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'   BiY
MI$ D.><C  O N W A WY.
kINISTER OF THE FIRST CONGRE]GATIONAL' OHIRCOH CINCINNATI) OllIO,
CINCINNATi:
TRUMAN & SPOFFORDo
1858.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
M. D. CONWAY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of Ohio.




TO MY PARENTS
I dedicate this book;-knowing that, whatever they shall find here which
shall recall painful differences of belief, it would grieve them far more to
think that I had swerved from the lessons of directness and sincerity which, by
word and life, they have evel taught as before all, and which they have a
right to claim from me always and everywhere.








LETTER
To a Minister of the Baltimore (Metlodist) Conference.
D)EAR FRIENDYour letter is one of the many of a similar kind, received not only
from members of our dear old Conference, but from those who were classmates at Carlisle, members of my circuits, or friends of myself and relatives in Virginia.  "Why I have left my old associations and communion," were indeed a question requiring a long answer.  But since it is
asked by all my friends (and they have every right to ask it), I have been
thinking how I could follow out your suggestion and publish an answer.
I have concluded to put forth a small collection of discourses, such as
have occurred in my regular ministrations.  For it is in these that a
preacher's heart and life get best garnered after all.  I' am  not of that
school who have one set of thoughts for the study, another for the pulpit:
I can only preach what is the last result of my own mind.  Therefore,
though I could wish that the urgency of a city parish allowed more time
for completeness and elegance, these thoughts are my real self, and as
such are, to me, sacred.  From such statements it is easy to trace the
threads running back to all I have left,-for an apple preserves the mark
of the blossom which bore it.                              M. D. C.
CINCINNATI, January, 1858,








CO N TENTS.
THE DIvINE WORlKER.-   -   -  9
THE SKEPTIC..               27
ORPHEUS -   -   -              -             - 45
THE MINISTER.-.                           65
THE PENITENT -   -.              - 80
THE VACATION  -.           -   100
THE CHILD   -                                 117
THE BIBLE -                                    37
MIGNON -..   -  161
THE ONE PATH -   -   -   -                    176
THE LOST BOWER                 -              195
THE COMMUNICANT    -                      -   209
THE CATHOLIC IDEA.- - 226
THE WORSHIPER -                           -   244
THE THREE REVERENCES-Io GOD                  - 259
II. NATURE  -   - -   274
III. MAN       4   4   - 288








THE DIVINE WORKER.
WIST ye not that I must be about my Father's business?
It is finished 
IT has seemed to me that these two passages of the
New Testament, combining the earliest and last words of
Christ during his earthly ministry, belong to each other.
When we remember that, in his childhood, the idea of
a purpose in life arose before him, and a clear light from
his soul revealed an object crying out for accomplishment, whose cries he alone could hear and aid, we are
thrilled with the first words which fell from his lips,
when his parents found him, a boy of twelve, sitting
with the doctors-I must be about my Fatther's work!
And as we read of his steadfast adhesion to that
work, following on through fire and thorns and the
dark valley, it becomes the triumphant password of the
eternal gates when he cried, It is fi'nished! And
he bowed his head and gave up the ghost.
Thou beautiful, wonderful child! thy words bring
us directly to the core of all vitality, strength and
excellence! We come to the idea of a personal existence slowly, to the faith that God has sent us into
(9)




10             THE DIVINE WORKER.
the world, as individuals, because each one had separately something to do there, which no created being
had done or could do for us, and with reference to
which work every atom and fiber of our nature was
prepared. But Christ, in his boyhood and that of the
world, has already prepared his heart's altar and
sacrifice, and the flame rises smokeless and pure!
My friends, any one who has been spending strength,
baffling the waves of sense, to reach the strong shore of
the spirit, will need no miracle beyond this to attest the
divine illumination of our Messiah.
And thus, from whatsoever side we approach it, we
find Christ's character more and more divine, because
more and more human; for the deep heart within us
all announces, Thus must it be with each man who is
worthy the room he occupies in the world, that he
should be about his Father's work, and that his last
consciousness should be that, according to the best
strength given, It isfinished!
There can be nothing now so needed among men as
the recognition of a personal calling. The arguments
which prove the truth of this Individualism are the
simplest; they are drawn from the most trusted articles
of every man's creed: and yet it is so simple as to be
ignored, that this is at last the cure which poor wounded
Humanity needs, and with many dumb signs has long
been seeking to make known, that each man should
come out in terrible energy of thought, word, and act,
with whatever wells up natively within him.




THE DIVINE WORKER.              11
I have said that it is drawn from the most trusted
articles of every man's creed,-for no one will say that
things are given over to chance or Satan; that Human
beings, with theirendless possibilities, higherand lower,
are the mere spawn of the Universe; sent here with
little if any forethought or afterthought, or often, as
Malthus taught, sent here to great disadvantage in the
light of political economy. But every one's first teaching to his child is to say, when asked, "Who made
you?" "God."  Why should it not strike into his
heart then to say, What is this?  The Eternal God
made thee! Then, 0 child, if he made thee, he meant
thee!
This let us rest on for Eternity, that God does nothing
by redundance; that there is nothing so small, not a
dust-atom, but serves its part toward balancing the
Universe of Stars; that the Ineffable glory goes as surely
into a butterfly's as into an angel's wing. And all the
grandeur of the outward Universe cannot be so mysterious and momentous as a man. Oh, friends! there
is another Universe into which a man must be born
besides this without: it is that which hath its infinite
growths and splendors within his soul, —where great
and holy thoughts and affections arise and shine, until
the nightly host of Heaven grows dim.
Thus "know thyself," " live thyself," "' be true to thyself," sum up for each the essence of Decalogue, Prophets and Testaments; and man only becomes man,
when he retires to the holy oracle within, and asks,




12             THE DIVINE WORKER.
"Lord, what wouldst thou have ME to do." and then
abandons himself to that work, however strange, or
difficult or meanly associated such work may be.
I confess now that I do not believe those who say
that the mass of mankind do and can have no such
experience of a personal relation to God and his Universe. I do not wish a better proof that they may and
do have it than the conviction of entire adequacy to his
calling in life, which every man feels, and his indifference to adequacy in the business of others. Men are
not sensitive outside of their own circles of duties, but
are very much so within them. You may easily persuade a physician that he cannot preach a sermon or a
minister that he cannot prescribe for disease; but you
shall find it a far more delicate task to assure the physician that lie cannot prescribe properly for disease, or
the minister that he cannot preach. And so of every
sphere of labor or profession; the blacksmith does not
care to be thought a -good carpenter, nor the carpenter
a lawyer-but each would be filled with mortification
or anger at a proof or charge of inability in respect of
that which he follows as a calling. And this is not
conceit, nor any low, but a very high, instinct. It is
the witness that each one has within him of a divine
right to excel in that to which he has been drawn, and
which he knows is the only one thing wherein he can
excel. He feels that he has a claim on all things and
all men to help him toward perfection, so long as he
faithfully works the work of Him who sent him, and




THE DIVINE WORKER.              13
who infolds the work proper for him in the soul o f
every man he sends; which inevitably reveals itself, at
the proper time, hand in hand with the measure of
strength needed. He feels that none can gainsay his
sufficiency for his task, except through his faithlessness or their enmity. So well may one be sensitive
to criticism.
It is very sad to see that this faith in the divine authority of the division of labor has long been a Church abstraction.  They tell us, God surely ordains in his Church,
or among his people, (the phrases are various,) that one
man should be a layman, another a deacon, another a
priest or a rector, another a bishop-so it is expressed
and illustrated by Paul's figure of the body and members. But when we would declare that God is King of
all the Earth, and not of their self-styled Church or people of God alone; and affirm that IHe makes the true
poets, composers, mechanics, and earnest-workers of all
kinds, and ordains them to their offices a great deal
more than their churchmen and dignitaries-why a
dimness comes over their eyes to such a degree that
they declare you to be wandering in the dark. And
th!is unbelief is assisted by the consciousness of too many
who have to say: I am not what I am by a divine impulse, but by the ordination of kind friends and circumstances. They therefore declare, that no one has any
authoritative mission to any special office. And these,
my friends, are dead, and must be left in sorrow to
bury their dead.




14             THE DIVINE WORKER.
A nobler doctrine is taught us by the unerring experience of the great throbbing heart of Mankind itself,
as recorded by the one infallible historian Human Language. The word which has been adopted to express
that by which a man lives, is CALLING. It would seem
that by a common understanding, which a universally
understood word always expresses, that which a man
does is not what he has selected, but which has selected
or called him. The word would imply that a voice has
been heard and obeyed.
And it is because the common heart is thus so far in
advance of the Church, because the Church needs,
more than those to whom it preaches, conversion to
God, to a faith that not one man nor hair of his head,
nor emotion or power in him is forgotten before Him,
and that this is equally true of John Smith, the cobbler,
and Paul, the apostle,-it is because of this, I say, that
the chief encounter of an lmpstriving individual manhood in any one is with the Church. The first question which brother dissenters ask each other on meeting is, How did youe get on with th1e Church, when
yout acted thus or avowed such opinions?  That being
told, the whole story is told. No great art is there
which has not been placed under ban of the Church.
The man who introduced something quicker than a
minim into music came near paying for it with his life,
and not until they became too popular for the temptation to be resisted did the Church encourage the painting and sculpture which pietistic impurity, even to this




THIE DIVINE WORKER.             15
day, oeten pronounces immoral because true. Thlere
never was one of the Holy Order of scientific men who
escaped the censure of the Chu1rch, if he Was brave
and free; and the progress of ages makes very little
difference,-Agassiz finds it about as hard as Galileo.
One instance I have heard, where a religious body
allowed God's blood to circulate freely through its
veins; and it is so remarkable that I will relate it.
There was in a country-town of Pennsylvania a boy
who gave early indication of a genius and passion for
painting. Ile was the child of Quaker parents. The
chief- I had nearly written only —error of this society,
is an ascetic intolerance of whatever contributes simply
to the sense of beauty, not seeing that Beauty in and
for itself must be good, because God made it and gave
it the key of the human heart. The Quaker parents
of little Benjamin sought, therefore, to repress this
inclination for painting which had so often been
rebuked by their leaders. But to repress it was not
easy: the God raged within him  like a fever, and
inspired  a scorn  of other work. The affectionate
parents went around and conversed with many members of the society on the subject; and, after repeated
discussions, it was resolved to lay the matter before
the Lord, since the Lord had made the boy. So they
gathered together in their old meeting-house where,
doubtless, many a testimony had been given to the
vanity of the fine arts, and there sat in holy silence
awaiting a message from the good Father as to what




16             THE DIVINE WORKER.
should be done with the pertinacious little Benjamin.
And when the voice, which never fails to be heard
when other voices are silent, came; and one declared
that there was a mistake somewhere, and that either
their antagonism to painting was an impiety, or else
God had erred in sending that young soul into the
world with such inevitable tendencies, and furthermore
suggested that the blunder might be on their part, they
all received his words just as if they had come from
the Bible. As his parents were very poor, they all
contributed something to have him educated in his art.
The fruitful years grew on, and little Benjamin had
reached the highest position as an artist in the most
cultivated of all countries; and he sent across the sea
a great painting to his State, by the exhibition and
value of which thousands of poor mutes of the institution which he endowed have learned to bless the name
of Benjamin West, who sent them "Christ healing
the sick."
When before did a religious organization ever ordain
one to the service of the true life within him; to the
service of immortal beauty;-and thus, taking him by
the hand, bid him God-speed in accomplishing his
Father's business?  Yet many a so-called heathen
has taught the Church this mission. " The first time
(cries the ancient Persian Prophet) that I was called
to the world above, the heavens and stars said
unto me, O Sasan! we have bound up our loins
in the service of Yezdan, and never withdrawn




THE DIVINE WORKER.              17
from it, because he is worthy of praise; and we are
filled with astonishment how mankind can wander so
far from the commands of God."
It is indeed the way of health,-to mind one's own
business. For no man can have any business unless
God give it him; every occupation possible having
some relation to the necessities of our mind, body, or
soul-which of course are of him. In faithful attention to our own affair, we place ourselves in harmony
with nature and the music of the spheres, which
though ruled by one law follow each its own orbit.
Many divine currents of life seem to flow out to invigorate us when we fall into our spheres of duty. But
to him who attempts to heed the world, or fashion, or
self-interest, and attach himself to any work to which
he is not called by temperament or craving, the
Heavens shall be unyielding as brass, and no fastflowing gush of inspiration shall ever come, like the
sirocco of the desert, to lift up his poor dust to stand
in solid pillars against the Heavens.
Happy is he whose heart is in his hand! What his
hand findeth to do he shall do with a consciousness of
might which may, with better reason than Napoleon
had, regard it as a proof of the weakness of the human
mind to suppose it can be resisted. All things willingly
fly to be his servants. By a noble army of such, spreading through all time, conies the proverb, clear as a sunbeam to every such one now, Love's labor's light. Most
surely do we feel, when we are fulfilling that which is




is18           THE DIVINE WORKER.
in the highest sense our calling, that not one eftort can
fail to advance it; that not one instance of opposition
from others can fail to advance it; that it goes on in
sleeping or waking. No toil for that end is hard. As
children dance and dream not of weariness; as the
young Mozart pores over his scores, and is only sad
when interrupted; as the mother wears away at her
sick child's bedside, and will only complain if any one
takes her place; as birds sing, and waters fall, and
flowers yield fragrance,-so easily does any one who
finds his true work accomplish it.
This is so certain a rule that we may affirm tlhat after
all, the best measure and indication of virtue is success.
The Universe is on his side-nature with its laws, the
real hearts of all men, the All,-froim the mote in the
sunlight up to the Lord of Hosts, throb and move in
sympathy with him. "In all the vocabulary of youth
there is no such word as fail," said the old Cardinal
Richelieu, to the young man who announced his
failure. And work with love is perpetual youth.
But let us not be deceived by the contemptible, vulgar estimates of the street, as to what constitutes success
or failure. A splendid estate, money counted to the
billion, a white house or a throne-these do not constitute success in life; these may be the miserablest
failures. For these, may have been lost incorruptible
treasures, gold coined of the pavement of Heaven; a
throne pure and high on God's right-hand, whence
selfishness, ambition, and injustice have been con



THE DIVINE WORKER.               19
trolled, may have been paid for this presidency or
kingly honor. We often read on marble fronts, success, where angels read sadly,failure.  Nor do poverty,
nor pain, nor fetters, nor death by violence or law constitute a failure in life. See up there on the cross him
who first fully entered into his Father's work. How
they mock him, and cry " Hail king of the Jews! lIe
said he was a king. He said he could save others, and
cannot save himself! "  Why, these men manifestly look
upon his claims and life as a complete failure. His life
cut off before its greatest vigor; dying by the most
ignominious instrument by which one could die-they
counted Christianity a failure! Even the disciples
seem to have thought so, and fled.
But in that divine heart whose last life-streams were
gushing, how far different were the revelations which
now we see were true. That day, when all thought
Christianity and Jesus a failure, was his coronation day:
that cross was his throne, whence he shall ever rule the
world; in that darkest moment the true birth-pang
of the Universe was past-and before man arose the
prospect of a newborn world! Lo, the World's most
majestic success!
Let the world have a care that it does not call the
most magnificent successes, failures; the worst failures,
brilliant successes. But thou, Oh, brother! know that
the soul alone is conscious of its full success  and,
whether men censure or blame, knows that it has
achieved all, when the deep heart can bravely take the




20             THEa DITINE WORKER.
last words of Christ, and say of its true mission, It ia
finished!  And this can alone ever be really felt or
said of that thing given you, that one thing whereto all
your faculties call you: for man has well been compared to the Labrador Spar, which, turned to a sunbeam
in various ways is opaque, but when the point of
crystallization is turned to the ray, instantly all the
colors of the rainbow flash through.
Success comes by this faith in what we can do,
which is the parent of that wonder-worker, manly enthusiasm. When men feel how real and deep a thing
it is to live, and feel that they must be about their
father's business, they are moved with the soul's passion:
then follows heroic action. Their duty, lying there
before them, is then as the breath of their nostrils, and
the word comes to them as in ancient days to one
chosen to work for Jehovah, " Not by might, nor by
power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts. Who
art thou, 0, great mountain! before Zerubbabel thou
shalt become a plain! "
Oh, how much of the mediocrity if not meanness of
our lives, how much of our tragical failure, is to be
attributed to a lack of enthusiasm! Three words of
advice, I remember, John Wesley had for a young
man: Be in earnest. What we want first is earnestness, and what we want last is earnestness-that
hearty enthusiasm which can come only where a man
feels conscious that he is in the right, and which carries him like lightning to his point. Men call it bad




THE DIVINE WORKER.             21
names, I know, call it fanaticism, ignorance, wildness,
ambition, imprudence. They praise much the virtues
of calmness and self-possession. But as we look back
now we see, that the brightest jewels on the brow of
history are the names of those who obeyed some high
impulse, and gave all to it. Men said of them, that
they were carrying things too far; they said this of
Luther and all the Reformers. And many suffered
themselves to be led by a reaction from the point to
which these had gone.  IJe see that an instinct in
them, unerring as that which in the bee and silkworm
puts human skill to shame, led these men to the extent
of their work; not a hair's breadth the other side of
it-not a hair's breadth this side of it. And we discern some method in the madness of Cromwell's saying, "That a man never rises so high as when he
knows not whither he is going."
The one great curse is indifference. It is nothing in
itself-for neither you nor I can harm the Universe, nor
do any wrong beyond God's power of righting —but
only as it indicates how many lives are barren, cold
and dead, because they are not drawn by any strong
fervor to any one sphere, having long ago denied their
Lord of Life, saying, 1 know no such duty. Oh! cannot apathy itself be used as a spur to carry you beyond
apathy, which is death.
Young man! Let us be in earnest though Chaos
should return! If thou must.needs be so, be whimsical, rash, imprudent, mad-so thou be saved from




22             THE DIVINE WORKER.
the body of death, which is a hateful indifference
to that which through thee would strive to bud and
bloom and contribute its quality to all!
If calmness, prudence, sanity are to be made the
bushel to hide our little ray, so much the worse for
them. But it is not so. Calmness is akin to enthusiasm. What can be more serene than the sunlight
which yet incessantly carries on its siege of subtle
heats, which presently turn snow and ice into violets
and hyacinths?  And as men look forth on the world
of Hlumanity, and remembering the burdens of old
prophets who sang of the latter-day glory, and the
saying concerning Christ, that he " saw the travail of
his soul and was satisfied," so fair and perfect even to
that exacting eye was the vision of a redeemed worldyet see it frozen by a dread winter; see man's hand
lifted against man in war; see trade polluted by dishonesty, so that what we eat and wear is poisoned or
stained with crime; see oppression of man by man,
until we scarce know  in their degradation  those
own brothers of Christ's-to whom we are anything but
brothers-save by the cry which the eternal spirit
within them, though feebler and feebler, still sends to
heaven; oh! as we remember this, see this, your
worldly doctrine of calmness changes us to marble I
Talk to the mother of calmness as her child disappears
beneath the wave; then come and talk of it to the soul
which sees God's idea, as he feels it, and others see it




THE DIVINE WORKER.              23
trampled under foot of men-our leaders standing without, warming themselves by the fire!
There is much need of faith in being about and
accomplishing our Father's work. Often our cyes
may see that a thing, if done, would be attended
with  trouble, confusion and danger, while yet the
inner voice is clear:.Let it be done-it is right!
Then must we walk and act by faith, not by sight;
be true to the inner light, and leave the rest to
God, beyond whose control no atom  can go. For
what is confusion to our poor siglht, is Eternal Beauty
to God.  And even to us, when we can release
ourselves from the usual bondage to fear, there is the
gleam of a higher good, such as animated Phocion,
when in a moment of great temptation of his nation to
an injustice, he cried, Let justice be done though the
heavensfall!  I have observed that every discord in
music in one of its notes suggests and leads into the
next chord.
Thus, brothers, let us evolve our idea; let us carve
from the hard rude block given each, the God that
labors within us to be born. None dream of the pure
joy of life who do not obey their hearts. The true and
great have always felt this. The last lines written
by Britain's first poet, Chaucer, were
Truth to thine own heart
Thy soul shall save.
And it is not the truth and rule of his own work, but
of all,-the saying of Sir Philip Sidney, " look into




24             TIlE DIVINE WORKER.
thy heart and write."  Let then no discord or danger
appal you. Let the burning thought leap forth in
thought, word, act; though the Earth be removed and
the Heavens shudder, they shall all at last repeat it
forever. To hear this let us wait if need be a million
years,-heeding the word which bids us having done
all, to stand!
Friends enough there will be, warm with love and
sincerity, to bid you substitute for this entrance into
the sanctuary of the soul, the words of those who
have entered it in past times and returned with the
messages of the Holy Ghost abiding there. I know
how hard it is for man to come face to face with his
own deep soul; and how the edge of the Spirit's
sword seems less keen when we get it at one or more
removes-through Isaiah or Paul. But say to these,
O man, No! Thankful am I for the Holy Book, but
I also exist now as Paul then; the planets move yet;
life yet fills the world; oxygen and hydrogen go to
make water, and oxygen and nitrogen, air, now as then;
the sun shines, the grass grows to-day; God is as great
as ever: dear friends, by the grace of God I also am
that I am!
Never was that book written which can come so
close as your own soul. Oh the soul-the soul, where
man mingles so mysteriously with Infinite Being! Oh
vast spirit of man, what heaven so high or hell so
deep that thou hast not the key of it! Oh infinite
aspirations and endeavors,-clamorous they rise up:




THE DIVINE WORKER.             25
We have strong pinions. We will bear thee, Oh soul,
beyond a myriad worlds; the suns shall light us on our
way; the planets shall but rest us, each for a day; on
-on to the supersolar blaze streaming from the great
white throne itself!
I know that this living from within —always from
within-is hard; and I would not accuse those many
persons who have sold their true and high birthright;
for there are ever great interests to offer great prices:
but yet must we bear witness to the immutability of
spiritual laws. It would not be love to a child which
wished to lean too far out of a window, that the law of
gravitation which it might violate should be kept secret
for the sake of its ignorant inclination. Neither will
it be love to any one to ignore the law, that death of
soul sits ready to spring on one who goes outside of the
law written on that soul; that any compromise or
suppression of it for peace or comfort or custom is the
tragedy over which the angels weep. For God has
not bound the solar systems by a chain of laws and
appointed their paths for the* heavenly host, and left
lawless the souls of men-the only vagrants of the
Universe. But he has engraven their paths and laws
on these also, —on the "tablets of the heart." In
living by these is health and immortal youth and
strength; away from them every breath is deadly.
Every act of untruthfulness to yourselves is rebellion
against God. Every adherence to what is popular,
involving rejection of secretly-felt truth, is a repetition
1.%




26              THE DIVINE WORKER.
of the old cry, "Crucify him! Crucify him! Give us
Barabbas, the thief, instead."
Like as a star,
That maketh not haste,
That taketh not rest,
Let each be fulfilling
His God-given hest.
Is this not then the true lesson to be derived from
the first and last words of Jesus?  They fall on us
with many touching associations.  They bring us to
the most solemn of all scenes to the Christian,-the
Crucifixion. Up there on the cross is the greatest
lover of man. He seems as he is passing from earth
to forget all without; to forget the wild mob, the cruel
spear, the nails, the crown of thorns. Doubtless his
mind centers on this: have I accomplished his work?
His mind reverts to the day when, a child twelve years
old, he went down to Jerusalem with his parents, and
the idea of his mission dawned on him, as he said:
I must be about my Father's work!  And on from
that he traced his life —his toils, his teaching, his
griefs. Had he ever been untrue to his soul?  Iad
fear ever induced him  to sanction the sins and the
superstition of the people, whom he was sent to reform?
Oh how sweet and clear twas the response in that dear
soul:' No! thou hast overcome; there was no failure;
it is fulfilled.' And so he cried "It is finished!"
And he bowed his head and died. Hark! Iearest
not his voice saying, So live that it may be said of
thy work also, IT IS FINISHED!




THE SKEPTIC.
PaILIP findeth Nathaniel and saith unto -him: " We have found him
of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write-Jesus of
Nazareth the son of Joseph." And Nathaniel said unto him, "Can
there any good thing come out of Nazareth? " Philip saith unto him,
"Come and see." * * * * Jesus saw Nathaniel coming to him,
and saith of him, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is
no guile."
THERE is one class of persons in the World who have
never had justice done them. I mean the Skeptics.
When a person is spoken of as a skeptic, you can see a
thrill pass over those present, as if they dreampt of a
serpent; and a mournful silence follows every earnest
avowal of doubt. And yet it would seem, on investigation, that we have no positive reason for the traditional idea that causes this shudder. Each one of us
doubts many times a day; and it is by continually
testing things by doubts that we come to correct conclusions in practical affairs.  But where the same test
is carriedinto the high matters of the Soul, where it
would seem we should be most careful to carry it, we
give up the well-tried rule; and when a person is so
scrupulous as to entitle him to the name of skeptic, we




28                 THE SKEPTIC.
are shocked. Yet it is a state of mind that is usually
involved in temperament, and may be traced in the
blood to your descent from skeptical or credulous races
and families. "The shapings of our heavens," says
Charles Lamb, "are the modifications of our constitutions, and Mr. Greatheart or Mr. Feeblemind is born in
every one of us."
We see the differences every day. One man will
weep in secret that he cannot believe the Incarnation or the miracles; another will swallow all mysteries, and only regret he hasn't more. One poor
saint will grope through the world melancholy, doubting if he is regenerate, or if he pleases God; another
is perfectly assured that he is of the elect, that he
is God's darling, and gives himself no more trouble
about it.
Which of these is learning the lesson of this Universe best?  Which is the truly humble and surrendered soul? Let that be answered by our first deeper
glance at the circumstances of this our mysterious. life,
where we find ourselves as in mid-ocean, with neither
shore in sight-for who can more than dream of the
source of the spirit before it entered his body, or of the
land whither we are borne by each moment, as by a
wave?
The motto of the wise old Gascon, Montaigne, was,
Que sfais-je?  What know I for certain?  Modern
Philosophy, inquiring into every sphere of science,
finds that the uncertainty of our knowledge is the




THE SKEPTIC.                 29
pressing question. While man is but a bundle of
senses, he never doubts; Reason is then in its lowest
state. But he is presently weaned, as it were, from
Nature. And the first separation is the discovery that
the senses are at fault in some instances, and therefore
are not infallible. The child at play, putting a stick
in the water, is astonished to see it broken at the
point where it touches the water; but still more amazed
is he to find, on taking it out, that it is unbroken.
His senses have deceived him. This is his first
lesson in the Law of the Refraction of Light.
The Man, a child of larger growth, sees that the
Earth is flat; and, when he calls in the mountain,
hears that some one answers; but presently is astonished to find that he sees a small mast at sea before he
sees the hull; and on searching for the sound that
answered his call, discovers no one. Here are the first
intimations of Perspective, and of the Laws of Acoustics, which explain the Echo as no longer an invisible
nymph.  You see that real knowledge begins by
bringing the senses into doubt. Its progress is by a
perpetual engendering of doubts, by which one experimenter is led to test the conclusion of the one who preceded him, and perhaps find his position untrue.
What is certain? In natural science, men of equal
genius have theories of the stratification of the earth,
the earliest appearance of man, etc., which neutralize
each other. Historians are just as much at variance.
Ciesar's Wars are questioned as being much more in



80                TTHE SKEPTIC.
significant than was supposed, and much reduced in
number. Homer is no more the conceded author of the
Iliad; and it requires hundreds of learned volumes to
show that Orpheus ever existed.
If there was anything we might have fixed on as certain, it might have been once the existence of matter
and our own persons. But we are now in the midst of
a most heated controversy on this very subject. Lord
Brougham has said, "He who has never doubted that
he existed, may be sure that he has no aptness for
metaphysical inquiries." Whether our senses are to
be believed, and whether we should give more certainty
or solidityv to their objects, than we do to the dreams we
have-of which we are equally certain while dreaming?
And dreams are not wilder than many things that men
testify to having seen: men raised to life, ascending to
heaven; health produced by touching the bones of
saints; cities let down from the heavens. Pious, unquestionable men have united in scores to testify these
things. We are familiar with the sincerest testimonies
to miracles the most astounding in our own day, by
persons who have no more interest to deceive than the
evangelists. How far shall we believe men? VWhat
shall we believe? Our own senses?-they deceive us
often; if you believe them, you would think two stars
close together, which were millions of miles apart.
Our own Reason?  All of us have given up something we once thought reasonable-why so infallible
now? 




THE SKEPTIC.                31
Who then is the skeptic but he who holds the
balances with unflinching, though human hand; who
believes that much may be said on all sides, and will
not be rash or partial in allowing one to be heard to
exclusion of the rest?  I-e is indeed the true ideal man.
The finest elements of Nature, the clearest of flame,
the finest clay, the lightest air, seem to combine in his
composition.  As was declared of one in the old
Bible, he is as the eyes of the Lord, which run throughout the whole earth. He sees many sides of things
where men generally say, "Sit down, eat, and ask
no questions."  He is the man who comes into the
world to consider,,rarrv. For the word skeptic, however much we shudder at it, really means the lofty
character I have indicated. The Greek word from
which it is derived is o'XrrI,,c a, literally, Islade my
eyes to look steadily at something. And a skeptic is
one who would shade his eyes of all but the light
necessary for seeing-would divest himself of all selfinterest-would dismiss passion, and steadily examine
all that comes to demand his acquiescence. These are
the men in all time, who, by earnestly pressing established positions, detect their fallacies, if they have
them, make them more certain, if they have them not.
The laws of Gravity, Circulation of the Blood, Fluxions, Motions of the Earth, came by skeptics. And
those who are not skeptics, have been those who in
every age of the world have abused, scourged, burned,
crucified those who,by finding these new laws, brought




32                THE SKEPTIC.
the old order into doubt on which they had fastened
themselves as parasites.
But men ask, Are we not warned against Doubt in
the Scriptures? Did not Christ, as he reached forward
his hand to sinking Peter, cry, " 0 thou of little faith,
wherefore didst thou doubt?"  Did he not tell them
that if they should have faith and doubt not, they
should remove mountainsa  And there is a phrase
coined up by translators and Churches as a sort of
bullet for skeptics, taken from Paul, as is said,
"Whoso doubteth is damned."  But with regard to
the few phrases where Christ is said to have rebuked
doubt, it is to be observed that the word does not
refer to doubt as we mean it, but hesitation to do
what you are already certain of as right. The word
used is,Cto-q, and means that kind of doubt which
all will unite in reproving; that which stands still
before known duty. But Paul says, JIrhoso doubteth
is damned —if he eat.  (The word does not mean
damned, but is judged). The amount of this and
the whole of Rom. 14, is this: in regard to the
question asked him, whether Christians could eat anything without respect to Jewish prohibitions on certain
kinds of flesh, he says: Eat what you will. But if
you find eating certain things incites weaker brothers
to real excesses, you had best abstain. But if you
doubt whether you may not be doing wrong, you
commit a sin,-for doing anything you are not sure
is innocent. It is the same as Cicero's maxim, What




THE SKEPTIC.               33
a man doubteth to do, that he should shun.  On the
contrary, it was Paul who called Festus " most noble,"
in the very moment in which he had declared that
he doubted on all those things of which he heard
Paul preach!
And I wish now to call to your attention Christ's
treatment of a skeptic. For the little we know of
Nathaniel, which is that I have read you in the text,
indicates him as a skeptic. And there is something in
this brief history, and especially Christ's singular and
earnest commendation of him, which excites a desire
to know all we can of him.
Those among the Jews who were really religious, as
the studious and wise in all nations, were in the habit
of going alone to think and read. The hypocritical
loved, as we find elsewhere, to pray, standing in the
synagogues and street-corners. It is thus a matter of
interest that Nathaniel was found by Philip under a
fig-tree, a kind which abounded a short distance from
the city. It was there that an eye rested on him that
he knew not of; ofne that could never see this retired
meditation without deep interest. It was the eye of
Jesus. He also had gone from the busy haunts of
men, and doubtless had seen him, when his own spirit
was burdened with a world's Evangel, and he would
fain commune alone with his Father. So when Jesus
was asked by Nathaniel " Whence knowest thou me?"
he said, " When thou wast yet under the fig-tree,
before Philip called thee, I saw thee."'  X There
2




34                THE SKEPTIC.
is something here left to the imagination to supply.
For the bare fact of Christ's having seen him under
the fig-tree can scarcely account for the great emotion
with which he instantly exclaimed, Rabbi, thou art the
son of God, the King of Israel. Some have thought
that this arose from Christ's having supernaturally seen
him under the tree; and the disciples may have so
understood it. But, though I shall not oppose those
who find this to be the best element discoverable here,
I will only say that I think otherwise. I believe that
there was something known to Jesus and Nathaniel
alone, relative to his being in that seclusion. Men do
not ordinarily leave the city for solitude and thought.
Some earnest emotion there was which led this soul
away from the shallowness of the city and the hypocrisy of the Temple,-some knowledge of the Father
which seeth in secret it implied, which at once riveted
the attention of Jesus. We know not what earnest
prayer that the Messiah might come to redeem the
people went from Nathaniel's heart. We know not
what immortal tears were wept in that retreat over the
woes and sins of his nation and himself. But we do
know, that it-was in the mind of Jesus to compare
this favorably with the apathy and evil which he
everywhere saw: here, at least, was no hollow pretense, but real fervor and feeling. And now as lihe
was selecting his disciples, he probably sent Philip to
the place where he had seen this good man. For the
record says, Philip fideth Nathaniel, as if he had




THE SKEPTIC.               35
been seeking him. And when he saw Nathaniel corn
ing he said, Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is
nzo guile. As if he should have said: "There are
in the city thousands of Israelites by circumcision;
children of Abraham by the mint-tithe and common
process. Here is one indeed; not outwardly so much
as they who are in the Temple,-but, in reality, because within him is none of their hypocrisy or guile.'
And yet, this man of such earnestness and beautiful
simplicity, who was declared by Christ without guile,
was a skeptic. When Philip found him under the
tree he cried with entire confidence,-" We have found
him, of whom Moses in the Law, and the Prophets,
did write,-Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph's Son."  But
he finds no ready belief. The incredulous answer is,' Caml any good come ouzt of Nazareth?"  That city
had become proverbial for she degradation and sinfulness of its inhabitants; and Nathaniel had all the
reason to doubt which we should have if told that the
Christ had come a second time at Paris or Rome.
We must wait to see much evidence first: for we have
known from them much evil and little good.
Though incredulous, Nathaniel, as is every soul
worthy the name of skeptic, was ready to be convinced, was ready to go to any pains to find out the
truth. It is for the scoffer, the infidel to refuse to examine and believe the truth; not so the skeptic.  lIe
stands to try the case. And he alone is the true man who
will neither believe nor disbelieve without considering.




36                THE SKEPTIC.
So when Philip, in answer to his doubt, says,
Come and see, we find him immediately leaving his
retreat and following. When Jesus saw him coming
and said of him, Behold an Israelite indeed in whom
is no guile. " After this," one might say, " Nathaniel
should have believed."  But faith in the Mlessiah was
something more to such a man than the acceptance of
commendation. He could not yet give him the high
veneration and simple faith which alone were, he felt,
worthy his own soul and the true Christ. He asks
still, "Whence knowest thou me? "  But when Jesus
told him that he had judged him thus from the devotional scene under the fig-tree, and he felt that he
who professed to be the Messiah, was one who judged
men, not by seeming or usual standards, and that he
esteemed him a true Israelite not because of the Law
or Circumcision, but because he went alone and was
guileless, —he felt that the true man had come; and
Jesus and Nathaniel met as eternal friends,-Inet, by
divine necessity as atom meets atom; and he found in
Jesus a true friend, because, in the best sense, a tried
friend; and Jesus found in this doubting Israelite one
who never deserted him, who left all and followed him,
who was with the last who saw hinm on the Earth!
Rabbi! thou ART the Son of God, the King of'
Israel!  Ah, my brothers, the man who has never
gone through the tears and anxieties of doubt, who
has not been led to wander alone thoughtful and
inquiring, knows not the thrill of joy with whichl




THE SKEPTIC.               37
any high certainty bursts upon an earnest spirit! He
alone knows the real joy of home and fatherland who
has long been separated by land and sea, —who has
past through storms, perils, fears. Ye who have not
felt these know not the full magic that lies in the
sacred threshold of home.  All joy needs sorrow for
its background; all belief needs doubt.
I know when the word skeptic is mentioned, vague
images of dread arise as spectres in the mind. Men
think of such names as IRousseau, Voltaire, Ilume.
And in nothing have the vulgarity of the pulpit and
the ignorance of the crowd been more displayed, than in
holding up these as the types of skepticism. These
men were not skeptics; at least, that was not their
real and prominent trait. Rousseau had really a lack
of faith, —not alone in theological dogmas, but in
virtue.  His Philosophy is of man,-to  enjoy; of
woman,-to please. But the skeptic must have faith
in virtue and God; and his doubt is only of those
things wherein men say that God and Virtue inhere.
If he gives up the objects of reverence, he does not
give up reverence itself; and his Love endures, when
the temples in which it worshiped have one by one
crumbled, as investigation has gone on. Nathaniel
does not inquire, marlk you, Can there be any
good? —but, Can any good come out of Nazareth?  It is not the good he doubts, but only the
Nazareth.
And the skeptic's idea is not that of Voltaire. The




38                 THE SKEPTIC.
one is an anxious search for truth-the other, scoffing
and persiflage. hlow different was the spirit of Voltaire when he said, as some one spake of Jesus, "I
pray  you? let me never hear that man's name
again " —from the eagerness with which Nathaniel
obeyed the request of Philip, Come and see; and
when convinced was ready to leave all and follow him.
Nor is it the skepticism of Ilume which we commend. He was, however, far nobler than the rest, and
his brilliant culture and excellence of character we can
all admire. Yet Hume made doubt the object-to be
certain of nothing, the highest condition of mind. But
the Christian skeptic only accepts doubt as the means
whereby he is ever climbing from doubt to greater and
more beautiful certainty.
When will the world learn that it is only strong faith
which can make skeptics.  When men doubt, and
suffer and die for their doubt, as they have done over
and again, surely this would seem to require some
faith. There is more faith even in religious error,
than in the truest of inherited creeds. For none are so
little in peril of thinking erroneously, as those who
never think at all; and no one will ever be a religious
skeptic, who has not enough faith and interest in the
subject to search into it, and see that there are doubts
connected with it, as with everything under Heaven;
and who would be unwilling to spend his life, if need
be, in conflict with the hard ore, simply from the
higher value lie places on the pure gold it holds.




THE SKEPTIC.                39
After all, skepticism is only the garment of faith.
The great skeptic is always the great believer. And
he who has a faith which absorbs his nature, which
fills his mind and life, as the sap in the tree fills the
smallest veins of ten thousand leaves; he, I say, having this faith, can only speak it out. in a series of skepticisms and paradoxes. When one states the deepest
thing be feels on a subject in any company, there is
always an ominous silence, which hints that your faith
has clothed itself in perilous language.
After the timidity that is inspired in some minds
toward bravely encountering the highest questionings,
arising from the idea of its reprobation by scripture,
and by Christ; then from associating therewith certain
reprehensible characters; - spectre third rises in a
horror at certain names.  The Goddess Yoganidra,
whom the Orientalists believed in as the illusory and
beguiling power of Vishnu, in modern times has
worked in the power of names, which are made to
serve for facts, which they are not, and, except by
analysis, often misrepresent. Such names as Skeptic,
Heretic, Freethinker, Latitudinarian, have been hung
up as scarecrows in the Lord's vineyard. Many have
been frightened thereby from  the richest fruits of
thought and experience; even as some ancient tribes
knew nothing of fruits of the nut kind, or of shellfish, thinking them altogether as hard and solid as
their shells. But even these names, when divested of
cant meanings, contain rich kernels. What does Lati



40                THE SKEPTIC.
tudinarian mean? Why, one whose sentiments are
broad and liberal: who will not bind to any dogmas of
his own the salvation or excellence of others; and will
admit the possibility that he may omit seeing one side
of the sphere, while he looks at the other.
Skeptic means, as we have seen, one who considers;
and there is no more terrible satire on what the
Churches have given men to believe, than the fact that
the word skeptic has come to be almost synonymous
with infidel; that is, considering these dogmas is
the sure way to reject them i
The same may be said of the word heretic. It is
simply dalps, to choose; and signifies one whose own
reason and conscience, and not those of another man
or set of men, have decided what he shall or shall not
believe. And that this word meaning to choose, should
popularly mean an unbeliever, simply states with unconscious honesty, that men who have the choosing of
their own faith, that is heretics, are rarely known to
choose orthodoxy.
And yet Churches are found to blaspheme God in
his construction of the necessary functions of the
human mind, and to insult the noblest part of man, by
circulating tracts entitled, Confessions of a Skeptic,
Freethinker's Death-bed, and the like trash!
I will take you to the death-bed of the greatest freethinker who ever trod the earth. It is a hard, severe
one, and there is much agony on it. A terrible freethinker's end, you may say! It is only about eighteen




THE SKEPTIC.                41
centuries back. That death-bed is the cross-that freethinker is Christ. Never before had a spirit of doubt
been let loose with such resistless power on this earth.
His doubts led him to the doctors' feet at first, where
his parents found him inquiring of them in the Temple;
they led him to the wilderness, to the cold mountain
and the midnight air. IHe brought all the existing
order into doubt. Pharisee and Scribe, Temple-service
and Palace, Church and State bear witness that a fearful questioning of all things is at hand. Every drop of
his blood is paid for free thought. Every wound in his
body, as we see it there, pleads in silent eloquence that
men should be large and free, and unbelievers of all
untruth; that the soul should plant itself firmly on its
own instincts, and hesitate forever ere it sanction what
may be false, knowing that every falsehood injures
somewhere! Around that freethinker's death-bed, the
voices of the darkness, agony and death, cry out to
Christian souls, " Be freethinkers! If you must be so
with the only reward a crown of thorns, a cross your
last bed, a mother's powerless tears at your feet your
only sympathy, still, be thinkers and be free! "
What love of such a being as this is worthy either
of him or the grandeur of the Soul? Is the love of a
slave, who fears  Is a blind, unreasoning, and therefore undoubting, acceptance a fit worship to him who
died for spiritual liberation?
Thou brave young man! to whom  faculties are
given to be the germs of other faculties that shall




42                 THE SKEPTIC.
forever aspire to the Infinite Light, - cherish every
doubt that comes of simplicity and truth! As the
little polypus presently shows on it a dot, which draws
to itself strength until it expands into another organized animal: so the doubt that arises is only the germ
of some higher Truth that God would unlock from
thy faculties.  Cherish every doubt!  To quarrel with
these convulsive throes of the mind whereby new
truths enter, would be to censure the fiery seethings
at the heart of the world, which presently cast up
through the boiling sea some fair island firm to the
step of man. For there is nothing solid that was not
once fluid, nor stable which was not doubted and tried.
And Skepticism is the only path to a noble certainty.
" He (says Lord Bacon,) who will commence withl
certainties will end with doubts, but he who is
content to commence with doubts may arrive at certainties."
I know that I invite you to much unrest of mind,
to some sleepless nights perhaps. But who would
evade the Eternal Laws and say to the Spirit of Life,
"Pass on! animate the world, —kindle every star;
let the great Heart beat from ocean to ocean; let the
power fill full every trunk, branch, twig, leaf, vein of
Nature-but leave me alone to sleep! Let none of the
divine currents fill me, thrill me! "
For you can write the entire history and secret of
this Universe on the smallest leaf of the forest. It
is liotion and Iest. Rest, the sleep; motion, the




THE SKEPTIC.                43
dream: Rest, the Economic life; Motion, its Poetry.
Nature lies as the enchanted Princess in the fairy tale;
MIotion is the Prince who unchains her spell and
restores her scepter and palace.
And these forces of the World, Motion and Rest,
enter the spiritual Life as Doubt and Certainty: the
twin sisters of the inward world.
For there is nothing certain save through doubt of
its certainty; nothing doubtful except by the greater
certainty of that which brings it into doubt. And
men are ever climbing from certainty to doubt and on
to certainty again,-as men go to war for a more
stable peace.
Let us see that we do not too much love Rest or
Certainty!  The wisdom  that cometh from  above,
saith the Book, is first pure, then peaceable. The love
of the peace that certainty invites to, amid as much
evil and ignorance as are in this world, is the love of
death. So are we told that those who are in regions
too cold for life, desire nothing so much as to sleep,
and that sleep is death.
But let us on the other hand not love doubt as an
end, but as a means.
This unresting life of the Inquiring soul is not fair
and good in itself, but as prophecy of a higher Rest.
It is thus with what we call the beauty of motion.
AMotion is not the element of beauty,-but in the
motion we /have a succession of attitudes and rests.
The gazelle leaping over the crags presents a series of




44                 THIE SKEPTIC.
beautiful pauses. Of any one of them we should soon
weary; but each movement promises a position more
full of beauty than the last. And we know that the
grand and noble element in the doubts of a Human
Soul in its endeavors after the Highest, is the promise
it gives of the attainment of Rest after Rest, upon
Truth after Truth, —all to be won, not given!
There is beneath a great sea of darkness, but above,
a greater sea of Light flowing forever downward-allconquering Light!  And into every soul some ray
of the God enters, enough to warm us with love, to
purify, amidst all doubts. It is certain that enough is
known for a good life. Meantime that one little ray
that yet dispels not the gloom, prophesies to us the
perfect day, for the path of the Just is as the sun
which shineth brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.
0 my brothers, across these quicksands of doubt lies
the strong shore of Faith; let us press on! And to
thy darkest hour the vision of our earnest Christ shall
surely come. Lo! over the centuries his hand is outstretched, his lips move to-day: Courage, doubting
heart, whilst thou wast yet under' the fig-tree,th/ere in thy secret doubt and sorrow,-I saw thee:
struggle on,;f need be, a year, a thousand years:
only be without guile, and on this formless void of
Doubt the moving spirit shlall bring the Eden of a
perfect knowledge!




