When at length he was qualified to enter the university, the Senate of Danzig supplied the means; and the time of his departure drawing nigh, he was desired to appear before the burgomasters and senators met in solenın conclave in the town-hall. Here were assembled these venerable councillors, arrayed in their splendid robes of office; while before them stood, in becoming humility, with tears of gratitude in his eyes, Johannes Falk. The senators shook hands with him, and gave him their blessing. One of the aged men took the youth's hand in his own, and uttered the memorable words: "Johannes, you are leaving us. God be with you. Remember you are our debtor; we befriended you when a poor child, and supplied all your wants. You must repay us. Wherever God may place you in after life, and whatever lot he may appoint you, never forget that you were once a poor child. And if ever a poor child should knock at your door, behold in him the gray-haired, long-buried senators of Danzig soliciting your aid; and do not send them empty away."

Falk's youth contained the germs of the work of love in which his after years were to be spent. His early life of penury fitted him to sympathize and mix freely with the common people. The kindness of which the old senator so pathetically reminded him, was indelibly engraven on his heart; and the wonderful interpositions of Providence on his behalf were to him a revelation of Divine love, urging him to glorify God by word and deed.

After he left Danzig it is not easy to trace the thread of his life for about twenty years. So far is certain, that he went to Halle in 1787, and began to study theology; but he soon gave it up, disheartened, probably, by the superficiality and indifference of the period.

Philology-the key to poetic treasures--had experienced a glorious revival under the auspices of men like Friedrich August Wolf, under whose guidance Falk devoted himself to the classics. He probably supported himself by teaching and literature while at Halle, where we still find him in 1798, having married, the year before, Caroline Rosenfeldt of that city. In 1801 he was residing at Weimar, where he became acquainted with Schiller and Herder in their later years. With Wieland, and more especially with Goethe, he enjoyed the intimate fellowship of an enthusiastic disciple; still retaining, however, his independence of thought.

The want of information respecting his outward circumstances is amply compensated by the development of his inner life, as exhibited in his poetry and journal, where his views of God and of human life are fully displayed. These are doubtless pure, amiable, and benevolent; but we look in vain for any mention of the Name "wherein are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Some years later, however, he turned to the Cross, beholding in it the strongest incentive to love and good works. On Good Friday 1817 he stands in spirit on a church tower, and looking down on a multi

tude of perishing souls, considers himself, as God's servant, appointed to bring them to the Saviour. Not for all the world, he declares, would he relinquish this sacred trust. He next beholds in vision the grace of God, after the vials of his wrath are all poured out, reigning supreme on the earth; and, overwhelmed by the manifestation of that grace in the cross of Christ, resigns himself entirely to its purifying and exalting influence.

The change thus wrought by degrees in the mind of Falk was not so much theoretical as practical, and is to be ascribed less to any process of thought than to the effect of the mighty judgments whereby God was then vindicating himself to the nations as the Sovereign Disposer of their destinies. An ardent patriot rather than a devout Christian-the sorrows which he was called to endure in the former character aided the development of genuine Christianity in his soul.

His powers of satire, at first wielded against mankind at large, were directed, as the rule of Napoleon gained ground in Germany, against the special sins of that country. In a piece written in 1801, he institutes a comparison between the state of his native land then and in 1701. The piety of that period he declares to be superseded by scepticism; its decorum by levity; its patriotism by intrigues with France; and finally, its sobriety and prosperity by luxury and empty coffers.

Again, he reproves his countrymen for their overweening love of system-their correct theories without corresponding practice, and their dry learning without vital

energy.

In the periodical, "Elysium and Tartarus," issued by Falk at Weimar, until Saxony had to succumb to the usurper, he pours forth the bitterest sarcasms against the vices and follies of the age, and calls attention to the unwieldy and most unpopular organization of the German army. While urging his countrymen to shake off the detested foreign yoke, he looks for deliverance not merely to their patriotic ardour, but with far greater. confidence to the sword of the Spirit.

Shortly before the battle of Jena, he adjures them, by their veneration for Luther and the Reformed faith, to renounce every selfish consideration, and resist to the death in the cause of liberty.

After the battle of Jena, Falk gave up literature, and devoted his energies to help his enslaved and impoverished countrymen.

After conquering Weimar and the surrounding territory, the French had, according to their wont, imposed heavy taxes on the inhabitants. At the suggestion of Wieland, Falk requested the French Commission at Weimar to appoint him their secretary. He accepted the situation with the sole view of aiding the oppressed community, and he fulfilled the duty with equal tact and intrepidity. The benevolence of his nature enabled him to stoop to relieve the most abject cases of misery, and to oppose in numberless instances the merciless rigour of the invaders. His noble exertions on their

behalf gained him, from the country-people, the title of "The Good Councillor;" and after the war, his sovereign, the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, bestowed on him a place and pension, and invested him with the Order of the Falcon.

