sss';,' ', < A a:* •^•s%;;;;;;. V,., ii ;;:'"'=■ ■• m ■'$;:^t:;vc>^>''' ■>-' < |k|j0lton fcilI\|ibrHrg. Presented to The Cornell University, 1870, BY G o 1. D w I N Smith, M . A . O x o n , Regius Profeffor of Hiftory in tiie Univerfity of Oxford. The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031669306 ASPIEATIONS. ASPIRATIONS THE INNER, THE SPIRITUAL LIFE, AIMING TO B.ECONCTLE EELIGION, LITEEATTJEE, SCIENCE, AET, FAITH, AND HOPE, AND LOYE, AND IMMORTALITY. HENRY M'CORMAC, M.D. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND ROBERTS. 1860. PREFACE. Some twenty years since, in a work on the philosophy of our common nature,^ I essayed to set forth the range of our facul- ties, their relations human and divine, and now, with, I trust, augmented insight, increased experience, and unabated hope, resume the task. This is not a sectarian book. It is simply the inculcation of spiritual truth, a spiritual religion and a spiritual God, as- pirations^ from the inner life, the life we do not see, but which, not the less, resumes our experience here, and, in a degree, the experience which is to come. For the earthly is in correspon- dence with the celestial life, and the spiritual truths of the present are also true for ever. There is not a principle, a fact, in our moral nature, which is not in strictest subservience to interests that cannot die. For the better intelligence, in all their simplicity and all their grandeur, of God's adorable laws, their beauty, their holiness, their truth, would approve religion's mighty unity and in- finitely benefit our kind. I would develop the great ideas of faith, and hope, and love, and immortality. I would plead for humanity, the elevation ' The Philosophy of Himmn Naime. Lond. 1837. ^ 'Aya;r»j, ^ufitZt ilprivvii ftaK^o^vf/Jx; ^^ntfTOTnSi aya^aiiruvij) 'jrtms, 'V^Cf^OT'/,?y iyK^ccriix. PEEFACE. of the masses, the integration in life and action of the heaven- imparted immunities of our kind. And thus would I realise the mighty spiritual freehold and thrice divine reality, that through aspiration and effort, not otherwise, rectitude is achieved, in hrief the power of being and doing good, for the sake of good- ness and truth alone. I would urge unity of faith, the amalgamation of creeds, on the basis of God's truth and love, and raise or strive to raise, each weary anxious heart straight to highest heaven. I would unite the beautiful, the elevated, the good, the pure, reconcile religion, literature, science, art, nay every precious and excellent thing, too much estranged, with religious trust and religious truth. For there is not a folly, a forfeit, or a crime, which has not its origin in ignorance or neglect of the great laws which regulate our human nature, and more especially, deficient culture of the intelligence and of the spiritual affec- tions, inner jewel and cornerstone of the angelic world where souls find rest for ever. Love it is, not fear, the end not merely the means, accurate discernment and pervasive enlightenment, hope not despair, which, heaven's very essence, exclude alike inenace, and arrogance, and gloom. Since the spiritual kingdom, and truth, and purity, with all gladness, are indeed within, and the divine is never far.i For there is hut one God, as there is but one desert, one obedience, one love, divinest principles, great with glorious augury to man. And each celestial affection ap- proaches us to the divine, and conjoined with science, also divine, opens a path to the stars. PBEFACE. In other respects, the physician is brought so in contact with the more solemn instants of life and death, when all dis- guise disappears, and the soul in all its littleness and all its great- ness stands revealed, that he perhaps of all men, has facilities for appreciating the value of influences coextensive with the world, deep as human feeling, pervasive as human thought. If I should be so fortunate as to realise, or help to realise for others, aspirations which comprise my heart, my soul, my con- victions, and my trust, if I might soothe but a single suffering, abate a single care, confirm truths which must endure for ever, it would prove a grateful return for hours of earnest inquiry and prolonged reflection. HENEY M'CORMAC, M.D. Belfast, Dec. 1859. CONTENTS. BOOK I. Moral Courage, The End and the Means, WaHng up the Affections, Love begets Love, . In the Name of God, Man and God, OneTmth, . Providence, . One Life, One Light, The Law of Duty, . Divine Intelligence and Love, The Price of Living, Love Divine, Eternal Progress, The La-w of Progress, The White Stone, . The Harps of God, . Divine Consolations, The Light and the Darkness, The Mighty Transition, Religion and Eeason, Putting down Evil, Nature a Hymn, The Great Dragon, A Divine Friend, Heart's Treasures, The Ladder of the Spirit. 1 2 3 4 6 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 SEC. The True Light, 28 Incorporate EeUgion, 29 Love an Inspiration, 30 The Real Eden, 31 Life Unending, 32 True Safety, 33 The Eoad to the Stars, 34 The Letter and the Spirit, 35 Glimpses of Paradise, 36 The Comforter, 37 Realisation of the Ideal, 38 Liherty, Necessity, . 39 Spiritual Progress, . 40 The Unseen Presence, 41 Love Conquers Death, 42 The Better Affections, 43 The Angel by our Side, 44 Subjection of Matter, 45 The Disinterested Affections 46 Faith in the Unseen, 47 What we Knd and what wf Bring, . 48 Creation our Care, . 49 The Good Physician, 60 Heart's Nurture, 51 Physical and Moral Culture 52 The Tree of Life, . 53 CONTENTS. BOOK II. SEC. SEC. Truest Innocence, . 54 The Incarnate Angel, 80 The Divine in Man, 55 Devotion and Belief, 81 Unreal Crimes, 56 Manners, 82 The Pure Affections, 57 Man and Brute, 83 Life through Death, 58 Training, 84 The Seen and the Unseen, 59 Progressive Religion, 85 Cumulative Influences, 60 The Christian Ideal, 86 The Eden of Life, . ' 61 Price of Liherty, 87 Man, as Man, 62 Desert, 88 Earth's Salt, 63 A Di"\Tne Environment, 89 The Heavenly Light, 64 The Current of Existence, . 90 Man's Hand, 65 Working with God, 91 Undine, 66 Providence, . 92 Tolerance, . 67 Dignity of Human Nature, . 93 True Nohility, 68 Youth Eternal, 94 Divinity of Love, 69 Divinity of Beneficence, 95 Real Courtesy, 70 To Seem and to Be, 96 The Whole Man, 71 Disinterested Affection, 97 Order Divine, 72 Church of the Future, 98 The Shagreen Skin, 73 The Bridge, . 99 Ahsence of the Divine, 74 Spiritual Influences, 100 Asceticism, 75 The Charities of Heaven, 101 True Nohihty, 76 Great Thinkers, 102 Force and Tenderness, 77 The Curate of Meudon, 103 Seed of Heaven, 78 The Divine Kingdom, 104 Unity of IteHgious Truth, 79 BOOK III. Training Souls for God, 105 One Providence, One Inspira- tion, . . .106 Eeligious Truth, 107 The Spirit of the Universe, . 108 Moral Death, 109 Living Day by Day, 110 A Just Appreciation, . Ill True Precision, . 112 The Seraph Within, 113 The Soul in the Voice, . 114 The Tree of Life, . 115 CONTENTS. xi SEC. SEC. A NoWe Book, U6 The Soul's Permanence, 138 Looking Heavenward, 117 Faith, of Heaven, . 139 Effort, 118 The Inner Life, 140 Shadows, 119 Loftiest Aims, 141 Life no Dream, 120 Reciprocal Development, 142 The Faithful Dead, 121 Force of Character, 143 To Know, to Be, and to Do, 122 Genius, Divine, 144 A Divine Ideal, 123 The Corrective of EvH, 145 Impulse and Principle, 124 Love Casts out Fear, 146 "Woman's Grace, 125 The Intent and the Act, 147 Moral Conquest, . 126 Death a Symhol, 148 A Soul, 127 Testimony of Christianity, 149 A_ Confession. . 128 The Mighty Reversion, 150 Kepler, . 129 A Divine Initiation, 151 The Body, . . 130 Unity with God, 152 The Divine Everywhere, . 131 The Process of Assent, 153 Celestial Law, . 132 Harmony of Divine Truth, 154 Soul-Oultore, . 133 The Safe Road, 155 Duties, Ours, . 134 True Affection UnselfiBh, 166 To Confer Happiness, . 135 Compassions, Diviae, 157 Eaith and Works, . . 136 Children of God, . . 158 Testimony of the Plants, . 137 The Business of Age, . 159 BOOI L IV. The Inner Voice, . 160 Introspection, 173 The Veiled Life, . 161 Divine Adjustments, . 174 Action and Eeaction, . 162 Unity, with the Divine, . 175 Evil of Eear, 163 Partiuga, . 176 Insistence of Purpose, . 164 The Highest Wisdom, . 177 The Divine Want, . . 165 Sin and Suffering, , . 178 Heaven at our Doors, . 166 Contending with EvU, . 179 The Paradise of Childhood, . 167 Physical Neglect, . 180 Divine Unities, . 168 Needfulness of the Affection. , 181 Man and God, 169 Seeds of Holiness, . . 182 Medisance, . . 170 Fellowship with God, ; 183 Association of Ideas, . 171 Spiritual Treasures, . 184 Aspiration, . 172 A True Faith, . . 185 CONTENTS. SEC. Our Keal Birth-place, . 186 True Science, Divine, . 187 Conscience, . 188 The Great EeaHties, 189 Looking Inward, . . 190 Earth a Paradise, . 191 Goldsmith, . . 192 Art, Divine, . . .193 The Roman and the Greek, . 194 The Revelation of Poesy, . 195 Uhland's Dream, . .196 The Mountain Side, . 197 A Twofold Life, . . 198 Esoteric, Exoteric, . 199 Materialism, . • 200 Music Culture, . . 201 A Divine Transfiguration, . 202 Life's Healing, . • 203 The Stars of Spiritual Truth, 204- Freedom ia Obedience, 205 Heart's Culture, . 206 Angelic Coromunion, The Purpose of Nature, Man and Brute, Speculation, The Inner Power, . The Magical in Nature, Evolution of the Divine, Seeds of Paradise, Evil, to be Overcome, The Angel on Guard, Prayer and Praise, . Effort and Development, The Object and the Pursuit, Progression, The Morning Stars, The Spirit in the Flesh, Nil Desperandum, . Our Very Best, The Affections, Faith and Fact, The Formula and the Truth, Divine Consideration, Perfect Love, Culture and Self-Culture, Heart's Influence, BOOK V. 207 Confiding in the Divine, 232 . 208 Philosophy and Faith, 233 209 Revelation of the Beautiful, 234 . 210 Genius, 235 . 211 Poetry, 236 . 212 Spiritual Safety, 237 213 The Pitcher of Tears, 238 214 Spiritual Reclamation, 239 215 Providence, of Heaven, 240 . 216 The Queen of Nature, 241 . 217 The Lower Animals, 242 218 Palaces, Divine, 243 219 The Voices of the Telegraph, 244 . 220 Transfiguration of Love, 245 , 221 The Heaven ia our Path, 246 . 222 True Reform, 247 . 223 Tumiug to God, 248 . 224 Genesis of Souls, 249 . 225 A Mind Diseased, 250 226 To-Pan, 2.^1 , 227 Swift, 252 . 228 The Soul's Healing, 253 . 229 Progressive Purity, . 254 230 He Liveth Best who Loveth . 231 Best, . 255 CONTENTS. xiii BOOK VI. SEC. SEC. AngeKo Lineaments, 256 Aspiration and Realisation, 279 Sympatliy, Diviae, . 257 Flowers of Paradise, . 280 Freedom through Genius, . 258 Keepers of the Gates, . 281 The World's Loveliness, 259 Associate Angels, . 282 The Grave, no Eesting-Place 260 A Real Faith, . 283 A Charter of Freedom, 261 Spiritual Influence, . 284 No Concession to Evil, 262 Divine Efiicacy, . 285 No Ontology, 263 Heavenly Earnest, . 286 A Nation's Greatness, 264 Road to Paradise, . 287 Universal Inspiration, 265 Truth, Trust, Love, . 288 The Petrel of the Deep, 266 Faith and Reason, 289 The Pure Affections, 267 Masculine Development, . 290 Circumstances, 268 Progressive Opinion, . 291 Truthful Intuitions, 269 Introspection, . 292 The Evil and the Good Seed, 270 No Partial Culture, . 293 Safety for All, 271 Unity of Nations, . 294 Self-Eespect, 272 Mental Soundness, . 295 The Religion of the Soul, . 273 Love a Faculty, . 296 The Inner Mansions, 274 Utterances of Literat ure, 297 True Greatness, 275 The Angel in Humai lity, . 298 The Virtues of no Sex, 276 Divine Truthfulness, . 299 A Just Asceticism, . 277 The Higher Life, . . 300 The Carriage of our Souls, . 278 BOOK VII. Self-Sacrifioe, 301 Human Dwellings, . . 310 The Nirva,Tia, 302 Lost is Lost, . 311 A Nation's Hope, 303 Municipalities, . . 312 The World a Paradise, 304 The Holiest Air, . 313 Conversion, 305 A Wise Ignorance, . . 314 Human Nature, 306 A Golden Thought, . . 315 Purpose, 307 The Exhihition, . 316 Swedenhorg, 308 Dogmatic Theology, . 317 Love and Fear, 309 Disease and Decay, . 318 CONTENTS. SEC. The Insane, . 319 The Marseillaise, . 320 Fear, a Blight, 321 The Navigators of Old, . 322 Money, . . .323 Guardianship of Souls, . 324 Filiation of Crime, . 325 The Visible World, . . 326 Life's Mission, . . 327 Pious Frauds, . 328 Psychology, . • 329 Purification through Love, . 330 Growing Old, . . 331 Sincerity a Test, . . 332 A Mighty Aim, . 333 Conscience, . . . 334 The Price of Progress, . 335 Saving Angels, . . 336 Eeal Growth, Grotius, A Progressive Light, Death, Life, . Constancy, Art's Eealities, A Progressive Faith, Harmony of Existence, The EeUgion of the Soul, Mental Science, . . The Oppressor and the Op- Life a Eeligion, Spiritual Eenewal, . A True Ideal. The Angel of Death, Hidden Influences, A Discourse with God, SEC. 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 BOOK VIII. San Januarius, . 354 The Soul's Bravery, 370 Human Victims, . 355 Living for God, 371 Ko Siu, no Soil, . 356 The Eeal and the Ideal, 372 Eehgious Perseoutioi 1, . 357 Up and Doing, 373 Protestantism, . 358 Pearls and Diamonds, 374 Children, . . 359 A Night at Sea, 375 Truthfulness, . 360 Philosophy and Eeligion, 376 Death, . 361 Living for Ever, 377 Eenunciation, . 362 Mother and Cluld, . 378 Eoads to Excellence, . 363 Warring with Despair, 379 Art, . 364 Progressive Influences, 380 Divine Energy, . 365 Knowledge and Faith, 381 The Best of Men, . 366 Eemorse and Superstition, 382 House of Truth, . 367 Faith and Love, 383 Broad Principles, 368 The Soul's Liberation, 384 Needful Effort, . 369 The Hand, . 385 CONTENTS. XV SEC. SEC. Necessity and Free-Wm, . 386 Spiritual Life, 396 Truth never Trite, . . 387 Love of Order and of Truth, 397 The Intent of Death, . 388 Men of Progress, 398 True Nohility, . 389 Conception of the Divine, 399 A Ravelled Skein, . . 390 The Better Life, 400 Courage at Heait, . . 391 Excellence of no Sex, 401 Poverty of Soul, . 392 The Divine Treasury, 402 The Life Within, . 393 The Past at our Door, 403 Modem Speculation, . 394 The Crown, 404 Creative Power of L ove and Art, . 395 BOOK IX. Speculation, . . 406 Pictures, 429 Out-ward Ohjects, . 406 Music's Efficacy, 430 The Promised Shore . 407 English Characteristics, 431 Ideas never Die, . 408 Eeceptivity of Man's Soul, 432 To he Greatly Good, . 409 Culture, 433 A Great Soul, . 410 Amalgamation of Creeds, 434 To Know God, . 411 EeUgious Essentials, 435 Life's Treasures, . 412 The Divine in Art, . 436 Tom Away, 413 Genius, 437 Humanity, One, . 414 Heart's Co-operation, 438 Youth, Iimocence, . 41S Glorious Trilogies, 439 Music, Divine, . 416 The Higher Life, . *40 A Thought of God, . 417 Our Outer Existence, 441 Speculative Ahility, . 418 Life, Spiritual, 442 The Angels hy our i Side, . 419 The WOl of God, . 443 The Highest Beauty , . 420 Spiritual Constancy, 444 Divine Progress, . 421 Tmst and Truth, . 445 Spiritual Parentage, . 422 Solidarity of Man, . 446 Fixity of Opinion, . 423 Ecstasies, 447 True Causation, . 424 One Reason, 448 The Eoad to GreatB ess, . 425 Sculptured Excellence, 449 Nature, Man, God, . 426 The Soul's Impress, . 450 Taking the Veil, . 427 Charlotte Bronte, . 451 Unseen Enemies, . 428 The Paradise Within, . 452 CONTENTS. BOOK S. SEC. Nature's Rest, . .453 One Faith, One God, 454 The Highest Trast, . . 455 Life, a Sacred Experience, . 456 Overcoming Evil with Good, 457 The Inner Kingdom, . 458 Charlotte Montefiore, . 459 Antoninus, Epictetus, 460 Spiritual Unity, . . 461 SheUey, Eousseau, . . 462 Elevation of the Masses, . 463 Standing Armies, . 404 A Prayer, . . . 465 Eternity, . . .466 Key to Heaven, . 467 Self-Esteem, . 468 A True Eeveahng, . . 469 The Great Eeality, . . 470 The Secure Haven, . . 471 Spindrift of Time, . . 472 Socrates, . . . 473 Jean Paul, . . . 474 The True Paradise, . . 475 Medisauce, . . .476 SEC. A Thanksgiving, . . 477 Eeligion, Faith, Philosophy, 478 Doing Aright, . 479 A Healthy Soul, . 480 Mental Affluence, . .481 Eeligion, Past and to Come, 482 True Genius, . . 483 Fear, not Eeligion, . .484 Man's Capacity, . . 485 Suffering Terminable, . 486 Ahelard, . . 487 The Pure shaU See God, . 488 A False Security, . . 489 Leopardi, . . . 490 The Dead Children, . 491 God's Provident Love, . 492 Godwin, Eoland, Fuller, . 493 Culture's Object, . . 494 Augustin, Calvin, . 495 Woman's Wrongs, . . 496 Celestial Armies, . .497 Insanity, Crime, . 498 The Test of Existence, 499 Law, Divine, . . 500 ASPIEATIONS THE INNER, THE SPIEITUAL LIFE. BOOK I. Fkom such a cHaos as this, the mind turns anxioiisly to a future which must assuredly arrive. Incende quod adorasti, adora quod incendisti. Many a revolution, social and political, must first pass over the Euro- pean world. In religion, in ethics, in mental science, men's minds must long continue to oscillate, as they do now, hetween the most ah- ject superstitions, the wildest infidelities, and find scanty resting-place in the intervals. So it must he until some one speaMag with authority shall rouse them once more, hy collecting all that is true in modem philosophy, and incorporating it with the one leading principle of man's relation to God, as creature to Creator, subject to sovereign, responsihle agent to his master, weak and imperfect nature to him who can purify and exalt it. But the hour is not yet come nor the man. Edinburgh Seview. "We have spoken from a profound conviction that there is a truth as lofty as ever council decreed, an image of Christianity as holy as ever won the admiration of saint or martyr, the moral and spiritual cha- racter of religion itself. Id. ASPIEATIONS. 1. MOBAL COWARDICE. Moral cowardice is the source of every mean and pitiful thing, renders a man afraid of duty, afraid of death, so that when the moment for action arrives, he equivocates, intreats, fears.' Moral courage is religion in action, moral cowardice is religion in defeat. Oh brother, exclaims a strenuous thinker, never strike sail to a fear, come greatly into port or sail with God the seas. Without courage, the courage of the heart, no one can be truly great. This is a courage that does not depend on thews or sinews, but on the soul. It animated the patriots and martyrs of old, as it animates the patriots and martyrs of to-day. Moral courage makes the man, the absence of it the knave, the driveller, and the fool. It is to the age's dishonour that its intellectual tendencies are marked with the characters of fear.^ Yet courage must be guided by purity and truth, since divested of these, it is shorn of half its strength. 2. THE END AND THE MEANS. No end is secure without well-digested means. Now, the great end is present and eternal progress, the means ' Tergiversatur, timet, plorat. Senecae Lnc. Ann. Bpist. ' Martineau, Frospectm Beview, Feb. 1846. 4 LOVE BEGETS LOVE. fBooK I. never-ceasing action, heaven-ward and God-ward. I would not, observes Kant, give one of Kepler's dis- coveries for a principality. What principality indeed, could equal the eternal principality which science realises in the empire of thought. No wisdom equals that which reveals man to himself, teaches him to regard social institutions, nay his whole life, as the possible means of unfolding and exalting the spirit within.^ Then let us cherish angelic thoughts, the fellow-workers whom some day we must let go that angels may come in.^ And thus shall we further the divine, thus realise the conception of that eternity whose nigh approach illumines life's close, as the rising sun illumines the glad expanses of the sea. 3. WAKING TTP THE AFFECTIONS. If only the thrice-precious affections could be re- produced at will, it would convert this life into heaven. More permanent if less intense satisfactions, however, are placed within control.'' Our happiness is consulted in the main,* while the actual subsistence of the better affections, assures us of that loftier destiny wherein they shall flourish and expand for ever. 4, LOVE BEGETS LOVE. The sentiment of love is realised by love. We cannot know God except by becoming the image of ' Charming, Spiritual Freedom. ^ Emerson, On Compensation. ^ Tucker's Light of Nature, Mildmay, Vol. II. p. 577. ' Ad prudentem giibematorem pertinet negligere aliqnem defectum bonitatis in parte, ut faciat augmentum tonitatis in toto. Aquinas, Contra Gent. Book I.] LOVE BEGETS LOVE. 5 God.' Indeed only in so far as man is thus, thinks thus^ can he give the reason of anything that God has made.^ Spiritual truth is apprehended by being spiri- tual.^ The flight from evil, says Plato, consists in resembling God, in becoming holy, just, and wise.* The mind, observes Channing, alone is free, which, instead of stopping at the material and making it a prison wall, passes to its author beyond, and finds in the radiant signatures of the infinite, helps to its own enlargement. At times we are as very angels, till things inferior steal in upon us and rob us of our better selves. In truth, we are of a spiritual nature, however much that nature may be dimmed, and the reality of virtue fills the heart with ineffable joy.'^ But the bondage of matter falls away one day, and the soul, rich in spiri- tual wealth, and coming to rely upon itself, proceeds heaven-ward, fit associate for angels indeed, all the sons and daughters of God.* "When gifts celestial descend upon the soul, then do we discern what it is to be of the divine image, and of the spiritual nature which never dies. ' Orr's Theism, Lond. 1857. " Swedeaborg, passim. ' Non posaumua loqui reote de numme diviao nisi simus iUustrati lumine ejus. lamblichus, De Myst. Cap. 18. Ille honorat Deum optim^ qui quantum fieri potest, facit mentem suam similem Deo. Sexti Empiriei Sentent. Opera, Lipsiae, 1718. * Theaeteins. * Hampden's Lectures on Moral Fhilosophy, Lect. III. ^ Animal, providum, sagax, multiplex, artium memor, plenum rationis et conellii quern vocamus hominem, praeclara quadam con- ditione generatum esse a supremo Deo. Cicero. MAN AND GOD. [Book I. 5. IN THE NAME OF GOD. In the name of the ever-compassionate and merciful God,"^ from whom all certainty and truth do spring.^ This indeed is an invocation which might well preface every serious thought and action of our lives. It would leave scant harbourage for evil, would not concentrate the sanctities of life on days, forms, shred of the beauty of holiness.^ It would not concede authority to inter- preters between conscience and the divine, erect tri- bunals that fail to recognise the spiritual equality and brotherhood of man, or suffer us to abnegate faith in the celestial obligations of justice, and truth, and love. For, thus, O God most merciful and com- passionate, should we not be merciful even as thou art merciful. 0. MAN AND GOD. It is with man in a degree as with God, though infinity separate them.'' For as the divine excellence shines through the material creation, the rising and setting sun, the flowing waters, the undulating sea, the spiritual radiance of the flowers, so is the coun- tenance transfigured by a well-disciplined temper, a ' Al-Koran, Sale. 2 Itaque plane video onmis scientiae certitudiaem et veritatem ab una ■yeri Dei cognitione pendere. Descartes, Lend. 1664. Med. V. 2 Dial, Boston, Oct. 1840. * Itur ad astra frugalitate, temperantia, fortitudine aliisque virtutibus. Dii non sunt fastidiosi, non invidi. Admittunt nos et porrigunt manum ascendeutibus. Imo Deus venit ad homines et in homines. Mens bona nulla est sine Deo. Senecae Epist. Book 10 PBOVIDENCE. heavenly will, and man, as Seneca tells us, becomes as a ministering angel, emulous indeed of heaven.^ 7. ONE TEUTH. As there is but one physics, one mathematics, in short one universal material lavsr,^ so there is but one universal moral law, one rule of love, in fine one esoteric truth, although there be many exoteric forms. Error in speculation, however, does not exclude intensity of devotion, precise action. The image, the relic, and the formula worshipper, may yet vie in veneration and love. Have I not seen the Moslim on his mat of prayer, as the perception of a higher power streamed in upon his consciousness, entreat heaven with intensest fervour beneath the cathedral of immensity. For love casts a halo not merely on a pure and upright faith, but even on partial errors and superstitions themselves. 8. PBOVIDENCE. There is a providence extending to the whole and also to the parts.^ It does not provide at one time and fail to provide at another, does not lavish favours on one nation or individual, to the prejudice or exclusion of other nations and individuals. It is a constant, not an interruptive providence. It is the best conceivable providence. It is the providence of God. ' Vir boiras non tantum Dei disoipulus et aemulator, sed etiam vera progenies est. Be Frovidentia. 2 Cumberland's Law of Nature, Tower's tr. Dutlin, 1750, § IX, Fro- ' Mimdus administrator pro-pidentia Deorum, iidemque consulunt rebus humanis neo solum universis, verum etiam singulis. Cicero. THE LAW OF DUTY. [Book 1. 9. ONE LIFE, ONE LIGHT. There is in truth, but one life, the life of the soul. The life here and the life hereafter, are not so much two lives as one life. The loves, hopes, aspirings which we cherish now, we shall cherish always. For con- sciousness is the life of man. The body with its won- drous mechanism, is but an accessory, the mould of the material. It might be likened to the parasitic cloud which clings to the mountain's brow. The mountain is as the permanent soul, the cloud is as the perishing frame. The present and the future indeed, are em- braced by one consciousness, except in so far as accru- ing knowledge and renewed affections, shall augment the old knowledge and the old loves. 10. THE LAW OF DUTY. The law of duty is the law of this and of the unseen life. Like the divine of which Seneca speaks, it meets one at every turn. Duty involves the moral law, the moral law involves duty, charity to our neighbour, purity of soul. Conscience, the inner light, is not in- deed innate, but the capacity of realising it is so. As objects appear to us under the form with which our sen- suous nature compels us to invest them, so ideas and emotions must seem and be, according to the mode in which our spiritual nature constrains us to accept them.i Thus, faith in God and in the unseen, is in relation with our moral consciousness, growing as it grows, ex- panding as it expands, in sympathy and unison together. ' Phenomenon, noumonon. Book I.] THE PRICE OF LIVING. 11. DIVINE INTELLIGENCE AND LOVE. Svreetest flowers, blossoms like diamond crovyns, rich, ■with the richest odours, fair beyond the imagination to conceive, adorn the wilderness. There, do we find the liquid crystal of the antelope's eye, the glittering hues of reptile, insect, and bird, the seraphic sunrise and sunset glow of the tropics, the rapt gaze of the Indian or African mother, as she fondles her sable offspring, lovely in her own eyes and in the eyes of all who re- spect the handiwork of God. Wherever we survey creation, in whatsoever direction we turn, there also do we discern intelligence and love, traces, as Cicero di- vinely expresses it, of one God, ruler and architect of the world.^ 12. THE PEICE OF LIVING. If we would live we must pay the price of living, pay it in its pains and its sufferings, as in its joys and its satisfactions.^ We have indeed realised a lofty proficiency, cheaply compassed, because cheap at any price, a glorious gain. Yet man too often values what he has not, and what he has he values not, though it comprise present, and the reversion of eternal life and felicity. A cloud, exclaims Fenelon, covers for a moment our feeble vision, but thy rays, O truth eternal, have pierced ' Pulchritudo mimdi, ordo rerum ooelestium, conversio solie, luaae, siderumque omnium, indicant satis aspectu ipso ea omnia non esse for- tuita — Cum autem neo mens, neo potestas hmnaua possit hoc efficere, Deus mras potest esse architectus et rector tanti operis et muneris. ' OtiSU irjorxa «{iymr«;. Epicteti Mnchiridion, Foulis. 10 ETEBNAT. PEOGEESS [Book I. this cloud.' In aiming at the divine, the philosopher of Stagira is indeed in unison with the Christian saint, in that the dignity of a being augments with his duties, and measures itself by the greatness of his task. 13. LOVE DIVINE. True love bears fruitage unto immortal life. To live in truth, is to exist in the purer aifections, without which existence would be valueless, a sorry void. It has been conceived that of beings spiritual, there were some that loved only, and some which only thought. Yet how could there be existence without this great, redeeming affection, existence without love. If, as the Christian apostle has said, we could but realise the love which the great spirit has shed upon our hearts, it would renew the world. For this is the real, the spiritual re- vival, which commends itself to our souls. And he that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.^ Love indeed, realises that which else is inconceivable to the heart of man. For faith is love, and God is love, love for the infinite hosts of sentient beings whose father, preserver, and creator he is. If in any wise we are to resemble him, it must also be in respect of this affection, which in veriest truth bears fruitage imto immortality. 14. ETEENAL PEOGEESS. As a mark, observes Epictetus, is not set up to be missed, so neither is evil the intent of providence in ' Je Tous avals done perdu de vue pour un peu de temps, un nuage avait couvert nos yeux pour un moment, mais vos rayons, verite etemelle ont perce ce nuage. De V Existence de Dieu. ^ 'O jCtsj dya-ruv ouK 'lyvej tov ©eav, oti o ©£of ayaT'/j XarU. Book I.] THE LAW OP PROOEESS. 11 the world. The divine purpose can never fail.^ The law of progress which is also the law of liberty, in- cludes all spiritual beings. To doubt it indeed, were to doubt the mercy of God. Duty urges progress in ourselves, its furtherance in others. It is a law which includes not only the intelligent and the good, but also the unintelligent and the bad, for they too must rise from the slough. The moral nature is so constituted as to render it impossible to remain in blindness and perversity for ever. Then peal it forth, there is pro- gress for all. The glad waters of the river of life shall irrigate every soul. As intelligence has been made to bear on the idiot, goodness to glow in the heart of the debased, so purity and truth, with all excellence, in virtue of the conditions of our being, shall some- time take possession of every consciousness for ever. 15. THE LAW OF PEOGEESS. The law of progress renders all men brothers, all women sisters. The heavenly mansions indeed, loom brighter, clearer, because nigher, to some than to others. The requirements of progress, in truth, are inexorable. Reason and religion are in strictest accordance in defin- ing them. For purity of soul is in perfect keeping with good sense, and no sense is too good for goodness. The heavenly soul is simply the best soul not only for the future, but for the subtle, shifting present, that decides on issues to come. In this life, as in the next, there are not two great classes merely, the elect and non- elect, but shades innumerable as engendered by con- 12 THE HAEPS OF GOD. [Book I. duct, position, character.' Although the most exalted devotion relate to high aims, religion comes also in contact and sympathy with the common springs of life and action. Soon or late, perfection must be approached by all. Our belief in God and in the spirit-life, alike involves this mighty consummation. We are associated on the onward path, a path which by a blessed neces- sity, each soul must traverse to the end. 16. THE WHITE STONE. I know one who as a child, sat with his sister read- ing the apocalyptic lines of John. To him that con- quereth I will give to eat of the manna that is hidden, I will give him a white stone. ^ Then his heart welled up with deep emotion, as he became conscious of the divine presence, and God's gentle kingdom, the surpas- sing value of desert, and of the better life to come. And he to whom that dream of beauty came, has not forgotten the hidden manna or the white stone, and yet hopes to compass them ere he die. 17. THE HAEPS OF GOD. Angels, to us invisible, are everywhere about us, hymning, as with harp and psaltery, the infinite per- fections, the adorable goodness, of God. Within us and around, divinest harmonies, indeed harps of God, are continually sounding for those who have ears to hear and to apprehend.^ Such are audible in the ' Martmeau, Miscellanies. Ty nxmTi iuKroi alirZ ipxyuv an rov fi,a,na. riv Ktn^uftitm, xxi iuiria Book I.] DIVINE CONSOLATIONS. nightly murmurs of the rushing stream, the ripple on the heach, the fitful winds, the countless laughter, as the poet with unsurpassahle beauty has worded it, of the ocean wave.^ They are heard in the hirds' song, the cries of the children in the spring, in fine in every joyous, heartfelt utterance of nature and of man. Some- times indeed, one hears air-horne symphonies, one knows not whence they come, as if trumping seraphs were hurrying hy. In the magical recesses of Africa and Asia, rife with glorious beauty, a ceaseless pealing hymn, rising and falling with glad diapason, issues from the animated world. One listens with a sort of ecstasy, by wild Irish or Scottish strands, or in some great American sea-bay, to the voices of carolling birds, sweeter far than any flute. In fine, the denizens of land and sea unite with man's great soul in jubilant utterances, in veriest truth the harps of God. 18. DIVINE CONSOLATIONS. In those wondrous fragments whose mysterious splendour overtops even eastern imagery, it is said with surpassing sweetness and truth, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be neither sorrow, nor sufiering, nor death any more.