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76 "Yes; there are,—there must be such," he continued, with growing enthusiasm. "Man is essentially a religious creature,—a looker beyond the grave,—from the very constitution of his mind; and the sceptic who denies it is untrue, not merely to the Being who has made and who preserves him, but to the entire scope and bent of his own nature besides. Wherever man is,—whether he be a wanderer of the wild forest, or still wilder desert,—a dweller in some lone isle of the sea, or the tutored and full-minded denizen of some blessed land like our own;—wherever man is, there is religion,—hopes that look forward and upward,—the belief in an unending existence and a land of separate souls."

I was carried away by the enthusiasm of my companion, and felt for the time as if my mind had become the mirror of his. There seems to obtain among men a species of moral gravitation, analogous in its principles to that which regulates and controls the movements of the planetary system. The larger and more ponderous any body, the greater its attractive force, and the more overpowering its influence over the lesser bodies which surround it. The earth we inhabit carries the moon along with it in its course, and is itself subject to the immensely more powerful influence of the sun. And it is thus with character. It is a law of our nature, as certainly as of the system we inhabit, that the inferior should yield to the superior, and the lesser owe its guidance to the greater. I had hitherto wandered on through life almost unconscious of the existence of this law; or, if occasionally rendered half aware of it, it was only through a feeling that some secret in-