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found in the resurrection of the body lies in the figment of a real matter."

'The universe is necessarily as it is, because God is holy, and His act cannot be arbitrary. This physical and psychical necessity is, in reality, God's holiness. The necessity of the universe does not contravene, but reveals the holiness of God. Physical necessity is a phenomenon of which the interpretation is moral rectitude or love."

"To see that the evil (phenomenally) is not really evil, but only an effect produced on us by good, has this great advantage that it enables us to face boldly the fact of that evil, and removes the disposition to regard the phenomenon as other than it is. Knowing that evil, too, as evil, is really good, we are no longer afraid to do justice to its proportions as evil, and to admit that, as seen, it is absolute evil, unredeemed by the least trace of good. With this faith in the absolute good (and it applies equally to beauty and ugliness), we can face the facts. It is just as in science; men could not really see nature so long as they thought she was partly false. The experimental inductive (phenomenal) science arose necessarily from the faith (for it was strictly 'faith'), from the conviction as a self-evident fact, that nature was absolutely and perfectly true. So will the same thing arise from the faith that she is really, absolutely, and entirely beautiful and good. A phenomenal art and philosophy will be the necessary fruits."

Sin is not a fact or reality, but a negation, a refusal to share in life. So excellent is life, that not to live is that foul and fearful fact of sin. It is so simple, first, to see that nature is God's act; to see that all God's act is

absolutely good. To see what life is shows it all. It is God's hand wiping away our tears. The universe is a scene of absolute life and beauty and good; nothing is there that is not so; only this sad fact, which yet stains not its glory, that some spirits refuse to share in it, is the great mystery of sin."

"We misinterpret what the Bible tells us of heaven. It says, indeed, that God will wipe away all tears, that sorrow and sighing shall flee away, and even that there shall be no more death; but it does not tell us that there shall be no phenomenal evil. That is quite another thing. Still there shall be life, yea, more life, still therefore evil.* But not sorrow and sighing, not tears; everlasting joy and undiminished gladness-gladness for life, for evil seen to be good. We fancy that if there be evil there must be grief, sorrow and sighing and tears unwiped away. But it is not so. To cure us of our grief it needs not to take away the evil, but to show it us. Shall we grieve at the evil when we see it as God does? Let me only see the evil as it is, O God! and my eyes shall weep no more, nor my heart know another pang.

"The motion of the sun was a source of error to the men of former times. Now God has removed for us that error, but He has not altered the phenomenon; still falsely-as falsely as when first Adam witnessed the illusion-rolls the sun around the earth. But God has shown it to us. The illusion remains, but the error is gone; so shall evil remain, but the grief shall be gone. The illusion shall not end, but

*I would venture to remind the reader who may be inclined to say, "This is a hard saying; who can bear it?" that the ordinary conception, of heaven, with its "sacred, high, eternal noon" and monotony of bliss, exclude the highest joy of sacrifice, the very life of love, and therefore of God.

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sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Not the least jot will God alter His deed; it is eternal. But none shall gaze upon the life of heaven and say, 'I will not live.' So shall there be no sin there, no death."

inch of thy

"Stand up, O heart! and yield not one rightful territory to the usurping intellect. Hold fast to God in spite of logic, and yet not quite blindly. Be not torn from thy grasp upon the skirts of His garments by any wrench of atheistic hypothesis that seeks only to hurl thee into utter darkness; but refuse not to let thy hands be gently unclasped by that loving and pious philosophy that seeks to draw thee from the feet of God only to place thee in His bosom. Trustfully, though tremblingly, let go the robe, and thou shalt rest upon the heart and clasp the very living soul of God."

I

CHAPTER VII.

THE following letters, extending over the next few years, are written to a friend in religious difficulties ::

"CHARTERHOUSE SQUARE, September 1857.

I am sorry I can't see you again before you leave for Paris. I hope you will enjoy yourself and be much benefited. When you have opportunities, write a line and tell me of your well-being.

"There is no comfort, no satisfaction, no good in merely getting the intellect right. Only escape from death, cease to regard yourself. Make your own welfare and happiness no part of your regard in thinking-then all will be clear. In your thinking give yourself and don't ask to get -not even satisfaction or peace in the feeling that you are going right, that you may hope to attain something at last. Escape from that damnation. Thank God, the end of all thought, of all effort, of all labour is this-which lies here just as close to us at the beginning-that we should cease to regard ourselves; all is mystery to us and darkness, until then, though we had all knowledge and knew all mysteries, for that is itself darkness and ignorance.

"If we can make our thinking too a giving, a loving, an escape from the death of trying to get, then our eyes are opened-then we know. Think of that ever, to know is to be. Suppose you are bewildered and know not what

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is right nor what is true. Can you not cease to regard whether you know or not, whether you be bewildered, whether you be happy? Cannot you utterly and perfectly love, and rejoice to be in the dark and gloom-beset, because that very thing is the fact of God's Infinite Being as it is to you? Cannot you take this trial also into your own heart and be ignorant, not because you are obliged, but because that being God's will, it is yours also?

"Do not you see that a person who truly loves is one with the Infinite Being-IS-cannot be uncomfortable or unhappy? It is that which Is that he wills and desires and holds best of all to be. This is the love of God; it perceives this illusion of what is to us, and sees and joins itself to that which truly is, that is, to God, and being one so with God, to it also must be God's eternal blessedTo know God is utterly to sacrifice self, to exclude the negation, to be one with Being, that is, to Be."

ness.

"September 1857.

"Most important I think it is to you to get out of that strange idea, that you ought to understand the meaning, or at least a consistent meaning, in every passage of the Bible. I can't conceive an odder mistake, especially in a person who believes it to be the Word of God, a book not for one man or age, but for all. You will certainly make a mess of the Bible till you can have patience with it. 'Tis as large as nature and as deep and as simple, and must be dealt with in the same way. If you don't understand a fact in nature, you don't fidget yourself till you can see how it agrees with what you think you do understand. You say, there's a fact I must study when I have time, and meanwhile you go on your way rejoicing-not least in this, that if your life is spared you will be wiser by