^ Such indeed is the aspiration of every believer in the compassionate mercies of God. In the hidden life, hidden from the eye of sense, but not from the ^ TloVTitiiv Tt xvfiacruv av^^t^fiot ytXxfffix. cvK 'iffrxi 'in. 14 THE LIGHT AND THE DAEKNESS. [Book I. spiritual eye, we have the unassailable assurance that a clearer insight will be afforded us, and that our long- ing hopes and fond desires shall not be frustrated for ever. 19. THE LIGHT AND THE DAEKNESS. That he who is himself bereft of spiritual insight, the inward revealing, shall fail to discern it in another, is unhappily too true. The light indeed shines in the darkness, but the darkness apprehends it not.' And thus has the letter come to trench upon the spirit. Yet of what avail is the letter without the spirit. It is of no avail at all. We may not play fast and loose with eternal verities, employing the counters termed words. The word is a breath, a pulse, the utterance of the moment, but truth is everlasting. As the bodily eye is needed to discern the sun's light, so is the spiri- tual eye to discern the light of the spirit, the truths of God. This, indeed, is the glad awakening in which not only man and angels, but the one great cause by whom the universe and conscience itself are called into being, rejoice.^ For God is its source. His is the true light which lights up the moral world, rescues man from darkness and from sin. His, is the wisdom which re- gulates, the power which produces, the providence which orders all things. ^ Kai TO Fertue Life, tr. Vol. ii. p. 14G. GLIMPSES OF PARADISE. [Book I. 35. THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. The very gospel of God, would that it were preached to all, is, that just deeds and pure aifections confer hap- piness, and that the good which we do, is its own great and enduring reward. The conviction that some written formula, only, can save, and that the unwritten formulas of holiness, and truth, and love, were they even those of an angel, are else of no avail, is one rife with misery and ill. More developed affections, a better cultivated reason, will indeed one day cease to tolerate the virtual exclusion of the wise and good, the errors and miscon- ceptions of teachers dead and gone, as well as lead to the universal adoption of the heaven-born formula here set out with. 3e. GLIMPSES OF PARADISE. Like Paul, we too are sometimes caught up, obtain- ing far-off glimpses of the sunny heavens and palaces of ecstasy, gilding, oftener than is thought, the poor man's lot, inspiring the poet's measures, the specula- tions of the philosopher, nay, even childhood's happy dreams. Like the saint of Tarsus, the Swedish seer visited, he assures us, the starry mansions, but never, since his final journey, has he returned to verify the tale, and his celestial arcana remain arcana indeed. For as Paul himself said, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor indeed hath man's heart conceived, what God designs for those who love him.^ A oTrS a.Xf/.05 ovk ttdi, Kat oZs oiiK sxovffz, Kut Wt x-a^lav avhurcou evx etvifiyi, aj nroif^aiTiv e &£os rot; aya^&iffiv ovtov. Book M LIBEETY, NECESSITY. 37. THE COMFOHTEE. The Holy Spirit,' the paraclete of the Greek Church, emphatically the Comforter, is, of all titles, most divine. For God, is in truth, our father, comforter, and friend, as will he felt and known, better and better, more and more, as men themselves increase in goodness, and holiness, and truth. 38. REALISATION OF THE IDEAL. Consciousness is king and lord of the human breast. Its elevation and purification, therefore, are above all things desirable. Now, by a law of the moral nature, the realisation of our ideal, calls for successive efibrts, fresh ideals. In virtue of this, the good man becomes better, the wise man wiser, the able man yet more able.^ But by another law, habit lays hold of us, we are stranded, perchance, on the shelves of formalism, carried round in the eddies of routine. The only issue, then, is to conquer fresh domains for the legitimate empire of habit, to compass yet other ideals, successes on successes for ever. 39. LIBERTY, NECESSITY. Each true obligation is divine. No honest effort, no virtuous impulse, ever yet fell through. For it is only by obedience that we overcome difficulties, realise the divine. Here, indeed, conformity breeds ability, non- conformity disability to conform. We are only at * Ta aytov ^rvtv/^ct, ' Animus hominis quidquid siM imperat ottinot. Puh. Syri. Sentent. 2i SPIRITUAL PEOGEESS. [Book I. liberty to do what is rights to work for, and with God. The controversy as to liberty and necessity, reminds one of Kant's antinomies. One can arrange it, either way, for or against, by dexterous shifting of the terms. We act according to our intellectual light, our habits, re- quirements, and sense of moral truth. Yet, the con- sciousness of intention, the compound nature of motive, the play of the feelings and affections, all combine to produce the sense, and, indeed, the reality, of liberty, as confined to the range of man's control. The author of the disquisition on matter and spirit, has urged the doctrine of necessity as founded on the nature of cause and effect.' To live within its dic- tates, he affirms, would be to live within the gates of heaven, to see God's finger in every event. The im- portant actions of our lives, the strong workings of our affections, are evidently determinable.^ Philosophical liberty, therefore, does not subsist, liberty does not re- quire it, and the liberty of indifference becomes ab- surd.3 But man's real field of empire is the soul. It is indeed his place. Here lies his only secure possession, true arena of moral effort and moral liberty, his victories and his defeats. All others, in comparison, flit and flit for ever away. 40. SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. Only by degrees can we ascend to heaven, though fain to reach it at a bound. For spiritual discernment, even with our best efforts, is of tardy growth. Yet, as mountain guides climb loftiest Alps, by steps secure ' Priestley. ^ Hartley, On Mm. ' Edwards, On the Will. Book I.] THE BETTER AFFECTIONS. 25 though slow, SO the daily footfall, if we only persist, shall conduct us to highest empyrean at last. 41. THE UNSEEN PEESENCE. Like heaven itself, spiritual existence is in our midst. It is here, it is there, it is everywhere. For God and the better life are the very, the real presence, a hierarchy of intelligence and love commensurate with all creation. It exists in every sun, it is present in every star, nay in those far-off nebulous masses whose lagging light consumes long ages ere it can arrive. 42. LOVE CONQUERS DEATH. Love conquers death, subdues it in truth for ever. Would only that each soul were filled, each breast were animated by it. For life, a life of sacrifice, subduing death in love, alone sufiices, alone can enable us, with the poet, to say. Thou art life's shadow, and as the tree Stands in the sun and shadows all heneath, So in the light of great eternity Life eminent creates the shade of death. The shadow passeth when the tree doth fall, But love shall reign for ever over all. The angelic, the spiritual affections know nor dread nor fear. They lend the soul supremacy over death, have done so and will do so, while heaven and earth endure. 43, THE BETTER AFFECTIONS. The Author of our best affections experiences them best. This must be so, for God is love. Here, and 28 THE DISINTEEESTED AFFECTIONS. [Book I. here only, is anthropomorphism conceivable, since in holiness and goodness, so far at least as it is possible for the creature to approach the Creator, man perfected and God are as one. 44. THE ANGEL BT OUE SIDE. How many pass through life without becoming even dimly conscious that angels house beside them, that in some devoted wife, fond child, or self-denying mother, a spirit ministers to all that is precious and excellent in man. For love abates all false, degrading distinctions, makes us, in truth, free of the hierarchy of heaven. 45. THE SUBJECTION OF MATTER. Matter obeys God as the body obeys the soul. Every human act, unless it become automatic, demands a distinct volition, Avhereas the divine impress suffices, apparently without further intervention. The lovely flowers bloom, richest perfumes flow, the lofty trees wave, the swift light speeds, with obedient spon- taneity, for ever. Matter, in all its phases, obeys with unfaltering accuracy the primal command. To the supreme will, it would seem an equal efibrt to float an atom as to poise a world. 46. THE DISINTEEESTED AFFECTIONS. The disinterested afi'ections yield loftiest evidence of infinite tenderness and love. And thus disinterested, through a provision most divine, are the afi'ections re- quired to prove. They are, indeed, jewels of price, the very fragrance and cynosure of heaven. Book I.] CREATION OUR CARE. 47. FAITH IN THE UNSEEN. That faith, the worship of spirit hy spirit, is indeed the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,^ is of all utterances most elevated, most true. Mightiest principles indeed are involved in the belief of the unseen. They are preached by all our affections, all our intelligence.^ And thus the inner life is fostered, vpith reverence, and hope, and love, raising us to some parity with the spiritual hosts, the mighty community of heaven. 48. WHAT WE riND, AND WHAT WE BEING. The perception of religious truth, as of all excellence, varies with the culture of the inner nature and the pre- scription of the age. It is not only what we find in religion, but also what we bring. Like refinement, re- ligion creates, because it discovers moral beauty. Spiri- tual poverty, indeed, seeks refuge in forms and ceremo- nies, whereas spiritual truth, with all the affections, must be seated in our heart of hearts, and in our soul of souls. 49. CREATION, OUR CABE. God commends the world to our care, and like a father rejoices in the happiness and perfection of his creatures.^ Models of divinest perfection subsist around. ^ "EffTi Se mirns i^vi^o/jLtvafv ifjrotfTuSii 'g^a.yit.avm, tk^yx"^ "^ (iXi^ofUvov. " Sazletfs Essay on Painting. ' Bester, geliebtester Vater, erwaichst nicht dem Schopfer desto mehr Veherrlichung aus seiner Schopfung, je vollkommener, je gliiok- liolier seine Gesclibpfe sind. Schleiermacher' s Lehen in Briefen, Band I. s.s. 66. 98. HEART'S NUETUEE. [Book I. What disinterestedness^ and^ so to speak, self-sacrifice, does creation not display. The affections incite us to imitate the divine, and, so far as may be, to render our conduct its very reflection and counterpart. 50. THE GOOD PHTSICIAN. The good physician is among the truest servants of a compassionate God. Acting up to his sacred mission, he relieves the suffering, comforts the perishing and the sorrow-laden, allays the pangs which often times it is humanity's lot to endure. Endless almost, are the benefits which accrue from the conscientious exercise of medical skill. The wise and good physician vindi- cates God's ways, and in countless particulars approves himself the preserver and benefactor of his kind. 51. HEAET'S NUETUEE. There are eyes, indeed, that beam of love, faces which nature charges with a meaning and a pathos, not be- longing to the single human soul that flutters beneath them, but speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations, just as a nation's language may be instinct with a poesy unfelt by the lips that utter it.^ For man cannot long abide among the dry bones of the intellect, but needs continual pasture in the feelings and affections. The affections, indeed, are as the red, red gold, they are rubies bright, they are pearls, they are divine. Once I saw a son, a good and gentle son, one that was good unto his father, as became a son. And the ' Adam Bede. Book I.] THE TREE OF LIFE. father held his son's hand, and kissed it, and again kissed it. Emotion exhaled from every feature. And he said, in tones that were calculated to move an angel's sympathies, my son, my son. I find it impossihle to convey in words, the impression which this scene from heaven made upon my heart, and which nothing shall efface for ever. 52. PHYSICAL AND MOEAL CULTURE. The moral loss ascribahle to physical mismanagement and neglect, is indeed enormous. One gazes with pain- ful interest on SchiUer immured in his little chamber at Wiemar. The ceiUng is low, the precincts are nar- row and confined, and consumption, from the respira- tion of an ill-renewed atmosphere, is imminent. Of consumption, in effect, this magnificent man, as Goethe well terms him, died in the very flower of his years. 53. THE TREE OF LIFE. Progressive development, with the appreciation of spiritual truth, is of moment, indeed. Unless a man be, as it were, born anew, he can hardly visit the celestial shores.' For how shall spiritual things he discerned, if spiritual discernment, itself, subsist not. Spiritual insight is but the soul's emancipation, the perception of the so nigh world of holiness, and faith, and truth, and love. By slow degrees, only, in this life, or were it in the next, is the shelter of the tree of life and of things spiritual, to be realised. For, whether 30 THE TREE OF LIFE. [Book I. we live, or whether we die, it can, in this respect, make no difference, seeing that we are alike in the presence of God. Francis of Assisi, founder of the mendicant order which bore his name, is said for fifty years to have fulfilled the resolves he made at twenty-one. Yet is it vigorous effort, not mendicancy, that is needed. For every attempt to realise some great and good ideal, in very truth, brings nobility along with it, and, as the poet sings, A life that bears immortal fruit, In such great ofSces as suit, The faU-grown energies of heaven. ASPIRATIONS THE INNER, THE SPIEITUAL LIFE. BOOK II. The polity of the Eoman Churcli was perfect for ita own purposes. It grasped tlie whole hody of the state, and left no grade or member un- cared for. But when heresy hroke into the fold, and conviction instead of suhmission was made the basis of the new church, uniformity he- came impossible and sects inevitable. Then arose the proverb, tiii ima, Hi nulla. And if a civilised community is ever again to be one fold, under one shepherd, it must be by getting through the sectarian stage, as the individual man can best do, and resolving moral, as well as material phenomena, into general laws and a universal providence. Edinburgh, Review. God and God's truth, need no suppressio vert, for reason is the field of human things, whose fruitful study brings insight into things divine. By tedious discipline, indeed, by slow providence, by inspirations ad- dressed to the seeking intellect of the philosopher, the yearning imagina- tion of the poet, the ardent piety of the prophet, by the sympathy of religious natures with each other, the common reason and conscience of all men, has the divine spirit sought to drive away the mists that dim our human vision. National Review. ASPIEATIONS. 54. TBUEST INNOCENCE. To be wise as serpents, harmless as doves, was Christ's emphatic counsel.^ It was in truth the most perfect counsel. We cannot be too good or too wise. And those who would oppose it, from the first spiritual enemy to the last, they know not what they do. Then let the friends of truth be wise. But the highest wisdom is truthfulness, adhesion to those eternal interests, which nothing should be suffered to thrust aside. The indi- vidual, indeed, may be crushed, humanity outraged, but when the lamp falls another takes it up, trims the wick, replenishes the oil, in short, sustains the bright effulgence for all the coming generations of men.- 55. THE DIVINE IN MAN. Well indeed has Cicero said, that in every great and good man there houses some ray of the divine.^ One thus lighted up, becomes in veriest truth a Pharos to ipovs/Aoi OS Oi oipeis, xeci axipatoi ais at 'VtpiffTtpai, ^ Et quasi eursores vital lampada tradwnt. Sumtum a ludia quoa faciebant Aihenienaes, in quibus is qui currebat, lampada tenebat, et cursu confecto, ei qui poatea curaurua erat, lampada tradebat. Lucretii de Serum Natura, Lib. ii. Franoofurti, 1583. ^ Nemo magnua aine aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit. De Natura J)eorum. 3-1 THE PUEE AFFECTIONS. [Book II. his kind. It must needs be so, for goodness and great- ness come from God alone, alone can be realised by daily effort and care. 56. UNHEAL CRIMES. Crimes that are no crimes, connected with belief and unbelief, have been set up in every age and time. Yet belief and unbelief, if the profession be sincere, have nothing in the world in common with crime. If belief and unbelief, observes Bailey, be involuntary, to apply rewards and punishments to opinion, were absurd as to raise men to the peerage for being ruddy, to hang them for scrofula, or to whip them for the gout.^ To set up as objects of praise and blame, things that really involve neither praise nor blame, is but to undermine the prin- ciples of morality, to play fast and loose with the best interests of our kind. All truth, conceptions the most spiritual and elevated, are self-evident and demonstrable, need, indeed, no extraneous aid or sustentation what- ever. The idolatry of forms, and opinions, and times, irrespective of right and wrong, is only less repre- hensible than the worship of stocks and stones. 67. THE PUEE AFFECTIONS. It is quite impossible to exaggerate the unspeakable grace and loveliness of the spiritual, the purer affections. They alone can successfully combat base addictions, earth-born passions. Beacon-lights and solace of hu- manity, they convert the heart in which they dwell, into a very hostelry of heaven. ' On the Formation and Publication of Opinions, Lond. 1826. Book II.T THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 58. LIFE THROUGH DEATH. The child -within us, says Socrates, dreads death. Yet in the current of my experience I have ever found that the child proper, does not dread death at all. Through the infinite tenderness and compassion of God, death, for the most part, conies upon him like sleep or some sweet dream. If indeed there be anything touch- ing, anything that speaks to the heart's deep fountains, it is the passing away of some gentle, innocent child.^ Death, in truth, is not the pit, the grave, the closed eye merely, much less the cessation of deep love, the loss of consciousness. No, it is a provision full of an- gelic significance, one for exalting, not debasing hu- manity, working out great spiritual ends, realising disinterestedness. Sufi'ering, like some white-winged dove, oft brings down the peace of heaven on many a shattered soul. No one, indeed, can gaze upon the faces of the faithful dead, without feeling his heart yearn vrithin him towards that purer, loftier state, which death's evangel so surely typifies and prefigures. 59. THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. The intense overpoweringness of the immediate, the visible, too often obscures the appreciation of the im- palpable and the unseen. Some portion at least of our consciousness should be reserved for developing the germs of spiritual life, the sustentation of the divine flame, which one day we are to light afresh upon the Muor giovane colui ch'al cielo e caro. Zeopardi. THE EDEN OF LIFE. [Book II. altars of the invisible. Man, indeed, is placed over this lower world, but by so much as he looks forward to the future and the enduring, does he transcend creatures to whom it has not been given to aspire to a world unseen.^ 60. CUMULATIVE INFLUENCES. If men had but adequate faith in the mighty effi- cacy of cumulative influences, their constancy would more rarely flag. The difference between an elevated and an inferior race, indeed, resides in the possession of a purpose, as distinguished from mere impulse. Strenuous efforts directed to worthiest objects, liken man, in a degree, to the ineff'able Essence, to whom the universe indeed is a purpose, and its perfection a never- ceasing end. 61. THE EDEN OF LIFE. Each man, each Adam, comes into life's Eden, pure, fresh, and innocent of guile. There he remains till, as the subtle allegory has it, the Serpent, that is to say man's inferior passions and addictions, holds out the apple of sensuality and invites him to partake. If he consent, the spiritual life dies within him, at least, until happily, compliance with the moral law and the spiri- tual affections restore him to the Eden of his hopes, and the better life be renewed again. For moral death is death indeed, the only death which sin introduces or can introduce into this world. Here, and here only, ' Nullum est animal praeter homiuem, quod habet ullam notitiam Dei. Cicero, De Legitus. Book II.] EARTH'S SALT. in man's very soul, is the celestial garden, paradise in- deed, abode of truth, and love, and all the aifections, else it is a Hades of evil, and misery, and despair.^ 62. MAN AS MAN. Morally and intellectually, if not physically, the black man and the white, the red man and the brown, are one, capable of culture and introspection, of all the spiritual affections, the great ideas of duty, and of a moral head and governor of the world. There are, in truth, many races, but humanity is one. That we are indeed one, that everywhere man is man, shall one day find acceptance on earth, as it has already found accept- ance in heaven. 63. EAETH'S SALT. Ye are the world's light, the earth's salt.^ Such are the emphatic utterances in which the Founder of Chris- tianity addressed those who were to transmit divinest effluences to the hearts and souls of their kind. Oft, while sympathising with those who suffer in humanity's sacred cause, we, too, would shoulder the cross with Christ, would drink the hemlock with Socrates, ascend the pile with Servetus, languish in the dungeon vdth Galileo, traverse the brine with Priestley, yet not the less do we crucify, poison, burn, imprison, banish, in the gentler forms, indeed, which the charities of modern life alone sanction, the man at our very doors who fain ' Fragt ihr wo Hbll' raid Himmel sey Tins -wolmeii beide in imd bei. Herder, naoh Swift. MAN'S HAND. [Book II. would sprinkle a little salt on the weeds of human error, venture to shed some rays of light on the yet abounding darkness. Yet, oh brothers, true associates and dear friends, faint not nor hesitate by the way. To-morrow, ye embark on the broad ocean of eternity. Ye, too, shall be revered while others fill your place. Nor is there a jewel however bright, or glorious secret, which, in the transit of the ages, ye shall not lay bare be- fore the enraptured gaze of rescued, rejoicing humanity. 64. THE HEAVENLY LIGHT. Prayers and praise should rise heaven-wafted towards the Infinite, and hope unbounded cling to every breast. We should have faith in God, whose silen^ influence is indeed everywhere, as in a parent, and in the illimit- able to come. Therefore, dear heart, have courage. For see, the sun of truth gleams brightly in the darkness, grows larger, and yet larger, till it shall envelop thy whole being in the heavenly light which shines for ever and for ever. 65. MAX'S HAND. How wondrous is the hand of man. To what moral, as well as material uses, is it not subservient, uses cal- culated, were they only well considered, to move us, as Galen^ has grandly said, to hymns of deepest thankful- ness. Well fare, indeed, the hand of human benefi- cence and mercy, and symbol, best and loftiest, the hand of God. Xp'ix! Tm ficpiiat. Giikni Opera, Lipsiae, 1822. Book II.] TOLERANCE. 66. UNDINE. Undine, by the Baron de la Motte Fouque, is the history of a soul in its passage through this super- terrene life. Undine is that soul, rife with every spiri- tual affection, in its primal innocence and purity, as free from earthly dross and stain. The unutterable grace and loveliness of a heart untrammelled by convention or deceit, are there. There, too, are the sweetness and the excellence of truest, best womanhood, the most exalted humanity. Undine is as a flawless gem. All falsity, and soil, and unworthiness, like the ocean in conflict with some granite rock, foam, froth, and break upon her faithfulness and her truth in vain. The glory and the gorgeousness of worldly things pale before her unfaltering constancy. She is not simply of earthly, but of celestial purity and perfection. Like every great, and good, and noble spirit, hers, indeed, was a link between earth and beaven. Her trust, without reserve, or re- ticence, or alloy, questions nothing, doubts nothing, but is all sacrifice, and submission, and love. Undine is not perhaps higher than humanity, but she is a very lofty ideal of buman virtues and perfections. 67. TOLEBANCE. The Mayflower, as has been said by the Edinburgh Re- view, carried to new shores the germ of a great nation, a spiritual venture, universal toleration, latent in the most inhuman of school-born theologies, universal religion in a husk of Calvinism.' For tolerance is a true moral ' Vol. xoii. p. 341. TRUE NOBILITY. [Book II, principle, but tolerance at least implies counter-toler- ance. If a man firmly conceive that he is right, surely it yields grounds for every reasonable indulgence and concession to others. A rational conviction can only spring from the exercise of reason, a loving conviction from the dictates of the heart. Heaven itself constrains not opinion.^ For God has made free the human soul, and respects the dignity of man. Even those who would shackle it, must still appeal to that reason which they else affect to decry. Alas for those in error, yet condemn them not. For them, too, the great effulgence must one day brightly shine. Tolerance, happily, ad- vances with the ages. Material flames have ceased to shrivel up the shrinking frame, and one day calumny, and detraction, hardly less scathing, must also cease to shrivel up the genial sympathies of the soul. ^Nlan will live more and more with God, more in accordance with the dictates of those precious capacities and spiritual affections, of which the sedulous culture alone inspires truest toleration in, and by all. 68. TRUE NOBILITY. Such is the heaven-born nobility of our nature, that from our apparent weaknesses oft-times springs our greatest strength. The manliest, are ever the gentlest of men, and this is only consistent with moral courage and the spiritual affections, the truest and most exalted of all. The best of both sexes, indeed, approach most closely in loveable endowments. It mult be so, for the virtues are of no sex. There are men, in truth, who ' The Nnr Philosophy, London, 1853. Book II.] REAL COURTESY. evince almost feminine tenderness and compassion, as there have been, and are, women of loftiest courage under circumstances the most calculated to appal. Mrs. Jameson,^ citing Swift in corroboration, enlarges, vrith not less force than truthfulness, on the solidarity of all the virtues in respect of one and the other sex. 69. DIVINITY OF LOVE. Love is humanity's greatest need. But true love, inner jewel and perfume of the soul, is also divine. For love is the seed of progress, of all excellence.^ Through it, indeed, must men be saved. This exalted affection has no thought of self, only seeks happiness in another, and to exhale its sweetness into the soul of the beloved. It is the link of eternity, binds us at once to nature and the world. No stain in truth, may soil the pinions of the seraph. No degradation, no impurity, is compatible, or indeed possible, with true love, which, proclaiming our immortal destinies, raises us on wings of truth, and trust, and tenderness, to heaven. 70. REAL COURTESY. There is something surely very admirable in the courtesy and devotion of knight-errantry. It was a defiance cast down to selfishness and brutality, worsting them indeed, with their own material weapons. Cbi- ' Ethical Fragments. ' Qui Tous rend un juge si severe pour vous-meme, qui vous fait penser que vous ne serez jamais assez grand, assez noble, assez d^voue, assez brave, assez desinteress^, que deux yeux s'arretent sur vous un instant. •12 THE SI-IAGEEEN SKIN. fBooK IT. valry, in the narrower sense, may indeed disappear, but it is well replaced by the pure life, lofty bearing, refined courtesy, and higher culture of modern times. True chivalry, else, is of no age or time, and seated in our being's depths, can never die. Other Bayards, yet other Sidneys, there are, and shall be, while earth and man endure. 71. THE "WHOLE MAN. The perfect man is the whole man. A narrow rule of life is impracticable as it is undesirable, has no suifi- cient hold on the inner sympathies which unite a moral purpose with a lofty aim. Spiritual religion is com- patible with every exposition of the divine, the highest aspirations, the loftiest motives, the soul's eternal peace. 72. OBDEE DIVINE. We are yet greatly deficient in respect of the extreme order, neatness, and purity incumbent upon us as crea- tures of God. For these are a debt, a moral conquest, in truth, which civilisation owes as a just tribute to sehf, and a lesson to barbarism. There is evidence, indeed, that this form of regeneration also, has begun. We shall one day witness over earth's wide domain, the material welfare and moral culture, of which each is to the other the only certain and enduring correlative. 73. THE SHAGBEEN SKIN. Life, in certain respects, may be likened to the sha- green sldn in the romance.' Each day, each hour, ' Peau de Chagrin, Balzac. Book II.] ABSENCE OF THE DIVINE. 43 curtails its fair dimensions, brings it to a close. In the tale, indeed, the author makes the hero ahuse his un- exampled opportunities, lapse into a pitiful egotism, revealing a sorry conception of the intention of existence. Alas, it is too often so in this rich and various life, so abounding in jewels beyond measure or price. We perish miserably on the very brink of the waters of life and truth.i The rarest opportunities, boundless capa- cities, the loveliest affections, affections worthy indeed of earth and heaven, are flung aside or trampled upon, as if they were very dross. 74. ABSENCE OF THE DIVINE. Professing atheists, for many reasons, must ever be few. Atheism, indeed, is a moral distortion, produced by oblique, equivocal culture, too often a narrow if not tortuous heart. Like insanity, crime, poverty, it is the disease of civilisation, or rather of what we so term. It is the mock antithesis of superstition. I would rather, says Plutarch, men should affirm there was no Plutarch, than that they should affirm I was a naughty Plutarch.^ The atheism, however, of which I would speak, is of a yet more disastrous stamp, acknowledging God but loving him not, professing charity but evincing none, admitting God's existence with as little feehng as it is denied by some, the atheism of the heart, in short, if not the atheism of the understanding. ' Emerson, The Font. 2 "Eywy' BVlt civ \Si\cifit fcaXXov mils uvSfaiTous Xiyiiv cripi ifjcov, /ajjte avli'ia'roi afiilixii!. Do Stipcrstitione. ASCETICISM. [Book II. 75. ASCETICISM. To wrestle -with virtue,^ was the Stoics' maxim. They professed, indeed, not so much the regulation, as the extinction of the passions and affections, very grace and glory of the world. Stoicism, however, with all its shortcomings, was a nohle cultus, prescribed moral development, and not merely the mortification of the living frame. Like the Stoics, Spinoza esteemed virtue and good fortune as one,^ and found the way, he conceived, in submission to God and the death of the passions.^ This lofty egotism, however, which followed nature as its sovereign good,* has yielded to yet diviner lights. Stoicism, indeed, insisted on self-sacrifice, but the spiri- tual affections, which Stoicism did not sufficiently recognise, take us out of ourselves, and insist on sacrifice for others as well. Stoicism sacrificed the passions to the principle of perfect rectitude.^ Death was esteemed a gate, and as Porphyry,^ and certain Christian mystics had it, a twofold outlet, at once from human passion and the world. The fortitude of ^ AirxsTv ifETMi'. 2 JEthics, Lib. v. § 42. ' Spinoza zeigt daas Tugend imd Gliick dasselbe sind, und nur in der Liebe zu Gott, und der Tbdtimg aller Leidenschaften bestelien. See, JVandenmgen eines Zeitgenossen, Hambro, 1857. B. i. S. 25. ' Etenim quod summum bonum a Stoicis dicitur, conTenienter naturae vivere. Cicero, Be Officiu, Lib. ui. cap. 3. ^ ArriHw. Impatientia, qua animus invulnerabilis et extra onmem patientiam positus dicitur. Seneca, Epist. ix, " 'O yivv ^xvuTss Si/^rXoZ,-. Sententiae, ix. Cantab. 1655. Book It.3 TRUE NOBILITY. the adherents of Stoicism,^ its bear and forbear, were in truth, admirable, paved the way for a sublimer creed and yet higher excellence, at a time when brute constraint and violence well nigh ruled the world. 76. TRUE NOBILITY. There is something surpassing, nay, divine,^ purest aspirations, ineffaceable tenderness, heroic devotion, con- summate truth, in the great deep heart of man. Were not these displayed when Socrates stepped forward to rescue his pupil in the fight. Was it otherwise, when, greatly daring, Arnold of Winkelried, at never-to-be- forgotten Sempach, uttered the memorable words, which peal, and shall for ever peal, across the ages. Dear, true confederates, he cried, foster my wife and children, be- hold I clear a path for you,^ grasping as he spoke, and burying in his breast, a sheaf of Austrian spears. Him, as Vattel said, while the centuries roll, shall Switzerland remember.* But patriotism, with all the virtues, never shall be wanting, while humanity endures.* 'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume, And we were weeds without it.^ ^ 'Avt^ou xai avi^oa. Siistine et absfine, Epictetus. 'OiirTin Kxi 'A'anrnov. ToUrandum et Sperandum, Euripides. ^ Est aliquid divinum. ' Treue liehe Eidgenossen, sorget fvir mein Weib und fiir meiue Kinder, ich will euch eine Gasse machen. MiiRer, Oeschichte. Band, xxi. S. 22. Tubingen, Cotta, 1816. * Law of Nations, On Noble Citmns. 