settle or fix themselves upon it; they unfold the Plicatures of Truth's garment, but they cannot behold the lovely face of it.

We must not think we have then attained to the right knowledge of Truth, when we have broke through the outward shell of words and phrases that house it up; or when by Logical Analysis we have found out the dependences or coherences of them, one with another. Divine Truth is better understood as it unfolds itself in the purity of men's hearts and lives. It is not so well perceived by a subtile wit as by a purified sense.

Such as men themselves are, such will God himself seem to be. That Idea which they have of God, is nothing else but the picture of their own complexion; that Archetypal notion of him which hath the supremacy in their minds, is none else but such an one as hath been shaped out according to some pattern of themselves ; though they may so clothe and disguise this Idol of their own, when they carry it about in a pompous Procession to expose it to a view of the world, that it may seem very beautiful, and indeed, any thing else rather than what it is. Dr. John Smith.

Christ was vitæ magister, not schola; and he is the best Christian, whose heart beats with the purest pulse towards heaven; not he whose head spinneth out the finest cobwebs. Cudworth.

Women come more easily to pure religion than men.

Men are accustomed to deal with affairs of life on a great scale, where (by reason of our mental infirmity) fixed general rules are essential; hence come men's notions of Abstract Justice, in which the Judge is forced to sacrifice his feelings to some law external to himself; an idea which they erroneously transfer to God. But women act in detail, and judge of each case for itself, and by their own feelings.

Then, again, men deal much with their equals, and have to stand out for their rights; hence the sharpness with which the idea of Justice and Right is stamped upon them. But women are chiefly concerned with unequals; with a husband above and children beneath them. Thus affectionate obedience and tender mercy are prominent with them; and they carry these sentiments into their religious relations.

That no one can enter the kingdom of heaven without becoming a little child, guileless and simple-minded, we all know; but behind and after this is a mystery which thou, O Reader, must take to heart. If thy soul is to go on into higher spiritual blessedness, it must become a Woman; yes, however manly thou be among men. It must learn to love being dependent; and must lean on God, not solely from distress or alarm, but because it does not like independence or loneliness. It must not have recourse to Him merely as to a friend in need, under the strain of duty, the battering of affliction, and the failure of human sympathy; but it must press toward Him when there is no need.

But those gentle souls which are drawn so quietly towards God, by no means go without their share of sorrow, only it takes a different form. It is not that an evil conscience stings them, that Duty works them hard, and their Affections fail; but they doubt whether they may suppose that there is any definite relation at all between them and the Infinite God. God is hitherto to the Soul as a pleasing poetical dream. He has not been felt in the Conscience, first as one painfully judging the heart, and then as subduing it. He is still a mere external God to the worshipper. While this is the case, there is Sentiment, but not yet Spirituality; and though the Religion is not formal and stiff, but poetical and free, still the soul can have no active life. But from this very circumstance a sense of vacuity arises. They long to get into contact with God, to rest upon Him for support. But He is outside the heart, like a beautiful sunset, and seems to have nothing to do with it. The sense of emptiness in- . creases to positive uneasiness, to an inward yearning after Him who alone can satisfy it. Thus does a restless instinct agitate the soul, guiding it dimly to feel that it was made for some definite but unknown relation towards God. In claiming a personal relation with God, nothing exclusive is intended; nay, he who thus learns that he is loved by God, learns simultaneously that all other men and creatures are also loved. That is an important lesson for the man's external action; indeed, is a foundation of universal love in the soul; but its

inward movements towards God proceed exactly as if there were no other creature beside itself in the universe. Thus the discovery that it loves and is loved in turn, produces sensible Joy; in some natures very powerful, in all imparting cheerfulness, hope, vivacity. The personal relation sought, is discerned and felt. The Soul understands and knows that God is her God; dwelling with her more closely than any creature can; yea, neither Stars, nor Sea, nor smiling Nature hold God so intimately as the bosom of the Soul. It no longer seems profane to say, "God is my bosom friend; God is for me, and I am for Him." So Joy bursts out into Praise, and all things look brilliant; and hardship seems easy, and duty becomes delight, and contempt is not felt, and every morsel of bread is sweet.

God has two families of children on this earth; the once born and the twice born; both obedient, both reverential, both imperfect, each essential to the other. Let neither despise the other, but let each learn his own weakness, and the other's strength. In the Religious and the Spiritual we see the Man-soul and the Woman-soul, that which thinks and that which feels, the negative and the positive, the formal and the instinctive, the critical and the creative, the principle of conservatism and the principle of progress; in the one the Conscience, in the other the Affection takes the lead, and yet one without the other could never be made perfect. It is by their mutual action that human nature is formed into a capacity for

true religion. Hence the schism between the two characters is far less in modern Europe than it was in antiquity; and each individual of us must look to combine more and more the excellences of both.

Still, if the new life proceed happily, it will at length take up into itself the steadiness of the opposite character. And even the developed Legal religionist may, either by domestic afflictions and other sufferings which deeply probe the heart, or by internal conflicts, be led to superadd the Gospel qualities. Possibly the most perfect character may be that of persons of masculine soul moulded into the feminine type by severe sorrows, especially from the deaths of those they love.

Let us return to the case of the new-born soul. It seems for a time as if the secondary principles were swallowed up and lost; for even Conscience fails to operate as such; the words Duty and Virtue become distasteful, and Merit exceedingly odious. Now this is angelic, so long as all duties are notwithstanding performed; for to act from love to God and from the new instincts of the Soul is far better than to act from a sense of Duty, which is apt to be a dry and external thing. Yet there is here a danger, in regard to that class of duties which are ordinarily performed by affection, and are no mere external things,

chiefly those among blood relations; for the domestic affections are sometimes absorbed and starved, not ennobled, by the new affection; and this is a great calamity. Young persons especially are put out of relation to their parents, brothers, and sisters by the change. In many