vidual effort, for unless we co-operate with God's spirit where can be our confidence that we are born to such hopes? All the inferences we may trace from the course of Providence are for us null and void, until we partake of the creative spirit, and feel the force of Christ's axiom, "My father worketh, and I work." It is only the consciousness that there is no answering reality within, that could dim the prophecies of man's future blessedness and perfection.

'Contemplate all this work of Time,

The giant labouring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature's earth and lime;

But trust that those we call the dead,
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever noble ends. They say
The solid earth whereon we tread

In tracts of fluent heat began,

And grew to seeming random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man;

Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,

And of himself in higher place,

If so he type this work of time

Within himself, from more to more;

And crown'd with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not as idle ore,

But iron dug from central gloom,

And heated hot with burning fears;
And dipp'd in baths of hissing tears,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom

To shape and use. Arise and fly

The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die."-P. 183.

This faith can spiritually subdue all the outward and material evidences of decay and annihilation-the worm

and the grave, but it cannot subdue the hunger of the heart for renewed personal communication. If it could, indeed, it would subdue the heart itself, the basis of Faith, for what redemption of His pledges could God owe to us, if it could become to us a matter of indifference whether our affections fed on phantoms or realities? It is unsatisfied desire that promises the future.

"I wage

not any

feud with Death

For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.

Eternal process moving on,

From state to state the spirit walks ;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks
Or ruined chrysalis of one.

Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth;
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.

For this alone on Death I wreak

The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart

We cannot hear each other speak.”—P. 112.

The sentiment of the last verse, somewhat impatiently and rebelliously expressed, under the influence of time and faith assumes towards the close of the volume this chastened and perfect form :

"The face will shine

Upon me, while I muse alone;

The dear, dear voice that I have known

Will speak to me of me and mine:

Yet less of sorrow lives in me

For days of happy commune dead;
Less yearning for the friendship fled,
Than some strong bond which is to be."

There are two pieces which we wish to bring into immediate connection: the difference between all earthly partings and that parting which places the great gulf of death

between us and our friend; and the spiritual qualifications for any feeling of communion with the dead:

"Could we forget the widow'd hour
And look on Spirits breathed away,
As on a maiden in the day

When first she wears her orange-flower!

When crown'd with blessings she doth rise
To take her latest leave of home,
And hopes and light regrets that come
Make April of her tender eyes;

And doubtful joys the father move,
And tears are on the mother's face,
As parting with a long embrace
She enters other realms of love;

Her office then to rear, to teach,
Becoming as is meet and fit

A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;
And, doubtless, unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruits
In such great offices as suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.

Ay me, the difference I discern!

How often shall her old fire-side
Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride,
How often she herself return,

And tell them all they would have told,

And bring her babe, and make her boast,
Till even those that miss'd her most,
Shall count new things as dear as old:

But thou and I have shaken hands,

Till growing winters lay me low;
My paths are in the fields I know,
And thine in undiscover'd lands."

"How pure at heart and sound in head,

With what divine affections bold

Should be the man whose thought would hold
An hour's communion with the dead.

In vain shalt thou, or any, call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.

They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,

The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest:

But when the heart is full of din,
And doubt beside the portal waits,
They can but listen at the gates
And hear the household jar within."

We had de

We must draw these extracts to a close. signed to say much more of our own, but as we turned the pages something exquisite forced itself upon us and extinguished our thought. We do not regret this. The best review of such a book is that which will draw the reader into some sympathy with the spirit which, out of such circumstances, breathes such sweetness and sacredThe key-note of the whole is struck at the begin

ness.

ning :

"I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all."*

And the same sentiment seeks strength to sustain and justify itself in the last prayer:

"O living will that shalt endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock,

Rise in the spiritual rock,

Flow through our deeds and make them pure,

That we may lift from out the dust

A voice as unto him that hears,

A cry above the conquer'd years

To one that with us works, and trust

*These lines remind us of Monckton Milnes', than whom none has developed more worthily the Religion of Sorrow. The coincidence of the words that form the rhyme is curious:

"He who for Love hath undergone

The worst that can befall,

Is happier thousand-fold than one
Who never loved at all."

With faith that comes of self-control
The truths that never can be proved

Until we close with all we loved,

And all we flow from, soul in soul."-P. 201.

There is added to the volume a Marriage Lay; but the old strain returns at the remembrance of another marriage that was to have been: and when through those fair portals he beholds the unspoiled Future, and the unborn races that in the long succession of the ages are to have their origin in Love, and God giving with every new generation a new hope and a new trial to mankind, his faith in the far-off Perfection, which would seem thus secured, is still strengthened by the remembrance of what has been :

"Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,

That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves."

CHRISTIAN TEACHER.- No. 49.

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