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cation. Helmer watched over the child with such a love as might be expected from its concentration on one object. He taught him his own language, and by much patience succeeded in making him read from his Bible. He corrected his errors, developed his faculties, enlarged his views, and did all that a matured can do for a young mind, and all that a powerful intellect can effect for the improvement of a weak one. He smiled when he reflected how he should, but a few months ago, have despised his present favorite object; how irksome would have been the necessary exercise of patience and condescension. But he had himself undergone a somewhat analogous, though more exalted discipline, and while he became submissive to learn, he became also patient to teach.

Every hour when he was not teaching, he was learning. His Bible was his continual study, and he read it differently. as his views changed. The leading point now seemed to be the benevolence which afforded a clue to every intricacy, stamped a celestial character on every dispensation, and beamed with a glowing radiance through the lives of prophets and apostles, up to the self-denying benignity of Christ, and, above all, to the unclouded, all-pervading love of the Universal Father.

When, after nine years of captivity, Helmer's release was obtained, he reëntered the world changed in all respects, but especially in the spirit with which he regarded the constitution and destination of society. His sister mourned over his altered appearance, and his bosom friend watched the gradual tranquillization of his spirits; but they knew nothing of the renovation within, till the truth was gradually revealed by facts.

"I suppose," said his friend to him one day, that you have a horror of solitude, as you well may after so long an experience of it. I never find you alone and absorbed in

study, as in old times. Does the ugly vision of your jailer haunt you?"

"Not to any terrifying degree; nor am I afraid of solitude, nor do I abstain from it as you suppose. If you came to me early and late you would find me gowned and slippered, and in as deep a reverie, perhaps, as in former days."

"Yet you are as active a man in society as myself, though not, like me, compelled to activity by a profession."

"By no secular profession, certainly. But there are reasons to which you, my friend, are no stranger, which have at length obtained some power over my actions, and changed my views of duty. My former life was one of utter selfishness."

"Yet it was one which men regarded with respect."

"Perhaps so; but thus far men are wrong, unless they believe that the labors of the studious have a higher object than the gratification of taste, or even self-improvement. I speak, of course, of an entire devotion to books."

"What think you then of a German theologian who had not crossed his threshold for half a century?"

"I judge him not; as, for aught I know, his biblical studies might produce more beneficial effects than active exertions, and might be prosecuted with that view. But such a life would not now be my choice. I should fear to banish the influences of nature, and to reject the purest elements of knowledge and enjoyment which can be afforded."

"I do not wonder at your prizing the influences to which you owe so much. Clouds and sunshine, woods and streams, were your best companions for nine long years."

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'They were more; they were messengers from heaven to me. But there were other messengers which spoke

clearer truths, and in a loftier language. In my prison I

learned that every man is made in God's image, not only as possessing a rational nature, but as being the source of spiritual influences."

"And is a nine years' captivity necessary to the apprehension of this truth?"

recesses.

"By no means; though to my shame, I acknowledge that no other discipline availed to teach it to me.—O no! many a mind which I have regarded with contempt on account of its partial darkness has carried this true light into its inner Poor M whom we laughed at for expounding the Revelations almost before he could read them, knew more of the philosophy of society than I; and the peasant's child who teaches her baby-brother to say his prayers is doing more in her appointed office than I in my classical studies. Yet you will not suspect me of undervaluing such pursuits."

'Certainly not. But I cannot understand why you were so very long in perceiving the end for which you were brought into the world."

"Nor I. And yet how few do appear to understand it! Since I have reëntered society, nothing has struck me so forcibly as the misapprehension of which I speak. I see, in the moral frame of mankind, a system of mutual adaptation, secured by mutual dependence; the deficiences of some endowments are proportioned to the superabundance of others; I observe a sufficient general analogy between the passions and affections of different souls to establish sympathy; and a sufficient diversity to keep up curiosity and interest; I see enough of the spiritual nature revealed to give confidence to benevolent effort; and enough of mystery remaining to excite to further research. I see here and there a bright, alluring example of the blessedness of philanthropy, at which men gaze and pass on. I hear an universal acknowledgment of the obligation to do good to

the souls as well as the bodies of men: and yet, what comes of it? Some are too indolent to give, others too proud to receive instruction. Some are too selfish to inquire, others too timid to reveal. Men meet to worship God, and separate without trying to do his work upon each other. They pronounce that to his own master each stands or falls, and then have recourse to public or private persecution for opinion. They thank God for the honor of being his vicege rents, and then compose themselves to sleep at their posts." "Nay, my friend: few, I hope, are so impious.”

"Few or none are wholly selfish, I trust: but very few are happy in an apostolic philanthrophy."

"How eminent must those few have appeared to you, when you mingled once more among men, like a visitant from another world!"

"They appeared like beings of a privileged race. When I see a physician ministering to the soul as tenderly as to the body of his patient, when I see a preacher of the gospel discoursing more eloquently by his life than his lips, when I see a student gathering together the treasures of wisdom only to distribute them with increase, or a friend faithfully administering reproof; when I hear the highest wisdom conveyed in lowly words, and stupendous truths let down into the mind of a little child—I rejoice to see how the will of God is done on earth as in heaven."

"We also witness efforts to redeem nations from slavery, and millions from superstition."

"And in such efforts we recognise yet more eminently the spirit of the great charter of our spiritual freedom. But here the beauty of the work is too often impaired by the intervention of a narrowness of spirit totally inconsistent with the principle of the undertaking. No voice which preaches the Gospel to the heathen should be silenced because it cannot pronounce the Shibboleth of human impo

sition nor should that gospel be called impure which is held out by ready hands, though the washing, according to the pharisaical rites of ablution, should have been omitted."

"Your years of solitude have done much for you, my friend. What will be the result of the experience of the next nine years spent in society?"

"If I can obtain as distinct an apprehension of some other truth of equal importance," replied Helmer, “ I shall not think that my time has been lost, or my experience wasted."

In nine years, Helmer was no more. The advocates of freedom in the senate were lamenting the loss of a strenuous defender of the national honor. The University prized the record of his name. His funeral hymn was chaunted on the banks of the Ganges, and the West Indian slave dropped a burning tear to his memory. The mirth of playful children was checked when they heard that their benefactor would smile upon them no more. The devotions of his household were now conducted by a voice which faultered at the words, "I am distressed for thee, my brother." In the house of prayer, his place remained vacant; and the pastor who had also been his friend, mourned that he must now turn to the records of memory for an illustration of the power of a sound mind tempered by love out of a pure heart.

THE EARLY SOWING.

ONE dreary winter's morning, a funeral, the preparations for which were of the most sordid kind, was made ready to set out from an alley in one of the lowest districts of the city of London. It was not regarded with any respect

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