6 Sag" an Helvetien, du Heldenvaterland, Wie ist dein altes Volk dem jetzigen verwand. Sailer. ^ Cowper. UNITY OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH. [Book II. 77. FORCE AND TENDERNESS. There are two principles in man's nature, force and tenderness. If the latter be cultivated to excess, it de- generates into weakness, if the former, into brutality. Yet heaven lends strength for the fit discharge of every task, and sweetness enough to temper it. And never was there lofty soul which had not ample admixture of both. 78. THE SEED OF HEAVEN. The seeds of all true, and pure, and beautiful, and hea- venly things are in God, that God whose silent image is everywhere. They spring from him, because they are in him, and of him, and from him. He is the very fountain of honour, and loveliness, and progress, and truth. Beauty is his quintessence, his the mother's ineffable tenderness, the father's fondness, the infant's winning smile. He is courageous with the patriot, hopeful with the philanthropist. His, is the flower's aroma, the solace of the tepid breeze, the cadence of the running stream. He smiles in the sculptor's studio, on the painter's frescoed wall. The choral voices of the children and of the birds are his, neither is he absent in the ecstasy of love, nor in any gracious, or exquisite, or ravishing thing. In fine, wherever there is light, and life, and love, there also is He, and will be, so lono- as man's soul endures. 79. UNITY OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH. Religion is spoken of under various names, as if there were, or could be, any religion but One. For religion Book II.] DEVOTION AND BELIEF. 47 is goodness, and truth, and love, an infinite, a progres- sive revealing, indeed the house of God, the very gate of heaven. It is belief in the one fountain of science, and truth, and love, as well as in man himself, counter- part and image of the divine. For belief in the earnest vyill, the living mind, belief in a personal God, is the very kernel of the true life of man.^ And much of re- ligious error, as has been said, consists in making the symbol too stark and strong, so that sense, and often feeling also, are lost in sound. 80. THE INCABNATE ANGEL. Some, nay many vcomen and men, walk through life as angels walk in heaven. All the better spirits, in- telligence, appreciation, courtesy, grace, love, with every truthful, spiritual essence, attend and mark their path. It is alike visible in what they do, as in what they leave undone. Their rectitude is, as it has well been called, a perpetual victory. And, thus, is the road to the stars. For every sweet aifection, gentle word, and noble deed, and worthy thought, lend aid in building up the spiritual house, furthers the road to heaven. 81. DEVOTION AND BELIEF. Just conclusions, feelings deep and true, coupled with the loftiest standard of self-restraint and moral earnest- ness, are needful indeed to man. The spiritual affections are the very guardian angels of the soul. A pseudo- creed complicates, and needlessly deranges, human duties. Such, however, are nature's divine compensa- ' Letter from Dr. Baird. 4» MANNERS. [Book II. tions, that the sincerest devotion is not incompatible with utterest error. Yet, the holder of the most perfect creed may be cold and apathetic as the stone, so that, in very truth, it imports us yet more to love than to know. 82. MANNERS. A work, or rather series of works, on the illustrious women of the Seventeenth Century, has recently ema- nated from Victor Cousin's pen.^ Angels, rather than women, sweetly justifying Dante's magnificent apos- trophe,^ seem to speak from every page. An admirable commentator on this work, again and again adverts to the surpassing charm of truly noble manners, as ex- ponents of spiritual loveliness and grace.'^ It is an art, he truly says, for manners too are an art, the only one perchance, cultivable in earth and heaven, the highest indeed, because imitating nothing but God. Instructed by the lieightening sense Of dignity and reverence In their true motions found.* Manners in truth make us free of the angelic king- dom, and founded on goodness and love, imply the very courtesies of heaven. For, if we shall but reflect, the essential happiness of this life and of the life to come, ' Etudes mr Us Femmes Illustres du xvii. Sieele. Paris, 1854. ' In te misericordia, in te pietate, In te magnificenza, in te s' aduna Quantunque e in creatura di bontate. ' National Review, Oct. 1866. * Ben Jonson. Book IL] MAN AND BRUTE. must needs include the commerce, itself celestial, of natures progressively elevated, with each other and with God. In the particular instances cited, beauty, station, wit, courage, magnanimity, in short, every factitious distinction and natural grace, unite, so that with excus- able hyperbole the writer adverted to, has added, it seems scarcely possible, the celestial inmates themselves, should shine with brighter, purer lustre.' 83. MAN AND BBUTE. The possession of an inner consciousness, and more or less perfect self-direction, by the brute, suggests very serious reflections. He owns, indeed, intellectual, and even moral capabilities, susceptible of a certain culture. In the brute, also, the phenomena which we style sen- sations and ideas, would seem modifications of a thinking principle.^ In respect of self-sacrifice and attachment, the lower animals sustain advantageous comparison even with man. There is, in short, that about them, which should secure our provident sympathy and care. If not, as Cowper says, To feed upon immortal truth, To walk with God and be divinely free, the lower tribes furnish, not the less, boundless illus- tration of unspeakable goodness and love. ' A trente-cinq ans Mme de Longueville a dit adieu au monde. Et pourtant eUe est toujours la meme, auesi gracieuse que majesteuse, et quelquefois aussi fiere, aussi foergique et aussi euhlime que Jacqueline Pascal et Angelique Amauld. V. Cousin, Mme de Sable, Paris, 1854, p. 8. ^ Weder das Kbrperliche noch das Geistige als das Wahrhaft Seiende hetrachten, sondem ein Drittes, von dem jede heiden nur Attribute, nur Erscheinungsweisen sind, Eee, Wanderungen, E PROGRESSIVE RELIGION. [Book II, 84. TRAINING. Lunacy, want, crime, disease, are terrible indications of indiiFerence and neglect. Judicious, sufficing care, acting on a naturally sound organism, realises bodily health, not less securely than does sufficing mental and moral culture, not omitting the affections, a healthy soul. Pauperism, lunacy, crime, could not, indeed, subsist in the face of prudence and intelligence, any more than could plague, cholera, scrofula, fever, con- sumption, idiotcy, subsist along with bodily health. The culture of the young is the basis of all good govern- ment,'^ and we owe it at once to heaven and ourselves, to inquire into every preventible evil, whether moral or physical, and to apply the fitting remedy. 85. TROGHESSrVE RELIGION. Religion, reconciling reason and love, the law of nature and the law of God, should be progressive, even as man's soul, his heart, his truth, his faith, his love, is progressive. Else, indeed, what were it to me.^ Art, religion, poesy, unlike physical science, seek outward expression as regards the inner life and thoughts of God. For religion is not hope or fear merely, but spiri- tual beauty, and goodness, and trust, and love. It seeks the unseen, which lies behind the seen, that which in- cludes all reality and all truth, the great ideal, archetype and earnest of heaven, which is at once the foundation of the universe and basis of the invisible.'' ^ *A^^ri ^oXiTuets a'jraffyis yiuv v^o^d. Diogenes Laertius. ^ Tl ^^U ^e- ^ Weim wir betracliten die siclitbare Welt und das Leben der Crea^- Book II ] THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. SI Day by day, the conviction more freshly presses, that there are indwelling principles in man and nature, . absent from no place, and continually made manifest in holiness, beauty, and truth. For every doctrine that is opposed to the law of love, the law of love condemns. These are the divine, the celestial realities, which must eventually do away with all absurd, fanatical, superstitious, atheistical, heathenish dogmas and prac- tices, bring men round to elevated conceptions, and uniting our highest nature with the infinite, the ever- lasting, and the unseen, for ever reconcile the soul to God and to itself. ^ 86. THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. How lofty was Christ's ideal of holiness, and faith, and love. Deep and all-pervasive was the religious sentiment within him. It was the devotion of a life, a soul mighty to realise the divine in man, the spiri- tuality of religion, the religion of the heart. His was intensest sympathy, because of his conviction of the infinite value of life and of the spiritual in humanity. In him, too, was life spiritual. He strove indeed, for turen, so finden 'wir dariimeii das Gleiclmiss der unsiclitbareii geist- lichen Welt welclie wie die Seele im Leite in der sichtbaren Welt verborgen ist, imd sehen. daram daa der verborgene Gott aUem nahe iind durob alles iat, und dem sicbtbaren Wesen ganz Terborgen. Jacob Boehme. ' Das Zeugniss des Geistes ia letzer Instanz ist innmer nur Bezeu- gung der Wabrbeit durcb das eigne Gewissen, das innere Wairbeitsge- fiibl dea Glaubigen. Dereinfacbe nnabweisHcbe Gmnd dafur Uegtdarin, dass da,s Zeugniss Gottes nur erkannt werden kbnnte an der Wabrbeit seines Inhalts. TJlrici, Glauhen und Wissm, Speculation tmd exacts Wissensehaft, Leipzig, 1858, S. 324. 52 A DIVINE ENVIHONMENT. [Book II. truth, the soul's freedom from moral error and from spiritual death, and became a sacrifice in the cause. 87. PEICE OF LIBERTY. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, that liberty which else can have nor place nor name. For heaven is spiritual, and must be communed w^ith spiritually. Every good thought, each blessed truthful affection, is a very efiluence from paradise, leads to heaven away. Conscience, counterpart of the divine, is progressive, but the divine itself is unchanging and eternal. Belief, living for great ends, should also grow, the affections not drifting one way, the convictions another. For man's intelligence may not safely war with the feelings, but expand with them in unison and harmony for ever. 88. DESERT. It ought to be blazoned in letters of adamant, graven in characters of light in the heart's chancery, that the best crowns in the divine gift, devolve not upon success but on desert. For desert is the very jewel and pearl of the soul, earnest and forecast of heaven. 89. A DIVINE ENVIRONMENT. How adverse would it prove to every low mean thought and base unworthy impulse, were we only duly conscious of the divine environment. If even a revered human presence realise this precious efficacy, how much more the unseen spiritual presence which is with us of necessity and at all times. We should pause ere we ventured to sully the silken pinions, or the snow-white Book II.] WORKING WITH GOD. vesture, of a single angelic friend. For God, and spirits, of the infinite, are with us, and present always. 90. THE CURHENT OF EXISTENCE. There is no delay in the great issues of existence. The divine business is transacted without delay. The vast current of being rushes onward without hesitancy or pause for ever. We are moving with the stream, whose swiftness we do not at once discover. For, Thou carriest us o£f as ■with, a flooii, We vanish hence like dreams.' And in a little, our generation and our time will be swept into the illimitable ocean of infinity, to be re- placed by fresh generations, new activities, yet more sufiicing to God's glory and man's celestial destinies. 91. WORKING WITH GOD. It is the mightiest aim to work with God. For reli- gion is not a charm to win salvation by stealth, sudden illuminations, or sleight of hand withal, but the deve- lopment of the soul in goodness, intelligence, and truth, the culture of every spiritual aifection, nearness, in a word, to God. Only by self-knowledge can we attain to the knowledge of God.* Man comes to know the divine through knowing himself. The very wealth and excellence of humanity consist in our approximation to God. For this is the real election, correspondence with, and receptivity of, things divine. Spiritual safety, in- deed, can only be compassed by faith coupled with charity, in thought and afieetion, habitual goodness in ' Psalm xc. '' Tholuck. 54 DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATUEE. [Book II, aspiration and in action, realising heaven in the soul. The soul happily is adapted to lay hold of celestial truth, and to become a progressive, conscious participator in the very life of God.^ He speaks, it is the essence of his most divine revelation, through the voices of man's spiritualized motives and affections. For religion, as a living trust, is indeed reasonable, conformable vrith the divine, and with every truthful, sacred, holy thing. 92. PROVIDENCE. Providence, divine Providence, seizes upon each several evil, disciplines, and eventually turns it to good. It is a wondrous, glorious process, but one which we do not always rightly fathom. To suppose, indeed, that He who is all power, all goodness, all knowledge, should tolerate perpetual evil, were an intolerable im- putation on that power, that wisdom, and that good- ness. For evil is suffered but for a time, permitted only to be eliminated from God's providence, and blotted out of His creation and His most holy empire for ever. 93. DIGNITY OF HUMAN NATUEE. To think meanly of human nature is a base, unworthy thing, at utter variance with man's inherent desert and dignity. For evil and imperfection are indeed earth- born and bounded, whereas purity and truth are inherent as they are boundless, susceptible of develop- ment and increase for ever. Goodness and wickedness are unappeasable foes. One must necessarily overcome and devour the other. And ' Maiuice. Book II.] DIVINITY OF BENEFICENCE. 55 therefore it is that elevation and advancfementj as re- spects the knowledge of God and things invisible,^ is the great and never-ceasing requirement of our souls. 94. YOUTH ETERNAL. We shall again be young. The morning stars shall sing to us as in their prime. We shall love the flowers, smiles of God, very types and archetypes of paradise, with all the beautiful things of earth and heaven. Spiri- tual truth indeed is dependent, entirely dependent, on psychology.^ For while nature conceals, man rises above her, and becomes to himself, the revelation of the divine. On psychology, then, for the testimony of consciousness is the criterion of all knowledge, depends wholly the proof of man's moral nature and the exis- tence of God, as of every celestial, truthful, holy thing. 95. DIVINITY OF BENEFICENCE. The beneficent influence of a single good man or woman on our species, it is impossible to exaggerate. For this, in its lower degree, is like unto the great Spiritual Presence itself, which frees, and one day shall entirely set free and transfigure, all mankind. 'Tis liberty of heart derived from heaven, The Uherty that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume.' A real effluence of holiness, and love, and truth per- vades the moral atmosphere around, and, like a charmed ' Locke, On iEducation. > *Sir W. Hamilton. Lectmes on Metaphysics. Edinhurgh, 1868. ^ Cowper. DISIXTERESTED AFFECTION. [Book II. circle, keeps every base, and wicked, and brutal thing at bay. In a comer of Madely churchyard, now rifely beset with weeds and docken, is a tomb, on which is graven the name of one who shed this heavenly effluence. For his was a real existence of charity, and faith, and love. There was an Irish Dean, too, a man of such spiritual potency as to impress the most impassive. His, indeed, were tones that could evoke charity from hearts of stone. Fletcher's deeds and Kirwan's M'ords should not lightly he forgotten. But infinite, almost, is the impress of beneficence on our kind. When once the angelic presence is felt, loved, and known, hearts bow gladly responsive to the precious influence. 96. TO SEEM AND TO BE. Would we seem a thing, let us be it. Would we do a thing, let us do it. Would we aspire, let us realise that aspiration. For goodness can only be compassed by goodness, holy thoughts by deeds of holiness, and the glories of the inner life through the strenuous efibrts of the living soul.'^ 97. DISINTERESTED AFFECTION. Admirably illustrative of God's ineiFable tenderness and goodness, is the production of the disinterested, the spiritual affections in the heart of man. For it is a canon most certain, most true, that if we love with deep affection, that affection comes finally to subsist inde- ' Das innere eines Menschen kann nicht das Werk des Andren sein. Schleiermacher to Eleonora. G. Lehen in Briefen. B. 1. S. 368. Book U.] THE BRIDGE. pendently of all return. And this result ft is, given by the hand of God himself,'^ that realises or helps to realise, a heaven in the heart and eternity in time.^ 98. THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. Much has been said and written about the church of the future, but it is here present, it is also now. The church invisible has no distinction of sect or nation. Its members are everywhere. Unpaid, so far as material rewards are concerned, they work for the common weal. This church exists in the east, it exists in the west, it knows no distinction of north or south. It acknow- ledges all peoples, celebrates it services in every tongue. The orisons of the faithful ascend from every clime. Its members hear betimes of each other, sometimes by what they do, sometimes also by what they suffer. They perchance know each other when they meet. Worshippers of one true God, they do not malign opponents, or seek to consign them to moral perdition and social death. Members, too, abound in all the churches, but all the churches are not members. The church of the future, the invisible, the universal church, is increasing, must increase, for it comprises the right thinkers and well-doers at once of earth and heaven. 99. THE BRIDGE. Love associates this world with the next by more than adamantine bonds, links that sunder never. The ' Die seltene Momente wo wirklioh der Himmel im Herzen ist und die Ewigkeit in der Zeit. Id. to Henriette v. Willich. B. 2. S. 136. * Maurice, Lectures to Ladies., 3rd ed. p, 8. 68 THE CHAEITIES OF HEAVEN. [Book II. darlings who have left us, we shall meet again. We cannot cease to love them, and they, we are assured, do not cease to love us. And thus, O God, love bridges the abyss, and even here, unites those whom death and time have for some brief period severed. 100. SPIBITUAl INFLUENCES. As material influences sustain our bodies, so do spiri- tual influences sustain our souls, ascending thus to higher realities, aspiration on aspiration, progress on progress, for ever. That only can be considered a real limitation which chokes the springs of spiritual life, severs us from God. For all self-imposed limitation, and every new duty is a limitation, which is a condition of a real exercise of the spiritual or higher life, is the reverse of a real limitation,^ reconciles us in so far with God. 101. THE CHAEITIES OF HEAVEN. Through God's infinite charity, the pure, the spiritual aflections are restricted to no class or condition of men. Sweetly, freely, do they spring up like flowers in the very gardens of heaven. One were, in truth, angelic, could one but maintain the holy frame which they so often induce. Behold the untiring constmicy, the un- speakable generosity of women, the celestial confiding- ness of childhood, the countless beneficence of the poor. Love, through divinest intuition, proceeds to instant action, plays its angelic part, were it in the veriest depths of desolation and despair. For love, ' National JRct'ieir, Ju]y, 1859. Book II.] THE CURATE OF MEUDON. 69 with all the spiritual affections, is indeed the spiri- tual life of man. We cannot love enow.^ Love it is, which frees us from the sin and stain else prone to mutilate the dear deep heart of man.^ In virtue of the affections, angels dwell along with us in every strait and care, abandoning us never till they land us, and land with us, on the celestial shores. Thus, the divine is ceaselessly at hand, and providence for ever nigh. 102. GREAT THINKERS. Great thinkers are the very salt and glory of the earth, rescue it from spiritual despotism, the tyranny of unreasoning, prescriptive thought, in a word, spiritual slavery and the idolatry of days and forms. According to their measure, they are a continual inculcation of goodness, and holiness, and truth, the very children of light and of the sun.^ Regardless of material interests merely, they realise a higher life, the poetry of life, life and poetry together, Innumeroua spirits who sun themselves Outside of time.^ For on them, and such as them, plays the very air of heaven, the divine afflatus which comes we know not whence, and goes we know not whither.^ 103. THE CURATE OF MEUDON. With all his faults, the Curate of Meudon was among the first of his time. Like Picus of Mirandola, ad- ' Tholuck, Gtado and Julius, tr. Lond. 7th Ed. pp. 13, 107. ^ M. Retsch, Die Schachspieler. ' Viws rou esoS. ' Aurora Zeigh. ^ To TnvfuiL oTov ^i\u irm, aXX' ovk, oi%u5 •prohv sp^irai xctt ttov ii^ayu. 60 THE CUBATE OF MEUDON. [Book II. mirable in literature and science alike, he might have sustained a concursus on all known things.* Rabelais received the commendation of De Thou, even Guin- guene discusses his influence on the French Revolution. The author of Pantagruel, he says, attacked ignorance in the spirit of a true philosopher, casting down idols and removing prejudice. He assumed, indeed, for safety's sake, the cap and bells, uttering momentous truths as if in jest.^ His precepts on education, or many of them, even now are admirable.^ Lafontaine, Boccaccio, Bacon, Montaigne, and Montesquieu, with Moliere, Sterne, and Swift, were all, I conceive, in- debted to him. Of these, Montaigne, perhaps, was only less outspoken than himself.* Michel de L' Ho- pital, indeed, opposed the Cardinal de Lorraine, when the latter would have introduced the Inquisition into France. Yet, Rabelais did not scruple to ridicule that Francis the First, who cast human beings into the flames in Paris, butchered them at Merindol. Bartholomew's Day he did not see, though he wit- nessed its lurid aurora. But not the less in Paris than in Rome, all who were found to countenance such blood-stained doings, incurred the trenchant irony of his pen. ' De onmi re soibiK. ^ Scriptum edidit ingeniosissimum, quo vitae regnique cunctos or- dines, quasi in scoenam, sub flctis nominibus produxit, et pcpulo deri- dendo propinavit. ' Comment Gargantua feut institue par Ponocrates en telle discipline qu'il ne perdoyt heure de lour. Oeuvres, Chap. 23. Paris, 1835. ' C'est ifi im livre de, bon foy leoteur. Esmis, Paris, An x. Book U.] THE DIVINE KINGDOM. . 104. THE DIVINE KINGDOM. In the better life it is more blessed to give than to receive. And thus it is, that God sheds blessings on us ceaselessly, with love greatest of all. To some, indeed, the rising sun, the gushing streams, sea, sky, and air, the play of man's great powers, shall seem dull and drear, while to others they are as opening paradise, glimpses of that fair region where highest hopes shall be converted into angelic certainties. For sin, and disease, and death, with ignorance, and poverty, and care, are to be considered not so much mere heirlooms of past delinquency, as imperfections to be got rid of, means, in short, whereby to compass knowledge, goodness, holiness, and the better life to come. It is the divine intention that each soul should dwell in duty, and through duty compass happiness and victory, proceeding from conquest to conquest, and into the celestial city at last. For each just, and true and pure aspiration is a possession for ever, yields fresh spiritual insight, conducts us in fine to heaven. So long as we labour under the metaphysical illusion of treating sin and crime as entities produced by a per- sonal evil genius, instead of looking upon them as a departure from God, the true good, but else transitional and eradicable, the influence of a sound theology, founded upon and united with a true psychology, on education and training, vdll remain nugatory. It is a contradiction, in terms, to speak of evil as innate, whereas it is goodness that is innate, as it is everlasting. m THE DIVINE KINGDOM. [Book II. For evil, fortuitous indeed, and transitory, is inevitably eliminated in the soul's progress through- time and eternity. It is perilous to lose sight of moral distinctions in quest of things in themselves insoluble, or if solved, of no account. For the theology of God is simplicity itself, consists in approaching him, whereas the theology of the theologian too often is unintelligible even to himself. Every thing essential to our spiritual safety has been made plain, were it to the heart and intelligence of the child. Evil is not infinite but good is infinite. Evil is not eternal, but good is eternal, even as love is eternal. Therefore, as contrasted with good, evil, were it never so great, never so oppressive, let us dare to hope and to believe, must become as nothing in the future of God and of time. For the seeds of holiness which subsist in all, shall one day overcome the evil that is in them. In innocence and purity do we enter on the stage of being, in innocence and purity, despite of eveiy lapse and imperfection, through the infinite mercy, and goodness, and wisdom, and lovingness of God, shall we finally and for ever emerge upon it. ASPIRATIONS THE INNEE, THE SPIEITUAL LIFE. BOOK III. VXauxav. Tlus. "SaK^aTts. Tflv i^Xtov rots ogWjWsvo/f ov f/covov^ oJfiui, rtjv rod o^anrSat ^vvatftiv vapip^^itv (p^ffiiSf aXXa xett rhv yinviv xeii au^Tjv xcti rpa^vivj oh •yivicriv atirov ovrcc, rXavxatv. Ha; ycc^- luKPCtTis- Kas/ ToT; 'yiyvaitfxofiivoi? roUvv (/.n (aovov to yiytcoffxiffSeti (paveti v'TTo roa ocyatSovi 'ra^Biycci, aXXoi xcci to iiveci T£ kcc) t«v ohviav utr' ixiivou auro7$ iT^ao'iivcuj ovK ohffms ovTos Tou a.yoiSo'uj dxx' sVi i'S'txtfja Ttjs ovfficts irgsff/Ss/^ xat %u)iitfAu v^t^i^ovTOSt Plato. Nos ne nimc quidem oculis cemimua ea quae Tidimus, neque enim est lallus aensus ia corpore, sed viae quasi quaedam sunt ad oculos, ad aures, ad nares, a sede animi perforatae. Itaque saepe aut cogitatione, aut aliqua "vi morbi impediti, apertis atque integris et oculis et auritus, nee videmus, nee audimus, ut facile intelligi poasit, ammum et videre et audire, non eas partes quae quasi feneatrae sunt aniuai, quibus tamen sentire niliil queat mens, nisi id agat et adsit. Cicero, ASPIRATIONS. 105. TRAINING SOULS FOE GOD. Let us train souls heaven-ward, yet, so as to enhance the power of eiFort and self-mastery. For these, no formula, no precept, can replace. There is no other way to develop the individual man, to secure admission into the safe havens of God's eternal love, where every shortcoming, with all remorse, and guilt, and dread, must be put for ever away.^ For no one can discharge the spiritual indehtedness of another. Each several soul, overcoming ohstacles, repelling every slight and stain, must for itself aspire to heaven. 106. ONE PEO^IDENCE, ONE INSPIRATION. As there are not two divine providences hut one divine providence, so there are not two divine inspira- tions, hut one divine inspiration. For, well understood, a general and an individual providence, a general and a special inspiration, severally, as coming from God, are the same. In our weakness and inexperience we would crave continuous aid, would climb each steep ascent • Die Tollendete Entwickelimg der menscUichen Personlictkeit muss wesentUolx zugleioli als das absolute Zugeeignetsein des Meusohen an. Gott gedaoht werden. Kothe, Theologische Bthik, Bos vollendete Reich Gottes, B. 2, S. 154. Wittenberg, 1844, 1848. F 60 THE SPiniT OF THE UNIVERSE. [Book III. descend each rugged slope, with the assistance of another. But God imparts strength enough, his in- finite oversight, his unutterable love and care, suffice for all. We have only to discharge, were it in our sorest need, the duty at hand. The sense of desert, the consciousness of a joyous, hopeful, stiiving, respon- sible existence, should be roused within our souls, and there fostered and sustained for ever.^ For all true con- version is unison with God, approving itself in faith in Him, and faith in our fellows, as evinced and wrought out in the spiritual and moral life of man. 107. HELIGIOUS TRUTH. Religious truth can never die. Its roots lie deeply bedded in the very heart and soul of man. But re- ligious truth has been associated with religious error, and men, unwittingly, have cherished both. Science, however, for like faith and love science is eternal, science will eliminate the error, will unfold the truth. Then science and religion, sister seraphs, shall walk together, hand in hand, sustaining man in this life, as in the heaven which awaits him in the end.^ 108. THE SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSE. As the soul of man is to the body, so is the Spirit of God to the universe. An African traveller it was,'' who, sick, sorrowing, and alone, turned wistfully to the blue ' So miindet das Erdenleten mit seiner Vollendung in das Himmels- leben aus. Eothe, Mhilc, Das vollendete Reich Gottes. = Park. Book IUO LIVING DAY BY DAY. U7 flower which met his fevered gaze, comforted with the deep assurance that heaven was also with him, not less than with the tender flower. But the universe is a mighty epic, of which no philosophy, no poesy, ever yet has told the tale.^ 109. MORAL DEATH. The only death is moral death. The body, indeed, perishes, yet still are we God's children. There is no death, what seems so is transition. This life of mortal breath Is hut a suburb of the life Elysian, Whose portal we call death.^ We leave nothing in the grave.^ The change concerns the material only, and was attendant on life from the beginning. For man through it must realise the ful- ness of existence, and find his proper element in the ocean of immensity.* no. LIVING DAY BY DAY. To live each day as it were the last, is perhaps too much to expect of our humanity. Yet is it best to be 'SoheUiug, * Longfellow. ' La mort ne nous ravit rien de notre etre, rien de notre personaUte, de notre esprit, de nos facultes, de notre amour, de nos affections. Tout en nous sera grand conune le ciel, grand comme I'immortalite. A. Co- querel, La Mort Seconds, Paris, 1850, *Li der unbeschrankten Commuiiicationen mit aller Sphairen der Schopfimg schleisst sich dem menschlichen Geschlecht eine unendliche Fulle von Gemeinschaft und Liehe auf. Alle Lebensquellen des tJniver- sums durchstromen nun die Menschheit, die ihr eignes Leben in den Ocean dieses aUgemeinen Lebens hineinergeisat, und es aus ihm in unendlioh gesteigerter Fiille wieder Zuriickempfangt. Eothe, Ethik, Die Zetzte Binge, B. II. S. 159. OH THE SEKAPH WITHIN. [Book III. — » prepared when the end, the second life, the new birth indeed, arrives. The glory of it, however, is, that there is no end, but that the first day of our consciousness is also the first of eternity, and that for ever and yet for ever, must that consciousness endure. 111. A JUST APPEECIATION. The manner and the form of our knowledge, as the Schoolmen were so well aware, depend exceedingly on the character and condition of the intelligence at the period of receiving it.^ Were this important truth once duly appreciated, it would lead to a more reverent ap- preciation of man's great capacities and immortal nature, as well as to an infinitely increased forbearance in re- spect of his shortcomings and failings. 112. TRUE PRECISION. A divine exactitude, so to speak, is required of us. The exquisite precision that obtains in the works of God, enchants the observant mind, testifies to his pro- vidential care, and prevision of things to come. In the sun's face we see his beauty, in the fire his fostering warmth, in the water his refreshing gentleness,^ every- where, in truth, his boundless exactitude and skill. 113. THE SEKAPH WITHIN. Mightiest possibilities lurk in every breast. We are, indeed, greater than we seem, greater than we know. The seraph that houses within, is ever there. So all ' Species cogniti est in cognoscente. '' Jeremy Taylor, Ouide to Eternal Soppiness. Book in.] A NOBLE BOOK. excellence, every dormant virtue, should be roused into exultant development, nor is there a quality befitting us for earth, or commending us to heaven, which ought not to be elicited in every soul. n4. THE SOUL IN THE VOICE. There are voices that bespeak the reality of generons culture or its opposite, the influence or the silence of elevated sentiment, those spiritual affections, which bring us nigh God, and realise community with celestial purity and truth. Love is among the sources of this, as of every great, and good, and generous thing, indeed life's very tree. At intervals, in truth, one hears tones that thrill the heart, utterances of passion-firaught em- phasis, and voices that vibrate to the melodies of heaven. 115. THE TEEE OF LIFE. We are images of clay, of iron, or of gold. In some the clay predominates, in some the rugged iron, and in some, dear God, the red, red gold. But to all it is not given to mount amid the branches of the tree of life,^ and straightway compass heaven.