ing, human heart ; that the dew of Heaven still falls on
the mountain of Sion ! Believe me, my friend, we have
only to keep at a distance whatever hinders and im-
pedes ; we must not put a glass over the flower, and
then expect it to be refreshed by dew of its own evap-
oration. No ; let us place the plant under the open
sky of heaven, and then it will not lack refreshment."
Mander was struck by the enthusiastic language of
the pastor ; a tear trembled in his eye ; and his emo-
tion was still further increased by the interest of the
pastor's wife who pressed her husband's hand with a
look of affectionate approval. He could not immedi-
ately answer, and the lady filled the pause by saying,
"It can never be so easy for man, as it is for our sex,
to forget himself and his knowledge, and force the ac-
tivity of his intellect into subjection to the receptivity
of his heart."
"Believe me," said Mander, "I have never been en-
tirely a stranger to hours in which every doubt and
every question was silenced by religious feeling ; and I
have never ceased to cherish them as the consecrated
moments of my life, and to long for their return. But
precisely because they have only been holiday moments
in life's long work-day — only aurora beams of the night,
not the morning red of a bright future — it is this which
saddens me, even makes me distrust them. How then
can those dim, vague feelings, which we can neither
direct nor arrange, which rather, like some extraneous
influence, carry us out of ourselves — how can they pos-
sibly give us a conception of God which will satisfy our
calm contemplation ?"
Hold's reply was,
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