spirits of youth, he contrives to be cheerful amid his difficulties; but at last the "Death-in-life" appears in his path—the dreadful question arises, "Must there not be something in me to provoke all this enmity? Were I a different being, would to me every step seem a stumble, every flower a weed, every brow a frown, every path an inclosure, every bright day a gaud, every dark day a faithful reflector of misery, every hope a fear, and every fear the mask for some unknown and direr horror? If it is not the universe, but I, that am dark, whence comes in me the shadow which so beclouds it? Whence comes it, that I do not partake either of its active happiness, or of its passive peace? And seeing that the universe is unreconciled to me, and I to the universe, must it not be the same with its God, and who or what is to bridge across the gulf betwixt him and me? If a finite creation repels me, how can I face the justice of an infinite God! If time present me with little else than difficulties, what dangers and terrors may lurk in the heights and depths of eternity? If often the wicked are prosperous and contented on earth, and the good afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, may not similar anomalies abound hereafter? And how am I to be convinced that a system so strange as that around me is wise that sufferings are salutary, and that its God is good? And how, above all, is my personal unworthiness to be removed?

Such is a general statement of the common difficulty. In various men it assumes various forms. In one man, a gloomy temperament so poisons all the avenues of his being, that to tell him to be happy and to worship, sounds at first as absurd as though you were giving the same counsel to one burning in a conflagration. Another is so spell-bound by the spectacle of moral evil, that he is able to do or say little else than ask the question" Whence and what art thou, execrable shape?" A third, sincere almost to lunacy, is driven doubly "mad for the sight of his eyes which he doth see"-the sight of a world, as hollow in heart as some think it to be in physical structure. A fourth has his peace strangled by doubts as to the peculiar doc

trines, or as to the evidences of his faith-doubts of a kind which go not out even by prayer and fasting. And a fifth, of pure life and benevolent disposition, becomes a mere target for the arrows of misfortune-at once a prodigy of excellence and a proverb of woe.

This last case is that of Job, and, perhaps, of those now enumerated, the only one then very likely. But the resolution of the difficulty he obtained applies to all the others unreconciled—it ought to satisfy them. How was Job instructed? By being taught first, in part through suffering, and, secondly, through a manifestation of God's superiority to him—a childlike trust in God. Even amid his wailings of woe, he had falteringly expressed this feeling "Though he slay me, I will trust in him." But when he saw and felt God's greatness, as expounded by himself, he reasoned thus: One so great must be good-one so wise must mean me well by all my afflictions. I will distrust and doubt him no more. I will loathe myself on account of my imperfect and unworthy views of him. I will henceforth confide in the great whole. I will fearlessly commit my bark to the eternal ocean, and, come fair weather or foul, will believe that the wave which dashes, or the wave which drowns, or the wave which wafts to safety, is equally good. I will also repent, in dust and ashes, of my own vileness, and trust to forgiveness through the medium of the Great Sacrifice, which the smoke of my altar feebly symbolizes.

Behold in this the outline of our reconciliation. The Creator of this great universe must be good. Books of evidences, begone! One sunset, one moonlight hour, one solemn meditation of the night, one conversation at evening with a kindred heart, is worth you all! Such scenes, such moments, dissolve the most massive doubts easily and speedily as the evening air sucks down the mimic mountains of vapor which lie along the verge of heaven. The sense given is but that, indeed, of beauty and power-transcendent beauty, and power illimitable; but is there not insinuated something more-a lesson of love as transcendent, and of peace as boundless? Does not the blue sky

