the order of the world. To be negative in one respect is to be positive in another. To be in keeping with the Divine mind is the purpose of the human mind; but to be thus harmonious with Deity, is to will like Him; and in order to this, we must attend to God, listen to His language, and learn His love; for not till we are thus imbued with His own Spirit, can we be free in will to serve Him as his sons. From the nature of things, and the Maker of all, neither the thought nor the tongue of the spiritually disobedient man can be at liberty; there is nothing in the universe in keeping with him but evil spirits. But love has no limits to its range or its language; it is always seasonable; it may at all times utter all it feels, for kindness must belong to its feeling; and it may be ever busy, and travel as far as the light. All it utters is truth, all it does is beauty, and all it aims at is harmony and happiness. This love is the response of the soul to the Creator, as when He first saw in his works the reflection of his own goodness, and the sons of God shouted for joy.

Emotions in man are ideas formed by his mind, and are only suggested by objects. The feeling of fear, joy, love, hope, is as strongly excited by an imagined object as by a reality; but the imagined object is formed by the mind, according to its habit of association with real things, or

according to a man's faith. Thus one man dreads what another desires, because he thinks of it with different connexions. A Christian, believing death to be only a passport to glory, may well long for it as a rapture from this wearisome, because wicked world; and being confident that the Father loves all that man ought to love, far better than man can do, a believer leaves wife, children, friends, to the gracious conduct of His careful hand, expecting to meet them purified hereafter. But what can make death beautiful and blessed to an unbeliever? How wide the difference in the emotion produced by the same object, simply because the mind of one clothes it with light, and that of the other with darkness! It is the same in regard to all objects. If we would enjoy happy emotions, we must have a happy creed. We must believe in something besides earthly objects, to receive heavenly ideas from them. We must hold Divine truths before we can be moved by Divine affections. We must trust in the will of God as love itself, before we can be so governed by this love as to fear no evil; for as we think, so we shall feel, as long as thought and feeling together constitute human experience. Why, then, do we complain of our tyrant passions? Our ideas are wrong. We see not as we ought; we deceive ourselves; we re

ceive not God's testimony; we believe falsehood; the truth is not in us, or we should be free; in the truth of real love, in the truth of real hope, in the truth of real joy, in the truth of a real Saviour and his peace, we should be free.

CHAPTER VIII.

LIKING AND DISLIKING.

MIND is the cause of all action and re-action. It originates polarity, or the existence of opposites. All matter is both negative and positive, because the will of Omnipotence is expressed in it. Each atom is related to other atoms, so as to be attracted or repelled according to their mutual states. It is thus with all things, because they are created-with souls as well as with bodies. But the human mind is endowed with the power of will, so far beyond that of any other creature, that it is capable of altering its own state in relation to other beings. Thus we use our senses, not merely according to the direct and immediate action of objects upon them, but in a pre-determined manner. We render the passive senses active by thought, and change the direction of the vital forces in the brain in such a manner, that through it we attend to ideas as well as realities, and reverse, so to say, the poles of those

nerves by which we receive impressions from without, so that they seem to convey them back from within. According to the state of our wills is our attention. Our material as well as our spiritual relation to objects is affected by our capacity to will, and by the manner in which we will. Thus the state of our desires modifies our power to attend, for desire implies the engagement of the mind about some particular object. Inattention is either the result of bodily unfitness or of intense mental occupation-either excess of feeling or deficiency. In either case, there is something to be overcome before the mind so affected can be duly educated.

We have seen how the obstacle to attention is attempted to be removed in case of bodily unfitness. Excessive mental occupation is selfabsorption, and to be remedied only by drawing the soul away from its inward objects, by presenting such external ones as must be attended to. The most direct way to divert inordinate feeling is to put one's self in personal contact with the patient,-seize his hand, for instance, and at once address him with some intelligence concerning facts, some piece of news from heaven or earth. Common sense teaches us how to obtain the attention of healthy children; we must pleasantly take them in hand, and whisper to them face to face; we must be engaged with them

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