ORPII     EU S.
FOR the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it; and
the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.
THE story runs that Orpheus, having had his wife
Eurydice snatched from him by a serpent's bite, determined to seek her in the realms of Pluto. He
descended into Hades with the lyre which he had
received from Apollo, anl in the use of which he had
been so well instructed by the Muses, that, whilst he
played, the wild beasts gave over their prey and ferocity, and even the trees and rocks, uprooted from the
earth, followed him.
At the gates of Hades a note from his lyre served to
silence the three-headed dog Cerberus who guarded it,
and gain him admittance. Never before had a living
person entered the dread abodes of death,-never had
a shade that wandered there been released to life
again. But when Orpheus entered where Pluto sat
enthroned in the midst of the Judges, and saw his
beloved wife, sad at having lost him, he commenced a
strain upon his lyre. The music wrought its enchant



46                   ORPHEUS.
ment everywhere. The tortures of those undergoing
punishment were suspended. The stern Gods of Death
and Hell were softened, —and lie received permission
that Eurydice should return with him to life again.
This much of the fable suffices our purpose. Lord
Bacon has said that "all the ancient fables might be
familiarly illustrated, and brought down to the capacities of children."  And there can be no doubt that
such a spiritual sense is enfolded in the story or
Orpheus. iades with its monarch Pluto and its stern
judges, its guard Cerberus, stand for the Senses, the
earthly propensities; the Furies are Passions. The
fair Eurydice is a type of the Soul, which, though
heaven-born, and conscious of the life and light in
the world above the Senses, where dwells the pure
Ideal to which she is espoused, still sadly leads the
life of earth.
Where is the Orpheus, where the lyre, which, entering into the life of the senses, shall bind them by
the sweet music of the spirit; shall bid the passions
cease their clamor; shall enchain the senses, silence
the fierce Cerberus, and bid the soul come forth to the
higher life?
It is not all music that can cast this potent spell.
The birds had sang, the muses chanted, but they did
not lead forth Eurydice. It was only the lyre of her
Orpheus that could.  And if there were any Orpheus
who by his divine spell could beat down the sensuality,
the earthliness of HIuman Life, and bid the Soul rise




ORI'HEUS.                 47
to its full and Godlike stature, surely we would all
gladly unite to welcome him, to follow him, and feel
all that within us was inanimate and hard, follow as
the rocks and trees in the fable.
Christians, you know that Christianity always professed to be this power,-this divine music which
could overcome all. It was given by one who came
to seek and save that which was lost,-the soul that,
like Eurydice, wandered in the earthly abodes, not at
Unity with God. Thus it was a religion which aimed
at the solution of the great Problem  which in such
dreams as that I have quoted had always haunted men.
That is, Christianity claims to be exactly adapted to
the conditions, aspirations, necessities of the Iz7uman
Soul.
I need not dwell on the fact that the fair Eurydice
is in Hades; that the soul is born in the midst of the
senses, with all their allurements and sweetness. If a
man has not learned that from his consciousness, he
will not learn it from  words.  The first man, says
Paul, is of the Earth, earthy. The spiritual nature
is a slow growth,-the fill ear that at last grows on a
spire of grass. Those who maintain that human nature is pure in essence; that it is born for God and
Truth, as the wing for air, do not maintain that nothing is to be done to elevate it to its high standard.
The fact that the rightful heir to the throne is born,
does not certify that he has become king, and, having
subdued his enemies, is seated upon it. Nay, they are




48                   ORPHEUS.
perhaps more keenly alive than others to the reforms
that are needed to elevate the individual and the world
from their low sensual condition. Our faith in human
nature is a faith in its capacity; faith in its high
birthright to grandeur; a desire to make it a monarch
worthy of its throne.
Now, you will readily see that, if Christianity
should be effectual for liberating the soul thus, it would
be the grand certificate in its favor. No miracle ever
claimed for Christ, no resurrection or ascension, could
be such a triumph as a redeemed soul. The proof in
this case which would be given to Christianity would
be such as rain and sunlight give that they are the
best for grain; from the fact that under them the grain
grows, without them it dies. The only proper question
then to ask is, Has this Christianity been found to
meet the wants of man? Has it been the sunlight to
call forth faith, purity, hope, love, as the flowers of
Spring from his heart?  Have even its severe exactions, its yoke, its cross, its burden, been only to
nourish the seeds of life for their harvest; as the snow
and wind are co-workers with the farmer?
And that this is the fair test of every religious
system, whether it be Christianity or Mohammedanism,
I will not affirm from any one's authority, but from the
very conditions of our existence.  It is simply impossible that man can be worked upon by anything
which does not conform itseyf to his entire nature.
If anything is too distant or too small to impress itself




ORPHEUS.                  49
on his retina, he cannot see it. If any sound is too
faint or far to strike his tympanum, he cannot hear it.
So if anything would be believed, it must impress itself
on his mind as credible; if anything would be loved,
it must strike his heart as lovely. To say that a man
can love and believe by some magic process other than
the faculties to believe and love which God has given
him, is to stop a man's ear and give him  an eartrumpet.
Take a savage, for instance, and suppose yourself
about to instruct him  in anything. Suppose you
should say to him, London is a great city. You see
it is as unintelligible as Sanscrit to him; London has
no meaning, city has none. You cannot give him
ideas from without; but out of ideas, pre-existing in
his mind, you may evolve a combination of ideas
which will understand your phrase; you may, that is,
take the savage's idea of a house, or a collection of
them, as he has seen them  in some settlement of
wiogwams; you may associate these with his ideas of
great  number so far as he can gather them from seeing
the stars or a forest: then enlist his idea of grandeur,
drawn from a hill or other object, to represent the
enlargement of a hut into a mansion or palace,-and
you may combine these into an idea in the phrase,
London is a great city; bearing in mind that he is
limited to his experiences, and that the phrase would
then only mean his own 1hut enlarged, multiplied
inclefinitely and called London. Whence it legiti.
2*




50                  ORPHEUS.
mately follows that, if you would teach this or any
man intellectual truth, you must presume him to be an
intellectual being; and unless the terms are such as
convey ideas which awaken a response in his mind,
they are no more than the ancient word abracadabra,
a series of letters which were said to contain a magic
word which, if discovered, would heal diseases and
enrich the world.
And so religious truth or revelation can only be
addressed to a being who is religious; and to preach
to men who were depraved, would be as foolish as to
go with old St. Anthony and preach to the fishes; for
a depraved man could not understand such phrases as
Love, Purity, Faith, God. A man must llave some
knowledge of these ere he can understand them; a
Universe of love and, aspiration must 1have opened up
before him, before they could be more to him than the
language of birds. Light must enter the eye before it
can see anything.
You see then how fundamental is the position, that
Christianity is nothing if it is not adapted to the conditions and wants of our nature. Where it would
address our rational, moral and affectional nature, it
must be itself entirely reasonable, entirely moral,
supremely beautiful and lovely; or else, no matter if it
were our guardian angel, it would flit by us unperceived, until the sense to perceive angels were given.
And this inquiry is one for every man to make.
For the soul can never be so far immersed in the senses,




ORPHEUS.                     51
as that no memory of its higher life shall steal over it.
Eurydice was very sad, for she thought of Orpheus and
his lyre. And the faintest misgiving that ever overshadows the sinful man, is the channel through which
the heavenly music may descend.
ILike a child
In some strange garden left awhile alone,
I pace about the pathways of the world,
Plucking light hopes and joys from every stem,
With qualms of vague misgiving in my heart,
That payment at the last will be required,
Payment I cannot make, or guilt incurred,
And shame to be endured.
And now, my friends, the sad fact presses on us, and
I am sure I do not overstate it, that many, judging
from the history of Christianity, always one full of fire
and faggot, and the present condition of Christendom,
filled as it is with systematic wrong; and judging too
by a comparison in our every-day acquaintance of those
who profess to be Christians, with those who do notmany calm men, I say, judging from these things, have
concluded that Christianity is not calculated to develop
the soul to its height; many more are often troubled
with a flitting ghost of doubt, whether it, like the false
systems described by the prophet, may not be a bed
"too short to stretch one's self on, a covering too narrow to wrap one's self in;"-whether the august soul
does not demand something loftier, more rational, more
attractive.




52                   ORPHEUS.
And if I had only the history of Christianity and its
present fruits to judge from, I should add myself to this
constantly increasing class. I cannot say that it is
(alone) a credential to any man I meet, that he is a
member of any ecclesiastical organization. Not that I
believe him any worse; but the good and bad find their
level in Churches and out of them alike, so far as
statistics and observation bear any testimony. So the
question which was once asked Christ, assumes a far
graver importance now: Art tozu he that should come,
or do we look for another?
But it is rather unfortunate that men have been
much more engaged in investigating the history of the
rising of their own sects, than that of Christianity
itself. If we would all pause a moment, and, struck
by the slight influence of our gospel over the minds and
hearts of men now, instead of declaiming so much eloquent prophecy as to the advancement and future
conquests of Christ's kingdom, revert to the time of its
actual coming, we might find much to make us ponder;
and perhaps enough to suggest a doubt whether this
gospel, which has so little effect, is really the gospel
which was to meet the wants of human nature.
Looking back over the ages we see, as in dissolving
views, one scene gradually swell into another, the
strange dawning of the Christian Light on the world.
The first view is of a young man, his soul possessed by
a lofty idea, declaring it to the people. Do men heedlessly pass it by? Is there any sign of indifference?




ORPHEUS.                   53
No there is hate, and there is love-but nothing between
them, no indifference! In every case those who do
not feel the sense of a new element infused into their
lives, are those blinded by selfish interests. It is not
to those hearts whose treasure is locked in some old
system of Church or State, that we look in any age to
see faith gushing forth as water in the desert. But
what see we on the other hand? The common people
heard him gladly. The fishermen leave their nets to
follow him — albeit, he says, "The foxes have holes,
and the birds of the air have nests, but I have not where
to lay my head."  The woman of Samaria with all the
city come forth and say, " Sir, give us of this water that
we thirst no more, neither come hither to draw." The
multitude tread one upon another! One would say
they recognized in his teachings something that answered the thirst of their souls; that they did not find
the bed short, the covering too narrow!
What can account for this primitive enthusiasm?
To see a few men of humble origin and culture, having
their interests and relations in a worldly point of view,
their very selves overpowered by the transcendent love
of a single man; to whom they were not attracted by
the ties of kindred, but the simple greatness of his
religion: to see them following him, as sheep their
shepherd; afterward scattered by the wolf of peril, but
again, despite the manifest belief of many that the
whole matter was to end there, gathered together with
the first love rekindled, and earnestly assailing the




54                   ORPHEUS.
Pantheon which the best thought and culture of the
world had reared in many ages, endeavoring to replace
it with a structure far less grand or imposing to the
senses and prejudices!
But see again the wonderful success! Like that tree
of the East which grows to its height in the most barren wastes of the desert,-seeking not the region of
verdure, but growing by the intrinsic force of its germ;
-so we behold this germ of Christianity, dropped in
the most unfriendly and hard soil, bursting the small
jar of Judaism where it was planted, then like the
mustard-seed springing up over the graves where
men have buried their worldly wisdom and interests,
" the greatest'of all the trees of the earth."
To what my friends, can we ascribe this mysterious,
all-conquering faith? Is not our power compared with
this, as of those who beat the air? May we not ask
with the servants in the parable, " Sir, didst thou not
sow good seed in thy field, whence then hath it tares?"
And the reply comes to us most surely-An enemy
hath done this.
The enemy, first, of a worldly philosophy, discontented with the simplicity of the Christain Evangel, and wishing to engraft upon its flourishing
stem  the mystical opinions of the. Eastern heathen
teachers!
Another scene arises before us in contrast with the
achievement of the simple band of fishermen, whose
voice the sheep heard and knew, when they knew not




ORPHEUS.                  55
the voice of strangers,-whom  the common people
heard with gladness. The historians tell us of one of
the largest churches in the East, where on a bright
Sunday morning, large numbers of people had assembled to hear the usual Christian ministrations.
Their Lord had ascended into heaven nearly two centuries before, but his gracious words, instinct with
spirit and life, had come down to them from those who
had known the first disciples. The gospel in all its
simple purity had been in their church and with their
fathers who slept, and within them truly "a well of
water springing ul) into everlasting life."  But on this
morning painful rumors have penetrated the homes of
these worshipers, that some changes are to be made
in their usual rites. Discussions in which they had
not had time nor learning sufficient to participate, had
been in hot progress; the changes, it was reported,
were to flow from them. The eager crowd has assembled.  Soon the priest comes in and takes his
stand,-one excited glance is cast on the upturned sea
of faces. H1-e then proceeds to announce that it has
been decided by the powers of Church and State that
changes must be made in their forms of worship.
Hereafter they are to worship Jesus of Nazareth
equally with the Father of Heaven and earth; they
are to believe in a Trinity,-which word was that
moment, for the first time publicly uttered; that this
Trinity means that Father, Son and Holy Ghost must
be worshiped alike,-three in one, and one in Three.




56                  OurrIPHEUS.
And whoso doubts this is placed under the dread
anathema of the church.
At hearing this, the congregation arise to their feet
in great indignation and excitement. "It is idolatry,"
cry some; " See written up there, hLear, 0 Israel, the
Lord your God, Jehovah is ONE God!"  And the
large proportion of the vast assembly left the church;
the rest remained, thunderstruck and trembling.
And here was the point where the power of Christianity began its wane. Its simplicity and purity gave
way to mystical rites, and a language unintelligible to
the people. Many a poor man left the pompous and
costly rites of the churches, and the sermon about
Logos and Trinity and Vicarious Atonement, which
were the stones offered those who asked for bread, and
wandered sadly alone to think of what joy those had
who sat at his feet on the Olive mount, or heard him
say in full rapture with the simplicity of the truth,
"I thank thee, 0 Father, that tlhou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them
unto babes."7
Men whom fire and sword had not affrighted, who
had followed Christ when the great and selfish interests of the world were arrayed against his Church,
taking up the burden of St. Paul who cried, " Nay, in
all these things we are more than conquerors through
him that loved us," —such men as these were sent
forth affrighted by a single word! They could suffer,
but were afilaid to be false to themselves and to God;




ORPHEUS.                  57
no! they would not worship iTAree in One more than
they would a square circle!  Never up to that time
had the church used force on the people. So great
was the privilege and so dear, that the force was on
the side of the enemies of the Church to keep them
from  being Christians. But coeval with the date of
the mystic dogmas is the history of the sword in the
church. A great painter before that time-had painted
an ideal image of Theology, as a beautiful, merciful
virgin, crowned witlh the white rose; but now blood
reddens the white roses, and they fall, leaving nothing
but harsh thorns to crown Theology. Every tie was
sundered between the people and that church they had
loved so well to call their "dear Mother."  The bed
was too short,-the covering too narrow.
A  brief while suffices for another view to arise.
We have here a large and costly temple, full of ceremonies; Bishops, Priests, Cardinals clad in strange
and fantastic garbs; no less strange doctrines; the
worship of angels, and saints, and images; the Madonna and child are more prominent than anything
else. Preaching and reading of the sacred records
have given way to genuflexions, and crossings, and holy
water. Alas  compare this with Jesus teaching on
the sea of Galilee! IHow far have we come from
that? Is this what the common people would gladly
hear?-this what is adapted to their necessities? No,
my friends!  It took a terrible power, the power of
fire and faggot, now and forever, to retain it. Ask
3




58.                 ORPHEUS.
why the numerous and fearful paintings of Hell and
its torments fill so much larger a space in their
churches than any others? It is because it was found
that the people did not LOVE the Church; so adhesion
thereto must be secured by terror and threats. But
Jesus did not threaten. Never! When his disciples
would have called down fire from  heaven on the
unbelieving Samaritans, he rebuked them and said,
Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of; for
the son of man is not come to destroy men's lives
but'to save them. IIow his voice must have sounded
in the ears of the persecuted dissenters, full of the
depth of prophecy: "I am  the good shepherd, and
know my sheep, and am  known of mine. And a
stranger will they not follow, for they know not tlie
voice of strangers."
And to-day that church stands before us claiming to
be the true Church. I know that it is customary very
hastily to denounce it. But let us pause a moment:
Because the history of this church has been one of
persecution and intolerance, is really not an argument
against the theory on which it is founded. All
other churches have been guilty of bigotry and intolerance, and if they had been as old as the Catholic
Church, they would have shed blood too. The world
was undeveloped, and why should the church not be?'It would prove just as easily that the world is God's
blunder, because such things took place in it, as that
this church is necessarily false on that account.




ORPIIEUS.                  59
It will not do to despise the claims of the Catholic
Church. For we have seen in our own day men of
high genius and superior cultivation-such men as
[Newman, Pusey, Brownson, Froude-seekingr rest for
themselves in that church; laying down all the dearest
interests and associations of life, and the highest positions in their respective churches, to become obscure
worshipers in the Romish  Church.  Now  I, for
one, believe in the excellence and sincerity of these
men; seeing no reason to doubt them.
This much is certain, 1No thinking man ever began
to examine the grounds of his faith who did not ficnd
much that was of doubtful strength therein. And,
the more it be investigated, the more does it come to
resemble the question asked Simonides by Iiero, VAto,
or what is God?  We are told that the philosopher
asked a day to consider, and at the end of that, another,
and at the end of every day, another; the difficulty increasing in exact proportion to the thought bestowed
upon it. A  fool can ask more questions of every
church on earth than its wisest men can answer in a
life-time. And in Protestantism every man has these
questions urged upon him personally.
What wonder if one, having searched into these things,
and ftund that though he may escape the more obvious
difficulties, may solve the nearest problems, he thereby
only enters into the region of new ones; as in the progress of our planet some stars set behind us only that
others may rise: what wonder, I say, if one shall find




60                   ORPHEUS.
this endless search painful, and shall long for some
rest for the weary and perplexed brain. " Right bravely,
O my brothers, did I start with you. I had found what
God was not-that he was not Triune, nor wrathful,
nor capricious; but what God is, I know as little as
ever. And here is the vast problem of evil in the world
unsolved.  I must rest. The way is hard and bleak."
Then comes the voice of the Church-tender, affectionate:
Joy of the desolate, light of the straying,
Hope when all others fail, fadeless and pure.
Think no more, O man, of these vast things. Thou
canst not know them.  Thou wilt only vex thy heart,
and waste thy energies. God has established a Churchl
to study deeply things for which thy daily cares allow
no time; trust them to us and be it enough to do thy
duty. Already thou art perplexed and sad-come!
rest thy heart on the breast of her who is thy Holy
Mother!
But no! the soul cannot rest there!  The Holy
Mother finds no children more perilous than her new
converts; so fearfully consistent and childlike are they.
In a moment of weariness or doubt they may flee
thither; but a soul which has once been addressed by
the Eternal Best can never rest long. So have I seen
a bird beaten from its flight by some sudden storm and
wind; but when it has past over, the wing again
strikes the air and it passes on into the blue heaven.




ORPHEUS.                   61
A rosary, a crucifix, a wafer, even if it be the body of
Christ, cannot satisfy an immortal spirit.  The bed
is too short for one to stretch himself on it; the covering
too narrow for one to wrap himself in it.
But when the spirit has decided thus-decided that
she cannot rest on the venerable couch whereon the
Holy Mother soothes her children, think not her pinion
will stay at any height short of the summits bathed in
the pure ether of her own Ideal. Thenceforth she has
become sophisticated, and detects the least remnant of
externalism and cant that linger or lurk in any church
which opens its arms. To every creed which claims
the devotion of the soul it cannot satisfy, untwining if
need be the closest arms of affection, "  No," she cries,
"I am not my own: Thou, God, hast made me for
Thyself, I cannot rest but in Thee! Sound thy voice,
O Truth-spirit, I follow thee; I am determined to press
endlessly to thee!"
Stand forth! cries the now insatiate questioner to
the churches; and of each as it appears the Spirit ever
asketh: Is your bed fit for the awful majesty of the
human soul? Does it allow for its infinite expansion?
Does it remember that a soul is never at unity with itself unless it grows unceasipngly-wiser in each moment
than it was the past moment? Is the bed long enough
for a man to stretch himself on it? Does it anticipate
the tremendous possibilities of excellence which beckon
ns —heights overleaping heights forever; to which,
though they be spiritual air-castles, the soul can never




62                   ORPNoHEUS.
cease to aspire without losing its inherent nobility,
and having its white wings trail in the dust, its garlands wilted?
Again she saith to the creed, Stand forth! Is thy
bed long enough for one to stretch thereon his mysterious self?  iRemember, it is not whether it suited the
soul and stature of Augustine, or Luther, or Wesley, or
Fox, or Calvin, or Channing: can it satisfy every soul
that can be born? Away with the old faith which
would mould every spirit to one rule of development;
squaring all by cant phrases, such as justification, adoption, sanctification.  Every soul must have its own
regeneration-one adapted to its special temperament.
Rules about this, thank God, have always been ropes
of sand. AMore generous is the text of the old Persian
Bible, "The paths to God are as numberless as the
breathings of created beings."  Can every man, then,
find your bed long enough for himself; find his individual insight and force faithfully and fully represented?
Itf otherwise, your creed is as the fabled bed of Procrustes, to suit which the limbs were to be drawn out
by cords or lopped off, as was demanded.
Or is your bed a bed of roses, without one leaf
doubled, lest the slumber of some oblivious soul should
be roughened? Is it a series of assertions which interest me not; of which you know nothing, save that
men have always said so; assertions which do not fill
me with tremendous conviction and joy, causing my




ORPHEUS.                    63
spirit to leap forth as a sword friom  its sheath, athirst
for victory on life's battle-plain?
Know, O man, that the soul is a god, and ever says
to all short of God, There shall be none other before
me!  Nothing partial and low shall mix her pure
wrine, or temper her divine intoxication! Her divine
right it is to bring all institutions and creeds to her bar.
For they clhange and pass away with the growing world,
but the soul remains and shall not pass away!
And from this faith we shall not be driven by any
weariness; for to answer this, the subjects are the
highest and most joyful which ever enlisted human
powers. Nor by any ill success in the search for truth
in its highest forms: wonderful indeed if the' soul did
not come short of its aim-the aim is so high.  See the
enormous design of religion! It is to search for the
ways of God to man; it is to seek for the secret of rapture so divine, that man shall rartake of angel's food:
it is to know God himself! If the soul were less grand,
it would have less disappointment; if its mark were
low, it might be reached.  But no; rather let us be
ever vainly striving, than be content withl what is
partial; for if you will be content with the mnediocae,
that you shall get-but nothing more.
Defeat and failure then are not signs of weakness,
but of strength, of nobleness; they teach us not to
despair, but spur us to greater effort. For the soul of
mnan must forever rise up toward that grand stature
wllich the heaven of stars hint as they silently await the




:64                   ORPHEUS.
time when they shall crown him King; it must rise to
a Beauty that shall find the beautiful Nature his handmaiden; and, until he reaches this, it must be written
of all the creeds that he may adopt for a moment; of all
the churches wherein he may kneel for orison or vesper;
of all bhut God mirrored in his universe, mirrored still
more in the pure heart, The bed is shorter than that
lie may stretch himself on it; and the covering narrower
than that he can wrap himself in it.




THE MINISTER,
TsEa Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.
IT is related of one of the Fathers of the Desert,
that, on one occasion, when he sat meditating on his
Lord, in devotion to whom hle had separated himself
from the world, and praying that he might have some
sign that his devotions were accepted, one side of his
cell seemed covered with a white haze. As he gazed,
a form appeared, and, glancing at the face, he saw that
it was Christ, dimly seen indeed, but with the face and
attitude which accorded with the traditions of the
Church.  The figure was indistinct, and sometimes
he doubted if it was there; then again it would glow a
little. His heart filled with joy: he fell on the floor
before the vision. " O, my Lord!" he cried, "for some
manifestation of whom I have so longed, dost thou then
come at last to bless me, ere I depart?"  As lie gazed
up, half-blinded by tears, at the vision, the bells of a
neighboring convent sent forth their evening call for
alms. It was at that time, that the needy came to the
convent-gate, to receive what Charity would distribute.
The good Father iad never failed to be there with his
( 65)




66                 THE MINISTER.
mite for the needy, llis word of comfort, his oil and
wine, for the body, or the soul. The afflicted and poor
had learned to look for his coming with joy. But now,
he thought, how can I go and leave this, the one
heavenly vision of my lif'etime! It will surely fade,
for the way is long. iNo, I will stay, and worship my
Lord; I will not go, and slight his manifestation of
h iniself.
But when lie had decided thus, his heart was not at
ease. H1e could not keep out of his thoughts iimagres
of the sad eyes, that would await his usual coming
with eagerness; of chilled firesides, and children crying for bread. IIe could noo longer stand it; but, hastening on account of his delay, he got together what lie
could spare of his little store, and kneeling before the
vision, bade it farewell, and went forth weeping into
the evening, knowing he should not see it again.
At the convent gate, he found a poor brother of
Christ's, of whomn  he had said: "If ye do it to hiom,
ye do it to me, whether it be good or evil;" and he relieved his want; and there were many women with
little children, who kissed, with tears, his bountiful
hand.
When he returned, it was night. The vision was
not seen, indeed; but, as he was about to strike a light,
his cell was filled with a celestial brightness, and out
there stood the form, no longer dim, but clear as the
sun; no longer did the face and form assume the attitude of church pictures,, but the tender smile, and




THE MINISTER.               c67
divine eye, were bent on him; and as he fell there,
nearly paralyzed, before the stupendous vision, the
divine hand lifted him up, and a voice of celestial
music said: "Iladst thou not gone, I had gone, indeed!"
It has seemed to me, that the good Father's experiences, which have taken this sensuous form, represent
the truth of to-day. In all Christendom, there appears,
not without some brightness, a face and person whom
men and churches worship as Christ. It stands there,
in the twilight of manifold creeds and sermons. And
churches and men think, that their sole duty is to
stand before that dim  form and face, which are not
glowing yet into expression, and never leave that. A
thousand clear bells may ring on around them, calling
tlhein to the gates of the world, where practical duties
are clamorous for accomplishment.  The poor cry 
" We are chilled and starving;"' the laborers cry:
"Our brains are growing to wood and stone; we pass
through God's fair world, and know not the message of
even a blade of grass;" the enslaved cry: "0 God!
we have no brothers, nor sisters, nor fathers, nor
mothers, nor children, nor selves. Might we only
die!"  These all crowd at the alms-gate.  HIark! it
seems the convent bells ring out very loudly to-day!
But how still within are the Christians, with and
without surplices; sitting in sanctity before their historical Christ-image! Strange that they should be
content to know that lie smiled tenderly upon Mary




68                THE MINISTER.
Magdalen, and wept for Lazarus, and should not wish
to see his tear and smile Capon themn; and the face does
not glow distinctly enough for that. They do not appear to hear the bells! They sit occupied in speaking
about their image, speculating  on its personality;
whether it is the very substance of its original or not;
whether this dim form they see has a soul, or is it a
spiritual body; while for any special expression on its
face, or word it utters, the Christ-figure, which Christendom sees as dimly as the anchorite saw, might as
well be dead. Indeed some cdo laugh and say there
is nothing but an illusion.
O, if they would only heed the bells which call them
to the gates! If they would only heed them as, with
deepening tones, their voices call: Christians! if ye
would be like him who came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister, arise and go hence! No longer let
him  minister to you, as a means of wealth, and as a
tree fruitful of bishopricks,'and ingenious speculations,
nor as a subject of literary leisure; but go forth and
minister to the needy and desolate. If ye remain when
the bells call to earnest duties, then will he go indeed
and entirely: once for all, and again, he sends you
forth, saying: Go ye into all the world.
0, what bright gleams of spiritual light would flash
down amidst such labors! And how, when returning
into our church altars from such practical employ, the
before dim form and face of the historical and traditional Christ, would glow with life, and a tenderness




THE MINISTER.                 69
beam on the super-sensual eye, and his voice speak in
the hearts of us, with the ancient thunder which so
roused the long slumbering echoes of Palestine!
We appear to have forgotten the second coming of
Christ, as a prophesy yet unfulfilled; that he must first
come as historical and personal, and afterward in the
complete success of every principle which he ever
uttered.  We think him dead.  But a little entering
into those principles of justice, truth, love, and freedom, and some effort toward their practical adoption in
the world, will cause the living Christ to flame forth
before you.
Nor times shall lack when, while the work it plies,
Unsummoned powers the blinding film shall part,
And, scarce by happy tears made dim, the eyes
In recognition start! 
He said, "I came not to be ministered unto but
to minister."  It is the Key to that life, and, alas,
it is to be feared, to that alone.  The ministry of
self assailed him as strongly as others.  "All these,"
said Selfishness, "will I give thee if thou wilt worship  me,"-as he gazed on kingdoms and realms
which his superior powers could so easily grasp.
But he came not to be ministered unto; and so had
no crown but of thorns. The ministry of seyf came
in the form of the wealthy, who, we are told, pressed
him  to go with them; but he came to minister to
the poor, so he could only say, " The foxes lhave
*A. H. Clough.




70                THE MINISTER.
holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the
son of man hath not where to lay his head."  When
he was in the temple, they wished to minister to him
if he would forego his own ministry. But when they
gave him the book of Esaias, he read, " The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me
to preach tile gospel to the poor; he hath sent me
to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to
the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to
set at liberty those who are bruised, to preach the
acceptable Year of the Lord." TIe then announced
that he was come to work this ministry for all nations.
Then were they all filled with wrath and thrust him
from the synagogue, and carried him to the hill-top
in order to cast him headlong. The youth escaped:
yet still, did he continue that life which, whilst it
sought no ministry from others, neglected nothing
that would bring joy to any human heart.  Nrone
were too poor for relief, none so obscure, but he would
find them, none so degraded but he would elevate
them. His life was perfect because it was full to the
requirement of his age, and was adequate to every
emergency. And such a life, whenever lived, becomes
as much a component part of the religious world, as
any element becomes part of the physical or intellectual world. What becomes of life without oxygen?
What becomes of philosophy without Plato; or of
poetry without Homer or ShaLspere? What is Religion without him who came not to be ministered




TH E MINISTER.               71
unto, but to minister?  Say what philosophy may,
we may only consent that religion shall become
abstract and theoretic, when evil has become abstract.  At present, it is fearfully concrete; and we
need workers of a strength terrible as the strength
of wrong; and we need that in Christ such men
should see that such strength is the possibility of
man, and so work with him, and like him  "overcolne the world."
It is at the first view  sad, that in this world
whereinto we are born, so many things teach man,
that he has come hither to be ministered unto; so
few that he has come to be himself ministrant. Love
meets him at the beginning, and weeps over him
at the end of life. IIe becomes dimly conscious even
in childhood that lie has been born heir to the vast
estate of parental affection. Ile grows to have his
boyish wants provided without thought on his part,
and all his foibles tolerated. IIe grows to find, as
a young man, that millions of money and contrivances have been employed for centuries to make
royal roads to learning for him, and to surround him
with preventives to ennui, before inner resources
are fully opened, by music and dancing, and agreeable romances, adapted to the hey day of his blood.
Every age unlocks a new world of charms.  Man
finds hiinself born into a planet glittering with spires,
domes, towers; every zone loads him  with spices,
fruits, or treasures. " For thee (cries a Poet) Nlaples,




72'THE MINISTER.
Florence and Venice, for thee, the Mediterranean,
the sunny Adriatic; for thee both Indies smile; for
thee the hospitable North opens its heated palaces
under the polar circle; for thee roads have been cut
in every direction across the land, and fleets of floating palaces with every security for strength, and
provision for luxury, swim, by sail, and by steam,
through all the waters of this world.s
It were wonderful, perhaps, if a man did not assume, as granted, that the end of existence on earth
was to be ministered unto. And indeed, the world
has been an apt scholar to learn this, if this be the
real lesson of things.  For it is not hard to say,
what this age represents. You know that all ages
are representative. We speak, for example, of the
ages of Pericles and Elizabeth, as ages of letters; the
middle ages, as ages of feudalism and chivalry; and
so of others.  This is the age of self-seeking. If a
dead man were to rise from his grave, it would not
startle us more than a real hero, if he should appear;
I mean a hero such as Christ, or even Socrates, or Luther,-a man who should care so little about being
ministered to, that he should be willing to be killed;
and who should be such a faithful minister in telling
others what is right and true, that they sho-uld kill
him. This Society has often done, and will do now, if
tempted by any blunt Truth-teller; for though Society
* Emerson.




TIIE MINISTER.               73
loves dearly to be ministered unto, yet it as dearly
loves to prescribe the way in which it shall be done.
And it is because the Spirit of Society in this age
is Sefish; because our very intellects are being coined
into money, our consciences becoming rolls of banknotes, our souls subject to climate in their moral
perceptions, which, as mercury in so many animated
thermometers, rise or fall as we go north, or come
south: 0, it is for this that the text gathers a
startling  emphasis for our ears to-day; and let it
ring on in thunder in every heart, where one desire
may linger to be like Christ, The son of man came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister!
And you need not think, any one of you, that you
can evade the responsibilities of the age, or its demands. So it is, and must forever be, that each one
must stand for so much weal or woe to his race. Think
now, each one, if you do not know of some heart's
joy which is resting on you,-which at your bidding,
or failure, would become anguish.  And of that one
whose good is at your mercy, the same may be said:
lie, also, bears the happiness of others, it may be,
many others, and these in their turn. So, with every
man, there is a thread running out through other
hearts, multiplied into a thousand influences. It is
as true of the human, as of the physical world, that
each movement must change so much the center of
gravity of the Universe; and every step shake worlds.
The demand of every age, most of all of this age, is.R*




74                THE MINISTER.
for men clear-headed enough to see their posts of duty
in this world, and stout-hearted enough to stand by
them. It is required that they shall be men of a large
faith and equal insight into the "eternal fitness of
things," from the highest point of view possible to the
time; and that when the Eternal Idea has addressed
them in their best thought, they shall hold to that
thought, as to a proper master, and follow its behests
above all others; above the inducements of vast majorities. All men of success owe it to a grander servitude,
and cry in the moment of triumph, Not unto us, O
Lord, not unto us. They work better than they know;
and the rough marble now radiant with beauty, surprises most of all him, who, by slight erasures through
months, had forgotten the whole in the necessity of
mediate efforts.
Brothers, the world seems perishing with blunders!
On one side we see a host of men who have adopted
some little fragment of a truth, itself fragmentary, and
because, holding it close to their eyes, it shuts out the
world and sky, imagining that it is the earth and
heavens-see them pushing it hotly to all extremes.
Golden riches, and long periods of more golden moments, and the great, strong sinews of the body, and
manifold fibers of the human brain and heart, are
wasted and crushed beneath every contemptible little
isnz that drives its car with gay brass-band and paint,
along the pathways of the world; energies which,




THE MINISTER.               T7
gathered on a few simple principles, as demonstrable
as that one and one are two, would redeem the world!
It is too bad. I sometimes think the extremists are
right in saying, that Ignorance should be punished.
Napoleon said of an action, " It is worse than a crime,'tis a blunder." And my brothers, in a world where
so many joys and griefs depend on the action of the
least of men; a life where not one scene of the heavens
or earth fails faithfhlly to warn us of the eternal destinies of all things, and the vast responsibility of lifeI say that, in such a world, no man can be ignorant,
without deep crime resting somewhere; oftenest, I believe, resting on the State, whose duty, in the highest
sense, it is,' to plant a school-house by every fountain,
and make the one as free as the other.'
But while ignorant fanaticism, or a zeal without
knowledge, holds its sway on one side, on the other we
find the antithetical crime, a knowledge without zeal,
which is worse; for knowledge chilled by cowardice,
narrows at last into mere cunning or bargain-tact.
Numberless souls are waning, yet think they have
virtue; alas, they do not see that they have not bravely
gone up to the standard of virtue, but have dragged that
standard down to their own dust! Never was the old
Benthamism, the " doctrine'of selfishness," advanced
more boldly than to-day, even while the shriek wherewith it was met by the common conscience, has scarcely died from our ears. Enough men secretly doubt
whether men are capable of any disinterested action.




i6                TIlE MINISTER.
Every nation on earth is at this moment allowing large
interests, mere interests, to settle questions so sacred
that the principles which they involve, stand as the
very Throne of God; and shall stand when the interests which supersede them shall have turned to the
dust, whence they have wormed their way up into the
sanctuary of man's heart, and blighted vast harvests of
souls which God would have garnered!
In the Church the greatest"divines declare they cannot reach men but by appealing to their fears; and so
goodness and spirituality are recommended as good
speculations. The trail of the serpent is in the so-called
highest interests of man; the animal ascends the throne,
and the spiritual turns office-seeker under it.
The sad fact draws near the fountain of tears. Backward! backward! into the old days of which it is
written, " this was the reign of fish;" "' this of reptile;"- "this of mammal;" and shall it needs be that
a higher race must write of ours, " this was the reign
of man a" Selfishness is the legitimate efflux of the
animal nature, and God will not have the world ruled
by the animal. The creative power is not spent!
And the Christian need not conceal his faith and
hope that such a new race has been begun, and shall
increase in numbers and power, until it overrules the
animal, whether it be on two or four feet. A race of
those who see something in this universe beyond an infinite trough or larder; something beyond a universal
wardrobe, or banking-house, or endless dancing-saloon;




THE MINISTER.               77
men who have bread to eat that the animal knows not
of; whose treasures are incorruptible. Lo! a new race,
possible if not historical, conceived every one of the
Spirit, born of a Virgin, suffering under Pilate, dead
and buried, ascended into the heaven of self-forgetfulness. Need I say, that the Adam from whom the new
race hath sprung, is he who called himself the Son of
Man-the child of our real manhood-who, in a selfseeking age, and to all self-ministering men, said:
"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but
to minister."
My fellow-man! look into this world, look into
thine own heart, and tell me if there is not something
new and startling in this rumor of the advent of a man,
who preferred ministering to others to being ministered
unto? I do not wonder, that the old Christians, when
they read the record of his ministry; of his constant
self-renunciation and self-forgetfulness; of his tenderness with Mary and Martha, Judas and Peter, and the
woman taken in adultery; of that bountiful nature,
which, as some sweet south wind of spring unbinds the
frozen streams, and causes nature to smile again in
flowers, made the human heart gush again with joys long
sunken, and warmed into fragrant life all of virtue or
beauty which the human heart contained;-I marvel
not, I say, that the ancient fathers, as they read, and
heard, and conversed of these things in the life of
Jesus, called him the Logos, or Divine Word, the traditional emanation of the Deity, which was said to




78                THE MINISTER.
have created the world. Surely there is every reason
to see in him the same spirit which created this world.
I know of no two things more alike than the Spirit of
Christ and that of Nature; for Nature also comes to
minister to us. See the sweet circle of charities; how
the revolving seasons fill man's horn of plenty; how
beauty flames in on every sense; how pearls, and gems,
and metals enrich man! And to the discerning eye,
Christ is in this charmed circle; he also bears the fruits
of all life's seasons, from early childhood to maturity;
he too fills the higher senses by the beauty, the music,
the fragrance, the sweetness, the solidity of his life;
and if all the pearls, and gems, and gold were fused into
one, who will say that it would weigh beside the pearl
of price, Purity, which he brought us? Truly," without him was not anything made, that was made."
And shall not we also, my fellow-men, join in with
this charmed circle of Christ and Nature; feeling, as
thus alone we can feel, the currents of the divine life?
I do not believe that the Church has yet dreamed of
the vitality and life which await her, when the celestial
springs of Charity shall have been unsealed in her borders-when it shall have surrendered itself a channel
for that love which overcometh the world. The genius
hovers above us, but cannot fully descend into our communion, till Christ, the man, is more fully realized
there; till to the cry of the poor, the weak, the
wronged, the Church, with no hesitant voice, responds:
In  God's name, we will save you!  IHang your




THE MINISTER.                    79
whole weight upon us; ye shall not sink, but we sinkl
with you! Then may we expect it when other virtues
and sins are preached and rebuked; when the questions
asked  are not, Does he go to church? Does he say
his prayers?-but, Do the blessings of those who were
ready to perish fall upon him w? when, instead of creeds
and confessions, hung upon the walls, graven on the
chiild's heart, shall be the noble creed of Manzoni:
All made in the likeness of the One,
All children of one ransom,
In whatever hour, in whatever part of the soil,
We draw this vital air,
We are brothers; we must be bound by one compact:
Accursed he who infringes it;
Who raises himself upon the weak who weep;
Who saddens an immortal spirit I




THE PENITENT.
THEN Judas, who had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of
silver to the chief priests and elders, saying: "I have sinned in that
I have betrayed the innocent blood." And they said: "What is that
to us? See thou to that." And he cast down the pieces of silver
in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
To EVERY human consciousness is opened a sense of
the two vast possibilities of our existence-the higher
and lower-which we commonly term good and evilHeaven and Hell.  These are Nadir and Zenith of the
spiritual world.  And all histories, whether of men or
nations, may be classified from  this inward and universal growth of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil; for as the Tree of Life has bloomed into our
human world, so has Evil flourished, and borne to all
agoes the harvest of wrong.
But these do not concern us very much, except as
they appear in the private heart, and personal life.
These white and black spirits seem to have their incarnations in our midst.  You know  that it is an
ancient idea, that men come into the world with constitutional tendencies to certain things, to which they




THE PENITENT.                81
seem bound, as representatives to their constituencies.
In the moral world, there would appear to be larger
generalizations. And while we cannot classify men
into the good and bad-no one being either altogether
good, or altogether evil-yet it would seem, that, on
one hand, men may so strive upward, as to be caught up
by some superior force, which overcomes the earthward
gravitation; and, alas! it cannot be denied, on the
other, " that as there is an inspiration of holy love, so
there is an inspiration of hatred or frantic pleasure,
with which men surrender themselves to the impulses
of destructiveness; and when the popular language
speaks of possessions of Satan, of incarnate devils,
there lies at the bottom of this the grave truth, that
men, by continued sinning, may pass the ordinary
limit between human and diabolic depravity, and lay
open in themselves a deep abyss of hatred, which, without any mixture of self-interest, finds its gratification
in devastation and woe."`
These thoughts press upon us, as, from the swarming
millions of the generations, emerge two figures; one
bearing on his face the light of God-the other, this
evil shadow, both necessarily associated; and the character of each brought out into fullest relief by the inevitable contrast. There they stand, face to face,
Judas and Christ.
There was a painter, who, walking the streets of
Florence, saw a child so lovely, so beautiful a picture
* Muller,
4




82                TIlE PENITENT.
of purity and heaven, that he asked and obtained permission to paint its portrait. He placed it on his wall
as a type of innocence-as something which should remind him of a sphere in which humanity could exist.
In the course of time, he was anxious to paint another
face, from life, which should go beside it in his studio,
and which should represent all the dark and evil passions of human life, as entirely as the child's face did
purity. They should be his symbols of Heaven and
Hell. A score of years passed, and the painter found
no such demon-face. But on one day, passing through
a prison, he saw in a dungeon the face he would paint;
it was the face of one condemned to death for a fearful
crime. That face, all written over with darkest histories, he put on canvas, and placed beside the child's,
which he had taken years before. Then flashed on him
the terrible fact, which was afterward confirmed, that
the demon and angel were one; that he had painted
the childhood and manhood of the same person.
As we call forth, and hang upon the heart's walls
the portraits of Jesus and Judas, let us know that they
are two phases of the same being —man; so does the
same earth rise into mountains, and sink into caverns.
If in Jesus we see a human soul, purified of earthliness, soaring to the sun, claiming his divinity, and sitting at the right hand of God, in Judas we see a soul
in descent; the dark shadow of the earth stealing over
its brightness, showing the tragedy of earth and heaven,
a soul's eclipse.




