When

But it does not follow that there will be more sorrow than joy in heaven. Joy is not incompatible with pain. Here joy and sorrow are in the same breast. It is not uncommon for the dying Christian to triumph in hours of acutest suffering. All good men suffer more or less every day as they witness the dreadful miseries about them. But they are not wholly unhappy on that account. On the contrary, they are often pronounced happy men. we say that a man is happy, we do not mean that he is perfectly so, or that he has no sources of unhappiness; but that while he may have much to render him unhappy he has more to make him happy. It is but rational to infer that it will be so hereafter, and that there will be inexpressibly more joy than sorrow in the experiences of the blessed. Yet there will also be much to render their happiness defective. "There will be pity for the suffering, a sorrow which does not abate, for humanity will not become deadened amid the ages of eternity." You are not fit to be in heaven if you cease to sympathize with the lost.

But the most repulsive feature of the current Eschatology is that it makes God a particeps criminis in this heartless indifference to the woes of the lost, by affirming that the ever-present view of the irremediable suffering of millions of his own. offspring will not produce a ripple of disturbance in his infinite happiness. "We know that sin, and the punishment of sin, are ever before Him; and yet He is supremely blessed. The smoke of torment is perpetually rolling up in the presence of the Omnipresent without disturbing in the least the ineffable peace and blessedness of that pure nature which is the paradise and elysium of all who are conformed to it." Still further, and more shocking if possible, it not only represents God to be cruelly indifferent himself, but solely responsible for a like indifference on the part of the blessed to the sufferings of their fellow-beings; by ascribing their inhumanity to their "acquiescence in the will of God." Now it is plain that this is a gross misrepresentation of the divine character.

The foundation principle of a correct system of Eschatology is, that notwithstanding the existence of sin, and the punishment of sin, God is nevertheless always good, always loving and merciful, and always just. No system can be credible

always co-existent in God. That there is no hindrance to their co-existence will be evident if we keep in mind the fatherhood of God, and the likeness of the divine administration to what we conceive should obtain in the methods of the wise and kind human parent. A little consideration will show that love requires both the divine and the human parent to do to, and for their offspring, precisely what justice requires them to do, and vice versa.

In this point of view it also becomes apparent that justice and love in any parent are necessarily co-existent and inseparable; that neither God nor man can truly love his offspring without, at the same time, being just to them; or be just to his offspring without, at the same time, loving them. It follows that punishment is as much a dictate of love and mercy as of justice; and further, that punishment is never justifiable unless it is dictated by love, and administered in love. No parent or administrator has any right to inflict punishment who cannot do it in love. The conception of an administrator, whether in the family, the civil, or the divine government, taking pleasure in the infliction of suffering because it is a just punishment, is revolting to all Christian or refined instincts. Such a being would be a monster. And still further, it must be conceded that no one is fit for the high trust of retributive administration in either of the relations just named who does not come to the infliction of punishment with sentiments of profound regret, and of sincere sympathy and pain, in view of the suffering he is about to inflict. The father who punishes his child with indifference to its pain, or without positive grief, is considered inhumane, if not inhuman. The civil judge who pronounces the sentence without an emotion of sympathy for the suffering culprit, is declared to be unworthy the ermine. Good men look with detestation upon heartless indifference to the suffering of even criminals. Even so to conceive of the Divine Father and Judge as consigning His own offspring to interminable and hopeless misery without a sentiment of sympathetic grief, and then turning His back on them for ever, never to have an after-thought of fatherly pity for them, is to conceive of a being at once inhuman, ungodlike, and satanical. Such a conception of God effectually demonizes and dethrones Him. "It is contrary to the whole

spirit and teaching of the Gospel, which inculcates a fellowship with the sufferings of others, commanding us to weep with those that weep, and 'bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.' It is contrary to the revealed character of God, whose very nature is to pity, not abortively, but with an active, curative, efficient sympathy, all suffering whenever and wherever He perceives it. To suppose God can see His own offspring suffering at any period of their existence, and not be moved with compassion toward them, is to divest Him of that very element of His character by which He holds sway over human hearts." He would no longer be the God revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ, nor a Being whom the Christian heart could reverence and love.

It follows as a correlative truth that the divine Father can and does suffer in sympathy with the distressed.

