338 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XL 



Have you seen Pessimus, a Prose Poem in Paradox, from 

 Oxford, and Sketch from Cambridge by a Don who imagines 

 that mathematical men are safer not to talk shop than 

 classical. I know several men who see all nature in 

 symbols, and express themselves conformably whether in 

 Quintics or Quantics, Invariants or Congruents. I send you 

 the electric scheme. 



To HIS WIFE. 



22d June 1864. 



May the Lord preserve you from all evil, and cause all 

 the evil that assaults you to work out His own purposes, 

 that the life of Jesus may be made manifest in you, and 

 may you see the eternal weight of glory behind the momen- 

 tary lightness of affliction, and so get your eyes off things 

 seen and temporal, and be refreshed with the things eternal ! 

 Now love is an eternal thing, and love between father and 

 son or husband and wife is not temporal if it be the right 

 sort, for if the love of Christ and the Church be a reason for 

 loving one another, and if the one be taken as an image of 

 the other, then, if the mind of Christ be in us, it will pro- 

 duce this love as part of its complete nature, and it cannot 

 be that the love which is first made holy, as being a reflec- 

 tion of part of the glory of Christ, can be any way lessened 

 or taken away by a more complete transformation into the 

 image of the Lord. 



I have been back at 1 Cor. xiii. I think the descrip- 

 tion of charity or divine love is another loadstone for our 

 life to show us that this is one thing which is not in 

 parts, but perfect in its own nature, and so it shall never 

 be done away. It is nothing negative, but a well-defined, 

 living, almost acting picture of goodness ; that kind of it 

 which is human, but also divine. Eead along with it 1 

 John iv., from verse 7 to end; or, if you like, the whole 

 epistle of John and Mark xii. 28. 



To THE SAME. 



23d June 1864. 

 Think what God has determined to do to all those who 



