of nations.  These men could never have touched my soul; they could never have dispelled the darkness of my mind; they could not be friends.  But was there ever a man that could have answered the questions for the solution of which my spirit yearns?  Plato was beautiful; around him was a pure, intellectual light.  But, after all, he knew very little; his writings are mostly suggestive.  But suppose here was a man who could reveal all the hidden things of life?  How sudden would be the delight of learning of him, of communing with his spirit?  And what if he knew, not only everything relating to this world, and my own intellectual being, but could tell me of all the universe, of all the after life?  Oh! what a joy such a man would be to me!  How would this midnight darkness melt into the clearest and most beautiful day!

But did such an one ever exist?  Why is it that now comes over me the vision of my childhood, of the Divine Man walking over the hills of Judea?  Oh, Christ! who wert Thou?  My thought goes forth to Thee; beautiful was Thy life upon the earth.  It had in it a heavenly sanctity, a purity, a grace and mercy, a gentleness and forbearance, that seems to me God-like and Divine.  Yes—­what if God descended and walked on the earth?  I could love Him, that He had lowered Himself to my comprehension.  But God! the Infinite and Eternal! in the finite human form, undergoing death!  I cannot comprehend this.  But what is infinity?  When I look within myself and realize my ever-changing and fleeting feelings, now glancing in expansive ranges of thought from star to star, I realize an infinity in mind, that is not of the body.  What if it were thus with the Holy Man, Christ?  What if He were God as to the spirit, and man as to the flesh?  If this were so, well may I have wished “to live when Jesus walked the earth,” for He alone could have revealed all things to me.  How wonderful must have been His wisdom!  And if His indwelling spirit were God, then Christ yet lives—­lives in some inner world of love and beauty.  Ah, beautiful hope! for, if immortality is my portion, I may yet see Him, and learn of Him in another existence.  Methinks the night of my soul is passing away; upon the rayless darkness a star has risen; a fixed star of love and hope; what if like other fixed stars it prove a sun?

Oh, Christ! holy and beautiful Man! if Thou yet livest in far-away realms of light and blessedness—­grant that I may see Thee, and learn of Thy wondrous wisdom.  Enlighten my darkness, and suffer me to love Thee as the Divinest type of man that my thought has yet imagined.

THE DAWN OF THE MORNING.—­I have gone back to my Bible with the old childish love and reverence.  I read it with an object now.  I know that in it, the beautiful Christ-nature was portrayed; and I read with infinite longings to find Him the “unknown God;” and bright revealings come to me through this Book.  I feel that it is Divine, and the light grows upon me; and sometimes like the Apostles, who awakened in the night, and saw Christ transfigured before them, I also saw a transfiguration.  I lose sight of the mere material man, and I perceive an inner glory of being, a radiance of wisdom, and purity, and love, that clothe Him in a Divine light, and make His countenance brilliant with a spiritual glory.