214 THE JOURNEYMAN, 



they are surely lost. But, dear William, Christianity is 

 not the cunningly-devised fable I once thought it. There 

 is a Saviour, and he who .believes upon Him with that 

 true, earnest belief which conquereth evil, shall, for the 

 sake of the sufferings of that Saviour, have his sins for- 

 given him, and for the sake of His righteousness be re- 

 warded. I once thought this an absurd doctrine ; now, 

 though I have more experience of men and things than I 

 ever had before, and though my reason has strengthened, 

 and is, as I hope, still strengthening, I can regard it as a 

 wonderful display of the wisdom of God. 



' Many are the reflections which an opening and a 

 closing year suggest ! How impenetrably dark is that 

 cloud which hangs over the future ! How dubious and 

 uncertain do the half-remembered incidents of the past 

 appear ! And what, since we have so little left us to 

 bear witness of the past since we have nothing to 

 assure us that in this body the future shall be ours 

 what is that present time which we dare challenge as 

 our own ? Is it a day, an hour, a minute, a moment ? 

 No, it is simply a line of division, a thing which has 

 neither solidity nor extension, breadth nor thickness. 

 And is this nonentity all we can call our own ? Cowley, 

 in his essay on the danger of procrastination, gives a 

 translation of an epigram of Martial, which, as it falls in 

 with my present train of thought, and is, of itself, very 

 ingenious, I shall here insert. By-the-by, I recommend 

 Cowley to you as an excellent and shrewd fellow, who, 

 if you court his company and conversation, will, I am 

 sure, give you much pleasure, and perhaps some instruc- 

 tion. He is a true poet, though of a rare school. But 

 the epigram : 



" To-morrow you will live, you always cry ; 

 In what far country does this morrow lie ? 



