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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
THE GREAT POETS 
 AS RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN H. MORISON 
 
 '>>* COPYJtK 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 
 
 1886 
 
.141 
 
 Copyright, 1885, by John H. Morison. 
 All rights reserved. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction 4 
 
 I. The Imagination in Religion . . 75 
 
 II. The Great Poets as Religious Teachers . 39 
 
 III. Dante 45 
 
 IV. Shakspere 83 
 
 V. Goethe • . . . . . 775 
 
 VI. Old Testament Writers . . . 143 
 
 VII. The Ideal Teachings of Jesus • . 163 
 
 VIII. The End i 93 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 flHYSICAL science must always 
 hold an important place in the 
 work of mental discipline and cul- 
 ture. It may do what no other pursuit can 
 in forming habits of exact observation, 
 comparison, classification, and analysis. 
 Apart, therefore, from its practical uses, 
 it is an essential branch of education. 
 But, standing by itself, it is only a branch, 
 and that not the highest. Wonderful as 
 its methods and discoveries are, it does 
 not undertake to comprehend or appre- 
 ciate the highest laws of the universe, or 
 to call into exercise man's highest qual- 
 ities. The sense of right and wrong is as 
 necessary in the investigation of morals 
 as sight and touch are in our physical re- 
 searches, and requires as keen an exercise 
 
6 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 of the intellect in arranging and applying 
 the facts which are thus discovered. Here 
 we are introduced into the great field 
 of human conduct. Beyond the sense of 
 right and wrong is the faculty by which we 
 rise to a conception of the vital or efficient 
 forces on which the outward universe, in 
 its multitudinous operations, depends. 
 And through this higher faculty we recog- 
 nize still another order of facts. A new 
 sun shines around us, and creates for us a 
 new heaven and a new earth, exalting sci- 
 ence into a divine teacher, bringing new 
 sanctities into our homes and extending 
 them through our wider relations with one 
 another. It is only as these three great 
 departments of knowledge are brought to- 
 gether that each finds in the others its true 
 counterpart, and so is enabled to fill out its 
 legitimate place as a means of education. 
 
 They who, by the common consent of 
 mankind, have been looked up to with the 
 greatest reverence as imperial rulers in the 
 world of creative thought, rising highest 
 
Introduction. y 
 
 and penetrating farthest into the secrets of 
 the universe, have been the seers or poets. 
 By their revelations, and in accordance 
 with the wants and laws of our nature, the 
 unseen world of spiritual thought and life 
 has been laid open to us, and thrown its hal- 
 lowing influences around us ; making itself 
 felt as a familiar presence from childhood 
 to age with the individual, and from the in- 
 fancy of the race onward with increasing 
 sanctity and power in every new develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Owing to instincts which are often safer 
 guides than our most elaborate theories, 
 the favorite stories and songs of children, 
 and the folk-lore which has found its way 
 everywhere into human hearts and homes, 
 are made up from traditions which appeal 
 most vividly to the imagination, and people 
 the world with ideal conceptions. Such 
 are the books like Bunyan's "Pilgrim's 
 Progress/' of which thousands upon thou- 
 sands of copies are demanded by each suc- 
 cessive generation. In accordance with 
 
8 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 these same instincts, and for reasons which 
 have commended themselves to wise and 
 thoughtful men for many generations, the 
 great poets have been recognized as august 
 and effective teachers, and, at the head of 
 those who have given the most perfect ex- 
 amples of literature, have had a leading 
 place in the higher systems of education. 
 It has been supposed that by studying them 
 in their native tongues the young would 
 become most thoroughly imbued with 
 their mind and temper. Their sympathies 
 would thus be refined and enlarged. Their 
 higher faculties would be called into ex- 
 ercise. Drawn into closer companionship 
 with those great souls and sharing their 
 highest thoughts, they would naturally rise 
 with them into a higher sphere of life, and 
 unconsciously become endowed with an in- 
 tellectual, aesthetic, and moral dignity, re- 
 finement, and simplicity which would hard- 
 ly be reached so effectually in any other 
 way. 
 
 But now the vast accumulations of wealth, 
 
Introduction. g 
 
 with the multiplication of material com- 
 forts and luxuries, are turning us away 
 from these things. And the tendency of 
 the age is still further increased by the 
 marvellous inventions and discoveries of 
 science, opening as they do fields of inves- 
 tigation in any one of which a lifetime 
 may be spent without looking beyond its 
 walls. Things visible and tangible assume 
 to be the only realities, and demand for 
 themselves the foremost place in every 
 wise system of education. Science, which 
 should include every department of knowl- 
 edge, is narrowed down to the world of 
 matter, which is supposed to furnish the 
 only substantial basis of truth. The popu- 
 lar literature of the age is marked by the 
 same characteristics. Even the ablest writ- 
 ers of fiction, for example George Eliot, 
 fail to rise into the empyrean where the 
 pure imagination should find itself most at 
 home, amid the ideal conceptions best fit- 
 ted to meet its infinite longings. If this 
 tendency to materialism is allowed to go 
 
io The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 on without recognizing the light which 
 comes to our higher faculties from the 
 higher facts of the universe, it can end 
 only in atheism and spiritual death. If 
 our most advanced schools of learning 
 should give in to this tendency ; if, instead 
 of seeking to call out all our faculties, and 
 most of all the highest, so as to make men 
 of the loftiest and broadest type, they 
 should lower and narrow their standard, 
 thinking it of more importance to make 
 specialists than men, the change is one 
 which may awaken very serious apprehen- 
 sions with those who look to the best in- 
 terests of humanity. 
 
 From the beginning, and more and 
 more as they advance in their education, 
 at home and at school, in the books they 
 study and the literature they read, our 
 children should be imbued with the fact 
 that there are laws higher than those of 
 matter, and objects of more transcendent 
 interest than any that can be dealt with 
 from a purely materialistic point of view. 
 
Introduction, 1 1 
 
 Without a recognition of these higher laws 
 and agencies, the material comforts which 
 science and the mechanical arts are pro- 
 viding in such boundless profusion become 
 instruments of moral and intellectual dete- 
 rioration. The loftier ideals of life, and 
 with them its nobler aspirations and ambi- 
 tions, are lost. And when they are gone, 
 wealth, all the more because of its abun- 
 dance, enters as a corrupting influence 
 everywhere, and taints the atmosphere in 
 which it moves. 
 
 A liberal education is not confined to 
 institutions of learning. Sometimes it is 
 gained by private investigations and stud- 
 ies in moments snatched from a busy life; 
 and sometimes, almost without books, it is 
 gained, amid pressing circumstances, from 
 the complications of business, from inci- 
 dental intercourse with accomplished men 
 and women, aided by habits of solitary 
 meditation. But wherever and however it 
 is sought, its office, and indeed the great 
 purpose of life in training and educating 
 
12 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 men and women, is to gall out what is 
 noblest and best in them ; to inspire them 
 with high aims ; to enlarge and purify their 
 minds by familiarity with the grandest 
 thoughts and lives ; and especially to exer- 
 cise their highest faculties by the truest 
 and largest conceptions of nature, man, 
 and God, The great poets, seers, proph- 
 ets, who have been the vanguard in the 
 progress of the race, and who, by lifting 
 men up to a higher consciousness of what 
 they ought to be, have kept them mov- 
 ing forward towards a higher ideal, must 
 always hold the highest place in every 
 well-organized and healthful condition of 
 society. 
 
 Other branches of knowledge must not 
 be undervalued. They belong to our daily 
 life, and no man can do without them. 
 But the higher and broader culture which 
 deals with matters of a more transcendent 
 quality, and which lifts science and life it- 
 self into a purer and larger companionship, 
 should enter into the training of every 
 
Introduction. 13 
 
 child, and go with him from the nursery 
 to the kingdom of heaven. The infant 
 mind is open to the holiest impressions, 
 and the more advanced the stage of intel- 
 lectual progress he has reached, the more 
 quickening and uplifting are the concep- 
 tions which he may find opening before 
 him as he follows the guidance of the great 
 poets of humanity. 
 
 It is the purpose of these essays to indi- 
 cate, by a few illustrious examples, some 
 of the lessons and some of the methods by 
 which this higher training may be carried 
 on, and our higher consciousness be at 
 once purified and enlarged. 
 
I. 
 
 The Imagination in Religion, 
 
 " Where there is no vision the people perish." 
 
 Proverbs xxix. 18. 
 
THE IMAGINATION IN RELIGION. 
 
 [|Y the imagination I understand the 
 faculty of looking through outward, 
 material forms into the unseen 
 principles or laws by which they are gov- 
 erned. What we see is but an intimation 
 or token of what is. All art, all language, 
 the world around us, the outward experi- 
 ences of life, are but symbols, more or less 
 imperfect, of something greater behind, 
 which we can neither hear nor see, but 
 which we recognize by this higher faculty. 
 We may call it vision, faith, pure reason, 
 imagination, or what we will. It is the 
 faculty which makes things unseen real to 
 us, and enables us to go beyond the reach 
 of the senses, and take in the higher facts 
 in man and in nature. 
 
 By means of this faculty we go instinc- 
 
1 8 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 tively from the visible fact to the unseen 
 law by which it is governed. That which 
 is seen becomes a token or representative 
 of what is not seen. The mathematician 
 recognizes in the smallest segment of a 
 curve the properties which enable him to 
 construct the whole. The naturalist sees 
 in the fragment of a bone the properties 
 which enable him to construct the entire 
 animal. In the falling apple Newton rec- 
 ognized a law by which the whole material 
 universe is governed. 
 
 Because there are laws everywhere, sub- 
 jecting the visible universe to their influ- 
 ence, and enforcing order through every 
 department of nature, science becomes 
 something more than an accumulation of 
 incoherent materials. External, visible 
 facts are arranged, harmonized, bound to- 
 gether, by invisible relations and affinities. 
 It is the office of this higher faculty to dis- 
 cover and apply these invisible affinities or 
 laws, and carry them out to their natural 
 results. 
 
The Imagination in Religion. 19 
 
 What we see is the symbol of something 
 unseen, which the imagination or divining 
 faculty recognizes. When we look upon a 
 face certain hues and outlines are all that 
 the eye can see. But behind that we, 
 through the imagination, form a concep- 
 tion of an intellectual, emotional, and spir- 
 itual being, whom we learn to love and 
 honor as our friend. He, the man, is never 
 seen by us, and makes himself known to 
 us through sensible form and sounds only 
 because of this higher faculty by which we 
 go in from the seen to the unseen. That 
 which is dearest to us is not what we see, 
 but what we divine, — using what we see 
 as symbols or suggestions of what lies be- 
 yond the reach of our senses. In looking 
 at Raphael's Transfiguration or his Sis- 
 tine Madonna, we see only a plane surface 
 marked by different shades and colors. 
 But while we look we are, through this 
 higher faculty, brought into communication 
 with the mind of the artist, and moved by 
 his grand conceptions of spiritual power 
 
20 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 and beauty. In like manner, amid the fair- 
 est scenes of nature we see only outward 
 forms and colors, but by the imagination 
 we are taken into a conception or appre- 
 hension of the unseen laws and presence 
 and workings of the Infinite Mind. 
 
 From the nature of things, science, with 
 its material instruments, can never enable 
 us to see Him who is a spirit. But it may 
 bring us to the borders of that unknown 
 realm where the healthful imagination de- 
 mands his infinite presence as the neces- 
 sary complement of what we see and are. 
 In "the starry heavens above " and "the 
 moral nature within " we find laws which 
 demand a supreme, overruling, and crea- 
 tive Mind to fill out these otherwise frag- 
 mentary parts, and mould them into one 
 harmonious and consistent whole. It is 
 the office of the imagination to fill out the 
 divine idea which lies hidden within visi- 
 ble facts, waiting for some intelligent soul 
 to follow their intimations onward to their 
 perfect expression. In science the imagi- 
 
The Imagination in Religion. 21 
 
 nation points to the deeper meaning which 
 lies in facts already discovered, and which 
 demands a step onward towards a broader 
 generalization. In art, in poetry, the im- 
 agination, feeling the limitations which our 
 mortal condition imposes upon us, fills out, 
 in its ideal creations, the thought of a di- 
 viner beauty, a more exalted virtue, a truer 
 joy, as the natural fulfilment of our pres- 
 ent being. And everywhere this divining 
 faculty looks up into the realm of religion 
 as the necessary complement to satisfy 
 the demands of our highest powers. The 
 great poets and prophets of humanity, in 
 all the ages, have been largely endowed 
 with this gift. But rising upward through 
 the seen to the unseen, in what is most sa- 
 cred and divine, Jesus stands immeasurably 
 above all others. Partial disclosures of di- 
 vine truth, laws imperfectly unfolded to the 
 human consciousness through the greatest 
 seers who had come before him, are sepa- 
 rated from extraneous and temporary ac- 
 companiments, and filled out by his more 
 
22 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 penetrating and comprehensive vision. 
 And so broad, so deep, and so high is the 
 world of truth and life into which he would 
 lead us that common words and images, as 
 symbols of his far-reaching thought, like 
 the handwriting of God on the outward 
 universe, often fail to impart to us their 
 divinest meaning. Instead, therefore, of 
 seeking to measure him by our inadequate 
 standard, it becomes us to look up rever- 
 ently to him, and strive more fully to un- 
 derstand him. It is the office of the imag- 
 ination from age to age to enter anew into 
 his mind, and interpret his thought and 
 life in the light of the highest moral and 
 spiritual progress, and the most advanced 
 ideas and intelligence. 
 
 Where the imagination exists as a great 
 natural endowment, and is educated with 
 our other faculties in accordance with the 
 laws of the intellect, it sees, as no other 
 faculty does, the grander possibilities which 
 are involved in the little facts around us, 
 and which grow up through them into 
 
The Imagination in Religion. 23 
 
 higher realities as their natural product. 
 It divines the future in the present. It 
 sees the plant in the seed. It recognizes 
 in each specific act what is involved in it 
 as its legitimate moral results. In the self- 
 sacrificing precept, "He that loseth his 
 life shall find it," it sees not only the pres- 
 ent struggle and loss, or apparent defeat, 
 but also, as already present and bound up 
 in the same act, the future consequences 
 growing out of it, — the soul endowed with 
 a richer life, and rising triumphant in 
 death. 
 
 From what is visible and present, as 
 shown in the imperfect specimens around 
 us, the imagination divines the law which 
 governs them, and follows it out to what 
 these imperfectly developed parts must be 
 when they have attained to their com- 
 pleteness. A single example taken from 
 Goethe's Autobiography will, perhaps, il- 
 lustrate what I mean. While residing at 
 Strasburg, he says, "I happened to be in 
 a pretty large party at a country house, 
 
24 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 from which there was a magnificent view 
 of the front of the Minster and the tower 
 that rises above it. ' It is a pity,' says 
 some one, i that the whole is not finished, 
 and that we have only one tower/ I re- 
 plied, 'To me it seems quite as great a 
 pity that this one tower is not completed ; 
 for the four volutes end much too abruptly. 
 Four light spires should be added to them, 
 as well as a higher one in the middle 
 where the clumsy cross now stands.' 
 
 "As I made this declaration with my 
 accustomed earnestness, a lively little man 
 addressed me, and said, 'Who told you 
 that ? ' ' The tower itself/ I answered. ' I 
 have observed it so carefully, and have 
 manifested so much attachment to it, that 
 at last it determined to confess to me this 
 open mystery/ ' It has not informed you 
 untruly/ he responded. ' I have the best 
 means of knowing, for I am the superin- 
 tendent of the public edifices. In our ar- 
 chives we still have the original design, 
 which says precisely the same, and which 
 I can show you/ " 
 
The Imagination in Religion. 25 
 
 After he had carefully studied the build- 
 ing, the imagination of the poet, like a 
 finer sense, recognizing in its principal 
 parts the law which should regulate the 
 entire construction, and following that law 
 out through the primary li^nes into their 
 proper development, arrived at conclusions 
 coinciding precisely with those adopted by 
 the genius which had planned the entire 
 structure. 
 
 In the highest art, as in nature, there is 
 nothing arbitrary. Everything must be in 
 accordance with a divine idea or law. The 
 great cathedral must fulfil the conditions 
 of that idea, and grow out of it as naturally 
 as the oak grows out of the acorn. And it 
 is the office of the imagination to divine 
 the law, and in accordance with it to con- 
 struct the whole from any one of its parts. 
 
 Thus we see that the imagination is no 
 fitful or capricious agent, and that it is gov- 
 erned as much as the eye or the reason by 
 laws, and that the conclusions to which it 
 leads us in its healthy action are as much 
 
26 The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 
 
 to be relied upon as those which we reach 
 through the senses or the reason. Indeed, 
 it is one of the 4*iost efficient agents which 
 the reason can use in opening the way into 
 new fields of knowledge. Especially is it 
 the surest pioneer in the whole realm of 
 moral and religious inquiry, where from 
 the finite, the visible, and the temporal are 
 to be evolved our highest conceptions of 
 the infinite, the unseen, and the eternal. 
 
 We need this divining faculty of the im- 
 agination in order that we may see, in their 
 fulness, the truths of our religion, which 
 are dimly suggested in the world around 
 us, and which, even in the New Testament, 
 are often revealed in imperfect and frag- 
 mentary forms of expression. The fulness 
 of divine truth and life, that is, all the ful- 
 ness of the divinity, as St. Paul terms it, 
 has dwelt in but one man. Human lan- 
 guage, from its very nature, could only par- 
 tially set it forth. Even the Apostle could 
 not take in, still less embody in words, all 
 that is involved in it. "We know," he 
 
The Imagination in Religion. 27 
 
 says, "only in part." As the Christian 
 mind and consciousness, in the grander de- 
 velopment of our moral and spiritual facul- 
 ties, have been enlarged, the divine fulness 
 which was in the mind and life of Jesus, 
 speaking through him in words and acts, 
 has been revealing itself more and more 
 to the foremost spirits of the world from 
 generation to generation. Men whose im- 
 aginations have been consecrated and 
 strengthened by holy living and thinking 
 and a profound study of what he taught 
 and was have been able to penetrate more 
 deeply into the thought of Jesus, to lay 
 hold on his instructions with a firmer 
 grasp, and to set them forth more effec- 
 tively to the reason and the heart. 
 
 This deeper, broader insight into the 
 mind of Jesus, this grander apprehension 
 of what he said and was, are not to be at- 
 tained by the logical understanding alone. 
 That has its important and indispensable 
 sphere and use. But it is circumscribed 
 and hesitating in its approach towards new 
 
28 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 truths or new developments of truth in the 
 highest realms of thought. No syllogisms 
 of logic can reason out the existence of 
 God, or set before us his boundless attri- 
 butes. After our keenest powers of analy- 
 sis have taken us inward as far as they can 
 towards the primary elements of matter, 
 the imagination comes in to fill out what is 
 wanting, and recognizes, as essential to the 
 completeness of all that is yet known, an 
 element finer than all material agencies, — 
 the force by which they act, the life in 
 which they live. 
 
 Each separate leaf demands every organ 
 that belongs to the plant. For without the 
 whole each separate part would be incom- 
 plete. So in the moral world, through our 
 affections and our moral sensibilities, soci- 
 ety is formed, friendships are cherished, 
 laws enacted ; but the imagination, in its 
 grander conceptions, sees how marred and 
 incomplete all these things are as we see 
 them here, and so follows them upward till 
 they are filled out and find their complete 
 
The Imagination in Religion. 29 
 
 development in him who is the highest law 
 of our being, the life of our lives, the one 
 satisfying object of our deepest and holiest 
 love, the one eternal author and support of 
 the moral order and harmony of the uni- 
 verse. 
 
 It is only through this faculty that we 
 can understand the majestic imagery of the 
 Bible, or see what its authors saw in their 
 profound and sublime conceptions of divine 
 truth. The logical faculty, invaluable in 
 its place, is powerless here. It may exam- 
 ine texts to see what they prove, and frame 
 its systems of divinity, believing that it has 
 thus embodied in a creed the whole of 
 our religion. In this way it has often 
 happened that the Scriptures have been 
 robbed of everything in them that is most 
 satisfying and precious to the soul. The 
 want of a reverent religious imagination to 
 aid the logical faculty and supplement its 
 deficiencies has been the cause of unmeas- 
 ured harm to the church. 
 
 One of the most noteworthy features in 
 
$0 The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 
 
 the teachings of Jesus is the ideal or im- 
 aginative form in which even his simplest 
 instructions are given. A winged sentence 
 comes to us, almost as slight in its out- 
 ward structure as the thistle-down which 
 bears its seed through the air a hundred 
 miles, and yet it brings to us the most 
 weighty and inspiring truths. As an illus- 
 tration of this remark, I open the Gospels 
 at random, and take the second sentence 
 that meets my eye. "Are not five spar- 
 rows sold for two farthings? and not one of 
 them is forgotten before God." How nat- 
 ural and unlabored the expression ! How 
 easy it is to see and to remember the whole 
 image that is brought before us ! And yet 
 as we take it home to our hearts, and seek 
 to follow it on with the imagination to- 
 wards its full significance, it bears us up 
 into the heavens, and introduces us, as no 
 metaphysical expressions ever could, to the 
 all-embracing, thoughtful, tender love of 
 God. We see here that in the mind of 
 Jesus the life of a sparrow requires, as its 
 
The Imagination in Religion. 31 
 
 necessary complement, the being, the love, 
 and the providential care of God. And 
 here the whole subject lives before us. 
 Reason with our short-sighted logic as we 
 may about unchangeable law, as the only 
 agency or method by which God acts in 
 the universe, such reasoning does not sat- 
 isfy us. This image of his love, this falling 
 sparrow, watched over and cared for by 
 him, appeals to a higher sentiment and a 
 higher faculty both of the intellect and the 
 soul. We choose not to enter the logical 
 dungeon which has been hewn out for us 
 in the rock of God's immutable nature. 
 These words of Jesus carry us into a larger 
 and truer sphere, and are more in accord- 
 ance with the loving kindness and perfect 
 freedom of the Eternal Mind. They tell 
 of a grander, truer, freer life from God to 
 man, and of man in God. 
 
