its eternal proportions. It is the supreme knowledge, and to whoever enters it a whisper comes whose only response is the confession of our noble hymn,

"True science is to read Thy name."

Much is said of a contradictory relation of science to faith. But the statement is a misnomer. True faith is the highest science, even the knowledge of God. Putting fishes or birds, shells or flowers, stones or stars, in a circle or a row is a lower science than the sublime intercommunication of the soul by prayer and love with its Father. Mere physical, without spiritual science, has no bottom to hold anything, and no foundation of peace. The king of science is not the naturalist as such, but the saint conversing with Divinity, not so much Humboldt or La Place as Fénelon or Luther. So far as the progress of outward science saps accredited writings, they must give way, or rather any false conceptions of Nature they imply must yield, leaving whatever spirituality there is in them untouched. But this is from no essential contradiction between science and religious faith. What faith or religion is there in believing the world was made in six days? Less than in calculating, with Agassiz, by the coral reefs of Florida, that to make one bit of it took more than sixty thousand years. Religious faith, what is it? It is the trembling transport with which the soul hearkens and gives itself up to God, in sympathy with all likewise entranced souls. But from such consecrated listening to the voice of Deity, fresh in our bosom or echoed from without by those He has inspired, we verify the rule already affirmed, and fetch advice and command for all the affairs of life. It is emphatically the minister's duty thus to join the vision to the fact, that they may strike through and through one another. Certainly, so the true minister's speech should run. Let him stand up and boldly say, or always imply, "I so construe it; and if the Church interpret it otherwise, the Church is no place for me. If the world will accept no such method, the world is no

place for me. I see not why I was born, or what with Church or world I have to do. From Church and world I should beg leave to retire, trusting that God's Universe, somewhere beyond this dingy spot, is true to the persuasion of IIis mind. I must apply religion universally to life, or not at all. If, when my country is in peril, I cannot bring her to the altar and ask that she may be lifted up in the arms of a common supplication,-if, in the terrible game of honesty with political corruption, when Check' is said to the adverse pow

er,

I cannot wish and pray that Checkmate' may follow,-when some huge evil, sorely wounded, in its fierce throes spreads destruction about, as the dying monster in Northern seas casts up boat-loads of dying men who fall bruised and bleeding among the fragments into the waves with the threshing of its angry tail, if then I cannot hope that the struggle may be short, and the ship of the Republic gather back her crew from prevailing in the conflict to sail prosperous with all her rich cargo of truth and freedom on the voyage over the sea of Time, if no sound of the news-boy's cry must mix with the echoes of solemn courts, and no reflection of wasting fires in which life and treasure melt can flash through their windows, and no deeds of manly heroism or womanly patriotism are to have applause before God and Christ in the temple,-if nothing but some preexisting scheme of salvation, distinct from all living activity, must absorb the mind, then I totally misunderstand and am quite out of my place. Then let me go. It is high time I were away. I have stayed too long already." Such should be the speech of the minister, knowing he is not tempted to be a partisan, and is possessed with but an over-kind sensibility to dread any ruffling of others' feelings or discord with those that are dear.

In the first year of a young minister's service, Dr. Channing besought him to let no possible independence of parochial support relax his industry: a needless caution to one not constituted to feel seductions of sloth, in whom active encr

gy is no merit, and who can have no motive but the people's good. What else is there for him to seek? There is no byend open, and no virtue in a devotedness there is no lure to forego. There is no position he can covet, as politicians are said to bid for the Presidency. But one thing is indispensable: he must tell what he thinks; he is strong only in his convictions; the sacrifice of them he cannot make; it were but his debility, if he did; and the treasury of all the fortunes of the richest parish were no more than a cipher to purchase it from any one who, quick as he may be to human kindness, may have a more tremulous rapture for the approbation of God.

After all, to his profession and parish the preacher is in debt. Exquisite rewards his work yields. If controversy arise on some point with his friends, there may, after a while, be no remnant of hard feeling, as there are heavy cannonades, and no bit of wadding picked up. Those who have striven with or defamed may come to cherish him all the more for their alienation. Those who could not hear him, or, when they heard, thought him too long, or what they heard did not like, may own with him, out of their discontent, closer and sweeter bonds. His business is expansive in its nature. The seasons of human life in broad representation are always before him. How many moral springs and summers, autumns and winters he sees, till he can hardly tell whether his musing on this curious existence be memory or hope, retrospect of earth or prospect of heaven! and he begins to think the spiritual world abolishes distinctions of spheres and times, as parents, that were his lambs, bring their babes to his arms, and, even in the flesh, his mortal passing into eternal vision, he beholds, as in vivid dreaming, other parents leading their children on other shores, unseen, though hard by. Where, after a score or two of years, is his church? He has several congregations,-one within the ded

icated walls, one of emigrants whom his fancy instead of the bell assembles, and a third of elders and little ones gone back through the shadow of mystery whence they came. In what abides of the flock nothing remains as it was. Wondrous transformations show maturity or decline in the very forms that, to his also changing eye and hand, once wore soft cheeks and silken locks. In his experience, miracle is less than creation and lower than truth. He cannot credit Memory's ever losing her seat, he has such things to remember. The best thereof can never be written down, published, uttered by orators, or blown from the trumpet of Fame, whose "brave instrument" must put up with a meaner message and inferior breath. Out of his affections are born his beliefs; earth is the cradle of his expectancy and persuasion of heaven; and not otherwise than through the glass of his experience could he have sight of a sphere of ineffable glory for better growth than Nature here affords in all her gardens and fields.

