violated and broken are the very ties which unite us to the Eternal, the Unseen, the Infinite. Our Father treats us as wayward yet beloved children, drawing us to himself in many ways (from all the temptations and wiles that surround us) by an instinct that amid the fulness of the transient yearns for the enduring; so that

"If goodness lead us not, yet suffering
May toss us to His breast."

Every trial faithfully borne increases our knowledge; for all experience is an inlet to some portion of truth, and the highest truth must be a matter of experience. This did Jesus insist upon in his conversation with Nicodemus: "A man to know a truth must be born into it." This was as if Jesus had said to him, "Attempt not to solve the problem of divine power in man, for a man to understand this must be the possessor of this power."

There is

We can only learn all the secrets of the spirit through experience, or life of the spirit. Every genuine experience brings nearer to God those who cultivate the graces of the spirit. "How can a man be born again?" asked Nicodemus of Jesus, as if he knew of no birth of the spirit. no outward fact that has not its parallel in a spiritual fact; nothing in the world itself which has not an answering fact in the world of thought and feeling. The genuine Christian feels spontaneously that things seen are temporal, things unseen eternal, and knows that before we can see higher truth than that which we now see, before we can understand a spiritual power greater than that we now possess, we must be born into it. This birth to the soul takes place whenever it has been prepared for deeper and wider experiences prepared to pass onward from one truth or from one spiritual experience into another.

Life is the opportunity of the soul, to see what the soul

will do with it. Every circumstance about us, every relation we sustain, every experience into which we are brought (with nature or with persons), is a gift of God's, replete with opportunity to use it for our own good or for the good of humanity. Every circumstance, position, or occurrence, if rightly recognized, awakens within us thought and emotion; and thinking and feeling is life. Highest thinking and feeling is spiritual life. The nearer our nature approaches the presence of Infinity, the more do the grand and sublime absorb it. Therefore the highest good that any person can do for us is to bring to us experiences which rouse our spiritual faculties into action. Thus indignation, awakened by treachery, or injustice, or evil of any kind, may become the lever which will remove rocks from the paths of others who are too weak in spirit to resent evil. "I wish that I could see you angry," said a physician to a patient, "then I should know what to prescribe for you; but when your nervecentres become depressed, from your feelings having been wounded, there is no medicine I can give you that will raise you from the nervous prostration which follows."

If we are strong enough, as we all have a power of making ourselves, to meet the events and the duties of our daily life, recognising the opportunities given to us as divine, then we shall grow in knowledge of the divine significance of all the experiences of life. God appoints them all; all have a divine meaning. He permits the treacheries which arouse the sleeping soul to action, the blows that strike through helmet and mail down to the heart, that by his own anguish man may be awakened to the claims of suffering humanity.

To piety as to genius, life is always great. No circumstance, no position, is commonplace; no action that is right to be done is low or mean; and as we increase in soul-culture, in profoundness of thought and feeling, so do we approach both states; for, so far as life becomes holy, full of

love to God and our brother-man, so does it grow rich and poetic. The saint is the peer and brother of genius. From the hour in which we accept all that comes to us as coming from God, to work out some great and wise purpose of his own, we gain in spiritual strength. The soul is born through its seeming death-throes into a new life. Doubt and despair vanish. The conquered sorrows are yoked together to help on the work of development. "After the crucifixion comes the resurrection." To be able to feel a fellowship with Christ's life, to recognise similar struggles, similar experiences, helps to raise the soul above all disappointments, all sorrows, and enables it to bear bravely lack of sympathy, false accusations, even the tearing apart of the heart's tenderest fibres; for when all transient things are subdued to that state where the soul can say, as said our holy Master, "Thy will, my God, be done," then it lives in unison with God, confident of his assistance, and sharer of his power. All of eternal value that we possess, we possess as children of God. Only through suffering borne with fortitude, and conquered, can we come into the fulness of our inheritance as children of God.

"To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy evil which seems omnipotent;

To love and bear; to hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates,"

this is to be

"Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone, life, joy, empire, and victory.”

CHAPTER IV.

MORAL ETHICS.

FREE WILL.-DUTY TO SELF. - SWEDENBORG'S VIEWS. SURVIVAL SELF-IMPOSED ADVISERS. BLESSEDNESS BETTER

IN CULTURE.

THAN HAPPINESS.

And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
SHAKESPEARE.

Whom the rods of discipline do not awaken, the scorpions of remorse shall. - Proverb.

A man's heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps. PROV. XVI. 9.

IT has been said that the will of man resembles the motion of the earth, he moves as his course is determined, but it is upon his own axis; and he moves, as it were, through space, no other power being able to interfere with his spiritual energy or his personal determination. And yet that movement, free as it appears to be, was caused originally and is sustained perpetually by influences external to himself, of which he is at once aware and yet in practice unconscious. Hence, as Spinoza said, not only do we not know the causes by which our actions are determined, but by the nature of the case we cannot know, and therefore we are free. Thus man is a law unto himself, and over all things else, on matters that concern his own self

conscious existence. In the only intelligent sense which the words can bear, he is a free agent "to run the course that is set before him." "Suffer it to be so now, for in this way God is guiding us," were the words of Socrates; and Spinoza wrote: "In the mind there is no such thing as free will; but the mind is determined to will this or that by a cause, which is determined by another cause, this by yet another, and so on to infinity." Tyndall reasons that if our organisms, with all their tendencies and capacities, are given to us without our being consulted; and if, while capable of acting within certain limits in accordance with our wishes, we are not masters of the circumstances in which motives and wishes originate; if, finally, our motives and wishes determine our actions, these actions cannot be said to be the result of free will. Now, in a certain sense this is true; but if life is an arena for the fulfilment of duty, for the right exercise of our most wonderful power of will, as has been said, we should so educate our wills as to make us masters of these very circumstances, which he presents to us as such formidable antagonists. In fact, if we know our inherited proclivities, our hereditary tendencies, we have only to determine in youth to conquer them, and we can conquer, so strong is the power of will. There are many false ideas to be rooted out of our codes of social ethics before the young can become able to start with a fair chance of educating the will aright, or of winning the battle of life. False delicacy of feeling, false ideas as to the requirements of honour, make much of the misery that we find in the world. In order to do our duty, we must have correct ideas as to the requirements of duty in our relations to others, that we may feel, will, and act, with proportionate reverence for all, in their various degrees and according to their several claims. We cannot act rightly even to ourselves until we estimate correctly our duties to others, and