All my companions left me at Meyringen, and I had a quiet, lonely Sabbath. It was a beautiful day for travelling, but more lovely still for resting. Had it rained, a number of persons would have kept Sabbath at Meyringen, but they would not do it, unless compelled by bad weather. Now God had given us six days of bright elastic air, clear sun, and cloudless skies to see him in his works; should we grudge one day for the study of his Word, one day for prayer? Should we travel without God, and travel in spite of him? What a dark mind, under so bright a heaven! It is a sad and sinful example, which Protestant travellers do set in Switzerland, by not resting on the Sabbath day. Prayer and provender never hindered a journey. That is a good old proverb; but it is safe to say that a man who rides over the Sabbath, as well as through the week, though he may give his horse provender, is starving and hurrying his soul.

Who resteth not one day in seven,

That soul shall never rest in heaven.

But there may be rest without worship, rest without prayer. The Sabbath is more thoroughly observed by Romanists, in their way, than it is by Protestants, in theirs. Without prayer, it is the worst day, spiritually, in all the seven. He who gave it must give the heart to keep it. How admirable is that sonnet translated by Wordsworth from Michael Angelo. Few original pieces of Wordsworth contain so much real religion as these beautifully translated lines.

"The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed,
If Thou the spirit give, by which I pray :

My unassisted heart is barren clay,
Which of its native self can nothing feed:
Of good and pious works Thou art the seed,
Which quickens only where thou sayst it may;
Unless Thou show to us thine own true way
No man can find it: Father! Thou must lead.
Do Thou then breathe those thoughts into my mind,
By which such virtue may in me be bred
That in thy holy footsteps I may tread :
The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind,
That I may have the power to sing of Thee,
And sound Thy praises everlastingly."

The nights of Saturday and Sabbath, it was a lovely sight to watch the rising moon upon the tops of the snow shining mountains, at such an immense height above us. We could not see the moon, but could only see her pale light travelling slowly down, as a white soft veil, along the distant peaks and ridges, till at a late hour the silver radiance poured more rapidly over the forests, and filled the Valley.

Saturday evening is distinguished in Scotland and New England as a time of speciality for washing children; in some parts of Switzerland it is a chief time for courting. I do not know that here among the Oberland Alps they have any such custom of child-scrubbing; in some parts it might be questioned if they have any ablutions at all; but I am sure it is a good habit. There was always a great moral lesson in it, besides the blessedness of being perfectly clen once in a week. It taught the children unconsciously that purity was becoming to the Sabbath; there was a sort of instinctive feeling induced by it, of the necessity of putting off the dark soils of the world and the week, and of being within and without clean and tidy for the sacred day. Well would it be if children of a riper growth could wash themselves of the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches every Saturday evening, with as much ease and ready obedience as they used to gather up their playthings and submit to the bath of soap-suds; if they could put aside their ledgers, and see how their accounts stand for eternity on Saturday night, they would have more leisure for prayer on the Sabbath, and would not so often bring their farms, their cattle, and their counting-houses into the House of God.

CHAPTER XXII.

From Meyringen to the Pass of the Grimsel.

AGAIN in the week's opening, upon our winding, upward way, from Meyringen to the Pass of the Grimsel. What glorious weather! the element of Autumnal brightness and coolness mingling with the softness and warmth of the Summer.

"The silent night has passed into the prime

Of day-to thoughtful souls a solemn time.
For man has wakened from ais nightly death
And shut up sense, to morning's life and breath.

He sees go out in heaven the stars that kept

Their glorious watch, while he, unconscious, slept ;-
Feels God was round him, while he knew it not,-

Is awed-then meets the world-and God's forgot.
So may I not forget thee, holy Power!

Be to me ever, as at this calm hour.

"The tree tops now are glittering in the sun:
Away! 'Tis time my journey were begun!"

DANA.

