RADICAL PROBLEMS.
BY
C. A. BARTOL.
BOSTON:
ROBERTS- BROTHERS,
1872.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
C. A. BARTOL,
In, the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
CAMBRIDGE:
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.




CONTENTS.
CHAPTER                                        PAGE
I. OPEN QUESTIONS.........     I
II. INDIVIDUALISM............  28
III. TRANSCENDENTALISM..........  6
IV. RADICALISM.............  98
V. THEISM.............   II9
VI. NATURALISM............    153
VII. MATERIALISM..........        69
VIII. SPIRITUALISM.........  I95
IX. FAITH................ 2O
X. LAW...............               245
XI. ORIGIN..............  262
XII. CORRELATION........284
XIII. CHARACTER.............  300
XIV. GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR....... 323
XV. EXPERIENCE............. 349
XVI. HOPE..... 362
XVII. IDEALITY.............  391








RADICAL PROBLEMS.
I.
OPEN QUESTIONS.
W.HAT  legislators sometimes say is true of all
questions: they may be divided. Life looks
like a page disfigured with interrogation-points; and
every answer breeds new curiosity, as if it were a
polyp. The child is an incarnate question, posing all
his elders; and the widening circle of light subtends
such a broader round of darkness as to give color to
the old sage's remark, - " One thing I know, that God
hates inquisitiveness;!" while many, like Lord Bacon,
value investigation superficially for its results of utility,
despairing of absolute truth.  But experience and
memory are tests that all inquiry is intrinsically precious.  I call to mind a college excursion with the
mathematical professor, to measure with instruments,
by triangulation, the distance between some towns in
Maine.  How far it was I have long since forgot,
but not the wonderful delight of the experiment, the
new dignity of the search for hill-tops of observation,
nor the cup of tamarind water a good woman, honoring our errand, gave to the thirsty, foot-sore wanderers
by the way.  We are glad at every solution of a




RADICAL PROBLEMS.
problem; yet queries are the intellectual miser's
hoard, in whose satisfaction by successful study he
would not rejoice, but that other queries take their
place. I fancy a shade of sadness tinged the exultation
of Columbus when the Western hemisphere showed
signs of its neighborhood to his vessel, to unbury the
mystery of the deep, and give an interpretation to the
magnificent dream he had so soon to exchange for
ungrateful facts. To guess pleases as to find out the
conundrum, riddle, or buried city. Our first conception equals in pleasure any verification. The hen is
not happier among the brood she is so anxious about
than in her nest; and in the mind's incubation there
are no heavy hours, but Time blends with Eternity, so
deep and peaceful is its flow.. In all pursuit there is a certain dignity.   The
money-making we despise is nobler than profuseness,
and is often not avarice of acquisition, but activity of
worthy powers; so that a sincere Crcesus said, if his
children had as much comfort in spending as he in
accumulating his fortune, he should be content. It is a
pulpit lamentation, as shallow as it is doleful, that we
are but getting ready to live, as also that poet line," Man never is, but always to be blest."
Let me join the enterprise, share who will the fruit!
To go with Cortez was better than Mexican gold; and
my friend's expedition to Alaska is of more worth than
any plant or precious fur. You buy your land and
build your house, arrange the orchard and trim the
garden-grounds, and then expect your reward. Foolish, if you count on any recompense sweeter than you




OPEN QUESTIONS.                 3
had as you went along! No peach or pear will be
more delicious than your thought in setting out the
trees. My neighbor grew weary of his perfect situation, and wanted to cross the bay and occupy a lonelier
point.
There is a movement-cure for the mind. Of one not
established in his views, it is said in pity, " He is all
afloat;" as if that were not the best condition, grander
and safer than to be ashore, - as if there were a finer
spectacle of ships in port than of the yacht-squadron
racing along the coast, or the grating of my keel on
the beach could be such transport as to be rocked in
my boat on the waves.  The anchor, said one, is a
true emblem: it holds the vessel fast, though it does
not hold the vessel still. -But the eternal heaving
underneath is a signal that the true state is to hoist at
the windlass, and away; and no figure of Hope leaning
on the fluke is just to its nature of exploration without
end.  There is provision for furtlier growth in the
bones of the skull and organs of the brain after the
sutures are closed: let there be space to expand in
the hardest understanding.
Freedom is not caprice, but room to enlarge. There
is a certain shock from the pavement to whoever
returns from roaming among the mountains or by the
sea. The city streets, like broad curtains or enormous
window-blinds, shut us in; and we feel robbed of the
elements-light, air, earth, and water-which make
the liberty of our fi'ame, and are better than any
physician's medicine-chest for every nervous disease.
We want not only so much sun and oxygen as can be
got into a chamber, the drink a bottle will hold, and




4              RADICAL PROBLEMS.
ground enough, like a caged tiger, to pace to and fro
in., - but to breathe the whole atmosphere, behold the
sky full of radiance, put our lips to the living spring,
and have no goal for our feet. Civilization increases
liberty, which is not, as jurists say, its price. When
institutions become bounds, the soul is cramped.
Formts and ordinances multiplied and made essential
to salvation feel sepulchral, like some walled town of
Quebec whose old defences stand against enemies long
since passed away. All creeds and rituals are on the.
defensive against benefactors who open the question
of their truth, and stop them with a challenge for the
loyal pass-word. Jesus well prescribed for our communication, nay, nay, as well asyea, yea. I admired
the little girl who to my questions rolled out a succession.of clear noes round as a revolver's bullets, - a
sign that the footing I should be on with her would
never become a swamp of good-nature; and was
pleased with the yearling boy who said, plain as he
could, " Hands off! " to those who would seize him,;
issued his declaration of independence that he was:
no lump of dough to be kneaded, but a block of.
marble to be turned into beauty by some artist's skill.
Establishments must answer for themselves to him by
and by!'
The dogmatic look is stupid; the inquiring, bright,
like that of people eager in the chase. So we can
explain the extreme changes in the same countenances.
How uninteresting when they are close, with nothing
to impart or receive, like the shut bivalve on the tideless flats! People who have made up their minds,
and are fixed, as they say, resemble merchants taking




OPEN QUESTIONS.                5
account of stock, or householders making an inventory
of their goods, instead of venturing bold purchase,
exercising hospitality, or driving a brisk trade. Lighthouses by day are useless for guides; and your system
of theology, which no ever-burning thought illuminates, is an old vase or lantern that lost its lamp long
ago. I observe the face of that young woman settling
upon the lees of religious reflection, - how plain and
ugly the features are! Anon she comes to me, earnest
in study, ready to compare notes, and so handsome I
cannot believe my own eyes.
-We are made for spiritual progress. Our organism
hints for its object perpetuation of the race. But the
easy propagation of vulgar specimens, and the number of noble members of mankind without posterity;
the decease of genius and virtue leaving no issue,
though the trustees of those shining glories have
descendants also from their loins; or the too much or
little of some parental element, giving insanity, eccentricity, or idiocy, instead of the expected soundness,force us to conclude there are ends beside earthly
inheritance and continuance. Jesus and Paul and
Washington have no heirs; and to how many might
Shakspeare's sonnets to one who was cheating the
world with barren singleness be addressed! Without
intentions of development outreaching fleshly designs,
men would come down to the level of animals and
plants. In the unfolding of truth is the honor of our
species and the immortality of every soul; and for this
all questions of truth must be opened. One thing is
sacred, - the sincere thought; and the being of God,
character of Jesus, ultimacy of Christianity, reality of




6               RADICAL PROBLEMS.
heaven, must be discussed. If, in the old Bible hyperbole, the scheme of redemption is so fine the angels
desire to look into it, surely we are not forbid.
Doubtless, in the wide charter of freedom, offensive
and exItravagant things will be said. The remedy is
not to mind them. Defy incendiaries not by watchmen and engines, but by building fire-proof!  Why
be troubled everybody does not think like you of
Christ?  Tell the defamer of your Master his battery
is too- weak or your constitution too strong for a shock.
Not only children, but childish opinions,: are the better
for a little wholesome neglect. Irrational rationalists,
rootless radicals, and infidels for pride or prominence of unbelief,- are to be let severely alone. Only
they who have something to say are, with refutation
or welcome, to be met. Set your castle-walls and
windows too high for the malicious to bombard or
break with stones. Are you disturbed by a doctrine.?
Surely it has ground! There must have been something in the book, or Paine's " Age of Reason" would
not have hurt so much or lasted so long.  Calvin
would not have burnt Servetus could he have otherwise answered his argument. Jonathan Mayhew said
the foes of freemen in Church and State, in default of
logic, knocked out their brains, and so furnished an
effectual reply. That man, you say, is a common
scold. Take no notice of him, if you would give him
better than he sends. Recrimination of others criminates you, and is the recriminator's proof. Solormon
says a fretful wife is like a bitter rain. Let her rain
under as it rains on the roof, and heed either* storm
alike! Oaths and remonstrances in the street are




OPEN QUESTIONS.                7
answered every day by not stopping to parley, but
simply keeping on. You resist only when wrestled
with: the most terrible are the speechless retorts.
What an iconoclast! you say. I see not that he breaks
any thing. He is impotent who bolts or is schismatic
without cause. Outrageous expressions! you declare.
I am not outraged. The community is not absorbed
in the barking of dogs. Treat the irritable controversialist, who makes a question of every statement, as
travellers do the brainless cur who thinks it his duty
to run every moment and growl at the gate. I walk
right by the guns on the Common bellowing so loud,
that have no shot in them for all the noise and blaze,
and despised the loud manifesto of a farmer's dog
when I learned he had no teeth, thoughl I saw some
boys in an English preserve scared by a canine monster alike destitute; and there are critics that mouth
and bay, but draw no blood. I suspect the dogs Paul
told his friends to beware of had something to say, or
could bite.
So God himself sets limits to the objector in the
weakness of the objection, and dispenses us from all
need to bridle others' tongues, or, like Louis Napoleon
with his throne of bayonets, to muzzle the press.
Truth cannot be disproved, purity cannot be libelled,
nor wisdom overthrown. Repression of free inquiry is
not too mucI1 ridiculed in the proverb that a cat may
look upon a king. I thought, said one, our house in
the great September gale would go, till I remembered
it was founded on a, rock. A basis in the eternal rock
who ci a shake? Pay not folly the compliment of fear.
It takes a deep sound to reverberate. What you do
not echo, do not dread.




8              RADICAL PROBLEMS.
But conservatives distinguish between questions of
science and questions of faith: the first are open; not
the last, which no theories of nature can affect. To
all criticisms of the Scripture history or cosmogony
one answer is made: that the Bible does not mean to
teach natural knowledge. Doubtless the sentiment of
faith lies deeper than the understanding which the
peace of God passes. Yet articles of faith are amenable to the intellect.'We distinguish that, too, as a
general power, from any logical conclusions. But it
is not true that any feeling is independent of the judgment. Jesus bids us love God with all our mind as
well; as heart; and the Divine way, not our imperceptiveness, is the basis of our trust. We are learning
that horses do not travel better, with more courage or
safety, for blinders; and the soul is no swifter for duty
or loftier in aspiration for being hoodwinked. Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but of superstition
and obsequious flattery; not of service, but of servility.
-We worship the King in the world he makes his crystal palace. Has our idea of the building nought to do
with our prayer? Had a Ptolemaist as much cause to
ascribe glory to God as a Copernican? If to Alphonso
creation was on the old notion so misfashioned he
thought he could, if present, have given the Creator
useful hints, his regard for the Architect must have
been lessened by the faults of the house, which Schopenhauer held so enormous he saw nothing to praise
and could not adore at all, leaving us a book not deserving to be opened, and a portrait we should fain turn
to the wall, save that the pessimist was so honest and
brave. The Deity in Genesis that made such short




OPEN QUESTIONS.                9
business of the world, doing it up in six days, - like
some master workman, called a driver because he
gets through and throws off so many affairs in the
twenty-four hours, or a jobber stopping a moment,
then off on some other errand, like Jehu with his team,
- wins not the reverence we pay to Him who works in
spaces no geometry can measure, and through periods
no numerals can express.
Faith not touched by sight, taking no guidance or
glory from the eye of the mind? The God that commanded Abraham  to sacrifice his son, or prompted
Jacob to plot with his mother to rob Esau by practising on father Isaac with his anachronism of false hair,
- there are people not a few, and ever becoming more,
who cannot believe. The old altar-fires are gone out,
and we can no more go back to the Hebrew notions
than to the lambs and goats of their sacrifice. Science
is to be minister in the new temple not completed yet,
and will bring abundant fuel to the shrine to feed the
flame. The one Jehovah of the Jews, presiding over
a narrow province, is expanding to the manifbld Pervader of an infinite sphere. His unity is verified by
analogies, of whose extent and clearness Moses or
Jesus gave no hint, but modern investigation shows
the universe kindling and alive with. When from the
leafing of plants to the orbits of planets a law of relation is traced, the words, I am, and there is none
beside me, gather a wider sense than in their.first
utterance. As the soft aurora and the rending thunder
suggest a common electricity, whose spending is followed by cold, we catch a glimpse of threads that
stretch through the firmament and sew all parts of




10             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
God's live garment together finer than any handiwork
or conception of man.
The keeping open of the questions has, more than
any closure of them, promoted: piety. Religion would
have been crushed, if not quenched, by any authority
to solve them at whatever Hebrew or Christian time.
Could terms of salvation have been written down, and
the plenary verbal inspirationists have succeeded in:
the final settlement they undertook, the Church would
have been banished from the circle of light, degraded
below the arena of controversy, and dismissed from
the region of intelligence as no subject of.reason, but a
motive to grovel and cringe like abject savages in a fit
of terror, too gloomy to be streaked with the twilight
of doubt for a reminder and herald of the dawn. If
we would be rid of denial, danger, and despair, we
must keep every thing open: the conventicle, communion, caucus, hall, and railway track, whose clogging by some untimely train is occasion of ruin and
death. The thought of vast assemblies for musical
celebrations of peace and international friendshipnobler than that division of the spoils at which the socalled  internationals, are, let us trust, falsely understood to aim - has had such fortune as to be accepted
now for an inspiration, till we at last invite to wave
together amid strains of harmony the flags of all the
kingdoms and republics of the earth, type of a Commune worthy to have. Faith must not in its proportions fall below the generosity of amusement and
politics, or lag in corners out of sight. Let the Dogmatist give place to the Liberal! When Jesus represents the Judge as setting the goats on the left hand,




OPEN QUESTIONS.                 I I
he may refer not to the lascivious but stubborn nature
of the beast, which even in tender years rears on its
hinder legs to butt at your kindest approach. If the
bigots are so typified, they will turn up in unexpected
places.  Let them  reasonably suffer the love that
would emancipate them from their fetters; and not,
like the cross cow I saw, hook the benefactor that
would untether the bonds from their own feet.
Free inquiry is more than a prerogative of one man
against the interference of another. The variety of
questions we ask, as of wants we feel, is the length
of our scale, and measures the dignity of our being:
let us pity the angels if, as we are told, they have
found out the secret of Nature and know all. The
animals seem to inquire little, and may be classified
according to the signs they show, in their several tribes,
of wishing to learn.  The suinmer-flies stiffen, curl
up, and wither in the autumn wind, without any
apparent queries what death is, or any dread of their
fate. Their incuriosity marks the degree of their inferiority. Our interest in the subject, our constitution
to entertain the problem, Job's desire to understand,
If a man die, shalI he live again?- is the token of
immortality; for it is no creation of our will, no fiction
of man, but the instigation of God, who hints nothing
he will not carry out. Shall not the lower creatures
we lord it over, and are so cruel to, have his vindication also? The cook told the complaining duck, " Do
not cry: all these things will be explained to you
by and by."  Of how much we are as ignorant as the
bird seized in the barn-yard, or under the doom of
the fowler's gun!




12             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Every theological system or sect is an attempt to
close questions; and every prophet's word a new eruption through the old crust of conventionality.  The
denominations are so many extinct craters, only like.tna or Vesuvius showing signs of activity, and every
little while breaking out afresh.  What is the deadest
conservatism but only a short lull, a temporary sleep?
Like the son of Agamemnon, the searching mind
comes terrible to purify. Unitarianism, Universalism,
Episcopacy, the English Church, and the Romish, are
all rumbling with pent-up commotions, and out of the
fiery contention in their own bowels ready to throw up,
like the aizuiZles round Mont Blanc, rival summits of
belief; and any undertaking to shut up and seal the
questions respecting God and man and heaven, Bible
or Saviour, prophecy or worship, is like chaining
down the safety-valve of the engine or binding too
tight the breathing-holes of the globe. Destructive
explosions, earthquakes that swallow up cities, ensue.
But is every thing left at loose ends like a feather on
the wind? No: questions of doctrine must be open,
but- questions of conscience closed before the day
passes, and the opportunity is lost. No moral problem
has many links. Open questions in a house about
trivial matters are like open wounds. Of what bits
we build our heavy cross!  Do not spend the day
discussing whether you shall drive or walk, invite a
guest or accept an invitation, wear white or black;
write a letter, rub out a spot, be on speaking terms
with a neighbor, or have honest acquaintance with
any woman or man. Time is valuable, nerves are
precious. " I cannot," said a man, making thousands




OPEN QUESTIONS.                13
every day, "consume my strength in debates with'
boys whether they shall steal my grapes or run across
my shed." Have no open questions to quarrel about,
and generate in your affections chronic disease. It is
better to decide a case wrongly than to get into a
wrong state of mind. You are sincere and conscientious in your respective views: do not, therefore, be
tyrannical to insist and urge them past all patience,
and reopen the'topic for'bickering without cessation
or fruit. Make not your conscience a torment. The
worst thing in the world may be a man's conscience,
or what, like Launcelot Gobbo, it is his humor to
call such.  His sting is not that of the bee laden
with honey, but the barren wasp. As lief have a'
hornet buzzing round your ears, or gad-fly searching
for the sore spot, as a domestic or social critic falling
fatally on your weak side. A duellist may be pardoned for finding out the armor's open joint or inexpert pass of his adversary; but there should be no
challenge between friends. Spare in your associate,
him or her that leans on your bosom, the tender place.
Aggravate not already existing inflammation, but heal
and soothe.' Dwelling together in unity is like ointment," says the Psalmist: there is no salve like silence,
and no blister of mustard or Spaniish flies equal to a
fresh plaster of interrogatory words. I do not wonder
the poor Malay sailor begged the captain either to
whip or scold him, but not do both together; for
that, like the multiplication-table to Marjorie Fleming,
is what human nature cannot endure.  People are
prosecuted for assault and battery; but the language
they fling is harder than their fists. It is against the




14             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
law for private persons to carry arms; but what stiletto
or pistol is so dangerous as a tongue? It is harder to
hold than a bull by the horns. I fancy that excellent:
actor, Walter Montgomery, followed to England by
the woman of ill repute, declaring she would be his
wife, who two days after the wedding destroyed himself, whatever she suffered; at his hands, suffered
something from  her -lips.  Little vexations, more
than enormous crimes, lay waste our joy, and turn
life from a boon to a ban.  They say the Inquisition is abolished: it has an emissary in. every house.
The: mosquito has an open question whether he shall
insert his lancet, and take his fill of your blood, which,
to settle the matter, you might freely let him do, but
for the host of his peers on a like surgical errand
behind; and there is a sort of mosquito-mind always
alert to consider where most to your disadvantage, and
the security of its satisfaction against your comfort, it
can make its petty attack.  Be not that name for
Satan, the accuser of your brethren. Put your conscience to private use. Keep it in your closet for a
probe, not unsheathe it as a sword. The unhealthy
action of the human frame is rightly called disorder:
what shall be said of those that disease us with their
moral complaints and uncharitable judgments?  They
are authors of the worst maladies, and most contagious.
Our Orthodox friends well bid us beware of the plague
of our own heart; for it is catching, whether yellow
fever and cholera be so or not. Does anybody in your
circle desire to lead? Let him not communicate to
you that itch! Ivy or the wild sumach is not poisonous to some vigorous people. But we do not plant




OPEN,QUESTIONS.              I5
the shrub or vine at our door-sill: we give a wide
berth to the deadly night-shade, even in the pasture;
and we learn to avoid folks who envenom us with
their manners and speech, and by their very glance
disturb, as some cannot look at or brush by the evil
plant but their skin will prick and swell. " This
creature worries the life out of me," said one, of a dog
biting and scratching only in play. But ill-temper
has worse teeth and claws; and, of all the gifts distributed among human beings, the least to be coveted
is the positive genius some disputatious persons have
for making everybody unhappy, dealing in questions
only, and accepting no one's reply.
Questions of action and disposition are somehow, at
length, to be closed. I must decide if I am going in
the cars or the steamer. If any temper of envy or
jealousy enter the lists and contest the prize, it will
be master or I shall. To settle moral- questions is
safe; for no man ever decided to be a drunkard or
profligate, however sin take advantage of his indecision
to make him a slave. Foster's Essay on Decision of
Character was wise.
But questions of doctrine cannot be wholly closed;
because, first, words are inadequate to express all the
truth. Some conclusions about finite things abide
beyond any power to shake. Kepler's and Newton's
laws of attraction hold like theorems in the mathematics. The effects of food and poison on the human
system are demonstrable, though it is disputed if alcohol
be food or medicine. The physiological and intellectual analogies run further between man and the brute
with every day's investigation; and plants disclose




g6              RADICAL PROBLEMS.
similitudes reminding one of the classic Dryads and
voices of trees complaining when the limbs were torn.
Iron, in the shape of filings about the roots, is given
to a pear-tree to prevent or cure a disease appearing as
spots on the fruit, -just the tonic the doctor prescribes
to his patient; and lime strengthens it as it does our
teeth and bones, while it drinks every day, or like an
animated creature dies of thirst. But when we come
to inquite what God is, or the soul is, or life or death
is, or what we are before or after our mortality, our
most earnest convictions cannot be precipitated as a
solution or projected like a chart.  They refuse the
confinement of a creed. The longevity of a dog or*
horse, eagle or elephant, is fixed; but of a spirit there
is no report. There are no terms to express it, or our
persuasions about it, unless we have made up our mind
that this mind is a mode of matter, the phosphorescence
of decay, like some vegetable and animal particles ceasing to shine when it ceases to rot. We can compass
the definite with ease.  What is done in secret or
whispered in the ear in closets will come abroad and
be published on the house-top; for an occurrence is
impossible to hide, or a noise to be unheard. Do not
tell anybody, we whisper.  It is a vain request! It
will be known because it is a fact; and every fact is
matter of knowledge. But the celestial realities defy
aught but a hint in speech. Because, says the sceptic,
they are so vague, have no solidity more than moonshine. But is moonshine nothing? Is it less than the
stiff and ponderous clod?
"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! "




OPEN QJJESTIONS.                f 
Lorenzo in the play showed Jessica all the orbs of
heaven in tune; and the glories of paradise gleam
through this same moonshine, as you call it, of the
mind, though you can make no medium for this light,
and no conductor for this lightning, of a phrase. Is it
all in the Bible? As well say the electricity of Nature
is collected in a Leyden jar, that coined money has
exhausted the mines of Nevada, or some cabinet con —
tains all the jewels of God.
Spiritual questions must be open, secondly, because
of honest difference of belief,- open between diverse
persons as ill every single mind. Attempts to force
conformity on the ground of the unity of truth imply
our possession of it, delinquency- in whoever rejects
our results, and the right to inflict penalties for disagreement as a crime. Shall there be for the iniquity
of intolerance no punishment? The inquisitor shall
come to question at last. Sure as God ordains sincerity of manifold conclusions, the hierarchs will reach
a sore pass when the blood of heretics shall call for
judgment after long crying.  From  prisons underground, and tombs they were walled into, above it
they shall ascend as shapes of prophets, for sentence
not from the oppressor's but the victim's mouth. Sometime I shall exercise the right you deny. Resurrection
of the body! A poor boon God grant I may be spared!
The rising shall be of the soul in every faculty, and of
that best of its parts, free inquiry.  The questions
choked off and strangled, hushed with the voices that
put them, shall return with imperial dignity of divine
permission and a prerogative of eternal satisfaction;
and "what we know not now we shall know here2




RADICAL PROBLEMS.
after," though other, greater things to be known, suspected and half seen, tempt and beckon us on.  It
will appear that Thought did not perish on a cross,
and Freedom  was not choked on a scaffold, and
Humanity was not beheaded with a sword; that of
many notes God made the music false pretenders to
his confidence branded as discord; and that heaven
is no monotony, but, like an earthly performer's, the
great Harmonizer's skill is measured by the reach of
keys he can command.
The third reason for keeping questions open is room
for growth. A small plant is put in a large pot for
that spread of the roots which will support the spread
of the boughs: and truths are living things that have
no fixed or final shape and never get their growth.
They stop only when turned to timber and lumber of
creeds.  If we must have sharply cut opinions to
make a house, let us, like tasteful builders, leave green
groves of thrifty speculation round our dogmatic precincts. Fell not the whole forest: spare branches of
beauty, and boundless woods of mystery.  Reduce
not this marvellous universe to pure intellectual property, but let wonder and worship have wild and tangled wildernesses to rove in. The Cape-Ann farmer,
to win a few more acres of tillage, laid low the pinetrees that girdled his land from the sea, and found too
late that the zone of grace was a belt of strength. The
north-east winds and waves - avenging furies against
making merchandise of Nature - blew the sands in
long hillocks for the burial of his whole estate. What
but deeper selfishness, exposing to direr retribution, is
it to convert truth to a title-deed of salvation and ticket




OPEN QUESTIONS.               19
to a celestial seat. Truth is a thing to adore, to live
and die for; and, if it will not rescue, rejoice it counts
us worthy in its cause to be cast away. But its service is our privilege, and no sacrifice. Nobody ever
gave to it so much as it returned. You may survey
its field, run the bounds of your persuasions, limit
your inquiries, and stereotype your prayers, when you
have measured the cords and stakes of the Lord's pavilion. Not an idea but should be ever aggrandized,
most of all your idea of the Divinity. An unchangeable
God? He should change continually in that greater
revelation which is your growing up to him, as Nature
changes to the learner, as Niagara to the gazer, as
your friend changes to your better appreciation, as
you change with all aspiration and culture, as the
horizon changes while you mount. " Beauty fled from
the eye," writes Renan of Palestine, " through the
gorges of the hills." So of divine beauty we follow
the flight.
But some things are sealed. Whether a man shall
love his wife, or a woman her husband, is not an open
question. Some clergymen will not exact, nor some
brides and bridegrooms make the promise to love, on
the ground that love is not in a person's own power.
The noble religions of all ages are under a mistake!
Judaism and Christianity falsely meet in the first
commandment of the love of God, and the second, to
" love our neighbor as ourself," was but an additional
mockery from the Master's lips; and as all the law
and the prophets hang on these, the whole fabric of
worship and morals must give way, and tumble in
ruin fbr the sophistry of sense. This is called affinity.




20             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
It is chemistry indeed, above its scope: of senseless
atoms, in the vital sphere. In Goethe's story of Elective Affinities, with whatever licentious implications,
death is preferred to sin. It was left for later teachers
to deny that love is a duty, and baptize inclination
with sanctity, on the pretence that the affections suffer no control. Such immorality prepense is worse
than yielding to sudden temptation. What libertine
wants a better apotheosis! Many a man, not of the
Mormons, has any number of free loves in a shifting
polygamy, without Solomon's or Brigham  Young's
responsibility. The foundations of marriage are an
open question, but not any husband's or wife's fidelity.
It is time for the policeman if it be. Whether I shall
love my wife or my wife me a subject of discussion?
The man that hesitates is adulterous, the woman that
deliberates is lost. Love at my option?  Love is a
law. Am I at liberty not to love God?  I am no more
bound to love my Maker than my partner or child.
Love is free as a planet not to leave its orbit; and
the Free Love that refuses the gravitation of order
is a crime and a curse, retain what male or female
pleader it will. Alas! that woman should advocate
looseness, - woman that has been, more than man, the
victim of changing fancy, and would find illn larger
independence no emancipation for her sex, but the
aggravation of its woes. But note the fundamental
mistake of this doctrine of easy divorce.  It is the
delusion that the object of marriage is pleasure, the
common-place question being if one party is going to
make the other happy; and, if either fails, the missed
joy may be sought elsewhere. But the design of no




OPEN QUESTIONS.                2I
relation of life is gratification, otherwise than by abnegation. Government, religion, society, is discipline as
well as comfort: the wedded state is the same; and
whosoever seeks in it a paradise of satisfied wishes
will be turned out of Eden with a flaming sword, like
Adam  and Eve.  Love cannot be quite housed or
fenced in.  But true affection without or under the
roof is no roving, but a requirement; and he who
imagines his regards may be flung round as a prince
scatters coin among a crowd makes them a beggarly
thing, and squanders the treasury of the King. Every
farthing of sentiment in my soul is his property: I
am but in trust, and must answer for each item of
expenditure and atom of waste. Yet how the floodgates of indulgence swing! It is time to arouse to an
assailant more than robbers threatening the common
weal: against the deluge of wild propensity, bulwarks
and breakwaters of principle are more important than
dykes at the inrush of seas, or props for crumbling
hills. Consult the common list of crimes. Whence the
murders and suicides that make the daily sheet ghastly,
but from inordinate desires? Whence the sympathy
for the criminal, which Dr. Wayland said forgets the
victim, but from overlooking obligations as essential
to progress as the ties of a railway; till murderers, of
either sex, are recommended to the mercy they never
showed, as if justice were not kindness to all men, and
unfair or unadministered laws cruelty. Dreadful as
is capital punishment, as yet the shadow of the gallows must remain. Hang a woman?  Yes: that is
one of the privileges she shares in the new age with
man, if she be unsafe alive.




22             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
For fiee preach lawful love! None other in the
universe has title. God's love is his law: he has no
liberty or right, such as Calvinism would give him, to
hate or forsake his children, nor allows their license
to leave each other. We are tinder bonds, and shall
have no bail. If you cannot promise to love, do not
wed. If I am priest, I give notice I shall exact the
vow, which one good woman insisted I should make
on her part also to obey. Be married with a ring, if
its gold circle be any wise an added link. An absent
husband lost his ring, which he said he would rather
go home without his finger than not find. Is it on
your finger in vain?  Love is a good ship, freighted
with human welfare: send her not out with sails and
streamers only on this stormier" than Atlantic sea of
our mortal life, but with cables of principle and rudder of a righteous will. Care for the coming race!
If married people may, for selfish delight, violate their
pledge, what is the lesson to the young, whose warmer
passion has no legal block? Hold to your covenant
for the sake of your kind. Of liberty we have for the
present heard about enough.  The dose will last!
Tell us of loyalty now. Bismarck to the politicians
said, "Is it not well first to ask of our duties? " when
they tired him with talking about their rights. We
hear the French are strict with the young, but permit
the yoked to do as they list. Well, these latitudinarians in America had better emigrate to the city whose
majority is said to be of illegitimate birth. Relaxed
authority is our ailment. All our relations are lightly
worn. Judas, though single and cut off by suicide,
has left a numerous tribe; and the circle in Dante's




OPEN QUESTIONS.                23
hell for traitors must be enlarged. I have lived
through two generations to doubt if that one old sin
is: less common, -desertion; and to thank those who
did not abandon me. Time, that tries all things, is
for our friendships what a sieve! There is the marble
sculptor, carving epitaphs at the corner of the street;
but every one of us has a business large as his in
our heart. Well, if an image of the resurrection be
formed by the inward chisel! Happy, if the truehearted exceed those who have failed! Let it be no
open question if you are stich. Let your constancy
outlast any stamp on the document.
-Whether to assume the holy estate of matrimony is
a question kept open by too many in our land, perhaps
by the at present agitated relations of men and women
held in abeyance or suspense.  But whether to discharge its offices, to meditate an escape from its relations, to have illicit intercourse, or, with what has been
called anatomical purity, cleave in imagination- to a
coveted mate not your own, is not open to any soul.
Confound not open questions with closed. Ecclesiastical or political tyranny, like a retreating host,
makes successive stands, as Lee at Gettysburg fought
and ran by turns. - But the categorical imperative of
Duty holds its own. What engagement to enter into
is open, but not whether it shall be kept; while to
some obligations we are born.  It is getting to be
settled that mankind is one community, and a man may
choose his country with no arm of iron despotism to
reach across the sea, impress him into, a ship or reclaim
him to war for his native soil; but it does not remain
for him to say whether he will be a good citizen of




24            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
the republic in which he stays. The secessionist was
doomed already, at Sumter as much as at Richmond,
in declaring in Liberty's name his withdrawal. My
friend yonder, the monarchist in New England, has
but this alternative, - to emigrate, or be a cipher where
he lives; while the revolutionist opens the question of
government not in orderly debate, but appealing to
force. But " the blood-red blossom of war" is a century-plant not considered in regular culture.
The administration, democratic or republican, is
open to question and suspicion, if it hide from criticism and hush up abuse. Power tends to corruptionri
needs watching and calling to account; for party is
partiality, to be mistrusted if it cry out when its doings
are looked into; and all New York politicians want
is secrecy for tracks of fraud whose uncovering astounds the land. Why is politics a name for uncleanness, but because every set of men in place become
thieves, if some opposition stand not guard? 0 official,
are, you afraid? Then formidable is your foe.  Why
startled at any raid, but that something in your platform or proceeding —jobs, commissions, corporations,
long and costly sessions - will not bear examination,
and you cannot, as will every upright man, welcome
unfriendly search? One thing pacifies hostility and
disarms hate, —a record without spot.  Put on the
Dread-nought of principle!  Flank your enemy by
evolution of character: spike with patriotism his guns.
But he is a dangerous man! What makes him dangerous, if you are right?  Will the people of the
commonwealth or nation indorse and exalt a destructive, in hopes at his hands of a division of goods, a




OPEN OQUESTIONS.                25
confounding of the worth and wages of manual and
mental labor, and partition of property like a pie cut
into equal pieces for all round the board? Incredible
such a ground of popularity in this country.  Unjust to
the common folk your alarm.  Universal suffrage becomes a wiser instrument and safer test every year,
with each exercise making us rejoice we are not ruled
by sceptre or rank.  I fear, says the conservative.
Your fear is no argument! I have not learned, said
a statesman, to put my hand into the Treasury. You
are in it yourself, was the reply; and that man a
whole generation of voting has not dislodged.
Conflict means something.  Rival partisans use
strong words. I know not what that Hebrew statesman, David, had encountered of objection to his reign,
when he prayed God to hide him in his pavilion from
the strife of tongues; but any one who looks over recent files of the New York and Massachusetts press will
understand what a strain for vile epithets the dictionary has endured, and how the English vocabulary has
been milked to the strippings for gall. Men balk not
to call each other liars, thieves, devils; and the charges
are taken quietly, no suits for libel instituted, till one
might think the depravity total, virtue quite gone, and
all the self-called patriots plunderers and office-seekers
alike.  But the viliipending must be taken with a
grain of salt; and doubtless that proverb, "The devil
is not so black as he is painted," arose from extravagant
abuse of not wholly base men. But remembering who
has by enraged adversaries been' called devil and diabolical, from Jesus down, one may query if it be of
course so dishonorable a term. Beside, Satan is a use



26            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
ful person: the Old Register informs us, in the case of
Job, the Lord put him to excellent purpose to try and
sanctify his servant and carry him from the temptations
of earthly prosperity through the hell of disgrace and
pain into a heaven of purity and peace beyond his first
estate. Through a like needed Purgatory, by that particular individual you consider your Beelzebub, you
may be led. If any set of men in public life pass
muster with such an antagonist, and come out of the
mangle with clean hands, and no indelible stains, the
agent will deserve something else than utter condemnation and scorn. Will it wash? you ask, of the dry
goods. Some things very hard! In Dante's Inferno
one class of demons handles for others the penal fires,
plunging them with forks into the lake of burning
pitch. Set a rogue to catch a rogue. One political
hand must wash the other: the Ins'and the Outs are
the two hands, and purifiers must be respected as well
as saints.
Is it an open question whether women shall vote?
Not quite, as they already so do in benevolent societies,
church-meetings, and educational enterprises, it only
remaining to complete their claim in civil affairs; and
at every caucus and convention the favor of the growing number asserting it is put up at auction, time only
being requisite to decide wvhat party will make the
highest bid. Without dogmatism in the case, or prejudgment of the issue, the defenders of woman's right
may ask a better argument against it than that of expediency, and alarm that more Irish women than AngloSaxon would rush to the polls. Nay, considering how
on the ballot our destinies hang, and over what filthy




OPEN QUESTIONS.                27
floors we tread with our fate in our grasp, should we
not anticipate the plea that women must be dragged in
the dirt to the shrine where law and justice are to be
sacrificed or saved, by substituting for ward-rooms and
dens noble buildings as the suffirage-deposit, making
palaces of our polls? If it be a true figure to speak
of the temple of our liberties, there is no cathedral
more solemn or fit for worship than the place where
they are to be maintained.




INDIVIDUALISM.
W THAT curious imputation of human contrivance
to God was the old notion of his scheme of
salvation, in which, like the bits of paper we try to
make a rectangle of, all the verses of the Bible were
parts of the puzzle. A little larger word is used when
liberal believers talk of the Christian system. But that,
too, implies a fence Jesus never put up. A man does
not accomplish much under keepers; and no great
thing was ever said or done in sight of limits, or within
bounds other than of thought itself. By what prescribed rule did Raphael make that Dresden Madonna,
the child in whose arms is King of men? After what
photograph did Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel,
copy that creation of Eve it takes the breath away to
look at, and of which one said he did not see how
the Florentine artist could have been descended from
that first woman, the mother of all, whom he himself
conceived?
There are in art or nature no wals. The autumnal
maple I saw all alone in the field, a flame of fire from
the bottom to the top, was the very burning-bush
Moses saw, and it shone all the way to and from




INDIVIDUALISM.               29
Egypt while I looked. When the love of God visits
me with its glow, there are no longer chambers in my
heart, but space for all mankind. I have seen people
scowl at finding strangers in their seats in church, and
have heard of nails driven in the railing to indicate to
the sexton none but members of the proprietor's house
should be admitted. But doors are leaving desk and
pew, as Father Taylor said his pulpit had none; and
the street crowds into the slips of temple and theatre
for sermons and prayers, without money or price.
Broad Church and Low  Church supersede High
Church. Faith is genuine as it is generous. Make
a dogma or tenet of it, and it is lost. I find, said my
friend, the more I reason about immortality, the less I
believe it. Throw yourself on your instinct, trust your
vision,.give your life to your Author and race, and you
will not doubt. The sceptics about God and heaven,
however polite and complaisant, will be found in the
last analysis self-seekers, and no devotees of their kind.
Does one withdraw from you and enact the disloyal
friend, you will find he lives on the surface, and degrades all realities into problems. Not himself one
with God, what wonder his very adhesiveness should
be untempered mortar, soft solder for solid support.
Say to him, All the distance between us you make: I
but keep on the line, trying to reach you if I can.
Freedom  of thought and freedom  of fellowship are
the same. What blunder identifies free-thinking with
infidelity, when it is the only path by which conviction
ever visited the human soul? The time is at hand for
those branded as unbelievers to be counted warmer
rotaries of truth than popes and cardinals and priests.




30             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
It is true, in all common interests, from a handful of
men to the millions of a nation, we must co-act, and
have organizers as well as idealists. Yet all institutions
must be mended by the thought they spring from, or
abolished by a better thought. But to change an organic habit is hard, and attended with agonies that
threaten dissolution. The reformer is always ruiner;
though Church and State have by civil and religious
doctors been ruined so many times, still to thrive, as do
trees once felled, out of their mangled or rotting stumps,
that all croaking sounds like that of the ravens sent
with food to Elijah. Our Constitution will get aground
often, said an old statesman, but there will be always
somebody, like the man on the banks of the Mississippi, who pushes the raft from the shore. Caesar in
power may well complain that "' Cassius thinks too
much;" but the thinker is saviour. What slow and
cumbrous processes men use at first! Self-interest of
operatives, whose livelihood depends on present methods, resists improvement. But a thought from some
brain, mightier than an army, steps softly in, and the
old style gives place to a new, though the light of
burning mills leads the inventor, showing where past
discovery made its way. The announcers of principle
give the oil of life to the lamp that illuminates; and,
like the captain feeding the boiler wvith his fireight,
throw their flesh and bones into the fire that warms
and impels mankind. We suspect the seer, and despise
visionaries as unpractical. But there is not a comfort
in our house, article of food or clothing, harvest of the
field or preparation of the kitchen, grain of wheat for
the grist or of powder for grinding the foe, but is at




INDrVIDUALJSM.               31
first the pure potentiality they perceived and contrived
and combined. A man-Erastus B. Bigelow-is still
alive, to whose wit the factories in Massachusetts owe
a debt exceeding a thousand-fold the sum he received.
What is a railway but an embodiment of conceptions,
once non-existent outside the solitary heads they visited,
putting on a wood and iron dress to walk abroad in.
Yankee notions alter the world.  All imperfection
comes from want of thorough thought. VWhen that
stops or lags, and the mind's eye winks at faults or
defects in the machinery or manipulation, injury ensues.
Intellectual blindness hurts and slays more than any
ill intent. Peering into the wreck of the late disaster
on the road, what do we see?  That a true time-table,
making no noise; a telegram, sped in an instant; the
silent step of a watchman sent back; an understanding
between conductors,- would have kept above the sod
a precious score now under it; that if kerosene is not
safe in a quiet parlor, it is dangerous in a jolting car;
that a good supply of rolling stock for emergencies
might hinder the confusion of arrangement, ending in
the chaos of destruction. But alas! all these thoughts
came too late.  Because they were tardy, the trains
were! As I looked at the heap of burnt and battered
bits of iron near the station, rusting in the rain, all
that from the catastrophe the flames had left, I shuddered to think by how little reflection that melancholy
monument, lying so still a reminder of anguish untold,
might have been spared.
But what application have such illustrations to the
working and apparatus of forms and creeds? There
is no peril in the running of a denominational estab



32             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
lishment. No matter what a man thinks in religion,
only how he lives! Men are praised who never attack
sects they do not belong to; and if they cannot speak
well of others, say nothing at all. We must answer,
the spiritual exceeds the utilitarian importance of
thought, in proportion as moral culture is of more
moment than a patent reaper, mowing-machine, steamengine, or cotton-gin; for these are all but the mind's
servants, serving it ill if it have unworthy aims. Is
the telegraph a blessing when fraud or tyranny controls
the wires, and they terminate in Napoleon's ante-chamber? Is travelling unmixed good? Half of us were
better at home! Where are you in your worship?
Whither drawn by the locomotive of will? What sort
of engineer is your conscience? What is the latitude
and longitude of your course toward the angelic isles?
The disciples left all and followed Jesus. It was a
splendid speculation. To be shrewd operators, we
might be content to part with our lands and bonds,
and take neither purse nor scrip, for one degree of
progress and character, or surer beholding of our end.
There are opinions on these matters we are wronged
and put back by.
Take some examples. The Lord's Supper as a line
between sinners and saints is no harmless ceremony,
but a snare of hypocrisy, a trap of pretence, or a reef
which thousands taking for a harbor have been cast
awaT on. A profession of religion hinders practice.
A certain prophet foretold that removing the landmark between church and congregation, and sealing up the book of communicants, would destroy
Liberal Christianity, though Paul said eating would




INDIVIDUALISM.               33
not make us better, or abstaining worse. His prediction failed.
Regarding the Bible as so much dried pemmican,
a little of which every daylis a sufficient ration for the
soul, classifies chaff and wheat, with some poison, together. Who reads the Book through now and holds
all the parts of Hebrew literature from a hundred pens
of equal worth, save such as the old Bibliolatry still
besots? Is it pious or blasphemous to put Deuteronomny
with the Gospels, David's curses with Christ's beatitudes, or JewVish retaliation with the Sermon on the
Mount?  A theory which constructs a gilded idol of
the whole Scripture, to be multiplied by myriads as the
sole condition of salvation, and be a pledge of security
because it adorns the table or cumbers the shelf, is a
bane. We have against it only the dishonest security
of a quiet agreement to let Kings and Chronicles,
wrathful prophecies and illogical epistles, go by. default while we attend to parables and psalms; or else
of an ingenious arguing of truth into the letter and
falsehood out. But children and the simple, unable to
understand this, are exposed to mischief still. It was
said of a certain politician, He is all brass. But the
prayer-book betrays a composition so like Nebuchadnezzar's image, no wonder good churchmen can endure
the contradiction no longer, but must have a purged
liturgy, - as I remember Ephraim Peabody sought in
vain to correct the comparatively pure version of the
King's chapel, which an Englishman said was the old
one watered, but my friend answered was the old one
washed; and needs washing a little more.
What so absurd as a prayer for deliverance from
3




34             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
sudden death! The article of death is always sudden;
and if the sentence deprecated is of death in the fiulness of one's powers, is not that what everybody
should crave? What is decline? All that is sad, or
casts a shadow into the prospect of old age.  How
clear an image of blessed departure is Scott's from
the set of the tropical sun!
" No pale gradations quench his ray."
How many covet going at once rather than drag to the
grave! He that fell by lightning was held by the
ancients
"Favored man by touch ethereal slain."
James Otis wished and had such fate. Job begged
not protracted existence, but hunted after the grave
and wanted it to open at his feet.  If the reader
has not, the writer has seen many an hour when death,
but that wisdom withheld it, would have been a boon.
It pleases God to call many suddenly: why pray
against his decree?  Of one whose genius years do
not dim, it was said, he will fall like a pine-tree, he
will dry up and blow away, or creep into some nook;
he will not die, nor any man know his sepulchre.
What better for Gannett, spinning out his last fibre,
turning the wheel when no more wool was on the
spindle, than Elijah's chariot of fire? The version of
the original form into " death unprepared for" scarce
improves it. Not death, but life is the thing to prepare for. Why notice that which Christ abolished?
The idea that God changes, turns his face from the
sinner who passes unreconciled, takes beyond any
profane swearing his name in vain. No repentance




INDIVIDUALISM.                35
or hope beyond the death-bed?  As the tree falleth it
must lie?  The human soul is not a fallen tree! The
best repentance for the worst transgressor or most
precious saint is after earthly decease, and Watts's
line is true of neither,"Fixed in an eternal state;"
for it were a fine degradation of the future to annul
there the law of progress which is the sole comfort
here.
Let such cases suffice to illustrate how thought may
act as a solvent on the chronic prejudice of an inveterate phrase. Is not more or better steam welcome?
O ye who run the machine of religion, hate not those
who supply new motive power; and let organizers
suffer search into the basis of organization, as men are
employed on the iron road with their clinking hammers to test the wheels. Not what excites, but incites
us, is the point. Are you rid of ambitious incentive,
of all desire to sound or shine, and sing Monckton
Milnes' "Lay of the Humble"?   Can you resign
leadership and refuse following?  Can you hold appetite from lusting and your tongue from reply? Then
I care not for your theological name: your connection
is with every worthy spirit to which the universe gives
breath.
Orthodoxy substitutes legality for love.  God cannot remit his law of eternal perdition to the race for
their ancestor's first offence; Jesus pays the penalty
with his blood, and the ransomed get into heaven on
the ground of right in his merit with the Judge to
whom he stands bail and pays the fine. Observe the




36             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
effect on character of this forensic view. Severe deacons and strict members of the church keep the letter
at the expense of the spirit of their contract, carrying
their divine scheme into human covenants, as Shakspeare makes Shylock quote Jacob's trick about the
cattle to excuse his own greed. What signifies my
neighbor's heading the list of communicants in good
standing, if, as the standard of his proceeding, to the
law of equity he prefers the law of the land? Why
should he not? Why should he be liberal and humane,
or just in the large sense of doing as he would be done
by, when the God he worships is so sharp? No: let
hiin encroach, run out his lines against my light and
air, return robbery for my bestowment, and, wherever
he can, do the legal thing that is immoral and unchristian, and without breaking the statute take the lion's
share! He has no higher law. He is as good as a
God on whom his own children have no claims he
is bound to respect, who forms one vessel-to honor
and another to dishonor. But, said my friend, God is
not a potter.
The critic of what is popular is asked what he
proposes instead: it is a malefaction to give nothing,
but only to take away. But as a decaying structure is
mended piece-meal, as a living organism is perpetual
substitution of particle for particle, so no system of
opinion comes or goes by human will or at once, but
by working through periods of a divine law, one of
whose executors is every honest objector, and which
Jesus fuilfilled for his times not only by positive statement but by finding fault. The trellis a vine clambers on is not torn away; but, if it be not repaired,




INDIVIDUALISM.                 37
it will rot and the vine fall. Ever and anon a voice is
lifted, We have had criticism enough: construction
is in order now. I answer, The two must go together.
Unitarianism fancies it is the last landing-place, the
pillars of Hercules every voyager must stop at, though
seas and continents of truth lie beyond. But the horned
bull of Fanaticism is not slain yet. If the Rationalist
has been the picador, the Radical must be the matadore
in the unfinished fight. It is held dangerous to unsettle a common faith. Not if it is unsettled by thought!
Better unsettle your house in season if it rest on the
sand. Is it dangerous to disturb a bad style of building, an uneven railway, or any defective machine?
We do it that we may be safe. He is the very devil,
said one of a Road President who was efficient. Is
security of less moment for the soul? What is salvation?  Not escape from  hell, but entry of bliss.  I
will not carry my blame of an opinion into my treatment of the man. There is a Public Garden of Humanity where all may meet: there is to be a Museufn of
Art and an atonement of Beauty. There is another
Common than that within the iron fence. As Radical
and Reactionist can enjoy a flower, a. picture, or prospect together, so the universal Creator opens vistas
either way of memory and hope, through which, despite side glances at their respective premises, they can
gaze on destiny and glory together.
For all the dogmatism is so stiff, it does not lie very
deep. It is a crust, a clod, or hard pan under which,
in everybody, we break into fertile soil. With theologic as with social gossips, what an automaton is the
tongue! How true the proverb of its being hung on




38             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
wires! What a perpetual motion is the repetition of
a creed, whose articles to the Protestant are like the
Catholic beads; and how deceptive the voice they are
proclaimed by, which crowds hang on for its resonance
and animal heat, three-fourths of the ardor being of
the body not the soul, and thle speaker being only
an additional stove or fiurnace in the house! When I
consider the nature of what my admiration is challenged for, how the famous pulpit-orator may go to
his audience with nothing to say, and with what seeming delight it is heard, the fervor seems a kind of
insanity, such as populations and nations are touched
with in some illusory expectation or aim, - like that
French foolishness insisting the downfall of Paris was
impossible, which, made into a compound battery for
Victor Hugo to handle, did not avail against the
German guns, though an English writer calls it the
most vital vanity in the world.
The congregation, you tell me, was great. Large it
often is, and hundreds have to go away. But to what
purpose? There are huge gatherings at concerts and
theatres and fire-works and menageries and jugglers'
shows, and on the Exchange. Let me celebrate the
thin house! It may be a question whether, throughout
the world's history, more has not been done with few
present than with many. Two or three in sympathy
were enough to persuade Christ's, attendance.  It is
a strange fact that the performer's power often reduplicates with the diminution of the throng.  He
becomes more natural and simple, ambition for effect
dies, the inordinate stimulus that sometimes the actor
is not inspired but maddened and prematurely killed




