only the individual is changed, but until the world around him is changed also, the best man will here find sometimes a conflict between his feelings and duties. In the punishment of crime, in the great battle with wrong, we may be called to sacrifice and suffering, and the performance of what are called painful duties. But even so the regenerate man is sustained and cheered, and triumphs over pain; and as fast as the world around him is changed and renovated, these painful duties diminish. They will cease entirely, when not only the breast of the individual, but the world that lies about him, shall become truly the mirror of the skies.

The sum of our doctrine, then, on this vitally important subject is this.

Regeneration, in its internal nature and process, includes three things:

First, the receiving the divine life into our inmost being through those capacities that open inward towards God and the spirit-world,― the divine life imparted by the Holy Spirit that ever breathes through the heart of humanity.

Secondly, moved by this divine and attractive force, our natural powers, intellectual, affectional, and active, incline towards God, and are drawn into his service.

Thirdly, all corrupt instincts, whether we acquired them ourselves or received them as the foul inheritance of the past, constituting the Adam of consciousness, are expelled. This is the old man which is put off as the new man is unfolded from within.

The new man is known and characterized,

By the new motives which are the springs of conduct. Hope of reward and fear of punishment both give place to an ever-abounding love. In other words, we act not from motives drawn from the future, but from the glad promptings of the present hour. Hence, again,

By a new kind of worship; for we do not seek God to purchase his future favor, or to deprecate his wrath, but because he is our present life and joy, and our powers lift the spontaneous hymn to his praise.

By a new enjoyment of external things, since the light and peace within us invest the world without us with their sun-bright hues, and since even the body which we wear is pliant to the new power that shapes the internal man, and makes the external reflect its radiance.

By the new morality in which the new life seeks expression and embodiment, when the soul puts on righteousness, and it clothes her, and makes justice her robe and diadem.

The means by which this great change is effected are as various as the culture and discipline of life. In the following chapters we shall attempt to group together those which seem of the most importance, and which often lie nearest at hand when we seek them not.

CHAPTER II.

CHOICE.

"How precious a thing is youthful energy! if only it could be preserved, entirely englobed as it were within the bosom of the young adventurer, till he can come forth and offer it a sacred emanation in yonder temple of truth and virtue! But alas! all along, as he goes towards it, he advances through an avenue formed by a long line of tempters and demons on each side, all prompt to touch him with their conductors and draw the divine electric current with which he is charged away." JOHN FOSTER.

No diligent and candid reader of the Sacred Scriptures can fail to have discovered that the spirit-world is described by them under two classes of images. They open above us a region of infinite purity and love, where all that is good and happy is parted off by itself, and hangs above us like a firmament of grandeur and beauty. They open beneath us a region where sin in its hideous shape sinks away to its own level, and seeks the hiding-places of a starless night. These two states are set over one against the other. It is the parallelism that runs through the whole Bible, and you scarcely open a page where you do not trace its lines distinctly and sharply drawn. No middle region is described in the land of souls. And this world of sense and matter is spoken of as hanging midway between those two great kingdoms

of Light and of Shadow. The world we now live in, mixed up as it is of good and evil, is constantly yielding back its primal elements, decomposing and parting off, on the one hand, the worthless dross, and, on the other, the clear and imperishable gold. Good and evil dissolve and part off by themselves, the good rising by its own affinities and seeking its kindred heaven, thus pouring ever fresh streams of life and blessedness into its abodes. The bad parts away, and is drawn to its like in the abysses, because there too is its kindred and its home.

This doctrine we find drawn out in the parable of the tares and the wheat, growing together until the harvest, when the former are gathered into bundles and piled up for burning, and the latter is stored away in its garners. We find it touched off with a most graphic pencil in the parable of the sheep and the goats, where the Son of man sits among the assembled nations, and, as the solemn drama passes along, they part asunder under the opposite sentences, Come, ye blessed! and Depart, ye cursed! We find it, again, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, symbolized in the great gulf that lies between the realm of Light and Bliss, and the realm of Shadow and Pain. And again we find it in the Apocalypse, where the new heaven shines above, beautiful as a bride, and the lake of fire lies beneath, with all unclean things that float on its noxious waves. And yet again we find it in our Saviour's description of a twofold resurrection; of those who have done good coming out of their graves to higher life and frui

tion, and of those that have done evil to a resurrection of condemnation and shame.

Now it is somewhat surprising, at first thought, that, while the Scriptures abound in all this moral painting, it should have no greater power over the consciences and lives of men; that, while these pictures are hung down out of the spirit-world into this, they have failed so much in arresting the gaze of mortals. We read over some tragedy that paints the happiness or the sufferings of human beings, and we thrill and weep at the winding up of its scenes. We take up some story of human fortunes abounding in human loves and interests, and we hang breathless over its catastrophes. Why is it, then, that the solemn drama of humanity, and the winding up of its fortunes, do not take hold of our deepest sympathies?

We apprehend the reason to be, that to many, perhaps to most minds, there is, after all, an appearance of unreality in these descriptions; that they do not seem to have any basis in known facts, or to paint human character as we know it and see it. Perhaps an objection may lie in the mind of the reader somewhat after this wise.

We do not see any such division of human character as answers to these pictures and images. Men are not all good, nor all bad, but between the best man and the worst there is every shade of character, where the colors run into each other. Take the highest grade of excellence that was ever attained to, take the lowest point of depravity to which humanity has