popular, simple, and able to be sung. But above all, they derive their magic and winning power from the poet's fearlessness, from his trust in, and his delight in his instinctive emotions. The songs of other poets are spoiled by their fear of their simplicity being called absurd by the public, by that doubt whether the thing is quite right, that thinking about thought, that shyness of one's own feeling which come from want of that unconscious trust in his rightness and delight in it which a child possesses. The kingdom of a perfect song, the kingdom of a perfect work of art, is like the kingdom of heaven, one must enter it like a little child.

'Fostered alike by beauty and by fear,' fear which has its thrill of joy, the child grows into union with the world, and into consciousness of his own heart, till the characters of danger and desire' are impressed upon all outward forms, and day by day more vividly that great enjoyment swells which makes

The surface of the universal earth

With triumph and delight, with hope and fear,
Work like a sea.

And in quieter moments, calmer pleasures are his—pleasures of love given and received, pleasures of childish friendship, pleasures of first successes in learning and in new pursuits, pleasures of obscure feelings just touched, not understood, which make in after-life

Those recollected hours that have the charm

Of visionary things, those lovely forms

And sweet sensations which throw back our life,

And almost make remotest infancy

A visible scene, on which the sun is shining.

We look back on them with reflection, but there was no reflection, or but little, then; the life was natural, unthoughtful, only now and then, amid the full movement of unconscious pleasure, flashes of deeper thought arose and passed away, a faint touch of something to come, a weight within the pleasure, a dim sense of sublimity or calm, a suspicion of what duty meant, just came and were forgotten, but did not die. They went to form the heart, to build up that which was to become the man, and they arose afterwards in maturer life to impregnate and to elevate the mind.

We spoil all this divine teaching of God and nature by forcing the child out of his unconsciousness into self-consciousness, by demanding of him reflection, by checking the joy of his receptiveness by too much teaching, too much forcing. Let him remain for a time ignorant of himself, and abide in his heavenly Father's hands; let him live naturally, and drink in his wisdom and his religion from the influences which God makes play around him. Above all, do not demand of him, as many do, convictions of sin, nor make him false and hysterical by calling out from his imitative nature deep spiritual experiences which he cannot truly feel. Let him begin with natural religion, leave him his early joy untainted, see that he knows God as love and beauty and sympathy. It is horrible to anticipate for him the days, soon enough to come, when sorrow and sin will make of life a battle, where victory can only be bought by pain.

But if we keep these early days pure and joyful, full of the blessedness of uninjured faith and unconscious

love, we give to the man that to which he can always look back with hope, and use for the kindling of effort and aspiration. For the din remembrance of their pure and powerful pleasure, the divinity within them, have virtue to recall us in after-life, when high feeling is dulled with the cares of this world, to loftier and better thoughts; to nourish and repair imagination when its edge is blunted by distress and doubt; to exalt the soul with hope, that though innocence is lost, yet goodness remains to be won; to tell us, in the midst of the transient and the perishable, that our life is hidden in God, and our spirit at home in immortality.

It is true that inimitable innocence and fearlessness, that perfect trust, that belief that nothing is impossible, that fresh and honest freedom, that divine joy, cannot be the blessing of the man. He has been driven out of Eden, and the swords wave for ever over the gate and forbid return. But there is a nobler paradise before us, the paradise of the soldier spirit which has fought with Christ against the evil, and finished the work which the Father has given him to do. There the spirit of the child shall be mingled with the power of the man, and we shall once more, but now with ennobled passion and educated energies, sing the songs of the fearless land, children of God, and men in Christ.

It is true that, tossed with doubt, and confused with thoughts which go near to mastering the will, we are tempted to look back with wild regret to the days, when children, we dreamt so happily of God, and lived in a quaint and quiet heaven of our own fanciful creation, and took our dreams for realities, and were happy

in our belief. But after all, though the simple religion is lost, its being now more complex does not make it less divine; our faith is more tried, but it is stronger; our feelings are less easily moved, but they are deeper; our love of God is less innocent, but how much more profound; our life is not so bright in the present, but its future is glorious in our eyes. We are men who know that we shall be made partakers of the child's heart towards our Father, united with the awe and love and experience of the man. And then, through death,

again we enter the imperial palace whence we came. We hear the songs and voices which of old we heard before we left our home, but we hear them now with fuller, more manly comprehension; we see again the things which eye hath not seen, but our vision pierces deeper. We worship God with the delight of old, before we went upon our Wander-Year, but the joy is more stately, for it is now the joy of sacrifice; and all things now are new to us, for we have grown into men, and we feel the power and joy of progress. But never, as we look to Him who led us all our life long until this day, shall we lose the feeling of the child. Through all eternity the blessing of the child's heart shall be ours. In the midst of our swiftest work, in the midst of our closest pursuit of new knowledge, in the midst of all the endless labour and sacrifice of the heavenly life, we shall always turn with the sense of infinite peace to God, and say, Our Father, suffer a little child to come to Thee.

U

[Jan. 1870.]

YOUTH, AND ITS QUESTIONS TO-DAY.

'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'
Matt. xxviii. 20.

THERE are pictures which, to the very close of the artist's work, want a magic touch to make them perfect -one point of light, one spark of brilliant colour. At last the hour comes when all is finished but this. Its addition is not an after-thought; one might say that the picture had been painted with the intention of it in the creator's mind. He adds it; it is but a touch, but it transfigures and completes the work.

'Of

Such a touch of finish is my text. All has been told of the Saviour's work-the lowly birth, the quiet ripening years of youth, the entrance into the ministry, the redeeming, revealing ministry itself, the founding of the kingdom, the sacrificial death, the resurrection, the passing into glory, the mission of the disciples to the whole world—and yet the picture is incomplete. what use,' we say, 'is all this, if the revealer of God and the Saviour of men is gone away from his work and left it in our feeble human hands? What beauty is there in a work which must perish, unsupported by the spirit of its author? The thing is incomplete.' At the very moment that we say this, as we read the