It

family I cannot say, not being a judge of such matters. was a wealthy family; but I never saw any display of wealth. The house, furniture, and dress of the ladies, all seemed to me chaste, simple, and in good taste. Nothing was said about high and low; for the family did not belong to the class of noveaux riches; and the poor were never alluded to unless it were to have their rights explained and enforced, or their wants relieved. Mr. Howard, however, was no great advocate of almsgiving. In former times, he would say, when mere temporary relief was all that the most sanguine friends of mankind could hope to effect, almsgiving was a duty, and a virtue; but now we should aim at something higher, something which not merely palliates, but cures. Almsgiving is now often but a respectable way the rich have of displaying their wealth, or of excusing themselves from all serious efforts in behalf of the poor and needy. He wished not merely to relieve for a moment the wants of a few individuals, but to cure poverty itself, to abolish the distinction of rich and poor, believing with Agur, that neither riches nor poverty is best for man. But he did not seek to effect this object by giving to the poor, nor by seeking to do every thing for them. The poor, he contended, were not poor because the rich wanted generosity, but justice. Nothing was needed for the poor but a simple reverence for the rights and dignity of man, as man. The great inequality in wealth which obtains results from the want of strict honesty in its acquisition, from the undue advantages which individuals by their adroitness or suppleness, and want of conscientiousness have been able to secure to themselves, and from the want of high moral feelings and a manly independence of spirit on the part of the poor. If every man would take with him, on commencing the pursuit of wealth, not conventional, but true Christian morality, there would never be any inequality in wealth to be complained of; and consequently no poor to be commiserated, and no occasion for the display of generosity on the part of the rich. He did not ask the rich to give to the poor, but to respect their rights. For himself, he was rich; he had inherited the greater part of his wealth, and although he might question the strict morality of some of the means by which his estate had been originally acquired, he did not think it incumbent on him to throw it away; but to preserve it, and use it according to the best of his judgment

for the moral, intellectual, and physical improvement of the community in which his lot had been cast.

I soon found myself quite domesticated in this agreeable family. I was not overloaded with kindness. I was in very feeble health, but no one tried to make me believe my health was feebler than it was. I had been unfortunate, but I heard no allusion to the fact, and no one attempted to console me. I was an infidel, but my unbelief elicited no remark, was I not also a man? Books, music, conversation, walks in the garden, short excursions to view some fine natural scenery in the neighborhood, afforded me ample means to recover my health and recruit my spirits.

Several weeks glided away uncounted, and I was evidently growing better. The world began to wear now and then a little sunshine, and to look less and less coldly upon me. Bright and laughing eyes were shining around me, but all the light did not come from them. I had somewhat to remember. I was an inmate for the first time in my life in a family where I could see religion without bigotry, zeal without fanaticism, warmth of piety without superstition. I was surrounded by holy influences. The temper of my mind was rapidly changing, and old half-forgotten feelings would come up, and at times I felt as I did in that distant past when all things were bright and lovely to my view. Somehow or other the world did not seem to me so desolate as it did, and I could hardly persuade myself that some good being had not made it. Whence this disposition to return to my early faith? this new disposition to believe and worship? I had been honest, philanthropic; I had aimed well, I had inquired diligently, but might I not, after all, have mistaken my way? A new doubt this, not a doubt that leads to incredulity, but which may perhaps lead to something else.

There is nothing, I suppose, singular or novel in this. There may be intellectual beings, who are moved by thought alone,-beings who never feel, but live always in mere abstractions. Such persons are dependent never on the state of the affections, and are influenced not at all by the circumstances around them. Of these beings I know not much. I am not one of them. I have believed myself to have a heart as well as a head, and that in me, what the authors of a new science I have just heard of, call the affective nature, is stronger, by several degrees, than the intellectual. The fact is my feelings have generally controlled

my belief, not my belief my feelings. This is no uncommon case. As a general rule would you gain the reason you must first win the heart. This is the secret of most conversions. There is no logic like love. And by-the-by, I believe that the heart is not only often stronger than the head but in general a safer guide to truth. At any rate, I have never found it difficult to assign plenty of good reasons for doing what my heart has prompted me to do. Mr. Howard understood all this perfectly, and uniformly practised on the principle here implied, not as a calculation, but because he was led to it by the benevolence of his own heart. He found me out of humor with myself and the world, suffering acute mental torture, and he saw at once that I must be reconciled to myself and the world, before I could look upon Christianity in the proper frame of mind to judge of its truth and beauty. Then again he was not extremely anxious to convert me. He did not regard me in my present condition as an alien from God, or as deserving to be an outcast from man. To him I was a man, a brother, a child of God. If I had been unable to come to the same belief he had, it might be my loss, but could not be my fault. He would gladly see me a believer, but he thought probably the influence of Christian example, and above all, communion with truly Christian dispositions, would go further than any arguments addressed merely to my understanding toward making me one.