 I have spoken of the imagination as the 
 divining faculty. In the little that lies 
 within our reach, it discovers the law by 
 which that little is governed, and in follow- 
 
$2 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 ing which we may be carried on to grander 
 conclusions. In the single bone it sees the 
 whole animal and the conditions of water, 
 land, and air essential to it. It enables 
 us to look upon our present life, and the 
 faculties of mind and heart which can be 
 brought out through the experiences that 
 are possible in this world, as but segments 
 of a greater whole. From these incom- 
 plete portions it divines the laws of our 
 spiritual being, and sees, as already present, 
 the higher opportunities and developments 
 which are needed, in order that these laws 
 shall reach the fulfilment of all that is im- 
 plied in them. Thus it sees the future life 
 involved as a necessity in the facts of our 
 present existence. In its highest activity, 
 as it shows itself in the mind of Jesus, it 
 sees in each separate fact that which is 
 needed for its complete development. To 
 his mind no single flower or sparrow lives 
 alone, but its otherwise helpless, isolated be- 
 ing is imbedded in the divine thought, and 
 is watched over, cared for, and tended by 
 the all-embracing, loving providence of God. 
 
The Imagination in Religion. 33 
 
 In the mind of Jesus the sense of the 
 divine love and presence associates itself 
 with every object and event, and thus fills 
 out, with the fulness of the divine thought 
 and love, what seems to us meagre and 
 incomplete. There was in him a perfect 
 blending of his mind and will with the 
 mind and will of God. Conceptions of the 
 eternal life and of the divine love and 
 nearness, which it is difficult for us to gain 
 even for a little while, went, it would seem, 
 always with him in his daily thought, and 
 were a part of his constant experience. 
 As the great mathematician in the small 
 arc of a curve, always and without effort, 
 as by his personal consciousness, sees the 
 whole, so Jesus, in each portion of our 
 human life, sees the whole. He sees each 
 fragmentary act in its completeness, in- 
 volving as it does, to his open and pro- 
 phetic vision, the presence of God in his 
 laws, and the righteous retributions for 
 good or evil which those laws are working 
 out. The unseen spiritual world and the 
 3 
 
}4 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 unseen retributions which are bound up in 
 every act and every disposition of mind 
 reveal themselves to him in the act which 
 is done, or the disposition of mind which 
 is laid open before him. 
 
 It is so everywhere in the Gospels. 
 Seeing great principles of religious and 
 moral truth involved in each small seg- 
 ment of life, Jesus follows those principles 
 on in their workings, without regard to the 
 limitations of time and space which hide 
 them from us. Our short-sighted percep- 
 tions and logical inferences from them 
 leave us perplexed and bewildered. He 
 approaches us from a higher region. Ma- 
 terial distinctions are dissolved. The lines 
 which separate matter and spirit disappear. 
 He takes us up into a higher realm, that 
 in our deepest and greatest experiences 
 we may be made partakers with him of the 
 ceonian, that is, the eternal or spiritual, life, 
 in which he lived. As we thus enter into 
 his light our darkness vanishes away. The 
 limitations of our physical existence seem 
 
The Imagination in Religion. 35 
 
 hardly to be recognized by him. He sees 
 in its completeness that which stands be- 
 fore us apparently imperfect and incom- 
 plete. We cannot so far put ourselves in 
 his place as to comprehend his thought in 
 all its fulness. Yet no other teachings 
 come home to us so tenderly and closely, 
 or so effectively adapt themselves to our 
 highest and dearest wants. 
 
 The office of the imagination in the dis- 
 covery, the interpretation, and the applica- 
 tion of religious thought and life is a very 
 important and very difficult subject. But 
 in this direction mainly we must advance, 
 if we would attain to a deeper insight and 
 a broader comprehension of the religion of 
 Jesus, or so live and believe in him as to 
 enter into his life with more vital and 
 quickening experiences than have yet been 
 embodied in his church or taken up into 
 the Christian consciousness of his follow- 
 ers. 
 
 We must not hope to see through it all. 
 When brought face to face with the spirit- 
 
$6 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 ual and eternal we must expect something 
 of mystery to overshadow it. We cannot 
 see through these things or define that 
 which is infinite. It is absurd to talk of a 
 scientific study of religion in its grandest 
 manifestations and influences. Its out- 
 works, its human agencies and instru- 
 ments, the history of its sacred books and 
 forms, may be studied with scientific care 
 and by scientific methods. But beyond all 
 that we can comprehend, in the infinity and 
 eternity which no human eye or thought 
 can penetrate, are "the hidings of that 
 power" which, awakening in us a diviner 
 life, would lift us above this mortal sphere, 
 and bring us into vital relations with a 
 purer realm of being. It is because the 
 Calvinists of a former age and the scien- 
 tific unbelievers of our day have under- 
 taken to bring everything within the grasp 
 of their logical rules and definitions, re- 
 jecting as unreal what they could not thus 
 verify, that they have failed to recognize 
 the deepest wants of our nature, the high- 
 
The Imagination in Religion. 37 
 
 est thought of the Bible, and the dearest 
 offices of Christ to the soul. 
 
 The great poets of humanity understand 
 better the way of dealing with, the grand- 
 est problems of life, and furnish better 
 examples for us to follow in the highest 
 of all studies than can be found with logi- 
 cians and scientists, great and beneficent 
 as they are in their own sphere. I have 
 endeavored to give some intimation of this 
 better method by which we may be led 
 into a truer liberty and a more life-giving 
 satisfaction in our interpretation of the 
 mind and the will of God. In this way we 
 may begin, in our Christian studies, to em- 
 ploy the imagination as an efficient agent 
 in helping us upward, with increasing love 
 and reverence, into ever higher, broader, 
 and more inspiring fields of vision. 
 
II. 
 
 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 " Men endowed with highest gifts, 
 The vision, and the faculty divine." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
THE GREAT POETS AS RELIGIOUS 
 TEACHERS. 
 
 T is the office of the imagination to 
 fill out in its completeness that 
 which reveals itself to us in actual 
 life only in mutilated or imperfect exam- 
 ples. The philosopher or anatomist takes 
 an ideal man as the subject of his investi- 
 gations, filling out what might be wanting 
 in any specific example. The great math- 
 ematician deals entirely with ideal forms. 
 This divining faculty, seeing what others 
 do not see, "outrunning the deductions of 
 logic," and recognizing in isolated facts 
 the law by which they and all similar facts 
 are governed, is the distinguishing quality 
 of the great minds who from age to age 
 have led the human race onward by new 
 revelations of truth in science, in govern- 
 
42 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers, 
 
 ment, and in those complicated but es- 
 sential qualities of thought and character 
 which enter as vital elements into our 
 social condition and progress. 
 
 This is preeminently true of every great 
 poet who, under fictitious forms and by 
 ideal examples, reveals the most substan- 
 tial of all realities. He deals with ideal 
 men and women, transforming himself 
 through the imagination into widely differ- 
 ent types of humanity, and showing to us 
 the wants, the faculties, and the capabili- 
 ties of our nature as they are brought out 
 under an infinite variety of circumstances. 
 Fictitious forms stand for underlying real- 
 ities. Behind the fact which the poet as- 
 sumes for the time he sees the law which 
 it represents, and, following it on through 
 its natural and inevitable workings, he 
 brings before us in its most affecting fea- 
 tures the whole attendant history. The per- 
 sonages by whom the problem is worked 
 out, like the unknown quantity in an alge- 
 braic formula, may be purely fictitious, but 
 
The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 43 
 
 in every great poetic creation they are 
 governed by the laws of their being. Rec- 
 ognizing and obeying those laws, the poet 
 reveals to us their workings in living ex- 
 amples of men and women moved by the 
 passions, hopes, enthusiasms, beliefs, and 
 fears which belong to such and such types 
 of humanity under those assumed condi- 
 tions. The greatest poet is he who takes 
 the grandest characters through the most 
 varied and trying experiences, and fills out 
 for us, naturally and truly, what should be 
 their secret thoughts and emotions. There 
 is no other process by which the wants and 
 capabilities of our nature and the great 
 laws of life can be so vividly and effec- 
 tively brought before us. 
 
 Hence it is that in all ages the imagina- 
 tion has suggested the most impressive and 
 authoritative method of teaching the high- 
 est ethical and spiritual truths. Homer and 
 ^Eschylus and Sophocles were the most 
 revered teachers in Greece ; and among 
 the accomplished scholars of our day, there 
 
44 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 are not wanting earnest Christian believ- 
 ers who find in them tokens and examples 
 of an inspiration not unlike that of the He- 
 brew prophets. If Plato rose above other 
 philosophers in his influence on the highest 
 thought of the world and in the place he 
 has held in its reverence, it is because his 
 imagination lifted him above his "dialec- 
 tics," and caused him to present his grand- 
 est ideas under forms which belong more 
 to the poet than to the philosopher. 
 
 It may, therefore, be well for us to see 
 how the most momentous of all subjects, 
 connecting us with God and the unseen 
 laws of his kingdom, are treated by a few 
 of the greatest poets. For this reason I 
 have selected three who are generally re- 
 garded as holding the highest place among 
 the poets of modern times, while they also 
 stand entirely apart from one another in 
 their leading characteristics as writers and 
 as men. 
 
III. 
 
 Dante. 
 
 " Ah ! from what agonies of heart and brain, 
 What exultations trampling on despair, 
 What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, 
 What passionate outcry of a soul in pain, 
 Uprose this poem of the earth and air, 
 This mediaeval miracle of song." 
 
 " I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze 
 
 With forms of saints and holy men who died, 
 Here martyred and hereafter glorified; 
 And the great Rose upon its leaves displays 
 Christ's triumph, and the angelic roundelays, 
 With splendor upon splendor multiplied; 
 And Beatrice again at Dante's side 
 No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise. ,, 
 
 Longfellow. 
 
Readers who would study the Divina Commedia with- 
 out a knowledge of the Italian language will find Mr. 
 Longfellow's translation, with the accompanying notes, 
 an indispensable guide and help. I know of no case in 
 which so literal an interpretation conveys the author's 
 meaning with such extraordinary felicity and skill. 
 For this reason I have taken the liberty to use it almost 
 entirely in my quotations. Dr. Parsons's translation, as 
 far as it is completed, gives in its rhythmical movement 
 a better idea of the tone and spirit of the poem than 
 any other translation that I know of. James Russell 
 Lowell's article on Dante is the grandest paper of the 
 kind that I have ever read, and may be placed with 
 Longfellow's Sonnets on the Commedia* 
 
DANTE. 
 
 ANTE'S " Divina Commedia " is, 
 I suppose, taking it all in all, 
 the greatest single product of hu- 
 man genius. Its subject is substantially 
 this : Man, in his first opening affections, 
 may be impressed with love and reverence 
 for what is divine. There comes a time, 
 however, when, amid other and low r er at- 
 tractions, this first love loses its hold upon 
 him, and he is led astray. But he is never 
 quite satisfied. In his difficulties and aber- 
 rations, the thought of what he has lost 
 comes over him with a sense of awe and 
 contrition. Then the divine Truth, whose 
 beauty so entranced him once, presenting 
 itself to him with startling authority, leads 
 him to look into his own heart and life, and 
 into the unseen world in which his destiny 
 
48 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 is to be fulfilled. So, step by step, through 
 the dread of punishment, through tears of 
 penitence, and by renewed purity of heart 
 and life, he is prepared to see again and to 
 embrace the Truth which he -had neglected. 
 It rebukes him at first. Gradually, as he 
 gives himself more entirely to it, he rises 
 upward, and, with every new advance in his 
 mental and moral condition, he is able to 
 look more clearly into it, and to see in it a 
 new attractiveness and power. Leaving 
 other guides behind, he follows it onward 
 and upward till it reveals itself to him in 
 the fulness of its divine beauty and splen- 
 dor. 
 
 Here, in naked prose, is the subject, if 
 not the substance, of Dante's poem. The 
 same thing had been preached in thousands 
 of Christian pulpits. It had furnished the 
 ground-work of all serious thinking and 
 teaching from the time of the Apostles. 
 Around it had gathered the commonplaces 
 of religion and morals, till the life that 
 was in it once had apparently been extin- 
 
Dante. 49 
 
 guished. How then could it be made the 
 central thought of the greatest poem of all 
 the ages ? 
 
 Dante, cast out of his native city, wan- 
 dering he knew not whither, without a 
 home and with no apparent means of sup- 
 port, felt, with the intensity of his keenly 
 sensitive and impassioned nature, how bit- 
 terly salt is the bread eaten by an exile at 
 another's table, and how wearisome the 
 stairs he had to ascend in other men's 
 houses. Yet in all his homesickness and 
 desolation his great mind lived in an ideal 
 world. He saw what was in man. Under 
 outward circumstances of prosperity and 
 adversity alike he recognizes the pres- 
 ence of a free and responsible being. In 
 every act, whether for good or evil, he sees 
 the workings of a divine law, and in the 
 workings of that law he finds the condi- 
 tions which are required by his fine instinct 
 of justice and mercy as the necessary com- 
 plement to these visible lives, and without 
 which everything here would exist only in 
 
 4 
 
$o The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 a state of suspended or mutilated develop- 
 ment. Through these ideal realms in which 
 the laws of our moral being are working 
 out their natural and necessary results, his 
 mind ranges as amid the only essential 
 realities. When a great crime is commit- 
 ted, he sees at once the consequences that 
 must follow, and in his secret thought as- 
 signs to the man who commits it his fitting 
 place in hell, — the hell in which the soul 
 imprisons itself by the commission of such 
 a crime. So, to his mind, every sigh of 
 penitence, every virtuous act, every ad- 
 vance of the soul upward through higher 
 thoughts and nobler deeds, reveals to his 
 prophetic imagination a sphere of life in 
 which alone men and women really live. 
 Beyond what meets the eye, therefore, he 
 finds, actually present to his thought, ideal, 
 but none the less real, realms of pain and 
 contrition, in which the perpetrators of 
 wrong may have their fitting punishment, 
 or in which those whose sins had left them 
 capable of penitence and purification may, 
 
Dante. 5/ 
 
 through years or ages of appropriate chas- 
 tisement and grief, rise above their sins, 
 and finally have every stain of guilt ef- 
 faced. But most of all did he rejoice to 
 follow men in their ascent upward to the 
 world where he should find again the van- 
 ished dream of an ideal truth and beauty, 
 and see, in a more transcendent form, 
 what had dawned upon him in his child- 
 hood as an object of unspeakable love and 
 reverence. In all his wanderings, intensi- 
 fied by his sufferings, these unseen worlds 
 and agents were present with him, feeding 
 his hungry heart with meat which others 
 knew not of, and so sweetening the bitter- 
 ness of his exile, and giving him some fore- 
 taste of "the peace" he craved. 
 
 Dante is himself so identified with his 
 poetry that we can hardly understand it 
 without knowing something of his per- 
 sonal history. When but a child he met 
 a maiden, younger than himself, who made 
 such an impression upon him that from 
 that hour she was to him the impersona- 
 
52 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 tion of all that is most beautiful and at- 
 tractive. " When she was near any one," 
 Dante says in his "Vita Nuova," "such 
 modesty took possession of his heart that he 
 did not dare to raise his eyes or to return 
 her salutation. She, crowned and clothed 
 with humility, took her way, displaying no 
 pride in that which she saw and heard. 
 Many, when she had passed, said, ' This is 
 not a woman ; rather is she one of the most 
 beautiful angels of heaven.' " "When at 
 length," as he says, " the Lord God of 
 justice called away my most gracious lady 
 unto himself," under the pressure of grief 
 which followed, he wrote a few small 
 poems concerning her. After this, he 
 writes, "It was given unto me to behold 
 a very wonderful vision, wherein I saw 
 things which determined me that I would 
 say nothing further of this most blessed 
 one, until such time as I could discourse 
 more worthily concerning her. And to 
 this end I labor all I can, as she well 
 knoweth. Wherefore, if it be his pleasure, 
 
Dante. . 5^ 
 
 through whom is the life of all things, that 
 my life continue with me a few years, it 
 is my hope that I shall yet write concern- 
 ing her what hath not before been written 
 of any woman." 
 
 Gradually, as his great work opens to 
 him its wonderful revelations, she becomes 
 transfigured before him, till "this mortal 
 has put on immortality/' and she is no 
 longer an earthly but a heavenly being, 
 the impersonation of divine truth and 
 beauty, animated and inspired by divine 
 love. While he thus thinks of her as hav- 
 ing her seat in the highest heavens, her 
 present glory is thrown back on her early 
 years, and the young maiden as well as 
 the maturer woman, whom he once knew 
 as the object of his purest love and rev- 
 erence, is, by the transforming power of 
 his imagination, lifted up into the same 
 exalted sphere. The thought of her still 
 awakens in him throbs of tender emotion, 
 when he calls to mind their early love for 
 one another, and the influence for good 
 
54 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 which she then exercised over him. She 
 is no passionless abstraction standing aloft 
 in the cold empyrean heights > far above all 
 human sympathies. Her features of un- 
 spotted truthfulness and beauty are suf- 
 fused with the roseate coloring of wo- 
 manly love and tenderness. Though di- 
 vine she is also human. When first she 
 appears in the poem, " her eyes were 
 brighter than the star," and she began to 
 speak " gentle and low with voice angel- 
 ical." But after she had expressed her 
 deep anxiety for Dante, " a friend of 
 mine," she said, "and not a friend of for- 
 tune," her shining eyes now filled with 
 tears, " weeping she turned away." And 
 when in the highest heavens it was given 
 him to see her for the last time in his 
 poetic vision, 
 
 " She, so far away, 
 Smiled, as it seemed, and looked once more at me, 
 Then Unto the eternal fountain turned." 
 
 Thus it is with her. If she is the imper- 
 sonation of divine truth, she also sheds 
 tears of human compassion. She has for 
 
Dante. 55 
 
 Dante not merely the stern qualities of a 
 heavenly monitor and guide, but also the 
 tenderness and partiality which had grown 
 out of their personal relations and their 
 personal interest in one another. 
 
 Here is Dante's Beatrice, the loftiest, 
 the purest, the most beautiful and inspir- 
 ing conception of woman in the literature 
 of the world. And she is the presiding 
 genius of the " Divina Commedia. ,, 
 
 The poet represents himself as having 
 fallen away from his sublime devotion to 
 her after her death, and as being infatu- 
 ated and misled by other passions and in 
 immediate danger of more fatal results, 
 wandering hopelessly from the true path, 
 when Beatrice, from her heavenly exalta- 
 tion, seeing that nothing else can save 
 him, devises a way by which he may yet 
 be rescued from destruction. He is to 
 be taken through the abodes of departed 
 souls. In those heretofore unseen realms, 
 he sees in its more extended development 
 what is in man, — what infinite capabilities 
 
56 The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 
 
 for good or evil, for weal or woe, as re- 
 vealed to him in the loss and torments 
 which each separate type of sin brings 
 with it or drags after it as its natural con- 
 sequences ; in the slow workings and fear- 
 ful pangs of remorse by which the soul 
 painfully makes its way upward through 
 penitential inflictions and sorrows till the 
 stains of sin are all effaced ; and in the 
 different degrees and kinds of joy through 
 which the different classes of the re- 
 deemed may rise, rank above rank, as the 
 poet rises from world to world, till the 
 highest souls are united as in one vast 
 rose, on which the dews and sunlight of 
 God's love falls, and into which his angels 
 and archangels are perpetually coming, to 
 breathe into the souls of the blessed new 
 effluences of divine love and peace. 
 
 It is not possible, in any condensed state- 
 ment or abbreviated sketch, to give an 
 idea of the "Divina Commedia." In it all 
 that is most vitally true in the thoughts, 
 all that is most quickening in the experi- 
 
Dante. $j 
 
 ences, all that is most inspiring in the 
 conceptions, aspirations, and prayers of 
 the greatest thinkers, saints, and martyrs 
 who had gone before him, may be found 
 transfigured by the poet's creative or sug- 
 gestive imagination. His subject, he says, 
 is man. Wherever he takes us, we find 
 ourselves in the midst of human sympa- 
 thies and emotions. Even in the Inferno, 
 amid appalling images of anguish, hatred, 
 and despair, there is something to relieve 
 the otherwise intolerable oppression of 
 darkness and terror. The hurricane that 
 drives poor Francesca da Rimini and the 
 guilty partner of her love, hurling them 
 onward, or whirling them round and round 
 forever in its remorseless fury, suspends 
 its motion a little while, when Dante calls 
 to them : — 
 
 '"O ye weary souls, 
 Come speak to us, if no one interdicts it.' 
 As turtle-doves, called onward by desire, 
 With open and steady wings to the sweet nest 
 Fly through the air by their volition borne, 
 So came they from the land where Dido is, 
 Approaching us athwart the air malign, 
 So strong was the affectionate appeal. " 
 
5<? The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 
 She tells her tale of love and grief, 
 
 11 And all the while one spirit uttered this, 
 The other one did weep so, that for pity, 
 I swooned away as if I had been dying, 
 And fell, even as a dead body falls." x 
 
 This is but one of many examples by 
 which some glow of human tenderness is 
 let into those joyless regions. Farinata 
 degli Uberti, shut up in his intensely 
 heated coffin, tells Dante that the conduct 
 of his sinful associates who are still on 
 the earth — 
 
 " Torments him more than doth his bed." 
 