TEIE PENITENT.               83
I have not selected this subject without hesitation.
Is it best, on this one free day of the week, when we
would fain forget the baseness of common life, and the
treachery and selfishness we meet there, in this dear
retreat of the spirit, the Sunday; where we would seek
out rather that part of the sky which is cloudless, and
lose ourselves in its pure depths —is it best, on this day,
to trace that dark vein of evil which starts out from the
name of Judas?
It would seem necessary, that we should adhere to
the natural history of the soul. What would we think
of a naturalist, who, instead of reporting what he found
in nature, should theorize as to what might have been;
instead of adhering to things as God has made them,
to the smallest antenna, should indulge in fancies of
genera and species, which do not exist? Our true
theme here is, man as he is-the evil man is included
equally with the saint.
It is a maxim left by Goethe, that " nature reveals her
secrets in monsters."  Some of the leading laws of
physiology have been discovered by a close attention to
monsters. Also, if there be monstrous out-growths on
the soul, and we shall probe them, not with morbid
curiosity, but earnest devotion to truth, we shall find
in them  high revelations.  Let us loathe nothing.
There, in the dung-heap, the chemical laws work on as
much as in the painting of rose and violet.
Of Judas, personally, we know but little. As his
name, Iscariot, indicates, he was a native of the City




84                 TIlE PENITENT.
of Kerioth, and is said to have been " the son of one
Simon." Jesus called him to be his disciple in all
good faith, and Judas followed him manifestly in the
same spirit. Finding him  apt in pecuniary affairs,
Jesus appointed him the bearer of the purse, which
they all had in common, and which sufficed for the few
and simple wants of the disciples, and was the means
of their charities. This position, which might have
enabled Judas to realize the high saying of Christ, that
it was " more blessed to give than to receive," was
transformed by himself into a curse. It seems to have
been the means of the first excitement of avarice in
him.  You will readily recur to that touching scene
with Mary:
" When bringing every balmy sweet
The Eastern climes afford,
She at the Saviour's hallowed feet,
The precious ointment poured."
There where he sat, at meat, in the house of Simon,
the wealthy Pharisee, in before the amazed company
burst the weeping Mary, and broke the alabaster as her
heart was broken, and poured the precious nard, as her
tears were poured. All seemed enfolded in a hallowed
silence, as she knelt at his feet, bathing them with her
tears, wiping them with the hair of her head. Judas
was the only one hard enough to break that holy
silence.  "Why," he muttered, "was not this ointment sold, and given to the poor 7'"  The conclusion of




THE PENITENT.                85
John is inevitable: "This he said, not that he cared
for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had
the bag."
This seems to have been the first incident which
roused, in any of their minds, a suspicion of Judas.
They do Christ little honor, who seek, on the force bof a
few doubtful texts, and to support the useless idea of
his omniscience, to make it appear that lie had a
supernatural knowledge of Judas' wickedness, and his
design to betray him, from the first. Could Jesus consistently have taken into their fellowship a man of such
evil purpose, had he known it? Could he have given
him the money-bag, had he known that his besetting
sin was avarice, and thus been the means of his temptation, while he taught thenm to pray: " Lead us not into
temptation?"  No, friends; in the attempt here to
"make out a case," as the lawyers say, for some mystical plan to be carried out, or omnipresence or omnniscience in Jesus, or literal infallibility of the Scriptures, some have imperiled the purity and truthfulness
of Christ's character, which are essential to our reverence of him, whereas omniscience is not.
The next view to be taken of Judas, historically, is
at the Last Supper. Already lie had been consulting
with those who sought to take Christ's life. lie had
accepted their proposals; but any one, who had not
heard the end of the history, would follow his steps to
this memorable upper chamber, with deepest interest
and hope. As he enters there, an evil man, to join




86                THE PENITENT.
with pure and loving hearts, in what they all feel to be
their last interview, we may look to see the triumph of
good over evil. There is something in the sharing a
common danger and sorrow, which knits the souls of
men more strongly than they are aware of, until they
try to break away from such fellowship; and we say:
Judas, when he enters the circle, will feel the old
love rekindled; the sacred presence will restore true
pulses to his heart. There is something in the atmosphere surrounding a noble and true spirit, which
withers every noxious weed of evil in those who enter
it. Ah, yes, we say, when he salutes his Saviour
again, and feels that eye, pure and tender, resting upon
him, he shall find that he loves him still. He will
melt to penitence; will fall down before his best friend,
and, like Mary whom he once rebuked, bathe his feet
with tears.
Alas! Judas has no eye to see that face, nor the soul
which could feel that presence. " Poor depraved humanity I" some one will say; but no, surely. It is just
such hardness as this, such sin as this man's, that the
human consciousness has agreed to call inh/uman, not
human-unnatural actions, not natural. Where is lie
who shall say that Judas' treachery was human-that
his kiss was manly?  Yet if humanity is depraved,
the most humane must be the most depraved. If man
is evil, the manliest thing would be meanest. By calling good things ~humane, manly, natural, human




THE PENITENT.               87
language testifies the native grandeur of our naturemaking evil a violation of our nature.
It was when Judas had entered and sat in their
midst, that Jesus was impressed with a sense of evil
near him. Presently he broke out with the startling
words, " One of you shall betray me."  How eagerly
did each one, conscious of no such intent, cry, "' Lord,
is it I?." Peter, most probably in an undertone,
asked John, who sat nearest Jesus, to inquire of him to
whom he referred. Jesus replied, also in a low voice,
that it was he to whom he should give the morsel, he
then held, when he had dipped it. Judas seeing them
conversing thus, and supposing they spoke of him,
since he knew he was the one, asked, most probably in
a half-mocking way, "Is it I  "  John looked at him
just then, and there is no wonder that, seeing him in a
new light, he should write that Satan entered him at
that moment-and, continues the simple narrative, " he
then having received the sop went out, and it was
night." Ah, yes, night, dark, unstarred night! For
when God's light within is obscured, then falls Night,
like a black pall, on all things. Who can tell the intensity of the darkness of the soul, which could pass
through such a scene as that of the Last Supper, unmoved from its evil purpose! Well does the Scripture
speak of the " mystery of iniquity."  As in some deep
cavern, when the guide casts a stone in a pit at our feet,
we hear it rolling on in the awful depths for many
moments, and, when we think it has surely found its




88                THE PENITENT.
rest, hear again a far distant crash in the earth's bowels,
causing us to turn chilled and awe-stricken from the precipice-so when we pause, pallid at this depth which
Judas has reached, what horror seizes us when the
lower hell yawns, and Judas comes with the foes of
Jesus, and says, "Hail, MIaster," and kissed him!
O Judas, betrayest thou the son of man with a kiss?
Could'st even thou do so basely! It has introduced a
new phrase into human language; as yet the human
mind had not conceived such a monster as a " JudasKiss."
But all possible pictures consist of lights and shades,
and this is not an exception. We have been looking
so steadily at the black shading, that we are likely to
forget that there are limitations to all evil-that the
Devil is not so black as he is painted. I must affirm
here, that I share the grave doubts which have arisen
in many minds, concerning the ordinary understanding
of this sin, and its motives. For it must be borne in
mind that almost every place has been assigned Judas,
from the pit of the archfiend to the seat of the archangel.
Epiphanius and others have preserved to us an account
of the gnostic sect of Cainites, who held that Judas
was an instrument in the hand of God for carrying forward the divine plan; and that he was not only blameless, but that his submission in accomplishing the most
painful and disagreeable part of that plan, should gain
him canonization for tunparalleled sanctity. There is
also a book called the Gospel of Judas, which was ex



THE PENITENT.                89
cluded by a few votes from our New Testament. Theophylact and others have supposed that Judas was confident that the people would unite and save Jesus, if
anything were attempted against him; and therefore
supposed he was getting the money without doing any
harm  to Jesus.  German  critics, always the most
thorough, generally agree that Judas anticipated a
result different from the actual event. And all of us
have perhaps had similar mnisgivings. Why this surprise at Christ's condemnation and consequent agony
of spirit?  Did he not foresee it?  Then is it probable
that for thirty shekels, between fifteen and twenty
dollars of our money, he should bathe his hands in
human blood, and sell his soul?
There seems a strong probability that Judas shared,
as for a long time did all of the early Church, the
Jewish idea of the Messiah, that of his being a temporal Prince; that being continually disappointed in
this, he became impatient, and wishing, or at least
willing to hasten the crisis when he would either be
proved an imposter or crowned king, as he supposed he
would be inevitably, if he were the trule Messiah, lie
agreed with the Jews to deliver him to them, or, at
least, to point him  out —which, by the way, was not
a matter of much importance, as far as Jesus was concerned, since he could have been found, as he said,
"daily in the temple."  It did Judas much more harm
than Jesus. I think, therefore, that there is little
reason for associating the act with deeper guilt than




90               THE PENITENT.
that of Peter's denial; one denied for fear, one pointed
him out for money: they did no special harm to Christ
in either case. The horror of men in all ages, is in
the crime against friendship and the ties of piety; and,
in the case of Judas, it is enhanced by the unmanly and
hypocritical manner of the deed, by a kiss.  The
human heart readily agrees with the Koran, that the
deepest of the seven hells is for all hypocrites. We may
conclude then very surely, that Judas had no idea of
being the means of Christ's death; which accounts too,
for that overwhelming agony which ended in his dying
at nearly the same time with his betrayed friend.
Of what happened to him after he saw Christ led
away to execution, there seems to be little certainty.
In the confusion which beset the disciples, during the
fearful scenes surrounding Christ's death, we can
scarcely expect accurate historic accounts concerning
any one man. Two entirely different reports respecting
his end seem to have spread, one of which was followed
by Matthew in my text, who says, "he cast down the
money and went and hanged himself;" the other by
Luke, who, it is thought, wrote tile Acts, whose record
runs thus: "'Now this man purchased a field with the
reward of iniquity; and falling headlong he burst
asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.
And it was known to all the dwellers at Jerusalem:
insomuch that the field is called in their proper tongue,
Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood."  Of these
two accounts, (which cannot be harmonized but by




THE PENITENT.                91
pious fraud,) I think the latter has more marks of
authenticity, and that there is reason to believe that
Judas, instead of committing suicide, when he saw
what he had done, died in some violent convulsion;
probably, from the description, apoplectic, brought on
by excessive remorse.
MIy friends, we have presented to us here a strange,
awful picture-a strong, rude man, habituated to all
the common hardening affairs of a life of manual labor,
suddenly stricken by a glimpse of his sin, and overpowered by a repentance which nothing but death
could satisfy! Around this spirit, which we have
evoked to-day, cling some deep questions of the soul;
let us approach them. For there is such a thing as
true penitence: wherein does it resemble this of Judaswherein does it differ from it? 
I have sometimes thought it were a good Prayer, if
one said, " May I have the penitence of Judas!"  For
see " the divine depths of sorrow " in him! Christ
crucified has not so great pangs as he who helped to
crucify him. Brothers, brothers, there is so much
superficial repentance: a mere sentimental acknowledgment of our sinfulness in general, or in particulars;
still more, a sorrow for some consequences apprehended
from evil in this or another world, that we have come
to think some distress of mind and begging off of
hell to be Repentance.  But the grief of Judas is
supernatural, almost holy!  In a world of shams,
here is something real. As the face of Judas, leav



92               THE PENITENT.
ing the Last Supper and plunging into the night, has
ever been in the imaginations of men and on canvas
the type of malignity, so the Judas casting down the
money at the feet of the Priests in the Temple, and
going forth to his wild death, has ever been, must ever
be, the type of human anguish. Down across the ages
sound those words wrung from a soul in pain, deeper
than what we commonly feel, " I have sinned."
And see, is not here confession? Who of us really,
I mean really, confess our sins: I mean turn away
from what is evil and low in our lives, and live purer,
higher lives, however much they rebuke our past conduct? Hele, in the confession of this man whom all
curse,.we have no hollow lip-service; any one can confess he is a sinner, if only to have credit for a fine
modesty. This confession means something, as the
lightning means something. When all was danger to
the followers of Jesus, when peril sprang in their fold
as a wolf, and those who had followed him better than
Judas, "forsook him and fled; " when Peter, who said,
" Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny
thee," stood up and denied him thrice-at that time,
when to befriend him is to incur public wrath, Judas
the traitor, yes, Judas the Traitor comes forward, and
bears witness to the innocency of Jesus, and his own
sin! " I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood!' How many of us thus confess Christ and
the purity of his law, when he is scourged and crowned
with thorns by corrupt and violent power? bear witness




THE PENITENT.                93
to the voice of the Christ within, when it clamors for
Justice, Love, Truth and Virtue?
And this penitence resembled the true in its ready
restitution, and refusal of all the gain of the sin. He
brought again the thirty pieces, and when they would
not receive them, cast them down. There is no better
test of a real repentance than.whether a man is willing to
give up the gains of sin; for this is practical and real.
Why, it is because for this men have substituted a
canting, whining, praying confession, that one is afraid
to use the very word repentance, lest some one should
think he has anything but utter contempt for what
passes under that word. But it is only good money
that is counterfeited; and no cant or error can obscure
the truth, by whatever name you call it, that there is
such a thing as a man's casting a steady, keen scrutiny
on his whole life, and on the special acts of that life;
and detecting the presence of evil in the motive and
attainment, by a true repentance rising above his past,
and spending his life and strength in blessing those
whom he had injured or neglected: in changing his
temper from bitter to sweet; in leaving bad habits and
frivolous aims, for high and holy purposes of life. I
would that men had more of this great penitence of
Judas, reaching down to the springs of vitality, than of
that which is from the throat upward.
And it is a sad truth,  which must be here stated,
that there are few who have no reason for this penitence. The celebrated Dr. Baxter, seeing a man borne




94                THE PENITENT.
to the gallows, said: " There goes Richard Baxter, except for grace." It was quaint, and dates from Calvinism; but we all see the deep truth which underlies.
Judas is a dark possibility lurking around every one of
us. Have we not a Lord Christ in Duty a Is the silvevr
never offered us to betray that duty? He who sacrifices any principle, anything he feels is good, for earthly
advantage, or pleasure, or popularity, does it take literally thirty pieces of silver to make him share Judas'
sin? Usually it is for a great deal more than Judas
got, and unattended by remorse and death.  Dear
friends, I mean just what I am saying; whatever fine
resolutions we have made, and are living by now,
memory still holds her wand, and evokes spirits from
her deeps that will not down at her bidding-spirits of
duties neglected; of guilt in thought and act; of things
which shame the open day. You alone know what was
the coin, and whither it went-the coin which purchased
a spirit's perfect whiteness of you.  YTou alone-there
is another, an Infinite Eye, which sees all. Infinite
Father, we give thee thanks that thou, and not we,
knowest how deep is outward observance; with how
many the cry of " Lord! Lord!" is a Judas-kiss, from
hearts already bought over by the world!
Yet, though with one sense we might well pray for
this repentance, in another it were better to cry:
Save us from the repentance of Judas! It differed
fatally from true penitence in some regards. For I fear
we cannot ascribe a proper origin for it. True repent



THE PENITENT.               95
ance bursts out from the soul, not its upon it. It is not
born of the results of action. It is the conflict of a
soul become conscious of the inception of sin; and
although that sin may never have had any evil overt
influence, (for God rules over all designs of men); may
never have grown up into action at all; may have produced good where evil was intended, as is often, indeed
generally, the case-yet the true penitent feels the sense
of inward evil no less heavily than if devastation reigned
around it. But Judas, says the record, " when he saw
that Jesus was condemned, repented himself." Why
should he not repent before he was condemned, or if he
were not condemned at all? I would not like to add a
feather's weight to the load of reprobation heaped by
all upon him, and, it is to be feared, too indiscriminately; yet I find it difficult to trust that penitence
which could pass unmoved the scene of Mary weeping
at his feet in Bethany; which could slumber amid the
touching scenes of the Last Supper, and invade the
quiet garden where Jesus had retired for prayer; but
now bursts out into despair and wild death, when the
result comes, and Judas feels h1imself standing, with
his soul naked to the eye of God, and the innocent
blood of his Son upon his hands. And yet should it
be remembered, that the deepest secret, in every spirit,
is known to itself and God alone. Who are we that
w e should judge?
And that which originates wrongly ends wrongly.
It is certain that Judas' repentance differed from




96                THE PENITENT.
the true in its end; in its influence on himself.
Tragedy is not the law of the spiritual life, but triumph. There are two words used in the New
Testament, which signify repentance, but of different
kinds. Martineau has well translated them, as sorrow
with the upward, and sorrow with the downward look.
The true penitence is of the upward look; it never
leads to despair; but, in losing self, finds God. See
this poor man writhing in remorse, and frantically
plunging the poisoned arrow deeper, even into his
vitals; our good Father sends not, requires not such
morbid conditions as these; they are not signs of
health.  It is true that deep and hot tears fall from
this upward sorrow, as it passes, like a cloud, over the
soul; but on those drops, which the stricken heart rains
down, falls the sunlight of faith, and forth on the black
cloud leaps the bow of promise.  Penitence has no
smile herself, but receives on her face the smile of God.
Alas! Judas, when thou didst leave that best friend of
thine and mine, truly "it was night," nor do we see
the dawn for thee; yet God is light, and if he shall be
now pouring his splendor on eyes which were blind on
earth, who shall gainsay him? 
Our duty is not to judge Judas, but learn our lesson
of him. I would say, then, he was not moved to the
true path of repentance, as he would have been by the
unerring instinct of the higher sorrow. Whither went
he with his confession, restitution, grief?  To his aCcomplices. It is as the gambler flies to the card-table




THE PENITENT.               97
to retrieve the fortune he has lost there; it is as the
drunkard flies to the cup to forget the misery it has
brought him. What more was needed to goad his remorse into madness than their answer: "What is that
to us? See thou to that." Ah! whenever we bring
to the accustomed association of the world, with its
pleasure and interests, our deeper, sadder moments,
how soon do we find that they have nothing in common
with it. " We want no earnestness, no excellence, no
conscience," cries the world. " What are they to us?
See thou to them."
Where was Faith then, the inner light of true repentance, touching into activity the giant in a man which
plants the heel of the great human will on that serpent,
which would trail through his heart, and nestle in his
brain, driving off every ministering angel?  Far else
would such faith have led thee, Judas! They would
have beckoned thee away to the scene of scourging and
condemnation. Ah! could we only see thee, at this
juncture, making thy way to the judgment-seat; see
thee there prostrate at the feet of Him who sendeth
none away; hear thee cry: "0, my Master! I have
sinned in that I have betrayed thy innocent blood"we should have something more than a vague shudder
for this sad story. For He never said to one repentant: "What is that to me? See thou to that."  Ah
see! the gentle. face forgets even its thorn-crown at the
voice of the penitent; the very hand he had nailed to the
cross is extended to the returning Judas; the very lips
4`x,




98.              THE PENITENT.
he had treacherously kissed, speak tenderly and kindly
still: Poor Judas! even t/hy dark sin is forgiven.
O, thou great, unfailing love of Christ, "free and
faithful, strong as death," could we but raise ourselves
up to thee, and open up within us those immortal
springs, which go forth to bless all, evil and good, just
and unjust!
But the history and its moral are closed, so far as it
is given me to close them; yet where human speech,
feeling its weakness before thile truth, which is deeper
than all speech, trembles into silence, it leaves a holier
voice in its place. Very much of my sermon shall be
written by God's finger, when next, in your secret
moment, your heart lies unfolded before Him.
We must pause far short of the depths then, and say
only that Judas' penitence was remorse, which is the
groan of death.  As when the nervous system  is
shocked by some sharp pain, above its power of endurance, and cannot react and recover, but must suffer the
pain to work its own consummation in death, so Judas,
scathed by the lightnings of the violated law of his
being, rushed wildly, blindly into the arms of Agony,
to which Death was the angel of relief. But that is
not hell enough for some: they have allotted him some
deep and special hell, which he alone is evil enough to
fill, for his sin-a sin, I say again, committed dailynay, at some period perhaps, in every life, that of betraying Christ (with us his sacred law) for some earthly
interest.




TlIE PENITENT.                99
"If he that loseth his life findeth it,' as Jesus said,
may we not hope that this terrible agony was with
Judas, the birth-throe of his higher nature, which, as
one catches flame from the candle flickering in its
socket, God may have caught up to burn more brightly
in a higher existence? For he willeth not the death of
any, but rather that all should turn unto Him and live.
Surely it requires an immortal spirit to suffer so for evil
conduct; a brute could not suffer so, nor an utterly
hardened man.
My brothers, so great is the infinite mercy to us, let
us not decide that he had none for Judas; or let him
that is without sin among you, cast the first stone. His
life was this: temptation, fall, remorse; what else is
every life? What better claim could he have to be our
human brother a
Clothed in sin and dust, we will bow with thee, 0
Judas! and as with expiring breath on earth thou didst
bear witness to thine own sinfulness, and the innocency
of thy Friend and Saviour, we also cry: "We have
sinned in that we have betrayed the innocent!'"
" Owning his weakness, his evil behavior,
And leaving, with meekness, his sin to his Saviour."




THE VACATION.
IT is expedient for you that I go away.
AN old Proverb says: " God is a good worker, but
loves to be helped." Luther was yet bolder, and
said, " God cannot do without strong men."   All
power is godlike, and its finitude is only degree. Our
race worships force and hates weakness. The best men
have agreed that weakness is abortion, nothingness;
that its business on earth is to die-to fall as blossoms
fall that fruits may arrive.
And yet I am sure there is no fact more universal,
than a distrust of our moral strength. In my association with men, I read with pain on most foreheads,
Do not trust me too far!  A feeling of inferiority to
desire and circumstance-a cowering before pressing
temptations —a lack of confidence in our principles to
face great passions, interests, opportunities; these constitute the chronic complaint of mankind. And, in it
all, the one favorable symptom is, the prevalent
strength-worship to which I have alluded. Impatience
with the disease, testifies our belief that there is such a




THE VACATION.               101
thing as health. We know that, as fabled Anteaus, in
his conflict with Hercules, recovered every wound and
regained full strength whenever he touched the Earth,
which was his mother, and was only slain when separated from possibility of contact with her, so man is
the result and child of certain excellent healthful laws,
in contact with which he is strong, apart from which
he is weak.
To discover for this timid race, paling before the
smallest clouds of temptation which rose over its sea,
feeling safe only when becalmed, the solid continent of
strength, came the Christ. All agree that he discovered
it; but as to the direction in which it lies, there is now
the greatest difference among those who hold themselves his followers. And all theories may be generalized in two.  One of these maintains, that his
method was to generate strength in his followers, by
certain external doctrines and promises; attested by
miracles, addressed to the senses.  The doctrines
of Immortality, of Prayer, and the like, were to
do the work. His method was to guide them by his
teachings, and lead them  to himself.  The other
maintains, that all his works and teachings were
designed, not to furnish a system of rules, but to
clear a path for men to enter their owes rules-not to
give them fruits, but bring them  to the labor which
should produce fruits-not to lead them to himself, as
an end, but only as a means of entering and possessing
their own selves.




102               THE VACATION.
You see how immense the difference: the one shows
God impossible to me-the other, God in me; one
makes me a parasite on the oak, the other, a branch
fast to the trunk; one makes my endeavors the spirals
of a worm, the other opens up the ascending spheres of
angelhood before me.
Can there be any doubt of the truth in the presence
of the most striking of all Christ's sayings, which I
have read.as my text? No wonder questionings arose
among his disciples, when they heard one who had fed
them with angel's food, who had stretched his great
self upon them, as Elijah on the widow's son, face to
face, breast to breast, until they rose the only twelve
living men in their nation-now say, It is expedient
for you that I go away from you. As well, they
thought, might the sun go out, and bid all eyes rejoice
that it was no more!
But Christ, with his great solar eye, saw them  as
they could not see themselves; saw that their full
strength demanded for its development, a greater selfreliance; and, as the condition of that, a weaning of
themselves from that dependence on himself and his
teachings, which was only adapted to spiritual infancy.
When he told them that he should ere long be parted
from them, sorrow filled their hearts-and in this time
of their prostration, he resolved to point out their true
sources of strength. "It is good for you that I go.
Your true force cannot be gained from me, more than
your muscles and sinews can grow strong by my labor.




THE VACATION.               103
If the teacher does all, the scholar will do nothing, and
so know nothing; but let the teacher be withdrawn,
after the task is assigned, and undreamed energies
shall be born of the necessity of self-help. Thus alone,
can the strength needful for your mission be supplied;
thus alone shall the Comforter-which in the Bible
bears its primitive meaning of strengthener-come.
You yourselves have faculties which are improved by
use, destroyed by disuse; and, after you are launched
upon them fully, dependence on what is without, however wise, dwarfs them."
In giving this method for elevating man to his
highest spiritual condition, Christ placed himself on
the great facts of Nature. The highest spiritual manhood appears as the human form, as the highest result of
the material world has appeared. Taking one of the lowest animal forms, we find there is no self-sustaining life.
It simply fastens itself on to a rock; the water gliding
by furnishes food from its sediment. It has no bone or
nervous system. The sun and atmosphere regulate its
conditions of life. All its life,-motions, powers, continuance,-are not fiomn itself, but from the outward
elements. A little higher in the scale, and, with the
wollusC, the dawning of a nervous and bony structure appears —but still they exist around it as shell,
not in it as centers of force. But, as animated nature
rises to higher grades, the tendency is from without inward,-from dependence and imprisonment, to selfsubsistence and freedom. The slell becomes skeleton



104               THE VACATION.
the nerves gather to centers. And so up to man, in
whom activities, once regulated by light, heat and air
without, are generated within, and rule external things
where lower orders were ruled by them.
The analogue in religious development is easily
traced. The lowest form, Fetishism, fastens itself on a
stock or stone for its god, and draws its spiritual, as
the jelly-fish its physical, sustenance only from what is
visible and tangible. In a higher type, such as Romanism, we see the dawnings of some independent existence. IHere germs of truth, God and sacrifice, heaven
and hell, are dimly recognized, though not received
into the soul; they surround it only as shell, in church,
pope, and confessional. The priest acts in lieu of conscience. But the progression goes on. Some higher,
sinewy souls, as Luther and Calvin, draw the shell
within, and propagate a race of more self-reliant minds.
For awhile they are not hlardy, and fully conscious of
their freedom; and for a time must hold on to the external; though now it is nothing worse than some traditional cant, and an infallible book. Then begins the
appearance of the true spiritual, self-helpful man on
earth; with personality superior to the world and his
own lower nature; able to cast away the most sacred
tradition, or venerable form, if it is not adapted to his
temperament; and to convert churches and creeds,
sacraments and institutions, into bone and sinew, and
into that divine nervous center, feebler or stronger in
every man, whose fibers run out into the entire




THE VACATION.              105
universe, and vibrate with the activities of the Infinite
Mind.
It was that this divinely ordained progression, from
an infant dependence to a Godlike self-reliance, might
occur in those men to whom his faith was bequeathed
as trustees, that lie taught them-to look to their separation for strength.
The Christian community, in every age, is apt to
stand in the same relation to the Church, and must be
warned of the same danger.  I shall trust that you
will not misunderstand me, and suppose me to undervalue the Church. That any people should fail to have
a church representing their faith, or that, when they
have it, they should be too indolent or indifferent to
attend it, is the most certain indication of shallowness
of mind, and poverty of character. I love the Church,
and can see that, in every age, it has given signs that
it may still hold, and announce the oracles of God. It
is no farce that we separate from the week a sacred
hour; that we make bold, in prayer and hymn, to claim
personal communion with the Most High God. O!
when I reflect on what all these rest in the human soul;
what far-reaching experiences they imply; what depths
the human spirit must have fathomed in its own necessities, what a universe of love and power must have
been opened up to its anxious glance, ere it could build
a temple or dedicate an altar to worship; then do I
feel that the Church is the ever-present seal of God to
man, as made in his own image; the sure title of the




106               THE VACATION.
soul to an eternity and an infinitude for its development and felicity.
But everything that the sun shines on casts a shadow.
And the shadow of the Church is, that its services, passing down from century to century, with little variety of
forms, becoming the routine of generations, may become the routine of the individual. It cannot be disguised that many, going to church several times a
week, and without intermission the year round, show
plainly that their church has become an end instead of
a means, and that their religious nature has no conscious existence independent of some special church.
At stated times, their religion rings its bells, sings
hymns, prays prayers, reads a sermon; then sleeps
comfortably till the next alarm sounds.
But how do we find many of these persons, so observant of rites, when duty or accident has taken them
where there is no church, no communion, perhaps not
even a prayer or psalm-book, or a volume of Channing
or Baxter?  How do we find them when confined to
the tedium of a sick chamber as their only temple?
Alas! too often the thirsty soul finds that it has left
with the preacher and church that well of water which
Christ said should be in the soul, springing up into
everlasting life. This is the secret of those-who have
had spiritual life deepened by afflictions. We have attributed, perhaps, the graver cast to sorrow or pain;
but I doubt not that it is generally the withdrawal of
the usual church externalisms, on which they had




THE VACATION.               107
relied too much. They have found that it was expedient for them, that they were left without a church for
awhile. As it is said, that, at some mineral springs,
those who have hobbled to them on crutches, have cast
them aside on the spot, and returned with firm step, so
have we seen superficial persons, with as light Sundaythought of God diluted in a week of worldliness; or
those whose religion is a mechanism of pew-hinges
and knee-hinges, brought by disease or affliction into
that loneliness which is nearest true strength. In resting upon themselves, they have gone into that spiritual
realm, which is more than all churches, as the sun is
more than any of its colors. For from the human soul,
the Church first drew its life, and only from the living
souls which form it, can its life become perpetual.
It is thus that often, beneath some thunder-stroke, that
which was a shell of sentiment or formality, is changed
to an inward bony structure of active principle; and
the one-day-a-week religion transfuses all the veins and
centers of every-day life.  The mother of Goethe, in
speaking of him, said: "My son, whenever le had a
grief, made a poem of it, and so got rid of it."  A true
christianized man would have a similar power over
all circumstances.  He must have the alembic of a
strong heart, so that each event of the day and nightthe worlds of trade, intercourse, affection, grief, pleasure-cast fterein, shall be reproduced as worship, and
life become every whit whole and true.
Believe me, friends, the religious dealings of a week




108               TH1E VACATION.
cannot be summed up on a single day. They need a daybook as much as your other business. If this affair of
the soul must be respected, it would be more convenient
to carrv one's preacher, Bible, hymns, and so forth,
along in one's heart and head, even if one day is to be
separated for the casting up of general accounts.
Have we forgotten the Ideal AMan?  Cannot every
hea'rt discern the life that is pure and sweet; wherein,
beside the senses which receive, and the hands that
work, and the common sense which so faithfully mediates between us and the world -beside and above all
these, is the throne of the pure Reason, with the coronet
of all virtues-never forgotten, but finding its highest
good in the absorption of all the senses and faculties,
over which it rules, in their specific objects?
Until the religious principle is adopted as part and
parcel of our entire nature, which we can no more lay
aside than brain or lungs; until it is a vital force, flowing forth with every radius of influence, and filling the
circle of relations, we shall never be strong. Tender
thoughts of Jesus, maxims, prayers, hymns, testaments,
sermons, depend on you for usefulness and interest, not
you on them; and if you have got into the habit of depending on them, or anything outside you for religious
emotions, until they go away, the Comforter, the strength
of God shall not abide in you.
It is not safe, then, to attribute the great differences
between churches, in the frequency of their services,
and the length and elaboration of them, to the apathy




THE VACATION.               109
of the one, and the superior earnestness of the other.
It may show a much higher religious condition on the
side of those who have fewer prayer-meetings, and
simpler forms. For it cannot be denied, that, if men
were perfect, these forms and meetings would not be
needed at all. All of these religious organisms anticipate a time when they shall cease. As one generation
builds a temple, which another re-builds; as one age
writes a creed, which another re-writes-so shall our
faith and worship be enlarged; and should they reach
their largest, they would disappear from without, and
shine forth grandlier within. Men would bear about
them, as they bear clothing, sermon and sacrament.
Neither, saith the prophet, shall one, in that day, say
to another, "' Know ye the Lord;" for the knowledge of
the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the
face of the sea. Churches are signs of weakness; indications, however, that this weakness has grown sufficiently conscious of itself to cry for strength.  The
laws and injunctions imposed on the ancient Jews,
while they were the results of the highest wisdom,
show very plainly what a filthy, immoral people they
were who needed such restrictions.  All law  is a
satire. Yet Christ, in stating this principle, declared
that not one jot or tittle should pass from the law till
all was fulfilled. When to say, Thou shalt not murder,
or steal, or commit adultery, has become as useless as
to say, Thou shalt not eat arsenic; when to say, Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength, and




110                TIlE VACATION.
thy neighbor as thyself, has become as superfluous as
to say, Thou shalt breathe the air, and walk by the
light-then will we close joyfully our church, not for two
months of summer-heat, but forever.  Then the uses of
a church will have been fully received; then the Comforter will have come; and man, self-poised and selfsubsistent, shall be God's noblest temnple; every act,
worship; every thought, a hymn. And no church is
worthy our trust, which does not carry within it the
germs of dissolution; which does not fully see before
it the gleaming goal where it ends in glorious consunmmation; which, regarding the necessity of outward
forms as transient and partial, does not pray0 God, forgive our crimes:
Forgive our virtues too, those lesser crimes,
Half converts to the right.
So have I seen a stream swiftly gliding, loudly dashing, onward, onward-willing enough to turn the mill,
or refresh the herd, or revive the meadow and flower
in its course-but  hasteninzg to be lost and finished in
something deeper, grander than itself, the all-absorbing
Ocean!
But when I commend to you the value-even the
superior value —of all the time in which the usual
religious resources are withdrawn, as tending, not to
dissipate your minds, but to cast you more fully on the
inward strength-what am I doing? Am I commend



TtIE VACATION.              111
ing to you spiritual Pride a Would I bid you be independent of the Supreme and His methods?  Indeed I
would not. The worship of stocks and stones were
better than no worship. You had better depend on a
rosary, a sacrifice, a book, than on self-sufficiency.
That soul which is contented with what it is, has
already died the death. But there is an interior selfhood, of which Jesus spoke when he said of the prodigal, he came to himnself. To that interior self I call
you, because it is the declared "Lord from heaven."
It is that which is pained at sin; which never can rest
impure; which bears heavenward. MSy fear is, that
through the incessant routines of the Church, you may
be drawn aside from that guide, and may at last have
no inward life beyond the power of these forms to
express. And to this point I have spoken with all the
more freedom, because I know that the Church cannot
be harmed one instant before it should be. All that is
genuine, is safe —only the fungus need fear the probe.
Abolish all the churches to-day, to-morrow they will
be living with twice the former vigor. For until man.
kind are perfect, Conscience, that "'divine curse," is
abroad with loosened lash. Conscience is the masterbuilder of churches; the great revivalist, opening
Heaven, barrinlg Iell.
I am sure that if all churches should be closed for a
year, it would enhance religious worship tenfold. For
it is one of the laws of our nature, that we really enter




112                TiHE VACATION.
nothing until we have held off a little from it, and then
newly invented it for ourselves. This it is that makes
doubt the necessary path to Faith. Mlany persons who
have never doubted concerning God, Christ, the
Soul, may suppose that they have faith in these; but
every real thinker knows they have not. Every great
truth repeats to the earnest mind Christ's words, "It
is expedient for you that I go away from you," and
goes, leaving the soul in doubt and darkness. It is but
for a time. The soul goes forth, as Rachel weeping
for her children, to seek the truth: then the old truths,
which had fallen, return, not as before, but bringing their
fill strength with them. For though the mind receives
many old truths which it had rejected, it never comes
to them under the same forms and limitations as before.
Under the warmth of its growing season worms have
become winged. Nearly every old dogma is the grub
of some golden-winged truth. The difficulty is, that
men will cling to the sloughed-off shells, when the life
is soaring in higher forms.
The reason of this stronger grasp of that which is
temporarily removed from us, would seemn to be, that,
when we receive truth by inheritance or tradition, we
do not see it independently, and judge it on its own
merits. We see by the light of personal affection; and
are often resting on the authority of parents, friends,
teachers, when we think we are reposing on a legitimate conviction of thle mind. So we are brought up to




THE VACATION.               113
give a sort of adherence to what comes over the Bible,
and out of the pulpit. I fear the most liberal churches
have not got quite out of that. You shall find it well
then for you that the Church shall be silent a little;
that you shall turn away from its periodical statements
to inquire of the trees, the sky, the clouds, concerning the
truth or untruth of what you have been urged to accept;
opening your hearts to the sacred probes of loneliness
with Nature, of reflection, as to what degree of life you
have distilled from all that you have heard or known
of Christianity, for personal strength of character; how
much is the mere husk of form.
Mark, if you please, hlow this law was illustrated in
the case of those men to whoim Jesus said, "It is expedient for you that I go away."  While he was with
them daily, giving them sublime truths, which they had
little to do but sit and hear, they seemed to have gained
no vital force from them; and, when opposition and
temptation came, their purposes melted before themn as
snowflakes in the sun. We find-when he was w'it?
them, observe! —one basely betraying him, another
denying him with oaths; and indeed the humiliating
record had to be made, " They all forsook him and fled."
But see! what means this excited crowd gathered
near the same place only a few months later! Is that
man facing so fearlessly the enraged throng for the
crucifid Christ, the same who denied him before he
was crucified? Can those who fled, be the same with




114               THE VACATION.
those who now gather around the relifted standard of
Christianity at Jerusalem; and those tongues, so lately
dumb with fear, the same with those "tongues of
flame," which leap forth, volcanic, to fuse and melt the
iron fetters of Judaism, by which the people are
manacled and fetlocked? Whence came this force,
which, in an hour, multiplied twelve Christians into
three thousand?
This was the Pentecost of great souls, when first the
full extent of their labors rose before them, and no
wonder-working Christ was there to relieve them.
This was that super-human strength, which has been
known to animate armies which have seen their leaders
cut down; advancing to a victory which attested that
the blows which laid them low, had made every soldier
a leader, with every nerve and faculty multiplied and
empowered by the pressing necessity.
I cannot but feel the lesson. I find I must often say
to my teachers and to the Church, Pray, move a little.
You are too strong. Pleasant enough it is to be borne
in a sedan all the time; but will not that stunt the
limbs Nature gave for walking?  Social worship is
good, but it is apt to absorb private worship; church
music is good, but am I not in danger of forgetting the
far sweeter melodies of silence?
Ah, I see God's full purpose, and know that Life
means more than the gathering of shells and pebbles on
its beach! Over the waves come the earnest voices of




THE VACATION.               115
those who alone and in silence bore their burdens.
"Into this sea, O man," they cry, " thou must plunge
ere thou gain the shore of thy strength; these sturdy
waves must buffet with thy God-given, and therefore,
all-sufficient sinews; if thou strivest not, the waters
will overwhelm,-if thou contendest bravely, they sliall
buoy thee bravely."