^ 116. A NOBLE BOOK. Each noble, excelling book does a portion of God's work. For, like a thing of beauty, a good book is in truth a possession for ever. A volume full of falsehood, malice, and invective, in short open or covert wicked- ' Bade volte risurge per le rami L'umana protitate. Dante, Del Twgatorio, Canto vii, ^ Beata I'alma che lasea tal pondo, E va nel ciel, dove e compita zoglia. EITOET. [Book IIT, ness, wrings the heart, distresses the intelligence. And what a luxury is a good book. It becomes as it were a dear friend, revealing secrets from the invisible, realising not only the harmonies of nature,^ but the very fragrance of heaven. Thus, a manual of devotion or philosophy, some old chronicle or volume of poor plays, speaking to the heart and from the heart, shall become indeed a treasure, snatching man from earth, bearing him to the ein-pjxean, and realising satisfactions from the infinite. 117. LOOKING hea.ve;;.waed. To look heaven-ward, is as a golden thread shot through purple tissue, interpenetrating every thought and action of our lives. For a divine providence is everywhere, now in some glorious deed or aspiration, the spiritual kingdom of odours, colours, and sound, the sheen of the yellow flower, strains of delicious har- mony, surpassing work of art, or natural adaptation. How diiferent indeed, are such teachings from the recital of formulas, once perchance replete with vitality and truth, but now grown old and sere. We require, indeed, fresh utterances from the heart, not the mere thoughts and words of those who worked and strove long years ago, but living, loving experiences, direct and flowing from heaven. 118. EFFOST. The one word effort, symbolizes a universe of thought. For, well understood, everything, all the mighty crea- ' Einldang niit dor ganzen Natiu-. Hoffmann. Book III.J SHADOWS. tions of God, is effort visible or implied. If man had but true faith in it, he would be mightier, wiser, better than he is.^ Unimaginable, in truth, is the virtue of persistent effort. Effort, indeed, is the exponent and the concrete of the law of progress, that progress with- out which there could be nor life, nor providence, nor movement. It is in truth, life, and happiness, and hope, whereas inertia is torpor, and listlessness, and doom. 119. SHADOWS. I knew a dog with assuredly the strangest addiction, for a dog, that ever was. Its nightly passion was to pursue, with many an impatient cry and bound, its shadow on the wall. And thus do men themselves pursue shadows, nay, the shadows of shadows. A merchant, just deceased, died worth, was it a soul full of knowledge, affections human and divine. No, but three, or, as the blatant chronicle recorded it, it might be nearer four millions gold. Yet, this poor, rich man died, it seems, dreading poverty. Do you not perceive, O wealth-seeker, that when you cultivate riches for riches' sake, you pursue a dream, the shadow of a dream.^ Your houses, lands, hereditaments, cannot follow you to the tomb. And if they did, what would they avail in a land where a single affection is of sni-eater moment than the untold wealth of the material universe. ' KendHohe Prinzipe fallen dioli an, und nur die innere Kraft, mit der, Du den Anfechtimgen widerstehst, kann dich retten von Schmach und Verderben. Hoffmann. "Sxiasom^, Find. Katrwu o-x/i, Soph. TraumeinesTraumeB, Hegel. TO KNOW, TO BE, AND TO DO. [Book III. 120. LIFE NO DEEAM. Quickly, quickly, doth life flit, even as a dream away. Thus wrote to me, citing the lovely words of the Sicilian poet, a soul now housed in paradise. He, the poet indeed, likened life to a dream,' the Spaniard called it sleep.- No, by the lofty heavens, it is not all sleep, nor yet a dream, quickly though it pass away, but a scene rich in noblest action, loftiest aspirings, the very forecourt and outpost of heaven, true arena of the multitudinous inspiration and providence of God. 121. THE FAITHFUL DEAD. Forget them not the faithful dead.'' Such is the legend, graven on tablets of stone, in one of the multi- tudinous battle sepulchres of Germany. No, forget them never, those who, faithful to their sacred trust, fought well life's fitful battle and perished in the act. For, were it not for these, and such as these, the world would become a sty and men mere rooting swine. 122. TO KNOW, TO BE, AND TO DO. To know, to be, and to do, are all resumed in the conduct of the nobly good and wise. To such, to seem ' '^"X"! 7"l •^'^(i^Xi^ra.i u; oMj »j /Jn. Theocritus, Idyl 27, line 8. ^ Que es la vida. TJn frenese. Que es la vida. Una iluaion, Una sombra, una ficcion, . . . la vida es sueilo, Y los suenos sueno son. Calderon, La Vida es Sueno. Jornada II. ^ VergisB die treuen Todten nicht. Book III.] IMPULSE AND PHINCIPLE. 73 and to be, to dare and to do, in very deed are one. For character and fate, oh golden truth, are only other names for one and the same conception.^ An over-timid, meticulous conscience, straining at flies, slurs life's great aims in a fritter of needless anxieties, since in a life of real grandeur, as some great soul has said, petty cares are unknown. 123. A DIVINE IDEAL. A divine ideal has been shed upon our souls, one that cannot die. Erom the same do vv^e derive the mighty conception of the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of Man. And thus does life assume an infinite signifi- cance, become associated with thoughts of eternity and of heaven. 124. IMPULSE AND PEINCIPLE. Impulse and principle, intuition and judgment, should, if it were possible, be one. They can only, indeed, become so, through early training, as well as sustained efibrt, the tireless patience and unconquerable hope, which make duty, and inclination, and resolve, firmly and indissolubly one.^ For only through belief comes love, and truth, and eternity.^ ' ScHcksal und Gemuth sind nvir vercliiedene Namen deaaelten Begriffs. Novaiis, Schriften. Berlin, 1826. ^ L' esprit juste, le coeur droit, enfin la grande route du sens oommun et de la conscience univeTselle. Victor Cousin, Oev/vres, Quatrieme Serie, Paris, 1849. ^ Nur in dem Glauben ist die Liebe, und die Walirheit, und die Ewigkeit. Hoffman, Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin, 1845. MOBAL CONQUEST. [Book III. 126. WOMAN'S GEACE. Grace was in her steps, heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love. Such is the poet's unsurpassed, and indeed, unsurpass- able delineation of the mother and parent of our kind. And such, did man but do his duty by them, might every woman become.^ For Vihat initiation, then, do we wait, is there not already divinest warrant for the task. In a London print, a little girl, we find it said, some vagrant daughter of glorious Eve, was recently consigned to Wandsworth gaol, for pulling things, by means of hair-lines, oif her parents' shelves, causing it to be imagined that the house was haunted. What neglect, what evil training, what vile antithesis, is here. Why did not the rector or the sitting magistrate, who it seems had to do with the affair, take the child to his home, or place her in some asylum where her poor heart might have been swayed by the invisible hair-lines of love, haunted, indeed, with things of heaven. 126. MORAL CONQUEST. Each successful moral effort is a struggle, indeed, and victory. For there are no efforts more arduous than spiritual ones. It is, in truth, the mightiest ' Eclairer, instruire, perfectionner les femmes comme les hommes, les nations comme les individas, c'est encore le meiUeur secret pour tous les huts raisonaUes, pour toutes les relations sociales et politiquea auxquelles on vent assurer im fondament durable. De Stael, De la Literature, Tome II. p. 157- Paris, 1812. Book III.] A CONFESSION. achievement to place things in a just light, satisfy- ing at once the intelligence and the heart, gaining, thus, far-off glimpses of the spiritual house and palaces of ecstasy. 127. A SOUL. In veriest truth, we are spirits in the flesh. The body shields a soul, a living, loving, yet unseen, immortal soul. For the body is not the man, but the soul only,' whose purification and development should be hfe's mighty end and aim. 128. A CONFESSION. Written in the beautiful round-hand of the period, in the fly-leaf of an old edition I possess of the Aphor- isms of Hippocrates, is the confession of V. F. Christ is to me the way, the life, the truth.^ Doubtless the confession was one not made in vain. To imitate, not merely profess, so mighty an Exemplar, the divine philosophy of him who bade the erring one sin no more, that so, sweetest of formulas, each trespass should be forgiven, his walk, his life, his truth, to relieve the morally sick and destitute, to comfort and enlighten, averting spiritual death,^ in fine, to further, to the utmost, the eternal safety and moral well-being of our kind, is of all ambitions most holy, most just, most pure. ^ 'H i^uj^i) o-u, TO 5r rS/ix riv. Sieroclis Commentarii in aurea Pythagoras Carminu. Cantab. 1709. - Chrietiis est mihi i-ia, -nta,, et Veritas. A.I>. 1687- ^ Ttfu ^avff,rov Toil blUTi^ov. KEPLEE. [Book III. 129. KEPLEE. Man's soul is the counterpart of the universe, he himself a fellow-worker with God, and at one with the purposes of heaven. Thus was it with Kepler, a man of science indeed,^ one steeped in goodness, intelligence, and truth. His was of the genius which elevates and regenerates our kind. As men, he says, enjoy dainties at the dessert, so do wise souls gain a relish for heaven. I thank thee. Lord and Master, he exclaims, in hymns of real praise, that thou hast ravished my soul with the work of thy hands, the light and life-giving sun, stars strewn through infinite space.^ All truth, all law, indeed, he named a thought of God,^ and every outward thing a symbol of the divine. Philo- sophy and religion with him were as one. His candour, ' Prodromtis 1597. Harmonices Mundi, 1697. ^ Grosser Kiinstler der welt, Ich sohaue wundemd die Werke Deiner Hande, nach funf kunstUohen Formen erbauet TJnd in der Mitte die Sonn' . Anspenderin Liclites inid Lebens, Die nach heU'gem Gesetz ziigelt die Erden uad lenkt In verschiedenem Lauf. loh. seh' die Miihen des Mondes, TJnd dort Sterne zerstreut auf unennessener Flur — Vater der Welt, -was tewegte dich, ein armes, ein kleines Sctwaclies Erdgesckbpf so zu erheten, so hoch, Dass ea inGlanz dasteht, ein weitliin herrsohender Konig, Fast ein Gott, denn er denkt deiae Gedanken dir nach Herrscher der Welt. Du ewige Maolit. Durch. alle die Welten Sciwingt sioli auf Fliigeln dea Lichts deia unermeaaener Glanz. Herder, nach Kepler, M^st. Cosmograph. ' La verite n'est que la penaee de Dieu. Quand I'homme y arrive il pense ce que Dieu pense, et la pensee de Dieu eat toujours saiate et parfaite conune lui. Coquorel. Book III.] THE BODY. patience, and perseverance, were, indeed, unbounded. Rodolpli II. his protector, tormented him to reHnquish astronomy for astrology. The confessors of Rodolph plagued him to become a Roman-Catholic. The Lu- therans, his co-religionists, persecuted him because he would not condemn the Calvinists. Tycho-Brahe be- sought him to abandon what he termed the reveries of Copernicus. The misfortunes of war drove his wife mad, while he himself was obliged to hurry off to pro- tect his aged mother, accused of sorcery and condemned to the rack. Worn out with toil and sheer exhaustion, he died sweetly and greatly, as he had lived, after vainly riding to the Diet at Ratisbon in search of arrears of pay, leaving but some two-and-twenty rixdoUars in his purse.^ Yet was this ornament of humanity styled an atheist. But Kepler will be honoured while our race endures, or a tongue remains to proclaim that Being to whose glory he has erected a monument thrice sublime. 130. THE BODY. The body, the rapidly-fleeting body, is not mere dust and corruption, but of the glorious works of God. Its chemical and vital changes are simply marvels of the divine. The ancients, perhaps, placed it on too high a platform, assuredly, we leave it on one too low. A body, indeed, maintained in health, and purity, and ' So hocli war noci kein SterMclier gestiegen Ala Kepler gestieg — imd starb in Hungersnoth, Er wusste nur die Geister zu vergniigen, Drum liessen ihn die Korper ohne Brod. Kastner. CELESTIAL LAW. [Book IU. well-being, subserving the purposes of God, is, in truth, a glorious tribute to the power which called it into being and sustains it as it is. 131. THE DIVINE EVEBTWHEHE. God is in the storm not less than in the calm, in the waste as in the garden and the ploughed field. Nothing can subsist apart from Him. There is not a tyranny, whether of one or many, the cruelest fanaticism, atheism the most heartless, epidemies the most devas- tating, sins the most revolting, which have not their origin in conditions, which, however perverted and outraged, are not the less, when wisely ordered, sources of tranquillity and peace, results in all res- pects divine.^ "With steadfast faith that sin may be forgiven, And love like this to he renewed in heaven, Poor is the heart adversity can hreak And loss is gain for love and pity's sake.^ 132. CELESTIAL LAW. The celestial laws assert themselves.^ Strength, honour, purity, lie folded up in them for ever. • They are, indeed, a stern Nemesis or a law of love. But unlike some earthly laws, they ever welcome back the ' L'homme a heau s'agiter, il s'agite dans un circle inflexible. Sea appetitg, ses besoins, ses exces, meme, tout le ramene a un ordre centre lequel il ne pent rien. Au moral comme au physique, par ses vices comme par ses virtus, il obeit a des lois mysterieuses et inflexibles. Alphouse Karr. ^ Mackay, The Triumph of Love. ' WoUaston, Religion of Nature Delineated, London, 1750, p. 265. Book III.] TO CONFER HAPPINESS. 70 penitent offender, suggest, in truth, the peace and the trust which are of heaven. 133. SOUL-CULTUEE. After all, humanity's greatest hope and most precious healing, resides in the culture of the soul. As a mighty teacher has said, we are to ponder things truthful, and just, and pure, and lovely, and good.^ For the spiritual fruits are love indeed, and peace, and goodness, and patience, and gentleness, and joy, with faith in the life to come. 134. DUTIES, OUBS. Duties, indeed, are ours, events are God's. The pursuit of truth is man's especial business, but the conse- quences of its discovery concern a higher power.^ Nie- buhr, whom Bunsen most justly characterises as a man of vast intellect, simplicity, and singleness of purpose, speaks of a city the women of which were deficient to that degree in mental culture, as not even to have a suspicion of its existence. But this city, alas, is also the world, its inhabitants are men. 135. TO CONFER HAPPINESS. The most exalted happiness, indeed, is to confer hap- piness. God, we may not doubt it, enjoys the satisfac- tions of his creatures. And while in our measure we "Otrcc IffTiv aXTjSni offa trsfivccj offx Sixaiu, otra aj-na, oVas ^potrtpiXvy flVa iv^flfix — A^awj), ^a^fie, it^rivtl, fiux^o^ufitotj p^^yiffroTns, aytcfaiffvu^i ^iffTts, ' La veritd est I'afiaire de rhomme, les consequences sont I'affaire de Dieu. Athanase Coquerel, 80 THE SOUL'S PERMANENCE. [Hook III. benefit others, we imitate, in truth, while we also realise the divine.^ 136. FAITH AND WORKS. In our moral life, faith and works are mutually com- plementary, and co-essential. To him who has the constant purpose, the resolute will, must arrive the fitting occasion, the right season. Him, indolence, the great dragon, assuredly shall not devour. 137. TESTISIOXT OF THE PLANTS. The vegetable kingdom, with its treasures of fruit and flowers, is a mighty interpreter of the divine. Flowers, indeed, are of the smiles of God, the very wealth and opulence of heaven. The resinous fragrance of Northern pinewoods, the spicy aroma from forests of the South, are of the tribute of creation to its Maker. I remember, as though it were yesterday, the music of a cocoa-palm which waved all day long, hard by the open casement of the chamber where, fever-stricken, I lay. Consumed by thirst, hardly conscious, it soothed my sufferings and lulled me to repose. Oh, blessings be on the Power which framed that palm, for ever. 13& THE SOUL'S PERMANENCE, The soul is all too divine to depend on a little dust, the poor contingency of any material combination of atoms. " La plupart dea hommes construisent laloreusement 1' edifice de leur malheiir. lis figurent que la vie lexir doit des bonlieurs infiiiis, et font consister le bonheur dans ce que ils n'ont pas, sans autre raison que ceci, qu'Us ne I'ont pas, et qu'un autre le possede. Book III.] THE INNEE LIFE. It not merely transcends the body, its temporary vehicle, but, as Arago has said, even the planet, the grain of sand, on which, for a few short moments, it happens to us to appear. Since God is not, as some idly suppose, the world,^ the merely visible things of this and other spheres, but an unseen, a pervading power, tenanting at once earth and heaven. 139. FAITH, OF HEAVEN. God can only desire the happiness of his creatures, that in all desirable, excelling things, they should be at one with Him, great indeed as heaven, great as immor- tality.^ If, indeed, we would keep faith with the divine, we must keep it with ourselves. If we believe in wis- dom, goodness, truth, strain no principle, violate no law, surely we are on the road to the starry heavens. 140. THE INNEB LIFE. The outer envelop which cloaks human consciousness, the phenomenal world, the things of sense in fine, may perish, but the inner feeling, the soul's life, can never perish. Dogmatism deals in its own peremptory fashion with this great truth, of which love alone, yields truest assurance for ever. ' Das Atome oder der klemste einfaclie Grundvestantlieil der Materie ist der Gott. Von Ewigkeit lier existirend und in Ewigkeit hia unver- nicMtar, tleibt selbst in alien "Weolisel der Ersolieimingen dooh imrner dasselbe, unverauderliche. Buclmer, Natw wni Geist. Frankfurt, 1867. B. I. S. 7. 2 Les puissances intimes de notre ams geront agrandies comme le sera notre horizon d'activite, notre sphere de tonheur, notre capacity d'adoration et de foi. Tout en nous sera grand comme le ciel, grand comme rimmortaJit^. A. Coquerel. G 82 BECIPEOCAl, DEVELOPMENT. [Book III. 141. LOFTIEST AIMS. There is a rational self-assertion wliich delivers us from the promptings of mean ambition and yet meaner acts. Without it, moral elevation seems impossible. Schleiermacher, assuredly among the greatest of modern theologians, relegated to the list of open questions, the ecclesiastical subtilties which would multiply the per- sonality of God, imply the destruction of man's spiri- tual nature, assert, in short, any other than a spiritual reclamation, through God's favour, but apart from all vicarious or substitutive agency whatever.^ The con- ception, indeed, which af&rms man's natural and in- evitable corruption, by a process here needless to trace, leads or tends to lead to spiritual arrogance and despot- ism, on one hand, or on the other to a self-humiliation hardly less pernicious. Whereas God, who commends us to our own self-respect and care, has imparted to us capacities almost boundless, with means adequate for their development. 142. EECIPEOCAL DEVELOPMENT. One virtue inclines to other virtues.^ Like the graces, the spiritual affections, principles most elevated, most divine, sweetest gifts of an infinitely munificent God, very seed and corner-stones of heaven, by reason of ' Sammiliclie Werke. Berlin, 1842. Glauhenslehre. ^ Ces clivers sentimens, la piete fUiale, I'amitie, 1' amour, et la tendresse paternelle peuvent exister a-la-fois dans nos ooeurs. Loin de se nuire, chaoim d'eux semble donner une vie nouveUe a tous les autres. Droz, L'Art d'itre Seurcu.c. Book UI.] THE COBEECTIYE OF EVIL. S3 their common filiation, tend continually to reciprocal furtherance, and yet more and more to realise them- selves. 143. FOKCE OF CHABACTEB. More souls, perhaps, have gone to ruin from the absence of sufficient firmness, than owing to any par- ticular proclivity to ill. Weakness, aggravating our shortcomings and those of others, is the especial malady of our moral nature. Force of character, indeed, is not always associated with excellence, hut when it is, the results are admirable. 144. GENIUS, DIVINE. Genius, safeguard and solace of humanity, truly patient and enduring, is of the mighty gifts of God. Intolerant of all that is base and low, its sympathies are attuned to every good, and true, and gracious thing. For genius, allied with a moral purpose, does battle with every hindrance, realises the ideal, in short aids to elevate and redeem the world. 145. THE COHEECTIVE OF EVIL. Every evil has its corrective. When opposed by healthy moral natures, it is met by efibrts only to be satisfied with success. The weak, indeed, may shrink, but no one duly impressed with man's celestial des- tinies, ever bated hope or trust under circumstances however disastrous or discouraging. The angels in human guise, their earthly labours closed, are sure to be appreciated at last. The good they have accomplished t 8-1 THE INTENT AND THE ACT. [Book III. the glories they have won, must shed a light upon humanity for ever. 146. LOVE CASTS OUT FEAB. To love God and man, and to cultivate the better affections, is the truest fidelity, vrhile not to love God and man, and not to cultivate the better affections, is the saddest infidehty. I would not fray a single leaflet of the tree of eternal life, yet I feel, I know, that every superstitious, untruthful element does hurt to religion's holy cause, and that it should be eliminated, and cast aside for ever. For the life spiritual is begotten, not of terror, but of love, since perfect love excludes all fear.'^ So, perfect faith, God's spirit in unison with the inner life, casts out infidelity. There cannot be fear or un- belief, when the soul is steeped in the spiritual affec- tions, and in the undying conviction of infinite good- ness and love. For a godlike life is indeed divine.- 147. THE INTENT AND THE ACT. In some, the interval between the intention and the act is as a fathomless abyss, while in others, intention and act go together, hand in hand. Thus, speaking of Schiller, some one said he did not fritter costly life away in the inconceivable infatuation of delay .^ The relation between the intention and the act indeQ.d, is a 'O 0EOf ayaTTn Icrr), ^ajSos oy« itrrtv \'j rn uyaTH, aXX' yi rtkiia. ay«V»j ^ Durcli ein gottliclies Leben 'wird man Grottes inne. ' Er vermeidete alle die leeren Zerstreungen wodurcli andere das kostbare Leben vergeuden. Book III.] TESmIO^fT OF CHRISTIANITY. 83 not to be questioned criterion of energy, not merely human but divine. 148. DEATH A SYMBOL. From every death there issues the symbol of eternal life. The man has been, but is now become.^ Time for him has lapsed into nothingness, and the divine purpose has advanced a step. Thou art mine, exclaims earth to the body. Thou art mine, exclaims the Lord to the soul. Never, in truth, were there more touching lessons of grace, spiritual aspiration, and resignation, than I have seen written, again and again, on the faces of the dead, the dead whom a living soul should ani- mate and direct no more. 149. TESTIMONY OF CHRISTIANITY. Christianity, religion, rightly interpreted, separating additions, legendary and temporary, from what is en- during and divine, elevating and developing every better principle, yields potent testimony to the truthfulness of the religious principle itself. How far merely figurative language has been actualised, how certain preternatural statements have found admission, in connexion with the Gospel narratives, it would now perhaps be fruitless to inquire. Suffice to say, they are not needed to en- force, nay, they often prove serious obstacles to, the sacred cause of holiness and truth. Instead of mysterious doc- trines as to the origin of sin, a spiritual Christianity simply shows that sin severs us from God, and that through penitence and effort, making thus true atone- ' Fatri, Briefe gegen den Materialismus, Stuttgart, 1856. 86 A DIVINE INITIATION. [BOOK III. ment, we are alone reunited to him, realising indeed here, the heaven v^hich hereafter awaits us all. The suhlime Christian doctrine of the spirituality and permanence of man's soul, as distinct from, and inde- pendent of, the secondary phenomena we term matter, has, in its brightness and enduringness, become more and more firmly rooted with the advance of time. Yet, still are there numbers unable to conceive existence apart from a frame, which, however fitted for purposes local and transient, is unsuited as a permanent adjunct to a spiritual nature and a more permanent home. ISO. THE MIGHTY REVERSION. All sin is irreligion, and there is no irreligion except sin. For purity, and sweetness, and truth, are of the essence of religion, which without them cannot be. The loftiest, holiest ideal that ever throned it in the saint's breast, or in the poet's soul, does not perhaps excel the living reality subsisting in many a heart, much more the great, the mighty reversion, which, through favour of the Infinite, awaits us all, 151. A DIVINE INITIATION. As dealing with spiritual facts and a most divine initiation, religion yields mightiest intuitions. But inasmuch as it has to do with humanity, it also has to do with imperfection, shortcomings, error, and gets mixed up with them. In time, however, our insight becomes clearer, what is erroneous and imperfect falls away, while that which is excellent is laid hold of, and perchance retained for ever. Book m.] THE PROCESS OF ASSENT. 152. UNITY WITH GOD. Philosophy and jurisprudence alike, disclaim retri- butive dealings on the part of God and man. And religion, too, which, rightly interpreted, is hut a loftier philosophy, disclaims them. The only suffering, the only retribution, since there is and can be no other, is not to be at one with God. Like Bohme, Swedenborg, his fantasies and follies apart, had frequent glimpses, indeed sweetest insight, into divine truth. The true church, he says, is within.^ Love to God and charity, he adds, make heaven. For love, of a verity, is the fire of life, the very life of man, that which seeks, and one day shall secure, the spiritual safety of our kind.^ We are, indeed, to live with God, not through dread of punishment, or the hope of reward merely, but because it is good to be with Him.'' For this is its own reward, in this resides the simplicity and the grandeur of true religion, from which every illusory, artificial, insufiicient, and conven- tional sanction must one day for ever disappear. 153. THE PEOCESS OF ASSENT. It is with religious, as with all truth, that when the heart is open to its reception, it must needs be taken ' Seaven and Sell, passim. ^ 'Aya.'xns Ss |K« ix^t '''"^'" ^'f- ' Lasst ims auch erkennen dass es ein lieroisolier Gehorsam ist, die Gesetze Gottes zu iDeolDachten, Moss weal es Gbttes Gesetze sind, imd niclit weil er die Beo'bacliter Her iind dort zu belohneii verheissen hat, sie beobacMen ob man scion an der kiinftdgen Belohnung ganz Terzweifelt, und der Zeitliolien auoli nicht so ganz gewiss ist. Lessing, Hrziehwig des MenschmgeschleM, § 32. THE SAFE ROAD. [Book III. in. The consent which conscience yields, alone is necessary. By no other conceivable process, can the mind arrive at conclusions that concern the spiritual life. Thus, then, there is a stage in progress when the light can no longer be excluded. When there are eyes to see it, the light must be seen, when there are ears to hear it, the truth must be heard. And every error, along with every misconception, at variance with the light and with the truth, must some time fall away and cease to aiFect the soul, just as if it had never been. 104. HABMONT OF DIVINE THOTH. The great and singular characteristic of religious, of divine truth, is its universality, its joint approval by the heart and intellect, its harmony with all other truth, with philosophy, the highest ideal, the best and holiest literature, the loftiest poesy, all science and art, in fine, every thing that constitutes the crown and glory of humanity, the very flower and peace of heaven. 155. THE SAFE EGAD. Spiritual truth is the ceaseless aspiration of every earnest, striving soul.^ Of this I am assured, that no mere spiritual nostrum, no empirical formula or play of words, can save man's soul, whether in the seen or the unseen life, but goodness only, and purity, and truth, in conformity with the divine. For what is spiritual safety but goodness, the cultivation of sentiments which impel the soul to God and a world beyond our own.^ And what ^ Bishop Hampden, Lectures on Moral FMlosophy^ p. 96. Book III.] TRUE AFFECTION UNSELFISH. 89 is goodness, itself, but nearness to the divine, the realisa- tion of heaven within the hreast, that heaven which lies by every hearth and at every door. The theory of the good, the beautiful, the true, is very simple and very intelligible, as well as in perfect consonance with the moral, spiritual law, and the fun- damental convictions of our kind. No shedding of in- nocent blood is implied here, no sacrifice except self- sacrifice, in order to find acceptance with God. For unless we become as little children, we cannot, indeed we cannot, enter heaven.^ Unless we be actuated by the pure, the celestial aifections so largely difi'used into the hearts of the young, we cannot partake of the sweet realities imaged forth by the terms, kingdom of God, the blessed life, the happy, the divine estate of childhood. 158. TRUE AFFECTION UNSELFISH. The affections, in themselves, are so very, very beau- tiful, that we are slow to discern that they may lapse into little better than a more refined selfishness. For there is a selfishness of the heart as well as of the in- telligence,'^ quite at variance with the spiritual harmony and perfection essential to developed humanity. Senti- ment, indeed, is the harmonious and living relation between reason and sensibility itself.^ For there must not be any divorce between intellect and afiection. Their objects are alike divine, in veriest truth are one. ^ Eav fih yivvjh aig tx ^xi^ia, au fih SiVfcX^jjrs us riiv {secfftXliccv r&iv oii^avm. ^ Evening Thoughts, by a Physician. London, 1850. ^ Cousin, On the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. Lecture V. On Mysticism. Wight's tr. 90 COMTASSIONS, DIVINE. CBook UI. Cherub and seraph, things of beauty and of grace, they walk hand in hand, home-ward and heaven-ward to- gether. Even the body, itself, as transfigured by in- telligence, and grace, and love, becomes an emblem of spiritual things. And genius and love, with every sacrament, and each spiritual and holy evangel, proceed in closest association, without hesitancy or pause, for ever. For the heart has aspirations that precede any thought, as thought itself, goes farthest when guided by the heart. If, indeed, in the spiritual life, there be a thing truer, more ravishing than another, it is that genius, and duty, and holiness, and love, are in closest dependence on each other. For the noble and the beautiful are not a dream, and never, never, shall be wanting in this thrice wondrous and exquisite world. The affections, indeed, are essential to all excellence, all true greatness. It is only what the soul drinks in with eagerness, that be- comes thoroughly and perfectly its own. So, affection and refinement, with all the graces, should be wedded to goodness, as to every just, and sacred, and beautiful thing. For thus, and only thus, can humanity become united with its better self, and the inner life, and with heaven. 157. COMPASSIONS, DIVINE. Being of beings, exclaims Shefiield from his West- minster Abbey tomb, have compassion on me.^ And wherefore should not the Infinite Heart, founder and fountain of the celestial affections, have compassion on ' Ens entium miserere mei. Book m.] COMPASSIONS, DIVINE. 91 Mm and on all men. For religion is not a thing of drear and gloom, but one of joy, and hope, and fruitions present and to come. Mere words too often, a fictitious instead of a real morality, a supposititious instead of a real theology, have, in a degree, estranged men's souls from that full reliance on the unlimited mercies of God, so much needed by the often sorely-tried, dependent heart of man. None of the modern systems of doctrinal theology, it has been remarked, subsisted in Christ's day, or in those of his immediate followers. In Christ's conversations, observes Jean Paul, we do not find a single word of souls falling with Adam, or of satisfaction for sin.^ How slender, indeed, is the foundation in the New Testa- ment, two passages of Paul and those of uncertain interpretation, for the doctrine of Adam's sin being imputed to his posterity.^ All, says Niebuhr,' ac- quainted with church history, know that a system of doctrines respecting redemption, hereditary sin, grace, did not exist for at least two centuries after Christ, or, indeed, find any sufficing countenance in the Christian Scriptures at all. Whatever may be said in respect of these critical utterances, certain it is that any coercion that does not imply the coercion of truth, a spiritual religion instead of a spiritual despotism, a religion of hope and love and joy, instead of one of sorrow and menace and gloom, is rife with misery and ill. For a true theology, in a ' Letter to his eon Max. Zip, London, Chapman, 1846. ^ Jowetfs Epistles of St. Faul, vol. i. p. 162. •• Life and Letters, 2nd ed. vol. i. p. 217, vol. ii. p. 119. 