INDIVIDUALISM.               39
by is withdrawn: the Spirit comes; and, for a lunatic
distracted with conceit of his importance, we have an
organ of the Holy Ghost. What joy and upbuilding
we remember in small companies, beyond superficial
transport of crowds in the laughing gas of ecclesiastical
vapor they breathe! We search too much for God in
the upper void. He is under foot as well as overhead,
in the hell of our privation as in the heaven of bliss,
in my conscience and my friend's heart more than
among the stars. The earth as well as the air is the
Lord's: let us respect the earth in us of which he made
us, as well as the soul he blew into our nostrils. O
invalid, who hast spun thy brains into the web of thy
fancy, the Divinity inhabits the world of fact. Become
worldly-minded, a man of the world, as your neighbor
is too much and you not enough. Pine no longer
among thy theories. Leave thy pillar, touch the earth
and arise strong. " Let your parish go," said Abernethy to worn-out Dr. Tuckerman, " and build a barn."
Moiling in the dust, striking on the ledge, blasting for
a cellar, raising the house, I build up beside my dwelling my nervous system, and learn that the Deity I
was soaring after had not left the ground. When I
can live close to my mason and carpenter. abide near
any human being without jar, I am with Him. Have
your own way, you will live the longer, we say. Yes,
when it is the King's highway of brotherly love.
But let Freedom be understood. It is no indetermination, but thinking and ancting according to law.
America borrowed frotn France her political ideas.
But the old French triumvirate - Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity - have fallen out. Say the Communists,




40             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
"' We do not want liberty, but equality." Equality, like
my friend's serpent that ate up the brother he was caged
with, has devoured Liberty; Fraternity will be but a
side-dish in the same meal. Labor against capital is
the form the new strife takes which is to have the next
century for its battle-field; and, among the passions
that shall thunder, there will be need of thought.
WVe may find no " glittering generality" or " blazing
ubiquity," but a half-truth apt to false applications, in
the doctrine of all men's equality by birth in any power
or for any lot. There is no freedoml  but in order,
harmony, the mutual adjustment of all according to
their several ability and worth. " The career open to
talents," said Napoleon; exercised, we must add, for
the common weal. We learn from M. Coquerel that
the late incendiarism  in Paris arose from the insane
principle of destroying capital, as though it were not
a crib at which all men feed. In the Communists
pulling down the column in the Place Vendome to
signify the end of war among the peoples of the globe,
by self-sacrifice of national glory to the idea of universal
peace, there was something sublime; and when they
burned the guillotine before the statue of Voltaire, to
symbolize the end of its red executions, society seemed
growing more humane. But the enterprise of striking
a level of human fortunes, Procrustes coming again to
dock the long stature and stretch the short, will cause
more woe with its brutal average than it will close.
The crevice when it is opened, as Dr. Beecher said
of the old Revolution, will run blood.  Such internationality will be no advance, but another fall of man
to the savage state, and, by removing motive to toil, an




INDIVIDUALISM.               41
exchange of riches for general poverty and want. The
excess of impulse in the last decade, which has shaken
either hemisphere more than earthquakes, needs reason
to be its moderator, regulator, and safety-valve.
We want to know not only what to do, but what
not to do or say. Socrates says his Demon told him
where to stop.
"As fools rush in where angels fear to tread,"
how often impertinent interference and superserviceable suggestion make us wish that Demon might come
back! VWould the mediums that converse with Socrates be good enough to hint to the old philosopher
how we should thank him for sending into the world
once more that useful governor of his mental machine?
At present, no benefactor could surpass this interior
conscience, sitting secret, like Maelzel's automaton,. and
at every false move in the game of human life saying,
Check. " In four cases out of five," said a great physician, " we help a patient best by doing nothing, and
the chief rule is not to move or prescribe anywise without surety of benefit." The doctors of our sick society
mnight well heed the lesson. Said my medical adviser,
" The most I can do is to tell you how to keep out of
harm's way." Give nature a chance to rally! He
that abounds in political specifics, and meddles most
with human nature, is a worse quack than medical
societies banish. So-called cure is the main generator
of disease.
Our raging publicity overlooks the value of private
counsel.  From  some individual comes the saving
word. It is always proscribed as individualism till it




42             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
becomes the common sense. But the deliverer is the
superior soul, communicant with the Supreme to convey its wisdom to half-unwilling recipients; one that
shares neither the panic of the multitude nor their
zeal, but has a heart beating for his kind, and is in
his opponents' citadel the friend of their own secret
respect.
" Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart,"
wrote Wordsworth of Milton, from whom  shone the
beams of republican liberty brighter than Orion for all
men. Of want of leaders, there is much talk; and
the leaders, when they come, are often but persons
magnetized by some epidemic impression or prevailing
superstition, like a certain captain who put himself
at the head of an officerless regiment at Bull Run,
and simply went with them to Washington in their
rout. Our civil and religious commanders are men
catching the contagion of any troop that marches by,
intent on victory or retreat. The ducal power on the
field is not in those who give the loud orders and ride
in uniform, but in some unseen M61tke or silent Grant.
So in faith and morals, not by the marshals and platform-orators, but thinkers we are led. Such let us
cherish as the apple of our eye; and not measure their
merit by their power to push and multiply themselves
in men's sight. Mr. Pierpont said of Dr. Channing,
"Put him into the street to shift for himself and make
his living, and he would die."  But we knew his
quality, and would no more have put him into the
street than thrown out our mirror or spy-glass. Is
physical strength- to work and lift, hoist or farm, fish




INDIVIDUALISM.               43
or build - the gauge of a man? How with those that
poise the telescope in the observatory, watch the currents of air and sea, predict the storms and cyclones,
make coast surveys, calculate eclipses, and run the
lines of danger and refuge for ships on our mnaps and
charts? "All things in common" was a shallow, transient rule. Equalize tasks or goods when you can
equalize gifts.  We did not put Channing to the
plough-handle, but to the pulpit and the pen. He
did braver things than carry a musket to load and fire.
It is not always the stalwart whom in the trial we
can trust. The woman who, when the Life Boatmen
were afraid, and refused to venture out to the wreck
on the Irish shore, went alone in her little skiff and
rescued the last survivor through the boiling surf,
proved that something more than muscle is called for
in the dreadful hour, and had a right to vote all those
cravens down.
A perfect development is, doubtless, not only the
complete beauty of a human creature, but the condition of the highest health of each particular faculty. I
fancy my friend's metaphysical glance would not be
dulled, but cleared, could he also keenly as an Indian
follow the trail. As diamond cuts diamond, and one
hone smooths a second, all the parts of intellect are
whetstones to each other; and genius, which is but the
result of their mutual sharpening, is character too.
He who is excellence, and does the heroic thing, will
say it with equal however rude expression, as did
Luther and John Brown. Said Gangoolly, the Hindoo
convert to Christianity, ~ When I made up my mind, I
went into my closet and cast down my idols, to break




44            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
in fragments on the floor, with fear in one side of my
heart, and triumph in the other."  How many a pull
at windlass and capstan that gesture was worth!
But, if we train not in a Denomination, do not
attend the Conference, or subscribe the Compromise,
we are charged with individualism. Is it so bad to
consider truth or right no creature of a consociation or
suffirage of the majority, or level average of differing
minds, but an act of duty from  a perception of the
mind? Sheridan was individual restoring his troops
from panic on the Potomac; Grant at Vicksburg,
Sherman in Georgia, Washington at Valley Forge, and
Butler in Baltimore and New Orleans. It is the fault
the synod found with Jesus, the council with Stephen,
the Jesuits with Pascal, the Church with Wycliffe and
Huss, the Pope with Luther and D611linger, the Unitarians with Parker; and every sect with whoever
presumes to know more than it has laid down. Were
these men individual in the low sense? Is number
virtue? How easy to outvote God who is only One!
If individualism be self-seeking, — like that of the
profligate, glutton, miser, and sot, - shall we charge
with it those who sacrifice themselves and take up the
excommunicating cross?  We hear of people on the
fence watching the signs of the times, to know which
side to jump, to be, as the poor queen tells "' Austria" in
the play, "' ever strong upon the stronger side."  There
is a theological fence. Popularity is never so sweet as
among our associates in an unpopular body. Does it
become such as enjoy to indict those who renounce it
when conscience bids?  The accuser may be target of
his own shaft. To be willing to appear on platforms




INDIVIDUAISM.               45
and receive ecclesiastical invitations, and be praised by
the religious press, and have one's own books printed
by an association, is no demonstration clear as Euclid
of philanthropy. The hypocrite is no hermit. The
humbug buzzes in a swarm. Your brother's pride of
separation may not match yours of communion; and
in attempting his portrait you draw your own.'" You
shall be a major-general," one was told, to tempt him
to join the convocation. Didambition keep him away?
If he stood aloof for that luxury of thought, more subtile than of appetite, to be a mental Sybarite, he might
be well arraigned. But what if better service were his
aim? O brethren, the motives on either side may
be deeper than party. At the siege of Paris a wounded
Uhlan and Frenchman, both reviving from  swoon*
together, recognized each his antagonist, exchanged
smiles and died, with that sign of something more.
than strife. Pure individuality does not exist, only
independent thought.
Such men as Newton and Kepler are said to think
God's thoughts after him. But what is the use of
thinking?  Do not all the churches undertake to do it
for us? Does not every creed assume that all the thinking is done; and liberal leaders tell us all we have left
us is to go to work, and spin our brains no more. The
more you think, said my friend, the more you are puzzled: act on your impressions, or take the current views.
Robert Burns says the poet does not find the muse by
thinking long; and Shakspeare shows us in Hamlet
how over-fine reflection palsies the will. I answer,
Thought is deeper than logic, taking for its laboratory
both heart and head, and has a use to resolve every mis



46             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
take. Error is not pure falsehood: it has a mixture
of truth. As a man choosing the wrong road is still
in the world, and will come by some circuit to his goal;
as the ore has in it gold and silver as well as dross, so
thought is the process to regain the track we have
strayed from, and to smelt the crude mass of opinion.  The  English  Bishop  Colenso  in Australia,
eliminating blunders from the Pentateuch; Father
Hyacinthe in France and his colleague in Germany
resisting the Pope's infallibility; radical writers in
America warning us against Biblical idolatry; and
scientific explorers all over the world scouting the
superstitions of theology, — are but so many meters.
Watch the motions of your own mind in successive
years, your varying construction of articles, or emphasis of miracles and prophecies and proof-texts; and
you will own how  the slow, silent tide of reason
sweeps away floating, superficial dogmas, and like the
Atlantic surging into some muddy creek hides the old
landmarks of belief. It is curious to see how this tenet
and that, once made the seal of salvation, passes from
the most orthodox pulpit and ceases.
"One spell upon the minds of men
Breaks never to unite again."
Why and whence this inevitable disintegration?  Because Thought cannot seize the unthinkable: there are
things the understanding cannot entertain any longer,
more than lungs can respire in a vacuum. That a
babe is born totally corrupt, that a favored few are
chosen and the rest eternally doomed, that any child
of God can be finally lost, that his innocent Son




INDIVIDUALISM.               47
could be punished, -doctrines once unthinkingly proclaimed, -are now impossible propositions; not discarded from among the articles, but suffered to sleep,
given the go-by, laid upon the table, because there is
no chamber open to ftlem in the human brain. They
have gone, with witchcraft and the evil eye, and the
power to curse, and demons, and priesthood, and
divine right of kings.
Thought also resolves evil into good: this solvent so
thorough, this reagent so mighty, that in its extreme
application all natural and moral ill disappears. No
annoyance or injury, no insult so gross, or harm so unexpected, no treachery of friend, ingratitude of those I
fbrwarded, dislike of those I loved, but under this compound blow-pipe melts. Evil is a snow-flake to swell
the current it seemed to resist. Be it great calamity
or trifling wrong, its compensation is its food for
thought. Riding in the cars through the north-east
storm, at a way-station a man coolly takes my umbrella,
leaving me to get home in the rain. What do in such
a case? Cry, Stop thief! Run after him, as one said
he would, though he had lost the train? - sagely adding, It might end in the State-prison. But the man that
has made so free with my property must need it more
than I, and perhaps he agrees with the Frenchman,
Proudhon, that all property is robbery, and he is only
getting some of his own back. I can afford to buy a
new one better than he: I shall never feel it in any
inconvenience to my purse. Going away unmolested
may stir in him some generous shame: by and by he
may even want to return the utensil he has no right to.
That nicely carved handle may tingle in his fingers as




48            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
he holds it over his head in some pelting shower, as
conscience-money has burned in the pocket of many a
robber, and been often sent back to this or that private
fund or public treasury.  Therefore, though I had
grown fond of the umbrella, that had shielded me
through many a beating storm or scorching sun all the
way from Massachusetts to the pine barrens of Florida,
did I not get the full worth of it in these reflections;
and, though I never should have another, was not my
revenge or atonement for its loss complete? Let the
thief reading understand I am paid!
Laugh at the trivial instance to illustrate a principle
verified on the grandest scale: only try the experiment! Put your trouble into your thought, trace its
relations, learn its object, discern its effect, and you
get rid of it, - it is no trouble at all: it is transmuted
into gold by the true philosopher's stone.  So the
Mohammedan mystic said, the religious soul is not
that which submits or bears patiently, but that which
is not afflicted, - does not recognize harm.  Perfect love casts out not only fear, but sorrow. No matter how great the grief may appear, — bereavement
of nearest companion or dearest child, -thinking of
its lesson, you become its master.  Said a noble
woman: " My anguish is mine: it is my fortune and
possession; I own it. You cannot have it: you may
make your million of gold on the street; but this is
my inalienable treasure."  It does not look so, more
than a dark rock in the mines of Nevada looks like
the silver pouring from it in the furnace heat. Yet
you can lose nothing but thought doubles its worth.
Yonder is the grave.  But there is a deeper grave




INDIVIDUALISM.                 49
within.  Its walls and fences are the boundaries of
your own heart. Nobody knows the way to the gate
of it but you. In it are buried no useless corses, but
old friendships and associations; sentiments once mutual betwixt you and others, that no longer exist, -
"Fond desires and hopes as vain."
The obsequies were noiseless, without shroud or coffin
or funeral procession; yet no crape ever worn, no
lament over the dead ever lifted, no hollow sound of
the gravel dropping from the sexton's spade, could
signify such suffering as went with the interments in
that invisible sepulchre.  Yet what man or woman
whose thought has not from  these terrible sacrifices
of the seed-corn of human joy reaped a harvest?
There are resurrections from' this other cemetery as
well as from the ashes in God's acre.
" There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking
makes it so," says Hamlet. Does not deeper thinking
make every thing good? Does one show ill-temper?
Do not let your ill-temper match his. The worst sea
is where two cross-waves meet.  Try to understand
it; grapple it with your thought; put it into the
refrigerator of your philosophy, not the powdermagazine of your passion, -  and you will gather
wisdom from it, as the naturalist does, not only fi'om
graceful forms, - skin or plumage, of beast or bird;
but fi-om wasps and serpents, in his cabinet or
musel um. If our associates zwilE be hard and unreason~able with us, will display bad qualities as well as
good, while rejoicing in the latter, of the former it is
quite just we should, with imperturbable attention,
4




50             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
make curious specimens, - as my young friend, traversing from Mount Desert to the Bluc Hills, does of
hornets and all manner of bugs.
Perhaps our companion cannot wholly help his
disposition more than the grovelling worm or stinging
insect can: let this thought make us patient.  Sin
itself this potent element can reduce.  Confess our
transgressions and cry for mercy, yet we cannot help
asking, Why are we constituted so peccable that not a
soul escapes?  Calvinism makes but one exception,
of the Son; Romanism adding the immaculate purity
of the Mother. " Shapen in iniquity," as David says,
born and begotten so that we cannot avoid excesses.and defects, what theory of such a fallible constitution
can show the Creator just?  Only this, - that sin and
remorse enter into his plan of education to make us
better and wiser, as Shakspeare says, " Best men
are moulded out of faults." What but Peter's denial,
Judas's betrayal, all the disciples' cowardice, made
them the humble, resolute men they became?  The
worst of us can turn his vices to account.. Sorely as
we have offended, we can do nothing fatal. Sheer
blasphemy and inhumanity in the old theology is the
doctrine of a doom to perdition and eternal woe for
personal or our ancestral delinquency. The bottomless pit were a blot on Deity, though but one soul
wallowed in it! Every thread of disobedience, every
fibre of depravity, God- weaves into his whip to
scourge us to virtue; and how many find their luck in
the offences by which they are lashed out of their
indifference. and sloth! It was said of a certain hypocrite, fancying he sported all the virtues in his behavior,




INDIVIDUALISM.               5 t
It would do him  good to be mortified by getting
drunk. Damned to all eternity for your:wrong-doing?
What a monster you make of God witht your conceit!
He does not reckon up the score of your departures
and short-comings to present you with the bill at the
judgment-day.  He carries no ugly pack of your
debts at his back. He has no memory: all is present
to him. He has no conscience: that implies violation
of law, which he is incapable of.  He accepts the
purity of your present mood. " Let by-gones be bygones," he says.  He will rake up no old quarrel.
"Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day
of salvation."   " Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be like snow.; though they be crimson, they
shall be whiter than wool." We pray to him: does
he not pray to us to turn to him? and may we not
well abridge our loud shouts and long liturgies to
listen while he so prays?  Evil has no existence to
him. He to whom the night shineth as the day, and
the darkness and the light are both alike, cannot look
on sin, and is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.
The measure of a man's character and elevation is his
ratio of evil and good.  If evil to him is large in
proportion to good, he is bad and low; if small, he is
good and high; if it vanishes, he is perfect like God.
Thought, once more, resolves deformity into beauty.
How  much lacks grace!  How  seldom  we see a
handsome person, with all the foils of ornament and
advantages of dress, at a party or on the street! To
the vast majority pclain is a mild term to apply. In
the mental-photograph album, to the question, " What
is your finest object in Nature?" one was uncivil




52             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
enough to write, "A beautiful woman, though I have
not seen one for years."  But the artist chooses for his
canvas not the faces commonly called beautiful, but
those in which his keener eye detects expressions of
sense and sensibility not revealed to a cursory glance;
and pretty people who have learned how pretty they
are, and take attitudes and prink and trim before the
glass, like the swans in the pond I saw at work on
their feathers, he scorns as subjects. An eye which
the genius of love makes penetrating will discover a
charm in every face. Not a breathing man or woman
but to insight will disclose more to attract than to
repel.  In the scarce-formed firame of the puniest
child, what a wonder of fitness beyond the strongest
engines and smoothest machines!  Physicians talk,
not so absurdly as we conceive, of beautiful cases of
disease; for what we call the laws of disorder manifest the working of supreme wisdom and equity.
Lastly, thought resolves seeming into being. What
tries us more than separation or pain is illusion. We
cannot grasp the universe.  What a kaleidoscope it is
of shifting colors, or camera of dissolving views! As
I daily reach my door-step, I contemplate the beauty
of the Brookline hills across the Back-Bay. I try a
hundred times to seize and analyze the spell. It draws
me back to gaze and muse, while the children stop
their play to survey and smile at me as my hand
lingers on the knob, and lifts not the latch of the door.
I toil to take up the enchantment, and carry it away
with me in my mind. But it baffles me: I cannot
hold or tell what it is.
A woman plays to me on her piano. The strings




INDIVIDUALISM.                 53
are so many tongues to tell me more of her experience
than she would venture on with her tongue to do. I
read or hear between the lines of sounding keys.  I
spell out trouble and.triumph in the tunes. The ivory
and ebony under her fingers speak of dark and bright
experiences, of struggles with narrow circumstances,
mixed with emotions of religious ecstasy.  Her state
of mind is a problem I cannot solve. Does her condition prove human life the lot of justice, or gibe of fate?
A young girl sees the prospect open before her of all
that is meant by wedded joy, and a long line of posterity flowing from her unspotted blood; when, from
his covert, the spectre glides in and dashes to the
ground the cup just touching her lips. Was this bird
of paradise made to be wounded, her bright wings
ruffled, and every nerve tortured and torn? We hear
of the mirage in the desert cheating the parched traveller's eyes with the empty image of water to slake his
thirst.  This mirage of human life, tantalizing the
soul ready to drink the happiness it craves and is constituted for, is the mockery. Not gall, like that offered
to Jesus, is bitter: but the seeming of what we cannot
realize; and the old theology is lavish of gloomy fancies to paint the balking of desire: —
"This world is but a fleeting show,
For man's illusion given."
" Each pleasure hath its poison too,
And every sweet a snare."
So it points to another world for reality, and counts
apples of Sodom all the apparent hopes and deceitful
satisfactions of this; as if we could trust the note pay



54             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
able at a future time of one giving no evidence he is
in funds now. Put aside, postponed, fobbed off in our
vain expectations, writes one, with a grim comfort we
anticipate death as something that will not dodge.
But we want to touch bottom and feel something solid
before.  If we can catch nothing substantial here,
what ground for supposing we shall hereafter?  The
Oriental writers dilate on this illusory character of all
terrestrial experience; and what but this does Solomon
the great king intend, when, after describing the bursting of all the magnificent preparations he had blown
up for his delight, he puts, like a placard on the rock,
this stern brand on the universe: " Vanity of vanities,
all is vanity." Who that looks on the dance of blood
and death performed by that most gay and wretched
of nations, that took for its' aim glory, and its name
Thze beaultful Graence, yet tears down the monuments
of its own fame, but must read a new commentary on
the old text? Shall we look to the tnen of physical
science, the positive philosophers, for the relief from
this phantom inspired sages fail to afford? No, they
answer: the reality of any thing we cannot reach. Only
phenomena, the visible, ever-changing accidents of
matter, can-we know and arrange in order under law.
God is unknowable: we can find nothing but it slips
from comprehension, however plain to sense.  " Is
there no balm in Gilead?" no remedy for this distress
of doubt? Yes: not in observation or regulation of
facts, but in thought.
"I think, therefore I am."  Descartes meant this
not fot argument, but to say, Being is equivalent to
thought, thought the indorsement of being; a proposi



INDIVIDUALISM.               55
tion we cannot forget to repeat. " I am," said the dying
minister, "therefore God, the Infinite Being, is."  But
H-e is, else how could I be? I am because he thought
of me. This is the solution of the riddle. What was
the beginning of all, said Dr. Clhanning  to me, but
a thought?  The thought of a family and home like
the world is love.
Here is the real, in your mind. You worship no
outward object or image, but your thought. He is the
thought of your thought. Beyond that you cannot go.
Do you shrink from that, as a human measure of Deity?
What other measure have you?  The seaman might
as well throw away his log because it cannot span the
Atlantic, or his deep sea line because it can touch bottom only here and there, Cyrus Field refuse to lay
the electric cable, or Herschel discard his diagrams
because there are stars in the unbounded blue,-as
we despise those faculties which are the only gauge we
have. They are good far as they go, - counterpart of
the creative soul.  No illusion is this vision in the
breast.  Every pure thought is a glimpse of God.
We have seen him, though the sight fade the next
moment for ever away. One beholding is pledge that
to behold him we are made. Somehow the spirit in
us, seeing and seen, ours and his, must be everlasting
spectator of the eternal spectacle. In a life which has
had its share of suffering, for one thing I am grateful,
-the power and habit of thought. What a refuge,
what an incentive, inspiration, and content! No drug,
or ether, or drowsy syrup like it to soothe anguish,
lull misfortune like a crying child to sleep, and heal
the stabs that are in every heart. Remembrance of




56             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
your Maker, your Origin and Portion, is oblivion ot
every wound of earthly affection an~d all the scars
of time.
Such is the plea for individuality. Private sincerity
is public welfare. A common Faith is a fortress we
agree to defend, and have to desert. How many creeds
once alive and swarming with champions resemble
the mouldy castles on the Danube and the Rhine!
But our thought is an impregnable retreat. No sanctuary or city of refuge, no den or cover for the hunted
beast, no tower the fugitive draws up his ladder into,
is so safe. Mr. Hawthorne is said to have prevented
interruption by a chamber without stairs. But in my
mind I am not interruptible. The peace of God not
only passes understanding, but also strife. Under censure or insult, or the tiger-spring of hatred and revenge,
the thinker, intangible, hhs meat to eat we know not
of, a feast of wine and honey, while mockers hold to
his lips the vinegar and gall. Hence his look of rapture you cannot understand. He has another lesson
than the, lecture you read him. Nobody, said one, ever
told me what I tell. Be no gossip of men, but God's
tale-bearer of news firom heaven, like the prophet who
imparts what he overhears; for our breast is God's
ante-chamber, and our instinct his door, whose handle
we can turn any moment out of care; and to the soul
as to the eagle he has furnished an eyrie beyond range
of earthly shot.
But thought is practical. Under whatever conditions, it at last must decide. It breeds charity by
emancipating firom individual bounds.  Unreflecting
parents expect from children as much love as they




INDIVIDUALISM.                57
give, forgetting that love descends; and they cannot
return to us, as we cannot to God, an equal love.
When they have children, and we are dead, out of the
mists of the grave, over the eternal horizon, will dawn
on them the first vision of our old regard. We talk
of justice to persons. We owe it to their thought.
Are you well disposed to me? - be fair to my thought,
greater than I, ruling and using me for its servant and
tool, which I stand for to live and die. It has right to
be respected, while I have no claim, but as representative of my constituent. I heard of an actor who had
an idea of Hamlet by which he was governed on the
stage, and of another altering his conception to suit
purchasers; and I heard of a preacher who had learned
to imitate the New York, Philadelphia, and Boston
pronunciation. But a true man never accommodates
to a meridian a doctrine that owns the globe. He has
not one opinion in his study or club, and another in
his desk. He has no policy, but is impolitic for his
thought. John Pierpont, being invited to a certain
pulpit, if he would consent not to handle exciting
themes, said, " No! gentlemen, not if you would give
me the salary of the Bishop of Durham!"  Unfaithfulness is selfish contrivance. Thought instantly shows
its folly; and it detects the quality of evil without
respect to the size of the act by which a weak judgment is confused, as if grand had an advantage over
petty larceny. A burglar carries off a few silks, utensils, or jewels; a pretended buyer secretes a bit of cloth
under her cloak; a pickpocket is found with your
currency in his hand; a small counterfeiter is caught;
a hungry woman steals meat from a stall, and is hauled




58             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
before the judge. But millions of money are conveyed
away by a Ring, and it is an "operation"! Trustproperty sweats, stock-jobbers strike for profits at stockowners' risk, the bulls and bears toss and pull.  Let
us ask pardon of the beasts. No creature that scares
you in the pasture, or hugs the traveller in California
gorges or polar ice, is so cruel. We say the Bank
suffers. But it is not alive. Granite walls, brick vaults,
mahogany counters, and pigeon-holes have no heart
or nerves, back to clothe or stomach to feed. They
suffer, whose dividends are daily bread, education of
children, cure of invalids. The widow suffers, whose
husband can no longer defend his home from landsharks, or sally forth to check financial moves against
his estate; and orphans suffer, who were advised as to
the best investment of their little means. Religion
suffers when Bible and prayer-book, sacrament and
sermon, control human reflection so little they cannot
hinder in the cultivated decorous classes transactions
that have no advantage but enormity over old plunder
on the London-surrounding highways, or Roman brigandage still lurking in the plains of Lombardy or
among the Southern spurs of the Alps. Custom and
ceremony, civil and ecclesiastical, go on: public sentiinent is slow to improve, and the condemners are the
committers of crime. But private thought proclaims
the need of a sense of God not only in the temple and
at the Lord's table, through stately ordinance, sweet incense, and sonorous intonation, - but in the merchant's
counting-room  and lawyer's office, on the judge's
bench.and at the brokers' board. When loss and
death ensue from mismanagement, and directors are




INDIVIDUALISM.                59
called to account, they feel offended and hurt. But
what is the use of them if they do not direct, more
than does the ship's figure-head or the painted form
with the printed Dirigo on a shield?  Stop your dispute how the wood and velvet shrine shall be illuminated. Take up your candles, carry them forth from
every altar, and set them  in the courts of Mlammon,
till all its dusky corners are lighted, and every unrighteous plot exposed. A lamp burning in a store is
greater safeguard than a lock. "I want more light
about the future," said my friend. We want it in all
the purlieus of trade. Certain Italian thieves are said
to have their fingers lengthened by the daily habit of
searching the persons of their victims. There are long
fingers nearer home! Let us trust business is not so
rotten, or greed so insane, as to make the revelation of
iniquity a nine days' wonder, but that these greater
robbers than the Alexander, whom the small thief he
would punish claimed fellowship with, may receive
their due.
Deeper private thinking alone can heal social dissembling. Reporting some interview, you say, I was
on my good behavior and did it nicely. Not on your
good behavior when the company went?  You could
curry favor, and let criticism crouch like a hushed
dog, but change your face of compliment as your
visitor turned the corner. The man whose tribunal is
his thought is on good behavior when he is alone,
and as careful of his designs as his words. His courthouse is not the granite building. He stands at a bar
whose rail is unseen.  He knows nothing of great
occasions and small. He cares no more to act than




60             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
to endure, to speak than to be dumb. Duty has no
inequality. The spirit-level varies not for a special
effort, more than mountains ruffle the huge sphere
they are strewn on like sand. Pulpits and platforms
sink; chambers of pain and poverty rise. No rush
of events and affairs can unpoise the soul whose collect
is conscious truth. In the whirlpool is a centre the
nad waters cannot shake.
In an age of corporate agency, whose consolidated
wealth challenges comparison with the exchequer of
the State, and makes legislatures its tools, of nothing
is tile need so sore as independent testimony of the
moral sense. It is no preposterous fancy, that for
lack of vision the people perish. Let Argus with all
his eyes come back, and permit no plan or proceeding.
to escape scrutiny. Away with darkness! If secret
societies continue for harmless ceremony, to gratify a
love of mystery, or for mutual supply to the impoverished from  brotherly hands, let us have no Freemasons or Odd Fellows of another sort to appropriate
of the common riches more than their share. Let the
manifold Rings that form and contract like anacondas
in their destructive strength, to centralize power and
wealth in a few, expand by ventilation till they burst!
One prerogative dignifies the human race, the freedom
of thought, at whose assizes every practice must stand.
In much we are excelled by the animals. The crane
not only walks like me, but swims and flies as I
cannot. But I can dive deeper, wade where it cannot
follow, and soar higher. Without moving a muscle,
the mind traverses Nature and has ascension without
death.




III.
TRANSCENDENTALISM.
THE line of a planet is a compromise between two
forces, a resultant which students work out on
the slate; and social progress has for its factors the old
institution and the new idea, from whose struggle the
race shoots ahead, - one represented by the prophet,
the other administered by the priest. Mankind depends on what it has hived and what it earns. Moral
capital is no metaphor. Knowledge and virtue accumulate as well as silver and gold, and are the highest
kind of real and personal estate, without which no
business in politics or philanthropy could be done.
How sad, said a foreigner, to think all the coined
money in the United States could not pay the national
debt! Yes, answered a Yankee; and to think, if the
harvest failed all over the world for a year, all nations
would starve! Labor is the only source of wealth,
cries the new party.  But manual is not the only,
hardest, or best labor. If we grew and applied no
fresh ideas, all the words of prophets, biographies of
saints, and traditions of Palestine would not stay our
hunger, mnore than the granaries of Egypt or last year's
load in store and barn. With all respect to those who




62             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
run the machine, a dearer honor belongs to such as
supply the motive-power. Free and wild speculation,
as well as custom and ordinance, has its place. Right
as Leroux may be in the doctrine of human solidarity,
or the advance of the species in column, the particles
change in this huge body, as the ranks of an army in
the field are depleted and filled up; and civil or ecclesiastical continuity is no mechanical necessity, but that
divine order we must put our own heart and will into,
and which the boldest thinker or righteous iconoclast
is no less part of than any bishop or sheriff, - nay, is
leader of the van. NVature proceeds not by leapis, was
the old Latin phrase. But closer scrutiny shows she
does. There is not only expansion, but eruption, —
volcano and earthquake; and, in minuter spaces, signs
of sudden action, as though the will of God were
no figure of speech.  Darwin and Spencer have to
modify the doctrines of evolution and development
to accommodate facts of rapid change into new orders
observed by eyes sharp as their own. There is, said
my friend, a track we must keep to in grooves of fate.
But there is many a place where Nature switches off,
and takes a new departure. Tlie free-thinker long
ago was said to have come to where was no more
road. But his road has no end; and he has advanced
ever since, and still keeps on. The traveller in Switzerland, looking fiom  his carriage, beholds his path
blocked at a hillside or plunging into a lake, and for
the moment imagines in that direction is no further
step. But, arriving at the point, he finds the beaten
way winding round the mountain's spur into the rarest
beauty of its course; and the mind that goes on with



TRANSCENDENTALISM.              03
out terror comes to the reward of truth. Where will
they stop? is the inquiry respecting the critics of established methods; and the answer is, Nowhere. M.
Coquerel tells us he was scolded by the French
authorities for treating social questions in his paper;
and, asking what was meant by social questions, was
told, Thizfngs that are! Yet not a thing but must
be unsettled in favor of something better, though the
reason of the nickname 5Transcendentalist was, that
whoever did this transcended all practical stability.
Doubtless he who inhabits the region of pure thought
becomes too impatient of existing modes. The air of
the church is close and smoky, said one returning from
a long sojourn in the country. Yes, I answered: to
a person used to the whole atmosphere God makes
so big that everybody may have enough, every room,
however ventilated, will seem confined. But as we
must be content to breathe in houses and temples, and
shops and court-rooms, so we must live and. morally
respire in such establishment of Church and State as
the common sense and conscience have been able to
secure, enlarging and improving it as we can. The
reformer is arraigned as destructive and traitor, accused
of breaking the church-windows from the inside, and
hewing down the pillars of the pulpit in which he
stands.  But if the windows are shut too tight to
open, or stained with superstitious emblems, and if
the sinking pulpit let him down to the level floor
where his congregation sits, there may be a blessing
from his axe and his stones. There is no church in
Christendom where this question, whether some of the
keepers are not betrayers of the citadel, does not arise.




64              RADICAL PROBLEMS.
What free Inan in any communion is not charged with
having broken his pledge, often unawares, as the excellent Deacon Grant with some horror declared hie
had done, with the first mouthful of brandied mincepie which his hostess had prepared. To think at all
is violation of promise, in principle if not in fact, by
marring some actual article of faith. How we queried
whether those noble English Essayists ought to stay
on the theological premises they took such liberty to
alter and extend! The papacy in Rome and every
bishopric in America are shaken with the same issue
of moral casuistry. Universalism  and Unitarianism
have expelled from their interior offenders they were
griped by, with intolerable pain; and what it is to be
a true Radical I have heard the banished discuss with
each other, as did the Southern seceders from the
Union, albeit they have no home from which to drive
the disloyal out. The interpreter and originator must
quarrel, and organization be at odds with the unorganized or unorganizable: meantime, for benefit as
for peace, it is well to have some estimate of the office
of the seer, and the value of his addition to the common
stock.
The crisis comes unawares. A new vision reforms
all our knowledge, as the astronomer catches a planet
in the threads on his glass and the solar system is
readjusted. The world of shifting opinion hangs on
a hair. How little it was thought, forty years ago,
that a Boston clergyman's difficulty with his people
about the way to administer the Lord's Supper would
be the string let into the loose public sentiment to
cause a new crystallization. I remember the horror




TRANSCENDENTALISM.              65
with which a fellow-student announced to me the
unbearable criticism of the ancient rite, and my wonder
at anybody's being so much moved. But forms hold
fast after the ideas have changed which were their
source and support, as shells and husks are no less
tough and hard when the kernel and substance are
gone. So how to eat the bread and drink the wine,
or commune without eating or drinking, was another
question added to the many which have made the
ordinance a very volcano of controversy, ever ready
for fresh overflow; though the Oriental custom seemed
not much suited to the Western mind. The young
minister was told privately to alter the style of the
symbol as he judged right, but he doubted his fitness
for such reconstruction; and the discussion sufficed
to separate sworn friends and unseat a genius soaring
like Pha6ton, whose freedom with an outward observance was his mishandling the reins of the Sun. It had
come to pass that, when men spoke of the elements,
not truth or feeling, but the oven and vintage, were
meant. In taking up, later, the line of this ceremony
between church and congregation, where by no power
it could be restored, we felt the force of this prejudice
threatening an equally violent result.
The personal distress of all dislocation doubtless
attended that severing of the clerical tie.  But the
portent was of new growth. There are moral pains
of birth and struggle for life.  The man was not
important to the Church till he left it to become such
a figure.as to make his judges the world's benefactors.
Now he stood for a thought.  His divorce from
preaching allowed marriage with an idea, till then
5




66              RADICAL PROBLEMS.
coyly courted, for an offspring of the best poetry and
philosophy of the age. A shrewd suspicion of German inoculation flung at the movement the word
Trcanscendental, for a disgrace, which, as of all
names of good and odious things, turned to fame.
In truth, the out-break was nothing new under the
sun. The fount of the Nile is discovered, but not of'
this spiritual Arethusa. Whoever was of that club
meeting in Concord and Boston must recall the
fellowship so dear, the delight as of another revelation, the Quaker peace, with but a dream of seeds of
revolution dropping through the quiet air. Edward
Everett likened the. doctrine to Virgil's thunderbolt,
three parts empty air. Was it wind the new husbandmen sowed? The whirlwind that was reaped was
a boon. Yet most men did not dread, but laughed
at the phenomenon as but moonshine or mirage.
As well tell Columbus it was no new world he had
reached when heaved in view the outlying island, one
of a flock which now beat at our windows in the political storm. Previous explorers' had sailed into the
same latitudes of thought. The startling doctrine of
the soul's sufficiency was no upstart or bastard, but
a lawful line of ancient origin, in divers branches,
Hebrew- and Greek, - going back to Plato and Abraham, Lot and Seth, groves of Academus and Garden
of Eden, before Bibles were. It was revived in the
best words of Jesus and John and Paul. English
translators dipped their buckets for it into the wisdom
of the East.  The Hindoo found himself a Yankee
with no question of caste. The Christian Scriptures
were paralleled from books of strange names in other




TRANSCENDENTALISM.               67
tongues. The spring of wonder burst up in Teutonic
soil, the same living water as in Indian bottles or
Jewish jars. It filtered into the clear British sense.
With astonishing virility the spiritual theory was
propagated by Carlyle; and as visionary a mystic
as ever wandered on the banks of the Ganges appeared in William Blake. Orthodoxy became ideal
with Coleridge's "' Aids to Reflection; " Wordsworth
put the same meaning into his odes, and Cousin
arranged it in philosophic terms. Yet when it was
proclaimed in its legitimate conclusions in the sanctuary of Liberal Christianity, it was greeted with a
shriek, as though Cudworth or Berkeley or Spinoza
had never lived. Religion, under a show of progress,
had declined, In too much logic, expression became
the ebb of faith, till it reached low-water mark.
Sectarian controversy brought down Trinitarian and
Unitarian alike to the flats of a dry and barren doctrinality; and the high divine converse with which
Puritan and Pilgrim began the Commonwealth gave
place to a Babel of words. What splitting of particles,
as described by Gibbon in the former age; what ransacking of prophecies, what dispute of the authority
of this and that passage, what weighing of jots and
tittles in diamond scales; instead of the grand war
of ideas, what petty battles of texts! Andover and
Cambridge responded to each other with paper popguns, not with the noise of His water-spouts. Into
this squabble the angel blew his trumpet to summon
to the privilege of direct communication with the
Infinite; none so much surprised as the trumpeter
at the ague-fit of anger and grief that ensued. He




68               RADICAL PROBLEMS.
felt in order, without break or fault in the natural
evolution.   He  had  occasion  to  avenge  his rejected sentiment in an address to the Graduating
Class in the Cambridge Divinity School, which, like
the last whirl of sticks of the savage's tinder-box,
first struck fire. But what a dish to set before the
King, that performance! After the short breathings
of the gentle prayer, which had in it no pronouns,
and one said was no prayer at'all, came the textless
discourse, preserved for ever in its sweet pungency,
while all the replies to it are forgot. It was no hornet
or drone lighting on us, but the sting of a honey-bee
guarding for us our own luxury. It was the return
of the Holy Ghost with voice, not recognized among
manifold opposing echoes so long listened to in its
stead.  But no rude, unwarrantable assault could
have begot such fear as that golden-mouthed speech.
It meant business, and laid out a stint of work. The
dismissed preacher had not been hushed. If he could
not have the pulpit's velvet cushion, he would take
the Lyceum's pine desk; and what a power lie made
the Lecture, is it not to be written in our chronicles?
In his farewell sermon, in Hanover Street, he had
said there were functions of the ministerial office he
should rejoice to discharge wherever he might exist.
For these his change of situation was a help. As
the painter stands offl friom the canvas to mark the
accuracy of his drawing, this man's absence from
his chosen calling gave distance for a true perspective, while he was doubly impressionable to compare another picture with the ecclesiastical.  He had
the advantage of a smooth temper.  Perfect health




TRANSCENDENTALISM.              69
stood bondsman for his equanimity, and the cool flesh
of a child was type of his unfevered mind. He never
rested and was never restless; his figure, the rifleman's statue, - not stirring till the fatal shot.  HIe
means something in every sketch, it was said of Hunt;
and God filled this word-painter with intention, his
own or the Spirit's you could not tell. They were the
same. But, called to defend what he had said, he
could give no account but his order -to think. The
responsibility was none of his. So thought -Francis
Bacon was authority enough for that philosopher's
page; and this man was under command.  His
thought was not in his hands: he was in the hands
of his thought. Like all who wear not their heart
in their sleeve, put on no robe of enthusiasm, and
warm their audience with no stove of animal heat,
he was charged with being cold.  The critics did
not look close enough.  They could not feel the
spiritual flame nor appreciate that baptism of fire the
Baptist foretold: which to the senses is a cool combustion. A warm temperament would have disqualified him for his task.  Temperance was his star.
After so much vapor we wanted dry light. Fondness
for persons runs into idolatry of institutions, and
checks audacious words.  Only his. dispassionate,
if not unimpassioned disposition could deal purely
with his theme.  It did not occur to him  he was
going to hurt anybody's feelings: no vision or prophecy had ever hurt his.  A full-grown superstition
standing in the way, how but by undervaluation of
the past, - as memory, habit, or tradition, - could he
throw his whole weight into his axe at the root of




70             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
the tree?  When, his friend said, "' Here are my facts,
I cannot give up them," 1" Here are my ideas," was his
reply. The facts were bad. He wanted them to be
better: as Dr. Hedge, being told the facts were against
him  and were stubborn things, answered, So matc/
hze woyrse for,he facts. What shall be said to reports
of the telescope pointed to sky or sea?  WVe can but
repeat them, as the captain below repeats the figures
the mate on deck calls out to him firom his quadrant
lifted to the sun. -Here was a finer glass turning to
the heaven of truth over the sea of time; and the
observer's sentence was translation of his sight. Interrogated, he could but recite what he had already
said.  When John Marshall's party-friends begged
to know why he persisted in refusing to answer
Albert Gallatin's speech, he at last said, Because
it is unanswerable.  So those who complained of
and rejected could get no rejoinder to this lesson.
He compelled his critics to become his quoters. Out
of what root did blossoms of such genuine beauty
and fragrance foil the cut-paper flowers of the creeds?
The Divine Immediacy with man!  One day, before
a keen eye, water rising to its own level in a tube
made a ruin of the Roman aqueducts. So it was
shown the river of God is not confined to Jewish
conduits.  We must have nearer access to it than
that long old file of Hebrew  Kings, Judges, and
Prophets, magnificent as are their monumental words
and refreshing as is the flood they convey.
This seer's originality armed itself with a new style.
The surprising fitness of trite terms in his use was a
resurrection of the dictionary. The silence of a sage




TRANSCENDENTALISM.               I
whets our eagerness to hear; and this man's advantage
was his superiority to ambition, his willingness to be
still, his indifference whether he used his eye or ear,
his avoidance of eloquence,  which Dr. Johnson calls
exaggeration, - and preference of low to high-sounding
words, like the modest artist who gives the whole
character of an object in neutral tints or a charcoal
sketch. WVhy be forward or loquacious? Truth will
find its own way and organ, and make dumb Moses
more persuasive than rhetorical and mellifluous Aaron.
It was not the only possible mood, perhaps not the
highest manner; but it was his, and'apt to the time.
There came no prophet's burden or scream, but the
voice of one careless of the fate of his person or proposition: trusting truth to the air and allowing it time
to sinkl into the ear, not anxious to multiply himself,
but to condense his message. He knew no method
could avail but that of his own constitution. Incapable
of feeling personal outrage or oppression, in good condition, content with the universe, as well fed as any of
the children at the table, delicate in his taste, every
pore informing him who was coming, and closing at
rude approach, and every nerve an alarm-bell at any
catechism, - neither seeking an audience nor itching
to hear himself talk, he was quite unfit for an agitator
or ecclesiastical demagogue.  Yet his individuality
kept him out of any class. lie stood for humanity,
and was one of the people. So his banishment from
the Church on a technical ground and punctilio of form
was as blessed ostracism as Dante's exile from Florence. Those going without the camp bearing some
reproach are always redeemers. Inside the heavens




72             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
are but half seen.  That imagination which is eye
and atmosphere is hindered by walls. A fence fences
out more than it fences in. I must be free as an Indian,
he said; for I want more liberty than that with which
Christ has made me free.
These were intrusive allusions but that my topic must
be treated with circumstantial illustration.  A  hero
he will not be of his own tale. This story should be
told, before all cognizant of the particulars pass from
the stage, to vindicate the transcendental position as no
affront to history, but protest against a mortgage of
the future. It has been described as a transitory affair,
like a meteor that shoots and explodes, or a plant without product or healthy root. But, standing guard for
progress does not disown the past. Sceptic no more
than Orthodox cuts off from his antecedents. Our
ancestors had not only their solutions, but their questions too. They had sailed for new  discovery, and
swung uneasy at their moorings, with doubts suppressed
by their situation or unripe for expression, - an inheritance for their sons, and coming to a head in brains
born of their own. All our present growth was in
their soil. The oak forest, that springs up after the
pine is burnt or cleared away, pre-existed as shrubs or
germs, for a while overgrown and kept down. Always
in generous doubts nobler convictions fasten and thrive.
The finest trees on the grounds where I ramble have
forced their way through the clefts of the rocks.
Paul was all the time in Saul. With his pains to prove
his untainted lineage, did it ever occur to him that not
the contradiction but cause of his heresy lay in the
religious purity of his blood? Gamaliel, be sure, had




TRANSCENDENTALISM.               73
his queries, however he managed for himself and his
pupils, like many a preacher and Sunday-school
teacher, to subdue them for the time.  Dr. Beecher,
accusing some members of the Massachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers of departing from
the faith of the Fathers, was asked by Dr. Lowell if
there were any members who adhered to the faith,
and could only cough out, Yes, for substaznce! IIe
also in an ordination-sermon hurled Paul's anathema at
the Unitarians as preachers of another gospel, and
bade them  depart and not shoot their poisoned arrows behind.  The Unitarians had their pay when
Dr. Beecher was arraigned as a heretic before the
Presbyterian synod.  But were the Unitarians rebellious or degenerate children of their theological sires?
No: they maintained the Pilgrim line, were Puritans
of the nineteenth century, striking for freedom to
worship God.
" Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!"
Transcendentalism did not foul its nest, or, as is
continually charged, despise its mother; but unfolded
the faith implied in every act of the settlers of the land.
It cast off naught precious in the old belief; but
was a new vessel, a better Mayflower for the Truth's
escape fiom her foes.  It set us all afloat; but that
may be better than to be all ashore. A church once
floated off to Nova Scotia fiom the British in Boston,
and still lives. The essence of faith is advance. Like
a political constitution, it provides for its own amendment.
In the moving on of mankind, the way-marks differ




74             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
at each turn of the road. It is the general direction we
must look at, like a ship that tacks, or carriage winding round the hill. WTould we repeat our Fathers' case,
the items of their life?  That were false imitation,
mimicry, a poor copy of those great masters. The
living likeness is to apply their principles to our condition. One star differs fromn another, but they all go
one way. One boulder has not its neighbor's weight
or size, but every scratch on the primitive rock follows
the same line of the compass. The icebergs show
every sort of shape and similitude, yet all drift to the
South. Our reformers square not their theories to
those of any former age, yet steadily with every step
near the goal of the same millennium.  Like the
angel that came down to trouble the pool at certain
seasons, this visitation of the Spirit is periodical. One
said its return was like that of the seventeen-years
locust.  But it always betokens conflict.  Byron
describes the cannon-roar that broke in on the ballroom at Belgium's capital as mistaken for thunder or
rattling of a car along the stony street; but volley
after volley came to prove its nature: and every stroke
of religious genius claims kith and kin with prior
ones, though fifty generations lie between.  At the
gates of hell, Sin convicts Satan as her offspring; and
all beneficence is born of goodness. The intellectual
regenerator is never heady, but calm  as he is warm.
He is careful as a surveyor of his spirit-level. Of
the re-creator none could tell if his temper were flame
or phlegm. He struck no attitude, stood on no stage,
had looked in no glass, was no oratoric gymnast, never
strained nor sweat, rolled his kerchief in his hand, or




TRANSCENDENTALISM.               75
wiped emotion from his brow, but had laid the robes
aside and sang without singing-garlands. He was poet,
but not laureate. His leaves were loose: he found them
with difficulty; and his only noticeable gesture was an
emphatic look, which a famous lawyer, who thought it
worth the entrance-fee, said was directed at nothing.
But it indicated that the speaker's subject had in his
ecstasy become an object of sight. He was of the
family of prophets who first are, then see, and then
say, -that being the order. In the old controversy,
who were the circumcision and Abraham's children,
Jesus decides for the patriarch's spirit against his
blood; and what bomb-proof occupant of an accredited
church could vie with this teacher of Christianity without its name?  It signified execution when into the
Spirit's hands was put this imaginative tool, polished
with courtesy and taking from good humor the finest
edge.  The least acidity eats into the steel; but the
keenness of rebuke is its tenderness.
Yet this genius was too high and subtile for popular
effect. A university of education, doing more for
scholars than any college, it needed the supplement
of talent to spread its inspiration into the common
school; and that came in the stalwart figure - like
a second Luther - of Theodore Parker.  He made
no feast for a few of nightingales' tongues, but a board
with bread for millions. He was not a seer, but an
officer, -the deputy-sheriff of ideas.  Never lived
man more strong and faithful to execute the writ.
Piety and philanthropy were as the coming and going
of his breath. Like an old Hebrew, he turned every
piece of paper to see if the name of God were on it;




76             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
and all his study went into act.  He suffered no
volume of truth to rest with uncut leaves on the shelf,
no scrap of information to be thrown into the wastebasket.  There were those well enough pleased to
have the new  speculations remain mental exercises,
and let institutions alone. Parker tore down the partition of esoteric and exoteric as the veil of the temple
was rent in twain. He could not conceive of a scholar
keeping a bit of his learning from the people to himself. He bitterly denounced the policy of doling out
wisdom as the folk were thought able to bear it. All
the poetry he undertook to turn illto prose, as Wendell
Phillips wanted Lincoln's proclamation, in Georgia,
in spurs and boots. Whatever could be truly said or
sung, with him must be done. Radical doctrine, say's
my Orthodox friend, is not, practical: it goes to pieces
in North Street. In Parker's hands every thing the
doctrine was opposed to went to pieces, - as Schiller
says of the cannon-ball shattering all in its way that
it may shatter its mark. Call the new views mist?
He condensed them into a thunder-bolt. Call them
nebulous? He showed they were world-stuff. Slavery,
intemperance, vice, criminal classes, perishing classes,
no cause or human condition but he took for his province.  Overladen with. social work in Boston, he
carried his crusade against superstition and iniquity
into every corner of the land. Soft-hearted, he made
his sensibilities the furnace in which to forge his
weapons, beside the transcendental writings which
were his Springfield armory.  Many friendly ties
broke under his heresy. He seemed to have gone to
the funeral of his affections, till he lost all bias of