THE CHILD.
I have gotten a man from the Lord.
Tin  was the exclamation of the first mother at the
birth of the first child. It is to be questioned whether
any of Eve's descendants have seen so deeply into the
mystic nature of infancy. How many with her look
upon the child as a mnan; as much so as a bud is a
flower; as much so as a drop of water has the same
elements as an ocean? How many see with her that
the child is firom the Lord; that it is indeed a "clothed
eternity;" and that those little eyes were lit up at the
central sun of the universe, torches of God, whose
flame cannot perish?  Al, parent, elect for so high
service as the care of a living soul from the heavens, I
would have you bow withl awe-struck Eve, and cry, I
have gotten a man from the Lord!
Were one called on to vote which was the most mysterious, unexplored realm  of science, he might well
decide, not magnetism, but childhood. I know your
naturalist, remembering hlow little Georgey did not
think a precious fossil too good to throw at the cat,
will persist that childhood, instead of being a realm of




THE CHILD.                 117
science, is the bane thereof; and literary men will all
agree, that Baby is philologically derived from Babel,
signifying confusion.  But all phenomena of science
are disagreeable until understood-comets, tides, etc.,
for example. And childhood is not understood, or is
misunderstood.
O transcendent realm of infancy! why so guarded.
The generations, as they pass, bring us orators, poets,
prophets; but where is he who comes with the key of
the child-soul?  Who will be the " tongue of the
secret," the seer-.-    -  the man of eld,
Whose eyes within its eyes beheld
Heaven's numerous hierarchy span
The mystic gulf from God to manll 
Some clear perceptions of the depth and dignity of
childhood have indeed, at rare intervals, been vouchsafed us; and there is no better calculus for the growth
of the world, and the advance of God's great year,
than the rising estimate of this morning time of the
world.
I am glad to find, that we are beginning to read of
the old theological idea of childhood with doubt. You
mothers, with children in your arms, often tell me that
you do not believe that parents ever regarded their
babes as depraved imps. We can scarcely imagine,
that the old New England divine, who affirmed, with a
whole synod to indorse him, that " hell resounded with
the wailings of infants," really meant just what he




118                  THE CHILD.
said.  It is well you cannot believe they meant it; for
it shows the strength of the sacred idea of childhood in
yourselves. And yet, in estimating our growth, we
must consider that these views were matters of earnest
popular belief. To give you an idea of the extent of
this conviction, I wish to bring before you a poem,
which I came across recently.  It was written in the
beginning of last century by one Wigglesworth, a
school-teacher at Walden, Mlass., of high reputation,
and was so popular, that it was used as a school-book
in various parts of the State of Massachusetts. From
this work, which is entitled the " Day of Doom," I
propose to give you one or two elegant extracts, which
refer to the children.
Wigglesworth meditates calmly on the damnation of
infants:
"Then to the bar all they drew near who died in infancy,
And never had or good or bad effected personally."
There was one who, when on earth, took little children in his arms, and blessed them; we had hoped he
might meet them there: Michael Wigglesworth sees,
with his spiritual discernment, a change.  These infants, summoned, as has been stated, to the judgment
bar, commence pleading, and very rationally too, one
would say, for such little folks.  They cry:
" Not we, but he, ate of the tree whose fruit was interdicted,
Yet on us all of his sad fall the punishment's inflicted."




THE CHILD.                   119
With a smile at their childish ignorance, which had
not even penetrated the first volume of Calvin's Institutes-with a sigh over their altogether carnal view of
the whole subject, these babes are thus indoctrinated:
"But what you call old Adam's fall, and only his trespass,
You call amiss to call it his; both his and yours it was.
He was designed, of all mankind, to be a public headA common root, whence all should shoot, and stood in all their
stead."
Either because of the profundity of this view, or because of their good breeding, or because they could not
help it, the infants yielded the point.  Wigglesworth
attributes it to the former; for the poem continues:
"Their consciences must needs confess his reasons are the stronger."
They are then, according to the gospel of our worthy
Michael-who seems to be a kind of forerunner of the
archangel of that name, who is to trumpet the Day of
Doom —cast into the place where forever there is
"weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of "-gums, as
Burns has it.
What was the prevalent idea of childhood in a
vicinity where this was a school-book, and its author
eminent as a theological instructor? For it appears that
this Wigglesworth was the same who was eulogized by
Cotton Mather in 1710.
Nearly all are ready to ridicule this ancient Calvinism; but many hold an idea which will be looked upon
as equally barbarous for our age with Wigglesworth's




120                 THE CHILD.
for his, among those who shall follow us by a century.
How many believe now that a child is naturally lost in
Adam, and that there is a necessity that the child
should live on in sin until something shall happen,
styled its conversion?  Why, it is not proper and
evangelical for a child not to be vicious naturally; and
presently we shall have it affirmed, that innocence in a
child is only a precocious tendency toward the dreadful
heresy which denies original sin.
Where doctrines are speculative merely, or where
they fall upon rough mature men of the world, who
are in little danger of thinking too much on such
subjects, we do not care to waste time on theological
controversies. But it is where the hard vice-grasp of
Calvinism is fastened on the child that our outcry must
be heard. For centuries, the Juggernaut Church has
been rolled forward on a child's heart. Its books and
pietistic dogmas hang about their necks as yokes; its
straight-jacket Sabbaths, to which every sparrow, singing on that day as on others, and every merry grasshopper, gives the lie, wither the sweet buds of faith ere
they open. I have known mothers, who would turn
away a nurse because she would frighten the children
with ghost-stories and the like, who will take those
children themselves, and string out pictures of the
lake of fire and brimstone, of devils, and of God's face
all blackened with wrath, compared with which the
ghost-stories are a pleasant pastime. I shall not soon
forget a story which I mean to tell, because it really




THE CRILD.                121
occurred. There was a little girl, who was very much
restrained and silenced on Sundays, and was given no
other dolls to play with than Jacob, and Esau, and
David, and Jeremiah, which she had to spell out all
day from the Bible. She could not help complaining
one day, when she had been forbidden a favorite picture-book: "0, I do wish Sunday was over."  "My
child, my child," said the pious mother, "it is wicked
to speak so; you will not be fit for Heaven if you feel
so.  Heaven, my child, is an eternal Sabbath."
"Well, mother," said the little girl, as if a bright idea
had struck her, " don't you think, if I'm a good girl,
God will let me go down to hell and play a little while
on Saturday afternoons 2"
And one, 1 knew, whose childhood was wholly
blotted out, because he felt that he and his brothers,
and cousins, and friends, in all their merry-making,
were dancing and playing on the very verge of the lake
of fire and brimstone, which burneth forever and ever.
God was to him a great death's-head, and the very
fountains of joy and love were poisoned. It was related some years ago, that there were children, born
in the mines near Manchester, England, "who had
never seen a flower," and, when it was presented,
knew not what it was, nor whence it came. Many
poems and speeches resounded through Christendom
thereupon. But are there not all around us subterrene
pits and labyrinths of doctrine and superstition, where
the children toil on drearily and never:see the cheerful
fft'




122                 THTE CtILtD.
flowers of faith and joy in life, with which God has
strewn the earth?   Life free and happy, music and
dancing, bloom not for them. One dark pall, the frown
of an ever-offended, terrible God, overhangs all.  O
Dogmna, Dogma, what a Mioloch thou art, and how
many children are sacrificed to thee!
But, if this hard faith paused when it had crushed
the earthly joys of childhood and scattered its garlands, it could be better tolerated. It goes far deeper,
and embitters the springs of faith and morality. How
often have we had persons point us to early manifestations of selfishness and injustice in a child, as
evidences of inherent depravity? There is no doubt
that parents of ten chastise their own ignorance and
folly in the persons of their children. Take the mass
of these selfish and naughty children, what have they
been taught? Here is item No. 1 in the Westminster
Catechism, to be recited from the time of ability to pnt
words together, until it is entirely retained in the
memory:
Qales. What is the chief end of man 
Ans. Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy
hiin forever.
By this, the child is notified that the object of its
existence is to flatter and gratify God's vanity, and its
own selfishness. I know that great theological truths
may be extracted fiom these words by mature persons,
but they are surrounded by a hard shell of mere cant,
and the child's teeth are not yet strong enough to break




THlE CIILD.              123
through the sh'ell and get the kernel. The idea of God
therein, is a Being who is soothed and cajoled by
flattery and glorification; in return for which, he gives
many good things: this being the interpretation placed
on another portion of catechetical instruction, by a
little boy:
Qaes. Why must we love God 
Ans. Because he makes, preserves and blesses us.
The little fellow placed the punctuation after preserves,
and with a decided smack of the lips, said, "Because
he makes preserves,"-lie forgot the rest.
A God, such as a child reads of in the Old Hebrew
Testament, and hears of from those who do not see that
Christ inaugurated a Yew Testament, because the Old
would n't answer; a Jehovah awful and angry; sending
out avenging, blood-thirsty angels; selfish; jealous of
rival deities; exacting; fond of compliments to his
magnificence; unjust; who could not forgive the smallest sin, until blood had been shed; such a God, I say,
revolutionizes a child's whole moral nature. The inward Life is throttled; and the outward life, we know,
is but an outgrowth of a child's idea of God. What is
to keep it from climbing by the standard you give it,
and being as wrathful, unforgiving, exacting and fond
of flattery as its God is made to be?
I do not mean to affix this to any one denomination
exclusively. I fear that while we Unitarians have
rejected this heartless method in theory, we retain
much of it practically. Not all of our churches have




124                THE CHILD.
realized the full beauty of the Birthright Church-standing up unhesitatingly to a faith in the native purity
of childhood, wherever it may lead us; holding the
children to be members of the Church by birth; sanctioning their gayeties and pleasures where they are not
wrong; and, by the gift of the communion bread and
wine, showing them that we are expecting from them
also pure and true lives, and that they too have their
Christ-childhood to imitate. We have forgotten the
full depth of that incident which planted a Church of
which children should be esteemed members on earth.
Let me read it over to you: " Then were there brought
unto him little children, that he should put his hands
upon them and pray: and his disciples rebuked them.
But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them
not to come unto me; for of such is the Kingdom of
Heaven."
Then, although we reject the catechism where it
seems to make life a matter of self-seeking, and recommends piety as a good investment, which will bring
something handsome at last, I am often pained to see
in home-practice, the same old serpent trailing along.
Scarcely a day passes without it. The mother whips
or scolds her child for what she considers wrong, and
gives him a piece of candy for what he does that is
right. Henceforth in the child's vocabulary the definitions stand thus: Bad act.-Something intimately
related to a flogging. Good act.-Something having
mysterious connection with a sugar-plum. The essen



THE CMILD.               125
tial principle of virtue is here lost altogether. Is it
impossible to teach a child that you expect him to be
good without being paid for it? When you reward one
for being honest or truthful, it is as much as to say, "I
supposed you to be a rogue and liar, and because you
are not, you deserve this."  Expect a child or man to
be good, and he will try to be so.-And so the mere
punishment or scolding inflicted for misbehavior, does
not teach the child that a thing is essentially wrong,
but only that it leads to serious inconveniences, and is
therefore inexpedient. And all this is a vulgar, useless
and threadbare method of treatment. Though children
should be restrained from being a trouble to others,
still, don't call physical restraint, or punishment, moral
training.
Thou poor bad child, with mouth full of falsehoods
and, perhaps, oaths, others may abuse and dislike theeI have no heart for that! Who knows how often the
vicious youth saw the terrific contrast between the
outer show and inner reality, which curses so many
homes; the invective changed to compliment when the
person at whom it was leveled appeared; the angry
brow radiant with smiles at an instant's warning; the
secret anger in the chamber,-the kiss in the parlor?
You may send the child to Sunday-school, and give
him to read the Sermon on the Mount, but you parents
are of more importance than Jesus and his discourses
in this sphere; and, as Thackeray has said, "in the
child's mouth, Mother is another name for God."




126                 THE CHILD.
" Is it well with the child?"  So asked the prophet
of the Shunamite woman. She could not speak: her
child was dead. How often do we ask the question,
and are told, " the child is well!"  No! it is not well;
it is as dead as the poor widow's. The child has fled,.and left in its place a mass of vanity, affectation, and
fine clothes. Between catechisms, puritanic Sabbaths,,and bad home influences, which should be treated
under the head of childrens' diseases, the child (the
real child) pined away and left us, leaving us, as before
said, the bundle of vanity and fine clothes, which the.fond mother still calls her child, and clings to, though
it abuses, and disobeys, and hates her! When I think
over the amount of ignorance of their nature, the bad
influences, the number of catechisms and Sabbaths
through which children come, I wonder that every other
mnan I meet is not a scoundrel; and that they should
ever come to church is a miracle.
With the reverend Channing, we must place the office
of educator above that of clergyman, or any other.
And there is no problem of so much moment to society
at present as, What is the best means of educating the
child, and what the best means of elevating the teacher;
securing such funds for this office as will command the
highest faculties and culture; for it takes nothing less
to deal with the child. What a rare combination of
qualities does it require to unfold carefully the man
from the bud, bringing forth, by due light and warmth,
every folded petal of genius or feeling! Any violence




THE CHILD.                 127
or bruising is felt ever after. For the ancients had the
true idea of education, as implied in that word, which
is from e and duco-to lead out. Culture is not to fill
up the child's mind from without, as if it were a cavity
to be heaped full of whatever geographies or languages
contain; but it is to unfold what is in it; and for this
the world exists-books being but indexes to what is in
the world.
The difficulty of the task arises from its extreme
delicacy.  Teaching, which now we find given to anybody, is the finest of fine arts. It is as if one handled
the delicate colors of the butterfly.  Nothing, to these
children, is trivial or unimportant; all is symbolic and
real, even your play with them. As, in their walking,
leaping, and antics, they are really learning the laws of
gravity, and the qualities of matter which delight or
bruise them, so in their joys, waywardnesses, repentances, they are learning the laws of their moral being;
and they know much more, generally, than they can
give the faintest hint of in words.
We are apt to forget this, the plastic nature of the
child, because, in our mature age, we know everything
comes to us, as it were, through a strainer, woven of
our prejudices, habits, and preferences.  We believe
what we have a mind to. But the constitution of the
child acts not yet by conscious independent exercise of
will. It is a part of nature, and acts by instinct or
necessity, as water falls or wind blows.  And so it
must use what it can get; and as a sbell-fish will arrest




128                 TIIE CIIILD.
and absorb every atom of sediment, of whatever kind,
which floats near it, to form its conch, so is every passing circumstance or word eagerly appropriated by the
young.  How important, then, that all the circumstances attending the development of the child should
be of a high and pure character, so that the mind, body
and soul shall come forth in the beautiful chorus of a
life high in aim and attainment!
Though we must needs draw the picture of the evil
demons which surround the cradle and earlier years
with very black lines, let us not be blind to the immense distance we have journeyed beyond Wigglesworth, nor to the wonderful appreciation of the subject
of childhood, and the need of a new literature for it,
which is altogether the most striking characteristic of
this generation.  What do our teachers say now?
They do not utter the old puritanic abuse of the children. Swedenborg, though seeking to preserve the
Calvinism of his age in an introverted mystic way,
sees, with the pure eyes of Eve, in each child, a man
fioin the Lord; sees sleeping there so softly, the Titanic
passions and powers which may rise to bless or curse
the race.'The sphere of innocence," says Swedenborg, "flows into infants, and through them  into
parents, and affects them. The innocence which flows
in is fiom the Lord, because he is innocence itself."
lie makes their place in heaven correspondent to the
eyes of God. Novalis pauses amid his woes to say:




THE CHILD.                 129
" Where children are, there is the golden age." Emerson has called the infant the "perpetual Messiah."
Is all this too much? I think not. We sit together
in our social life, in a hard shell of conventionality,
without a moment of self-forgetfulness, with the bit of
ceremony in our mouths; no sign of real life is given
by any one, for fear of some one's whispering, " How
eccentric!" conversing of weather, crops, and congress.
The infant is brought in by accident, and the circle is
regenerated in an instant. It cannot speak much, but
stupid indeed is that age or sex which cannot read a
whole Elizabethan literature in its clear diamond eyes,
and hear poetry and music in its prattle. It brings us
into the golden age once more.
Is it not the perpetual Messiah? The Christ seemed
to think so; for amid the dissensions of his disciples,
and their low apprehensions of his Evangel, his whole
decision and lesson was to set a young child in their
midst, the symbol of innocence and trust. Why should
we wonder that the Church of Rome, though crowned
with superstition, and clad with a robe of darkness,
should have ever had its great and true soul in every
generation? Why should we marvel that the earnest
St. Austin, the saintly i Kempis, the truthful and
gifted Pascal, the heavenly-minded Fenelon, the stronghearted Luther, were reared in that Church? Throughout its darkest ages, up over the blood on the path it
has come; over the lurid fires kindled for dissenters;
above the rage of evil-minded cardinals and popes;
6




130                 THIE CHILD.
above the dark inquisition-there shines on through its
history one clear, steady light, which could not fail of
its work. It is the holy child. There, carved by ablest
hands, painted by devout minds, the child rests on its
mother's breast, adored, loved; rebuking all evil passions, all meanness, all falsehood, by the serene innocence of its face, it was indeed the redeemer of the
apostate Church. What guilt could be cherished in its
presence?  Did it not speak to every father, every
mother of the little one at home, stirring the holiest
fountains of feeling? There it stood, the mother pressing it to her heart, the perpetual Messiah in every
Church; silently contradicting all that was false and
rotten in the service or sermon. The Church unconsciously bore in her bosom the elements of her own
destruction; for in worship of the child, men were led
again to simplicity and truthfulness, such as could not
co-exist with Jesuitism, or cruelty, or the lust of power.
Again must the holy child be exalted in our churches;
and, through gathering about us the child-like spirit,
we must see God's spirit moving upon the chaos of
society, and bringing forth the verdure of another Eden.
"Christine," cried the people, at the death of Gustavus-" Christine shall be our queen!"  And the
little girl of seven was brought out in the arms of a
rugged  Norseman, cheerful and  happy, and  was
crowned Queen of Sweden.  Happy nation, whose
rough soldiers acknowledged the beautiful sway of a
child's kind heart to be more than the wisdom of ambi



TIHE CIIILD.               131
tious lords.  It did but anticipate the higher day
of prophecy, when the rough, warring passions and
interests of men shall acknowledge the scepter of innocence and love: the wolf also shall dwell with the
lamb within us, and the leopard shall lie down with
the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the
fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
We must remember, then, as a Church, what an important element we have in our midst; one which we
must either, as a Church, ignore as not of God's honsehold, but of Satan's, or else absorb into our organic
life. It is our highest duty, perhaps, as a Church, to
lead the inborn trust of a child up to Him who implanted it. We should see that the pleasantest associations of life are connected in their minds with our
Church; and it will always be a sure test of a church
whether the young people love it. We should, as far
as is proper, mingle with the gayeties of the children,
that we may possess an influence on their graver moments. We should tell them that music was established
by the dear Father in Heaven, and also flowers, and
AMay-days. Let them know that it is ie that has set
the young blood to music; and that dancing is a part
of their nature, all of which HIe has made; that Ile
also pre-arranged laughter and fun. And when the
Christmas comes around, we should alter the word
KIris-Kringle, which they use, into Christ-Kindlein, of
which it is a corruption — Christ-Kindlein, or the
Christ-Child.  Tell them  that his birth made the




132                 THE CHILI).
Christmas; that he loved children, and gives them
gifts now by putting it into our hearts to love them,
and make them as happy as we can.
To what great importance does the Sunday-school
rise! I hate the phrase Sunday-school, because it is
associated with milch that is silly and morbid in most
minds; but I mean a Sunday-school such as we know
nay exist. Not a place for tasks should it be; the
children have mental tasks through the week, and we
have no right to rob them of their days of rest. In
Virginia, where the poor have no means of education,
the little MIethodist or Baptist Sunday-school, out in
the woods, is of wonderful importance, and one child
in every twenty learns to read from them; and I have
known little girls of ten walk every Sunday five miles
for the inestimable privilege. But the ideal Sundayschool would seem to me to be an adaptation of the
church to the age of the child. Simple as we may try
to be in the pulpit, it is impossible to impress on the
children subjects which imply a knowledge and experience which they cannot have.  But still every truth
enunciated has a corresponding statement, which may
reach the child's mind. And I will take it on myself
to say, running the risk of all that may be expected of
me after it, that it is the duty of a minister to prepare
himself as elaborately for discourses to the Sundayschool as to the pews.
Let me also remind the youth of both sexes in this
church, that it is not only an important duty to con



TIHE CHILD.               133
tribute what they can toward the cultivation of these
children, but that it is an important privilege and
source of culture to themselves. I venture to affirm,
that no amount of infbrmation can make an intelligent
person of one who has never watched and assisted in
the unfolding of a human mind: one book, the grandest
of all, written by God's pen, lies unknown to such a one.
When I go into alny Sunday-school, and find it leading
a lingering consumptive existence, and find the young,
who should be there as pupils or teachers, absent, I
say to myself, This church is composed of very pleasant people, no doubt, but they are not up so high yet
that they can enter here!
But in our church, with our ideas of human nature,
its greatness and destiny, not to have a living intercourse of this kind with the young is unpardonable.
Above all, as the center of the school, should we have
an excellent library. I know if all the books to be had
now were what they used to be, you might well excuse
yourselves and children from having anything to do
with them. Ah! how well we remember the pious
fiction of James, who would go playing in the water
when his mother forbade it, and was drowned; of
George, who went into the street on Sunday, moved
and instigated thereunto by the devil, and was logically run over by a coach. O dear! the very memory
of what I have suffered in childhood, at the hands of
Tract Societies and Sunday-school Unions, makes me
shiver; and to this day, I never see any poor little red



134                 TIE CHILD.
riding-hood, who has been waylaid by one of those
wolfish books, that I am not irresistibly reminded of
the British merchant, who, one day, determined to
make an immense outlay of parental affection, and
take his two little boys out into the country. Solemnly
they marched out, and, when arrived, the affectionate
business-man laid down his cane, and seizing either of
the youngsters by the collar, said: "Now, boys, I've
brought you out here to enjoy yourselves, and if you
don't enjoy yourselves pretty quick, you'll catch it,
that's all!"
But, thank Heaven, we are no longer necessarily
chained to these societies and their books. More than
in the Submarine Telegraph, do I see the superiority of
this age in the tendency of the highest genius, the
world over, to bring its very highest faculties for the
entertainment of the children. This was never heard
or dreamed of until this generation. We should hail
the entrance into this sacred sphere, of such authors as
Hans Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and Zschokke
in Germany; Thackeray, Dickens, Charles Kingsley,
and the Howitts in England; Cranch and Hawthorne in
America, as the reddening dawn of a new element in
our age-reverence for the child. Of the latter of these,
Mr. Hawthorne, as the first of our language who entered
this new vein, and the one who has mined it with the
best success, we must be more special in our remarks.
His are, unquestionably, the best children's books ever
written. All his earlier series of tales, " The Twice-told




THE CHILD.               135
Tales,"   Mosses from an old Manse," " Snow-image,
and other Tales," though written for adults, are good
enough for children-which is the highest praise that
can be given to a book: they may be well placed in the
hands of children of fourteen or fifteen years. But
those written for children especially, (though I am
sorry for him who ever gets too old to enjoy them),'i True Stories for Boys and Girls,"'"Wonder-book,"
"Tanglewood Tales," are the best expressions of his
genius, and entirely free from the somewhat morbid or
shaded coloring of the Scarlet Letter and Blithedale
Romance. Hawthorne has not forgotten that lie was
once a child-which so many forget. If it be true, as
is written, that no man knoweth the things of a man,
save the spirit of man which is in him, even so, we
may say, none can know the things of a child but the
spirit of a child. It is the old Christian doctrine, that
we enter the Kingdom of Heaven through a child-like
spirit. IHe who can bear this spirit into the experience
and culture of age, is the true Priest —the rod blossoms
in his hand.
Let us then, my brothers, see that we leave not the
tender vines unwatered, untended in God's vineyard.
Let us look deeply into the eyes of the child, and see
that its and our eyes were kindled at the same supernal
fire. Woe, woe to those who break the links which
bind them to those days when they were so freshly from
Heaven, and which these little ones were intended to
perpetuate in our minds! May the Church feel that it




136                 THE CHILD.
has a maternal interest in these as her children, as well
as their parents! And, may the Church, seeing that to
them all our faith and hope are soon to be committed,
when we shall lie down to rest from life's struggle;
that those softly sleeping babes, these playful children,
must one day be unsealed from the casket of youth, and
rise as genii, standing strongly for God and the Right,
or faltering by the way, for our neglect —may thile
Church, seeing this, gather about them as a granite
fortress, fighting their battles against the superstition,
error and evil of the world; seeing ill each new-born
child, a new center of unlimited influence for weal or
woe-a new star kindled in the firmament of Humanity; and bowing before the incarnate mystery, feel with
the first mother, We have gotten a mian from  the
Lord!




THE BIBLE.
ALL Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
Now, first of all, I must say that there is no such
sentiment as this in the Bible. It was solely in the
minds of King James' Translators.  If you will examine this passage (2 Tim., 3, 16), in your Bibles, you
will find that the word is, in the first clause of the sentence, is in italics; which, you know, always means in
the Bible, "supplied by the translators."  In the
supply of this little word, the whole intent of the
passage is destroyed. The passage literally translated,
without any word not in the original, reads, "Every
scripture (or writing) given by inspiration of God, is
profitable,"-and so on.
By it is opened up before us the great Problems of
Inspiration, Revelation, Infallibility and Authority.
They concern deeply our views of a Book which has had
more to do with the life of mankind and the History of
the World, than all other books together: a Boolk which
will be proclaimed from ten thousand pulpits this day,
(137)




138                 THE BIBLE.
as the infallible Word of God, as surely as if the sky
had divided and the volume fallen from its heart:
a Book, to which has been attached every shade of importance, from that confirmed by the Helvetic Confession of 1675, which made a belief in the inspiration
of every vowel point in it, a matter of life and death,
througlh the critical views of modern Germany and
England, which, commencing with Luther's rejection of
many canonical books, has embraced such churchmen
as Coleridge, Arnold, Tholuck and Neander, under the
title of rational interpreters, (who believe the Bible in
the main true, but by no means infallible,) and a few
who have rejected it altogether, as unworthy of confidence.
It requires a sort of animal courage to plunge into
this whirl of conflicting views; but there is no question
of more importance, especially in this country, where
the Bible is so universally accessible; and I have faith
that, by mutual frankness and charity, we may attain a
reasonable view, which will not obscure, but brighten
this " lamp to our feet and light to our pat}h."
In all nations there are what are called the Sacred
Books. The Turk has his Koran; the -Iindoo his
Puranas; the Persian his Desatir; the Jew his Hebrew
Scriptures; the Christian his Greek Testament. Each
of these has an equally implicit faith in the excellence
and superior inspiration of his Bible. Walter Scott,
when dying, asked for a book: when asked "what
book?" he is reported to have said, "What book!




THE BIBLE.                 139
There is but one book."  It was a proverb, at one
time, that a clergyman should be homo unius libri-a
man of one book; and people were scandalized by seeing him with other books than the Bible. But this
Bible-worship has its strict parallel in the other nations.
The Caliph Omar ordered the great Alexandrian Library to be burnt; for, said he, " The value of all
books is in the Koran; if true, what they say is in that,
if not true, we want them not —burn them! "
The idealization and worship of some outward object,
seems to be the first result of the action of the religious
sentiment-the infantine grasp of Reverence. This
underlies all Idolatry; of which the animating sentiment is good, but the object partial. Idolatry of outward rules comes next; the Fire-worshiper has his sunrise; the Catholic his Church; the Protestant his
Bible.  The Jew, thinking that God cared only for
his nation, felt at liberty to exterminate, mercilessly,
all other nations; the Romanist, believing the ark of
Noah typified his Church, announces that all outside
of it are to be lost; and the Bibliolater excommunicates
all who will not fall down and worship the Scriptures.
The Trinitarian Coleridge wisely predicted, that the
Idolatry of uncivilized nations would be followed by
Bibliolatry among the civilized. So the event has
proved. Men can scarcely even consider the question
of the Bible calmly; and discussion here easily passes
into intolerance.
It was one of those enchanted days of early autumn,




140                 THE BIBLE.
when the many-colored vesture of nature, giving the
sign of smiling decay, touched the heart to a deeper
tone; a fair Sunday, when God's breath filled the earth
and sky, and forsook not the reverent heart, that I met
a dear old friend and classmate, from whom I had long
been separated. We had loved and labored for the
same faith once, but now our paths had parted widely.
Yet there I saw the same earnest eye-the brow with
the same seals of truth and intellect which were the
rivets of our former friendship. I cannot forget that
walk which made the whole day flit by as a shadow.
Thus began our conversation. "I have been thinking (he said) of the death of our poor S., and how it is
written,' It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of
the living God.' 
" Is it possible (I said) that you think he has fallen
into worse hands than when he was among his friends
on earth? Does God love him less than we?"
"'lIe was unconverted, and I quoted from  the
Bible."
" But do you not see that you are following Judaism
and not Christianity; it may be a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of a Jewish Jehovah, but not a Christian
Father."
" But' holy men of old wrote as they were moved by
the Spirit.' 
"BBut this does not say that the writings were inspired, but only the good men. You must take notice
that in the Scriptures the human element is mentioned




TIHE BIBLE.               141
as fully as the spiritual.'holy men wrote.' What
idea of inspiration do you hold to?"
" The literal authenticity of the word of God."
" So do I, when I can find it. But because a collection
of books is made up, neatly arranged and bound in one,
does not constitute it the word of God. Now, I undertake to affirm, that no, one believes in the literal
authenticity of the Bible. Do not start, but tell me,
if you, for instance, believe that the sun stood still over
Ajalon, to await the massacre of the Gibeonites?"
"' Of course I am aware (he replied) that the statement that the sun stood still, was founded on the
exploded idea that the sun moved round the earth;
but I believe that the earth stood still so long."
" To set aside, then, the question, whether this universe paused for a small band of Jewish barbarians to
wreak their vengeance on a village of men and women,
you admit that the sun's standing still is not exactly
the same as the earth's standing still; and that the
spirit which moved the writing of that statement, was
not quite so wise as Copernicus?"
" If that is what you mean by literal authenticity, I
will admit that the Bible is not verbally inspired. But
I hold to the accuracy of its particular statements."
" By admitting that there may be verbal inaccuracies
in the Bible, you allow that there is some limit to its
inspiration.  That implies that men must find that
limit; for if there be verbal inaccuracies, men must
discover them.  But that involves the right of our




142                 TIlE BIBLE.
private judgment to criticise. The right to discriminate
in one thing includes the right to discriminate in all."
"I agree."' Then I will proceed to show you how mistaken
you are in supposing, that you, or any one who reasons
this far, believes in the particular statements; my position, mark you, not being that the reason shall be
limited to what any class shall maintain to be alone
reasonable, but what all shall acknowledge.  It will
not do to say, that because this or that is a miracle, the
reason will not own it; because it is not conceded by all
that a miracle is unreasonable."
My friend expressed his surprise; for it is a common
error, that those who discredit the infallible dogma, do
it from mere disbelief in God's power to make a revelation, and confirm it by miracles.
"Now, first (I proceeded), there are cases of direct
contradiction, where you are actually forced to reject
one thing in order to believe another of two affirinations. Compare, for example, the accounts given of
Judas in St. Matthew and the Acts. Matthew states
(27: 3), that Judas repented, brought again the twenty
pieces of silver, cast them down, and went and hanged
himself; that the chief priests, after consultation,
bought a place to bury strangers in with the money,
which place was called the "field of blood," because it
was purchased with the price of blood. The author of
the Acts states, that Judas purchased a field with the
reward of his iniquity, and, falling headlong, burst




THE BIBLE.                143
asunder in the midst, and his bowels gushed out, on
which account the field was called Aceldama, or Field
of Blood. Now, unless your mind can entertain such
contradictions as that the chief priests could have
bought this field, after Judas had died, with the same
money which Judas had paid for it before he died;
that Judas cast away the money, and bought a field
with it also; that Judas could have died in two entirely
different ways; that the field was called Aceldama both
because Judas died on it, and because the price of
Christ's blood purchased it —you cannot believe the'particular statements' of the Bible without some
reservation. Another instance is the account of Paul's
conversion, given in two different portions of the same
book-the Book of Acts. In 9: 7, we are told, that'the men which journeyed with Paul stood speechless,
hearing a voice, but seeing no man.'  In the 22d: 9,
Paul himself says, that they saw the light, but heard
no voice. It is an exact counter-statement; in one
their fear being ascribed to hearing a voice, and seeing
nothing; in the other to seeing a light, but hearing
nothing,."
"I must honestly concede these inconsistencies, since
you draw mny attention to them," said my friend, " but
you will as honestly allow that they are of no special
importance to any revelation of truth to mankind."
" Of none, except to show us the possibilities of error
in the best of such professed revelations."
"I must still maintatain," he continued, " that the




144                 THE BIBLE.
Bible i's authentic, in respect of any fact in nature,
history, or morals, which affects man."
"Would you regard an error, committed in the very
point which a writer started out to establish, as proving
the Bible not authentic in that regard a?"
"I certainly should."
" Let us, then, examine the account of the deluge.
There having been some dispute about the size of
Noah's ark, I- will agree to put it outside of the largest
computation, so as not to have the charge of making it
too small. Let it be 500 by 100 feet in size: it would
be all one to my point if it were twenty times that
size. Now, it is known that there have always been
on earth more than 150,000 species of animals.  Of
each species, Noah is said to have taken a pair of the
unclean (under Jewish laws) and seven pairs of the
clean. This would amount to havinginn an ark of 500
by 100 feet about five or six hundred thousand animals,
of the largest as well as smallest sizes.  With these
animals, which could not be gathered in an ark twice
the size of Cincinnati, with food enough to sustain them
for the hundred and fifty days in which, it is stated, the
waters prevailed, with one window only, Noah and hIis
family were slhut up. Mind you, this does not rest on
the idea that this is impossible because supernatural;
there is no intimation that there was anything supernatural. The ark was said to have been made so large
in order to admit all the different animals of which the
writer, who was no Cuvier, knew; that they were not




TtHE BIBLE.               145
fed by miracle, is plain, from the distinct assertion that
enough food was taken for them all. Then what are
we to think of this account of the deluge.'All the
high hills that were under the whole heaven were
covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered.' It is stated, in
the Bible, that this water came in the natural way, by
rain, and from the fountains of the great deep, which
were broken up; and we are, therefore, forbidden to
think that it was added from without the natural elements, which God caused to break forth. Now, it is
very easy to demonstrate, that all the water in the earth
itself would not be able, if it covered the earth frow
the line of circumference upward, to reach to the tops
of the highest mountains on the planet, or even the
small hills. All the water which could come, in the
way stated in the Bible, from the seas and rain, would
not cover the surface of the earth higher than some
houses. Remember-we must, if we believe the Bible,
believe its assertions as much as to the way in which it
is done as to the main event; and are not at liberty to
suppose a miracle where the Bible declares there was
none."
"I must confess (said my friend,) that I cannot see
that it would be of importance, to have a revelation of
scientific accuracy. But, will you not agree with me,
that in all that bears upon the moral duties of man and
his relation with God, this book is authoritative. "' I must really qualify my words before I can assent
6 -x




146                THE BIBLE.
to that. I should not like to give the Bible to a child
with any intimation that its moral standard was to be
always revered. I would not like to place before the
child King David, as a man after God's heart, as he is
called, for, setting aside his conduct to Uriah, of which
he repented, does this, from the 137th Psalm, read like
the writing of a'man after God's heart.?''Oh
Daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed, happy
shall he be who rewardeth thee as thou hast served us i
Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little
ones against the stones!' Nor should I be willing to
give to children, who have mothers and fathers, the
following misanthropic saying of a jaded sensualist, as
the true iiipiration of the wisest of men. (Ecc., 7: 27.)'Behold this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out thie account; which yet my
soul seeketh, but I find not: one (gooud) man among a
thousand have I found; but a (good) woman among all
those have I not found.' The youth then, are to have
it on the authority of the Word of God, that there is not
more than one man to a thousand who may be trusted,
and not one woman! And what idea is the following
to give concerning the nature of the human soul? (Ib.
3: 18 )' I said in mine heart concerning the estate of
the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and
that they might see that they themselves are beasts; for
that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts;
even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so
dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that




THE BIBLE.                147
a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is
vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and
all turn to dust again.' Very natural speculations for
King Solomon in the midst of his seven hundred wives,
princesses, and three hundred concubines; but not quite
good enough, to place in the hands of those whom we
desire to believe that there is a difference between a
man and a beast!  And you, my friend, no more than
I, can believe in the unqualified moral authenticity of
a book, which represents a just God as hardening Pharaoh's heart, and then punishing him and all Egypt for
the hardness of one man, which he had himself caused
in order to make a display of his power; or, as commanding Moses and Aaron to tell Pharaoh a deliberate
falsehood, saying that Israel was only going a little
way into the wilderness to sacrifice to their God, when
they really designed running off entirely; or as commending Jael, who, for a political end, betrayed Sisera,
her husband's friend, into his tent, and while he was
asleep, drove a spike through his head! "
My friend was silent, and we soon parted; I to urge
these facts upon all before whom I am called, in God's
providence, to stand; he to find, I trust, a sunnier faith
than that with which I found him clogged.
But now it is asked,' Do you then reject the Bible
altogether 2" No.
There is a strange illusion abroad, that the Bible is a
unit; that if you touch one stone in this nicely-wrought
arch, all the rest will fall to the ground. There never




148                 TUE BIBLE.
was a greater blunder: of all books on the face of,the
earth, there is none of such variety of dates, authenticity, subjects. Few can tell why they believe any of
them authentic; but it is a familiar thing to students of
the Bible, that it was but by a few votes of fallible men,
that we have not now several books of the Old and
New Testaments, which have been decided to be apocryphal; and that only by a few human votes, were
several of those still preserved retained. The Church
has always been wavering as to what was Bible, and
what was not; and as to who wrote"- various books. It
is common to hear of the Books of Moses,-yet you
cannot suppose that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, unless
you suppose that he was capable of giving a minute
account of his own death and ceremonies of burial. It
is proved, by orthodox critics entirely, that Paul did
not write the Epistle to the Hebrews, and some other
things ascribed to him. Such a book calls for great
discrimination.
It is utter absurdity to say, that one who rejects any
portion of it, must reject all. Profound logic!  Because in a garden I gather for food potatoes and peas,
I must take along also, nightshade and artichokes!
Because some superstitions, which no child would now
own, are found in Plato and Lord Bacon, therefore all
they wrote is superstition!  This is the reasoning
which would say, that because we will not believe
everything in the Bible, we must reject it; and have
no business with preaching from it and commending it.




THE BIBLE.                149
We affirm that our common sense, our moral sense,
our ability to investigate, are given us for the purpose
of our distinguishing what is credible, what incredible,
what healthful, what hurtful to the mind and soul; as
we have faculties to distinguish between vegetables
which are good food, and those which are poisons.
hIave you ever thought what a curse an infallible
Bible would be to the world?
Let us suppose for a moment that the fruits of the
world, and all the products which support the.race,
should come henceforth without labor, and the law no
longer hold, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat
bread."  What would become of the physical development of mankind, which is known to depend on labor?
It is manifest that man would dwindle into feebleness
in a few generations, and presently become extinct.
How would it be with the intellect? Suppose it should
henceforth be the plan of school-teachers, after giving
children their various problems, to go around and give
each solution and answer, so that there should be no
need for any child to make any intellectual effort. It
is plain that education is at an end; that mental powers,
dependent, like the body, on labor, must lose their vigor.
Yet this spontaneity of harvests and donations of unearned knowledge are parallel to the gift of a revelation
to the soul. If Genesis gives us the true history of
creation, and the laws of nature, they are not left to
be discovered, of course. What, then, is left to develop such men as Leibnitz and Agassiz? Does not




150                 THE BIBLE.
tile existence of such men presuppose that things are
cnot revealed?. What mental strength can be derived
from laws unfolded more than physical from harvests
unlabored?  Let us carry this consistently into the
moral and spiritual life; for there is a science of the
soul also, and laws surrounding it; and we affirm that,
as fruits without labor would be physical degeneracy,
]nowledge without thought and invention  ultimate
idiocy, so a revelation of moral and spiritual truths,
without exercise of the soul to attain them, would be
moral and spiritual weakness and vastation. Hience a
book which should be acknowledged, without test, a
revelation of these things, superseding the activity of
the spiritual faculties, would be the bane, not the
blessing, of mankind.
Any Protestant can see this principle acting in
lRomanism. There a person goes to the confessional;
the priest is his conscience to tell him right or wrong.
The soul is not required to act on its own sin, bhut to
obey blindly the verdict of the priest.  It is easy to
see that, under such treatment, the conscience rusts
and perishes by disuse, as fishes in caves, where there:is no light to exercise the nerves of vision, have no
eyes. This fact easily explains to a Protestant the low
mental and moral condition of Catholic countries. Yet
how does this differ essentially from having the action
of the conscience superseded by a set of written texts
and rules? In one case, it is priest; in another, book;
in neither, the soul.




THE BIBLE.                 151
The error of expecting or believing in an infallible
book-revelation, arises from the old heathenism, that
God needs something of man for his glory or happiness. Many unconsciously imagine that God has a
book or creed in the world, which he very much needs
men should believe, and if they do not, will be insulted
and angry. But when we know that all is for the culture and elevation of man, and that this implicit reliance on an external authority disparages the self-reliance and energy within which are the conditions of
strength, the matter is plain.
Another view to be taken is, that this so-called infallible revelation comes through human language. Language is fallible, being the outgrowth of man. IIow
can an infallible revelation come through a fallible
medium, retaining its infallibility?  That it does not,
is shown by the fact that a simple text often strikes ten
men in ten different ways. Christ in the Bible says
plainly, My Father is greater than I. The obvious conclusion of all would be, that God was greater than Christ.
But the teachers come in and say, that this means
that the divine was greater in him than his earthly
nature, and- give other indirect meanings. Well; but
do they not show in that explanation, that the Bible
needs their aid to rescue it from the imperfections of
language? So, by this showing, it would follow that
the Romanists are right in saying, that an infallible
book renders an infallible interpreter necessary, which
they furnish in an infallible Church. What is the use




152                 TIHE BIBLE.
of an infallible revelation, if, because of the imperfections of men and language, one understands one thing
from a text, and another the opposite, as is the case
with Unitarians and Trinitarians in regard to the
simple saying of Christ, " My Father is greater than
I."
Having then inquired, What the Bible is not, let us
see in what sense it is a revelation. For we do believe
it to be a revelation in the highest sense-a revelation
by reason of its errors and immoralities no less than by
its truths. I know there are some who are ready to
ask, If the soul learns all from within, what use can it
have for any book or external influence? It is enough
to reply to these, that the soul needs revelation from
without because it has revelation within. The very
want of a revelation, is itself a revelation. The rain
is not more refreshing to any flower than the water-lily,
though it is, and because it is surrounded by water.
Euclid is a mathematical revelation to the youth, only
because the youth has a mathematical faculty. But
let us trace the sources of revelation.
From the beautiful groves of Arezzo, Michael Angelo
wrote thus to his friend Vasari: 1" Here I am fed with
angel's food. The thunder speaks to my ear with the
voice of ages; the winds come rushing with Almighty
power.  They talk of nature, and what is nature
but the Spirit of God, filling man with  inspiration a"




THE BIBLE.                153
Ah! there is where inspiration begins. Before this
fair and wonderful apparition, called Nature, as a bird
sings its joy, the great soul utters itself in prophecy
and revelation. When natural objects and laws are
interpreted into meaning for the Spirit, that is truth,
and truth is always divine. Wherever truth is, God is.
Swedenborg saw that whenever some angels announced
a truth, a twig which they held in their hands blossomed. The first race of prophets is the flowers and
stars, which, through any wise and pure soul, blossom
to truths far grander than any flowers or stars.
But if mere nature be inspiration to her true lovers
and interpreters, how much more any insight into that
being in whom all nature culminates —Man; for surely
man is the meant of nature-all the gradations of form,
from lowest plants to highest animals, being but hints
and prophecies of his advent. In him, all the excellencies of other beings were concentrated. To him, as
their king, all owe homage.
Well, now, what if there be a book which truly records the development and destiny of this wonderful
being-a book which gives faithful history of the credulities, speculations, errors, follies of his race's infancy
and boyhood; of the rising of higher stars of knowledge and insight, through slow experiences of ages; of
the night and gray twilight of this being dissolving
into the magnificent dawn of a world's holy religion?
Would not that be a revelation of man? and because
man is God's image, his nature God's work, must it
7




154                 THIE BIBLE.
not be God's revelation also. Suppose to a geologist
the earth should suddenly become transparent; every
fossil accessible; the gradations of form-from the central rocks up to the crust, open to his examinationwould that not be a revelation, or" a drawing back of
the vail" from the earth? But man also has a geology.
In any true biography of the race, we see successive
strata of life; here also are fossil superstitions and ideas
as in the earth are saurian and dactyl. And though,
as the old monsters are extinct, demanding for their
existence primitive stages of the world, many of the old
thoughts and statements imbedded in Old Testament
sandstone are extinct, yet do they reveal human development spiritually, as fossils reveal the development of the
animal creation materially. You will see readily, that
the difficulty men have with the Bible versus Science and
Morality, arises from an attempt to make it out a direct
supernatural revelation from  God; it being natural
enough for the human mind, in its early days, to
imagine the sky to be a firmament, or firm, solid arch,
but incredible that God should have called it so. Thus
you see we are not troubled with those difficulties.
What we find in the Bible, which is not strictly
true or moral, we take as thle best evidence of the
genuineness of the book. If not true to science, it
is true to human nature. A book brought up to the
standard of a French academy in its scientific accuracy, or to transcendental ethics in its moral rules,
would smack of some secret council of modern times.




