Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/579

Rh Indian Medal of Honour, and a grant of land into the bargain; and as in India there is no exception to the general rule that prosperity brings friends, it may be hoped that these gallant fellows have had in the long run no reason to regret that they cast in their lot on the side of duty.

Passey offered the second post in his levy to Braddon, who would fain have retained his connection with the gallant remnant of his old regiment; but Kirke, who was now without officers, asked him to join his regiment, and as this offered the chance of immediate service, he naturally accepted the latter invitation in preference. Kirke took Yorke and Egan also with him and a young officer of the 80th, while Maxwell joined him temporarily as surgeon, Grumbull being left in medical charge of Mustaphabad; and the regiment thus reinforced set off the next morning at daybreak.

Mrs. Hodder did not accompany the other ladies to the hills, but stayed with her husband, who on the same day moved back into his old quarters in the city, and set about re-establishing his school. The Hodders took Mrs. O'Halloran to live with them for the present; the poor child with her young baby not being fit to travel.

 

 From Macmillan's Magazine.

" what consolation is to be found in such a worship? What is the use of believing in such a God?" This is the objection I expect to hear. It is true that the conception I have been drawing out, however evidently great, sublime, and glorious, is at the same time a painful and oppressive conception to us. The thought of the unity of the universe is not by itself inspiring; the belief in it can scarcely be called a faith. For we must look at the bad side of the universe as well as the good. The power we contemplate is the power of death as well as life, of decay as well as of vigour; in human affairs He is the power of reaction as well as of progress, of barbarism as well as of civilization, of corruption as well as of reform, of immobility as well as of movement, of the past as well as of the future. In the most ancient and one of the grandest hymns ever addressed to Him, this mixed feeling of terror and fascination with which we naturally regard Him is strongly marked: — "Thou turnest man to destruction; again Thou sayest. Come again, ye children of men. For we consume away in Thine anger, and in Thy wrath we are troubled." Bearing this in mind, it has become a habit with us to say that God thus conceived is not God at all, and to treat belief in God as equivalent to a belief in something beyond these appearances, something which gives the preponderance to good and makes the evil evanescent in comparison with it. If we cannot grasp this belief in something beyond, it is thought that what is visible on the face of the universe is a mere nightmare. "Call it God, if you will; but it is a God upon whose face no man can look and live; from such a God it is well to turn away our eyes. What is the use of such a God?"

But meanwhile He is there. Though the heart ache to contemplate Him, He is there. Can we turn our eyes away from Him? In which direction should we turn them?

And yet no doubt it is quite possible to look upon the universe and see no such being. It is possible to think only of each thing as it comes, and to refrain from viewing them in the whole which they constitute. By viewing all things continually "in disconnection dull and spiritless," we may relieve our minds of the burden of a thought too vast for them. This course is possible, and even has its advantages; but it is only possible in the same way as it is possible to narrow our minds, to retrograde into a past stage of development, and the advantages it offers are of the same sort as those which barbarism offers in comparison with civilization. For a mind of any force or compass it is scarcely possible; at least, if it is possible to remain a stranger to the conception altogether, it is scarcely possible to lose it after having been once enlightened, after having once admitted a conception which so rapidly modifies the mind into which it enters.

But is this conception really so efficacious to modify the mind? Is it not too large and vague? Or if its power over minds in a certain stage cannot be denied, if the wonderful effect it has had, even in its rudest shape, over the nations that have been converted to Mohammedanism must be acknowledged, yet is there any reason to believe that it can exert any influence over minds sobered by knowledge and inductive science? The question here, be it observed, is not whether practical results are to be expected from such