still let the voice of prayer arise. It must reach the throne of God, it must ascend to his ever-hearkening ear an answer of mercy must be returned, for He has said, "Call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." He has never said to the house of Israel, "Seek ye me in vain.” Although an answer should not immediately descend, yet "Wait for His seasonable aid, And, though it tarry, wait; It appears, at the first glance, as if the prayer of Jonah had been instantly heard. Yet such could scarcely have been the case, for three long days and nights he continued in that fearful situation: how lingeringly must three days and nights have passed in that dismal prison ! even Slowly must time ever pass to those who struggle in dark waters, yet such should pray that their faith may never fail. Though God should appear deaf to the voice of their entreaties, let the promise be remembered, "When thou passest through the waters, I am with thee." Unseen, He is there; He is near, with them, listening to every prayer, watching every moan, until the purpose of His love be accomplished, and He may reveal himself as He is, the most Merciful. After the sufferers have been drawn from the deep, they will rejoice that they have been there, to acquire such a knowledge of themselves and their Saviour as can seldom be acquired in calm waters. It is time to retire from the shore; the calmness of evening has descended upon the waters. Already the sinking sun approaches the horizon, and flings a broad pathway of light over the sea. It is like the bright track of those who had gone before, of those who set on earth to arise in glory. Many long years have elapsed since thou, my beloved L- didst fade from earth in thy youthful beauty, and pass into a more glorious sphere; still shines thy pathway as brightly over the ocean of my life, as on the solemn hour, when thy sun did set on a darkened earth. Thrice since that eventful day has the household chain been broken, but succeeding tears have never dimmed thy memory; still thy bright example shines in unclouded lustre, a pathway to the better land. For the first time heaven opened to receive one of the treasures of our home, when thou didst enter glory; for the first time earth closed upon a form which had enshrined our beloved, when thy beauty was veiled in darkness. The shock was permanent; that shock which rent the sunny veil of life, and disclosed Time and Eternity in their true proportions, the colossus standing amid dissolving views. The chiming of waters mingles with my thoughts; I understand the murmuring accents, they speak of the home of my beloved. There, like "the voice of many waters," is heard the voices of harpers harping with their harps. They sing a new song of great joy, "Blessing, honour, glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb." She joins the choral strain; it is but the continuation of that hymn which she commenced on earth. "Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." The murmur of waves dies away upon mine ear; their antitype, the voices of the adoring multitude, seem faintly audible. "Dream I, or do I hear the distant strain Sweet to the soul, and breathing strong of heaven?" MODERN PAINTERS. WE have this month to give the answer offered by the Author of "Modern Painters," to two great objections against the connection between beauty and goodness. "There remain, however, two points to be noticed before I can hope that this conclusion will be frankly accepted by the reader. If it be the moral part of us to which Beauty addresses itself, how does it happen, it will be asked, that it is ever found in the works of impious men, and how it is possible for such to desire or conceive it? "On the other hand, how does it happen that men in high state of moral culture, are often insensible to the influence of material beauty, and insist feebly upon it, as an instrument of soul-culture? "And first, it will be remembered, that I have throughout the examination of typical beauty, asserted its instinctive power, the moral meaning of it being only discoverable by faithful thought. Now this instinctive sense of it varies in intensity among men, being given, like the hearing ear of music, to some more than to others: and if those to whom it is given in large measure be unfortunately men of impious or unreflecting spirit; it is very possible that the perceptions of beauty should be by them cultivated on principles merely æsthetic, and so lose their hallowing power; for though the good seed in them is altogether Divine, yet, there being no blessing in the springing thereof, it brings forth wild grapes in the end. And yet these wild grapes are well discernible, like the deadly gourds of Gilgal. There is in all works of such men a taint and stain, and jarring discord, blacker and louder exactly in proportion to their moral deficiency. “But secondly, it is to be noted, that it is neither by us ascertainable, what moments of pure feeling or aspiration, may occur to men of minds apparently cold and lost, nor by us to be pronounced through what instruments, and in what strangely occurrent voices, God may choose to communicate good to men. It seems to me that much of what is great, and to all men beneficial, has been wrought by those who neither intended nor knew the good they did, and that many mighty harmonies have been discoursed by instruments that had been dumb or discordant, but that God knew their stops. The spirit of prophecy consisted with the avarice of Balaam, and the disobedience of Saul. Could we spare from its page that parable, which he said, "who saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open," though we know that the sword of his punishment was then sharp in its sheath beneath him in the plains of Moab? or shall we not lament, with David, over the shield, cast away on the Gilboa mountains, of him to whom God gave another heart that day, when he turned his back to go from Samuel? It is not our part to look hardly, nor to look always, to the character or the deeds of men, but to accept from all of them, and to hold fast, that we can prove good and feel to be ordained for us. We know that whatever good there is in them, is itself divine; and wherever we see the virtue of ardent labour and self surrendering to a single purpose, wherever we find constant reference made to the written scripture of natural beauty: this we know is great and good, this we know is not granted by the counsel of God, without purpose, nor maintained without result: Their interpretation we may accept, into their labour we may enter, but they themselves must look to it, if what they do has no intent of good, nor any reference to the Giver of all gifts. Selfish in their industry, unchastened in their wills, ungrateful for the spirit that is upon them, they may yet be helmed by that Spirit, whithersoever the Governor listeth; involuntary instruments, they may become of other's good: unwillingly they may bless Israel, doubtingly discomfit Amalek, but short coming there will be of their glory, and sure will be their punishment. "It has been said by Schiller, in his letters on æsthetic culture, that the sense of beauty never furthered the performance of a single duty. Although this gross and inconceivable falsity will hardly be accepted by any one in so many terms; seeing there are few so utterly lost, but that they receive and know that they receive, at certain moments, strength of some kind, or rebuke from the appealing of outward things ; and that it is not possible for a Christian man to walk across so much as a rood of the natural earth, with a mind unagitated and rightly poised, without receiving strength and hope, from some stone, flower, leaf, or sound, nor without a sense of a dew falling upon him out of the sky; though, I say this falsity is not wholly and in terms admitted, yet it seems to be partly and practically so, in much of the doing and teaching, even of holy men, who in the recommending of the love of God to us, refer but seldom to those things in which it is most abundantly and im |