THE BIBLE.                155
Suppose a correct theory of the stratification of the
earth, or a catalogue of animal genera and species,
were found in Genesis, who would believe it to have
been written in the age it professes? But there, with
all its imperfections, superstitions, immoralities united
to so much that is divine, is so exact a counterpart
of man as he is, that we know it is true; and it is as
much a revelation in its blunders as in its truths.
Take the book; examine its language, ideas, structure, and see if it does not bear the impress of man
from childhood to maturity. Its account of a six days
creation, after which, God was fatigued and must rest;
the firmament, which was a solid wall, dividing the
waters in the earth from the waters above it, so that
when it rained the windows of Heaven are supposed to
he opened to let the water through; are not these the
speculations of children?  Then the dire judgments of
Jehovah, Egyptian plagues, the swallowing of Pharaoh
and his host in the Red Sea, the Deluge; are they not
the prodigies of the nursery of the race?
But the childhood passes, and we have the earnest
action of political and social life. The celebration, not
of God's prodigies, but of the achievements of men, and
the splendor of kings. Here is a race's self-reliant
youth. Then earnest life and experience distil their
deeper meanings. Manhood rises in prophecy. And
now on, profounder, profounder, runs the ever-widening
human spirit; through great action, lofty prophecy,
elevated hymns; until the soul of a people, striking




156                 THE BIBLE.
Heaven with its sublime front, gathering the experience
and insight of foregone ages, —as the aloe its accumulated strength of ninety-nine years fad its centuryblossom-bursts forth into that Evangel which redeems
the World!
The Bible of a nation, is all which expresses the soul
of that nation. Thus we revere the Bible of the Hebrews, because of its superior naturalness and humanity. The Human soul everywhere, in all ages, finds its
wants, satisfactions, sympathies, consolations, there,
because the human soul wrote it. If I had not written
the Bible, I could not find my emotions so faithfully
recorded there; that is, it was written by that common
heart of mankind to which we are all inlets. So, also,
there is not an error or crime recorded there, but flows
directly from the nature we all partake; thus making it
as well the " sword of the spirit," as a " lamp unto our
feet."  It is indeed the Book of Books, because the
most faithful epitome of Man.
And this simple rule applies, not only to the Books
of Narrative, but to those of prophecy, poetry, and the
divine oracles of Christianity. When we remember
that the human soul is a divine being, wandering
through the world gathering forces for a higher life,
how sacred become her traces and footprints!  And in
this sacred volume, we believe may be found, nature
new-created and transfigured through the Soul! Only
from its depths can prophecy come; for the human soul
is the one thing alone which we can think of as reach



THE BIBLE.                157
ing God. Prophecy and vision are not then supernatural, but the very height of the natural.  It is the
flower of actual life. " Art thou a soothsayer, good
Mother? " said Apelles to Zara. "Who," she cried,
"who  that has lived to see the raven hair turn to
snow; who that has watched the sapling as it grew
into the sturdy oak, and has beheld generation after
generation swept away; who that has seen all this and
yet stands blasted and alone, is not a soothsayer?
Aye, young master, age and sorrow have the gift of
reading the future by the past."
In nature everything becomes sacred and beautiful
when it ceases to be mere outwardness, and becomes
knowledge. Serpents and other reptiles, and insects
are often loathsome in themselves, but not so when a
naturalist is tracing fromn them God's idea in creation.
So Egypt, the Wilderness, Babylon, Jerusalem, are
records of crime and error, often of the most disgusting
kind; yet from those poisonous roots grew the fairest
blossoms of prophecy, and fruits of Christianity.
All experience is really Revelation. IHow would it
be if every one now born should not be able to profit by
the laws and facts which have been discovered by those
who lived before him?  Ages have gone to acquire the
laws of Gravitation and Electricity, the axioms of
matter, the properties of fire, water, poisons. Now,
unless these were revelation to the next generation,
each one can only learn these things by being burned,
drowned or poisoned in turn. Thus life tried by the




158                THE BIBLE.
Hebrew people through manifold experiences has been
expressed in the Bible. The circumstances are past,
and-we cannot undergo them ourselves; but they are
reproduced here as truth, which is always alive. The
more we live and feel, think and act, the more do we
discover how true is this Book. In it every age of the
world brings a contribution to my fireside. I may bear
Egypt's yoke and Israel's freedom; the Wilderness, its
trials and joys; and blessed Palestine in my own private heart. Is it not thus alone we can live and be
nourished by life? Men must live by bread; bread,
planted, growing, harvested, kneaded, baked. Dust
enough there is unsown, but he cannot eat it; yet that
which he does eat is but dust passed from field to oven.
So, to his mind, what is mere Nature but dust?  But
when Nature, overcome by human force and mind,
yields experiences of life; and these yield maxims of
prudence, wisdom, thought, prophecies, psalms, holy
visions; then may the spirit be nourished by it, as the
body by bread which was last year's dust. But we
must bear in mind, that it is only revelation so far as
the soul is able to appropriate it by life and experience.
A traveler may tell us of delicious and luxuriant fruits
in the tropics, but they are not so good to us as the
homeliest fare we really have. It is even so with your
maxims, texts, morals; they are idle abstractions,
except so far as the life is up to grasping them. The
writing must be read in the same spirit which wrote
it, and revelation commence in the individual soul, as




THE BIBLE.                 159
it commenced in the brain and heart of Isaiah or
Paul.
I fear not then for the Bible. Let it be cast forth to
the severest tests of Time and Criticism; let the clearest of the sunbeams play around it. I hate to hear
persons express fear that it can be injured by such investigations. Who dares say that any truth can die?
Truth is everywhere sealed with the power and immortality of God. And were every sentence in the Bible
proved false except one, that one would not be disparaged an iota, but would survive the wreck of all the
rest.
Let us not insult God's dominion over the world by
any timidity. Least of all can we fear that the Bible
shall lose its true authority. More and more as unwise
claims are stricken down, and foolish superstitions concerning it fall, it brightens to a value which the Bibliolater, afraid to prove it, can never know. Too long
has it been associated with the best that is in every
man; too long the companion of affliction, the solace of
toil, the help of faith, for it ever to fail of its divine
mission. Scholars may quote Plato in studies, but the
hearts of millions shall quote this Book at their daily
toil, and draw strength from its inspiration, as the
meadow draws it from the brook. Alh no, I cannot for
a moment contemplate such a thing as its loss! I have
heard of a Fair Island which had long gladdened the
sea as a gem; where voyagers had been wont to pause
for its beauty and refreshing fruits and fountains,



160                 THE BIBLE.
suddenly sinking beneath the waves. 13ut what were
that to the loss of this sacred record of Man, and God's
dealings with him; to the sinking of this Fair Island,
whereon millions of life's weary, tempest-tost voyagers
have found  repose and comfort2 Be not anxious,
friends, more than you are anxious for the sun lest it
should fail, —lest the true authority of this Bible should
be impaired: embalmed in the immortal heart of man,
sealed by the Eternal Spirit, its Truth must live as
long as these shall live.




M  IGNON.
Seek.
MOST beautiful among the creations of Goethe is
Mignon, the child. Born of a noble family in Italy,
in the midst of every luxury and refinement, she was
stolen by a band of vagabond actors, and reared in
contact with coarseness and harsh treatment. Though
stolen at an age to which memory can only recur with
twilight indistinctness, her shrinking  temperament
warned her that the cold German airs were not native
with her; her loneliness among her gay companions
attested that she was not born with them; and in her
mind, there ever floated a cherished, though vague,
vision of the beautiful skies, luxuriant gardens, and
superb halls and ornaments of her southern home.
She yearned for something, she knew not what; but a
subtle instinct guided her heart southward. Of those
whom she chanced to meet, she would ask if they were
going north or south; and if they said the latter, her
eyes would light up with unwonted hope, and she
would ask them to take her with them-she was so
cold there. The child met her first and only friend,




162                    MIGNON.
Wilhelm; he cared for her, and soothed her, and she
canme to worship him.  It was when he was sitting
alone, that he heard the sound of music, and Mignon
entered with her cithern, and sang, with impassioned
voice, the finest lyric of modern times, in which all her
dreams of home and her vague longings concentrated.
"Knowst thou the land where the citrons bloom,
And the orange lights up the leafy gloom;
A gentle wind from deep blue heaven blowsThe myrtle thick, and high the laurel grows.?
Knowst thou it then?'Tis there!'tis there!
O, my true loved one, thou with me must go!"
Poor Mignon! she never reached her Italian home;
but, while yet a child, she was taken to a fairer home,
a sunnier sky, a tenderer father, where the flowers
never fade, and love never fails, and none could snatch
her away.
Margaret Fuller has called Mignon the type of lyric
poetry.  She would seem  rather the type of all that
mysterious yearning, striving thing within us, which we
call the so80l.  For is she not God's child-born of his
heart, and in his beautiful halls?  Surely, "heaven lies
about us in our infancy;" and there too are garlands of
innocence, and dreams of beauty.  What though the
poor child is out here among the vagabond passions
and follies of life?  What though they have borne her
away into contact with coarse natures, and she must
lead a shrinking life amid the chilling airs of evil?




MIGNON.                  163
In secret, she still pines for her first sweet innocent
home; she weeps and prays for a hand which shall
lead her there.  And when we come close to the
human heart of any one, let us listen well, and we
shall hear the chords swept by an unseen hand, and
the music, now "querulously high, now softly, sadly
low," of a heart yearning for its Father's house-the
land where the fair fruits of the spirit bloom.
I know it is not always so; that there are some
whom these dreams and longings for the higher, purer
life seem to have deserted; whom Swedenborg appears
to have indicated when he spoke of some spirits which
he saw in hell, but who were very happy there, and
thought they were in heaven. Alas! that were the
saddest of all hells. I must think the philosopher was
mistaken, and that though there are many who are so
deeply absorbed in the merely earthly life, as to be
generally forgetful of the spiritual, yet the vision will
urge itself vividly, at times, on all, and the homewoe cling to the hardest heart. If there had been
some of the Calvinistic film taken from the eyes of
Swedenborg, he would have seen, hovering amidst
these spirits so contented with their hell, by which is
meant the mere physical social life, which so many
lead apart from anything higher, another spirit. It is
the spirit of DOUBT. Ever and anon she stoops and
whispers to one and another: Are dust and ashes fit to
mnake the treasure of a divine soul 2....  Your
neighbor had all these things for which you give up




164                 MIGNON.
everything; he had wealth, and family, and position;
but he sleeps under the sod, and they benefit him
not...  Are you not ashamed to see how few
aims you have in life, which the worm or mole burrowing the clod has not in common with you? They
and you seek only comfort, and a supply.
Thus, gliding about, whispers the questioning spirit.
There is no man who does not sometimes hear that
voice.  Then patiently she waits to see if the doubt
grow deeper-if some inquiring eye shall be turned to
her; and when it is, she has but one word to whisper
in the ear; that word is SEER.
No, no! the soul, in a hell of mere earthliness, can
never entirely persuade itself that it is in heaven. And
even from the midst of what seems absolute spiritual
destitution, when nakedness and starvation have done
their utmost, when this spirit has whispered her doubt,
and said to the soul seek, the poor prodigal catches a
glimpse of his awful poverty of spirit, and cries: "I
will arise, and go to my Father."
Seek —yes, I must seek; but what?  Some would
say Regeneration - some, Christ - some, culture.
Men have always a disposition to take humanity in the
lump, and ask, as one would of a marble-quarry or
guano, " What is it good for?"  A friend who has recently been in England, and met'often with her best
man, Carlyle, told me an anecdote of him, which struck
me as satisfactory. A fine London gentleman, who
wished to know the author, more perhaps from curiosity




MIGNON.                 16 5
than anything else, came over from London, and went
up toward Carlyle's house. IIe met him in the street
before he got there. "Well, Mr. Carlyle," he said,
" I've come into your faith, that every man ought to
be set to work, and kept at it; but what now shall a
man work at?" "Ah!" was the rough answer," you're
a great fool, to come out here in the rain and mud, and
ask a man what ye're to do, when it's what you were
put into the world to find out with your heart's blood."
It was God's truth for all its bluntness. What are
you to believe amid the clamor of swarming creeds 
What, when your mind has plied all mysteries with
fervor, honesty, and valor, you shall find to be your
own special creed-not the Episcopalian, nor Presbyterian, nor Unitarian creed, but your own. Attempt
not to climb into the kingdom  but by your own
door.  Pray not the prayers of others, but heed
him  who said, Enter into thy closet.  What are
you to do in the world?  What thy hand shall
find that it can do, when every sinew aches for its
work; when the heart holds itself full under the
light of God, as the wool is spread under the bleaching sun —then what it tells thee, obey.  What the
mind shall seek, or the heart or the hand shall seek,
that is the very problem given thy life to solve; the
thing for which thy heart's blood is to be paid: seeking
alone shall lead thee to it. Christ said: " Seek and ye
shall find,"-not " find and ye shall seek."
And thou, 0 Seeker! who hast heard in aspiring,




166                  MIGNON.
growing nature, or the aspiring striving soul, the voice
which cries, Seek, and art ready to seek the best and
highest life and knowledge which the universe can
give, take courage; the path of search is not through
the musty volumes of theologians, nor through questions of incarnation and hypostasis, nor through the
catacombs of the dead, and fleshless ideas and institutions of the past; but the way is simple and plain
before thee; and the light of a few strong instincts,
such as God has lodged in every human heart, will
shed all clearness that is needed.
First, seek truthfully. He who plans at the start,
that he will arrive at a certain foregone conclusion, or
that there is any conclusion which he is resolved not to
arrive at, hath a falsehood in his heart. He is no true
knight of the seekers; let him give up his sword, and
stand aside.  Such a man is fonder of himself than
the truth, and would flare his conceited little taper in
the face of the very sun. The strong man is he who
does not adopt ideas, and shape them to the prejudices
of himself and those around him; but with the hemlock or the cross in sight, humbles himself before the
truth of things, and becomes its faithful mouth-piece;
stating not what he or others would have to be so, but
what really is so. Nature is very obstinate, and shuts
down her shell, like a turtle, when you try to force her;
and so is it with all truth. I have no faith that a man
will fathom any question to any good depth, who fears
his plummet will go too far, or fears any conclusion




MIGNON.                  167
however startling. Perfect truth —that is his only line.
" But so you shall be led to doubt." Is not a true doubt
better than a rotten, false show of belief or certainty?
Is it immortality, or God, or custom, or society, that
seeking brings into doubt?  Let us openly say, "I
doubt," if that is the truth of the moment; and when
a clearer moment comes, we may say, i I see how it is."
That conviction which has never been doubted, is not to
be trusted for an instant; even your faith that there is
a God is worthless, if never cross-questioned; for we
rely upon the solid earth, remembering that there is
nothing solid which was not once fluid, and that nothing
is certain which has not been doubted and tried.
Then, seek b6avely.  Spiritual, like other fortune,
favors the brave; and as Frederick the Great said,
"Providence is on the side of the best battalions."
Many springs of life, full of health and greatness, gush
on unvisited, because men fear to tear away some old
dead brambles, sanctified by Church or State, which
close all the paths to it. A devotion to absolute justice; what a grand life it opens up in the soul! what
strength for the heart is in those waters! But some institution bestrides the way, and men skulk off, and
never know justice. Free thought; what inspiration is
in it! The naked tree of winter, lifting up its dead
arms to the sky, is not more ennobled when, flooded
with summer sap, it climbs to a soul in flower and
fruit, than the ordinary man is when he resolves to
think for himself-to b3 free from all the trammels of




168                   MIGNON.
priests and politicians, and put forth, as fruit, his own
faith and his own life; yet society closes up the path
to that fountain, and bids you yield the right to think
and speak freely, and of yourself, on pain of being
called eccentric, or infidel, or fanatical, or mad. Yet
is it ever true, as Mohammed said, that " Paradise is
under the shadow of swords," and the depths of the
heart will echo on with the poet's voice: " 0 friend!
never strike sail to a fear. Come into port greatly, or
sail with God the seas. Not in vain you live, for
every passing eye is cheered and refined by the vision."
Lastly, seek earnestly; and here, alas! is the real
point of failure. Man is a creature of'motives; hun.
ger and thirst, cold and heat, are comprehensible to all;
but the hunger and thirst after righteousness, of which
Jesus spoke, are not so comprehensible; for this reason
the earth glitters with granite and marble cities, and is
clothed with purple and gold; but souls of granite
strength, and the white raiments of purity, are more
rare, because the senses addressed by these are not
generally strong enough to be roused to their objects,
as the senses of the body to theirs. The worshipers of
the vailed Isis affirm that the chosen incense of their
goddess is scentless to all but her true worshipers. It
depends on the nature of each of us, its coarseness or
fineness of fiber, whether we can be enkindled to a
passion for truth, and an enthusiasm for virtue and
rectitufde. Until a man can come to a kind of scorn of
his earthly routine of life, and asks himself, "Am  I,




MIGNON.                  169
an immortal being, to be only a maggot among maggots, striving only to be a little larger and more wellfed than the rest among which I roll along?" he cannot
glow with that divine earnestness which leads to the
highest truth and beauty; which is to him  as the
warmer ray, which changes the grub to the beautiful
fly with burnished wing. 0, what might not men do,
if they were only in earnest! Now, see how it is: our
moral sentiments, our faith, our religion, are ever
yielding, yielding, yielding-never maintaining their
ground; pinioned and disabled by the swarm of lilliputian interests, prejudices, and fears which oppose
them. Dear brothers, how is this?  Is Satan, then,
really stronger than God?  Cannot God make hearts
stout and strong as well as the devil?  Why must we
be content to see evil uppermost all the time? Why
must religion remain, through our timidity, a nightmare of the soul, instead of its glorious dawn?
It is because inspired and enlightened minds and
hearts are basely unfaithful; and truths, as glorious as
God-truths which fill full, in grand chorus, all the pipes
of the universe-fall upon our dull eyes and ears like
some election gossip. To be earnest, is to be great. How
arid is that desert sand, hot in the sun-the serpents
creep over it, and the wolves stretch them on it. But
see the rising sirrocco! now it fills and swells it, and
lo! the desert sand stands in grand pillars against the
heavens, and all things that live and grow, bow and
bend before its terror and force! And what else is our'7*




170                 MIGNON.
poor human dust; lying and barren under the trail of
the meanest motives, trodden by the beasts of low
passions and cares, until some earnest love of high
and noble principles, some superb leap toward the
highest expands and inspires us, and the poor dust
rises to heaven, and man becomes the awful hand of
God, stretching his rod or scepter over the world!`
I know the doubt that makes men falter; I have heard
that low-toned whisper of the senses which says,
" Sugar is sweet, and music, and dancing, and wine
make glad the heart, but what know we of virtue and
heroism; we cannot taste nor handle them, and only
see that their devotees are often in trouble."
It is the crowning glory of the Christian virtue that
it cannot be bought; here differs the soul fiom sense:
the one acts for private ends, the other without, and
often to the detriment of private ends. But its rewards though slow and hidden, are sure and beautiful.
Not knowing what you shall find, you must seek; yet
the promise remains, Seek, and thou shalt find.
Listen to the story of the old man and his sons. As
he was drawing near the closing moment of his life, he
said to them, " My sons, all that I have to leave you is
hidden away in the field,"-and he died without being
able to tell them the spot where the treasure was buried.
Then forth went the sons and plowed the field, turning
up every clod; but they found no treasures. They
planted it that year, and, when the crop was taken in,
they dug again for the money, but could not find it,




MIGNON.                  171
and planted again. When some years had passed
thus, a thought struck the eldest of the brothers, and,
calling the others, he said, " My brothers; year after
year since our father's death we have broken up the
field to find the money of which he spoke: we have
not, it is true, discovered any bag of gold, but we have
worked well and are strong and healthy, and our acres
have yielded us a fair income each year. It is my
belief that this health and fair income of our labor are
the treasures which our father said were hidden in that
field." And with him the others agreed.
Ever does the Father leave his children the inheritance, dropping but the one word, Seekl. Ever do IHis
faithful children cast in the plow and tend every clod to
find the golden treasures; and in the very health and
strength of soul which flow from the seeking for Truth;
in the priceless harvest which grows from the earnestness,
the sincerity, the valor which are involved in its pursuit, the endless wealth which the Father bequeaths us
is revealed. All around us it lies infolded in nature,
in the world of men, and women, and children; in
every mystery; in duties, perplexities, temptations,
cares; the wonderful alchemy of a seeking spirit touches
any of them, and they become gold.
Expand thy heart, O Christian, until it embrace the
swarming world! Be embraced, fair Universe; this
kiss to all that is; ye bring me bags of gold from my
Father, and letters written and signed by him. I will




172                  MIGNON.
not let any of you escape until I have searched and
found your secret, that for which you exist!
For Christianity is seeking-" extraordinary generous seeking." Not from one flowing down with the
current and gathering into his shell the sediment that
happened to pass, came these life-giving words which
uplift the soul as on eagle's wings. See that eager
child's face turned up to the doctors in the Temple in
anxious questioning! See that youth walking alone in
the wilderness of Judea, seeking the secret of nature in
tree, and mountain, and the stars! See the man, fasting and lonely seeking in the fierce crucible of Temptation the strength of his godlike soul! Ah that face,
look at it! Does it hint of a quiet fireside and slippers; of content and luxury; of a well-conditioned life
which ignores all mysteries, all that cannot be felt or
seen?
Surely no; but, as we gaze on that restless eye, on
that heaven-searching face, we almost look to see the
shoulders strike forth in pure white wings, aching for
higher, holier spheres, as the only natural complement
of such a life and effort. Men watched him as he rose;
straining eyes forgot all but him, who, before the gazing world, was changing on from man to angel, from
angel to god; but, as he rises above the earth until he
is lost to sight, one word falls back to us, as it were
the blessed curse of Ahasuerus, cutting off all rest save
that which may be found in endless aspiration toward
the realm where he has gone. The voice cries, Seek!




IIGNON.                 173
O man, wilt tho1 not seekS Ever is there a higher
and holier, and wilt thou still give thy heart to the
mixed and lower?
This voice came to us as we wandered in the woodmy heart and I —alone. My heart first heard and
spoke of the Christ, the Ideal Seeker, and would feign
have me follow; had even wept that I was so little
kindled to seek.
Hush, my heart! Why must I be forever troubled
with discontent and doubt of my life? Let me live my
life in quiet! Why lead me to dreams of virtue, and
purity, and truth, which I have seen so vaguely? Why
cannot I rest and enjoy with the throng?  Sad and
weary enough now, I am, with following after your
beautiful Christ; I must rest: Cease, my heart, to persuade, and let us hope for better things in some other
planet, where the current shall not be too strong for us.
Then my heart spake between her imploring sobs:
Do not, O do not rest here,-thou who hast been
given a vision of the land of a pure knowledge, where
the soul comes to the flower of a divine life; where
that clod men call human life is turned to violets and
roses.'T is there!'T is there! O my true loved one,
thou with me must go!
But why, my heart, should I leave the seen for the
unseen? Is not earth full of beauty and love?  Seest
thou not the path thou wouldst urge is lonely?  There
are few who seek these things. Dost hear, in the
distance, the joy and music of those who throng the




174                 MIGNOrN.
avenues of compliant life? Why follow this phantom
called Virtue?
Then my heart cried, Ask this vine why it crept
toward this tree rather than where there was no tree?
Ask the imprisoned flower why it grows toward the
smallest beam of light? Ask the needle why it ever
trembles toward the north-star?'Tis the very nature
and essence of a soul to seek endlessly the best. In
this Gethsemane of the world, while others, with heavy
eyelids, cannot watch one hour but sleep, she, the soul,
ever wakeful, goes apart to pray. Canst thou not, with
it, watch one hour i
Then I answered not. My heart spake on.
Is not the soul' God's child? Is there wonder she
should seek her Father's face 2
Then her tone deepened, as if a more awful voice
had spoken, and I only heard, " When thou saidst unto
me, Seek thou my face, my heart said, Thy face, Lord,
will I seek."
Then I held out no longer. I turned overcome.
There heart and hand took the eternal oath: Yes, in
God's name, we will seek forever; we will endure all;
will be scorned or hated; will leave father, mother,
and all dearest ties, and will SEEK; and wherever and
whenever we fall, my heart and I, I know that it shall
be with hands and eyes stretched out toward the everlasting summits.
Brother, sister! you whom I love more than you may
ever think; you to whom I shall never again appeal



MIGNON.                   175
suffer me to leave in your hearts one word - Seek.
Seek higher realms of knowledge and faith. Amid all
the allurements of life-amid the terrible griping persuasions to selfishness and dapperness, which are
stronger in this city than elsewhere-may your heart
never forget my parting word; may you never be content, but ever seeking.
And now I am content. I leave it there. It is not
so much whether the real voice of our church here be
vocal or silent-I know that the standard, where I leave
it, is for Truth, Justice, Humanity, Freedom, and Endless Seeking. And as I give it back into his hand who
entrusted me with it for a brief space, above all hard
thoughts which you may have, above all misunderstandings, I hear one voice, which is enough: "' It shall
not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that
which I please, and prosper in the thing whereto I sent
it."
NOTE.-The above sermon concluded my ministry in Washington.City.




THE ONE PATH,*
First pure, then peaceable.
IT is now eight weeks, and the Congress of these
States, called, as if in bitter irony, United, is still unorganized. There is reason enough for the grave apprehension now  pressing upon the  mind of every
patriot. Our young Hercules, just as his labors have
arisen before him, and the nations looked on to see
him strangle the Hydra here, and there unbar the flood
of Reform toward manifold Augean stables, suddenly
becomes paralyzed.  0, son of Jove! last and strongest,
what is this? whither has thy noble promise fled?
We meet here, my friends, on a common ground.
Varied perceptions of the relations of that common
ground to human welfare separate us into different
parties.  We are also of diverse sections.  I do not
think the pulpit should be used to assail any of these,
as such. I, therefore, shall not permit myself a doubt,
as I touch this most sensitive subject, that you will
sympathize with me, and with each other.  I do so
*Delivered in the City of Washington, January 26, 1856, during the
contest for Speaker, which resulted in the election of Mr. Banks.




TIlE ONE PATH.             177
only because, in these troubled times, my heart burns
to point you to the ancient landmarks of Right and
Wrong, which, when seen, none can fail to acknowledge; for, like the objects of the ear and eye, they are
their own evidence. I shall not make any partisan
statement, for I belong to no party; but there is one
phase of the present state of things which enters my
pulpit, whether I will or not. This arc of the circlenot the arcs of the politician or economist-the pulpit
cannot be true to itself without interpreting. And I
am constrained to believe it a mathematical certainty,
that any arc of any circle, moral or geometric, being
given, the others may be discovered and described,
and the radii traced to their center.
I shall waste no words on the dogma, that such subjects are not proper to the pulpit. Christ and Paul
found them appropriate to thieir ministry. If moral
questions should not enter here, what should? And if
questions involving the happiness of millions, and the
good relations of section with section, and man with
man, throughout the land, are not moral, what are?
It was the saddest day that ever dawned on the
country, when this was made any other than a moral
question. In the day when it was made one of national
political issue, the wind was sown; to-day we reap the
whirlwind. It is exclusively a moral question, as are
all questions affecting humanity. It is not a question
of North and South -those very terms should be
banished as unhealthy here. How completely do we
8




17S              THE ONE PATH.
find moral perceptions obscured, when here, in the
noon of the nineteenth century, on a question involving
more entirely than any other the just relations of men
toward each other and toward God-a great nation is
geographically divided. Men with divine souls must
be lumped with the clod whereon they tread, and certain principles and ideas considered as exclusively products of certain sections, as coffee or cotton. Given a
man's longitude and latitude, and you may predict his
views on Slavery, and nearly everything else; as when
you know the way the wind blows, you may announce
with certainty the position of the nearest weathervanes.
But in the present state of things, the political view
hears its trump of Doom. The old party watch-fires
are but blackened earth and ashes; their lines have
fallen in unpleasant places. A fearful disintegration
has supervened the political mass: let us hope by the
working of a higher synthesis. Ihitherto we have had
ancestral compacts and the political representation of
negroes canvassed. Men have spoken of what is " wise
and expedient," rather than what is right. You need
not that any one should show you how this political
treatment has miserably failed, even in objects no
higher than its own.  Each party has come forward
with its nostrum, declaring itself the original old Dr.
Jacob Townsend, whlose pills, and none others, were
genuine; each was to bring repose to the distracted
patient, and soothe irritation by profounder nationality.




TIE ONE rAT.       179
The inflammation has spread with every Administration until this; and with this, the very powers which
enable inflammation to spread seem nearly death-still.
I doubt not it would be so with the administration of
any merely political party in the country. Let the
people know, then, that this is the grand success of
the political treatment of the Slavery question —every
wheel of the government stilled!
In this state of things, it will not be the popular
heart, but they who live by smothering that heart, who
will withstand those who now, when all other methods
fail, present THE ONE PATH, opened up before the country
in the Christian Law, First pure, then peaceable.
Every man knows how alone he gets peace. Priests
may mumble over the souls of the departed, or beneath
them, Reguiescat in pace, but no soul ever rested in
peace until it had entered it by the path of purity.
And the greater is contained in the less; each atom
obeys the laws of the sphere. Nations began with individuals, and are now but collections of them, and
must obey the laws of individuals. With both, peace
blossoms only on the stem of purity.
This, then, will save us from any national peril, that
the Conscience shall be enthroned everywhere Absolute
Monarch.  It must be allowed untrammeled action,
wherever, in any man, it prohibits slaveholding, and
wherever, in any man, it does not, so far as any other
than moral methods of restraint are concerned. Only
let men feel that they are living and voting at unity




180               THE ONE PATH.
with their best light of duty, and they demand no
more, but are at ease. When agitation is abroad, it is
certain that the lash of conscience has been loosened
somewhere.
In order to secure this, we are called to mutual concession-to the concession of each moral sense to the
other of all it claims-it being understood that nothing
can be claimed by either for political advantage, but
only from such a sense of the moral necessity of such
a claim as shall never shrink fiomn any results whatever, which are needed to secure it. If the two portions of the country cannot unite, and feel at the same
moment ready to face the Eternal Judge, with the full
conviction that they are each completely true to God,
and to every man, white and black, bond and free, on
earth, let them sink together beneath the waters under
the earth, but never, never unite, or remain united!
We are called the more to this concession, because
the error has been with both sides, and is now. The
men whose consciences were first stirred on this subject
have dwelt on the inhumanity of slaveholders, without
remembering to ask whether THEY were not slaveholders.
For whatever the Federal Government sanctions or
adopts is of course by complicity of all who are parties
to that Federal compact.  As the people of Virginia
did not derive their power to hold slaves from  the
Union, and do not now, of course none of the rest of
the States, or of the individuals of the States, are involved in it. They are, indeed, in a high sense, con



THE ONE PATH.               181
cerned in all that concerns their fellow-men; but not
otherwise are they morally involved, than as they are
in widow-burning in Hindostan, or cannibalism in the
Fejee Islands. Do we, as Americans, take upon our
consciences the sins, as we may think them, of Great
Britain or Japan, because we have treaties with those
nations? Do England and France become responsible
for one another's policy, or assume each other's National Church, because, for a different object, they have
formed an alliance? The United States are but such an
alliance. And, as England and France have only a
common responsibility for what is done in the war with
Russia, so have the people of the free States only a
responsibility for what is done by the Federal Union
as such.
This blunder has had its antithetical one in the South.
And here, I may say, we must guard against our prejudices. As a Virginian, with no tie of relationship
northward, of the remotest kind, past or present, I feel
how easily I migrht slide into a justification of my dear
mother, the South. But the soul knows no prejudices
or sections, and must see all under the pure light of
reason and conscience.
The first error of the South has been an impatience
in the discussion of this question, reminding calm men
of those unfortunate persons met with in lunatic asylums, who speak rationally on all topics until you touch
that on which they are deranged, when their insanity
bursts wildly forth. This has caused them to put them



182               THE ONE PATH.
selves in an attitude before the world which has brought
down its severest censure; and, feeling that this was
not just what they deserved —since they were at least
sincere-it has led thein on to a still greater rage
against a judgment whiclh, however unfair, was the
result of their own mistaken heat. It has precluded
freedom of discussion even among themselves; a policy
which no human brain or heart ever respected yet.
The native sons of the South have again and again
sought to discuss it in their own vicinities, and have as
often been threatened and visited with angry processes,
though the privilege is secured them in the Bill of
Rights of nearly every Southern State. The South has
thus lost the confidence of many of her own children,
who find that a freedom exercised by their lordly ancestors, Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and  by them
transmitted as an eternal inheritance, is now denied
them by men who beside those are lilliputian. Those
who deny that the full sunlight should play above, and
beneath, and around any subject, can never convince
any disinterested person that they are in the right.
This was true before Jesus said, "Whoso doeth right
cometh to the light," and it has been true ever since,
and will be true to all eternity. What would men, including the South, say to Christ's getting into a passion
with an antagonist, or Plato's refusing to hear the other
side in an argument 
Blunder is of a prickly-pear growth, one leaf developed from another. This impossibility of free speecll




THIE ONE PATHI.              183
in the South has preserved a Code of Slavery which is
far beneath her moral sense, but which cannot become
a dead letter so long as there are wicked and selfish
men in the world. As an evidence of this, it is a
familiar fact that the wretched men termed "Negrodrivers," are held, with their families, in scorn by all
classes of society in the South; yet no business is more
entirely legal, necessary and remunerative.
HIow is the Code to be reformed, if it is a crime to
broach the subject? Take any Southern man, and ask
him if he believes that these blacks should be so completely in the possession of the whites that there should
be no security to the marital relation; that one man
should have the power, if lie'wills, to separate the
families he owns to any extent 2 Ask him if he be.
lieves that immortal beings should be reared in brutal
ignorance?,  (And those who do otherwise by their
slaves break the laws. HIow sadly suggestive is the
fact that the only other people who forbid education to
any, are the Yezeddis of Mesopotamia, who are also
the only race of devil-worshipers!)  A Southern man
will reply, No.
And yet these laws remain there, trained by Southcrners who are nlot men, to bear the cruelest fruits;
such as have aroused the open indignation of the world,
and the secret indignation of thousands of Southern
hearts, and shall continue to do so, until human souls,
North and South, are fatherless, and no divine instincts of justice and pity flow out from God's heart.




184               THE ONE PATH.
Thus both sides, by their own premises, need internal reform. But our reference now is to the great
moral responsibility pressing on each, and growing out
of our being one people. I would the pressure were
heavier! In this country, where, by the very nature of
the representative system, all action and influence of
the General Government-involving as they do the
happiness or misery, elevation or degradation, of men,
women, and children, everywhere-are shared by every
tax-payer and voter, the moral responsibility resting on
each man is tremendous. What abject cant is it to say,
The North has nothing to do with Slavery. Nothing
to do with it! When the National flag cannot wave
over a slave in this District, nor in any United States
Territory, who is not a slave by Northern as well as
Southern consent! lNever was any duty plainer than
theirs to attend to this affair-to see what it is which
they, by their representatives, have been perpetually
sanctioning and extending. There is need that the
voice of the ancient prophet should be in every breath
which stirs the free airs of Free States, crying to each
man this day, "Arise; for this matter belongeth unto
thee! "
I alluded just now to those who had assailed the
Southern institution, and neglected the demonstrable
fact that the first and (until attended to) the only assailable thing with them was their complicity in it. The
only sin of these is a confused perception. But there
is another class of real criminals. It is they who see




TIrE ONE PATH.             185
Slavery to be wrong, and see how they participate in
it, and might free themselves from it, but suffer themselves to be overcome by its allurements. I have been
ashamed to hear, in Boston, the descendants of the
Puritans apologizing for Slavery. They thought a
Southern man would like that. But no Southern man
would like that! The Southerners, thankc God, are
not so bad; they say, Slavery is right; if not, there is
no apology for it. John Randolph spoke their sentiment, when, pointing his finger at one such man in
Congress, he said, "I envy not the heart nor the head
of a man who can come here from the North and defend
Slavery." Southern politicians are willing to make use
of such, while they laugh in their sleeves; but the
nobler men and women of the South grieve to see men
falling thus meanly.
Here, at Washington, it has been as the fly in
wheat-one noble head after another laid low; falling
into infidelity, as the Slavery power has cast some web
of interest around them. And those who believe, with
Christianity, that it profits not a man to gain the whole
world and lose his soul, turn pale and say, " Who falls
next?" No matter if the concession is for " Peace.'"
So did the army on the Alps desire nothing so much as
peace, to lie down anywhere and sleep; and those who
slept never woke more! Nothing is deadlier, at times,
than peace; and invariably when, as in this case, the
word Peace is but a cover of your desire, that your




186              THE ONE PATI.
personal interest and business should be undisturbed —
a disguise of that only Satan, Selfishness.
Ali, ye American men! too soon have you inscribed
on your banner, Peaceable.  More successful had it
been, if the word had been in the order in which the
ancient Christian places it-first 2ure, theen peaceable.
Never was there but one path given men to walk init is that of a pure conscience. Whether the light be
dim or bright, it is in the right direction; guilt is in
veering from that. There may be innumerable crooked
lines between two points, but one straight. What is
the right line between us and that peace we all crave?
We can all imagine two men of entire candor and
courtesy —the one Southern, and believing Slavery
right in itself; the other Northern, and believing it
wrong-coming to an understanding on the subject; the
common postulate being only that neither must himself
do what he believes essentially wrong.
Souldhern.-I believe the institution is best for the
white and colored races.
iVorthern. —I make no doubt of your sincerity, but
would like to discuss it.
Sou. —We may do that presently. But will you not
allow that, so long as I hold that opinion, you have no
right of any kind to illegally interfere with what I hold
legally as property 
Athr.-I do see that. The wrong is not in my detestation of Slavery, nor my endeavor to inspire you




THE ONE PATII.              187
with a like feeling, but in my attempting a right thing
in a wrong way.
Sou.-Which is always an unsuccessful way.
Nor.-Now, let us define the other side. I believe
that Slavery is the " wild and nicked phantasy," that
Brougham  called it; or the "sum of all villainies,"
which Wesley pronounced it. You are connected with
it sincerely, and, therefore, unless you have refused
possible light, innocently; but if I am connected with
it, I sin.
Sot. —Certainly.
Nor. —If you and I have partnership in a slave, your
innocence does not exculpate me.
Sout.-Certainly not.
Nor.-If you seek to make me a party to anything
which I hold wrong, you are guilty, even though you
believe it right, unless you can first persuade rue also
that it is right.
Solt. —It is so.
Nor.-And if our firm cannot remain withlout involving me in this wrong, my one path is out of it.
The firm must be dissolved.
Sou. —Assuredly.
Now, my friends, let us approach our national agitations thus simply and quietly.  The people of the
United States are a firm. Wherever the firm deals
with Slavery, all deal with Slavery; and the General
Government Has dealt, and does now deal, with that
local institution. I appeal to you, Southern men, is it




188               THE ONE PATH.
not the only right thing for those who believe Slavery
to be sinful, whether it be really so or not, firmly to
declare themselves fiee from all share in it, if not by
your concession, then by whatever means they can,
but certainzly to do it?
But, it is said, your fathers conceded this and that,
and will you not stand by their compact?
If there be any compact, and it pledges me to what I
feel wrong, shall I be judged by my father's light?
But if, in obedience to your conscience, you should
injure this Union, you would cause great evils-evils
greater than Slavery.
Evils are not sins. We do not wish to rid ourselves of our share in national slaveholding, as from
an evil disease, but as a moral defection, as falsehood
or theft would be. Evil is a part of God's law; for
Ile says by every prophet, " I create evil."  He is responsible for whatever evils ensue; we only for doing
his will. Is not my soul his voice? And when I reject
that voice, which assures me it is wrong to do this, is it
not a sad lack of faith in Him? As one would say,' Thou, Infinite Being, didst bid me thus, but didst not
foresee, as I do, that this and that evil would follow?"
Will you imperil the interests of' thirty millions of
whites for three or four of Africans?
The adages, reply the others, are very good: IHonesty, even in the old Roman sense, embracing all that
is just and true to God and man, is the best policy:
Right never wronged any man. The interests of the




THE ONE PATH.               189
three or four millions of negroes are not so near to us
as the interests of the whites who hold them. Those
we would but redeem from physical Slavery; but these
we would redeem from what, by our creed, is far worse,
the crime of enslaving them. If I rob you, you know,
I am far worse off of the two.
" Then, if you think thus, we must separate. We
think you in error, that you cannot think our institution
right; or that even to say it is inexpedient, or an evil,
does not define your view; that you must count it immoral. Certainly, nothing, however valuable, should
induce us to do wrong; and the South admires, as
mnuch as any people, the brave words of Phocion,
Let justice be done, though the heavens fall! "
But, it is replied, it does not end here. You say we
must secede. But this proceeds from the assumption,
that the Union is inextricably involved in the policy
which makes all hold slaves. We do not believe that;
we think the Union is essentially involved in Freedom,
and that all its pro-Slavery proclivities are usurpations.
We believe, indeed, that it does not interfere with you
in your slaveholding, nor the English in their aristocracy, nor the Arabs in their Mohammedanism; but,
at the same time we believe our Constitution protects
us from compulsory sanction of these, and protects us
in our freedom. Thus we cannot enlist against it, but
only to redeem it from the distractions resulting from a
misinterpretation of our compact. If there is secession,
it cannot be on our side.




