Vain were the battle, if a warrior, having slain his foes,

Shall turn and find them vital still, unharmed, yea unashamed:
For Error, dark magician, daily cast out killed,

Quickeneth animate anew beneath the midnight moon :

Once and again, once and again, hath reason answered wisely;
But not the less with brazen front doth folly urge her questions.

It were but unprofitable toil, a stand-up fight with unbelief:

When was there candour in a caviller, and who can satisfy the faithless?
Too long, O truant from the fold, have 1 tracked thy devious paths:
Too long, treacherous deserter, fought thee as a noble foeman :
Haply, my small art, and an arm too weakly for its weapon,
Hath failed to pierce thine iron coat, and reach thy stricken soul:
Haply, the fervour of my speech, and too patient sifting of thy fancies,
Shall tend to make thee prize them more, as worthier and wiser:

Go to be mine the gain: we measure swords no more:

:

Go, and a word go with thee,-Man, thou ART Immortal!

CHILD of light, and student in the truth, too long have I forgotten

thee:

Lo, after parley with an alien, let me hold sweet converse with a

brother.

Glorious hopes, and ineffable imaginings, crowd our holy theme,

Fear hath been slaughtered on the portal, and Doubt driven back to

darkness:

For Christ hath died, and we in Him; by faith His all is ours,—
Cross and crown, and love, and life; and we shall reign in Him!
Yea, there is a fitness and a beauty in ascribing immortality to mind,
That its energies and lofty aspirations may have scope for indefinite ex-
pansion.

To learn all things is privilege of reason, and that with a growing

capability,

But in this age of toil and time we scarce attain to alphabets :

How hardly in the midst of our hurry, and jostled by the cares of life,
Shall a man turn and stop to consider mighty secrets;

With barely hours, and barely powers, to fill up daily duties,
How small the glimpse of knowledge his wondering eye can catch.
And knowledge is a noting of the order wherein God's attributes evolve,

Therefore worthy of the creature, worthy of an angel's seeking;

Yea, and human knowledge, meagre though the harvest,

Hath its roots, both deep and strong; but the plants are exotic to the climate;

All we seem to know demand a longer learning,

History, and science, and prophecy, and art, are workings all of

God:

And there are galaxies of globes, millions of unimagined beings,

Other senses, wondrous sounds, and thoughts of thrilling fire,
Powers of strange might, quickening unknown elements,

And attributes and energies of God which man may never guess.

NoT in vain, O brother, hath soul the spurs of enterprise,

Nor aimlessly panteth for adventure, waiting at the cave of mystery:
Not in vain the cup of curiosity, sweet and richly spiced,

Is ruby to the sight, and ambrosia to the taste, and redolent with all fragrance:

Thou shalt drink, and deeply, filling the mind with marvels;
Thou shalt watch no more, lingering, disappointed of thy hope:
Thou shalt roam where road is none, a traveller untrammelled,
Speeding at a wish, emancipate, to where the stars are suns!

COUNT, Count your hopes, heirs of immortality and love;
And hear my kindred faith, and turn again to bless me.

For lo, my trust is strong to dwell in many worlds,

And cull of many brethren there, sweet knowledge ever new :

I yearn for realms where fancy shall be filled, and the ecstacies of treedom shall be felt,

And the soul reign gloriously, risen to its royal destinies :

I look to recognise again, through the beautiful mask of their perfection,

The dear familiar faces I have somewhile loved on earth:

I long to talk with grateful tongue of storms and perils past,

And praise the mighty Pilot that hath steered us through the rapids:

He shall be the focus of it all, the very heart of gladness,—

My soul is athirst for God, the God who dwelt in Man!

Prophet, priest, and king, the sacrifice, the substitute, the Saviour,

Rapture of the blessed in the hunted one of earth, the pardoner in the

victim :

How many centuries of joy concentrate in that theme,

How often a Methusalem might count his thousand years, and leave it

unexhausted.

And lo the heavenly Jerusalem, with all its gates one pearl,

That pearl of countless price, the door by which we entered,—
Come, tread the golden streets, and join that glorious throng,

The happy ones of heaven and earth, ten thousand times ten thousand:
Hark, they sing that song,-and cast their crowns before Him;
Their souls alight with Love,-Glory, and Praise, and Immortality!
Veil thine eyes: no son of time may see that holy vision,
And even the seraph at thy side hath covered his face with wings

DOTH he not speak parables?-each one goeth on his way,
Ye that hear, and I that counsel, go on our ways forgetful.