is

give us an unutterable sense of security and of unio around us, like the curtain of a tent? Do not the stars dart down glances of warm intelligence and affection, secret and real as the looks of lovers? Do not tears, torments, evils, and death, seem at times to melt and disappear in that gush of golden glory, in that stream of starry hope which the milky-way pours each night through the heavens? Say not with Carlyle, "It is a sad sight." Sad! the sight of beauty, splendor, order, motion, progress, power, Godhead-how can it be sad? Man, indeed, must at present weep as well as wonder, as he looks above. Be it so. We have seen a child weeping bitterly on his mother's knee, while the train was carrying him triumphantly on. "Poor child!" we thought, "why weepest thou? Thy mother's arms are around thee, thy mother's eye fixed upon thee, and that bustle and rapidity, so strange and dreadful to thee, are but carrying thee faster to thy home." Thus man wails and cries, with God above, God around, God below, and God before him. Not always shall he thus weep. But other elements are still wanting in his reconciliation. It is not necessary merely that power, beauty, and wisdom lead to the conception of God's goodness and love, but that suffering, by perfecting patience, by teaching knowledge, should, while humbling man's pride, elevate his position, and put into his hands the most powerful of all telescopes-that of a tear. "Perfect through suffering" must man become; and, then, how do all apparent enemies soften into friends! how drop down all disguises; and misfortunes, losses, fevers, falls, deaths, stand out naked, detected, and blushing lovers.

One thing more, and the atonement is complete. Man has about him another burden besides that of misery-it is a burden of sin. To this he can not be reconciled. This must be taken away ere he can be perfectly at one with the universe or its Maker. This, by the great sacrifice at Calvary, and the sanctifying power of the Spirit, has been taken away; and now, whoever, convinced of God's benevolence by the voice of his own soul echoing the language of the creation-satisfied,

from experience, of the benefits of suffering-is also forgiven, through Christ, his iniquities, stands forth to view the reconciled man. Be he of dark disposition, his gloom is now tempered, if not removed; he looks at it as the pardoned captive at his iron bars the last evening of his imprisonment. Be he profoundly fascinated by moral evil, even with its dark countenance, a certain morning twilight begins to mingle. Has he been sick of the hollowness of the world, now he feels that that very hollowness secures its explosion-it must give place to a truer system. Has he entertained doubts-he drowns them in atoning blood. Has he suffered his sufferings have left on the soil of his mind a rich deposit, whence are ready to spring the blossoms of Eden, and to shine the colors of heaven. Thus reconciled, how high his attitude, how dignified his bearing! He knows not what it is to fear. Having become the friend of God, he can look above and around him with the eye of universal friendship. In the blue sky he dwells, as in a warm nest. The clouds and mountains seem ranged around him, like the chariots and horses of fire about the ancient prophet. The roar of wickedness itself, from the twilight city, is attuned into a melody, the hoarse beginning of a future anthem. Flowers bloom on every dunghill-light gushes from every gloomthe grave itself smiles up in his face and his own frame, even if decaying, is the loosened and trembling leash which, when broken, shall let his spirit spring forth, free and exulting, amid the liberties, the light, the splendors, and the "powers of the world to come."*

* The author means, if God spare him, to develop further his views of the reconciliation of man, in another, and probably a fictitious form.

CHAPTER VI.

POETRY OF THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.

THE entire history of Israel is poetical and romantic. Besides the leading and wide events we have already indicated, as nourishing the spirit of Hebrew poetry-such as the creation, the flood, the scene at Sinai-there were numerous minor sources of poetic influence. The death of Moses in the sight of the promised land; the crossing of the river Jordan; the wars of Canaan; the romantic feats of Samson; the immolation of Jephtha's daughter, the Iphigenia of Israel; the story of Ruth, "standing amid the alien corn," with all its simplicity and pathos; the rise of David, harp in hand, from "the ewes with young," to the throne of his country; his adventurous, checkered, and most poetical history; the erection of the temple, that fair poem of God's; the separation of the tribes; the history and ascent of Elijah; the calling of Elisha from the plow; the downfall of the temple; the captivity of Babylon; the return from it; the rise of the new temple, amid the tears of the old men, who had seen the glories of the former-these, and many others, were events which, touching again and again, at short and frequent intervals, the rock of the Hebrew heart, brought out another and another gush of poetry.

We speak not now of David's Psalms, or those which followed his time, but of those songs which are sprinkled through the historical works of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel (inclusive of one or two of David's strains), and which shine as sparkles struck off from the rolling wheel of Jewish story. It is beau