190              TilE ONE PATI-I.
On this assertion, now made by a large portion of
this nation in terrible earnest, hangs all the excitement,
and will hang more and more. Crimination and violence serve no purpose here. Both are equally sincere.
Individuals may be insincere, but no large mass of men
can hold together, with means and influence, for any
length of time, on an affected or fanatical basis. Hypocrisy would forbid the enthusiasm manifested on both
sides; and the outlay necessary for a cause cools all
fanaticism.
How, then, shall these be reconciled with each other,
preserving self-truthfulness?
We must set aside here those who cry "Peace,"
when there is none. I, for one, have lost forever my
faith in those self-styled conservatives, who would rely
upon "putting down agitation." That cry has been
sounded for a score of years, and with what success
any one may see by going no farther than the House of
Representatives. Stop agitation!  So Xerxes forbade
the sea to advance; so the Phcenicians shot arrows into
the clouds when a stormn arose; so an English gentleman wrote an elaborate treatise, showing conclusively
that the Atlantic could never be crossed by steam,
which went out to America in the first steamer. Stop
agitation! Judging by late events in Kansas, one
would say it is to take much more agitation than the
country has yet known, to put down agitation.
No; this scab of Acquiescence, which you would
bring over the sore, is not a cure, even if you could get




THE ONE PATH.              191
it; the fester would only deepen more treacherously.
Agitation is not the disease, but the friendly symptom
which admonishes of disease. Eruption and fever are
the health of a disease; a wise physician will never
wish them to cease, but by the eradication of the underlying cause.
How, then, is Peace, which all love, and which is
for the interest of all, to come?
Let St. James answer: By the wisdom which cometh
from above, which is first pure, then peaceable. Let
every man in the Union only feel assured that he
stands beneath the sheltering wing of his country, A
PURE MAN. Let men cease to see the National Flag discolored by what they believe dishonorable and wrong,
and then be told they have nothing to do with it, when
each stands with his share in the eye of God and man!
Then shall that unrest, which is the sign of the strong
lash of Conscience, cease! Then shall the word SLAVERxY, that dirge of our woes, never more disorganize
Congress, for it will be beyond Congress. I pity the
Northern man who finds repose while his hand is bindin g slaves; still more the Southern man who would
desire to have him find peace in impurity.
I know how large a number of good men in the
North this position will offend. But I am ready to
reiterate that, when their personal responsibility for the
bondage of a man anywhere is past, Slavery only
addresses them as other evils. A man cannot, of
course, cease hlis testimony against whatever is to hirn




192               THE ONE PATH.
wrong,,except by being so far forth implicated in it.
It may, however, be emphatically announced to this
class, that if all they had ever thought, said, or written,
on this topic-abstractly good, as much of it is-were
condensed into one word, it would be to the act which
would have freed them, or any one of them, from complicity in the thing, as a child's play to the great
Lisbon Earthquake. If any of them thinks that the
preservation of the Union involves such complicity, let
him not turn phrasemonger, but himself secede, and rot
in prison, ere he pays taxes or accepts advantages in
his State through which he is inevitably involved. No
eloquence would persuade like this. A great action is
by its divine nature irresistible; great words are good
only when difficulties make them great actions. In
some way or other, nations are at the mercy of strong
men, and a thousand flee before one.  Truly, says
the Brahmin:
Devoutly speak, and men
Devoutly listen to thee;
Devoutly act, and then
The strength of God acts through thee.
How godlike is it to be brave and true!  There
never was a soul conceived in God's mind, or projected
into the North or South, or East or West, who in itself
honored dapperness or cowardice, and respected not
an honest, unflinching  stand on any side. I am a
Southern man, and I fear not contradiction fronm any




THE ONE PATH.              193
one born there when I say that they all respect a man
from the North who will not bend from his principles;
and that not one of them thinks a doughface worthy to
be valued as more than a catspaw. A heroic action for
virtue, which is such only because imperiling large interests, is a new star lit in the Heavens. Men see it, and
feel the presence of the unseen higher Power; they know
with joy that the earth is more than a moving anthill.
This joy cannot be moved by any danger or loss. If
the Union were sundered by such a stand, does it not
pay in that it props the whole Earth? For were the
Union divided on a principle of right, a voice like the
angel-hymn of a Second Advent would go forth, proclaiming the law by which thrones tremble, and all
oppressions and evils fall as leaves in October,-First
pure, then peaceable.
Before all, then, let us dismiss Fear. Let us, with
Montaigne, fear nothing so much as fear. Southern
men! Northern men! be one in being brave for your
light and your right! If it should be found ever
necessary to separate-as I pray I may never believe
more than I do now —still would mutual honor survive;
and by no event can any obstruction befall the vast
destiny for which these superb American hills and
plains were planned. By their great strength, these
national throes proclaim the grandeur of a Nation's
new-birth.  Hark! there is now as of old a voice
on the angry waters, " It is I: be not afraid." Serene
and unharmed above our small cares and storms is
8*




194             THE ONE PATH.
enthroned the Genius in whose mind once, as ill
an egg, lay the Western Hemisphere, and Columbus,
and Washington, and to our tearful prayer replies,
0, man, think you that I have created these in
vain? Know that until God is dethroned, the Right
must prevail: Until He dies, nothing good can die!




THE LOST BOWER,.*
SAT not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better
than these?
MnRS. BROWNING has entitled one of her finest poems
The Lost Bower. A child goes forth to play among
the trees, and follows wherever her wayward fancies
lead. Presently she finds herself in the midst of a most
beautiful bower: sweetly the vines cling about the
young trees, which, rising around as pillars, intertwine
branches and leaves above her head. Delighted she
sits beneath the wondrous arch, and fancies that it
must have been planned by the fairies.  There the
morning glides only too swiftly away over the enchanted
child, who sits in the magic bower, beguiled by beautiful
reveries and dreams.... Scarcely can she sleep for
thinking of her new-found treasure, out in the grove.
In the morning, what speed to find it again, and recall
the beautiful fancies!  Alas! she searches in vain.
Every tree, every bush, every flower seems to stand
where it was, but the bower cannot be found. Day
* Thanksgiving-day, Nov. 26, 1857.




196              THE LOST BOWER.
after day, with tearful eyes, she searches; nay month
after month, year after year —in vain; the lost bower
takes its place among the sweet visions of the pastthe loved and lost.
My friends, our lives are searches for lost bowers.
We walk about in the present, but do not really live in
it; that is, our bodies, our gayety, all that is most
superficial about us, may be seen on the street and in
the parlor to-day; but the real life, meditation, memory,
feeling, thought, all that is most sacred in us, clings to
the names and places of the past. There stand, in its
"dim  religious light," the forms of our heroes; our
worship is the echo of two thousand years; we find no
Eden short of six thousand.  Who has not felt the
charm of what is old?  Who does not find in himself
the explanation of how the word, which simply means
what should be held sacred, has come to mean anything
old, which is the case with the word venerable?  Who
does not know the awe which falls from old church
music, and from gothic arches, which our age gathers
from the past to associate with its most sacred hours,
as we press in our Bibles the flower given by one now
in the grave a Not all the blossoms of this year are so
sweet, so beautiful as that poor faded leaf. Our whole
lives are a sad silent inquiry, Why were the former
days better than these a
But what had become of that lost bower? Wherefore could not the child find it again?  Each tree,
bush, flower stood there still. Whither had the fairy



THE LOST' BOWER.            197
vision fled?.     Surely, it was the fabric of her
own fancies! Her innocence, her faith, her heart of
joy, were the fairies which wove the vines into latticework, and made the grass a divan. But such a day
and bower, with its: visions, did not leave her the same
child that entered; the bower was there next day, next
year, but the eyes. were changed. The, primner was lost
because its lessons were learnt.
Search no more in the grove, fair child! forth whereever thy destiny leadeth; in the school, in the home,
faith and innocence shall rear bowers as beautiful;
each day shall yield: its own visions. and dreams. The
universe is pledged thee that no good is. superseded but
by a greater good  not loss, but gain is the law. The
lost bower was but the unfailing artist's study of a
grander design i
By an excellent custom of our country, we are called
together to-day to consider: "these days," not: past
days; to see what there is in the day now shining
upon us for which to be thankful. Never were there
times in which our faith could be better tested. We
stand under shadows thicker than those which have
clouded any Thanksgiving-day that even the oldest
person who hears me can recall. The scars of one terrible war have not yet healed over, when the spice.
laden winds of India are wafted to.us, sickened with
the scent of blood. The ocean has yawned again and
again to swallow up its thousands, and drape unnumbered families with mourning. Our own land has fallen




198             THE LOST BOWER.
into the hands of irresponsible power, which, in the
guise of Liberty, each day robs freemen of their most
sacred rights; which answers our outcries with outrage on
outrage; which gives to the children of a noble ancestry, when they ask for the bread earned by the bloody
sweat of their heroic fathers, the stone and the serpent.
The pillars which supported the fabric of a nation's
trade have tottered, and we stand amid the ruins today, feeling that this hush of terror is too surely to be
followed by the piteous cries which shall come from
those who see no angel standing between them and the
cold winter; who, penniless, fold their strong arms beside silent looms and cold furnaces.
As a people, then, how natural would it be, on this
annual day, instead of pondering what we have to call
forth thankfulness, to gather together, and weep over a
nation's lost bowers; to inquire, Why were the former
days better than these? How swiftly rush our thoughts
back to the years of plenty; the long periods when no
sound of war burdened the air; when our dear land
was not torn by strife; when, alike in Massachusetts
and Virginia, white was supposed white, and black,
black, —right was right, and wrong, wrong; and the
hopes of a world's emancipation beat high!
Yet a little reflection shows us that these advantages
of those days, toward which we turn so longingly, were
the merest illusions; else why did they not last?
What is good is permanent; only what is false, or
merely sentimental, perishes, or can perish.  Take,




THE LOST BOWEW.             199
for instance, the history of American freedom. It is
common for us to recur to the period immediately succeeding the Declaration of Independence, as that in
which the principles of Liberty were most acknowledged among us. Anti-Slavery men are pointed to
large votes in favor of emancipation in several of the
Slave States, as efforts which they have paralyzed: the
declarations for freedom of the leading men North and
South, at that time, are quoted. It is true, indeed, that
this was the sentiment of the country; but it was only
sentiment.  The pecuniary interests of the country
were not, to any material extent, involved in the
institution of Slavery at that time; nor did our wisest
ancestors see that they were to be, else never would
they have quietly made the concessions to it which
were made. As soon as the impulse for freedom was
found in collision with these pecuniary interests, or
supposed interests, it was proved a mere impulse: there
was no man at the South, and for years none at the
North, who was found to have it as a principle. It remained for these clays to prod'uce men willing to risk
immediate interests, for what, in former days, was
only a sentiment.
It is even so with the rest of our lost bowers. There
were days when peace smiled on the land, and the temple of Janus was closed, to the world's joy; but how
shallow a peace! a gay bubble, which the smallest pinpoint could cause to vanish any instant! It takes tenfold the pressure to break peace, once gained, now



200              THE LOST BOWER.
tenfold of what was required in even the latest periods
of the world. Every war deepens the sentiment into
a principle, graven with fire on the popular heart.
Sebastopol heralds, in thunder, the advance of the
Prince of Peace!
Or is it the loss of credit and financial abundance
that we deplore. It is demonstrable, that the financial
crash is the special glory of this year. The ruin is a
grand reality; the smooth prosperity of the "former
days " of trade is now seen to have been a whited sepulcher, covering rottenness, and dead men's bones.
Last year it was a glossy system of gambling and falsehood; to-day, thank God, we stand on truth; for truth
is beautiful even amid ruins. I say again, it is the
crowning glory of these days, that health enough remained to tear up by the roots this deadly upas tree,
under whose poisonous shade so many of our young
men had come and were coining to find repose!
Hear then the answer which the spirit of the present
has for those who look backward and ask, Why were
the former days better than theses You are "these
days; " if they are not better, it is because you are not
better! All that the former days had, you have around
you now; not one leaf of the lost bower has stirred:
the beauty of Peace has not been dimmed; the eternal
principle of Freedom has lost no luster; the laws of
supply and demand, the necessities of trade are unchanged; gold is still gold, and iron, iron; the earth
has not ceased to bear, nor seasons to roll on; the




THE LOST BOWER.             201
materials of all " former times " are furnished without
stint to the hand of " these."
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Nay, see what we have in addition to all that the
greatest foregone generations had: we have the deeper
values which experience writes on everything: what to
them were sentiments, have, with us, through fearful
storms and bleak winds of human experience ripened to
inviolable laws; dreams have been shaped into facts;
each ingot of gold, each bar of iron has, under the command of the stern Cromwell of Knowledge, descended
from its niche, ready, as we shall bid them, to be apostolic, and " go about doing good."  The bowers which
fairy sentiments planned for our ancestors, to pass away
with the morning mist, the sturdy sinews of to-day may,
if they will, realize in enduring granite. Indeed the
mishaps and grievances which we bear to-day, are the
upshot of what these much-lauded " former days" have
bequeathed us; but it is in the power of the Genius of
the Present to sow the dragon's teeth of Evil, and
gather the harvest of a phalanx for God; to enthrone
Peace on the ruins of War; to see the Samson of
Slavery buried by the action of his own blind power;
to convert the angry flood of a financial crisis into a fit
moment for turning the stream into more natural and
lawful channels, wherein the golden argosies of commerce shall be borne — n before healthier breezes than
those that fill the sails of Wall Street.
9




202             THE LOST BOWER.
II. But I am jealous of every moment which detains
us from interpreting this law as it prevails in the
private heart. Each one who has the key to the facts
of his own experience, has the key to all public factsa single heart being the moral world in miniature, as a
drop of dew is the sphere in miniature, with its own
equator and magnetic poles.
How unconsciously do our eyes, when the immediate
care which had claimed them has passed, look longingly
to our past. The quiet hour of solitude has fled: it
may be summed up as a reverie in which the old forms
and faces reappeared; memory delivered us to memory,
and we are recalled to life only by the starting tear.
The life around us seems strange and foreign; there in
the old school-room, the old yard, under the mother's
caress, the real life lingers. The home-woe clings to
us. We pass through the present as a wilderness, and
often, with the children of Israel, we hang our harps
upon the willow and weep when we remember the holy
places we have left, for how shall we sing the heart's
songs in a strange land? I have often felt the room
grow very still as some one sang " Auld Lang Syne,"
or "'By-gone Hours," or "I Would I Were a Boy
Again." The popular Ballad-poetry of all nations
turns generally toward the past.
The instinct is delicate and true. The old bowers
would not have been made so enchanting, had it not
been meant we should seek for them. For there lies
the sunlit shore of happiness: our childhood knew no




THE LOST BOWER.             203
sorrow, as we know sorrow now, in the days when
"every grief and every pain were wept away in transient tears." One tender kiss could cure all. The
heart which now cannot be quite happy without some
contribution from every continent and every island on
the planet, was happy then with a doll or a top, and
found the wealth of Ormus and of Ind in a baby-house
or a coasting-hill...  Better yet; back there is
the moon-lit realm of dreams,-dreams whose gorgeous
sheen had not turned to cold night-fog in the garish
daylight of knowledge. What superb lives we lived
with Jacob and Joseph, Mary and the young child,
Solomon and Sheba's Queen for our personal friends;
how proudly we walked the golden cities and fair
islands of the realm of the good and great HIaroun Al
Raschid; what voyages we took, what magnificent
sights we saw with Sinbad! Alas for the day when
we awoke and rubbed our eyes again, but saw that
there was no ladder let down from heaven, saw that
Haroun Al Raschid reigned no more, saw that our
poor society was made up of far other elements than
Valentine, and Fortunatus, and the seven Champions!.. Sweeter yet; back there is the serene blue
heaven of Faith bending over our childhood. No
cloud of doubt had overcast, nor rained down its chill
upon our hearts. God could be seen and loved in the
father and mother. Why should we look tremblingly
into the future, when the Ever Near was there to
supply our wants through their hands? No Medusa



204              THE LOST BOWER.
world stood there staring us in the face, freezing the
genial currents of instinct and truth by threats of loss
and persecution. Thou beautiful trust of childhood,
where art thou now in this, our cautious, calculating
life!...   Above all, O, above all! there are the
blessed isles of Innocence. For once, thank Heaven,
we stood in the world clothed with the snow-pure
raiment of stainlessness! Press down on our heads
heavily as ye will, dark memories of sin, ye cannot rob
us of the sacred tears, through which, as lenses, we see
at our life's morning a child, arrayed in white, glistering, transfigured!
Ah! who shall rebuke us if seeing all these in our
past we ask sadly, Why were the former days better
than theseS -if, even on our day of Thanks, we turn
away from all we have and are to search for our lost
bowers a
Happiness, the ideal life, entire trust, innocence;rich indeed the coronet of gems on childhood's brow!
Yet, let us inquire into these as they existed in us in
those "former days."  What is that hap.pintess which
is not conscious of its own existence? Is it not as a
white figure against a white back-ground? And where
is this dark back-ground which the white form  of
happiness needs, in order to be known as such, to be
found? The happiness of a child is the mere negation
of sorrow; it is not positive; it does not feel the thrill
which pleasure must derive from contrast with pain.
We continually see that the child is ignorant that the




THE LOST BOWER.              205
older persons around -yearn toward its happy Kingdom:
it yearns just as much toward maturity, and often shows
impatience of the slow years...   Beautiful also
are these air-castles and dreams of the young; so also
are the blossoms beautiful,-yet well may the eye which
weeps over their fall, smile as it looks up and sees the
fruit ripening in their place. An air-castle turns to old
gray stone, unless it can be lived in; and the Arabian
Nights create a craving for Arabian days, a craving
which they cannot satisfy...    Also that faith of
the child: what is that trust which has never been
tested?  We also, in our maturity, could have such
faith as that, if to our every desire a hand came forth
for its satisfaction. Easy is it to have faith, when
faith and sight are one; easy to trust when the sun
shines bright and all is gay: but to trust when all is
dark, to believe when there is no sight, to live by faith
when it draws near to the shadow of death,-that is
something higher, nobler than all the sunny, cloudless
sky shining over childhood.
Thus much also must we say of the child's innocence. It too is merely a negation, not a positive
good: it does no harnm, but the question presses, What
good does it do? Sugar is sweet, but one cannot live
on sugar. We sicken on it, and long to have some
kind of flavor dropped upon the lump. The fall from
innocence is the knowledge of good and evil; to deplore that our first parents ever ate of that tree of
knowledge, is to deplore that they ever rose above




206             THE LOST BOWER.
being mere animals. The first deep trace of character
was drawn then.
Not then, as they existed in the "former days," are
happiness, the dream-life, faith and innocence to be
desired. Shall we, then, never find the lost bower?
Friend, to copy the fair visions of former
days into the actual life of these days, seems to be the
true aim. Nothing is lost; nay, how much is gained!
Did childhood ever feel the joy-I will not call it happiness - the thrilling joy with which, in some great
moment, you have looked up through earth's shadows,
and felt that God lived;-heard his mighty heart beat
for you...  Look you, can the highest, fairest
dream of your childhood match the blue sky, as seen
in some serene moment, which followed trial? or Sinbad's diamond valley, does it compare with the starsown garden of God above you, as caught by the eye,
which experience of earth's pettiness has lifted upward?. T. Tell me, could all your trustfulness toward
your parents, gathered from all your earlier life, be
thought of, when, in freedom and faith, you have
scorned a worldly prudence, and spoken the word, done
the deed for God, then felt that, in the same moment,
his arm was folded around you as a mother's, and all
the tears that men could wring from you, were received
in his bosom?... And for innocence, what so
white and true as that which can do no harm, because
it is absorbed in doing good? For the soul, which is
filled with a noble enthusiasm for noble work, is lifted




THE LOST BOWER.              207
from the plain of shadows, and whatever its stains, in
its divine passion, is spread under the all-bleaching
sun, which withers up the faintest spot or blemish.
There was one who went forth to seek his lost bower.
As he searched, one met him-a tender face, which
seemed to float in the dreamy memories of "former
days.", " "Sir, if thou hast taken it hence, tell me
where thou hast borne it."  "iWas it not reared of
happiness, of ideals, of faith and innocence 2" " It is
the same."  " Then, my child, I can lead thee there."
So they went on, hand pressed in hand, till they stood, O
joy! before the lost bower! But now, from the lindens,
fiom each flower's calyx, came forth ministering spirits.
The rose said: "1 Thou seekst again the bloom of joy.
Ask and receive, that your joy may be full."  The
lindens sang, " Thou seekst the old land of dreams.
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered
the heart of man the things which God hath prepared
for those that love Him. But his spirit revealeth all."
The sparrows in their boughs chirruped sweetly:
" Seekst thou thy childhood's trust?  Behold, not one
of us'is forgotten before God;' and'thou art of more
value than many sparrows."' Then said the pure
white lilies: " Seekst thou the child's innocence?
LThus saith the Lord, Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like
crimson, they shall be as wool."' And over the doorway was written: "' Except ye shall become little children, ye cannot enter."  Then that seeking spirit knelt




208                 THE LOST BOWER.
before him who had led it there, and knew that hallowed head; that loving face.  "To whom shall I go
but unto thee, O Lord? Thou hast the words of eternal
life."  Then there, in the bower regained, in the Eden
which is not the dream  of "former days," but the
reality of the present, that soul found its Thanksgiving-day.
Is the bower lost then? Who sayeth
That the bower indeed is lost?
Hark I my spirit in it prayeth,
Through the solstice and the frost;
And the prayer preserves it greenly, to the last and uttermost,
Till another open for me,
In God's Eden-land unknown,
With an angel at the doorway,
White with gazing at His throne;
And a saint's voice, in the palm trees, singing,
"All is LOST... and woN I"




THE COMMUNICANT.
HE then, lying on Jesus' breast, saith unto him, "Lord, who is it?"
Jesus answered, " It is he to whom I shall give this morsel when I
have dipped it." And when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to
Judas Iscariot.
CAN it be possible? Can this be the true reading of
the record, that Jesus gave the awful Eucharist of the
Church to a man in whose face he read treachery,
avarice, and malice? Did he not recoil, and did not
his face contract to a frown, when, on that memorable
evening of the Last Supper —the last time in which he
should meet with them all-it came Judas' turn. The
account says not-and that too after passing through
the severest crucible of doubt and test, in every century, since it was written. Christ stands committed to
having given Judas the communion bread and wine
without hesitation or qualification.
Looking on that household work of art, Leonardo da
Vinci's painting of the Last Supper, we find ourselves
attracted by two faces; one is the trustful, tender St.
John-we are at once touched to gentleness and love;
the other is the scowling Judas-we are inflamed with




210             THE COMMUNICANT.
indignation and scorn. As we turn then to the face of
Jesus, we are struck with the happy genius which has
preserved the real superiority of him to all others; for
the face of Christ, looking on Judas, has not lost the
tenderness with which it looked just now on John; it
does not partake of our indignation. He reflects not
the scowl of that man who grasps the money-bag; and
when he gives him thle bread and wine, perhaps never
so fully do we feel him to be the child of our Father in
Heaven; for He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and
on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust.
I am aware how astonishing it is in the light of ecclesiastical history. Either Jesus was wrong in giving
this sacrament to Judas, or every Church has been
wrong in its administration. Scarcely had Christ and
his immediate disciples died, when a vail of mysticism
was cast about the Lord's Supper, which even the
highest Protestantism has failed to withdraw fully. It
has partaken the gradual stages of human culture and
religious freedom. In one age, we find it the peculiar
privilege of the priesthood. It is then, after contro.
versy, decided, that the laity may receive it in one
kind only, the priest taking both kinds. B3ut great
professions and sanctity must precede the admission of
the devotee. As reformations, which can never cease
their onward march, amid social and religious systems,
until solar systems cease to move, have advanced, we
have seen the masses admitted to this sacrament; but




THE COMMUNICANT.             211
under such terrible injunctions and fearful denunciations of those who partake it in unworthiness, as to
keep away all but those who regarded themselves as
peculiarly sanctified. It has been always held as a terrible means of spiritual despotism, and excommunication regarded as an earthly anticipation of the final
sentence, Depart ye cursed.  Nearly all ministers
reserve to themselves the right of refusing the communion to any- one whom they consider unworthy;
and it would, perhaps, be hard to find an ecclesiastic
who does not show by his conduct that had he been in
Christ's seat at the Last Supper, he would have passed
by Judas with the bread and wine, and given it to all
the rest. But Christ 4as not a churchman, and were
he to appear now in any church, would be denounced
as a schismatic.
And, my friends, though in our simple form of
Church regulation no such priestly domination and
passing upon others are possible; I do not think we
ihave generally returned to the primitive spirit of the
Sacrament. When I see at its stated return the division
of the congregation which occurs; the pew-door opened,
and the children and younger members of the family
retiring; many leaving who, I know, secretly love and
revere Christ and his religion, though counting themselves unworthy to say, "I am a Christian." 0, when
I see this, I feel that the meaning, the life-blood of the
sacrament is lost, until it has become a mummnied
mockery; that what was to be a bond of union between




212             THE COMMUNICANT.
all men, has become a line of division; that it means
something in the minds of those who leave which we
who participate will not acknowledge, and cannot without spiritual arrogance!
Let us this day come to an understanding of this
service, and of each other. Let our motto, as a society,
be the words of Orestes, —Between us be truth! And
I would declare here and now, that I cannot regard the
sacrament in any light which would prevent its being
taken by every man, woman, and child in this house;
and am unwilling to participate except under this
avowal. Let us to-4dy withdraw the mystical hood
which it received from hooded friars; and looking
earnestly, see what was meant by it: and thus, unbinding hand and foot of their grave-clothing, may we find
this institution throbbing with that life, without which
it will soon be putrid.
I. I wish to examine the sources of error on this
subject.
The phrases, This is my body-This is my blood,
hlave often been used to inspire awe, even where the
Romish idea of transubstantiation does not prevail. It
has been thought, almost universally, to indicate some
preternatural import in the service. But Christ is
more of a poet than a technologist, and this is a phrase
addressed to the imagination. The saying, " This is
my body, and this my blood," is entirely in keeping
with other phrases whose meaning is apparent: " I am
the vine;" "the shepherd;" "the door of the sheep."




THE COMMUNICANT.               213
They are all, simply, oriental metaphors. The perversion of them dates to an age which invested the
material person of Jesus with peculiar sanctity, akin to
that which afterward, and even yet, exalts him metaphysically, separating him from the human brotherhood. A spiritual age can regard the idea of the real
flesh and blood, only as religious cannibalism; and all
other ideas as tinctured with it, except the spiritual and
rational.
But the real sword of flame which has guarded the
entrance to this table, has been a strong passage written
by Paul to the Church at Corinth,-than which I do
not know any human utterance more misinterpreted;
and that, after being fearfully mistranslated. The facts
are about thus:
Corinth, more than any city of that period, was
noted for its wealth, luxury, and dissoluteness. The
corruptions of the city had crept into the Christian
Church at that place. This first began to be manifest
in the observance of the Lord's Supper. The members
of the Church were in the habit of bringing with them
at the time of its recurrence, bread and wine for its
celebration. When Paul had left them, they brought
more than was necessary for the emblematic character
of the rite. We learn from St. Paul's epistle, and it is
easy to believe concerning such a city and age, that, by
gradual corruption, this simple and solemn feast became a banquet. The poor were excluded from a table
to which they had -not the means to contribute; and




214            THE COMMUNICANT.
those who did -attend, feasted to excess, and even
drunkenness; thus surrounding the Christian communion
with the scenes of the pagan saturnalia, which they had
professed to relinquish. In reference to these abuses,
Paul writes: "Nlow in this that I declare unto you,
I praise you not that you come together; for it is not
for the better, but the worse. When ye come together,
therefore, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper: for in eating every one taketh before other his own supper; and
while one is hungry, another is drunken. What! have
ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the
Church of God, and shame those who have not? "-that
is, have not the means to contribute to the rich feasts.
After reminding them of the simple meaning of the
ordinance, he adds: "He that eateth and drinketh
unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself,
not discerning the Lord's body; " that is making it a
means of sensuality, rather than spirituality.
How many millions have refused to unite in this
service because of this word " damnation," no man can
compute. The word is one which is not translated
"' damnation " elsewhere in the Testament, and occurs
several times in this very connection without being so
mistranslated. It really means that those who ate and
drank in this excess, ate and drank that which harmed
them rather than benefited. You will readily see, too,
that the entire spirit and phraseology are addressed to
a state of the world and the Church, which could not
exist at the present time in any part of Christendom,




THE COMMUNICANT.              215
and therefore cannot be properly used as they have
been.
Yet there is a form in which we may well be
addressed by the words, Whoso eateth and drinketh
unworthily, eateth and drinketh harm unto himself.
Most eagerly do we announce, that if any one partake
the communion from an unworthy motive,-not meaning thereby anything but a cover, or a desire of approbation, or a self-commendation to the community, he is
doing that which shall let loose the lash of conscience
upon him!
But the phrase is " unworthily," not " in unworthiness." If it be interpreted to excommunicate all who feel
deeply their unworthiness to be called Christians, those
who, conscious only of need, are unwilling to make
any open professions of Christianity-then let us all
retire. The saints may take it exclusively for themselves. I, for one, cannot touch it. Who can?
But when I remember one who said, "Do this and
remember me;" that he dipped the morsel, and gave it
alike to John, who loved, and Peter, who denied, and
Judas, who betrayed-I can draw near, as one who
sometimes may love, and yet oftener denies and betrays. And the heart replies: " O, weak and straying
child! this is given thee because of thy unworthiness.
Thy sin and thy need alone keep it from being a dead
form."
II. SNow then, that there are no more any traditional
errors in our minds on this subject, we may-find greater




216             THE COMMUNICANT.
freedom in the positive side of our subject-this, namely,
What is the exact significance of this sacrament to men;
not to saints, nor communicants, nor baptized persons
alone, but to the common heart-to men?
It lies in -one thing —and one which is as comprehensible to one man as to another-one which appeals
to old men and women, and young men and women;
to boys and girls, and newly-weaned babes; to thieves
and gamesters, and swearers and idlers. That one
thing is SELF-SACRIFICE. It is the alpha and omega of
Christ's life and teachings. The contribution of his. life
to the human soul, was a broken body and shed bloodthe only interest about which is the self-sacrifice they
imply. The injunction of his religion and its offer is
a yoke, a burden, a cross-the only thing which elevates these above the yoke of the ox, the burden of the
slave, the cross of the criminal, is the self-sacrifice
they, symbolize.  One thing is forever sublime and
god-like; that is heroism, and heroism is self-sacrifice.
Beautiful is self-sacrifice at home, where each gives up
something for other's happiness; in the manifold forms
of love, and of unselfishness: sublime is it in nations,
where mutual concession preserves justice and peace:
god-like is it in the hero, who for a principle will sacrifice wealth and position, or will drink the sacrament
in dying for the right-drinking of the same cup, and
baptized in the same baptism, with him who instituted it.
A sad day was it for the Church, when a fierce and




THE COMMUNICANT.            217
thoughtless Pnritanism dragged from every steeple the
only real symbol of Christianity-the cross. Would
to heaven it now glittered from every steeple of church,
or chapel, or temple, or mosque, or turret, or pagoda
on the earth-silently writing on the sky, bending over
every land and sea, the noblest word Paul ever uttered,
"God forbid that I should glory save in the cross!"
There let it be raised-there let it stand forever. Not
to symbolize the ignorance of the past; not to preach
absurd ideas of vicarious or imputative atonement;
but to rouse in every man that deepest soul in every
man, which knows that holiest of all in man or angel
is sacrifice; that it is better to give than receive-to
minister than be ministered unto; and that when,
through forthcoming ages, "the thoughts of men' have' widened with the process of the suns," and
the earth has been subjected, in every element, to the
dominion of man, and redeemed from her dungeon of
evil, then nothing shall be found in the worlds grander
than a soul, which loves God and man above self!
And from this time to that, there cannot be any
moment in which self-denial is not demanded of every
soul. To sustain to-day, and here the simple truth and
purity of the Christian idea, apart from the dogmas
and errors of men, demands it. To sustain the principles of justice, humanity, and freedom, so constantly
trampled under foot in our presence, demands it.
This bread and wine have the simplest voice, the voice
of the Good Shepherd, saying to all, even the little
9*




218             THE COMMUNICANT.
children, and with as much tenderness and meaning
for one as another: " If any man will come after me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow
me i'
By this essential element, every duty is united; and
the loftiest efforts and designs of the most enlarged:philanthropy, are not wrought out by any law different
from that whereby a child does an unselfish act to its
brother, though only a toy be concerned, in one case,
and a nation in the other. And in this spirit, which it
symbolizes, we have the highest kind of real presence.
The man who should resolve that he will live for others
more than himself; that he will give what help he can
to the poor; that he will seek to be unselfish as toward
his family and neighbor-may not be willing, indeed,
to say, I am a Christian; but he has received the
highest benefit of the sacrament-a benefit far greater
than if he thought he had eaten the actual body and
blood of Christ, or that there had been some mysterious
favor done heaven, which it would repay, which is the
usual idea.
Then a little child can lhave the fullest appreciation
of the sacrament, when it knows that it means that
habit of self-denial which is the great lesson of childhood. How many, if their young minds were taught
this simple lesson, and they were encouraged to take
the bread and wine, would be impressed more thereby
than by all other teaching? A religious light would
shine on all their little associations; they would be




THE COMMUNICANT.             219
kinder to one another, more forbearing, obedient, unselfish-doing this in remembrance of him.
III. Now, who will say that this principle, the
mother of all other principles, which enters where
love enters —human or divine love-is confined to any
one class of the community? We know that there is
no one who does not know that self-denial is the path
of the Christian. I do not believe there is any one
who is not conscious that it has its constant violations
in his life. But there is likewise a certain internal
knowledge, that nothing is so good as love and truth.
And this germ within us, the Great Teacher would feed
with those living streams, which flow from the example
by which he has ennobled the cross. 13y remembering
how to attest the truth, he did not shrink from any
agony, we may well be led to put to ourselves some
severe questions: How much of what I know is right,
am I willing to stand by to my loss? How much farther
would I follow the truth I hold, if I saw it lead to death
by cross or otherwise a Is my life good and sweet;
and should I this day fall into the grave, would it be
written above, He lived a life of self-sacrifice a or of
self-seeking? Are there none given to me, that in devotion to them, I may find myself?
When you have found that the sunlight falls only in
the churches, and the regular communicants' houses,
then may you deny the universality in some stage of
their growth of those sentiments to which this sacrament appeals. I would not like to take upon myself




220             THE COMMUNICANT.
the blasphemy of saying, that in God's universe, it
is possible that a spirit can exist in which there
may not be found something to which this central
light of Christ is related.  That a purely evil intelligence can exist in earth, or heaven, or hell, is
to dethrone goodness, and circumscribe its destiny.
"Every knee shall bow at last," is the higher creed
of Paul; and faith repeats on earth the high hope of
olden prophecy: " And in the last days, it shall come
to pass, that the temple of the Lord shall be established
on the top of the mountain, and all realms shall flow
unto it."
And for this reason, because none can be beyond the
reach of limitless love- because no heart can be so
poor a hovel that no heavenly beam shall shine through
its window-this memorial of the highest human devotion and love must be offered to all. When it is participated by a few, or any class or age is uninvited,
then is it taken out of the entire spirit of Christianity.
For we are too apt to forget that Jesus lived mainly
with the very class of persons to whom this sacrament
has been so long refused. Much scandal was created
by his breaking bread with publicans and sinners. He
never lost sight of the immortal soul in any one. And
when the poor weeping Magdalen was brought before
him, and the Jews were ready, by their law, to stone
her to death, a glance drove them away; then, with a
tenderness that restored the angel in her, he said; " I
do not condemn thee; go, sin no more." It was the




THE COMMUNICANT.             221
high mission of the Son of God to rise with blessed
light full on all, and like some sweet moon, to draw by
mysterious and beautiful light and love the tides of all
souls, causing energies and aspirations, long stagnant
or pent, to beat full toward the celestial shores.
0 man! 0, many-sided human heart! how little
knoweth each of the other! Every soul knoweth its
own burden, its bitterness, prayer, love, and hope; but
dreams not it could be fully sympathized with by any
other. If the vail could only be removed, and it could
be seen that everywhere soul answers to soul, as, in a
mirror, face answers face; if it were revealed to us how
within us all are the same dreams and phantoms, hopes
and doubts, heights and depths, strengths and weaknesses- I think we should fall on each other's necks
with tears, as those who, walking a crowded thoroughfare, sunddenly meet face to face a brother or son whom
they imagined in another continent. We should unite
at this table, feeling that our need and weakness make
us brothers; and if any Judas come here, to him also
must we kindly, eagerly give the morsel... For
who is worthier to receive it? Not I. Who has not
betrayed, from timidity or interest, Christ, or his conscience, the perpetual Christ, in instances which memory calls to witness against us?  And yet there is
nothing practically good which results not from our
imperfections and poverty. Prayer is a sign of it;
praise is enkindled by it. All that in us sees some-:thing higher to which we have not attained, is at once




222                THE COMMUNICANT.
our glory and our shame. And this glorious yearning
for somewhat high, nobler-be it weak or strong, be it
in a good or evil man-is the divine title to this sacrament. You need not tell me you have no such inward
craving. As well say you are living without lungs or
blood. There it is, deep within you-flashing faintly
forth perhaps, yet inherent; despair is a form of it, as
well as hope. It goes on chanting forever in all:
Nearer, my God, to TheeNearer to Thee I
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me;
Still all my song would be,
Nearer, my God, to TheeNearer to. Thee I
Though like the wanderer,
The sun gone down,
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone;
Yet, in my dreams, I'd be
Nearer, my God, to TheeNearer to Thee I
There let the.way appear,
Steps unto Heaven;
All that thou sendst to me
In mercy given;
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to TheeNearer to Thee!
See there that man with the evil shadow on his face!
The disciples gaze at him  with horror; cry, "Satan




THE COMMUNICANT.             223
has entered him;" shrink from contact with him.
But thou, blessed Saviour, didst not shrink nor turn
from him! Thine eye pierced beneath the cloak of evil
and treachery, and saw within the indestructible flame
of God-dim indeed, and growing dimmer, but still an
immortal spirit. Not to the hand or lip of Judas, but
to that almost expiring soul, thou didst give the morsel.
And thy love was not lost even on Judas.
As he went out into the dark night to perform the
dark crime, there arose on his night one whitened
spot-the vision of a tender face, which, seeing his
evil design, still loved him; which, when it beheld the
treachery in his heart, was not blackened with an angry
cloud, but for a thunderbolt gave him the last token of
affection in the emblems of that body so soon to be
nailed to the cross by the very hand which received
them!
O, I doubt not, this vision lingered with him and
followed him when he " went out and it was night."
I doubt not some far-off voice within him cried, when
he was with Christ's enemies, "Did he love thee best,
or did these?"  By night and by day, waking, sleeping, there was before him the last he had seen of him,
whom he had started so earnestly to follow; there it
was-the face serene and full of love, while others
frowned,-the hand holding out to him the morsel.
It was that act, that love which saved him! Had
Christ arisen when the traitor entered and indignantly
cried, " Depart, false heart I Pollute us not with thy




224            THE COMMUNICANT.
presence! "-then he would have left with hellish
mockery, and no pursuing angel. But now Love,
beyond all that poor Judas had ever known, is hard
after him. And ah, see! it has conquered him!
When none were found to bear witness to the innocence
of Christ, Judas proclaims it; and that penitence, so
deep that death alone could relieve it, outweighs, let us
trust, the dark sin!
So you will see, friends, how it is that I cannot
dismiss you until the communion is over. I wished to
explain this more fully. My benediction would choke
me; I could not dismiss one single one of you, however unworthy, more than he, whom I would love to
follow, could send away from the Last Supper, the man
who betrayed him.
Rather would I say to you whose hearts cry with
Judas, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the
innocent-that cry finds its pitying ear here: And ye
who cry with the Centurion, "Lord, I am not worthy
that thou shouldst come under my roof," -lo! he is
already under thy roof!   O my treacherous heart!
0 feeble will! To whom should I go but unto thee,
O Lord! Thou hast the words of Eternal Life!
May the vision never leave us unpurified, —the vision
of a love manifested through the tender, manly Christ,
which ever flows from the heart of God to each and all,
like the rain which he maketh to fall on the just and
the unjust. No man can get beyond unlimited love.
We may make larger or narrower the bed in our hearts




THE COMMUNICANT.               225
for the fountain's play, but we did not cause it to flow,
and we cannot cause it to cease. To these immortal
cisterns, 0 brother-pilgrims, weary and athirst, let us
repair,-with these waters are purity, and love, and
everlasting joy.
10




TUiE CATHOLIC IDEA.
EVERY several gate was of one Pearl.
WHEREVER earnest religious Faith enters, the tendency immediately is to affinity and unity. The high
nature of religion is at once felt to be superior to technical differences and petty disagreements. The appearance of Christianity was the signal for an effort to unite
the Jews, long sundered into sects and scattered throughout the earth. And it was when the earliest persecutions of the Christian Church were suspended for a
space, and each band was' glowing with its first love,
that it was found so easy to unite them all under one
central head into a Ioly Catholic Church. It were
very wide from the truth to suppose that this union
was for any but the highest purposes. They were all
what they claimed to be by the word Catholic, i. e. liberal, broad, universal. Then was the Church a living
thing, and its catholicity real.
Ah, had she only gone on in the same spirit with
which the union had been baptized! But the Church
did not see bevond its own immediate welfare; she did
(226)




THE CATHOLIC IDEA.            227
not see that those who came afterward in the everwidening world, with the trust of larger views of all
tlhings which they were commissioned to make good to
mankind, had an equal claim on her catholicity; such a
cat'holicity, also, as should not deprive them of their
birthright to individual freedom and thought. So the
Churchl was soon proved not to be up to its own idea-the
Catholic Idea-and so its history is heart-rending. But
let us not hastily accuse it for this. What church is up
to its idea?  Does not each represent that idea, on which
it claims to be based, only so far as is found convenient?
Does Protestantism still bear a spirit of protest,-or
does it settle down, as if no new ray should ever dawn
upon the world?  Even in our own church, which
attracts so many of the thinking youth of this age, on,
account of its freedom, do we not see in some places
signs of tranmnels and creeds?
And yet, though unrealized, there above us shines
forever the great Catholic Idea, the vision of a united
and powerful Christendom! There, on the pages of
prophecy, gleam still the unfulfilled golden visions of
the Church, prepared by purity and love as a bride for
her Lord. The idea is always alive. Each young
man, whose soul is dedicated to the highest purposes of
life, feels the hope kindled within him; his instinct
heralds unity; he is pained at anything like controversy in the pulpit; the criticisms of his parents and
friends on other denominations grieve him as illiberal
and unwarranted. Yet, as time goes on, he becomes




228.           THE CATHOLIC IDEA.
in turn as querulous and particular as the rest; not
through having surrendered his genial faith, but through
having tried it and found it trampled underfoot of the
herd. The angel Peace, once driven by the thirst for
conquest from the kingdoms of the world, had sought
the holy altars of the Prince of Peace; but soon Constantine's sword put her to flight, and though all hear
in dreams the rustle of her wing hovering near us, yet
she visits not the Church on earth.
It is not because the churches really desire to remain
at strife thus. Indeed there is much evidence that
the bitterest ecclesiastical quarrels have been caused by
efforts at coming together. Every age witnesses an
attempt at meeting, which only ends in a greater rebound.
About ten years ago, the churches of the world were
called to unite in an Evangelical Alliance. It spanned
the angry floods of controversy, —a bow of promise.
At the Synod of Berlin, held by all denominations in
Germany, preliminary to that of England, the leading
spirits in which were the great-souled leaders of those
called Orthodox, Neander and Tholuck, the latter gave
the key-note of that religious union, for whose rich harmonies to burst upon the world, every ear of every land
waited eagerly. In that Synod arose that most eloquent living preacher of the Refobrmed Church, and
announced thus the central idea of the world's Evangelical Alliance: " The substantial unity of the Church,
is a thing which already exists, and the Evangelical




