an interpreter in that highest poetry through which God reveals his hidden thoughts to the awakened soul. This is not a mere æsthetic feeling. It is something purer and loftier than the simple emotions of taste. Else the most picturesque eye would be the unfailing attendant of the devoutest heart; and the rarer the beauty of the external scene, the deeper would be the impression of the unseen God. But it is not so.

The devotional enjoyment of the visible works of God is a sentiment peculiar to Christianity and those prophetic influences which preceded it in the mind of the Hebrew race. We find nothing corresponding to it in the remains of classical literature. In the sacred odes of the Greeks, and in the descriptive poetry of the Romans, there is not a passage to remind us of the sublime bursts of pious feeling, kindled by the aspects of creation, which break forth continually in the Psalms and that wonderful poem of Job.

The old Polytheism was Nature in the plenitude of sensuous wealth, projecting the shadow of her gorgeous but coarse imagery on the pure expanse of the Infinite; not the might and glory of the Infinite coming down on Nature with resistless influence, to chasten and spiritualize her wild energies, and humble them in reverent submission to the law of the Eternal. . . Our intensest conviction of the presence of God- our clearest persuasion that He has drawn nigh to us — is not, however, when we are the quiet and contemplative spectators of His works, or the passive recipients of outward influence, but in those

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SOULS IMMEDIATELY,

higher exercises of faith which engage our wills, and put us on virtuous effort, and excite us to active coöperation with Him, when we seek Him and believe that we have found Him, in the glad appropriation of every duty, and the cheerful acceptance of every sacrifice, which He demands.

In every case, communion with God is not a simple gift of nature, but the reward and blessing of spiritual culture and devotedness. Our moral remoteness from God and the necessity of holiness to approach Him, is the great idea which pervades Scripture from beginning to end, and so broadly distinguishes it from the prevalent systems of philosophy.

There are, undoubtedly, great differences of original temperament. Some minds are spontaneously more devotional than others. But perseverance in uprightness from religious motives is sure, in the natural order of spiritual development, to issue in a deepened consciousness of God's immediate access to the soul to sustain and comfort it. This susceptibility of religious impression and spiritual insight varies also in races of men as well as in individuals. We find it in its highest form among the ancient Hebrews connected with the recognition of one God, and of His intimate relation to their moral condition. John James Tayler.

If we reflect but upon our own Souls, how manifestly do the species of Reason, Freedom, Perception, and the like, offer themselves to us, whereby we may know a

thousand times more distinctly what our souls are than what our bodies are. For the former we have by an immediate converse with ourselves, and a distinct sense of their Operations; whereas all our knowledge of the body is little better than merely historical, which we gather up by scraps and piecemeals from mere doubtful and uncertain experiments which we make.

Dr. John Smith.

Though every good man is not so logically subtle as to be able, by fit mediums, to demonstrate his own Immortality, yet he sees it in a higher light. His soul being purged and enlightened by true sanctity, is more capable of those divine irradiations, whereby it feels itself in conjunction with God. It knows that God will never forsake his own life which he hath quickened in it; he will never deny those ardent desires of a blissful fruition of Himself, which the lively sense of his own goodness hath excited within it; those breathings and gaspings after an eternal participation of him, are but the Energy of his own breath within us; if he had any mind to destroy it, he would never have shown it such things as he hath done.

Plato seems sometimes to reprove the ruder sort of men in his times, for their contrivance of Pictures and Images to put themselves in mind of the Angelical Beings, and exhorts them to look into their own Souls, which are the finest Images, not only of the Lower divine Natures, but of the Deity itself; God having so copied forth himself into the whole life and energy of man's soul, as that the lovely

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CONNECTION WITH THE INFINITE

Characters of Divinity may be most easily seen and read of all men within themselves; as they say Phidias, the famous statuary, after he had made the Statue of Minerva with the greatest exquisiteness of Art, to be set up in the Acropolis at Athens, afterwards impressed his own Image so deeply in her buckler, ut nemo delere possit aut divellere, qui totam statuam non imminueret. And if we would know what the Impress of Souls is, it is nothing but God himself, who could not write his own name so as that it might be read but only in Rational Natures. Neither could He make such without imparting such an imitation of His own Eternal Understanding to them as might be a perpetual Memorial of himself within them. And whenever we shall look upon our own soul in a right manner, we shall find an Urim and Thummim there, by which we may ask counsel of God himself, who will have this always borne upon its breastplate. Though the whole fabric of this visible Universe be whispering out the notions of a Deity, and always inculcates this lesson to the contemplators of it, yet we cannot understand it without some interpreter within. ib.

What argument is this of yours, Protagoras? that concerning lesser things, both intellectual and moral, such as concerning number, music, or the character of a man, mistakes are hurtful, and liable to bring punishment, in proportion to our need of using those things; but concerning the Gods, the very authors and lawgivers of number, music, human character, and all other things whatsoever,

mistakes are of no consequence, nor in any way hurtful to man, who stands in need of their help, not only in stress of battle, once or twice in his life, as he might of the brave man, but always, and in all things, both outward and inward? Does it not seem strange to you, for it does to me, that to make mistakes concerning such beings should not bring an altogether infinite and daily punishment, not by any resentment of theirs, but, as in the case of music or numbers, by the very fact of our having mistaken the laws of their being, on which the whole universe depends. Kingsley.

I think some men of latter times have much mistaken the nature of the Divine Love, in imagining that Love is to be attributed to God, as all other Passions are rather secundum effectum than affectum; whereas, St. John, who was well acquainted with this noble Spirit of Love, when he defined God by it, and called Him Love, meant not to signify a bare nothing known by some effects, but that which was infinitely such as it seems to be.

Dr. John Smith.

God has not waited for us to love Him; before all time, before we were endowed with life, he thought of us, and thought of doing us good. What he meditated in eternity, he has performed in time. His beneficent hand has bestowed every variety of blessings upon us; neither our unfaithfulness nor our ingratitude has dried up the fountain of his goodness to us, or arrested the stream of his bounty.