He is repre

sented in the Scriptures as having sorrow, and this sorrow is of the nature of suffering, a painful experience, or it is nothing, a mere mockery of words.

It is said that such sympathy on the part of God for the lost "would be the destruction of the divine blessedness." But this does not follow. The only legitimate inference is, that God cannot be perfectly happy so long as any of his offspring are miserable. The Scriptures declare that God is "blessed forever;" but they no where say that he is perfectly happy. It is one thing to be perfectly happy, and another to be predominantly so. Doubtless, God's predominant experience must be one of happiness, since he has other and infinite sources of joy, besides the contemplation of the condition of mankind.

It is also said that any limitation of happiness is an imperfection, and, therefore, to say that God can suffer in sympathy for the lost, that he can experience the least "tinge of pain" from any cause, is contrary to the divine perfections. That is, God must be perfectly happy forever; though in order to be so, he be divested of that which is most excellent and lovely in any character, whether human or divine, viz.: a profound sympathy for all in distress, and invested with a demoniacal heartlessness and indifference to the misery of his immortal child!

But we have unmistakable evidence of

*From an article by the present writer in The Christian Union on "The Long-Suffering of God."

divine suffering in the agonies of the cross, which are wholly indefensible either as a just transaction or as an adequate method of redemption, on any other hypothesis than that the divine nature in Christ suffered with the human. It is urged by those who hold that the sufferings of Christ were vicarious, that their atoning efficacy depended on the dignity of the suffererthat the substitute must be divine as well as human. But how can this be true if the divine nature did not suffer? If a theanthropic character was necessary to Christ's mediatorial work, and if the suffering of the cross was an essential part of that work, then there could be no atoning efficacy in that suffering unless it was also theanthropic.

Moreover, the cross was not even an expression of God's love, if he did not suffer in the crucifixion of Christ. What evidence of the love of God was there in a suffering in which he did not and could not participate? But God himself rebukes this cheap zeal to honor his perfections by the declaration, "God is love," and by assuring us that it is the conclusive evidence of his love that He did suffer to save sinners : But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us"-not that "God died," but that he "tasted death for every man," which has no meaning at all, unless it be that the divine nature in Christ suffered.

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We are authorized by the Scriptures, and constrained by the laws of our rational and moral being, to think of God as having a nature like our own, and to invest Him with those attributes of character which are the best fruit of the culture of His spirit in the hearts of men. It is regarded as a crowning excellence in a man that he has an active sympathy for his fellow men in distress, which leads him to personal sacrifice in their behalf, and to share their sorrows in order to alleviate them. To say that a man had no capacity for such virtue, would argue an imperfection in his moral character, instead of honoring him. And the statement that God can suffer does not imply an imperfection in the divine character. It simply asserts a defect in His happiness, that through His sympathy for suffering humanity His own blessedness is impaired. But a defect in God's happiness for such a cause, instead of being an imperfection, gives greater luster to His character. It is the denial of this that dishonors Him.

But how long will God's suffering for sinners last? The common theory is that it lasts only through the probation of this life-that it will then be exhausted, and God will have no sympathy for sinners while they are enduring the dreadful woes of eternal punishment. But there is no foundation either in reason or revelation for this theory. Look at it for a moment in the light of the following illustration: A man is lying at the point of death; a minister is with him during his last hour. He assures him that God is still placable and gracious; that "His mercy endureth forever;" that He loves him, and is willing to pardon and receive him. But the sinner dies unbelieving and unsaved. From that moment all is changed; the hitherto loving, tender, pitying God suddenly becomes implacable, unsympathizing and indifferent to that sinner's awful fate. With regard to that individual, the feelings of God are now wholly reversed, and henceforth He can have no sorrow or regret in view of his misery, but must forever be to him only a consuming fire. "Surely this is the ne plus ultra of impiety. Here is a God whose moral qualities change with the changing hours." One hour He is loving, tender and gracious; the next He is callous and unmoved, even by the spectacle of unutterable misery! Surely none who think can believe it.