 And while he is speaking, a neighbor of 
 his, the father of one of Dante's most inti- 
 mate friends, recognizing his voice, lifts his 
 head above the fiery sarcophagus in which 
 he was confined and cries out, weeping: — 
 
 " Where is my son ? and why is he not with thee ? " 
 
 Then, misunderstanding Dante, and 
 wrongly inferring from a single word that 
 his son is dead, he exclaims : — 
 
 u Is he not still alive? 
 Does not the sweet light strike upon his eyes? 
 1 Inferno, x. 
 
Dante. 59 
 
 And without waiting to hear anything fur- 
 ther, in sullen and speechless anguish he 
 drops back again into his torturing bed. 
 Down almost in the lowest depths of 
 hell, the Count Ugolino suspends for a 
 few moments his work of fierce and ghastly 
 vengeance, to tell the most heart-breaking 
 of all pathetic tales, how by the treachery 
 of the Archbishop Ruggieri, who is with 
 him in this place of torment, he and his 
 four children had been shut up and starved 
 to death : — 
 
 11 I heard the locking up under the door 
 
 Of the horrible tower ; whereat without a word 
 
 I gazed into the faces of my sons. 
 
 I wept not, I within so turned to stone ; 
 
 They wept ; and darling little Anselm mine 
 
 Said : ' Thou dost gaze so, father, what doth ail thee ? ' 
 Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made 
 
 All of that day, nor yet the night thereafter 
 
 Until another sun rose on the world." 
 
 u When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo 
 Threw himself down outstretched before my feet, 
 Saying : * My father, why dost thou not help me ? ' 
 And there he died ; and, as thou seest me, 
 I saw the three fall one by one, between 
 The fifth day and the sixth." * 
 
 1 Iitferno^ xxxiii. 
 
60 The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 
 
 These expressions of a father's love and 
 grief come from one who because of the 
 enormity of his sins is placed in one of the 
 lowest circles, and amid the fiercest tor- 
 ments, of hell. In this very neighborhood 
 one of the most abandoned of sinners tes- 
 tifies that in relating what he saw in hell 
 Dante does not confine himself to the ret- 
 ribution of a future world. The friar Al- 
 berigo says to him : — 
 
 '* Know that the soul, that moment she betrays, 
 As I did, yields her body to a fiend 
 Who after moves and governs it at will, 
 Till all its time be sounded : headlong she 
 Falls to this cistern." 
 
 In proof of this he points to Branca 
 d' Oria, who lies near. But Dante sharply 
 replies : — 
 
 " I think thou dost deceive me, 
 For Branca d' Oria is not dead as yet, 
 And eats, and drinks, and puts on clothes." 
 
 But Branca d' Oria, the moment he com- 
 mitted the double crime of treachery and 
 murder, had been hurried down into the 
 lowest hell, and left a devil in his stead to 
 
Dante. . 61 
 
 inhabit his body in Genoa. By such im- 
 ages would Dante indicate the terrible and 
 immediate consequences of sin. Human 
 affections, human passions, the tenderness 
 of grief, the malignity of hate, go with the 
 sinful everywhere through that dismal 
 abode, creating the sorrows which are 
 there endured and bewailed. 
 
 Dante's Inferno is no foreign structure 
 arbitrarily erected. It rather symbolizes 
 conditions of existence projected from the 
 soul, and formed, like the shell around the 
 nautilus, out of natural secretions from its 
 own inmost life. Its retributions grow 
 out of the moral constitution of man, and 
 hold an indestructible place in the order 
 of the moral universe. On the very heart 
 of our humanity, as a warning and a safe- 
 guard to the soul, are inscribed the ter- 
 rible words which Dante saw written in 
 dingy colors over the gate of hell : — 
 
 11 Justice incited my sublime Creator : 
 To rear me was the task of power divine, 
 Supremest wisdom and primeval love." * 
 1 hiferno, iii. 
 
62 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 This same eternal law of retribution, 
 which allows no hope to the sinful while 
 they continue in their sin, goes hopefully 
 upward with the soul through the pangs of 
 purgatory, and fulfils its commission in the 
 region of supreme blessedness. I suppose 
 that fifty persons read portions of the " In- 
 ferno," and get from that their idea of 
 Dante, where there is one who follows 
 him up the toilsome ascent of the moun- 
 tain of purification, and thence upward 
 still, till he has attained to the loftiest vis- 
 ion of what may be possible to man aided 
 by all the ministries, human and divine, 
 which God has ordained for his moral and 
 spiritual advancement. In the Purgatorio, 
 there are sufferings hardly less excruciat- 
 ing than those which the poet has left 
 behind. But hope, which is shut out 
 forever from the Inferno, is permitted to 
 enter here, and to throw something of its 
 gracious light around those who, through 
 ages upon ages of pain and contrition, 
 are expiating and expunging their sins. 
 
Dante. 63 
 
 Here as in the Inferno are human hearts. 
 Here are greetings of friends, touches of 
 human feeling, a tender interest in the 
 world where they once lived, which relieve 
 the dreary uniformity of unremitting suf- 
 fering. All are anxious for the prayers of 
 friends who are still living on the earth. 
 The poet meets Nino, " a courteous judge" 
 whom he once knew, and who now says, 
 referring to his daughter, and to his wife 
 who had married again and unhappily : — 
 
 11 Tell my Giovanna that she pray for me, 
 Where answer to the innocent is made. 
 
 I do not think her mother loves me more, 
 Since she has laid aside her wimple white, 
 Which she, unhappy, needs must wish again. 
 
 Through her full easily is comprehended 
 How long in woman lasts the fire of love, 
 If eye or touch do not relight it often." 1 
 
 In the circle assigned to those who are 
 expiating the sin of avarice, Dante meets 
 Pope Adrian V., lying with his face 
 downward under an overpowering bur- 
 den, bound and imprisoned by the feet and 
 hands, and saying, " No more bitter pain 
 
 1 Purg. viii. 71. 
 
64 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 the mountain hath." Of all the thousands 
 who courted and flattered him while he 
 lived in his great office, there are none now 
 to remember him in their prayers. Only 
 one person he recalls as truly his friend : — 
 
 " Oh earth I have a grandchild named Alagia, 
 Good in herself, unless indeed our house 
 Malevolent may make her by example, 
 And she alone remains to me on earth." l 
 
 The poem is everywhere relieved by 
 sweet touches of nature such as these, and 
 by passages of rare beauty as well as of 
 profound wisdom, which find their way to 
 the heart like some subtle purifying and 
 reviving essence. Unexpectedly on one 
 occasion he feels a sudden trembling of 
 the mountain, while from all around him 
 there arises the sacred song, " Gloria in 
 Excelsis." He is anxious to know the 
 cause : — 
 
 "And lo ! in the same manner as Luke vvriteth 
 
 That Jesus appeared to two upon the way, 
 
 From the sepulchral cave already risen, 
 
 A shade appeared to us, and came behind lis 
 
 Down gazing on the prostrate multitude." 3 
 
 1 Purg. xx. 142. , 2 Purg. xx. 167. 
 
Dante. 65 
 
 This is Statius, the poet, who tells them 
 that he himself, who had been lying there 
 five hundred years and more, had just now 
 " felt a free volition for a better seat," and 
 so was ready to leave these sufferings be- 
 hind and rise into the courts above. 
 
 M Therefore thou heard'st the earthquake, and the pious 
 Spirits along the mountain rendering praise 
 Unto the Lord." 
 
 Here we see it is by no arbitrary external 
 act, but through a change in the soul itself, 
 a consciousness of purity regained, and 
 with it " a free volition for a better seat," 
 that it rises above these painful trials. 
 
 " It trembles here, whenever any soul 
 
 Feels itself pure, so that it soars, or moves 
 To mount aloft, and such a cry attends it." 
 
 Is it not a beautiful conception, that of the 
 mountain trembling with joy, and the mul- 
 titudes of sorrowing souls breaking forth 
 into a song of gladness because one of 
 their number, after ages of suffering, is 
 now freed from the intolerable burden that 
 still weighs them down ? 
 5 
 
66 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 It is, I think, more difficult for us to en- 
 ter heartily into the poet's conceptions of 
 Purgatory, and to feel the moral force and 
 beauty of his teachings there, than to go 
 with him in any other part of his great 
 work. With the Reformation, Purgatory 
 was abolished by the Protestant churches, 
 and no longer came in to make a part of 
 their Christian consciousness. Not the 
 doctrine itself, but the monstrous abuses 
 connected with it by a corrupt and merce- 
 nary priesthood who gloated over its pe- 
 cuniary gains, led to this result. Between 
 an eternal hell and heaven there was left 
 no intermediate condition by which sinners 
 might pass from one to the other. But 
 within the last century, in the growth of 
 the more humane sentiments of our relig- 
 ion and the more benignant ideas of justice 
 suggested by them, there has been an in- 
 creasing tendency towards the belief that, 
 in the counsels of infinite power and wis- 
 dom, justice, not less than love, demands 
 that there should be some proportion be- 
 
Dante. 67 
 
 tween the sin and the punishment ; and 
 that while a penalty for sin must be paid 
 to uphold the law of righteousness, yet the 
 great purpose of pain as connected with 
 transgression is a remedial one, and that 
 the effect of pain as a remedial agent must 
 not be limited to this world. Under these 
 influences, Christians of all denominations, 
 who allow themselves to think and to fol- 
 low freely the teachings of Jesus in their 
 humane and beneficent bearings, have been 
 relenting from their old severity and ex- 
 tending the sphere of our moral probation 
 beyond the limits of this life. We are 
 thus practically, though in a less definite 
 and more purely spiritual form, restoring 
 Dante's idea, and making his intermediate 
 world more comprehensive, it may be, than 
 both the others, at least in the early experi- 
 ences of those who have just been passing 
 out of this earthly life. From this point 
 of view, a great deal may be learned by a 
 careful study of the " Purgatorio." 
 
 Dante himself was not allowed to enter 
 
68 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 Purgatory till every mark left on his coun- 
 tenance by the malignant atmosphere of 
 Hell had been washed off, and he had 
 girded himself with the reed of humility. 
 After that, he was able to walk upward 
 from circle to circle with a lighter step, 
 only as one sin after another had been ef- 
 faced from his heart. Near the summit of 
 the mountain, he is approaching the border 
 of the terrestrial paradise. A fierce flame 
 is blazing before him. He shrinks from 
 entering it, but is told that only when he 
 has submitted to its searching fires, so that 
 all the grosser elements of his nature are 
 refined away, can he be permitted to see 
 Beatrice. Thus excited and drawn onward 
 by his intense desire to see her, he enters 
 within the flame, and while standing in it 
 he would gladly have leaped into molten 
 glass to refresh himself : — 
 
 " So without measure was the burning there." 1 
 
 After this he is allowed to enter the earthly 
 paradise. 
 
 1 Purg. xxvii. 
 
Dante. 6g 
 
 The six closing cantos of the " Purgato- 
 rio," in which Beatrice first appears person- 
 ally before us, have a profound moral sig- 
 nificance, and contain passages of surpass- 
 ing moral elevation and spiritual beauty. It 
 is only when we approach them, as Dante 
 did, from the Inferno and the hardly less 
 torturing experiences of Purgatory, and 
 then in our best moments give ourselves 
 entirely to them, that we can catch more 
 than distant glimpses of their affecting and 
 profound significance. 
 
 From the beginning of his painful pil- 
 grimage, Dante has been looking forward 
 to this meeting with intense longings. 
 Now he is left to himself by Virgil, who 
 can take him no farther. Forms of more 
 than earthly sweetness and splendor greet 
 him on every side and lead him on to new 
 visions of divine benignity and truth. Be- 
 fore him he sees an hundred angels spring 
 on a chariot divine, singing their song of 
 welcome, and " scattering like the Spring- 
 time roses all around. " 
 
jo The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 li Underneath a falling cloud of flowers, 
 Which from those hands angelical rained 
 
 Into the chariot and around in showers, 
 Wreathed over a white veil, with olive crown, 
 
 Appeared a woman in a mantle green, 
 And living flame the color of her gown. 
 
 "Although the veil which from her forehead fell, 
 Girt by that frondage of Minerva's tree, 
 
 Suffered me not to see her features well, 
 Queenly she looked, and yet upbraided me." 1 
 
 The angels interpose in his behalf, and 
 ask, " Lady, why chide him so ? " She, 
 describing his great natural endowments, 
 and the gifts and opportunities bestowed 
 upon him by divine grace, adds severely, 
 in words intended for him, but addressed 
 to those around her : 
 
 " I with my beauty held him for a space, 
 And with my young eyes kept his footsteps firm 
 
 Mine own to follow in the ways of grace. 
 Soon as the threshold of its second term 
 
 My life had reached, and I my being changed, 
 Earthly for heavenly — this man wholly gave 
 
 Himself to other loves from mine estranged. 
 And when from flesh ascending through the grave 
 
 To spirit, my grace and goodness were increased, 
 I was less dear, less lovely in his eyes." 
 
 " Say," she continues, turning to Dante, — 
 
 1 Dr. Parsons's Translation, xxx. 
 
Dante. 71 
 
 " say, say if this be true." And when he, 
 confused and overcome, confesses that it 
 is so, she turns to him again and asks how 
 he could have been so misled. He an- 
 swers, weeping : — 
 
 "The things that present were 
 With their false pleasure turned aside my steps, 
 Soon as your countenance concealed itself." 
 
 To this she replies : — 
 
 " That thou mayest feel a greater shame 
 For thy transgression, and another time, 
 Hearing the Sirens, thou mayest be more strong, 
 
 Cast down the seed of weeping, and attend ; 
 So shalt thou hear how in an opposite way 
 My buried flesh should have directed thee. 
 
 Never to thee presented art or nature 
 Pleasure so great as the fair limbs wherein 
 I was enclosed which scattered are in earth. 
 
 And if the highest pleasure thus did fail thee 
 By reason of my death, what mortal thing 
 Should then have drawn thee unto its desire? 
 
 Thou oughtest verily at the first shaft 
 Of things fallacious to have risen up 
 To follow me, who was no longer such." 
 
 Here self-conviction stung Dante to the 
 heart so sharply that he fell powerless to 
 the ground. The other ladies again inter- 
 posed in his behalf : — 
 
J 2 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 iC * Turn, Beatrice, O turn thy holy eyes,* 
 
 Such was their song, 'unto thy faithful one, 
 Who has, to see thee, ta ? en so many steps. 
 In grace do us the grace that thou unveil 
 Thy face to him, so that he may discern 
 The second beauty which thou dost conceal.' " 
 
 She grants their request, and Dante, re- 
 ferring to what he then saw, exclaims : — 
 
 " O splendor of the living light eternal ! 
 
 Who underneath the shadow of Parnassus 
 Hath grown so pale, or drunk so at its cistern, 
 
 He would not seem to have his mind encumbered, 
 Striving to paint thee as thou didst appear, 
 Where the harmonious heaven o'ershadowed thee, 
 
 When in the open air thou didst unveil ? " 
 
 Virgil, who represents the human un- 
 derstanding, can no longer guide Dante 
 upward, and therefore Beatrice, or Divine 
 Truth, takes him in charge, and as they 
 rise from sphere to sphere, and he by his 
 advanced intelligence and virtue is able 
 to bear it, she with an infinite sweetness 
 smiles upon him, and reveals to him more 
 and more of her celestial beauty. At the 
 lowest stage of heavenly joy, she turns 
 towards him, "blithe as beautiful,'' and 
 says : — 
 
Dante. y^ 
 
 11 ' Fix gratefully thy mind 
 On God, who unto the first star has brought us.' 
 
 It seemed to me a cloud encompassed us, 
 Luminous, dense, consolidate and bright 
 As adamant on which the sun is striking. 
 
 Into itself did the eternal pearl receive us." 
 
 Here he feels the desire enkindled in 
 
 him, — 
 
 " That essence to behold, wherein is seen 
 How God and our own nature were united." 
 
 He finds here, in the lowest of the heav- 
 enly spheres, his wife's sister, Picarda, 
 and asks : — 
 
 M ' Tell me, ye who in this place are happy, 
 Are you desirous of a higher place, 
 To see more or to make yourselves more friends?' 
 
 First with those other shades she smiled a little ; 
 Thereafter answered me so full of gladness, 
 She seemed to burn in the first fire of love. 
 * Brother, our will is quieted by virtue 
 Of charity, that makes us wish alone 
 For what we have, nor gives us thirst for more. 
 
 Nay, 't is essential to this blest existence 
 To keep itself within the will divine, 
 Whereby our very wishes are made one ; 
 
 So that as we are station above station 
 Throughout this realm, to all the realm 'tis pleasing, 
 As to the King, who makes his will our will. 
 
 And his will is our peace ; this is the sea 
 To which is moving onward whatsoever 
 It doth create, and all that nature makes.' " 
 
74 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 "Then it was clear to me how everywhere 
 In heaven is paradise, altho' the grace 
 Of good Supreme there rain not in one measure." 
 
 From this blessed spirit Dante turns 
 to Beatrice, — 
 
 " But she such lightnings flashed into mine eyes, 
 
 That at the first my sight endured it not; 
 And this in questioning more backward made me." 
 
 This may serve as a sample of the poet's 
 method of taking us up into one after an- 
 other of the heavenly spheres. There are 
 passages all along of no great interest to 
 us, especially where questions of physical 
 science are discussed. But we are con- 
 cerned only with the religious character of 
 the work. And that is brought vividly 
 before us, as we advance constantly into 
 higher realms of thought and experience, 
 and listen to the profound and lofty dis- 
 coursing of those who had been, in their 
 different spheres, the great examples and 
 lights of the world. In the sun, or the 
 fourth heaven, where dwell Thomas Aqui- 
 nas, and the great theologians and fathers 
 of the church, these words are heard:-— 
 
Dante. 75 
 
 " Whoso lamenteth him that here we die 
 
 That we may live above, hath never there 
 Seen the refreshment of the eternal rain. 
 ... In the lustre most divine of all 
 The lesser ring, I heard a modest voice, 
 Such as perhaps the angel's was to Mary, 
 
 Answer : * As long as the festivity 
 
 Of Paradise shall be, so long our love 
 Shall radiate round about us such a vesture. 
 
 Its brightness is proportioned to the ardor, 
 The ardor to the vision ; and the vision 
 Equals what grace it has above its worth.' " 
 
 It is not always easy to understand what 
 is said by these sublime teachers on the 
 greatest of all themes. Theology, as rep- 
 resented in the person of Beatrice, and as 
 taught in the heavens by those who had 
 most truly comprehended and illustrated 
 its meaning, becomes, as we ascend, less 
 an intellectual statement, and more and 
 more a quickening spirit, solving, as noth- 
 ing else can, the great and terrible prob- 
 lems of life. The stern voice of the prophet 
 is heard even in heaven denouncing, as the 
 old Jewish prophets had done, the ava- 
 rice, the profligacy, and wickedness of the 
 world, and more especially the corruptions 
 
j6 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 which had crept into the church, even into 
 its high places. But above all things, vis- 
 ions are granted of victory over sin and 
 death. 
 
 " I saw the heaven wax more and more resplendent." 
 
 And Beatrice exclaimed : — 
 
 " ' Behold the hosts 
 Of Christ's triumphal march, and all the fruit 
 Harvested by the rolling of these spheres.' 
 It seemed her face were all aflame, 
 And eyes she had so full of ecstasy 
 That I must needs pass on without describing." 
 
 "There," she said, — 
 
 " There are the wisdom and the omnipotence 
 That ope'd the thoroughfares 'twixt heaven and earth, 
 For which there erst had been so long a yearning. " 
 
 In a yet higher sphere, a still brighter 
 vision is vouchsafed to him, which caused 
 him to exclaim : — 
 
 " O splendor of God ! by means of which I saw 
 The lofty triumph of the realm veracious, 
 Give me the power to say how it I saw ! 
 
 There is a light above, which visible 
 Makes the Creator unto every creature 
 Who only in beholding him has peace, 
 
 And it expands itself in circular form 
 To such extent, that its circumference 
 Would be too large a girdle for the sun. 
 
 In fashion then as of a snow-white rose 
 
Dante. yy 
 
 Displayed itself to me the saintly host, 
 
 Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride. 
 
 But the other host, that flying sees and sings 
 The glory of Him who doth enamour it, 
 And the goodness that created it so noble, 
 
 Even as a swarm of bees, that sinks in flowers 
 One moment, and the next returns again 
 To where its labor is to sweetness turned, 
 
 Sank into the great flower, that is adorned 
 With leaves so many, and thence reascended 
 To where its love abideth evermore. 
 
