that governed England before her, she might have pursued a milder course. We must remember, too, that she was under a foreign influence. Her Spanish husband was a Catholic, from the land of St. Dominic, and had all the arrogance and severity of the Spanish character. The Catholics, also, who had been persecuted during the two former reigns, naturally sought an opportunity for retaliation. The Court of Rome was urging to sanguinary measures. All these influences and circumstances must be taken into account, when we speak of Mary. She was far from being a good queen, yet she was by no means such a bloody tigress as some have represented.

Protestantism advanced perhaps faster in Mary's, than in Edward's reign. The persecutions of Mary alienated the hearts of the people, not only from her, but also from her religion. The dumb logic of the masses always tells them that a cause must be weak when it needs the support of martyr-fires. There was also a mingling of political and religious feeling in favor of the Reformation. All Englishmen rebelled in heart against Spanish influence. The Englishman's chronic hatred of France was almost forgotten in the sharper pains of a spasmodic hatred of Spain. An English Catholic sympathized less with a Spanish Catholic than with an English protestant. Thus the very means that were used for the suppression of the Reformation, helped it forward. In these various ways the English people learned to forsake

"Holy pardons, holy beads,
Holy saints, holy images,
With holy, holy blood:
Holy stocks, holy stones,
Holy clouts, holy bones,

Yea, and holy, holy wood:

"Holy days, holy fastings,
Holy twitchings, holy tastings,

Holy visions and sights,

Holy wax, holy lead,
Holy water, holy bread,

To drive away sprites."

We have no time left to speak of the influence of the Reformation upon England, and its influence, through English literature, English commerce, and the English

Church, upon the world. If we associate the idea of protestantism with the name of Elizabeth, the words put by Shakspeare into the mouth of Cranmer at her birth, have a real and sublime meaning:

"Let me speak, sir,

For heaven now bids me; and the words I utter
Let none think flattery, for they'll find them truth.
This royal infant (Heaven still move about her!)
Though in her cradle, yet now promises
Upon this land a thousand, thousand blessings,
Which time shall bring to ripeness; she shall be
(But few now living can behold that goodness,)
A pattern to all princes living with her,
And all that shall succeed; Sheba was never
More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue,
Than this pure soul shall be; all princely graces,
That mould up such a mighty piece as this is,
With all the virtues that attend the good,

Shall still be doubled on her; truth shall nurse her;
Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her.

She shall be loved and feared, her own shall bless her;
Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,

And hang their heads with sorrow. Good grows with her;
In her days, every man shall eat in safety
Under his own vine, what he plants; and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbors.
God shall be truly known; and those about her
From her shall read the perfect ways of honor,
And by those claim their greatness, not by blood.

THE Soul of man-what is it? A living, conscious, sentient, active, responsible being, bearing the impress of the Divinity, destined to survive the dissolution of the gross material body it here occupies, and to live on for ever. Its powers and faculties, who but God can fully

comprehend? Who but God can know its present capabilities, and especially its future capacities, its powers of retrospection and memory, of anticipation, endurance, attainment in wisdom, knowledge, holiness and happiness? We can speculate as we will, and analyze our own individual faculties as far as we may, in the present state; we may conjecture what shall be our future condition, the circumstances of our being; but still, a vail of mystery hangs over the subject, that no human eye may pierce, and nought but the light of eternity may dissipate. Well did the inspired apostle declare, "For we now see through a glass darkly; (or as some render it, as in a riddle or enigma; but then, face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known." (1 Cor. xiii. 12.) In the context the apostle is contrasting our present and future conditions. The imperfection of our present knowledge is contrasted with the perfection of knowledge to which man shall attain in another state of being; our present condition is compared to that of a child, and our future to that of a mature and perfect man. Now, says he, "we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things. The present is our incipient state, our state of childhood or infancy; the future or immortal, our mature and perfect state. The mature and perfect man in the present state is not further in advance of the infant child, in knowledge and understanding, than the redeemed soul in the resurrection state is in advance of the wisest and greatest men in the present state of being. The infant may know as much of manhood as the wisest of the latter knows of the future.

Notwithstanding the darkness and obscurity in which the future is involved, there yet exists in man an irrepressible desire to know what awaits him in another world,-what lies within or beyond the vail which separates this world from the immortal. And why, he naturally inquires, why should that state, about which so much solicitude is felt, remain covered with an impenetrable vail? If God has given us a revelation, why does not 14

VOL. IX.

that revelation explain the enigma, and allow us now to "see as we are seen and know as we are known,"-to look through the whole scene and see clearly all the glories and wonders of that upper and spirit world, with all the powers and faculties and blessedness of the redeemed ? Perhaps we shall be unable to answer this inquiry satisfactorily to all; but we can at least suppose an answer, that is satisfactory to ourselves, and which, we hope, may prove so to most, if not all, candid inquirers. Man is at present in his infantile state of discipline, fitting for another and higher state, but with relations and duties which pertain to his earthly state. And we suppose that if the full light of eternity were now to burst upon him, the sight would too much abstract him from the world in which he lives, and unfit him for the part he has to act in the present state. Therefore God, who has wise and beneficent purposes in all he does, has withheld from man here, the full knowledge and clear vision of the future and immortal life.

"O, blindness to the future kindly given,

That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven!"

But, although we may not now see all that belongs to the future, yet enough is revealed for all practical and necessary purposes. The fact of man's future existence is clearly revealed; also the fact that all men shall exist hereafter; that 66 as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive;" and equally clear is the evidence that that existence shall be immortal, endless, incorruptible, glorious and happy. And is not this enough? Does the prying curiosity of man seek to know all the minute particulars of that being? Does he inquire, with some of the Corinthian church of old, "How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?"1 Or does he inquire whether the soul in the other world, clothed upon with its "house from above," shall remember all that it has done, and all that it has suffered, here? Or whether we shall there have a perfect consciousness and memory of the past; know all our former kindred and friends; not alone those who have passed from the

1 1 Cor. xv. 35, et seq., where the best answer ever given to this question may be found.

boundaries of time, but those who still linger on these mortal shores; be aware of their condition, character, temptations, sins, sufferings and triumphs? Or does he ask what shall be the locality, what the employment of the denizens of the heavenly kingdom?

To these and all similar questions we can give no definite answers, except so far as the light of Revelation may guide us. We may have our opinions, our conjectures, our speculations; but still it is only "through a glass darkly" that we can see. St. John tells us, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he, (Christ,) shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."2 From this language we might infer almost every thing that is desirable for man in the future state, in relation to consciousness, knowledge, power, and intercourse with men in this world, if we believe Christ possesses and shares all these in the highest degree. For, 66 we shall be like him," our "bodies shall be fashioned like unto his glorious body." We "shall see as we are seen and know as we are known."

As to the question whether the soul will hereafter have a perfect consciousness of all that it has been and done while here, there is a variety of opinions among professing Christians. Some professedly Liberal Christians, whose general system lays the foundation of hope for the final "restitution of all things," nevertheless stop short of that conclusion, and urge, as a difficulty in the way, the idea that the soul, retaining the memory and consciousness of the past, must forever look back with regret upon its past transgressions; and though there shall be no penal fires or material flames to torment it, yet an eternal remorse for its past sins and short comings will prey upon it forever. Others, again, to avoid this (to us obviously illegitimate) conclusion, deny the premises altogether, and with one swoop annihilate the memory of the past, with all consciousness of former sins and sufferings. This, to us, seems like falling upon Scylla in order to avoid Charybdis; for it robs us of one of the noblest and most essential faculties of the soul. If the memory of all past sins and sufferings be blotted out forever, so, it seems to us,

21 John iii. 2.