religious opinions, they are all in vain. Why is this? Simply because there can not be a right converse, without a right spirit. Every man is an oracle, either of truth or of falsehood; he must speak either life or death-for God, or against him. The man who feels his position will be well assured that indifferentism consists not with 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 connections. 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 receive 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 self-absorption, 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 alone, and soul to soul, in order to disengage them. Men are but children of a larger growth, and must be managed pretty much in the same manner, with all due allowance for their greater obstinacy in evil habit. Still let them have something real to look at, and with it some evidence of the sympathy of another spirit.

We must control ourselves and others on the same principles. We must polarize the sense-powers by an act of will; we must determine to set our attention upon what we know to be proper objects. If we are indisposed, we must do as Johnson did with his writings, we must go doggedly to work, and before we have done our best we shall be well pleased with our efforts. The reason of our pleasure is in the fact, that we have put our brains voluntarily into a condition to impress our nervous systems throughout with our new ideas-our thoughts become connected with emotions, we feel them in our bodies. We are constituted to enjoy novelties, especially of our own creating. They act upon us somewhat after the manner of outward objects that are agreeable to us; they are in keeping with our bodies as well as minds, in consequence of our thorough attention to them, and therefore their

light, their sound, their motion, is ideally and essentially communicated to us so as to actuate our nerves.

We willingly polarize ourselves with regard to objects, so as to become passive to their action, until we are positively affected by them, and are in a state positively to influence the minds of others by our own force and energy. This is the way that men master each other mentally. They attend to things until the accumulated impressions overpower them, and to relieve themselves they must show others what they see, and express themselves in words and actions.

But, alas! those whose heads and hearts are full to overflowing of the great things of outward existence, can scarcely speak, but they seem like enthusiasts and madmen. It is, therefore, essential to the success of strong and sensitive souls, that they study all the arts of prudence and wisdom, in order to win their way, and persuade men to be happier. But with the best oratory, and the ablest argument, it is still almost impossible for even a wise man to speak from his heart the truth as he feels it, without presenting it in so individual a manner as to offend. It is, to a certain extent, his duty to do so; the scandal is not in the honest speaker, but in the uncharitable hearer. Minds that are equally positive are of necessity repulsive to each other, unless they are equally attracted to the same point. The truth, as it is personally felt by another, is, however, the very thing that a party man needs to tolerate with cheerfulness; for unless he can so bear it, and even enjoy it, he can never be converted from the popery of self-opinion and partisanship to the catholicity of Christdom.

Truth is intended to neutralize opposition, and to be the bond of union between all rational minds; but every attachment to mistake induces dislike and antagonism, because error is of the nature of evil or disorder, and therefore always tending to maintain dis