V.

"I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our

incompleteness, —

Round our restlessness, His rest."

MRS. BROWNING. Rhyme of the Duchess May.

IT is for the young,-for those who may be called away early, that I long most to speak. Young, strong, eager, they do not think of death; at their age, it is hardly to be wished that they should. Let them think of life,— of living to the honour and glory of God. But I do wish them to think of heaven with joy and gladness, not with the half stifled thought that I know is often their's:

I am content to die: but oh, not now!

And if the thoughts I have suggested are

material, is not the idea of heaven usually presented to us—the white robe, the harp and crown,-quite as much so?

If one material idea may be admitted, we may not scruple at another; or if all be figurative, is it well to limit ourselves to the use of one figure only, till in some minds there arises that sense of monotony, of weariness, which we should most earnestly seek to avoid for ourselves and all for whom we care, as associated with the idea of their home even on earth, how much more, then, if associated with the thoughts of their home in heaven! Oh, I would rather, if better might not be, or until better might be, leave, as Martin Luther did to the little child, his belief that he should find in heaven the wished for white pony with golden trappings, than for one instant chill his heart with thoughts of a heaven that could be no heaven to him!

"I can just remember," says a theologian

of the last century, "when the women first taught me to say my prayers, I used to have the idea of a venerable old man, of a composed benign countenance, clad in a morning gown of flowered damask, sitting in an elbow chair." And he proceeds to say, that in looking back to these beginnings, he is "in no way disturbed by the grossness of his infant theology. The image thus shaped by the imagination of the child, was in truth merely one example of the various forms and conceptions fitted to divers states, and seasons, and orders, and degrees of the religious mind, whether infant or adult, which represent the several approximations such minds, or minds at such seasons, can respectively make to the completeness of faith. These imperfect ideas should be held to be reconciled and comprehended in that completeness, not rejected by it; and the nearest approximation which the greatest of human minds can accomplish, is

surely to be regarded as much nearer to the imperfection of an infantine notion, than to the fulness of truth. The gown of flowered damask and the elbow chair may disappear; the anthropomorphism of childhood may give place to the Divine incarnation of the Second Person, in after years; and we may come to conceive of the Deity as Milton did when his epithets were most abstract (so spake the Sovran Presence); but after all these are but different grades of imperfection in the form of doctrinal faith, and if there be a devouter love on the part of the child for what is pictured in his imagination as a venerable old man, than in the philosophic poet for the Sovran Presence, the child's faith has more of the efficacy of religious truth in it than the philosopher's.'

And if we study our Lord's teaching in

*H. Taylor. "Notes on Life."

humility and reverence, we shall find that He has dealt with us in loving condescension, much after this manner. All that we are told of the kingdom of heaven by Himself or in His written Word, is so sweet, so tender, so full of love! The wedding feast; the supper of the young heir; the description of the King's daughter, all glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold, and of the holy city as a bride adorned for her husband, so graciously alluding to the love of personal adornment inherent in our human nature; the pledge, "I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I shall drink it new with in my Father's kingdom;" the promise, "To him that overcometh will I give to sit upon my throne," which meets and (if I may so speak) sympathizes with the love of preeminence, so strongly felt by the noblest natures; all show how mercifully He speaks in language suited to our weakness, telling us

you