objects; that is, internal vision is most powerful in the absence of that which is external. In like manner the eye of the soul must be closed to earthly scenes and attractions, if exalted or impressive views are to be attained of invisible and divine realities.

It is when other sounds are hushed, and the glare of day is no more, that the voice of the nightingale is heard.

As a lake shut in by woods or precipices, and spreading out its placid bosom to the sky, reflects the imagery of the bright expanse and of the surrounding objects, blended in one beauteous scene; so a mind free from the perturbations of sense and passion, and turned in thought and affection towards God, best receives the impress of celestial things, reflected in its innermost depths; nay, realises a junction of heaven and earth, of God and the soul; divinity being united to humanity in the case of every pure and loving heart.*

* Ο Θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστί, καὶ ὁ μένων ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ, ἐν τῷ Θεῷ μένει, και ὁ Θεὸς ἐν αὐτῷ.—1 John iv. 16.—So v. 12. ἐὰν ἀγαπῶμεν ἀλλήλους, ὁ Θεὸς ἐν ἡμῖν μένει.

It was a beautiful maxim of the Platonists, which recommended the cultivation of the abstract branches of science, in order to promote the great object of their philosophy, the purification of mind from matter, or the dominion of reason over sense. The notion is well explained in the following eloquent passage of an old writer, whose Remains, though tinctured with the pedantry of the time, possess extraordinary worth, exhibiting a rare specimen of masculine comprehension, united to considerable brilliancy of genius.

"Besides those ȧperaì kadaptiкaí by which the souls of men were to be separated from sensuality and purged from fleshy filth, they devised a farther way of separation more accomodated to the condition of philosophers, which was their mathemata, or mathematical contemplations, whereby the souls of men might farther shake off their dependency upon sense, and learn to go as it were alone, without the crutch of any sensible or material thing to support them; and so be a little inured, being once got up above the body, to converse freely with immaterial natures, without looking down again and falling back into sense. Besides many other ways they had, whereby to rise out of this dark body ; ἀναβάσεις ἐκ τοῦ σηλaíoν, as they are wont to call them, several steps and ascents out of this miry cave of mortality, before they could set any footing with their

Ir is not when the sun shines brightest that human vision is the most distinct, or that it reaches to the greatest distance, but rather in seasons when the light is softened or partially obstructed by clouds; as in each of these cases may be discovered on surveying the broad expanse of ocean. So it is not amid the sunshine of prosperity that the intellectual or spiritual vision of man is the most piercing or extensive; for though the nearer objects or scenes may appear luminous or beautiful, those which are remote are neglected, or but faintly discerned.

More or less of shadow, and the awakening of the mens divinior, whether in a poetic or religious sense, often go together. It is when the sun has disappeared from the horizon, that the dews of heaven begin to fall; and darkness that reveals the firmament of stars; and in the softening of the heart through sadness, that thoughts and imagery sometimes spring up, like the wondrous palace, glittering with diamonds and gold, that burst upon the sight of Thalaba and his mother, when wandering in the sandy waste.

There are few gifted or imaginative natures altogether unvisited with these glimpses of Immensity, that weaken for the moment the spell of material things, or act as auguries and presentiments of realities more significant than any that belong to our present being: as in those sombre and magic spectacles which at times attend the slumbering eyelids but wakeful brain, when haply assemblages of spectral forms, more or less dimly revealed, yet all silent and awe-struck, move to and fro in restless intellectual part in the land of light and immortal being."-Smith's Select Discourses: Prefatory Discourse concerning the true Way or Method of attaining Divine Knowledge, sect. 1.

The author, who was Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge, must have been a prodigy of learning for his years, having died in 1652, at the early age of thirty-four.

Whatever may have been the merit of the Platonic speculations, whether in their original or revived forms, they were surely conceived in the true poetic spirit, to which the sentiment of devotion and of the higher contemplations of piety is so nearly allied.

alternation, as under a sense of some passing mystery, vague, unfathomable, undescried; as though, outside the sphere of the visible, the rush of embattled spirits, or the funeral dirge of a world, were heard in momentary echoes in the depths of infinitude.

OUR souls, viewed in relation to the invisible state, are perhaps but as our bodily eyes when shut, to which the landscape is not less near than when open; corresponding with the mystery of hope and wonder, that to those assimilated in taste and purity with the divine, the glory of the brighter world, though unseen, is never remote, nothing intervening between them and heaven but the thin veil of mortality.

DEVOTIONAL ASPIRATIONS; OR, PRAYERS

AND PRAISES.

De Profundis :

An embodiment of feelings now perchance passing through many a mind, as clouds flitting and intermingling in a sombre sky.

GOD! whose glory is incomprehensible, yet who hast made it to consist in that chiefly which, most needing, we best know, the exercise of thy mercy; to thee we cry who are but as nothing, dust, and a shadow. Let our weakness be lost in thy strength, our darkness in thy light, our sinfulness and griefs in the plenitude of thy compassions. Enter, O Lord! into our hearts, and irradiate them with the beams of thy love; and though we deserve to suffer the pangs of thine absence, yet return, O God! to that shrine which thou hast formed for thy inhabitation, and never more depart; that so, being replenished with thy light and purity, thy power and thy blessedness, we may be "filled with all the fulness of God."

Animate us with the remembrance of Jesus, helper of the helpless; who, passing through scenes of conflict and humiliation, held closest communion with the invisible and unchanging; healed the sick, comforted the sorrowful, and at last expired, amid anguish and reproach, in consummation of his mission of love; while, gazing on his cross, we are

melted beneath the might of a benignity and meekness which, in drinking the final and the bitterest cup of woe, crowned a beneficence that was never weary, and a patience inexhaustible and divine.

Father of illumination and love! Spirit all-pure, all-perfect! let the star of thy pity arise upon the midnight of our hearts, and chase away their darkness and perturbation. Remove the veil which conceals heavenly things from our sight, and let us catch some portion of their brightness and glory.

Open our eyes, O Lord! that amidst our own feebleness and misery, and the insufficiency of earth or the universe to make us happy, we may behold around the symbols of thy presence and omnipotence, even "chariots of fire and horses of fire." And may a glimpse of Christ, as fixing a benignant eye on frailty and sorrow, be vouchsafed amid the conflicts of doubt and fear; nor withheld in the last lonely hour; but, infusing the sweetness of his peace into the soul when the scenes of earth are fading away, give an assurance of welcome to his Father's house, and to the bosom of eternal Love.

Hear us, O God! from thy throne of majesty and of mercy, and unite us to thyself for ever.

Matins.

ITH the light of returning day, our souls would spring afresh to thee, O God! the uncreated Source of life,

holiness, and happiness. We praise thee that during the defenceless hours of sleep, thine eye, as the stars looking down benignly on a slumbering world, has been fixed upon us—the lowliest of thy creatures that can recognise in thee their Original and End. And now, O Father! that we are about to enter on the scenes and vicissitudes of another day, impart to us such a sense of thy presence as shall dispel the shades of darkness and evil from our minds, and bring us

BB