ering, and rivers had been flowing, and day and night had been, while I was nowhere! Nowhere ? Alive I was not. But I was a thought in the mind of God; and now I have been made, and now I am what Providence has care of. But when I think of the time, the eternity, past in which I was not, and then think of the day I was born, I feel fresh from the hands of God; I feel as Adam may have done when he got up from the earth, and knew himself that minute made out of the dust of it.

MARHAM.

Fearfully and wonderfully we are made.

AUBIN.

Years, hundreds of years, thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, for infinite ages, I had no being, though God was meaning I should have; then, a few years ago, he let my life begin, in his gift of a child to my father and mother.

MARHAM.

O, but it is a wonderful life, this of ours, when we do think what it is! Every child at its birth is an Elnathan, a gift of God.

AUBIN.

And it is not for God to give and not to care. Sometimes my soul is in darkness and mourns, and it is as though God were far from me; but he never is, and I know he is not. For God is not with us less one day than another, though there

are seasons in which our souls can feel him more. Yes, I know that what God has been to me at

any time, he is always; and he is than what I know, infinitely more.

more to me

O, there are

days that call to me out of the past, and one asks solemnly, "Dost thou not remember having been born again, and was not that change God with thee?" It was; and what I am now is because God is with me. And another asks, “Wert thou not as one dead once, and art thou not alive again?" Yes, and my soul's going out of the body will not be more terrific than many passages in my life have been. The day of my death will not be stranger for me than several days have been that I have lived through, through God; and so for which I have come to know God the better and the more happily. And I shall die, but only to know the more blessedly that God is the Father of us spirits.

CHAPTER XIII.

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet, 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,

And lo! creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect, stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?

J. BLANCO WHITE.

MARHAM.

PERSONS Who have no faith themselves cannot understand in what way those who have it are the better for it.

AUBIN.

But whether we know it or not, we are all of

In

us mysteries to ourselves and to one another. our souls there is what is connected with God, and through that channel what may come, or how we may be quickened, it is not for usno, nor for the angels to say.

MARHAM.

It is very likely that hereafter some very slight

est help or change may be enough to make us enjoy ourselves a thousand times more than we have ever done.

AUBIN.

There are landscapes by Paul Potter which are a delight to look at. But the Dutch scenery that he painted from, and painted exactly, is ugly and very dull; or rather I should say, it is so to most persons; but to Paul Potter it was not. Now I can believe, if some little want were supplied in my spirit, that the whole earth would be glorified to me, and God be seen throughout it.

MARHAM.

And so God be all in all, even to the eye.

AUBIN.

You remind me of another thing which I have remarked. A man has looked at a scene somewhere, and thought it to be very pretty ; but when he sees it as a landscape in some great master's painting, he feels it to be spiritual, and his soul is the better for the sight.

MARHAM.

Is it so, Oliver? Well, how do you account for it?

AUBIN.

The artist is an interpreter of the earth's look, and such a helper we most of us need; just as the heathen cannot understand the Gospel without its being explained to their minds. However,

the more godly we are, the more we shall feel the spirit of God in all God's works, and in all The lily looked to Christ

his workings with us. more, and something diviner, than it does to us, when he spoke of it as being so arrayed in glory by God. God so clothing the grass of the field! - there is a way of thinking of that which ought to clothe our souls in faith.

MARHAM.

Faith, perfect faith! That is the garment which in the wearing would make life be like a high festival, and this earth like the house of the Lord, and our thoughts like Christ with us.

AUBIN.

That is what I am sure of; and from my being sure of it, my little faith serves me more than it otherwise would. Troubles and pleasures and death are about me. And they are about me like a blessed home. Though this is what I do not see; but I do know it. So, in whatever my circumstances are, I can feel at home, and not like a prisoner; just as in this house I am sure that I am at home, even in the dark, and when I can only feel things about me and not see them.

MARHAM.

Whatever our darkness, God is in it; and through faith in him, if we have not light at once, we have peace.