THE CONSCIOUS MISERY OF INFIDELITY.
An eminent artist, who was an avowed unbeliever, was employed by a gentleman living in the country to paint the portraits of his family. While he was employed in executing his commission, he was an inmate of the family of his employer. That family (we knew it well) was a beautiful specimen of Christian order, culture, and affection. It was a pious home, on which God had liberally shed the blessings of his providence, and they were consecrated and refined by the influences of his grace. Christianity never looks more beautiful than when it is seen in the virtues and the joys of a house whose sphere is all governed and animated by its influence. It was a scene to touch the susceptible heart of the artist. It did affect him profoundly. He saw there a happiness which he had never seen before—an oasis which blooms not in the dreary wilderness of skepticism. Before leaving, he said to his employer, "Sir, I would cheerfully give away all the fame and riches of this world, if I could have your faith!" An American professor, while pursuing his studies in Germany, was in habits of somewhat intimate intercourse with a renowned scholar, who was a Pantheist. The latter once said to him, "I would give the world, if I had it, to be able to say thou to my God as you do to yours." Yes, the infidel is sometimes conscious of his own misery, especially when it is brought into bold contrast with the cheerfulness and serenity of true and living Christianity. He then has a vivid sense of the dismal present and yet more dreadful future, which is the portion of that man who lives "without God in the world." “Without God in the world!” Never was the miserable condition of an unbelieving soul so powerfully painted in so few words. What a dreary chaos must be a world without God! Beginning in chance, existing without control or direction, and ending in—nothing. What must be the condition of a soul which feels itself drifting blindly along in such a godless world, through unknown space and duration! No wonder if such a soul, when it comes in contact with a calm, thoughtful, intelligent, happy believer, should be struck with the hideous contrast of the rayless and hopeless gloom within and around itself.—Sel.