INTRODUCTION. SINCE the Divine spark, the human intellect, was first transmitted from its heavenly source to burn within the heavy and cumbrous lamp of a mortal body, it has never burned more brightly, or struggled more vigorously to be rid of its encumbrance, than in this nineteenth century. That flickering and often dimlyburning flame from the altar of the Land of Light never strove so much to discover the secrets of its birth, and find its proper home, as it does now; for the human soul is an exile here. "This is not my rest," it declares amidst the din and whirl and battle of thought and mental activity of this nineteenth century. Have you ever listened to the little babbling brook as it rushes on, and tried to make out what it said? "Onward! on to yonder silent river; I cannot stay here, I must onward!" it seems to say; and then the deep and softly-flowing river, too earnest and solemn to babble or tell its aim, except an endeavour be made to arrest, or divert its progress, points still onward, onward to the bosom of old ocean, to lose itself again in the source from whence its every drop B was derived. And this principle of centripetal attraction seems to run through the world of nature. The principle of gravitation draws earthly and gross things downwards, but the heaven-born can only struggle towards its home. Rivers to the ocean run, nor stay in all their course; Fire, ascending, seeks the sun; both speed them to their source. So the soul, derived from God, pants to view His glorious face; Forward runs to His abode, to rest in His embrace. Music, Light, and the Soul of Man are heaven-born, and they ever point to their fatherland, as the needle to the pole. When Pilate asked, What is Truth? he only expressed the demand of his age. The noblest minds of antiquity had been trying to solve the problem and had failed; disappointment, blighted hope and despair of coming to the light were concentrated in that bitter and cynical query, for whose answer he did not care to wait. And so men have gone on, as St. Paul says, "ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." And why the sad complaint? why this bitter cry? "Who will show us any good?" Is there no such thing as Truth? Are we for ever to be as the alchemists, toiling at the crucible and watching with weary eyes and ceaseless vigil for the advent of the Philosopher's stone that shall reward our toil? Are we ever to be letting down our dredging-line into the deep, and coming no nearer to the truth? ever voyaging and straining our eyes for that continent, that land beyond the sea, that never gladdens our eyes? but age after age to follow the mirage and drink only deeper of the cup of disappointment? These are the thoughts that now in this nineteenth century are racking many a thinking man's heart. Pilate's question will be repeated and re-echoed by ten thousand times ten thousand weary, thinking, toiling minds this very night, and to-morrow, and still tomorrow, as the day's research has brought them no answer from the dark unknown land beyond. And yet there is an answer: there is the Truth, there is the guide; all is not so dark, albeit veiled and hidden from our unassisted reason. The Great Father of spirits has not left Himself without a voice or sign, whereby to guide the wandering intellect back to Himself. To the eye of the uninitiated the blaze of heaven's nightly illumination is a confused mass of scattered stars without order or arrangement; but to the sailor they are guides, and out of the apparent disorder he detects the Pole-star by which he steers. To the unskilled the magnet is nothing but an ordinary piece of iron: to the navigator it is his pilot. So the Truth, which has guided millions of happy souls through the rocks and quicksands of the sea of life, and landed them safely in their proper home, is by the world unheeded while it anxiously seeks for its own ideal of Truth, but which, when presented to them, they scorn as the Jews did the Messiah, and in which they refuse to see anything more divine than is to be found in any other system of philosophy that has been propounded. There is no doubt the Jews were very earnest and anxious in their expectation of the Messiah, even at the very moment when He was dwelling amongst them, "despised and rejected of men." Truth-seekers now are earnest and anxious in their watching for the dawn of Truth, and yet that Truth is in their midst, like its great Source-poor, despised, undesirable in aspect, and rejected by the world's favourites. Mere earnestness, then, is not the only qualification necessary in the search for Truth. This philosopher's stone is "hidden," and ever has been, "from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes." "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him," so subtle, so delicate, so refined, that it escapes the rude grasp of the bold speculator; so still and small is the voice that it is whispered only in the ear of him who puts off the shoes from his feet at the Temple's gate, and recognizes that the place whereon he stands is holy ground. Have you seen how gently and carefully the anatomist proceeds when searching amongst the springs of life, that delicate principle that eludes our grasp, yet is all around us? Have you watched the analyst in his search for subtle elements that would escape altogether a ruder observation ? These should suffice to teach us, that holy dread and solemn awe become the man who would honestly set himself to find out God. This nineteenth century has no lack of Truthseekers, but the Truth-seekers have more than ever forgotten that Humility is of all qualifications the most indispensable to the man who would learn the secrets of the Unseen, and fathom even the shallowest waters that wash the shore on which we "pebblepickers" wander, and wonder at the expanse that lies beyond. We attempt in these pages to exhibit some of the workings of a mind that may be taken as the type of a large class of young, thoughtful, studious men of the day-men who, having had instilled into their minds the "Divine Right of Private Judgment," as the phrase is, have determined to shape out their own course of thought, cast off the prejudices of their education, and adopt as their motto for life, "Every man his own creed-maker." Most of the incidents |