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made so full of gloom and desolation; and justly so, having no knowledge of Christ.-Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. And he who clothes the lilies with their lovely dress, taking the seed at first rotting in the earth in Spring, and carrying the germ of life up by his power into the light of day, and there causing the rays of the sun, and all the influences of the elements, to weave for them a Summer array, with which the impearled golden robes of Solomon in his greatest grandeur were not to be compared in glory-he who clothes the lilies with such loveliness, will much more take care of the germ laid with our mortal frame in the earth, will raise it into the light and air of heaven, and there will swallow up mortality of life, giving to every believer in the Lord an array perhaps incomparably more glorious than even the vesture of the angels.

FINE sensibilities are like woodbines, delightful luxuries of beauty to twine round a solid, upright stem of understanding; but very poor things, if, unsustained by strength, they are left to creep along the ground.

JOHN FOSTER.

MAN is of dust, etherial hopes are his,

Which, when they should sustain themselves aloft,
Want due consistence; like a pillar of smoke,

That with majestic energy from earth

Rises; but having reached the thinner air,
Melts, and dissolves, and is no longer seen.

WORDSWORTH.

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 and offer it forth 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 element with which he is charged away. JOHN FOSTER.

AND, surely, if the purpose be in good earnest not to write at leisure that which men may read at leisure, but really to instruct and suborn action and active life, these Georgics of the Mind, concerning the husbandry and tillage thereof, are no less worthy than the heroical descriptions of virtue, duty, and felicity. Wherefore the main and primitive division of moral knowledge seemeth to be into the Exemplar or Platform of Good, and the Regiment or Culture of the Mind; the one describing the nature of Good, the other prescribing rules how to subdue, apply, and accommodate the will of man thereunto. LORD BACON. Adv. of Learning.

CHAPTER XVI.

Reduplication of Character-Return of Action into the strength of principles-Restrictions on the law of seeds and of reproduction in morals-The seed-time of sensibility and passion-Necessity of living roots for the permanence of good habits.

THE analogy between the verdant fulness, exuberance, and activities of Summer, and the active development of our intelligent and moral being, is exceedingly impressive. Seeds are not only an illustration of the germs of character, but character likewise returns upon itself. If the Earth were one vast forest from the progress of a Banyan Tree, this mighty spectacle would be but a faint image of the manner in which the branches of character return into the parent soil, and take new root there, and spring up into new trees, that again shoot back their branches for new roots, thence to rise into new trunks and foliage, till the man becomes his own wilderness, aud wanders every where beneath the shadow of his own being:

“ A pillar'd shade, and echoing walks between!”

So character reduplicates itself.

First, the principles form the actions and the habits, then the actions and the habits themselves form new principles. Every action becomes in its turn a

germ, a seed, a governing power of other action. Thus, in today for ever walks to-morrow-to-day is the promise, and to a vast extent the regent, of to-morrow; for not only as a man thinks and acts to-day is he likely to think and act to-morrow, but he sets causes at work to-day that must operate to-morrow, and he drops germs of feeling and of habit into the furrows of life to-day, which will be developed to-morrow. Thus character, by action, forms character, reproduces it, and gathers strength, and is renewed; and thus intercourse with others, from being at first the simple development of seeds, principles, germs, laws, within, reacts still more powerfully from without, and gives new laws, and works new forms, and communicates new life and energy to opinion, emotion, and habit.

Just here it is, that one of the most extraordinary analogies is to be traced between the goings on of life in developing and developed plants, and the opening and concentrating activities of our own immortal being, our tendencies consolidating into habits. We are told, as the result of deepest scrutiny into the mysteries of life and character in plants, that the changes of sap, by which they acquire their peculiar and distinctive qualities, take place chiefly in the leaves; and also that the effect is to the greatest extent produced by the combined agency of light and air. Until the leaves are formed, the sap seems to rise and fall in the tree, according to the state of the weather, as the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere may affect it. But as soon as the plant has expanded its leaves, the sap flows regularly towards them, and is so firmly held by them, or changed and concentrated in returning from them, that the plant ceases to bleed when incisions are made.*

* Sacred Philosophy of the Seasons.-Duncan.

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