Tf On 18th May 1826, a couple of days after the death of his wife at Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott writes in his diary: "An- other day, and a bright one to the external world, again opens on us ; the air soft, and the flowers smiling, and the leaves glittering. They cannot refresh her to whom mild weather was a natural en- joyment. Cerements of lead and of wood already hold her ; cold earth must have her soon. But it is not my Charlotte, it is not the bride of my youth, the mother of my children, that will be laid among the ruins of Dryburgh, which we have so often visited in gaiety and pastime. No, no. She is sentient and conscious of my emotions somewhere — somehow; where we cannot tell; how we cannot tell; yet would I not at this moment renounce the mysterious yet certain hope that I shall see her in a better world, for all that this world can give me. The necessity of this separa- tion,— that necessity which rendered it even a relief, — that and patience must be my comfort." ^
If In a letter to Mrs. Lydia M. Child, thanking her for her book Looking Towards Sunset — a book which he regrets that his sister, then lately dead, never saw, Whittier writes : " How strange and terrible are these separations — this utter silence — this deep agony of mystery — this reaching out for the love which we feel must be ever living, but which gives us no sign ! Ah, my friend ! What is there for us but to hold faster and firmer our faith in the goodness of God ? that all which He allots to us or our friends is for the best! — best for them, for us, for all. Let theology, and hate, and bigotry, talk as they will, I for one will hold fast to this, God is good; He is our Father! He knows what love is, what our hearts, sore and bereaved, long for, and He will not leave us comfortless, for is He not Love ? " ^
Yes! in the sea of life enisled.
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild. We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
* De Quincey, The Household Wreck.
« The Jmmal of Sir Walter Scott (ed. 1891), 194.
• Life and Letters of John Greenleaj Whittier, ii. 486.
314 NO MORE SEA
Bufc when the moon their hollows lights, And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights, The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour —
Oh! then a longing like despair Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain —
Oh might our marges meet again!
Who order'd, that their longing's fire Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?
Who renders vain their deep desire ? — A God, a God their severance ruled !
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.^ ^ Matthew Arnold, To Marguerite,
God's New World.
3-i.
Literature.
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3if
GOD'S New World.
And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.— Rev. zxi. 5.
In this chapter of Eevelation, we are at length in still waters. We have read of trials and judgments ; we have read of foes and battles ; we have read of sorrows of the righteous and triumphs of the ungodly. Shall there be no end of these things ? no end of this state of imperfection, of warfare, of unrest? no end of these vicissitudes and alternations, of these inversions of right and wrong, of these perpetual renewals of a strife once decided ? Yes, out of the ruin of the old world there rise a fresh heaven and a fresh earth. The Holy City is now seen descending from the hands of its Builder and Maker, prepared " as a bride adorned for her husband." The voice of one of the angels is then heard, proclaiming, " Behold, the tabernacle of God is with man, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them " — the full realization of the prophetic name, Immanuel, God with us, bestowed upon our Lord (Matt. i. 23) — their God. " And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes ; and death shall be no more ; neither shall there be mourn- ing, nor crying, nor pain, any more ; the first things [that belonged to the old order, the fashion of this world] are passed away."