“Then, as the telescope’s miracle drew
    Infinite Heaven’s vast worlds into view,
    So doth the microscope’s marvel display
    Infinite atomies, wondrous as they! 
    A mere drop of water, a bubble of air,
    Teems with perfections of littleness there;
    Infinite wisdom in exquisite works
    All but invisible everywhere lurks,
    While we confess as in great so in small,
    Infinite skill in the Maker of all.

    V.

    “And there be grander infinities still,
    Where, in Emmanuel, good has quench’d ill;
    Infinite humbleness, highest and first,
    Choosing the doom of the lowest and worst;
    Infinite pity, and patience,—­how long? 
    Infinite justice, avenging all wrong,
    Infinite purity, wisdom, and skill,
    Bettering good through each effort of ill,
    Infinite beauty and infinite love,
    Shining around and beneath and above!”

And let this simple hymn be the old man’s last prayer, bridging over the long interval of well-nigh fourscore years between cradle and grave with a child’s first piety:—­

    Love and Life.

    “‘My son, give Me thine heart;’
      Yes, Abba, Father, yes! 
    Perfect in goodness as Thou art,
      I will not give Thee less.

    “But I am dark and dead,
      And need Thy grace to live;
    Father, on me Thy Spirit shed,
      To me that sunshine give!

    “Thus only can I say
      When Thou dost ask my love,
    I will return in earth’s poor way
      Thy gift from heaven above.

    “There is no good in me
      But droppeth from on high,
    Then quicken me with life from Thee,
      That I may never die.

    “For if I am a son—­
      O grace beyond compare!—­
    A child of God, with Jesus one,
      In Him I stand an heir;

    “In Him I live and move,
      And only so can give
    An immortality of love,
      To Thee by whom I live.

    “Then melt this heart of stone,
      And grant the heart of flesh,
    That all I am may be Thine own,
      Renewed to love afresh.”

About the much-vexed question of Eschatology and the final state of the dead, I have long since grown to the happy doctrine of Eternal Hope—­ultimately for all; perhaps even siding with Burns, who (as the only logical way of eliminating evil) gives a chance to the “puir Deil:”  albeit the path for some must be through the terrible Gehenna of fire to purify, and with few stripes or many to satisfy conscience and evoke character.  As for that text in Ecclesiastes about the “tree lying where it fell,” commonly supposed to prove an unchanging state for ever,—­it is obvious to answer that when a tree is cut down, its final course of usefulness only then begins, by being sawn up and converted into furniture; much as when a human