TRANSCENDENTALISM.               77
sentiment, and dealt justice without extraneous considerations. He disowned the maxim that scorn and
anger were instruments unfit to be used. Only bad
men had no right to them! Whose contempt should
be so great, whose wrath so terrible, as that of the
good against the ungodly and all their works? He
had no private malice, bore no grudge against the
individuals he publicly scored; but he carried his antipathies of principle so far as to be styled an intellectual ruffian. Calling of names in meeting, where
the assailed cannot answer, appears to them an unfair
advantage, and stirs ill blood. To impeach the motives serves less than to argue the case. But though
his sarcasm was resented and complained of, it was
the base custom or false doctrine the holders had
identified  themselves with which felt his severity.
In that his arrows stuck.  Dr. Channing said the
slaveholder was to him an abstraction: it was the
system  of slavery he discussed.  Mr. Garrison answered, Is the slaveholder an abstraction to the slave?
To Parker, sin was a man. Living in Luther's time,
he would have believed in and thrown his inkstand at
the devil. Incarnate evil he condemned, and would
make way with that Dagon, planting his shoulders
like another Samson at the pillars of Gaza. "- Stick
or stone, whatever comes to hand," says Virgil, " the
mob will throw." His only choice among means of offence was of the most effective, thinking no such rights
of war as Grotius describes belonged to wrong-doers,
in the conflict of words. For the tyrant or traitor he
had wrath, and freely drew for his portrait a copy of
Herod or Iscariot; for the bibliolater, ridicule, —but




7s             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
his anger or irony, like the Indian bullet that cleaves
the buffalo and pursues its way, went through the
embodiment to the essence of mischief in society and
the soul. Had the Calvinist some artificial condition
of redemption?  He laughed at it as like a red string
tied round the little finger for an amulet or charm.
He was not revealer, but administrator, of a new
testament; and Cobden or Cobbett, Webster or Lincoln, did not use a more resistless plainness of speech.
He had occasion. Religion had deceased into tenet,
like the coral insect into the coral bed. Men were at
ease in Zion: -liturgy had become lethargy. As the
keeper stirs the sleepy lion with his pole, or the electrician passes a spark through the torpid frame, or the
guide shakes and rouses the traveller sinking to deathly
slumber in the snow, he made no scruple of roughly
disturbing the more fatal repose of the elect in their
assurance of heaven, while leaving their brethren to
perish of oppression on earth. When the fugitive was
in his house, this new Templar added cocked pistols on
his pillow to his grandfather's rusty gun at the door,
and was ready with word or blow. He had a relish for
irony and enjoyed the fray. When one said to him,
"You have not your ancestor's military bent," "' Have
I not?" he grimly replied. His brain was a masked
battery ever ready to be unlimbered.  As public
questions degenerate into private disputes, he sometimles descended into personalities and details which
he should have looked down on from the sun. But
truth took a step forward in his word.
Yet Liberal Christians, already persecuted as extremists, not only refused to follow, but hesitated to




TRANSCENDENTALISM.              79
own his freedom  of thought.  They had gone far
enough. It was time to stop. Channing was the last
result of reason. An inch more was the jumping-off
place.  Parker had assailed what Channing stoutly
defended, -the supernatural; and the miracles of
the New if not of the Old Testament were now the
citadel whose defence alone prevented the surrender
of Christianity.  Belief in them was made the test.
Norton maintained the miraculous as the essence of religion. Channing was disappointed in Parker because
he declared it unessential, if not untrue; but Parker
has prevailed, if not in refuting or setting aside, yet
in displacing it as the touchstone.  Moreover, he
questioned any verbal gospel. The leading scholars
had with much trouble purged the text. He denied
the authority of the text, however pure. He removed
every outward landmark, and planted the boundaries
in the soul. WVhat we shrank from was the logical
conclusion.  Yet the basis the Unitarian majority
still repose in is the history, the prophet, not the
human mind. That is not trusted as a final organ of
truth. Channing is leaned on as the pillar of this
Scripture position, and it will by many be held sacrilege to doubt his claims as a seer.  His writings,
however, hold not with thinkers their place. They
defy not the tooth of time. His genius was for reflection and sentiment rather than insight.  Eloquence
was his peculiar mark. Who that was young when
he was in nis prime can forget the matchless simplicity and fervor of his speech, - that voice of melody
so singular, and resonance one could not credit from
the slender chest, audible to the vast congregation




80             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
because of the might of interior whispers it reverberated; not a syllable lost because every one was saturated with spirit, and carrying the hearer to heaven
on that unique rising inflection which, though a generation has passed, must still ring in every ear on
which it once fell? Yet, in the record on the cold
page, eloquence takes up too much room. We tire,
if we read for information or new direction, of the
long climacteric roll. As the world quickens its speed,
we dislike preface: we want pith, and praise orators
like the English who give us figures of arithmetic
rather than rhetoric, and come to the point. Emerson,
in the region of intellect, meets this demand. He sees
too clearly and too much to dilate with emotion or
expand his phrase. If his style for a moment takes
on a fine sound, he resists temptation, checks the
impulse.  Immensity of meaning constrains him  to
study economy of words. Channing called him poet,
but no philosopher.  But there is no distinction of
poetry from truth. Only verse-wrights deal with the
unreal. Shakspeare is as prudent as Bacon, as judicious as Hooker, as metaphysical as Kant. Emerson
reaches the supreme height, if not of Mont Blanc, yet
one of the aigzuilles.
As a philanthropist, Channing was sublime; but
truth is the highest philanthropy, and whoever describes a circle about yours exceeds you as benefactor.
To behold and declare how things stand in the universe, - to widen a man's horizon, - is a greater
mercy than to feed or clothe.  A  good feeling, a
humane theory, does not suffice.  Conscious benevolence is a lower motive than Christ's martyrdom for




TRANSCENDENTALISM.                8!
the truth. Channing's feeble health and solitary life
separated him fi'om the race his ideal goodness would
bless. He spoke as an apostle, hardly of the same
blood with those who heard, discoursed downward
firom his desk, distanced the laboring men he talked to,
held at arm's length the masses for whom he professed
his interest and in whom he felt a serious concern.
He was not in direct fellowship. He had views rather
than vision. He used a reflecting telescope, not the
naked eye.  Conversing with him, one felt not so
much like a fellow-creature as part of the instrument
he was at work with to find and catalogue the celestial
facts.  He respected another's mind as an explorer
does his companion for his help in the expedition.
Something not organic, but derivative, characterizes
his instructions. " A potted Plato" one called him.
Unsurpassably lofty in feeling and aim, his page is so
deficient in close reason or imagination one-half the
sentences can be omitted with no disturbance of the
method or loss of sense. Not for the sake of odious
comparison, but of a true leadership, I would lift the
standard on which testimony is blazoned in laiger letters than any scheme even of charity. To one whose
sermons had disturbed his audience it was said, "I Why
not suit and time your matter better to those in your
charge? I suppose you preach to do good?" " No,"
he answered: "I do not.  I preach to testify. Let
me be true. God will see to the good, which he alone
is and does."  The great modern character is the
reporter, who keeps the world of society and politics
in motion. But he is tool and servant of another head —
reporter of thought, of an interviewer of conscience,
6




82             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
of a watcher of that sky Coleridge looked at when he
said,'s Only after celestial observations can terrestrial
charts be constructed."   t will make you see stars,
says the coarse worldly proverb, of any sudden shock.
But these spiritual stars are no unsubstantial sparkles
of a stunned brain. The eye that saw them can turn the
other way, and in " English Traits " and " Representative Mlen" prove as keen in the earthly direction as in
the heavenly. It is all in the eye, whose lenses no
surveyor's theodolite can match. He who has sight
need not attack another or defend himself.  This
ocular or binocular arm makes a new style of warfare,
like that introduced into the field.  Cmasar led his
troops. Napoleon figures in a cocked hat, and Jackson on his horse.  In the holy bard's imagery, the
Most High is made to copy human warriors, gird his
sword on his thigh, and ride prosperously to battle.
But here is a war most wonderful in history, fought
by an invisible man called M6ltke, without musket,
spear, or coat of mail, - only map and pencil; and a
million of men stand ready to follow where he draws.
It is a ghostly conflict, rehearsed on the stage of fancy:
the awful engines play harmless as a little model in
the secret chambers of the brain, before hosts. fall
dead and fortresses capitulate, and civil populations, a
hundred-fold more than the beleaguering army, surrender and sue for peace, and the old boundaries
of nations are changed. Not by unreasoning passion
are social victories won.  Said Ichabod Nichols, when
one talked of using strong words, "' Put your strength
into your reasons."  Poisoning of wells, Southern proposals to import plague into the North, assassination,




TRANSCENDENTALISM.               83
and starvation do not carry the day. The Communist throws petroleum to fire the city, pulls down the
Column, tears up coffins and murders priests; but
brings not in the free, equal, and fraternal reign. In
America or France such methods make the gentler
sex the worse.  Light is better than lightning; and
lightning is the best social and civil help when tamed
to run soft and obedient on an errand. The great
reformer is the discerner, —
"Who revolutions works without a murmur,
Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies."
Transcendentalism relies on those ideas in the mind
which are laws in the life. Pantheism is said to sink
man and nature in God, Materialism  to sink God
and man in nature, and Transcendentalism to sink
God and nature in man. But the Transcendentalist, at
least, is belied and put in jail by the definition, which
is so neat at the expense of truth.  He made consciousness, not sense, the ground of truth; and, in the
present devotion to physical science and turn of philosophy to build the universe on foundations of matter,
we need to vindicate and reassert his premise. Is the
soul reared on the primitive rock? or is no rock pritnitive, but the deposit of spirit, therefore in its lowest
form alive, and ever rising into organism to reach the
top of the eternal circle again, - as in the well one
bucket goes down empty and the other rises fuill?
The mistake is to make the everlasting things subjects
of argument instead of sight. No logic can compass
them. The more we reason about them in the terms
of the understanding, the farther we are away. Wait




84             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
awhile, says the investigator, and we may tell you if
God exists and you are immortal.  But God is no
conclusion. A Deity deduced from phenomena were
finite as they, and nothing worth.  God is the commencement, if he be at all; and to expect, by breaking
open some atom, to see him come out like the smoke
into a giant from the fisherman's box is atheism at the
star t.
The Transcendentalist sought a basis of knowledge
beyond the senses, and of religion beyond ecclesiastical
services. His religious feelings were hurt by going
to church, and he encountered the odium  of going into
the woods and fields, or on to the sea instead. He
affronted the procession of Sabbath-keepers with the
needless insult of secular avocations, or sports in plain
sight. Because it was Sunday, in a Imeeting-house and
a pulpit, and with a Scripture text and ordained minister, bigotry and bad scholarship were not sanctified.
He heard not only the truckman and porter swear, but
the name of God taken in vain in the worst profanity
of the lifeless repetition of liturgical forms. In rocky
resounding clefts, he could worship better than in the
house made with hands. Standing outside the churchdoor, the music of praise pleased him better that he
could not hear the sectarian sermon. On the reeling
steamer's deck, with ecstasy through the cabin-windows came to him the anthem accompanied with a
part, described in no musical notation, by the winds
and waves. He disowned the temple's peculiar claim;
and a band of play-actors with the sacrifice of their
talent and time to help some poor and aged member,
or promote a worthy cause, made the stage a pulpit,




TRANSCENDENTALISM.              85
and the theatre a church. Holy day or place? There
is no such thing. A holy man or woman, and a Holy
Spirit, but no holy time or spot save that hallowed
by a righteous act. Sacred office or exercise? An
innocent child teaches more than a sensual priest,
politic cardinal, or bad pope; and we scout the notion
that any base officials are in trust with the waters of
salvation, or have a lock on the river of life as one
commands a valve or faucet with his hand. A face
with the beauty of that shadow cast by the first consciousness of a parentage beyond earthly father or
mother communicates wisdom which canonical books
and apostolic succession cannot match. As in old
time some people worshipped in churches and cloisters outside city walls, these Transcendentalists defied the conventional adoration with a piety of their
own.
The Transcendental school must, however, encounter
one criticism. Part of it led into the doctrine of Divine
Impersonality. Emerson followed Cousin. The objection to Personality was its supposed limitation. It
lowered the Infinite. But you say a great deal about
God when you say he is impersonal. You lower him
negatively, and deny his chief attribute, if not his being.
The guilt of presumption is not avoided, but incurred.
Does piety decline to imprison him in human measures?  We had thought humanity not his prison, but
his image. What other larger measure of him do
you propose? The sky were a prison. Besides, we
do not measure God: he measures himself with countless graduations in all his creatures, and without this
self-measurement on an endless scale we could not




86             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
know him at all. We conceive ill of him in outward
dimensions like a giant. He can fill the firmament,
and dole himself out in the wing of a fly, brain of an
ant, or burnish and buzz of a bee. He is spirit; and
that we cannot imagine as impersonal. Spirit is intelligence and intent. If you hesitate to ascribe to him
purpose, you resist the instinct of mankind in all ages,
which from the Hottentot to the Hindoo, the Chinaman to the North-American Indian, the Greek to
the Turk, and the Christian to the Mahometan, finds
the staple and fundamental article of its devotion in the
will of God. In teaching that he is spirit, and that
birth from the Spirit is like the sound of the wind,
Jesus curiously identifies spirit and person as synonyms of speech. Spirit or Person: neither implies
finiteness more than the other.
The world affirms Personality. Is world or whirled
its proper name? What is it but motion from centres
of force, in mighty balls or imponderable particles:
in the stone that resolves itself into orbits of atoms,
and the drop that is a sea for living things to swim, nor,
more than leviathan, lack room? All this action, and
no will?  Nothing too heavy to lift, or too light and
little to get hold of; yet no agent, meaning, energy,
or behest?  If no divine, then no human personality,
which were a causeless effect. In scholastic phrase
God is not personated, but personating Person. If
this human quality is no gauge of him, he is lost altogether, as we are lost; for with our personality goes
immortality, and we are photograph-plates taking
pictures to-day, broken to-morrow; and then no more
impressions. A strange way to dignify and exalt the




TRANSCENDENTALISM.               87
Divinity to make him and his work such a shallow
fading surface! To say he is an idea of the human
mind, and comes to consciousness, or is conscious of
himself in it, does not belittle him. Ideas are substantial and eternal; and where or how else he is conscious
who shall say?  You have several homes, - in city,
country, at the Springs, or by the sea. His houses
who shall number?
Person signifies the unfathomable. Who shall say
where the whisper of the wind begins?  A  man's
voice or sound is from his inmost self, like the character
an actor performed through his mask; and what is the
material universe but the pipe Omnipotence shapes,
as a boy his whistle, to play what tunes he likes. God
is the word: what speaks in the beginning was with
him and was he. Personality is no degradation. As
the sparkle of a dewdrop implies the sun, and that is
a spark to the light that feeds it; as a trickling drop
balances the sea, and nothing less could be its parent;
as the running of the drops together between the
shrunken boards of a barn first brought to my mind
the mystery of the world; as a breath were not without boundless ether; as a pebble dropped in the water
or as a blow or gesture of the hand goes to the confines of Nature and is co-extensive with gravitation, -
so the faintest emotion implies the Most High; and
God takes up his abode in the lowly and contrite heart.
Doubtless we bely him, as we do every thing, in
our speech.  But it is greater untruth to him not to
speak. Some word we cannot help. Those most stout
like Goethe to say all words are inadequate go on to
use them, though every word, used or emphasized




88             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
alone, cleaves from  our t'hought and breaks down.
But if we discard the Infinite Self we lose the Universe, which is Version of One, or Person translated;
and what does Person mean but that the world is not
senseless surface, but stands for something, was made
in earnest, and not by accident or for sport?  Personality is not part of it, but the whole, - top and bottom
of things, sum and substance of philosophy; and the.
impersonality the sage imputes as an honor is poor,
cheap, and finite.  We argue what are called the
Carlyle and Buckle theories of history. Are events
determined by persons, or by laws? If history relates
what is done by inspiration or design, the question
disappears.  Personality is nothing, or it is all. It is
not the pound we put God in, but essence of the freedom which is his necessity, and to share which is man's
glory. If we are personal, we have a destiny; if impersonal, only a doom. But this personal persistence
was by some Transcendentalists treated with slight;
and all curiosity about it flouted as impertinent peeping into what we had no business with.. Such scorn
is affront to the aspiration of mankind. Forceythe
Willson, after listening to a lecture that brought ilmmortality into doubt, said, "' Philosophy is good; but if
philosophy contradicts my instincts, I throw it overboard."
Personality alone vindicates prayer.  If Deity be
Immeasurable Consciousness in which I have part and
lot, then prayer is no gymnastic self-excitation beginning and ending with my own will, but some stir of
the Divinity it comes from and goes to. -It constrains
God so far as his liberty can be constrained; for there




TRANSCENDENTALISM.               89
is that he cannot help. How can he help seeing and
hearing his child whose voice is part of his soliloquy?
Can he say, I will not listen or look?  He, is bound
in his own nature to hear and answer prayer; for lhe
is not one Individual and you another, he sitting up
there with ready-made laws to apply to you as a foreign
substance; but you and he, even as Jesus and he,
are One. He cannot get along without you, or avoid
blessing you. Your inmost desire is his interpreter.
Were prayer an arbitrary whim, across the track of
his predestination it were crushed like a pin on the
iron rail.  But request or answer is foreordained and
insured against possible failure or loss.
To one Transcendental philosopher - Mr. Alcott -
we are in debt for his vital conception of Personality.
A pure mystic, subsisting on the thin sweet grass of the
mount of vision, in the full sweep of the pervading
theory that blew like a trade-wind against the conception of a conscious and willing Deity, he kept his footing and saw God keeping his. In all his Conversations
East and West expounding matters, so singular to
charm and hard to penetrate, he has held by self hood
as the sheet-anchor of creation, and. rendered a service
for which his memory will be honorable and dear.
He was true Transcendentalist, teaching that the soul is
no ephemeral thing, but lives beyond the momentary
impression, in the past, the distant, the future, and in that
eternity where time disappears or all times are alike.
True philosophy is no peculiarity of dainty speculation,
but staple of practical life. It is an idea becoming
flesh, or common sense exalted by sentiment.  Not




90             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
only a poet, like Wordsworth, can address his ideal
child,
"Thou whose exterior semblance dcth bely
Thy soul's immensity,"
not only Shakspeare can make Lady Macbeth say to
her husband,
"Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant, "
but the negro pilot could tell the captain in Charleston
harbor, "Wind and tide against you, it is ten miles
to the city; but, weather favoring, you are there now."
We are not blind to what we see through. The Transcendentalist leaps out of routine, shakes off the weight
of custom, most are fettered by and drag as a ball and
chain. He detaches every thing from himself, to make
it an object of contemplation and enchanting marvel.
His own personality he wonders at, and tries half
vainly to explore. " I want to know more of myself,
- this very Jonathan: I have lived seventy years with
him, and he is a great mystery to me."  His theory
enters into character as well as thought. While dogmatism makes out its exhaustive schemes of the universe, and ambitious conceit and  desire  to  shine
babble their presumptuous judgments, he sits and
smiles at the depth their lines dangle in; and, when
they correct or contradict him, learns not to answer
again. He asks nothing for himself but to be allowed
still to think, and put his observations in words which
passion may reject till reason receives. He takes all
injury and wrong, fi-om foes or friends, out of his sen



TRANSCENDENTALISM.               91
sibility and into the alembic of his reflections, whence
the crude ore and rough fragments run pure gold. NQ
Caliban or Shylock but enriches the poet's drama;
no people so bad and hard the thinker cannot enjoy.
Said my friend, I like that "' Great Misery " island: it
is like so many folks I have seen, barren and unpromising at a distance and first sight; but when you are
there, the green fields are all around you. His forecast
lights up the darkest hour. Said my friend, walking
among the cliffs, Reasoning is like the rock ahead you
hope to mount and see further from; and faith has
foretaste of paradise.
We shall discover that our glory is not pure passivity,
to be the sport of impressions, like feathers in every
wandering breeze, but personality. We shall be convinced that conscious self hood rooted in the self of
Nature, and spreading into man or angel, is no selfishness, but the only possible generosity. A certain dissolute sympathy may survive self-reliance; but all
genuine love and sacrifice die with it. No earthly
good a noble pesron will not sooner decline or impart than demand. Personality has no measure: it
is measure of every thing else. It is the golden rod
with which the angel takes the length and breadth of
the New Jerusalem. In the present rage of physical
science the paricldes are contending with it for victory.
But they are its servants, and usurpers when they
snatch at its rightful sway. The thinker goes with his
thought, which can reach nothing beyond itself. No
God is cognizable above my inmost being, which he is.
Where my imagination goes, I go; and it goes to him
and heaven.




92             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
The objection to personality in God is its likening
him to man's which is limited.  But this objection
assumes its own fact.  Who has laid down or reported the metes and bounds of hzuman personality?
It is unlimited. Person in the sense of appearance is
finite. The body which the soul is in, or rather which
is in the soul, has limits, but not that in which the
body is contained. Man's eyes, says Herbert,'" dismount the highest star." David's description of trying
to leave the Lord by ascending to heaven, or making
his bed in hell, or flying on the wings of the morning
to the uttermost parts of the sea, not only shows where
God was, but where David was! Is our imagination
the compass of Nature?  But our imagination is the
carriage we sit in. Paul knew a man who was in the
seventh heaven. Rise high and float far as the balloon
will, the gazer from beleaguered Paris walls, or a
Fourth of July muster-field, outstrips it standing on
the ground.
" One morn is in the mighty heaven,
And one in our desire! "
But the last outshines the first.
" And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn."
Shakspeare knew space was not the holder, but the
a~cident and servant of the mind.  We, like God,
possess it; not it us. " I own part of Boston Common,"
said Father Taylor; " and I will tell nobody which part
it is." WVe cannot tell where our property in Nature
ends.




TRANSCENDENTALISM.                93
Nor is human personality limited in time more than
in space.  Doubtless the almanac or family register
will tell us when we were born. But our soul is older
than our organism. It precedes its clothing.  It is
the cause, not the consequence, of its material elements;
else, as materialists understand, it does not properly
exist. Jesus asserted the truth of all men when he
said, "Before Abraham was, I am."  WVho can tell
where he began? It is a wise child that knows his
own father. Grandparents reappear in the babes they
play with. The Jews thought older prophets returned
in later ones; and it might be Elias that had come
back in Jesus. Naturalism traces man farther than to
Eden, and finds his progenitor in some fossil fish or
reptile that lived measureless cycles ago. Napoleon
said he was the founder of his own family. We were
our own ancestors, and shall find it quite impossible
to decide our commencement in time, though we point
to our cradle in the garret. We all lay in one crib, if
we knew where it was; and Plato's doctrine of preexistence we have laughed at only to see it recur under
the flag of the straitest orthodoxy of our day.
Human personality has no intrinsic limitation in
itself.. It is sometimes said, men or particular races
of men, as the Negro or Chinese, stop growing like
an animal or plant.  But they are only by adverse
circumstance or their fellow-creature's oppression tethered for a time. None can predict or set any goal
to the progress of science. Yet that is only one of
the lines: art, society, government, are others in the
progress of man. This shock of conventional horror
at supposing any likeness of God with man is as pro



94             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
fane as it is inhuman.  God and man must rise'or
fall together.  We have been afraid and ashamed
to think nobly of ourselves. But he is like us! He
made us in his image; and, laugh at it who will,
we do and must somehow make him in ours; for
were the parent unlike his child, it were absurd to
speak of parent or child.
Nothing in us lasts like faith. Richter calls it the
night-flower blooming into the hour when sense and
memory fade. I learned the fact in an involuntary
experiment of being thrown to the ground by a train
of cars. It was'"a vision of sudden death."  For
a moment it was all of death that can be known, only
that in returning consciousness came resurrection to
myself and my friends. But in that moment of decease was no fear.  Had I been riding above, not
with a crushed limb underneath, I could have felt no
more sure of the wise regularity, in whose chariot
without falling I was borne.
Orthodoxy and Physical Science are considered
foes. But they build on the same foundation. In their
method they meet. The last asserts we get all knowledge, and the first that we get religious knowledge,
through the senses, -the Book, the Prophecy, the
Miracle being the foundations of faith, as if there
were less piety in Plato than in Locke.  Transcendental Thought is the only communion with God,
save by some proxy that casts our vote for us, like
a master for his slaves, or patron for everybody under
the roof of his mill.  WVhat wonder the believer
should conclude in the scepticism with which the
scientist begins, and doubt be the Land's End for them




TRANSCENDENTALISM.               95
both.  With neither is any option.  The structures
they put up are different, but the site of both alike
is the sand; only the believer sees'not how he is
logically shut up to the scientist's frank expectation
that the rain and the wind will beat and blow till the
edifice fall, according to the Latin proverb that we
owe our possessions and ourselves alike to death.
The consistent physicist, like Mill, carries his point
to the denial of all necessary truth.  The figures of
the multiplication-table and the properties of a triangle, all the axioms of the mathematician and geometer, a square, cube, line, or circle, mnay be such only
to us and not in some other world, there being no
such thing as ascertainable truth. The contemptuous
proverb, " He does not know much, and what he does
know he does not know for certain," hits the whole
race with its vulgar fling.  The Christian solace so
many millions have hugged to their breast, " What thou
knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter," is refused; for death is no solution, but only the last dodge.
So truth is not what is, but what one troweth; a
name for everybody's notion and all contradictory
beliefs! It is the honor of the Transcendentalist
every great soul from Hebrew Moses to Hebraic'
John Brown —to affirm truth otherwise as eternal
vision of what suffers no change, the consonance of
reality in Nature and the mind. Apart from perception truth is not.  The Greek tongue excels the
English in having a verb for truth corresponding to
the noun, and the apostle speaks of 1"tru/inzg  in
love." No canonical book has a nobler verse than
that in the Apocrypha,-" Wisdom is a loving spirit: "




96             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
for love is not born of wisdom, but wisdom of love;
and neither is born of matter or the flesh. To rest
our case in miracle is to rest it in the letter that killeth; for all phenomena, like the letters in the Primer,
are but an alphabet making sense only as arranged
by some intelligence.  It matters not what shape
matter may take: it is an unmeaning syllable till
adopted by the intellect. If the water becamne wine,
or a few loaves and fishes a ton of food, it was a
cipher still of no significance before it was chosen
to convey the spirit's despatch.  It is not the wire
stretching from England to America for which we
care; but the messages sent over it beneath the deep,
unquenched  by all its billows, unsilenced by its
mighty roar.
Preoccupied with ideas, God's true mediators, we
look upon -marvels with an incurious eye. I confess
I am not moved when the table tips.  The wonder
is just as great when it reposes firmly on its legs.
Stones thrown through the windows by freakish elfs
hold not my reflections like the glass made from the
flux of their crumbled grains. All -is in discrimination; nothing in the gross fact. The delicate odor
of a tea-rose, said one, transports me: but at one
smell of the pond-lily I say, No more I thank you!
The Divinity gives us facts enough.  We cannot
manage one of a thousand. I rather ask him to stay
his hand than from his horn of plenty continue to
pour. He has led me into the Gallery; and I have
no fear of his hurrying me out before it is half seen.
The Transfiguration by Raphael, or Wedding-feast
in Cana by Paul Veronese, or Conception by Corregio,




TRANSCENDENTALISM.              97
is not a subject that holds or concentres my regards
more than any simply human theme, -a ship in port
by Turner, landscape by Corot, or the " Sower" by
Millet; for God is as near in the field or on the sea
as by any mountain, in any marriage or origin of life,
with whatever unusual signs. Sinai made no better
thunder and lightning than the Jura, or the woodcrowned hill whence in my boyhood the flaming
cloud made its rush, and the red bolt leaped as a
sword from the scabbard. I am grateful to antecedents and ancestors; but why explore the processes
by which they earned what I inherit, instead of for my
posterity earning more? I value the Bible; but shall
I prefer it to what it records? It were to prize the
family-register before the domestic joy. The Scriptures are not authority, but notes and memorandum
book for experience, which has no Heretofore or
Hereafter or Elsewhere, but interminable omnipresent Now.




IV.
RADICALISM.'INVE learn how much there is in a name to love or
hate.  The apostles, forbid to speak in the
name of Jesus, rejoiced to be counted worthy to suffer
shame for it. It is not the word that is detested, but
the thought, the dearest part of a man. He that loveth father or mother more than that is not worthy of
it.'" I do not like the word Radical" is the last phrase
in thousand-fold repetition. But is it well to quarrel
with the dictionary, like Don Quixote with the windmill? Words do not exist by our permission or any
governor's proclamation. God makes them. They
are born out of the air. Democrat, Republican, Copperhead, Communist, - it were easier to reduce a fort
than silence any such epithet. Chartist, Fenian, International, - William or Victoria might be glad to
expunge those titles. But they will not down at the
bidding of count or king. No arrival so important as
that of a new denomination, a name in the mouth, an
organic power on the earth. Dr. Channing said he
belonged to no sect, but willingly bore the name Unitarian on account of its odium. I do not choose to be
called Radical; but, if it be an unpopular designation,




RADICALISM.                 99
label me with it. It must mean something good. Let
us be what respectability and conservatism have an
instinct to scorn! Out of some corruption is forged
every new thunder-bolt of speech which people deprecate and dread. Yet a bad name loses its repulsiveness by degrees.  As the tortoise shell is cut and
scraped, dropping some roughness with each process,
at every touch of the saw and file and sand, to get its
last polish fiom the human palm, so a distasteful term,
Whig or Abolitionist, under the critical knife and after
much handling, shows signs of preciousness, becomes
bright and smooth. Print it, roll it under your tongue,
and it will come out right.
Everybody takes his turn at reform. The Tory
Eldon said with an oath, if he could begin again it
would be as an agitator. We know the ethics of compromise and temzporize. Men have made Christ's
tenderness in withholding some things fiom his disciples a warrant for treachery. An eminent preacher
says he has thoughts it were premature to publish.
What is the time to tell a thought but when you have
it? The inspiration is your commission.
Radicalism  is roolednzess, the quality of the root,
which Paul says we are borne by and do not bear,
the stability of plant or man.- Is it tearing up by the
roots? Jesus announces that operation for what his
Father had not set out. But the gardener knows how
the good tree is made thrifty by going down to its
roots to stir them. Scraping my old myrtle makes it
quick and green.
There are two kinds of radicalism. The one boasts:
the other prays, and joins the great communion of




I00            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
human dependence. Faith is no manufacture or article
of private consumption, but a tradition of the human
race. The mark, not to be counterfeited, of the genu.
ine Radical is humility, - confessing God in history,
that we are lifted to our vantage-ground by all foregoing action as mountains rise by successive throes.
My dear friend professes to put himself squarely outside of Christianity, and thinks so he does; but he can
no more do it than eliminate from his veins his ancestral blood. Do we disdain to inherit civilization, government, art, material benefit from our sires? Let us
then raze the old houses aud shops, despise the custom
of the ancient stand, pry up the rails we ride over,
and, as the Irishman said, to decry asking my neighbor's help, not be under a compliment to anybody!
Is there no moral capital?  Can we dispense with
customs and institutions more than with the wharf and
street, reservoir and sidewalk, town-house and bridge?
Jacob's well stood for more than water. Better unlimber your organ of destructiveness on outward improvements, than those within.  Continuation, not
origination, is our part. Build on the old basis, stand
and walk a step forward in the old path. If God be
father, the Past is mother, of our mind. I heard of a
man preferring his immortality to his source, his own
existence to his Maker's. He was logical, on the supposition that he was. made by himself and for himself,
and, like the Pharisee, to pray thus with himself. But
if there be such a thing as Humanity, that I am part
of, then there is Divinity. A disinherited man we
pity; a disinherited race were extinct.
Stetp by step: that title of the story is the tale of




RADICALISM.               I01
mankind. We are to rear an Art Museum. On what
ground? First, a wilderness; then a battle-field with
savage nature and more savage man; then a harvestfield; then a mart of commerce; lastly, the hall of
knowledge and delight. Contempt of the rudest aboriginal ways knocks out the underpinning.
But we must go on. " There are in Boston," said
one to an old citizen, " no ancient families to justify
pride of birth." The citizen replied, " We have their
descendants."  " Point me," was the rejoinder, "to
one case of the blue blood." " I do not like to be
egotistical," answered again the long-descended man.
Doubtless we need the grace of self-criticism to temper
self-complacency. Our individuality runs not only into
variety, but oddity. In avoiding monotony and uniformity, we lose unity in our architecture. Let the
new Museum be an academy to reclaim us from our
riot of independence to some standard of beauty and
criterion of taste, not only in our edifices but our manners and thoughts, to grow from  that root without
which there can neither be a great community nor a
California pine.
But let us have the branch as well as the root. No
conceit of progress is so gross as that of eschewing all
change. What absurdity is this circular and printed
sketch of doctrine, sent us to sign, as if words could be
bonds or bounds! We must be atomically united, like
the parts of a tree, with the Spirit for our enlivening
sap. At a meeting for church union I heard a speech
informing the company how Unitarians were to be
killed off, by preparation of bookst of moral science
suited to establish the Trinitarian truth. Harness a




102             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
horse of high spirit into your chaise, he travels with
alacrity and joy. But he would resent being tackled
into a truck; and the Holy Ghost, set to drawing
the old cart which passes for the Church, will tear it
to pieces. If you would be safe, hitch a donkey into
your dray.  Science a means, and your establishment
the end?  Every thing outward must serve the soul.
Every creed is an arrested development. We think
of the Bible as a structure solid and eternal. It is the
record of alteration without ceasing, -patriarchs giving
way to judges, judges to kings, kings to priests, priests
to prophets, and prophets to Jesus their head, and
Jesus to the Spirit. Vital power sloughs off old formulas. Some Northern churches had negro galleries a
quarter of a century ago. It was suggested, in one
case, to evacuate or remove the wooden box from
which, as one said, the colored folk looked down on
the congregation like crows. The fierce and almost
universal opposition to this it is difficult now to conceive. But at length the high enclosure went; and
not by all the king's horses and all the king's men
could it be restored.  So pass the stiffest ceremonials
beyond recovery. Who could be at charges or shave
the head to conciliate bigots, as Paul and his companions did?  Yet, such is the superstition for Scripture
examples, a friend says on the strength of that old instance he could cross himself among the Catholics.
Does then an apostle's act of course indicate the law
of perfect conduct? If the Trinitarian Doxology be
sung, I can join in the tune, but not in the words.
When one declined a true believer's asking for alms,
saying, "' I am a heretic," " Oh, sir, your money is




RADICALISM.               Io3
orthodox," was the reply. Of the orthodoxy of good
music there is no doubt.
True Radicalism is also of a loving spirit. There
is a sour sort of it, the fruit being still green; but the
ripe and sweet variety we shall have to adopt. We
fix on a creed as final, as the farmer calls his choice
apple Seek-no-fzrthzer; but the new growth outstrips
and leaves it behind. Progress is the law. When the
Eastern Railway was built, ample room was left at
the crossings for the cars. But forty bridges have to
be raised to let the Pullman palace cars pass through.
Narrow terms of Christian communion have at great
expense of good feeling to be pulled down; else the
Church becomes one of those corporations that have
no soul. Like University graduation, like organlic
evolution, Free Religion is an unfolding of previous
forms, and is not that bolting from them affected by
some, ending like the side path I took in the woods,
in a swamp and a squirrel track. A good man humorously expressed, the development in his case by
saying, "' I spell my God with two o's, and my devil
without a d."  In an old anti-slavery Quaker family I
served at the funeral of a young man who had never
heard a dozen sermons, yet was a pattern of all good
works. His wedding-day had been set, the bride's
wedding-dress made, the wedding-house nearly done;
yet he welcomed death. The Eastern mists were the
mourning robes; but the bereaved had clad themselves
in cheerful attire. As it pleases God the beautiful
flowers should grow not only in gardens and enclosures, fenced from the cold and the wind, but on wild
hill-sides, along uncultured meadows and plains, and




104            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
up near the snow-line of Alpine peaks, so, not in any
revival hot-house or paradise of a sectarian conventicle,
the finest human excellence springs. Virtue within
and without the ritual must be compared. The lists
are set in this noble tournament; a fair field is open;
the Judge throws down his warder: leap, holy knights,
to the conflict, and God defend the right!
Not what we profess, but produce, is the test. Dissenters from Calvinism were told, Yours is a good
religion to live by, but not to die by. That is all we
want. We do not expect to die, yet are willing the
case should be settled by what are called death-beds.
We must have, theologians tell us, a revelation of
God; as though he were hid in his works. Are
Shakspeare, Raphael, Beethoven so hid? Creation is
God's transparency, not screen. Goethe's earth-spirit
weaves the garment we see Him  by. This veiled
Deity reminds one of the coarse preacher's figure:
God is like a squirrel in the wall; he can see you
though you cannot see him. So says not that man
of no Christian birth or breeding, the Hindoo, Chunder Sen, — a pearl of Orient piety welcomed by the
leaders of a dozen religious sects, from Martineau the
Rationalist to Dean Stanley of the Established Church.
The wisdom has been queried of letting into our pulpits this illuminated heathen, whom Jesus would have
taken to his arms. Well if our liturgies, or prayers
without book, could touch the rapture of this latest of
the Magi from the East!
WVhat a Radical is Nature! See the plants, from a
mixture of sun and rain, start in a thousand stretches
of greenness to make a garden of the globe, their




RADICALISM.                I05
clinging to the root not hindering their airy ascent.
Abide as it will in the ground, no dead past for the
tree.  It scatters in autumn the leaves it will not
reclaim  in spring. What cares the orchard for last
year's apples and pears, forgotten in preparation of
the new crop? No merit made of the heaps of twenty
seasons'falling ruddy and yellow from the boughs; no
expectation of being saved by the old works, but only
by grace of the new: the yield on the branches a
transformation of the vital juice from beneath the soil.
What a Conservative that barren fig-tree, occupying
the room of its betters! But blasting or burning is the
doom of what does not bear.
Development not allowed, revolt, revolution, will
come.'The workman's proverb, " Steady by jerks,"
is illustrated by how many a crisis in the world.
Causes, says BjBrnson, have to be repeated many
times ere the explosion we call an effect. Witness
the downfall of France from its long diet, not of duty,
but of glory.  Grown-up pre-occupants insist we
shall act on their conscience and will. We' cannot
abide our own children contradicting us, as, with a
mite of spirit, they will. Things degenerate till, as
Goethe says, the gods will not recognize the sire's
features in the faces of the sons. But the true Conservative will thank Goth or German who restores the
type of a religion run down.
As all conception is covered, and none can tell just
where Anti-Slavery, Woman's Rights, the Sanitary
Commission, Etherization, Steam, or the Telegraph,
began, it is hard to trace the genesis of Radicalism.
Its germ, dot or double-dot, is as obscure as that origin




io6            RADICAL PROBLEMVS.
of man which mortgages another century for its decision. As the new planet may have several simultaneous discoverers, so with the dawn of an idea. Real
originators resign in favor of the Spirit. Always there
is engineer and brakeman: always driving wheel of
the thinker, the safest of men; the danger being firom
somne stone of ultra-conservatism on the track.
But what occasion, in the little band of Liberal Christians, had any but to keep the peace, instead of showing teeth to bite their cherry in two? Paul blames
Peter for conforming. Yet in a signal instance how
Paul himself conformed! Why could not we conform?
The first radical motive was the law of truth. When,
six years ago, the churches were invited to send to the
first Unitarian Convention, in New York, delegates
authorized to represent their convictions, and pledged
to pay great respect to the decisions of that body, we
protested against such putting of personal and congregational freedom under threat. It seemed insincere to
confound diverse opinions in the one stripe, which
chosen messengers might hold out for a banner.  We
were told, You will stand alone and wear motley.
WNe said, Better Joseph's coat of many colors than
the prison-uniform. We prefer citizens' or soldiers'
to policemen's dress. An officer of the steamer Lexinzgton, escaping on a cotton-bale, told the court when
the fire covered the deck he thought it a case. So did
we,. when a synod appeared as the precipitate fiom
the solution of independent thought, It was time to
be a martyr or witness-bearer.
But another motive was the law of faith. We
wanted to believe. We were accused of weakening




RADICALISM.                107
the ranks. But the fellowship of honest dissent anticipates wider sympathies, and enlarges the Church.
When once, in Faneuil Hall, the constables tried to
close the door against the crowd, the president cried
out, Faneuil Hall is open! However, for convenient
concert, one end of Liberal Christianity might be shut,
we meant the other end should swing; and, at whatever cost of house-warming, to keep open doors.
Doubtless the articles assumed made a trig marching
costume. The reports say that the number of believers and churches has been multiplied by the platform
and working plans of leaders so busy and brave. But
what census shall give, beside the poll, the weight of
those saved by the defended rights of reason! How
serious the secession, but for the victory of thinker
over priest! Would not our ship have been dismasted, or unmanned and abandoned, or, amid waves
of controversy, lacked seamanship to reach port, but
for that modifying of the first stringency, which the
new Protestants compelled? The rebels against human leadership did good service; the appellants to the
higher law promoted justice; the heretics preserved
unity, and schismatics kept the faith.
A third motive was the law of growth, erroneously
supposed to come from hushing up differences. Stifling private judgment may yield mechanical increase.
A thoughtless huddling together in the rabbit-warrens
of conformity makes the denominational count large
and easy. Self-interest and gross social instinct furnish
a conglomerate or pudding-stone of assent. But the
articulation of limbs or branching of a tree figures
vital spread. Largeness is not greatness. An artist




io8            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
was asked what should be the proper price of a certain
picture measuring six by nine,- the amount of putty
being the standard, not the painter's art. It is said all
the boughs brought together would make a uniform
bole; but where then the green expanse, the lungs of
leaves, the sap, blossom, and fruit?  The tree were
timber, without axe or saw; and any sect that forbids
outgrowth is a stick. Liberty reproached as dissolving ties?  It alone knits them.
Mark now some illustrations. Cutting the old Hebraisin to graft in the Gentiles was as painful as to
King George the Colonial Declaration. But it was
good for Jewish as for English blood. Luther's attack
on the Romish corruptions saved Rome, and gave the
papacy a new lease, as uncapping the central fire keeps
the earth from splitting; beside that the volcanic upheaval gathers the vapor into springs, laces the valley
with streams, slopes the rocks to grind into intervals,
and produces corn and wheat below, to laugh to the
wind-flowers and nodding vines above. Another sort
of rending makes the grandeur of history.  Was
Methodism in England the ruin of religion, or its extension into new realms? Did Puritanism, driven from
home or fleeing from the halter, waste one drop from
the vials that hold the tears of the saints? Compare
its commonwealth with the establishment- that fears
it can no longer wring revenue of royallty from the
poor, but must stand on a footing with other orders,
or come to the ground! Did our doctrinal Fathers,
forsaking Pilgrim Orthodoxy, destroy Congregationalism? These cases history vindicates. But, one radical step more, we are among the breakers; and Put




RADICALISM.                 IO9
about ship! is the cry. Hard aport! sang the captain
from the upper deck to the man at the wheel, as he
steered in the fog, upon Cape Race, so near I saw the
brown rocks bare with each retiring wave. In our
theological ship, is the Free-thinker, advising a new
course, going to cast us away?  What pilot within
hail but the candid student, who keeps abreast with
science and does not stay behind to be petrified at any
Salt Lake with Mormon leader or Mistress Lot?  Our
guides with their verbal basis broke the harmony they
would bind. With but a touch, light as that at which
the Touch-me-not bursts, scores of clergy and others
met in private rooms, in Boston, to consult lest the
ecclesiastical republic might receive harm. The press
launched gibes at the improperly advertised movement
as still-born. But it was a new and living generation,
which the newspaper -sometimes generous, but servant too much, not of man, but of the majorityhas come to respect. We always repent of going with
the multitude. People are sorry for their senseless
shouts and stupid throwing-up of caps. The denouncers become the accepters of ideas. Their assertors and
martyrs behold the scoffer creeping into their ranks,
and pretending he was always there.
"The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side."
The servile print grows polite, and begs to be reporter
of that it had visited as abortionist. It is the old story.
What to-day crucifies, to-morrow crowns. That first
meeting, to which the parlors were open for fair play,
became parent of the Free Religious Association and
the Radical Club.  In their formation some of the




I IO           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Radicals took no part, having no talent nor relish for
machinery to act on the popular mind, deprecating a
new sect, or dreading a hard concrete of their precious
ideas.  They loved free thought as an element, resented the appearance of a curb, coveted no personal
publicity, and would not put their principles in any
conventional gear. Religion is not only an institution,
it is an inspiration; and, in the necessary division of
labor, some serve best where the electricity is generated, leaving others to apply it to the fine or useful arts.
Radical doctrine is needed less as a weapon or tool
than a leaven in the yet heavy lump of this world's
dough.
But what is the Radical position? It is against any
final wording. Unitarians still hold that in the Bible,
the New Testament as supplement of the Old, the Divine mind is fully expressed, though they quote Robinson that "  more light is to break out of God's Word."
But we say there is more Word! As a sailing-master
gives new directions every day, we must have firesh
orders from the Navigator of our humanity, at each
degree of the voyage. The old chart alone will not
suffice. Can we find all we need, every coast and
island laid down, on the sacred map? What specific
rules does the volume hold for Liberty, Republicanism, Temperance, Prohibition, Woman's Rights, Free
Trade or Protection, War and-Peace, Labor and Capital, Poverty and Wealth? )For every live question
we do and must take counsel of the Spirit, as did Isaac
or David, Noah or Lot. WVhich is the blasphemy, -
to find their instructions insufficient, or to declare there
are none for us?  "Honor the king," says Peter.




RADICALISM.                I I I
What king do we honor?  God is no linguist. He
does not talk Syriac or Greek. At Pentecost, he was
understood in every tongue because he used none, and
no translation was needed of his speech. You give
your dog the meat you have made 1 im speak for, rising on his legs. In the heavenly ait our food is hung
high for us to aspire.
The Radical position is next against individual
authority. Truth is God's note, needing no indorser.
Jesus its authority?  It is his. Inspiration is not its
warrant, but effect. Of all eloquence of pen or tongue
it is cause. Christ's impersonation of it was his power.
But it was not exhausted in him, more than the atmosphere in one wind instrument. If in Scripture, the
splendid score of the old masters, we read aught that
does not chime with the string under God's finger
in our breast, sweet as it sounded once, it is discord
now. Corrupt birth, arbitrary choice, bloody atonement, hopeless woe, -is it between the sacred lids?
It grates on me no less, and I will reject it as quick
as the last crudeness vented with impunity in this rashspeaking day. In any creature, son of God or son of
man, no authority but the response of the spirit that
rises to the Spirit that comes.
The Radical protest is, once more, against any contradiction of science. To the constitution of Nature
your religion must give way. This has got through
the hair of our head in regard to Galileo, who, once
alone against the-Church, now has a unanimous vote.
Lyell and Darwin may get such a verdict some day.
To give man or the world a date of but six thousand
years would, but for theologic imperception, appear




I I2           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
as absurd as to make the sun a satellite of the earth.
The doctors tell us, never was a man like Ruloff for
thickness of skull. Suitable callipers might match it
in many an ecclesiastic head. Sydney Smith told the
dignitaries they had but to put their heads together to
make the new wooden pavement for St. Paul's. The
men, be they able as Agassiz, who assert, will have
to scout a creation of man apart from other tribes.
Religion above science is the eagle scorning the fowler,
in the sky; religion against science is the earthen pot
clashing with the iron in the stream.
3ut has Radicalism no principles? Yes: it denies
to affirm, clears the way to travel, vetoes less than it
signs, and tears down but to build.i', Its affirmation is,
Spirit takes in all. My friend says, The Spirit is born
of Christianity. I answer, Christianity of the Spirit.
He says, Spirit is an abstraction.  I say, A reality.
He says, The gospel covers the ground. I reply, Neither actual nor ideal.  I stand within the Christian
lines, the lowest private in those ranks.  But I look
out to the origin and end of the march.  There are
greater words than Christian, - the Divine Humanity,
the image of God in the soul of man.
The second principle is, forward character. Respect
the past, we are told. Yes, and the present too! The
past is no bed to lie down on. Ancestral achievements are abused for a lounge and easy-chair. Foregoing legislation had its place; but, in this parliament
of the world, what is the motion in order now? Lay
the next course. Better not have begun than stop.
To bless is not to bolt, but tug at the load that tries
our united strength. Not revolution, but evolution, is




RADICALISM.               I I3
benediction.  Would that lesson were learned in
France!
The third Radical principle is the perpetuity of the
Church. Never was falser maxim than that religion is
a thing between a man and his Maker. It is a bond
betwixt men, as well as with God. Jesus prescribed
no form; and a generation passed without any binding
outward order. The Church, like the world, is overgoverned by base love of power. When one tries to
rule me, I hlave a vision of thrones on which his progenitor was king or queen. Tyranny is the heritage
of every sect.  But the check of that great Italian
water-wheel is felt in every denominational cog. The
Church will survive, because it does not consist in any
mode of discipline, but sympathy through every varying statement and style. Uniformity is not unity, which
liberty and law constitute, and law without liberty prevents.  Centralization, with dominant will, passes
before the dawn of local privilege with universal light.
Architecture is one shadow of this on the dial. The
cathedral, that overshadowed the town and nestled the
population around its walls, as the fountain draws them
in a Tyrolese village, dwindles. Though New York
and Boston put up large edifices, these are but on a
reduced scale, copies in pale ink of the ancient magnificence. No more structures like St. Peter's and
Strasbourg, and the Duomo at Milan, long for such as
Ruskin may! Cologne, since most of us were born,
remains, save on paper, unfinished, with some builder's
crane on its tower for a sign. Palaces of shingles our
bishops have to put up with. What is the temple to
the traveller's road?  Theatres and railway-stations,
8




114            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
warehouse-blocks, dwellings of granite and marble,
costly stones, gray and ruddy, in parks and reservoirs,
outshine the modest audience-rooms mostly reared for
Christian assemblies. AWhat meeting-house can vie
with river or ocean-steamer, or the hotels where we
eat and sleep?  David might repeat his complaint to
Nathan: "I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark
of God dwelleth within curtains."  Is it all a mark of
decay?  Rather that, in time to come, less ritual and
more life shall compose the Church. Like its Head, it
will triumph by going away. It will become Christian
society. It will not, like the papacy, absorb, but be
absorbed in the commonwealth. Conference and communion will take the place of throngs, excited or
amused by some fine organ or famous voice. Whatever reaction entice the unthinking multitude to popish
mimicry for a while, conversation will come, instead
of "that gallop of words called eloquence. But the
Church will survive. ~Without her the reformer, who
reproves her backwardness, would not have been.
From the altar, where she too much kept the coals to
warm her own hands, he has seized the brands to kindle every holy fire. Her insulter may behold his own
blood in five generations of her priests.
But she is not to stay a place for ceremony, empty
and apart save once a week.  Household affection,
loyal friendship, honesty in  affairs, justice to the
laborer, fellowship with the poor, and example of
temperance for a law, are the transformation wherein
Zion's latter-day glory shall appear. From her Liturgy shall not the name, with the fact, of slavery drop?
No grain of humanity can she leave out. Those dig



RADICALISM.               1 15
gers in -the trench, along the dark wet tunnel, amid
flaring lamps, her light must include.  Employes,
conductors, switch-men, brake-men, signal-men, ticketsellers, draw-tenders, machinists, ought, as much as
sailors, to have public sympathy, vacations from their
task, and a Bethel of their own. How will their lack
of science, religion, and sound morals, react on us!
Their eyes were wet when they were told, nothing but
antique phrase kept their coming, with car and engine,
as much as the tents of the patriarchs and ships and
camels, into our prayers. This will be communion,
and no longer protest.
Radicalism  means room.  The old barns in the
country were not built large enough to let the modern
breed of horses in; and my friend visiting me had to
feed his team out of doors. The old churches were
not built big enough to let the new men in. There is
space for the body to sit down or lie prostrate, but not
for the soul to stand up. The science, scholarship,
culture, character, cannot be accommodated in the
temple.  I remember how the animals, that drew the
families to church, used to graze on the juicy herbs
round the sheds; and it still seems to me a chaffy
nutriment parent and child tried to masticate within.
Large-hearted, high-minded men and women, with
their towering heads, have yet to resort to fodder in
the field, not being able to get at the hay on the mow.
What food we furnish is the test. What is their commissariat? asked General Scott, when told the rebels
were marching to Washington. Whether we touch
the shadows of bread and wine in the supper or not,
we must be communicant with God, to supply men.




