of this earth, if it were what it feels to you. But that would be for a boy to have at ten years of age the mind that grows in a man only at seventy. To all men, youth would be a little more nearly what it looks, if there were more faith in them while it is passing. And there is a greatness of faith, in which it would be possible for a man to wear his old age like a vesture, which unembodied spirits might, some of them, envy. MARHAM. Lord! increase our faith. St. Augustine said, that he would not change places with any angel, if only he could attain the station assigned to man. AUBIN. O that station! And yet when we have reached it, and when we are ensphered within it, everlastingly, this very day will be a fond memory with us. For it will be a pleasure, in the city of God, to think how we used to die daily in the earth. These are our latter days, and the ends of the world are upon us now; but in heaven any recollection of our present feelings will be a zest to our immortality, and what will make us to God and thank him. look up MARHAM. And for me, this may be before the year ends its round. AUBIN. It is more likely to be for me, uncle; that is, if I am worthy of heaven on my dying. And for us both it will be before Saturn finishes one circuit more. And then we shall be untouched by what is planetary, by heat and cold, and the changes of day and night. And the light of the sun and moon will be nothing to us when we are citizens of the New Jerusalem; and on our becoming immortal, days and years, the shadow that moves on the face of the dial, the hammer that strikes the hour, and the marvellous clock-work of the stars themselves, all will be nothing to us. MARHAM. And then the last enemy will be nothing to us; for death we shall have undergone, and found to be birth. O God! may our certainty of what death will prove to be strengthen us against what it seems to be. AUBIN. And it ought to do so. For in itself life was better than what it felt in our passing through. In your youth, uncle, no doubt you were troubled about many things, and you took more thought about the morrow than was right, and you were as anxious as though of your life you had the whole guidance, and God had none; and so, through littleness of faith, the eyes of your understanding were withholden, so that you could not see things about you as they might have been seen, and as they look now that you have passed through them. MARHAM. Now I see them beautiful with the light of God about them; but that light I had little feeling for once. Ay, and I must remember that in these old days of mine the light of God is on all things round me, as much as it ever was. Faith, more faith, is my great want. The Lord is my salvation; why or what should I fear? AUBIN. I will think of the past, and so be brave for time to come. Adversities laid hold of me, but I said, Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth ; and so they became angels with me unawares. And moving in remembered scenes, what are those forms I see so beautiful and smiling, and with the light of heaven shining from them? They are friends, who, the last time I saw them, were bodies wasted and convulsed; rather, so they seemed to me to be; but now they are to me what in their agonies they were just becoming, they are saints of heaven. Sufferers they were, and now they are saints; and so I think of them, though at first after losing them my thoughts of them were as painful as their last days were. It is not the past has changed, but myself; for I judge of it more wisely now than I did. MARHAM. Even while passing, life was more beautiful than we know of; and so, in coming, death, without doubt, is diviner than we feel. AUBIN. Week by week I am nearer the end of my life, and time pushes me on towards death, out of one day into another. But after prayer in an evening, I have a thought that comes into my mind with a feeling as though it were sent; and it calms me with a peace not of this world, and it says to me, "It is through night that the day begins anew, and it is through death that life will be thine afresh." Misfortunes seem to call to me from places where I met them, "Evils we were at the first look, but in thine eye of faith we changed into ministers of God; and so will death." And there are solemn seasons, in which, from heaven, holy and departed friends make their witness felt within me, "Our last agonies did but make us immortal; for death is Christ's, and Christ is God's." CHAPTER Xv. Now this is why, in my old age, No grief comes near me, and no cares Serenity broods o'er my mind, For I daily pray to Heaven, That when the hour of death arrives My sins may be forgiven. No anxious fears disturb my breast, My days serenely roll; I tarry till it pleaseth God To heaven to take my soul. -JEAN MICHEL. AUBIN. THERE are some who grow to be men, and almost old, without the knowledge of suffering. And their thanks to God are for their many pleasures; and for their sorrows, when they come to thank him, they are not the men they were. For, in the mean while, they have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and found Eden vanish from about them, and the world feel like thorns, and thistles, and dust, and a curse. And there are some who do not get the better of this sense of desolation; for they are angered by it, and not humbled. But those who, having lost the feeling of Eden, get that of earth's being Gethsemane, soon find life rise heavenwards under |