ance for the soul? Why look out into immensity, forward to eternity? We are on the earth, why not be altogether of the earth? Much may deceive, but passion at least is real. The temptation is strong, and, we fear, often prevailing; and when it does prevail, it can be only by a convulsive effort that the life of the soul is saved. For here there could be no doubt as to the meaning of the temptress; the invitation was clear and unmistakable: Turn from spirit to sense, leave faith for sight, bow down at the shrine of Belial, curse God and die to all nobleness. While the mental atmosphere is pure, while the darkness is only without, while the "red lightnings of remorse" do not flash within, and self-contempt is not added to that of others, there is good hope that the haven of a believing working manhood may be gained; but from the rocks of the Syrens who ever returned?

The second peril is not the surrender to sensualism, but is perhaps still more desperate; the abandonment of earnestness, the lapse into a harmless but purposeless skepticism. Concerning much a man may question, but of this he must not entertain any doubt; that the universe is not a dream, a phantasmagoria, an aimless, incomprehensible nothing, but a reality. He shall always believe that, whatever his uncertainty, truth is immovable and immortal. There is thus a refuge for faith in the wildest discord of doubt; and the very inability of the earnest mind to reach a definite and particular belief may render the more emphatic and even heroic an unwavering confidence in the existence of truth, in the verity of God.

“Oh yet we trust that somehow good

Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood:

"That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

"That not a worm is cloven in vain ;

That not a moth with vain desire

Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain."

1;

Once this faith is lost; once a man comes to question whether there is an earnest purpose in this universe at all when it is no longer of his own path or his own powers of navigation that he doubts, of the very existence of a celestial vault above those clouds, with its immovable lights burning round the throne of God; then he is in an evil case. Here, too, he finds rest; but it is only a degree nobler than the rest of sensualism; it is the rest of an easy, careless, blunt indifference, an acceptation of the good things of the day, a consent not to push sternly forward in an undeviating path, but lightly and laughingly to "gyrate," like M. Maurepas. Is it uncom mon, either in literature or in society, to observe the working of such a spirit as this? Does there not subsist in our age a certain skepticism, good-humored from its very completeness, and extremely clever and gentlemany, which would laughingly aim its darts at the very heart of truth? All loftiness of emotion, all earnest prizing of spiritual belief, is genially bantered aside. Truth may be very good, but its pursuit is so tantalizing; one gets on to satisfaction without troubling himself about profound faith; intensity of feeling is a sign of youth, or affectation, or feeble enthusiasm; the nil admirari mood, the abnegation of all reverence and wonder, befits the smart member of polite society; honesty consists in making no pretense to earnestness. And then wit survives; on every

of

thing there can be hung a jest; from the star to the grass blade, all things can be covered with the flickering light of clever and kindly banter. It is by no means unpleasant to meet a disciple of this school; he is sure to be witty, cheery, sparkling, devoid of all pretense, blithe as a canary. No less exhilarating is the same spirit when breathed from the page literature. Sydney Smith was perhaps its most signal embodiment; allied with genius still more rare and delicate, we are sensible of its subtle enchantment in the softly glowing paragraphs of Eothen. Yet this whole phenomenon is one of unquestionable sadness; perhaps few things could be more melancholy. Fichte and Carlyle proclaim rightly that there is a grandeur in noble sorrow; it is ill with him who is incapable of spiritual anguish, even of lofty despair. That very pain is, we repeat, a proof of devotion to truth; as the keenness of the slighted lover's distress tests the depth of his affection. Better bow before a vailed Isis than care not whether the Divine can be known at all! This is the second peril, and many are there in our day, whose best existence, whose soul's life, is by it put in jeopardy.

But for him who doubts sincerely, and will nowise fail from his faith in truth itself, there may be ordained the breaking forth of a great glory of deliverance and of dawn. True it is, his doubt is to be hated, and he can never fairly take the road until it is no more. But the brightness of the morning may be proportioned to the length and the darkness of the night. The overwearied dove long winged its aimless way, over an earth that was but one wide waste of waters, under a streaming and darkened sky; and now its tired pinions flapped heavily, the heart within had almost failed, the last ray of hope was fading from the eye; but even then the olive twig emerged, and from a rift in the thick cloud a beam of light fell on the fainting

breast, and gradually the earth again unvailed her face, and the triumphant embrace of the returning light kindled a glory which eclipsed all other dawns. Need we apply the parable?

In the following chapters of this Book, we shall, amid much else, have occasion to note several of the phases of Modern Doubt, and to observe whether and how the Christian life can spring amid it, triumph over it, or stand unassailed by it.

CHAPTER II.

JOHN FOSTER.

JOHN FOSTER, peasant in the west of Yorkshire, and father of the subject of these paragraphs, was one of those undoubting Christians, whose lives, unnoticed by the world and unconsciously to themselves, are yet faithful transcripts from apostolic or patriarchal times. He no more questioned the stability of that path on which he went toward eternity, than he questioned the firmness of the ground along which, with solid measured tread, he walked to his daily toil. For twenty years before his death, he prayed, every year, that God, if it seemed good to Him, would terminate his earthly career. And this strength of character was finely shaded by a tendency toward reflection, a love of meditation and retirement. There was a lonely spot on the banks of the river Hebden, whither he used to retire in meditative hours, and which became known as Foster's cave. His wife Ann was the fitting spouse of such a husband. Her piety was of the same order as his; her decision still more conspicuous. One day, before their marriage, Mr. Foster happened, in her presence, to be in a desponding mood. "I can not," he said, "keep a wife.""Then I will work and keep my husband," rejoined Ann. Prudence would join with love in recommending such a union.

On the 17th of September, 1770, their son John was born.