 Faces I saw of charity persuasive, 
 Embellished by His light and their own smile, 
 And attitudes adorned with every grace." 
 
 From this scene of wonder and delight, 
 Dante turned to question Beatrice. But 
 she had been called upward to take 
 
 " Far, far above, her seat 
 Upon the throne her merits have assigned her." 
 
 " I lifted up mine eyes 
 And saw her, as she made herself a crown 
 Reflecting from herself the eternal rays. 
 
 * O lady, thou in whom my hope is strong, 
 And who for my salvation didst endure 
 In hell to leave the imprint of thy feet, 
 Of whatsoever things I have beheld, 
 As coming from thy power and from thy goodness, 
 I recognize the virtue and the grace. 
 
 Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom, 
 By all those ways, by all the expedients, 
 Whereby thou hadst the power of doing it. 
 
 Preserve towards me thy magnificence, 
 
?8 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 So that this soul of mine which thou hast healed, 
 Pleasing to thee be loosened from the body.' 
 Thus I implored; and she, so far away, 
 
 Smiled, as it seemed, and looked once more at me, 
 Then unto the eternal fountain turned." 
 
 These are but samples from the Paradiso 
 to illustrate its spirit and its character. 
 But only as we study them, each in its fit- 
 ting place, can we feel them in their beauty 
 and their power. As in the previous books, 
 so in this, the poet unfolds to us something 
 of what he saw in man, filling out what he 
 saw by forms and conditions of being 
 needed for the full and happy development 
 of all that is greatest and best within him. 
 I dare not trust myself to make any further 
 comment on this wonderful work ; but close 
 the chapter by a long passage from Mr. 
 Lowell's great article on Dante. 
 
 " The man behind the verse is far greater 
 than the verse itself, and the impulse he 
 gives to what is deepest and most sacred 
 in us, though we cannot always explain it, 
 is none the less real and lasting. ... It 
 is for his power of inspiring and sustaining, 
 
Dante. 79 
 
 it is because they find in him a spur to 
 noble aims, a secure refuge in that defeat 
 which the present always seems, that they 
 prize Dante who know and love him best. 
 He is not merely a great poet, but an in- 
 fluence, part of the soul's resources in time 
 of trouble. . . . 
 
 " All great poets have their message to 
 deliver us, from something higher than 
 they. We venture on no unworthy com- 
 parison between him who reveals to us the 
 beauty of this world's love and the grand- 
 eur of this world's passion and him who 
 shows that love of God is the fruit whereof 
 all other loves are but the beautiful and 
 fleeting blossom, that the passions are yet 
 sublimer objects of contemplation, when, 
 subdued by the will, they become patience 
 in suffering and perseverance in the up- 
 ward path. But we cannot help thinking 
 that if Shakspere be the most comprehen- 
 sive intellect, so Dante is the highest 
 spiritual nature, that has expressed itself in 
 rhythmical form. Had he merely made us 
 
80 The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 
 
 feel how petty the ambitions, sorrows and 
 vexations of earth appear when looked 
 down on from the heights of our own char- 
 acter and the seclusion of our own genius, 
 or from the region where we commune 
 with God, he had done much. But he has 
 done far more ; he has shown us the way 
 by which that country far beyond the stars 
 may be reached, may become the habitual 
 dwelling-place and fortress of our nature, 
 instead of being the object of its vague as- 
 piration in moments of indolence. At the 
 Round Table of King Arthur there was 
 left always one seat empty for him who 
 should accomplish the adventure of the 
 Holy Grail. It was called the perilous seat 
 because of the dangers that he must en- 
 counter who would win it. In the company 
 of the epic poets there was a place left for 
 whoever should embody the Christian idea 
 of a triumphant life, outwardly all defeat, 
 inwardly victorious, who should make us 
 partakers of that cup of sorrow in which all 
 are communicants with Christ. He who 
 
Dante. 81 
 
 should do this would indeed achieve the 
 perilous seat, for he must combine poesy 
 with doctrine in such cunning wise that 
 the one lose not its beauty nor the other 
 its sovereignty, and Dante has done it. As 
 he takes possession of it, we seem to hear 
 the cry he himself heard when Virgil re- 
 joined the company of great singers, — 
 
 "'All honor to the loftiest of poets.'" 
 
 6 
 
IV. 
 
 Shahspere. 
 
 "And that each heart 
 Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book, 
 Those Delphic lines with deep impression took." 
 
 Milton. 
 
SHAKSPERE. 
 
 S Shakspere is of all his guild the 
 most universal genius, he reveals 
 to us what is in man as no other 
 poet or philosopher has ever done. In 
 his works we find not particular men with 
 their individual and accidental peculiarities 
 as they actually show themselves in life ; 
 rather each person may be regarded as 
 representing a peculiar type of manhood, 
 with the qualities which belong to that type 
 by virtue of his manhood, and which are 
 therefore essential to his completeness. 
 As we go through the vast range of Shak- 
 spere's characters, so different in their 
 original endowments and with capabilities 
 brought out under such various conditions, 
 and yet with certain qualities belonging 
 alike to all by virtue of their common 
 
86 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 humanity, we see how, in obedience to the 
 laws and necessities of our nature, he fills 
 out what is wanting in history or biography, 
 and what would not improbably have been 
 wanting in the persons themselves as they 
 actually appeared in their individual de- 
 portment. We do not find what Henry V. 
 or Richard III. or Wolsey actually did 
 and thought, but what the ideal type of 
 manhood represented by that name should 
 do or think under those circumstances so 
 as to reveal to us more vividly and fully, 
 and therefore more truly, than in actual life 
 the elements which belong to our common 
 humanity. 
 
 Man, as delineated and filled out by the 
 most original and comprehensive imagina- 
 tion that has ever appeared in this world, 
 is the subject of Shakspere's writings. 
 As we study them and enter into their 
 thought, we learn to feel what powers for 
 good or evil are folded up within us, and 
 what agencies are needed for the develop- 
 ment and exercise of those powers. The 
 
Shakspere. 87 
 
 eye could not have been formed without 
 the sun, to whose existence and influence 
 every fibre in its structure bears witness. 
 Man's social organization could never have 
 been evolved without the companionship 
 of men and women. So the yet higher 
 faculties, which every great poet finds mak- 
 ing a vital part of our mental and spiritual 
 constitution, could never have come into 
 being, except in an atmosphere of divine 
 justice, love, and mercy, filled out for us by 
 the actual existence and presence of God. 
 This great fact is illustrated everywhere 
 in the writings of Shakspere. With him 
 the complete man is endowed always with 
 the religious element. And where that 
 is, there, as its necessary concomitant, is 
 an atmosphere pervaded by influences in 
 which it may live and have its being. In 
 this respect, Shakspere has done for those 
 who speak the English language a work 
 second only to that which is done by the 
 sacred writings. And his word comes to 
 us all the more with authority, inasmuch 
 
88 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 as he does not write professedly, or perhaps 
 consciously, as a religious teacher. 
 
 In unfolding to us man's nature, this 
 greatest of poets can no more separate 
 him from religion, in his highest develop- 
 ment and his highest moments, than he 
 could separate him in his social affections 
 from the human companionship which 
 they require as essential to his happiness 
 and well-being. To his imagination, fill- 
 ing out the conception of a complete hu- 
 manity, the idea of worship and of God as 
 necessarily involved in the idea of wor- 
 ship can in no wise be left out. The 
 finest influences of nature, the heaviest re- 
 sponsibilities, the deepest and holiest af- 
 fections, find their truest direction, their 
 purest inspiration, encouragement, and 
 support in this higher realm. And when 
 men violate the laws of their moral and 
 spiritual constitution, from this higher 
 realm come admonitions and retributions 
 to appall the evil-doer, and thus confirm 
 the moral order of the universe. 
 
Shakspere. 89 
 
 All this we find in Shakspere hardly less 
 than in the Gospels. I will not say, as 
 has been said, that Shakspere is the most 
 Christian poet that ever lived ; but I do 
 say that often, both in spirit and in method, 
 he, more than any other writer, reminds 
 me of the Gospel teachings. No two 
 things could be more unlike, in their imme- 
 diate purpose or final intention, than the 
 words of Him who came to redeem the 
 world from sin, and the writings prepared 
 to entertain a popular audience at a Lon- 
 don theatre. No one probably has felt 
 this contrast more painfully than the poet 
 himself. Hence, the pathetic strain in 
 which he chides " with Fortune," as he 
 says : — 
 
 " That did not better for my life provide 
 Than public means which public manners breeds. 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ; 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." 
 
 It is always with a profound and most 
 touching reverence that he refers to Jesus, 
 as in passages like these : — 
 
go The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 " In those holy fields 
 Over whose acres walked those blessed feet 
 Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed 
 For our advantage on the bitter cross." 
 
 "Alas, alas! 
 Why all the souls that were were forfeit once; 
 And he that might the vantage best have took 
 Found out the remedy. How would you be, 
 If He, which is the top of judgment, should 
 But judge you as you are ? " 
 
 Many things there are in his dramas 
 which we would gladly expunge, and in 
 which he yielded to his own rollicking dis- 
 position or to the requirements of the 
 stage and of the times. But his gentle 
 Christian spirit, so merciful and at the 
 same time so true, goes with him wherever 
 he goes. His subject is man, into whose 
 nature he looks with a quick and profound 
 insight and a tender sympathy with men 
 of all sorts and conditions, recognizing in 
 them everywhere affecting tokens of a 
 common brotherhood. His keenness of 
 perception does not, like the policeman's 
 dark lantern, rejoice only in detecting the 
 malefactor. But with a more ardent joy 
 
Shakspere. gi 
 
 he uses it as a kindly light to discover 
 " some soul of goodness in things evil," — 
 and even in bad men. Thus it is that he 
 awakens in us an interest in persons whom 
 we might find intolerable if we should 
 meet them in actual life. It is not what 
 we might see in them, but what the great 
 poet of humanity who is speaking to us 
 through them sees, that so deeply inter- 
 ests us. 
 
 Thus it is that he reveals to us often, 
 where we should least expect to find them, 
 marks of consanguinity which cannot fail 
 to touch our hearts as they did his. Even 
 so poor a creature as Falstaff is not sent 
 away as an utter outcast at last, but bab- 
 bling "of green fields/' and crying "out 
 'God, God, God,' three or four times," his 
 last moments being thus embalmed by the 
 sweet memories of his childhood, and the 
 one word which may well place us all on 
 the same lowly level, as common suppli- 
 ants before the Infinite mercy. May not 
 this sympathy with a very sinful man re- 
 
Q2 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 mind us of One who looked with loving 
 compassion on those whom very respect- 
 able and devout men would drive away 
 from their presence as unworthy and un- 
 clean ? 
 
 And this faculty of seeing quite through 
 the deeds of men and showing them to us 
 as they are, with a kindly regard to the 
 good qualities which may be bound up 
 with what is evil in them, is not confined 
 to the poet's treatment of persons compar- 
 atively insignificant or worthless. With 
 equal tenderness and justice, "speaking 
 the truth in love," he deals with men of 
 world-wide celebrity whose overmastering 
 faults otherwise might hide their less con- 
 spicuous virtues. A careful examination of 
 his writings, with this object in view, will 
 perhaps reveal him in a new light to one 
 whose attention has not been called to this 
 Christ-like feature in the judgments, so 
 true and yet so merciful, which he passes 
 on the great men whom he calls up before 
 his judgment seat. As one of many exam- 
 
Sbakspere. 93 
 
 pies, we may take " the great child of 
 honor, Cardinal Wolsey," as Queen Kath- 
 arine called him. What can be more ten- 
 der, more touchingly beautiful, or more 
 severely true than the way in which his 
 name and memory are dealt with, when, 
 
 M Full of repentance, 
 Continual meditations, tears and sorrows, 
 He gave his honors to the world again, 
 His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace ! " 
 
 Of " too much honor,'' he had been 
 made to say before, — 
 
 " O 't is a burden, Cromwell, 't is a burden 
 Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven.*' 
 " O Cromwell, Cromwell, 
 Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
 I served my king, he would not in mine age 
 Have left me naked to my enemies." 
 
 And when he died, after his faults and 
 his sins, his unbounded ambition, his 
 double dealing, his cruelty towards those 
 who stood in his way, have been faithfully 
 recounted, his grander qualities — " fash- 
 ioned " as he was " to much honor from 
 his cradle " — are lovingly brought out. 
 
 " His overthrow heaped happiness upon him; 
 For then, and not till then, he felt himself, 
 
94 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 And found the blessedness of being little : 
 
 And, to add greater honors to his age 
 
 Than man could give him, he died feaiing God." 
 
 Well might the dying queen, after hear- 
 ing this, say : — 
 
 " Whom I most hated living, thou hast made me, 
 With thy religious truth and modesty, 
 Now in his ashes honor : peace be with him." 
 
 But there is a broader sense in which 
 the relationship of our greatest poet to 
 the Gospels shows itself. There is noth- 
 ing forced or conventional in the moral 
 and religious ideas which run through his 
 dramas. The lesson and the feelings ap- 
 propriate to it flow out of the subject as 
 naturally as perfume from the rose. Two 
 young lovers, listening to music in the 
 delicious moonlight of an Italian evening, 
 prompted by the exuberance of their joy, 
 break out into thoughts like these : — 
 
 " Look, how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold : 
 There 's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubims, — 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls; 
 But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 
 
Shahspere. . 95 
 
 Henry V., before the battle of Agin- 
 court, with the solicitude natural to a mon- 
 arch under circumstances so critical, goes 
 through his camp in the darkness of the 
 night before the day had begun to dawn, 
 and thus gives utterance to the thoughts 
 that press most heavily upon him : — 
 
 " Not to-day, O Lord, 
 
 not to-day, think not upon the fault 
 My father made in compassing the crown! 
 
 1 Richard's body have interred new; 
 
 And on it have bestowed more contrite tears 
 Than from it issued forced drops of blood : 
 Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, 
 Who twice a-day their withered hands hold up 
 Toward heaven, to pardon blood. . . . 
 
 . . . More will I do; 
 Though all that I can do is nothing worth, 
 Since that my penitence comes after all, 
 Imploring pardon." 
 
 In " Hamlet," the guilty king, left to him- 
 self, breaks out into these words : — 
 
 " But, O, what form of prayer 
 Can serve my turn ? Forgive me my foul murder ? 
 That cannot be; since I am still possessed 
 Of those effects for which I did the murder, — 
 My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. 
 May one be pardoned, and retain th' offence ? "' 
 
 In " Richard III.," before the last fatal 
 
96 The Great. Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 battle, Shakspere depicts, in visions of judg- 
 ment and terror, the workings of a guilty 
 conscience, unnerving the warrior whose 
 resolution and courage had never failed 
 him before in any desperate emergency. 
 
 Queen Katharine, in the near prospect 
 of death, waking out of sleep, exclaims, — 
 
 " Spirits of peace, where are ye ? are ye all gone, 
 And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye ? 
 
 Griffith. Madam, we 're here. 
 
 Kath. It is not you I call for. 
 Saw ye none enter since I slept ? 
 
 Grif. None, Madam. 
 
 Kath. No? Saw you not, even now, a blessed troop 
 Invite me to a banquet ; whose bright faces 
 Cast thousand beams upon me like the sun? 
 They promised me eternal happiness, 
 And brought me garlands, Griffith, which I feel 
 I am not worthy yet to wear: I shall, 
 Assuredly." 
 
 In all these cases, hardly less than in 
 the Gospel narratives, we are compassed 
 about by moral and religious forces, pre- 
 sented to us here, as there, under imagin- 
 ative forms, and all, not for the sake of 
 teaching a lesson, but as the natural and 
 spontaneous utterances of the human soul. 
 
Sbakspere. gj 
 
 I doubt whether there is a single essen- 
 tial doctrine or precept of the Gospels 
 which is not directly or indirectly recog- 
 nized and enforced by Shakspere. This 
 he has done, not only in scenes like those 
 from which we have quoted, and in the 
 retributions which work themselves out by 
 natural processes in his plays, but often in 
 short single sentences, often single ejacu- 
 lations, forced from men under the press- 
 ure of the moment. 
 
 " Let us know 
 Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, 
 When our deep plots do fail : and that should teach us 
 There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 Rough hew them how we will." 
 
 " The quality of mercy is not strained, 
 It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
 Upon the place beneath: It is twice blessed, 
 It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." 
 
 "Ah, what a sign it is of evil life, 
 When death's approach is seen so terrible." 
 
 " The immortal part needs a physician ; 
 Though that be sick it dies not." 
 
 " The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
 Make instruments to scourge us." 
 
 Many pages might be filled with pas- 
 
 7 
 
g8 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 sages of similar import, all recognizing re- 
 ligion as a necessity of our nature. 
 
 Shakspere's religion is preeminently a 
 natural religion. It comes everywhere as 
 a spontaneous utterance to meet the deeper 
 wants of our being. He who, more than 
 any other poet, sounded all the depths of 
 our nature, and knew as no one else had 
 known the secret workings of the soul, 
 finds everywhere substantially the great 
 truths of the Gospel naturally adapting 
 themselves to the mind of man, and creat- 
 ing around him an atmosphere in which 
 his highest faculties can live and thrive 
 under the severest trials, and in the great- 
 est emergencies of his earthly experience. 
 In Shakspere's works, as in the book of 
 nature, we meet these wonderful revela- 
 tions of divine truth. They rise before us 
 by no arbitrary processes or mechanical 
 ingenuity. As the vibrating chandelier or 
 the falling apple, to the penetrating imag- 
 ination of Galileo or Newton, laid open 
 what had hitherto been a hidden law of 
 
Sbakspere. 99 
 
 the material universe, so the manifold 
 operations of the human mind and heart 
 laid open to the imagination of Shakspere 
 the essential wants, and in them the laws, 
 of our moral and spiritual being. And 
 those laws, as he represents them, both in 
 themselves and in their mode of expres- 
 sion, are essentially the same that we find 
 in the Gospels. 
 
 Both bring before us by easy and natural 
 methods what commends itself to us at 
 once as the religion of nature. And by 
 nature I mean the whole physical and 
 moral universe, each section an organic 
 part of one infinite whole. So it seemed 
 to Shakspere, as the passages I have 
 quoted and an intelligent reading of his 
 works may show. The world, to his mind, 
 was not divided into separate compart- 
 ments, one portion sacred and the other 
 profane, but every part belonged to the 
 universal order, which is divine, and every 
 man had in his own organization that 
 which allied him to what is highest and 
 
wo The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 best. As the humblest plant reaching up 
 through the darkness of the earth seeks 
 the air and sunshine as its own inheritance, 
 and every fibre as it is evolved tells of its 
 relationship to them, so the human soul, 
 reaching up through the obstructions of 
 time and sense, by every higher thought 
 and sentiment evolved within it, claims as 
 its birthright the fostering help of the 
 highest moral and spiritual laws and agen- 
 cies. There are no elaborate arguments, 
 no evidences or cunningly devised systems 
 of morals or divinity ; but wherever man 
 is awakened by his deepest and loftiest ex- 
 periences, there the fitting atmosphere is 
 found, and the soul, like a new-born infant, 
 breathes its native air, and finds in that 
 purer realm its appropriate nourishment. 
 
 When a man's higher faculties are born, 
 they find the higher realm which reveals 
 itself to his spiritual, as the material world 
 reveals itself to his bodily, eye. So it is in 
 Shakspere. He looked into the soul of 
 man, and filled out what he saw there by 
 
Shakspere. 101 
 
 the conception of a world of spiritual ideas, 
 laws, and agencies implied by it and es- 
 sential to its completeness. To him the 
 natural and the supernatural were but har- 
 monious parts of the same divine order. 
 And is not this precisely what we find in 
 the Gospels ? The outward form is differ- 
 ent, but the substantial results are the 
 same. Men have thrown around the Gos- 
 pels and substituted for them their artifi- 
 cially constructed theories of Christianity. 
 But in the Gospels themselves all is clear 
 and natural as the sunlight. If there are 
 doctrines which are not understood, it is 
 either because they are obscured by the 
 glosses which human ingenuity has put 
 upon them, or because, like operations in 
 the material world which are not yet un- 
 derstood, they lie too deep, or are too far 
 in advance of our present attainments, to 
 be fully comprehended. Truths the most 
 salutary and far-reaching — truths which 
 enter vitally into the deepest workings of 
 our nature — open before us in the Ser- 
 
102 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 mon on the Mount as naturally and with as 
 benignant a grace as hill and valley reveal 
 themselves to us at the approach of the 
 morning light. And as it has been in the 
 past, so in all future ages, we believe, with 
 every new accession of life from within or 
 of light from abroad to the individual or 
 the race, they will unfold themselves with 
 increasing vitality and power. 
 
