move?" "And yet," said Abraham, "thou worshippest them, and wouldest have me worship them too." The story adds that Terah, in his rage, sent Abraham to be judged for his crime by the king.

Nimrod asked Abraham: You will not adore the idols of your father. Then pray to fire.

Abraham: Why may I not pray to water, which will quench fire?

Nimrod: Be it so: pray to water.

Abraham: But why not to the clouds which hold the water?

Nimrod: Well, then, pray to the clouds. Abraham: Why not to the wind which, drives the clouds before it?

Nimrod: Then pray to the wind.

Abraham: Be not angry, O King-I cannot pray to the fire or the water or the clouds or the wind, but to the Creator who made them: Him only will I worship.

On another occasion, "Abraham left a cave in which he had dwelt and stood on the face of the desert. And when he saw the sun

shining in all its glory, he was filled with wonder; and he thought, 'Surely the sun is God the Creator,' and he knelt down and

worshipped the sun. But when evening came, the sun went down in the west, and Abraham said, 'No, the Author of creation cannot set.' Now the moon arose in the east, and the stars looked out of the sky. Then said Abraham, 'This moon must indeed be God, and all the stars are His host.' And kneeling down he adored the moon. But the moon set also, and from the east appeared once more the sun's bright face. Then said Abraham, 'Verily these heavenly bodies are no gods, for they obey law; I will worship Him whose laws they obey.""

XXXV. Man's Belief in a Future Life.

The rude beliefs about spirits and dreams and the customs observed at burials show us that, however shapeless man's idea of another life may be, he has from the earliest times believed that the spirit or breath, the ghost

(which comes from the same root as gust), departs to dwell elsewhere when the body is cold and still in death. The highest and lowest races of men have tried to form some notion of what that blessed state is like where happiness is given to the good, where friends "loved long since and lost awhile," will, with smiling angel-faces, welcome us; or what that dark state may be where misery and wanhope (despair) dwell.

Man, in wondering what becomes of the spirit, has thought that it haunted the place where it once lived, or that it passed into some other body, perhaps into some animal, and then into higher and higher forms, until it reached the dwelling-place of the gods.

He has placed his heaven in some far-off Island of the Blest, or in some sunny land,

"Deep meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,"

or in the west where the sun sets, or in the sun, moon, and stars themselves. The pictures of it have been copied from the earth; and

all that he loves here, whether chaste or coarse, he hopes to have in larger measure there, even as he wishes to shut out from thence all that he dreads now.

The best and brightest view of heaven is, leaving the rude idea of the savage far behind, to behold in every place on earth a fit spot whereon to kneel, to feel the sacredness of duty, and then we shall believe that all which we here know to be highest and noblest and best shall be ours in heaven, wherever that heaven may be. The thought that God's worlds are thus linked together is very beautifully touched upon in one of the old Persian sacred books. The soul of a good man is pictured as being met in the other world by a lovely maiden, "noble, with brilliant face, one of fifteen years, as fair in her growth as the fairest creatures. Then to her speaks the soul of the pure man, asking, 'What maiden art thou whom I have seen here as the fairest of maidens in body?' She answers, 'I am, O youth, thy good thoughts, words, and works, thy good law, the own law of thine own body. Thou

And since all of us like to read hymns about. heaven, here is one which I expect you have never seen before. It was written thousands of years ago by some great-souled Aryan, and is full of music that cannot die away :

Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O Soma!

Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me immortal!

Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal!

Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me immortal!

Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, there make me immortal!

XXXVI. Sacred Books.

If this book has taught you nothing else, I hope it has taught you that the different

The whole of this beautiful story is given by Mr. Tylor in his "Primitive Culture," vol. ii. p. 90, a work to which I am much indebted, and which should receive careful attention from every thoughtful person.