92 THE BUSINESS OF AGE. [Book III. word God in the heart, is alone in accordance with his light and with his love, the simple intelligible dictates of universal spiritual truth, man's spiritual safety, the changeless and unchangeable convictions of the best and wisest of our kind. 158. CHILDBEN OF GOD. To be named the children, sons and daughters of God, is surely the loftiest designation that human beings can receive, or to which they can aspire. As in the beautiful words of Aratus,^ cited by St. Paul, we are, in truth, the offspring of the divine. For it involves a mighty fact, one that comes with peculiar emphasis on the soul, yields loftiest incentives to imitate the divine. That w6 are, indeed, God's chUdren and his creatures, is of those angehc truths, consonant with every right affection, the very marrow of goodness and intelligence, the loftiest and most consolatory that it is possible for 159. THE BUSINESS OF AGE. There is, at least there need be, no mental or moral decrepitude. For every sweet affection, the entire in- telligence in fine, grows, or ought to grow, brighter with time and sustained effort. The body, in truth, decays, but the soul need never decay. The busi- ness of age, then, is to nourish our powers, discipline our perceptions, multiply the loftier influences that spring at once from the sensuous and spiritual worlds. Does age, indeed, shut out the secret paths along 'fl? xfiti rivi? T(wv XCC&' tifia; ■^oinraiv u^riKctfi^ Toy yci^ KOU y'ivos l^/i'iv. Book III.] THE VEILED LIFE. which, souls are led to the goals of perfection, the very gates of heaven. Is the spirit which forgets itself in the joys and sorrows of another, of necessity less radiant in advanced than earlier years. Angels of purity and intelligence haunt the chambers of the soul in age as in sunny infancy, if we will. And their spiritual solace shall attend and wait upon us, along the fields of time, to our celestial happy home. ISO. THE INNER VOICE. He, in truth, begins a new life, who determines to act up to the best dictates of his inner nature. Christ enlarged not so much on the soul's immortality, as on inward purity, best and only real preparative for it.^ There is not a requirement of the loftiest truth, the most sterling manliness, the soundest philosophy, the noblest patriotism, the broadest philanthropy, that will not be found in unison, if we only obey the inward voice that tells us to go on, and not to palter with the great requirements of our position and our time. Since life is so short, so short,^ that we may not pause till the morrow, but in what is to be said, and done, and felt, and thought, to say, and act, and feel, and think it now. 161. THE VEILED LIFE. In each of those who pass, there may be veiled the sweetest spirit-life, probity, thoughtfulness, courage, gentleness, and patience under difficulties. There is, ' Eine innere Eeinigkeit des Herzens in Hinsiclit auf ein anderes Leten. LessiBg, Erziehimg des Mmsehengesehlecht, § 61. 2 Das Leben ist Inurz uad die Zeit ist edel. EVIL OF FEAR. [Book III. indeed, nothing amid the wide-spread marvels of exist- ence more wondrous than are the hidden powers, hidden from all save the soul's deep discernment, in fine the phenomena of the inner life. For man is a mystery to himself, a mystery only to be fitly appreciated by the mighty Originator of all things. 152. ACTION AND EEACTION. Action and reaction subsist not less in the moral, than in the physical world. Do good and you shall be done good by, respect others and you shall be respected, love and you shall he loved. For God will do this by you and more, through the medium of your own soul, in which he dwells potentially and for ever. On the other hand, hate and you shall be hated, despise and you shall experience despite. Life, liberty, and the just pursuit of happiness are the rightful inheritance of all men. The legend, indeed, is blazoned on the American declaration of independence, with the living context and correlative of four millions of slaves. 163. EVIL OF FEAB. Fear inflicts even larger evils than do violence and crime, since it saps the masculine energy by which alone they are to he comhated. Had the conservators of truth heen less faithful to their sacred trust, what were our position now. Great thoughts animate the soul to deeds of heroism, best preparative for a heroic eternity. And there are perhaps few things more heroic than to state the truth, the entire truth, and the truth only, to our kind. Book III.] EVIL OF FEAR. 95 A little leaven, were it of truth and goodness, impels "wholesoirip thouglit into appropriate channels of utter- ance and action. The slave of selfishness vnll never conquer earth, much more the holier, lovelier realms of heaven. The great and adorahle marvel, in respect of the eternal principles of the moral lavr, is this, that they work, not hy signs and symbols merely, any inver- sion or invasion of natural, that is to say divine, law and order, hut only through the regeneration and spiritualisation of the dear, deep heart of man. When this mighty truth is felt and known, sects shall vanish and controversy be no more. There shall be no church except God's church, and no contention except to do His will. Societies and individuals, alike, can only purchase advantages, not by owing them to others, but by per- sonal effort and sacrifice of their own.^ A divine energy should animate us, whether in sustaining the respon- sibilities of life or in furthering the interests of truth, greatly to dare and to do.^ For heaven has yielded us the kingly boon of self-control, the heroic power of the spirit over itself, the heavenly union and unison of goodness, and moderation, and energy, the genius which vivifies, while our turn of duty lasts and ere we hand it to another,^ lighting up as with a torch, a diviner life within. Would we, indeed, touch other hearts, we must speak like angels from om- own. An infinite ' Guizofs Democracy, 5tli ed. 1849. 2 Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, noctes atque dies niti praestante labore, ad summas emergere opes rervunque potiri. EVIL OF FEAB. [Book Hr. courage combined with cheerfulness as infinite, ventur- ing to be great and true, should animate each single soul. It is the instinct and destiny of genius, since true genius is virtue, ceaseless effort, indeed the very marrow and divine energy of the soul, to do battle with every prejudice, all ignorance, folly, vice, and sin. Since genius may not scathless evade its celestial obligations, forfeit its holy mission, sell itself for gold. The world needs all its labourers. For God, who loves us, and to whom, as to everything that is spiritual, and truthful, and good, we are for ever nigh, yields his devoted servants and children his utmost sympathy, and the crown of victory at last, requires all the truth that is in us, our most strenuous efforts, our best resolves. We are, indeed, to aim at perfection, even as God is per- fect, and never for a single instant to doubt our final suc- cess, and the success of the mighty principles for which we are to contend. The seeming defects of the moral world argue, let us be persuaded, nothing against the moral government of God. For all torpor and decay, and even spiritual death, itself, with every doubt and difiiculty, must sometime be got rid of in the soul's progress towards that spiritual perfection, at which, assuredly, it is the divine intention we should steadfastly and ceaselessly aim. ASPIRATIONS THE INNEE, THE SPIEITUAL LIFE. BOOK IV. I KETEKENCE physical science, more as the source of utmost human practical power, and a, means by which the far-distant races of the world, who now sit in darkness and the shadow of death, are to he reached and regenerated. At home or far away, the call is equally instant. Here, for want of more extended physical science, there is plague in our streets, famine in our fields. The pest, we know not why, strikes root and fruit over a hemisphere of the earth. The voices of our children fade away into the silenoe of venomous death. The population resists every effort to lead it into purity of habit and habitation, to give it genuineness of nourishment, and wholesomeness of air. SVightful superstitions still hold their own over two-thirds of the inhabited globe. The phenomena of nature, those legends of God's daily dealing with his creatures, which were intended by the Creator to enforce his eternal laws of love, remain unread, or are read back- wards into blind hundred-armed horror of ideal cosmogony. How strange it seems that physical science should ever have been thought adverse to religion. The pride of physical science, indeed, is adverse to religion and truth. But sincerity of science, so far from being hos- tile, is the pathmaker among the mountains for the feet of those who publish peace. Ruskin. H ASPIEATIONS. 164. INSISTENCE OF PURPOSE. As power imparts grandeur only to the grand, so opportunity is fitly embraced but by the good. Each, elevated conviction is in unison with power over, not bondage to self, ingredient of all virtue, root of all progress. Insanity and vice, however different the di- rection, are one, as collectedness and firmness of pur- pose rightly to dare and to do, are the other, of two extremes of which every soul is capable. 165. THE DIVINE WANT. Without compromise, as without reserve, are the ever- expansive revelations of divine truth, and such, too, should be our avowal and appreciation of them.' For knowledge, and philosophy, and science, and religion, are at one with each other, as with God.^ Indeed we need the divine. The good need it because they are good, the wicked because they are wicked, and all be- cause they are human. Therefore it is, that God con- ' Erzieliiiag ist OfFenbaning, imd Offentarung ist Erzieliiing, die dem MenschengescMecte geschehen ist imd noch geschieM. Lessing, Die Erzielmng des Menschengesohleehts, ^ 2. ^ TJnd warum wird jene Eiige so haufig gegen. die PMosopMe ausges- proclien. Aus keiaen andem Grimde als weil es noch immer Gelehrto giebt, die Philosoplie und Wissensohaft trennen. Moleschott, Kreis- lauf des lehens, Zweite Brief e. 100 THE PARADISE OF CHILDHOOD. [Book IV. tinually reveals himself in the soul's deep affections, the voices of outward nature, the confidences of our kind. Here, the wise and the ignorant, hy a sort of moral parallax, look up alike through the infinite in- terval that separates divine perfection from human imperfection. 166. HEAVEN AT OUR DOORS. The hirds that carol in the lofty ether, the flowers that enamel the mead, or blossom in the parterre, are as angels proclaiming that paradise is within, heaven at our doors, and the divine everywhere. For each day regeneration, unity with celestial things, begins, or ought to begin anew. Alas, exclaims a thoughtful writer,^ the really good and wise but too deeply feel how terrible is the struggle, how incessant, how determined, to emancipate the soul from low desires, grovelling thoughts, and earth-born impulses, to make their being truly beautiful and truly free. This, indeed, is a struggle which can never cease, till, as Sir Thomas Browne has styled it, we reach our jubilee-day, and compass the spiritual life which is life indeed, flee the spiritual death which is death indeed. For else the soul is as a fallen angel which finds no peace in heaven.^ 167. THE PARADISE OF CHILDHOOD. Some time or other, if not now, we shall renew the heaven of our childhood, the heaven of the moment ' Atlns, Jan. 13, 1844. « Nen-man's Theism, The Eardcned Politician. Book IV.] MAN AND GOD. that is passing by. And why should we not realise enjoyments which circumscribe no duty, are at variance with no spiritual law. For a just faith and morals pure, in action, are of necessity' divine, assure the satis- factions of heaven, not less in the life of the instant than in that which is to come. 168. DIVINE UNITIES. Knowledge, and trust, and truth, proceed ever hand and hand. This mysterious, wondrous, and in part incomprehensible existence, hastens on to another yet more wondrous, mysterious, and incomprehensible. We are surrounded by a boundless world of sense, as by an unseen world not less boundless.^ It is impossible with all our insight, to appreciate spiritual truth through the medium of the intelligence only. It is the rock on which intellect has been shattered from immemorial time. For the divine is not mere knowledge, but love also. And religion, too, is love, true exponent of God's unutterable tenderness, man's boundless obligation and conformity. 169. MAN AND GOD. Nothing can extinguish the spiritual sympathies of man with man, and of man with God. One who knows our requirements and infirmities, some husband, wife, mother, sister, child, friend, shall oft-times rescue us from spiritual defeat, save, or help to save, the soul from death. And thus would He who knows our weak- nesses and infirmities do by us all, did we only suffi- ' Attious in the Critic, Oct. 9, 1858. MEDISANCE. [BookIV. ciently aspire to and love liim. For every aspiration brings the soul to God^ helps to realise heaven. 170. MEDISANCE. Of all the addictions adverse to the soul's weal, there are few, perhaps, so injurious as that which the French term medisance. The literary assassin revels in mis- statements to which he dare not append a name. To bear false witness against our neighbour, to gloat over his shortcomings, real or imaginary, is odious alike to God and man. For not less important even than faith in' God, is faith in humanity. We need to believe in God, yet we also need to believe in man. No one who is void of the one, can be truly actuated by the other. The gentleman will not sully his soul with falsity, were his name never so much concealed and un- known. Medisance, in respect of individuals, whether open or cloaked, is evil indeed, but doubly evil is it when directed against nations and peoples, against that which is of God, and in truth divine. Reli- gious, or rather irreligious medisance, is surely not less serious, not less sinful than social. To be lenient to others, inexorable to ourselves, cauterising the ulcers which eat into our better nature, is alone obli- gatory on all. ' Der Menach, Gipfel der Natur, Basis der Gescliiclite, in der llitte zwischen einem von Kbrpern erfiillten Eaum und einer von Thaten erfiillten Zeit, zwisciien einer unennesslichen Leibwelt und einem unal)sehl3aren Geisterreiche. Karl Fortlage, System der Pstjclwlogie als empirisoher Wissenschaft mts der Beoiachten des Innern Sinnes. Leipzig, 1855, Einleitung. Book IV.] ASPIEATION. 171. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. The property which an idea or an emotion has of calling up another idea or emotion, and reciprocally, termed the principle of association, is of deepest interest in our mental and moral constitution. It builds, or aids in building, up the intelligence and heart in infancy, fortifies them in adult age. Association discharges in psychology much the same function which ajffinity does in chemistry. As respects our moral nature, it enables us to confront evil with good, to make the latter the very basis and ground- work of our being. Habit, with its iron or its golden rule, is no other than association. For as the sand- heap is added to or degraded, grain by grain, so is character formed by imperceptible degrees, till passion's mighty pulses overthrow the frail structure, or confirm it, perchance, in endurance and soHdity for ever. 172. ASPIRATION. It is the necessity, the very hunger and thirst of the spirit, to rely upon God, in a word, to aspire. There is not a spiritual longing whose object we have not the means to compass, a perfection which it is not within our power to achieve. For our human nature, with its various and almost divfne capacities, is founded by God. He subjects us to laws which we did not origi- nate, imparts to us our wondrous powers, and, through culture and ceaseless efibrt, amplest means for their development. DIVINE ADJUSTMENTS. [Book IV. 173. INTEOSPECTION. The human soul, as we learn by introspection and the observation of others, is subject to most precise and positive laws.^ Consciousness, in truth, is the great teacher.^ Philosophy and religion, though intimately related, and both from God, are nevertheless in certain respects distinct. Those divine emotions, the anxieties of thought, aspirations after liberty,^ which bring us nigh high heaven, and reason itself, reflection of the silent influence of the image of God, are alike sacred and needful to each other. If we give ourselves wholly up to sentiment, we lapse into mysticism and sacrifice reason. For sentiment has the pretention to elevate man directly to God, without the intermediary of the visible world, and the still surer intermediary of intelligence and truth.* But reason without the afiections, in matters which concern both, will not alone conduct us to heaven. 174. DIVINE ADJUSTMENTS, Exquisite, in truth, are the divine adjustments to our several wants and weaknesses. Yet, their highest usefulness, assuredly, is to lead us to their mighty ' Dans la construction de nos systemes philosopliiques, nous devons toujours tendre a concevoir la nature sous le plus simple aspect pos- sible, mais a condition fondamentale de subordonner toutes nos con- ceptions a la realite des phtoomenes. Comte, Philosophie Fositive, Tome iii. p. 83. Paris, 1833. ^Das psychologisclie Messer ist die Scharfe der den innem Sinn beobaohten den Aufmerksamkeit selbst. Alle mrtliche Wissenscbaft gebt diesen Weg. Fortlage, FsycMogie, Gegenstmid imd Methode. ' M. de Montalembert. * Cousin, On Mysticism, On the True, the BeautifuJ, and the Good. Book IV.] PARTINGS. 105 Originator, to generate lovely thoughts which conquer death, make us at one with the empire of eternal life. For man needs a living, loving, commerce with God, fresh revealings, renewed aspirings, rescuing him from ritualism, dulness, and spiritual decay. 175. UNITY "WITH THE DIVINE. A weU-known theological empiric, once addressing his hearers, rightly enough observed. If you were in heaven without a new heart and a right spirit, you would he glad enough to get out of it. But paradise is not a place merely, as is here imagined, but unity with the divine, the well of sweet waters in the heart.^ It is wherever the divine is acknowledged, believed in, loved.^ For celestial thoughts and celestial things, in- deed, convert the else lowliest soul, the humblest pre- cincts, into a very hosteby of heaven. 176. PABTINGS. Touching, in truth, was that passage in the great reformer's life, when he was required to give up his little Magdalen, his child. My little daughter, my beloved Magdalen, he said, you would remain with your earthly father, but if God call you, you will also willingly go< to him. Yes, dear father, it is as God pleases. Then he took the Book and read from Isaiah. Thy dead men shall live, and thus to the end. Again, he said, my daughter, my Magdalen, enter thou into thy rest. And she turned her dying eyes upon him, and with angelic innocence replied, yes, father. • Newnuuis Theism. ' ' ^ Swedentorg, Heaven and Sell, 106 THE HIGHEST WISDOM. [Book IV. Another daughter and another father abode in a lone log-hut far towards the western sun. And he too was called on to part with his treasure, his darling, his child. Father, she said, I am cold, cold. And twining her fever-spent arms around him, she murmured, father, dear father. My daughter, he whispered, does the flood seem deep to you. Nay, father, for my soul is strong. I see the further shore, and its banks are green with immortal verdure. I hear voices, too, as the voices of angels calling from afar. But there is a mist in the room, father. You will be lonely, lonely. Father, dear father, farewell.' When Olympia Morata, worthy compeer of Vittoria Colonna and Lady Jane Grey, was breathing her an- gelic life away, at Schweinfurt, October 26, 1555, but barely twenty-nine, she said to her husband and little brother Emilio. I can no longer see you, my best beloved, but all around me seems adorned with the fairest flowers.^ Death, then, was not terrible to these children of heaven. Why should it be so to any of us. 177. THE HIGHEST WISDOM. Suspended from a soldier's neck, one slain at Sebas- topol, was found a leaden tablet, a mother's gift, on which were traced characters in the Russian tongue. ' Lietend blicktc die sterbende Tochtei den stummen Vater An und driickt' ihm die Hand. " Yater, ich bin nicht melir !" Sprach sie, zarte Thriinen bedeckten ihr brecbendes Ange Und den weinenden Blick scbloss die verhiillende Kacht. Herder, Die Sterbende Tochter. ^ Jules Bonnet, Tic c!^ Olympia Morata, Paris, 1856. "WUdermuth, Olympia Morata, ein Lebensiild, Stuttgart, 1854. Book IV.] CONTENDING WITH EVIL. 107 The highest wisdom is to serve the Lord. And what better could this poor mother have written, had an angel guided her hand. What angel could surpass a mother's self-sacrificing tenderness. For the good mother, joint head of the family tie, very precursor of heaven, is indeed an angel, one of whom surely none in heaven's loftiest hierarchy may take precedence. 178. SIN AND StlFFEKING. It was once supposed that there was a material hell, some sulphurous region where men were tortured for deeds wrought in the flesh. But we know better now, know that the sinner's suffering is a moral suffering, sorrowing over sin and severance from God. This, however, is a state of grace contrasted with that lower hell, the apathy which no sense of error, no awakening of contrition, serves to chasten. For goodness is unison with God, while its opposite is disunion at once with God and with heaven. 179. CONTENDING WITH EVIL. It is incumbent on us to contend with evil whenever and wheresoever we meet with it. As tyrants tread out the life, the beautiful life, of the free, so do evil thoughts, foul indeed, and dreary,^ creep with suffer- ance into each neglected soul, and enslave it. Spiritual quixotism is not necessary, though spiritual quixotism be indeed rare. Yet, to assimilate what is beautiful, to make the faulty good, the good better, is like inhaling the fragrance of celestial flowers. For the beauty of * Attr^pec fLiv V/i <7fa.vra. Ta •4'i'X^ii vtiif^fi-aTa Kat ^a^ij. Plutarch. 108 SEEDS OF HOLINESS. [Book IV. the spirit, that beauty which likens it to God, grows, in truth, in each happy environment, as the flowers. And every deed of self-sacrifice and spiritual endurance, in its measure, raises the soul for the time to paradise, bears it, indeed, aloft as in a chariot of fire. 180. I'HYSICAL NEGLECT. What with incessant wars and social neglect, half the French conscripts, it seems, are found physically unfitted to serve. And thus is it, more or less, every- where. The very idea, in truth, of effectively provid- ing for the bodily conservancy and material elevation of the people, seems practically unknown. lei. NEEDFULNESS OF THE AFFECTIONS. The understanding is more slowly developed than the afiiections, which, in early life, are needful as a mother's milk or a mother's fostering care. The mother, indeed, loses in a measure, her identity in oiRces of self-sacrifice and love. Without the afiec- tions, the infant could not so much as live, could neither evince nor evoke the exceeding joyousness which likens him, and the mother who bore him, to the heavenly inmates, realises, in truth, for the affections of the very ecstasies of heaven. 182. SEEDS OF HOLINESS. A holy life is of greater moment than what is termed a sound theology, a spiritual revelation than any verbal creed.^ For religion is of those certainties which are To ya^ y^afAfjca a^oxrimiy to Se ^HtJfAX Z^aiovom. Book IV.] FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD. 109 to be entertained without any doubt or hesitancy what- ever.^ Fanaticism and atheism, twin sisters, are in unison in this, that they deride philosophy, decry every appeal to the eternal standards of divine truth and human excellence.^ In short, superstition is the one unhappy extreme, of which atheistic unbelief is the other, that clamours continually at the portals of the spiritual life, and would fain compass their overthrow. Alas, that we can deny the Being who loves us as his children. Him who created the father's heart, the mother's tears and smiles. Yet, each wind speaks of Him, and the heaving deep, the green earth, and the sunny flowers declare his purposes and assure us of their fulfilment, suggest aspirations which foster seeds of holi- ness and truth, rescue us from the dust of corruption and spiritual death, and approximate us, however im- mense the interval, to the immaculate and unseen. 183. FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD. The great aim of man's existence is fellowship with God and the life invisible. Yet, to imagine any direc*' or immediate intuition of the unseen, or of its ineffable Head, is of the essence of mysticism, opens the door to ' Carlylgs Life of SUrling, Part I. p. 128. 2 Icji hate keia Hehl es auszusprechen, die Angel mn welche die heutige "Weltweisheit dreht, ist die Lehre vom Stoffwechsel. Mole- seliott, Kreislauf des Lebens, Mainz, 1852, p. 363. Gedanie ist eine Bewegung des Stoffs, id. p. 401. Keine Kraft ohne Stoff, kein Stoff ohne Kraft. Bucliner, Kraft und Staff. Frankfort, 1855. Alle jene JFaHgkeiten die wir unter dem Namen der Seelenthatig- keiten tegreifen, nnr Functionen der Gehimsubstanz sind. Vogt, FhysiologiacJie Briefe, Stuttgart, 1847, p. 206. 110 FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD. [Book IT. extravagance and error. For sentiment, though it elevate and vivify, can never prove a substitute for thought. Modern quietists but reproduce the concep- tions of a bygone time. Musselman Sufis in the East, Tauler and his associates in the West, erroneously pro- nounced for the renunciation of earthly things, the potential, if not the actual union of the soul vnih God, Yet Tauler, it was, that good soul, who, in 1340, formed among the Waldenses the mystical association of the Friends of God. His boundless charity, indeed, was shown in his devotion to the victims of the Black Plague, in Hamburgh, in 1348. The great Alex- andrian Neo-Platonists, among whom, as Vacherot states,' Greek philosophy found its final utterance, de- clared for absolute unification with God. With Ploti- nus, as with Plato, to die was in a sense to live. In more recent times, Servetus, then Spinoza, and, long after, Hegel, held that everything was God, and the soul but a thought of God. But man and God, at least in the sense of the Mystics, are not one.^ Enough for us, then, to imitate the divine, and with Simplicius,' ' Toutes les ecoles grecques y coexistaient et y travaillaient chacune dana le sens de ses principea et de ses traditions. Sistoire Critique de rEcole d' Alexandrie, par E. Vacherot, Paris, 1846, Preface. ^ Pour TiTTe d'une vie superieure, I'humanite n'a pas besoin de changer de nature. Pour entrer dans la vie, pour posseder Dieu, comme dit Plotin, il n'est pas necessaire qu'elle devienne elle-meme un Dieu. EUe trouve dans sa propre nature tous les Elements d'une vie superieure. Id. Tome iii. p. 450. rius in Enchiridion Ejiictcii, cum versione Wolfii et Salmasii. Lugduni Batavorum, 1640. liooK IV.] A TRUE FAITH. himself a follower of Proclus and Plotinus, to await the hotter life to come. 184. SPIRITUAL TEEASTJEES. The power of thought is a possession most divine, likens us to God. Genius, which is lofty thought and parent of heroic desires, sacrifices itself for its generation and for all time.' What is philosophy, what religion, even, except a purified ideal, the sublime of genius and of thought. But knowledge is the result of two factors, our experience, namely, and its reception as governed by the laws of thought. Consciousness is the great arena, the especial point of union between man and God, where, amid the spirit's priceless treasures, we realise the divine. 185. A TEUE FAITH. The religious sentiment is infinitely desirable, but that yields no grounds for combining it with error, since faith should ever be coupled with the exercise of reason and love of the divine. Whatever, observes Jacobi, be the insufficiency of philosophy, we must still philosophise, else deny the supremacy of reason itself. The existence of a living personal God, the absolute worth of virtue, the divine origin of man's soul, the reality of feeling, and the sovereignty of conscience, were by this great thinker incessantly instilled. Philo- ' Niotta ist ■bezeichnender fiir das Genie, als dass seine Aeussenmgen Oder Erfindungen der Auadruck der Zeit, das aiisgesprocliene "Wort, die hingestellete Erfiilliiiig fiir den dnnkeln Drang fiir das Sehnen und Bediirfen einer ganzen Generation siad. Haym, Segel mid seine Zeit, Berlin, 1857, p. 201. CONSCIENCE. [Book IV. sophy, indeed, exercises the right of verification and interpretation, while the religious sentiment, by declar- ing that love is the basis of the moral law, implies its own celestial sanction, yields prescriptive proof of immortality. 186. OUR EEAL BIRTHPLACE. Preserved from all mean and vulgar contact, nourished by lofty example, to what might humanity not aspire. The Pitcairn, now the Norfolk Islanders, had no uncommon origin to boast of, yet in conduct and character they awaken deepest interest. Children, indeed, very hostages of heaven, are of divinest mintage, born each several instant in the paradise of God, wherein it is the eternal problem of education and of civilisation to retain them.' 187. TRUE SCIENCE, DIVINE. All true science is sacred, all true science is divine, the earth is alike holy, we are all the children of God. For a true theology and a true astronomy, a true morality and a true physics, come alike from Him, reveal themselves from heaven.^ 188. CONSCIENCE. It is Herbart's position that there is no original legislative moral principle.^ Without a doubt our sense ' SpeaMng of Jeanne D'Arc, Miolielet otserves. Elle eut d'ame et de corps ce don diTin de rester infant. JSistoire de la France, Tome Cinquieme. ' Herbart, Lehrbiich zur Fsychologie, Konigsberg, 1834. Book IV.] LOOKING INWAED . of obligation is gradually built up, results from many factors. Cumulative experience is transmitted from generation to generation, furnishes a basis for acquisi- tions ever true, ever new. This, the philosophy of religion establishes without appeal.^ Thus, as Butler' remarks, humanity is adapted to virtue, and man by nature becomes a law unto himself.^ 189. THE GEEAT EEALITIES. Visibly and invisibly, we are placed in ceaseless relation with spiritual things. The unseen, the eternal world is ever nigh, and the divine, with all goodness, and spiritual beings of every degree, are at hand. Everywhere the unseen subsists beneath the seen, a moral and immaterial behind a material reality. 190. LOOKING INWAED. Some, alas too many, close their eyes to the spiritual life within. Yet not to look inward, to abdicate the faculty of introspection, is in its degree to put ourselves on a level with the unreasoning brUte. The intellect alone does not originate our highest thoughts or acts, since these derive their sanction from the heart.^ For religion is not only reason, and knowledge, and philoso- ' La pHlosophie est immortelle comme son principe, la pensee, revelation progressive de I'immiiable verite, elle se fait cliaque jour et ne sera jamais faite. Vaoherot, Siatoire Critique, T. iii. p. 511. ^ Sermons on the Love of God. ' La raison et le sentiment ae conseiUent et se suppleent tonr a tour. La force est dans le coeur. C'est le sentiment, Tinstinct moral. Les grandes pens^es viemient du coeur. Vauvenargues, Seflexiona et Maximes. Paris, 1821. I lU EABTH A PARADISE. [Book IV. phy, it is also emotion, and gratitude, and conformity, and submission. These aid the soul in its strife with self, as in its combats with what Herbart terms the great enemies of religion, and I will add of man's soul, blind submission namely, to received dogmas, ignorance, fanaticism, and hypocrisy. 191. EABTH A PARADISE. There is a happy harmony pervading all things, at once of earth and heaven, which is as the voice of God. Faith in the divine, founded on the contemplation of nature and the intelligent appreciation of final causes, of distinct means to distinct ends,^ is, if not the most perfect, at least among the more perfect of earthly wit- nesses to the being and perfections of God,^ and if not actual knowledge is all but knowledge.^ For in the divine empire there is no real evil.* What we so term, is simply negation, limitation, transition, opposition. Death itself is but a transformation, a getting rid of the material, a spiritual necessity. In nature there is no repose. Action and reaction, birth, development, and becoming, conspire with divinest energy for the good of the whole. With all its shortcomings, the earth is a paradise. With every breath we inhale an ethereal lethe-stream, so that joys are only moderately, and pains hardly at all remembered.