 Nothing can be more natural than the 
 teachings of Jesus. His appeal is to the 
 mind and heart of those around him. We 
 need only to read his life and words to see 
 that with him natural and revealed religion 
 are one. Everywhere, in man and nature, 
 he beholds the indwelling and perpetually 
 creative presence of God. Heaven is his 
 throne, the earth is his footstool. The 
 flowers of the field, the raven and the spar- 
 row, still more his disciples, and even the 
 poorest outcast among men, are objects of 
 his loving care. Religion with its benefi- 
 cent laws and ministrations is everywhere 
 recognized as a vital influence, interfusing 
 
Shakspere. 103 
 
 itself through all that is sweetest and best 
 in nature and in man. The more pro- 
 foundly we enter, with our deepest thought 
 and experiences, into the Sermon on the 
 Mount, the more clearly shall we see how 
 naturally the religion of Jesus adjusts itself 
 to the highest wants and faculties of our 
 nature. He who saw, as no one else has 
 ever done, the hand and the mind of God 
 everywhere in what were to others only 
 "the hidings of his power," had but to lift 
 the veil which obscured the vision of those 
 around him, and lo, everything became a 
 token or a revelation of God's most holy 
 laws and his beneficent dealings with his 
 children. Jesus did not create "life and 
 immortality." He " brought " them "to 
 light." From the beginning to the end of 
 the Gospels, it is the uplifting of a veil, or 
 rather the opening of our eyes, that we 
 may see facts which had been kept secret 
 so long, only because they were waiting 
 for some one able to see and to reveal 
 them in all their gracious influences. 
 
W4 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 And in harmony with the Gospels are 
 the lessons taught us by the greatest of all 
 poets. In the power of filling out what is 
 seen of man in his earthly environment by 
 the additional conception of the laws and 
 agencies associated with him as a living 
 member of God's unseen kingdom, there 
 can of course be no comparison between 
 the two. But the poet's transcendent im- 
 agination carries him farther in this direc- 
 tion than any other poet has ever gone, 
 and as far as he goes, by his own indepen- 
 dent processes, he reaches substantially the 
 same results, filling out what others see in 
 human life and conduct by the unseen 
 moral and spiritual facts involved in them. 
 His words, like those of Jesus, are not to 
 be taken literally, but as symbols of what 
 no human language can express so forcibly 
 in any other way. And in proportion as 
 the poet rises above individual and acci- 
 dental distinctions, his images, like alge- 
 braical characters, become exponents of 
 facts which belong, not as individual char- 
 
Sbakspere. 105 
 
 acteristics, to one man or another, but as 
 qualities imbedded in our nature, and mak- 
 ing a part of our human constitution. 
 
 Dante follows his characters on after 
 death, and in what awaits them there fills 
 out for us his conception of the conse- 
 quences involved in the lives they lived 
 on earth. Shakspere, on the other hand, 
 while not unmindful of "the life to come," 
 reveals to us the unseen influences for 
 weal or woe which meet us here "upon 
 this bank and shoal of time." Mightier 
 than any earthly condition are these min- 
 istrations of divine justice or mercy. 
 
 Take Macbeth as an illustration of his 
 method. He comes before us, a brave man, 
 whose deeds of loyalty and courage gain 
 for him — 
 
 "Golden opinions from all sorts of people," 
 
 together with thanks and praise and new 
 dignities from the king. But no sooner 
 has an unhallowed ambition gained a foot- 
 hold in his mind, than it begins to throw 
 its baleful shadows around him. 
 
106 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 " Present fears 
 Are less than horrible imaginings." 
 
 As he approaches the act of treachery and 
 murder, " these compunctious visitings of 
 nature " grow more terrible. His courage 
 fails. 
 
 " We will proceed no further in this business." 
 
 When stimulated and forced on by his wife 
 so as to 
 
 " Bend up 
 Each corporal agent to this terrible feat, ,, 
 
 the whole atmosphere, to him, is filled with 
 blood and terror. 
 
 " Thou sure and firm set earth, 
 Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear 
 The very stones prate of my whereabout, 
 And take the present horror from the time, 
 Which now suits with it." 
 
 And when the deed is done, this awful 
 nemesis makes itself immediately and still 
 more fearfully felt. 
 
 " Methought I heard a voice cry ' Sleep no more ! 
 
 Macbeth does murder sleep.' . . . 
 
 Still it cried ' Sleep no more ! ' to all the house : 
 * Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor 
 
 Shall sleep no more, — Macbeth shall sleep no more.'' " 
 
Shakspere. ioj 
 
 " How is 't with me, when every noise appalls me ? 
 What hands are here ? ha ! they pluck out mine eyes. 
 Will all great Neptune ? s ocean wash this blood 
 Clean from my hand? " 
 
 And so, through the whole downward 
 progress of his life, the fatal work of retri- 
 bution is going on. Unseen terrors be- 
 come overpowering realities. In the ful- 
 ness of kingly grandeur, he grows to be 
 more and more the victim of " horrible 
 imaginings." 
 
 " Better be with the dead 
 Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace, 
 Than on the torture of the mind to lie 
 In restless ecstacy. Duncan is in his grave; 
 After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ; 
 Treason has done his worst : nor steel, nor poison, 
 Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, 
 Can touch him further." 
 
 New crimes only lead him into new com- 
 plications of wretchedness. All the joy of 
 life is gone forever. He has " supped full 
 with horrors." 
 
 " I 'm sick at heart. 
 
 I've lived long enough: my way of life 
 Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf; 
 And that which should accompany old age, 
 As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
 I must not look to have." 
 
io8 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 " Out, out, brief candle ! 
 Life 's but a walking shadow ; a poor player, 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
 And then is heard no more." 
 
 Except in the New Testament, I know 
 not where we can find such a lesson of ret- 
 ribution, working out by natural processes 
 the terrible consequences of evil-doing in 
 the soul, and picturing them to us by im- 
 ages expressing such unspeakable desola- 
 tion and sorrow. 
 
 And not less does the poet unfold to us, 
 in characters of perennial light and beauty, 
 the sweet and blessed experiences of self- 
 forgetting love and purity, the moral eleva- 
 tion and inward satisfactions which go with 
 those who, living true and faithful lives, 
 are yet subjected to the sharpest disap- 
 pointments and sorrows. Queen Kath- 
 arine has already been brought forward as 
 an example of this kind. We have seen 
 how, through the imagination of the poet, 
 her last hours, otherwise so dismal, were 
 lighted up by visions of transcendent joy 
 and loveliness. 
 
Shakspere. wg 
 
 The inward satisfactions which entered 
 so deeply and with so vital a power into 
 the mind and heart of Cordelia are not 
 easily described. Her whole history, su- 
 perficially considered, is such a violation 
 of the laws of a righteous retribution as to 
 shock the moral sensibilities of a shallow- 
 minded and profligate generation. For this 
 reason, some third-rate poet in the time 
 of Charles II., with nothing of Shakspere's 
 profound moral and spiritual insight, gave 
 the tragedy a prosperous conclusion, thus 
 debasing and vulgarizing the sublime con- 
 ceptions of the poet. ' And in this muti- 
 lated condition, it held its place on the 
 stage a hundred and sixty years. 
 
 As she came from the creative imagina- 
 tion of the poet, Cordelia is the richest, 
 deepest, most entirely unselfish, the most 
 profoundly pious, and the most perfectly 
 harmonized of all his characters. She 
 lived in a heathen age and land, but in her 
 we find fulfilled what Mr. Lowell meant 
 when he spoke of embodying " the Chris- 
 
i io The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 
 
 tian idea of a triumphant life, outwardly all 
 defeat, inwardly victorious." She is en- 
 dowed with the finest qualities of our 
 nature, called into exercise under the most 
 trying conditions, and in them we see re- 
 flected the richest gifts and graces of our 
 religion. The beatitudes dwell in her as 
 in their own beautiful and native home. 
 In her is an infinite wealth of love, — a life 
 fed from the eternal fountain, and endowed 
 with a joy and peace which the world can 
 no more give than it can take away. 
 
 To such natures, under the fiercest tri- 
 als, there is given, as by divine appoint- 
 ment, an exaltation of soul, which looks 
 down on pain and grief and whatever there 
 may be worse than these with a sublime 
 unconsciousness of evil. So is it with 
 Cordelia. She needs not the wealth or the 
 happiness of this world, but rather its trials 
 to call out within her what is sweetest and 
 best. In her heart, which, like that of 
 Chaucer's distance, is " a chamber of holi- 
 ness," and in such a life as hers, there 
 
Sbakspere. 1 1 1 
 
 abides a jewel richer than all the world be- 
 side, which can borrow no additional worth 
 from outward circumstances, and would 
 only cheapen itself by seeking the costliest 
 materials that could be used to set it off. 
 Outwardly everything turns against her. 
 But sorrows and sacrifices are transfigured 
 by the soul that shines through them. 
 
 "Patience and sorrow strove 
 Who should express her goodliest." 
 
 When she wept, — 
 
 " She shook 
 The holy water from her heavenly eyes." 
 
 " In brief, sorrow 
 Would be a rarity most belov'd, if all 
 Could so become it." 
 
 Well might her father say of her, — 
 
 "Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, 
 The gods themselves throw incense." 
 
 Each new aggravation of wrong only 
 takes her up into a higher realm. When 
 the last terrible ordeal has come, there is 
 no sign of weakness, no cry of distress. 
 " We are not the first," she calmly says, — 
 
 " Who, with best meaning, have incurred the worst." 
 
H2 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 In the sublime elevation where she 
 stands, death has no power to harm or 
 terrify, but is welcomed rather as a con- 
 secration and a sacrament. She dies, to 
 be crowned with an eternal loveliness 
 and beauty ; young indeed, but by no un- 
 timely end. For we know that the highest 
 purposes of life have been fulfilled in her, 
 and that life so lost will assuredly be found. 
 In the creation and treatment of such a 
 character, Shakspere shows how thoroughly 
 he could enter into the deepest spiritual 
 resources of our nature, and how well he 
 could appreciate the feelings of him, who, 
 the evening before his crucifixion, with a 
 full knowledge of what lay before him on 
 the morrow, and with all the powers of 
 darkness arrayed and apparently prevail- 
 ing against him, could ask no better gift 
 for his friends than that his joy might be 
 fulfilled in them. 
 
 The view which I have given of Cordelia 
 may, to some persons, appear far-fetched 
 and extravagant. But it places the closing 
 
Shakspere. 1 13 
 
 scenes of "King Lear" on a level with what 
 has gone before, and makes of them a fit- 
 ting conclusion to what Mr. Furness justly 
 calls " the sublimest tragedy ever written, 
 so awful in its grandeur that it almost 
 passes into a realm by itself." 
 
 Very wonderful is the faculty which 
 Shakspere has of taking us up almost with- 
 out our knowing it, by means of some 
 powerful emotion, into his own mountain- 
 heights of vision, and drawing us into har- 
 mony with his holiest and loftiest creations, 
 so that their lightest breath touches a 
 chord, and brings forth kindred music in 
 our hearts. Without saying one word 
 concerning religion, he makes us feel its 
 presence, as an all-pervading atmosphere, 
 blending with our deepest emotions, and 
 awakening in us the sentiments of rever- 
 ence and prayer. In the stormiest sea of 
 troubles its heavenly spirit comes, as the 
 dove over the waste and troubled waters of 
 a deluged world, with its olive branch of 
 peace. And when we have been racked 
 
H4 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 and distressed by tempests of passion, by 
 crime and outward horrors, this same spirit, 
 reflected from the very blackness of the 
 storm, shines with a diviner light into our 
 hearts, as did the bow of promise when 
 God first placed it in the clouds, a token 
 of his loving presence, and a sign that he 
 would no more destroy the earth. 
 
 It is a great thing for us who speak the 
 English language, that our greatest poet 
 should have been so grandly endowed with 
 the faculty which looks through " this 
 muddy vesture of decay " and the shadows 
 it throws around us, into what is spiritual 
 and divine ; that he should have been able 
 to enter so far within the veil, and bring 
 thence from " the holy of holies " qualities 
 of such unspeakable worth and beauty, to 
 enlarge our conceptions of what is fairest 
 and best, and so to exalt, enrich, and adorn 
 for us this human life of ours, and show us 
 how it can be made divine. 
 
V. 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 'All things transitory 
 But as symbols are sent." 
 Faust. 
 
GOETHE. 
 
 "N these papers I am speaking of 
 the great poets only as religious 
 teachers. Whatever I may say of 
 their personal characteristics or of their 
 poetical merits in other respects is only 
 incidental, or in its relation to my principal 
 subject. The fact on which I would dwell 
 is, that no really great poet who knows 
 what is in man has been able to fill out his 
 conception of a complete and perfected 
 manhood without recognizing religion as 
 its deepest and highest attribute. 
 
 As a further illustration of this I would 
 take Goethe's " Faust," which his biogra- 
 pher, Herman Grimm, with perhaps par- 
 donable extravagance, calls " this greatest 
 work of the greatest poet of all nations 
 
/ 1 8 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 and times." I cannot but think that Goethe 
 better understood his own position. He 
 said : When the Schlegels " tried to raise 
 him (Tieck) above his proper place and 
 spoke of him as my equal, they made a 
 mistake. I do not hesitate to speak of 
 myself as I am : I did not make myself. 
 But I might, with as much propriety, com- 
 pare myself with Shakspere, who also is as 
 he was made, a being of higher order than 
 myself, to whom I must look and pay due 
 reverence." 
 
 Five days before his death Goethe said, 
 in a letter to his friend, William von Hum- 
 boldt, " For more than sixty years have I 
 had before me my youthful conception of 
 Faust, — the whole series having been 
 from the first clear to me, though not in all 
 their details." In his Dedication to the 
 first part of the tragedy, written more than 
 thirty years before the second part was 
 finished, he already speaks, of those who 
 witnessed its beginning as belonging to a 
 past generation. 
 
Goethe. ug 
 
 11 They hear no longer these succeeding measures, 
 The souls, to whom my earliest songs I sang: 
 Dispersed the friendly troop, with all its pleasures, 
 And still, alas! the echoes first that rang! 
 I bring the unknown multitude my treasures ; 
 Their very plaudits give my heart a pang, 
 And those beside, whose joy my Song so flattered, 
 If still they live, wide through the world are scattered. 
 
 i( And grasps me now a long-unwonted yearning 
 For that serene and solemn Spirit-Land; 
 My song, to faint yEolian murmurs turning, 
 Sways like a harp-string by the breezes fanned. 
 I thrill and tremble; tear on tear is burning, 
 And the stern heart is tenderly unmanned. 
 What I possess, I see far distant lying, 
 And what I lost, grows real and undying." 
 
 I copy from Bayard Taylor's Transla- 
 tion of Faust, which, with its acompany- 
 ing notes, furnishes most of the available 
 help needed by the student who would 
 understand this remarkable work. 
 
 The poem opened upon Goethe in his 
 early youth, and, during his whole life of 
 more than fourscore years, it held a fore- 
 most place in his thoughts, tasking his 
 highest powers of invention to fill out in 
 detail his conception of the capabilities 
 and wants of our nature. As in the works 
 
120 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 of Dante and Shakspere, so in this, his 
 greatest work, the subject is Man. The 
 old story of Faust's compact with the devil 
 furnishes the groundwork of the plot. 
 
 Faust, a student, has exhausted all the 
 sources of knowledge open to him, and 
 finds for himself no real satisfaction or re- 
 pose. It is Easter Sunday. But the songs 
 which he hears from the streets, of Disci- 
 ples and Angels, only awaken a painful 
 sense of what he has lost in being taken 
 away from his early faith. 
 
 " Once Heavenly Love sent down a burning kiss 
 Upon my brow, in Sabbath silence holy ; 
 
 And, filled with mystic presage, chimed the church bell slowly, 
 And prayer dissolved me in a fervent bliss. 
 A sweet, uncomprehended yearning 
 Drove forth my feet through woods and meadows free, 
 And while a thousand tears were burning, 
 I felt a world arise for me. 
 
 Sound on, ye hymns of Heaven, so sweet and mild! 
 My tears gush forth: the Earth takes back her child! " 
 
 While he is in this unsatisfied and un- 
 believing state, the devil, under the name 
 of Mephistopheles, appears, and offers to 
 serve him. This offer Faust accepts, with 
 
Goethe. 121 
 
 the single condition, that if ever he should 
 be entirely happy for a single moment, that 
 day should be his last. 
 
 " When thus I hail the Moment flying: 
 ' Ah, still delay — thou art so fair ! J 
 
 Then bind me in thy bonds undying, 
 
 My final ruin then declare ! 
 
 Then let the death-bell chime the token, 
 
 Then art thou from thy service free! 
 
 The clock may stop, the hand be broken, 
 
 Then Time be finished unto me." 
 
 The problem, then, to be solved by the 
 poem is, What can so far satisfy a human 
 soul, that for a single moment it shall be 
 entirely happy ? All the resources of this 
 world, of knowledge, wealth, and art, of so- 
 ciety and nature, supplemented by " super- 
 natural solicitings " and aids, are placed at 
 the young man's disposal. Whatever can 
 fascinate the senses, or gratify his love of 
 pleasure or power, whatever his ambition 
 or his passions may desire, is freely granted 
 to him. But with all these helps he only 
 grows more restless and unsatisfied. He 
 falls in love with Margaret, a young and 
 innocent maiden, the type of earthly 
 
122 The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 
 
 beauty. But love which is not regulated 
 and sanctioned by a diviner law brings 
 only unhappiness and ruin. Through all 
 his experiences in this direction there has 
 never been a moment to which he could 
 say : — 
 
 "Ah, still delay— thou art so fair.*' 
 
 The search for selfish gratification ends in 
 utter discomfiture and sadness to himself, 
 and in sorrow and death to the only being 
 that he loves. In " The Inferno " of Dante 
 there is no pathos more touching, or more 
 profoundly tragical, than that which asso- 
 ciates itself with Margaret ; and no wail of 
 grief more piercing than that which comes 
 to us from this heart-broken, conscience- 
 smitten, frightened child, the victim rather 
 than the accomplice of Faust. With the 
 loss of maidenly innocence, all her happi- 
 ness is gone. Her spinning song, — 
 
 "My peace is gone, 
 My heart is sore, 
 I never shall find it, 
 Ah, never more! " — 
 
 is too well known to be repeated here. 
 
Goethe. 1 2) 
 
 So is her cry of anguish to the Virgin 
 Mother, the Mater Dolorosa. 
 
 " Alone, and ah ! unsleeping, 
 I 'm weeping, weeping, weeping, 
 The heart within me breaks. 
 
 " The pots before my window, 
 Alas! my tears did wet, 
 As in the early morning 
 For thee these flowers I set. 
 
 " Within my lonely chamber 
 The morning sun shone red : 
 I sat, in utter sorrow, 
 Already on my bed. 
 
 " Help ! rescue me from death and stain ! 
 O Maiden! 
 Thou sorrow-laden, 
 Incline thy countenance upon my pain ! n 
 
 In the great cathedral, while they are 
 singing the Judgment Hymn, the air be- 
 comes too close for her. 
 
 - ' I feel as if the organ here 
 My breath takes from me." 
 
 " I cannot breathe ! 
 The massy pillars 
 Imprison me ! 
 The vaulted arches 
 Crush me ! — Air ! " 
 
124 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 She is driven from one to another ex- 
 treme of wretchedness. She is tried for 
 child-murder, and convicted. She lies in 
 prison, helpless and hopeless, condemned 
 to death, and awaiting the hour when the 
 executioner shall come for her. Faust, in 
 the darkness of night, finds his way to her, 
 and hopes to rescue her. The poor fright- 
 ened child mistakes him for the headsman, 
 and cries out in terror : — 
 
 " Art thou a man, then pity my distress ! " 
 "Thou'rt come for me at midnight-hour; 
 
 Have mercy on me, let me live ! 
 
 Is't not soon enough when morning chime has rung? 
 
 And I am yet so young, so young ! 
 
 And now Death comes, and ruin! 
 
 I, too, was fair, and that was my undoing. 
 
 My love was near, but now he 's far ; 
 
 Torn lies the wreath, scattered the blossoms are 
 
 Seize me not thus so violently ! 
 
 Spare me ! What have I done to thee ? " 
 "O let us kneel, and call the Saints to hide us!" 
 " Judgment of God! myself to thee I give. " 
 " Thine am I, Father ! rescue me ! 
 
 Ye angels, holy cohorts, guard me, 
 
 Camp around, and from evil ward me!" 
 
 In confusion, anguish, and supplication, 
 Margaret disappears. Mephistopheles, 
 
Goethe. 125 
 
 with an air of triumph, eagerly exclaims, 
 " She is judged." And from afar, as from 
 another world, a voice is heard, saying : 
 " She is saved." Faust, hearing his name 
 spoken by Margaret, vanishes in darkness 
 and misery. And no moment has ever yet 
 come to which he could say, — 
 
 "Ah, still delay — thou art so fair! " 
 
 Here endeth the first lesson. 
 
 Fifty years have passed by, and Faust, 
 in the Second Part of the tragedy, is again 
 placed before us. He is now eighty years 
 old. He has left the young man's life be- 
 hind, with its impulses and passions. The 
 little world of ambitions and indulgences 
 centring in himself has long since been 
 given up. He now belongs to the larger 
 world of human interests, and is to take 
 part in the great onward movements of 
 humanity. 
 
 He first appears amid beautiful objects 
 of nature. Aerial spirits are circling round 
 him in the balmy airs of spring, to refresh 
 
126 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 him in body and mind. And in order to 
 separate him entirely from the tumultuous 
 experiences which lie now so far behind, 
 they sing to him : — 
 
 M Now the Hours are cancelled for thee, 
 Pain and bliss have fled away: 
 Thou art whole : let faith restore thee ! 
 Trust the new, the rising Day ! ' ' 
 
 He feels the inspiration, and says : — 
 
 " Life *s pulses now with fresher force awaken 
 To greet the mild ethereal twilight o'er me; 
 This night, thou, Earth! hast also stood unshaken, 
 And now thou breathest new-refreshed before me, 
 And now beginnest, all thy gladness granting, 
 A vigorous resolution to restore me, 
 To seek that highest life for which I 'm panting." 
 
