IN one of Disraeli's novels, the hero makes a remark to the effect that a man can scarcely be far-seeing mentally without being short-sighted bodily. The undoubted falsehood sets forth indirectly a principle which is certainly true. Corporeal graces and beauties, captivating as they are, act by no means in the way of tonics to the mind. The handsome face and vigorous frame are seldom united to the powerful and penetrating intellect; and, on the other hand, bodily deficiencies are very commonly compensated by unusual mental adornments. The bold, lustrous eye will love to range round the brilliantly lighted ball-room, while the imperfect organ would rather employ itself in the study. Profound thought and earnest reflection may be highly delightful occupation to the man who cannot recognise a friend at two yards' distance; but the man with sound and acute bodily vision will have a pleasure in its exercise almost incompatible with incessant activity of the eye of the mind.

But in connexion with matters "beyond vision," our mind, just now, pursues a much graver train of thought.

If, as we lay our heads on our pillows at night, there were suddenly to fall upon us a wonderful power, and we were enabled to see and hear all that is passing within a circle of even a few miles, with what deep and earnest emotion should we be filled. At the hour when we, sober livers, seek our rest, the members of the great council of the nation have little more than entered upon their labours. As we are just emitting our first unharmonious intimation that the outer world has for a while passed from us, our legislators are about commencing the principal business of the night. At that hour eleven large theatres in and about London are crowded from floor to ceiling with audiences which ought to be happy, if laughter prove happiness, or noise gratification. Concert-rooms, ballrooms, lecture halls, almost innumerable-all exhibit excited gatherings of industrious pleasure-seekers. Quiet evening parties are dolefully progressing, and uproarious bachelor suppers are eliciting the blessings of invalid old ladies.

But it would not be this, which might be considered the bright side of London life, which would most attract our attention. It would be the dark side by which we should be fascinated and spell-bound. Glitter and gaiety would be scarcely heeded, so terrible would be the interest excited by the black guilt and fearful misery which would be revealed to our view. Prisons, hospitals, workhouses, would discover their several scenes, differing very much in some respects, but all alike in this: they would be sad, painful, and depressing. This would be wretchedness in the mass; but our eye would rest on individual cases, by which, perhaps, we should be yet more deeply moved. At the very moment while we, in peace, lie waiting for sleep to steal over us, there is going on the drunken revel which will be the husband's and the son's destruction, and the murdering sword which will pierce the hearts of wife and mother. No sound breaks the stillness of our chamber, but mad guilt is buoyant in its favourite

haunts, and tries to persuade its victims to the notion that they are happy, though they know full well in their inmost hearts that they are never free from the attendance of a hideous, pall-bearing, ghastly spectre, who will be seen sometimes, felt always, and who will clutch them in an hour they dare not think of. Innocence is in our house, and those whom we have brought up in honour and purity quietly take their rest; but within almost a stone's throw there wander through the streets those who seek no pillow in the sense of seeking peace, whose forced gaiety is the most awful evidence of degradation indescribable. O Heaven! how little we think of these things. The wind blows keenly, and bitter frost prevails. Come, sweet sleep, to us, and sweet sleep is almost at our bidding, and will close our eyes; but the wretched vagrant boy, staggering onwards, where shall he lay his head, and what repose is there for him? Let him crawl beneath the arch, and lie there till sense depart, and on the morrow, if life remain, let him to his work again. His work! His way of getting bread! Ask not how. He lives but as he has been taught to live, and will die as myriads have died before him— reckless, hardened, without a care or thought of heaven or hell.

In how many chambers into which we should be permitted to gaze should we see the King of Terrors busy? We are assailed by no dread of death. We compose our limbs complacently, and smoothe our pillow with a grateful sensation of ease, and gently sink to slumber. But while we are doing this, Death's dart has been felt by not a few even within the narrow circle we have described, and the mystery of the flitting spirit and the wondrous loosening of the bands which keep life within the mortal frame is going forward in many a sick-room. And not only the mystery of life's termination, but its commencement, is proceeding. Existence ending in this house is strangely contrasted by existence beginning but a few doors off. The old man's dying groan may be heard almost by the same ear which is listening to the new-born infant's first feeble cry. Two spirits are equally crossing life's threshold, but one is leaving and the other entering.

