ted only with a prudent view to after-interests. Surely there is a
love which exults in the power of self-abandonment, and can glory in the
privilege of suffering for what is good. _Que mon nom soit fletri,
pourvu que la France soit libre_, said Danton; and those wild patriots
who had trampled into scorn the faith in an immortal life in which they
would be rewarded for what they were suffering, went to their graves as
beds, for the dream of a people's liberty. Justice is done; the balance
is not deranged. It only seems deranged, as long as we have not learnt
to serve without looking to be paid for it.

Such is the theory of life which is to be found in the Book of Job; a
faith which has flashed up in all times and all lands, wherever
high-minded men were to be found, and which passed in Christianity into
the acknowledged creed of half the world. The cross was the new symbol,
the Divine sufferer the great example; and mankind answered to the call,
because the appeal was not to what was poor and selfish in them, but to
whatever of best and bravest was in their nature. The law of reward and
punishment was superseded by the law of love. Thou shalt love God and
thou shalt love man; and that was not love--men knew it once--which was
bought by the prospect of reward. Times are changed with us now. Thou
shalt love God and thou shalt love man, in the hands of a Paley, are
found to mean no more than, Thou shalt love thyself after an enlightened
manner. And the same base tone has saturated not only our common
feelings, but our Christian theologies and our Antichristian
philosophies. A prudent regard to our future interests; an abstinence
from present unlawful pleasures, because they will entail the loss of
greater pleasure by-and-by, or perhaps be paid for with pain,--this is
called virtue now; and the belief that such beings as men can be
influenced by any more elevated feelings, is smiled at as the dream of
enthusiasts whose hearts have outrun their understandings. Indeed, he
were but a poor lover whose devotion to his mistress lay resting on the
feeling that a marriage with her would conduce to his own comforts. That
were a poor patriot who served his country for the hire which his
country would give to him. And we should think but poorly of a son who
thus addressed his earthly father: 'Father, on whom my fortunes depend,
teach me to do what pleases thee, that I, pleasing thee in all things,
may obtain those good things which th