D. No doubt I saw a reason faintly and partially. But, after all, dear master, faith is still a bitter morsel.

M.-Bitter only where love is lacking. He who loves relies. You love Him not; and you do not love Him although you say that of all beings He is the most worthy of love.

D. In your opinion, then, the way to knowledge lies through faith and love?

M.-So I think, and so Christ says; for all knowledge is but the mirror of life.

D. Be not displeased if I once more take refuge in His own words: "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."

M.-The buckler breaks. The life eternal was certainly present in the Church long before the knowledge after which you aspire. "We know," says St John, "that we have passed from death unto life." The knowing spoken of in Scripture is a tasting. "We have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come." 1 "Taste and see that the Lord is good." In those days when the Light of the world shone upon the Church, a garden of the Lord sprang up, and every tree in it was adorned with golden fruits. But what grows beneath the beams of the light which you see? However near the sun may be, still, if its rays fall obliquely, the winter lasts and not a flower blossoms. And with you it fell obliquely, and not in the centre, which is the heart.

D.-You nearly vanquish me, for you are mighty in the Word of God; and what that means I now can no longer doubt. Must we then begin from below?

M.-Where else can he who has fallen begin? Properly speaking, however, faith is rather innermost than undermost, and it gives light both up and down. Mankind have lost the cheerful ring of peace; and in what other way can they recover it save that in which it was lost? We fell by disobedience, and only by obedience do we regain our feet. To believe is to obey. I know of only one test which the Lord has proposed to them 2 Psalm xxxiv. 9; 1 Pet. ii. 3.

1 Heb. vi. 5.

who ask of Him a test. It is: " If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." "The pure in heart shall see God." You have aspired after a knowledge not merely to be known to you by rote, but possessed as more your own than all else. But is not such a knowledge external only so long as your own being belies the testimony of your knowledge? You wished to unite yourself in wedlock with the lofty goddess Wisdom, and forgot what she herself declares : "I love those that love me;" and, "My son, give me thine heart." You wished to wed her, and yet are ignorant of the holy mystery of wedlock, which is, "that they two shall be one flesh;" and yet you were not willing to share with her so much as your heart, but only your thoughts.

D. Let a wise man correct me ; it is as wine poured into my wounds. Let him smite me; it is as ointment upon my head.

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M.-I have not yet done. Something I have still to say respecting the final issue. How is it possible for us to reach it, even with our knowledge, so long as it is written, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be" ?3 The apostle has said, not merely of this or that individual, but of all of woman born, "Now we see through a glass darkly." It cannot therefore be faith alone that sees in the dim glass, but also knowledge, and that in an equal degree-the knowledge which is taught in the schools of earth. Where is the man who does not hold his breath when he contemplates the goal which beckons us at the consummation of all things? Then, however, I shall know even as I am known (of God)." And thou, fettered at every inch of the way by the dust on which thou treadest, and, like the weathercock, changing every hour thy course and compass, thou triumphest in the fancy that thou hast already grasped that goal with half thy hand. Yes; as children grasp at the moon. And would that you were but children in your teens! Who would then grudge you your sport? But you are forward boys, ambitious of playing the part of master before the time-knights of the peacock-feather-mock monarchs in 1 Prov. viii. 17; xxiii. 26. 2 Eph. v. 31, 32. 3 1 John, iii. 2.

the realm of thought. Is not your knowledge a journey without an end? Scarcely have you reached a stage when you must arise and proceed. Is it not like the thread of Ariadne, with which, painfully picking your steps, you creep on from darkness to light? The name for it is a working day. It will be Sabbath where we see face to face. There only, where all is comprehended in one, do we find rest. And if it be true that,

Before the image of the mountains green
Can mirrored on the crystal lake be seen,
The angry storm must hush itself to rest,
And not a ripple curl the water's breast;

oh, how far are you yet from seeing a correct image even in the glass! For when will all be calm within you?

D. The wise man says, "A right answer is like a sweet kiss." I shall still with half-broken mast be tossed about upon the spacious sea, but now I know in what direction to look for land.

14.

Faith is a new Sense.

Faith's a sixth sense, by all confessed
To reach much further than the rest.

HEB. xi. 24-27. "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king for he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible."

1 Prov. xxiv. 26-Luther's vers.

M°

OSES had become a king's son, and the future offered to him the prospect of honour, wealth, and luxury, but he chose to avouch his connection with the poor and servile Hebrew nation. It may well have been that he did not at the time foresee the forty long years of contention and trouble which awaited him; for during these he was "a sorely afflicted man, above all men upon the earth,"1 and had little enjoyment. Even his natural understanding, however, was sufficient to show him that he would have to encounter reproach and bitter variance and sore privations; and yet from all of these he did not recoil. Like Christ, who instead of the joy which was set before Him, preferred to endure the cross,2 so did Moses esteem such reproach greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. And this is the reason why it is called the reproach of Christ. The recompense of the reward was invisible to the bodily eye; but, notwithstanding, he beheld it with the eye of faith; and with faith's view of it, it behoved him to rest content until the 120th year of his life. Only then did he attain to vision; but even then not to fruition. For though he saw it with his eyes, he was not allowed to touch with his foot the land of Canaan, the goal of his earthly pilgrimage. From the top of Nebo he beheld it afar off, but "went not over thither," passing meanwhile into that better land of which Canaan presented but an imperfect image. The hoary pilgrim was thus a true type of the walk of faith in this scene of sojourn on earth.

"He endured as seeing Him that is invisible." Yes, such is faith; and no words could describe it better. It is the eye for the world unseen; it is a conviction wrought into the inner man which makes us surer of its objects than the sense of sight does of those which stand before our eyes. We are told in Scripture that it "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen;" and this means that it is a testimony of God's Spirit in our mind, excelling every other, nay, Heb. xii. 2-Luther's vers. 5 Heb. xi. I.

1 Num. xii. 3-Luther's vers.
8 Deut. xxxiv. 4.

4 Heb. iv. 8, 9.

bidding defiance to all other testimonies of the visible world. For thus it is written respecting Abraham: "Against hope he believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God." How forcible the expression, "Against hope he believed in hope"! What was there in all the visible world on which the patriarch could build the belief or expectation that his seed should one day be equal in number to the stars of heaven? In nature he saw only a pure negation. But what does it matter although all creation say No, when the word of God has said Yes? Faith fastens on Him who is unseen, as if it saw Him.

How marvellous a thing faith is! There is no power greater than that which the sight of our eyes exercises over us, and yet in defiance of it faith can hope even where there is nothing to hope for. In truth, however, faith itself is likewise an eye, and one before which all the riches of the invisible world-the deepest recesses of heaven, as well as the abyss of hell-lie disclosed. Were it otherwise, how could a man possibly prevail upon himself to put to hazard the present world, with all its wealth, in order to win eternity? "Were the universal globe," says a believer, "and all that it contains, suspended upon the thread of a lie, and did I know the word of truth which would break the thread, that word I would utter, although the globe and all that it contains were to drop into the abyss." Whence comes this certainty and confidence? It cannot have its source in the sublunary world, and must be a testimony vouchsafed by God to the soul. Let there be but a grain of such inward faith, and it will remove mountains of appetites and lusts, and extirpate the passions most deeply rooted in the heart. Yes, a single grain of such faith makes the entire

1 Rom. iv. 18-20.