I I6           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
We flatter, brace, and backen ourselves on compliment,
with mutual quotation and commendation, keeping a
market of praise and running an exchange of vanity,
instead of treating one another with verity and right.
For Radicalism one virtue we may claim, sincerity.
These men are not pretenders. To honesty they add
ability, and often aptness to teach, which can ill be
spared by the Church. We may have an equal wonder at what the pulpit welcomes, and what it excludes.
We can think of one with a genius for piety like that
of the Hebrew David, whose line he stands in, and a
voice of electric speech, yet under the ban because
miracle is to him mythology, and he cannot believe a
troop of angels sang over Bethlehem. He writes a
book of " American Religion," humorously by a critic
called an ast/eroid in comparison with the " Ten
Great Religions" from another hand, which are related to it rather as mammoth and mastodon are to
man.  Another, under the ecclesiastic taboo, is an
author, of national fame, soldier and leader of a black
regiment in the civil war, advocate of every philanthropic reform, treating every question with alarming candor and wit. A third, a master of every liberal art, poet
and philosopher, on all subjects a catholic, comprehensive, unpartisan judge, may be found like Levi, sitting
at the receipt of custom. A fourth, too true to trim,
and as unable to purchase place with sacrificing a
grain of frankness as an old martyr with a pinch of
frankincense in the fire of Jupiter, shall be content to
read the proofs when he might furnish better matter
for the press. But the inward panorama is lighted
with a score of such in the social circle, respected by




RADICALISM.                 1 7
no organized power, yet drawing looks of reverence
and love. Two appear in singular contrast: one accepting Jesus, and rejecting Christ; the other a devotee
of Christianity, and indicting its reputed author. The
free thinker, of however different shade, is scared with
being told he will be classed with them; as if he were
looking after his classification, not the truth.
But shall we allow such men to be heard, or put
them down?  If Jesus were the man I take him for,
he would permit the sharpest interrogation of his
claims.  I honor my Miaster too much to defend
him with any ostracism. He that with equal patience
and plainness confronted hypocrites, and wanted
Thomas the sceptic to put his hand into the wound,
is no example for muzzling inquiry, or thrusting it from
our side. The empire which professed to be peace,
with its censol'ship of the pen, ended in war; and the
tongue we bridle in others we shall ourselves be run
away with. Do we give dignity to the pulpit by covering it with restrictions removed from the press? It
is unsound flesh that shrinks from being touched.
There is something rotten in the Denmark that fears.
Courage to pursue every study, with hospitality to the
results of investigation, is the flag of faith. Until it
appears that church-men or creed-men make the best
men, are more gracious neighbors, live by a higher
law than legality, or bring up their children to be
more modest and respectful than those of other parents, we may believe it possible still, as with Saul, to
be bred after the most straitest sect of our religion a
Pharisee. While so many use form as a Sunday
cushion for their mind, or put dogma instead of fidelity




II8            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
into contracts, and the old rule lasts of knowing a man
by his fruits, let us give Liberal and Radical a fair
chance at the tribunal of worth. We cannot let the
candidates be umpires too; but, as we choose arbitrators of national claims, leave it to mankind, God's representative, to judge of all men. The verdict at last
is just.




v.
THEISM.
IT is a fact, meriting reflection, that the word which
has been most hateful to religious people is Deism,
or a belief in God, so direct through his instant care
as to make small account of special revelation. Was
it from a kindly wish not to irritate this sore of old
prejudice, that by the name Theism, of equivalent
sense, the same sentiment returning after generations
is now baptized? Who was, of theists, the chief but
Jesus? Who but Christians should be deists above all
believers beside? That a synonym for infidelity should
be found in either term may imply in those who gave
or bore it some share of a common fault. If one
party underrated the written gospel, the other too
much disparaged the universal light. It is possible to
blaspheme not only a visible rite, but the interior soul,
that temple without which is no sanctity in all the
gold of prophetic wonders and words. Shall we
brand as a sceptic the man who wishes no particular
mediator, he confides in his own Author so immediately
and much? For what comes any seer but to revive
the sense of Deity, and work the miracle of resurrection
on no dead body, but our buried faith in that Being so




120            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
indwelling and surrounding, nothing and nobody can
come betwixt him and us - as the old story tells us none
did betwixt Enoch and him?  We hear of atheists.
But atheism is impossible. Without God, man were
not. There are only atheistic theories which we
touch, by summoning the witnesses.
The first is Nature, by which we mean a certain
whole, or unity. The world is not all in pieces, but
all together. For convenience, we talk of this thing
or that as distinct; but separate or separable nothing
is. There is no such thing as a thing, but every thing
is part of something and of every thing else. This
relatedness makes all one, hard as it is to define the
relationship. We are taught in childhood boundaries
on maps, and so fix in mind an artificial notion of
dividing-lines which God never made.
" Line in Nature is not found."
There are no exactly measurable degrees of space or
time, latitude or longitude. We name for practical
purposes gross quantities which do not square with
the fineness of the facts. But in their faith or unfaith
men are fooled with words. One says, If the truth
should turn out there is no God, we must abide manfully the result. But God is the Truth you imagine
requiring you to deny him. He is the Truth you set
out from, as he is that you reach. God and Truth are
both dictionary words. What right to define them
differently, or make Truth the larger of the two? The
atheist says, No God distinct from Nature. I answer,
No Nature distinct from God. What beside Deity is
this entire and infinite simplicity we mean when Na



THEISM.                   121
ture is pronounced? It is alive. A dead unity we cannot conceive. Death is dissolution into disconnected
particles or parts. But, as no such absolute disconnection can be, death but seems, and is not. You say.
matter, I spirit; you, that spirit is finer matter; I, that
matter is coarser spirit. It remains for us both to find
what substance is, since two substances cannot coexist.
That all phenomena blend in unity is the point science
arrives at more clearly every day.
"The world's mine oyster
Which with knife I'11 open;"
but the point of cleavage neither Positivist nor Metaphysician finds. In Nature's armor is no joint a spear
can pierce. Is God supjernatural? Then he is limited; for here is something called Nature no eyes ever
saw the end of, and no terms of human conception
can exhaust, from which he is cleaned out and confined to quarters, like a monk in a convent, nun in
a cloister, or student ordered not to go off the collegegrounds. Shall we tell him, as we do a child, to
make himself small, or lie on his own side? "' God is
a definite idea," said that great scholar and masterly
writer, Andrews Norton, in reply to the supposed
pantheism of Schleiermacher represented by George
Ripley. But, open the box of your logic, he has escaped; as well set a trap for the light.  " Lo! God is
here," we sing in the temple; and many think of him
as an unseen priest haunting the church, or huge anchorite, like Simon the pillar saint. Yet, outside at
the corner of the village meeting-house, or on deck
when the Sunday praise gushed through the cabin



122.           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
windows with organ accompaniment of the winds and
waves, I have worshipped him as devoutly as any that
sat and sang within. My friend, who went with me
to the mighty sea-beat rocks, whistled some light tune.
I could no more have done it than in the cathedralchoir, where, in Dresden as in Boston, I heard the
operatic airs intrude.
God is held holy and apart: that is finite. He
is holy in the sense of whoZeness and health.  The
loss of wholeness, any nerve or organ acting on
its own account and setting up for itself, is disease.
All secession is sickness in the body politic or animal
frame. When one said Beauty of Holiness in a plea
for art and the art-museum, a clergyman replied, Yes,
but Holiness of Beeauty we cannot say. Indeed, will
not the equation work both ways? Gross notion of
Beauty in which it will not! Handsome to the eye
of flesh,. but beautiful noimpure thing or person can
be. David saw the omnipresence forcing him to feel,
if there were any bed in hell he could lie down on
without God for his fellow, his adoration and its object
were gone; and Adam's fancy, that he could hide from
the Lord among: the trees of the garden, showed the
short-coming of his apprehension, which made the
Divinity but a larger man. The Infinite cannot suffer;
and his necessary blessedness is proof that my sin,
pain, -compunction, is no solid, but surface, - a shadow
not, as theologians so monstrously describe, to last forever, but pass away, having served the ends for which
it was sent. We err, do wrong, answer for it, and are educated by it. Our iniquity becomes our grim minister,
our folly a glorious benefactor. But we can do noth



TIIEIS M.                 1I23
ing against the will of God; for independent wills
were breaks in Nature, with which the sublime totality
we call Spirit were not. The doctrine of convertible
species absolves itself of atheism, which lies rather in
the opposite view of faults and blank intervals in the
world. In the gaps no God could be; and if there be
aught where he is not, he is not at all.
The next witness is Instinct, - a desire or direction
animating Nature to suggest the same living unity at
heart as in every point. This principle is identical, in
however diverse creatures or things. The ant I saw
dragging a grain of sand, as important to its hill as the
Column Vend6me to Paris, and his brother pulling
along over the gravel the carcass of a blue-winged
moth; the bee in his hive or flower, or on a bee-line
between; the toad or turtle basking in the sun on a
rock; the bird and butterfly; the dog and deer; the
fish and fox; man and woman, - all have this common
quality we call Instinct. The little one that runs to
me with a smile and kiss before it can speak, and the
dumb beast that licks my hand or rubs its fur on my
foot, are acting from the same impulse and doing the
same thing. On one parallel child or animal pushes
or runs.  I cannot distinguish between the heifer's
horns and the baby's doubled-up fists. Does this property stop with what we call sensitive existence? When
we speak of somebody's monkey-tricks; when a man
is called a snake in the grass or a bear, or one woman
is called a lioness and another a cat, and we are told
to beware of their teeth and claws, for they scratch
and bite with words,- we feel a disgust at carrying
humanity so low. But we must take it lower still.




124            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Must I not feel that the plant, creeping toward the
light, is a type of my groping my way faster, but with
less certainty of direction, out of the same cellar? The
roots spreading after water under ground, that have
been known to pierce through the decaying wood of a
conduit for a drink, imitate my seeking in a thirsty
land for a finer river. Plants that shrink from touch
are prefigurations of the nervous system, and mimic
the maidens withdrawing their hands from a too bold
or eager grasp. The fertilizing pollen shows vegetable
sex. For the mutual attractions of human beings and
chemical atoms we use the same word, affizniy, - as in
Goethe's wondrous story of " Elective Affinities," and
Miss Shepherd's of " Counterparts," and a whole class
of literature back to Plato's Ideas. The electric fluid
loves iron so that it will run on a wire beneath the bottom of the deep: Jesus resembles to it the coming of
the Son of Man; and some scientists suspect it to be
the element of thought. No brain without phosphorus,
says the physicist; and advises the student to a diet of
fish for strength to swim and cleave the depths of hzis
ethereal sea. No inertia that instinct does not bore
or dive into, or come up through, to breathe. All the
faculties of the mind - causality, comparison, memory,
imagination, constructiveness, and music - act from
instinct. It is the first form and matrix of divine inspiration. According as a man draws from books and
systems, learning and recollection, instead of this living spring, he lacks or loses power, and drops from
eloquence and pathos into oratory and recitative.
What this quality is we cannot fathom or circumscribe.  Microscopy and analysis detect it in the




THEISM.                  125
rhythm of the particles of a bar of steel and of a stone,
as a universal nature, which is another name for God.
It is one tune and many variations, like " Home, Sweet
Home," through endless travesties of the pianist, - an
unsearchable essence, an innumerable sum.
The third witness is Character, which, whoever possesses, knows he never created, but only, like the block
under the etcher, yields himself obediently to receive.
No virtuous man takes the credit of his own virtue.
It is no manufacture of the mind, but a product and
projection from behind the will, use whatever subordinate shaping we may to fit the case and circumstance: " And this not of yourselves; it is the grace of
God."  In proportion as my good behavior is my private intention, conscious of its charm or able to reckon
its merit, it is at fault. It is beautiful, only as ascribed
to the Sovereign Command. Jesus claimed no glory,
for it cost him no struggle to cast off Satan. Think
not to pay me for the service I render you i Your payment is an injustice and offence. Render a service to
somebody else. Pass, as Franklin said, the favor on.
I am a mere agent. I do the King's bidding, like one
of the soldiers of that old centurion, who could figure
Jesus only as captain of a troop before which diseases
fled. Render vour dues to the one Author, whom all
channels of benefit and mercy represent. How ridiculous this complaint of people's ingratitude for your
help and kindness! _Are you the source of their advantage; or did you communicate it for recompense,
as a hired servant that grumbles because he has to
wait and dun for his wages? Are you owner of the
house, carriage, or garden you invite them into? Your




1 26           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
demand to be paid likens you to the Roman proconsul
who embezzled the provincial fee on its way to the imperial treasury. Are you charitable? It is God's pity
in you. From his winking at the times of " this ignorance " your lids learn to drop, while lynx-eyed pursuit
of any sin is worse than the sin.
" Be to their faults a little blind."
There is an imperceptiveness finer than any sight.
How men are hit with the pistol they wear and whip
they flourish! Censure is the edge-tool which he that
handles cuts himself with. Judgment and righteousness are a line and plummet nothing in the world can
bear to meet. Governments are not carried on, taxes
collected, houses and railways built, or any machine
run with perfect rectitude. Demand ideal purity, and
the wheels stop. The pump has to be fetched, says my
friend, with dirty water; though it would seem as if
New York had used too much! In business-dealings
with my fellow-men I find a certain per cent of corruption. But I am too busy to stop. I cannot consume
the day with question of every particular; it were an
expense of nerves more precious than money. I am
guilty if I let the community suffer so?  But I suffer
wrong rather than suffer myself. The Spirit bids me
let off, and not sentence many a criminal.
How such compassion, returned for wrong, abounds
among the purer sex! Therefore Goethe, their truest
modern delineator, says:"The eternal womanly draweth us on."
In whatever calamity or folly, it is always some
woman's hand outstretched to take us up. Lady is




THEISM.                 127
bread-giver. She that blamed us when we throve
will feed and tend our hunger and disease. Every
man has been a Mungo Park without travelling. This
is the crown of the queen. No woman has reached
supreme merit in song or story, policy or art. It was
said of an able woman, if it had pleased the Lord to
drop her spirit into the pantaloon she would have been
a great general. But what match would Elizabeth of
England or Joan of Arc have been for Cromwell or
Napoleon? Yet, as organs of Divine forgiveness, we
have a thousand women for one man. I do not wonder
when the Catholics desire Heaven's mercy they call
on the Virgin for her prayers.
All great character is the flow of Divine love and
justice through the human soul. Looking at Niagara,
an eminent statistician said, There is power to turn all
the machinery in the world. But does not the gazer
at that green tide feel the folce of a mightier flood behind his smallest act of right? " My usual weight is
a hundred and forty pounds," said the countryman;'" but when I am mad it is a ton." There are no limits to
the sacred rage for equity. Not by wealth or numbers,
but its cause, Union beat Secession. "' We have figured
out this sum," said the slaveholder to Mr. Garrison,
" and are sure to prevail."'" It would seem so; onlyyou
have omitted, one thing, that is God," was the reply.
When the civil war broke out, and boys under age ran
away to enlist and fling themselves in the Dragon's
mouth, a joyful sacrifice for liberty and the land, was it
their own will, or something that took it captive as a
tool for its majestic design, and made a paradise for
them of the field of death? A true spiritualism, not




1.28            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
that which is but the sensuality of the spiritual world,
nerved their arms. Their motive was not a thought
of any shiny place they were going to, but conscious
glory of the spot they were in. Virtue or duty is ever
such heavenly joy; all notion of reward is foreign to
it. Samuel J. May hardly *expected his translation
would make him happier. " I may," he said, "have
clearer vision, but not more confiding faith."  The
saint only asks to be permitted to continue to feel and
love as he does already. Dr. Tuckerman declared his
idea of eternal bliss was fulfilled in his ministrations
to the poor. When one dilated on Christ's anguish
for man's deliverance, Charles G. Loring answered, it
was his privilege to think Jesus the happiest man that
ever lived. What a superstition that he was crushed
by the penalty of sin of millions dead or unborn! Did
that wine of the Passover, that water of the Samaritan
well, or that corn rubbed in his disciples' hands, have
no refreshment or flavor in his mouth? Was not the
meat, they knew not of, a feast which no funeral of
earthly life or comfort could offset? My neighbor's
delight in feeding his own horses, the little girl's in
tolling the fishes, the minister's who has bread of God's
word to dispense, needs no supplement of supernatural touch. The disembodiment we call death cannot
make it more celestial. God recompense it with palms
and harps and crowns, gold pavements and streets of
pearl? It reminds one of the Oriental prayer: " Have
mercy, 0 Lord, on the bad; for Thou hast done every
thing for the good in making them so  "  My inclination to make a sacrifice of time, talent, pleasure, or
life, is a gift from him too great for aught else as pay



THEISM.                 129
ment or equivalent to be possible. Let others spend
their immortality surveying the precious stones of the
New Jerusalem! We will sell every share in that city
for new commissions in the war against woe and sin;
and not covet, in comparison with the service we enlist for to the end, even the wine the Master told his
followers he was to drink new with them  in the
Father's kingdom.
This disposition, not created by, but breathed into
us, is witness of God. The carver at his table, though
eating no morsel, has the best portion, as the most
blessed and enviable person at the board is the host,
who divides all his dainties among his guests. Here
is a quality which no politic contrivance or utilitarian
experience, no calculation of carnal solace to revenge
temporary abstinence, and no generalization of remote
selfish benefits of any sort, can account for. It is positive life of that Infinite One whose own joy is communication, and to imitate whom alone makes us
communicants.
The great achiever is never wilful, but possessed.
In wilfulness the will of God or man were lost. The
great are conscious of destiny: what they mean is
meant in them. Napoleon had a star; Jackson swore
by the eternal splendor; Lincoln waited on Providence, and would not force events. Called coward by
the impatient, killed for a tyrant because slavery owned
in him its most dangerous foe, branded as a compromiser by reformers conscientious but unwise,- when
he died, and the lots were cast for what he left, his
coat also was found woven without seam; for no high
phrase, extreme ground, radical or doctrinary extrav9




130           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
agance, can compare with the character, which is
God's fitting such a man to his purpose, - as he was
so conspicuously to whose cradle the Magi were led
at Bethlehem, and who will survive all his critics, new
or old.
The fourth witness is Art, the expression of truth in
the form of beauty, be it what it may we call beautiful,- picture, sculpture, music, or manners; for, take
whatsoever shape, without inspiration it is not art.
Poem or painting, wholly explainable into the maker's
dexterity, is not art, but artifice. The part that could
not be calculated or foreseen, in your grace or eloquence, which was the escape of God, where your
pen like the Spiritualist's pencil was guided; the slip
of your tongue; the point while you climbed you were
raised into; that of which you knew not and the artist
knew not, and no theory can clear up how it was done;
which baffles as it delights, - is the interesting and immortal portion. In the composer's company you are
lifted off your feet because he was. In Retzsch's engraving of a scene in Homer, the deceased hero is
borne to glory by angels. So, when touched by any
performance, we are exalted with singer or speaker,
and tread on air. A bit of canvas, on which genius
has put its mark, can no longer be measured by the
foot-rule. A  visitor of Rubens's Descent from the
Cross, being told it was time to go, answered, " Wait
till they get him down!"  Who has not seen how
leagues of land and water, hill and sea-beach, could
be brought by faithful color within a narrow frame,
and the universe of earth and sky opened to our glance
by a few happy strokes of the brush? As Madame




THEISM.                   13 1
Guyon was elevated by religious triansport from the
ground, as Mr. Hume in his trance ascends to the
ceiling, so we go up, unaware that we rest below, see
afloat by the magic of genius in an ether of joy.
Raphael is said to be the only one who can make his
angels look natural in mid-heaven, and absolve themn
of gravitation. Does he not make us, soul and body,
just as light?  The artist in his rapture heeds not laws
of Nature in any mechanical sense, balks at no difficulties that make materialists halt, but revels in miracle. No impossible wonder of the story gives him
pause.  Paul Veronese makes the wine run red at
Cana in his incomparable sketch; Raphael fetches
down Moses and Elias to witness the Transfiguration;
Schaeffer shows the hapless lovers in their penal whirl;
and Allston displays Samuel rising to Saul at the
Witch of Endor's incantation. What is the ecstasy
which the cold canvas can impart after generations
have gone, and the ideas are obsolete from which it
took its cue? There must be in it a hint of truth which
physicists do not suspect. All the spiritualism is a
hound after reality more precious than protoplasm or
animal derivation of men. Artists are not atheists,
however artisans may be.  They are possibly not
church-members, sabbatarians, or liturgists; but they
are believers and worshippers. A spirit passes before
them, as before Job. There is a moment or place in
their task where, in the Orthodox phrase, they know
they are assisted. It is no flag fleshly appetite can
plant on the celestial coast. It is what on their voyage a holy vision wins. This, with Jesus, was the
transcendent bliss. Disparage not art: he was artist!




I32            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
From no such official or wretch as the popular theology misfashions could have come the spoken music
of those parables and sermons, conversations and
prayers.  Such sentences of solace and benediction
were moulded by lips that had exquisite sense of the
melody of words. Was there art in Plato's philosophy or Homer's lines?  Put his periods beside any of
theirs. The ring is as true, the tone as sweet, the
rhythm  as complete, while the matter is more momentous and sublime. Verse-wright or logician many
a one, but no teacher without Divine breath.
Does it shock piety to couple art with the Saviour of
the world? Who but the world's Maker is the supreme
artist? His works are beautiful persons and immortal
souls. Art is man's nature, and man's nature is the
art of God. Manners are an art as much as tinted
cloth or carved stone. The gracious element will flow
into every various act and motion, as the same fountain
has many jets. We hear of eminent creators grouty
and inaccessible, like Turner; and of poets and philosophers being taken suddenly ill, and jumping into
bed when callers were announced. But it was to avoid
the intrusion of reporters and insolence of gossips.
There is a rudeness gentlemen must use to the impertinent, a shell sensibility exudes, a chevaux-de-frise
the tender heart sets up against unjust fault-finding or
unwarranted approach. But without inward grace is
no insurance of courtesy even in the feminine frame.
Such arrant rebels were the women of the South, General Butler must print something about she-adders at
his office-door; and in both the French Revolutions a
special fury seized on women more than men. From




THEISM.                  I33
the genuine artist, politeness, on whoever has capacity
to receive it, will flow. William Blake, treating the
companion of his walk with rare deference, had, with
second-sight, still loftier salute for St. Paul passing
them on the way. This magnificent style depends on
no prim particulars of elaborate study. I can think of
an artist, who may smoke, dance into all the positions
of an acrobat, wear a cap in your presence, use expletives to pious folk profane, with such overrunning
good-will in every look and gesture to his pupils and
peers, - keeping no secrets of his skill, but telling every
thing, as a scholar said he left his manuscripts open for
all on his table; and giving to each comer alternately
a piece of his mind and a piece of his heart, expending with reckless profusion his vitality in good advice;
drawing smiles and tears alike with his pencil and his
tongue, and setting everybody astir with his voice as
with the drummer-boy from his brush, — that no one
shall say where the authentic art begins or ends. That
such a man, moved unwittingly by something greater
than his exceeding wit, should deny God, were as if
the finger denied the brain.  JIave come to see your
possessions, was said to a land purchaser, who answered, I own none of these acres: I am a possession
myself.
In all art we take example from God. "All the
world's a stage," writes Shakspeare. It is also a picture, which the Author leaves us to finish. It is a collection, the best in which we are puzzled to decide.
From admiring the tawny lion we are diverted by the
shining bug. Our eye is taken with the frowning cliff,
but taken off by the billow dashing at its base; and




134             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
again soon forgets the foamy rush, to be absorbed in
the long stretch of noiseless flats clothed in green and
yellow by the retiring tide. When paint is added to a
boarded house, it is like covering a lank frame with
generous flesh and blood. But God leaves the world
no skeleton.  How Nature hastens to heal every gash
of coulter or carriage, or cannon-wheel! People take
glasses to inspect the details of a landscape by Church,
or battle-piece of Le Brun. How do they compare
with the shadings on the back of a turtle, scales of a
fish, neck of a dove, or wing of a fly? We say of a
well-adorned creature, it is beautifully marked. The
fierce leopard, prowling panther, stealthy cat, cumbrous cow, slow ox, are designed and drawn as if God
could let nothing mean or savage drop from his hand
without his signet, as a painter writes his initials on
his least sketch.
" Did He who made the lamb make thee?"
write Blake of the tiger. Yes, answers the soft decoration, supple motion, glittering eye. Divine intent
in lavish charm  is here, as in the meek ball of wool.
How the spell for the population, of caravans* and
menageries, vindicates the wild beast we think fit only
to exterminate! Are not the animals themselves artists,
into whom a taste for beauty descends? Watts writes
of the bee," How skilfully she builds her cell!
How neat she spreads the wax!"
No, says the theologist; nothing but instinct. But
wiser science discovers voluntary intelligence; and we
find that birds alter and adapt their nests as men their




THEISM.                  I35
dwellings to new situations. Are not the modulations of
their songs, too, learned and enriched by degrees, - one
note or trill, in successive ages of these winged citizens,
joined to another? Surely the lark, thrush, linnet, and
nightingale, are not deaf as a flute or hand-organ to
their own melodies. They are no wood-work of dumb
show to entertain us, but have something of the feeling
of Braham or Malibran in their breasts, some organ of
tune in their tiny brains, and appreciation of harmony.
They must despise the senseless screams that pass in
some of our parlors and churches for secular or sacred
music. They sing and play more true than many
choirs and organists. They are their own composers,
and have no Mozart or Beethoven to give them the
score. Is not their nerve and faculty the Lord's composition, part of the music of the spheres? The art
that is God's exercise is his demonstration too. " He
has made every thing beautiful in his time;" and, however our modern Orthodoxy may note exceptions, if
there be a Hell, I doubt not that is handsome too.
The last witness is Experience. Everybody comes,
like Falstaff, to need God, - One eternally alive to succor and befriend. I cannot quite credit the professions
of entire content, with which, looking only to annihilation, some lay their offspring in the dust, and have
their own coffins made. It is a cheerless belief, or disowning of faith, that no God makes his rendezvous in
the human breast, or becomes conscious of himself in
his children's mind. When we go down into depths
beneath the sun and air, not to find him were madness
and despair. He is there to bring us up, like divers
with pearls in our hands. There are cases in which




136            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
no man can redeem his brother. Mortal or angelic
help will not avail. Something the soul must have for
its reliance: one cannot lean on himself. Who does
not feel the pathos of the situation when Rip Van
Winkle says his dog is the only friend he has left! But
there are extremities wherein no fiiend in sight will
suffice. The Invisible Almighty we want. If some
other, as Jesus, the Virgin Mother, or Guardian Angel,
stand instead, it is but as his proxy to assure us of his
pardon and support. Happy they who require no
medium, attorney, or friend at court, being at home
with the great Appointer and on good terms with the
King; able to say, like one when admonished to make
his peace with God, " I am friends with him, and we
have never quarrelled."
We cannot rest in multitude, in the many. There is
no single creature that is not many, of imperfect principles and inconsistent moods.. "My husband," said
a hopeless woman, " is hurt at what I did with the
best purpose: I do not expect to please him in any
thing."  "I feel," said another, pointing as we sailed,' that I am that long, lonely island, looking over on
other peoples' trees." But, in the sense of unity embracing the world, we are at peace. The doctrine of
Spiritualism, held as of a swarm of spirits of all dispositions, without Infinite Spirit, can only discompose.
Such a Spiritualist wrote me, " Truth cannot prevail
without the abolition of the Christian's God." Spiritualist and Atheist!  What a worse than Chinese
puzzle this chaos and limbo of spirits, -
"Black, white, and gray,
With all their trumpery!"




THEISM.                  137
The many only repeat the One, and are impossible
without it. Take away the mathematician's unit, and
all his mighty calculations sink. Take away the real
Unit, and the universe is no more. It is easy to call
names, to brand as atheist him that believes not in
your God, who may be finite, fetish, devilish. BLut
discard the vital Unity to adopt the elements and particles alone for your countless senseless fathers and
mothers, and religion is the hypocrisy of an empty
name. In the One only we repose, and meet any fate.
A friend, dying of cancer in the throat, said: It is his
will; and I have so suited my mind to it that, should
anybody come in and say, Alice, you are going to
get well, I know not how I could bear that!
AWe fondly trust each other, but no fellow-creature
can bear our whole weight. We shrink from omnipotence, not knowing what it will do with us; but the
Almighty is all-tender. Among men, it is not the strong
that disturb us, but the weak. Strength of will and
feeling raises and soothes. The feeble irritate and
torment. The superficial chop-wave on the sea vexes
and annoys and disquiets the sleeper as it dashes
sharp and angry on the shore. But the ocean's groundswell lifts skiff or frigate gently, and how silently, as
an infant rises and falls on the mother's heaving
breast.  The resonant surge along the tremendous
rocks, as mellow as it is mighty, is delicious unsatiating
music, never tires the musing mind, hushes the weary
frame in the soft resistless swing which sun and moon
stand ready to push to and fro, is a pleasant accompaniment of thought; and, with its rote in time, reminds of the roll of eternity. The image is with me




I38            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
still of one whose eye-lids drooped, as by some preestablished harmony, with the regular dip of my oars
on the slopes of the sliding, watery heaps. So on this
slippery surface of time we are borne by a Providence
we cannot fathom or withstand. The Power that is
measureless can afford to be kind.
" Hark to the voice of the mighty sea,
Whispering how meek and gentle he can be."
The shallow freshet, the brawling brook, cannot help
being rough. O my brother or sister, precious are your
regards; but if, in sore distress, it is the mildest treatment I need, if my heart is wounded within me perhaps by your ill-considered word, then with David I
call for mercy on Him. His hand is as much easier as
it is greater. Nature is that hand, into whose hollow
creep alike the bleeding soul and the stricken deer.
His breath is more healing than any human speech:
solitude is that breath. Thousands charm and cheer
me, but One sustains. Without Him we are confused,
dissipated, and dissolved. In his Being we are and
cannot cease to be.
But there are conditions of knowing God: first,
intellectual.  We call atheist the man who does not
accept our definition. But we must see God, if at all,
in his act. We cannot part him from what he does,
or between Creator and creation stick a thought. Once
he was supposed too pure to soil his hands with
making the world; that he employed apprentices, or
used for a proxy his Son; or, if he constructed it as a
carpenter and owned it as proprietor, like an absentee
landlord he left it to run itself in certain grooves of




THEISM.                 139
rule, while he took the air in some celestial Boulevarde, showing his hand occasionally to break his
laws, playing a game of hide-and-go-seek with his
creatures, and caught only in some marvel.  The
sacred hymnist prompted our thanks that we"Are not left to Nature's light
To know the Lord;"
as if an author could be published in aught but his
works. God's revealing is in what theologians considered his veil. Spinoza was counted atheist because
he could see nothing but God; as Novalis said,was
drunk with him. Nature the wreck and ruin of a fall?
No: his costume changed, summer or winter, every
day-. Peruse him in printed ink alone, when we turn
the rock-pages of the globe, the album and picture-book
for his children's amusement, containing not the seven
wonders we read of in our primer, but showing all is
such wonder-land where we live that nothing in particular as a miracle can be distinguished and defined!
A good editor tells me my God is Brahma, because he
is One I cannot get rid of or cut off' from myself.
But I have never been able to pronounce his name.
There is a moral condition of knowing him. A
liar is atheist, conceiving only of some power he can
circumvent. If you make partial, deceptive statements.
I shall find out the missing links which Darwin hunts
for in the earth's autobiography. How surely in every
falsehood the Deity sees himself denied! The duplicity of the Pharisees was. their own blind which they
could not see him through; but his beauty shall break
out all over you into eyes. The false reasons are not




I40            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
only insulting, but profane; and whoever gives no such
is rare and divine. Every deceiver imitates the ostrich
with its head in the sand and its body out. My friend
in the cars did not know how clearly I saw her unwillingness anybody should take the empty seat by her
side. The moon eclipses the sun, and is eclipsed by
a sixpence close to the eye; and all double-dealing
eclipses God. As criminals are described in advertisements, how we placard the uncandid on the inner
walls! They, and no theoretical atheists are without
God. We can readily think of people who keep on
their premises a pot of varnish and plenty of veneer.
From the shop of their mercenary mechanics comes
nought but superficial mimicry of value, -the excellence skin deep, the meanness a foot thick. Be mahogany all the way through, if you would have your religion pass for more than pretence. " Oh, that I knew
where to find him!" dost thou cry, O Job? Find yourself in his service, which is justice to his creatures, and
you will not miss him. For the man who gave to the
Missionary Society the money he owed for his woodbill, saying he, must pay God first, that Being must
have been hard and far to reach. Weave your dogma
out of prophets' tongues, you will not catch him: put
your fence of form never so high, you cannot impound
his Spirit. He will stay only in the truth of your own
lips and purity of your eye. He laughs at 3your creed
like the morning at the prism in which you would analyze and confine its beam. If he be not in your purpose, you can have him, like Greek or Jew, only round
in spots. Your righteousness is the Real Presence.
Theodore Parker over a sceptic's coffin said, " 0 Lord,




THEISM.                 141
though he doubted thy being, he lived thy law;" and
all who had come to wonder what prayer could be
uttered were convicted as less faithful than the man in
his shroud.
There are doubtless professors of atheism, idolaters
of science like Vogt, carrying contempt of religion so
far as to class the apostles with apes. Self-esteem in
their brain fills the whole space reverence should share.
A French Communist general, being asked if he believed in God, answered, No; and he would not tolerate him if he did: it was one against many, a tyranny
he would resist and erect the barricades in heaven,feeling as Milton's Satan did about the God whom
only "thunder had made greater." This was the
insane anarchy washed out of the streets of Paris with
the blood of sixty thousand men. The God that had
been preached to them, of Calvinist and Jesuit, priest
and cardinal and pope, undeserving his sceptre, was
too like the earthly rulers whom liberty and brotherhood led them  to withstand.  " What, then," the
French officer was asked, " do you believe in?" Elbow-deep in gore, " Universal Harmony," he replied,
- with no Harmonist, only a tune as on a barrel-organ
playing itself! No wonder a bar was set up for a trial,
in which binocular, ambidexter, centipedal, believing
Germany was appointed judge. Nevertheless, an obscure sense of right inspired that Commune, and every
honest drop of blood shall have a resurrection.
All science of the understanding God escapes. No
microscope or telescope will ever discover him. A
devout scientist, apologizing for his brethren, said,
"They are too much occupied and tired with their




I42            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
specialties of investigation to entertain the subject of
Deity."  But is it not their method which for any
spiritual pursuit is at fault?
There is, to know God, a spiritual condition. Is
faith his communication to us or our unfolding to him?
He will impart himself in the ratio of our growth.
Doctors tell invalids it will do them good to take deep
inspirations of their own breath; and travellers say
they get no just impression of Niagara or St. Peter's
till, by often gazing, they grow up to what they contemplate.
So with our seeking our source. All things help
us. I found a teacher in the little brown bird filling
the sky with its song from a throat no bigger than a
straw. As I wrote in the field a heifer came up to me.
I offered her some clover. She shook her head, did
not want that. I stroked her forehead. She jerked
her horns again: it was no cosseting she was after.
She stood and looked as I drove my pen, and was but
immensely curious to know what I was about there on
her domain. What was the green worm crawling
towards me along the walk but some bit of an old sin
trying in it to lift its head from the ground? Every
dumb creature is one round in an angel-ladder we
mount on to God and heaven. The beast has no dread
because no idea of death. Our ability to face and anticipate destruction is proof we are not to be destroyed.
Your joyless outlook at annihilation, like the Indian
death-song, refutes your doctrine of doom. With one
glance at the universe we feel some One is happy, with
whom we shall have a good time. Some of us debated, if shut up to the alternative, which we should




THEISM.                   I43
prefer, faith in God or in our own immortality. Let
me go down, if only so he can remain eternal supply,
to vanishing creatures, of dissolving views. But God
were suicide if he killed himself in his children, murderer if he slew his children in himself, deceiver if be
stirred expectations he must disappoint, robber if he
waylaid us for any treasure of fi-iendship, spurious
benefactor if he snatched away what he had once
bestowed.
"Chip, chop, chain,
Give a thing and take it back again!"
"Do you believe," one was asked, "' in the devil?"
" No: I believe in God."  The man who doubts the
reality of sin is held a pantheist. But he who regards
sin as an essence is not a theist.  Thought, which is
imperative, and no respecter of persons, must charge
him with being an atheist. Satan is agent and tool, not
a chess-player saying Check to God. He is, and there is
none else, - eternal equation of the universe. It is no
subtraction, but seal of his infinity, that he can leave his
own solitude and make persons in relation with himself, Person of whom they are part, able to love and
pray. Were the Divinity a single consciousness devouring as quick as it produced, it would be a helpless
and futile force. Its power to differentiate, hinted in
the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, is its
own authentication.
From the teachings of many churches and schools,
we should suppose God's nature a collection of contradictory qualities, like those creatures which, though
hostile, are caged together, to look askance and growl




144            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
at each other; living only in a sort of truce or armed
neutrality. So he has to keep the peace in this quarrelsome family of his own inclinations. He compromises between them, is the great Compromiser. God
is good; but, we are told, forget not he is holy too,
and that his holiness limits his grace. No! his holiness expresses his grace.  He is equally benignant
whether he comfort or strike, as light and lightning
are but the same. A Methodist said to a Calvinist,
" Your God is my Devil." But we all have really the
same God. The overseer on the plantation was an
obsequious person to the owner, cruel to the slave,wreathing his face with smiles, with a whip under his
cloak. God turns a shining look on high and low.
He has not given you up! The writer in Genesis, and
Paul in his Epistles, were mistaken and disrespectful
in supposing he had failed with Adam and Eve. One
described the virtue of a persevering ecclesiastical
organizer as like the mill, once having grasped the
log, not letting it go till it was turned to account of all
its value. So God will never have done with us till
we are converted to all we are good for. He will get
the last drop of music out of us. Jesus was in error
if he thought God had forsaken him. We remember
the town-crier, who used to go round ringing his bell,
and shouting, to inquire for some lost child, and set
the whole population, on every wharf and by-lane, to
hunting him up. I have known all the inhabitants in
a village kept awake because some lad had not returned
from the woods; and large parties organized for the
search. The meanest and worst is as dear to God as
the one we call his Only-begotten. Parents are sup



THEISM.                 I45
posed to have favorites; but the good father or fond
mother will never tell the pet of the house, however
by look, act, or manner the secret be betrayed. They
are ashamed of their partiality. God has no partiality
to be ashamed of.. No sublime personage, king or
genius, profound philosopher or special messenger, is
an inch nearer to his good-will, a hair's-breadth deeper
in his embrace, than the humblest breather.
God is the same in all ages and nations. We think
he has some far-away Golden Age, like the commencement of the Christian era; and the Jews put it
still further back with Father Abraham. They appropriated Jehovah, made a monopoly of the Lord, on
that little strip of territory; letting the heathenHivites, Jebusites, and the rest - have some poor little
wretched deities, Moloch and Remphan, of their own,
but no share in Him who thundered fiom the mountain, and had led them to Sinai through the Red Sea;
as tile modern Chinese think all worship and civilization barbarous but their own. Almost all Christians
fandy the Pagans under a curse, and not a few put the
world's favored time eighteen centuries ago. To the
question in the mental-photograph album, which is'the last toy we play with, In whkat period would
you have rather lived? they answer, Whzen Christ
was born. Those were the times of glory, when the
star went before the wise men, and the annunciation
chme to Mary; the angels sang over the cradle, the
Holy Ghost descended as a dove, and in tongues of
flame, and there were healings and feasts and resurrections! Now the age of miracles is past. But is
God less manifest now than then? Was there formerly
IO




I46            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
more of him in the world? Has he lost ground?
Absurd, impossible, impious to presume i What those
wonders were we cannot exactly say, only that Jesus
told his followers greater were to come; and just as
great now as ever. Where would you rather have
lived? in Bethlehem or Bethany or Jerusalem, rather
than Boston?  What illusion of false color througlh
the kaleidoscope of history, the stained glass of imagination, we turn on the Distant and the Past! X"Are
you going to the Holy Land?" said one to my friend.
" No," he answered: " why should I be flea-bitten at
Nazareth?"  As if the Holy Land were Palestine
more than England or Massachusetts! The steps of
Christ? They are no more on the slope of Olivet or
along the shore of Galilee, road to Emmaus, or way
to Capernaum, than in every place of need and path of
progress, or enterprise of philanthropy. Asylums for
the sick, and cargoes of flour for starving Frenchmen
three thousand miles off, are as good and sacred as the
upper chamber of the Passover or the Cross carried
to Calvary. A mission to India or the Sandwich
Islands, a commission sailing to San Domingo, or
sitting, lords from England and peers in America, at
Washington, to settle international disputes, - are as
divine as conclaves of apostles dividing out their
routes over land or sea to Corinth and Athens, and
Thessalonica and Rome. The reports of committees,
examining matters essential to the public weal, ought
to be as religious in motive as any old Epistle to the
Philippians or the Hebrews. Why should the living
Present slink away so ashamed before the ghost of the
Past? To-day is as good as ever dawned. Egotism -




THEISM.                  147
abounding, all-devouring coveting of place and priority, loving to lead - alone hinders the Divinity, as
Victor Hugo said Napoleon with his ambition annoyed God. We have no one kirg or queen, crowned
like Victoria or William; so everybody wants to be
empress or emperor.  In what shining talents and
splendid virtues this self-love is the only flaw, fatal
to the rounded integrity! No egotist can be greatly
loved.  However modest, deferent, deprecatory you
are, if a pushing forth-putting temper, a greed of
precedence be the main-spring, people will know it;
and the nearer you come and friendlier you would
seem, the more they keenly feel, and make you feel,
their distrust. Be not the fly in your own ointment.
Lo! all the constellations of truth and beauty in God's
heavens are waiting and wanting to come down to
you, and you put yourself a mote in the object-glass
of your own telescope, to shut out the spectacle and
spoil the revelation! Leave your self-pronunciation
at last behind. Simon Magus thought the Holy Ghost
could be bought for money: will you sell it for admiration?  It will not be the Holy Ghost, but some
plausible falsehood - mock pearl, paste-diamond,
pinchbeck metal -your vanity barters for its food to
grow fat on. You are high and lofty, O my man of
talent and fame! But any man, to move me, must not
be so tall I cannot see God over him.
The lower creatures have the same God as we.
They, like the poor negroes once, have been neglected
in the pulpit and the religious books. Of that beautiful Mosaic Law, " Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that
treadeth out the corn," Paul asks, "'Doth God take




s48            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
care for oxen?  Or saith he it altogether for our:
sakes? "  Vith all due respect for the great apostle, I,
answer, Yes: God does care for oxen as well as for us.
In this slighting comment on the poor patient drudges
for man I have no share. Beast and bird how like us in
nature as in structure! I saw some pigeons lighting
on a narrow window-ledge. There not being quite roomfor all, it interested me to see how dainty and restless,:
with what clean and delicate step they moved, like
men or women on a crowded bench. At last one or.
two got up as you do in a car, only on wings instead
of legs, then flew off to a wider seat; where, the rest
following, they formed in line again, and seemed to
have an excellent social festive time together, as if
they were giving a party or returning calls. I thought
they behaved as sensibly as people do in a pew or at
a picnic, and were as kind and polite as gentlemen
and ladies. I saw a dog make signs with his right
forepaw to his master across the street as if asking
leave to come, and then spring over like lightning
the moment he was allowed.  Those our poor kinsfolk have a measure of inspiration.  He whom we
worship is God not only of the Jew or Gentile, but
of the hunted deer and over-driven horse.  " Not a
sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father":
is not that in all literature the tenderness most
sublime?
"Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
Did He who made the lamb make thee?"
Yes: the tiger has rights not to be tormented, which
we are bound to respect.




THEISM.                   149
Through all -miaterial chances God abides the same.
The revelation of Him, before whose face the heaven
and earth fled away,, only anticipated science. Gross
bulk, there is no more in the world: nothing is left but
power. Matter is committing suicide in the material.
ist's hands. We stand face to face with the Infinite
Force. We sometimes see in man or woman a Beauty
that takes away our breath. It is a ray of the Divine
Spiritualism to announce the retinue of spirits, without
which the universe would seem a tomb; but all have
one God.
Can -we speak to him? Can we refrain, with this
geyser in our heart bursting up to heaven? But he
sees our situation. Beggary will not turn one hair
white or black.  " Which way do you call the wind?"
an Irishman was asked.  "I could not call it any
way," he replied. How about the wind that bloweth
where it listeth?  Becalmed in Frenchman's Bay, our
skipper whistled for the wind importunately and long,
till it came in a gale from the hills. Who can read
Cowper's
"' Celestial breeze, no longer stay,
But fill my sails and speed my way,"
without a heart-echo?  Earnest seeking is prayer.
Charles Goodyear spent his substance, threw in his
health, used up his family, and tired patrons and
friends searching for a form of India-rubber to be of
service in the arts; till, as Forceythe Willson said,
"Nature, also worn out, told  himl,'Take it, my
child!"' When my search for a lost keepsake became
agony, I found it in dust or desert or sea. God is
constrained by prayer, and cannot choose but heed our




I50           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
request; for the genuine prayer in us is part of him-,
self and no whim of ours, as we are part of him. It
belongs to the constitution of things, and is one of the
laws that cannot break. God, said one, could have
made a finer fruit than the strawberry. No: in the
French phrase, he does his whole possible. Can he
help seeing us? Hearing us, no more! "Thou must
hear me," Luther said. He bides tryst. You will
not give your razor or the reins to a child. God will
give us only good. When words fail us, the inward
incense rises and rests ever in the soul, like smoke
from the chimney, the cloud on Mont Blanc, or the
powdery snow blown for ever round the head of the
Ortler Spitze, the Alp-giant in the Tyrol. "I took
him up into my room and prayed with him," said
the minister, of the Liberal Tract distributer at the
Tremont Temple; "but I have concluded not to be
bothered with him any more." But prayer, that is
perfunctory or used as magic, is jugglery and pretence.
It must be patient and painstaking, like that in the
Garden, to be heard.
We seek unity: but God is difference too. The Son
is eternally generated, not as an individual, but an element in the entire substance and essence of things.
Physical science as vainly as metaphysical strives to
reduce this other yet not alien quality. The philosophic astronomer tells us of the fire-mist or nebula
or world-stuff, of which the worlds were made. We
might, so far as concerns solving the problem of creation, as well stop with the shining, rolling worlds
themselves. Whence the vapor they are made of, is
as hard to say as whence the masses and orbits com



THEISM.                 I51
plete. The point we make is a paradox, alters not our
position, and brings us no nearer the Source.- Can we
get the universe out of a primordial germ? From
some vesicle was the balloon of Nature inflated, and
the whole bubble blown? By what breath without
mouth or lungs! The bellows must be accounted for,
and One they were handled by. A marvellous child
thrust his pipe into that soap from which star and
planet were thrown off! Such a view of the origin is
a conception, but no thought. It is unthinkable. So is
all derivation of Nature fiom design. We can speak
of the design of an artist or artisan. There are
models and patterns, after which weavers and carpenters arrange their thread and timber. But we cannot
distinguish between the Originator and his work. Creator and creation who can separate with his eye or in
his mind?  I conceive of the fender, which I look at
while I write, as constructed of iron, smelted fiom
ore, blasted or quarried from the mine by a series of
inventions. But whither did God go for his materials,
and in what manner were they fetched? Did they lie
at first within or outside the Being they were used by?
For God there is no quarry to discover, and no date
to lay his corner-stone. It is not supposable that he
began at any point in time or space, or that there was
any beginning, such as the Book of Genesis declares.
It conmmences now, says the photographer to his sitter.
But He never commenced. The universe was never
less, nor will be greater, any more than himself. WVe
may say,.ftness; but any attempt to consider periods
or compartments, as including all, is nonsense and
folly. God has no era, and the epochs we name are




152            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
for accommodation and convenience, not perfect science
or history of his deeds. The Pyramids, Strasbourg,
Vatican, had their architects. Ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel was plaster once. But none has ever breathed
to say where or how the Eternal Builder put his hand
to the foundation of his palace; and Jesus is as ignorant of the day or hour as the babe in your crib. Mr.
Huxley gives us a good phrase in the " Physical Basis
of Life;" yet his protoplasm is itself no simple thing,
but combination or composition of several elements,
whose putting together is a mystery so beyond our
search, that the adjective proto, or first, seems a sheer
assumption and misnomer. The First hides under and
behind every atom he employs. Besides, Mr. Stirling
shows how proofless is the dogma that any one protoplasm serves for vegetable, animal, and -nan. Every
species, through the whole range of organization, may
have its own. Its hIomogeneizy takes for granted the
point to be demonstrated, and is recommended to the
mind by the fascination and flattery there always is in
any single explanation of all phenomena.
There is in matter no elucidation of the genesis of
Nature. Spirit is the first term. Thought is the starting-place, not the result. Infinite Self, to which time
or place is not, save,as opportunity of motion and
transition, is the centre, which is circumference too.
All we know is a Becoming, which is in and fiom
Being. Blessed that the secret is not found out by us;
for then the object and continuance of life were gone.
It was said of one, She ceases to care for a man as soon
as she knows him. Be not regretful you have not
ascertained the Divine method: no interest in existence
for an intellectual creature would remain.




