ness he stares upon. No rainbow beautifies that cloud; there is thunder in it, not light. Night is behind-without a star. His dear one has vanished, her light put out by thunderous death, not a sparklet left. There is no daughter for him-but alas, he is a father still; yet no father to her. For her whose life the blameless baby took, long years gone by, there is no mortal husband, no immortal mother. Child and mother are equal now; each is nothing, both nothing. "I also shall soon vanish," exclaims the man, "blotted out by darkness, and become nothing -my bubble broke, my life all gone, with its bitter tears for the child and the mother who bore her, its bridal and birthday joys, which glittered a moment-how bright they were, then slipped away,-my sorrows all unrequited, my hopes a cruel cheat. Ah me! the stars slowly gathering into one flock, are a sorry sight-each a sphere tenanted perhaps by the same bubbles, the same cheats, the same despair for it is a here with no Hereafter, a body with no Soul, a world without a God!"

The

Hard by in the same village, the selfsame night, a thoughtful man, born, baptized, and bred a theological Christian, full of faith in the popular mythology of the churches, accepting its grimmest ghastliness, sits down by the bedside of his prodigal son, his only child, life's substance squandered on harlots, wasted in riotous living. Death knocks at the profligate's oft-battered door: no syren shakes the wanton windows now. last hour of the impenitent has come. The father looks on that face so like its mortal mother once, now stained by riot, and scarred by lust, the mother's image broke and crushed: so in the sack of a city, a statue of Mary is whelmed over a church portal, and thrown down, and the fragments of shattered loveliness are crunched to dust beneath the lumbering cannon wheels and vulgar drays, while from the street the artist eyes the shards of beauty wrought from his dreams and prayers. The father feels the breath of the vampyre of the tomb as it slowly numbs the youthful limbs,-joint by joint, finger by finger, hand by hand he sees the mist cloud over the inanimate and soulless eye. Life slowly ripples out from that once manly heart. Telescopic memory sweeps the horizon of the father's consciousness. He remembers the cradle,

bought with such triumph; the birth-night; the little garments previously made ready for the expected guest; the prayer of gratitude for the given and the spared when first he saw his first-born son; he recalls the day of his marriage, when he stood on the world's top and Heaven gave him that angel-it seemed so then-to be loved, a real angel now, long since gone home to Heaven, her heart broken by the son's precocious waywardness. The father watches the ebb of mortal life, it is the flood of hell, bitter, remorseless, endless hell; his son sinks into damnation-joint by joint, and limb by limb. Now he has sunk all over! The mortal father turns to religion for comfort. Theology tells him of the fire that is never quenched, of the worm which dieth not, the torments of his child-the smoke ascending up for ever and ever, and bidding him be glad at the eternal anguish of his only son. His Bible becomes a torment ;-in the "many mansions" of its Heaven he knows none for the impenitent prodigal whom Death drives from husks and swine. He looks up after God; a grisly King makes the earth tremble at his frown-angry with the wicked every day, and keeping anger for ever; there is no Father. He turns to the "Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief," asking "will not Mary's Son help me in peril for mine? for a sword pierces through my own soul also." But the Crucified thunders, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels;" and all the host of theological" Christians" respond-" He shall go into everlasting punishment! Amen!" For him there is no Christ-nor never shall be one. Religion is a torment, immortality a curse, and God a devil! "Is there no Mother for my son?" he cries. The finger of Theology, hiding the morning star, points down to Hell, and the voice of Night with cold breath whispers" For ever."

At the grave the "Atheist" and the theological "Christian" look each other in the face; one has laid away his daughter for annihilation-he is the father of nothing; the other has buried his son in eternal torment, the father of a devil's victim, of a soul for ever damned! What comfort has the one from Nothing, the other from Hell? Human Nature tells both, "it is a lie. Atheism is here a lie; the popular theology is there another lie."

Yes, it is a lie. Eternal morning follows the night; a rainbow scarfs the shoulders of every cloud weeping its rain away to become flowers on land and pearls at sea; Life rises out of the grave, the Soul cannot be held by festering flesh. Absolute Religion puts this ghastly theology to everlasting rest; the Infinite Mother will mercifully chasten, heal, and bless even the prodigal whom death surprised impenitent; Love shall cast out fear.

