to him, becomes the holiest vision of our hearts. It broke nothing abruptly off for us; and enabled him to leave a Presence upon the earth, sufficient to soothe the sorrows, inspire the conscience, and deepen the earnestness, of succeeding ages. And so is it with the least of his disciples, whose mind is truly tinged with the hues of the same heavenly spirit. The very child, of too transient stay, may paint on the darkness of our sorrow, so fair a vision of loving wonder, of reverent trust, of deep and thoughtful patience, that a divine presence abides with us forever, as the mild and constant light of faith and hope. What we had deemed a glory of the earth may prove but the image of a star upon a stream of life, effaceable by the first night-wind that sweeps over the waters. But that we have seen it, and looked into the pure depths given for its light, is enough to assure us that, though visionary below, it is a reality above, and has a place among the imperishable lustres of God's universe. Thus, with attributes of being that have little concern with time, the reckoning of moments is of less account. The transitory reflection points to an eternal beauty. And while human things are learned by the lessons of a slow experience, a momentary flash of blessing may give us what is most divine; and like the lightning that strikes us blind, leave a glory on the soul, when our very sight is gone.

12*

X.

THE FREE-MAN OF CHRIST.

1 CORINTHIANS VII. 22.

HE THAT IS CALLED IN THE LORD, BEING A SERVANT, IS THE LORD'S FREE-MAN: LIKEWISE ALSO, HE THAT IS CALLED, BEING FREE, IS CHRIST'S SERVANT.

FREEDOM, in the most comprehensive sense of the word, can evidently belong to Omnipotence alone. To be exempt from all controlling force without, is the exclusive prerogative of a Being, within whose nature are folded all the active powers of the universe, and to whom there is no external Cause, but the acts projected from his own will. To be at rest from all conflict within, can be the lot of no mind, susceptible of progressive attainment in excellence: for moral growth is but a prolonged controversy in which conscience achieves victory after victory and He only whose holiness is eternal, original, incapable of increase or decline, can have a mind absolutely serene and unclouded; of power immense, but rapid and unreluctant as the lightning; of designs, however majestic, bursting without appreciable transition from the conception to the reality. Descend to created natures; and whatever force they comprise, is a force imprisoned and control

led; if by nothing else, at least by the laws of that body, which gives them a locality, and affords them the only tools wherewith to work their will. The life of beings that are born and ripen and die, or pass through any stages of transition, floats upon a current silent but irresistible. In other spheres there may possibly exist rational beings unconscious of the restraining force of God exercised upon them; whose desires do not beat against their destiny; whose powers of conceiving and of executing, whether absolutely small or great, are adjusted to perfect correspondence. And since we measure all things by our own ideas, he whose conception never overlaps his execution, can never detect the poorness of his achievements, how trivial soever they may be in the eye of a spectator. But man, at all events, palpably feels his limits; receives a thousand checks, that remind him of the foreign agencies to which he is subject; glides like a steersman in the night over waters neither boundless nor noiseless, but broken by the roar of the rapid, and dizzy with the dim shapes of rocky perils. Our whole existence, all its energy of virtue and of passion, is in truth, but the struggle of freewill against the chains that bind us-happy he, that by implicit submission to the law of duty escapes the severity of every other! Our nature is but a casket of impatient necessities; urgencies of instinct, of affection, of reason, of faith; the pressure of which against the inertia of the present determines the living movements, and sustains the permanent unrest, of life. To take the prescribed steps is difficult; to decline them and stand still, impossible. We can no more preserve a

stationary attitude in the moral world, than we can refuse to accompany the physical earth in its rotation. The will may be reluctant to stir; but it is speedily overtaken by provocatives that scorn the terms of ease, and take no heed of its expostulations. Driven by the recurring claims of the bodily nature, or drawn by the permanent objects of the spiritual, all men are impelled to effort by the energy of some want, that cannot have spontaneous satisfaction. The labourer that earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, is chased by the hindmost of all necessities, animal hunger. The prophet and the saint, moved by the supreme of human aspirations, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, -embrace a life of no less privation and of severer conflict. And between these extremes are other ends of various kinds,-renown for the ambitious, art for the perceptive, knowledge for the sage, given to us to graduate and allow in fair proportion. All these are conscious powers, but all imply a conscious resistance. Each separately precipitates the will upon a thousand obstacles; and all together demand the ceaseless vigilance of conscience to preserve their order, and prevent the encroachments of usurpation. Thus, all action implies the presence of some necessity. And if other and more liberal conditions are requisite to perfect freedom, then can no man be ever free.

Exemption then from the sense of want and the need of work is not that which constitutes freedom to the human being. Another form of expression is sometimes resorted to, in order to discriminate the free from the servile mind, and contrast the nobleness of the one with

the abjectness of the other. It is said that the freeman acts from within, on the suggestion of ideas; while the slave is the creature of outward coercion, and obeys some kind of physical force. But this language still conceals from us the real distinction. Even the man whose person, as well as mind, is in a condition of slavery, is not necessarily, or usually, under any external and material constraint. Hour by hour, and day by day, he enjoys immunity from bodily compulsion; and habitually lives at one remove from the application of direct sensation to his will. He too, like other men, is worked by an ideal influence,—a fear that haunts, an image that disturbs him. When the field-serf plies his spade with new energy at the approaching voice of the Steward, it is not that any muscular grasp seizes on his limbs and enforces a quicker movement; but that a mental terror is awakened, and the phantom of the lash flies through his startled fancy. And, in higher cases of obedience, it is proportionally more evident, that the physical objects which are the implements of procuring submission fulfil their end by the mere power of suggestion. The eagle of the Roman legion, the cross in the battles of the crusades, reared its head above the hosts upon the field; and wherever this instrument, made by the chisel and the saw, was moved about hither and thither, it drew to it the wave of fight, and swayed the living mass, content to be mowed down themselves, if it alone were saved. It was an emblem of things most powerful with their hearts; and illustrates by another example, the truth, that the force which persuades the submissive will is, in all instances, from the highest to the lowest,