THE CATHOLIC IDEA.          229
Alliance has only to proclaim it to the world. All who
are here must deplore the differences which exist in
Christendom. But how can you put an end to them?
You must make the attempt only in the way of mutual
instruction and encouragement. In one of the Reformer's words, I will say there is no church, no Christian party which can claim to possess pure truth,truth absolute in all points of view; and, if these words
are true, I shall take the liberty of adding, that there is no
church, no Christian party on the earth which may not
learn something from the other churches and parties.
It is thus we may realize a grand and true union, of
which we see now only the commencement."
Well, in this high spirit the assembly gathered in
London. Alas, the spirit was willing, but the flesh
was weak; the lower dogmatizers triumphed over the
superiors. The alliance could only be organized on a
test creed of nine dogmas, which excluded the Catholic,
Quaker, Swedenborgian, and Unitarian Churches.
Thus an Evangelical Union could not be held in the
noon of the nineteenth century, without the exclusion
of two thirds of those who honestly believe themselves
Christians! The result of the movement was a sad
failure, and a speedy departure of the clergymen back
to their parishes, to find the relighted flames of controversy burning fiercely on every altar in the world.
Now, these men did not go to England to produce
such results. Each one who went there, doubtless
thought that he comprised more brotherly kindness in




230             THE CATHOLIC IDEA.
his single self than any ten men who could be found
in the alliance. Yet they forgot all when it was proposed to admit the Unitarian and Quaker delegates.
What then is the difficulty? Why, it would seem that,
though Christendom is conscious of a great want, it is
not so clear as to the real nature of that want; and so
it can only grope for the remedy. It cannot see yet
that the Catholic Idea is the only one on which a true
alliance can be based; and that, by its very nature,
that would have to wipe out those last nine articles
with which they must, they thought, burden men's
minds; for this idea must take in all who love
Christ's religion, no matter what articles they subscribe: the word catholic means UNIVE:RSAL.
And, though as yet we see no true embodiment of
the Catholic Idea, we have, in the inspired words of
the Seers, the study of this great design of the Highest.
Behold there, on the lonely Island of Patmos, exiled
by the decree of Domitian, one who, in his life, had
leaned on the holiest breast, through which hle had
heard the beatings of that great loving' heart of all
things, whose care cannot be dissuaded from the smallest of his creation. He sits there, never less alone than
when alone, in converse with ever-glorious unseen beings, for such are pure and divine thoughts. These
build for him the towers of endless vision; for him,
earth, sea, sky come close to whisper the superb raptures of that higher world of which his lonely Patmos
wmas but the porch or outer-court. Ah, then, as some




TIHE CATHOLIC IDEA.           231
auroral arch leaps quivering athwart the northern
midnight, so full on his eyeballs burst the burning, inefi:able splendors of the City of God, the Church triumphant and united, the new Jerusalem  purified and
exalted!
One thing he saw, and repeats again and again —
Every several gate of that IRoly City was one pearl!
This I must take as the type of our new and ideal
Catholic Church; and I shall interpret the words in the
light of the affectionate spirit of St. John, of whom
the legend runs, that when he was too aged to enter
the church, and participate in the exercises, he was, at
times, brought in his chair, in order that he might bless
the worshipers, and that his only expression then was,
Children, love one another. Who could so well see the
true unity as John, the loving, the beloved?
I. Now, he saw, leading onward, even to the consummation of the Church, the differenlces which must ever
exist. He says, there are many gates to this new Jerusalem, this Church of the Future, and not one alone.
Not only are there now "several gates" into the
Temple of Faith and Truth, but it was meant to be so.
It is indeed very strange that men cannot become reconciled to differences of religious faith and worshipyes, even when carried out with full enthusiasm. Generally, those persons get on together most agreeably,
who none of them care particularly about their individual beliefs. But surely this ought not so to be.
Here we are, cast together in this planet to make the




232             THE CATHOLIC IDEA.
most of it, and of each other. We are made different
in all respects, and necessarily led to different occupations and tastes. Well, we can easily see that sameness of feeling, taste, habit in us all would be a sad
monotony; we are glad that all do not look alike, nor
act alike, nor think and love alike. And yet, with
strange inconsistency, the world has always been intolerant of religious differences; as if, when it came to
the very highest department of his nature, man's whole
nature were suddenly subverted, and difference, found
divine in every other relation, here suddenly became
satanic!
Now, it is easy to show that the very life of the soul,
in its progressive existence, depends on these irritating
differences. In the first plane, each individual is a
new and different stand-point from which the universe
is to be viewed. Do I wish a man to come and attempt to describe what may be seen from my own
stand-point? That I can see better than he. I wish
him to describe the view from his own stand-point, to
which neither thou nor I, but he alone, has access.
The same may be said of churches-each is representative of some true idea, which it sees clearer than
other churches. It would seem that the law of animal
development, known as the "' Balance of Organs," discovered by Geoffrey St. Hilaire, holds equally true of
development in the religious world. The idea is, that
Nature makes so much outlay of her capital on each
animal, that the difference between them is one of dis



THE CATHOLIC IDEA.            233
tribution-any larger development in one part being
compensated by diminution of some other. In the frog,
the feet and legs have so large a claim, that the ribs are
put in atrophy to allow it. In observing all the transitions, from the lizard to the serpent, we find that as the
reptile grows longer, and more is needed for vertebral
column, the feet are shortened, until, in the serpent,
they have been absorbed altogether into the length, and
the feet can only be found in their rudiments when the
skin is cut. These things are properly to be stated
here, because they indicate natural law, and every law
runs quite through the universe. We find this balance
of organs pre-eminently-in our churches. Each one is
as yet fragmentary-each represents some one good development which the others do not. For example, we
have on one side the Universalists, who are filled with
the idea of the love of God-who say that they can
demonstrate all their truth from the one text, God is
Love; these sing in perpetual sunshine. But the sunlight, though genial and sweet, contains also the deadly
sunstroke.  Millions of pleasant, harmless rays do
indeed fall from the sun for one fell sunstroke; but
still there is that terrible side to the sunlight even,
which must not be ignored. So the Calvinist has a
proper existence antipodal to the Universalist. He
represents that true principle, which one age calls
Nemesis; another, Retribution.  No matter if some
individuals or catechisms, not yet released from the extreme of a reaction, do overstate this idea-a wise man




234             THIE CATHOLIC IDEA.
will easily sift all the statements of hells and devils,
and see that there is a true core there, which cannot be
ignored in any true apprehension of God's law. You
may take any church, and shall invariably find that it
has a definite reason for existence, and a principle of
life, which must be an element in any future church or
faith, which should be called catholic, or universal.
The Romanist will affirm for you, that there must be,
in the divine government, a womanly tenderness, as
well as a paternal discipline; that purgation, or purification, is the prospect of the fuiture as it is the fact of
the present. The Quaker ever calls us to simplicity,
and shows eternal principles in the smallest things-detecting the serpent's trail in a compliment or a dress:
Methodism still utters Wesley's motto, Be in earnest:
Swedenborgianism will kindle heaven at your hearthstone, and prove that the highest man must be a god.
Others, which I need not name, would show, should
we cut deep down into their ideas, that they too are
given some stone to polish, and bring to the Holy
Temple, which all must unite to rear when the true
Catholic Idea shall prevail. Look around, brother; see
rivers, lakes, mountains, hills, valleys, caves-dig deep
enough, and you shall find the same granite rock underlying all these diversities, however various the depths.
The blunder that we make in our censure of other
churches, is in seizing hold of their weakness rather
than their strength.  No man can help us by his
weakness, but only his strength; so no church can




THE CATHOLIC IDEA.            235
help us by its weakness, but by its strength.  It is
very well, and indeed necessary, that we should recognize the differences between denlominations-these differences exist to be recognized and defined, and we can
only be taught all sides of the truth by seeing distinction and antagonism of ideas. The affliction is, that
men will bring ugly feelings into such discussions,
when every personal feeling in the sacred presence of
Truth is an impertinence. If I tell the points of difference between a Calvinist and myself, I should surely
take great shame if one should hlave reason for dreaming that I would not like that Calvinist as much as a
Freethinker, or would not go as far to serve him? In
any controversy, as soon as a personal feeling enters, it
shows that truth is in that moment forgotten, and self,
with its petty love of triumphl, rises in her place. Why
should I not be equally kind to a Catholic, or Calvinist,
or Methodist, or Infidel, or Deist, or Atheist? I know
not.
It is very certain that the churches which have best
satisfied the wants of the human heart, have been those
which have gone the farthest on this catholic principle,
and have absorbed most of the elements of surrounding
churches. A great hint was given in this direction by
the rise and progress of Methodism-one which, I fear,
our liberal churches are very slow to take. There is a
church which has gone ahead, in numbers, direct influence on the masses, and general extent, of all other
Protestant Churches. Why has Methodism done so




236            THE CATHOLIC IDEA.
much - outstripping Presbyterianism, Unitarianism,
Quakerism, with their more republican form of church
government? It is simply because MIZethodism absorbed
many of the finest elements of all the surrounding
churches. Its founder was the most liberal Christian
of his century.  That church was the child of the
English Church, and retained its essential principles.
To this Wesley added many of the ideas of the Mora.
vians, with whom he was in frequent intercourse; he
drew in many of the best works of the more spiritual
Catholics, such as a Kempis; and he was not afraid to
publish the life of the Socinian, Thomas Firmin, and
recommend many of the ideas of " that good man," as
he called him, to his followers. Of course, as all these
churches had grown out of the wants of the human
heart, the church which included the most of them
was more likely to reach all classes. For you shall
find, if you mingle much with men of various opinions,
that what they really love in their creed is not its falsehood, but its truth; not its weakness, but its strength.
Sometimes they will swallow what is false, because
they have not time or ability to separate it from the
truth it clings to, as its shadow; but that is not because
they love it. And in any conversation with a person
of another faith, if we only have the grace and sense
to recognize the truth that must be, to some extent, in
every creed, we shall find that they will compromise on
all the rest; unless they be deacons and clergymen
who, under a creed, have not, of course, their personal




THE CATHOLIC IDEA.           237
freedom. Perhaps no lie was ever believed. No matter how much we shudder at it, when the dogma was
announced, it was a living truth to the heart which
believed it, and, in higher translations and forms, the
same truth shall ever be believed; and now, in any
earnest belief; you find the exercises and signs which
correspond with the highest faith.  Men walked by
the definite law of gravitation long before they knew
that there was such a law.  MIen are living by the
rule of the most liberal ideas, who fancy they are
quite orthodox. As one said, there is a great deal of
human nature in man —and the proverb, If you drive
nature out at the door, she flies in at the window. All
religious bitterness and intolerance shall certainly be
proved one day to be a misunderstanding of one another, and churches be astonished to find that their
souls have been living by a common atmosphere, as
their bodies have; that their churches were spiritually
lighted (though in various degrees) by the same divine
sun, as the outward was by the same natural sun; that
only those were totally in the dark, who thought they
could imprison the light all to themselves, and-so made
impervious shutters all around. Ah, friends, we cannot shut up God's sunlight in any one church or housecloselthe shutters never so quickly, and you alone are
in the dark; the sunlight fills every other temple whose
doors and windows are opened wide!
II. This brings us, then, to see with St. John the principle of UNITY, which must be the basis of the Catholic




238             THEI CATHOLIC IDEA.
Idea. Though he saw that this holy city had several
gates, there was something in common; every several
gate was of one pearl. In the Oriental figures, a pearl
meant PURITY. The Evangelist saw that all the various
paths to God, all the different forms which Christianity,
even in his day, had assulled, led upward and onward,
where they were attended by purity of heart and life.
No matter what their creeds, the saying of Christ must
ever hold true-Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God. I would say of even an atheist, whom
I knew to be pure and earnest, " Brother, thou dost not
yet see God, but the pure must see God at length."
From Romanism and deadliest Calvinism, I know there
often arise our Fenelons and our Edwardses; even so
have I seen, friom the blackest slime and mud of the
river's bottom, grow up the whitest, purest pond-lilies.
Indeed, were we called on to enumerate those of other
churches whom we most value and love, we should not
take those who stand up and comply with modern ideas,
forgetting that liberality is no grace in a man who stands
pledged by truth and honor to be faithful to a creed till
the pledge is cast, but to those good old men who stood
in terrible consistence by their faith, however horrible;*
our love clings to Calvin, and Edwards, and Emmons,
and Hopkins. Whlat care we for the words they uttered?
They had a pure spirit, a spirit of truth and sincerity,
which, like a city set upon a hill, no cloud of false doctrine
* Decreturn quidem horribile fateor. —-alvin, In3., Lib. II, e. 23.




THE CATHOLIC IDEA.             239
can hide. For each man, purity is only to be found in
his own steadfast devotion to what he believes true and
right. If we are not hypocrites, we shall find our Gates
of Pearl; but to an unreal one, who goes each week to
church, and silently avows a faith rejected by the heart,
the pearly gates are discolored, and no celestial light
can shine throughl them upon the earthly path. For
purity is as much a matter of fidelity to our real creed
as to anything. But no man is fit to enter the true
and holy Catholic Church, who does not feel that,
though the gates are several, they are all of one pearl;
that pure and earnest men are always brothers; that
when men unite for benevolence or philanthropy-for
the right against the wrong-they enter alike the city
of one God.
Very muchl do I fear that the source of all our dissensions is, that we are not all striving for the Gates of
Pearl, but for a mere sect or self-advancement. What
means this holding up of unwarranted tests of the
Christian Life,-one must have just this or that in cqnversation and manners; " he must use words which end
in ation," regeneration, sanctification; he must have
just such and such views as are conventional about the
Bible, or the personality of Jesus. But any free
aspirant for the heavenly city will spurn from him all
such handcuffs and fetlocks. He will say to the
churches, — Brothers, so long as you demand of me
purity of heart and life, you do well; you must not
tolerate guilt; such toleration would root up the very




240             THE CATHOLIC IDEA.
subsoil from which alone Faith can grow: but when
you have demanded this, your claims on me are ended;
for I am  free, and in all other things, stand or fall
before God alone!
In fact, we can only look upon the existence of such
a phrase as " religious toleration," as a biting sarcasm
on the world. 1 should certainly look upon it as an
equivocal compliment, for any one to say that I had a
tolerance for all denomninations,-that is, that I bore
with other peoples' opinions. Tolerate indeed! You
might as well say a man is good and kind because he
tolerates other peoples' existence on the same planet
with himself,-for a real existence includes a man's
sentiments, as much as it does the room his body
occupies. Tolerate forsooth! The very a b c of Philosophy or common sense, to say nothing of Christianity, would teach us not to tolerate other men's
honest differences, but to rejoice in them,-to hold them
to them,-to see that, if they are sincere and pure,
their true ability to help us lies in that distinction;
that for one who has eyes of his own to conform with
the vision of others, would make him a mere cipher,
counting only when combined with some one who was
a positive figure. And are there not thousands, who in
opinion are but as ciphers, added to some Calvin, or
Swedenborg, or Channing, figures of positive and individual value? Let us hear the last of tolerations. Let us
rejoice in those who rise as new centers of thought and
influence; let us as earnestly as we can insist that




THE CATIHOLIC IDEA.          241
every man must enter by his own gate, that each shall
have his own creed, his own worship, his own atonement, his own regeneration, his own heaven; claiming
only that purity of purpose shall animate him; that
each shall have the Gate of Pearl before him, within
his heart the Pearl of Price.
And that this earnest spirit does animate the mass of
every religious denomination, I must ever believe. It
does seem to me incredible that men should go to the
expense and trouble of building edifices, and supporting
ministrations for doctrines, in their professed belief of
which they are insincere. Unreal things presently die
of inanition, if not at once. Much less can we believe
that the expensive and inconvenient system of fasts and
days with Catholics, or the " horrible " tenets of Calvinists, would or could keep any but sincere and convinced
men on their rack. I know there are many in the
churches who are not earnest, and have ulterior ends
for compliance, but thle mass are always genuine.
It may be asked, then, why have we, if sincerity is the
one thing requisite, found it necessary to discuss and
oppose various forms of belief. It is because so many
have no personal faith at all. The youth grow up
and take their parents' church and creed as they live
in their house. We hear human beings constantly
lumped together, as if they were vegetables, to be taken
in the lot,-here is a " Methodist family," and there a
" Presbyterian family." Is there not room for suspicion
that in such families each may not have his own faith,
10*




242             THE CATHOLIC IDEA.
but his fibater's?  If each has actually through hard
thought and experience attained a personal faith, we
have no complaint to offer, though it be Catholicism,
though it be Atheism. We must sound the note which
will bring every soldier to his place,-not that of
parents and relatives,-but his own. When  there,
whatever his creed, he stands with the noble and true
of all ages. He is one of the True Catholic Church.
Ah, my brothers, too long have we been estranged,
too long forgotten Christ's prayer, " that they may be
all perfect in one," not one in any such sense as would
stunt the perfect development of any one; but that
they may be perfect sin one. Can we not have a
unity consistent with individual perfection?  Can we
not respect the convictions and peculiarities of every
earnest and pure mind, by meeting it with an equal
reliance on our own peculiarities?  Shall we still continue the society of the vulgar, who, in order to keep
from open war, conceal their differences of opinion a
Is that the way for immortal beings, who should all be
equally seeking the truth, to convene? Shall men be
less than dumb planets, of which we are told, "one
star differeth from another star in glory? " Surely an
earnest mind would suppose others equally so; a pure
heart suppose others equally pure with itself.
Up over our petty dissensions, thou at least, 0 pure
and kind heart, canst see a plane where all true pilgrims meet and rest together; a fountain, a shade,
where all are refreshed alike: thou canst see those




THE CATHOLIC IDEA.            243
Gates of Pearl, whose blessed light pure hearts reflect as
mirrors long before they enter there i
Made in the image of one Father, children of one
hope, with eyes kindled at the same spiritual sun, in
the strength of a common nature, the hope of a common
destiny,-join hands, knit hearts, and press on to the
gates, unstained and white, through which we enter to
see eye to eye, as we have loved heart to heart!




THE WORSHIPER.
AND as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered.
AROUND that man, standing on the mountain, with
the splendor of God on his face, his raiment glistering
in the light's flood, what momentous histories and facts
cluster!  See! in his single self, he represents vast
primaeval pains, through which nature slowly ascended
from zoophyte to the human form, thus bearing in his
form the progression of the world. He represents also
the steadfast growth of ages, wherein this form, once
gained, passed on from being a naked savage, in a
paradise of sense, to being a shrine for awe and adoration; and in himself, bearing on the farthest wave,
shows the line where the immortal shores are reached
at last; and so up on that transfiguration mount, not
alone Jesus see we, but, through him, a world looking
to its magnificent future; on his heart, a race held high
to catch a gleam of all it shall be when, transfigured by
aspiration and worship, the fashion of its countenance
is altered.
I celebrate to-day this apotheosis of all things; the
central heat which causes the solid sphere to put forth




THE WORSHIPER.              245
wings; the light which shows the world to be on its
ascent-revealing on the unfolding flower, r ascend;
on the swelling fruit, I ascend; on the forming wing
of the chrysalis, 1 ascend; revealing most clearly how
up through man's brain and heart, lie the path and
gateway whereby all things in the end enter heaven.
And this path and gateway is WORSHIP.  I know
the largest part of the Christian world maintain that
the world is redeemed and transfigured by Incarnation;
placing that, as a method, where we place WTorship.
They tell us that the higher descends into the lower to
uplift it; that, in the conflict, God stoops to conquer.
We trust that it is not so. We trust that the young
Bettine was right when she wrote, " Nothing which is
celestial passes over; but that which is earthly passes
over by the celestial." The perfect can help us best by
shining on there —the pure, uncompliant perfect! In
God's name, let there be no descent anywhere-no in.
carnation; nay, no influx, but that of a spirit which,
stream-like, flows on to lose itself in the all-absorbing
ocean!
I3But that which is earthly, passes over by the celestial. Man can lift himself up to God. Up on the
eternal mountains, which rise around him, lie may
climb till he glows in the perpetual light bathing their
summits; such light not to be given to him as to a
beggar, but won and claimed by him as by a hero.
And all-sufficient, indeed, is that grace which, being
attained, flows from the soul to baptize all things into




246              THE WORSHIPER.
the holiest relations-showing that, as it was said of
old, "all roads lead to Rome," there is no one thing
whereon man may look or ponder, which has not its
divine side, opening up a way to God.
Think it not, friend, a light thing that a man should
worship, though its object be a stone, an ape, a monster. Thereby hang the tenderest, sublimest mysteries
of the soul. No matter what the object is now, in
every thought which is born of a sense of need, we
have a tendency which leads to all that is highest.
There stand along the pathways of the world the
flaming altars; some with whiter, clearer, some with
smokier, duller light; in desert caves, in monastic
walls, in fanatic noisy groves, in speechless sittings, in
the repetitions of Liturgies: yet remember what awful
torch lighted all; remember what awful depths of
spiritual need man must have fathomed, what transcendent visions of the boundless supply he must have
caught; think what prelusive dreams, yearnings, phantoms, doubts, hopes, experiences must have surrounded
the soul ere burst forth this sublime oratorio of prayer;
think of how all that man has yet reached, all that he
shall be, are implied and foreshadowed in the lowest
altar ever reared!
It will be necessary for us to fix well in our minds
the nature of reverence or worship, and to dismiss a
great deal of cant on the subject.
In the first place, we must remember that what we
have to consider is a SPIRIT, and not any of the specific




THE WORSHIPER.               247
forms it may take in any one place or period. The
spirit which leads a man to doubt himself; to grope
toward the mystery overlying his life; to sigh for what
lie knows not; to cry for help-this is spiritual worship, however much it may mistake its objects, and
fasten itself to stocks and stones. What the missionary
societies so pertly call idolatry, is by no means that.
One earnest ray illuming their horn-eyes, would show
those stocks and stones transfigured in the celestial
light of the spirit, in which they are hewn and worshiped.  Only the worship of Self is idolatry.  The
trail of the serpent is not found in the Parsee prostrate
before the splendors of the rising sun, nor in the Indian
low-bent as the thunder-step of God is heard in the
terrible music of the storm; but in those whose prayers
smack of the larder and the money-safe. We have not
to go out of our own neighborhood to find the actual
idolatry; all around us petitions go up for rain and
crops, and physical remedies, and prosperity, from
those who do not see that the Holy One, to whom they
are addressed, is not really adored, but that bread and
butter certainly are. The Liturgy prays that God will
"preserve, for our use, the kindly fruits of the earth;"
a prayer nothing different from those by which the
"heathen" worshiped Ceres, goddess of crops; and
one much more idolatrous, because offered after the
world has been taught that God is to be " worshiped
in spirit." And though under such prayers the fashion
of the countenance may alter, it is to the dull gray of




248              THIE WORSHIPER.
materialism, or the yellow of gold, not to the snowpure luster of a spirit which cannot recall sorrow or
joy of earth, in a presence before which they are as
motes in the sun.
Surely it is time that we saw that the language of a
pure worship would not be in the tone of one suppliant
for life; would have nothing to ask; knowing that all
earth's wisdom conspiring could not see our need so
well as God's slightest glance; nor all its affection be
so ready to give it as his most indifferent feeling;
would have nothing to confess to the All-seeing; could
only rejoice that God was God; could only dwell
steadily on ALL THAT IS, under his rule, from atom to
angel; seeking in each some lineament of the Divine
Face; altering and becoming assimilated in the great
brightness.
The primal fact would seenl to lie somewhere in this:
Man has, for all practical ends at least, a two-fold existence; one in the material, one in the spiritual world.
As gravitation and other laws surround and control his
body, so do spiritual laws environ his soul: they are
equally definite and sure. And as man has senses to
perceive, and members to obtain material benefits, so
has he spiritual senses and powers to grasp and appropriate the inner and divine world.
It were a great error, however, and one to which
liberal thinkers are quite prone, to suppose that worship is as simple a matter as eyesight; that a clear conscience is the open eye, which is all that we need to




THE WORSHIPER.                 249
guide us. This natural light which is all-sufficient to
distinguish right and wrong, and to secure innocence,
is nevertheless as far from the spiritual height named
Worship, as a lullaby is from a symphony of Beethoven's. Or, we may say, as man's eye, seeing at first
the light, at length is educated into a knowledge of the
spectrum, and of the relations of colors and shades, and
thus refined into the highest perception of beauty and
art; so the inward eye has a no less complex task;
must penetrate farther and farther the depths and mysteries of spiritual life, so that mere sight shall deepen
into vision and the beauty of holiness; and onward to
worship, the portal perhaps to ecstacy, revealing things
which, as Paul said, "it is not lawful for a man to
utter."
But do not suppose that true Worship is a mere
sentiment. In all of this education of it from simple
sight to higher insight, the discovery is hastening on,
which shows the unity of the material and the spiritual.
The trained sense detects the one it has learned to love
in all the atoms of his creation; ponders a divine lesson
in all and each. To the holy worshiper Nanac, prostrate with his feet turned toward Mecca, there was
one who cried:
" Base infidel, thy prayers repeat!
Toward Allah's house, how dar'st thou turn thy feet?"
Before the Moslem's shallow accents died,
The pious but indignant Nanac cried,
" And turn them, if thou canst, toward any spot,
Wherein the awful House of God is not."
11




250               THE WORISHIPFR-.
More than all, the true worshiper has an eye quick to
recognize the divine element in every man;. by which
the human relations are purified and justice secured;
and in every special act where, to the coarser, no elements are working except interest or inclination, such
a one sees something behind, demanding for that act a
religious elevation also. -In short, in reverence we.
recognize a great, powerful agent, which; starting fronm
the mind in which it has been cultivated, polarizes all
things in its sphere; causing all to turn' toward. their
true star; one which thus deepens all the'relafions of
life, lifting its Sinai, and sending forth the tables of its
law in the midst of those who worship the golden calf;
one which frees the intellect from the trammels of
superstition and prejudice, by sanctifying its every
possible object with the sense of a God dwelling in
each'and all; which binds every man to his right and
special work on earth, by showing that to be the talisman whose charm shall lure angels and principalities to
his side. Thus, beneath the pure fire of the worshiper,
earth and spirit are fused into one; matter disappears,
and in its place God's.great Poem of Nature; man's
body vanishes and, in its place, musical meanings of
form and adaptation. Under this light the fashion of
all is altered.
Little faith have I, for one, that any admirable work,
any high success will come from any other source.
The arm of might in the earth is devotion; the strength
of God acts through the devout man. Can a man who




THE WORSHIPER.              251
looks not beyond himself and his poor dust for inspiration and strength, accomplishi anything beyond what
dust can accomplish? To such a one the heavens and
the earth are a jest; the circling planets, a waltz;
nature says, Eat and drink, for to-morrow you die. But
for great action, I look to that man on whose spirit the
universe rolls deep organ-tones, which call him to
prayer; who has stern, unwavering faith in glorious
realms, which eye cannot see, nor ear hear; who works
with eye fixed steadily on an unseen pattern, given him
in the-Mount.to copy in the plastic materials of earthly
life. Such work is perfect, because worship has linked
nerve and sinew on to the central power which can
work no imperfection; and that worker enters the secret
of him who said, "I can do nothing of myself: the
Father that is in me doeth the work which ye see me
do;" comprehends the sublime paradox of the earnest
Paul, ":I live, yet not I! "
HIence came from the experience of the world the noble
and true saying, that work is worship. All real work is a
reverence for the law and voice of God in the heart of
the worker; a man's calling, being obedience to that
which has called him. I know there is a kind of botching and patching of things in' the world, dignified on
-tle street with the name of work; it is only some insane men building granite and marble sepulchers for
their souls;  e*ldeavoring to soothe their consumptive
intellects with the prospect of coffins inlaid with gold.
But every stroke of true work on the earthi breaks the




252              THIE WORSHIPER.
spirit's chain, not forges it; each honorable coin is the
seal of a man's independence, not the price for which
the Lord of him is betrayed. Every fabric reared by
earnest integrity and labor on earth, corresponds, stone
for stone, to another which is eternal in the Heavens.
And of every work we know that if it is a man's best;
if it be a true worship toward his Ideal's shrine,though before our eyes such work shall crumble to the
dust ere the grass is green on the laborer's grave,-the
result of that work is imperishable; on that mount of
toil the soul has climbed to its transfiguration, and by
every touch the fashion of its countenance was altered.
All, noblest indeed of all worship is work! If there
is any chosen one, any darling of Heaven, it is thou, O
brave man, who hast an earnest heart for work, and a
strong right arm. From my lowly destiny of talker, I
may at least spread the palm in the path of the noble
worker, hailing him Earth's King. No Epic, whether
of Homer or Dante, is like the Deed-Epic; no romance,
though of Shakspere, equals the romance of the obscurest life which fills a home with the " sweet tasks of
love; " no symphony can vie with the music of any life
recording fulfillment in clear, strong action. Dean
Swift says, " The poorest poem is better than thle best
criticism ever made upon it." I will say that the
poorest action which is genuine, is better than the
most eloquent words about action, which ever were or
will be uttered or written.
See on the sacred mount the Son of God, full under




THE WORSHIPER.               25.3
the glory of his Father's smile!  For what, dear Saviour, art thou elect for so high preference and splendor?
How art thou, fiom a world of men and women, singled
out as the one whose tabernacle high visions of patriarchs and prophets visit, for whom God's voice breaks
forth in every heart to call thee his beloved? Ah! as
that weary face turns upon me, I read the sufficient
answer; read it in the sliarp thin lines which grief has
traced upon it; read it in the scars where fearful conflicts are recorded; read it in the shadow of a cruel
death already forecast on his brow. Such transfiguration did not occur on the plain of ease, but on the
mount of toil; it was not given, but won. Through
long vales of darkness, through the valley of the
shadow of death, lie carne to this light: conflicts with
evil, deeds of mercy, trials, labors of loneliness, these
were the keen-edged prayers whereby the fashion of
his countenance was altered. Never was such height
attained by worship born of sentiment, and fading on
the lip. And only those who die with Christ, are
raised with Christ.
There is a pain which, I doubt not, we all know-a
pain which comes as we remember the prayers which
our childhood, with face hidden in a mother's lap, put
up to one who was best known as a Heavenly Mother.
HIow the heart filled as it repeated, one by one, the
dear names which hovered about its little sphere!  Not
one least care was unworthy the special attention of the
Maker of All. Easily, indeed, was the countenance of




254              TIIE WORSHIPER.
the child altered under suchi prayers. But then came
the years which chilled them all; and if the prayers
were continued, they were the merest mummies of
prayers, no longer uttered with the faith and glow
which once had given them wings. Sweet melody of
childhood, where art thou?  When I would repeat thy
strain, my heart seems voiceless in every string. IHow
often have we longed once more to bury our faces in a
mother's lap, as if that had virtue to brine all back
again, just as it Was!
What is the matter with us? Is the soul not as dependent on its Father now as then? Are not its needs
vaster-its griefs more heavy?  Is it not as dear to
God now? Why have such cornmunings ceased with
childhood?
It is because ypou have learned only the surface of
that deep saying, that only by becoming little children do we enter the kingdom of heaven. We would
preserve into manhood the form, not the spirit, of our
childhood's trust. Such verbal petitionings are as impossible to our manhood, as it would be to preserve the
old enthusiasm for the doll and the hobby-horse. It
cannot be. And if we would feel the thrill and beauty
of our childhood's faith again, we must be surrounded
by objects as dear, and be filled with prayers as real,
as those of the child. What is true to a child, is not
true to a man; do not try to keep it up, or you lose
the precise thing you seek —REALITY.  Tlle child
asks God for temporal and personal blessings-it is




THmE WORSHIPER.              255
natural and beautiful; the man who does it is guilty of
affectation-knowing the truth, as Christ said it, " Your
Heavenly Father knoweth what ye have need of before
ye ask him."  But the old trust, simplicity and feeling, shall re-appear in that life which utters no word
or prayer which is not real and simple; which holds to
the insight of manhood as it once did to the- insight of
childhood; which, in a word, has no attitudes to play
off toward. God or man, but: surrenders itself unreservedly to the love and behest of truth.
More and more does it become manifest, that the
question which: concerns us most, concerning every
man, is, Can lie leo counted on for strict fidelity to
principle? May he be relied on for absolute allegiance
to what is honorable?  It is evident, that though many
wish to be considered, like Caesar's wife, above suspi.
cion, few can be so regarded., The revolution of the
wheel brings the: i'll weight of the car on every spoke —
how many have we known to snap under the pressure
even when the tire is strongest!
Many things have been tried for the security of virtue
under all temptations and opportunities. Wit, beauty,
sentiment, feeling, learning, poetry, philosophy, each
has come forth, in turn, a Daedalus to give the young
Icarus wings. But the wings have melted in the sun,
and the spirit fallen into the flood.
Whom, then, can we trust?
Only the man who meets God's eye everywhere and
al ways.




2 56             THIE WORSHIPER.
Only the man whose reverent spirit makes every
place or instant the focus in the whispering gallery of
the universe, where all voices gather, saying, Thou,
God, seest me!
Only the man whose mind, quickened by worship,
detects, in the dullness or sensitiveness of his own
heart, whether the heavenly smile or frown is upon
him; who remembers, in every dealing, whoever be
the other party, that he is dealing with God.
Only he can be fully relied on who sees the world
aright; and, through tile crowd of cares and affairs, is
ever pressing to touch the vesture of the Most IHigh,
knowing that only when by prayer he grasps that hem,
is he made every whit whole.
Up, then, 0 my soul! Follow on the rugged mount
whe-e the holy vision shines. Dost thou despair, seeing that transfigured one in contrast with thy heavy
clay; his snow-white dazzling raiment with thy filthy
rags; his altered face with thy earthliness?  Despair
not!  Climb on, and thou too shalt be changed; for
we know that we shall be like him when we shall see
him as he is. Lighter and lighter each step finds the
earthly about thee!  Brighter and brighter on thy
raiment the bleaching sun! Strive on, pray on, and
over thy altered spirit thou too shalt hear, on thy transfiguration-mount, the secret whisper, This is my
beloved.




THE THREE REVERENCES.




THE youngest laid their arms crosswise over their breasts, and
looked cheerfully up to the sky; those of middle size held their hands
on their backs, and looked smiling on the ground; the eldest stood
with a frank and spirited air; their arms stretched down, they turned
their heads to the right, and formed themselves into a line; whereas
the others kept separate, each where he chanced to be.
"Three kinds of gestures you have seen; and we inculcate a threefold reverence, which, when commingled and formed into one whole,
attains its highest force and effect. The first is reverence for what is
above us. That posture, the arms crossed over the breast, the look
turned joyfully toward Heaven, is what we have enjoined on young
children; requiring from them, thereby, a testimony that there is a God
above, who images and reveals himself in parents, teachers, superiors.
Then comes the second; reverence for what is under us. Those hands
folded over the back, and, as it were, tied together, that down-turned,
smiling look, announce that we regard the earth with attention and
cheerfulness: from the bounty of the earth we are nourished: the
earth affords unutterable joys....  Then we bid him  gather
courage, and turning to his comrades, range himself along with them.
Now, at last, he stands forth, frank and bold; not selfishly isolated;
only in combination with his equals does he front the world.
WILHELM MEISTER.




G 0 D
As I passed bSy and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with
this inscription: To THE UNKNOTWN GOD. Whom, therefore, in ignorance ye worship, him declare I unto you.
ThiE first Reverence is for that which is above us.
With minds vailed, and kneeling before the transcendent
mystery and grandeur of such a subject, let our thoughts
turn upon GoD.
It was not in haste, nor the blindness of guilt, that
at Athens, the world's center of thought and culture,
an altar was reared to the unknown God. We need
not Paul to declare it an evidence of their superior
Reverence; for it is to be observed, that the sentence
rendered by our English version, " Ye men of Athens,
I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious,"
really should read, " I perceive that in all things ye are
much given to religious devotions "-being the highest
approval, and not a rebuke. Paul saw too well on
whlat deep foundations such an altar was laid. Well
did lhe know through what ages of speculation, doubt,
inquiry, experience, the mind of Greece had climbed




260                    GOD.
to that highest rung of the ladder of knowledge-the
consciousness of ignorance.
It is well enough that we are brought thus to stand
with Paul in Athens; for from the superior genius of
the people, as well as the greater completeness of their
records, we can see the natural stages by which the
human mind " feels after and finds " its path through
the mystery which so envelops our existence. And the
human mind is one everywhere - in modern England,
or New England, and in ancient Greece; as, when
you have analyzed one drop of water, all oceans, seas,
and rivers yield no other elements.
All speculation opens with Pantheism. Polytheism
comes before it, but it is merely the first impression of
the senses; Pantheism  marks the entrance of real
thouglht. It affirms that all is God. Tile faith is velry
old. In the Ancient Persian Parterre of Mysteries, it
is taught that God is all; that each thing is only another form of the same substance, as ice, snow, vapor
are different forms of water.  This belief began in
Greece, with her first and half-mythic poet and singer,
Orpheus. At first it was the dream of poetry, and is
stated in fragnents attributable to him. But the dream
of one age is the science of the next; and that which
Orpheus sang to the music of the lyre, which hie is said
to have invented, was solidified in the minds of the
populace as real ftaith. Not as the poet saw God in
everything, but in a direct sense did they see him in
all. Thus they ascribed to their greatest and strongest




GOD.                  261
men and women the titles of God and Goddess. Hence,
in Greece, Pantheism, which borders on poetry, though
it remained the faith of their seers and sages, with the
masses, was lost in Polytheism; and Pan, the All,
shrank to a Pantheon. The Pantheistic origin of their
religion is attested by the name of their highest deity,
Zeus, or Jupiter. The word Zeus means Ife; the life
in all was the God in all. The philosophers continued
to use the names of the gods, though Hercules, Neptune, Venus, Iris, were only to them as any scientific
nomenclature might be to us-meaning strength, the
sea, the rainbow, beauty, and so on.
Next to the schools of the old prophets and dreamers,
came upon the stage the schools of philosophy; for life
comes presently to demand something more substantial
than dreams and hymns. The four schools accepted
Pantheism-the Epicurean, Stoic, Peripatetic, Pythagorean. It is easy to see how the consistent development of
a philosophic Pantheism resulted in atheism, as it did.
For if Nature was God, where was his intelligent being
possible except in Man, who certainly is at the top of
nature, and in whom nature becomes for the first time
conscious? Then man was God; and it is manifest, that
if man was the only God, there was no supreme intelligence anywhere —creation was chance, and worship,
superstition.
In the reaction against this result, which presently
began to be announced through their wisest men,
speculation started forth in a thousand paths. And at




262                    GOD.
no time could it have been better said of the Athenians, that they were "much  given  to religious
thoughts," than when every wise man among them
represented a distinct idea of God, and the earth, air,
fire,' water and sun were successively identified with
that name as essence or symbol.
And, now, thought deepens in earnestness, as the
objects it had pursued are receding. There comes on
Greece a period of extraordinary intellectual activity.
We can imagine nothing finer than the sight which
history brings into relief, upon the age of Pericles, when
poets, priests, philosophers, mathematicians, orators,
in that birth-place of culture, gathered together in the
halls of:l ericles, and quickened by the genius of the
almost ideal Aspasia, sought each to find his nearest
point to that Being, whom Timarus called the " circle,
whose center was everywhere, whose circumference
was nowhere."  But beyond the definition of Socrates,
beyond the dream of Plato, leaps the unclutched goal
of'all aspiration and speculation. The fable of the
Wandering Jew, Ahasuerus, is recalled in this history
of the human mind, where it was clearest and strongest,
in its effort to find out God: forever seeking —never
resting'-it roams through all the universe which answers to faculty or sense, and at the end of every path,
whence it has returned baffled and weary to press
some other way, it has left its altar inscribed, To the
Unknown God.




GOD.                   263
If history ended here, the student might well be a.
brave skeptic; and taking part with this unwearying1
thought againsti the:clQse-kept mystery, cry, Thou
Supreme Power, if indeed there be Supreme Power,
why hast thou made this mind destined ever to search,
never to attain? Even a man, could he make a world,
would be wise and good enough to say,.' Seek and ye
shall find," shall be the eternal constitution of my
world. But;history comes nearer to only beginning here.
This very vagueness and doubt were the ladder let
down from heaven, whereon, to the wayworn traveler,
the angels should descend.  In ignorance, all true
knowledge begins.  And in the tone of the wiser
skeptics which God sent to Greece, we see the paling
of the watch-fires of human speculation before the prophetic morning-star of Bethlehem.!Homer had begun by describing God as having dark
eyebrows and golden hair. And it began to appear
very plainly that the most learned, who came at a
much later day, though they were shocked at sulch
physical associations with God, did nevertheless only
improve it by describing, in the likeness of man, his
mental and moral attributes. Let me quote a short
passage from one of these satirists, who began to dissect the figure set up for adoration by the philosophic
schools. Xenophanes writes:
" If beasts frame any Gods to themselves, as it is
likely they do, they make them certainly such as them



264                   GOD.
selves, and glorify themselves in it as we do. For
why may not a goose say thus:' All the parts of the
universe I have an interest in: the earth serves me to
walk upon; the sun to light me; the stars have their
influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the
winds, and such by the waters: there is nothing that
yon heavenly roof looks upon so favorably as me. I
am the darling of nature! Does not man keep, serve,
and lodge me?'T is for me that he both sows and
grinds; if he eats me, he does the same by his fellowmen, and so do I the worms that kill and devour him.'
Thus the goose makes himself the end and theory of
nature, and God is but the apotheosis of itself."
The graver and greater souls took the alarm, and
felt that thought had now reached its impenetrable
walls. Pythagoras said, "It is best we should not
know  God."  Plato taught that the knowledge of
God was the most difficult of all things, and even when
attained, could not be disclosed to the masses. Socrates said, "All that I know is that I do not know."
And these were the intellectual and moral forces
which in foregone ages had reared the altar to the unknown God; which Paul found when he came to bring
Christianity to Greece.
But though all the results of thought had been one
by one surrendered, their minds worked on upon the
great problem. God had made it the glorious necessity of the Greek mind to think. Silently, deeply it
plied its task.