For the terrible realities whereto we tend, are hidden from our eyes,
We know but heed them not, and walk as if the temporal were all things.
Vanities buzzing on the ear, fill its drowsy chambers,

Slow to dread those coming fears, the thunder and the trumpet;

Motes streaming on the sight, dim our purblind eyes,

Dark to see the ponderous orb of nearing Immortality:

Hemmed in by hostile foes, the trifler is busied on an epigram; (19)
The dull ox, driven to slaughter, careth but for pasture by the way.
Alas, that the precious things of truth, and the everlasting hills,
The mighty hopes we spake of, and the consciousness we feel,—
Alas, that all the future, and its adamantine facts,
Clouded by the present with intoxicating fumes,—
Should seem even to us, the great expectant heirs,

To us, the responsible and free, fearful sons of reason,
Only as a lovely song, sweet sounds of solemn music,

A pleasant voice, and nothing more,-doth he not speak parables?

Look to thy soul, O man, for none can be surety for his brother:
Behold, for heaven-or for hell,-thou canst not escape from Immortality!

OF IDEAS.

MIND is like a volatile essence, flitting hither and thither,

A solitary sentinel of the fortress body, to show himself every where by

turns:

Mind is indivisible and instant, with neither parts nor organs,

That it doeth, it doth quickly, but the whole mind doth it:

An active versatile agent, untiring in the principle of energy,

Nor space, nor time, nor rest, nor toil, can affect the tenant of the brain; His dwelling may verily be shattered, and the furniture thereof be disar

ranged,

But the particle of Deity in man slumbereth not, neither can be wearied :
However swift to change, even as the field of a kaleidoscope,

It taketh in but one idea at once, moulded for the moment to its likeness •
Mind is as the quicksilver, which, poured from vessel to vessel,
Instantly seizeth on a shape, and as instantly again discardeth it;
For it is an apprehensive power, closing on the properties of Matter,
Expanding to enwrap a world, collapsing to prison up an atom:

As, by night, thine irritable eyes may have seen strange changing figures,
Now a wheel, now suddenly a point, a line, a curve, a zigzag,

A maze ever altering, as the dance of gnats upon a sunbeam,

Swift, intricate, neither to be prophesied, nor to be remembered in succession,

So, the mind of a man, single, and perpetually moving,

Flickereth about from thought to thought, changed with each idea,

For the passing second metamorphosed to the image of that within its ken, And throwing its immediate perceptions into each cause of contemplation. It shall regard a tree; and unconsciously, in separate review,

Embrace its colour, shape, and use, whole and individual conceptions;
It shall read or hear of crime, and cast itself into the commission;
It shall note a generous deed, and glow for a moment as the doer;
It shall imagine pride or pleasure, treading on the edges of temptation;
Or heed of God and of his Christ, and grow transformed to glory.

WHEREFORE, it is wise and well to guide the mind aright,

That its aptness may be sensitive to good, and shrink with antipathy from evil :

For use will mould and mark it, or nonusage dull and blunt it ;

So to talk of spirit by analogy with substance;

And analogy is a truer guide, than many teachers tell of,

Similitudes are scattered round, to help us, not to hurt us;

Moses, in his every type, and the Greater than a Moses, in his parables,
Preach in terms that all may learn, the philosophic lessons of analogy;
And here, in a topic immaterial, the likeness of analogy is just;
By habits, knit the nerves of mind, and train the gladiator shrewdly:
For thought shall strengthen thinking, and imagery speed imagination,
Until thy spiritual inmate shall have swelled to the giant of Otranto.

NEVERTHELESS, heed well, that this Athlete, growing in thy brain,
Be a wholesome Genius, not a cursed Afrite:

And see thou discipline his strength, and point his aim discreetly;
Feed him on humility and holy things, weaned from covetous desires;
Hour by hour and day by day, ply him with ideas of excellence,
Dragging forth the evil but to loathe, as a Spartan's drunken Helot:
And win, by gradual allurements, the still expa. ding soul,

To rise from a contemplated universe, even to the Hand that made it.

A common mind perceiveth not beyond his eyes and ears :
The palings of the park of sense enthral this captured roebuck:
And still, though fettered in the flesh, he doth not feel his chains,
Externals are the world to him, and circumstance his atmosphere.
Therefore, tangible pleasures are enough for the animal-man ;

He is swift to speak and slow to think, dreading his own dim conscience;
And solitude is terrible, and exile worse than death,

He cannot dwell apart, nor breathe at a distance from the crowd