118 TWO WORLDS, OF WILL AND OF ACTION.

existence, a state of being related to my action as effect to cause. This object of my action is not however to determine my mode of action. I am not to place the object before me, and then determine how I am to act that I may attain it, my action is not to be dependent on the object, but I am to act in a certain manner, merely because it is my duty so to act. As I do not hunger because food is present, but a thing becomes food for me because I hunger, so I do not act thus or thus because a certain end is to be attained, but the end is to be attained since I must act in the manner to attain it. I do not observe a certain point and allow its position to determine the direction of my line, and the angle it shall make; but I draw simply a right angle, and by that determine the points through which my line must pass. The end does not determine the commandment, but the commandment the end.

Fichte.

The will is the effective cause, the living principle of the world of spirit, as motion is of the world of sense. I stand between two opposite worlds; the one visible, in which the act alone avails; the other invisible and incomprehensible, acted on only by the will. I am an effective force in both these worlds. My will embraces both. This will is in itself a constituent part of the transcendental world. By my free determination I change and set in motion something in this transcendental world, and my energy gives birth to an effect that is new, permanent, and imperishable. Let this will manifest itself in a material

deed, and this deed belongs to the world of sense, and produces in it whatever effect it can. ib.

Two worlds are ours, one creative of the other. There is the inner realm of thought, emotion, and imagination, and there is the outward realm of practice, where thought, emotion, and imagination take their investiture of flesh and matter, and pass into nature and history. In one we have them in their warmth and fusion, in the other we have them crystallized into fact. All radical changes in character begin with changes in the inner realm of thought and emotion. There we are moved upon by the powers that are above us; by the Eternal Spirit that lies on our soul like a haunting presence, giving us visions of celestial purity, bitter compunctions, sighs for a better state, and images that float down out of heaven through our fancies. But none of these are yet ours. They sometimes come without any agency of our own. Thus far they have wrought no change in character, for they have not yet passed under the action of a human will. Left to themselves they are as indeterminate as celestial ethers. They are appropriated by a distinct agency on our part, which consists in giving them a place by our own right arm among fixed and solid realities. The thoughts and emotions wrought in us by the Spirit of God are as yet foreign to us. They are heavenly treasures let down within our grasp. We grasp them by fixing them in the voluntary life, and then they are forever ours.

Edmund H. Sears.

The law of God it reacheth intentions. And God doth

in an especial manner punish naked intentions, because men cannot punish them. Culverwel.

There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve Put God in your debt. Every stroke

him the more. shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer. Emerson.

No; there is not one sacred hour of the Heart's intercourse with others, in which we are not looking to, and living upon the unseen. The eye that looks on us is but the material organ of an unseen spirit's Love; the familiar voice that speaks to us draws its tones from an unsearchable Heart, whose life is hid with God; — the very hand that is clasped in ours has a pressure of tenderness that belongs not to flesh and blood, and is an impress from the unseen Soul. Blessed, then, be God, that they are the Things that are seen that are temporal, and the Things that are unseen that are everlasting!

J. H. Thom.

Of this thing, however, be certain; wouldst thou plant for eternity, then plant into the deep, infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart; wouldst thou plant for year

and day, then plant into his shallow, superficial faculties, his self-love and arithmetical understanding, what will grow there. Carlyle.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom, and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. Thoreau.

The body that is dust; the soul-'tis a bud of eternity. Culverwel.

No subject of moral and religious discussion has been more involved in perplexity and obscurity, than the relation between things earthly and things heavenly; between the duty that seems to be imposed upon us by our connection with this passing scene, and the preparation we are bound to make for greater and more enduring interests.

It is the current doctrine of professed teachers, - that the things of this earth are hostile to man as a moral and spiritual being; that time and eternity are so utterly different that there can be no correspondence between their interests or their arrangements.

On the other hand, the natural good sense of men, and the indestructible feelings of their nature, are constantly forcing on them the belief, that as Divine Providence has already given them a definite place amidst the ar

rangements of this world, - as these arrangements are suited to their present powers, and are, at the same time, evidently but parts of some more august system of arrangements which is evolved in higher worlds, as their happiness and respectability in time are chiefly determined by their conduct amid present interests; - and as there is evidently great guilt in neglecting them, their due use must be the requisite for admission to a more glorious station.

Man's aim is not perfection, but the perfecting of his nature. The former states an ultimate object; the latter only intimates that we must constantly be striving to carry our nature further toward perfection.

Our Saviour aimed at no visionary object ;· nor did he seek to accomplish that object hastily, and by one or two extraordinary efforts; but he accommodated himself to the course of events which formed his peculiar situation in life. He patiently did the good that was offered him. Rev. T. Wright.

Neglect of time is not preparation for eternity.

My mind can take no hold on the present world, nor rest in it a moment, but my whole nature rushes onward with irresistible force towards a future and better state of being. Fichte.

The grand difficulty is to feel the reality of both worlds, so as to give each its due place in our thoughts and feel