But conscious of the infinite perfection of God, with the consciousness of immortality in my heart, all this time I smile through my tears, as Death conveys in his arms, one by one, the dear ones from my side. I see them go up like fabled Elijah in his car of flame. I see their track of light across the sky, and I am contented; I am glad; I also shall presently journey in the same chariot of fire, and sit down again beside the dear ones who have gone before ;

"Nightly I pitch my moving tent

A day's march nearer home."

I smile on it all, and am a conqueror over Death.

My friends, I look at things as they are, at least strive to do so, and if I had come to the conclusion that man was mortal only, I should proclaim my conscientious conclusion strongly, and clearly, and right out. If I thought ' in my heart that there was no God, why, then I should proclaim that odious conviction. Nay, if I believed in the God of the popular theology, the God who retails agony and damns babies, paving his spacious hell with. "skulls of infants not a span long," that He made religion a torment, immortality a curse, and was Himself a devil, why I should tell that too,-and would never hold back from mortal men what I thought Truth, howsoever much it might tear my own heart to get it, or my lip to proclaim it. But, looking with what philosophy I have, with what nature God has given me, I come to the other conclusion, and wish only that I had poetic eloquence to set it forth till it went into every man's heart, and drove fear out therefrom, and planted everlasting life therein.

I see not how any man can be content with blank annihilation, to have no consciousness of immortality, no consciousness of God.-Chance! Fate! Annihilation!

"Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim,
Lights of the world, and demi-gods of fame?
Is this your triumph-this your proud applause,
Children of Truth, and champions of her cause?
For this hath Science searched, on weary wing,
By shore and sea-each mute and living thing?
Launched with Iberia's pilot from the steep,
To worlds unknown, and isles beyond the deep;
Or round the cope her living chariot driven,
And wheeled in triumph through the signs of heaven?
Oh! star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there
To waft us home the message of despair?-
Then bind the palm, thy sage's brow to suit,
Of blasted leaf and death-distilling fruit!"

"What is the bigot's torch, the tyrant's chain?
I smile on Death, if heavenward Hope remain!
But if the warring winds of Nature's strife
Be all the faithless charter of my life;
If Chance awaked,-inexorable power!-
This frail and feverish being of an hour;
Doomed o'er the world's precarious scene to sweep,
Swift as the tempest travels on the deep;
To know Delight but by her parting smile,
And toil, and wish, and weep, a little while;
Then melt, ye elements, that formed in vain
This troubled pulse and visionary brain;
Fade, ye wild flowers, memorials of my doom!
And sink, ye stars, that light me to the tomb!"

But with the consciousness of immortality, with a certain knowledge of the Infinite Perfection of God, the perfect Cause, the perfect Providence, I can do all things: no doom is hopeless; disaster is the threshold of delight.

"Nearer, my God, to Thee!

E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me,

Still all my song shall be,-
Nearer, my God, to Thee.
Nearer to Thee!"

VIII.

A SERMON OF PROVIDENCE.

GOD WILL PROVIDE. GEN. XXII. 8.

In a previous sermon I have already spoken of the Infinite God as Cause, and as Providence. But the constant Relation of God to the world which He creates and animates, is a theme too important to be left with the merely general treatment I have bestowed upon it. Atheism and the Popular Theology are both so unphilosophical in their Theory of the Universe; the function ascribed to finite Chance, the Supreme of the Atheist, in the one case, and to the Finite God, the Supreme of the theologian, in the other, is so at variance with the primitive spiritual instincts of human nature, and so unsatisfactory to the enlightened consciousness of cultivated and religious men, that the subject demands a distinct and detailed investigation by itself. It will require three sermons:-the first going over the matter very much at large and treating of Providence in its universal forms, the others relating to the application thereof to the various Phenomena of Evil-to Pain and Sin. I shall not hesitate to repeat the same thoughts and even the same forms of expression, previously made use of in these sermons. I do this purposely, both to avoid the needless multiplication of terms, and the better to connect this whole series of discourses together.

The notion that God continually watches over the world and all of its contents is one very dear to mankind. It appears in all forms of conscious religion. The worshipper of a fetiche regards his bit of wood, or amulet, as a special Providence working magically and exceptionally for his good alone. Polytheism is only the splitting up of the idea of God into a multitude of special Providences -each one a sliver of deity. Thus man has

"Parcelled out the glorious name."

The Catholic invokes his Patron Saint, who is only a rude symbol and mind-mark of that Providence which is