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could slay a thousand Philistines with the jaw of an ass is a sufficient specimen of strength: while a man who could handle a spear like a weaver's beam cannot be improved, though Milton give the devil a spear as big as the mast of a ship.—And so of the varieties of nature. If we shall suppose man fitted to the earth, then although the earth should pass through the greatest variety of changes, the same general features should be renewed. We cannot expect that nature should be so fitful as to stand on her head for one generation's amusement, while other beings are hourly born, for whose similar natures she is meant to smile and frown as well as for us.

Above all things the finite soul demands that such a variety should exist: for novelty, or change, and progression are one. Moreover we shall demand that this variety be so distributed that all shall find something pjeasing in it, rather than that some should be nearly perfect, and others utterly neglected. We would ask that he who bears the burden of painful experience should have some compensation therefor, and strength to his task. And further, inasmuch as it is the exaltation of our intellects which has led us into the comparison of finite and infinite, by which comparison we suffer, shall we not ask that as much of the old stupidity—the brute consciousness of the unspeculative period be granted to us as the progress of our grade will permit of? And lastly, if there should appear to be suffering for which our judgments do not find entire compensation in this life, we shall ask that it be of such a character that the style which reason gives to the next grade of our immortal life