a noble and deep way, but in a dim, wearied way, the way of ennui and jaded intellect, and uncomfortableness of soul and body. The Middle Ages had their wars and agonies, but also intense delights. Their gold was dashed with blood; but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their life was interwoven with white and purple; ours is one seamless stuff of brown. Not that we are without apparent festivity, but festivity more or less forced, mistaken, uncultured, incomplete, of the heart. How wonderfully, since Shakespeare's time, have we lost the power of laughing at bad jests! The very finish of our wit belies our gayety.

not

"The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, I believe, our want of faith. There never yet was a generation of men (savage or civilized) who, taken as a body, so wofully fulfilled the words, 'having no hope, and without God in the world,' as the present civilized European race. A red Indian or Otaheitan savage has more sense of a divine existence round him, or government over him, than the plurality of refined Londoners and Parisians; and those among us who may in some sense be led to believe, are divided almost without exception into two broad classes, Romanist and Puritan, — who, but for the interference of the unbelieving portions of society, would, either of them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; the Romanist having always done so whenever he could, from the beginning of their separation, and the Puritan, at this time, holding himself in complacent expectation of the destruction of Rome by volcanic fire. Such division as this between persons nominally of one religion that is to say, believing in the same God and the same Revelation cannot but become a stumbling-block of the gravest kind to all thoughtful and far-sighted men, - a stumbling-block which they can only surmount under the most favorable circumstances of early education. Hence, nearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the plurality in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands. Most of our scientific men are in this last class; our popular authors either set themselves definitely against all religious forms, pleading for simply truth and benevolence (Thackeray, Dickens), or give themselves up to bitter, fruitless statement of facts (De Balzac), or surface painting (Scott), or careless blasphemy, sad or smiling (Byron, Beranger). Our earnest poets and deepest thinkers are

doubtful and indignant (Tennyson, Carlyle); one or two anchored, indeed, but anxious or weeping (Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning); and of these the first is not so sure of his anchor but that now and then it

drags with him, even to make him cry out,

A

'Great God, I had rather be

pagan suckled in some creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn.""

The prose-poet, Digby, in his elaborate work upon the Ages of Faith, by which he means the ages during which the Romish Church still held unbroken sway over Christendom, makes the same complaint, and proposes a similar explanation of the evil complained of, only with him the Protestants are the sad ones, and a return to Romanism must be the cure for their sadness, if it is to be cured. Now, leaving out of the account all exaggerations and partisanship, there is a truth here which well deserves to be pondered. So far as the age is especially sad,—if this is indeed the case, we must say that the confusions and misgivings of the soul are largely the cause of the sadness, or, refusing to entertain this comparison of past with present, we shall nevertheless find it true for all times that religiousness and joyousness belong together.

And yet let us qualify our statement a little, let us admit that there is a gladness which certainly would not be aided by religion. We mean the cheer which accompanies youth and health, a happy temperament, and a favored lot, the contentment which has been disturbed by no changes and chances, the joy of children and of childlike or childish men and women. If it were best for us to find in our earth only a vast playground or pleasure-garden, if it were best that our tools should all be toys, and our books all picture-books, and life an endless fête-day, it is likely that the solemnities of religion would he found intrusive. And yet the joy of children is by no means complete or lasting. It is broken by grief as passionate as the gladness is exuberant. A trifle calls it forth, a trifle causes it utterly to cease, and the darkness is as profound as the light was resplendent. Indeed, the sorrows of the young predict their future greatness, and even amidst the sweet sounds of their mirth we catch the note of sadness which announces the inevitable tragedy of our life. Religion does not set herself always and persistently to invade this

child-world, and call out those who dwell in and are content with it to be her saints and heroes. She is not unwilling to bide her time; presently they who are light-hearted and at ease now shall have need enough of her, when the summer-days begin to be numbered, and the flowers droop, and the tempest gathers. Let there be a time to laugh; let the young rejoice in their youth; let us not insist that they shall have only sermons upon great truths and solemn duties, only be sure that when the soul awakes, and the season of childhood is over, an earnest word shall be ready for the opened ear. But sooner or later the day of thoughtfulness comes, and now if we would have joy and peace, happy days, happy New-Years, — it must be not as children, but as men and women, and our thankfulness for the gift of life, and our satisfaction in it, will be in proportion to the depth and genuineness of our Christian piety. If we are to rejoice at all in this world of ours, if we are to find pleasure in a being too great to be other than tragic, it must be as believers in God and in the Son of God.

