ugh pass among the mountains, where each
must go alone, one by one, in solemn silence, for the avalanches hanging
overhead; one by one, in breathless caution, for there is but barely a
footing; one by one, for none can help his brother on the track: the
steady eye of faith, the firm foot of righteousness, the staff of hope
to comfort and support--these be the only helps. And each one carries
with him, as his sole possession on that lonely journey, no heaps of
wealth--no trappings of honour; these burdens of the camel must all be
lifted off, ere he can struggle through that gully in the rocks--"The
Needle's Eye;" but the sole possession which every wayfarer must take
with him into those broad plains where only Spirit can be seen, and Sin
no longer can be hid, is the shrine of his affections, the casket of his
precious pearls in life--his Heart, unmantled and unmasked. And if in
time it had been a well of love, flowing towards God in penitence, and
irrigating this world's garden with charities and blessed works, that
little sparkling stream shall then burst forth from this rocky portal of
the grave, a river of joy and peace, to gladden even more the sunny
provinces of heaven. For the heart with its affections, never dieth:
they may, indeed, flow inward, and corrupt to selfishness; becoming
then, in lieu of fountains of waters, gushing forth to everlasting life,
a bottomless volcano of hot lava, tempestuous and involved, setting up
the creature as his own foul god, and living the perpetual death-bed of
the damned; or they may nobly burst the banks of self, and, rising
momentarily higher and higher, till every Nilometer is drowned, will
seek for ever, with expanding strength, to reach the unapproachable
level of that source in the Most Highest whence they originally sprung.
For this cause, the kindest fatherly word which ever reached man's ear,
the surest scheme for happiness that ever touched his reason, was one
from God's own heart--"My son, give me thy heart."

They lived upon the blessing of that Word, our noble, kindly pair. To
enlarge upon the thought as respects a better world is well for those
who will: for if He that made the eye and framed the ear, by the
stronger argument Himself must see and hear, so he that fashioned
loveliness and moulded the affections, how well-deserving must that
Beautiful Spirit be of his rational creature's heart! Away with mawkish
cant and stale sentimentalities! let us think, and speak,