The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. | Page 6

likely to be correct, in any given instance, than our own. The injury done to the national cause by the persistent animadversion of well-intentioned men, who cannot conceive that their judgments may perchance be incorrect, is scarcely less, than the openly hostile invective of the friends of the South. The intelligent citizens of the North, especially those who occupy prominent positions as teachers and instructors of the people through the press, the pulpit, and other avenues, should ever be mindful that the political liberty which they possess of free thought and free speech, has imposed upon them the moral duty of using this wisely for the welfare of humanity, and that they cannot be faithless to this obligation without injuring their fellow men and incurring a heavy moral guilt.

THE BROTHERS.
AN ALLEGORY.
DEDICATION, TO ONE WHO WILL UNDERSTAND IT:
'I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely, us they turn from praise I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith; I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose, I shall but love thee dearer after death.'
The Creator still loved and guarded the earth, although its children had departed from their early obedience. In evidence of His care, He sent, from time to time, gifted spirits among men to aid them in developing and elevating the souls so fallen from their primal innocence. These spirits He clad in sensuous bodies, that they might be prepared to enter the far country of Human Life. Earth was rapidly falling under the merciless rule of a hopeless and crushing materialism, when He determined upon sending among men, Anselm, the saint; Angelo, the tone artist; Zophiel, the poet; and Jemschid, the painter. The spirits murmured not, although they knew they were to relinquish their heaven life for that torment of perpetual struggle which the forbidden knowledge of Good and Evil has entailed upon all incarcerated in a human form.
_For self-abnegation is the law of heaven!_
* * * * *
'Brothers,' said the merciful Father, 'go, and sin not, for of all things that pass among men must a strict account be rendered. For are not their evil deeds written upon the eternally living memory of a just God? Evil lurks in the land of your exile; it may find its way into your own hearts, for you are to become wholly human, and to lose for a time the memory of your home in heaven. But even in that far country you will find the Book of Life, which I have given for the guidance and consolation of the fallen. For it is known even there that 'God is Love!''
* * * * *
Then the journey of the Heaven Brothers began through the blinding clouds and trailing mists of chaos, in whose palpable gloom all memories are obliterated. Naked, trembling, and human, they arrived upon the shifting sands of the world of Time and Death.
A vague, shadowy sense, like a forgotten dream which we struggle vainly to recall, often flitted through their clay-clogged souls, of a strangely glorious life in some higher sphere; but all attempts to give definite form to such bewildering visions ended but in fantastic reveries of mystic possibilities or dim yearnings of unseen glories. They found the Book of Life, but they remembered not that the Father had told them the Word was His.
For the thread of Identity, on which are strung the pearls of Memory, in the passage through chaos had snapped in twain!
* * * * *
Like the silver light through the storm clouds flitting over the fair face of the moon, gleam the antenatal splendors through the gloom of the earth life.
As Anselm wonderingly turned the pages of the Book of Life, strange memories awoke within him. So inextricably were the dreams of his past woven with the burning visions of the Prophets, that the darkness of Revelation, like the heaven vault at midnight, was illumined by the light of distant worlds; his own vague reminiscences supplying the inner sense of the inspired but mystic leaves. What wonder that he loved the Book, when in its descriptions of the life to come, he felt the history of the life already _past_; and through its sternest threatenings, like the rainbow girdling storm clouds, shone the promise of a blessed future!
He spent the hours of exile in a constant effort to commune with the Father; in humble prayer and supplication for strength to resist the power of sin. For he feared the Evil which lurked in the land. He examined the springs of his own actions, analyzed his motives, and tortured himself lest any of the evils denounced in