^ ' Bishop Hampden's Moral Philosophy, p. 111. ^ Dr. Wilson, Edinburgh Essays, p. 349. ' Herbart. * Herder. ' Mit jedem Athemzug eia atherischer Lethestrom unser ganzes Wesen diorchdringt, so dass wir ims der Preuden nvir massig, der Leiden kanm erinnem. Briefwechsel Zwischen Oothe imd Zelter, Berlin, 1834. Book IV.] ART, DIVINE. I l.i 192. GOLDSMITH. It has been said of Goldsmith by competent judges,^ as it has been admitted by the vrorld, that his writings were characterised by the good, the natural, the gentle, the pure. Like those of Burns, they are revealings of the poetry of life, the divine sweetness of the heart of man. What then of his faults, to us his goodness, to cynics, if they choose, his carelessness, heedless of the morn. Johnson, his great cotemporary, went through life bravely enduring many a buifet, tortured by melan- choly and disease, but he had not the angelic tempera- ment which has caused Goldsmith's words to compass earth and sea, and which will render them a comfort and a joy to generations and generations to come. 193. ART, DIVINE. If we can, let us render art natural, reconcile nature with art, and if it be possible, imbue man also with this manifestation of the divine. But without self- forgetfulness and lofty culture, high art, vrith all its fulness of grace and of truth, is impossible. The statue of Love, by Edmee Bouchardon, in the lower hall of the Louvre, displays celestial truth and beauty. As with many of the works of Geefs, Mac Dowell, Marshall, Fraikin, and others, souls imbued with the divine fire, one only wonders that heart can conceive or hand embody such marvels of excellence in the stone. For art of a verity is precious, raises souls towards the In- finite, inoculates them with things of heaven. ' Forster, De Quincy, Goethe. THE EEVELATION OF POEST. [Book IV. 194. THE EOMAN AND THE GREEK. Nothing can well exceed the perfect naturalness and absence of vulgarity displayed in Greek, and com- monly in Roman literature. In spirit and in heart, indeed, the Greek was a gentleman, but the Roman, though most assuredly not all Romans, was plebeian. In civil and social polity, however, they made, it must be conceded, many advances on the Greek. With the Greeks, women were a cipher in the body-politic, with the Romans the wife was at least a portion of the social, the civic circle, that circle in which even yet she does not fully hold her place. The Greek, indeed, had the exquisite wild grace of the hind and the roe, the poppy in the corn, but the Roman combined the strength and wilfulness of the half-tamed brute. The Greeks, in truth, had the poetry and the grace of life, and, as was once said in their exquisite tongue, they shall be loved and remembered so long as there is beauty, or eyes to see it.^ 195. THE EEVELATION OF POEST. Oh ye iu whose souls the pulses of the spiritual life beat faint and low, come listen to the poets' lays, to some Hood, Barrett Browning, or Tennyson, to strains breathing divinest inspiration, thoughts glow- ing with celestial fire. They shall unlock the hidden fountains for you, perchance rouse you from deathly slumbers, waken you up to perceptions that never die. * Mtp(^^is av xaXXos « xai o(p6a.X[i.t)i ^Xi'Tufft, LoHgUS. Book IV.] UHLAND'S DREAM. 196. UHLAND'S DEEAM. There are things, as it seems to me, quite heavenly in certain of Uhland's ballad lyrics. The Angel's Serenade in the dying girl to her mother, raises one as on the wings of hope and love to heaven. The Graf von Greiers, the wild grace and surpassing melody of the Dream, with the bitter-sweet accents of the joys that are never to return, echo in the heart, and thrill the very soul. Hream,' I dreamed not long ago I lay on a lofty hiU. It was nigh tlie ocean strand, And I saw far into the land, And far, far o'er the sea. Hard by the shore below A dainty bark there lay, With streamers brightly flowing, For the pilot he was going, Would brook no more delay. _ There came from distant mountains A joyous company. Like angels glancing fair, Flowers wreathed amid their hair, They journeyed towards the sea. They swept in long array. This troop so fair and gay, Some their bright cups swaying Others dancing, playing, With song and minstrelsy. ' Traum. 118 THE MOUNTAIN SIDE. [Book IV. They said unto the skipper, Wilt thou take us on our way. Earth's hopes and joys we he, Here no longer tarry we. Must far from earth away. Into the ship they hied them, The joys hoth great and small. And then he said, each dear one, Behind remaineth none, By dell or mountain wall. They said, we are here together. Now haste, we may not stay.' And the swift winds freshly blew, As on their way they flew, Earth's hopes and joys that day. 197. THE MOUNTAIN SEDE. It is glorious to rest by the mountain side, some lone Highland strath or long hill of Mourne, where the tall heather waves, and the clouds course along the sky, list to the lark's carol, the plover's call, and dream of heaven. For although we must work most times, we need to dream also, ponder things invisible, the coming time when life with all its marvels for us shall be no more. The mountain's slope stretches with all its greenery to the sun, the brook bounds from shelf to shelf of its rocky bed, the breeze fans the passive hair, and every- thing bespeaks peace and quietude, the deep, the holy serenity of heaven. But, now, the hill is clothed with grey, the winds rise as the evening falls. They wail, they almost sob, ' Fahr zu wir haben EO. Book IV.] ESOTERIC, EXOTERIC. and the heart is filled with care. Nature, the hountiful mother, has altered her mood, and the recipient soul, faithfully responsive, reflects it back again. 198. A TWOFOLD LIFE. When we lose a being whom we love, ohserve "William von Humboldt,' and Zschokke after him, we exist in two worlds. For love unlocks the gate, admits us to communion w'ith the lost associates, whom once and for ever we shall join again. Fortitude to bear, with discernment to look beyond, has heen imparted to us by heaven. To us, also, is the fair heritage, the silent realms of thought and love, embellished with every bright reality, all the afiections that shed grace or glory on our kind. 199. ESOTERIC, EXOTERIC. There are believers, esoteric and exoteric, those who believe in the spirit, and those who believe in the letter merely. Yet what were the letter except as a spiritual declaration, nothing, less than nothing, an unrecorded dream. Nature and man's soul are the very texts and sacred manuscripts of God, yield the only clue to the science of the universe. That there is a ceaseless in- spiration made continually manifest in the heart of man, is among the most certain of spiritual truths.^ Our convictions need incessant revision. The theology that is stationary is lost, nay, is already numbered with the ' Briefe an eine Freundinii. 2 Jolm Hancock's Address to the People called Quakers, Lisbum and Belfast, 1801. ESOTEBIC, BXOTEEIC. [Book IV. past. Revelation and development are one. Where there is no development, there can he no revealing. Where there is no revealing, neither is there develop- ment. We must descend into the soul's depths, as vre would refer to the green-rohed trees, the golden stars. When we examine nature's developments, we discern the revealings of nature. When we ponder the developments of the soul, we discern the revealings of God in humanity. For the lettflr avails only as the symbol of progressive truth, genesis on genesis, deve- lopment on development, for ever. Progress is to be measured not by the coming or going of comets merely, the revolutions of the sun, but by the stirrings and the strivings, the workings and the winnings of those who are no more. Instead of only looking up through nature to nature's God, we shall find witness to him who moulded us, in the depths of our souls, looking out on nature from him, rising to nature on the wings of faith and love.^ Let us build religion on science, indeed, but also on the heart, let us found it on the affections, but also on truth. The religious teacher should combine an Aristotle and a Paul. The image of the Great Reformer beckons to us through the mists of eighteen hundred years. The swinging waves, the gushing fountains, the wind- chased clouds, the sighing breeze, the perfume-laden flowers, with men's fair thoughts and deeds, invite us to continue and perfect his work. To set forth mere formulas from the past without acting, loving, thinking for the present, will not, cannot suffice. We must ' Talfourd's Vacation HambUs. Book IV.J MATERIALISM. elevate women, free the proletary and the slave, train and educate the ignorant, reform the vicious, rescue the famine-stricken and the insane, raise the down- trodden and the oppressed, set aside beliefs which degrade humanity, do not honour God, ere religion can avail us as it might and as it ought. For religion is a thing of freedom and of joy, of trust and of truth, of grace and of hope, of confidingness and of love, which yields no colour to baseness or degradation, and which can only subsist in its fulness and its grandeur in the hearts and in the practice of happy, regenerate man. 200. MATEEIAIilSM. Materialism is an hypothesis so much the more hazardous, since neither philosophy nor experience yields any proof, direct or indirect, of the existence, as vulgarly conceived, of matter.^ The materialists not only affirm the exclusive existence of what they term matter, but they also reject interior observation,^ affirm the identity of brain and mind. Yet the brain is not mind, exercises no one function of mind.'^ Like all matter, what we so term, is but a perception, the resultant of certain outward forces indeed, operating on the soul. ' Ferrier's Institutes, Prop. xii. § 3. ''Der Phrenologe theilt rait dem speculativen Psychologen den Irrthum siciere iimere BeoTjacMimg fiir unmogKoh. zu halten. Port- lage, Fsychologie, Band i, S. 11. ^ Es giebt gewiase Irrtliuiner im Menschengeist welclie, otwohl an sioh selbst niclit wertli dass man sich mit ihnen teschaftigt, doci ein imleugtares Interesse bekommen. Zu ihnen gehort der Inthum vom Sitz der Seele im Gehim, Fortlage, Id. Band I. S. 108. MUSIC COLTUBE. [Book IV. Marij in truth, has no mental instincts, whereas the brute has many, available for the various acts of life.^ The problem of the brute, however, is one of singular difficulty, but one, also, which, happily, we are not required to solve. In man, himself, the thinking prin- ciple comprises the whole soul. Exclusive, indeed, of errors of observation and inference, the materialist commits the capital solecism of confounding the pheno- mena of the moral and material worlds.^ 201. MUSIC CULTUEE. It seems incredible, almost, that the few elementary sounds supplied by nature, should constitute the foun- dation of the divine, the joyous thing which men term music. Yet, in nature, as in art, like laws prevail. In one as in the other, a half note must succeed three whole ones, major keys and minor must alternate. In the sensuous, as in the higher life, the law of needful change, the great law which pervades all nature, and on which all life and the joy of life depend, obtains.'* Musical culture, and the culture of the feelings and affections, which rule or ought to rule it, should run together. For true culture is full of grace, flings a robe of loveliness over commonest things. ' Holland's Mental Physiology, p. 203. ^ Wenn Feuertaoh die Gedanienbildung eine Phospliorescenz des Gehimes nennt, so hat er damit in trefSicher "Weise die Impotenz der materialistisclien Grundgedanken, die weder Licht noch Warme 2U erzeugen vennbgen, sondem nur Schein-und-Irrlicht geben, character- isirt. Fabri, Briefe gegen den Materialismm, Stuttgart, 1856, p. 130. ' Gesetz des geforderten Weclisels, Gbthe, Oesprdche mil McTcermann, Feb. 1, 1827. Book IV.] A DITINE TBANSFIGUBATION. 123 The solace of art, like other gifts divine, is addressed to the affections and intelligence of all. True sentiment imparts delicacy and refinement to music, which, as a science, an art, is indissolubly bound up -with the spiri- tual and the unseen. Nothing, it has been said, more strongly proves the angelic tendency of music than the very tender age, as in the case of a Handel, a Haydn, a Mendelssohn, or a Mozart, at which the mind de- clares for it. For music in itself is heavenly, incites to celestial purity and truth.^ In its chaste simplicity, it is replete with faith and nobleness, aspirations for the great, the generous, the good, yet with all its enchant- ing loveliness and simplicity, is not too fastidious or refined for the common uses and behoof of man. Allied as it is with heaven, it should be wedded to our aspirings and our affections, brought beside every hearth, and into every home. 202. A DIVINE TBANSFIGUBATION. As we grow older, wiser, better, a divine transfigura- tion, so to speak, should animate every countenance, inspiring at once nations and men. Yet, alas, it is often far otherwise. The revolting doctrine of demo- niacal possession, has led to the destruction of whole hecatombs of men. Rose Cullender and Amy Duny once lived in happy, careless childhood, at Lowestoft. By and by, they grew up, grew old, and, in 1665, were attainted as witches, at Bury St. Edmonds,^ before Sir ' TJnter den Kiinsten ist die Music die religiiiseste. Sie ist ganz Aiidaclit, Seknsuclit, Demnth, Liete. Tieok. , ^ State Trials, Volume VI. LIFE'S HEALING. [Book IV. Matthew Hale, who, pious Christian and humane man as he otherwise was, sentenced these poor creatures, not quite two centuries ago, to be charred alive. The excesses of the New-England Puritans, their weird and dreary laws, the juridical murder of Mary Dyer and others, show how utterly the principle of fanaticism can trample out every spark of pity in the breasts of otherwise sincere, and earnest, and pious men. The trial of Urbain Grandier, a good and gentle priest, for the imputed crime of bewitching the Ursuline nuns, at Loudun,^ is amongst the most singular of its kind.^ A certain Pere Lactance, mider the inspection of an unjust magistrate, one Laubordemont, subjected Gran- dier, who had been previously stuck all over with pins to detect the badge of the fiend, to the accursed torture of the boot. They would also have torn out the nails of his feet and hands, but this the surgeons refused to perform. After his poor limbs, bone and flesh, had been crushed to a jelly, Grandier was fastened by a circle of iron to the stake, and consumed quick. May all such foul beliefs and evil dealings pass away, and men, chastened by the blessed conviction of God's felt though unseen presence, dwell as one family in his holy city for ever. 203. LIFE'S HEALING. Duties, that usefulness which no crosses, no vexa- tions, should interrupt, are, with the affections, Hfe's great healing and reality. When we know that this planet is but a speck amid the profusion of immensity, ' Michelet, Sistoire cU la France, ^ Bistoin des Diables de Zouduii. Book IV.J THE STARS OF SPIBITUAL TETJTH. 125 how can any one cringing here, engaged in tortuous policy there, longing for that which only brings him nearer the end, not hesitate ere he sully his soul.^ Why fear we to stand alone. The dread of blame, a morbid deference to opinion, is the secret weakness of many a soul, applies the axe to those great principles which lie at the root of all right action and generous enter- prise. Consider the divine instruction, how the highest teaching, the very treasures of the spiritual life, are addressed to all. A strenuous sense of duty, as it seems to me, must accrue from even a partial ap- prehension of these truths. On the other hand, the slightest impairment of moral tone is replete with injury to nations and men. For every effort should be made to commend all just and holy things to the great true heart of living, loving humanity, taking them out of the range of mere ritualism and barren profession, incorporating them with the actions, the affections, and convictions of our kind. 204. THE STABS OF SPIEITUAX TEDTH. The stars of spiritual truth are brighter, clearer, because of the efforts and the insight of that genius, very instinct and effluence of heaven, which has re- moved from our eyes full many a film of clay. No, were principalities, and powers, and distinctions nume- rous as are the grains on the wave-washed strand, never could they sufficiently endow those great spirits to whom, coupled with insight and faith, we owe it, that ' Claims of Labour, 2nd ed. p. 42. 126 THE STABS OF SPIRITUAL TEHTH. [Book IV. we are enabled to think, and act, and love, as beseems those who are to think, and act, and love for ever. Here is the spot indeed, now is the very time for devoted service to the spiritual and the unseen. Human nature, in fact, is a hierarchy of powers, each, when it knows and holds its rightful place, destroy- ing the usurpation of mean errors, restoring the sway of lordly truth, the right aim of morals in philosophy and action.^ A noble life must spring from pure inten- tion and sunny hope. What the soul's light pro- nounces incredible, that, in God's name, let us leave uncredited.^ Truth alone, lives for ever, and we may not steal, were it into paradise, with falsehood in our mouths. We cannot hope to inherit heaven by fallacies on earth. For belief in human brotherhood and in the divine reversion which awaits us all, is the very salt and spiritual life of man. Through insight we discern that death is a new birth, that else, death is an impossibility, since once conscious we are so for ever, and that here we live in a twofold world. The multitude must be educated, women trained to highest excellence, women, whose finer intuitions and loftier capabilities, we, nay they, have yet in a degree to learn. How sweetly and equably might we glide along the stream of time, were the earth, through some newer, more spiritual crusade, awakened to the great realities, the lofty ideal, which, in consonance with God's eternal gospel, never for one moment cease to subsist around. Until we have moral and spiritual unity, the same ' Westminster JReview. * Oarlyle, Life of Sterling. Book IV.3 FEEEDOM IN OBEDIENCE. 127 unity that obtains in the canons of lofty art and ma- terial science, there can be no eifective or permanent progress. For belief and action, thought and affection, should extend to our daily life, shedding sanctity and security on the world. The very anticipation lends colour to the belief, while the love of everything great, and good, and beautiful, and true,^ yields hope that one day we shall effectively abate the sin and evil, the error and the ignorance, that incrust the priceless gem we style the soul of man. 205. FEEEDOM IN OBEDIENCE. God knows each desire of our hearts, each thought and aspiration of our souls. Never can we enough ap- preciate his tender care. Yet, while we commune with and praise him, let us not put up mere begging peti- tions, ask him to stay the order of his providence, or to perform our special work for us, for this He will not do, however much we entreat him. Then let us look in- finity in the face, and, bravely subduing selfishness, compass regeneration for ourselves. For where the spirit of God is felt, there also is liberty.^ This convic- tion alone, subduing self indeed,^ yields release from slavery, confers absolute freedom within the wide range of spiritual law. For there neither is nor can be, safety irrespective of incessant self-development, uncon. ditional conformity with the divine. ' GuhoHs Corneille. ^ 'O Se Kv^tas to ^viZfj^a IffTiv, o5 Ss to -Trnvfia fcu^toVf zxu iXiuh^ia., ^ Ouhiis IXiCh^oi iavTov fjtri K^ctTuv. 128 HEART'S CULTUBE. [Book IV. 206. HEAET'S CULTURE. The longer I live, the more intimately am I persuaded of the urgent need of culture. Spasmodic utterances are here of no avail. The heart must be revived, there must, as thus, be a change of soul.' This it is, vrhich can alone enable us to appreciate God's miracles, the marvels of man's skill. It is culture that imparts per- ception of the beautiful and the good, yields truest insight into literature, religion, science, art.^ The edu- cation of the heart makes us cognizant of God's love, the treasures of goodness that subsist among our kind. Training supplements the divine providence, while the absence of training fills this our magnificent dwelling- place with lazar-houses for the helpless, the incompetent, and the insane, soaks the earth with blood, ravages it with crime. Without culture, man is a contradiction and a nonentity,as with it he becomes a creature but a little lower than the angels,'' very counterpart and impress of heaven. ^ Vous soulevez, mon ami, une grande question, celle de savoir meler la poesie a la raison, rimagination an positivisme, la tendresse a la discipline, dans la couduite chaque jour plus difficile de la vie. Pierre Bernard, Confession du nmniro 13, 1' Union Midicale, Paris, 25 Aout, 1859. ^ 'HXaTTWfTas atiTov P>^K^Z E. B. B. A JIIND DISEASED. [Book V. victory and dominion over self, the divine purity vphich bows only to the verdicts of conscience and of heaven. 248. TURNING TO GOD. In moments of great joy or extreme despondency, the soul turns spontaneously to God, Author of the sweet affections and of every joy, rock indeed and founder of the universe, man's mighty sustainer and stay.^ And the higher the soul aspires, the more continually do angel voices, do hope, and truth, and trust, and love, cry out to their Author and source, the more ceaseless become the longings for the things of the unseen life and realities to come. 249. GENESIS OF SOULS. Where there is no genius, no inventiveness, no love of knowledge, in fine no moral or spiritual freedom, there will be no great men. For moral death borders closely on spiritual. The soul is handed over to ma- terialism, chained to formulas, which fail utterly to bespeak the infinite, the inviolate tenderness of the great Father and Parent of our kind. , 260. A MIND DISEASED. Insanity, whether as regards the mind or the heart, is simply the last result of impaired control over one's soul. Indolence, hypochondriasis, imbecility, spleen, in their several degrees, are forms of the same drear malady. But insanity evinces as many varieties as does the sound mind itself It is still mind, indeed, ' Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott. Martin Luther's Hymn. Book V.] TO-PAN. 157 but mind in ruin, perversion, and decay. Partial in- sanity, the tyranny of false ideas and emotions, or of emotions or ideas \vi-ongly placed, is tlie minimum of which, confirmed insanity, dementia, in short mental ruin, is the maximum. Multitudes, wanting power over their own minds, are continually lapsing into insanity, or liv- ing on its very verge. For, let us repeat it, there is no exact line of demarcation between the sane and the in- sane. The defects and perversions of the insane mind, are simply, in a more or less exaggerated form indeed, the deficiencies and perversions of the sane mind itself The more decided our self-mastery, the greater, so to speak, is the impossibility of becoming insane. But the feebler our self-jurisdiction, the more the soul is given up to a perverted will, is wanting in development, the greater becomes the proclivity to spiritual decay. Ill- directed culture alone, lies at the root of this monstrous evil, and not mere disorganization of the brain and nerves, as an illogical, and, in itself, in truth, insane hypothesis, would have us to imagine. 251. TO-PAN. Among the earlier declarations of Pantheism is the sublime inscription at Sais. All that was, and is, and shall be, am I, and mortal yet has never raised my veil.i Hardly less peremptory is the affirmation of Spinoza. There neither is, nor is it possible to con- ceive, any substance save the Divine.^ For, indeed, we * E^fy h/£t irap TO yeyavast xai ov xai SffofcsvaVt *«) rov ifAov yri^Xov ouSus ^ Praeter Deum nulla dare neque conoepi potest substantia. 158 THE SOUL'S HEALING. [Book V. only reach truth, each object of moral interest, every natural conclusion concerning God, the soul, and future destiny of man, approximately.' Yet, the cultivators of spiritual science shall one day join hand in hand, while a loftier goddess than that at Sais, with smiles shall raise her veil. 252. SWIFT. Swift, with his subtle irony, bore resemblance to him who aided to rehabilitate the memory of Galas. He was a great-souled man too, of inflexible honesty, iron energy, and vast attainments. But his soul seemed cased in steel, and his character, as a whole, is of painful in- terest. Devoted hearts there were too, which beat but for him, and bled as well as beat. Alas and alas, for he was very unhappy. All his peculiarities seem refer- able to his consuming ambition and personal wretched- ness. He might, apparently, form no wedded tie, and his ambition was a blight. For him, indeed, there was no peace, could not well be any till he reached the bourne, where, as is graven on his chancel tomb, fierce indignation no longer lacerates the poor troubled heart of man.^ 353. THE SOUL'S HEALING. It was the remark, though only conditionally true, of a keen thinker,^ that the mind's health is not more certain than that of the body. That the mind, the ' Hamilton's Discussions on Philosophy and Ziierafiire, Lond. 1852. ' Ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit. ■'' La Eoctefaucauld. Book VO THE SOUL'S HEALING. 159 thought-mind and the heart-mind, may become diseased, and so undergo a sort of living death, is most true. Spiritual health must be upheld by strenuous effort. Would you sustain the soul's health, act wisely. Would you sustain the heart's health, do good. By doing good, in truth, you become good. But there must be the constancy and purity of purpose that can suffer no weakness, tolerate no stain. For Hfe is too short, the stake too great, to squander on secondary aims, to the prejudice of the holier sentiments and affections. Foolish pretension, mock greatness, are a sorry ex- change for the lofty purposes of a temporal, an eternal existence. No, nothing should be suffered to override our sense of self-respect and usefulness. We forfeit very treasures of wisdom, and tenderness, and goodness, owing to our poverty of conception and spiritual in- ability to appreciate them. God, the infinitely pitiful and merciful, sanctifies our efforts, blesses the results. For to him, in truth, as the poet sweetly words it. Each ■wish is as a. prayer. Life is a combat in the face of difficulties, with heaven and all the angels as spectators. It is an inexpug- nable truth that man will obtain what he deserves, will find what is really good for him, exactly as he seeks for it.' Like the Titans of old, we must scale the heavenly heights by efforts of our own. But it is' needful to cherish nothing at variance with the soul's ' Westminster Seview, Oct. 1853. PKOGRESSIVE PURITY. [Book V. weal, with purity and truth.' Now, science can accom- plish this for us, at least in part, that science within whose sacred precincts no grovelling error or revolting superstition can survive. To overcome evil with good, to have no paltering with sin, and, hand in hand with the divine, to compass purity and truth, is indeed to win the life celestial on earth, and secure its reversion in heaven. 254. PKOGRESSIVE PUHITT. The real riches comprise every expansion of the heart and intellect, everything that tends to render man not merely happier, but wiser, better, more faithful, and more true. We are born very poor, but with boundless capacities for goodness and excellence, a receptivity for every angelic, celestial thing. The very salvation of men and nations depends on the supremacy of the generous affections. It is the soil from which the flowers of life, the soul's best harvests, spring. Trust and truth, the sentiment of progressive purity, would render life a living prayer. For between truth and truth, excellence and excellence, variance there cannot be. Man must not lose heart, never for an instant cease to look upon art, and poetry, and nature, and heaven itself, as things divine. Let science advance as it may, the revelations of the soul in things that concern their common weal, precede it ever. Spiritual truth, let us be assured, is just as determinate as any other. Nay, ' Wenn Zeit ist wie Ewigkeit, Und Ewigkeit wie Zeit, Dor ist bofreit in allem Streit. Book v.] HE LIVETH BEST WHO LOVETH BEST. llil it is the science of sciences, the great certainty, which one day shall overwhelm doctrines that rack the heart, offend the understanding, and impair our unity with heaven. The angels that stand beside us, urge ceaseless pro- gress, a holy intentness, an ever-growing confidingness in the declarations of conscience and of God. Resol- vedly to will, and then as resolutely to do, will bring us nigher Him, free the face from many a cloud, the heart from many a care. Death, indeed, reveals the spiritual life, as night reveals the stars. No principle of duty acted on, no habit of self-sacrifice enforced, is ever lost, and surely not those great, sweet, rich, and pure affec- tions, the love that brings reversion of eternal life, the patient practising that yields costliest fruits, in fine, the soul's insatiate craving for a more congenial, an eternal home. 255. HE LIVETH BEST WHO LOVETH BEST. We need not only the development of the moral faculty, but also its healthy development. Truth and excellence are to be cultivated as in the presence' of God, beneath the umbrageous foliage of the tree of life, and not as if dwelling in some evil environment, in a region of darkness, and sin, and death. For man must be brought to feel and to know that he is created in the very image of God, the aU-present God who is con- stantly near him, present in all creatures and in all things.^ When the moral faculty is unhealthy, it be- comes weak, deficient in depth, in earnestness, in ' Jacob Bblmie, Aurora. SYMPATHY, DIVINE. [Book V. beauty, and in truth. A healthy moral development leads to a healthy moral life, with the cheerful discharge of all its requirements. Man must be instructed as -with, a mother's love, a father's unfaltering care, and, adding self-culture, led to individual and collective ex- cellence,^ to know^ledge at once secular and religious, being and becoming together, union of all the pov^rers vrith all the affections, crown of the spiritual arch, and, so far as may be, perfect intuition with perfect faith, abating spiritual destitution, indeed, and sustaining his elevation, for ever. 256. ANGELIC LINEAMENTS. There are those whose faces are as the faces of angels. Goodness and truth are stamped on their lineaments for ever. Goodness realises heaven in him who has it, awakens it perchance in the beholder's soul. Since the highest culture, seeks excellence for itself, confers a yet loftier expression than what mere happiness can bestow. 267. SYMPATHY, DIVINE. We cannot entertain a doubt as to God's entire sympathy with his creatures. In death as in life, we are alike sure to find him. But He has confided us to our own care, shews us the end, while he also imparts the means. An infinite capacity, in truth, subsists in man. Each soul is endowed with endless powers. But our efforts must be made with all our strength. Our whole ' La vie do Thomme n'est en r&lite qu'une grande education dont le perfectionnement est le but. Degerando, JPerfectionement Moral, et de I' Education de Soi-meme, Paris, 1825. Book V.] FREEDOM THROUGH GENIUS. 163 soul must be poured into the work. Else we cannot compass the sweet will of God. For He is, indeed, our Redeemer. He will cleanse our souls from every soil, and raise us to purity and truth at last. 248. FREEDOM THROUGH GENIUS. The sin, and folly, and ignorance, that incrust that wonder of wonders, and miracle of miracles, the human soul,^ must one day disappear, yield to the incentives furnished by God and the sweet spirit life. Face to face with infinity and the divine, we may not dare, without impiety, to sully our souls with untruth. The marriage of perfect wisdom with perfect goodness, can- not be perfected without liberty. "We cannot, indeed, arrive at right conclusions, short of the fullest ap- prove! of the intelligence and the heart. How, indeed, are men to rise to lofty conceptions if they never lift their thoughts above constraint. For the ideal and spiritual are not less real than the visible and tangible. Nay, there is greatness in the very conception of an infinite growth in wisdom, and purity, and truth. To the genius which in all times and places has laboured in the service of humanity, has providence assigned the task of educating the great family of our kind. For genius vrith its magical gifts, sits as if on some Galileo or Brahe's tower, beholds clearly in the spiritual horizon, things dim and misty on the common soil. To genius, indeed, are heavenly patience and sacred aspirings, the knowledge of the mysterious ' Mens est quaedam -ns animae, qua inherimus Deo et fruimur. St. Bernard, De Amore Dei, Cap. 10. lf« FEEEDOM THROUGH GENIUS. [Book V. beauty with which heaven endows the soul when chas- tened by lofty intelligence and hallowed by the affec- tions. From Syria, it has been said, we derive our religion, from Greece our literature, from Rome our laws, not indeed to degrade, but to improve upon them, not to follow with servile submission, but with spiritual insight and extremest care. And genius steeped in celestial truth, with angel utterance is ever prepared to declare the exquisite analogies, lift the veil behind which resides the inner, the divine life, very atmos- phere of wisdom, and gentleness, and love. Nothing, indeed, can affect the issues that await us on the further shore. The roses may wither, but not the aspirations which are lighted by an unsetting sun, fed by sources that never can run dry. As children of one God, we cannot imagine a joy which shall not be ours, for the change which snatches us from an earthly, also introduces us to a more sufficing home. Even here, now, there are flutterings as of seraph's wings, winds which whisper things divine, holy thoughts which render all things holy, in fine the celestial world with all the ineffable amenities of heaven. ASPIRATIONS THE INNEE, THE SPIKITUAL LIFE. BOOK VI. Denn alle Kraft dringt vorwarts in die Weite, Zu leten und zu wirkea hier vmd dort, Dagegen engt und hemmt von jeder Seite Der Strom der Welt und reisst una mit sich fort. In diesem innem Sturm und aiissem Streite Vemimmt der Menscli ein eohwer verstanden Wort, Von der Gewalt die alle "Weseu tindet, Befreit der Mensch sich der sich. iiherwiadet. Gbthe. Grar klar die HiiUe sich vor dir erhehet, Dein Ich ist sie. Es sterte was vemichtbar, Und fortan leht nur Gott in deinem Strehen. Dnrchschaue was dies Strehen Uberlebet, So -wird die HiiUe dir als HiiUe sichtbar, Und unverschleiert siehst du gBtilich Streben. Fichte. ASPIRATIONS. 