I HAZARD this assurance, that, let what will come of the terms, yet without the truths conveyed in those terms, there can be no self-knowledge; and without THIS, no knowledge of any kind. For the fragmentary recollections and recognitions of empiricism usurping the name of experience can amount to opinion only, and that alone is knowledge, which is at once real and systematic, or in one word, organic. Let monk and pietist pervert the precept into sickly, brooding, and morbid introversions of consciousness; you have learnt that even under the wisest regulations, THINKING can go but half way toward this knowledge To know the whole truth, we must likewise ACT: and he alone acts, who makes; and this can no man do, estranged from Nature. Learn to know thyself in Nature, that thou mayst understand Nature in thyself. COLERIDGE'S Letters.

BUT turn thou to the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. In that alone is life, and the Life is the light of men. What then but apparitions can remain to a Philosophy which strikes death through all things visible and invisible; satisfies itself then only, when it can explain those abstractions of the outward senses (which by an unconscious irony it names indifferently facts and phenomena), mechanically, that is, by the laws of Death; and brand with the name of mysticism every solution grounded in Life, or the powers and intuitions of Life?

COLERIDGE.-Appendix to the Statesman's Manual.

Now? It is gone! Our brief hours travel post
Each with its thought or deed, its why, or how:
But know-Each parting hour gives up a ghost,
To dwell within thee, an Eternal Now!

CHAPTER XXIV.

Voices of the Autumn continued-Evil Grows and Ripens, as well as Good-The mere Negative Character Grows, as well as the Posi tive-The Autumn Reveals it, whether Tares or Wheat-Importance of the Previous trial of Habits.

RIGHTLY considered, the facts of the origin of evil, and the existence of the wicked, are not more mysterious than the facts of God's forbearance, and his holding up the curse and penalty of the Law from falling. This is a stupendous mystery, explained only in the sufferings and death of Christ, and capable of explanation in no other way. The mystery of the universe was not how God could punish sin eternally, but how he could consistently refrain from so punishing it, in any case. On the ground of the sufferings and death of Christ, he lets the world. go on unpunished, undestroyed, in its career of guilt, that those who will, may have opportunity to believe and become righteous, and that all the righteous may be gathered in and saved; that the wicked may have space for repentance, and that all whom the Father hath given to the Son may come to Him. Under such a system of mercy, there results inevitably the growth and development of evil, as well as that of good, and together with it, Let both grow, and grow together.

Growth is predicated equally of both and it is only in the process of growth, that we find out, certainly, the characteristics of both. It is to be remarked that it was not till the blade sprang up, and brought forth fruit, that the tares appeared in their real character. The tares then are distinguished, among other things, by their not bringing forth fruit. They may be merely negatively wicked, but if by a certain time they do not bring forth the fruit that good seed produces, it is proof positive that they are tares. This is our Lord's appointed test of character-By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? A good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and a corrupt tree corrupt fruit. And a tree is good, only when it accomplishes the appropriate end and purpose of its being. God expects grapes of his vines, and if he does not receive them, he justly complains of a fraud and a wrong towards their owner. Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? So, the fact of there being no fruit is

enough to prove, of the proWhatever goodly appearance a time, it may look like the

duce of the field, that it is tares. it may have, however much, for real grain, yet if, when the time of fruit comes, and you draw nigh to the harvest, there is no grain, it is tares.

Just so, you cannot tell, in this world, among a multitude of souls, for a long time, which are going to be tares, and which not; for although the time for fruit has come, and has always come, with accountable souls, yet the time in which there may possibly be the development of fruit, the assumption of the new fruit-bearing character of the disciple of Christ, and the consecration of the being to him, that possible time has not past, until the period of probation has passed. If, when the time has

come that there should be fruit, there are mere tares and no fruit, then, if they should be cut down then, they would be tares forever; although, if spared, the time of fruit and the production of fruit may come, and then they are no longer tares, but wheat. But from the time when fruit is expected, this negative character of not producing fruit was to be enough to prove a character of positive evil, if it be not changed; it is always enough to establish the fact that they are tares, if you have the fact that they are not wheat.

Here, then, we have one great, important fact, from which, as we shall see, there proceed vast, eternal consequences, and trains of practical truth and warning, of amazing solemnity and power. But there is also a great variety among the tares. And here, we come upon a fulness of beauty, and depth of meaning, and minuteness of application in this parable of our Lord, which otherwise can be but poorly understood and faintly illustrated. We must take account of these tares. There was a plant in Judea, in appearance not unlike the corn or wheat, having at first the same kind of stalk, and the same greenness, but bringing forth no fruit, or at least none good. There was a particular species of weed known in Canaan, says another instructive record, which is not unlike wheat, but, being put into the ground, degenerated and assumed another nature and form. The seed sown by the Devil, which is sure, when it grows up, to grow perverted and corrupt, is just as good for his purposes, just as sure to accomplish his designs, as that which, from the beginning, might be known as utterly and incurably evil. Indeed, it is by the corruption of the truth, and the mixture of a lie, that the god of this world more surely deceives men's souls, and strengthens his empire.