arranged that these unhappy men can not understand or value the love which perhaps is still tendered them, but must infallibly lose it again through their own folly. To the things of highest value in human existence, the nearness of God, an inward trust in the good ending of a brave life, and that love and fidelity which can not exist without reciprocal esteem,--to these the evil man never attains. The other things let him enjoy in uneasiness and in the continual fear of the envy and hate of thousands (if that can be called “enjoyment”), and do not begrudge him a happiness that, for much the greater part, exists only in the mistaken idea that others have of it. “_Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa_,”--speak not of them, but look, and pass them by. As far as concerns our present life and nature, what is necessary (and therefore conceivable) as a reason for our faith, is only this: that without faith (that is, a trust in the transcendental, in what we can not grasp with the senses), we can not carry out the purpose of life in its entirety, nor can we lift ourselves to that plane which, _with_ this faith, lies in our power of attainment and therefore becomes our task; that, further, for the attainment of this plane we need a power of love which is stronger than that which rests on human affections, and which is also very likely the element that creates life and sustains it and that possesses the power to overcome death; and that finally neither this faith nor this love would endure in the face of the enormous obstacles which oppose them on every hand in our earthly existence, if it were not for the glad hope that “there remaineth a rest to the people of God.” IV The most positive fact we really know as to an existence after death is the resurrection of Christ. This is evidence not only historically vouched for (better, indeed, than most so-called “historical facts” of equal antiquity), but also a necessary postulate from a philosophical and ethical point of view, unless the whole history of the world for two thousand years past is to rest upon a delusion, or even, one may say, upon an intentional falsehood. The resurrection is, and will remain, therefore, the foundation both of all true Christianity and of all transcendental hope. Judging by this resurrection of Jesus, the future life would seem to be somewhat similar to our present existence, and death accordingly an event of much less importance and, one might properly say, much more a matter of indifference than we usually assume it to be. At any rate, the future life will be an evolution; neither an everlasting rest in the literal sense, nor everlasting enjoyment. The latter would not be noble enough, and the former appears to us as beautiful only in moments of weariness and not when we are endued with new vigor.