GOD.                   265
Characteristic of the whole nation appears to me the
story related of one of their most refined and cultivated
minds. It was Simonides who was asked by Hiero,
IfLo, or what was God?  We are told that the Poet
asked a day to consider; and, at the end of that, when
Hiero came to get his answer, desired a day longer,and at the end of every day, another day, saying, that
the difficulty increased in exact ratio with the thought
bestowed upon it. And this silent seeking, which had
no answer to give, was the attitude of Greece. What
in all history is sublimer than this nation, chosen for
all the grand achievements of the pure intellect beyond
all other nations before or since, kneeling in renunciation of all its finely wrought theories, acknowledging
the stirring of wants which the intellect could awaken,
but could not satisfy; but still attesting their faith in
the Being who enshrouded himself from their faculties
by feeding the holy flame of reverence within them;
and keeping alive the fire on altars which confessed
their God unknown! Blessed indeed, were those servants whom the Lord, when he came, found watching!
It was then that the voice of Paul was heard on
Mars Hill, breaking the awful silence. Never elsewhere did such eager ears and anxious hearts gather
around him, as when he cried, "Men of Athens! I
perceive the depth and earnestness of your religious
aspiration. I have witnessed your devotions, and seen
your altar to the unknown God. Whom you are in
I 11




266                   GOD.
acknowledged ignorance still worshiping, him declare
I unto you." No voice sounding so bold a note
could fail of a hearing in Athens. Admirable Paul!
He did not underrate their devout spirituality,-the
sinews which stood strong and ready to work; but
brought the engine to which these sinews might be
married, and the problem of the universe solved. He
did not disparage their accumulated culture; but with
the rich tissue of his inspired discourse he wove a
golden thread from their own Cleanthes —" For we also
are his offspring."  But he declared to them that they
were wasting this great religious force, in seeking to
find out God as they did matters of metaphysics and
science. As they went to the Agora to discuss the
laws, or the grove to teach philosophy, so they went to
the Temlple to find out the First Cause: but, cries Paul,
"He dwelleth not in temples made with hands:" he is
not to be known by the mind as an object of thought.
You have found that the end of this is darkness. It is
well. Yet there is a reality in this mystery, a true fire
at the heart of this smoke-cloud. THERE IS a great
Being, the creator of us all, who hath determined all
these periods of thought and knowledge among men, —
so that haply they might feel after him and find him.
He is not far from you. As your own poet has said,
We are his children. And this was the great announcement of Christianity to the Philosophy of the World,namely, That the Infinite God could never be an object




GOD.                   267
of thought to the finite mind, but of feeling, experience;
not an abstract theorem, but an inward, spiritual power.
Dwell with me an instant on this difference, and you
will see what the contribution of Christianity, as a
method of search, was to the world. You will see in
the names of things true symbols of their history. The
names Tieos, Deus, and other words which stand for'God in the ancient languages, were purely philosophic,
and related to him simply as a creative force. The
Egyptian Osiris is from Osireth, meaning, the land is
mine. The Greek Zeus meant life; Theos, Creator.
These words might have been addressed to electricity,
if that had been discovered to be the First Cause. But
Christ's word was Father.  That must be addressed,
not to a creative agent, but to a conscious, tender,
sympathizing Being. And Christianity came to show
that, not at the portal of the intellect, but at that of the
devout heart, to whomsoever that knocketh it shall be
opened. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness. God is love; whoso loveth, knoweth God. It
was shown that the soul or affectional Intuition, which
Stoicism had degraded as sensual, was as definitely
adapted to the apprehension of the Divine Being, as
the palate to food. Thus the stone that the builders
had rejected, was to become the head of the corner.
The phrase which had preceded Paul at Athens which
pronounced Christianity foolishness, because it gave no
new, scientific theory of the universe, he accepted




2'S                    GOD.
boldly; "For after that," he says, " in the wisdom of
God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased
God by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that
believed."
Very grand in history, apart from all other Eras, is
the Era when Christianity came face to face with Greek
Philosophy. We naturally impersonate two tendencies,
and see two Messiahs meeting at Athens. One was
Plato, Messiah of the pure Intellect. Though dead six
centuries, he comes, borne on every heart and brain in
Athens, his eagle-eye flashing with the splendor of the
sun of thought he is fresh from gazing on, to meet the
supersolar eye of Christ, radiant with his baptism of
fire.  The Greek said, "I have sought him, but
he cannot be found; though every ray of the sun
became my torch, darkness has fallen around me."?
The other responds, " 0 Plato, not to the intellect is
the vision opened: blessed are the pure in heart, for
they see God." And there and then occurred the
ever-glorious bridal of Plato and Jesus, the Intellect
and the Soul; and whom God so joined together, no
man shall ever put asunder.
I have only thought this history worthy of being
related, because it is the history of every thinking man.
The eagle in the embryo, is shaped like that which
creeps and that which swims, ere it comes forth winged
for its skyward flight. So is it with the Christian man.
He must pass through all that path of vagueness, doubt,




GOD.                  2t9
unbelief, pantheism, atheism; and then on an altar
still burning within, write his own ignorance, ere he
can come forth winged with Love and Faith to soar
into the empyrean, whose light had blinded the eye of
thought by its intensity.
Let it not be supposed that this natural history of a
thinking man is supposititious. I think I can put the
problem before you in such a way as to show you that
the progress of Greek thought from Pantheism to the
unknown God, is also your own progress, so far as you
have had any. Let us try, as the human mind at first
tried, to conceive of God as an object of thought,-I
mean in the way in which it is constantly maintained,
we may think of him, that is, through his attributes.
You say, for instance, God is infinite: if I should now
affirm he was not infinite, nothing could more shock
you. But if God is infinite he must be everywhere:
he must occupy every -part of space: if there were any
atom of which you might say, this is not a part of God,
God would be limited to the extent of that atom.
But what else is this than Pantheism?  This wood
must be God if he is everywhere. We ourselves must
be God, if that is so. The same result comes' of any
other attribute that the intellect may ascribe to him.
Take that of Omnipotence, for example. If God is
Almighty, all power is derived from him: you cannot
conceive of an act independent of his strength; whether
it be the gift of charity, or the plunge of the assassin's




270                    GOD.
dagger. He does all, and so moral distinctions are lost.
But do you then deny that God is infinite and omnipotent? No more than I mean to deny that there
are beings in the planet Neptune, who have wings and
twelve eyes. I only mean that for the intellect to
make such affirmations, is as foolish as for a man to
close his eyes and turn his ear to a painting to discern
its merit,-the intellect being related to God, only as
the ear to the picture. I have only designed to show
you that the intellect without the heart is an atheist.
And people are none the less atheists when they have
a number of canting terms on their lips about God and
his attributes.  That is worse than silence.
It is heart-worship, then, that reaches God; not
intellectual acumen. And this reverence is based on
love. By the training of life through affection, love is
ever seated on the throne in man, ideally, if not
actually, and through it comes every conception of
what is the highest good. It is therefore true that
" we love Him, because he first loved us; " not because
that appealed to our self-love, but because it showed
him to be a loveable being. This is the law of love. It
is as the rain falls easiest where the ground is already
wet; is as only something magnetic attracts the loadstone,-a piece of wood will not. We cannot love an
abstraction, nor a set of laws; nor can be touched by a
mere historical or arbitrary relation to God. The heart
is that Cordelia whose filial love cannot come forth by




GOD.                    271
threats or rewards, but, knowing its sacred laws, responds to whatever claims its affection, as she to Lear:
I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth; I love your majesty
According to my bond; no more, no less.
A  child does not revere a mere parent; but the
tenderness, affection, and goodness implied in the word
parent. Were these absent, physical relationship could
not secure it. On the other hand, the love of what is
lovely is unavoidable, if there be no perversion of the
natural action of the emotions.
How cruel a wrong to the heart and its most sensitive feelings, how cruel a wrong to its upward strivings,
is done by those who give it a God who does violence
to its instincts! The very spring of the divine life is
tampered with! Men may call infinite wrath, scathing
with hell's lightnings myriads of souls; infinite injustice, heaping on one innocent soul the punishment of a
world's sin; infinite caprice, electing some, reprobating
others-men may call these God; then the soul knows
that, in her highest condition, she cannot love nor
worship such a God; cannot love wrath, caprice, injustice; as if through the world a law should be proclaimed, making dishonesty the legal duty of every
citizen, and the scaffold the reward of honesty, we
should soon have communities springing up, who
would sanctify the scaffold,~by dying on it, honest men.
We may have doubt conoerning many doctrines-of
this one we are certain: God is Father of our spirits;




927-2                  GOD.
it is He that hath made us: and if we are so constituted as to love what is lovely, and hate what is hateful, it is His work; and if, for not accepting as our
God a tyrant, governing only by threat or bribe, we
shall be sent to hell, we know that the truest souls shall
be there-souls that staked all on love and justicesouls whose companionship were far better than any
God who would send them thereFor a loving worm within its sod,
Were diviner than a loveless God
Amid his worlds!
Far inward, then, to the shrine of the heart's sacred
ideal of all that is fair and dear —where the cold questions of logic cannot penetrate, whlere the rude hand of
fanatic dogmatism cannot lay waste its altar-let the
human spirit repair to meet its best-beloved.  And
shall the intellect share nothing in the sacred joy?
Surely God hath no angel so beautiful as the intellect,
which, having found its sweet ignorance, obeys gladly
the soul's wand. Upward and ever upward let it soar!
And as, uplifted upon it, we rise to height above height
of nature, probing the immensities which overlie and
underlie us, the soul's upturned eye answers the smile
of God, which illumines all: " Thou Great Being,
whom I cannot name-here,'where worlds on worlds
eternal brood,' where thought grows faint before the
stupendous vista-my heart whispers, and its whisper
I will trust-Surely the Power is but a drop in the
Ocean of Love."




GOD.                    273
Brothers, can we ever forget the joy when this faith
entered? O, the stumbling on the dark mountains! when
Reason went forth over the great deeps, and, like the
dove, returned bearing no leaf of promised rest; when
the brain was racked with doubt, and the flesh fainted,
because they said, Where is thy God? The universe
was silent.  When the hard face of atheism was turning the heart to stone; when the cry was already rising
from flower, bird, man, cFatherless!- hark the angelic
voice, Stay thy hand! And another eye, the eye of a
loving heart, opened, as the mind's eye closed in weariness. Then felt we pulses of Eternal Love; for the
first time knew we the full meaning of FATHER.
12




NATURE.
AND if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it
of hewn stone; for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted
it.
So early in the history of our race was the first
reverence connected with the second-reverence for
God, who is above us, with reverence for Nature,
which is beneath us, yet which HIe made, and saw
that it was very good.  The altar built of simple
natural stone, unhewn by man's workmanship, symbolizes well enough the truth, that Nature is a temple
for worship, and that our earth, just as God has made
it, is the altar whereon the spirit's highest devotions
may be offered; and thus is itself to be revered, from
daisy to world, as every whit holy.
It is well that the reverence for what is above is said
to precede the reverence for what is beneath us; for it
is only in this light that Nature can be really seen at
all. It is fashionable, I know, to pay a kind of lipservice to Nature, her fine days, and most peculiar
phenomena.  But he alone really sees Nature who sees
God in it; to whom every grass-blade is a letter signed




'NATURE.                  275
and sealed by the Supreme Love; in whom a devout
eye has secured such harmony with it, that the spirit
reflects the simplicity and freedom, bloom and grandeur
of Nature in adequate life and action. None ever saw
a sunbeam  to whom  it was not a love-glance from
heaven. None ever saw the sky to whom it was not
the Father's blue eye, fill of peaceful benediction.
And no astronomer ever saw more deeply than the
child, who thoughlt the stars small holes to let the
glory through. Each one is just that; and to the
childlike, all thlings share the illumination.
A poet has written:'T is heaven alone that is given away-'T is only God may be had for the asking;
There is no price set on the lavish summer,
And June may be had by the poorest comer.
I cannot quite respond to this. I am constrained to
think that within and beneath every fair object in
Nature, there lurkls treasure which only a life of
patience, trial and virtue can win. The Nature which
shines in upon the eye, or stirs the membrane of the
ear, is cheap enough; but how small a part is that!
But let me not anticipate.
I. Nature first enters man through the doorways of
sense. The religion of the senses is utilitarian. Their
perception of the world is as a store-house of bounties.
They are willing enough to acknowledge a being who
gave these bounties, but care not to look beyond their
benefit to the senses.  Their highest name for that




276                  NATURE.
being is Providence. And this is well; for it promises
the highest spiritual relations to Nature at last, as a
fish's fin promises a man's arm. There is a wise
Oriental proverb, which says, " With patience and
labor, the mulberry-leaf is changed into satin."  Man,
like the cocoon, fastens himself on the world through
his senses; but this is the beginning of an ascent;
for soon after Nature enters sense, she becomes an
object of
II. The intellect. Ile experiences that all things
tend to educate him. Where he was a huntsman, lie
now becomes a zoologist; where he was a plowman,
he now becomes a naturalist; finding that animals and
plants are not alone good to be eaten, but have certain
habits and appearances which the intellect has an interest to examine. He visits the fields without gun,
and the brook without rod.  Tihe senses found in
Nature their nurse; the intellect finds in her a schooldame. What discipline is in the observation of natural
objects and facts; what economy of time and labor we
learn in the directness with which a stone falls to thle
ground, and the general precision of all things; what
lessons of means and ends in the adaptation everywhere seen-the humming-bird's beak fitted to the
honeysuckle's urn of sweets, the wading-birds suited
with long legs, and the grazing animals with long
necks; what inculcations of individual purpose in the
steadfast isolation of all things; so that, under no circumstances, can ice and fire do each other's work, nor




NATURE.                 277
lead and iron be interchangeable in offices! All these
are to the faculties of the mind what the gymnasium is
to the limbs of the body.
And thus far mankind have penetrated Nature, and
are at hiome. Indeed, the faith which men have in
Nature, is one of the most beautiful sides of life. A
little block of wood, which, in former years, a surveyor's axe lias marked, will, before a jury, convict a
million men of perjury, ere the mute testimony of
its growths shall be doubted.  No man could ever
conceive of a lie in tree or flower.
III. But now commences the transition into an
equally positive but more difficult sphere. Whatever
King Midas touched, was turned to gold, says the
fable; but MIidas could not live on gold, and so perished with the bread changed to gold in his hand.
The intellect does, indeed, transmute the objects of
sense into the golden laws of science, but it leaves a
craving going on unsatisfied.  That does not supply
the whole man which feeds the body and the intellect;
man is more than body and intellect. "It is written,
man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."  It is needful that some power shall quicken each object into a
word from  God's mouth, ere man realizes the full
meaning and joy of the universe, in which it is appointed him to dwell.
Carefully let us pick our way here —seeking for
truths, not fancies.




'78                  NATURE.
The highest point gained is the perception of a
SOUL IN NATURE; and this perception begins its formation through the presence of beauty everywhere around
us. The faculty which responds to this sacred baptism of
the universe in loveliness, is not exactly the intellect, nor
the religious soul, but partly both, and is properly called
Taste. A cultivated taste perceives that in Nature
beauty is omnipresent, for there is no object in Nature
which sufficient light will not make beautiful. Some
one has remarked, that under an intense light, a decaying corpse has the most transcendent and heavenly
beauty.  And this all-pervading element, which is
only designed as a lure to something deeper than itself,
brings on a train of thought wlhich presently startles
man, as by a supernatural presence. For he reflects
that there is beauty beyond the reach of his eye.
In vast coral-beads, and forms of aquatic life, under
the sea; in close-closeted pearls; in unmined dianmonds; in polar glaciers, and desert flowers-there
are realms of beauty, which the eye of man can never
see. Early strata and caves attest that beauty was
glowing in the world thousands of years before the
human eve was created.  Why should these things
have been made beautiful  If beauty answers a definite end, how was it served when it stretched out
beneath the eyes of reptiles and fishes?
Reason whispers that it was not wasted; that there
was no ray of this divine beauty which did not shine on
sonic eye, and light up some spiritual star. And man




NATURE.                 279
is brought to question if there be not something deeper
than he may have thought, in that which he terms so
hastily the instinct of the orders of nature, which are
beneath him. I would acknowledge the mystery of
nature, nor fail in caution where the line between
reason and speculation is so slender; but the knight of
the olden time read on three sides of the temple,
Be bold,-on one, Be not too bold.  Even the
caution need not stay our entrance, -where the torches
which guide us are the definite facts of natural history,
and the path clear induction.
The first fact which meets us is our inability to
define how far sensitive life descends into the creation,
from  man downward. We know that animals not
only have sensation, but are individual in mind or
instinct, (or whatever you may clhoose to call that for
which we have no name). An individual is a unit.
Now, when we take one of the lower forms of life, such
as the sponge, we find that, in one individual, both
animal and vegetable life are developed. The sponge
grows as a vegetable, and when it is torn from its
rock it writhes with evident pain until it is dead. But
since it is a unit, we must ascribe this susceptibility to
pain to the vegetable as well as the animal. Well, if
you can predicate sensation of any one vegetable, you
cannot tell how far it descends; but it may be supposed
far beyond our ability to discern. As far it may be as
life itself,-which is found even in the mineral kingdomn, for any:stone-mason shall tell you the difference




280                  NATURE.
between live rock and dead rock.  These are our
kindred, since we have life in common. The botanist
when asked, Why does the sensitive plant shrinkS
replies, It is not known, but the best theory is that it
has something like a nervous system. Milk is found
healthy for many plants, as the cocoa, as well as for
animals; and the chemists tell us there is far less
elementary difference than was imacgined, between the
sap of plants and the blood of men.
With equal reason we may say, that as we cannot
fix the limit of the susceptibility to pleasure and pain
in creation, and might, if our eyes were keen enough,
detect its fainter manifestations in the granite hewn
from its bed, so neither can we affix a limit for the
spiritual element. As the inferior animals answer
bone for bone, sense for sense, to our physical frame,
how do we know but that, if we could penetrate all that
is inclosed in the term " instinct," we should discover
the germs of an organic, intellectual existence? The
phenomena of the instincts of plants and animals,
which amuse our earlier days, are entitled to a far
more serious thought now. Almost all naturalists
concede the moral nature of animals; finding in them
hope, fear, love, and, in many instances, a plain
knowledge of right and wrong.
Then the moralist enters with his testimony, and
asks, Why is all this suffering in the world?  It is
against the belief in a good God, to suppose that there
can be a single pang in the world, except for moral.




NATURE.                    281
uses and ends. Suffering is for benefit. Yet here we
find that not only is there suffering throughout the
animal creation, but the vegetable is not exempt,-the
mimosa, the sea-plants, suffer pain.  Only cruelty
could have ordained pain where there is no higher life
to need its discipline! But, if there be in all these
lower orders a faint, spiritual essence, which has its
consciousness and flowering in man alone, then we
know what upward strivings result from the universal
suffering; and we know, too, the uses of the universal
beauty, even where it shines on the eyes of the inferior,
animated world alone.  There is a divine element of
which this beauty is at once the sign and discipline.
And we stand fairly in the presence of the sublime fact
that life, —divine and beautiful LIFE,-saturates and
glorifies the universe. The voice cries, as of old, " Do
NOT I FILL ALL THINGS, saith the Lord? "  Then does
man enter the universe with holy awe,-for wherever
the spiritual element is, God is; and this calls forth the
reverence for what is beneath us. In this light Solomnon, in all his glory, may sit at the feet of the lily.
Every step is on hallowed ground. Each atom  of the
fair world, however lowly to the vulgar, to the devout
spirit rises to be a polished pillar in
That Cathedral boundless as our wonder,
Whose quenchless lamps the moon and stars supply;
Its choir the winds and waves; its organ, thunder,
Its dome the sky.
My brothers, thus I say to myself: As life goes on,




282:                  NATURE.
and the one thing in any moment unchanged, is change
itself; as empires rise on the great flowing, ebbing sea
of Time, to burst, bubble-like, in a moment; as wrong,
falsehood, hypocrisy, gnaw like worms at the heart of
the Tree of Life; as men fight and devour one another
for perishing toys, such as gold or thrones, —one thing
will the  true soul claim  which includes them  all,
Nature.  An old traveler found in a barbarous tribe,
one woman set apart from others who maintained that
she was affianced to the sun; what cared she for the
poor maggots around her, what, for the roar of the distant worlds of civilization,-was there one object of the
earth which was not kept alive, or brought to its perfection, or clothed with beauty from the magnificence
of her Beloved One? Where, cries the spirit, is the
light that bathes all-which is as glorious on ruins as
on palaces-which floods all things small and great
with splendor, —tlither, O thither, will I press to my
beloved! Heaven shall be his smile of light! Hell
shall be the cloud which vails his face from  me! Not
face to face can the spirit meet her sun with its terrible
brilliance; but in all fair forms of nature he is reflected;
and in the love and reverence of nature she finds her
Lord.
Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.'T is her privilege
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed




NATURE.                     283
With lofty thoughts, that'neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of common life
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all that we behold
Is full of blessings!
In all that is called social progress, formation of character, and spiritual insight, we shall find the essential
element to be an advance toward a realization of and
harmony with Nature.  Suppose the social Utopias
were all realized in any community; all being at work
in their true places; none idle, and none poor; each
protected and guarded by all the rest-nothing would
be gained beyond what exists in any bee-hive, or coralbed. What is the essence of what we call Ch/aracter
in this world?  It is simply unswerving self-reliance.
The superior men of this world are those who find the
bent and power of their own nature, and rest upon
that. For the inclinations of our minds, for certain
special callings, is Nature welling up in us, as truly
as a spring bursting up is Nature.  The old mottoes of
the great-Know thyself, Obey thy heart-are but calls
for us to enter the sacred circle of things which are
strong and beautiful, by being what God meant them
to be. Plato is a philosopher exactly on the principle
that sugar is sweet; Shakspere is a poet as a diamond
is bright.  The differences of human character may be
easily reduced to the question, Which is truest to




284                 NATURE.
Nature? of beauty, which is most natural  of manners, which is freest from affectation, or a disguise of
Nature?  This is the test of all, corresponding to the
Litmus of chemists, by which they detect the presence
of acids anywhere. No circumstances can cover up
the law. A throne cannot hide the meanness of a
natural butcher, as Caligula, perverted into a kingwhile Diogenes, following his nature into a tub, plants
the seed of greater and nobler systems of faith and
philosophy.
And as it is social progress, and personal character,
so is it the law of spiritual insight.  It would be
amusing, if it were not of a deeper interest, to see the
slow iconoclasm of Nature amidst the most venerable
systems of the world. No sooner has the Sabbatarian
proved his point, and draped the world for one day of
the seven in a dingy puritanic pall, than some un-calvinistic bird comes twitting and laughing down the
whole arrangement, and grasshoppers, bees and fishes
cannot be frowned into suspending their Sunday merriment. People are not so certain about the Sabbath;
but they know that God made the bird, and did not
make it more gloomy on one day than another. And
so with many human creeds: Nature is too much for
them. Men may talk of fire and brimstone; but when
we find that there is no beast of.prey which does not
destroy its victim in the least painful manner possible,
we know that there shall never be in the universe one
superfluous pang-not one day of suffering for any




NATURE.                  285
soul beyond what is best for all. I want no argument
weightier than a rose or a sunbeam, to dispel all the
dark shadows which superstition and dogmatism have
cast on the face of our loving God. While, on the
other hand, every object in the earth and sky is a
tongue of flame to attest the reality; no flower is there
but preaches, in every stage of its growth, the true
regeneration; no pendent calyx, but is a bell calling to
orison and vesper; no grass-blade, but is a churchspire, pointing upward to the Infinite Love, to whom
the universe ever turns as a flower expanding toward
the sun.
And, to be felt and trusted, our Faith must be put
forth fiom our hearts as naturally as the grass and
grain are put forth from  the heart of the earth.
Whence this complaint of the apathy of the world
to the Church? The grass does not complain that the
herd will not feed upon it.  And when the churchaltar is built of simple stones, without the polluting
handicraft of priests and councils lifted upon them, to
shape them for their own sectarian. edifices, nien will
bring their heart's blood, if need be, to pour out as
libations upon that altar to the God, by whom and for
whom the heart's blood of all men really beats at last.
If the Romanist may, on each Christmas eve, have
hlis great St. Peter's Cathedral flash forth suddenly, by
its annual miracle, with dazzling light from every window; the great dome rising up like a heaven of fires;
each turret leaping to a spire of flame, causing the




286                  NATURE.
worshiping throng to fall prostrate beneath heaven's
fire-flood-surely we who have chosen to worship in
Nature as our temple, may treasure up the moments
when God, with ineffable glory, fills and overflows the
world. Thou art my friend-I am thine; so may- I remember hlere, how out of a corrupt, heartless city,
where Satan held a steady scepter; out from the cries
of those who, in street and church, set up their idol,
and cried, O Baal, hear us! out, out I pressed, weary,
hleartsick for a breath of truth, to the woods and fields.
Up the steep hill-side I climbed, leaving all the garish
city behind-sick and tired of it, I say! The fiery streaks
of approaching day flecked the east; and presently the
first golden glance of the day's eye smote me. I turned,
and O! what did I see? Over against the sun stood a
great elm, which might have grown a century for the.glory of that day; through it the stream of light flowed.into my heart; each stately branch, a pillar of fire;
each leaf, a pentecostal flame-tongue.  Then I knew
how Moses came down from  the mount, with face
flushled with the glow of the burning bush; when God
met him in the bush which burned, and was not consumed. there it was again, kindled for my morningprayer.  Then I knew God was near-in sound of my
voice. My soul cried, O my Father! it is good to be
here; and here let thy love rear a tabernacle, where
thou shalt dwell with me, and never, never remove.
Then out from the glory of the burning bush came a
voice, to which all Nature chanted chlorus —Thou, poor




NATURE.                  28T
child, whose dust dilates beneath the Infinite Love, sped
with every sunray, thou standest in the Church of the
first-born. Here is the temple into which the ransomed
of the Lord shall come with songs, and everlasting joy
upon their heads-NATURE. Men have imitated the
trunks of these trees in tihe pillars of their cathedrals;
the lofty embrace of their branches have copied in the
arches of their fretted ceilings; they have travestied the
p)iping winds and the songs of birds in their organs.
It is well; but they are thus only trained for a purer
communion, face to face, with the spirit of Nature,
which, when it shall shine on man's simple surrendered
spirit, shall bring him to a grandeur but faintly hinted
in this great sunrise, whose elements of mere mist
and light are far cheaper than those of his wondrous
nature!




Ml A N,
WHEN I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers; the moon
and the stars which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art
mindful of him and the son of man, that thou visitest him?  For
thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned
him with glory and honor.
IN every land poetry has gained its greatest rapture
when it has celebrated man.  Here the superior soul is
enlisted, and the tongue of flame descends. In man is
the marriage of heaven and earth, and all things gladly
unite in chorus to celebrate the holy and sublime
sacrament.
The poet and king of Israel went forth to commune
with God in nature: but in himself he found both,nature was transfigured in his thought, and the godlike
soul arose. The pomp and glitter of the Court which
he had left, faded under this high illumination. The
greatest crown of the East whose gems shone on his
forehead, was forgotten as tinsel.  On his brow  was
pressed the coronet of a more royal dignity, —his crown
as a MAN.  God had made him  a little lower than the
angels, and crowned him with glory and honor!




MAN.                   289
Surely nothing can be finer than this inspiration
which saw, nay felt, the meeting of God and nature in
man, as sea meets shore. The Psalmist thinks of the
heavens as the work of God's fingers, the moon and
stars as what he has ordained; blending thus the first
and second reverences,-reverence for God and for
nature, as his expression; but the fact that he, by
virtue- of his manhood, stands there as the rivet of the
two, bearing in himself both God and nature, leads him
to the last, but not least reverence,-that for what is
around him; for those who stand on the same plane of
the universe with himself; for man.
What a vast and varied labyrinth of phantoms,
struggles, dreams, doubts, hopes, fears, does man enter
when once he rends the vail of consciousness, and seeks
to tread the hidden paths of his own nature!
Although the highest wisdom of all nations has
warned us of the dangers of a life from without, and
heroic voyagers of the inward seas have told of the
mystic splendors there, and the pearls of price far
hidden in the soul's depths; although philosophy, from
the first, has written on her temple-front, Ifzow thyself,
and the oracles of religion cried, Commune with thine
own heart; yet mankind have always had a dread of
knowing too much about themselves. Anatomy, as a
science, has fewer lovers than any other; and phrenology, physiognomy, and other systems which aim at
perception of personal.character, are staved off almost
fiercely, while others with half their evidence are re*12




290                   MAN.
ceived with little question. There is something sublime in this shudder with which man approaches the
Ark, even where he is the anointed Priest. For this
awe of knowledge has never been felt except in the
sublimest realms. Faust sold to the Arch-fiend, and
Prometheus bound as the eternal prey of the vulture,
are national fables which testify the fear which guarded
a knowledge of the secret things of God and Nature.
The fable of the eating of the fruit, which revealed the
knowledge of his own good and evil, shows man's
shudder at penetrating his own mysterious Self. These
are the grandest continents of the spiritual sphere
which is within us. Arnd I would that with this awe
heightened into reverent earnestness we should approach the subject of man,-man, to whom has been
assigned every seat in the universe, from the floor of
the pit to the throne of a God; man, whom Rochefoucauld will show with plausibility and wit to be a
bundle of selfish passions, while Paul cries, "Know ye
not that ye are the Temple of God? "
There are two tones in the verse I have quoted,
which it is well to observe, as we shall find, perhaps,
that they correspond with two tones which may be
heard in man himself. What is man, that thou art
mindful of him? This tone is disparaging; yet let us
follow it, for it is a true note, and the truth will always
be found most beautiful in the end.
I. Man, thlel, is an animal. There is no essential
difference that can be pointed out between him and the




MAN.                    291
inferior orders. The naturalist tells us that he has a
thumb to his hand where the animals with hands have
fingers only; or that his skull sits on the top of the
vertebral column, where even the ourang-outang has it
thrust forward. But these are only enough to show
him another, doubtless a higher, variety of animal. It
is not contended that there is a joint, or fibre, or sense,
or function of blood and nerve in man which is not in
the quadruped also. The lower animals also dance,
sing, love, hate; are fond of music, are fond of dress;
they build, sew, plant, weave,-and pursued these
things long before man, who, the ancient writers say,
learned these arts from them. I would that the identity
ended here, but it does not. It is in vain for us to
assume that with the beginning of the reign of man on:earth, the reign of the animal ceased. Not so, my
masters! One could almost fancy that when man was
about to be created there was a rumor of it among the
lower animals; and that they, dissatisfied with their
more constrained forms, collected about the centers
where man was to appear, and as the upright forms
arose, climbed into their hearts and brains.  So that,
despite the erect posture, one man became an ape,
another a bear; some were snakes in the grass, some
foxes, some wildcats; many donkeys. They have only
told half the fact, who have found physical resemblances
in men to certain animals. The dispositions are preserved as well. Society frequently presents the appearance of a menagerie of fierce, sly, proud, and




292                   xMAN.
stupid animals. It is even worse in him,-for the bona
fide animal may be kept in the barn-yard on account of
his form; but what defense is there against the twofooted calf or mule that may bring his hoofs in at your
front door?
I am serious in what I say. I mean that in every
government, congress, or parliament; in every fashionable assembly, you will hear the bray of asses, the hissing of geese and serpents; that war dates from  the
beasts of prey, and slavery is a relic of the hyena.
II. But, though this is the truth, it is not the whole
truth concerning our nature. To stop on our animal
nature, and say, Behold the human heart, is the common way with theologians; but it is as if you should at
night point a man's eye to the earth and say, Behold
the planetary universe; nor regard the heaven of fires
which vaults above that earth. Thus, though the first
note is low, the moon and stars which he has ordained
to rise above man's earthliness, the heavenly lights of
the soul which are jewels to crown him with glory and
honor, enable us to strike, with the poet, a nobler key;
Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and
hast crowned him with glory and honor! We cast the
glove to the misanthropist. Does he charge crimes?
We will answer with heroisms: does he point to
prisons? We will point to temples and asylums: does
he bring science to prove man another link in the
animal chain?  We will respond with the higher
science which proves that in him the link fastens on to




MaN.                   293
angels and archangels. In harmony with this high
claim, we find the definitions of man which the race
has formed in its highest moments and localities. The
Greek word for man was O  0og o mC; a word formed of
three others (ava, Srpmoa, o-c) signifying to turn tJe eye
pTward. Man worships the unseen and eternal. His
eye overleaps the foregrounds of life, which hem in
the animal sense, and claims the horizon as a portal to
the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
In all nations this higher realm of our nature has been
recognized; but in none more truly than the Oriental,
who affirm that the animals traveled through a thousand forms toward the spiritual world, rising step by
step from the prostrate worm upward; but at their
highest they could only wander on the shore of the
great gulf, which separates the earthly from the heavenly. Then was man created as the bridge, to leap
that chasm, whereon all that was animal might pass
over to the spirit; for he rested with his body on the
shore of the animal, but with his soul on the shore of
the spiritual. And by him all things ascend.
I will venture here and now to give full and hearty
consent to this ancient faith. It is too common for us
to pass without notice, the fact that our expressions for
natural facts, and for personal facts, are synonymous;
that we speak of the face of nature, the veins of metal,
the bowels of the earth; that light and darkness,
warmth and coldness, are as much expressions of mental conditions, as of physical facts. We are content to




294                    MAN.
enjoy the blessings of nature, without asking why it is
that every animal, mineral, and vegetable, strives to
feed, and clothe, and heal, or in some way bless us.
Surely it is because the whole creation is garnered and
reproduced in man. The vegetable grows in his hair,
the mineral in his bone, the metal in his blood, and, as
we have seen, the whole animal kingdom in his organs
of sense. Thus related to all, all may enter hlim and
be translated into thought and emotion,-for he is the
bridge over the chasm. There is not a weed or poison
but through some botanist or chemist will become
eloquent and philanthropic; no insect, stone, star,
but is humanized, and rises to poetry and spirituality. Man is, indeed, as Paul said, the Temple of
God; and in him nature comes to kneel and adore.
This ascent begins with his own body, which is nature
in quintessence. Through his genius the body radiates
higher mechanic forces; the lever is modeled from his
arm; the hammer is his fist in iron; his finger is
lengthened in a rope; his hand is copied in all pronged
instruments; his head-curve is the plan of the stone
arch; his body the original of his house. Then nature
beyond is reached. Through his genius and spirituality heavy granite and limestone rise to sing and pray
in the Cathedral, which Coleridge called a " petrified
religion; " his pencil gives spirituality to bogs, swamps,
decayed trees; the rough marble breathes with an
ideality which man himself cannot reach. The absorption and apotheosis goes on in the higher spheres of




MAN.                    295
nature. The mental structure projects itself in governmental forms; its threefold division, into the Intellect,
the Sensibilities and the Will is repeated in the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative departments; which,
more or less perfectly, are found in even the rudest
governments. Creeds, Churches, Angels, Gods, are
celestial copies of the human model. Man's progress
is simply more entrance of nature into him, and freer
passage to the spiritual shore. By him all things exist,
and without him nothing is made that is made. Without his brain nature is a huge mud-ball; without his
eye sunrises were but damp fogs. "We know (says
Paul) that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth
in pain, awaiting deliverance into the glorious liberty
of the children of God."
The thought that man, whose nature we bear, is here
as the center of the physical universe, and God's
highest word thereto; nay, his grapple fixed thereon to
raise it to his own beatitude, fills me with an awe
akin to terror! Before him nature fades, as a frame
before the portrait it surrounds. Sinai shrinks to a
hillock when Moses stands upon it. What is Thermopylae when Leonidas is there?  What ant-heaps are
the seven hills of Rome when Cicero's voice is heard!
We have spoken of the two other reverences; for
what is above us,-for what is beneath us. It is now
to be stated that both of these cease to be theoretical,
and become practical and vital only when they concern
reverence for man. For we know nothing of God,




296                    MAN.
save as he stirs and inspires the soul of man; nothing
of nature, except as interpreted by the brain of man.
Life among men is the practical test of what reverence
we have for what is above and beneath.
For God is represented on earth by the best men.
These are they who hold more of the celestial light
than others; who by a closer intimacy with nature,
more answering harmony with the laws of their being,
and a stricter slkrrender to their own vital force, are
elect for superior offices. They are giants and kings
among men. When God sends such into his vineyard,
he says, " They will reverence my sons." The first,
reverence for God, is involved here: they speak and act
for God; His honor is bound up with theirs. But how
trle is the parable!:EHow have men in every age
stoned and rejected those thus sent. See all along the
highways the hemlock, the scaffold, the block! Hear
on every wind the cry of the multitude, "Crucify
him! Give us Barabbas, the thief, instead of him! "
What else is said of our best teachers and reformers
to-day? Are they our presidents, kings, judges, and
representatives, as they would be if we bowed beneath
the scepter of the God for whom they stand?
And, on the other hand, reverence for what is
beneath us never rises to its sacred summit until it is
called for by our relation toward the weak, poor and
ignorant. there reverence for the lower ceases to be
sentiment. Of all things the most difficult is properly
to estimate and respect those who are our inferiors.




MAN.                    297
As it is easy for the weak to cling to the strong, it is
hard for the strong to respect the weak. Yet nothing
would better indicate the advance of civilization. The
savage despises weakness; will slay a child because it
cries, or a woman because she faints. Our civilization
shows the old savage instinct when it turns from the
drunkard and the harlot; when it justifies or ignores
the enslavement of millions because they are of an
inferior race, that being the truest seal to their claim
on our help and protection. In the first age men will
eat each other. In the next this ceases, but they will
slay and rob each other. The next will abolish this,
but replace it with war and slavery. We await the
age which shall cease these also, and realize the full
sadness of the fact, that this poor humanity so despised,
maltreated, slain, enslaved from age to age, is God's
own heart; shall see in each who is wronged the bleeding Christ, and hear him say again, "What ye have
done to the least of these, my brothers, ye have done
to ine."
The least of these his brothers! Can it be that each
man we see, of whatever degree or complexion, has in
him  that immortal flame which certifies his brotherhood to the Son of God!- Has each the wondrous soul
which is little lower than the angels!
O my poor, bleeding Christ, I cannot hide from thee!
Thou meetest me on the street each day of my life
meekly bearing thy five red wounds, in those the least
of whom cannot be wounded, but thou art wounded~
13




298                    MAN.
There in the hovels are the children, growing up in
ignorance and vice, whom our free and Christian State
decides shall not go to our schools, because they are
not white. Ah, how plainly I saw, each little hand
had the mark of a bloody nail in the center! This
week I met thee again. Against all law, and- all right,
three helpless ones were sent away into bondage,-two
of them infants, not dreaming of the fearful fate awaiting, —by a thing called a judge; our miserable, venal
press, with one exception, applauding; and the community going on heedless of a wrong, which, in our
midst, crucified our Lord afresh:!
AMy friends, I ask no pardon for speaking of these
things here. Rather pardon us, thou spirit of humanity,
that we go on in our apathy and self-seeking; and, seeing thee there, fallen among thieves who have left thee
wounded and stript of all thou hadst, have passed by
on the other side! But if we have forgotten those who
are weak and wronged, God has not; and their cry
shall pierce where the saintly prayer which forgets
themn shall fail to enter. Whoso touches one of those
little ones, touchethl God's heart; whoso forgets them
and their claim, hath forgotten their Infinite Father.
Better were it for that iman that a millstone were
hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea. God
is as mindful as you, ye mothers, of his children, made
in hiis image. " Can a woman forget her sucking child,
that sh- sthould not have compassion on the son of her




MAN.                      299
womb?   Yea, she may forget; yet will I not forget
thee! "
The present organization of society cannot last; the
world is even now budding in every branch and twig
with revolution.  And why?  Because the world is
organized on the basis of contempt for man.  O ye
lords! O ye ladies! Your East Indian delicacies are
rich and rare. Feast, adorn yourselves, be merry!
What elegant forms Indian sinews assume as they
reach you,-golden, superb I Let the swarthy fellows
work on!  What affair is it of yours if India is a
galley-slave, her fair land a brothel for your fine East
India Company! Hark I what cry is that? Why do
you turn pale?
"Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair,-the lair of slaves,
Like lightning Delhi leaps forth, —-half startled
At itself; its feet upon the ashes and the rags;
Its hands tight to the throats of tyrants."
What means this crash of trade? It means that man
is trifling with man. It means that in Wall Street, in
State Street, men are gambling with the coined heart'sblood and sinews of labor; gambling where the very
bread of the widow  and the orphan is the stake.
Trade, too, it would seem, is based on the contempt of
iman; men looking on others much in the light of
sheep, valuable chiefly on account of their susceptibility
of being fleeced.
I say again, that the present organization of society
is on a foundation of sand, and cannot last.




300                   rMAN.
And for all the dreary catalogue of crimes against
man, not any one man, or country, or section, is to be
arraigned. More than any other, I take shame in saying it, the so-called Church of Christ on earth is to be
arraigned. Has it not trained men from their infancy
to despise and detest their own nature? Has it not
taught that every man, even in childhood, is to be distrusted? Has it not taught that God holds men so
cheap, that the mass of them are to be damned everlastingly; and that those who are not, are to be saved
by all manner of crouchings, whinings, and supplications, like spared slaves?a What wonder if' men
despoil, crush, rob, and enslave. this child of the devil;
this walking leprosy; this alien and outcast? Does not
God feel that way toward him? Is he not angry with
him  every day? I do not wonder that the great
church-bodies all over the world, are on the side of
oppression. No man can estimate the lashes, the
chains which Dogma has imposed on humanity,binding both body and soul.
I arraign no less our liberal or free Christianity, as
we complacently call it. I fear that with the majority
of us, the binding of a slave is not so horrible as the
doubting of a miracle. Our Boston Unitarians will
commune with slaveholders, but not with Theodore
Parker,-that brave, true man, who stands now with
broken health, yet where he ever stood in front of the
phalanx of God. It seems, then, we have so much to
say about our dlecad Christ, his miracles and propllevies,




MAN.                   301
that we have but little time to consider our present
scourged and forsaken Christ, who stands before us in
the human world of to.day, with the thorn-crown
piercing its brow! Let us not excuse ourselves, but
vail our faces I There is no excuse for our church.
We are founded only on the grandeur of human
nature, on which also we and our leaders have ever
claimed that the mission of the Son of God was founded.
With our views of worship there would be no need for
a visible, external church, were it not for our mission to
humanity. Were there no practical duties toward
mankind, our faith would say, "Close the churches,
and turn each man all the more on his own soul, so
that he may worship not in any outward temple, but in
his closet, in spirit and in truth! " Our visible church
is a seal to our mission to humanity, as the body is the
seal of a soul's mission to other bodies. We stand
here for the dignity of man, for his elevation, for every
human claim; or else we stand as a wart or a wen on
the body. We have a God identified with man; a
Bible which says, "If ye love not your brother whom
you have seen, how can ye love God whom ye have not
seen? "
Our reverence for man does not mean that we are
contented with him. No student of history and society
can be contented with man, on account of this reverence
for him. King David, looking up to the splendor of
the heavenly host, may ask sadly enough, Whllat is man?
He does indleed seem a dwarf in his magnificent palace.




302                   MAN.
These mountains, oceans, continents do suggest a much
grander race to rule over them. Yet have we had a
few colossal souls,-human continents and mountains.
We tread on a planet where Moses, and Plato, and
Paul, and Shakspere, and Columbus have stood. That
we speak such names with reverence and pride; that
we count it noble to belong to the same race, and speak
the language of such men-this is the token of an ascending race. Let the scoffer point to war, rapine, cannibalism, to prove the meanness of man: we ask him how
do we know that war, rapine, lust, crime, are mean.
In animals such things are not mean. If we were
nothing better, we would not feel that our history, as a
race, is disgraceful. Toad is not loathsome to toad,
nor viper to viper. Furthermore we ask, Who are
our heroes, our loved and admired men? Are they the
assassins, the thieves, the more eminent cannibals
and murderers? On the walls of the lowliest you
shall find portraits of Christ and St. John, of Luther, Wesley, Washington, Chatham, and Wilberforce; not portraits of Caligula, of Judas, or Benedict
Arnold.
All around us we see man contending with Destiny
in a million forms,-with the earth's barrenness, with
temptation and passion, with ignorance and pain; yet
ever as we cry out to our watchmen, "What of the
nighlt?" the watchmen cry, "The morning cometh "
Theln with infinite hope for man, and reverence for his
nature, we will look from our Pisgah of Faitli for the




MAN.                  303
promised land of humanity; where angels shall at last
welcome man with the song, "Thou hast made him a
little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with
glory and honor."