 " That highest life " he is now to seek. 
 The disappointments and sufferings which 
 he went through long years ago have 
 helped to give clearness and steadiness to 
 his mind, and to free the atmosphere from 
 the false coloring by which he had once 
 been deceived and misled. With mature 
 ideas and purposes, guided by the intellect 
 more than by personal feeling, he engages 
 in interests and pursuits closely connected 
 with the well-being of man and his higher 
 
Goethe. 1 2/ 
 
 development, and thus enters on his new 
 and more comprehensive career. 
 
 " Faust/' says Bayard Taylor, " in the 
 First Part, is an individual, in narrow asso- 
 ciation with other individuals ; here he is 
 thrown into the movement of the world, 
 the phenomena of human development, 
 and becomes, to a certain extent, typical of 
 man." 
 
 By the aid of Mephistopheles, who is be- 
 coming more his servant, and less and less 
 a ruling or guiding spirit, all the resources 
 of this world, physical, intellectual, and 
 moral, as they present themselves to the 
 imagination of the poet in his ever enlarg- 
 ing attainments and experiences, are placed 
 at his disposal. 
 
 He attaches himself to the Emperor, but 
 amid the trickeries, formalities, and cor- 
 ruptions of government he finds no way 
 by which he can render any really impor- 
 tant service. Mephistopheles willingly 
 enough helps him to relieve his sovereign 
 from his financial embarrassments by the 
 
128 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 indefinite issue of paper money ; for that is 
 one of the Devil's tricks. He also very 
 willingly helps the Emperor to win battles ; 
 for in the cruelties and wrongs perpetrated 
 by war he finds himself entirely at home. 
 But when he is required to restore to life 
 Helena of Greece, that the people may be 
 refined and purified by her, that is, by a 
 higher type of beauty and consequently a 
 higher aesthetic culture, Mephistopheles, 
 seeing in this an influence unfavorable to 
 his ascendency, very unwillingly lends his 
 aid. But Faust, who has turned wearily 
 from one after another of the prizes which 
 men covet most, gladly seeks for what is 
 highest in classic art (personified under 
 the name of Helena) as an efficient factor 
 in the advancement of society. 
 
 "The sense of the Beautiful in the hu- 
 man mind,' , says Bayard Taylor, " is intro- 
 duced as a most important agent in human 
 culture, gradually refining and purifying 
 Faust's nature, and lifting it forever above 
 all the meanness and littleness of the 
 
Goethe. 129 
 
 world." Beauty is not employed here, as 
 in the First Part, to allure the senses and ts 
 excite the passions, but in the higher form 
 suggested by Goethe when he says : " The 
 Beautiful is a primeval phenomenon, which 
 indeed never becomes visible itself, but the 
 reflection of which is seen in a thousand 
 various expressions of the creative mind, 
 as various and as manifold as the phe- 
 nomena of Nature." Faust's consecration 
 and devotion to this primeval beauty is 
 symbolized by his love for Helena and his 
 union with her. But the union of a mortal 
 man with a perfect ideal beauty cannot be 
 a permanent relation. The child which is 
 born to them, and which represents poetry, 
 produced by a union of the Classic with the 
 Romantic, breaks loose from their control, 
 and soon dies, leaving only his " garment, 
 mantle, and lyre " upon the ground. 
 Hardly has the funeral dirge for him ceased, 
 when Helena says to Faust, — 
 
 " Also in me, alas ! an old word proves its truth, 
 That Bliss and Beauty ne'er enduringly unite. 
 
 9 
 
ijo The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 Torn is the link of life, no less than that of love ; 
 So, both lamenting, painfully I say : Farewell ! 
 And cast myself again — once only — in thine arms." 
 
 Her corporeal part disappears ; only her 
 garment and veil remain with him. The 
 Goddess herself — the divine beauty which 
 she represents — is gone. But the gar- 
 ment in which she was enfolded is his. 
 
 " Hold fast what now alone remains to thee. 
 
 It is no more the Goddess thou hast lost, 
 But godlike is it. For thy use employ 
 The grand and priceless gift, and soar aloft ! 
 'Twill bear thee swift from all things mean and low 
 To ether high, so long thou canst endure." 
 
 " Helena's garments dissolve into clouds, 
 surround Faust, lift him aloft in the air, 
 and move away with him." He is thus 
 borne upward into a higher plane, even 
 while losing the soul and essence of her 
 being, and clinging only to the garments 
 which she has left behind. Far more up- 
 lifting and effective is Dante's vision, when 
 the Beatrice whom he had loved and rev- 
 erenced on earth had been made immortal 
 by the touch of death ! As the imperson- 
 ation to him of divine truth and beauty, 
 
Goethe. 131 
 
 she still cares for him, saves him from the 
 deadly snares of sin, and leads him upward 
 through the opening heavens, unfolding to 
 him more and more of her divine radiance 
 and beauty as he rises with her, through 
 deeper experiences, with powers of vision 
 constantly refined and enlarged. 
 
 Faust indeed is enlightened and raised 
 above his former self, but not satisfied. 
 His next step is to control nature and 
 bend it to the service of man. He obliges 
 Mephistopheles sorely against his will to 
 reclaim a great amount of fertile land from 
 the ocean. This land is assigned to Faust. 
 He devises methods by which he shall 
 make it the abode of thousands of happy 
 families. Just at this time he sees that an 
 elevated spot near him, which has long 
 been occupied by a family of poor people, 
 impairs his prospect. He endeavors to 
 purchase it. But the old proprietor would 
 think it sacrilege to sell the land which 
 has come down to him from his fathers 
 through many generations. In a moment 
 
i $2 The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 
 
 of vexation, Faust expresses his wish that 
 the place might be destroyed. Mephis- 
 topheles immediately, without the knowl- 
 edge of Faust, sets fire to the cottage, 
 which with its inmates is at once destroyed. 
 " One funeral pile consumes " them all. 
 Faust curses "the inconsiderate, savage 
 blow," and refuses to take advantage of it. 
 Because of the covetous and impatient 
 wish, however, to which he had given ex- 
 pression, he is struck blind ; but because 
 he immediately regretted what he had said 
 and refused to profit by it, he has at the 
 same time a clearer spiritual vision than 
 before. 
 
 " The Night seems deeper now to press around me, 
 But in my inmost spirit all is light; 
 I rest not till the finished work hath crowned me : 
 God T s Word alone confers on me the might." 
 
 He urges on the work, and seeing al- 
 ready in his mind's eye its fulfilment, he 
 exclaims: — 
 
 " A land like Paradise here, round about. 
 
 Thus here, by dangers girt, shall glide away 
 Of childhood, manhood, age, the vigorous day: 
 And such a throng I fain would see, — 
 Stand on free soil among a people free I J> 
 
Goethe. 135 
 
 While thus absorbed, and glowing with 
 ecstacy at the thought of the happiness 
 which he is to impart to generations yet 
 unborn, he hails the fleeting moment with 
 the fatal words : — 
 
 " Ah, still delay — thou art so fair! 
 The traces cannot, of my earthly being, 
 In aeons perish, — they are there! — 
 In proud fore-feeling of such lofty bliss, 
 I now enjoy the highest Moment, — this!" 
 
 In that first happy moment of his whole 
 life, being now a hundred years old, Faust 
 sinks back, and dies. 
 
 Mephistopheles, moralizing over his dead 
 body, says, in chilling irony, — 
 
 "No joy could sate him, and suffice no bliss! 
 To catch but shifting shapes was his endeavor : 
 The latest, poorest, emptiest Moment — this, — 
 He wished to hold it fast forever. 
 Me he resisted in such vigorous wise, 
 But Time is lord, on earth the old man lies. 
 The clock stands still — 
 
 Chorus. Stands still! silent as midnight, now: 
 The index falls. 
 
 Meph. It falls, and it is finished, here ! " 
 
 " The Body lies, and if the Spirit flee, 
 I' 11 show it speedily my blood-signed title." 
 
1^4 Tt> e Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 A sharp contest for the possession of 
 Faust's soul arises between Mephistopheles 
 and the angels. He is overawed by them. 
 In spite of his mockery, as one baffled and 
 powerless, he asks : — 
 
 " What now restrains me, that I dare not curse ? " 
 
 The angels prevail, " bearing away the 
 immortal part of Faust," and singing : — 
 
 " Hallowed glories ! 
 Round whom they brood, 
 Wakes unto being 
 Of bliss, with the Good. 
 Join ye, the Glorified, 
 Rise to your goal ! 
 Airs are all purified, — 
 Breathe now the Soul ! " 
 
 The closing scene both by resemblance 
 and contrast reminds us of Dante's Par- 
 adiso. The holy fathers, one after another, 
 break out in songs of heavenly rapture 
 or in prayer : — 
 
 " That all of mortality's 
 Vain unrealities 
 Die, and the Star above 
 Beam but Eternal Love ! " 
 
 " O God, soothe thou my thoughts bewildered, 
 Enlighten Thou my needy heart ! " 
 
Goethe. 135 
 
 Then the angels again appear, soaring 
 now in the higher atmosphere, bearing still 
 the immortal part of Faust, and singing : — 
 
 "The noble Spirit now is free, 
 And saved from all scheming : 
 Whoe'er aspires unweariedly 
 Is not beyond redeeming. 
 And if he feels the grace of Love 
 That from On High is given, 
 The Blessed Hosts, that wait above, 
 Shall welcome him to Heaven." 
 
 But to whose hands shall he be com- 
 mitted, that he may be prepared to enter 
 that higher realm, and hold communion 
 with those who dwell there ? This old 
 man, who has spent a hundred years in 
 gaining whatever knowledge the world in 
 all its varying pursuits can give, is placed 
 under the charge of the "Blessed Boys," 
 who had been taken from the earth in their 
 earliest infancy, — placed with them that 
 they might " inaugurate him to the perfect 
 state," even as Jesus, we read, "took a lit- 
 tle child and placed him in the midst " of 
 his ambitious disciples to be a teacher and 
 
136 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 example to them. So, the Blessed Boys 
 receive Faust, singing : — 
 
 " Gladly receive we now 
 Him, as a chrysalis: 
 Therefore achieve we now 
 Pledge of our bliss. 
 The earth-flakes dissipate 
 That cling around him ! 
 See, he is fair and great! 
 Divine Life hath crowned him." 
 
 A chorus of penitent women intercede 
 in his behalf with the Mater Gloriosa who 
 represents the Divine Love. One of the 
 Penitents, " formerly named Margaret, 
 stealing closer," prays : — 
 
 " Incline, O Maiden, 
 With Mercy laden, 
 In light unfading, 
 
 Thy gracious countenance upon my bliss ! 
 My loved, my lover, 
 His trials over 
 In yonder world, returns to me in this." 
 
 " Behold how he each band hath cloven, 
 The earthly life had round him thrown, 
 And through his garb of ether woven, 
 The early force of youth is shown ! 
 Vouchsafe to me that I instruct him! 
 Still dazzles him the day's new glare." 
 
Goethe. 1 37 
 
 And to her, the Glorious Mother replies : 
 
 "Come, lift thyself to higher spheres! 
 When he has a spiritual sense of thy presence, he will follow. " 
 
 One of the great Doctors says : — 
 
 '* Penitents, look up, elate, 
 Where she beams salvation; 
 Gratefully to blessed fate 
 Grow, in re-creation ! 
 Be our souls, as they have been, 
 Dedicate to Thee ! 
 Virgin Holy, Mother, Queen, 
 Goddess, gracious be ! " 
 
 The Chorus Mysticus follows with the 
 words : — 
 
 " All things transitory 
 But as symbols are sent ; 
 Earth's insufficiency 
 Here grows to Event: 
 The Indescribable, 
 Here it is done: 
 The Woman-Soul leadeth 
 Us upward and on." 
 
 " In these lines,'' says Goethe, referring 
 to the angels' song beginning with, "The 
 noble Spirit now is free," "the key to 
 Faust's rescue may be found. In Faust 
 himself, an ever higher and purer form of 
 
138 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 activity to the end, and the eternal Love 
 coming down to his aid from above. This 
 is entirely in harmony with our religious 
 ideas, according to which we are not alone 
 saved by our own strength, but through 
 the freely-bestowed Grace of God/ 1 
 
 No two men could be more unlike in 
 character and personal habits than Dante 
 and Goethe. And no two poems, involving 
 substantially the same problem, could well 
 stand more widely apart than the tragedy 
 of "Faust" and the "Divina Commedia." 
 Yet no one, I think, who is familiar with 
 the Paradiso can read the last scene in 
 "Faust" without being strongly reminded 
 of some of the most impressive and mag- 
 nificent passages in the closing cantos 
 of the great Italian poet. As in Dante 
 the ancient schoolmen and fathers of the 
 Church, so in Goethe the holy fathers turn 
 our thoughts upward into the heavenly re- 
 gions. As Dante shrinks from the attempt 
 to introduce God visibly, even in the per- 
 son of his Son, but employs Beatrice, the 
 
Goethe. 139 
 
 impersonation of Divine Wisdom, to lead 
 him upward to the eternal light, so Goethe 
 employs intermediate agents, Mary Magda- 
 len, the woman of Samaria, Mary of Egypt, 
 and yet another of the penitents, " formerly 
 named Margaret," to intercede for Faust, 
 not directly with God, but with the Mater 
 Gloriosa, "the Eternal Womanly,'' who, as 
 the impersonation of the divine Love, 
 comes " down to aid him from above," and 
 to "draw him ever upward and on." We 
 do not find in Goethe the terrible sense of 
 personal reality which belongs to the older 
 poet. In grandeur of conception, in eleva- 
 tion and spirituality of thought, in vivid- 
 ness of coloring, in tenderness and inten- 
 sity of feeling, in steadfast and all-pervad- 
 ing emotions of reverence and adoration, 
 the most sanguine admirers of Goethe can 
 hardly find in the " Faust " any approach 
 to what meets them in corresponding pas- 
 sages in the Paradiso. 
 
 There are many things in " Faust" which 
 grate harshly on the sensitive nature of 
 
140 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 persons delicately trained in Christian 
 churches ; many things which may shock 
 us by their levity, their whimsical sugges- 
 tions amid sacred associations, and an ap- 
 parent irreverence in dealing with what is 
 highest in morals as well as religion. But 
 just here, in this trifling, scoffing habit, is 
 the sphere in which the Devil of the nine- 
 teenth century presents his most attractive 
 and dangerous allurements. It was well 
 that Faust, the representative man of the 
 age, should enter into it, and go through 
 with the experience of its fascination, that 
 so in his own person he might find out its 
 shallowness. Thus only could he be en- 
 abled to go on questioning one thing after 
 another, till all the resources of this earthly 
 life were exhausted, and it only remained 
 for him to seek in a higher realm that 
 which alone could satisfy him. The ap- 
 parent levity, which prevails only too much 
 throughout the poem, must not shut our 
 eyes to the profound seriousness which 
 underlies the whole fabric, thus showing 
 
Goethe. 141 
 
 the sincerity of Goethe's words as illus- 
 trated by this the greatest of his works : — ■ 
 
 " Who ne'er his bread with tear-drops ate, 
 And weeping on his bedside sate 
 Through the long night's grief-laden hours, 
 He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.*' 
 
 The Second Part of Faust is not an easy 
 poem to read. It is overloaded with a 
 mass of materials too vast and various to 
 be moulded into one organic whole. It 
 would have been more attractive if it could 
 have been completed by the spontaneous 
 action of the poet's mind while the ideas 
 were fresh, and the materials, less copious, 
 were yielding themselves more pliantly to 
 his touch. But as it is, involving in itself 
 the carefully matured results of a lifelong 
 experience, with an imagination absolutely 
 free from all religious prepossessions, ran- 
 sacking the universe of matter and spirit, 
 to find something that might satisfy the 
 desires of a human soul, it speaks with an 
 authority which no youthful production 
 could have had. 
 
142 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers* 
 
 We think of Goethe as a worldly-minded 
 man, who made light of many things which 
 Christian men hold in reverence. But as 
 a poet, he went down as few have done 
 into the depths of our nature, filling out in 
 his conceptions of man as man what will 
 always be wanting in individual examples. 
 And with the freest exercise of his inven- 
 tive faculties from youth to age, the result 
 of his life's work was the conviction that 
 if we press on towards " an ever higher 
 and purer form of activity/ ' the Eternal 
 Love will come down to aid us ; and so we 
 may find our satisfaction here and our sal- 
 vation hereafter. He had endeavored to 
 place himself outside of all accepted relig- 
 ions and to reach something better than 
 had yet been known, but in his ideal con- 
 ceptions, following the leadings of an un- 
 fettered imagination, he rested at last in 
 the elementary Christian truths which he 
 might have learned as a child from his 
 mother's lips. 
 
VI. 
 
 Old Testament Writers. 
 
 1 1 have also spoken by the prophets, 
 And I have multiplied visions, 
 And used similitudes, 
 By the ministry of the prophets." 
 
 Hosea xii. iOo 
 
Old Testament Writers. 
 
 T is the office of the poet to catch 
 the deeper meaning suggested by 
 transient objects or events, and 
 so to set it forth, and infuse his spirit into 
 his words, that he may cause us to see and 
 feel as he does. Amid scenes of grandeur 
 and beauty, his higher susceptibilities are 
 touched ; emotions, affections, aspirations, 
 and longings are awakened, which find no 
 appropriate satisfaction or home in this 
 outward world, and, to meet their demands, 
 his imagination transforms the purest and 
 finest objects of sense into symbols of 
 something finer and higher still. Thus 
 Wordsworth describes his experiences at a 
 time of impassioned spiritual exaltation : — 
 
 "And I have felt 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 10 
 
146 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all." 
 
 By images like these, he takes us up 
 with him into his mount of vision, and en- 
 ables us with him to see 
 
 "A light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration, and the poet's dream." 
 
 Here is the inspiration of a great poet. 
 
 We now pass to a very different ex- 
 ample. Moses has been obliged to flee 
 from Egypt in consequence of his intense 
 sympathy with his enslaved and afflicted 
 brethren. Born to be, under God, the 
 founder of a nation, and the author of a 
 religion which in its further development 
 was to redeem and enlighten the world, he 
 was at this time engaged in the humble 
 occupation of keeping the flock of his 
 father-in-law, Jethro. His great soul was 
 
Old Testament Writers. 147 
 
 brooding over the sorrows of his people, 
 and seeing no possibility of liberating them 
 from their cruel bondage, as he moved with 
 his flock from place to place amid the 
 mountain fastnesses, and in the solitudes 
 of the desert, 
 
 "And he led the flock to the back side 
 of the desert, and came to the mountain of 
 God, even to Horeb. And the angel of 
 the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of 
 fire out of the midst of a bush: and he 
 looked, and, behold, the bush burned with 
 fire, and the bush was not consumed. And 
 Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see 
 this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. 
 And when the Lord saw that he turned 
 aside to see, God called to him out of the 
 midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. 
 And he said, Here am I. And he said, 
 Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes 
 from off thy feet ; for the place whereon 
 thou standest is holy ground. . . . And 
 Moses hid his face ; for he was afraid to 
 look upon God." 
 
148 The Great Poets as Religions Teachers. 
 
 Thus Moses, bearing upon his heart the 
 sufferings and sorrows of his people, with 
 his senses divinely quickened, at a moment 
 of impassioned elevation, sees in the flam- 
 ing bush before him, — 
 
 " A light that never was on sea or land." 
 
 He hears a voice which others might not 
 hear. In the consciousness of that higher 
 presence, he is made to feel that the place 
 whereon he stands is holy ground, and 
 hides his face, fearing to look upon Him 
 whom no man shall see and live. Here is 
 the inspiration of a great prophet. Does it 
 come from the same source as that by 
 which the devout poet feels his inmost na- 
 ture quickened and illuminated ? Or was 
 Milton wholly mistaken in his invocation 
 at the beginning of " Paradise Lost/' — 
 
 '* Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top 
 Of Oreb or of Sinai, didst inspire 
 That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, 
 In the beginning how the heavens and earth 
 Rose out of chaos." 
 
 The word inspiration has always been 
 associated with the poet in his grandest 
 
Old Testament Writers. 149 
 
 achievements. And it has been used es- 
 pecially to suggest that quickening of the 
 imagination by which he may see in man 
 and his surroundings what the outward eye 
 cannot see, and be able to set forth by ap- 
 propriate images man's deeper nature, and 
 the unseen conditions and agencies which 
 are required for its growth and exercise. 
 
 Now if by this same faculty, " the vision 
 and the faculty divine/' he should be so 
 inspired as to recognize and set forth dis- 
 tinctly the unseen laws or forces which 
 belong to the moral and spiritual universe, 
 we have the conditions needed to produce 
 a divine revelation. Its value must depend 
 on the character of the revelation itself, 
 that is, on the clearness and extent of the 
 vision, and the power with which it unfolds 
 to us the higher laws and conditions of our 
 being, in connection with the unseen moral 
 and spiritual agencies which may act with 
 us or upon us. 
 
