which have so painfully annoyed you. "Make haste, make haste to love," said a good man in Spain, to one of a scrupulous conscience, "Make haste to love; and the scruples will fall away, which rise but from a fearful heart; 'for perfect love casts out fear."" I have always admired that saying of the Rev. John Newton: "Love and fear are like the sun and moon, seldom seen together." Love is what you want, then, — perfect love. This will not only "cast out all fear that has torment" (1 John 4: 18), but it will impart a power to the soul, by which it will be enabled to render a cheerful obedience to the precepts of this royal Gospel law, as well as to the dictates of a sound and enlightened conscience:

"Inflame our hearts with perfect love;

In us the work of faith fulfil;

So not heaven's host shall swifter move
Than we on earth to do thy will.”

It is Archbishop Leighton, I think, who defines the labor of love to be the labor of rest; rest even in the motion it communicates, because such motion is so natural and sweet to the soul that loves. True love to God, he says, loves the labor of love, as it is a service to him that is loved. Love has its motions, but they are heavenly and circular;-still in God, beginning and ending in him;—yet not ending, but moving still without weariness. He compares the motions and labor of love to the revolution of the heavens, which is motion in rest, changing not place, though running still.

CHAPTER XI.

THE INSUFFICIENCY OF INFIDELITY.

HAS my infidel reader never read the story of one Aristoxenus, the musician? So great was his admiration of his profession that he defined the human soul to be nothing more than a harmony. You, from a baser motive, love of sin, define your soul to be " part and parcel" of materialism.

"This ardent hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality,"

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I consider to be the universal feeling of our race, with the exception of an unfortunate few, those to whom, by a wicked course of life, immortality has been rendered undesirable. Look at the inferior animals; there is not one desire in their nature for which a benevolent Creator has not made a provision. A desire for immortality is one of the "leading passions" of man. Has the Author of our being left this wholly unprovided for?

Do you think, my friend, that I misunderstand your character? I never can lose sight of the fact, that there is nothing in infidelity for which any intelligent man would seriously contend a single moment, unless necessitated to do so by irregular morals.

If it be the fact that you desire "to live on terms of amity with vice," then, in order to sin without disturbance, "till nothing moves your consistency in ill," the readiest way is, to "harden your heart in the forge of bad principles," and school it on "the anvil of despair," till it bids defiance to the strokes of conscience.

I feel inclined to apply to your lengthy lucubrations the sentiment of a witty individual: "The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of heaven, but the stars are still there, and

will presently reäppear." Your bundle of infidel straw, kindled by a spark from your own forge, has, indeed, raised considerable smoke; and it aspires and spreads along the heavens, and threatens to cast into eternal obscurity every sacred star of truth. Lest you would increase your sin by cavilling at the declarations of your Maker in the Bible, I shall employ "the dying breathings" of one of your repenting brethren to blow away some of the smoke. May God make his sad and mournful end an eternal blessing to you! The thought has just struck me that you would not be offended, if I preface it with the following lines, with which I doubt not you are familiar:

"Sure 't is a serious thing to die, my soul!

What a strange moment must it be, when, near
Thy journey's end, thou hast the gulf in view!
That awful gulf, no mortal e'er repassed,
To tell what's doing on the other side.
Nature runs back, and shudders at the sight,
And every life-string bleeds at thought of parting:
For part they must; body and soul must part;
Proud couple! linked more close than wedded pair.
This wings its way to its Almighty Source,
The witness of its actions, -now its Judge;
That drops into the dark and noisome grave,
Like a disabled pitcher, of no use."

