almost beyond the reach of hope, and in proportion as he is without hope, he is without the natural stimulus and inducement to self-correction. A human being so situated is already in the position of a melancholy madman. The one is deprived of all hope of enjoyment by disease, the other by his fellow-man; and in both cases, if the cause continue, the end can only be entire loss of intellect, or else suicide; for the brain and nerves are robbed of their proper stimuli, and the body becomes the pregnant source of agonising sensations, which destroy self-control.

It is by activity that our faculties are preserved as well as developed, and their proper action is always agreeable. Life, in fact, is not properly maintained unless in some measure pleasurable. A feeling of unfitness for life always seizes the heart that is robbed of hope, and whenever despair gets possession, the soul desires death, and struggles for oblivion. There can be no spontaneous remedy in our disordered nature for the terrors of guilt; but if we possess a true faith, despair appears impossible. Belief in God as He is, not according to this mode or that, but simply as our God and Father for ever, is the only cure for every thorough heart-trouble. And there is a fellowship with the Father and the Son in which solitude and darkness are impossible. We cannot, with the true light in us, but hope in His mercy, and that hope is itself a grace that ensures its blessing.

But the man who endeavours to draw his religious creed from nature will never find rest to his soul; he will feel as if at the mercy of the elements-all Godforsaken and alone. The philosophy and science of this world never taught a little child to say, 'Our Father, who art in heaven' they bring us not, in the secrecy of our spirits, to pray as seeing Him who is invisible; they whisper no sweet promises of peace and

assurance for ever; but, instead of an ever-present personal Provider and Counsellor, they leave us the barren notion of a mere Power imposing laws on matter, to work themselves out with but main chances for the benefit of individual spirits. But, blessed be the science from above, and blessed beyond praise the philosophy of heaven-God bids us cast all our cares upon Him, for He careth for us. Even the very hairs of our head are all numbered;' not an atom shall go wrong with us if we long for holy fellowship, for then the Father, the Advocate, the Comforter, will come and take up His abode with us; so that we shall never look abroad for truth, light, beauty, or love, without finding them.

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CHAPTER XI.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PASSIONS.

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Ir the lower animals think, we have no reason to infer that they will to think as we can do. Do they show any signs of possessing a recollective faculty of the will? If they have not power to recall and combine past impressions by a voluntary effort to fix attention on abstract ideas, they are without the essential quality of thought itself as man experiences it. Without this faculty we should but dream and remain at the mercy of impulse from present impressions and the associations of a memory, with which recollection and review, for the pose of determining conduct would have nothing to do. Whatever we may think of the intelligence of lower animals, we feel that there is a line of demarcation between them and ourselves, and that a moral line, which cannot be crossed. Thus, as we cannot blame animals for want of logical discrimination, so neither can we charge them with immoral conduct, whatever we may say in a figurative style of their vices, which are only habits inconvenient to us, and never sins. It is the power of the human will, influenced as it is by moral and spiritual motives, to direct the current of thought, that gives to man his mental superiority and moral standing. Whatever diminishes this power also so far lessens his responsibility. We excuse a man who has not the will to reflect on ideas, but only as we excuse a madman's violence, in virtue of his being mad, or not in a mind to

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be self-manageable. But if from immoral habit he has become insane, we trace his madness to his sin; and as we would not attempt to cure a drunkard while drunk, but would punish him for getting drunk, and, if possible, prevent a repetition of his madness, so would we put every man under a moral and physical restraint, and a course of training for his cure, whose want of will to control his passions makes him a pest to society.

We cannot doubt that, as the life of this flesh hangs on a breath, so the power of controlling thought hangs on some delicate arrangement of atoms, with which the soul is so connected as to move it, and to be moved by it. The difference between the sublimest philosopher and the most grovelling idiot, in regard to the exhibition and enjoyment of intellect, is, as far as we can discover, but the difference in their respective organisations and states of health. This humbling view ought to cure us of intellectual conceit; for who dares despise his brother's understanding, when he reflects that the Divine mind will bereafter judge us, not for lack of power, but for its abuse; not according to what we have not, but according to what we have; and will distribute new endowments as each may have employed the capacity he held ? The decisive crisis is but a result. How silly, then, is that common adulation of talent which regards not moral principle, and values the play of wit more than a Godlike will, although this is indeed the only true dignity of our nature. What mere cant of bigotry and carping criticism must that be which would alike depress all minds to their own low, dull, flat, unprofitable level of formality, as if the diversified workmanship of the Infinite could all be trimmed into the same shape by conceited man. As well may we endeavour to reduce creation to a monotony as to bring all minds to perceive and act in the same manner. The spirit of each must vary as much from all others in power and intelligence,

as the material medium through which it works must differ from all others in construction and circumstances.

The body is only a convenient form which the spirit uses, and we have the highest authority for believing that many spirits may occupy and employ the same body. Nor can we discover anything in nature that renders it difficult to credit this fact. Some persons, with most unphilosophical audacity, have, however, denied its possibility; but at least it behoves them first to prove that they understand the mode of spiritual existence and operation, before they contradict the literal force of the New Testament, from which we learn, that if we use not our bodies according to divine law, they will be employed by other powers to dishonour and destruction. But in no circumstances in which the moral integrity of the soul can be tried, does it necessarily succumb to the seductions of the body, nor, with right knowledge and reliance, to the persuasions of perverse spirits.

Who reigns within himself, and rules

Passions, desires, and fears, is more than king.

MILTON.

'He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.'

But how are our passions to be governed except by a dominant principle or attachment to some mighty truth, by which the will may be rectified, and nobler purpose be substituted for inferior desire? Superior motives are addressed to every understanding. Our Maker has implanted detecting conscience, self-respect, and social affections, in every mind elevated above the physical curtailments of idiotism. The passions, then, are the elements of our moral nature; they cannot be destroyed without our own destruction.

The suspension of their influence is the suspension of consciousness. It is only by the consent of our wills that they are excited into disorder, and only by our