and each will say gratefully: "Lord! now lettest thou "thy servant depart in peace," when his handiwork has been prospered.

Another side of the topic has since pressed vehemently on me. Though Virtue is our most sacred possession, without which Life is not to be coveted, and therefor is that which, as we hold, God most approves in Man, (copiléσTaтov, to use the phrase of Aristotle,) yet Human Virtue is in its essence largely relativ to Human circumstances and almost requires such circumstances for its exercise and maintenance. In the Christian Heaven neither Chastity nor Bravery nor Compassion nor Prudence nor Generosity nor Justice nor Longsuffering can hav any exercise. This single fact weighs heavily against the idea, that, when torn up from its own soil, any human virtue can hav absolute value great enough to be preserved (as it were) in vacuo by exceptional physical law, or sacredly in-urned as a memento, after its occasion is past. Everything distinctiv of the individual seems to vanish when all the dearly-earned peculiarities ar stripped off or locked up, which, admirable in this world, ar superfluous in the quasi-angelic state.

SECTION XXVI.

CAN VIRTUE PERISH?

FROM the treatise of the celebrated Malthus, I think, I learnt the formula, that God ordained this world as a manufactory of Virtue; a doctrin which seemed to point further to a belief, that he would not permit the loss by death of a product elaborately earned or bought at vast price. But now I am pulled back by perceiving that nearly all our separate Virtues, especially those that ar

gained or sustained by earnest effort and grave sacrifice, ar virtually lost in the Christian Heaven; while it is hard to imagin any Heaven in which they will grow and thrive, unless its climate approximate to that in which they were nativ. A further inquiry arises, whether pious Christians would think it a boon from God to liv a second life in a world sufficiently like to ours to need and maintain our Virtues. I half remember from old days a hymn on the dying Christian, in which, after a whisper from him that "Worlds should not tempt him" to accept a second "dreary life" such as the present, the hymnwriter closes with the verse:

Thus spake the Christian, firm possest

Of Faith's supporting rod:

Then breathed his soul into his Rest,
The bosom of his God.

This verse suggests (and to me other facts support the belief) that the "Rest in God's bosom " for which many a Christian longs, is not perceptibly different from that "Absorption into the Divinity," which, in the Egyptian Ritual of the Dead and in the modern Buddhist Creed, is greeted by English scorn and gibes. Virgil well understood that painful effort was wisely planned for man by the Supreme power. He tells us :

Pater ipse, colendi

Haud facilem esse viam voluit, primusque per artem
Movit agros, curis acuens mortalia corda,

Nec torpere gravi passus sua regna veterno.

An Eden, a Paradise, such as under ancient Saturn, would, according to Virgil, hav been the torpor of mankind. True and sound philosophy. Effort is essential to progress. In the finite Being, Rest, unless as preparativ for new Effort, is Stagnation. Indeed, if a superlativ Virtue can only be attained and "perfected by "suffering” (Heb. ii. 10), then no future Heaven can be characterized as a Rest, but rather will be a wrestling

ground, where higher and ever higher Virtue is to be laboriously earned. If such lofty Virtue is destined to become a reality, beyond a doubt it will hav an inward well of joy unimaginable. Possibly some ambitious souls may aspire to be "baptized with this baptism;" but the many seem to pine for a royal and easier road to the celestial plateau. These thoughts somewhat hint that a single life may be quite enough for average saints, who hav "served their generation by the will of God, and "then fallen asleep." It is not for us to deny, that Eye hath not seen nor Ear heard what the Secret Counsels may reserve for some. My sole question now is, whether it is wise and legitimate for the preachers of unauthoritativ religion to announce future life as an ascertainable fact, that ought to influence Theory, Sentiment or Conduct. To pretend that it is essential to having any worthy religion at all, is not only a wonderful historical error, but a very pernicious one in the face of modern material Science.

SECTION XXVII.

THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD.

For more reasons than one the relation of the Dog to Man seems instructivly to represent in some respects that of Man to God. Man's normal life being five times as long as the dog's, no man thinks of a dog as his life partner. For his death the master has a short grief, but to cherish grief would be a weakness. In the unequal friendship the inferior givs far more love, yet is not wronged; for he gains the full satisfaction of his nature. The man is to the dog vastly more than the dog can be to the man; yet the two hav moral affection in common.

They hav in common love and hatred, and other emotions. The dog apprehends the man, understanding his commands and believing in his love, yet certainly does not comprehend him.

Between God and Man the gap is prodigiously greater than between Man and the Dog. Our failure to comprehend the mighty Superior, whom yet we apprehend, is out of all proportion vaster. If there be in the man something divine, much more is in the dog something human; much ampler also is God to us, than anything that all men can be to him. Human love to God can only be, or mean, with an intellectual belief in his Supreme Goodness, a love of all goodness in the abstract; therefor supremely to him. Such love and reverence ar due to him, just as obedience to us from the dog: but love on the same basis men cannot hav from God. A man is not heartless to his loving dog in calmly accepting his timely death: must God be accounted reckless of his grateful devotees if he does not make them sharers of his own Eternity?

SECTION XXVIII.

IS ETERNITY COMMUNICABLE ?

THE question further presses, May not Eternity like Omniscience and Omnipresence be a special peculiarity of the Most High? I marvel at the levity with which many Christians scoff at any who doubts of human immortality. In reply to insult sometimes unsparing, it is vain to ask, "Would you fling such words at Isaiah "and Jeremiah ?" for an average Christian is too deeply drugged with dogma. But to one who can listen, I reply:

Do you really think a saint's life of seventy years to be a mere dog's life? Surely the question is, How a man livs, not how long.

Antiquity believed that man could be deified: we regard this as the babbling of childhood. The Infinit One is in permanent and necessary contrast to all his finite creatures. It is not piety, but folly, to suppose his illimitable power, his illimitable knowledge, his illimitable reach in space, imparted to one of us. Who can wisely reverse the presumption in the case of illimitable time? To propose as a dogma, an Axiom, that man is to be co-eternal with God, is to me like an infatuation. If any one believe it on the ground that it is miraculously revealed, that is quite another matter. But to present it as a first principle, is simply inadmissible: and if it be argued out morally, it must be held modestly,- -as an opinion, or a personal conviction, not as a dogma. Certainly a priori all analogy concerning the Infinit and the Finite is strongly adverse to the notion.

But I here add a protest not superfluous. It is indiscreet to use the grand phrases, Eternity, Immortality, and exposes us to attack by the Greek Axiom.* The Power which givs to Man eighty or one hundred years of life, does not communicate any Divine peculiarity in granting a second or a third limited term of life; and so on, however often repeated. If there be no intrinsic contradiction, or other absurdity, in the idea of a human Life renewed after Death, argument for it is admissible without invading the characteristics of Deity.

*Section ii., above..