or
domestic, or moral, has imposed upon him--until, at any cost or any
hazard, he hath sought to do, in his daily life, those things which God
in His word doth most authoritatively and continually command. All such
may, all such do, become, all such are, the _mediums_ of the Lord Christ,
omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal, walking, as the Divine Man, in the
midst of the paradise of the angels. Breathing forth His breath, and so
vivifying the very air which the angels respire and live, He breathes
down that great _aura_ upon us continually. In prayer, and in the good
self-sacrificing life, we drink in that _aura_. The breath of God
inflows into the lungs; the thought of God streams into consciousness;
the energies of God are directed to the will; man, weak, becomes strong;
man, ignorant, becomes wise; man, narrow, becomes broad; man, sectarian,
becomes catholic and liberal; man, self-conceited, becomes reverent and
humble; man, transformed from the image of the tiger, the ape, the
serpent, takes upon himself, in Christ, the angels' image. And as we
drink in more and more of this Divine Spirit, our path in life--the path
of humble uses (not the path of self-seeking ambition; not the path of
prying curiosity), groweth brighter and brighter unto the perfect day."

CHAPTER III.
ABOUT COAL.

I am sitting by my sea-coal fire, and, from the clear way in which it
burns, and the peculiarly pleasant warmth it seems to give out, I have
every reason to believe that the thermometer is below the freezing point,
that the ground is hard as iron, and that before to-morrow's sun rises,
Jack Frost will not only have lavishly strewn the earth with pearls, but
have sketched fairy landscapes innumerable on my window-panes. Ah, well,
it matters little to me:

"The storm without might rain and ristle,
Tam did na mind the storm a whistle."

The respected partner of my joys and sorrows has retired to roost, far
away in the nursery the maternal pledges of our affection have done
ditto. Unless an amorous member of that inestimable class of public
servants--the metropolitan police--be at this moment engaged in a furtive
flirtation with the cook, I have no reason to believe that, beside
myself, any of my limited establishment is awake. My boots are off--I
have an old coat on--I have done my day's work--I don't owe anybody any
money (the reader need not believe this)--I poke the fire--I light a
cigar--and think there is