Upon the bed of his last sickness lay a dying sinner. His character may be best learned by attending to his bitter complainings when approaching that "awful gulf," from whence he never returned: "My physician tells me I must die, and I feel that he tells me the truth. In my best hours, and in my worst, death has been perpetually upon my mind; it has covered me like a dread presence; weighed me down like an ocean; blinded me like a horrid vision; imprisoned my faculties as with bars and gates of iron. Often and often, when, in saloons, alive with mirth and splendor, I have seemed the gayest of the inmates, this thought and fear of death have shot through my mind, and I have turned away sick and shuddering. What is it, then, to approach the reality? to feel it very near, nay, close at hand? stealing on, and on, and on, like the tide upon the shore, not to

be driven back till it has engulfed its prey? What is it to apprehend the approach of the time when you must be a naked, guilty, trembling spirit, all memory, and all consciousness, never again for a single moment to sleep, or know oblivion from the crushing burden of the 'deeds done in the body'? The dying may, indeed, be in a place of torment, in hell,- before the time; and the remembrance of past life, stripped of all its deceptions, shrivelled into insignificance, may appear, in connection with eternity, but as a tiny shell tossed on the broad black surface of an ocean; then, again, the intense importance. of that very insignificant fragment of time, and the intense remembrance of all that occupied it;-its schemes, and dreams, and sins, and vanities, sweeping across the mind, in solemn order, like a procession of grim shadows, with death waiting to embosom all. O! well may I smite upon my breast, and cry, with all but despair: Woe is me for the past! woe, woe, for the past!' Every dream is dissolved, every refuge of lies is plucked from me,- every human consolation totters beneath me, like a bowing wall; and all the kingdoms of the world, and all the glory of them, could not bribe from my soul the remembrance of a single sin. Ambition, pleasure, fame, friendship, lie around like wrecks; and my soul is helpless in the midst of them, like the mariner on his wave-worn rock."

The above is all that I feel inclined to oppose, at present, to your theories. To me it is awfully conclusive. You may smile at my weakness, but I never felt a stronger determination in all my life to live if it were for no other regard than my death-bed scene a holy and a blameless life. What has been one man's case may be mine, — yours. That which caused a capacious mind a man of such splendid talents and acquirements - - to tremble and be dismayed, may affect both you and myself, though of far inferior talents, if unprepared. O, sir, think of these things in time! Prepare to meet thy God! “Sure, it is a solemn thing to die, my soul." The dying man spoke of the thought and fear of death having darted across his mind in the gayest assemblies; that they followed him everywhere, and attended him as a presence, in his best and worst hours. Has

not every sinner living something of this apprehension, more or less? Are you never annoyed with anything of the kind? If not just now, have there been no such visitations in past life; no such secret, unaccountable intrusions, which have thrown their shadows across your soul, and awakened feelings which you could not allay, - created an uneasiness which has not easily subsided? "Man, know thyself; "an accomplishment this, quite as necessary for you as for the heathen who had it inscribed over the door of his temple.

You put me in mind of a spider, running up and down, hither and thither, with a little thread; wasting its own body, and wearing out its vitals, to make a curious web. No sooner is it finished, than the besom, with one wild sweep, destroys the gay and airy fabric, and often, along with it, the unfortunate spider. Your web of sophistry will one day be torn to pieces, either by the besom of truth, wielded by the Holy Spirit; or by death, the most emphatic and conclusive of all preachers. Job 8: 14 is worth your attention; and the effects of your principles are very strikingly noticed in Isaiah 59: 4, 5.

All you have written only goes to prove the truth of the testimony of one now with God, who, in his day, looked closely into your principles. "Infidelity grounds its existence on the fancied cheats it discovers in religious creeds, without having one original virtue to entitle it to respect. It is a system of negatives, if system that may be called, whose only boast is, that it discovers errors in revelation, and hence assumes a title to credit, by instructing its votaries to disbelieve. Under the influence of this pure negation of excellence, it promotes its interests by the irritation of those passions which it should be the business of our lives to subdue, and fortifies itself in those strange commotions which it contributes to raise."

There is a pretty and poetic sentimentalism in your views of death. Had you flourished in the days of a certain old poet, I fear his rude grapples would have disturbed your ideas. I question now whether your flowers can bear the following, although little more than half a blast:

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