But suppose our power of vision still further extended, and imagine it embracing not simply a few miles, but the whole world. Life is everywhere. We lie in darkness and in solitude, and in a sense the world to us is confined within our narrow chamber, but at the other extremity of the earth there are at this very moment myriads of human beings in whom life dwells quite as vigorously, and by whom it is grasped quite as tenaciously as it is by us. In India and in Iceland alike the mystery of existence is going forward. It stays not in that place while we endeavour to grasp and understand it in this place. At one and the same moment change ensues in the minds and bodies of every human being. As I conclude this sentence I am not precisely what I was when I commenced it, and the moment of time which I have occupied has brought some change to every creature under heaven.

Life is indeed more marvellous regarded in its distinctness and separateness in each individual than in the mass. It is intensely wonderful to think, as we lie so peacefully in our bed, of the millions upon millions of beings like ourselves, who exist equally with us, though under such varied circumstances, and so widely parted. But the wonder deepens into awe and trembling when we bring the mind more closely to the consider

ing each bodily frame as being inhabited by a separate spirit—a spirit which arose alone, which must live alone, and depart alone. We are no more parts of our nearest, dearest, and most sympathising relatives than we can mingle our existence with that of the angels above. There may be similarity of thought, there may be kindred power, there may be sameness of disposition, but there can be no oneness of life. I lie in my bed in this room, and of a sudden my summons may come, and I may be gone, yet not the smallest sensation would be felt by relatives in the next room, however devoted their affection. For love cannot grasp life. Life is the burden which every man and woman must bear for himself or herself. In the Godhead alone can there be three persons and but one spirit.

We must now cease mention of the bodily eye, for the eye of the body cannot travel into the regions whereinto, for a moment, we would convey thought.

When we speak of men who have been long since dead, we are undoubtedly accustomed to regard them as extinct. After a certain lapse of time, and when the generation to which the dead man belonged has been gathered in, the feeling of those whose thoughts turn upon the departed is so calm and composed, that neither his life nor his death as affecting himself forms matter of reflection. What the man did and what he said may more or less remain, but the man himself is gone, he has passed away, and his bones lie mouldering in the churchyard. The fact of his having lived in relation to himself is nothing to us; we are only concerned to the extent to which our interests have been touched by his sayings and doings while he was upon the earth. And this disposition to regard those who "are not," only in respect of their courses in the world, and to lose sight of them altogether when they stepped from off life's stage, is greatly increased when not only a few years, but when centuries have intervened since they of whom we speak or read went hence. Thus, when we read in the Bible that long list of kings, to every one of whom the day of death came at last, though they lived to such marvellous ages, the feeling certainly is something akin to that with which we read of those great buildings of antiquity of which there now remains not one stone upon another. And coming onward, when we read of the mighty men of old, prophets, priests, princes, saints, and martyrs, after we have for a while pondered their deeds and wondered, perhaps, at their splendour, we peruse the record of their deaths with comparatively little interest, bestowing upon them a momentary reflection, such as may have been excited within us by some glorious sunset, a brilliant and beautiful scene impressed on our memory, but still a sunset, the closing of a day long since, and which can never be recalled.

And yet, if the Bible be true, with these kings, prophets, priests, princes, saints, and martyrs, shall men meet again-men who now walk the earth in life's full vigour. Not one of the vast army has ceased to be. True soldier or base rebel, each one lives-lives as surely as we ourselves live. And so all who have drawn breath since the world began are gathered together in that unknown land beyond the grave. Adam lives. Bring your eye down the roll of ancient nations. Take for your starting-point the Bible history, and follow on until modern times; in short, let the history of the world flit before your mind's eye, and then

try and grasp the fact that not a single human being who has had life is dead, but that he lives-lives now-lives while you read-and what words shall express the awe which shall penetrate and prostrate your soul.

And again we ask you to dwell upon the thought that, beyond the grave as on this side of it, we are assured no confusion of existence has arisen. Each spirit, in bliss or in misery, is clear and distinct from its neighbour as it was upon earth. It is a countless multitude, but yet every soul holds its own joy or bears its own burden of sorrow. It is an innumerable army, but each member of it has his place; and increased as it will be in a day which is on its road, when all who are now living, and perhaps generations yet to come, shall have swelled its ranks, still will each spirit, free and unencumbered by any other spirit, dear friend or deadly foe, be known, be summoned, be judged, be blessed, or condemned for ever.

