90 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



to Cadboll. Typhus is still raging, I hear, in that part 

 of the country. My own dearest lassie, why am I so 

 much more anxious on your account than on my own ? 

 But it is always thus when the heart takes a firm grasp 

 of its object. Man in his colder moods, when the 

 affections lie asleep, is a vile selfish animal; his very 

 virtues are virtues so exclusively on his own behalf that 

 they are well-nigh as hateful as his vices. But love, 

 my dearest, is the fulfilling of the law : it draws us out 

 of our crust of self, and we are made to know through 

 it what it is to love our neighbour not merely as well 

 but better than ourselves. We err grievously in those 

 analogies by which we attempt to eke out our knowledge 

 of the laws of God through an acquaintance with the 

 laws of man and quite as grievously and in the same 

 way, when we strive to become wise by extinguishing 

 our passions. The requirements of the statute book are 

 addressed to the merely rational part of our nature ; and 

 could one abstract the reason of man from the complex 

 whole of which he consists, that single part of him would 

 be quite sufficient for the fulfilment of them. But it is 

 not so with the law of Deity : it is a law which must be 

 written on the heart, and it addresses itself to our whole 

 nature; or, to state the thing more clearly, it is not more 

 a law promulgated for man's obedience than a revelation 

 of his primitive constitution ; and through grace this 

 constitution must be in some degree restored ere the 

 law, which is as it were a transcript of it, can be at all 

 efficient in forming his conduct. . We are mutually 

 pledged, my Lydia, and the law of God commands us to 

 love one another better than we love all human kind be- 

 sides, than parents, relatives, or friends ; and how does 

 the affection we bear to each other conform to this ? 

 Why, it is the very injunction embodied. And would it 