A short time previous to the battle of Leipsic, the troops commanded by the Duke of Ragusa, fresh from the battle-fields of Spain, invaded the Weimar territory, and committed the most reckless atrocities. They set fire to the villages, whence the terror-stricken peasantry fled in despair, without knowing where to turn for shelter. The misery of these poor fugitives entered into Falk's very soul. He left his home to help the sufferers, and went forth solitary and unprotected, but strong as a host in trust in God and love to man. Wherever the foe oppressed, he was to be found taking the prey from the plunderers and restoring it to the rightful owners. Wherever he went terrible sights met his view. The unthreshed corn from the harvest-field was thrown down as litter for the horses, the roads being strewn with grain. Stolen horses were sold for a few florins, the flocks on the fields shorn, and the oxen taken from the plough to the slaughter. When at a loss for fuel, the soldiers tore down the staircases of the houses. Falk saw that a stop must be put to these outrages. Mercy was unknown to the invaders; but he thought that the fear of an insurrection of the peasantry driven to despair, might have some weight with them, and suggested this idea to the French general, De Coehorn, who at once placed a company of soldiers at Falk's disposal. He availed himself of their services in his tours through Weimar and the neighbouring countries, doing his utmost to quell the wanton cruelty of the troops and restore order and justice.

The battle of Leipsic changed the scene.

Miserable

fugitives now occupied the place of an insolent and rapacious soldiery.

The pestilence swept the country from east to west, overtaking the vanquished on their retreat, and raging in the villages where care and hunger had prepared it numerous victims. In one village no less than sixty orphans wept at the graves of their parents. Nor did the destroying angel leave Falk's home unvisited. Four of his six promising children were taken away. He was prostrated by illness himself; and, crushed by sorrow, he longed for death. "We poor mortals," he writes, "are all alike. We all desire to share in the transfiguration on Mount Tabor, and to build tabernacles there with Moses and Elias; but shrink from the temptation, the agony in the garden, the cross, the crown of thorns, and bloody sweat;-these overwhelm the natural man with terror and anguish. Oh, how difficult to say, while these bitter trials last, 'Not my will, but Thine be done,' from a calm, resigned, and guileless heart!"

Falk was restored to bodily health, and cured, moreover, of his spiritual languor and his indifference to the things of God. National and domestic distress had stirred the inmost depths of his nature, and opened up a wide and free channel for the stream of love which wells forth from the foot of the Cross. From the time of the emancipation of his country from the French yoke to the day of his death he devoted himself to labours of love. He had gained the confidence of the people by his strenuous exertions on their behalf; and now the exigency of the times brought to him mechanics whose trade the war had ruined, farmers without seedcorn or money to buy it, and hundreds of orphan children,-miserable wanderers, begging or stealing to keep themselves from starvation.

To be concluded next month.

bestowed upon him. To him, the lowest nature, ¡ the highest things were shown. If it were so, it would be but what we see in the world daily. The narrowest natures are often most broadly blessed by fortune. Wealth, and social rank, and family felicity are given, not only where they are not deserved, but where they are not understood. But perhaps we should wrong Jacob if we called his nature shallow. Coarse it may have been, but it was intense and abundant. There were materials enough in it: passion, affection, business capacity, even a vein of the ideal-resource enough of all kinds it contained. And though a little harsh in youth, and perhaps somewhat soured by opposition in mid-life, yet under the sunshine of prosperity, and beside his favourite child, it mellowed to a rich and exquisite sweetness in old age.

Some may think the revelation given to Jacob at Bethel, on his way to Padan-aram, the most interesting event in his history. And to those beginning life it may be. There is an ideal brilliancy in it attractive and fascinating. But that sombre, stern conflict, beyond the Jordan, in the gray, unromantic days of mid-life, is a profounder study, and there will always be found gathering round it those who know the imperfections of life, and the bright hues of whose early expectations have been toned down by the pale cast of experience.

The time when this revelation was made to Jacob was when he was returning from the east, in very different circumstances from those in which he had gone to it. He went out with his staff in his hand; he came back increased to two bands. He went out alone, with life before him, somewhat hopeful perhaps of happiness, and full of anticipations, fresh and eager to run the race of life; he came back an altered man, with life behind him, with what was to enjoy of it mainly enjoyed, and perhaps the cup did not now seem so sweet and intoxicating to him as he believed it would be before he put it to his lips. At any rate he had drunk it fully. He had lived a many-sided life. Of sensual enjoyments he might seem to have had his full,-and he was not averse to using the petty passions of others as the means of gratifying his own larger ones. In business he was always fortunate. And in those

higher things which men's hearts crave, though like to be foiled at first, he was at last victorious. And thus he had lived a busy, clever, various life-a keen, competitive, successful life; and with the fruits of it now reaped and gathered he would return to rest in the home of his fathersto live and then to die amid the scenes and traditions of his early years. It is sweet to dream in a foreign land of the place of one's childhood. Imagination gilds the sordid hovel of our birth. The meanness and the squalor, and the upbraidings and the bickerings, which we remember, are elevated into the struggles and the not unnatural discontent of honest but pressing poverty. We remember but the good; we for get the evil, or change it into good. And Jacob too was using the necromancer's art. The sunshine and shower of his early days he now remembered but as sunshine. All the good stood out bright before him, and all the evil had disappeared. His own evil too was forgotten; or if remembered, was excused and peremptorily forbidden to intrude itself. About to set foot on the old country once more, what was to be looked for but happiness, the happiness of twenty years before, now secured against break or vicissitude!