God's sympathy for the distressed results from His love for them, and there can be no valid reason assigned for believing that it will ever cease while suffering continues. "The divine suffering in the life and death of the God-man Jesus Christ is not to be regarded as comprehensive of all God's suffering for men, but rather as a temporary manifestation of a disposition to sympathize with and save the suffering, which is part of the eternal nature of God, and which must, therefore, be as enduring as the suffering. He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows not only on the cross, but through all the past since grief and sorrow began. And since God's nature is so unchangeable, the same yesterday, to-day and forever,' He will continue to

bear the griefs of others so long as grief shall last."*

And what then? Shall we deny the doctrine of future punishment? No. And we do not. Because God sympathizes with the miserable, it does not follow that there is no misery. The world is full of anguish, and God sees it all and regrets it, but it continues to exist, nevertheless. So, because the future punishment of the incorrigible will be a source of pain to God, it does not follow that there will be no future punishment. Nor is it by any means a necessary or logical inference that future punishment will not be endless, and that all will eventually be restored to happiness and heaven. True, the divine love and sympathy are curative in tendency, but they do not always prove effectual in restoring men to virtue. The God-man suffering on the cross was one incontrovertable instance of the divine sympathy and love for sinning men. But thousands witness that spectacle, and believe it to have been a divine sacrifice, who are not reformed nor saved thereby, but die as they have lived-in their sins. What warrant has any man for supposing that the eternal, unchanging love and sympathy of God's nature will be any more efficacious in reforming and saving the soul after it is damned than before? The inference would rather be that if the divine love proved unavailing here, it would continue to be so hereafter. But while we may feel compelled reluctantly and sadly to admit the fact of eternal punishment, we are all the more bound to strenuously and persistently vindicate the divine character against the monstrous and impious caricature implied in the supposition that God looks with indifference or complacency upon the woes of the lost.

We conclude, then, that while hell exists there must be sorrow in heaven, and that the prevalent theory that heaven is a state of perfect happiness, in the sense that no alloy of sympathetic grief can enter into the experiences of God and the blessed, is unreasonable and unscriptural, and, therefore, untenable.

* "The Long Suffering of God."

I KNOW not how it may be with others, but as for myself, I confess that I have a great deal of curiosity in regard to the ancestry of authors. From whom did they derive their genius, if they have genius, I ask, or their talent, if they have any talent? Was it handed on to them as the torch was handed on to the fleetest in the old Greek race? or was it kindled in their own fiery souls? Whose descendants were Shakespeare, and Milton, and Byron ? Were they

or were they the first, as well as the last, of their family?

Mr. Francis Galton, an Englishman of letters, of a scientific turn of mind, published, three or four years since, a curious volume, the thesis of which is that genius is hereditary. It is maintained with considerable ingenuity, but not, I think, with much success. There is a world of difference between genius and talent, but the difference, which most men feel, though few can define it, Mr. Galton does not appear to perceive. That talent is sometimes hereditary he occasionally proves -never, I think, that genius is. Such, at least, is my impression, and I propose to test its correctness in the following paper, in which I shall endeavor to trace the ancestry of some notable English authors. As I have no theory to prove, I shall not attempt to settle their intellectual status. There can be no dispute about genius or talent where the greatest are concerned.

ing his parents, and the latest have only discovered that he was probably the son of Richard Chaucer, a vintner of London. From whose dear, motherly bosom he suckled the milk of human kindness, no one even conjectures. There is no solid biographical ground under our feet until we reach the beginning of the seventeenth century, and, as far as most of the writers after Chaucer, until we reach Wyatt and Surrey are concerned, it does not greatly

matter.

A historic interest attaches to the family of Sir Thomas Wyatt, in the person of his father, Sir Henry Wyatt, who was imprisoned and racked in the Tower by Richard the Third, as a punishment for his adherence to the house of Tudor; and there is a tradition that he would have starved to death there, but for the timely appearance of a providential cat, which brought him a pigeon every day, from a neighboring dovecote. After the death of the usurper he became a Privy Councilor to Henry the Seventh, and after the coronation of his successor, he was made a Knight of the Bath. For his valor at the battle of Spurs, he was rewarded by the honor of Knight Banneret. He was also Treasurer of the King's Chamber, and he filled other high offices; in short the father of Wyatt was a person of importance. His mother appears to have been raised to her ladyship from a humbler position than distinguished the Wyatts of Yorkshire. Her maiden name was Anne Skinner, and she was the daughter of a John Skinner, of Riegate, Surrey.

"Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still."

But there is nothing that can now be known. His earliest biographers are silent respect

a Sir Robert Howard with the daughter of a Duke of Norfolk, who was the granddaughter of an Earl of Norfolk, a younger son of Edward the First; and the second, the marriage of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, the father of our Surrey, with the Lady Anne, the youngest daughter of Edward the Fourth. The father of this How

ard, by the way, was raised to the Dukedom by Richard the Third, whose cause he supported, until it went down in blood at Bosworth Field, where he figured, in Shakespeare, as "Jockey of Norfolk," and where he was slain. Lady Anne bore several children, but they all died young, and after her death her childless lord married again. His second wife, the mother of the poet, was the Lady Elizabeth Safford, a daughter of Edward Safford, Duke of Buckingham. It was an unhappy marriage, for the Lady Elizabeth was not only twenty years younger than her husband, but she loved and was beloved by the Earl of Westmoreland.

If we owe to one noble author, Surrey, the invention of blank verse, we owe to another-Buckhurst, the first use of it in tragedy, in other words the first English tragedy in blank verse. The author of Ferrex and Porrex, and the stately Induction to The Mirror for Magistrates, Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset,-was of a very distinguished family, the founder of which in England, Herbrand de Sackville, came over with William the Conqueror. Sackville's father, Sir Richard Sackville, held important offices in the reigns of Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth; his mother, whose name was Winifrede, was the daughter of Sir John Bruges, or Brydges, who was at one time Lord Mayor of London. His grandmother was, I imagine, of higher rank, being the aunt of poor Anne Boleyn, the mother of Queen Elizabeth. It adds to one's interest in Sir Richard to remember that he was the friend of good old Roger Ascham, whose principal work, The Schole-Master, was specially provided for the instruction of his grandson, young Mr. Robert Sackville. The estimation in which Sir Richard was held by Ascham is set forth by himself in his preface to The Schole-Master where he is thus characterized "That worthy gentleman, that earnest favourer and furtherer of God's true religion; that faithful servitor to his prince and country; a lover of learning and all learned men; wise in all doings; courteous to all persons, showing spite to none, doing good to many; and as I well found to me so fast a friend, as I never lost the like before."

About seven years after the axe of the executioner had descended upon the neck of Surrey, and while young Mr. Thomas Sackville was thinking of marriage, a young

VOL. VIII.-22

gentleman of rank was born at Penshurst. His name was Philip Sidney, and his lineage was high. The Sidneys are supposed to have been of French extraction, and to have come to England about the reign of Henry the Second, to whom William de Sidney was chamberlain. The grandfather of Philip Sidney, who was cousin to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, held offices of dignity and importance in the household of Henry the Eighth, and was celebrated among the commanders who were present at Flodden Field. His son, Sir Henry Sidney, received the honor of knighthood, and was appointed Ambassador to France by Edward the Sixth, who was more his friend than his sovereign, and who breathed his last in his arms. Lady Mary, the wife of Sir Henry, was the eldest daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who fruitlessly attempted to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne. The Sidneys were living at Penshurst when Philip was born, but they were not out of favor at Court, as so many noble families were, for the lad was named after the royal husband of Queen Mary, who appointed Sir Henry her vice-treasurer. It is not often that we see the great of other days as they appeared to their contemporaries, and when we do, they are not so strongly individualized as we could wish. We have to imagine much, as in this old sketch of the parents of Sidney, which was drawn by Fulke Grevile, Lord Brook, who was Sidney's kinsman, and loved him dearly, and the last of whose three titles to remembrance on his tomb was that he was his friend. "Sir Henry Sidney," my Lord Brook writes, "was a man of excellent natural wit, large heart, sweet conversation, and such a governor as sought not to make an end of the State in himself, but to plant his own ends in the prosperity of his country. On the other side, Lady Mary Sidney, as she was a woman by descent of great nobility, so she was by nature of a large, ingenious spirit. Whence as it were even racked with native strengths, she chose rather to hide herself from the curious eyes of a delicate time, than to come upon the stage of the world with any manner of disparagement, the mischance of sickness having cast such a veil over her excellent beauty, as the modesty of that sex doth many times upon their native and heroical spirits."

The affection which this worthy couple lavished upon Master Philip was touching