CHAPTER XVI.-A PARADOX.

As I began to recover the tone of my mind, and to look with a less jaundiced eye upon the world, my infidelity became a frequent subject of conversation. One evening, while we were conversing, I remarked to Mr. Howard, that since I had been in his family, I had been almost persuaded to become a Christian.

"Perhaps," he replied, "you are, and always have been, much nearer being a Christian than you imagine."

"But I can hardly be a Christian without knowing it." "I am not so sure of that. Christianity is not a creed, but a life. He who has the spirit of Jesus is a Christian, be his speculative belief what it may."

"I have not as yet advanced far enough to admit even the existence of a God. I see not then how I can have much of Christ in me."

Vol. IV.-16

"Christ is not a dogma to be believed, but a spirit to be cultivated and obeyed. Whoever loves truth and goodness, and is willing to die for their honor and the redemption of man, as Jesus did, I hold to be a Christian in the only worthy sense of the term. He may not indeed have the 'letter' which killeth,' but that is no great loss, so long as he has the 'spirit' which giveth life.""

"You seem determined to make me out a Christian, and that too without changing my faith."

"The belief in Christ lies in the bottom of every honest. man's heart. Christianity is nothing foreign to our soul. It is the ideal, the realization of which would constitute the perfection of our nature. Just so far as you advance in the work of perfecting your own nature, do you grow in Christ; and could you attain to the highest perfection admitted by your nature as a man, you would attain to the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus. In yielding obedience to the moral laws of your own being, you are yielding obedience to the Gospel. One of these laws, the one which I term the social element of human nature, you obeyed in your efforts to reform society and augment the sum of the common weal of your kind. Consequently in obeying this element, you were conforming to the Christian law. You fancied you were obeying a law of infidelity, but that was an error of judgment, easily accounted for. You saw that element generally overlooked or discarded by the Christian world; you therefore inferred that it could not be an element of Christianity; and you rejected Christianity because you supposed it rejected this element. But had you seen that Christianity recognized this element as its great, its central law, you would not have thought of rejecting it."

But I was an unbeliever long before I ever dreamed of turning social reformer. "

"Very possibly; but still for a Christian reason. All the infidelity I have ever met with springs from one of two causes acting separately, or from both combined. The first cause of infidelity I have already spoken of. Some men feel a strong desire to redress social or political grievances, and are repulsed by the church. They therefore imagine the church opposed to political freedom, and social progress; and identifying Christianity with the church, they disown it, and very properly. The second cause of infidelity is found in the development of the philosophical element of

our nature. This element is strong in some men. They must be free to inquire what and wherefore they believe. This inquiry the church has prohibited; they have therefore concluded it prohibited by Christianity itself; and therefore have rejected Christianity; and I add again, very properly. In both of these cases the supposed rejection of Christianity has been induced by Christian motives; and the infidel could not have been, with his lights, a Christian, had he done differently."

"You seem, sir, disposed to attribute infidelity to good causes and not to bad.

"Certainly. I have long since learned to hold myself ignorant of the real causes of a man's opinions, till I have been able to trace them to a good, even a sacred source. Infidelity indicates an inquiring mind, an honest mind, not a depraved heart. It originates in what is good in the individual, and is disgraceful only to the church which has given occasion for it. Instead then of censuring infidels, denouncing them in the name of God, and trying to set the community against them, I look into the church to ascertain, if I can, its errors or defects which justify infidelity. Christians, not infidels, are to be denounced, if any are.' "But, sir, will the church suffer you to make such assertions? Will it not denounce you as well as me?"

"I am not much in the habit of asking permission of the church to say this or that, and if it chooses to denounce me, all I have to say is, I will denounce it; and I am sure it will regard my denunciation of it, as much as I shall its denunciation of me.

"Every man who believes Christianity and knows why he believes it, has at some period of his life doubted it. Authority and tradition may answer the wants of the multitude, but there are those who must not only know what they believe, but wherefore they believe. In these men the philosophical element is active. They ask, why do we believe Christianity? What are the grounds for believing it? When they ask this question, they have no thought of doubting, far less of disbelieving. They are honest, but they have a craving to comprehend that faith they have hitherto taken on trust. But when they begin this questioning they are necessarily ignorant, and doubt is the inevi table result.

"Doubt, although in itself free from sin, is a critical matter. I am far from pretending that we may doubt without