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16.

Thoughts on a Sermon.

"that we

E is really sublime, this man! with his faith in "the religion of pain," and "the deification of sorrow!" But is he therefore right? What has he preached to us to-day with all the force of eloquence, all the earnestness of conviction? that " pain is the life of God as shown forth in Christ; are to be crucified to the world and the world to us. This perpetual presence of a crucified God between us and a pitying redeeming Christ, leads many a mourner to the belief that this world is all a Golgotha of pain, and that we are here to crucify each other. Is this the law under which we are to live and strive? The missionary Bridaine accused himself of sin in that he had preached fasting, penance, and the chastisements of God to wretches steeped in poverty and dying of hunger; and is there not a similar cruelty and misuse of power in the servants of Him who came to bind up the

broken-hearted, when they preach the necessity, or at least the theory, of moral pain to those whose hearts are aching from moral evil?

Surely there is a great difference between the resignation or the endurance of a truthful, faithful, loving, hopeful spirit, and this dreadful theology of suffering as the necessary and appointed state of things! I, for one, will not accept it. Even while most miserable, I will believe in happiness; even while I do or suffer evil, I will believe in goodness; even while my eyes see not through tears, I will believe in the existence of what I do not see that God is benign, that nature is fair, that the world is not made as a prison or a penance. While I stand lost in utter darkness, I will yet wait for the return of the unfailing dawn,-even though my soul be amazed into such a blind perplexity that I know not on which side to look for it, and ask "where is the East? and whence the dayspring?" For the East holds its wonted place, and the light is withheld only till its appointed time.

God so strengthen me that I may think of pain and sin only as accidental apparent discords in his great harmonious scheme of good! Then I am ready

-I will take up the cross, and bear it bravely, while I must; but I will lay it down when I can, and in any case I will never lay it on another.

17.

F I fear God it is because I love him, and believe in his love; I cannot conceive myself as standing in fear of any spiritual or human being in whose love I do not entirely believe. Of that Impersonation of Evil, who goes about seeking whom he may devour, the image brings to me no fear, only intense disgust and aversion. Yes, it is because of his love for me that I fear to offend against God; it is because of his love that his displeasure must be terrible. And with regard to human beings, only the being I love has the power to give me pain or inspire me with fear; only those in whose love I believe, have the power to injure me. Take away my love, and you take away my fear: take away their love, and you take away the power to do me any harm which can reach me in the sources of life and feeling.

18.

OCIAL opinion is like a sharp knife. There are

SOCIAL

foolish people who regard it only with terror, and dare not touch or meddle with it. There are more foolish people, who, in rashness or defiance, seize it by the blade, and get cut and mangled for their pains. And there are wise people, who grasp it discreetly and boldly by the handle, and use it to carve out their own purposes.

19.

HILE we were discussing Balzac's celebrity as

WH

a romance writer, she (o. G.) said, with a shudder: "His laurels are steeped in the tears of women,-every truth he tells has been wrung in tortures from some woman's heart."

20.

IR WALTER SCOTT, writing in 1831, seems to

SIR

regard it as a terrible misfortune that the whole burgher class in Scotland should be gradually preparing for representative reform. "I mean," he says, "the middle and respectable classes: when a borough reform comes, which, perhaps, cannot long be delayed, ministers will no longer return a member for Scotland from the towns." "The gentry," he adds, "will abide longer by sound principles, for they are needy, and desire advancement for themselves, and appointments for their sons and so on. But this is a very hollow dependence, and those who sincerely hold ancient opinions are waxing old," &c. &c.

With a great deal more, showing the strange moral confusion which his political bias had caused in his otherwise clear head and honest mind. The sound principles, then, by which educated people are to abide, over the decay of which he laments,-are such as can only be upheld by the most vulgar selfinterest! If a man should utter openly such sentiments in these days, what should we think of him?

IN the order of absolutism lurk the elements of change and destruction. In the unrest of freedom the spirit of change and progress.