VI.
NATURALISM.
THEOLOGY has been a standing insult to Nature.
But by what rights of primogeniture?  It is no
elder brother or better born. Nature is that word of
God which theology means. The assault is suicide.
It is a false contrast to oppose Nature to Revelation,
every syllable of which comes through her mouth.
Nature is not contrary to Spirit which it voices, nor to
art which voices it, but only to artifice.  The true
distinction is that all religion which is not natural is
artificial. Nature, or our knowledge of Nature, advances, while theology is stationary, - professes to
have learned out. It sits by the roadside with improgressive complacency, as a lout reviles the sister that
passes by. No wonder the theologian insists that
Nature cannot tell us of God; for she never originated,
and cannot indorse his schemes. Living close to Nature is good for health and worldly wisdom: why not
for character and truth, and to import common sense
into our creed? Here is Nature's revenge: that every
system, so far as it leaves her, becomes artificial. Is
this quality better in doctrine or ritual than in manners or speech? Much of the present belief and wor



154            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
ship of the Church lacks genuineness. It has no
charm for a sincere mind, or challenge for the attention
of a strong one. Those who wait on the ministrations
complain, as some have done at watering-places, that
the table is poor, the food scant, and they have to
carry their own provisions, though but a cracker, to
partake of in secret. Said my friend, who was overpersuaded to go to a showy church, " I had to spend
my time looking round at the building and the bonnets; for I took in the sermon with the millionth part
of my mind."  Many Churchmen and Church-women
so belong to the great class of artificial people, it is
not strange those who can abide nothing but reality
choose to be unchurched, and that thoughtful persons
fall away from ordinances and tests. Artificial folk
we know too well in society to wish to meet them in
the temple. Their love is painted fire; their protection, a Quaker gun; their loyalty is for the spoils of
office; their philanthropy rises when the tide turns
against slavery and oppression; and they will be for
woman's rights when the majority of men are. We
have all been cursed with artificial friends, following
and smiling in our prosperity, as when you go forth
on a bright day every lazy creature creeps out to bask
in the sun. But the overcast sky of our fortunes
shows their affections to be affectations. - In our extremity they desert us. When we are sick and weak,
and they have no hope we can do any more for them,
they drop off. They will not need us, and think we
shall not complain or call them to account when we
are gone; for "dead men tell no tales."  Their ties
with us are for ornament alone, like those knots and




NATURALISM.                  I55
bands, cunningly caived in architecture, giving but the
appearance of strength, only weakening the pillars by
every grain in their construction cut away. Nature,
from the lips of piety a term of reproach, and mark
of man's depravity and corruption of the world? We
speak of the Divine nature. But when we change the
adjective to  umancz, it spoils the noun, and Milton's
" human face divine " is a contradiction in terms! Not
so. Nature is substance, and every thing substantial
is good.
"All A11 are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul."
But do the scholars who think Nature herself fallen
consider what blasphemy to His body is their diagnosis? Nature is the proceeding of spirit, language of
revelation, material and finish of art; for, says Shakspeare, -
"' Nature is made better by no mean,
But Nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art,
Which, you say, adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes."
There is no distinction of natural and revealed religion. Either is the other, if one or both be true. It
matters not whether our knowledge be growth into
God or his descent into us.
But for what ideas are we to Nature in debt?  First,
that of Infinity. Does it come fiom Scripture?  But
whence the Scripture? From creation the prophet's
mind had it, ere it could flow from the prophet's pen.
All ideas are within, phenomena are but the occasions.
Imagination is the artist sitting in his secret studio to




[56            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
mould and tint the stuff of Nature's quarry. Without
the starry vault, whence the notion of immensity?
This sparkling hollow what shape shall match? Taking a hint from geometrical figures, my friend called
it diagrams of iigkt.  It seems an endless beach for
the eye to wander over. It is an hour-glass through
which stars fall likie sand. It is a celestial railway to
whose last station we never get.'"Milky Way " we
call part of it; and the new-arrived German pointed
and asked if it were Milk Street. it is headland after
headland from which we leap into the bottomless deep.
It is a transparent lake we sail over, a trembling line
we hang on, our downward gaze returning the image
of the upward. Nature pale before revelation? God
lighted' her great altar-candle as well as the lamp of
reason, or taper in any prophet's bosom, and the too
often dark lantern of the Church.
Is Eternity an abstract conception? The world is a
notched stick, a register of vast lapses.  Said the
Greek, It never grows old. But, fresh as it contrives
to look, it bears marks of incomputable age. It is a
genealogy and record of time, - man's family-tree.
Had it been fashioned to cover its tracks and efface
its own history; if the earth obliterated all transactiQns on its surface or in its depths; if it came before
us spick and span, with the furniture varnish upon it
just from the shop, like something turned from a
lathe, created new every moment as sentimental philosophers say, - what could it give us of that feeling
of duration which is our stepping-stone into eternity?
But as I walk along the shore and note the crumbling
cliffs, the fragments fallen in countless heaps, the cob



NATURALISM.                 I57
ble-stones they have been worn into, the comminuted
pebbles, and the fine brown or white sand into which
the granite mountains have at last been ground by the
waves; as I notice huge upland boulders delicately
poised as if their melting vessels of ice had let them
softly to the ground, and others with bits of stone
underneath acting as chisels with which they have
ploughed their way, showing in the smooth grooves
the unmistakable direction of the geologic scratch;
and as I observe how Nature, ready to heal her own
wounds, has clothed with beautiful lichens, in colors
faster than of any art, their enormous sides,- I ask
how long it took to do all this; and, from the futility
of attempting any chronology, take refuge in the everlasting. I looked at a cedar rooted on the edge of the.
precipice, — an old Atlantic sentinel, standing guard
of vegetable life over against the barren waste before
Columbus heaved in sight of the Western shore, - with
the knotted stump of a more ancient tree enclosed. We
do not remember, said my friend, when we did this: it
has dropped out of our recollection. We have turned
over some of the pages of this " infinite book of secrecy," and detect everywhere vestiges of., former life.
We dig up fossil remains of animal and plant. We
find, in petrifactions, other cemeteries and mausoleums than man has reared. We discover in caves
rude tools of primitive fashion. We explore in the'
rock, once mud, the prints of the feet of pre-Adamite
birds. We calculate the periods requisite to build the
coral reefs and lagoons of the Pacific Sea. Mr. Darwin, trying to explain the origin of all existence from
primeval germs, has to confess missing links; and




158           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
knows not how long they were in Nature's chain, or
what gulfs they spanned in the bridge of the neverending march. Of our idea of eternity Nature is the
suggestion, if the Eternal One be the cause.
Has not the idea of Omnipotence like derivation,the will, we are conscious of, confirmed in thing's? All
this motion hints the self-moved, the Infinite Determination. How admirably dextrous he who keeps half a
dozen balls in the air! But what the vigor and suppleness by which these larger countless ones are kept from
falling or interfering?  To the invisible wind, sweeping and striking, rousing the ocean to send far inland
the sound of fury with which it founders ships at sea
or dashes them ashore, making the midnight sky the
alarm-bell struck by its hammer, -whence or whither
in its flight we cannot tell, or how twisted into the
tornado over the plains and among the gorges of the
hills; simoom of the desert, hurricane round promontories and among the islands, or cyclone and typhoon
of the Indian seas, - we owe the conception of strength.
That we may not miss this realizing sense, the earthquake does not confine itself to the tropics, but travels
north to shake every city and village by turns. Volcanoes open to show the pent-up vapor in this boiler
of the planet is not exhausted; and make us shudder
at the force, in rivets of iron and rock, beneath the
mighty deck we tread.  On every side are signs of
unexpended power whose leash is in the Almighty
hand. We ponder over the long dykes of trap-rock
that lace the granite coast, and ask what heat and
fierceness thrust them up from their fusion far below.
In one spot on the American continent the terrible




NATURALISM.                 159
pot has overflowed and spread in a chaotic mass all
about; and in some places the granite, through which
the molten streams were forced, has itself melted again,
and risen to break in two the trap by which itself was
broken at first. As a ship signals to us her condition,
so does this aerial vessel of the globe inform us of her
story and state. Does she not hold out colors, the flag
of power, to which the banners of nations are vanity?
I know not what innate sense I may have had of a resistless will; only that the resounding breeze which
woke me on my bed in the dark woke also my childish soul. Gentler tokens of equal energy more affect
me now, in the tide coming and going every day. I
sit and write on the sea's edge. As I look up, the
waters have ebbed, the sea has lost its arm. In the
empty bay the long sea-weed, that had stood upright
with perpetual courtesy in the waves, lies prostrate for
leagues, and paints with pale green the wide reaches
that take their names from long since deceased tenants
that saw the picture as I see it now. No loom ever
wove carpet like the stripes and patches of brown,
yellow, and black that variegate this marine verdure,
through which the sluggish channel, shrunk to a thread,
winds its way, turning the neighboring islet into mainland accessible to foot of man or beast. I bend to my
task in that musing work, which makes hours pass as
instants; then lift the eye, and lo! the inlet is full
again, so that fleets of kingdoms might ride on it.
Without raising its voice to the murmur of one louder
ripple, the sea has rolled in. What mathematics shall
reckon the liquid tons heaped against the hemisphere
while I have not heard the ticking of the clock? It




t6o            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
seems no unworthy task for the sun and moon to carry
this watcr-pot of the planet on their shoulders, to fill
the pail now for the East, now for the W~est; and of
this refirigerator and salt sanitarium make the most for
mankind.
But it takes not things of tremendous weight and
size to stir this sense. A little bird, lighting on the
tree-top and filling the whole air'for miles with the
song from its slender throat, while the sun climbs to
the zenith, excites the feeling of ability and vitality
which there is no way to estimate or play out, more
than of the turning on their axes of planets and suns.
What did those who have pronounced upon Nature's
defects know of her resources? They were like an
infant-school pretending to all the knowledge possessed by their mistress. How invention has gone forward, and our conception of Nature with greater stride,
wiping out inadequate notions on which the old creeds
were based, since this conventional disparagement
began, and compelling perpetual revision of theology;
though Conservatism resists, like the mop of Sydney
Smith's famous Dame against the tide!
But one want in Nature, it is said, we must confess:
there is no sign of forgiveness or mercy. We depend
on the miraculous communication for that. Can there,
then, be aught in God not signified in his works? If
Nature remits no penalty of broken law, is there proof
that God does; or is any voiding or suspension of law
an equal fiction, in the world or the soul? Goodness
is manifest: the universe overflows with it. What at
first we count hostile turns out to be friendly; and this
love or goodness is the only attribute, including all we




NATURALISM.                   6 I
call tenderness or pity, such as seems to quiver on the
lips of the Phidian Jove. The mercy is not in letting
us off from the proper punishment in full measure for
our fault, but in so constituting us, and ordaining the
issues of our acts, that no sin can be fatal; a fatality
of eternal woe for temporary transgression being the
monstrous wrong and cruelty for so many ages palmed
off on human superstition for the justice of God. Have
children a right to parental sympathy?  To Divine
compassion we h'ave the same claim. It is no gratuity
he could fairly withhold, at his arbitrary choice. It is
not his option, but necessity. It appears in all his
providence as much as in any special grace. It is
what physicians call Nature's healing power. The
instinctive effort to expel any bane from the system in
the shape of disease, - a cough, sweat, fever, eruption,
which is the evil demon going out of doors; the marvellous recoveries from nervous functional organic
prostration, Nature being, what man is erroneously
called, the resurrection doctor; the formation of a new
tooth, bone, nail, or claw, when the old has decayed
or been torn away; the abundant juices that run in the
same season to a second crop of grass, berries, blossoms, or fruit; the throes of remorse to drive out
iniquity before the setting in of mortification or dry
rot, — all show salvation in the make of things as
much as in any supernatural display.
Character must absorb and be nature before it is
worth.  Good-natzured is our term to describe perfect
temper. Dr. Spurzheim's observation forced him to
say he preferred a wife good by nature to one good by
grace. Benevolence, to be relied onl, must go deeper




I 62           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
than will, into instinct and blood. Then there is no
need of what revivalists call change of heart. I have
heard Orthodox people depreciate the amiable qualities I regretted they did not possess. Change your
heart, O friend? So much the worse for me were it
changed! " Keep that position," says the artist to his
sitter. Keep that disposition, I am moved to say to
some I love: it could not be any better.   She has not
experienced a change," mournfully one said of a dying
negro woman who was a Liberal Christian.'" Ve
hope not: none was required or would be a benefit,"
was the reply. I have seen in a young child, just cutting her teeth, an expression of patience, which was
the identical trait we read of in the Book of Martyrs,
with beauty not surpassed by Daniel in the lions' den,
the three in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, Paul in the
stocks, Peter in the dungeon, or Jesus on the cross. I
should not have admired John Brown on his gallows
any more.
But did not the Christian dispensation bring in metrit
of a quite new style? It were sad had virtue denied
itself, or ever been born.'" Cradle of Liberty," said
Kossuth, -" I do not like the phrase: it has a savor
of mortality."  The heraldry of holiness is too old to
trace: it has not altered its coat-of-arms. Have we
nobler than Plutarch's heroes? Were our soldiers at
Bull's Run better than those at Thermopylme?  What
mnodern captain braver than Cocles kept the bridge?
Where a case of nmore unselfish sacrifice than Curtius
ieaping into the gulf? Is maid or matron now more
jealous than Lucretia of honorable fame?  Purity,
loyalty, patriotism, and generosity are everlasting ex



NATURALISM.                I63
cellencies, the monopoly of no religion or age. The
oak did not become emblem of courage battling with
harder storms than the north-east can unloose, nor
the sweet-brier with its roses and thorns a symbol of
intangible chastity, in our era. There were brave men
before Agamemnon, and virgins before the mother of
Christ. To what time or denomination does a good
man belong?  He is Quaker of the inner light, and
Catholic in the outer worship; he sees Unity of person
branching wider than any Trinity; he is at home with
Methodist fervor and Episcopal decorum; he likes
Congregational freedom and Presbyterian order; he
believes in Orthodox discipline and Universal redemption; he agrees with the Spiritualist's presence of unseen fiiend, and in a rising from the grave of body
and dust into a glorified form. All parties covet him
because he adheres to none, and is above any, having
the freedom of the city of God. No society or cere-.monial suffices to hold or bind moral integrity. No
meeting-house is big enough for the soul. No more
empty the pretence of the babe's nurse to appropriate
the grown man, Washington or Lincoln, than that of
the Church to keep her charge in leading-strings, when
it has outgrown the nursery-room of ecclesiastic rule.
I remember, when a boy, how I envied the horses out~ side the sanctuary on Sunday. Though they, too, were
tied, it was with a longer tether; and my pasture was
dry compared to their green round of grass.
He makes better men than churchmen, was the complaint against a popular preacher: was it not panegyric? Said a Radical to a young girl in a Catholic
school, "You cannot be religious too soon: you need




I64            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
defence from whatever quarter against earthly vanities
and lures. I beg you, be no sectarian: I do not want
you for a proselyte; I would rather a thousand times
you should be defended than agree with me in opinion."
All who are religious are at one, and need only the
atonement they have received. By a humanity deeper
than strife, Rebel and Federal soldiers exchanged comforts, in the intervals of an engagement, across the fortification lines; so we stretch hands over rival frowning
battlements, and recognize each other by a surer than
Masonic touch. The wisdom of Natural Religion is
justified of her children. Wordsworth doubtless was
a good member of the English Church, but spoke
from his heart when he wrote,-'6And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."
When Safford was astonishing a circle by his swift
computations, and one asked by what training he
solved the fearful sums, " By nature," answered the
chief of American mathematicians standing by. We
notice this divine property of reverence even in the
beasts who look up to man as their deity. Well, if
the bowed head or lifted kerchief, or hat held before
the face in great cathedrals, express always a deference
as sincere. Even the worm tryvin  to raise its horned
proboscis makes some figure of aspiration. The alarm
with which our cruelty has managed to inspire almost
all the lower creatures is inverted veneration. The
highest reach of spiritual culture is nature; for it
is absurd to call natural that savage state from which
man is moved naturally and irresistibly to depart.




NATURALISM.                  I65
The consistent theologians took bravely the consequence of their accusation of our nature, that outward
Nature is evil too. We ridicule the mystic fancy that
man is responsible for the obliquity of the ecliptic and
might say, Isnow and rain; but it is matched in the
older doctrine that the world was ruined in his fall;
that the pits and brambles, barren swamps, hot deserts,
and icy poles and ragged cliffs, came of his sin. Milton
sings of the tears Nature wept over the eating of the
forbidden fruit; and we have all seen and felt on our
cheeks, as if on hers, those plashing drops, blotches
of wet falling wide and slow, from which he doubtless
took his line, though probably nothing dreadful and
deplorable had occurred. It is our mood that Nature
is cipher of. " The heavens mourn," said a Democrat,
on a rainy day, " over the disastrous vote."  " These
are tears of laughter," a Whig replied. The rifts in
the globe are too grand and beautiful, too redundant
in health and fertility, to have a curse for their cause.
Who would have the world round as a bullet, smooth
as a ball of yarn, bright as a bead in the sun? These
drifts of sleet and mist shall be not puddles of mud
only, but sweet springs and lilies and strawberries by:
and by.
"The dews shall weep thy fall to-night,"
says Herbert to the Day: but how many morningglories from such dews arise?  Byron's like figure of
Ardennes
"Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
Over the unreturning brave,"
might be of gladness just as well. The gorges are
better than a polished surface; the billows, than an




i 66          RADICAL PROBLEMS.
unruffled sea; thorns and thistles, than the spontaneous
production, in which man himself would vegetate and
rot, and his soul never rouse from sleep. The flower
we could snatch with hasty impunity were not so
lovely as that whose virgin sweetness we win fromn
its sharp defence with a bleeding hand. Only from
"the nettle, danger," can safety be plucked.
Abolish the so-called evil, and you abolish the good.
How many virtues  of patience, forgiveness, commiseration, magnanimity- are conditioned on human
defects! God understands himself and his children
in them also. Beware how you make Nature evil.
Driven out with the theological fork, she returns and
prevails. Truth to my nature, good or bad, is my
only task, Is it a wasp's duty to bring honey?  Is the
copperhead or hooded snake accountable for its venom
or fangs? If the Scribes and Pharisees were the
devil's children, their only obligation was to make
good his designs.
But do we not see native depravity in the child,irritable, wilful, wanting what it cannot have? What
achievements are wrapped up in that will, affections
in that sensibility, arts and sciences, endless inventions
and improvelnents, in those wants which grasp at every
shining object, and are discontented that the mnoon will
not come down! You are angry with your child because it will not be polite as you dictate. But the
fault is yours, not its. %Will you beat it with brute
strength? Would you mould it in your fingers as wax
or dough?  Do you not own that new individuality
Divine Personality shapes because it needs another
instrument, and desires no repetition of you, whom




NATURALISM.                 I67
one said, It is enough to have once? God will lay you
down, and have done with you, if you push and encroach. Force not the little master or mistress to come
and kiss the gentleman, as if the salute or caress, when
not voluntary, had value for your courtesy as merchandise in trade. Let the gentleman take that castle himself, if he can, in fair truck and barter. If I cannot win
your babe to my arms, I will respect its freedom, as I
would the affections of your grown-up daughter or son.
The doctrine of Natural Religion is not unchristian.
Jesus was the pre-eminent specimen. From the unfolding of his own soul came all his wondrous works
and words. Had he been anywhere to see God out
of his bosom? When he said, Before Abraham teas,
I am, he meant no pre-existence you do not share,
only you are not inwardly developed to perceive it
so clear. All persons are convertible into equivalent
glory, if not into whatever he was. When Lucy Stone,
in the riot, told her friends to look out for themselves,
and was asked, "' Who will protect you?" - "This
gentleman," she answered, turning to the leader of the
mob, who instantly proved as good as her word. It is
the touch of sunshine that makes the roughest bud
open. Paul was hid in Saul all the time. Fickle
Peter was not misnamed a rock: the superficial wave
has but to retire to disclose the granite ledge; and
under unstable feeling lies unshakable resolve. To
the nature within nature we appeal. In a graceful
dancer I admired the flying feet that struck so surely
every note of the tune which flew from pipe and viol
through the air, with pre-established harmony in nature between the melodious chords and those of the




i 68           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
human frame. Like answer in our spiritual constitution just education will find to every law of purity and
line of truth; and we shall know that each genuine
sentiment and resentment of the mind has its part in
the music, and is a string in that harp, made of living
fibre, which the angels play.
Nature, to our meditation, supplies the moral that
goes with the fact. With this power we must be on
good terms. Nature pardons no mistakes. She will
not give me an inch of rope or hair-breadth of billow
to save me from drowning or oversetting in my boat.
But on her fidelity we can depend. Point for point, to
the end of the line, it will answer to ours. Her penalty is the other side of her reward. The mechanic
puts his board to the circular saw. If he puts his arm,
it will cut that just as well. If his hand is caught in
the wheel, it will be carried round as swiftly as the
strap. The car will crush my toe on the rail with the
same coolness and iron equanimity as it does the boy's
copper cent. The Almighty's buckler is for his children's defence; but they must not rush on its thick
bosses themselves. Had there never been a line of
Holy Writ, Nature would have hinted obedience of her
laws, with every child's finger that went into the flame,
or moth that hovered about a lamp, or flood that came
and wind that blew and beat upon the house; with
every spring freshet or lava-stream that tore up the
fields and burnt or bore the villages off, a teacher of
Theology.




VII.
MATERIALISM.
NW   THAT is the starting-point?  "In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth."  But
the materialist says, In the beginning the heavens and
the earth created God, or the idea of God in the human
mind; having first created the mind capable of that
idea, fancy, or fact. But derivation fi-om  dust is a
theory that disposes of no metaphysical difficulty. In
an ever-changing universe, something must self-exist.
Is or has matter any self.? In the play of Ruy Blas,
the hero bursts, in a closing scene, into the warning
cry, " I am here! "  Out of no act of this mighty play
of the world can the I be kept. To no after-piece can
it be postponed: it is an impossible feat for any Roman Lucretius or French Encyclopedist. An Infinite Self, root of every other, appears with the first
motion of curiosity, runs like the ghost under the
platform, reappears at every point, - a giant that carries us all the time, a spy we never escape, a sapper
and miner of whatever godless hypothesis we build.
Does the traveller go on foot, this has outstripped him
by rail; does he run post-haste,.this, like the telegraph
after the thief, has sped with the lightning; does he
drive his:stakes in the wilderness, he wakes up mor



170            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
tified with this pioneer ahead. The Romans were
right to make Terminus itself a god, and our poet is
right with his "' god of bounds." It is a contradiction
to talk of any bound of God.
In this almanac of Nature, what is the date? WVe
cannot, without a sense of absurdity, date mind fromn
matter.  An inmost sentiment, deeper than sense,
stronger than logic, wider than what we observe, and
higher than all we understand, forces us to date matter
firom mind. The masters of wisdom, Plato and Aristotle and Spinoza, join in this verdict with the chiefs
of inspiration, Moses and Job, Jesus and Paul. Your
primordial atom assumes order and an Ordainer;
your protoplasm implies a Protoplast and plastic art,
an Architect of the many-chambered house, a First including the many, and a Self-motion without which is
no motion; your substance, One that stands under and
holds up; your conscience, a Detective pursuing us
firom the trees of the garden through every web of
sophistry or thicket of shame.
Matter is multitude, which it is preposterous to put
for the original term and make the. parent of unity
instead of the result. What is the depositor but the
soul, from which all this fund or bank of particles proceeds, and by which it is held, something it dropped
by the way and shall resume at will, like cast-off
clothes or an old manuscript, to go through the imill
again? Matter is the mind's decayed -self, buried for
a while, and awaiting a resurrection. All this scene
of visible glory is but a receiving-tomb. Lower life
is the sepulchre of worn-out higher, with angels at the
door to blow the wakening trump, at which the rock




MATERIALISM.                 I71
itself shall rise to consciousness, the clod clap on
wings, and lost spirits learn hell is but a way back to
heaven.
You are sure of matter?  But who *are you, and
what is it to be sure; or what is matter sure of?  The
physicist despises superstition and idolatry, but tallks
of our origin in the elements. What idolatry so deep,
superstition so stubborn, polytheism  so manifold, or
pantheon so wide!  Deification of the elements as
factors of whatever is called God or man? Give us
back Jove and Juno, Mars and Minerva, Vulcan
and Venus, for better deities. Let us study religion
with Homer for our text-book, as nearer the truth
than the senseless atoms. If the elements are more
than instruments, let the carpenter be made by his
tools, the painter by his paint, the chemist by the gases
he combines in his retorts. If we shrink, with the old
sufferer, from  saying to corruption, " Thou art my
father," and to the worm, "' Thou art my mother and
my sister," it is a noble hesitance. We subordinate
our Author to ashes in subordinating ourselves. To
make the first term  countless is like making the variations precede the tune, and the accompaniment prior
to the player. A lifeless womb of life is unthinkable.
The gem is not made by the rock that imbeds it, nor
the flower by the soil it grows in; and the phrase
spontaneous generation is a figure drawn from choice.
There was a mother of the matrix we were shaped in,
and hewer of the rock firom which we were hewn.
The wonderful Person contains road and sky, is at the
goal and the outset, stands for the post and slips in
behind the limit, and constrains us to conclude as we




172            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
commence. Matter may be our nursery;- but who is
our nurse?  Matter is but the door of invisible force,
lying always in fineness, not in gross-bulk. Are the
subtilties made of the masses which they toss?  Are
light, heat, electricity, magnetism,' product of some
creative crucible? The composition is the clod. A
French chemist reduces all not to atoms, but to'atomicities, or active powers, - shall we say, to One Atomicity, whose name we dare not speak? The materialist
starts from the particles, and gets into the presencechamber of the King. Encourage him  on his way.
Give materialism rope enough, perfect liberty, and it
will hang itself.  It thinks to commit murder, and
commits suicide.
Yet physical philosophy is not without benefit. It
has made the wordy Sahara of metaphysics green and
fruitful. Into the void of abstractions it puts form and
color, a language clear and picturesque. Let us give
thanks for its portfolio of sketches of the actual world.
This earth is so fair, I reserve my opinion if heaven
be better. I take not the preacher's assertion. Let
ne -pause before this picture.  Hurry me not with
premature descriptions of the next. There are momnents of visible revelation, when life is unmixed blessing, the cup is full, time disappears in eternity, there
is no such thing as calamity, the soul is content and
asks no more of God. A gleam  of glory from  the
unveiled constitution of things sets the gate of paradise
at our steps. We see death as the last scud of vapor
that flits away. God makes his garment of matter so
fine we little children can only clutch and gaze.
Materialism humbles, too, our pretensions of a sepa



MATERIALISM.                 173
rate nature., A Hebrew scorn of animals, founded on a
notion of their' inferior origin, and existence for man's
use, infected the Christian teachers, though not Jesus
himself. To the naturalist, more than to the theologian, we owe the, growing interest in their welfare.
It is the crown of civilization to apply the word Aunmanity to a kindly treatment of every lower tribe.
What but the science we condemn has taught us that
this is no figure of speech. or act of grace, but simple
justice to creatures of the same dust as ourselves?
Zeal to gather specimens may sometimes be cruel,
and the eager pathologist pursue sharply the homologies of structure and function. But a new sentiment
is making the knife relent: the pinning and vivisection once so remorseless now submit to the law of
economy of pain.  In regard to human beings too,
materialism proclaims equality. It is no autocrat or
aristocrat, but democrat.  It shows one womb and
cradle for all men. A narrow spiritualism, regarding
the soul as not a flower or outgrowth, but aeolian
attachment' of the body, allowed cruel diversities
among men. The Church suffers from its fancy of
gifts in one, impossible to another, carried in the case
of Jesus to the extent of miraculous generation and
introduction to the world. But for him God would
not love or save the rest of the house. The other
members of the family have sinned past cure. The
case is gone by default: the sword is unsheathed, and
the throne burns with devouring wrath. But if this
dear Son will bow to the stroke, and sprinkle his blood
in the flame of that almighty forge, restoration to favor
may be had! Such gratuity at another's instance and




I 74          RADICAL PROBLEMS.
intercession, I decline. If God will not love me for
my own sake, I will not be loved. If he hates my
nature, let him hate. If, says Mr. Mill, I must go to
hell on any ground that goodness in God or man is not
the same, to hell I will go! Would you have your father
or mother embrace you for your brother's or sister's
sake? Could you accept the affection tendered you on
account of an older child or first-born?  This primogeniture is no better in one place than another. An
iniquity on earth, it is no magnanimity in heaven.
We want a generous Father, or let us have none.
Christ died for me? I would die for him. He were
worth dying for. If he died for us, it was because
God saw that we were not worthless, but worthy.
We want no sacrifice but of our own kind. If it was
not my blood that flowed on the cross, it has no virtue
for my sin. It was a drop of the cirfilation of the
race, and therein its power to redeem.
With the eternal All-mover, atom or immensity is
the same. He is weigher and gauger of his own substance and dimensions. The number of his meters is
the note of his infinity. The hand raised in prayer or
stretched for help is more continent of him than the
heavens. Omnipresence which the materialist admits
is only mechanical extent. But piety makes the lowly
heart larger than the sky. " God is everywhere," said
the Sunday-school teacher. " Is he in this room?"
asked the little boy. "Yes." —   In my des'k" —
" Certainly." — " In my hat? " -   No doubt." -" In
my pocket?"- "Of course."'  "No, he isn't: I
haven't got any!" God's presence is co-equal with the
sense of it. The materialist's experiment of the end



MATERIALISM.                 I75
less subdivision of matter - observes our metaphysician,
Mr. Harris -resembles travelling in a circle with the
hope of solme time coming to' an end. Is not material
multiplication, to reach the immeasurable, nonsense as
sheer? Materialism is a counterfeit depth, and atones
for being shallow only by being obscure. Its professors complain of metaphysical abstractions. They
substitute physical ones. The definitions of Spencer
are more prolix and less satisfying than tthe categories
of Kant. Nothing but confusion can come from making things procreators of thought. Without parentage
and rule of mental conception, they are starving orphans, masterless steeds. In materialism  is no rest,
but endless chase, that brings no game to cover. It is
the wild huntsman blowing a ghostly horn in a barren
pursuit. But spirituality is peace. It finds the weight
and specific gravity more truly than did the old philosopher in his bath.
It makes a difference to have the centre of gravity
fall within or without. They who seek external foothold for the soul remind us of the toy whose perpetual
attempt to recover its erectness is the amusement of the
child.'" Discontent is immortality." But it is not a
famishing discontent.' Prone to action and to rest,"
says Pascal, "through action we seek rest."  Blessed
constitution, without which the apple would not have
been eaten, or the fenced garden forsaken for the world,
made so wide, as Goethe says, on purpose for our wandering! Man would have been satisfied to vegetate
and rot where he was born. The poise of the other
hemisphere was wanted by the Genoese sailor as well
as by the globe. By every discoverer, North or South,




I 76          RADICAL PROBLEMS.
the same momentum has been felt. Finding the fate
of Sir John Franklin, the explorer traverses himself.
Captain Hall, in The Polaris, searches for the counterpart of a map on some inward membrane. The student of geography or of the animated kingdoms lays
out the metes and bounds of his own nature. Selfknowledge is the aim of his knowledge of animals and
plants. The physicist goes round about the problem
which the metaphysician directly grasps. Naturalist
and supernaturalist would tell the bounds of God's
acre with diverse method, each with his own rod and
chain. The only question is if there be any Owner of
the field, or the world is a wild lot with no claitn.
Marvellous canvas which no pencil ever touched, and
a stranger set of cartoons than in any Vatican, with new
sketches in numberless slides!  Whoever finds the
problem easier so may be congratulated, as a child put
off with empty promise. In Scott's novel, the lad
begged the lady to give him silver, the only money he
was acquainted with, and declined her gold.
A thoughtless observation stops with the exterior.
No personality is no origin and no destiny. Who is
there to be immortal? Whom  go to?  Why so foolish to try to put our foot beyond the border, break the
hedge, or hang over the precipice where is no support
but empty space, or climb above the top of our tree of
life, unless there be indeed a path the vulture's eve
bath not seen?  On this point Idealism and Materialism once shook hands. It was a singular meeting of
extremes, stranger than when Herod and Pilate became
friends. But the permanent position of the material
school was with Idealism  a temporary phase.  To




MATERIALISM. -77
reduce all to unsympathetic power, tossing out this
ephemeron of man, to keep up an hour like the stray
butterfly that wearily drops drowning in the tide, is
mean and disrespectful. It makes the universe look
poor, a conundrum not deserving a guess; a nest of
boxes, with much pains opened, to disclose nothing in
the last. Contempt of the Creator and of his creation
comes from self-contempt. The miracle of his glory
is to beget children, as Saturn adorns himself with his
rings.
Materialism is an apology for ignorance. It has but
one maxim, that everybody is devoured by the Sphinx.
It is celebration of surface and despair of knowledge.
It scoffs at the (leepest sentiments of humanity, by dropping God and Heaven as fancies or whims. But he
who specifies what we can have no notion of has some
notion of it himself. Every negative is a positive.
God is unknowable, you say. Is God to you but a
word? What business, then, have you to say about him
so much? It is saying a great deal, to affirm he has
no inventory or manifest, and is inferior to any'householder or master of a ship. You have no right nor title
to say you know nothing of what you know nothing.
The subject to you does not exist. The materialist has
no account to offer of Nature or man: only that the
particles in one arrangement present beauty in form
and color, without life; in another, unconsciousorgans;
in a third, creatures deceived with an imagination that
they are not machines. What is the imagination, that
inner eye? From him no reply; but that the atoms in
one collocation digest, in a second secrete; in a third
assimilate, in a fourth feel, or reason, or love, or illusively appear to will.
12




I 78           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Materialism climbs over the sides of the pyramid, or
sits akimbo on its top, but explores not the interior,
and denies it has any door. It is a spy reporting the
nakedness of a land flowing with milk and honey. On
the materialist's chart, the whole spiritual region, like
one point of the globe, is put down as " No mtan's land."
What of any interest or importance in human life
can he explain? A certain multiple of those elements,
his only counters, composes a round stolid mass, wheeling eternally dumb through the sky. A few of them,
otherwise disposed, form a human figure that sees and
speaks, sparkles with genius or glows with desire, and
sends shocks of affection through another with which
it has a deeper than chemical affinity; or thrills us
with combinations of argument and imagery, never
heard of on the planet before and making all things
new. One of these shapes, with its few score pounds
avoirdupois of flesh and blood, we call Moses; another,
Cesar, Isaiah, Shakspeare, Christ.  But law-giver,
commander, poet, prophet, redeemer, or saint, comes
out of the retort according as the atoms are mixed,
and the blind fingers sift! Such a theory is too great a
demand on the faith which materialists despise. My
credulity is great; but, like a rmillionnaire in the city
angry with the assessors, it refuses to pay so enormous
a tax. How cheaply the unspiritual theory appraises
those quick faculties of my friend, the nimble-tongued
woman, that never fail in any jet of talk to deliver to
my prosing dulness something fresh! Can the quality
of that young maiden, who just left my board, be
analyzed?  Can that purity, untouched and intangible
by aught evil, be convicted as an outcome of the soil?




MATERIALISM.                 179
From these novel speculations, we learn that conscience
is no voice of God or communion with rectitude, but
calculation. Utility transformed makes that angel of
light; and self-interest is the wonder-worker that turns
out self-sacrifice from its lathe, projects every passage
of devotion, ahnd casts every scene-of heroism  in the
whole history and long tragedy of mankind. The iron
selfishness, which some alchemy contrives to convert
into the gold of disinterested deeds, is itself transmuted
clay. I can read Hebrew from right to left, but not
spell creation with this alphabet.  I cannot get one
from  many, but the many from the one. Where is
that One? as Philip asked Jesus: point him out! He
is the artist that does not thrust himself into his work.
I went into a studio and admired the sketches, in charcoal and water-colors, that lined the walls. But where
was the friend that drew thesefac-sinziles so lively of
the house and headland, the boat and the bay? No
sign of palette or easel, painter or brush, anywhere to
be seen! The design so exquisite, the skill so perfect,
the tints so true, and every shape solid in this re-creation of Nature; but the hand withdrawn?  Room  for
all to appear to advantage but the one that did it all.
For her no nook nor corner where I could conceive she
was bestowed! Shall we doubt the First Artist is,
because he nowhere draws himself?
WVe cannot separate motion from will, mobilization
of an army from the general, or of the funds fi-om a
financier. The wires of the electric cable are not
wrapped closer than this faith. An English authority
affirms it as an indisputable axiom of science that life
comes only from life, never from death. But life is in



I8o            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
distinguishable from movement; and who has reached
the limits where life and death part?  Death is still
and cold; and how stark and stiff we have thought
large part of the creation! Sepulchres are hewn in
the rock, whose helpless mass seems fit enclosure of
the corse that shall leap or walk no more. But motion
is no absentee from the stone. "The dance of death"
continues in what we consider dead, and disproves
death with rhythm the unarmed eye cannot see, and a
music of spheres, infinitely smaller than the orbs Shakspeare celebrated, which our ears cannot hear. A finer
procession begins where the funeral ends, and elemental melodies laugh at the melancholy dirge. Tyndall's thesis, that heat is a mode of motion, resolves
the universe. The figures in this cotillon are appointed
by an intelligence identical with command. There is a
swarm not only in the beehive or the city street. Every
wooden block is occupied and spinning under the feet
that seek it for a support. The sea stretches off glassy
and treacherous, as a place for unwary mariners to
drown and die in. But the existence that sports in
its huge bosom roughens the surface with schools of
fish that make mimic waves on its swell, and spring
out for a moment, with the universal disposition to
break bounds into the air. From the bald eagle that
sailed by me this morning, to the fly I discern only by
his pincers on the back of my hand, is no interval nor
cessation of activity. There is no passive voice in the
world. Patience is a nobler motion than any deed.
We never have so much will as when we say, Not
mine. There is no stay. WVe must up and on: the
bed or chair is intolerable unrest. In the arena is ease:




MATERIALISM.                 I8I
the rising sea drives me from  the seat where I am
writing my theme, and a heaving ocean of desire lifts
me to enterprise and accomplishment ever fresh. My.
boat is tossed and tosses me; and in my heart is a
pulsation chiming with my oar, a jet from the infinite
pulse. The beat in my wrist refers me to that in my
breast. To what does that refer but a will co-extensive with wisdom and equivalent to love?
I sit in a skiff on the last ebb of the tide: the minnow swims through the transparency below, and the fly
floats through that above; an infant-crab creeps, and
a minute flounder, simulating the sand, -ploughs on the
bottom, while a horse-shoe steers along with his rudder of horny tail; bits of eel-grass glide with their
shadows; the long sea-weed waves on the surface in
the wind, its glittering tips casting down prismatic
tints, spots of rainbow that move over the bottom of
the sea, which is pierced with little holes through
which the clams suck, and breathe back with bubbles
that ever rise and break without noise; the drift of
clouds overhead is reflected in the mirror under foot;
a slight ripple glances the last subdivision of the oceanswell that lifts my little vessel softlier than a babe on
the mother's breast; the surf a mile away tumbles on
the rocks, beyond my island break-water, with a force
no frigate could resist. And all this on a morning as
gentle as ever shone. No will nor meaning, says the
materialist, in the whole! Then how prolific is ignorance, and what a busybody death!
How much motion is represented, beside what is
seen! The wave rises and washes some invisible particles from the cliff. But what imponderable tons in




182           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
unreckonable ages have been washed from  every
promontory and ragged seam!  The rude sculptor
of the sea, shouldering to his work, chips finer than
any chisel an atom at a time, smoothing into what
beauty, carving with what grandeur, the mighty block!
The green tongue of land that divides the quiet bay
from the stormy deep has been moulded into curves
passing any mathematics to compute.  Yet all the
tendency to this exquisite result is without intent!
We are not able or allowed to spell a syllable in the
volume that has no preface or finis. We are looking
over an album in which no photographer had a hand.
We are walking through a crystal palace whose pillars
were set with no plumb-line; and it required no eye
in the making of what we behold! But will is power
knowing what it is about, whoever may please to
esteem himself accident or resultant of a blind force,
that cannot, like the Cyclops, even feel round. Through
countless variety all the cogs are carried with one wheel.
The strength that raises a child's finger rolls the billow and the orb; and the hydrostatic paradox is wherever Infinity is balanced by a drop.
Spirit cannot be parted from matter. We worship
God as Spirit; but we cannot conceive him out of
Nature. No more can we so conceive the human soul
unclothed, but, as Paul said, clothed upon. Hence
the difficulty always felt of imagining immortality
without the body. So for their dead kings the Egyptians built, in the Pyramids, houses more splendid
than any palace, and embalmed the flesh. Was theirs
a superstition of which we are rid?  There is, in
Greenwood Cemetery, a mausoleum of such cost that




MATERIALISM.                 I83
the fortune intended for the occupant is inherited by
her dust; and a Greek temple in Mount Auburn
casts into the shade with its beauty many a country
church.  Our horror of the resurrectionist arises
from  our superstition of a resurrection. The good
Boston doctor, who bequeathed his body to the dissector's knife, doubtless had been annoyed by it. When
the Indians were removed, their being driven from the
graves of their fathers was the peculiar aggravation
of cruelty on which Congressional orators dwelt with
a pathos it was poetical to think the roving tribes were
conscious of themselves. Yet furniture for future use,
weapon or ornament, was put into the warrior's tomb;
while the Chinaman, after his California toils are over,
can fancy no rest for his remains but on the side of
the globe where he was born. The resurrection of
the body - a spurious phrase, substituted for the NewTestament resurrection of the dead -is printed in all
liturgies, and the mortal relics committed to the ground
"in hope of a general resurrection at the last day." Is
it possible friends suppose these dissolving frames will
sprout from the soil or be mechanically restored? This
gross belief is, however, not without ground. It is
founded on an idea as true as it is necessary, - that
without form or matter spirit is lost; the mistake being
that this identical matter, our familiar garment, will recover fiom the trance of death. So we cannot quite give
it up. In my neighborhood, a little boy, attempting
lo bathe in a race-way of the ebbing tide, was swept
away and drowned, - Nature herself undertaking to be
both minister and service, shroud and procession, prayerand dirge, sexton and grave, with her salt caves and




I84            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
sounding tides. But from such disposition of the dear
body the town was in revolt. Crowds hung along the
beach, peered into the channel beneath the draw, and
put forth in boats to hunt it up out of its wide wandering sepulchre. Field-pieces were brought and discharged fiom the deck of a vessel sailing to and firo in
the harbor, hoping by the concussion to start the morsel
of humanity fiom its lurking-place in the briny ooze,
so wholesome and sweet. Before the time the apostle
names, the Sea was called to give up her dead. Was
it all sympathy with the afflicted, otherwise in many
ways expressed? Was it a feeling that the soul could
not survive the loss of its perishing robe? Did it hint
the lingering strength of the notion that associates it
so indissolubly with its habitual form, and imply a
rational view that its projection without form is impossible to conceive? The physicist laughs at the Romish
or Episcopal official's notion of perpetuated flesh; yet
the physicist admits no individual immortality without
a reassembling of the particles we are each one composed of now, thus meeting the ecclesiastic in the
same philosophy. If both could learn a human person's independence of any given  set of particles,
neither need scorn the other; and the discovery how
delicately the threads are woven in Nature's loom, how
her strongest is her finest stuff, and how she hides heI
everlasting principles, the thunders of her power, in
imperceptible atoms, and not in bulk, suggests continuance in safe investment.
The whole is inseparable from the one. Mlaterialism
is disintegration. The infinite divisibility of matter is
an axiom in mechanics: is its infinite multiplication




MATERIALISM.                I85
an account of the universe? An Anti-Darwinian said
it is not from one, but an ocean of germs. But, to get
the one out of many, thought labors in vain. What is
the whole which the materialist posits as greater than
any Personality, or God?  It is the general impression
of the world. But this is no whole. It is infinitesimal part. To talk so of the whole is absurd. We
say we see the earth, ocean,. or sky, with but a trifling
arc or section of either in our view. When a traveller
came in sight of Sebago Pond, wide stretching and
ruffled by the wind, she asked if it were not the Atlantic. We say Columbus discovered the Western hemisphere in an outlying island. That referred to the
continent; the continent, to the globe; the globe, to the
constellations, swimming in immensity like mites in
the waste or motes in the air. The integrity of Nature
cannot be reached by our observation or generalizing.
No induction of particulars or deduction of logic is its
measure. It is Thing of pure Thought. Like integrity
of character, it is no construction of distinct portions,
or polyp-growth resolvable into endless individuals;
but implies simplicity of absolute centre, from which
all the virtues radiate, and of which every word of
wisdom or deed of goodness is a beam. The mlan
worthy of his name is never in pieces; is not manysided, but circular, meeting you with one line of
beauty at every point. God is the sphere in which
innumerable circles, great or small, are contained. In
every earthly inch and throughout celestial leagues is
one uncontainable Container, reducing countless objects, circumstances, persons, and events to the Being
from which they proceed. For Being is no multiple,
but'always and for ever One.




I 86           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
But, the materialist will ask, does the Spiritualist
attain to unity? Is he not vagrant, in variety beyond
all compass, entangled in the meshes of the net whose
drag we cannot escape more than fish can the seine in
the stream? Here is the reply: We cannot comprehend or imagine the Person or Unity which is God,
but we can think it. Eternity, Infinity, is our Thought,
though like the peace that passeth understanding, or
the heaven eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the
heart of man conceived. My identity with it I' feel,
but cannot describe. Of the enthusiast who declared
"I am  God," it was said, he is right, though the
words were false the moment they left his mouth.
Our doctrine admits no proof, all proof being less certain than itself.  It is open to criticism  and scorn,
spite of which it will not cease to be affirmed and to
affirm itself.
We cannot explain the lowest forms of life by importation of properties from the air and the soil. My
firiend picks up in the pasture a red berry which has a
pleasant taste, but whether it be poison she cannot
tell. Who can elucidate the difference which determines the flavor of an apple or peach; or of meats,
which some have not a palate keen enough to distinguish with the eyes shut; or of wines, for which a
certain judge had a tongue so nice as to detect a savor
of iron fiom a key having been dropped into the cask?
The wisdom, from whose herbarium all the grasses
came, like varieties of architecture and stuffs of the
loom from the master's designs, ordained the manycolored orb of human genius to outreach all the patteins of palaces and colors of woven silk and wool.




MATERIALISM.                I87
The derivation of spirit from  matter implies a time
when spirit was not. Some lonely little vesicle wandered in the void womb of a universe! When I can
put myself into my own crucible, rake myself out of
the ashes of my own furnace, cut myself into pieces,
and from Medea's kettle recover my youth, take my
perceptions back into their materials, and be revivified
from elemental dust, I may expound the process of
creation of which my intuitions and imaginations are
the end. But our cradle is farther off than our tomb.
It were easier to find where Moses was buried, though
no man knoweth his sepulchre to this day, than where
he was born, if by birth we mean that by which Moses
was made to be himself, and not Aaron or Pharaoh.
Our knowledge finds everywhere a wall, if our wonder do not turn it into a way to Infinity. I sit in a vein
of trap-rock, through which the granite has been eaten
out by what the Greek poet called the foaming tusks
of the sea. Midway in the horizontal shaft the once
overhanging cliff. has fallen to fill a section of it up.
The stone has disintegrated into soil, and in the soil
vigorous oaks have sprung to overtop the level whence
came the support of their own roots. The total is
beauty, which no camel's hair pencil with all the pigments could improve. Give me the methods, material
equivalents, and exact time required for the picture so
as to leave adoration out, and I will set you then the
harder problem  how beauty has come into a thought,
a character, a gesture, a gait full of grace, or the human
face divine, with no intent to lift our eyes above the
earthly floor. Is matter such an accomplished posturemaster it can take all the attitudes of perfection and




I88            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
faultless propriety of mot-ion unawares? Delsarte
would generate eloquence, like electricity from cushion
and cylinder, by a study of the language of facial and
bodily expression, to every syllable of which only
passion and inspiration first gave vent. This theory
puts artifice for art, cuts the train of oratory and action
from the locomotive of feeling, would conjure things
signified out of their signs, subordinate the everlasting
to the mechanical, and dispense pulpit and rostrum
from the need of any inward affection. But no such
juggle can create truth. We cannot extract mind
from earth, as by successive processes in a refinery the
black juice of the cane becomes white as wheaten
flour. Reason is absolute. It accepts not its costume
of matter for its creator, any more than would the
French monarch the state robes which Thackeray in
his pen-sketch sets up for his royal self. The marble
mountains of Carrara move not out of the sceptic's
way for any dispute or ignorance of their origin; and.
the moral sense is so positive that from all speculation
Kant retreated on it for fundamental trust, like Wellington on the Torres Vedras from  the open field.
How selfish utility mounted into spiritual tenderness
and strength would puzzle Minerva to tell. " I cannot
allow myself," said a man, " to eat a pear by myself:
I have to carry it home."  Who told Theodore Parker
not to kill the little spotted turtle basking by the brook?
Ezra S. Gannett would not let me have my newspaper
back till he had folded it precisely as he took it from
my hand! I sit among the rocks before the spectacle
of the sea that rolls and breaks in thunder at my feet.
In no other way is sublimity brought so near. But




MATERIALISXM.              189'why am I uneasy and discontent? Why not abide and
enjoy the marvellous scene, letting the day pass, and
Time shake his hour-glass as he will, while such luxury
of the imagination, beyond all feasting, is mine? Because I am alone, and my companion is needful to
perfect my delight. You say it is an elixir of utilities;
it is the compound interest of selfishness; it is a dividend on the policy of mankind-: but that the main
chance were susceptible of such gradation, and brute
appetite could graduate humanity like a lily from the
mud, we should all have been a pack of gluttons and
thieves! I decline this origin of glory. I will find in
no such dross the making of my heavenly crown.
In all nobility is an unborrowed charm. A child of
five summers takes my case in hand for counsel from
her curly head, and warns me not to stand on the platform or jump from the moving cars. What concern
has the little maiden in my hoary head and nearly
spent life? Has she calculated the account of profit
and loss in my departure or longer stay? Is not the
gentle disapproval of my rashness part of a generous
instinct which comes out to touch me more in the
sober smile than in the monitory word?  I should as
easily suspect a miserly computation in the motherly
hen's scratching for her brood close by. The abysses
of the sea are beneath those white caps blown up by
the south wind; and firom more fathomless deeps of
the human bosom rises every spell of honor and
truth.
I am positive, says some reporter, in whom we may
mistrust some mixture of -will with knowledge. But
the ewill -which positivism, materialism, phrenology,




I90            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
and the metaphysics of Jonathan Edwards, not knowing what to do with and unable to explain it, unanimously deny, declines to leave the lexicon or the world.
We make a convert of the man; but the will is not
convertible into any particular motive. If it would
only confess itself to be a sequence, a link in the chain,
no cause, but one of an endless row of effects, how
well we should comprehend it; and in our philosophical cabinet lay it as a labelled specimen on the shelf!
But it declares itself to be more than intelligence.
It testifies not that it has, but is motive. In a saint,
like Jesus, it declares itself part of the will of God,
as it must be in every man, who is his child, in every
filial act; for this unscientific, wilful veto on the will
cannot stop with human nature, but must defy the
Divinity. If the universe have a throne, and be not
an automaton, freedom is the birthright of man.
But how get from our idea of God to the fact?
We deny the chasm! As there is no void in Nature,
but the opposite banks that fiown at each other are
united by space.and air and magnetic circuits as closely
as by timber and steel at the St. Lawrence River or the
Menai Straits, so subject and object cannot be severed.
Some identity makes them  one. " Know thyself" is
a profound proverb, because self-knowledge is the
knowledge of God. The prodigal came to his father
when he came to himself. No absence of God where
is a man, or of man where is a God! The same immense, positive, universal Root abolishes all but surface difference, and allows no negative. Life is the
fact; and death, the shadow it appears to cast, is part
of itself, the ghost of life, as all apparitions are shades.




