despair, or how often does death dash them to the earth; and while we weep for them as lost, lo! a bright silver meaning, of which we had not dreamed, rolls out of the iron shell. And in these again we touch more subtle springs, and behold, a golden spirit flies forth from the inner mystery, and out of this again the marriage-ring, in token of our union with God.

In a certain city, a day was fixed to elevate the statue of its patron saint to its lofty pedestal. Great care had they taken to give the work to the best artist, and select for it the most commanding position. The day arrived, and with it the statue. All eyes were eager to see it; but when it was uncovered, instead of the image of their saint, they saw only a huge, unsightly mass of stone. It had neither form nor comeliness. The rage of the people was great, and threatened to destroy the artist. But, urged by his entreaties, they began to elevate the statue. And as it ascended unto the heavens, it began to assume grace and beauty. And when it reached its resting-place, behold, it stood forth in awful grandeur, as it had been a living god, descended from Olympus.

And so does life, while near at hand, appear large and uncomely. We can not take it in at a glance. We can not hold it far enough from our fevered hearts to see its divine proportions, so sorely does it press upon us; and sometimes great is our disappointment, and we murmur against the great Artist. But when the image ascends to its restingplace, all its rough angles are rounded, its hard lines softened, its proportions harmonized; and we see, as we could not before, that this rude mass contained the image of the heavenly, the guardian spirit, the patron saint, the all-watchful and beautiful God.

III.

THE THOUGHT OF THE HEART.

"FOR as he thinketh in his heart, so is he."-PROV. 23: 7.

THIS text, in its connections, is used as a caution to one who would judge of the real feelings of a host merely by his proffers of hospitality. It warns such a one not to be deceived by any outward appearance of cordiality; for he will find that his host is not necessarily such as he promises with his lips, but such as he is in his heart. "Eat not the bread of him who has an evil eye, nor long for his dainties; for as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, he saith to thee; but his heart is not with thee." The text might be used with excellent effect to enforce the duty of perfect truthfulness and sincerity in social relations; to show the folly of surrounding ourselves with those who expect one thing while we mean another, the impossibility of concealing what we really are in our hearts by any expressions of unreal cordiality or unfelt interest. It is much to be regretted that society is so seldom allowed to group itself by the natural laws of spiritual affinity, and is so often forced aside from its natural tendencies by artificial attraction or repulsion.

Owing to a multitude of little falsities, almost every man finds himself in false relations, from which he can hardly extricate himself at any given time without dissimulation or unkindness. But there is nothing to be feared from rela

tions formed upon the basis of reality and sincerity. If we - seek only those to whom we mean to speak and act as we are in our heart of hearts, and if, by being always true to ourselves, we draw around us only such as value us for what we are, and nothing else, there might be truth between man and man. But because we are always exhibiting dainties of manner, and look, and speech, and saying to all, "Eat and drink," when it may be that we inwardly loathe the dainties, and wonder that any are attracted by them; because of this we are untrue to ourselves, and we disappoint others. We are just what we are at heart, and we shall fail sooner or later in every thing which depends upon any thing else in us. It is never hard to give of ourselves; our personal influence, our genius, that goes out from us as light from the sun, and hence we shall always be true to and never disappoint those who meet us on that plane of expectation; but alas for one who must always create some dainty foreign to his tastes, to satisfy the craving of foreign natures! Truthfulness becomes very difficult to such persons. It throws virtue into the market at a price almost too high for human nature to pay. How much better that we should be clothed with social relations which will admit of the largest and freest movement, and which will enable us to surprise by unpromised resources rather than disappoint by promised supplies, which we can furnish only by promise. But good as are these suggestions of this text upon the duty of complete honesty in social intercourse, it is for a widely different purpose that I have selected it. I use it now as the illustration of a spirit-law of action and reaction between the thought of the heart or the reality of character and its environment of circumstances and opportunity. We are what we think in our hearts, as we are what we most

profoundly love. Herein lies our hope and our securitythat we are not transformed into all the eccentricities of the intellect, that we are not limited in our growth to its limitations; but we grow into, we literally become, the thought of the heart. The heart absorbs something for its nutrition out of all that occupies the mind, and even from the niggard hands of falsehood wrings its needful food of truth.

A thought may occupy the intellect, and yet not be taken into the heart, conscience, will, so as to essentially affect the life. This seems at first a pure misfortune, but it is not always so; it is the heart's security against false teachers. Alas for us, if it were not possible for the mind to assent to one thing while the heart believes another and better! Only a small part of the food taken into the stomach is nutritious, or adds any thing to support existence. It is only a subtler secretion which finds that of which blood is made and the fire of life kept burning; yet the innutritious is as essential to health, and to life even, as the nutritious food. No person could live for a week if fed upon purely nutrient food. There is much such a process going on between the moral and intellectual life. But a small amount of that which we take into the mind is absorbed into the circulation of affection to become a part of life. We think a great many things; the heart finds and needs but few, but these few it will have. And it would be difficult to show that the innutritious thought was not as essential to life in the end as the nutritious. It is doubtful if, at present, we could exist upon pure, absolute truth; for “no man can look on God and live." And yet we must ever strive after this same impossible thing; for only in seeking the absolute truth are we able to find the true. When we look back upon the history of our own minds, we are tempted to smile at the

changes through which we have passed, the nothings which at various times have occupied the field of our mental vision as if they were all. We think in astonishment of the earnestness with which we have clung to one and another theory, as if our own and society's existence depended upon it. We need not smile; we need not wonder; much less need we be ashamed or discouraged. In every earnest grasp of the mind upon what seemed to it true and permanent, the heart found what it longed for. We did not become like that transient error for which we were battling; we became more and more like the thought of the heart, which was of pure truth and which loved the error not for its sake, but supposing it to be true. It was for that we aspired and prayed; and even though from this time we see clearly that we then saw through a glass darkly, the heart drew nutrition of immortal life from that partial attainment. Do you think that Paul was really the worse for having believed in his heart that he verily ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth? Was he not the better Christian for having been so good a Jew? In that perfect devotion to what he thought was right and true, was he not becoming more and more like perfect rightness and truth? I think so. Indeed, when we think in what error (as later times have proved it) so many good and true men have lived and died, and accomplished a noble lifework, we must see that an earnest heart finds communion with the Infinite, even when the intellect mistakes some Gorgon dogma for absolute truth-mistakes the ugly and ill-shapen door of the sheepfold for the great pasture where the soul finds springing grass and living water.

Surely, Fénelon, sweet and beautiful Fénelon, drew the sources of his life from something better and purer than the