Forth from the industrious, thriving village of Meyringen, we pass through a picturesque, broken, wooded vale, with many romantic side openings, and then comes one of the loveliest sudden morning views of the distant blue and snowy mountains. The clouds have ranged themselves in zigzag fleeces, in a bright atmosphere of many shades of azure, deepening and softening in the distance. It is a lovely day. Whatever travellers have been resting on the Sabbath, that rest has lost them nothing of this heavenly weather, and it ought to make the soul's atmosphere clearer and brighter for the whole week. So may it be! So, when we meet the world, may we not be "without God in the world." How beautiful is God's creation in this light!

"And if there be whom broken ties

Afflict, or injuries assail,

Yon hazy ridges to their eyes
Present a glorious scale,

Climbing suffused with sunny air,
To stop, no record hath told where!
And tempting fancy to ascend
And with immortal spirits blend!
Wings at my shoulder seem to play,
But rooted here, I stand and gaze

On those bright steps that heavenward raise
Their practicable way.

Come forth, ye drooping old men, look abroad
And see to what fair countries ye are bound!”

The multiplication of mountain ridges of cloud, Wordsworth describes as a sort of Jacob's ladder leading to heaven. Sometimes the mountains themselves look like a ladder, up and down which the clouds, like angels, are flying. Were it as easy for a broken-hearted man to get to heaven, as to climb these mountain passes, few would fail. Afflictions make a craggy path in the pilgrimage of many a man, who yet, alas, does not, by their means, ascend to God, nor even experience the desire of so ascending. But our motto must be Excelsior! Excelsior! Higher! Still Higher! even to the throne of God!

Thither the wings of Poetry will not bear us, nor glorious sights, nor emblems, nor talk of angels, nor prosperity, nor adversity, nor aught but Divine Grace. The best ladder in the universe is good for nothing without grace, simply because men would not climb it. It might be made with steps of Jasper, and set against the stone pillow beneath the sleeper's head, and angels might stand upon it and wave their wings and beckon, but never a step would man take, if grace within did not move him. This thundering river Aar will split mountains in its course downwar s rather than not get to the sea; the very mound we are cro sing is rifted from top to bottom to let it through; but you could not make it turn backward and upward to its source. Such is the course of a man's heart, so self-willed, so unchangeable; downwards, away from God, nothing can stop it; upwards, back to God, home to God, nothing can turn it, but God's own grace in Christ.

Petrarch once climbed a high mountain with a little volume of Augustine's Confessions in his pocket. At the summit, after feasting himself with the landscape, he opened the book to read, when the first passage that caught his eye was the following: "Men travel far to climb high mountains, to observe the majesty of the ocean, to trace the sources of rivers, but they neglect themselves." Petrarch closed the book, and meditated upon the lesson. If I have undergone so much labor in climbing this mountain, said he, that my body might be nearer to heaven, what ought I not to do, what labor is too great to undergo, that my soul may be received there for ever! This thought in the Poet's mind was both devout and poetical, but it rises in the depths of many a soul, without being reduced to practice. So much easier is it to go on pilgrimage with the body, than to climb spiritually the hill Difficulty; so much easier to rise towards heaven with the feet, than to carry the heart thither.

Why should a step of the soul upward be more difficult than one of the body? It is because of the burden of sin, and its downward tendency. Nevertheless, there is this consolation, that with every step of the soul upward the fatigue becomes less, and the business of climbing grows from a labor into a habit, till it seems as if wings were playing at the shoulders; while in climbing with the body there is no approximation to a habit, and the fatigue is ever increasing. The nearer the soul rises to God, the more rapid and easy is its motion towards him. How beneficent is this! How grand and merciful that "Divine agency,” says John Foster, "which apprehends a man, as apostolic language expresses it, amidst the unthinking crowd, and leads him into serious reflection, into elevated devotion, into progressive virtue, and finally into a nobler life after death.”

"When he has long been commanded by this influence, he will be happy to look back to its first operations, whether they were mingled in early life almost insensibly with his feeling, or came on him with mighty force at some particular time, and in connection with some assignable and memorable circumstance, which was apparently the instrumental cause. He will trace all the progress of this his better life, with grateful acknowledgment to the Sacred Power, which has advanced him to a deci