MATERIAI,ISM.               191
There is a doom on every scheme of pure criticism.
Not by counter-criticism-, but want of vitality, will it
fall, as trees said to be winter-killed perish of the
summer-drought that has drained their sap. As in
morals, so in the intellect, the worst fault is fault-finding. A strong organism insures longevity. I saw a
prostrate trunk, half-rooted in the ledge and soil, each
branch of which on the upper side had made a soil of
the parent-bole, and shot up into a perfect tree with
boughs and sprays of its own. Any thing is possible
to bountiful being, to amplitude of soul. But the poor
and juiceless denier, subsisting by attack, like the
mosquito on the blood of its victims, leads a precarious life, and will soon be blown away by the wind, in
some little heap of his fellows as useless as himself.
But must we not define, stake out our roads and
bounds of our dwellings, and have gates not only to
open, but shut?  "W'  e cannot live," cries the conservative,'" out of doors."  We may well consider if we do
not live too much in doors for our virtue and our
health i  Has the close air of churches any better
quality than that of other houses or shops? To what,
asked my friend, do you owe your recovery?  To perpetual open air, I replied. Air, light, water, earth,
the four elements with their ever-flowing magnetism,
the only medicine-chest from which I have got any
good. All close communion is unwholesome. Camp
of Indian, haunt of Bohemian, wandering of gypsy,
are more salubrious.  I grudge every hour frost and
storm drive me in fiom the roof where"Tenderly the haughty Day
Fills his blue urn with fire;"




192            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
or " fretted with other golden fires " at night.  " I call
this going in, not out," said Edward Everett when he
walked abroad.  We need ecclesiastical ventilation.
When the lamps burned low in the North-End meeting, and the oil was complained of, the merchant told
the worshippers to find the difficulty in their deoxygenizing breath. Was the atmosphere any better for
the mind?  But the old confinemlent has given way to
a gracious allowance, in some quarters, that we can
worship in the woods. Thank God for this big playground for his children's recess! Not a few roods of
land in Boston or Hartford, but the earth is our common, which no Internationals can cut into strips as
numerous as the population. Beyond private rights of
legal possession it is an undivided patrimony. One,
asked if he were owner of a line of coast, replied,
How absurd to presume to own shore or sea! My
idol, like that of ancient idolaters, is made of stone.
But it was fashioned by no tool in hutman hands. The
elements of wind and wave were its sculptors; the
promontories measure its stretch; and through unmeasured leagues of its proportions it is vocal with
the praise I lay, a sacrifice, on its shrine.
Every thing is affirmative.  Denial is but the hem
of definition. Nlay is the condition of rea, which is
unconditional. Every creature adds: the coral insect,
his reefy sepulchre; the worm that eats the mulberry,
his silken tomb; the spider, his web, that pays in beauty
before the broom  sweeps it away.  The bee is a
sugar-refiner of Nature's most concentrated sweet, like
human creators of good finding in his hive his grave.
The objector, the contrary person, has no business.




MATERIALISM.                 I93
Your amount of righteous will is your warrant. The
pious man says, " I have no will." IHe should say, No
wfis. It was not his will, but his wish, Jesus resigned.
Self-renunciation is not surrender of will. The will
is never so strong as in giving up, for principle and the
common weal, self-interest or sensual-delight.
Every thing is excellent in the ratio of its positive
force. Free Love and Free Religion are the phrases
of the day. But freedom is of no worth save to express truth, and conform to the divine order. Love and
Religion are not choices, but inspirations and necessities, the laws as well as liberties of our being. They
are stones in gear to grind our daily bread, but falling
they grind to powder whoever would shift them to
the service of his passing whim. Personality is the
secret and circle of the world. We doubt immortality
because we count personality the accident, not the
essence of our nature. But it is the composer as well
as the tune. By statutes, that cannot be repealed
because never passed, every genuine concord comes:
in a symphony of Beethoven, in a harmonious affection, in a word fitly spoken on the smooth wheels of
opportunity, or a pure and happy deed. To sacrifice
yourself is impossible.  God cannot sacrifice you!
Only some unworthy propensity - obstinacy, vanity,
pride -can be sacrificed, as much below yourself as
the ram Abraham caught in the thicket was below.
Isaac his son.  Never was man less a victim, and
more a victor, than Jesus on the cross.
The opinions of most people are accidental. The
minister or professor does not succeed, and imputes
his failure to the system or sect he trains under, or to
I3




194            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
partners who will not see his merit, - unlike the brave,
clergyman, who said he stuck to Orthodoxy because
he was Orthodox: " the company was not much!"
If the person is greater than his creed, le carries it.
If lie is less, and wins no promotion, he bolts. If the
platform is old and rotten, it trembles under the tread
of every strong man. But the soul is one with its
faith.




VIII.
SPIRITUALISM.
THIS seems a misnomer. It means the materialism of spirits, so much of heaven as can be
manifest to mortal senses. But pure spirituality is
impossible, in God or angel or man.
"For soul is form, and doth the body make,"
writes the poet. Seneca says it is a mistake to think
the surface is the inferior part of a man. Goethe declares: " 0 Philistine! there is no inside." Beauty
and wit and love come out. All the explorations of science are on planes of inconceivable thinness. As the
soul opens, it knows it is not in the body which it uses
and contains; but is as much more than that as the
atmosphere than the earth, or ether than the stars.
The Turkish cadi asked Layard, "Wilt thou see
heaven with thine eyes?" Death will not benefit us
if it blinds.
But Spiritualism  does not abide fair experiment,
like electric, chemical, or planetary laws. It cannot
endure sceptics, in whose presence all other operations of the world go on without superfluous modesty.
It has not been made to bear on any practical welfare




196            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
of man, - to rescue those exposed to wreck or famine;
to comfort any in sorrow, save its own devotees; to
detect the sealed number of a bank-bill, though great
reward was offered; to add a mite to the store of
knowledge; or to. charm  intellect or fancy with any
rare rhetoric of words. Whether Jackson or Morton
discovered anaesthesia, a disembodied spirit did not.
It was not beforehand with Leverrier to announce
the new planet, or with Daguerre in the photography
it applies to cherubic portraits. The great souls it
re-presents to us have so retrograded as to make the
anticipation of our own immortality an alarm. Franklin, in its introduction of him, is inferior to Poor Richard and his old newspaper, and makes no show so
grand as with his knuckle drawing the spark from his
paper kite. Swedenborg does not see, nor Washington behave, nor Webster speak so well as in the flesh.
Milton's poetry and Parker's pith are gone. The revelations make backsliders of all men.
Is it that the struggles of the departed for self-publication fail on account of imperfect mediums?  It
was said of an artist, All his pictures are full of the
east wind. Over all their communications runs a
blur. Spiritualism  seeks the shade, twilight, drawn
shutters, and a closed-up box for its performances, as
it did midnight in church-yards. Its children are not
of the day. I have heard of painters who would put
their drawing of a flower where only a single ray
would fall on it for the best effect. But the cardinal
blossom I picked required no s'uch bolstering of gloom.
The more it was brought into the light, so that the
sun shone in and round and through its leaves, which




SPIRITUALISM.               197
no palette can match, the handsomer it became. For
people or pictures one law: how do they bear being
exposed? Michel Angelo told the anxious sculptor to
set his statue in the public square.
Yet Spiritualism is a genuine attempt to handle
that problem  of existence which puzzles the young
child whom we see putting on its considering-cap to
know why it is here, and who is responsible for its
appearance. Somebody it is evidently determined to
call to account. The riddle it begins to guess at we
have not finished, and Gabriel or Uriel will never
solve.
But are the facts of Spiritualism fairly dealt with?
"They are not in Nature," says an eminent naturalist.
That is, he has not found them. Does he assume to
know all that is in Nature, and exhaust in his classes
and categories her sum? The gods laugh at him,
as he does at any preceding tribe of naturalists asserting for their survey eminent domain. Said my classmate, to the senior Professor Ware, of the a priori,
proof, " This is unintelligible."'"Would you not
better say," answered the venerable head that swung
its pendulum so justly between opposing views, "' that
you do not understand it?" No superstition of the
Church is so gross as that of the scientist that he has
mastered the creation in his formulas, and can rule
out phenomena not encountered in his field, on the
ground that they are not among the contents of the
creation. Is he as chosen clerk to take an inventory
of her effects? The theories that have been already
surrounded and overthrown show how scientific and
ecclesiastic dogmatistS are blood relations falling out,




198            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
as vice fights with itself in another person. He is
fool, as theologian or physician, who fancies no circle
yet to be drawn will circumvent him. Give us your
criterion of incredibleness.
But there is a second objection to Spiritualism on
the score of religion, urged by Christians who hold
the supernatural view, and are disgusted with the spurious miracles and pretended apparitions of the new
faith. This is a family quarrel about a supposed will
of God, under which one party claims all his curiosities, and a monopoly of prodigy, with which it is sacrilege to interfere. We forget the absurdity of isolated
portents. Whatever has happened may occur again,
and must accord with law. Half a dozen ghosts in
Palestine, to please a few spectators on the Hebrew
stage, and none beside in all history throughout the
sphere, were as tough as yesterday's most astounding
tale. Christianity and Spiritualism, as popularly professed, rest on the same marvellous prop. Both maintain human survival with external proof. As the eye
sees that the duck or hawk which rises from the water
is the same that dived; as Sam Patch came up from
Niagara as he went down, - so the ghost is seen to be
the man we knew. But immortality is -no matter of
chronology.  Bare  continuance what noble  spirit
would accept? So the Florida cedar, that took root
before the land was discovered, were better than a
man. To be immortal is not to be the same, but
another higher self every day; so that by none, without
a discerning love, we could be recognized. Goethe
said Schiller had taken such strides as to astonish
him. Milton's seeing his " late-espoused saint " in a




SPIRITUALISM.               I99
dream is grander than any of the gross apparitions.
Let us behold our dear ones in pure vision " still far
high advanced," rather than coming back in their
earthly features and old clothes. These bodily resumptions or perpetuations of familiar forms are but one
step above the Morgue. The resurrection is no act
of fleshly preservation, nor heaven a huge pyramid of
Egyptian embalming. The soul will not stop with
being translated: it must be transformed. The guise
the departed return in hints a reduced condition, as if
their absence had been one long diminuendo; and in
going to the other world the exchange had not been
in their favor. But God has only one world; and, in
that, no conflict of laws, but progress through whatever dark or devious passage. Jesus is descried by his
followers exalted in a glorified form. If my vanished
friends be not more wise and worthy, but only sentimental talkers with but a fragment of their former
character and remnant of their wit, show them not at
all. Piety were charity, to walk backward with a
mantle for the shame of celestial simpletons and dotards, the sunken wreck of once fair women and
brave men.  Better go under than go down. A
sailor, hearing ungenerous terms of salvation  announced, took his hat, and said, " I make over my
chances to the rest of the company;" and, sooner
than be the sort of angel some depict or disclose, let
us ground arms in the battle of life, surrender our
being, and face annihilation with a smile.
It is a rational faith that the planets are inhabited
and our vanished kin all around us.  But are they
eaves-droppers or tale-bearers?  Will they give us




200             RADlIAL PROBLEMS.
ineffectual stammerings about their lot and our prospect, and lament their inability to tell us clearer or
more?  When they speak, the message will be unambiguous as the last trumpet or the first song! The
soul stoops not to extraneous support.  It does not
endure being shored up. Out of the immortal nature
immortality has no proof. Another's rising is no evidence of mine. Shall I cling to the skirts of Jesus, if
God sees nothing worth saving in myself? I do not
wish to live if I am not part of himself, or can fall out
of his careless hands. Righteousness, strength, or sense
I have none. All is his. The moment I claim it, it is
gone. The saint owns not his sanctity. Christ resents
being called good: the beauty is lost that has seen
itself in the glass. But if I incur God's displeasure,
I wish no one's rescue but his own! I have value in
his eyes, am part of his investment; and the miracle
is his projection of a creature individually distinguished
from  himself, when there is no personal distinction
but for thanks, worship, and love. There is no demonstration, then,-of prolonged existence by sensible
signs. But through aspiration the soul has fobr outfit a
life-preserver in its own conscious tie with its Author.
The lines it walks on are shot from the heavenly shore.
No argument can be so strong as this interior sense.
Though the graveyards should heave, and tombstones
lean and fall, to let up the swarming myriads of the
buried in all time, it were no assurance of my destiny
comparable to my thought of God as my relation.
But, amid the dissolution of old beliefs, Spiritualism
has rescued millions from the sceptical gulf into which,
as by a reaction-wheel from  irrational systems, they




SPIRITUALISM.                201
were plunged.  Better make our " prophet a mahogany plankl," than  conclude there is no prophecy.
Ridicule of Spiritualism, as a hysteric laugh over the
charnel-house, is a poor substitute for the wildest
dreams and most baseless visions. The gloom of chambers abutting on the grave, which to some is all that
learning and culture and study of Nature supply, leaves
scant superiority of reason or advantage for scorn of
those who expect to appear in their familiar habit. The
ascension-robes were prettier to look at than the pall
and shroud. I was called many years ago to say the
last words over the corse of a dear sister, whose kith
and kin thought all, that was left of her rested on the
bier. They requested the service should be as simple,
the words as few, the implication or committal of
belief as little as it could be made by reducing, with
selections and omissions, the Liturgy to its lowest
terms.  But why any ceremony at all? Wherefore
not, without priestly pretence or hypocritical form,
shovel the ashes into the hole? What lingering relic
of superstition, not quite as dead as the senseless
frame, detained the dust, needing no more speech than
any other clod? We are so made that into the hardest unbelief Hamlet's query of futurity will intrude.
The human breast is a camera-obscura, from which
every ray of celestial light cannot be shut out; and
Spiritualism has great odds in its favor against the
Calvinism which put all the generations of men, with
the exception of some Enoch, Elijah, or Jesus, under
ground, to await a final summons.  "You will find
your mother," it said to the orphan, "' when the affairs
of the planet after myriads of ages are wound up."




202            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
To this " hope deferred, making the heart sick," came
the whisper, " Your mother wants to speak to you: she
is present in the circle here." By no strategy were the
lines of an army turned into such rout as was suffered
by the believing host intrenched along the lines of
apocalyptic pictures and apostolic tropes. The Spiritualist's view was a stereograph; the Calvinist's, thin
as the earliest sun-sketch. This scarce less than eternal sleep; this motion indefinitely to postpone our lessons and lay our love on the table; this dubious getting
up out of decayed members and a conflagrated world;
this reassembling from the debris of Nature of countless particles wandering and lost, — presented an unwelcome spectacle to the musing mind. As well lie
where we were, or let our atoms thrive in other growth,
as be disturbed so! Rip Van Winkle's shorter slumber, to wake and find all so changed as to make his
arousal a doubtful boon, seems a satire on so awkward
and unconsoling a faith.
If the Spiritualists be asked for proofs of their creed,
they point to facts still taking place, as wondrous as any
Jewish tales; and Science shuts its eyes to phenomena
it can neither explain nor resolve. Convicting thaumaturgists of some tricks does not bring all that is
strange and incomprehensible under the ban. Nothing is more common in all history than the mixture of
imposture with truth.  Spiritualism  must have the
examination it asks. It cannot be dismissed with a
jeer. Belief in the persistency of persons it has kept
up. There was creeping over us a cold and cheerless
monotheism, not only in the sense that there is but
one God, but that a numerically one God is all there




SPIRITUALISM.                203
is to lift the earth and fill the sky. Spiritualism  peoples space with his escort and family. No longer so
ghastly are the moon and stars. Nature is a swarm
of creatures in glory, seen or with vanishing wings,
as in pictures of the old masters; so that the danger
now is the Deity by its own offspring will be eclipsed.
But the old swamp of a universe is redeemed.  VWhat
were unfathomed ocean caves, and flowers wasting
sweetness on the desert air, to the wilderness of an
uninhabited world! Somebody had been before my
friend, and was perhaps with him, to see the meek
" Rhodora " he thought so lovely, when he came. The
charge of irrationality on supposing occupants everywhere about us, though unrevealed, let us fling back
on the contrary notion of inoccupancy. If it be powder in my ears, O infidel! it shall be nitro-glycerine in
yours.
But do they actually, or can the departed lawfully,
step over the dead line? Were not two modes of being
confounded, if so mixed?  The answer is in no theory,
but must be in the facts; and if contempt of Spiritu
alism is a cover for scepticism of the soul's futurity,
we must inquire what our basis is. If God could make
me out of a shell, he can make an angel out of me.
If my body be a resurrection from  the grave of a
trilobite, something finer than enters its own tomb
may come out. If clay has mounted into my soul,
how high shall my soul mount?  What is: the last
graduation of the scale, on which nebulae rise into
stars, and this well-clad planet is the phmnix of its
own cinder-heap; and Newton gets out of the balance
he was so light in as a babe, to weigh the constella



204            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
tions in his hand? Let the objector consider whether
two kinds of facts are not classified together. The
miracle of an uncommon is not of course an illegitimate event.  An apparition is not usual.  But
would it violate any known law? The lame, blind,
deaf and dumnb, are cured by long treatment sometimes.
Would sudden healing break the world's order? Blast.
ing a fig-tree, or multiplying thousand-fold loaves never
baked and fishes that never swam, were an affront to
reason, a floating of things from their foundations, a
lie of Nature, so that we could not depend on her
word.  When the discovery of fossil remains and
shells of extinct fishes was alleged to prove the planet
more than six thousand years old, a clergyman asked
why God could not have made the fossil bones and
shells just as they were in their beds, having never
served any living creatures for homes? It was asked,
in reply, why God could not have created Herculanieum and Pompeii under ground, never having been
cities on the surface or the habitations of men! If
any Being could do this, his doing it would be a lie,
after which we could put in him no confidence, tell us
to trust him however prophets might. He had appointed us to meet hiln in a particular place, and
not kept his tryst. We should not know what othl'"':
promise he might break. God is faithful, and does
not go back on us or on himself. He goes forward,
and leads us to higher revelation without end. But
seraphs coming as ghosts on earth, or mortals going
as ghosts to heaven, are no burglars.  Earth and
heaven are but mansions of one house.  It is God's
extension to us his debtors.




SPIRITUALISM.               205
But the spectral demonstration there are those who
neither relish nor need. They are above the middle
air, in which these heavy-winged cherubim fly, that
are like herons among birds, soon weary of soaring
and ever ready with their long legs-to light on the
flats. Doubtless these frequenters firom above of our
lower atmosphere will turn out to be amphibious creatures, not permanently content with either element;
mediators on the fence betwixt the spheres, or a sort
of insurance company for such as doubt the superior
life. Spiritualism is spirituality run into the ground.
Yet some must have celestial things made plain, as
figures are chalked large for the dull-eyed or nearsighted.  All Divine revelation is condescension to
those who cannot gaze undazzled on the sun. Who
are the philosophers to disdain its lowest degrees?
The sage rebuked the savage for fondling his Deity,
and addressing to it endearing words.  But God
rebuked the sage for repelling his child, really drawing nigh to him at the only point his ignorance could
reach, as little ones walk to their parents with weak
and wavering steps. What are all our approaches to
the Infinite but as of babes that step and stumble, and
venture on? The boy or girl you see on a door-step,
trying and straining to get hold of the handle of a
bell, is an image of our best prayers. 0 metaphysician! are the Spiritualists coarse and you refined, or
are they substantial and you vague in your speculations
on the transcendent theme?  The Future will decide
the relative value of the stuff from their looms and
the webs from your brains.
Meantime let those who care less for the outward




206            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
facts and more for the inward thoughts be thankful
for the subject, which no meditation or disclosure exhausts. I too much enjoy my reflections to wish the
matter cleared up. " Grandmother, what is glory? "
cried the lad learning the Lord's Prayer. I do not
quite want to know. Let the New Jerusalem not be
measured for me! I desire not to be informed how
many sorts or regiments of angels there are.  Let
something even of the certainty of bliss be reserved,
and of the eternal blazon withheld; nor the story be
told till it become trite. The gladness of the supernal
visitants to see us, and be able to manifest themselves,
gets a little tiresome. We hope there is some secret
they have not let out. We should be disappointed
with Paradise, if what they say of it were all. Shall
we complain that the Divinity is veiled, or in eclipse;
and the road of our destiny runs and' turns out of
sight?  Let us rather rejoice in the hidings of his
power, in promise of fountains we can never drain;
and that the path is no turnpike stretching monotonous
over the blazing hills, but winding and tempting
through lonely hollows and thickets of mystery! The
descent of the valley of the shadow of death, so cool
and private, is good for us, as well as ascending among
the seats of the elders. With what rest and refreshment,
on mossy beds and along noiseless streams, may it not
prepare for new action and advance! I bless my Maker
for my joy to think, exceeding all pleasure of other
appetite or possession, festal scene, beauty of prospect,
or travel by land or sea.' I want more light," said
my friend. But I am sure enough, because sure as He
wills. I read in the religious sheet a lamentation over




SPIRITUALISM.               207
one, standing outside the accepted Christian faith, as
therefore less convinced of happy survival of the dissolving flesh. O critic! is the vista clear and the journey mapped out for you? Are there no queries to be
put, surprises to encounter, or discoveries to make?
Yours then were the lot to be deplored!
Shall it be said there is something ungrateful in this
craving for circumstantial knowledge beyond our present lot? One world to be in is enough at a time. Let
us not grasp after the preternatural, which will be natural in due season; nor seek unto strangers after news
of our ascended friends; nor covet a support for ourselves in the dark valley beyond the rod and staff leaned
on by our race; nor wish to degrade for our convenience
or curiosity those promoted from the earth. A man
once fell from an immense raft of logs on the Penobscot, and disappeared in the foaming stream. A few
days after, his employer, seeing what seemed his
ghost advancing toward him, with the well-worn im
plement for arranging the logs in hand, cried out with
horror, "' Do not come back: you are welcome to the
fork! " Is there not something in the coarse and comic
expression that goes seriously to the heart?  What is
the design of our friends' going, but that they may
reach a higher state, and we get along without them,
in outward presence and person, as well as we may?
Shall God repent of and foil his own purpose, by ordering at once their sensible return? It were to belittle
the majesty of bereavement, and discrown death of its
glory, for a consolation so fleshly and weak. Parting
is a lesson: shall the book it is written in be snatched
away before it is learned? The grave means something;




208            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
and, though it never held a soul, were too empty of
significance, if the tenant walks out the day after his
burial to mock us with his mortal shape. Let us not
grasp at the treasure God hides, but be patient till he
give it to us again as to the rest of mankind in his own
way. To cleanse, not continue our fondness, he takes
away our idols, and denies the familiar embrace. Our
beloved leave our senses to lodge in our souls; and
the holy imagination, that works in their living substance to shape them  more finely than before, were
baffled by gross presentment of their wonted form.
That our virtue may be pure and sublime, God
withholds the "' eternal blazon " we seek. The saints
of former ages trod their way unhelped by marvellous
shows. They knew no distinction of nature and the
supernatural. N2aztre, in human knowledge of a
lawful creation, is a modern entity; and from the
sutject they mused on so intensely till the fire burned
calme the object that could be seen and felt in the air.
Tt was their faith, not the fact, that was extraordinary,
amounting to a second-sight.  If angels went and
ministered unto Jesus, in visible form, as of flesh and
blood, he had the advantage of a succor forbid to us,
and detracting from the truth and honor of his example. Who was there to lift him from his agony in the
Garden; or help him, but Simon the Cyrenian, to
bear his cross?  When he was mocked with the purple, and pierced with the thorns, and drank the gall,
there was none to stand by him but God. Invisible
sympathy sufficed. The same is too wholesome, and
needful for our goodness. from Him, that we should
wish it neutralized or lowered in quality by carnal aid




SPIRITUALISM.                209
of apparitions to touch us with warm hands. The
struggle with pain and temptation is hard; but let me
have no superiority in it to my kind.  " I am a stranger and pilgrim on the earth, as all my Fathers were."
If I can share their fate, I am content with their lot.
They ventured forth on unforeseen perils of an untried
existence; and I will follow in the same straits, hoping through fog and icy currents and driving storms
to reach their warm Polar Sea. How corrupting is
this mistaken vanity of being carried in some spiritual elevator above foregoing generations!  The improved arts and increased comforts dispense not with
our working out our own salvation by effort and patience equal to theirs.'What we call the progress of
society may hinder as much as it furthers the soul.
Want of that vivid feeling of Deity which solved the
world in wonder, and stamped any former time as the
age of miracle, is proof of a decline in one direction,
to match whatever general advance.
Spirit is its own proof, which no rarefaction of matter can reach. What signifies a street-full of ghosts
if they teach me naught?  The lively Frenchwoman
said they were but mortals who, though dead, had
never been able to go. Spiritualism has offset the
scepticism of the market, but not disentangled the
soul from sense. Its spirits are bodies; and boundless liberty between the sexes is the doctrine of one
of its seers  Life is the test of honor or shame to our
faith.
14




IX.
FAIT H.
THERE  is a feeling which it needs no science but
close -observation to know is shared by lower
creatures; by the cat rubbing round your leg, and
the dog you may call Fido to signify his loyalty; by
the horse that owns your stroking of his neck, and the
cow that takes your hand into her mouth, as well as
by the babe sinking unalarmed to sleep on its mother's
breast. It is dependence, a consciousness of succor
and support. We call it religion, no definition of
which suffices that makes it an act of the intellect
or confines it altogether to man. It is the owning of
superior power and goodness; a sense of God in the
soul: not the motion we make, but he makes in us,
findingg himself in our heart. It is a narrow measure
that would put this Divine seizure into our understanding, and a false date that would derive it fiom our
will. No picture in Nature more touches a child than
a fountain bubbling noiseless fiom the ground, carrying up a perpetual pillar of whirling sand, as firm in
the water as that which moves in the caravan's sight,
or once led Israel through the desert. It is an image
of the well springing up unto everlasting life.




FAITH.                 21 1
- But this Faith is thought by many to be in suspense
or passing away. Physical philosophy has drilled and
blasted the old rock men rested and built on as eternal; and people run every way from more expected
explosions. Rome was not more moved by those terrible Gauls than is the Church by these uncomplimentary barbarians - geology, astronomy, and ethnology -
making havoc of her traditions and savage work with
her sacred books. Study stops no more for priestly
remonstrance than the train for a boy's pin on the
rail. The last rag of belief seems about to be torn
fiom us by ruthless hands. Not only Mormonism and
serpent-worship are descended upon for gross oflbences,
but a right to arrest Christianity is asserted by the new
police.
But the primitive granite cannot be blown up. Because it has been found out that the world was not
made in six days, but was a job. too long to be done
iy any demiurgus; that mankind cannot be derived
from one pair; that no single flood ever drowned all
Nature; that history is not fall, but an ever-ascending
order; and that the Bible has flaws for Colenso to
point out in the Old Testament, and Strauss and Baur
in the New, - is Faith destroyed?  No more than a
building by an architect's removal of a rotten underpinning to plant his structure on the ledge. No record
is exempt from  critical tests, and the command of
thought to move on. Jupiter and Venus, Mars and
Mercury, and Saturn himself, are driven into lifeless
names and sparkling points in the sky; tormenting
witch and enchanting fairy are gone, and not a few of
our cherished forms and notions must follow. But




21I 2            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Faith survives out of dissolving superstitions, as the
trees out of last year's decaying leaves.
Nor does Faith, like a feudal prisoner, live at the
mercy of science, but is sovereign.  Where were
knowledge without motive of curiosity and confidence
in something to be known? Lessing liked truth or certainty less than the pursuit of it. Why care for it but
from prior persuasion of a correspondence in the world
with ourselves; that things and thoughts are made fast
with the same glue; that creation is no confidencegame to cheat us with marked cards or loaded dice of
laws broken in anybody's favor; but, without one
juggle, will justify to the end the inquiry it prompts.
If Intellect be father this Faith is mother of sciences
and arts. The scholar is led by some surmise, like the
lamp in the miner's or hunter's cap casting its light on
the dark. This column of fire and cloud in the mind
gave Columbus his second-sight. The laws of matter
come as ideas, those ghosts of the mind, before they are
verified in facts. Newton's unity, or God's in him,
revealed Nature's to him; and no falling apple was
more than a signal-ball. "V'TWhither now?" asks the
child of the angel, in Greenough's statue. Hope is the
mind's angel-guide. Darwin admits the missing links,
but clings to the organic unity.  His faith cheers and
halloos the hound of his understanding.  Huxley cannot meet objections to his protoplasm; but thinks the
builder's brick, for this palace or mosaic, though too
small to handle, will yet appear. He will furnish
cement or mortar from  his own mind.  Because
Goethe is no dualist, but a believer in the One, he
finds in the sheep's skull a transformed vertebra; in




.FAI TH.                2I3
the fruit the leaf, and in all the colors of the rainbow varying mixtures of light and shade. Do we
call the child cunning, for the interrogation-point
in its face?  Htow it coasts along and circumnavigates its own little globe of flesh, finds its continent
an island, becomes an individual, parts from God and
begins to be afraid, and loses for a time its innocent
wonder!  Age is not in years, but self-sufficiency.
Our octogenarians are lads in what is called the dark
age, and misses in their teens. But the man reflecting
becomes the child again. The moon-faced marvelling
of the babe is shallow to that surprise of the unfolded
mind which no deep-sea line of metaphysics can sound.
The man believes so much, he is called infidel; and
atheist, for being intoxicated with God. The sanctuary cannot hold him, as the queen's court could not
Talbot's troops. The fire is quenched by the sun of
miracle. Cork up some supernatural drop to which
all Nature beside is but " leather and prunella "?
What is liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius to
the circulation of the blood; or the turning of water into
wine at Cana to that on the Danube and Rhine; or
the money in the fish's mouth to the Australian mines;
or the blasting of the fig-tree to its growth; or Joshua's
brake on the sun to the rolling of its car; or the spectre to the moon's light; or a revolting resurrection
of the body to the immortal life of the soul? I believe
in Christ's healing, because all goodness heals. Said
Edward Everett to an overweening solicitor, " You
make me sick."  True men and women are all physicians to make us well. Faith in God's works let us
have. Any supposed counter-works or anti-works im



214            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
ply duplicity in his constitution. Like the love Shakspeare boasts, this world was builded far from " accident."  The paper account of it may be but cre'dit
mobile. But the Bible is not fountain nor river, but
reservoir; and, though it become a ruin, the spring is
deeper than that lake Nyanza Baker found at the head
of the Nile. The stream flows like the Euxine to the
sea: it is a Danube to force its way through mountains
-of prejudice; a St. Lawrence brawling over rocks of
controversy; a Niagara dropping to a different plane
and deeper tide over the pitch of some tremendous
reform, like Luther's; a cataract ready for a new leap
in that German mind, scorned' as unpractical, but'
showing its double genius to speculate and act.
We must not confound with the substance the accidents of faith. A scholar suggested to a churchman
the unimportance of some rite. " Nothing is unimportant that we stand on," was the reply. But why stand
on trifles, any pulling of which from under our feet
may trip us up?  Forms and formulas are burrows of
insincerity. " What is the difference in your farmer
since his conversion?"-" This, - that when he used,
in cutting trees on Sunday morning, to carry his axe
on his shoulder, now he carries it under his cloak."
Chunder Sen arraigns English hypocrisy, sending the
brandy-bottle with the Bible to India.
Doubtless, faith must be nourished by scriptures and
institutions. But it is congested when they become
ends instead of means. Mr. Brindley had not much
sense of beauty when he said the use of rivers was to
feed canals; and the beauty of virtue is gone when
the canal of the Church is made the reason and end of




FAITH.                  2 I5
those affections which are the currents of the soul; and
God himself is considered part of the Establishment.
Faith is the motion of love. Visiting a nephew of
General Hardee, the writer on Tactics, I heard fi-om
the wife a complaint of the Northern soldiers who
had trampled her orange-grove and spoiled the crop.
I took some large oranges fi-otn my pocket and gave
to her children, saying, " Here are some that have
come back."-" I am beginning to have faith in these
T'ankees," she cried. A small kindness may be mother
of a child of goodness that grows to be larger than
herself. But whoever had a human friend he was
not obliged to turn from to God? Said a nervous
woman, "I have sometimes to tell my husband to
go away." But so we never tell Him.
But has Faith any hold on the future?  Let science
answer. When Copernicus was told, according to
his theory the planet Venus should have phases as
well as the moon, he said,' "Wait till you have a telescope of sufficient power." Those phases were among
the first things the improved telescope reached. From
a resinous property he detected in the refraction of
the diamond, Newton predicted the discovery that it
is carbon. When the new planet appears, Leverrier,
like Wordsworth's saint, but " sees what he foresaw."
Morton risks murder for the blessingy of ether to mankind. Our punctual crossing the Atlantic by steam,
and traversing its monstrous bottom with the electric
cable, was once a prophecy. Quite alien from such
cases is the prevision of that immortal sea we shall
navigate when this poor flesh is a condemned vessel?
Is Nature a subject for foresight, and human nature




216            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
not? The anticipation of gold pavements, and houris,
and luxurious boards, is the coarse working of the
instinct. We must not expect to take our old coats
and shoes with us.  "How  much did he leave?"
" He left it all: he did not take a cent! "  But in
spiritual immortality is nothing base. It is the unselfing of the soul. Our hope of it is our honor of God.
He does not play with us to give us a good time at
any theatre of Vanity Fair, nor let us lick the hand
just raised to shed our blood, but will justify our aspiration in a fact as sublime. i' VWhom God deceives is
well-deceived," say you, O Goethe?  Deceit of the
inmost in us were self-deception in him. Forms will
pass. When the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was
called in question, a pious woman said, " If they take
away the bread and wine, what shall we have left?"
But the light will remain, fall the shadows how they
will. Sunday may lose its emphasis. Men may get
along without ministers.  " Your kingdom," said
Charles Sprague to a clergyman, " is passing away."
The triumph of the Church, as of its Head, will be
in going from us. But the kingdom of God will not
pass; and that kingdom shall be a home.
Faith is unity, the real atonement. Faith is one, in
distinction from particular objects, be it fixed on God
or Christ, Saint or Virgin, angel or mortal.  The
motto for a seal, I die where I am attached, is
graven on a vine twining round a pillar. But the
fidelity is in the vine itself, whether climbing on a
trellis or a tree; and my trust in my partner's loyalty
is as noble as in my Redeemer's sacrifice, or my Maker's
faithfulness. The same principle clambers to heaven




FAITH.                  2 I7
or clings to earth. It may make an idol of a stone or
fetish of a man, but parts not quite with its own nobleness. Holding to a bit of carved wood, painted image,
woven flag, or printed creed, it implies invisible excellence or sufficient help, some reliance on the constitution and Constituter of the world. In the yacht-squadron
my friend's fancy saw a troop of hooded shapes gliding ghostly over the deep. I saw clouds of canvas
bellying from the well-moulded hulls, guided by mortal hands of eager captains, who believed in the laws
of wood and iron, water and air, and the triumph of
the best model and sail and skill. In the sloop and
schooner, that tried conclusions, leaving the rest in a
helpless heap behind, was a figure of minds far ahead
of their generation, of that proud majority which is
but a confused multitude and lagging crowd. All
faith is-in law and lawgiver. Subscription to miracle,
though exacted and crowned in the Christian Church,
is unbelief. My friend exposes glass on his roof, and
in due time the sun gives it a beautiful rose-color. If
the sun do it this year, and refuse next, we could put
no confidence in the sun, nor know but it would rise
in a new quarter, or its furnace-register give out.
Who could lean on a Being that played fast and loose?
How foolishly we talk of his making laws! His laws
were never made. They have not their birth in time,
but are necessary in him, are himself, and cannot
change more than he, - not card-castles he like a child
is amused with building and throwing down. Not
lack but fulness of faith rejects tales of unnatural
transformation of water into wine, and green leaves
into withered, or any substance unknown into silver




218            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
coin. These are juggles, to which Perfect'Wisdom
cannot stoop. It is time miracle, as a test, were withdrawn. Those who cannot abide it the Church cannot afford to lose. Doubtless there are interpretations,
like Dr. Bushnell's, by which the supernatural turns out
to be the natural, and the portents are made as orderly
as the procession. But will you lay persons, who can
neither take them raw, nor cook nor construe them so,
under ecclesiastic ban?
Faith is distinguishable, next, from its statements.
What men contend about is not the substance, but the
form: the five points, thirty-nine articles, the scores
of sacred books so uneasy ever since they were bound
into one, the discrepancies in doctrines, narratives,
or genealogies, and uncounted clauses and texts. My
friend told me he thought " God must be sorry now
he had a Bible, finding men quarrel about it so." Expressions, unsatisfactory to those they are invented by,
generate strife. Every church in Christendom is convulsed over the undermined language of its collect or
creed, and all who stand on it are in fear of being blown
up. Written dogmas, not shifting to correspond with
the march of knowledge, are flanked. They cease to
be sentiments, and become tenets grasped and held by
the will. Some persons escape from the untenable
forts of theology; and some try yet to man the hopeless guns. The war becomes a meilde; and no man
knows his opponent. The excommunicator finds himself at heart excommunicated, with but some tatter of
a phrase which for a weapon he has clutched. By
the bishops that judge Colenso is he not secretly
indorsed? Priests, like politicians, illustrate Talley



FAITH.                 219
rand's saying that the use of language is to conceal
thought; and the art of  utt/ing things confounds
candor with trick. Part of the clergy in every establishment outgrow and chafe under the old cut of the
uniform which from policy they still wear. Others,
like mourners going from black to slate color, attemlpt
to vary their costume by degrees, to take time by the
forelock, and meet the coming wave. My brother
would fain be free. On judiciously selected points he
is outspoken, and wins credit of courage and being
independent. But his boldness is not boldness. He is
not loyal to his last and innermost belief. He thinks
the time has not come, or the people are unprepared.
He will work at the soil successive seasons before
casting in the seed. But, had prophets waited till
everybody was ready, would any reform  have occurred? It is a battle of sentences, theologians now
fight, more than of thoughts. All are on the defence.
They are mouth-pieces of ancient divinity, holding
proof-texts as shields over their heads. You are brave
only in spots, O Orthodox or Episcopal friend! Now
and then, here or there, you deal a lusty blow at
prejudice. But you have no mettle of principle, always, everywhere, and all over. Dare to say as you
think, - that there is no warrant but expediency for
governing the Church; no system of divinity in your
symbolical books; no authority for faith in the Bible
or any printed word; no evidence of immortality but
in the immortal soul; no God apart from Nature and
man; that every spirit can say with Jesus, " I and
my Father are one; " that the Divine unity consists
eternally in its offspring, is in its activity, and in loss




220            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
of its relations were itself deceased,  and your congregation might be as thin as ours!
Though we seem earth-wide and heaven-wide apart,
faith is one motion in our minds. The collision is
between the trains of word and theory. Some fresh
conviction struggles for life out of worn-out schemes,
as, fi-om the gravel, which a past vegetation crumbled
into, I admire to see the sweet rose and soft mullein
spring. Happy is he by whose imagination, in some
new proverb, it is voiced. Lonely as the seer that
sat astonied, or as John the Baptist in the wilderness, he will be for a time. But soon he will appear
a forerunner one party would expel and another win.
"' Go out," says the pope to D6llinger, yet begs conference with the man more formidable than a rival pope;
"as if," wittily answers the great heresiarch, "the
Father cared to have my body with him when he
has excommunicated my soul."  "Come," cry the
Rationalists to the robust Romanist,' "to swell our
revenue! "  The Papal fear and Radical hope prove a
common ground beneath personal pretensions and
a belligerent vocabulary.
For, thirdly, Faith, distinguishable firom all particulars of object or statement, is indistinguishable in
itself.  Other properties may be christened by its
name. Pride and passion, sensuous music, gay architecture, Sunday clothes, keeping one day holy, seeking
God in a single place; making the curtains of a temple, the gems of a Shekinah, or the rafters of a meeting-house holier than all space; removing the temple
not made with hands to some heavenly distance,
instead of trembling with joy in it all around and




FAITH.                   221
every day; thinking the Divinity can undergo shrinkage from the universe to a conventicle,- all this may
be considered faith. But by the narrow  mode its
quality is not touched. In every age and nation which
we call heathen, - through Buddhist and Brahmin,
Mahometan and Chinaman, Indian of the Eastern or
Western clime, sun or serpent worshipper, -a like
feeling runs from one Source, with whatever stain in
the stream.
Faith is repose in the perfection of the world. Job,
cursing the day of his birth, and wishing to cover it
with night and be his own pall-bearer, was an infidel.
Schopenhauer, flinging stones at the creation, as a
worsted work that just rubs and goes, is prince of
denying spirits. My friend, rejecting Christianity, is
not a sceptic; for he worships Truth, and never flinched
in his persuasion, like Wordsworth's, that every thing
is " full of blessings." He has less doubt in him than
that infallible Pius IX., unable to foresee his own
dethronement, vainly beseeching a conference with
the recusant German scholar on points in dispute, and
trembling before rebels he would cut off but that they
are protected by the foremost nation in the world. This
friend fights a duel with history, assails the logic of
events, considers mankind mistaken in what it remembers or forgets, holds his own recollection of more
worth than the oblivion of ages, and Cato-like tells the
gods they have prospered the wrong cause, which is
an accident that does not occur; but, by his temper
of devotion and trust in the Most High, he is saved
from all just accusation of unbelief. When shall we
learn that one thing is sacred, -our thought?  We




222            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
assassinate our own liberty when we condemn our
neighbor's.  Liberal Christianity hates its offspring,
like a parent scolding an inherited propensity in his
child. But beware your prescription of terms! Has
the man no faith who sacrifices life to duty, thinking
all is over, and expecting nothing beyond, —facing
annihilation, and not asking to continue? Demand articles of faith? My love has none; nor, when perfect,
has my health. If I descend to particulars, and talk
of my head, stomach, or heart, disease has begun.
Soundness is the light and happy bearing of the whole
frame, and faith of the undivided mind. Curiosity
about our beginning, or dogmatism about our end, is
defection from Faith, which contemplates only existence; and, no more heeding death than butterfly or
bird, sees only a path of morning-glory without end.
Faith goes on, not needing to take an observation. It
is no resignation of office or winding-up of affairs,
but proceeding to do business, and not take off our
clothes till we go to bed.  It is like the Western
pioneer, or traveller that halts for but an hour. The
Yankee in Italy glanced at the Apollo Belvedere, and
told his attendant to check it in the list of curious
objects, as he must pass on! His business was more
important than the statue. The wanderer along the
rock-girdled beach never finds just the place to pause,
while Beauty coyly glides before to toll his feet. The
man of science cannot rest, though he find out the chemistry of the sun. The earth's poor clerkship or unreadable record keeps Darwin on the stretch. The intellect
would circle the old with ever new generalization.
Artist or inventor has visions that shed scorn on his




FAITH.                  223
performance; and no character, even of Christ, without
room for improvement. Faith means this conscious
room. The infidel is he that asserts finality anywhere,
makes a term of any achievement or conception, sees
or puts a block in the eternal road. To affirm any stop
or period is unbelief. How many the unbelievers in
full communion on the church-books! Some astronomers say the earth will drop into the sun by and by,
and be burnt up.  Is he a believer who asserts a
destruction of the world, ultimate loss of millions of
souls, the running out of human nature, and ending
of the race of virtue at the tomb, like an Olympic game
at the goal, with the partial saving and crowning of a
few victors elect? Choice, confidential friend or private secretary of the Lord as he may deem himself, he
does not properly believe at all. Faith is not such a
murderer of hope.  To vilify our kind, or despise
ourself, is not belief. David, crying out he was conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity, was a blasphemer.
He was a matricide, shouldering on the woman that
bore him his own guilty lust: and they renounce God,
with him, who quote his language to the point of
a general fall and woe.
Calvinism is a system of disbelief. To say God was
disappointed in his works, repented of man's creation,
got off the track with his engine, and botched his business so as to have to do it over again, is worse than
atheism, - if Bacon be right, that, rather than have
us think ill of him, God would not have us think of
him at all. Faith is the feeling that creation is no bad
job, bubble that has burst, or mine that will blow up, -
but a master-piece, with no flaw. "' The experiment




224            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
has not succeeded," the Harvard professor used to say
to his class, when acid and alkali failed of the intended
combinations in his retorts.  Has the great Experimenter nothing else to say?  To declare that tragedy,
not triumph, was the end of Jesus; that such a Son
went under, with the heavens deaf and dumb to his
prayer; that the ruling Power said to him, Dust to
dust is the doom, and your talk of ascension is a foolish
whim, -- so that, as in Richter's dreadful dream, now
there is no Christ, - Orthodoxy would hold to be dire
unbelief.  What is it, then, to reckon the entire
humanity cast away, with the exception of a favored
minority snatched like brands from the burning, - God
hard of hearing to myriads of souls in immemorial
wons? A father's harsh chastening of his child brings
universal blame; and lately, in the West, certain citizens hung to a tree, not waiting for the law, an abuser
of his boy. Yet we are all bound for prison, in the
sentence of the schools, —except the redeemed, who
seem like courtiers obsequious to a tyrant because personally-safe. But to crook the knee to such a despot
for his power were the meanest slavery on earth.
Faith is, that there is no such fatality; but as the sea
in God's chariot of cloud is a cleanser of the air for
man's breath, while making every wave a span of
beauty to bridge all lands, so an ocean of purity is
sufficient antidote to all sin.  Faith says that no
hurt goes to the centre, no stain is too deep to take
out, no wound which Divine surgery or cautery cannot
tent.  The soul cannot mortify.  The stuff we are
made of is so stout the texture never rots. I heard a
reformer say, There is essential evil, heart malady in



FAITH.                   225
curable, an everlasting scar, a consequence of folly we
can never get over, but must be left hopelessly behind,
like one that gives out on the march, or a vessel that
lags in the race. Melancholy want of faith! Total
depravity or everlasting penalty? Why argue against
it, when, if it be, there is no God, there being nothing
total but him! Even sin has a ministry, and is one
of God's sharpest tools. The vilest criminals on the
scaffold without hypocrisy commend to him their souls.' The my)stery of iniquity" teaches some clear lessons.
If our preaching lose edge in making light of it, the
edge is turned in declaring so universal an experience of no use. Men sometimes do wrong or doubtful things fi-om an impulse, for which they cannot
account, but from which they learn wisdom.  The
faults of Paul and Augustine made the mould in
Which their excellence was run; and " Uriel," in the
poem, well doubts if the old deities know not, though
they tell it never to the younger, that naught is ill.
Faith says that destiny is not doom. The jail, to
which the convict goes, is no object of his faith. He
bows to the verdict, feels the sheriff's hand on his
collar, surveys the machinery of the law in jury and
judge, hopes for no reprieve; yet his faith stops in
no visible circumstance, but foreruns beyond calamity
to rescue at last. It is no demonstration nor conclusion
in the head, as when the degrees are measured in a
triangle or contents of a geometrical figure; but it is
the rejecting of all dimensions in our lot. The sailor's
endless rope, the mechanic's revolving wheel or universal joint, the spiral stair lifting at every turn, is its
type. It is the Towver of Babel that does reach heaven.
I5




226            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
It is the horoscope of paradise; and, as the astronomer's glass can compass no bound of sparkling constellations and conjunctions, so it overleaps every wall
of time or space.
It is not in propositions, but persons,- powers alive,
whose relations are truth, designs goodness, and enterprises joy, - to lay some ocean-cable, to reach a North
Pole, or knock at the gates of shining mansions.
People talk of faith in the Bible. It is impossible.
You may blindly believe all its books an inspired
summary; but no scripture can be the object, nor more
than the excitant of faith, as the quick-silvered cushion
or revolving cylinder is of electricity. In a loose use
of the word, I may have faith in material substances
or in ideas and laws; but strictly only in persons, in
being and life. There may be acceptance of, but no
faith in miracle,- only in an Ordainer whose mode is
order; a self-consistent One, who turns not to contradict
himself, and cannot be outgeneralled by an alien force.
Faith is faithfulness, or living by an inward law.
David calls God's word a light to his feet. But no
parchment or paper ever held that word which comes
in visions, goes running swift to the ends of the world,
and is published only in deeds. The Greeks had hilltop signals of flame, and the old racers handed the
torch to each other. But there is a candle God must
light in the soul. He goes round his own city, and
has the only key to the hall. None else can apply the
match and kindle the jet.  Opposite rules may be
gathered firom between the sacred lids; formulas are
swallowed, and nice customs courtesy to great kings.
Louis Napoleon bent, and dodged the shot. But there




FAITH.                  227
is a Marksman no respecter of persons, and careless
if monarch or peasant come in his range. There is
a bridge whoever passes pays toll, a tax impartially
levied, a custom-house remitting the duty for no bribe,
a road with no fi-ee passes, and a concert where no
dead-head hears the song. The mercy is not that the
law swerves, but that it does not slay. The storm
rises in the teeth of the wind, with thunders to wreck
the world. How the wheels rattle, and the steaming
vapor rolls round the sparkling heat! But the crash
goes by. Up the valley for miles the sun turns the
rain to silver drops. Rainbow  on rainbow  hangs
double assurance on the flying cloud.  The green
gloom hurries seaward, and white sails scud home
faster for the gale. In an hour all is clear and sweet
in the sanctified sky. Is it law, or is it grace?
All the faiths have one root, like all the mountains,
shooting from one bulb.  Godjudge betzwixt me and
thee ends dispute. Inquisition or victim appeals to
the same court. Father Taylor, seeing a half-dozen
white martin-boxes of churches in a country town, said,
" You have war here!" But, like hunters or explorers
scattering their forces to find the same game or gold,
every sect adores one Spirit, whether by Quaker
dumbness, Methodist shouting, or Romish cross. One
painter uses high colors for his landscape, and another
low. Is the first Episcopal, and the second Rational?
Both are true. My neighbor's Orthodoxy is a piquant
relish in his society. Dr. Bushnell can swallow creeds
as Mirabeau did formulas, seeing the centre of the
target they all hit. Elihu Burritt or Mary Lowell
Putnam can translate languages at once into each




228            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
other. No word suffices for the thought; so we use
many, as a surveyor his triangular series for a measure. When love repeated and overworked sounds
sentimental, we say truth; and Allah is refreshing
when God has become trite.
Our faith is better than we. We pretend surprise
-at the gyrations and self-inflictions of fakir and dervish,
and barbarities of bull-fights, still the sport of Spain.
But we murder Indians, and drink blood, like the base
woman in Scripture wiping her lips and saying,
"What have I done?"  No speech of Owyhee or
Japan is more brutal than the last report of slaughter
from the commander of our troops, whose abolition
of humanity no savage ever matched. But American
religion takes it as bread and wine from  the communion-board. The air is full of spirits, buzzing like
so many bees in our bonnet; but none help us to be
merciful or just. The Church says to the world, Stand
apart, Iam holier than thou, yet brings forth no better fruit. " Thzat is a lfMagdalen," said a visitor,
pointing to a picture on the wall. " No: a St. Cecilia,"
was the host's reply. " Well," rejoined the guest, "' at
this distance, my eyes are so poor I can scarce tell
sinner from saint."  We ask dreadful questions. Are
communicants nobler than those who partake not of
the elements? Are members of good society more
generous than Bohemians?  Are preachers less jealous than artists or actors? I suspect a reputation for
sanctity, under which men do unsaintly things. What
is uncleanness but conscious cleanness, or a sense of
dirt that cannot bear a mote, and insanely spends
life in removing every speck?  But innocent childhood




FAITH.                   229
plays in the mud. Only the invalid is annoyed by
foul weather. Hazlitt says the Italian lazzaroni let
the fleas, that craze nice ladies, creep unmolested over
their naked limbs.  Unworthy men most warmly
resent offences, swear at whoever imitates their mistakes, and confronts them with a copy of their own
sins. " To the pure all things are pure;" but nothing,
to such as have "1 their own mind and conscience defiled." Am I elect, my seat secured at the table or
among the dignitaries on the platform? In that persuasion I am lost. Do we lift our eyes to God?  He
is as low under our feet as high above our head.
After mounting over the Swiss passes, Splilgen, Stelvio, and Great St. Bernard, I came to the Finstermiinz, a tremendous gulf grander than the lofty pitch.
The divine glory is in his condescension. His humility
is sublimer than his exaltation above the clouds. Our
conceptions affect our conduct. Some creeds demoralize. But the idolater goes into the kingdom before
the money-maker; and his wit was not far, who,
being shown two portraits of thievish stock-operators,
wondered  that of Jesus was not hung between!
Consistency would require too many crucifixions. We
are hurt by our conceit of progress; and suck a subtle
poison from our songs of deliverance,
" Which kings and prophets waited for,
And sought, but never found."
Are we so well, and were our predecessors so badly
off? So the Orthodox chants, and the Liberal follows
suit. But there was light and color in the world before we were born. Mists rose to be clothed in beauty.




