pose, some comfort, some heart-end. In short, as knowledge without love is only vexation, so, unless love and knowledge equally nerve the arm to labor, it is but slavish drudgery; and those who would enforce toil without making it intelligent, and conducive to domestic, social, patriotic, and philanthropic ends, are only Satan's slave-drivers, and receive his wages— living death and inherent condemnation.

The end and purpose of all precept, teaching, providence, and evangelizing, is to make men God-like, that they may endure all contradiction patiently, and persist in forgiving and loving until all faults are lost in the fullness of mercy, and all hearts are either won by the beauty of holiness or forever repelled into their own place by the irresistible force of truth and light.

Happily in this country education always helps to elevate the mind by bringing it into association with useful employment, since there is a commercial demand for knowledge of every kind; but the higher advantage of even secular instruction is shown in its moralizing influence: for by supplying the mind with intellectual objects, it is the better enabled to resist vulgar temptations, and the more so, since education, in a Christian land, involves an acquaintance with much religious and revealed truth. Facts speak strongly on this subject. In the journal of the Statistical Society, (November 1847) Mr. G. A. Porter, states that only one educated person in 76,227 of the male population, and only one in 2,034,133 of the female population, was accused of crime, on the yearly average, from 1836 to 1846, throughout England and Wales. In 1846, only one educated person in Middlesex was rendered amenable to the laws of his country; the annual aggregate of accusations being 25,412. Such facts need no comment.

All true knowledge is divine, since there is no truth but of God's making. But it may be maliciously em

ployed, and the proof of maliciousness is the fact that a soul willfully perverts, to selfish or malignant purpose, the truth that benevolence places before our minds, to rectify our motives, and thus sin turns the truth of God into licentiousness, and takes occasion, from the liberality of Heaven, to render light itself a cloak for disguise and deception. Herein we see the hideousness of a lying spirit: it craftily takes advantage of the gifts of God to deceive honest, unsuspicious, true, credulous souls, and wins upon their affections through their ignorance, in order to obtain some sacrifice on the altar of its cupidity, whether for fame, for lucre, for lust, or for the satisfaction of whatever disposition or desire may be the dominant principle or motive of its character. Hence the endless variety in the forms of beguiling fiction and of artifice with which men trade with others, and pander to the encouragement of their own passions. But the most Satanic of all deceptions is the common one of employing one truth for the purpose of concealing another. Thus men believing in the light of nature deny the light of the Spirit, and because God reveals Himself in creation, require Him not to address them in any other way; and thus, too, under the mask of conscientiousmen cease to exercise charity, and pretend to obey God while they would smite with a curse the brotherhood of Christ, as if they were the rightful monopolists of all wisdom, and as if knowledge dwelt alone with them. Surely, those who lay down laws for consciences, and condemn unheard, must arrogate to themselves the prerogatives of Divine intelligence, and assume such authority only because they believe themselves infallible, while in fact the immensity of their conceit conceals the enormity of their error.

ness,

But it is of the nature of knowledge, or an acquaintance with facts and things, to confirm the humility of a truly humbled mind, because it is the quality of such

a mind to feel its own ignorance and deficiency, in consequence of its perceiving somewhat of the excellent glory of Him by whose liberal hand all means are administered, and by whose inspiration all minds are endowed with whatever of understanding they may possess. In every mind that is not humble, knowledge is but knowingness, since each new insight into the relation of things only induces such a one to think more of himself, as if he were indeed a gifted seer, to be admired for his consciousness of eyesight. He looks not forth to wonder and to worship. He may, indeed, be well pleased that the universe is so nicely adapted to his individual comfort, but in his self-complacency he never thinks of being thankful to Him who has adapted the sunshine to his sight, and objects to his soul. Though capable of reasoning, concerning the movements of heaven and earth, as fitted to himself, yet, with face opposed to the firmament of Jehovah, he looks up and laughs, without a thought but of himself. The soul, somewhat acquainted with the moral character of his Maker, however, and having respect to His holy law, as the mirror of His perfection, feels that wisdom and love are both infinite, and that the utmost keenness of created vision can but serve the soul to gaze into the profundity before it, so as to discern those rays of light that indicate the glory beyond sight. Like the devout astronomer, peering into space among stars that appear but as points, although they are really centers of revolving and populous worlds, "in number beyond number," the more he beholds the more he feels his incapacity to penetrate the depths of Divine knowledge and goodness. Conscious that he dwells but as an atom of dust on the outskirts of a galaxy of immeasurable glory, moving through eternity in the hand of Omnipotence, he becomes, in his own estimation, as nothing, and he loses all perception of himself in the overwhelming

apprehension of the Presence that fills immensity, and crowds the boundless existence He has fashioned with proofs of His power and His wisdom. The Au

thor of beauty and majesty and thought is the object of every rightly-thinking spirit. But what is the vision of the heaven of heavens to a mind that sees not God? It is but as a brilliant chromatropic display, revolving to please a child, that expresses its joy by exclaiming, I see I see! Thus the undevout natural philosopher, without a spiritual insight, contents himself with regarding the orrery of God but as an invention for his amusement. But there is truly no meaning but moral meaning in the sights and sounds that penetrate to the soul of man; and the Divinity addresses himself personally to each one of us, and demands our hearts, while engaging our intellects. Almightiness is only so far evinced to our understandings, as to teach us to trust Him in His faithfulness for all futurity. Thus every lesson in true knowledge —knowledge of ourselves, of our position, and our Maker-ends in faith, to show us that we are not yet arrived at maturity of life, and shall not know the love that always embraces us until we are born into tho atmosphere of a higher and a brighter world, and are able unabashed to meet the eye that guards us. But this fellowship with Heaven is not complete in any partial knowledge, but in that which realizes God so perfectly as to be filled with His own charity, for it is complete love alone that is complete light, and reveals all things without the possibility of error or of doubt. The true idea of any thing is its perfection. Humanity in its completeness has not yet been seen by any of us, but it is that after which every intelligent believer is seeking: when he finds it, he will behold God, and know even as he is known.

CHAPTER XI.

FAITH.

THE duty of doubting is the first consequence of a rational faith, and of our liability to sin. The ignorant and willful have few doubts except of the truth: the false is the most probable to their apprehension, and whatever suits their tempers is apt to become their delusion; for passion is the mightiest of deceivers, and corrupts the reason of every man who has not been instructed to distinguish right from wrong by the test of conscience, rectified by divine law. What we most vividly and selfishly hope or fear is most apt, in this twilight of reason, to deceive our senses and our judgment. If we look into the marvelous history of those deceptions which have deluded the masses of mankind, we shall discover that they have always flourished in proportion as minds have been unblest by the knowledge of natural and revealed realities, and consequently unestablished in any true faith. For however strongly such persons may believe, yet their best convictions amount merely to credulity, since they give credence to something demonstrably inconsistent with some truth clearly evident to all who will use their reason. Whatever is contrary to any known fact is a falsehood. Hence they are forced to set about confirming their folly by persuading themselves out of their senses. is really a question whether all great impostors are not mad, in consequence of first adopting some notion contrary to moral and physical law, and then reducing all their thoughts into keeping with their chosen absurdity and wickedness. Even a pretense, when pertinaciously defended, readily assumes the appearance of

It