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

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.

Oh, thou Eternal Love, that hast loved me when I could neither know nor acknowledge thee; immeasurable love! that has made me what I am, that has given me all I possess, and that has yet promised me infinitely more! Oh love, without interruption, without change, that all the bitter waters of my iniquities could not extinguish! Have I any heart, oh, my God, if I am not penetrated with gratitude and love for thee? Fenelon, translated by Mrs. Follen.

No one, except God, cares for more than a small particle of the universe. Guesses at Truth.

This is very pleasant; this loving heart of my God thought upon Philothea, loved her, and procured her a thousand means of salvation, even as much as though there had been no other Soul in the world for him to think of; just as the Sun shining upon one side of the Earth, shineth no less than if it shined only there; in the very same manner did our Lord think and take care of all his dear children, providing for each one of us as though he had not thought upon the rest. De Sales.

Nothing is farther than Earth from Heaven; nothing is nearer than Heaven to Earth. Hare.

If man could only understand and appreciate how deeply he is the object of Divine Love, he would be overwhelmed with confusion and astonishment.

Upham's Life of Catharine Adorna.

One of the child instincts, I believe, that few forget, is the emotion caused by all open ground, or lines of any spacious kind against the sky, behind which there might be conceived the sea. And I am certain that the modification of it which belongs to our after years, is common to all, the love, namely, of a light distance appearing over a comparatively dark horizon. Whatever beauty there may result from effects of light on foreground objects, from the dew of the grass, the flash of the cascade, the glitter of the birch trunk, or the fair daylight hues of darker things, (and joyfulness there is in all of them,) there is yet a light which the eye invariably seeks with a deeper feeling of the beautiful, the light of the declining or breaking day, and the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like watchfires in the green sky of the horizon; a deeper feeling, I say, not perhaps more acute, but having more of spiritual hope and longing, less of animal and present life. It is not by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue, it is not by intensity of light that this strange distant space possesses its attractive power. But there is one thing that it has, or suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in equal degree, and that is Infinity. It is of all visible things the least material, the least finite, the furthest withdrawn from the earth prison-house, the most typical of the nature of God, the most suggestive of the glory of His dwelling-place. For the sky of night, though we may know it boundless, is dark; it is a studded vault, a roof that seems to shut us in and down; but the bright distance has no limit; we feel its infinity, as we rejoice in its purity of light.