We almost fancy, when reading the narrative after this point, that it is unreal. It is so true to nature that it cannot be fact. One with keen psychological insight and great dramatic power has invented it. He wishes to teach us a profound lesson-that youthful treachery, that advantages gained by questionable ways, cannot profit or allow of a happy old age: and he has permitted himself to dramatize events-to bring Jacob's youth and age together-to put Esau, the defrauded brother, again upon the stage—to bring this wayward, wilful man, who will always attain his ends by his own, and not by God's a last decisive conflict with his Maker, that he may show him utterly worsted. It is a stroke of the highest art to bring Jacob to the Jordan surrounded by wives and sons, and laden with the earnings of his lifetime, and even there to bring down upon him the wrath of Esau and the opposition of Heaven. Or rather, it is above human art. The narrative is no piece of skilful composition. It is somehow real. It must be a dream-a moral dream-a dream of the con

ways,

into

science but a dream, confounding old and new together. In life there is not old and new, we carry all our past always with us; it needs but the occasion to awaken it and make it as much real as what transpired an hour ago. Jacob was now again on the border of his native land, after twenty years of exile. The thought of it called up other thoughts-his youthful treachery, his terrified flight, the angry form of his injured brother, -bitter, regretful, self-upbraiding thoughts; for years bring softening, and the harsh, antagonistic acts of youth, are grieved over and mournful. And to this was added the thought of what he had vowed at Bethel, and how ill his vow had been kept. And when the darkness came down upon him these memories of the past mingled in his heart with the relations of the present; and there rose before his conscience that wonderful dream in which the gigantic height of his wild brother again seemed menacing him and all that he had; and that Form that once stood above the ladder, in divine light, had become a dark shadow, with which he must wrestle for his life.

We have suggested that the events had no outer reality, but were a dream, a projection of the conscience; not of course seriously, but as the best way of expressing our view of their profound meaning, and particularly of the truth which they teach, which is the moral unity of life. Perhaps life has many unities. It may be an intellectual unity: much more may it be a unity of feeling; for perhaps a man's life is greatly shorter than it seems. Rarely any of us lives more than twenty or five-and-twenty years. By that time we have become all we shall ever be, and have felt all we shall ever feel. It is the moral unity that Scripture teaches. And this is a unity both all through, from end to end of life, and one all round, embracing both the external and the inward life.

Jacob had not calculated on finding the beginnings of his life so vividly unaltered. Twenty years had passed since he did the evil; surely the evil must have worked itself out of things long ere now. But it had not. It stood now before him just as it stood when he fled from it twenty years before; only more formidable, grown in bulk and terror, with greater power to do him hurt, in proportion as he was now more susceptible

of hurt. Then it was Esau seeking Jacob's life; now it is Esau with four hundred men, seeking not Jacob's life merely, but all those lives into which his own had been partitioned, and every one of which he feels to be his own, and would give his own many times for it. The time and space get pressed out of life, and the great turning-points come close together. It seems, after all, even with its bewildering complexity, almost a simple thing life; one or two large acts, hardly more than a single great decision, go to make it up. In boyhood, perhaps, the sketch is drawn in simple lines, though all the after years be employed in filling up and minutely colouring. But the character of the picture is in the primary sketch. Not only were the outward circumstances of his early days repeated again to Jacob, but the very feelings were renewed. It is said that he was (( greatly afraid and distressed." It was the same feeling under which he had fled twenty years before, and which he remembers his life long as the day of his distress. Our evil finds us out. Hindered by opposing circumstances, counter-worked by happy influences, retarded by distance, delayed by time, it is an influence that works its way towards a man, moving on after him unseen through a life-time, till it finds him. In some way or other it meets him, and he recognises it. He and it parted company in boyhood, in youth, a lifetime ago, and he thought it neutralized, buried and forgotten; but it yet lives, and will rise like a spectre beside him. It may not interfere with affection, with trade, with prosperity, with fortune; it will stand beside all these neutral, but its time will come. It will find him out either actually, in the usual recognised penalty, or in the fear that it is going to find him out; or else in bitter compunction and sorrow for the wrong he has done. The law is constitutional, deeper down than all remedial schemes. Christianity does not obviate this law; rather in some ways it aggravates its action. The conscience that is tender will suffer most acutely from this law. What sorrow was like to Paul's, when he remembered how he had persecuted the Church? God had mercy on him, because he did it ignorantly; but God's mercy could not hinder the persecutor's sin finding him. Mercy itself is unable to deal with this fundamental law. It cannot administer relief to