So let the preacher stand by his order. But let him be just, also, to the constituency from which it springs. Hearty and cheerful, though obscure worker, let him be. Let him fling his weaver's shuttle still, daily while he lives, through the crossing party-colored threads of human life, till, in his factory too, beauty flows from confusion, contradiction ends in harmony, and the blows with which each one has been stricken form the perfect pattern from all. There is a unity which all faithful labor, through whatever jars, consults and creates. Of all criticisms the resultant is truth; be the conflicts what they may, the issue shall be peace; and one music of affection is yet angelically to flow from the many divided notes of human life. Who is the minister, then? No ordained functionary alone, but every man or woman that has lived and served, loved and lamented, and now, for such ends, suffers and hopes.

,

How quiet the saloon was, that morning, as I groped my way through the little white tables, the light chairs, and the dimness of early dawn to the windows. It was my business to open the windows every morning, finding my way down as best I could; for it was not permitted to light the gas at that hour, and no candles were allowed, lest they should soil the furniture. This morning the glass dome which brightened the ceiling, and helped to lighten the saloon, was of very little effect, so cloudy and dusk was the sky. The high houses which shut in the strip of garden on all sides reflected not a ray of light. A chill struck through me, as I passed along the marble pavement; a saloondampness, empty, vault-like, hung about the fireless, sunless place; and the plashing of the fountain which dripped into the marble basin beyond-dropping, dropping, incessantly—struck upon my ear like water trickling down the side

of a cave.

It had never occurred to me to think the place lonely or dreary before, or to demur at this morning operation of opening it for the day; a tawdry, gilded, showy hall, it had seemed to me quite a grand affair, compared with those in which I had hitherto found employment. Now I shuddered and shivered, and felt the task, always regarded as a compliment to my honesty, to be indeed hard and heavy enough.

It might have been yet I was not a coward — that the little coffin in that little room at the end of the saloon had something to do with this uneasiness. On each side of that narrow room (which opened upon a long hall leading to the front of the building) were the small windows looking out upon the garden, which I always unbolted first. I do not know that this presence of death had anything to do with my trepidation. The death of a child was no

I say

very solemn or very uncommon thing in my master's family. He had many children, and, when death thinned their ranks, took the loss like a philosopher, as he was, a French philosopher. He philosophized that his utmost exertions could not do much more for the child than bequeath to him just such a life as he led, and a share in just such a saloon as he owned; and therefore, if a priest and a coffin insured the little innocent admission into heaven without any extra charge, he would not betray such lack of wisdom as to demur at the proposition. Therefore, very quietly, since I had been in his employ, (about a twelvemonth,) three of his children, one by one, had been brought down to that little room at the end of the saloon, and thence through the long hall, through the crowded street out to some unheard-of burying-ground, where a pot of flowers and a painted cross supplied the place of a head-stone. shop was not shut up on these occasions: that would have been an unnecessary interference with the comfort of customers, and loss of time and money. The necessity of providing for his little living family had quite disenthralled Monsieur C from any weakly sentimentality in regard to his little dead family.

The

So I do not know why I shuddered, being also myself somewhat of a philosopher, of such cool philosophy as grows out inevitably from the hard and stony strata of an overworked life. The sleeper within was certainly better cared for now than he ever had been in life. Monsieur's purse afforded no holiday-dress but a shroud; three of these in requisition within so short a time quite scanted the wardrobe of the other children. Little Jacques had always been a somewhat restless and unhappy baby, longing for fresh air, and a change which he never got; it seemed

likely, so far as the child's promise was concerned, that the "great change" was his only chance of variety, and the very best thing that could have happened to him.

And yet, after all, there was something about his death which individualized it, and hung a certain sadness over its occurrence that does not often belong to the death of children, or at least had not marked the departure of his two stout little brothers. Scarletfever and croup and measles are such every-day, red-winged, mottled angels, that no one is appalled at their presence; they take off the little sufferer in such vigorous fashion, clutch him with so hearty a grip, that one is compelled to open the door, let them out, and feel relieved when the exit is made. It is only when some dim-eyed, whiterobed shape, scarcely seen, scarcely felt, steps softly in and steals away the little troublesome bundle of life with solemn eye and hushed lip, that we have time to pause, to look, to grieve.

