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Reduced by sickness to the verge of the grave, the doctrine of eternal punishment seemed to me then, as now, utterly at variance with that beneficence which good and wise men, and the supporters of the theory themselves, ascribe to the Deity. I did not believe that I deserved it, and I did not fear it.

"Heaven is first a temper, and then a place," says an old writer. And so of hell and purgatory. At least, however it may be in the next world as to which it is presumption to pretend to know, or to speak positively—in this life, and probably in the next, hell is chiefly portable, and exists mainly as we carry it about with us in our consciousness.

Protestant and Catholic Theories of Punishment—It is rather to the disadvantage of the Roman Catholics that they need two hells to keep them straight, while the Protestants manage (with some difficulty, it is true) to get along with but one. But then, the one hell of a bigoted Protestant is more dreadful than the two hells of a liberal Catholic.

CONDEMNATION of the Puritan

ology was expressed in his grim God's truth never made so lugubrious a f

HE favorable time for accomplishing ject has gone by when the purpos Enthusiasm-warmth of p grown cold. -is needed for all great enterprises. I things vigorously purposed are already ha complished. A concentrated will makes a ecutive hand.

HE highest excellence is seldom achiev

more than one vocation. ing to distinction in separate pursuits di and the nearer we advance towards exce in one direction, the farther we recede fr in another.

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in general too intent upon accomplishing our objects to be able rightly to calculate their value. We fall into the mistake of overestimating their worth, from the pleasure or the trouble the pursuit of them gives us.

What Pursuits are most Honorable?. Something of regard for public interests, as well as for mere private advantage, must enter into our pursuits, to give to them an elevated character. To administer to the necessities of life, and to add to its comforts, its graces, and its enjoyments, these are our noblest employments. "It is an honor," says Theodore Parker, "to be

*

* At the mention of this name, let me pause to pay a brief tribute to an honored memory. Theodore Parker was perhaps the most thoroughly religious man of his day. Many good men will dissent from his religious views, but all candid men will concede the energy with which he sustained them. His power of statement was indeed wonderful. No conqueror ever arrayed his forces with greater skill, or brought them to bear with more crushing force, than he the resources of reason, of history, and of statistics against the evils he opposed. This power he derived as much from the immense range of his acquirements as from the native energy of his character. His learning was vast and various, his love of humanity ardent and profound, and his devotion to the interests of truth as deep and as sincere as that of any character of any period. Not a man of commanding original genius, with even little of creative power, and less remarkable for the originality of his views than for the extremes to which he pushed them,

able to mould iron, to be skilful at work cloth, wood, clay, leather. And they a heroes of the race who abridge the time man toil, and multiply its results; who wi truths from God, and send them to a heart; they who balance the many and t into harmonious action, so that all are and yet each left free."

he was still a brave, true-hearted, thoroughly manly of the people, and for the people.

man

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

UESTIONS are usually cheaply ask

ed, but sometimes dearly answered.

But this is a timorous maxim. Better than this, because conceived in a freer spirit, is that aphorism of Joubert-"Questions show the breadth of the mind; answers, its delicacy."

QUOTERS AND QUOTING.

ERTILITY of quotation argues an innate

FER

deficiency of original power," says W. Alfred Jones. But surely, the remark is more pointed than true. To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound. To illustrate with learning, too, and to sustain by authorities, is to render convincing what were else, peradventure, unheeded- especially as more minds, as