on, are of one mind and heart on this. The thought
underlying all their thoughts of man is that "higher than love of
happiness" in humanity which expresses the true link between man and God.
The practical doctrine that with them underlies all others is, "Love not
pleasure--love God. Love Him not alone in the light and amid the calm,
but through the blackness and the storm. Though He hide Himself in the
thick darkness, yet" give thanks at remembrance of His holiness. "Though
He slay thee, yet trust still in Him." The hope to which they call us is
not, save secondarily and incidentally, the hope of a great exhaustless
future. It is the hope of a true life _now_, struggling on and up
through hardness and toil and battle, careless though its crown be the
crown of thorns.

Even evangelicism indirectly, in great degree unconsciously, bears
witness to the truth through its demand of absolute self-abnegation
before God: though the inversion of the very idea of Him fundamentally
involved in its scheme makes the self-abnegation no longer that of the
son, but of the slave; includes in it the denial of that law which
Himself has written on our hearts; and would substitute our subjection to
an arbitrary despotism for our being "made partakers of His holiness."
One of the sternest and most consistent of Calvinistic theologians,
Jonathan Edwards, in one of his works expresses his willingness to be
damned for the glory of God, and to rejoice in his own damnation: with a
strange, almost incredible, obliquity of moral and spiritual insight
failing to perceive that in thus losing himself in the infinite of holy
Love lies the very essence of human blessedness, that this and this alone
is in very truth his "eternal life."

Among what may be called Essayists, two by general consent stand out as
most deeply penetrating and informing the spirit of the age--Carlyle and
Ruskin. To the former, brief reference has already been made. In the
work then quoted from, one truth has prominence above all others: that
with the will's acceptance of happiness as the aim of life begins the
true degradation of humanity; and that then alone true life dawns upon
man when truth and right begin to stand out as the first objects of his
regard. Never since has Carlyle's strong rough grasp relaxed its hold of
this truth; and howsoever in later works, in what are intended as
biographical illustrations of it, he may seem to confuse mere strength
and energy wi