230            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Gently fell the twilight and dew. There was joy in
life and hope in death, or content to cease and give
place. In the Christian era came Hamlet's question,
4" To be, or not to be." I have heard Christian men
and women say they have no complaint of annihilation, if that be for the universe best; as the Indian
folded his arms, sang his death-song, and went over
Niagara in his canoe.
Be it what it may, that is not sad which we can
sing about. Something delicious is there in a funeral
hymn or dirge, with trumpet and muffled drum, of
the dead march over the soldier's grave. A friend
told me of the sweetness of the dying chime of bells,
in a foreign town, as a figure of his fading life. Does
not this feeling mix in the cadence of every bell that
tolls? The child said it tired her to think of living for
ever. The Oriental Nirwana is understood in the Occident. But being equal to cessation is the strongest
proof of continuance. The creature has title to live,
that can surrender its life. Can a fly do it? Said a
hearer of my sermon: " men are not worth saving."
But the doctrine of depravity is proof of nobility. Who
found it out?  No goat or wolf, serpent or tiger, is
ashamed of itself, or ever saw the plague of its own
heart. The man that first discovered his sin went further than Columbus. Nothing but virtue could ever become aware of vice. Does not good taste detect discord
in music, deformity in a posture, or disproportion in a
building? How else is ugliness discerned in the character? Chief of sinners are you? To decide that, you
must be expert professor of morals. That forth-putting
woman does not move us like the gentle-voiced one




FAITH.                  231
by her side, unanxious to lead. Set up your ideal
standard, see yourself overhung as with the constellation Libra by the higher law, hold yourself amenable
to a perfect tribunal, and worthy of hell-fire; and then
declare yourself worthless and corrupt utterly? This
self-depreciation is native grandeur, the foil of goodness
and bond of honor. Self-condemnation is God's absolution; and pleading guilty, acquittal at his bar.
Presumption of our own righteousness is a pest.
Who has not seen in the house some king or queen
who can do no wrong, and will take no counsel; is
omniscient to decide every point, with brazen impudence bluffs off objection, lies every day with pretence
of information, and ends in that chronic wilfulness, or
insanity of the will, for which no asylum is provided,
yet mortal cannot endure, and gets rid of by a divorce
or putting the globe between? This head-strong selfconfident temper check on its first appearance in your
child. Tell me not, O fond parent, you would not
break its will'! In wilfulness the will is not preserved,
but destroyed.
Faith is a moral quality, whose antithesis is disloyalty. Hypocrisy is the shell after the kernel is eaten out
Something more than intellect must keep the faith.
Unfaithfulness is worse than death, and opens a deeper
sepulchre than can be dug in the ground. The deceitful companion is farther off than any stranger. As a
man leaves a temple, you feel the traitor going out of
the inner sanctuary.  Though all seem fair on the
surface between you, and you laugh and play with
him still, he cannot without repentance return. All
religious faith has the same spiritual property to




232            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
resolve bulk of theology and body of divinity into
simple persuasion that our Author will be true. Amid
the glory of Nature, no sentence, of others or my own,
viill express my conviction. Before the stress of my
trial no rampart of sect will stand. My metaphysics
dissolve like fog burnt off by the sun. My citadel
goes as a Minot's Ledge light-house under the storm.
But I see the arm of God by day, and I feel it in the
gloom.
We make out a case for Christianity by calling
Nature unmerciful.  But what, if not pity, mean
these warnings, - before earthquakes, eruptions, or
billows hastening to cut off the beach, and mutterings
of the tempest prior to the bolt?  " Breakers ahead"
is the cry of alarm.  But how curiously the peril is
announced to the eye by the whitening wave, and in
the night to the ear by the peculiar sound, - the rattle
of the sea-serpent answering to that of the land!
Mercy is no after-thought of a Being who has to
make up his mind, but the constitution of matter and
human nature. A man carries a few wild roses to a
sick woman's room.  Long years after, sick in his
turn, he finds the flowers out of their ashes blooming
in her memory, as she returns his service a hundredfold.  Nothing so natural as the supernatural help
that makes all duty or calamity light. Is your task or
lesson, act or speech, easy?  Watch the kind of ease!
There is the facility of garrulity, and that of the Holy
Ghost. Faith sees blessing prevail over bane, man's
wrath a note of praise, evil a servant of good, and the
assassin's dagger in God's hand, to save a nation when
a martyr is made of its Chief. His providence no




FAITH.                  233
belief can sum. I take an inventory of my religious
effects. They are not a cent on a dollar of my debt.
I cannot pay, and must break. What an assumption,
that you can put the account on a page of rhetoric, in
a syllogism of your logic, and balance the books with
God!
Faith is not a constant quantity, but an unvarying
quality. There are no gulfs between men. As the
slate and granite and trap-rocks all come to the surface,
so the antiquary can forego his search, find all opinions present, and have a section of the world in every
age.  Comparative Theology has not exhausted its
illustrations. The Chinaman's sending his body
across the Pacific for burial.repeats Egyptian embalmment and the superstition of all nations about the
grave.  Brigham  Young, as naturalist and householder, is our King Solomon; the medium, a relation
of the witch of Endor. The tripod becomes an extension-table, with raps instead of voices; the sibyl's cave,
a wainscot at twilight. Mr. Home can show us in
himself the bodily ascension of Jesus and Elijah.
John was mistaken for the Messiah whose shoe-latchet
he was not worthy to unloose, and Christ for Elias or
some old prophet come again. The grandfather reappears in that blue-eyed babe of two black-eyed
parents. In short human nature is one, despite all
variations. He is a Hottentot, we say of some stupid
groveller; he is a Turk, of some cruel husband. The
Esquimaux, drinking train-oil, feeds no more grossly
than the man in broadcloth.  Seeing his brother's
unhappy self-exhibition, a great man said, "There is
something in him  like me."   " His blood is like




234           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
ours!" cried a French peasant at the execution of
Louis XVI. "Yes," said Fox the English preacher;
"and therefore it should not have been shed."  Goethe
declared there was no sin he could not have committed,
and John Wesley saw himself in the thief. I am a
man, and nothing human from me alien, brought
down the house, on the Roman stage. There is a
parallelism in the proverbs of all nations. We have
a hook for every eye of old speculation, and can button
our creed with one fifty centuries ago.
Action or opinion has its ancient counterpart.
Sheridan has the dash of Hannibal, Grant the prudence of Scipio, and Sherman does in Georgia what
Xenophon did in Persia. Stone tools and weapons
from antique caverns show the same art with our
shops, railways, and mills. The exigencies of California mining have reinvented ancient tools.  Our
iniquities are as inveterate as our merits. We marvel
at the Jew's contempt for the Gentile who was wiser,
the Greek who was more polished, and the Samaritan
who was more gracious than himself. But our Chinese
prejudice is thicker than the famous wall. Are not:heathen and pagan terms we apply to better men
than ourselves? When the Presbyterian priest would
force his way into Calhoun's dying-chamber, "Fool!"
cried the statesman, " to think he can teach me things
I have considered all my life!"  We fancy the problems are solved. But every question is open. We
float with our Fathers on the same sea of wonder, and
sail out of and into the same horizon of shade. We
cry for the same solace,
" And with no language but a cry."




FAITH.                 235
What a benighted man, to talk of pre-existence, do
they hold Plato, who have learned the precise fact of
man's creation from the dust! But Orthodoxy in our
day repeats the doctrine. Dr. Beecher thinks it were
mean for God to create us with a blot, like the bloodstain no water can wash from the floor, or a piece of
damaged goods. So we must have sinned in a prior
state; and our punishment is in the depravity with
which we were born. Jesus pre-existed, we say.
Why not everybody, if he was a man? He abolished
death. But God chooses no favorites. We die like
those before us. There is no unmixed truth in sacred
history, nor unmixed error in profane. On a column,
in a carriage, cupola, or balloon, I am upheld by the
same earth; and in all my metaphysics or common
sense I have one Uplifter. Isaac Watts sings of the
"basis" that belong as much to Paine or Voltaire.
Men try to be sharp and get the best bargain. But
I stand in awe before the justice none can escape.
You can take no advantage of God. You will have
no joy beyond your measure; and I have not suffered
too much. His car rolls on a law harder than steel,
resisting every hammer or file. To the mind's eye
matter disappears. Order and motion alone remain
for his vehicle and will.
Sects are as ships, whose common is the ocean, but
each with its own mooring in port. The thinker sails
where he will. The Free-Thinker encounters the
Creed-Bound on the high seas of literature, politics,
art, and general conversation: only they run in when
clouds rise, to cast anchor in dogma; and he, like a
Red Rover, holds on his course. But both are one in




236            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Faith, which starts with Spirit. Unbelief dates from
the dust, and has only that mechanical notion of Infinity which it shares with the brute, who also sometimes
seems in the creation to feel overpowered. But it is
only a Finite extended. Nothing is infinite but the
soul. Space is but one of the fields it works in. Our
intellect is classified by what it begins with. " Hath
the rain a father, and who bath begotten the drops of
dew?" asks Job. It makes a difference if I consider
that the rain is my father and the dew my mother,that my generation is in the particles, not in my being
thought of before I came, and coming because of me
there could be a thought. There is but one question;
and the battle is drawn. All who hold the elements
for their origin are on one side, and those who derive
fiom  the Elemental Power on the other. Even the
animals, in their worship of man, have an obscure feeling of a source above the clay. "' Be patient," I said
to the dog who offered me his fore foot to shake:
"' your paw shall become a hand by and by." We
speak of the body we are members of. A man's culture is measured by the largeness of the community
he consciously belongs to.  Friends and relations,
our social class, the municipality, the commonwealth,
the country, the Pilgrim stock, the Anglo-Saxon, the
human race, and all intelligence firom the seraph to
the beast, are so many ascending marks on the scale
of dignity. Never was a nobler name than " Commune" but for want of the commune vinculum. If
justice be the bond, the cause is international. If
division of property, irrespective of industry, worth,
and ability, be the aim, it means universal robbery and




FAITH.                  237
poverty. It is arithmetical or geometrical progression of all the pirates that ever beset the land or
roamed the sea.
Faith is not a conclusion, but a quest. It is confidence in a right we can reach, which grows more
fine and tempts us on for ever. Mr. Martineau's
title, " Endeavors after a Christian Life," was ridiculed
as implying what he had not attained. But who has
attained? Attainment were a block in the path, a
blind alley, the great stone rolled against the door of
the sepulchre. If Jesus be -not more and better than
he was on earth, then he is dead, and never rose. I
never meet a man but to inquire my way. I am
thankful not only for the Inner Light, but for the road
which generations have made and trod. We complain of every stone and turn in the winding and uneven way over which we walk or drive. But do we
think how much digging and blasting it cost? Only
to its termination in any forerunner's steps let us
object. Even the great Example is not the finality,
possibility, and flying horizon of the human mind.
For creatures who are in a new coil of the chain of
habit every year, what a dignity death adds to life, as
a winding-up of involved accounts, and setting us up
in this business of character again! The Church is but
provisional, and must not complain of those who find
no communion in the cold passing round of the loaf
and cup, but are driven to the oracle within.   Is it
wicked," said one, "to play croquet on Sunday, and
not go to church?"  "Yes," was the answer, " if it
be a wicked thought." But pious scandal of your
neighbors is worse.




238            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Depravity may be unconscious; but sin is the sense
of sin, and faith is the feeling of spirit. Great is our
debt to the explorations of matter that distinguish the
age. But the results only point to a higher method we
must reach. The microscope throws the glory of the
telescope into the shade, by its revelations of that vital
structure which concerns us more than all the splendor
of the sky. " This star with a tail spinneth round
that other: let it spin," we say with the Turkish cadi.
But if the secrets of health and disease can be disclosed by the physiologist, he more than Herschel
or Leverrier shall have our thanks. Yet mind and
conscience elude the keenest lens. God or man will
never be seen through a glass, even darkly. The
protoplasm, which Mr. Huxley describes as the physical basis of life, is composed of several principles,
behind which the mystery of being is intrenched; and
when you shall have got the tiles of all fashions used
in this castle of creation, the Power that lays them in
order is still to seek, whom no magnifier will ever
detect among the atolms or the orbs. But what we
cannot grub up out of the dirt, or overtake on the
comet's trail, our nature shares. God, says the physicist, is unknown and unknowable. But to the spirit
nothing is known so well, in that self-knowledge of
God and man, knowing each himself in the other,
which is the foundation of all knowledge. What is
knowledge?  An impression on the senses, picture in
the eye, or sound in the ear? I know the ship when
I have numbered its sails, and shrouds, and masts.
I can call it sloop or schooner, frigate or brig. I
know the bird or fish or plant, when I have analyzed




FAITH.                   239
its organism, and assigned its class. But I do not
know the Deity, at whose least whisper of duty in my
breast I am eager to work, ready to suffer and die!
The youth and beauty of our Israel, that fell in high
places or low ones of battle, knew not why! I deny
the materialist's definition. As to your'" knowledge,"
said the cadi to Layard, " I defile it."  Limiting the
term to an understanding of external objects put in
rows deserves the contempt of all to whom the unseen
is real, and ideas are entities which cast as shadows
the sun and moon. Nature is no dualism. Yet the
words spirit and matter must be used. The only
question is, Who heeds the laws of language best? Science, the foe of Superstition and destroyer of groundless beliefs, is friend of Faith, and relays its foundation
beneath frost or flood. It is teaching that force is not
quantity, that there is no such thing as size, but every
thing according to our optical apparatus - giant or
dwarf- and the resistless energies too subtile for sight
or touch. All is the same Proteus in manifold modes.
Every entry that is opened, shaft sunk, tunnel bored,
organic or inorganic latch lifted, leads to one point,
which is centre and circumference alike, - a Unity we
have as yet no better name for than God, but whose
suggestion is not from time or nature, but the soul.
O student of these fair appearances, observer of this
ghost of God we call the world! before you close the
catalogue, account for yourself. Will you tell us why
you are here? Who woke your curiosity, and started
you on your track? Was there no Instigator of your
researches, or Source of your delight? What is the
name of That which persuades you not chaos, but
cosmos, is all?




240             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
In Paul's trinity of graces, love is greatest. But
the love that fondles is not so good as the faith which
forgives and expects, and abolishes antipathy. The
feeling to a fellow-creature which makes him dear,
though he will not further or vote for you, nor come to
hear you lecture or preach, is worth more than all
the superficial amiableness ever poured out. This
confidence is the essence, the great wheel on which
all lesser ones turn, the kingdom  to which all else is
added, the condition on which our actions will take
care of themselves. " What are you doing? " it was said
to a noble young person.  "'.As usual, nothing," she
replied. But it was enough such-sweetness of spirit,
purity of look, and beauty of manners should exist.
There would be no wrong or waste activity, and no
pride of accomplishment, as in the busybody that
meddles with other people's matters, and clothes himself in his own righteousness. Who needs your haste
and sweat, and superserviceable interference?
The creed touches the character. In the rebellion
against Rome of Protestantism, in the recoil from
Orthodoxy of Liberality, and the large field we have
won of unfettered judgment, our dogmatism has begot
indifferentism. We say, No matter what a man thinks,
if he lives right.  Liberty has become, instead of a
means, the end.  One being asked which he preferred, faith in God or freedom, answered, My freedom.' But when free love, free trade, free rum, and free
religion are the mottoes, we ask what curb will keep
this wild horse of freedom from running away with
us. You look to your harness when you are going to
take a ride. Keep a tight rein on this span of free



FAITH.                  241
inquiry and free-will, to hold them to the King's highway. Without conviction, liberty, like a ship carrying
too much sail, ploughs under. What is the use of your
independence?  WVhat is the freedom of the seas for?
To sail about aimless and shoot into every inlet for
sport; or like that Alabamna, burnt and branded for
ever into English history, to make free with other
folk? Freedom is a bastard unless its parent be Truth.
No matter what our opinions are! Is it any matter
what a man eats, but not what he puts into the stomach
of his mind, a French novel or a psalm? Many ways
to heaven? Some to hell!  Stop, as did the young
man in the low theatre when he read in capitals over
the door, To the Pit! Are you going to the rehearsal?
There is a rehearsal for every thought, ere the act, be
it music of charity, or murder in the Bussey Woods,
or on the Brookline road.  What but sabbatarian
superstition stretches into intolerance the tether of the
law, to shut up a public library from those who have
no church?  What but bigotry made one ask, " Shall
we have only Unitarians and infidels on the platform
to celebrate Italian emancipation?"  Yet a certain
minister proclaims his adherence to the same old
articles held forth a hundred years ago, saying he
would nail them on his church-door for a sign. So
indeed it were well to do! The farmer nails mischievous birds and beasts of prey, hawk and fox, on
his barn-door.  The trader nails base coin to the
counter. I saw counterfeit money hung up, a long
row of bills, in a city warehouse. Luther nailed his
propositions, a placard against the papal bulls, on
the German  cathedrals.  Such doctrines as total
i6




242            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
depravity and farticular e&ection abolish the Declaration of Independence, and deserve any exposure of
shame. WiVere the Five Points in New York named
with any reference to the Five Points of Calvin? They
lead to the same despair! We were shocked by Taney's
opinion that the negroes in this country have no rights
white men are bound to respect. But the abolitionists
might have spared him the length of their lash. This
belief was founded not only on his construction of the
Constitution, but his notion of slavery as a heavenordained institution based on plenary inspiration of
the text. WVhy should not we curse Canaan if God
did?  What was the judicial decision but part of the
theological one, that mankind have no rights He is
bound to respect? Was the Divine proceeding in
dooming men for moral inability the pattern for us to
match, like reverent copyists in galleries of the works
of the great masters, or tapestry-sewers in the French
shops? This the lost image we were made in to stencil
in our demeanor and stitch into our heart? Has the
child in the cradle no claims on you? More indefeasible ones have we all on God. I ask him to justify
my existence; nor will he that resented not Job's
expostulation condemn my demand, but satisfy me
my creation was wisdom, and his bestowment of life
a boon.  Though my fate, like an engulfing billow
racing after the vessel, were hard at my heels, one
thing is needful: his conduct must be such as while
I live I can imitate without harm. Is he unforgiving,
remitting only with blood?  I shall be the same.
Did he punish Jesus in our stead? Let us hunt up
scapegoats, and in every court let the guilty go! For




FAITH.                  243
our salvation must Christ's body and blood be partaken in the elements, though the taste of wine wake
in the once delivered drinker the wolf of appetite? Is
the Pope infallible? Then a kingdom  nmust lie in
chains, at least till the world learn to laugh at a pontiff no more able than the astrologer in the story to
predict his own fate, and his authority be blown to
pieces by a new-born nation's breath.
From men's persuasion comes their course. Whence
cruelty to animals, but from an opinion derived from
the Hebrew books, and customs too, that we are their
absolute lords? Trace a human quality in beasts,
make them our relations, and our new estimate will
stand them in better stead than a thousand Berghsocieties. Truth is moral. "Is aught wrong in the
temper of my articles? " asked a bold editor, knowing,
with Goethe, that the spirit we act in is the highest
matter. " No," was the ansvirer: " your sharpness is
not for yourself, but your cause." All the weapons of
God's armory we are to wield against false prophets.
Wrath and ridicule do not belong to selfish men
to use, but to enthusiasts for the truth. Let them
buckle on the steel against His adversaries, and draw
the sword, and poise the lance of holy indignation and
scorn. Would you bless your fellow, do not so much
give him  creature-comforts, but enlarge his view.
Any belief, like that in immortality, is sound that
promotes the common weal. God made us not for
handiwork alone, but to behold his beauty.
If perfect love casteth out fear, perfect faith casteth
out sorrow. Do we weep when mature fruit is gathered?
Does the husbandman mourn over his sheaves? What




244            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
means your stubborn grief but that there is no garner
for the soul? Is it not only the shock of corn, fully
ripe in its season, that is gathered, but the flowers and
the buds? Yet we pluck them from the garden and
the field; and the human blossoms, like those that had
unfolded in a coffin on its way, fulfil their promise out
of our sight.




x.
L A W.
USE different words as we may for diverse aspects
of the creation or moods of mind, there is no
distinction between law and person, or law and love.
By law we mean the Divine method or habit, not an
alien power to constrain. If our growing knowledge
convince us that there is no departure from the line,
we do not believe that line is arbitrary, or was ever
laid down by One who would fain leave it if he could;
but is itself expression of his own essence. Truth,
beauty, goodness, — these three in the language of the
schools are one and consubstantial.
We are placed in the world amid forces we cannot
measure, of Nature without and our own nature within; liable to be run away with by the elements and our
own passions. The reins, which are knowledge and
will, are put in our hands; yet we shall be unseated
and ridden over unless we take heed: and the danger
is twofold, - from other driving as our own. As an
old author says, we are like ships in a storm, in danger
from the waves and each other. There is a superstition that it promotes health to sleep with the head
to the north, to correspond to the axis of the globe.
To ride backward or look from a piazza on the sea




246            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
makes some persons sick. Farmer or sailor knows
he can make the elements friends or foes, - difference
of pilot being the only reason one vessel comes to port
and another founders in the same gale. " Man will
be happy," said Spurzheim, " when he confines himself to understand and find ways to execute his Creator's laws." We are at school to them firom our
infancy. They are the only university. The child
finds that his throat is the wrong place to put down
the gravel he plays in, that the fire or candle does not
agree with his fingers, that edge-tools will cut hands
taking them by the blade, and that he sits down very
suddenly on the floor unless circumspect with the
muscles upon which his leg-practice begins. Nature
and our nature are like two mutually adjusted clocks
or harps.
This sense is in the proverbs and cries of all nations.
" Be careful!" says our companion when we step
over the threshold, or on the stairs, or lift the baby,
or open the knife, or reach for the razor, or cut with
the scissors, or fasten the rope, or loose the mainsheet, or belay.  "'Look out!" cries the Yankee
coachman; " Prenez-garde!" the French omnibusdriver; "Fire, fire!" the rock-blaster. The steamwlhistle screams far off to clear the track; the red or
white flag of the signal-man warns horse and man at
the crossing; the watchman springs his rattle at midnight-disturbance; the bell is rung by hand or by
lightning in cities, in a conflagration. In Teneriffe
I heard the Spanish sentinel cry every hour in the
night, "All is serene!" as -if the citizens must be
wakened every little while to be assured they might




LAW.                    247
sleep soundly. " Get out of the way! i" we shout to
our dearest fiiends. The chariot of lawwill bear us
if we sit in it; its wheels worse than any Juggernaut
will grind us if we be in the opposition to _If-s Majesty's government. It is not the train that I see arrive
or start, but His statute of which that is the apparition.
A hundred locomotives go through the tunnel every
day; but with every gesture and breath His decrees
pass. Do you think retribution is postponed till the
world is burnt up, and the trumpet sounds and the
general judgment dawns, and all nations assemble at
a final bar; and, if these things do not take place, you
will escape, run toll, and go scot fi'ee? Your punishment is at once. An impure or intemperate man
wrestles with a law, and is surer to be thrown than if
he assailed the engine. The people say ironically to
a man who has blundered against a wall or run his
craft on a ledge, " Did you hurt that rock any? " More
than by any disobedience you can the Divine command! The prudent profligate, who thinks not to injure his body, and is said only to corrupt innocence in
the partner of his guilt, is dying out in the centre, like
the rotten cocoa-nut, whose husk only hides its ill odor.
The preachers say, " Break not the heavenly laws!"
But a law was never broken. The law breaks us, if
we try which of the two is best, We fight a duel with
God. Jacob wrestles with the Most High, and finds
his own thigh out of joint. You think you are sharp
when by some ingenious trick you make what you
call a good bargain. You are stupid not to know it
is bad. "I calculate to do about right," we say.
That about is often -a large circumference, a good way




248             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
off from the centre. It is no honor to hit the target
on the rim. "Memorialize congress," it was said to a
smuggler complaining of the confiscation of his bark:' they will do you justice."  " Ah," he replied, " that
is what I am  afraid of!"  Whether congress will
do justice, its treatment of French and other claims
makes us doubt. But there is a Legislator who will.
No fraud or robbery, violated purity of a woman or
stained honor of a man, outrage that makes us ask if
any God live and reign, but he will atone to every
victim and make the unholy victor quake.
We speak of those who are responsible, being in
power. In some power the weakest of us are. 7Ve
call it the will of God when our disrespect of his order
turns its blessing to a curse, as the Turkish captain
condones the mismanagement that casts away his ship,
with pious ascription to fate. "Just my luck!" you
say. No, your fault! " His providence! " No, your
improvidence! Piety to accept the miseries which
impiety inflicts?  Not so, if impiety consists not alone
in. profane swearing, but in disregard of conditions the
Being you worship ordained. It is time to cease from
our false baptism of the calamities, we draw on our
own heads, as his appointments, and the unchristian
christening of our mistakes as his inscrutable wisdom;as if he struck us when we wounded ourselves, or
slew us when we committed suicide; as if the typhoid
fever, as his angel, came out of the well that communicates with the receipt of ordure. If death be his
messenger, we often despatch it. If he make out its
warrant, he leaves it, as Horace Mann said, to every
one of us to insert the date. It is no absolute will.




LAW.                    249
You determine it for yourself, and by your conduct for
your husband, wife, child, or parent, - lengthening out
their days with gracious manners, or with insult stabbing the heart to bleed life prematurely away, and
bringing down gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.
Father it upon God, will you?
I accuse not Deity of these horrors and ghastly facts
in human life. Human carelessness is the misdoer
and homicide. It kills a thousand to one beyond every
assassin and highwayman, robber on the land or
pirate on the sea. In neglect of sanitary rules at the
table and in the relation of the sexes, in private unsanctity of the young, in unfit or defective exercise of
body and. mind, in all its undermining or overloading,
its detraction from human vitality outrivals the waste
of war, all whose flaming standards measure out for
mankind the fields of conflict, but not the wider reaches
of their fault.. Who shall weigh the woes inuring, like
wrecks and heaps of sea-weed cast upon the shore,
friom inconsideration of the Truth?
When a powder-mill explodes, or a ferry-boat blows
up, or a locomotive dragging one train crashes through
another, it is published as an " awful accident." No
accident,. but human eedlessneness; not deliberate
murder, but thoughtless manslaughter. The mixing
of broken wood and iron, and splintered glass and
suffocating steam, amid gasping men and women, is as
regularly according to law as the rising of the sun,
or ebb and flow of the sea. Only it was attempting
to proceed against law, instead of with it. The law
goes on more terrible than an army with banners, and
the fragments are left bleeding and burning behind.




250            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
There are no accidents. Disorder is but the result of
our blind neglect of Order. Our defeat is in order
then. The carpenters on the staging, who had not
nailed the support, fell to the ground by the gravitation
that steadies your seat. The equilibrium is disturbed?
Not God's or Nature's, when we niiss our footing, and
are overset. "I did not know," you say. Of all parties the Know-nothings was the worst.
But is there no mercy?  Never, in the sense of
releasing from this hug of Omnipotence withstood.
Suppose the unwilful authors of the so indulgently
denominated mishap could -have been let off from the
legitimate issue of their unlawful course, the attractions
of matter cancelled, the hot vapor held back, and the
coals of fire forbidden to kindle: we should not know
what to depend upon. God and Nature would be
playing fast and loose with us. All our calculations
would be disturbed. We should be put completely
out of our reckoning, and not be under tuition, but at
a juggler's show. Education were impossible. When
shall we learn that justice is not one thing, and pity
another; but Mercy and Truth meet together, Righteousness and Peace kiss each other, and the Divine
compassion no exceptional attitude, but the undeviating step?
We complain that the innocent suffer from the errors
of the guilty. But we see not the Hand holding the
balance of redress, death being the pivot, and one
scale hanging with even weight on the immortal side,
however tremulous the beam. WVho shall say that to
the blameless departed compensation is not made?
There is no murmur in their song. They have no




LAW.                   251
account of vengeance to make up. Earthly law may
exact recompense; but no standing grudge beyond!
WVe tread on graves. Our road is ashes. The rolling stock, the running gear, glides swiftly over the
spot of disaster which has left no trace. The travellers, who knew not it was a way-station for heaven
where they stopped, on a higher plane proceed.
There was one for whom it was not unmeet, like
Elijah, to go in the chariot of fire. In the spiritual
fabric he spent his last thread. He was like one turning the wheel when the wool gives out on tihe spindle.
The fibre of his frame worn out, it was meet he should
be dismissed from the field for refreshment, and that
music of welcome for those who have well done. One
virtue, of patience, that went against the fire of his
nature, and high pressure of his speed, is for him
struck from  the list.  The hireling longs for the
shadows that point to the great emancipation of the
freedman's dawn, where the Lord will deal gently
with him who has dealt severely with himself. For
Ezra Stiles Gannett let there be on the dry page of
discussion trace of a loving tear.
But the whole sweep is beyond us. We can reckon
the orbit of the most erratic body in the sky; but
Providence mocks our mathematics. Yet science is
doing the work of religion in reducing phenomena
under the range of law; and no libel is so gross as
to charge it with serving the cause of atheism, or
unbelief, in disclosing the invariably regular march of
all appearances and events. Is the living God to be
proved only in arbitrary ordination and wilful favor to
individuals or nations? Must he be a Parent who




252            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
has pets, a partial Schoolmaster whose generosity to
one pupil is injustice to another, a King who smiles
on his courtiers, and for critics of his authority has
only frowns? Shall some exceptional act, some whimsical decree, some miracle of love to a chosen man, in
worse violation of order than any physical prodigy,
demonstrate his presence? Thanks to investigators
who say, No'!
Still less is the cause of Faith served by ascribing
any occurrence to a malignant power. Yet a new
phrase, in startling capitals, has lately saluted our eyes
on placards, and from the orator's speech, and in public
prints, - Fire-Fiend, -a natural expression to personify as a demon the element of awful and sudden
mischief, but involving a hurtful mistake. Fire-minister or fire-angel is the true religious word. The
acceptance, with which the other name has been reiterated shows how prevalent still the false feeling which
invented it, - that God the Good has a rival power of
evil in the world, with agents of destruction in its employ. But two forces are not; only one in Nature,
making servants of all substance. Nothing in the universe so potent as fire. It has lately in a day laid in
ashes a city which some' thought the most beautiful in
the States; and, not content, swept, villages in Michigan and Wisconsin away with its burning broom, as it
turned to ashes in an hour the cars on that fatal Eastern train, and poured out from  the broken pipes the
suffocating steam; consumed to the water's edge the
gay yacht on Long Island Sound; and lurks everywhere, ready to spring forth quicker than a panther
or assassin for deadly mischief, unless sharper than




LAW.                     253
any creature in ambush  it is watched; indifferent
whether it destroy treasure or life. When the dogstar rages, men fall like flies under the sun-stroke. Is
it not diabolical? No: it is divine. Without it there
were nothing human, no life extant of any sort. Unseen Spirit we believe Author of all. But physical
-philosophy has shown the sun, the great body of
light and heatI for our system, to be the source of all
vegetable and animal life, the Almighty's instrument
in creation; and the sun shines because -it burns.
Sixty or seventy tons of red-hot coal a day supplied
the motive-power of the steamer that brought me
across the sea. What amount of fuel is thrown into
that furnace a hundred millions of miles away, to
draw the planetary load! There is no bounty of the
harvest, and no beauty of the blossoms, no benefit of
changing seasons, no clothing for our body, no daily
bread, comfort, necessity, or luxury, but his chariot
brings it. From his genial rays the growth of wood
to build house and ship or kindle on our hearth; or
out of forests to lay away the mines of concentrated
combustible to warm us in winter, and turn ten million
wheels and spindles in our factories the year round.
It is all fire, angel and minister of God, cashier
of the bank that never fails. In the cordial pressure
of your hand, beating of your heart, blush on your
cheek, sparkle of your eye, animation of your look and
gesture, is some portion of its beams. I do not wonder
at the Oriental adoration of fire, the Persian worship
of the stin;i and I admire the keen retort of the Eastern sage to the Englishman who rebuked his idolatry:
"You, too, might worship the sun if in your foggy




254             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
climate you ever saw  him."   Could any idol be
allowed, it would be no block, picture, or graven
image, but his blazing orb. Jets of flame, blue and
crimson, which no science can comprehend nor logic
expound, lead our thoughts into unfathomable mystery.
Cold is death: the marvel of life arises with warmth.
If fire be the strongest of the elements in its excess
or misplacement to harm, it has no peculiar commission to injure nor monopoly to destroy. The water
that buoys will drown. The air, soft as a zephyr, can
rise in tempest of ruin. The earth, our floor, may
cave in to bury us alive, or slide from  the mountain
and carry off dwelling and inmate. Every thing will
bless or ban us, as we put ourselves in fit or cross
relations. On its right hand, it welcomes; on the left,
it sends us accursed away. It may be benediction
or scourge, cornucopia or vial of wrath. According
to our behavior, it frowns or smiles, furthers or blasts,
gives us a reception or sets up a bar of judgment.
We owe a tender pity to the sufferings of our fellowcreatures. Never was a tenderer call for sympathy
than comes from the city, beside the sepulchre of its
matchless prosperity so speedily dug. Yet what was
the conflagration but a dreadful calling to account of
the hasty ambition for wealth and success that put
such walls of pine and masses of shingle, and thin
veneers of brick and stone, the best of which were
only nominally fire-proof, and wide sections where
if one -building went a hundred must follow, at the
mercy of a kerosene lamp kicked by a cow? -as in
Portland a fire-cracker was the equally insignificant
occasion of doom. If we charge a ledge or load a




LAW.                     255
cannon, and lay a train of powder, or attach a fuse,
and then apply a spark, we know what to expect.
We should understand with equal certainty what will
come in such ill-constructed and unguarded quarters
of many of our towns, when some flung-away match,
or midnight reader's candle at the bed-curtain,,or
careless ash-heap, or smoker's pipe (getting every
year to be a more general and unbearable nuisance), or
burning gun-wad, times the flame, it starts in a corner,
with draught and wind to give it instant velocity and
terrible voracity in its course. Chicago endures the
penalty.  But she is not alone, if even especially
guilty. She is conscript for our battle with the
avenger, choosing that point of attack and warning
us with what other onslaught the war may go on.
She is scapegoat of our sin, bearing it into the wilderness of her desolation, if we repent. She is one
summoned for correction as an example. Avoid her
funeral-pyre by seeing to the security of your own
edifices and streets.
Fire a fiend?  What bore the tidings of calamity
and the cry for help but that same fire in the shape of
lightning over the wires, more rapid in its office than
devouring flame?  What sent back  instantaneous
promise of aid and certificate of value but the same
stream, the essence of the element that had made the
havoc? Fire is the most alarming of cries. It is a
good servant, but a bad master. But let us not forget
it is in its nature beneficent alone. A great cause of
death, M. Coquerel tells us, in the siege of Paris was
the cold, want of fuel in exceptionally severe weather;
and the lives of children were saved by a few sticks




256             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
to make a fire to prepare and keep warm  their food.
If the vengeance of violated law comes through fire,
careering on the wirlwind's breath, beating down arch
and column and marble front, and escaping all control,
we must not call malign the executor of justice and
instructor to obedience.
Men shrink from this idea of wide-spread woe as
punishment. They prefer to call it a disaster, visitation of Providence. It is a sentence, as much as when
a man is sent to the gallows or jail.  God's officers
are in waiting, his detective's touch on our shoulder.
It is easy, you say, to be wise after the event. Well,
next time let us be wise before the event!  In the
enormous size our cities grow  to, in the superficial
quality of our carpentry and masonry, in the too late
arrival of our engines at the spot, we may be less
safe than in the times when we had but a bell with no
electric arm to ring it, every man's buckets hung in his
garret, and all good citizens rushed from their rooms
to put out the first gleam of danger or restrict it to a
narrow space. Wisdom  after the event!' Have we
yet to learn that petroleum oil will explode with a
scintillation, that a huge flame will leap across a scant
passage, and when it gets roaring headway will smite
the stoutest bulwarks like a surging sea-to bear down
all before it?
But in the anguish is saving grace. It reveals the
interconnection and solidarity of mankind.  Quarrel
as they will, and vile specimens of human natureroughs, thieves, murderers for booty, plunderers of the
poor, selfish refusers of assistance save at exorbitant
prices -as any seething of the social elements throws




LAW.                     257
like scum to the top, these fellow-creatures do not
desert each other in time of need. Humanity is not
extinguished but excited by misfortune, though we
share the shock. As the great Lisbon earthquake
sent a ripple over the ocean to American shores,
London and Liverpool capital feels the blow of falling
Chicago. But London and Liverpool are not withheld from  charity by their loss. Everywhere none
more ready to give than those who have suffered, to
those who have suffered more. It is a noble temper
in this mortal clay, a shining refutation of the dogma
that the soul is totally depraved. It is God himself,
who is love, moving in his children's hearts. It is an
Internationality, or super-nationality, all whose members rejoice or mourn together.
It is curious to see how widely through the country and
the world, from a single town, run manifold branches
of this great system in modern business of insurance
against fire. But the failure of insurance companies
under the strain, and the disclosure of the fact that
particular corporations will agree to cover thirty times
their own capital or assets, may suggest a query how
far we are covered, and whether commissioners, like
some boiler-inspectors, are not too easy in their search.
Fire, then, is Heaven's servant, and no fiend. Tile
old Theology must answer in part for its being so
misunderstood. The ungovernable fury of fire fairly
unloosed; its hideous waste of wide regions, leaving
groves and fields and habitations blackened heaps; its
terrific overflow from volcanic peaks into streams of
lava, to scorch and whelm in ruin vineyard and abode;
its dismal smotherings of man and beast; the ground
17




258            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
trembling and rumbling with its pent-up force, impatient to escape from the centre it constitutes of the
globe, with famous judgments, as on Sodom and Gomorrah, - have doubtless furnished to writers of Scripture the hint of the popular hell. It was an appreherision from Nature, not inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
How much more grand and true David's conception
of it, as a minister bearing the Lord's gifts and corrections alike in its hand!
Fire a devil or factor of Beelzebub? What is this
warming of the heart, all over the land and the world,
but an inward fire lighted from the supersolar spark,
and having in it a million-fold the heat even of those
fierce, unquenchable tongues that sucked up the verdure
round the Lakes, licked, into dust the metropolis of
Illinois, and feasted on the blood of thousands of lives,
to mark this hemisphere of the West with one of the
chief astounding afflictions in the annals of mankind?
Fire in the wrong place -on the floor. and not on the
hearth; in a powder-magazine, and not a factory-chimney-; in a defective flue instead of a poor man's hovel -
is no comfort. The inward fire - in our hate, not our
kindness; in envy, not generosity; in lust, not love - is
no minister of grace. Yet even it has caught, to burn
out the often foul chimney of a human breast, which
will -draw better when it is clean. The remorse we
deprecate we could not spare. Fan the flame of a
fine compunction. Let the fire, that has levelled a
city to the soil out of which with such indomitable
industry it was raised, be met with the brighter glow
of charity. As in the prairie on whose edges she sat,
their crown and lustre for a thousand miles, fire is




LAW.                     259
fought with fire, so against the outward element let
us set the interior flame of good-will. Because love
was not burnt, Chicago shall be rebuilt. Charity shall
be the master-mechanic. Courage shall be restored in
her citizens by the world's generosity. She shall rise
from prostration, with the help of a hundred cities,
more fair and strong than before; and, with her hands
stretched to the lakes and the sea, feed us again with
meat and bread, if we feed her sore want and hunger
now.
If there is a law of Nature, there is a law of love
in human nature and the Divine. When we talk of
natural law, let us not forget that which is not less
natural because it is spiritual. The overflow' of sympathy in the shape of bounty surprises giver and
receiver. Yet it is no accident nor choice, but a necessity firmer than the ravage of flame or axis of the
globe. What merit in that succor which is the constitution of the human heart?  If we speak of the whole
humanity, and not, like Paul, of a sin-distracted soul,
the law of the members is the law of the mind. The
flame that made a cinder of the great city, and used
forests for its kindlings, was but the lamp that law is
read by. If without suclh light the inward engraving
might.get effaced or obscured, the conflagration is a
blessing.  If the fire were sent not only to consume
town and village, treasure and life, but to burn deeper
this lesson, its art is glorious beyond all other encaustic
pictures.
The Divine law is remedy, not fatal disease. The
Samaritan that will not leave the robbed and wounded
traveller to perish is not a man sitting on his beast and




260            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
riding between Jerusalem  and Jericho, but mankind
as a comforter for every afflicted man. We heal our
own flesh when We pour balrn into anybody's wounds.
The apostle's figure is true: Christian goodness is
kindness to one's self; and the Western paper's sentence was scarce a conceit or hyperbole, - that even
Chicago is essential to the world.
Our help to the needy is a meter of civilization and
religion. It gauges our discovery of the Personality
in which we all meet together. No individuality but
must pass and melt in the consciousness of an equal
destiny and source. But this is no mechanism. The
ocean will not flow where is no inlet; and there are
souls closed up against this benevolent tide.  They
are shut out just as much from their own joy. Virgil's
line,' Happy if they but knew their own welfare,"
illustrates the deeper self-ignorance of those who cannot learn pity when in such blazing letters. But they
are becoming the exceptions. How fellow-feeling increases and benefactors multiply! All the prophecies
that illuminate the Bible grow pale before the fact of
the millennial day. It is easy for a hard heart to dispense alms to a wretched object.  But to lavish
supplies to beneficiaries hid by the breadth of the
earth is a revelation of the sons of God.  After the
death of Thomas Starr King, a man in California,
leaning on his tool, and with tears running-down his
cheeks, cried out, " How I loved that man!"' You
knew him, I suppose?." said the traveller to whom he
spoke.  "No, I did not."  "You have heard him




LAW.                    26I
speak, then?" was the rejoinder.  "No: I never
saw him," said the rude miner again. When affection
~like that shall spread as a common sentiment, the
misers will be in the minority, the kinship from one
touch of nature will be owned; perhaps the Divine
need will cease of startling us by flagrant cases to
commiserate, and society be born again.




XI.
ORIGIN.
ALL thinkers consent that the Bible book of Genesis gives but a fable 6f the creation, or the
conception of some poetic mind, not any miraculous
knowledge which the Creator bestowed.  That the
light and the heavenly bodies and every living order
arose from some distinct, instantaneous fiat, science
cannot admit; nor that there was ever such a no/tzing
as the catechism supposes out of which the universe
came. WXe can as easily conceive that God was born
as that the world began. It was not made in time, but
by the Eternal Builder, in whose productive essence
it is everlasting as himself; nor can we insert any
notion of age or chronology between his being and
his work, however we may trace connection in its
parts, or the progress of a single -planet like the earth.
Physical philosophy, in attempting to show a commnencement, commits the same error with literal faith;
and is guilty of a blunder all its own, in deriving every
thing fiom matter instead of spirit, as is so grandly
asserted in the Scripture text.  Reason allows not
dust as the basis, but the deposit of mind.  Only a
thoughtless observation could bring forth the fancy,




ORIGIN.                  203
that figures in so many a verse, of " primeval chaos
and night." There was no darkness before the dawn.
Light and cosmos alone were primeval, - begotten
of God. If the, earth was ever without form and void,
other spheres without number were shining and singing in the firmament.  Never a wreck that was not
the refuse of former beauty, never a clod but from the
decay of somewhat awaiting a resurrection; and
all that we call dead is cast-off clothing, mending for
some new garment.  It is the dropping of decay,
which fresh vitality shall resume.  Matter, which is
multitude, follows Spirit, which is One. Our students
overlook on Jacob's ladder the descending angels,
prior in office to those that ascend. Creation is the
condescension of the Most High to become the Most
Low: not dust rising into Deity, but Deity stooping
to dust. We can get the finite out of the Infinite; but
the process cannot be reversed. The manifold is tlhe
One, but without the One were no number.
The fruit on the tree of life is from ideal planting.
We are told that from  material investigations has
grown all benefit.   But by some metaphysician,
visionary or spiritual observer, every seed has been
sown.  Only to the kingdom  of God have all the
other good things been added. A pure perception, of
-which nothing visible was cause or more than occasion, in the mind of the physical explorer, -Newton,
Kepler, Oken, Goethe, -led to every discovery from
which inestimable utilities proceed. Abstract thinkers,
as Kant and Plato, stop not in their service of intelligence till they lift the whole platform of action and
plane of life. Matter is the false date that spoils our




264           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
almanac. It makes every item of calculation deceptivec. From the cradle of Eternal Being all variety
springs.
The fault of the last theory is in trying to evolve
the entire man from what is below himself.  His
animal organism  may be so unfolded.  But he is
spirit too. Something is let down as well as lifted up
into him. Will our friend, who is following back the
race into some primitive germ, please to account for
his own presence and curiosity, — for his wish and
power to classify?  Whence his hunger after something more than those creature-comforts for multiplying which the Baconian method is praised?  I want
an explanation not only of the object which is his
subject, but of the student himself and of the study;
and I find it only in some absolute Truth.
On purely physical premises God himself is no
Original, but only a conclusion. But out of the finite,
which is all the understanding and senses can compass, only the finite comes.  No heaping of finites
can get nearer the Infinite than does a drop. Some
logicians throw contempt on the pretence of a finite
creature like man to any idea of infinity. But what if
it should turn out that he is infinite himself? In the
Semitic, Hebraic, and Mahometan, as well as the too
often pseudo-Christian thought, God and man are.
separate terms, so that the latter can reach the former
only by some bridge.  But the ccause-way is the
common nature of both. The mediator between God
and man must be divine, and man must be divine for
mediation to be possible.  The phrase immutable,
addressed so continually to Deity by our clerical sires




ORIGIN.                 265
in their prayers, seemed external, and implied this
separate Being we are in relation with. But the
Japhetic mind abolished this gulf, filled up the empty
space, turned the interval into smooth continent, and
saw the Unity which God and man together are. In
the Greek gospel ascribed to John, Jesus says, "- I and
my Father are one;" and in that last wonderful
prayer for oneness in which all should meet, he means
nothing personal to himself as an individual, but has
a vision of the measureless life.  Strange that the
Gospel whose authenticity is questioned should proclaim the spiritual verity which the Synoptics miss,
though they do not contradict, and perhaps in the
divine Fatherhood imply.  Which narrative is the
truest representation of the historic Saviour it is left
to scholarship still to decide.  But an insignificant
minority of the Church has yet risen to the sublimer
view. Even the Father is so outside as to be but a
fetish unseen.  The soul has idols as well as the
sense. When I spoke of the Deity as changing to us
with our own growth, some of my hearers were
shocked, and one quoted against me the text, " without variableness or shadow of turning." But I replied
that nothing which turns or casts a shadow is without
God, or not part of him as much as the sun; that he
is not only the fixture, but the flow; and that the same
sacred book declares that he repented of having made
man.
But does not Divinity descend into and communicate with the brute too? There are animals that
mock man in their habits; warm themselves at the
fire, build lodgings among the trees, and fling broken




266            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
branches at their pursuers. The ants emulate us in
their wars. But none of them put telescopes to their
eyes, hold pens in their hands, raise temples, found
governments, save in the rudest fashion among the
bees, beavers, and crows; pass laws, have art to discover truth or put eloquence on their tongues, or
imitate with any of their horny armory the cannonwheel that ploughs the earth for the seed of freedom
and right. But they all partake this universal motion
and will, which, no less than thought, expresses Deity.
The head of the Phidian Jove speaks not only of
reflection, but power and pity, to indicate the artist's
and the Greek idea. Personality, self-consciousness,
action as well as vision, is the lesson written in the
world; and some rudiments or relics of all our attainments may be detected in these inferiors, the poor
relations we do not own, but may have yet to admit
to a share in our proud generalities for mankind of
firee and equal birth-rights. Burns's adoption of the
mouse for his fellow-creature hints in it some drop
of the blood of which God is sacredly said to have
made all nations. - The St. Bernard dog, that saved
the life of a wounded soldier by hugging him  to his
breast when every comrade had left, was entitled to
rank among nurses. The Newfoundland one, that
slept on his master's bed, but would not enter the
chamber after the master's death, yet oftenest of any
member of his family went to lie on the grave, might
be classed among mourners. The one that gave me
a daily greeting at the corner of my street, as cordial
as any neighbor's, I certainly counted among my
friends.




ORIGIN.                   267
But in my recognition of these as members of the
family reduced in their fortunes, who may have seen
better days, let me not forget I have rich relations and
a nobler kith and kin.  Humboldt says, "I am an
insect clinging to the surface of the earth."  Did he
think how nearly he adopted the theologic classification," What worthless worms are we"?
I walk with the man of science up the rounds of
organization from the dust. But let him not ask me to
stop with the human form. I can show, of angels, no
plates such as travellers fetch from their observations,
or geologists give of fossil remains. But does nothing
exist which cannot be so represented?  The trilobite
may be ancestor of my body, but not father of my
soul. That the scale of being ends in man is impossible to think. It has no end nor beginning.  It is
that sort in mechanics called an endless chain. It
is not a circle; but a spiral. Go down, microscope in
hand, to the seed-vessel, to the animal cell, to the
root in the ground, or dot or double-dot in the egg;
to the sponge on the rock or increment of the crystal;
to the chemical atom; to the infantile miniature of the
plant betwixt the lobes of its little germ; to the undulations of a ray of light, or the splendid blossoms
among the softest tiny feathers of the bed of moss; to
the generation of colors by the crossing of flowers, or
the hues in the marvellous sea-weeds that match the
rose and pink, - are you nearer the bottom than when
you set out?  Can you tell if the bubbles youl come
to are the primal forms, or by whom they were blown?