259. THE WOELD'S LOVELINESS. How beautiful is the world. To see the sun rise in the tropics, the ocean flashing with phosphoric light, each starry constellation, as it sets and rises beside the line, the great and grand aurora, like some banner of eternity waved by angelic hands, spanning the sky with rosy arch or dropping like a curtain, frosted with silver and gemmed with stars. To inhale the aroma of the pine, the ravishing fragrance of southern flowers. To watch the western humming-birds, the red birds and the blue, the gorgeous serpent, the many-tinted crea- tures of sea, and earth, and sky, gay blossoms, fishes, and the ceaseless insect whirl. To gaze, face to face, and eye to eye, upon the mighty whale, the arrowy shark, the swift sea-fowl, the multitudinous denizens of earth and sea, the inhabitants of many lands, the people by many shores. In fine, to witness the cease- less action of animate and inanimate creation, ascend- ing in one mighty diapason to heaven. Ah, how beautiful is the world. 260. THE GBAVE NO EESTING-PLACE. We are so to live, observes Arnold, in one of his school sermons, that deiath should prove an infinite blessing. For death is not the pit, as by a dreary 16S A CHABTEB OF TEEEDOM. [Book VI. metaphor it is too often named, but peace, and activity, and love, and hope, and joy. It will conduct us to a double life, expanding in action and enjoyment, along with those we hold most dear, those who, even here, are with us, as God is with us, in affection and in love. There could not indeed be a future without sharing it with our kind. For, undoubtedly, if he will but listen to God's word in the centre of his soul,^ man will arrive at insight into the divine economy of his life and being. Let us then confide in goodness, though aware of evil, foster pity though versed in pain. Since, as has been said, the water of life is faith, its bread love, its salt work, its sweetness poesy, the grave but a passage to the higher, the better, the unending life to come. 261. A CHAETEE OF FEEEDOM. Christianity tolerates no slavery, whether physical or moral, holds out a charter of freedom to all our kind. But religion, itself, must be freed from the errors vdth which sectaries have encumbered it, errors which they discern in each other, but ignore in themselves. The allegory, as Coleridge terms it, the grisly conception, of an unholy evil being, antagonistic to God, taken literally, has been productive of an infinity of ill. There cannot be permanent evil in a universe, where God and nature have enveloped goodness with eternal sanctions. Let us then discard every low conception, unworthy at once of heaven and ourselves, harmonising our actual life with our aspirations, our aspirations with ' Jacob Bbhme, Aurora. Book VI. NO ONTOLOGY. 169 our conduct. We are bound by obligations nothing less than divine, to abide by the dictates of our intelligence, the impulses of our hearts, not passively either, but with all our bravery, our utmost strength. For the great interests of truth and of the soul, brook nothing short of our firmest action and our best resolves. 262. NO CONCESSION TO EVIL. No one ever yet made concession to the principle of evil, in men or things, who did not in the end regret it, for to listen to evil is to be lost. But evil differs from barbarism and ignorance, with which, however, it may be allied, in that it is essentially insidious and aggres- sive. It is not the less, however, weakness or moral cowardice to submit to it. When the healer of souls, in whatever walk he may ply his task, is guided by goodness, intelligence, and truth, he may approve him- self a real miracle of energy and usefulness. But whenever he is led by mere motives of gain, pays gro- velling submission to error and ignorance, what is it but the worship of the principle of evil. 263. NO ONTOLOGY. Things can only be known as they present themselves. Ontology, then, reposes on no solid basis, does but dis- credit the science with which we conjoin it. No mor- tal, says the inscription at Sa'is,' has ever raised my veil. ' XJnd wenn kein Sterblioher nach jener Innschrift dort dein ScHeier hett, so miissen 'wir TJnstertliolie zu "warden suchen. Wer ihn nicht heten mil ist kein achter Lehrling zu Sa'is. Novalis, Schriften, Ber- lin, 1826, B. i. S. 47. 170 A NATION'S GREATNESS. [Book. Yl. Novalis, however, makes one of his mystical characters, exclaim. If no mortal have raised the veil of the god- dess, let us ourselves become immortal, else are we no true disciples. We cannot, indeed, have an ontology, but we may have a psychology or soul-lore, by which we register the soul's acts, its aspirations, and its powers. We can have the positivism of truth, the cherished certainties of nature, God, and immortality. 264. A NATION'S GREATNESS. A nation's greatness consists in its great men. For ■without great men there can be no greatness, hardly even the conditions by which it is fostered and appre- ciated. Great men, indeed, are the earth's salt, very seed and leaven of heaven. Material greatness is very small beside moral greatness. Emerson, after paying a graceful tribute to English greatness, proceeds to let us know that England is not larger than the Georgia of the Americas. Yet Greece, and Athens, which is smaller still, contained at a given period more great men than England and America, with its Georgia inclusive, perhaps do now. Were size the criterion of spiritual greatness, certain countries should be rich indeed. But the fine aroma, the blossoming of huma- nity, cannot subsist under low spiritual conditions. For oppression brutalises the oppressed, and by an inevitable Nemesis, the oppressor also. Humanity, itself, can alone become truly great, when, through the happy progress of liberty and enlightenment, the nations become as one nation, and the oppressors and the oppressed, alike, shall be no more. Book VI.] THE PETREL OF THE DEEP. 285. UNIVEESAL INSPIRATION. Great spiritual truths should be brought home to the convictions and moral exigencies of mankind. The heart and understanding must be appealed to, and doctrines which v?age war with the affections and intel- lect, replaced by others more accordant with universal spiritual truth, the general inspiration, potentially, and very often actually, subsisting in every breast, the convictions of the good and wise of every age and time. For spiritual truth is the common heritage of earth and heaven. The wise and good, the apostles of God, in whatever age or time, realised the divine by the very same inspiration which reaches us now. It is, indeed, of God, the very same, according to their several measures, which rejoices the heart of poor troubled humanity and the exultant angels, who, mighty in their spiritual possessions, rejoice unceasingly beside God's throne. 266. THE PETBEL OF THE DEEP. There is a bird, the least of those that haunt the green sea-wave. In the wildest weather, when the winds most fiercely blow, and sea and air seem mingled in the drift, this little creature hovers fearlessly mid rack and spray, now advancing, now receding, or swooping down behind the combing wave, finds rest and shelter on the white floor of the seething deep. Thus, too, like the petrel, man betimes realises safety amid the tempests of life,^ and skill and courage are begotten of the storm. FRUITFUL INTUITIONS. [Book VI. 267. THE PURE AFFECTIONS. Each pure affection, the father's tireless fondness, the mother's unfaltering love, bespeaks itself from God. Children bring down fresh revelations, the very aroma of paradise, from the infinite. The mother, herself, experiences emotions unfelt before.^ For the babe, as the poet says. Was given to sanctify A woman. Fain, indeed, would she exhaust life's capacities for her child. No wonder, then, that children are beloved, very corner-stones and exponents of heaven. 268. CIRCUMSTANCES. If an infant be reared with the wise and good, amid a pure environment, or, on the other hand, among the unwise and wicked, in a word, amid an evil environ- ment, who can doubt that its future will be commen- surate. And this is the doctrine, so named, of circum- stances. But circumstances are the means only, and not the end, serve but to sow the seeds of goodness, which man, through strenuous effort, and despite of every obstacle, must bring to happy harmony and ex- cellence at last. 269. FRUITFUL INTUITIONS. Whatever the developed heart and cultivated intelli- gence approve, we have, so far, the crowning assurance ' Mutter treu wird taglich neu. Book VI.] SAFETY FOB ALL. 173 must be true, and whatever the developed heart and cultivated intelligence reject, for to these and through these are the divine revealings addressed, we have the equal assurance must be untrue. It is, indeed, the heavenly privilege, the blessed prescription of aspiration and holiness to realise themselves. For that which we earnestly and conscientiously desire, in the best sense do we eventually and certainly become. 270. THE EVIL AND THE GOOD SEED. As the sting of the little tsetse fly, which travellers tell us of, destroys the powerful horse, the brawny ox, so the unchecked infusion of a single malignant passion or base addiction, shall perchance destroy and pervert the whole soul. On the other hand, by a blessed neces- sity, some generous principle, when once we are happily imbued with it, shall transfigure the entire man, ap- proach him to the angels, bring God and heaven in its train. 271. SAFETY FOE ALL. Oak and triple brass, the poet says, swathed his breast who first tempted the fickle main, but surely ten-fold iron encircled his, who, in an unhappy moment, ventured, even in speculation, to consign his brother to destruction beyond the tomb. We do not urge the favour or disfavour of hea- ven in respect of propositions in natural science, yet religious and moral truth is not less self-suiRcing, demands in its behalf no extrinsic favour or disfavour whatever. IT! THE EELIGION OF THE SOUL. [Book VI. The common ground, in regard of the higher truths, is becoming more and more extended, the delusions of a darker time are passing away, and the sectaries, despite their strained unnatural pretensions and mutual antipathies, are approximating, to merge their differ- ences one day in the glorious unity of the truths of God. 272. SELF-EESPECT. Any prescription or prerogative, whatever, that tends to crush the principle of self-respect, partakes of evil. It is imprescriptible truth that we have a right to stand firmly on the privileges and immunities of our better nature. He, observes Paracelsus, who would know the com'ses of the heavens, let him first know what is hea- venly in man,'^ sublime and beautiful saying, perhaps only to be surpassed when he adds that from the know- ledge of ourselves we rise to that of the divine. 273. THE EELIGION OF THE SOUL. We need not more, but fewer religions. We need not less, but more religion. The religion of the affec- tions, indeed, tends to reach all hearts, purify all souls. But it needs the religion of the intelligence, also, that intelligence whose deep recesses no one yet has fathomed, to regulate its outpourings. If the understanding do not rule the heart, the heart the understanding, we are liable to lapse into the error, not less selfish than un- natural, of supposing that we alone can be saved. Yet, goodness is salvation, and wisdom is salvation, and love ' Opera, Geneva, 1658. Book VI.] THE INNER MANSIONS. 17j is salvation, safety, indeed, and joy for the soul which harbours them. Would sectaries but meet on this common ground, what good might they not accomplish, what neglected households might be lighted up, what souls incited to the moral effort which is of heaven. Else, how can the great example of the men, the women, saints indeed and martyrs of our race, avail, if the delinquent spirit make no effort to rescue itself. To this it must come at last. The battle must be fought in the very soul of man. For God, who sees the inner, the true life, wills that we should be holy, even with the holiness of child- hood. He loves purity and truth, the humblest service, the very first steps on the long ladder of progress which is to conduct us to the celestial land. Enough at first to know that God is love, that obedience to the divine is happiness, till earthly transition, at length, yield place to the permanence of heaven. 274. THE INNER MANSIONS. Santa Teresa,^ desirous to image forth the perfection, the beauty, and the dignity of a soul in grace, compares it to a palace of diamonds in which there are many mansions. Catherine of Siena,^ speaking of ecstasy, exclaims, much as St. Paul did before her. I know myself no longer, but only the divine that is within me. How great is the contrast between either of these, and Edwards, for example, author of the treatise on the ' Castillo Interior o las Moradas. 2 Opere delta diva e SerapJiica Catherina da Siena, Venotia, 1505, Le la Divina Frovidentia. TECE GREATNESS. [Book VI. Will. The Roman Catholic mother makes no appeal to the understanding, with the Protestant divine the heart is as naught. Yet, in matters of religion, as- suredly, we are hound to realise all the truth which the heart and the intelligence, guided and supported hy each other, yield. Nothing can well be more detrimental than faulty con- ceptions as to the goodness and mercy of God. The penitential psalms Niebuhr esteemed it a perfect horror to teach to children. How, indeed, can we find it in our hearts to inflict upon them rituals, confessions, which shadow forth the possible spiritual destruction of any portion of our kind. Let us rather dwell on the beautiful things of God, whose spirit is everywhere, and in whom, in very deed, we move and live for ever,^ his mercy, his holiness, his truth, and the heaven which consists in wisely loving and doing well. 275. TEUE GREATNESS. No people can be great, unless they feel and act greatly. For meanness of soul is destruction, opposed to all moral and spiritual elevation. To obey inferior impulses, only, however disguised and decorated, is to sacrifice the bloom of the soul. To obey the intellect, merely, is but a degree higher. There are sects, indeed, as there are individuals, in which a trace of gentle cul- ture is hardly to be found. Yet, to secure the loftiest results, the highest aims, sects must be united on the broad platform of intelligence and faith, noblest action conjoined with truest love. Book VI.] THE CAEEIAGE OF OUK SOULS. 276. THE VIRTUES OF NO SEX. The loftier virtues, spirituality, gentleness, unselfish- ness, by a law of the inner, the higher life, appertain to men and women, to our common humanity, alike. For God has made no distinction between the highest and hoUest manhood, the highest and holiest womanhood. The inward light, the masculine independence, necessary to the formation of character, are evinced alike, regard- less of sex, by the best and wisest of our kind. 277. A JUST ASCETICISM. We must not make our bed too soft. Some degree of asceticism, not, however, the asceticism which courts infliction for infliction's sake, is needful for the soul's weal. Stoicism, indeed, enjoined unflinching endur- ance. But thanks to the better spiritual culture of our times, we know that endurance, though a great, is not the only virtue, and that the object of our hopes and our aspirations, may be a present reality as well as a joy to come. 278. THE CAERIAGE OF OUE SOULS. We are like soldiers on guard, have the charge of mighty truths, in short, the carriage of our own souls. Most certain it is, that we are called on for ceaseless efibrt, not only in the moral, but the intellectual and physical worlds. Were it possible, then, it should be blazoned in characters of light, proclaimed as with the thunder's roll, that our powers must be exercised and developed to be retained. FLOWEUS OF PARADISE. [Book VI. 279. ASPIRATION AND EEALISATION. There is not a faculty of which, the just exercise does not insure gratification. A happy frame of mind is, in itself, happiness, and happiness springs up here, as I am persuaded it will spring up in heaven, from appro- priate moral, intellectual, and affectionate activity. 280. FLOWERS OF PABADISE. It is pleasant to reflect that the Maker of the prim- roses can adorn the mansions of heaven with yet other flowers. We do not, indeed, live sufficiently in our emotional life,^ our sympathies, and our afiections, in devotion to nature and to art. If we did, it would bring us into closer relations with the celestial world. The hungry beggar-boy Who stares unseen against our absent eyes, Bears yet a breastful of a fellow-world, Contains himself both flowers and fiimaments And surging seas and aspectable stars.^ The paradise which is at hand, we do not see, the angels which house beside us, we do not know. In these respects, children have advantages over us which it almost needs to be born again to appreciate. For they live in the very forecourts of the higher life, com- pass, in their degree, the divine ideal, and are already communicants of heaven. I still remember my child- hood's ecstasy while inhaling the rich perfume of the red wallflower and the rose, gazing in some leafy arbour ' SlacJc's Ministry of the Heautiful, Lend, 1850. * Aurora Leigh, Book VI.] ASSOCIATE ANGELS. at the emerald hues which strained through the beechen leaves,^ or handling the spray torn from some verdurous tree. But children, themselves, are gems of paradise, at one with the flowers and with heaven. 281. KEEPEES OF THE GATES. How sweetly shall a real saint, some man or woman aiming at the divine, dilate on the truths of the better life, truths which yield rest to those who toil indeed, and are laden heavily.^ The friends of God are also friends of man. Theirs is the courtesy which shrinks from the infliction of pain. For they who invite others to the celestial mansions, keepers of the gates of heaven, should surely approve their mission by deeds of gentle- ness and love. Enough for them, faithful to their sacred trust, to rescue sinners from their soil, and fellow-workers, perchance fellow-sufferers, so to lead them as to arrive at the safe havens of eternal peace at last. 2S2. ASSOCIATE ANGELS. Sin is the only stain, and with ignorance the one great evil and destroyer of our race. Knowledge, to be sure, is not virtue, but it is a stepping-stone to virtue, its firmest ally and associate. For love and science, twain angels, approximate ever more and more, as they ascend the celestial scale, till they merge, at last, in the harmony of heaven. ' Die diclit verflochtenen Buolieiigange in denen das Licht zu Schmaragden verwandelt wird. TieoKs Phtmtasus. ^iun ^Qos fie ^ayns at xo-^nmris kou -^e^a^riirfisvott jta-ycj oLvuvavaca v/ias* SPiraXUAL INFLUENCE, [Book VI. 283. A REAL FAITH. A sincere faith can ill brook the imputation of error. Each cherished conviction we would, indeed, share with those we love, would pause with and hold by them for ever. Yet, who does not feel and know that an un- worthy life is the greatest impiety,^ and that love and heavenlymindedness alone can take us by the starry path that leads to paradise away. 2W. SPIEITUAL INFLUENCE. Celestial influences are everywhere, heaven trifles not with the spiritual, any more than with the material law. For God sustains in holy earnestness the world. The conditions of the inner, are fixed and immutable as those of the outer life, the laws of mind as those of matter. True philosophy and religion bear the strictest tests, court alike the Hght of day. Yet, truths half appreciated, are capable of being turned into deadly errors, not the less serious for being conjoined with an affection or even a vital certainty. In the spiritual, as in the material life, God, so to speak, puts forth no greater, yet no less an effort than what is needful to the end. In like manner, the goods which we desire, must be sought for through and by means which are adequate to the end. Belief in an incessant intervention in our spiritual states, is just as great a moral solecism as the belief in the suspension of material law. Never, for an instant, in either case, is the divine order suspended or interfered with. Let ' Vita indegna, rimmenza impieta. Book VI.] DIVINE EFFICACY. 181 US only have faith, for this is the keystone of the spiri- tual arch, that God acts ever for the best. For the greatest goods, the very loftiest truths lie indeed in common ways. They pervade our homes as they per- vade infinity. 285. DIVINE EFFICACY. The many admirable instructors notwithstanding, there is incessant need of culture to develop the powers pent up in every breast. Unworthy convictions degrade those who entertain them, impair the spiritual efficacy of culture itself. On the other hand, just con- ceptions dispel doubt, give birth to thoughts and feel- ings which ring like strains from paradise through the heart. For every truth is consistent with itself and with every* other truth, never yet has contravened the handwriting and Scriptures of God within the soul. In a life of love, a life lighted by a holy light, the heart is as a welling spring, in which fresh truths continually rise, while truths already felt, experience new and ravishing developments. As Christ himself has taught, the divine oversight extends to all men, for all are children of the divine. He insisted, indeed, on moral accountability, on gentleness, for he was gentle, and on truth, the brotherhood of humanity, the final extension of one spiritual rule over the earth. The teacher's duty, in- deed, includes not merely the appreciation of vital truth, but its spiritual utterance. Brutality, vulgarity, and ineptitude, are at utter variance with the divine. But earnestness, too, is needful to those revealings which 182 EOAD TO PAEADISE. [Book VI. conduct us to the heaven beyond this life, nay, render life itself a heaven virhile we stay. 286. HEATENLY EAENEST. God, by making us susceptible of affections pure and holy, and thoughts divine, has yielded unassailable earnest of the safety and redemption of our kind. For as night admits us to the glories of the visible heavens, so, v^hat men term grief and care,'- with death itself, afford yet further access to the paradise of God. There cannot, indeed, be rational life without effort, or suc- cessful life without a struggle. Passiveness and inertia are the soul's bane, as a life bright with heavenly faith and holy earnestness, sweetly and evenly passing on to the Great Communion, is replete with satisfactions divine. The oftener the spirit bathes in the serene waters of the river of life, the greater becomes its enjoy- ments. Like buds of immortal promise, replaced for ever, the fountains of eternal truth flow on the more freely the oftener we draw from them.* 287. EOAD TO PABADISE. As prayer and praise purify and solace the heart, so each spiritual effort leads us nigher to God. What happiness, then, to aid were it but a single soul on the road to heaven. But commerce with the celestial, the unseen, needs ceaseless patience and perseverance. I ^ Hovoi T^fiipovTis (i^oTous. Euiipides. 2 Con immortales rosas, Con flor que siempre nace, Y quanto mas so goza maa renace. Book VI.J FAITH AND REASON. 183 know not always what they mean who speak of taking heaven by storm. Hers surely was the better lore who in words of unfaltering sweetness has declared. It was the soul of love and faith That planned the gentle words. "Whose music woke like summer's treath My young heart's hidden chords.' 288. TEUTH, TRUST, LOVE. The human race are continually educating each other for good. Men, conscious of an unseen God, aiming at the hidden life, are to strive for something higher than mere personal felicity. There are appointed relations between intellectual power and moral goodness" which nothing can set aside. Moral pravity arrests the soul's development, as goodness quickens and directs its flight. This great truth, practically derided and set at nought by all fanatics, from Omar down, Coleridge clearly saw and appreciated. He, himself, was an illustration of the divine union between goodness and intelligence. Casaubon was not less so, as witness his daily morning prayer, his self-denying toil, his touching Diary, his converse with his friends, Joseph Scaliger and Herbert Lord of Cherbury, his grief for the loss of his Philippa, his life, his child, his all. 289. FAITH AND REASON. Some have imagined that superstition was allied to faith, where it is the antinomy of a just faith, wars alike with reason and with the divine. Now, as in the darkest ages, superstition, wherever subsisting, rejects ' Frances Brown. 184 MASCULINE DEVELOPMENT. [Book VI. a spiritual God, substituting some immoral figment of its own. For tiruth perverted or deformed, is not trutli at all. The degeneracy, on the other hand, named infidehty, thrusts aside everything not founded on the senses and the logic of the intellect. But further, infidelity, like fanaticism, ignores the law of love. Conjoined, they form that combination of the horrible and grotesque, which too often has thrust true religion aside, and shed as if it were water, the blood of the intelligent and the good. 290. MASCULINE DEVELOPMENT. A state, like an individual, owes its development to its relations with the world of thought and the world of action. The masculine inteUect needs the sustenta- tion of public affairs. ^ Man in truth, is formed for heaven through the medium of earth. The insane desire for concentration, for centralism, uncorrected by adequate local municipal development and federal union, ruined Rome, and threatens to injure, nay has injured, the British, as it has injured the Gallic commonweal. Let us indeed have union, concentra- tion, strength, but so as not to militate against the moral life and material wellbeing of the parts. Social science, the politike of the Greeks, deals with the great questions which concern man's living welfare,^ questions which it imports each striving intelligence to resolve. ' Crescit enim cum amplitndme rerum vis ingenii, nee quisquam claram et illustrem oratiouem efScere potest nisi qui causam parem invenit. Tacitus, Dialogm de Oratorthu^^ Cap. 37. ' Arnold's Zife ami Correspondence, vol. i. p. 216. Book VI.: NO PAETIAL CULTURE. 185 291. PEOGRESSrVE OPINION. In law as in philosophy and religion, in philosophy and religion as in law, what is incongruous and inept is continually eliminated through the illumination furnished by progressive goodness and intelligence. The great coUege of thinkers, the universal, the invi- sible church of the present and future, emits its judg- ments, which then become law, any opposing record or statute to the contrary notwithstanding. But pre- sently, opinion shoots ahead, and the process is repeated, and shall continue to be repeated, so long as man remains free, which we trust shall be for ever, to decide upon the infinite problems of the present, the future, and the past. 292. mTEOSPECTION. As we never actually behold our material selves, so some, so to speak,' never behold their own souls. Yet, introspection is a great duty, one of the various pro- cesses which benignant heaven, through the medium of reason and the heart, has enjoined for the develop- ment of man's soul and the education of our kind. 293. NO PAETIAL CULTUEE. The better affections, the very necessity of acting and loving, yield infinite proofs of celestial vnsdom, and goodness, and love. Such, in effect, is their resistless sway, that they tend to self-development even when the object is merely personal. From the intimate connexion of the three leading principles of our nature, sentiment UNITY OP NATIONS. [Book VI. namely, aiFectiorij and material activity, all partial cul- ture proves eventually ruinous and absurd, replete, indeed, with elements of disruption and decay. Civi- lization is indissolubly bound up with the recognition of spiritual law.^ The persistent denial of the rights of thought, as many an example shows, is only produc- tive of social ruin and political decay. The ideal of Christianity, as of all religion, presup- poses a creed which shall satisfy at once the intelligence and the affections, in a word, the intellect and the heart. The Roman Catholic does not dare to think enough, the Protestant does not venture to love enough, and so they remain apart. Yet, the filmy veil of an- cient misconceptions must one day fall away, and be- come as if they had never been. Led hand in hand by religion's loftiest ideal, love's tenderest aspirations, men's prayers and praise shall some time ascend in blended incense to heaven. Guided by a truer and not less loving appreciation, faith shall yield its glad assent, and the wounds of suffering humanity shall be healed. 294. UNITY OF NATIONS. Concurrently with the amalgamation of creeds, there is a tendency in the nations to form one immense family. The unity of nations is surely not a dream. Yes, a time may come when nation shall no longer oppress nation, when our wretched differences shall cease, when the earth-products shall be as a usufruct to all, and when the world, as it ought to be and would ' Buckle, Oil Civilization, p. 206. Book VI.] tTTTEBANCES OF LITEEATUEE. 187 be, if we only suffered it, shall become as a garden, the very paradise of God. 295. MENTAI, SOUNDNESS. One of the earliest evidences of recovery in insanity is a returning sense of self-respect.^ And thus, indeed, is it in every rally from folly, vice, and crime. The saving, the angelic principles of self-respect and self- mastery resume their blessed sveay. The individual begins to hold commerce with his better self, with heaven above, and man around. The heart regains its influence, lofty reason its sway, and the demons of folly, impurity^ and sin, retain their drear ascendancy no more. 296. LOVE A FACULTY. What we have learned we must sometimes unlearn, and what we have once respected we must perchance respect no more. Man's celestial faculties, introspection and love, sink iuto inaction from disuse, become im- paired, and, finally, even lost. There must, indeed, be the violation of no divinely-appointed law. It is through the culture of the whole man only, not pas- sively, but with every energy of the soul, as moral and sentient beings, that the dire results accruing from the mismanagement or neglect of our God-awarded powers, can be brought to a close. 297. UTTEBANCES OF LITEEATUEE. To many French writers, would it were to all, we owe deepest obligation and gratitude. In his Attic ' Hood's Eeport on Bethlehem Hospital, Jan. 1853. 188 THE ANGEL IN HUMANITY. [Book VI. Philosopher,' Emile Souvestre speaks oftentimes like an angel from heaven. Only listen to this prayer by Alphonse Karr, one of the great hierarchy of thinkers, writing perchance, for daily bread, yet uttering between whiles, things worthy to be remembered for ever. Thanks, he says, O Lord, for the beautiful things thou hast created in common. Thanks for the blue heaven, the sun, the stars, the murmuring waters, the shade of embowering trees. Thanks for the poppy in the corn, the flower upon the wall. Thanks for the linnet's song, the nightingale's hymn. Thanks for the perfumed air, the music of the winds. Thanks for the clouds, gilded by the rising and setting sun. And thanks, too, for love, the most common sentiment of all. 298. THE ANGEL IN HUMANITY. Everywhere among the men and women of our kind, are angels of charity and disinterestedness, men and women whose desires are as the perfume of paradise, whose hearts glow with celestial fire, whose eyes are lighted with the very light of heaven, doing what is right with self-denial and cheerfulness, tongue of gentle- ness, soul of wisdom, and heart of love. Don Manuel de Montesinos, of Valencia in Spain, holds charge of a sort of penitentiary for the morally sick and infirm. The penitentiary receives the man, indeed, but his crime remains at the gate.' Don Manuel is ever present. He finds no fault publicly, but ' Philosophe sous les Toils. ' La penitenciaria solo rci.'itic el hombre, rl dclito quoda ii la puerta. Book VI.] THE HIGHER LIFE. with persuasive, gentle v?ords takes the culprit aside, never wounding his self-respect, insulting his conscious- ness, or provoking hatred. At Palermo, lunatics are or were treated by a Sici- lian baron with extraordinary assiduity and success. The whole secret of his method, would that it were universal, was ceaseless occupation and kindness. The name of Florence Nightingale is one no Englishman shall soon forget. But now here, now there, men, women, whose names are written in the Book of Life, pursue the task of reclaiming the outcast, relieving the destitute. And thus, through the infinite clemency of God, the extremes of humanity meet, misery and crime are remedied, and it may be set aside for ever. 299. DIVINE TRUTHFULNESS. Untruthfulness is the vice of inferior natures. There are in fact, numbers who have the very loosest notions on the subject of veracity. Yet, should man be truth- ful even as God is truthfUl, in each and every transac- tion of his soul. 300. THE HIGHER LIFE. It may be quite right to say that morality, as a body of truth, a science, was elaborated long ago, neverthe- less, spiritual verities are in ceaseless process of develop- ment, at once in the individual and the race. The affections, too, render duty ever true, ever new. We can only escape from our defects by rising into a higher region of life, and thought, and action. How true is it that sin dims the spiritual eye, dulls the fine percep- THE HIGHER LIFE. [Book "VI. tions of the soul, impairs the infinite, the bitter-sweet longings, the eager gaze, which hoping, straining, it may he, by night and by day, to burst our chains, we direct towards heaven.