er to assuage sorrow and to comfort pain.

So to live is heaven;
To make undying music in the world,

and to have an influence for good result from our lives far down the
future. Through the beneficent influences we can awake in the world

All our rarer, better, truer self.
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burthen of the world,
... shall live till human time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever.

It was this belief, so satisfying to her and so ardently entertained, which
inspired the best and noblest of her poems. With an almost exultant joy,
with the enthusiasm of an old-time devotee, she sings of that immortality
which consists in renouncing all which is personal. The diffusive good
which sweetens life for others through all time is the real heaven she
sought.

This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty--
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.

Believing that humanity represents an organic life and development, it was
easy for George Eliot to accept the idea of immortality in the race. She
reverenced the voice of truth

Sent by the invisible choir of all the dead.

It was to her a divine voice, full of tenderness, sympathy and strength.
She was fascinated by this thought of the solemn, ever-present and
all-powerful influence of the dead over the living; there was mystery and
inspiration in this belief for her. All phases of religious history, all
religious experiences, were by her interpreted in the light of this
conception. The power of Jesus's life is, that his trancendent beauty of
soul lives in the "everlasting memories" of men, and that the cross of his
shame has become

The sign
Of death that turned to more diffusive life

His influence, his memory, has lifted up the world with a great effect, and
made his life, spirit and ideas an inherent part of humanity. He has been
engrafted into the organic life of the race, and lives there a mighty and
an increasing influence. What