 The form in which the inspired teacher 
 presents his revelation to us must be that 
 
i^o The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 which is suggested to him as best adapted 
 to his purpose. There is hardly any form 
 of historical, biographical, or poetical com- 
 position which is not thus employed in the 
 Bible. The main object of the writers is 
 to bring home to the minds and hearts of 
 men the great truths in which their highest 
 interests are involved. The literal fact, 
 even in what bears the form of a historical 
 statement, is often the least important ele- 
 ment in the narrative; inasmuch as the 
 question whether it actually occurred does 
 not at all affect the deeper truth which it 
 is intended to express. The lesson taught 
 by the parable of the Pharisee and Publi- 
 can, or by the book of Jonah, is wholly 
 independent of the consideration whether 
 such events ever actually took place. 
 
 In the historical and biographical parts 
 of the Old Testament, traditions handed 
 down, sometimes through many genera- 
 tions, are employed as vehicles of divine 
 instruction. The literal truth of these tra- 
 ditions is usually of small importance, com- 
 
Old Testament Writers. 151 
 
 pared with the higher truths which they 
 are intended to express. The writer, there- 
 fore, would naturally be less anxious to ar- 
 range the outside details as they actually 
 occurred, than to present them in such a 
 way as most powerfully and truthfully to 
 set forth the higher moral and spiritual 
 lessons which they are employed to con- 
 vey. For this reason, and in accordance 
 with the habits of the East, the main facts, 
 whether true or not, are often supple- 
 mented by details evidently interpolated 
 by the writer, in order more effectively to 
 illustrate and enforce the principal thought. 
 An eminently good man dies suddenly. 
 How is the event described ? " And Enoch 
 walked with God ; and he was not, for God 
 took him. ,, Here the inspired writer, look- 
 ing beyond what the eye can see, breaks 
 through the limitations of our earthly 
 knowledge, and opens to his readers deeper 
 experiences and wider realms of being. 
 Beyond the outward and visible, he sees the 
 spiritual environment in which the faithful 
 
1 52 the Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 servant of God had lived while on earth, 
 and in which he still continues to live. 
 This vital truth, as here taught, is entirely 
 independent of the question whether the 
 man Enoch ever actually existed. There 
 is no word here to indicate a translation 
 bodily from earth to heaven. 
 
 The story of Abraham, founded evi- 
 dently on old traditions, when viewed in 
 any light, is a most interesting and inspir- 
 ing one. It loses nothing, but on the 
 other hand gains greatly, in moral and 
 religious impressiveness, if we regard it as 
 filled out, in many of its details, by the 
 divinely inspired imagination of the writer, 
 so as to bring more fully into view great les- 
 sons which might not otherwise have been 
 learned. Take, for example, the proposed 
 sacrifice of Isaac. Circumstances may 
 have arisen to convince Abraham, as was 
 the case with thousands of parents in our 
 civil war, that God required of him the 
 sacrifice of his son. The one thing to be 
 impressed forever on men's hearts by the 
 
Old Testament Writers. 1 53 
 
 narrative was the readiness of the father 
 to give up his son in obedience to the will 
 of God. In accordance, therefore, with 
 this ruling object and with the habits of 
 the East, the actual facts may have been ab- 
 breviated, or they may have been enlarged 
 by additional details, so as to exhibit with 
 the greatest vividness and truth the one 
 lesson w T hich they were intended to illus- 
 trate and enforce. In a similar manner, 
 w r e may interpret the long and earnest col- 
 loquy between Abraham and God, where 
 the heart-felt intercessions of a devout 
 soul for a doomed and wicked city are 
 supplemented by the imagination of the 
 writer, so as to fill out for us, in the words 
 assigned to the Almighty, the part taken 
 by God, which is usually hidden from us 
 in our devotions. In like manner, the 
 story of Jacob's w r restling with God, in a 
 time of great personal anxiety, and refus- 
 ing to let him go till he had secured his 
 blessing, may be explained. By too severe 
 a regard to the letter that killeth, we are 
 
i$4 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 in danger of losing the spirit that giveth 
 life. 
 
 That which is deepest and most life- 
 giving in the Old Testament is what we 
 should cherish as alone vitally essential. 
 Goethe, who had read the Bible through 
 several times in his boyhood and early 
 youth, says, in regard to the superficial 
 objections brought against it, and which 
 he could not answer, they " did not affect 
 my belief in the fundamental conceptions 
 which lay at the root of them all ; the sig- 
 nificance of each, if not the harmony of the 
 whole, I could fruitfully realize, and, alto- 
 gether, I had put too much of my best soul 
 into this book to be able ever afterwards 
 to dispense with it as part of my spiritual 
 nourishment. This enlistment of my best 
 feelings on the side of the book made me 
 proof through life against whatever sneers 
 or raillery I might find directed against it ; 
 for the spiritual good of which I had been 
 partaker from the book had convinced me 
 experimentally of the dishonesty of all such 
 
Old Testament Writers. 755 
 
 irreverent assaults. On the other hand, 
 any kind of thorough critical research hon- 
 estly meant was grateful to me ; all ex- 
 tension of our knowledge with regard to 
 Oriental localities and costumes I appropri- 
 ated eagerly, and I employed them without 
 fear in the large and liberal interpretation 
 of the traditions which my spiritual experi- 
 ence had made so dear to me." 
 
 It is thus that the writings of the Old 
 Testament may always fill an important 
 part in the spiritual education of the young. 
 Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, and the 
 rest, in the acts and words attributed to 
 them, stand before us to-day as examples 
 or teachers of an ideal thought and wor- 
 ship, and may help to quicken our devo- 
 tions, and lift us up through higher or more 
 vivid conceptions into holier and better 
 lives. They were not perfect. Their vis- 
 ion was not unobstructed. They "were 
 men of like passions with ourselves." And 
 therefore all the more are they able to 
 awaken our sympathies and help us in the 
 
1^6 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 doubts, perplexities, misgivings, and short- 
 comings which we share with them. 
 
 The book of Job, with its solemn ques- 
 tionings, its tender pathos, its hallowed mo- 
 ments of assurance, its strugglings against 
 doubt, its painful attempts to explain the 
 mysteries of evil amidst the heaviest trials 
 that can befall a good man, may not wholly 
 satisfy our reason ; but as a divine tragedy 
 it may come to us in our sicknesses and 
 sorrows with a strange power of healing, 
 and point out to us the direction in which 
 we must go if we would pass from dark- 
 ness to light, setting before us the experi- 
 ences of one who has tried all the expedi- 
 ents of earthly success and failure and 
 found them wanting. 
 
 The book of Ecclesiastes deals with the 
 problem which Goethe used a lifetime in the 
 attempt to solve, and ends in the only sat- 
 isfactory " conclusion of the whole matter " 
 then possible. " Fear God ; and keep his 
 commandments : for this is the whole duty 
 of man. For God shall bring every work 
 
Old Testament Writers. 15J 
 
 into judgment, with every secret thing, 
 whether it be good or whether it be evil." 
 
 " By the inspiration of the Almighty," 
 these writers were lifted above themselves, 
 and from that elevation, in flashings from 
 the great central light, they saw more 
 clearly and farther than others could see. 
 Where their reasonings failed, their spirit- 
 ual intuitions or powers of vision left no 
 room for doubt. From the depths of hu- 
 miliation and penitence, after the commis- 
 sion of a most heinous crime, came the 
 Miserere, in which the burdened heart of 
 our sinful humanity still finds comfort and 
 relief. The words, " I know that my Re- 
 deemer liveth," wrenched from a trusting 
 soul by the sharpest anguish, in the light 
 of the New Testament have taken on a 
 meaning which the writer could not have 
 foreseen, and, associated as they are with 
 heavenly strains of music, come as a voice 
 from heaven with their blessed assurance 
 to millions of weary and sorrowing mortals. 
 
 Of this same goodly fellowship were the 
 
158 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 extraordinary men who had such an influ- 
 ence with the Jewish people in the later 
 days of the monarchy, and whose writings, 
 through all succeeding ages, have been 
 marked by their prophetic character. The 
 highest reaches of the imagination in the 
 moral world are always prophecies. He 
 who most vividly sees what is in man sees 
 also how indissolubly his fortunes, in the 
 long run, are bound up with his obedience 
 or disobedience to the laws of his moral 
 and spiritual being. In following those 
 laws on as ruling forces in the conduct of 
 men or nations, he is able to foresee and 
 predict future events. And what is true 
 in the particular case before him is true 
 for all time. That which was a prophecy 
 for the Jews is a prophecy for us to-day, 
 revealing to us as it does the working of 
 those laws by which alone we can live. Be- 
 cause the Jewish prophets looked through 
 the fleeting phenomena around them into 
 the eternal laws by which human actions 
 are to be governed and the destiny of men 
 
Old Testament Writers. 159 
 
 and nations determined, the predictions 
 they uttered for their own people still re- 
 tain their prophetic character, and stand 
 as solemn lessons for us and for all com- 
 ing ages. 
 
 This power of associating future events 
 with moral conditions so as to read the 
 fortunes of the future in the character of 
 the present, and in a corrupt age to divine 
 the qualities which alone can redeem a sin- 
 ful people, and give them a universal influ- 
 ence among the nations, was possessed by 
 no one of the Jewish prophets in so re- 
 markable a degree as by the writer of the 
 closing chapters of Isaiah. It was a time of 
 national humiliation and disaster. " Zion 
 is a wilderness ; Jerusalem a desolation. 
 Our holy and beautiful house where our 
 fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire, 
 and all our pleasant things are laid waste." 
 But through and beyond it all, with pro- 
 phetic vision, he sees, for his regenerated 
 people, "a new heaven and a new earth." 
 But who is to be this great deliverer ? 
 
i6o The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 No conquering hero. No mighty ruler. 
 " When we shall see him there is no beauty 
 that we should desire him. He is despised 
 and rejected of men: a man of sorrows 
 and acquainted with grief : and we hid as 
 it were our faces from him." " Surely he 
 hath borne our griefs and carried our sor- 
 rows : yet we did esteem him stricken of 
 God, and afflicted. But he was wounded 
 for our transgressions, he was bruised for 
 our iniquities : the chastisement of our 
 peace was upon him ; and with his stripes 
 we are healed. " 
 
 He who amid overwhelming national 
 calamities and apparent ruin could see in 
 such an one the Saviour, not of the nation 
 alone, but of the world, must have gone 
 down into the deepest wants and capabil- 
 ities of our nature, and have had, as no one 
 around him had, a prevision of the moral 
 and spiritual qualities which can regen- 
 erate men's souls, and establish an ever- 
 lasting kingdom on the earth. He may, by 
 the special " inspiration of the Almighty," 
 
Old Testament Writers. 161 
 
 have been enabled to foresee, as a distinct 
 individual, "him who was to come." Or 
 his conception of the servant of God, un- 
 der the only type of manhood in which he 
 could redeem the world, may have been 
 filled out for him by an exercise of the 
 imagination equally sublime and equally 
 inspired. And in that conception, he may 
 have combined unconsciously the leading 
 features of him who centuries later came 
 to fill out, in his own thought and person, 
 all that was wanting in those who had gone 
 before. In either case, the writer's lan- 
 guage was then, as it is now, a prophecy 
 to the human soul of him, the ideal man, 
 who alone, embosomed in the mind and 
 heart of God, can meet its deepest and 
 highest wants. 
 
 Towards this central figure in the his- 
 tory of our race, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, the yearnings of devout souls 
 had been reaching forward. The greatest 
 prophets in their moments of fullest inspi- 
 ration and exaltation acknowledged their 
 
1 62 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 own insufficiency. As Jesus said of them : 
 " They did but prophesy." All that went 
 before, the grandest reach of the imagi- 
 nation on the part of the loftiest, purest, 
 and most richly endowed among the sons 
 of men, even in their most inspired utter- 
 ances, gave only foreshadowings, intima- 
 tions, darkly or dimly awakening expec- 
 tations, of some one greater still, in whom, 
 not broken fragments of a disordered hu- 
 manity, but all the fulness of man united in 
 perfect harmony with God, and so all the 
 fulness of God, should dwell. As point- 
 ing to this diviner light, and unfolding 
 tenderly and powerfully to us a want which 
 all may feel, these ancient prophetic writ- 
 ings are of unspeakable value still. Their 
 longings for something better, their in- 
 complete but still advancing ideas, their 
 revelations, imperfect indeed, but conscious 
 of imperfection, and looking forward to one 
 greater yet to fill out what was wanting in 
 them, may do much to help us in our ap- 
 proaches to that which is the fulfilment 
 alike of law and prophecy. 
 
VII. 
 The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 " The flesh profiteth nothing : the words that I speak unto you 
 they are spirit, and they are life." John vi. 63. 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. 
 
 ^ROM the greatest of the prophets to 
 him in whom their highest proph- 
 ecies were more than fulfilled is a 
 long step upwards, and we shrink from ap- 
 plying to him the sort of language we have 
 used in speaking of them. It strikes us 
 unpleasantly to hear him spoken of as the 
 greatest of all the poets of humanity, and 
 his teachings as embodying in form and 
 substance the highest possible ideal concep- 
 tions of man, and the sphere of activities, 
 human and divine, in which the full pur- 
 poses of our being are to be accomplished. 
 We think of him not only as supreme 
 among the sons of men, but as standing 
 apart by himself, above all principalities 
 and powers. But in this we forget the pre- 
 eminent characteristic of his greatness. 
 
1 66 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 The greatness of earthly ambition separates 
 a man from his race. It lifts him up into 
 an icy isolation from which he looks down 
 with pride and distrust on his fellow-men. 
 But the greatness of Jesus only brings him 
 into closer fellowship with man. If he was 
 one with God, it was that he might draw us 
 also into the same perfect sympathy and 
 union, — " as thou, Father, art in me and I 
 in thee, that they also may be one in lis," 
 Our human nature is thus, as he would 
 teach, enfolded in the divine. And in or- 
 der to lift us up into this life-giving union, 
 Jesus places himself on the plane of our 
 common humanity. Whatever more he 
 may have been, as man or God, he came 
 here as the Son of man, subject to our hu- 
 man infirmities and trials, bearing our sick- 
 nesses that so he might be brought into 
 closer relationship with us. The son of 
 God in truth he was ; but it was as a man, 
 with human faculties, human sympathies, 
 human affections, human methods of ac- 
 tion, and human forms of speech, that he 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. i6y 
 
 could bring down his divine thought and 
 life to the heart of our humanity, and thus 
 reach and regenerate the souls of men. 
 
 We cannot enter into the mind of Jesus 
 as we enter into the mind of Dante or Mil- 
 ton, or of David and Isaiah, or even of St. 
 Paul. We cannot understand how it was 
 that the whole universe became to him a 
 transparent medium, in which he saw and 
 felt the workings of the Supreme mind, 
 through laws and agencies unseen by those 
 around him. And to apply to his words 
 the terms which we apply to other writ- 
 ings, or to subject them to the same meth- 
 ods of examination, seems like an act of 
 profanation. We shrink from using in 
 this connection the term ideal or imagina- 
 tive, as if we were thus lowering the char- 
 acter of his instructions. 
 
 But it is only from a human standpoint 
 that he can speak to us so as to be under- 
 stood. However clear the " vision" with 
 which he looked into things human and 
 divine, and however beyond appeal the 
 
1 68 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 authority with which he speaks, it is only 
 by using the forms of speech most expres- 
 sive to us that he can make us partakers of 
 his thought. And it is only by the exer- 
 cise of our limited human faculties, and by 
 employing the ordinary rules of investiga- 
 tion, that we can interpret his teachings. 
 
 As in all other cases, therefore, before 
 and since his time, so also with him, the 
 loftiest and most effective utterances of 
 moral and spiritual truth must come as 
 they do come to us, through the imagina- 
 tion, — the divining and creative faculty. 
 He saw in the humble flower before him, 
 as the source of its life, a creative act of 
 God, and in each fragment of a human 
 life he saw the law that pervades and gov- 
 erns the whole of our moral being. Each 
 visible fact is filled out, to his mind, by the 
 unseen law, and by the influences and the 
 yet undeveloped results which are indisso- 
 lubly bound up with it. With powers of 
 vision more penetrating and comprehen- 
 sive than have ever been known among 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. 169 
 
 men, he saw, as no one else ever did, the 
 unseen but ever present elements of power, 
 justice, love, which are involved in appar- 
 ently insignificant objects and events, and 
 which are the fundamental laws of life and 
 of human society. And what he thus saw 
 he set forth by images which appeal 
 through the imagination to the minds of 
 those whom he would address. 
 
 Living, as he did, in what is to us an 
 ideal world, in the bosom of God, at the 
 centre of all moral and spiritual influences, 
 the words he uses are saturated with its 
 spirit, and filled out, through his deeper in- 
 sight and by his creative imagination, with 
 a meaning which it is often very difficult 
 for us to appreciate. As one who visits 
 the home of his childhood sees around him 
 dear forms, which others cannot see, and 
 every silent stone or tree awakens affect- 
 ing memories, and touches chords of emo- 
 tion which others may not understand, so 
 Jesus sees everywhere tokens of a diviner 
 presence, a deeper life, holier and more 
 
i jo The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 beneficent purposes and influences, than 
 those who live on a lower plane can fully 
 comprehend. His simplest expressions, 
 therefore, often come to us charged with a 
 richer and deeper meaning than we are 
 prepared at once to recognize. 
 
 One of the truest tests of imaginative 
 genius shows itself in the power of en- 
 dowing common words with a significance 
 beyond what originally belonged to them. 
 Dante speaks of being obliged to give to 
 the language employed by him a meaning 
 which it never had before, and the skill 
 with which he causes material images to 
 suggest facts belonging to a higher range 
 of experience strikes us as one of the most 
 marvellous features of his great work. The 
 same faculty shows itself in Shakspere, 
 running through his writings as lightning 
 through the telegraph wires, making them 
 mediums of a higher intelligence than is 
 patent on the surface. 
 
 Far above all other writings, in this re- 
 spect, are the Gospels. They who receive 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. iji 
 
 them only in a literal sense know not what 
 they are. Most of us, however, are so ac- 
 customed to take them in a higher sense, 
 that we lose sight of their literal meaning, 
 and forget the power by which those sim- 
 ple words have been made effective in cre- 
 ating a new heaven and a new earth for 
 those who receive them into their hearts. 
 We have only to repeat the most familiar 
 passages, to see how easily and naturally 
 Jesus has taken words up from their hum- 
 ble or homely belongings, and made them 
 harbingers of a divine message. " I have 
 meat to eat that ye know not of." " Pray 
 ye the lord of the harvest that he will send 
 forth laborers into his harvest." " The mar- 
 riage feast." "The pearl of great price." 
 Perhaps no word has been more entirely 
 transfigured, enlarged, changed from the 
 transient to the eternal, than the word 
 "life," as it enters into our Christian con- 
 sciousness, bearing with it the deeper, 
 broader, more vital ideas and associations 
 which he has infused into it, and through 
 
1J2 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 which the world itself has become regen- 
 erated. 
 
 Jesus sees in all outward objects the em- 
 blems of something higher than them- 
 selves. In nature he recognizes a divine 
 presence, acting everywhere as a perpetu- 
 ally renewing and creative energy. When 
 therefore he speaks of natural objects, he 
 speaks as one who sees what no chemist 
 or naturalist has ever seen. Thus he fills 
 out the visible beauty of common flowers 
 with the ever-present agency of Him who 
 " so clothes the grass of the field " " that 
 even Solomon in all his glory was not ar- 
 rayed like one of these." To his mind, 
 the falling sparrow in its apparent isolation 
 and helplessness is followed in its descent 
 by the pitying eye of God. 
 
 Not in the material world, however, but 
 in man does he find the highest expression, 
 and the truest image that is given in na- 
 ture, of the creative mind. He does not 
 speak of God as a law, an all-pervading, 
 impersonal presence or influence, though 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. 173 
 
 he recognizes Him in that capacity. From 
 man, the highest type of existence visible 
 to us, — higher than the sun or stars, and 
 governed by higher laws, — he has bor- 
 rowed the words, " Our Father who art in 
 heaven," by which he would bring home to 
 our hearts the truest and most affecting 
 thought of God. As with the greatest 
 poets, so with Jesus also, man is the ob- 
 ject of paramount interest. " He knew 
 what was in man ; " and no one else has 
 filled out the sphere of man's capabilities, 
 the supreme laws of his being, or the sphere 
 of influences acting upon him, on so com- 
 plete and so vast a scale. To his mind, 
 the human soul, so divinely endowed, is 
 greater and of more value than the mate- 
 rial universe. " What shall it profit a man 
 if he gain the whole world and lose his own 
 soul ? " This conception of the unspeak- 
 able value of the soul and the closeness 
 of its relationship to God runs through 
 all his teachings, and lends an ideal charm 
 and dignity to our common duties and rela- 
 
i?4 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 tions. Into our homes, permeated and 
 presided over by the divine love, he would 
 bring a source of perennial joy and beauty 
 by greater purity of heart and a more de- 
 voted union of husband and wife. And 
 while thus securing by indissoluble ties 
 the closest of earthly relations, he fills out 
 the thought of these family endearments, 
 and gives them a healthful enlargement, 
 by throwing around our homes, and bring- 
 ing into them as a vital force, a more com- 
 prehensive ideal of brotherhood. " My 
 mother and my brethren are these which 
 hear the word of God and do it" " Inas- 
 much as ye have done it unto one of the 
 least of these my brethren ye have done it 
 unto me." A Christian home is thus the 
 ideal centre of affections which reach up 
 to the fountain of all love and blessedness, 
 while they also reach out to all around in 
 silent benedictions, in kindly words, and 
 tender benefactions, uniting entire neigh- 
 borhoods, and indeed the whole human fam- 
 ily, within the same ideal brotherhood. To 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. 775 
 
 his enlarged conception, they who should 
 come in from the north and the south, 
 from the east and the west, the living and 
 the dead, were to be, as Paul has said, one 
 family "on earth and in heaven." What 
 an expansive stretch of the imagination 
 does it require to take in this conception 
 in all its sweetness and extent ! 
 
