations for the sake of avoiding some greater evils. Let this always be explained to them whenever it is possible to do so; and endeavour in all cases to make them look on the parent as never the voluntary giver of anything but good. To any hardships which they are convinced you inflict reluctantly, and to those which occur through the dispensations of the All-Wise, they will more easily be trained to submit with a good grace, than to any gratuitous sufferings devised for them by fallible To raise hopes on purpose to produce disappointment, to give provocation merely to exercise the temper, and, in short, to inflict pain of any kind merely as a training for patience and fortitude this is a kind of discipline which Man should not presume to attempt. If such trials prove a discipline not so much of cheerful fortitude as of resentful aversion and suspicious distrust of the parent as a capricious tyrant, you will have only yourself to thank for this result.

men.

Since the end of suffering, as a moral discipline,' says an excellent writer in the Edinburgh Review (January, 1847), on the Life of Pascal, 'is only to enable us at last to bear unclouded happiness, what guarantee can we now have of its beneficial effect on us, except by partial experiments of our capacity of recollecting and practising the lessons of adversity in intervals of prosperity? It is true that there is no more perilous ordeal through which Man can pass-no greater curse which can be imposed on him, as he is at present constituted-than that of being condemned to walk his life long in the sunlight of unshaded prosperity. His eyes ache with that too untempered brilliance -he is apt to be smitten with a moral coup de soleil. But it as little follows that no sunshine is good for us. He who made us, and who tutors us, alone knows what is the exact measure of light and shade, sun and cloud, storm and calm, frost and heat, which will best tend to mature those flowers which are the