We have still to speak of things "beyond vision." We have dwelt upon the dead who are only dead in that they live in another sphere, and we have contemplated the living who are still upon the earth. But science asserts the existence of other worlds besides this in which we dwell. We are told that this earth forms but part of a vast system of worlds, teeming, probably, with life. Whether the inhabitants of those far-off creations are human beings like ourselves, we, of course, cannot tell. But that life abounds in those mighty and mysterious spheres seems to be the conviction of the learned, by whom the great and awfully interesting subject has been earnestly and devoutly pondered. So that we obtain but a very imperfect view of life even when we have extended our gaze, not only over the souls united to bodies in this world, but over souls disencumbered in the world above. Still, there is a vast tract, so to speak, unexplored. Much mightier creations than this, comparatively, insignificant earth, are rolling on in their appointed courses. Thought has wondrous power, but thought is distanced here. When we think of the whole of this world, we have a difficulty in realising the expanse embraced, but when we try to grasp the idea of countless worlds, and these worlds in comparison to ours, as mountains to little hills, the intellect is at once brought to feel and own its feebleness, and to desist from a labour wearisome and profitless.

And now with awe and trembling draw near. We know heaven has its inhabitants, and hell. Former dwellers upon earth await, in an intermediate state, the Judgment. But good angels walk in heaven, and fiends crouch in darkness. At this instant of time the song of those bright spirits, who have kept their first estate, is heard in heaven, and the fierce, despairing cry rings forth from the banished and the lost. Reader, is it not the case, that while we profess to believe all that the Bible tells us in regard to the mighty scenes enacting beyond that mysterious blue canopy above us, we, nevertheless, scarce bestow a thought upon those things wherein we avow we have faith? We have, within us, a vague idea of a great change to ensue some day-a change to ourselves when our bodies will be placed in their graves, and in some remote region, and in some mysterious manner, our spirits shall continue to live; but when we are told of the eternal world existing now, of archangels and angels surrounding now the throne which is in heaven, and when we hear

of the great First Cause as filling all space yesterday, to-day, and tomorrow, do we really believe?

For, consider what it is to believe this stupendous truth? We have not before our thoughts something intensely wonderful which we shall come calmly to investigate at a future time, ten or twenty years hence, maybe. We have an overpowering truth now, or all is falsehood. Yes, night has closed in, the stars are in the heavens, slumber is gradually creeping over this great city and this portion of our globe, we rest our heads upon our pillows and invite sleep, but all the appalling majesty of heaven exists at this very moment, all its awful wonders exist now. While these thoughts are passing through our brain, some employment have even archangels and angels, some scene is going forward in high heaven, and the Lord of all, the Incomprehensible, vieweth and upholdeth everything which He hath made.

And here, again, we stay for a moment to remark, that in heaven, as on earth, there is no confusion of existence. The bright spirits above, acting in harmony, joining in unceasing song, and glowing with the same indescribable happiness, must be yet as clear and distinct from each other as we are who are creatures of earth. What constitutes the difference we know not, but that no spirit can in any sense be portion of another spirit is, without question, plain. Only the One Mind can enter into, and, so far, form part of, the images of Himself which it has pleased Him to create. Angels and archangels, even, differ. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with whom the many who shall have come from the east and from the west shall sit in heaven, are still Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The glorification of their spirits has not confounded those spirits. Purified and elevated alike, still doth unmingled bliss find in each spirit a distinct dwelling-place, a separate temple, though, it may be, equally beautiful and equally holy.

Then see what we have, in thought, embraced. The living upon earth, the spirits which have gone home, from the first man Adam unto him who not a minute since departed, the inhabitants of those worlds which we believe to be rolling round about us, have passed before us; and finally, we have contemplated with awe as much as has been revealed to us of the eternal mansions. In the glare of day and the silence of night, this stupendous amount of life proceeds. No rest, no intermission. And before this world began we must believe there was overflowing life. Can there have been any time when the great First Cause sat in awful majesty alone? The rules of ordinary reasoning avail not here. We know that, in the things of life, to remark that the cause must precede the effect would be mere trifling. But if you try to fasten your mind upon the thought of the Omnipotent King sitting alone in heaven, you find it recoil as from a sin. Once to suppose the existence of Almightiness without the exhibition of almightiness, would lead us into appalling, perhaps sinful, speculations regarding the overwhelming mystery of the origin of all things.

But that the waves of this fearful ocean now never rest, we know. That whether we lie in our bed at night, or are in full action at noonday, we may hear their roaring, if our ears be not wilfully closed, is cerThere is but the future doubtful-that mighty future which opens its arms to receive us all.

tain.

The future! There is no future. In a sense everything is present.