his sanctities into penury and exile, that have had their tongue plucked out with the hot iron rather than shape it to a lie ;-have they indeed been swept away by the scorn of the wicked and the fool, never to reappear and lift up their heads into the light? The less they ask for anything to repair their sufferings, the more must we in our hearts demand it for them; thus far at least, -that their faithful choice be vindicated that the truth they would not betray shall glow as the light and flow round them as an aureole; that the righteousness which they would not sacrifice shall prove, as they deemed it, to be eternal, and to be the congenial and undying element of the souls susceptible of it.

:

These are not obscure features in our humanity. They give to history its chief glory, to private experience its most purifying element. In choice societies and in rare times, they blaze upon the open brow of life, as a hand-writing of God, legible to the interpreter versed in divine symbols, as a glorious prophecy of immortality. Whoever hides them by sin, blots out, as far as in him lies, the sublimest of human hopes. Whoever brings them to intenser brightness lifts off the darkest shadow from the human soul.

XXI.

The Child that needs no Conversion.

MATTHEW Xviii. 1–3.

"At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

We know nothing, as we could desire, of the subsequent career, either of the disciples who brought down so grave a rebuke, or of the child who attracted this memorable benediction. Whether Peter and the rest ever were "converted," and became subjects of the kingdom which employed them as its heralds; whether the little child that needed no conversion retained his simple, wondering heart, or, too much reminded of his distinction by his mother's talk, had the heavenward gate of his spirit, so wide open before the eye of Jesus, gradually closed, are matters hidden from our view. The change which Jesus demanded from his grown followers was harder, alas! than that which the world would urge upon the child. It is easy,—I will not say inevitable,—

to lose the early qualifications for discipleship; difficult, -I will not say impossible,-to recover them when lost. The uplifted, listening look of our young days, the unclaimed mind beseeching you for truth, the love so wise, the thought so deep from very artlessness, are cheated away, except from the rarest of beings, by the hard falsehoods of experience, and exchanged for lower moods in the whirl of interest or ambition. The trustful spirit, that feels in the beauty and goodness of things resistless reason to believe them real, accepts too soon the bribe of disappointment, goes over to the side of sceptic shrewdness, demands inordinate security ere it will confide in man or God, and dwells in the universe as if it were a pedlar's hall. The sagacity of the will supersedes the wisdom of the affections; the habit of independent action, struggling to its feet, tramples on the capacity for dependence and obedience, till our manhood grows too stiff to bow the head; the bargain of our pride is pushed beyond the limits of this world, and our competitions grow noisy, if not for the "greatest" place, at least for the reserved seats, in the kingdom of heaven. Greatest in the kingdom of heaven!' what a strange and fearful combination does the phrase present! the comparative greatness of a man in the absolute empire of the Most High! How little touched with the genuine temper of devotion, how narrow in the conception of its objects, must be the mind that could entertain the claim aloud and before the face of Jesus!

VOL. II.

X

Let any man, not blind in eye or soul, go out into his field at night, and look up through the clear air, and uncover his head beneath that canopy of worlds, and by the swiftness of the shooting star measure the slowness of their eternity; and think whether he belongs to a realm in which he can covet to be greatest? Or let him quit his own particular life, and taking his station above the plain of history, watch the crowds that, far as eye can reach, have been ever crossing the open green, till lost in the passes of the boundary mountains; let him mark the costumes in which the human soul has made its apparition, and hearken to the tongues of every kindred in which it has told its tale; let him note the eager grouping of humanity around the tranquil forms of poet, prophet, saint, and sage, and listen to the unconscious harmony they make of beauty, thought, and prayer; and say, whether this is the host, now mingled with the congress of immortals, among which he claims to be greatest? Ah! what could he do, but shrink from the light of eyes so pure, and hold an awful peace? What, at most, but sit at the feet of their diviner wisdom, and reflect some glow of their holy fire? It is enough for him if he may live on at all; let him lie still in the Everlasting Hand, and take what God may send with trustful and unquestioning heart. He may feel assured, whoever he be, that any kingdom in which he could be greatest, can be po kingdom of heaven, but a very poor and earthly

place, though he picked for it the choicest planet of the skies. And if he does not know this, especially after hearing the voice of Jesus in his prayers, he is as far from the Christian in his religion, as he is less than the child in his simplicity.

Yet the disciples who coarsely disputed for the prime places in the universe, were honest, orthodox men; heartily possessed with the most devout traditions of their times; actually built into them; and ready at any moment to give up their fishing trade and tax-gathering for the theocracy. Nobody could say they were Pharisees, hypocrites, or sceptics: they held by the theology in which piety had stereotyped itself, and were sound, practical, historical believers. They had been instructed in the Scriptures from their youth; knew the commandments, and kept them; had their minds tinctured with the rich colouring of the prophets, and their imagination filled with the image of perfect life and providential rule according to the approved type. To have doubted the Messianic advent and approaching triumph,-to have been puzzled or dismayed by the colossal power of Rome,-to have indulged misgivings at the sight of its lowering eagles, and fancied it more likely that they would slowly fall by the drooping of natural strength than suddenly drop by the flash of bursting doom, would have appeared to them a blaspheming anti-supernaturalism,—a refining away of the very substance of