force in teaching and confuting"; and that, "if it be harmful to be angry, and withal to cast a lowering smile, when the properest object calls for both, it will be long enough ere any be able to say, why those two most rational faculties of human intellect, anger and laughter, were first seated in the breast of man." In like manner Schleiermacher, who was gifted with the keenest wit, and who was the greatest master of irony since Plato, deemed it justifiable and right to make use of these powers, as Pascal also did, in his polemical writings. Yet all who knew him well declare that the basis of his character, the key-note of his whole being, was love; and so, when I had the happiness of seeing him, I felt it to be; a love which delighted in pouring out the boundless riches of his spirit for the edifying of such as came near him, and strove with unweariable zeal to make them partakers of all that he had. Hereby was his heart kept fresh through the unceasing and often turbulent activity of his life, so that the subtilty of his understanding had no power to corrode it; but when he died, he was still, as one I of his friends said of him, ein fünf-und-sechzigjähriger Jüngling. To complain of his wit and irony, as some do, is like complaining of a sword for being sharp. So long as error and evil passions lift up their heads in literature, the soldiers of Truth must go forth against them: and seldom will it be practicable to fulfil the task imposed upon Shylock, and cut out a noxious opinion, especially where there is an inflammable habit, without shedding a drop of blood. In fact, would it not be something like a mockery, when we deem it our duty to wage battle, were we to shrink from using the weapons which God has placed in our hands? Only we must use them fairly, lawfully, for our cause, not for display, still less in mangling or wantonly wounding our adversaries.

After all, however, I allow that the feeling of the ridiculous can only belong to the imperfect conditions and rela

tions of humanity. Hence I have always felt a shock of pain, almost of disgust, at reading that passage in Paradise Lost, where, in reply to Adam's questions about the stars, Raphael says,

The Great Architect

Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge

His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire; or, if they list to try
Conjecture, He his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter. When they come to model heaven,
And calculate the stars, how they will wield
The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances, how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb, —

Already by thy reasoning this I guess.

Milton might indeed appeal to certain passages in the Old Testament, such as Psalm ii. 4, Prov. i. 26: but the bold and terrible anthropopathy of those passages can nowise justify a Christian in attributing such a feeling to God; least of all as excited by a matter of purely speculative science, without any moral pravity. For in the sight of God the only folly is wickedness. The errors of his creatures, so far as they are merely errors of the understanding, are nothing else than the refraction of the light, from the atmosphere in which he has placed them. Even we can perceive and acknowledge how the aberrations of Science are necessary stages in her progress; and an astronomer now-adays would only show his own ignorance, and his incapacity of looking beyond what he sees around him, if he were to mock at the Ptolemaic system, or could not discern how in its main principles it was the indispensable prelude to the Copernican. While the battle is pending, we may attack an inveterate error with the missiles of ridicule, as well as in close fight, reason to reason; but when the battle is won, we are bound to do justice to the truth which lay at its heart,

and which was the source of its power. In either case it is a sort of blasphemy to attribute our puny feelings to Him, before whom the difference between the most ignorant man and the least ignorant is only that the latter has learned a few more letters in the alphabet of knowledge. Above all is it offensive to represent the Creator as purposely throwing an appearance of confusion over his works, that he may enjoy the amusement of laughing at the impotent attempts of his creatures to understand them.

LINKS WITH HEAVEN.

BY ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.

UR God in Heaven, from that holy place,

To each of us an Angel guide has given; But Mothers of dead children have more grace, For they give Angels to their God and Heaven.

How can a Mother's heart feel cold or weary,

Knowing her dearer self safe, happy, warm? How can she feel her road too dark or dreary,

Who knows her treasure sheltered from the storm?

How can she sin? Our hearts may be unheeding,
Our God forgot, our holy Saints defied;

But can a mother hear her dead child pleading,
And thrust those little angel hands aside?

Those little hands stretched down to draw her ever
Nearer to God by mother love:- we all
Are blind and weak, yet surely she can never,
With such a stake in Heaven, fail or fall.

She knows that when the mighty Angels raise
Chorus in Heaven, one little silver tone

Is hers forever, that one little praise,
One little happy voice, is all her own.

We may not see her sacred crown of honor,
But all the Angels flitting to and fro
Pause smiling as they pass, they look

upon

As mother of an angel whom they know.

One whom they left nestled at Mary's feet,

-

her

The children's place in Heaven, who softly sings A little chant to please them, slow and sweet, Or smiling strokes their little folded wings;

Or gives them Her white lilies or Her beads

To play with: - yet, in spite of flower or song, They often lift a wistful look that pleads

And asks Her why their mother stays so long.

Then our dear Queen makes answer she will call
Her very soon: meanwhile they are beguiled
To wait and listen while She tells them all
A story of Her Jesus as a child.

Ah, Saints in Heaven may pray with earnest will
And pity for their weak and erring brothers:
Yet there is prayer in Heaven more tender still,
The little Children pleading for their Mothers.