 I know of no imaginative writings among 
 the poets which take us into such a realm 
 of ideal life and beauty as the Beati- 
 tudes, revealing to us mental and moral 
 conditions, and ever-present influences and 
 satisfactions, which exceed in value all out- 
 ward possessions, and transform disappoint- 
 ments, privations, and sorrows into instru- 
 ments of love and of a transcendent 
 blessedness. Here he brings home to the 
 poor in spirit the kingdom of heaven as 
 already theirs, and bears witness to an at- 
 mosphere so clear that they who live in it 
 — the pure in heart — shall see God. 
 
 Everywhere in the Gospels, by what in 
 any other teacher we should call the trans- 
 
iy6 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 figuring power of the imagination, images 
 drawn from things material, and apparently 
 commonplace and evanescent, are filled 
 out by suggestions which take us up into 
 what is eternal and divine. At the temple 
 in Jerusalem, amid the profuse and osten- 
 tatious offerings of the rich, a certain poor 
 widow came and threw in two mites equal 
 to a farthing, — a very ordinary act, a very 
 mean sort of a person, it must have ap- 
 peared to those who were looking on. But 
 there was one present who was able to 
 put himself in her place, to divine her 
 thought, and, beyond what others saw, to 
 appreciate her secret motives in the great 
 sacrifice she was making. And in the 
 light thus thrown around it, that appar- 
 ently insignificant act was taken out of the 
 sphere of perishing things, and has been 
 through all the ages an encouragement and 
 help to those — the poor and the friend- 
 less — who have needed it most. The box 
 of precious ointment poured upon the feet 
 of Jesus awakened in Judas only feelings 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. ijy 
 
 of indignation, and even to others of the 
 disciples seemed a needless waste. But 
 in the spirit which prompted it, Jesus saw 
 the unselfish, reverential love which de- 
 lighted so to express itself ; and through his 
 words, that act, filling then the house with 
 its fragrance, has gone with a still more 
 grateful perfume wherever his gospel has 
 been preached throughout the whole world, 
 " a memorial of her," and a symbol of what 
 is most beautiful in the holiest affections, 
 touched and uplifted by a thankful rever- 
 ence. Where among all the great works of 
 genius do we find a simple act like this so 
 taken out of the sphere of transient events 
 by the creative imagination of the poet, 
 and so embalmed and glorified as to create 
 a new world of beauty, and throw its light 
 and charm around every similar act ? For 
 here, by canonizing this lowly act, Jesus 
 has created for us also an ideal world of 
 refined tastes and sentiments, in which 
 our most delicate instincts, our holiest and 
 most self-forgetting affections, may delight 
 to dwell. 
 
iy8 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 Once, as Jesus stood by the lakeside, 
 behold, " A sower went forth to sow," and 
 straightway, through his creative words 
 and presence, the whole outward scene is 
 transformed into a sphere of invisible 
 agencies, in whose workings man's eter- 
 nal interests are involved. " The field is 
 the world, the good seed are the chil- 
 dren of the kingdom." "The harvest is 
 the consummation of the age, and the 
 reapers are the angels." 
 
 In the greatest poems, there are little 
 secluded nooks, secret confessionals, or 
 domestic scenes, and private conversations, 
 which are very dear to us, as they go al- 
 ways with us, and, more than any private 
 cabinet of jewels, help to enrich and beau- 
 tify our chambers of imagery. The part- 
 ing of Hector and Andromache in Homer's 
 Iliad, the story which Dante tells of Fran- 
 cesca da Rimini, and of his first meeting 
 with Beatrice after she had " risen from 
 body to spirit," the few loving words of 
 Cordelia to her father when he had been 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. 179 
 
 left in utter wretchedness and desolation, 
 are passages of this sort, and show in each 
 poet the highest point that he ever at- 
 tained. The atmosphere which scenes like 
 these have once created around us has so 
 associated itself with our dearest thoughts 
 that it abides with us always. 
 
 Such passages abound in the Gospels 
 far more than in all the great poets. Al- 
 most every word of Jesus comes to us with 
 its far-reaching suggestions, and its re- 
 fining, uplifting influences. Common in- 
 cidents or familiar objects are filled out 
 with ideas which take us into sweeter and 
 higher realms. The heaven in which he 
 lived infuses itself into all his thoughts, 
 gives its ideal coloring to his language, and 
 so folds itself around us as a living atmos- 
 phere. Compared with the world in which 
 he lived and moved as in his native ele- 
 ment, and whose spirit is breathed around 
 us now by his words, the grandest creations 
 of other poets, except in what they borrow 
 from him, seem poverty-stricken. Even 
 
180 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers, 
 
 " Isaiah's hallowed strains " seem hardly 
 more than the earnest gropings and smug- 
 glings of a half-illuminated mind, moved by 
 a divine impulse, and feeling its way up- 
 ward towards the light. 
 
 From our easy familiarity with the Gos- 
 pels, and the mechanical manner in which 
 we have come to think and speak of them, 
 we fail to see them as they are, and to 
 recognize in them the creative power that 
 should act on us and open our eyes to new 
 worlds of thought, affection, and emotion. 
 And what is it but the ideal element inter- 
 fused through them that gives such a power 
 to v/hat would otherwise seem like very 
 simple expressions ? " The foxes have 
 holes, the birds of the air have nests, but 
 the Son of man hath not where to lay his 
 head." Yet homeless and shelterless as 
 he was, at that very moment he was asking 
 men to follow him as their highest privi- 
 lege and joy. 
 
 What but the ideal thought in which 
 he lived and with which his whole being 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. 181 
 
 was saturated has thrown such a world of 
 pathos and such a divine fascination and 
 power into the words, "O Jerusalem, Je- 
 rusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and 
 stonest them which are sent unto thee, 
 how often would I have gathered thy chil- 
 dren together even as a hen gathereth her 
 chickens under her wings, and ye would 
 not ! " Or where else shall we find words 
 which have such a divine sweetness, and 
 such a world of tender healing and com- 
 fort, as in his gracious invitation : " Come 
 unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
 yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am 
 meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find 
 rest unto your souls." Where among the 
 poets do we find single expressions which 
 come to us with such power to take us be- 
 yond their literal meaning into unseen soul- 
 satisfying realities ? Or what single pic- 
 ture or episode in any of the great Epics 
 or Tragedies appeals so powerfully to the 
 imagination as the story of The Pharisee 
 
182 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 and Publican, The Prodigal Son, or The 
 Rich Man and Lazarus ? The more criti- 
 cally we examine them as works of the im- 
 agination, the more perfect we shall find 
 them both in form and substance ; and the 
 more entirely we give ourselves up to them, 
 the more shall we be impressed by a sense 
 of " the virtue " which may come out from 
 them, to touch our moral and spiritual 
 sensibilities, to heal our diseases, and to 
 quicken our holiest affections. 
 
 Or, if we seek for creations on a grander 
 scale, I know of no place in all the realm 
 of poetic creations, where we may find any- 
 thing to compare with the twenty-fourth 
 and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew in 
 sublimity and pathos, in breadth and lofti- 
 ness of conception, in elevation of sen- 
 timent or in depth of spiritual insight. In 
 the progress of the narrative we feel that a 
 deepening solemnity has been gathering 
 round us. At last, with one majestic sweep 
 of the imagination, Jesus, looking through 
 the ages, brings into one vast perspective 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. 183 
 
 all the generations of men, to undergo the 
 great ordeal through which each individual 
 soul must pass, — men's actions here in 
 their separate and solemn distinctions fol- 
 lowing them on from time to eternity. Yet 
 so wonderfully drawn is the picture, that 
 in all this application of inexorable law, 
 room is left for the manifestation of per- 
 sonal feeling, and in this countless throng 
 and multitude, each individual soul stands 
 before us with its own separate record, and 
 its undertone of surprised joy or grief. As 
 a powerful presentation of the most ma- 
 jestic, the most affecting and awful images 
 that can ever be suggested to the mind of 
 man, the poetry of the world furnishes no 
 parallel to the passage beginning with the 
 words, "When the Son of man shall come 
 in his glory, and all the holy angels with 
 him, then shall he sit upon the throne of 
 his glory, and before him shall be gathered 
 all nations." 
 
 Outward, visible, material images are em- 
 ployed to set forth facts of the profoundest 
 
1 84 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 spiritual significance. No literal interpre- 
 tation meets the conditions of the case. 
 Dante, as we have seen, speaking of a 
 nobleman who, having invited friends to a 
 feast at his house, caused them to be mur- 
 dered there, tells us that when that act of 
 treachery and murder was done, the soul 
 of the murderer was immediately hurried 
 down into one of the lowest depths of hell, 
 and that his body, which remained alive in 
 Genoa, was thenceforth possessed and ani- 
 mated by a devil. More impressive lan- 
 guage could not be used to express a great 
 and terrible fact. But no one now would 
 take it, as some of his contemporaries did, 
 to be interpreted literally in all its details. 
 In the parables of Jesus, in accordance 
 with the laws of human thought and the 
 necessities of language, images the most 
 touching, majestic, and awful ever pre- 
 sented to the mind of man are brought 
 forward, to give an added vividness to the 
 scene, and to awaken in us some sense of 
 the momentous issues for weal or woe in- 
 
The Lie j I I each in gs of Jesus. 185 
 
 volvecl in our conduct here. But the imag- 
 ery in its separate parts is to be regarded 
 only as the superficial vehicle in which the 
 more vital and substantial thought and im- 
 pression are conveyed. 
 
 I have gone somewhat into detail in the 
 treatment of my subject. Viewed simply 
 in this light, as works of the imagination, 
 the teachings of Jesus have a vitality, a 
 suggestiveness, a tenderness, a majesty, a 
 quickening power, a beauty, and a grandeur 
 so surpassingly great and peculiar that in 
 all these eighteen hundred years no man, 
 however lofty his genius, no Dante or 
 Shakspere or Milton or Goethe, has ever 
 added to his words a single sentence wdiich 
 the best minds of the world would judge 
 worthy of his utterance. 
 
 Let us for a few moments look at our 
 subject in a more comprehensive light. 
 Dante did much to deepen the moral con- 
 victions of men, to enlarge, to deepen and 
 intensify their spiritual conceptions, and to 
 rive them a new sense of reality in regard 
 
i86 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 to the deepest interests of life and the un- 
 seen agencies around them. Shakspere 
 invented new forms of intelligence and 
 beauty, love and devotion, new examples 
 of thought and life, which have revealed 
 in man new capabilities, wants, and affec- 
 tions. He has thus enlarged the sphere 
 of human interests and activities. As to 
 what is highest in both these mighty gen- 
 iuses, — they drew their inspiration and 
 their ideas from one in whose footsteps 
 they reverently counted it a privilege and 
 an honor to be permitted to walk. 
 
 It is difficult to look in this larger way 
 at what Jesus has done to fill out our con- 
 ceptions of what is holiest and best in our 
 human life and conduct, in our relations to 
 one another, and in the intimate and vital 
 union which may exist between man and 
 God, or our connection with his unseen 
 presence and kingdom. From the open- 
 ing words of the Sermon on the Mount to 
 his last affecting words upon the cross, 
 " Father, into thy hands I commit my 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. iSy 
 
 spirit," he takes us through what is to us 
 an ideal realm. He fills it out with images 
 of fidelity, justice, love, and mercy, human 
 and divine, which reach down into the in- 
 most depths of our being, and, with our 
 advancing powers of thought and our per- 
 petually renewed spiritual perceptions, cre- 
 ate around us an ever enlarging sphere, in 
 which all our best faculties may find their 
 fitting exercise and enjoyment. In that 
 ideal realm he lived. Its reality was the 
 one all-pervading and controlling fact. By 
 word or deed, by miracle or parable, with 
 the poor Syro-Phoenician woman or on the 
 mountain of transfiguration, in private con- 
 ference with his disciples or in the temple 
 confronting the leading men of his nation 
 with words of terrible significance, — from 
 his baptism in the Jordan to his last vis- 
 ible appearance on the Mount of Olives, 
 whatever he did or said or was comes to 
 us filled out by the consciousness of that 
 ideal realm. His lightest words, hardly 
 less than his gravest instructions, suggest 
 
1 88 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 it to us, as it always lay in his mind. The 
 sight of the ravens or the lilies calls up the 
 thought of him who feeds or clothes them. 
 Or, to take one example more, as a fitting 
 close to what I have to say, in this direc- 
 tion, of him who came to exalt the humble, 
 and to save that which is lost : " Either 
 what woman having ten pieces of silver, if 
 she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, 
 and sweep the house, and seek diligently 
 till she find it ? And when she hath found 
 it, she calleth her friends and her neigh- 
 bors together, saying, Rejoice with me; 
 for I have found the piece which I had 
 lost. Likewise, I say unto you, there is 
 joy in the presence of the angels of God, 
 over one sinner that repenteth. ,, Where 
 among the great poets do we find objects 
 apparently so ordinary and commonplace 
 endowed with the power of lifting us up to 
 a thought so affecting and sublime ? By 
 these homely images, the shilling that was 
 lost, the woman who sought diligently till 
 she had found it, and the friends and 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus. i8g 
 
 neighbors whom she called in to rejoice 
 with her, Jesus sets before us the loving 
 sympathy of the angels in heaven with 
 every sinful one on earth who turns again 
 to God. Everywhere he sees something 
 that is to him most tender, majestic, and 
 beautiful in the homeliest of human inter- 
 ests and relations, and lifts them up into a 
 grander significance and beauty by associ- 
 ating them, in the closest possible union, 
 with what is divine. 
 
 Very wonderful, as viewed in this light, 
 are the teachings of Jesus. But still more 
 wonderful is the manner in which, by the 
 transforming power of the imagination, 
 he identifies himself with his teachings. 
 When the Jews, in perplexity and anger, 
 scoffingly asked of him, " Who art thou?" 
 he answered them in substance, " What 
 I say to you that essentially (TV &pxqv)-l 
 am." (John viii. 25.) So perfectly was he, 
 in his daily thoughts and acts, and in his 
 entire being, bound up with what is high- 
 est in morals and religion, that he comes 
 
1 90 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 to us as the illustration and embodiment 
 of what he taught. Living, as he did, in 
 perfect union with God, all the higher 
 faculties of our nature were unfolded, and 
 all the divine qualities and attributes 
 which can exist in a human form were 
 incarnated in him, so that we have in 
 him an expression of the grandest possi- 
 bilities of man, and of the fullest mani- 
 festation that can be given of the mind 
 and character of God. In the conscious- 
 ness of the indwelling presence of God, he 
 identified his own thoughts with the sug- 
 gestions of the divine mind, and thus iden- 
 tified himself with God. " I and my Fa- 
 ther are one." The coming of the Son of 
 Man was, in his thought, the same as the 
 coming of the kingdom of God. And he 
 regarded as his ministers or angels, all 
 the divine agencies by which his work was 
 to be carried out, and spoke of himself as 
 directing them in the struggles and trials 
 through which his religion should pass, as 
 well as in its triumphant progress. Of 
 
The Ideal Teachings of Jesus . 191 
 
 this fact we have remarkable examples in 
 the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chap- 
 ters of Matthew, and in his last conversa- 
 tion with his disciples, as given to us in 
 the Gospel of John. 
 
 Here, in the identification of himself 
 with his teachings and his work, and, 
 above all, with Him in whom he lived, is 
 that which separates him from all other 
 teachers, giving him " a name above every 
 name/' and exalting his ideal conceptions 
 above every other " principality and power." 
 His consciousness of his own human per- 
 sonality was often lost in the consciousness 
 of God's indwelling presence, so entirely 
 did he live in harmony, or rather in uni- 
 son, with God. This oneness with his Fa- 
 ther, which is most distinctly brought out 
 and emphasized in the fourth Gospel, gives 
 a transcendent grace and attractiveness to 
 the loftiest expressions recorded by the 
 other evangelists. Bearing in mind that 
 his thoughts came to him, or rather un- 
 folded themselves within him, as prompt- 
 
192 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 ings from the mind and heart of God, we 
 may appreciate his feeling, when he says, 
 " The words that I speak unto you, they are 
 spirit and they are life." 
 
VIII. 
 
 The End. 
 
 "And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the 
 Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, 
 that God may be all in all." — i Corinthians xv. 28. 
 
The End. 
 
 HIS little book, in its treatment 
 of a great subject, lays no claim 
 to completeness It deals rather 
 with hints and illustrations of facts which, 
 when subjected to a thorough analysis and 
 carried forward to their legitimate results, 
 may, I think, be found to include the 
 most affecting and effective truths of our 
 religion. The one underlying thought, 
 which gives a meaning to all the rest, is 
 that of God everywhere, the central force, 
 the quickening life, the guiding intelli- 
 gence, by whom all created things are 
 united in one harmonious system, each 
 dependent on all, and all on each. Each 
 therefore is united with all the rest, and 
 with Him who "is over all, and in all, and 
 through all." If, then, any single object 
 
ig6 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 could be fully known by us in all its rela- 
 tions, immediate and remote, it would re- 
 veal to us the whole order of the universe, 
 and the mind of Him. who sustains it in 
 every part, and carries it onward by a per- 
 petual and progressive act of creation. 
 Man, as the highest type of creation per- 
 sonally known to us, may be regarded as 
 being, in himself, the most advanced ex- 
 pression of the mind of God to be found 
 among created things. And they who 
 have the profoundest insight into his ca- 
 pabilities, active or dormant, must see 
 most clearly the higher laws of his nature, 
 and the facts connected with his moral 
 and spiritual constitution. The great poets 
 of humanity, therefore, may be summoned, 
 as competent witnesses, to testify to the 
 higher faculties of our nature, and to the 
 beliefs and wants which are essential to 
 their healthy and complete development. 
 As we rise, by lines of gradation not al- 
 ways perceptible, through different degrees 
 of " the inspiration of the Almighty, which 
 
The End. igy 
 
 giveth understanding," we are introduced 
 to the long line of poets, seers, and proph- 
 ets, who, in the higher development and 
 advancing intelligence of the race, have 
 unfolded to us, more and more distinctly, 
 the laws of our spiritual being, and the 
 touching and sublime facts connected with 
 them. At last, we come to one fore- 
 shadowed indeed by them, in whom their 
 grandest ideas have something far more 
 than their fulfilment. 
 
 And here, as we enter into his thought 
 and life, we are vitally connected with in- 
 fluences which unite earth and heaven, 
 and bring us everywhere into sympathy 
 with what is divine. Our highest thoughts 
 and our deepest experiences associate 
 themselves with the eternal life, and make 
 it ours. The desires of the ungodly shall 
 perish. The love of the selfish and the 
 sensuous shall die. But that which brings 
 us into oneness with Christ brings us into 
 oneness with God, and makes us and all 
 that essentially belongs to us immortal. 
 
ig8 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 The golden experiences of the past come 
 transfigured before us, and lift our eyes 
 upward to a holier companionship. Earthly- 
 desires are transmuted into heavenly affec- 
 tions. Whatever we have known and 
 loved takes on a diviner meaning, as we 
 live and believe in him who is the resur- 
 rection and the life. 
 
 For in him the Word was made flesh. 
 All of the divine intelligence and attri- 
 butes that can be incorporated in a human 
 life were incarnated in him. Ideas sug- 
 gested to poets and prophets in their mo- 
 ments of loftiest inspiration are filled out 
 with a diviner meaning in the teachings of 
 Jesus. And his teachings have their most 
 living and life-giving exemplification and 
 manifestation in the august and wonder- 
 ful personality, human and divine, of the 
 teacher. The Incarnation, " God in Christ 
 reconciling the world to himself/' and, 
 therefore, God in humanity, a redeeming, 
 sanctifying presence, is the great doctrine 
 of the New Testament. But the world 
 
The End. igg 
 
 has been slow to receive it. Through ages 
 of darkness and sin it has been struggling 
 to gain admittance to the souls of men. 
 Even now the language of its great exem- 
 plar is, " Behold, I stand at the door and 
 knock.' ' And few are ready to accept the 
 conditions and make the sacrifices which 
 he requires of them, that they may know 
 the blessedness of giving themselves up 
 entirely to him. 
 
 Nevertheless, the prophetic vision is no 
 illusion. The sign of the Son of Man may 
 not be recognized by us ; but he is coming 
 in the heavens with power and great glory. 
 The more deeply we enter into his spirit, 
 and the more fully we partake of the life 
 that was in him, the more shall we be sus- 
 tained and gladdened by the divine assur- 
 ance. Therefore it is that we look for- 
 ward " in sure and certain hope " to the 
 day when the beneficent purposes of his 
 Advent shall be accomplished, when the 
 whole family of man shall be included in 
 his prayer, " that they all may be one, as 
 
200 The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. 
 
 thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that 
 they also may be one in us," and when 
 the prayer itself, in its largest and most 
 catholic sense, shall be fulfilled by the 
 perfect union of man with God. 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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