all evil shall be done away, and all good perfected! where the intensity of human emotion shall no longer interfere with the bright serenity of holy love, but both be conjoined in one inexplicable bond! where myriads shall be loved, as now we love our friends; and friends be loved, as now we ought to love our God; and God be loved, and admired, worshipped, understood, and delighted in, with a reverence and a rapture, an affinity and a comprehension, with human sentiment purified, and divine capacity superadded, more than ever saints conceived, more than even angels knew!

Realize thoughts like these, dearest

as a counterpoise to vain imaginations; and when praying that an abundant entrance may be ministered to yourself, remember one who loves you well, yet desires to be your faithful friend.

LETTER XVI.

MY DEAR

FROM what I have observed and heard of you, and from what I recollect of myself at your age, I think I understand your present state of feeling, your tastes, desires, opinions, and sentiments. From having drawn them out into action, and from having enjoyed and suffered their consequences, I know too whence they come, and whither they tend. To this you will attribute my affectionate anxiety on your

account.

My love, you are ambitious;-vague, restless, ever-changing desires occupy your mind, and your heart is full of those fair shadows with which romance disguises reality. What kind of distinction is best

worth having, you have not yet decided; but, as least unattainable in the present state of society, perhaps your thoughts fix most frequently on intellectual celebrity. I say celebrity, for I do not believe that intellectual acquirements would fulfil your vision. Your judgment is convinced of the necessity of spiritual religion; occasionally you are touched with a sense of its worth and sweetness, but you do not believe that it is in itself all-sufficient to make you happy, and your heart rebels frequently against its requirements. You are well aware that you cannot compromise with God; "that you are not your own; that, as "bought with a price," you are bound to surrender all you are, and all you possess, to his service; to account your talents a delegated trust, for the use of which you are responsible, and the glory of which appertains to him! Now this loving God, with "all the understanding," is a stumbling block at which thousands have stumbled, and tens of thousands have fallen to rise no more. To toil, deserve, and acquire, without the stimulus supplied by personal ambition, or an exulting conscious

ness of superiority; to receive praise and render it to God untouched; to strive for victory and inscribe the trophy with the name of another-this you feel is " a hard saying." Yet, herein lies true happiness and true distinction. Personal aggrandizement is the stately phantom, of which desire to glorify God was once the warm and living substance. It expired in Paradise with Adam's innocence, but divine grace can revive it even here; and it starts into full life and beauty, in that region where each glorified spirit casts his crown at the foot of Him who gave it. *Was not David, making magnificent preparations for the temple which another was to build, and renouncing even the glory of those preparations, nobler and more distinguished than the same David numbering his people from vain-glorious pride? My love, you are dazzled with the dew-drops of earth, because you do not raise your eyes to the sun in heaven. The queen

of Sheba thought no more of the glory of her own court, when she had seen the surpassing excellence of Solomon's; and Paul, after he

* 1 Chron. xix. 10-20.

knew him who alone "hath life and immortality," could cheerfully "account all things but loss" for the excellency of that knowledge. Love, the constraining love of Christ, can alone render this self-renunciation easy and delightful-but it can do so; can enable a soul really to like, and rest contented with, life's most secluded path, and most unobtrusive occupations. But do not misunderstand me, and suppose that this renders the cultivation of our talents unlawful, or unnecessary. Never let indolence, as an excuse for supineness, say to vanity, as Balak did to Balaam, "Thy God hath kept thee back from honor." Had you the mind of an angel, religion would not circumscribe its exercise it would allow you to know, and desire to know; to learn, and determine to learn all that art, imagination, and science have placed within human reach. One thing religion certainly does, it claims a right to prescribe the motive by which we shall be actuated, and the object at which we shall aim; but surely, the glory of "Him who filleth all things," is no mean motive, and the everlasting welfare of our fellow