This little Jacques, when I came to his father's house, was a rampant, noisy, cunning child, with the vivacity of French and American blood mingling in his veins, and filling him with strongest tendencies to mischief, and prompting elfish feats of activity. He was not by any means a fascinating child, in fact, no children ever fascinated me, but this little fellow was rather disagreeable, a wonder to his father, a horror to his mother, and a great annoyance generally; we were all rather cross with him, and he was universally put down, thrust aside, and ordered out of the way.

candy upon the seat of my chair, when I sat down to rest myself.

Little Jacques ardently loved a sly fishing-expedition on the edge of the marble fountain-basin, and had lured one or two unthinking gold-fish to destruction. with fly and a crooked pin. He would sit perched up there at an odd chance, when his father was away, and he dared venture into the saloon, his little bare feet twinkling against the water, his plump figure curled up into the minutest size, but ready for a spring and a dart up-stairs at the shortest notice of danger. This piscatory propensity had been severely punished by both Monsieur and Madame C—, who could not afford to encourage such an expensive Izaak Walton; but there was no managing the child. He seemed to possess an impish capability of eluding detection and angry denunciations. To be sure, circumstances were against any very strict guard being kept over the youngster. Madame C was a very weak woman, a very weak woman indeed, she declared that such was the case, -a nervous, dispirited woman, whom everything troubled, who could not bear the noise and tramp of life, and altogether sank under it. Destiny had had no mercy on her weakness, however, and had left her to get along with an innumerable family of children, a philosophic husband, who took all her troubles coolly, and a constant demand for her services either in the shop or at the cradle. She could not, therefore, have patience with the incessant anxiety which little Jacques excited by his pranks.

One day Madame C- had gone out for a walk, leaving the children locked in a room above, five of them, two younger and two older than Jacques; and these together had been in a state of riotous insurrection the whole morning. Little Jacques was not of a disposition to submit to ignominious imprisonment, when human ingenuity could devise means of escape; while his brothers were running wild together, he so

berly hunted up another key, screwed and scraped and got it into the keyhole; it turned, and he was out.

Half an hour afterwards, his mother, returning, caught the unfortunate fugitive contemplatively perched on the edge of the fountain-basin. In such a frenzy of anger as only unreasonable people are subject to, she caught the child, shivering with terror, and thrust him into the water. The gold-fish splashed and swirled, and the water streamed over the sides of the basin. It was only an instant's work; snatching up the forlorn fisher, she shook him unmercifully, and set him upon the floor, dripping and breathless. I saw nothing of them until night. His mother had then recovered her usual peevishness, weakness, and inefficiency; the ebullition of energy had entirely subsided. I was curious to know whether the summary punishment had had any effect upon Jacques; but he was asleep, as soundly as usual after a day's hard frolic.

My curiosity was likely to be gratified to satiety. A strange change came over the little fellow after this. To one accustomed to his apish activity, and to being annoyed by it, there was something plaintive in the fact of having got rid of that trouble. The child was silent, mopish, "good," as his mother said, congratulating herself on the effect of her summary visitation upon the offender.

When, however, a month passed without any return of the evil propensities, this continued quiescence grew to be something ghostly, and, to people who had only their own hands to depend on for a living, a subject of anxiety and alarm it was expensive to clothe and feed a child who promised but little service in future.

"The enfant will never come to anything," said Monsieur; "we could better have spared him than Jean."

To which his wife shook her head, and solemnly assented.

The 'enfant,' however, gave no signs of taking the hint. Day after day his

little ministerial head and flaxen curls were visible over the top of his oldfashioned arm-chair, and day after day his food was demanded, and his appetite was as good as ever.

Watching the child, whose blue eyes, now the mischief was out of them, grew utterly vacant of expression, I unaccountably to myself came to feel an uncomfortable interest in, a morbid sympathy with him, - an uneasy, unhappy sympathy, more physical than mental. No fault could have been found with the motherly carefulness and attention of Madame C. It was charmingly polite and French. But the sight of her preparing the child's food, or coaxing him with unaccustomed delicacies and bonbons, grew to be utterly distasteful,—an infliction so nervously annoying that I could not overcome it. A secret antipathy which I had nourished against Madame seemed to be germinating; every action of hers irritated me, every sound of her sharp, yet wellmodulated voice gave me a tremor. The truth was, that plunge into the water, taking place so unexpectedly in my presence, had startled and upset me almost as completely as if it had befallen myself. A hard-working woman had no business with such nerves. knew that, and tried to annihilate them; but the more I cut them down, the more they bled. The thing was a mere trifle, the fountain-basin was shallow, the water healthy, nothing could be more healthy than bathing, and, at any rate, it was no affair of mine. Yet my mind in some unhealthy mood aggravated the circumstances, and colored everything with its own dark hue.

I

I could not give up my place, of course not; I was not likely to get so good a situation anywhere else; I could not risk it; and yet the servitude of horror under which I was held for a few weeks was almost enough to reconcile one to starvation. Only that I was kept busy in the shop most of the time, and had little leisure to observe the course of affairs, or to be in Madame's society, I