So it is. So strong are our tendencies to one tone, that the Christian, in setting to his worldly desires the bounds which his religion exacts, feels to be exercising a self-denial--yielding the temporal to the eternal. He scarce seems to himself to be acting the part of true worldly wisdom. In reading the life of Dr. Payson, it is obviously manifest, that his deeply spiritual views were not inwrought harmoniously into his life's web, as would have been, if he had carried along with him a whole community. The materialism of this age must pass away, as has passed the quixotism of the crusades. Each has but expressed a stage in the progress of thought; and neither measures the mature life of the soul. It is not so certain to sight, what will be next grasped by this reaching onward to the things before; whether a better reconcilement of the life that now is with that which is to come, or whether a vaporing, misty sentimentalism is to be the spirit of the next age. There are not wanting indications, that the materialism of this age is to be followed by a dreamy spiritualism, raising men above the observance of vulgar duties, but not above the practice of the grossest vices. It is not uncharitable to mark such tendencies, where we see canonized Rousseau, the very embodiment of sensuality, egotism, and misanthropy; and progress _so_ taught to be the law of _individual_ man, that, whether going to commit his crimes at the brothel, or to expiate them on the gallows, his tendencies are still and forever upward. We need better evidence than sight can afford, to say,-- "O no! a thousand cheerful omens give Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh: He who has tamed the elements, shall not live The slave of his own passions; he whose eye Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, And in the abyss of brightness dares to span The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high, In God's magnificent works his will shall scan; And love and peace shall make their paradise with man." *Bryant Conclusion. The matter of the preceding thoughts may be thus summed up.