would England now be as merry as old England, and the time being as good and happy as any that may yet be in store, not even excepting what Jeremy Collier has called, "the millenaal, paradisinical, earth." Pleasure says to every one of us what we say to children, Open your mouth, and shut your eyes.

This law has been expressed in manifold terms. Every lament said or sung of the fickleness of pleasure is an admission of the law. When Pope declares that "Man never is, but always to be, blest;" when, again, he describes happiness as that something" Which, still so near us, yet beyond us lies;" when Armstrong (in the Art of Preserving Health, a poem, by this time of day, well-nigh forgotten) describes it as a coy goddess who "Invites us still, and shifts as we pursue; when Barry Cornwall upbraids it as "The gay to-morrow of the mind which never comes;" all these are but ways of expressing two things, that pleasure consists in giving chase, and that the object of pleasure is never present, but always out of ourselves. Chiefly to this, although partly to the first law, belongs that overflow, that enlargement of heart (πλaτvoμós) to which Christian writers so often refer, sometimes speaking of it simply as glorious liberty, at other times, and with equal truth, regarding it as the very essence of joy. And that word which denotes the very highest pitch of enjoyment, to wit, ecstasy, comes to the same thing; for, in the Greek, it means transport, an outstanding,

ἔκστασις.

Likewise the great truth, so often repeated, that love is happiness, and the more of the one the more of the other, when put into formal language means, that happiness is an outgoing of the soul, and the farther out the more happiness. The more hopelessly we are in love with nature, the more heartily we enter into the joys and sorrows of our kindred, or, better still, the more entirely we give ourselves up to the worship and (are we not allowed to call it?) the fellowship of the Almighty Father; in a word, the more self is forgotten, and the mind sent abroad, for us the happiness is higher. So that the nearer we approach self-annihilation, the happier do we become; and if such a state were only possible, it would be the happiest of all. It is only possible, however, in death, or, perhaps, in a swoon; and thus it is that we hear persons who have been entranced and filled to overflowing with unutterable bliss, tell that they could have died, and were ready to melt away.

These remarks are fully borne out by all the accounts that have reached us of persons in a state of high enjoyment; and among others are well illustrated by the behaviour of those disciples to whom was given a foretaste of heaven on the Mount of Transfiguration. The

* To be distinguished, however, from Aristotle's definition of pain as an ekotaσis, where a very different metaphor is intended. For he has before him the idea of something out of place, and uses the word in opposition to Karáσтaσis, as above cited (p. 23.) As pleasure is a κατάστασις, or settlement, so pain is an ἔκστασις or unsettlement.

bliss was too strong for them, and so blinded their souls that they were overpowered with sleep. When they had somewhat recovered, they were so bewildered, that of Peter it is told-he knew neither what to say, nor what he said: indeed, what he could have meant by proposing to build three booths it is hard to understand. In like manner, when Saint Paul was caught up into the third heaven, he knew not whether he were dead or alive, in the body or out of the body; and so far also might credit be given to the legends of Ignatius Loyola, and other Romish saints, if, without bringing forward the witness of other men, it were simply related, that in the warmth of their devotions, these worthies felt as if lifted from the ground. Perfect joy will not keep house with perfect knowledge. In so far as we become self-conscious, there is no room for joy; and on the other hand, as Hooker finely brings out (Eccles. Pol. v. 67)," the mind, feeling present joy, is always marvellous unwilling to admit any other cogitation, and in that case casteth off those disputes whereunto the intellectual part at other times easily draweth. A manifest effect whereof may be noted if we compare with our Lord's disciples in the twentieth of John, the people that are said in the sixth of John to have gone after him to Capernaum. These leaving him on the one side of the sea of Tiberias, and finding him again, as soon as themselves by ship were arrived, on the contrary side, whither they knew that by ship he came not, and by land the

journey was longer than according to the time he could have to travel, as they wondered, so they asked also, Rabbi, when camest thou hither? The disciples, when Christ appeared unto them in far more strange and miraculous manner, moved no question, but rejoiced greatly in what they saw. For why? The one sort beheld in Christ only that which they knew was more than natural, but yet their affection was not rapt therewith through any great extraordinary gladness; the other when they looked on Christ were not ignorant that they saw the well-spring of their own felicity: the one, because they enjoyed not, disputed; the other dis-· puted not, because they enjoyed."

Turning now to view the opposite state of mind, wherein self-consciousness bears sway, it will be found that nature has pronounced woe upon him who will brood over his own self. Eat not thy heart, was the advice of Pythagoras long before Christianity came to teach and to train us in the same doctrine: and all who partake of such food have been represented by Bacon as very cannibals-the cannibals of their own hearts. Which they truly are, who, among Christians, give so much heed to self-examination-ransacking every motive in search of lurking evil, and raking up their hearts for a good sign-that they lose all peace of mind, and at length are willing to wrest the words of the Apostle to suit their own feeling, that true believers are in this world "of all men the most miserable." This kind of

self-consciousness, Milton has described as "treading the constant round of certain doctrinal heads, attended with their uses, motives, marks, and means." It took strong hold of the Puritans, and still clings to their followers; but it was not entirely confined to them. We may conceive how widely it must have spread when even Jeremy Taylor, the most poetical of divines, yielded to its influence, and how deeply in his nature the cancer must have been rooted, when in his book of Holy Living he could gravely set himself to give somewhere about eight tokens for a man to know whether he had been drunken or not. Equally self-conscious, too, is that kind of self-denial in favour with the ascetics, who sternly determine to gainsay nature, think what they please, and believe what they think; as when George Herbert, in a couplet, which is crippled most likely from having to keep pace with the sense, tells

us to

"Look at meat, think it dirt, then eat a bit,

And say withal, Earth to earth I do commit."

The Christian religion is a gladsome religion—a gospel; and greatly must it have been misunderstood ere any of its followers could have been brought into such woe-begone plight. Truth they undoubtedly have seized, but only in part-the sour side of the peach.

These are examples of extreme self-consciousness displayed in man's spiritual nature. As displayed in his intellectual nature, a like tale must be told. Thought,