The Gospel is the light of our years. The Gospel helps us to keep festal time, because it establishes us in the firm persuasion that God doeth all things well; that this world in which we live is his world as well as our world; that it went forth from his hand, not as an experiment of uncertain issue, but as the complete expression of a wisdom which seeth the end in the beginning, and cannot err,—of a love which can propose and do no harm to any creature. We profess no skill to explain the mystery of our life. Sin and sorrow meet us at every turn, violated law and broken peace. Whether we have any religious convictions or not, we do not find the world just the place where one would say without misgivings to his fellow, A happy New Year to you! We meet in houses of worship and chant our jubilates; we gather in pleasant dwellings, where the light shines down upon innocent and happy faces, and all looks glad and beautiful;

but who can forget, be he Christian or Gentile, the outer darkness? Who would like to leave one of our thousands of homes of purity, love, and cheerfulness, on some day of rejoicing and giving, and visit those quarters of the city where the wretched and the vicious are heaped together, a seething mass of corruption? Who can keep his thoughts from wandering sometimes in those directions, or refrain from the question, What right have I to laugh, whilst so many weep? Have the days yet come in our world when we can be

glad, and betake ourselves to amusements? Ought not life to be an unbroken crusade, carried forward in fear and sorrow? Now we can meet this state of mind only with the word of Christian faith. If we believe in God, we have no need to explain His world. If we have confidence in an earthly friend, his strangest works do not perplex us, and we are sure that they are better than they seem. A true piety carries the soul back to a Perfection which, whilst it suffers and indeed stimulates activity to realize every ideal, and to supply every deficiency in our human circumstances, is nevertheless our assurance that the world we live in was wisely planned, and is lovingly guided, and that to be gloomy and desperate over it comes not of faith, but of faithlessness, not of the humility which waits, but of the conceit and haste that virtually sit in judgment upon God, and this before the time. We most frankly confess, that if, in the little knowledge of our poor mind, we were making a world, it would not be such a one as this. But, happily, not man, rather the All-wise and All-loving God, in whom the pious heart believes, made the world and us who live in it, with all our fine humanities and brave aspirations, the wisdom and the mercy which lift us up so high that we look down sadly and despairingly upon God our Creator's works. O for that rebuking word of St. Paul to chide our halting faith! "Shall the thing formed say unto Him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus ?" What is it to thee, though the almighty and ever-blessed God has not seen fit to make all thy fellow-worms to be presently wise men, and saintly men, and happy men? Have faith in God, and when he deigns to tell thee, who but yesterday had not been called forth from nothingness, that, in this world, which naturally enough looks confused and strange to thee, all things are working together for good to those who love Him, believe and give thanks, and eat thy bread with a merry heart, and try to realize as once it was given to an over-anxious man to know, that as God took care of the world ages upon ages before thou wast in it, so it is likely he will be able to care for it now and evermore without thee, and to conduct it to its great issues when the places which have known thee shall know thee no more forever! So the Gospel bids us trust in God, and do good, and lean not upon our own understanding, or make knowledge the indispensable condition of peace. Thankfulness and joyfulness have been realized in times whose light, compared with that of our day, was but thick darkness. "If thou faint," saith the Scripture, "in the day of adversity, thy strength is small." It is not what we see, but what we believe, that must sustain us.

a tide

The Gospel is the light of our years, because it is the soul's deliverance from its worst enemy, -the enemy that threatens death. How can I keep festal time, some one may ask, when my sins press heavily upon me? and is it not the office of a wise piety to convict me more and more of sin? Most certainly this is one function of the Gospel, but, thank God! not the only one, and not by virtue of this is it a Gospel indeed. The new life, which is by Christ, is gladdened by the persuasion that through him the penitent have obtained the forgiveness of sins, and it is enriched by an unfailing tide of love, flowing into the soul from the very fountain-head of living waters, which must needs bring fertility and beauty wherever it takes its way. A soul that is overcoming evil by the grace of Christ will be of good cheer, even though as yet the victory is by no means complete, and the contest threatens to last a lifetime. The Gospel was a cause of great joy, from the very first, to Jews and Gentiles who were able to receive it; for though it made them realize as they had never realized before the extent and the enormity of the world's degradation, it gave them new power to endure, new energy to labor, the faith and hope which save men in the darkest times, and make heathen ages days of miracles and of the kingdom of God. If the Gospel is a Gospel at all, it is something more than a threat of vengeance to be executed upon the sinner. It proclaims a Saviour. It saith, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people. Every true Christian fast will be followed by a Christian thanksgiving, and the day of rejoicing will be as bright as the day of penitence was dark. Religion does not make us sinners, and if its Law shows us the measure of our transgression, and so slays, its Christ suffers and forgives and inspires, and so we live again, and as we never lived before. A gloomy, ascetic stoicism, or a hardfeatured Puritanism, is not a genuine Christianity. If our life were purely and only tragic, the Creator would have hung the heavens with a funeral pall, and have sent the wind of the desert to consume the flowers, and have hushed all the birds of the air, save the illboding owl. Abraham was glad because he saw in the future the day of Christ; and now that the day is come, let us not change it into a night of weeping. They may be ages of conscientiousness, but they are not ages of faith, which allow no time and place for festivity, and conscientiousness without faith presently heightens into madness.

E.