super-nature, that knits us by subtle web of intellect, blends yearnings of the heart, speaks in every cadence of our uttering, so that we know our Home is not here: a beneficent radiation in it brings what no money can buy-a power to keep from sin and be content with the will of God. We are not deluded by things of our own device; we no more create our consciousness of Divine action than we do of physical action. The mystery and change everywhere, the underlying permanence and law, make us feel that we have come here to learn, to have belief in right and wrong, and healthfully to strive that we may enter the broad daylight of God. So sure of this are we, that the promise is sweeter as this life is darksome and weary, the soul becomes more hungry when the body is ill at ease. There are some whom the lightning of misfortune blasts-only to intensify their inner impulse to be holy. Amidst all that humbles and scathes, in every strange defeature, they stand erectwe look upon them with less of pity than of love and reverence. There are passers through the Lazar House of Misery, but in their manger and straw is a majesty of God. Our inner impulse to the miraculous flings over acts of faith, though wrought in the meanest localities of earth, an emanation from the glory of Heaven. We have "A King whom to afford Of service truly, Performed and duly, Is to bespeak eternity of bliss." GEORGE HERBERT. D 66 THOUGHT IV. WORLD WITHIN THE WORLD. Only in Reality lies the essence and foundation of all that was ever fabled, visioned, sung, spoken, or babbled by the human species; and the actual Life of Man includes in it all Revelations,, true and false, that have been, are, or are to be."-THOMAS CARLYLE. "The evidence of the senses is not stronger, ought not to be more convincing, than the evidence of the understanding. The eye of the mind may see as clearly, and judge as correctly, as the eye of the body.”—Rev. C. BENSON, Hulsean Lecture, 1820. THE disposition with which nations and individuals are endowed by heredity from their ancestors, is moulded into character and receives outward form in daily behaviour, by their belief and will. Belief and will do not originate by chance, nor expand of themselves in the spirit. They are formed, voluntarily or involuntarily, by the operation of our consciousness on the experience of life. Belief in the miraculous is world-wide. The most powerful mover of the will, that which plays the greatest part in the history of the earth, that which animates. to marvellous exertions, and furnishes brightest hopes and direst fears to heart and mind, is our sense of the Supernatural. There are sensations of awful dread, as embodied in Coleridge's dark verse, that something not of earth is behind us; and there are bright experiences as of a spirit moving over us, filling the depths of our soul with a solemn mystery, creating new life. How this sense could be quickened, the belief be excited, the will put in action, and moral obligations established, apart from miracles, marvels, deliverances, is a mystery. If there is no God, and men invented Him, men are able to fashion by thought a more wonderful Being and Existence than the universe either represents or contains—this, in itself, is creative and partakes of the miraculous. If there are no angels nor devils, no supernaturals nor miracles, men have pictured to themselves beings and operations the like of which cannot be found in heaven or earth: thus the world within is more marvellous than the world without. The invention of spirits, of supernatural marvels, of consciousness as to God, apart from an ultimate object, without even an antecedent, is a miracle. We apply the thought. If all causes and antecedents are material; if all being and existence are comprised in matter, force, space; how can the inner character and outer conduct of Hebrews and Christians be explained apart from those marvels on which their faith and history immovably rest? Experience proves that Revelation, embodied in the Old and New Testaments, has a power of entering our nature; of living in us, and becoming part of our ordinary intelligence; raising us to purer heights in knowing truth and doing good. Such a life is, like that of Sir Philip Sidney, poetry put in action. He who says, "The Bible, historical monuments, national institutions, public cere monies, lives of saints, heroic holy achievements, sublimest martyr-deaths, events of world-wide interest, transactions so majestic that all others become small in comparison, are based on delusive notions, are not realized truth, but flights of falsest fancy, and erections on groundless superstitions;" expects every man to be counted a liar-himself alone as true. Even so, how will this miracle of a man account for these notions, flights, superstitions, seeing that there is not even the shadow of a shade of reality in any of them; and in human nature no power of creating? We cannot move a limb without some substratum of fact; how, then, without the grain of mustard seed for reality, has the whole world been moved to faith in miracles? There must be a world within the world. That, however, does not conform to the materialistic statement "The external world is the only reality;' but every one, not a materialist, capable of accurate scientific thought, has been fully persuaded that there is an inner world. Every one: for reason far from extinguishing religion by a more gaudy light, adapts our eyes to the higher sacred lustre. The bonds of organic union, personality, and identity, which make man to be man, are not wholly physical; we possess states of consciousness and continually perform mental acts which testify of things immaterial-things utterly transcending and contrary to all that is possible in physics. When we give language to the stars, to the night a spell, and question the uncomprehended earth concerning the enigmas of life, we are not dreaming nor deluded men, we are sure even when most baffled and bewilderedof a true unerring Wisdom. The mind is at times apart from the body-so far as consciousness goes “ πῶς ἔνδον, εἶτ ̓ οὐκ ἔνδον; ὀρθῶς ὦ γέρον. 66 ὁ νοῦς μὲν ἔξω συλλέγων ἐπύλλια ARISTOPHANES, Acham, 372. Peregre est animus sine corpore velox." HORACE, Ep. i. 12, 13. We possess permanent mental and emotional states concerning things which, materially, are impossible; and seem to have means of knowledge transcending those called natural. All that we know has two faces: Mind, a floating succession of ideas; Matter, a floating consciousness of phenomena. Mill, in his "Logic,” says, "The substance Body is the unknown cause of our sensations, the substance Mind is the unknown recipient." The passage from one to the other we cannot understand, nor explain how will acts upon the body; and every transfer from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous seems of a transcendental character-more inscrutable than the media influencing the translation of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, gravity. The fact may be put in physiological form :-The development of the frontal lobes of the brain is greatest in those men who possess the highest intellectual powers. "Electrical irritation of the antero-frontal lobes causes no motor manifestations," says Dr. Ferrier (“Functions of the Brain," p. 287). "Though not motor, they are inhibitory motor, and expend their energy in inducing internal changes in the centres of actual motor execution." Consequently, the keys on which the anthem of high intelligence and emotion is played are the frontal |