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 him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke 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.

that

It is the current doctrine of professed teachers, 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

122 TWO WORLDS

THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE.

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

ings, to keep our mind's eye and our heart's eye ever fixed on the Land of Promise, without looking away from the road along which we are to travel toward it. Hare.

To the noblest of mere philosophers Mr. Carlyle stands related somewhat in this way. The speculative seer, if of a high and genuine order, must needs, by spiritual instinct, regard the universe as a divine vision, and the reason as an inspired organ for beholding this; which is equally the implicit faith of philosopher, poet, and hero. But the sage is by nature, and purpose also, a dialectician, and labors to define the primal truth he sees, and to pursue it into all its ramifications. From this process Mr. Carlyle turns with comparative indifference. He values the master truth of the philosopher, not as an idea to be worked upon and minutely evolved by the understanding, but to be taken into the character and affections to rule the will, and to shape and glorify the whole structure of the man and of his life. Sterling.

"The world is enmity with God; that is my ground, as you call it, though your ground, too, just as much. Why should I make such a fuss about dissenting from that which is enmity with God? I wish à priori to

dissent from it."

"You can hardly identify the society in which you and I move with the world which the Bible speaks of in that way."

"Can't I? Why not? the identical world; what world do you suppose is meant ? "

"The world of wicked men.'

"And is ours the world of good men? Ah! my dear Wykham, so we go on, passing on the application of the Bible from hand to hand, and all repudiating it, and saying it is our neighbor's not ours, till we reduce the Bible to a formal, stupid commonplace, and then are satisfied. I say the world does mean my society to me, and the poor man's society to the poor man. If I wait till the world of murderers or burglars molests or tempts me, I shall wait forever." Oakfield. W. D. Arnold.

Expressions abound in the literature of modern Christendom, implying an antithesis between temporal and spiritual things, between morality and religion, between the world and God. No one can fail to observe that this antithesis, whether founded in reality or not, has become a social fact. There are two standards of judgment extant for the estimate of character and life; one set up in the pulpit, the other recognized in the forum and the street. The former gives the order in which we pretend, and perhaps ineffectually try, to admire men and things; the latter that in which we do admire them. Under the influence of the one, the merchant or the country gentleman is professedly in love with the innocent improvidence of the ravens and the lilies; relapsing into the other, he sells all his cotton in expectation of a fall, or drains his farms for a rise of rent. On the Sunday, he applauds it as a saintly