^ Progress is the result of an endless series of small advances, since no one yet reached perfection at a bound. The road to the higher life, in this, our earthly existence, which flits, so swiftly flits away, often leads over broken, precarious ground. And he who, in any degree, has succeeded in acting up to his ideal, will often have occasion to survey the past with a regret not unmingled with admiration and dread. For oft, in the soul's strivings, there is that which causes the heart to thrill, and the voice to falter, in those who are worthy to know and to behold them. It is not, indeed, so much what we have believed, as what we have loved, observes Bernard, which is of moment, words, in truth, deserving eternal memory. For love is the one twin angel, as of knowledge is the other, which stands by the throne and before God's face for ever. Eytvtidtt ra. ditK^vx /iou IfAoi y upros vifiipccs kcci vvktos. Sept. ASPIEATIONS THE INNER, THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. BOOK VII The redeemiaig influence of Borro"w, leaving no poisoned, incurable ■wound, needs very muoli to be insisted on. Men cultivate remorse as a virtue, to atone for past siu by aggravating tlie sting of regret. They are scared by tie ghosts of their past misdeeds. Wbat a man does, be it good or bad, is so much less than what he is, that it is weak and miserable slavery to be in subjection to the past. A man may not tarry with his past acts. He must not allow his life to be hindered by either the reproaches or the applause of his conscience. To change evil into good, to perfect that which is imperfect, is the problem assigned to each to work out on his entrance into the world. Nature, indeed, has no reprobates. Nothing is finally or irretrievably bad. Mistakes and even crimes, are not dead inorganic results, to remain in stem unchangeable evil. They may be transmuted iato good, for they spring from living human natinre. They are to seire as ex- periences, for the purpose of helping us onward, not dragging us back. Since experience, as Gbthe says, is knowledge gained at the expense of something we would not willingly have done. Tor those who use it aright, experience leaves no brand. There is strength and regeneration in life, even in the life of the moment that is passing away. Anon. "A^is THUS Mx^ovs ^a.'^at rovs lavruv vsk^ovs. Matthew. ASPIRATIONS. 301. SELF-SACElrlCE. A LIFE of sacrifice is a life of liberty, since it is a life of love, the liberty of imitating that Being who loves continually and cannot err. Self-sacrifice is among the highest requirements of the mighty Taskmaster, puts us in possession of the very law of God, charges it with our everlasting weal. It is the final issue of the reverent faith which lifts a man out of himself, instils the loftiest principles, the conviction of a higher life. It imparts vitality and reality to the deep matters of the soul, faith in the divine future, faith in goodness, faith in the unseen ear, the all-pervasive presence, begets thoughts which are as portals to heaven, angels to guide and to warn. It suggests, and likewise helps to realise, aims which exalt a nation and an age. It confirms the virtue which outshines circumstances and defies temptation. It is associated with the poetry which floats through the universe, with the genius which allies itself with all goodness and all truth. It is indeed no other than the house of God, the very gate of heaven.^ 302. THE NIEVANA. Some controversy has arisen in respect of the Budd- hist word nirvana, as to whether a conscious, or an un- ' Swedenborg, A Biograpjiy, by J. Wilkinson. London, 1857. A NATION'S HOPE. CBooK VII. conscious absorption into the Divinity, were meant by it. Bournouf and Colebrooke both state that a con- dition of eternal felicity is spoken of, vi^hich, if mystics in regard of the reason did not continually contradict themselves, would at least imply a conscious absorp- tion, since consciousness must be the correlative of all felicity. We may not, cannot deny our own individuality, the reality and individuality of a providential God.^ And whatever wonders the soul shall behold, or whatever initiation it may have to undergo, let us firmly believe, leaving Buddhist and Pantheist to decide as they please, that our intelligence and our love shall experience augmentation and development for ever. 303. A NATION'S HOPE. It is a fearful, a crying ill to extinguish a nation's life, a nation's hopes and liberties. A Pole whom I had befriended, used sometimes to repeat for me his national airs. But ah, the lost hope, the dying pathos, that spoke beneath his hand. Another Pole, I heard exclaim over and over from his dying couch. Ah, were I only not sick, not sick.^ Hungary, too, is fallen, while Dembinski's son has perished, dying, it is said, of starvation, at Melbourne.^ Who has not wept to think of Athens, glorious even in her fall, of Saxon Harold, despoiled of life and reign ' Mens liumana adaequatam tahet cognitionem aetemae et infinitae eseentiae Dei. Benedicti de Spinoza, Opera, Ethices, Fars Secunda, Prop. 47. Lipaiae, 1843. ^ Wenn ich nicht nur krank ware. ^ Manchester Guardian, June 24, 1858. Book Vn.] THE WORLD A PARADISE. 105 througli impious trickery, of Kosciusko, when lie cried that Poland was no more.' Too often, alas, has despot- ism's fell hoof stamped out the fires of human liberty. Thus, when Monti sings of Italy ,^ his exquisite lines ring through the heart, and evoke, as the poet has hymned it. Tears from the depths of some divine despair. For alas, when a nation's aspirations are trampled in the mire, the very ecstasy of life and hope is blotted out, for millions, for ever. 304. THE WOBLD A PARADISE. The world is yet an Eden, hues golden and purple are still seen, ravishing melodies are yet heard. All nature, indeed, is a revealing, a ceaseless declaration of the else unutterable excellencies of God.^ And each man is an Adam, undergoing apprenticeship in the garden of life. Sia as erst, is still the only fall, its destruction our paradise regained. ' Pirns Poloniae. ' Bella Italia, amate sponde, Pur vi tomo k riveder. Trema ia petto e si oonfonde, L'alma oppressa dal piacer. ' Die Natur ist auoh eiae Offenbarung. In seiaem, reiaen Glanze hell Toranleuohtet, die iimere Siissigkeit, die geistige Blume, als der ver- torgene Liehtkem der in ihr immer nooh paradiesischen LiehlioKkeit, jene heilige Sohdnheit von weloher die ganze Seele des wahren Kiinst- lers erfiillt ist, raid fiir welohe der begeisterte Denker vergehens den Ausdruck sucht, hesonders so lange er jenes Geheinmiss der Liehe nooh nicht ia seiner Wirkliohkeit hegriflen hat. F. V. Schlegel, FhiksopMsche Vorlmmgm, 8te Vorlesung, Wien, 1830. CONVERSION. [Book VII. Life is an Aladdin's cave, whose jevyels are all the virtues, conscience the enchanted lamp, lighting up the soul. Man is a Prometheus scaling the heavenly- heights, happily not suifering the vultures of moral pravity, ignorance, and despair, lacerating his poor heart, to turn him from his purposes. He is a pilgrim, too, whom honest, downright Bunyan, honest and downright though he did not originate his wondrous allegory ,1 shall take by the hand, lead past Doubting Castle and the pit, all the demons that would prey on his unguarded soul. For ours is a merciful and com- passionate God, and wills not that a single one should sink or perish by the way. 306. CONVERSION. Conversions, missions, revivals, must go hand in hand with the advance of civilisation, the age's pro- gress, and form a part of it. What does it avail though individuals, whole nations even, like the Indians of Paraguay, should put on the outer garnish and livery, the profession, if the living, loving, hopeful reality, that alone constitutes a pure religious faith, be want- ing. For were religion only shown to be the sweet and gentle, albeit serious, solemn thing it really is, man would fly to its embrace. Some teachers, are as very angels, while others surely have mistaken their voca- tion. Instil fewer dogmas indeed, or rather leave dogmas aside, but instil with heart and soul, faith, and hope, and charity, then divinest influxes follow as ' Guillaiime de Guileville, Felerinage de Phomme, Hill, Pickering, Loud. 1858. Book VII.] PURPOSE. things of course. In short, religion, knowing God but as a parent, is the great correlative of the soul's pro- gress in goodness, intelligence, and truth, and love, and cannot so much as be conceived or imagined apart. 306. HUMAN NATUEE. Nor writer, nor painter, nor poet, nor sculptor, has ever yet realised the at-times unapproachable majesty and dignity of human nature. Let those who, under colour of religion, would degrade that nature, look to it. Some, indeed, have reached a pitch of excellence, that refreshes the soul to contemplate, an excellence which not the very angels perchance may surpass, and which yields celestial forecast of a time when the material interests that loom so largely here, must give way to the lofty aspirations, the pure affections, which link our earth with heaven. 307. PURPOSE. As Coleridge keenly observes, the wise possess ideas, whereas the rest of mankind are possessed by them. What, indeed, is infirmity of purpose, what incapacity for spiritual or moral progress, what insanity even, that departure from sound reason and sound feeling, but the being given up to an idea or ideas, from which, since the individual does not or cannot assert his freedom, there is no release. But the man of moral energy will not submit to the tyranny of an idea. He will employ his imagination to ameliorate and refine, he will live in the future somewhat, because embodying his ideal of life, and because, as Niebuhr says, in working out life's SWEDENBOEG. [Book VII. problems for himself, he works them out for others also, in short, he will remain exempt from the bondage to self, with which no soul is free. For as it has been said, the Man who would te man, Must rule the empire of himself— In it must reign supreme, Establishing his reign on vanquished -will. 308. SWEDENBOEG. Swedenborg's visions were true or they were other- wise. Certainly they were not objectively true, and very often they are subjectively false. All bis inter- locutors, as Herder has shrewdly remarked,^ deliver themselves alike. Many of his conceptions, placing the false, as has been said, under the aegis of the holy, are dreary enough, at utter variance with God's wisdom, and mercy, and love,^ while others are just as rife with celestial beauty and truth. In short, his is a Protestant instance, as there have been many Roman Catholic ones, of that state of abstraction, coupled with ' Alle sprechen aus ihm und wie er, wie er aus seinem Imiem hinaus Sie sprechen machte. Also durchaus eintonig, daher das Lesen dieser Schriften so sehr ermiidet. Herder, Werke, B. IX. S. 95. Fsychologische MrkVdrvmg der Swedenborg' schen GescMchte. ^ "Wer in lebendigem reUgiosem Glauben lebt, verklart durch den- selben aUe Erscheinungen um Sich her, und jede Begebenheit erhalt ihm gdttUche Bedeutung. Er glaubt an das Walten Gottes in der Natur, aber er darf weder Hassliches nooh UnmoraUeches zulassen, sonst wird sein Glaube Aberglaube. Das Beispiel des ungliicklichen Swedenborg, der die einseitig-e Verfolgung der hochsten und reinaten Gedanlcen, deren der Meusch fahig ist, ia uuheilbaren Wahnsinn fuhrte. Sivedeniorg und der Aberglaube. Schleiden, jSft«(?8«, X«jp«y, 1857. Book VII.3 HUMAN DWELLINGS. corporeal hallucination, which ends by mistaking its own conceptions for outward realities. But spiritual truth, since it is clothed with everlasting sanctions, needs no preternatural utterances, and certainly not those of the Swedish seer, whatever. 309. LOVE AND FEAB. Religion has been regarded through the medium of love and of fear. The advocates of sombre faiths adopt the latter. They tell their dear ones, their children, else so accessible to all spiritual affections, to fear God. Ah no, were it with my latest breath, I should employ it to say, r^pecting themselves and the spiritual nature that is within them, love God only, sublime yet simple element of all religion, all morality. For we have only to fear ourselves, our passions, preju- dices, shortcomings, ignorance, weakness, and nothing else in this world. 310. HUMAN DWELLINGS. Municipalities and capitalists should reconstruct, but with every appliance of order, purity, and decorum, the dwellings of the working-classes, the poor. Great then would be the saving in the matter of preventible disease, great the avoidance of physical suffering, moral stagnation and decay. For all rule, with all government, whether on the large scale or the small, avails only, as furthering individual development and wellbeing. The more general diffusion indeed of aesthetic culture, in which architecture holds so prominent a place, would subserve the better interests of our kind. 20O THE HOLIEST AIR. [Book VII. 311. LOST IS LOST. Lost is lost and gone is gone.^ I attended once a ship- wright, one who built stout ships to navigate the seas, who died of hot fever in the place where I reside. And he was a comely youth as he lay upon his bier. But he is lost, he is lost, exclaimed his sorrowing mother, he is gone, he is gone. Then she praised him for what he had been and done. And now, she cried afresh, he is lost, he is lost, he is gone, he is gone. There were just the mother and her dead son by the cold hearth-stone. Together, they abode in life, and now, too, are they together in a land where stout ships are no longer needed, and where stalworth sons do not leave fond mothers to struggle with penury and care. 312. MUNICIPALITIES. Federal, elective institutions and municipalities, the latter in Niebuhr's most true estimate the very basis of political life and liberty,^ should subsist throughout Britain and the world. They have worked well wherever they have been introduced, and along with trial by jury, lie at the very foundation of civic life and liberty. 313. THE HOUEST AIE. The hoUest water is water to drink, water to main- tain the body's purity and furnish refreshment for man. The holiest earth is that which bears corn, and wine, and oil, for his sustenance, hides the wasted frame ^vhen God's good work is done. And the holiest air is ' ITnd hin ist hin, vorloron ist verlorcn. ' Freie Verwaltung. Book VII.] A GOLDEN THOUGHT. pure air, air untainted by the odour of decay, air fresh, in short, as that which plays on the lea-field or drives the salt-sea wave. For cleanliness, and suste- nance, and order, are needful to all, and holy, indeed, are the earth, the water, and the air which subserve these precious exigencies. 314. A WISE IGNOEANCE. There are things of which the brevity of life and the limits of man's intelligence require that we should remain ignorant.^ But there are also things which concern us all to know, things, as Elizabeth Carter remarks, essential to our present condition and pros- pects, and to the investigation of which our faculties will invariably be found adequate. We cannot afford to remain blind to religion, and science, and poesy, and literature, and art. For this were a sottish ignorance. Yet some, alas, are all but unaware of truth's divinest elements, the glorious wealth of art, the spirituahty of our affections, some to whom aspirations too deep for words, conceptions holy, just, pure as the heaven from which they spring, seem little better than dross and forgetfulness. 316. A GOLDEN THOUGHT. The golden thought flashed this morning with pecu- liar vividness on my soul, that we were, indeed, mem- bers of the divine commonwealth, part and parcel of the glorious congregation of God's creatures, worlds ' Humanae enim sapientiae pars est, quaedam aequo animo nescire Telle. Scaliger. 202 DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Book VII. stretching beyond worlds into space illimitable/ and that infinite intelligence, and love as infinite, took con- cern of us for ever. For the present and the future are as one great Now, and the soul's pulses of the moment, are the same throughout eternity. 316. THE EXHLBITION. Pictures there were, and statuary, at the recent Man- chester exhibition, that one could wish never to forget, pictures, statuary, that imparted new faith in spiritual purity, and goodness, and truth. There, was witnessed a surpassing loveliness, immortal truths were incul- cated, affections instilled, such as tide men over the sea of life, and into the wide-spread ocean of eternity. 317. DOGMATIC THEOLOGT. Dogmatic theology, at least as it is held by multitudes, is in much the same transitional state, abounding in mysticism, error, and other shortcomings, that dogmatic astronomy, dogmatic chemistry and physics, dogmatic physiology and psychology, were in some two or three hundred years ago. You might not safely reason on physical science then, you must not, according to some, reason on religion now. The Scripture text is admit- tedly not conclusive as against physical demonstration. • Die Grbsse Gottes wird nicht durch Stemenweiten gemessen. Die Unendliclikeiten der Sonnenwelten, die Aeonen der Weltgeschichte siad ein Niclita gegen die geringste Erscheinung geistiges Wesens und Lebens. Das G-efiihl fiir Sohonheit in der Natur, welclie uns, wenn auch unsagbar, die ewige Liebe hinter den korporlichen Erscbeinungen ahueu lasst, wird nicht gemehrt durch die Siriusweiten des Stemen- himmels, nicht gemindert durch die Kleinheit des fimkelnden Thau- tropfens. SoUeiden, Stiidien. Book VII.] THE INSANE. But adds a writer in the Edinburgh Keview,' is it con- clusive against moral induction and metaphysical in- quiry. We cannot indeed reason too much, provided only vre ohserve the laws of reason, the well-prescribed limits of our intelligence. For rehgion should be the measure, not only of our affections and our love, but also of our best knowledge, our awakened capacities, our ripest intelligence. The notler hustandry of mind. And culture of th.e heaxt.^ S18. DISEASE AND DECAY. Ah, poor suflferer, if thou wast only not so impatient. For consider, disease, and sickness, and the wreck of temporal things, are also avenues to the better, the hidden life,^ smooth many times the approach of death. Be not then so much solicitous about the body, as of the soul's heal, and wast thou sick, then shouldst thou be well. For happiness depends not on fortune only, but on things yet more divine.* Then should celestial messengers conduct thee to the heavenly mansions, and the fountains of eternal joy. 319. THE INSANE. The least fallible, indeed the only sure method of treating the insane, is by ceaseless, intelligent, attrac- tive occupation of body and soul. We have not, perhaps, as Descartes remarked, entire power of self- ' Oct. 1850, p. 351. 2 Drenuan's Poems, 2d ed. Dublin, 1859. ' Krankheiten sind Lehijahre der Lebenskunst imd Gemijthsbil- dnng. NovaUs (von Hardenberg). * Juliani Imp. Ad Themistium, Opera. Parisiis, 1640. THE MARSEILLAISE. [Book VII. conservatism, for this is reserved by Another who unites in himself the perfections which are wanting in us, yet to us not the less has been imparted the keeping of our own souls. It needs culture, ceaseless appeals to all the extant faculties, the better affections, continual repetition, to lay the foundation of healthy moral and mental habits. No one who has not had intercourse with the mentally perverted and debilitated, can imagine how imperfect is their self-control for good, how inferior their addic- tions, how frequent their lapses, ere they regain, if it ever existed, their lost self-control. Their souls, like those of the imbecile and idiotic, have to be treated as we treat some forms of paralysis, supplying effort, at first passively, by and through the intelligence of another. It is a most noble task to reintegrate the ruined soul, set right the perverted intelligence, in short, restore the spiritual harmony and completeness, which, assuredly, it is the divine intention should sub- sist in all. 320. THE MABSEILLAISE. Once again, perchance, shall the Marseillaise, sub- lime hymn, echo over the freed soil of France. Her beauteous plains shall cease to be deluged with blood. Culture, amenity, and joy shall subsist in her borders, hand in hand with all the virtues, all the arts. Never must we believe that providence designs for Italy, Poland, Hungary, France, any of the great European populations, in fine, perennial convulsions at the dicta- tion of political despotism, or religious fanaticism. Book VII.] FEAR, A BLIGHT. There shall one day ensue a real, indeed, a holy alliance between the nations,^ overawing, and, if needs be, crushing, with mightiest, truest purposes, tyranny and despotism whenever they may be found. 321. FEAR, A BLIGHT. There have been periods in the history of our kind when blighting fear exerted dread supremacy. The cruelest kings, some Russian Ivan or Spanish Pedro, found reverence from a barbarous race. African Lan- der saw trees hung thick with human skulls, grim fruitage of the superstition that wars with glorious aims, sees in the life beyond the grave but dens of endless suffering. The red hand, blood impressed, records in central America the sacrifices of a revolting past. But too long has religion been infected with the same drear leaven. Diabolical agency, which even Luther held by, was believed in for ages, and weird wild legends still linger by many a hearth. Yet, one day all shall learn that God, and, subject to him, their own souls, are the fountain and supreme tribunal of that truth of which formulas and confessions are the more or less imperfect utterance. For the laws of nature and of our own being, are as thoughts of God, and science and religion are entirely at one, all existence is a revealing, and light, at once material and spiritual, a proclamation to nations, realms, and times. Every- thing that appeals to the higher faculties, appeals also to the divine life, the eternal, the golden aspirings within. That sin introduces moral death is indeed most true, ' Durch Einlieit zur Freiheit. ■206 THE NAVIGATOES OF OLD. [Book VII. but that it introduced physical death, is contravened by the evidence of actual science, quite as clear and demonstrative in geology, as was in Galileo's time and is now, the evidence for the world's revolvings round the sun. For religion needs no untruth whatever, to aid its blessed, its eternal sanctions. Man advances in intelligence and holiness with an impetus that in- creases with his spiritual growth. All existence is a kingdom of reason, a region in short of the kingdom of God. And the pursuit of science in a sense is reli- gion, as the pursuit of duty is holiness. There is indeed a soul in nature and that soul is God.' There is a perfect consent, harmony the most absolute, between natural science and religious truth. Whatever be the obstacles occasioned by the stupifying yoke of habit, the difficulty of altering past modes of thought, Ave must not the less cultivate spiritual sym- pathy with the entire universe, abandon the folly of thinking to save life or soul by superstitious obser- vances, in short, address ourselves to the nobility of thought, the moral elevation, and entire truthfulness, that lead from the comparative narrowness of earth to the enduring greatness of heaven. 322. THE NAVIGATOES OF OLD. It is touching to peruse the relations of the early navigators, how, in some remote island of the ocean, OS avpccvov T ertu^t xa) yatxv feccK^av rrovTou t£ ^tcpo^ov olo/aa. k avifAcay (jias. x.r.X. Sophocles, Fragmenta ex Incertis Tragediis, LI. Brunck ed. Book VII.J MONEY. 207 the birds, devoid of fear or dread, lighted on their per- sons or walked amid their feet. The Indians welcomed the 'Spaniards, the people of Otaheite the English, as gods. Alas, we do not requite the dear children of nature as we ought. A traveller, in America, speaks with rue of a butterfly, the imprisoned seraph as he sweetly terms it, months after its impalement, raising its beautiful wings.^ If some rare and lovely winged creature, bearing the divine signature from regions afar, light upon our shores, it is forthwith despatched by some fool, and thrust, a mere waste of feathers and skin, into a glass box. Birds, too, are massacred in preserves, nay, ani- mals are followed into their native wilds, and destroyed with no view of lofty science or human conservancy. Surely a time may come, when we shall again walk among the creatures of God, and without the infliction of needless sufiering, share with them our common heaven. 323. MONEY. The excessive inconvenience and even misery, so often induced by monetary derangements and monetary frauds, should lead to efiicient efibrts to rectify certain malpractices and misconceptions in respect of money itself. For money, capital, in a word, stripped of economic verbiage, is simply an expedient for doing away with the immediate exchange of objects of prime necessity. Silver, platinum, gold, really anything but stationary in their values, are not alone adequate as a ' The Shoe and the Canoe. sm FILIATION OF CRIME. [Book VII. basis of exchange. With due care, a paper money, sufficient to facilitate exchanges, limiting all transac- tions between individuals to a cash standard, might be made to represent not merely the precious metals, but other values. Banks issuing notes,' but acting as comptrollers of credit, proportioning loans to capital, should be placed under municipal or government con- trol, and the entire system of fictitious values and false credits brought to a close. 324. GUAEDIANSHIP OF SOULS. The better principles are guardians and conservators of men's souls. Self-respect alone, did it pervade all bosoms, would infallibly elevate the whole family of man. And he who justly valued himself for the divine, the noble gifts of God, sum of all his worth, his every capacity, would necessarily appreciate them in his kind. That these gifts constitute man's entire excel- lence, is a truth which no convention, no prejudice, can set aside. For the kingdom of truth and of reason, which is also the divine kingdom, can never be at variance with, or wanting to itself. 326. FIUATION OF CBIME. There is not a folly, a superstition or a crime, un- atoned for, which, by the natural filiation of cause and effect, does not produce its dreary crop of bale and suifering. The horrors related in the daily press, are at once a rebuke to our sottish self-esteem, and an urgent plea for the more effective culture of our kind. ' Smith, Say, Graj', Freedly, Senior. Book VH.] LIFE'S MISSION. 209 326. THE VISIBLE WOELD. It needs a sort of sensuous, as well as intellectual new-birth, rightly to appreciate the wonders of the material and moral worlds, the conception of an all- wise and infinite God. The uncultured man, the savage, and the child, live amid creation almost with- out once imagining that any thing spiritual underlies or earth, or sea, or sky. They feel, indeed, but do not know, they think, but hardly appreciate thought. The unconsciousness, however, so lovely and appropriate in the child, is out of place in the man. Although religion, and philosophy, and poesy, and science, teach better things, he is all too prone to view the material world, the old atheism, as the one and only existence. Yet, the visible heavens and the visible earth, with all their sublimities, are but as an appear- ance, declaring order and reason, celestial harmonies, laws divine, in which matter has no share. 327. TJFE'S MISSION. Life is or ought to be a ceaseless development, no gospel of negations, but the marriage of philosophy with faith, the religion of the heart, a building-up of truths to be written on the countenance,^ and pondered in the soul. For this is the free spiritual activity which makes us indeed children of the divine, compel- ling the revelation of nature's secrets, penetrating to the idea through the senses, aiming in hours of inspiration • Hominem literum et maguificum si queat, in piimore fronte aniramn gestare. Apuleiue. P PIOUS FEADDS. [Book VII. at everlasting truths, continual action in goodness and intelligence, in short realising the faith, the charity, and the hope, which are of the very light and glory of heaven. 328. Pious FRAUDS. Let us hold with Coleridge that religious frauds are the worst of frauds, bearing dreary crops of misery, deceit, and crime, at utter variance with the faith, the trust, and the truth that lie at the root of the spiritual life of man. For we may not hold back a truth, utter an untruth. The freest disclosure alone combines safety and peace. Faith must not be at issue with itself, religion cannot be irrational or untrue. We may not conceive God otherwise than as absolute truth, perfect goodness, infinite wisdom. And to God and our own conscience are we alone accountable for dis- cerning those attributes in him. Earnest is life. Each soul must digest the heavenly manna for itself. For every sorrow the heart has turned from, we lose a consolation,^ for every fear we dare not confront, we forfeit some of our hardihood, and for every truth, I will add, that we fail to cherish, we forego a portion of our very souls. Reason, faith, philo- sophy, must contract divinest nuptials. Then should we have the universal church, the progressive, the pure,^ a church true to man's best interests, because true to truth, to hope, to thought, to feeling, and to affection, without sacrifice of reason or of love, but combining these in one sacred, one celestial whole. ' Ruskin. ^ 'O xuPaoa;. Book VII.] PURIFICATION THROUGH LOVE. 359. PSYCHOLOGY. Psychology, as a science, is natural and demonstrable as any other, takes acfount of man's inner nature, the good, the beautiful, the true. So far from self- observation being impracticable, everything, even that material science by some thought alone accessible, comes to us through the medium of the inner, the un- seen life.i Psychology, rightly understood, resumes all other sciences, for it is the science of the living soul. It is intimately connected with religion, of which it is the sure and certain ally, and vain are the efforts which have been made, or ever shall be made to decry it. 330. PURIFICATION THROUGH LOVE. The doctrine of purification by fire, was adopted, perchance to escape the not less absurd than drear alternative of ceaseless pain. But, unhappily, it was applied to this life, as well as to the life to come. Arrested by the Inquisition of Venice, Giordino Bruno was sent to Rome, where two years' imprisonment, -with death impending, did not suffice to abate his constancy. On the 9th of February, 1600, after being excommuni- cated, he was handed over to the secular power, in order, as the mocking formula ran, that he should be punished with the utmost clemency, and without effusion of blood. He heard his sentence with intrepidity, merely saying to his judges that perhaps it caused them yet greater terror than it did him. Eight days after, he suffered the accursed infliction to the end. ' Das hbhem selbst, der innere Sinn. Fortlage, B. ii. S. 251. SINCERITY A TEST. [Boor VII. Would that the reformed churches, rightly rejecting the revolting doctrine of a fiery, had adopted that of a universal spiritual purification. The world, however, knows not God through science only.^ For love, it is,^ which exalts us to the great conception of the ultimate regeneration, not of a selected few, hut of man's whole kind. This view claims to be revealed by the con- science, and not merely by the fancy, a distinction first insisted on by the distinguished philosopher above named.^ As for the doctrine itself, it is entirely con- sonant with the goodness, clemency, and power of God, and as such commends itself to our entire adoption. 331, GROWING OLD. It is an illusion about growing old, for how can the soul grow old. Gradations, which we term the ap- proaches of age, sickness also, mask transition, and with many a change bring the frame to its term. But it is our duty to be unmoved by any such. For the countenance, if young, should be the prophecy of a joy- ful future, and if old, the record of a glorious past. 332. SINCERITY A TEST. Sincerity is the correlative of every virtue. The eyes were given to man to look, the tongue to speak the truth. AH- falsehood, every disguise, is a horror, a misery, and a sin. Directness is the very essence of genius, and loyalty, and grace, and with all goodness ^ OVK 'iyvia o KotrfAos ^itx- rris ffo^ioLS rov @tov. ' Offenbarung durcli Liebe, ^ Bruno, Bialoghi dell Causa, Principio, e Xfm. Venice, Loud. 1584. Book VII.] CONSCIENCE. proceeds straight to its aim. Let us be directj then, even as God is direct.^ Divinest truth is set forth in the revelations of nature as in those of man's soul. For the world, the entire universe, is as a volume making truth more visible, goodness more divine. The un- tainted soul abhors cunning and duplicity, and strong indeed must be the perturbing influences that can set aside its natural proclivity to truth. 333. A MIGHTY AIM. Mighty was the aim that would rouse the dead,^ the dead in spirit, from their trance-like repose. For whether in the seen or the unseen life, there is no other death than spiritual. He whose soul is well awakened can never die, and he whose soul is not awakened, is in effect dead, in spirit dead, whether in this life or in the life to come. Spiritual insight, as we learn through the psychology of faith, increases with our spiritual knowledge itself. The soul awakened, presses upward and onward to the eternal goal, is impelled to acts of mercy and of truth, and realises the ecstasies of heaven in the end.^ 334. CONSCIENCE. While I agree with Herbart,* not the less would I affirm, that each moral aptitude is inborn in the soul. ' Paciem semper monstramus. ' 'Eys