f our being to that of
the whole of our being, to forego the good of any portion of our
life in deference to that of all our life, to renounce any
happiness of the individual which conflicts with the welfare of
the race, to hold the spiritual atom in absolute abeyance to the
spiritual universe, to sink self in God. If a man believe in no
future life, is he thereby absolved from the moral law? The kind
and number of his duties remain as before: only the apparent
grandeur of their scale and motives is diminished. The two halves
of morality are the co ordination of separate interests in
universal order, and the loyalty of the parts to the wholes. The
desire to remove the obligations and sanctions of the moral law
from their intrinsic supports, and posit them on the fictitious
pedestals of a forensic heaven and hell, reveals incompetency of
thought and vulgarity of sentiment in him who does it, and is a
procedure not less perilous than unwarranted. If the creation be
conceived as a machine, it is a machine self regulating in all its
parts by the immanent presence of its Maker.

When we die, may the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter of Christ, be
our confessor; the last inhaled breath our cup of absolution; the
tears of some dear friend our extreme unction; no complaint for
past trials, but a grateful acknowledgment for all blessings, our
parting word. And then, resigning ourselves to the universal
Father, assured that whatever ought to be, and is best to be, will
be, either absolute oblivion shall be welcome, or we will go
forward to new destinies, whether with preserved identity or with
transformed consciousness and powers being indifferent to us,
since the will of God is done. In the mean time, until that
critical pass and all decisive hour, as Milnes says:

"We all must patient stand, Like statues on appointed pedestals:
Yet we may choose since choice is given to shun Servile
contentment or ignoble fear In the expression of our attitude; And
with far straining eyes, and hands upcast, And feet half raised,
declare our painful state, Yearning for wings to reach the fields
of truth, Mourning for wisdom, panting to be free."

PART SIXTH SUPPLEMENTARY.

[FIFTEEN YEARS LATER]

CHAPTER I.

THE END OF THE WORLD.

WE read in the New Testament that the heavens and the earth are
reserved unto fire against the day of judgment, when they shall be
burned up, and all be made new. It is said that the elements shall
melt with fe