268            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Go up to this globe of reason in the human head, and
thence to this well of love in the human heart, are
you nearer to the top; or do you sit down weary as a
child on the monumental stairs? We build cemeteries.
Is there in God's works any graveyard that we can
set apart and consecrate to stay for a burial-ground,
save as a spot of perpetual resurrection? Transformation of species does not gainsay immortality; for
this is possible only by the convertibility and conversion of man into angel through some selection, adding
buoyancy and leaving out what is earth-bound. When
it please God to slide us off easy as sleeping to a new
sphere, it will be no transmigration as of summer-birds,
but transmutation of life. Does not the soul conceive
its capacity to live and act without these special
organs, and paint in tints of glory the heaven to
which it goes?  "' The Father's house " was no structure Jesus had seen; but, more solid than any edifice,
it was, a reality his imagination projected. With Infinite Personality every person is safe, from the elder
above to each mite of humanity. You have not lost
your child. The spirit that shone in its soft eyes,
moved in its tender limbs, beat in its gentle heart, and
spoke in its inarticulate voice, has title to unfold beyond
any seed of the garden and the field. We called the
negro an ape; and science avenges the insult by forcing us into the  same relationship.  They, whose
bravery at Port Hudson and Fort Wagner no white
ever surpassed, shamed millions of traitors or halfhearted patriots in the Free States. They were God's
make-weight against the slavery they had suffered.
They turned the tide of battle for the freedom by




ORIGIN.                  269
which alone the nation was saved. We owe the Commonwealth to a black skin. If there be no future for
the black man, let there be none for me!
The impossibility of running a boundary-line between man and animal is hinted in the fact of their
correspondence in every physical feature, which discovery of higher likeness with every close observation
backs. It was thought the lower creatures have no
conscience. But shame for misconduct, with susceptibility of correction and improvement in some of them,
is plain. It was said they have no notion of God.
What notion have we but in that sense of Being
superior to ourselves, which the cow and ox show in
our presence.? It is said every day, the horse would
not be so submissive if he knew his own strength.
The lion, elephant, leopard, and tiger revere their
keeper. We are told they have no language. But
they communicate with each other. The sentinelcrow warns the flock. Many a bird calls its mate,
with strophe and antistrophe of song. They understand much of our meaning in the natural language of
expression. Whether they have or will ever reach
arbitrary terms for abstract conceptions, or whether
words are senseless in the parrot's mouth, let those
who will presume to decide in the light of the training they are capable of and progress they make.
But must we not admit they have no ideas?  The
term  idea subtends an arc so wide, firom  Plato tu
the savage brain, it is not easy to settle their share
But some. representation of the world, and of the
creature in it who assumes to be lord of the creation,
they clearly possess and are governed by in their




270           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
course. The squirrel I stoned when I was a thoughtless boy, who stopped after much running in the centre
of the ridge-pole of my father's barn, rose on his hind
legs, and with his fore paws beat his breast, moved
me with his prayer immediately to desist. Yet is any
animal like man in proposing to himself an object in
life?  One kind of dog seems to choose for his profession the rescue of travellers from Alpine snows;
and another kind seems to make it his business to save
from drowning, though known sometimes to seize and
bear from the water such involuntary subjects of compassion as only proposed to swim. The shepherddog's care of the flock shows more intelligence than
some human servants, and is daily engaged in what
looks wonderfully like a regular occupation. Do we
choose, or are we led and impressed into our vocations?
Surely there are things men do and animals cannot, such as architecture, legislation, astronomy, and
finance.  But the question is whether, in what they
are competent to, they show signs of similar faculties
and dispositions; so that students dispute, and are
puzzled to know if man be an ascended brute, or the
beast a descended man.  The point of debate is
whether an absolute demarcation can be run between
them at any point, to make in Nature the vacuum she
abhors. In our pride, we stand out for the godless
gap. We inherit with our religion a traditional prejudice from the Jews, whose sacred superiority and
antipathy to animals had to be withstood by the comnwand not to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.
Paul bids, but I do not, " beware of dogs." But the
just sympathy, in which man reaches out in our day




ORIGIN.                  271
to woman, may extend at last to lower tribes. What
limits this fellow-feeling may have to observe we have
not yet defined.  I have a friend who declines to
molest mosquitoes in their feast on himself. But the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals finds
itself obliged to discriminate, and, according to the
humorous proverb, " draw the line somewhere," - one
of the Thirty-nine Articles of its creed being for the
encouragement of " insectivorouts birds; " while I have
known a tender-hearted woman to bound her mercy
the other way, with a wish that the meal-treater of a
dray-horse might be removed by death!
But let us consider certain religious objections to
this last view of human nature, which is now the main
question under debate, not only in books of science,
but in every newspaper of the secular and religious
press, city parlor, sea-side piazza, and country town.
To the first shock of the doctrine that the whole race
did not arise from one couple, the cloud of Darwin
adds the heavier clap that our ancestry runs back of
all human creatures to the anthropoids, and behind
even them to the first species and speck of organized
being.
This endless series, of which humanity is but a
link, is supposed first -to reflect on the Creator, by
doing away with creation in any proper sense, and
substituting for cause and effect, for voluntary divine
production, not special development, but general
evolution, interminable sequence of existences and
events needing no spirit, but only matter, for their
substance and source; whereas the tale in Genesis
presents a real Maker fashioning his child from the




272            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
dust of the earth, and breathing into his nostrils the
breath of life. But would God show more power,
or man be clothed with greater honor, in this direct
formation from the ground than by transformation of
successive animal ranks?  Did the earth lose worth,
and was it soiled, by being shaped into a worm, a fish,
a bird, before taking the upright figure?  To the
bishop denouncing such a transmission Mr. Huxley
said, " Rather come from a monkey than be a block in
the way of science!"  The biblical theologian, and
obsequious naturalist who defers to the popular creed
and exjplains Genesis, offer no appeal to reason, but an
argument to pride, in trying to persuade us man was
made apart from every other creature; God stopping
to draw a long brehth and open a wide interval betwixt
all that lives beside and him, that he might have the
glory of a purely independent and isolated derivation.
But attempt to conceive how this starting him all by
himself took place. Did actual hands scoop the atoms
from the soil, to mould, as an artist does the clay, into
a perfect model of manhood? and did a mouth of
flesh blow into the yet lifeless nostrils, to turn the stiff
corse into a moving frame?  Is that a credible mode
of divine working? and is transmutation step by
step from inferior to superior incredible?  It is so
only to the superstitious caviller, not exploring the
contents of his own thought, or affirming a literal
dogma instead of thinking at all.
The new hypothesis is not fully proven in any statement of it yet made. The record is imperfect. The
trains of observation do not connect. But the objection holds not good. You have seen the conjurer's




ORIGIN.                   273
trick with his rings, now together and now apart, you
could not tell how. Do distinguishable varieties of
being suggest an Author more than an indissoluble
chain? You suspect materialism in this unfolding of
life from stage to stage, with no possibly perceptible
boundary-line. But is Deity revealed by intervening
rather than by propelling from the first? or is infinite
power and wisdom required to project things one by
one, as a sculptor does his statues, more than to
fashion a mighty whole?  It is thought the scientist
would banish the Originator, and show the palace of
Nature reared out of multiplied myriads of infinitesimal tiles. But it is absurd to fancy there ever was less
or ever will be more universe, or that matter is a condition save as the consequence of mind.. What is all
existence but receptacle, prepared in the animal and
enlarged in the human brain, while every instinct
flows in, from what fountain who shall tell?  It were
as rational to say the granite reservoir makes the
water it holds, as that the cerebral lobes create the
thought and affection they are incarnate chambers of,
and every nerve a service-pipe of the river of God.
Shakspeare describes the ambitious man
" Scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend."
Our disgust at the notion that we are graduates of this
primarjy school of the animals into the university of
souls proves like arrogance, acquired through sin, not
natural to the simple, unsophisticated mind. They
are somehow our fellows. Why are children so fond
of them, begging to be taken to the circus and meni8




274           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
agerie, eager to feed the elephant as he comes out to
swing his trunk, to visit by turns the tenant of every
cage, and run after every dog and kitten, lamb and
calf, chicken and bug?  Because, as George Herbert
says of the healing plants, they " find their acquaintance there."  "Do you think that fine infant boy
came from a monkey? " asked one. " He is a monkey
himself," was the reply; a speech the mother standing
by did not seem to resent. " I always thought," said
my friend, "' the man was' only something more than a
monkey, and the monkey something less than a man."
But which way does the motion take? There is no
law of progress by which every thing advances and
nothing declines. If some angels are going up, others
are coming down. The Maker is implicated in all.
Were man to fall, God would go down with him!
But particular men and tribes may sink to the brute
and the worm. Some ethnologists see in the North
American Indians the wreck and refuse of the ancient
ten tribes of the Jews. A degraded race is harder to
recover than an undeveloped one to ascend. Many a
man is burying himself in some beast. I would be
just and kind to every feeble member of a lowered
humanity, Indian or African, for in every such member I see an undying soul; but I would not lift a
finger to perpetuate the race. A distinguished Frenchman told me he thought the French type was going
down.  Surely, the German type more deserves to
be and propagate than that which in the modern
Gaul has lived so long not on duty, but glory. What
was the Commune but the last struggle of a nation to
preserve itself in the quality of self-worship? But, as




ORIGIN.                  275
Goethe says, God will not see the once-loved features
of the progenitors in the faces of a corrupted lineage.
Without extinction, through long purgatory, by an illtrained people must paradise be regained. All running down is for re-creation, as Tennyson's " Vision
of Sin" ends with an awful' "rose of dawn."  Fallen
races, like fallen leaves, tmanure another growth. Out
of latent or suppressed germs better timber springs
through the ashes of worthless woods. Would not a
section of the creation show eternal equality of the
sons in finer grades of quality than all the stuffs and
goods of human art?  The old mythology pictured
the gods striding from hill to hill; but there is no
mincing step so nice and short as their degrees. The
geologist cannot see the glacier move through the
Alpine gorge; but, as it must move unequally at the
centre and the sides, he takes its measure by the relative position, after a certain period, of a series of
stakes. What pins shall denote changing combinations of the smaller particles of magnetism, electricity,
heat, and light, to build the living frame or inanimate
things?
Yet, according to the Primer, this is not creation at
all. Did not God make the world out of nothing?
Try to imagine a time when was no universe. We
can no more think away Nature than God. A naked
Deity, or blank Unity with no diversity, One without
many, is an unreal idea of impossible fact.  The
Trinity is a philosophic attempt to escape from a
barren and bald monotheism. But no less preposterous an Infinite Parent from all eternity, with but one
child. All that is must have for ever been. Like a




276            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
changeable silk, the Almighty's robe, glimmering in
the light of his countenance, makes the only alteration. Miracles - are there several, or but one impenetrable wonder through innumerable forms?  Were the
sea to ridge itself a dry-shod path, or the sun to rest
on his axle, the green bush to burst into flame, or the
water become wine, I should not be more amazed,
however confounded and stupefied, than by every
regular phenomenon and ordinary procession.  My
objection to miracles is not the scientist's, for he is
incompetent to disprove them; nor the scholar's, of
not evidence enough; but the child's, that a Father
leading should turn round to confront his own method
and take it all back. Whatever, like the marvellous
healings, we have a gleam and inkling of in Nature,
we can accept as going on from the least experience
to the farthest reach.  If species are distinct, every
new one seems an added prodigy. But God is no
theatrical scene-shifter, shoving aside his doors and
curtains to let in new figures.  WTould dislocation
more than gradual action show his might? He saw
his way clear through! What characteristic of creation is wanting in the imperceptibly nice operation of
his hand? A cataclysm, earthquake, eruption, thunderbolt, billow, startles us more.  But is there greater
ease or less mystery in the opening of a leaf, waxing of
the dawn, or flow of the tide? The sublimity is not
God's caldron of the volcano, or kettle of the waterspout, or sledge-hammer of the sea; but the atom he
makes his tool.  With that, too small for our sight,
he rears the mountains from the depths or shaves the
rocks to the plain, blends a few elements into potent




ORIGIN.                   277
substances thousand-fold and dissolves them  again,
strengthens every bone and  swells every fibre, or
wastes gigantic sinews away.  Nothing can turn its
edge. With that chisel too small to see he shall cut
us down, lay us low in our coffin, and with that trowel
build us up again. His finger it shall be to pick us
out of our grave; and his vital sculpture, not by
diminution but increase, for our resurrection into
smooth, seraphic shapes.  What are those strange
powers Goethe writes of as "' the mothers" but these
agents out of sight?  That man results from  their
inscrutable instrumentation is no disinheritance from
his privilege of a heavenly birth.
But the theory of man's animal derivation is supposed to do away with his personal identity. If this
means an absolutely separate self, so that your will or
mine is an independent monad, like a monolith or
monograph standing alone, undetermined by motives
and unconnected with other wills, there is in such insulation no personal quality. Personality is the sounding through us of no private wish, but of universal
truth, as his part does through the actor, or a tune
through pipe or string.  Personality unites us with
our kind, and expresses the common interest. When,
as I heard a host tell his guests at table to fall to, we
set about satisfying carnal appetite, or parading in our
peculiar set of jewels and silks, and being angry at
imitators of our costume or turn-out, or seeking selfish
aggrandizement, we may be individual, but we cease
to be personal. We express or enhance the general
welfare no more than a hawk stooping for its prey, a
peacock lifting his tail, or pigs feeding at their trough.




278            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Isolation is not the quality of a person, but rather of a
brute. Even the lower creatures shame our by-ends
in their flocks and herds, playing together as I lately
saw two robins; and as dogs delight to, more than to
bark and bite. I think Watts maligned them. Men
and women commonly take more pleasure in a quarrel
than they. Do not the wedges of emigrant fowl, that
cleave the autumnal sky, show in such sociality of a
general concern some degree of that personality our
philosophy denies?  Sympathetic service measures
your personality. It is the overflow of affection from
dateless tribes.
Woman, the flower of humanity, like the sweet
crystal from  the last refinement of the sugar-cane,
seems oftener than man to scorn the notion of animal
origin. Yet what more is her beautiful hair than a
relic friom the skin of some progenitor beyond Esau?
Let the gay lady be ashamed rather of her velvet train
sweeping across the parlor-floor, leaving no room for
anybody's feet!   I am  not mortified at my trail
stretching back over the floor of creation, in nobody's
way. Is it less credit to have come vitally transmitted,
or transmuted from lower but ever rising orders, than
mechanically dredged out of the ground? Our personal identity consists in our intoning what inspires
us from the past- for the whole present and future
good, through our particular gift; as a special melody
is voiced by the entire atmosphere playing through
trumpet or flute. But the individualism that would
compass an exclusive benefit is a vice.
Yet no charge is more frequently false. We are
accused of individualism  fot declining to join some




ORIGIN.                 279
particular sect. Some of us are marked as flagrant
examples for not being members of an association
or conference. Belong to what party youl will; but
plead "Not guilty" when you are flung at because
you serve none in politics or religion. If you are un
social and unkind, indifferent to philanthropic enterprise, an enemy to the freedom in others you enjoy
yourself, a hoarder of advantage at the expense of the
common stock, then you are individualistic; but not
for failing to be an active zealot in any denomination.
Is there not more individualism in ambition to be
prominent on the platform, where some men and
women not waiting to be invited procure their own
opportunity to speak, or in travelling from Dan to
Beersheba for small upshot of help to the community,
and getting one's name clothed with flattering compliment in the newspapers, than in silence and absence
for disinterested toils?  Was Beethoven, Raphael,
Milton, individual in the bad sense, for being each busy
in composing, and each a composition of the breath
of God, rather than running every day to some clique
or club? Let truth and cheer come out of your closet,
as Jesus sent them from mountain and desert to mankind; and, though never seen where men most do
congregate, who shall question your personal claim?
If he that says I AM be our Author, persons we are,
whether we can tell how or not. Whence I came, I
will not bother my. head.  Here I am alirve, to love
you and worship God. What if I cannot account for
my genealogy, and map or photograph the family
tree? Does the scientist say certain phenomena are
all? But how of himself, the observer? How hap



280            RADICAL PROBLEMIS.
pens it lhe observes? Will he please to analyze his
own curiosity to put things in a row, and have an
hypothesis?  HIe interests me more than the strata
and coral-reefs, and fishes and beasts, in his discourse.
Why leave himself, the man, out? He must pardon
me, if I consider the experimenter more than the
retort or oyster-shell in his hand. He is a person,
offshoot of Person Infinite, in whatever bit of antediluvian cradle, too minute to see, he lay.
But many philosophers and Christians revolt from
this unity of the animal with the man, because it does
away with immortality. But what ground is weakened, on which you have credited a future life? Is the
Lord's rising proof of yours? Is that rising disproved
because man is older than the garden of Eden, has a
chimpanzee for his far-off cousin, or a trilobite for his
sire?  The old burial-service implies a resurrection of
the body. Can it not rise as easily if descended from
any or every branch of the animal kingdom, as if
composed, as the story tells, of the crude silt it shall
dissolve into, or of the gravel dropping on its casket
from the sexton's spade?  But those animals in the
one long lineage embracing us are not immortal:
why should we be any more?  What know we of
their destiny, but from that Old Testament text about
"the beasts that perish"?  Some of them  better
deserve to live, are more faithful and patient, than
some men; show more consideration and conscience
than their masters. As Bacon says man is the dog's
God, the dog is sometimes more worshipful than his
owner. That beings in heaven will be all of one sort,
nothing but angels, as we commonly conceive them,




ORIGIN.                 281
with crowns and palms and harps, is hard to think.
It would be monotonous and tiresome! There must
be not less, but more, diversity than here.  The
trouble in the argument is not any prejudice of our
prospects from the new theory; but, like some people
who have got on in the world, and cannot speak to
their humbler kith and kin, we do not want to have
these poor quadrupeds for our associates because we
are ashamed of the connection.  Two of their feet
having in us been promoted into hands, so we have
got the upper hand.  But, in the birds, as if God
would reprove our pride, are not two of the feet become wings, which we covet and expect by and by?
I have a mighty fine notion of may flesh, and hesitate
to think it bears a freight of saurian monsters, circulates megatherium blood, had a mastodon's bulk for
its crib, is the bier on which myriad relics of vital
antiquity are borne, and shall find its own grave and
revival in who knows what coming animated forms!
But why should I be made of finer stuff? God has no
porcelain, but one clay; and all the vital fluid at bottom is the same. The materialist tells me he doubts
immortality, not being able to credit the reassembling
of his particles; and he says to the bereaved, " I have
neither faith nor philosophy to comfort you." But we
do not want the particles reassembled!  When my
body has dropped, let it go. It is mine no longer.
I have no more use for it: let me be reclothed! The
theory of human nature as part of a grand evolution,
instead of a haughty pillar standing alone, and so
more apt to tumble down, encourages my hope. If




282             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
we survive, it is not by travel, but transformation,
another step of development above ourselves, as we
are above something else that went before.  The
problem of futurity is how to get one species into
another — the species man into the species angel;
and, on the doctrine of strictly specific creation or
inconvertibility of species, our expectation could not
flourish, but suffers fatal blight. If man has got out
of an immemorial infancy into his present altitude,
what limits shall be put to his ascent? It is all dark
and unseen. But humanity once was out of sight and
reach as are the cherubim and seraphim now.
o-bw shall we come to port across the sea?  God,
whom we launched and sailed from, cannot surprise
us with the celestial more than the terrestrial shore.
As, in the Pacific, some wave lifts the sailor's boat over
tle reef into the lagoon, we shall rise. Such faith
is not damped, but kindled, by the idea that man was
made not, according to the supposed Scripture chronology, by a sudden thought, six thousand years ago,
but was from measureless cycles looked forward to,
with long-minded plan, in the least structure and
faintest beginning of organized life. If I was thought
of so early, contemplated before the morning-stars
sang together, from the foundation of the world;
if the great Architect had in view every room and
column of my proportions in his original design, so
that each joint of form and fit of faculty has an antiquity to which the Pyramids are but yesterday, and
the globe itself but as a painter's easel; if the sky be
the Artist's chamber, and time my Author's stepping



ORIGIN.                 283
stone, - then may I not believe that the care for me,
which was from everlasting, will be to everlasting;
and sing with David,'" Thou wilt not leave my soul
in the grave;" and say with Jesus, " Now come I to
thee"?




XII.
CORRELATION.
THE mind seeks unity. He has no genius for
philosophy who is seduced and satisfied with
any multiplicity, trinity, or duality. The heart, too,
is content only with the One, mistake that One though
it may. The dissipated man is he whose affection
roves among a thousand objects, however he abstain
from sensual indulgence. But the true soul loves one
worth, delights in one beauty appearing in many
forms. Also, the conscience discerns one right in
manifold circumstances and cases of business, personal
intercourse, and social reform: as Cicero said so long
ago, sublimely,'" There is not one law at Athens, and
another at Rome."  The soul, moreover, worships
one Spirit. The sin of idolatry consists not simply
in fastening veneration on an outward thing; but the
moment it is diverted from the Infinite Unity, it will
be distracted among " gods many and lords many,"
and catch up any fancy for its fetish. The objection
to defining religion as " a recognition of the facts
and laws of the universe" is not only that it misses
the sense of Deity, -the trembling and peace of the
breast, - but that, beside leaving out person, it divides
thought.




CORRELATION.                 285
Yet difference is not duplicity.  All diversity is
unity produced, as a million sunbeams continue the
sun. It is the radiation of God. It is the graduation
of essence into substance, and of substance into existerlce. It is extension of centre into circumference,
and general into particular; there being no special
providence of exception to eternal rule.  Deuce is
the devil. There are no two where the second is not
part or repetition of the first and last — alpha and
omega - to whom will go the jhomage which we must
pay, if we do not pervert.  He will idolize who
does not adore. The materialist, who scorns the notion of prayer, adopts a huger idol fashioned to his
hand than was ever set up in Mexican temple or
savage hut.
In the modern doctrine of correlation of forces is a
blazing illustration of this unitary quality. Correlation of truths and duties is as perfect as of the parallels
and meridians of the globe. We sail on a great circle
when we heed the smallest obligation. An eminent
man, reproached with having been a drummer when
he was a boy, asked, "Didn't I drum well?"  When
Mr. Bergh collects half a bushel of cunningly concealed spurs from beneath the horses' bits in Central
Park, how distinguish his from any apostle's benevolent zeal?
There is, then, such a central unity in the human
frame, we can let on our entire strength for any
task,- as the Merrimac turns a spindle, or the Cochituate throws up a column, with the complete height
and weight of its uppermost tide.  We say of a
man prompt in action, cordial in salutation, or zeal



286             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
ous for any end, he is not double-minded or halfhearted, but whole-souled.'
One power in diverse manifestation is the lesson of
Nature. Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and motion are the same essence, convertible into each other,
displaying that single manifold Force we call God, in
the physical universe.
The same fact is in our constitution. The senses
sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch - are different modes
of perception, and meet in one sensorium.
Moreover, the faculties of the mind —memory,
judgment, imagination, wit, and will- express the
various activity of the one intellect, or inmost knowing
instinct, which remembers, imagines, chooses, invents,
or compares.
So with the character. Truth, justice, love, goodness, courage, mercy, are not contradictory or alien
one from the other. An identical conscience is distributed to the need of the hour. All the virtues of
behavior are offspring of one virtue in the breast; and
if a man is guilty in one point, he is guilty of all. As,
in the fountain on the Common, the same water is
played through a number of jets into the likeness of a
pillar, a flower, or a fan, -all that is requisite being
to have a head of water to which to fit every mouthpiece, -so good affection streams into whatever conduct our relations determine, or the occasion demands.
Outward integrity means this complete equipment
from one holy purpose.
We are governed by circumstances, say some. Not
we, only the lines of our activity.  The power or
quality of our purpose is not governed by circum



CORRELATION.                287
stances. Is the lightning governed by the lightningrod? The circumstances are only the conductors of
the'" centre-stances," in our motives and aims, be they
low and selfish, or lofty and humane.  Wind and
wave are circumstances.  Is the pilot victim of circumstances when the ship is cast away, or of his own
ignorance and negligence? The same circumstances
carried other vessels to port.  The Scotia arrives
and the Cambria goes down in the same gale. By
the same temptations which some souls founder in
others are sped.
We think one moral property higher or better than
another. But each is of tantamount worth. Justice
is as good as benevolence. Truth is never contrary to
mercy. Courage does not withstand meekness. Selfrespect is not opposed to humility. All these traits are
but the methods one intent operates through by turns.
To be master of the situation is to know which part of
speech in the voice and word of God is in order, what
temper to show, what stand with interlocutors or interactors to take. Doing with the sum total of our being
what Providence in the premises calls for, that is perfection.
The judge dispenses equity on the bench. Stern
we call him, or inexorable. But is it not kindness to
the criminal to arrest him in his course?  Were it not
unkind to the community to let him go scot-free?
We protest against the enacting of hell on earth in
this horrid business of war. A war of words is declared against Bismarck, and a woman's congress
called for peace.  But whether fighting is wrong
depend's on whether it is in place, -the thing in the




288            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Divine plan at the time to be done. You see the refuse
of the field, at certain seasons, raked together by the
farmer, and the heap set on fire. What is war but
the flame with which the great Husbandman burns up
the refuse of sin and folly in the field of the world?
Is it necessary, unavoidable, this Judgment-day?
Then it is divine. The Prussian minister wishes to
unify Germany, and out of a bundle of States like
loosened rods to make a great nation.  France is
jealous that Germany will be too strong, as England
was that America would; and war is the incident he
has to encounter in his design,-and must manage as
he best may. It was the incident we had to encounter
for the same purpose, - to preserve, bind together,
and new-create our own land. At last, the French
fight not for conquest but national self-preservation.
Is the soldier, the volunteer, or drafted, instrument to
this end, on either side a savage wild beast and mere
brute?   Should we allow anybody to say it in our
case?  No: the man who, when fighting alone was
left the last resort and means of salvation for country,
for liberty, for humanity, fought and fell in the trench
or wilderness, on the plain, or bloody slippery deck
when the Cumberland went down, not hating his
enemy or the public enemy, whom yet he saw it was
indispensable to overcome, - that man died as nobly
as any passive sufferer persecuted to death, burnt or
hung by religious or political foes. "I have no illwill -to the South," said Putnam: "I hope they will
fight well."
The martyr is thought a grander character than
the hero. Either is alike grand, as either is fit for




CORRELATION.               289
the hour. When one said, "John Brown made the
gallows glorious like the cross," some were shocked
that should be said of the armed invader of Harper's
Ferry. But his purpose, in the sublime bravery of
attacking a sovereign State with a handful of men,
and the patience as sublime of submitting to the sentence of the court,- remarking, as he went to the
gibbet, on the beauty of the Virginia hills, - were
the same temper that Master and apostle showed on
Roman engines of torture. He bound up martyr and
hero in his own person.
One soul moved by one Spirit maintains its level
best in every exigency. We speak of cardinal virtues,
But every virtue is cardinal that is seasonable. Only
put the whole of yourself into the errand of the moment, as the ocean makes high tide successively at
each point of the shore. The spider sits in the centre
of its web of myriad strands.  Whatever interferes
with one of those gossamer lines draws the whole
creature bodily, in watch and act, to that point. A
many-sided man we style him whose talent applies at
all quarters with equal ease. Cast your entire vitality
and eternal redemption on a hair-breadth of instant
responsibility, as our Chicago brothers did at the fire.
A woman is insulted, and the sphere of her sensibility invaded. She knows it, and the villain-invader
knows.  Her whole womanhood rises to resent and
repel the hostile or disrespectful approach.   The
schoolmen said the whole of God, is in every particle:
tl-. whole of her is at the point of menace. She is
gentle and humble, charitable, a Lady Bountiful,
gracious and sweet as summer to your courtesy. But
19




290            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
your rude encroachment shall discover how much
less terrible the wrath of the lion than the wrath
of the lamb.  The recoil from indecency, affront at
insolent familiarity, rebuff of injury, is as lofty, becomes her as much, pleases God as truly, and is
entered in as shining letters in the recording angel's
book, as her most generous gifts and loving accents
and winning looks, by which, with parallel closeness,
some other position is matched.  The soul has no
corps de rdserve.  All is engaged.  Run, without
scruple, to the obligation now ringing at the door. It
has been said, by a famous doctor of divinity, Jesus
would not have driven the traders out of the temple
at the close of his career. A scourge for othlers less
became him whose crucifixion was his crown! But
that Father's business he was about having many
departments and details, - now a disputation with the
doctors, and now a last supper with his firiends, —
whatever demonstration  was timely, each diverse
performance or endurance that embodied unqualified
devotion proved the same worth; and he needs not
the apology of some that the lash may have lighted
only on the lazy oxen, unconscious of profaniing the
marble shrine, when it belonged so much more richlly
to the human chafferers that were switched out. It
was the same whole and faithful soul, changing its
operation as the conditions changed, that fell to the
ground with the bloody sweat in the Garden.   Ice
was not in the despair which radical and conservative
theologians suppose. But the burdens were so great,
he had to summon all his strength, even that he
ordinarily used to stand up with, to sustain them.




CORRELATION.                29I
With economy, he accomplished every jot of the design before him there and then. At a hard question
we drop the head, because we need the power it is
held up by to think with. Some persons, when they
wish to reflect expeditiously and with all their might,
lie down at full length. Jesus prostrated himself, to
concentrate his capacity for what Heaven bade, - not
to give up!
This is the sum of morals. For what work strikes
the clock? Meet the emergency, be it action or resignation, in zeal or self-control, with all the genius
that lies in you,- now for speed, anon masterly inactivity, as the engine uses the same pressure of steam
to go forward or back. Each is good, each is best
alternately, according to the object in view. But each
must have the whole power, whichever way it goes
on the track. Do not try to move two ways at once,
with your mind more than with your vehicle. The
result is obliquity and overthrow, not rectitude in
either. There is no such thing as'" a divided duty:"'tis always simple.  The eye cannot look on two
things, even separate panes of glass, with the same
glance, but passes with lightning rapidity from the
first to the second. Yet a covert purpose or by-end,
instead of the ostensible one, is the great sin of imankind. We call it diplomacy, policy, expediency: " All
which words," I heard my friend say, " I hate." We
say of a man, who is always after something other
than he professes or pretends, that he has two crowns
in his head, making a type of the hair which in some
heads is confused by curling to a point in two circles,
and hard to comb out. The real man or woman is




292             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
often so twisted as to be impossible to get at. There
is no simplicity, or central and all-absorbing affection
or aim. " There are two," is said of an inconsistent
man.  Sometimes there are twenty..  How  many
a friend will assign false motives for his conduct!
He has neglected us somehow, and wants to excuse
himself.  So he tells how much he wanted to be
with us, but had to go elsewhere. " I wanted to be in
your house, or at church." No: you did not. People
do what they want to!  You want to keep your
fiiend, but not your vow. As easily serve God and
Mammon; as soon pull opposite poles together. A
fictitious reason for what we do or fail to do is the
commonest lie, and the worst; for it is a lie we cannot
prove upon anybody, or properly charge him with.
It is lying in that interior sphere we cannot presume
to inspect. Tile lie of circumstance, saying the thing
that is not, is harmless in comparison. For that we
can provide some antidote. If you have prevaricated
in act, prevaricate not also in speech. Your apology
is the dirty sponge, adding more uncleanness than it
removes. We do not want a part or fraction. " Out
upon this half-faced fellowship!" Neutrality, indifference, facing both ways, says Dante, is hateful to God
and to the enemies of God.
Concentred energy is the miracle.  The man in
the lighthouse or observatory is all eye, and can see
a glint of the tossing bark, far off in the storm, when
you can see nothing. It is because the whole of him
sees.  You did not notice?  Your inadvertence is
your fault. Perception is integrity. Not to mind is
not to obey.  There is a correlation of the vices.




CORRELATION.               293
Do not cheating and lies, drunkenness and lust, the
spendthrift and thief, go together? Take home one
of Satan's relations, and the whole family will follow.
Be profuse, and you will be mean: be ungenerous,
and you will be unjust.  "-Economy is revenue,"
thundered the British orator. Frugality is the fund of
charity. "Be just, before you are generous"?  No:
be just, and you will be generous. The politeness of
the man that has just swindled me was part of his
theft: it was the velvet over the claw. Does lie see
how he wrongs himself, like the mower striking at a
harmless creature with the handle of his scythe, and
cutting off his own head with the blade? Profanity
in the street puts on another guise in the sanctuary.
But does an honest oath break with God more than a
formal prayer?
Excellencies cluster like grapes. In our version,
" add to your faith, knowledge," with the rest of the
list, the figure of a chorus in the Greek word is lost.
Three Graces, nine ifuses, three Furies, - always
a choir! Every virtue, said the sage doctor, hangs
round filial piety. In our cheap moralizing, we set
the heart and head in opposition. But, when Napoleon's brother complained of the Emperor's want of
affection, he answered, "' My love has the dimensions
of my mind," - not weak fondling of a kinsman, but
legislation for Europe!
Thought is correlate of feeling, goes as deep in the
mind of God or man. The preacher in doubting this
is a sentimentalist, not a sage. We oppose the inward
to the outward. They are not antagonist, but part and
counterpart. The wind that bloweth where it listeth




294             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
sometimes rises within and sometimes breezes from
without. I have felt it in a Quaker meeting, and
through the Lord's Supper, making every vessel,
touched by departed saints, dear. Any way, every
way, and always, let us turn to take it with our
sails.
The vital point is that which the physicist overlooks.
In the relations he loses the relationship. What is the
correlating power but the Living Absolute, whose rest
is all motion, whose abode is in every reference, and
whose immutability ceaseless change? In vain to
separate the spectacle into portions, make specialties
of study, and affirm there are only phenomena. The
countless drops run out of and into one. To that
which renders it possible for a single energy or element to appear now as light and now as electricity,
now as memory and now as judgment, now as rectitude and now  as wisdom, now  as vision and now
as love, now a principle and now a rite, we must
bend.
The correlation of human qualities arises from that
of the Divine attributes. It is a false notion of both
Orthodox and Liberal that God's equity was ever postponed or preferred to his pity. The laws of justice
are not confounded in some mixture or after-thought
called mercy, as forgiveness outright, or a composition
for offenders by some innocent proxy suffering in their
stead. There is no such misprision of treason, or compounding of felony, or partaking of crime. Leniency
to a bad man may be the greatest cruelty. Indulgence
is a morass of surrender where no virtue of kindness
or sincerity can plant its foot, or a fellow-creature be




CORRELATION.                295
reached with help. The Deity is no weakling to set us
such an example. Let our demand of honor and infliction of discipline emulate his! His retribution is
not revenge, but kindness suited to the case. Mercy
does not so much, as Shakspeare says, temper justice,
as express it; and law is the hand of love.
Human callings are correlative. What iniquity to
set one honest trade against another, or make capitalists and artisans foes! The correlation of manual and
mental labor is the core of political economy. The
provoker of a duel betwixt them forgets their common
bond. He is a superficial moralist to classify, as the
old mineralogists did their stones, not by inward nature but external marks. Is not the body concerned
in all labor? Yet labor is never a thing of mere
muscle or nerve. Are not intelligence, will, fidelity,
and the sweat of the brow alike in the student's and the
digger's task? The mechanic often gets better wages
for easier effort than the poet or the priest, who sometimes come near to starve. Some of the law-offices
and one-half the pulpits are less remunerative than
the master-carpenter's shop.  The toil of the man
that makes my road, lays out my grounds, turns my
rock ravine into a stairway to the sea, and beneath
boulders and rough fragments - the wreck of agesdiscovers a beach, I rate as of more value than some
sermons and prayers. Were all the mechanics employed in rearing the temple, or do some conduct the
exercises within?  Ceremonies may be more lifeless
than any tools, trowel or axe. There are automatons
in the professions; there are thinkers in the mill and
field; and he may add less value to the Commonwealth




296            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
who hammers at an argument or homily than he who
beats on a lap-stone or a nail. How brainless or un.
fair not to heed the finer conscientious property which
may appear in any avocation, and is absent from the
unfaithful in every class, but should unite all! The
agitator assumes a conflict of interests that does not
exist. He is a fish so used to troubled waters, that he
feels lost and not at home, unable to swim, in the
smooth. In default of an angel, he descends himself
to stir up the pool, in which none will be healed.
With no mystic quality of worshipping God in history
or sympathetic imagination of mankind, his mind has
a cruel edge. Sincere and earnest he may be, but
without wisdom or depth.
No pursuit is virtuous, only some man in every
pursuit. Let us not be deceived by appearances. You
are looking in the wrong place, we say to one who
discerns not some object or resemblance we point out.
How continually we do that! Before a picture of a
dying soldier and of a sister of charity, a keen discerner of look and posture said, "' I see the religion
here in the face and figure of the wounded man more
than of the woman who assumes to be its minister."
Were the missionaries, who sent a tract about the impenitent thief to distribute in the army, themselves
more honest than the brave troops that went down to
the bloody plain?
We set the Past against the Future. They are
friends. "Does he approve your view?" I was very
recently asked, respecting a great scholar.  "Not
now," was my reply; "but when it becomes history
he will." IHe that but conceives a thought finds in




CORRELATION.                 297
another's expression of it only a premature birth. But
tradition and inspiration agree;
And sage experience doth attain
To something like prophetic strain."
If the critic denies only to define, restricts and excludes
error to affirm truth, is he not conservative?  Let me
never write a line nor speak a word whose object is to
pull down! I would only tear away to build, and blow
up to arrest the fire, — as Jesus destroyed to fulfil.
In a battery is the positive hostile to the negative pole?
The organizer has no quarrel with the seer. Without
vision every institution would decay, like a body unsupplied with fresh blood. The humblest members
have no strife with the highest. When my head failed,
I took to my feet. On the vessel's deck, amid burning
sand, under the peak of Teneriffe, through the pine
barrens of Florida, and along the Atlantic shore, I
walked back into heart and brain some drop of feeling,
some spark of thought.  Society is a growth; and he
is a public enemy who would interrupt its continuity,
or thinks to cure its diseases by taking it apart. But
it feeds on truth as new as last year's wheat. It is -
" One army of the living God."
But does the host incur danger fiom the scouts it sends
ahead, to be in Milton's phrase "all ear"? Abernethy detected disease at a glance. Let us honor
the political physician who notes and treats the nation's
ills.
In the vast system, let each, resigning selfish independence, act his part and receive his just income of
love and peace.  "Keep to the right as the law




298             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
directs! " Ask only what belongs to you. The world
is large. There is room for me and thee. Do friends
drop off and favors cease? It is no accident. Do not
regret or deprecate, do not wish or forebode.  Let
go what is not by eternal affinity yours. Your tax you
cannot avoid, your property you will never lose. " I
will not strain myself," said Daniel Webster, " to kill a
fly."  The bar that keeps you out you cannot break:
the bolt admitting you turns with ease. This correlation is God's high chancellor to see that justice is
done. Do you disparage my service, and drop out
of the circle of my companions and friends; and do
yoLu justify your desertion with poor apologies, putting
your disloyalty on false grounds? Waste not so your
words, nor spend a thought or breath on the matter!
I shall not suffer: take care of yourself, and have no
alarm for me. Like the watchers in the judges' boat
at the regatta on the river or the sea, God has his
sentinels in the heart to secure fair play and punish
foul.  I shall make up in self-respect for your discountenance, just as, with my humility, I shall set
limits to your praise. What are the scales on your
court-house to Heaven's universal balance?  Great
evils to the black man were predicted from the abolition of slavery. But a right to his own earnings supplies motive better than came from the lash.
"' Nebber you fear, though nebber you hear
The driver blow his horn."
Against all temptations to treachery one thought is an
overweight, - that of being a pure instrument of truth.
The idea of God's service, in that of his creatures,




CORRELATION.                299
clean of all pride or vanity, or lust of gain or count
of worldly success, stirs a joy with which no human
favor can compare. Applause is a passing, pattering
rain; popularity, the morning cloud and early dew:
benefit is the well springing up unto eve rlasting life.




XIII.
CHARACTER.
W        HAT reason the Oriental had to suppose divinity or divination in dreams I know not; only
that I dreamed being in a great conference discussing
Jesus Christ, till his name flew back and forth as
between battle-door and shuttlecock, when at last he
himself rose in the meeting to hush and astonish all
with the words, " Touch me not!"  What meant that
repulse of Mary after the reported resurrection? Was
he a ghost, such as Homer or Virgil tells of, whom
the hand would pass through? Did he reserve his
first greeting for another?  Rather, saluting Mary and
asking Thomas to test his flesh and blood reality, he
yet declares to the fond woman, The time to dote on
me is past: God whom I go to is as much your Father
as mine. Let no critic call rude his rejection of whatever sign of regard she so naturally rushed to give!
He threw cold water on her affectionate zeal to concentrate its flame for the shaping of all duty at the
forge of her heart.
This was the topmost round of Christ's character.
One step above self-sacrifice on the cross was the selfabnegation after the crucifixion. Not that he would




CHARACTER.                30 l
disparage himself. He knew and asserted he was a
showing of God; but, having shown him, he would
retire. What appearance on the stage could match
such self-withdrawal! Does any action transcend a
graceful taking leave? He was a medium, whose
virtue is to display the object,- like a window where
nothing but the entry lamp is visible within. " You
cannot see him: he is behind his Master," said Father
Taylor, of a famous preachier. You see not the IMasler as he reveals the all-informing soul; as you do not
the man who unveils a picture in some great cathedral, to be the valet of its beauty the business of his
life. On the Wengern Alp I admired the spotless air
that hid and denied itself, to draw the Jungfrau from
its ten-miles distance almost to touch my eye. This
temper of self-renunciation Jesus hinted not at the close
only, but throughout his career. He resented being
called good: he was willing anybody should speak
against him, but not against the Holy Ghost. He
insisted it was expedient for him to go away, to introduce the Comforter whom  his longer stay would
eclipse, but whose coming would lead beyond his
lessons into all truth. What finer incident in history
than that after the walk to Emmaus, when at the
village table the old gesture in breaking bread betrayed and they knew him,, and "L he vanished out of
their sight"! As the absence of his statue brought
Brutus to mind, Christ was manifest less in his advent
than his exit. It is a paradox of beauty. His arrest
of us is his refusing to be stopped with. Did Cmsar
or Cromwell or Washington decline the crown?  He
would be neither king nor idol. " Oh, that is he I " we




302            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
say, when some man's quality is spoken of. We have
Jesus only in being passed on by him. To worship him,
if it be Orthodoxy, is infidelity and rejection of Christianity, and flat contradiction of his own bidding. To
make him a finality is to make him a fetish. As an
idol we lose him altogether. In the novel "Jane Eyre,"
Rochester says he could seize the woman he loves,
but the essence he seeks would be gone. 0 fond believer! in your so tight grasp of your Lord, you miss
him.  Only your light touch of him, feeling after
what he stood representative for, can appreciate him.
Let me alone, he says to those who would still hang
upon him. This is not his peculiarity. Of all true
regard for friend or fellow-creature, the proof is not
gross demonstration but delicacy, penetrating through
the outward form and bearing to what they mean and
are missionaries of. When Montaigne says, " I offer
myself faintly and bluntly to him whose I most effectually am," he puts a good understanding before
any kiss or caress. To every ecclesiastical sentimentalist Jesus gives this tonic: Live not for me, but the
objects I live for; love not me as you do the righteous
will. Did God, in a phrase lately controverted, take
"' an inferior man " for his instrument? This is supreme manhood. Pick a flaw, who will, in the diamond, to which those are dirt that have just been
discovered in South Africa; find, if you can, cloud or
stain in the pearl from the hand of the great Lapidary
as he makes up his jewels. But this is indeed Milton's'" human face divine."  It is to reach the zenith, and
touch the horizon of our utmost conception.
Do I tempt to a more refined idolatry?  Not in




CHARACTER.                303
denoting a virtue whose beauty is a bond. It were a
stride for a self-worshipper to adore such a character,
or even an image, a bit of painted cloth, flag, or emblem; any thing but the gaudy butterfly or golden calf
he is! When one expostulated with Mr. Thackeray
for making young people talk so silly in his books, he
said, "Nonsense! you can't make them talk half silly
enough! " But, O flatterer of the Lord! Jesus is too
busy for your adulation. He does not wait to smell
this everlasting smoke of your incense. Do not keep
me, he says: and I must not detain you. My business is to forward these goods I am trusted with.
Have I introduced you to God? Let me stand aside.
Engage in and enjoy the conversation.
With that sublime soul, to put one's end above one's
self, then, is the method of character. Do your work,
and divert attention from your hand in it. The fine
actor is lost in the personage he represents, the orator
in the theme of his discourse, the singer in the melody
he chants, the poet in the verse he writes, and every
artist, builder, agent, in the business Heaven sends
him on. What does Michel Angelo know of bending his neck out of joint, painting the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel? What does John the Baptist resolve
himself into but a voice in the wilderness? So Garrison did in the land slavery was making a worse
desert. Why did John Brown think the sovereign
State of Virginia and whole South no disproportionate
antagonist, but that his cause was more than Union or
nation? The best work everywhere is that of those
absorbed in it, — like the silk-worm in the cocoon it
weaves for its shroud; the bee lost in the heart of the




304            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
flower it sucks; the coral insect, continent-builder, in
the rocky reef. Self-oblivion is God's remembrance.
The glass of admiring eyes is a fragile preserver.
Service of God in your kind is a safe which the last
fire will not crumble. That is a Raphael, we say of
the picture on the wall. Is Raphael in it at full
length? No: figures of others, —the Holy Family,
angels that stoop, or cherubs that peep. That is
Beethoven! It is an orchestra, playing his symphonies, till his bronze fades from your misty eyes. That
is Shakspeare. Yes, most hid when most revealed;
less apparent in the self-referring sonnets than in the
disinterested plays: all the dramatispersonce but the
metes of his personality, a dwarf in the incidents of
his biography, a seraph that soars and sings in his
immortal lines. The locomotive is splendid, speeding
on its track; but modestly slipping aside, its task done,
unseen, to let its living -load roll into the station, has a
peculiar charm.  In all Dr. Channing's writings the
sen'tence that always moved me most was that ending
the Preface to his first volume.  " In truth, I shall see
with no emotion but joy these fugitive productions
forgotten and lost in the superior brightness'of writings consecrated- to the work of awakening in the
human soul a consciousness of its divine and immortal
powers."   So Jesus says, Not me, but my purpose, my method, my direction, my affection for God
and man, -in these my mission is fulfilled; the new
Jerusalem has many avenues; arrive at your station
how you will!
But has not his character another side?  What say
of his conscious exaltation? his singular and un



CHARACTER.                305
paralleled self-respect?  We will say there is no selfinterest! It is all instrumentality. He is illustrator-,
and his word illustration, of something deeper. Ile
would have us follow him, as we follow a demonstration in geometry on the blackboard.  Is it for the
demonstrator's sake, or the truth's sake?  It is what
we follow to: as we follow a guide up the Alps or
into the Adirondacks; as we prospect for gold mines
in California, - not for the guide, but for the view or
the treasure; as the Spaniards followed Cortez when
he drew with his sword in the Mexican sands a line for
the brave part of his army to cross, and cowards to go
back. Such the only following Jesus asks, not to his
honor, but the common weal.  Follow him?  We
follow that in him  which says,  -'ouch me not, —
and, like those men of Galilee, gazing up after him
into heaven, find ourselves in the infinite unseen,
with him somehow still.  Well for the simple and
unlearned then or now to follow him; but, when you
follow truth and God, the personal following of him
may cease. To those who knew not what to follow,
he gave the command. " Have you experienced religion? " an unlettered woman of eighty was asked by the
priest who would make a proselyte. "Yes, so far as
I have practised it," was the reply. Such Jesus would
have, not for followers, but peers; not servants, but
friends.
But self-forgetfulness is not self-support.  Jesus
speaks of his glory he had before the world was.
Is it not what we call the Ideal? L He had an elevator.
As the stream runs into your house from a head of
water, as the wheat yonder at the Western Railway
20




306            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
without stint flows down from a building raised
high in air, so fiom what fathomless fund and storehouse of thought his disinterestedness was drawn!
Why speculate so much? says the practical man.
Why not go and do something, like the missionaries?
But, after the missionaries have sailed a thousand
leagues and sacrificed themselves with homesickness,
exposure, and hard fare, what is it for the Sandwich
Islanders, and heathen in Hindostan, they do, but
proclaim certain views?  The views, then, are of some
importance: what is every act but the offspring of a
sentiment? To the critic, wondering we should beat
and puzzle our brains over the problems of the universe, we say, For every particle of pure truth, caught
in pure vision or assayed from the crude ore of accepted creeds, our meeting or meditation is not in
vain, more than the enterprise of diggers in the
California mines. My friend admitted the correctness
of my essay, but justified the current opinion on the
ground of the necessity of some alloy to prevent wear
and make the truth pass. But alloy we can pick up
plenty in the street. How if the supply of virgin gold
fail?  Why has the world not drained the Jewish
Master dry, and spent long ago the last farithing of
the Christian faith, but because of the immense Bank
he leaned on, that honored his drafts?  O my busy
brother, God speed your benevolent plans! But, to
get along, we must have, not only the rolling stock,
rails and driving wheels of some association or church
order, but the locomotive power; and he that gives
us only more and better vapor, - call it mere breath
if you will, steam from human lips, - is in place, and




CHARACTER.                307
his word as good as any deed I Has not what Jesus
said, more than what he did, insured his longevity?
What he said was no cut and dried scheme. He made
it up, or it made itself, as he went along waiting upon
God, holding Nature in solution in his mind, and
putting character into every tone.  In the conventional notion he is nothing but a Preceptor to his
pupils, with the downward look. But what were
his downward look without his upward one? He
united his vision with sincerity, and was not double
to different men, like those esoteric and exoteric clocks,
on the outside and inside of railway stations, that
never agree. He grew, says Luke: did he ever get
his growth? That were the end of him; stoppage
of soul or body is certain death.  Call the sexton,
then, to make a grave for both! Do you not deny
for him the very immortality Paul says he brought
to light, when you disown his progress, and say he
had exhausted God, though having all of him his
flesh could contain? Full of the element he floated
in, how his capacity enlarged!' Treading the line of
beauty, where did his feet find the end, or what proof
is there it was enough for him to tread it for us, and
not we for ourselves? I should as soon think of the
iron filings drawn to a magnet, or. bits of down to
an electric jar, emptying the fluid that pervades the
world, as of his or any sayings or doings expressing
the whole creation's life, or Creator's peace and joy,
to illustrate not substantiate which he came and
taught.  His was the Ideal method; but are we
bound to his Ideal, could we exactly find it out?
No, but to our own. There is justly no more than




308           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
one. It belongs not to him, but to all, availed of in
whatever diverse degree. For a ship, to be of the
fleet, need not take the same way to the same port
or fight, in an exact mathematical line after the flagship. We are in Christ's convoy so far as we sympathize in his style. His style in character, as well as
in chronology, affects us still.
Do not imitate him, we are told: deal at first hand
with God. But God is no abstraction. We are part
of him, and Jesus is part, in proportion to his worth.
The society, State, church, household we live in, as
well as stars that shine over us, are members of Deity,
some hand or finger of God; and by the laws of life
we reach him over every causeway that is portion of
himself. " I put myself," says our friend, " squarely
outside of Christianity."  That, were it psychologically possible, were to be so far outside of God. We
have a horror of examples; but the worst one is that
which we often in our prejudice set ourselves. We
are inside of all human life. There is no such thing
as a come-outer. Everybody, as one said of himself,
is a stay-inner, and Christian in some sense. As the
eye searches in the sky for the Pointers to find the
North Star, so we see his traits in line with that
pole of truth we too must steer by. However clouded,
is it not in our firmament as big and steady as in his?
" But an Ideal greater than he is, which we make
for ourselves 1 " exclaimed a good doctor of divinity, in
surprise. No, we never made it, more than we did
Orion or the Pleiads. God makes it; he is it! Purely
individual we cannot be. In every man is the Ideal,
greater than any man and all men, or Jesus himself.




CHARACTER.                309
Such an Ideal had not Washington and Lincoln of
a patriotism, which no details of service could expend,
to make their names splendid myths of love of country
when all the incidents and anecdotes shall be forgot?
It is no accident. The human heart makes no mistake. more than God. The selfish, blustering, belligerent demagogue of the hour, with whom God seems
not to exist when he mentions him, can reach no such
fame.  Of all excellence this Ideal property is the
span, the last touch and first breath. There is nothing so small or low it does not bend to, or bend to
itself.  Which is the best picture, -that eked out
every inch, as you have seen a cataract, mountain,
iceberg, with a painstaking Chinese brush; or that
conceived, swept and played upon with some humanizing design, finding in form and color but its
language and silent tongue? William Hunt never
took his brush but with such intent. Which is the
best orchestra, - that which renders every piece like
a great music-box, or that which turns pipe and string
to such expression as to bear you like a wind to some
heavenly shore?  " It is too much sail to carry," said
one at a pathetic performance.  "It means," replied
another, " you shall carry sail somewhere else." Who
is the best speaker, - he that grinds or saws out with
set teeth his sentences, or he that transpires what he
is inspired with? Who accomplishes most anywise,he that goes doggedly to work, as the Esquimaux make
their dogs draw their sleds over ice and snow, or he
that opens his faculties to be blown upon from above
and plants them in the river of God, - as the miller
makes breeze and water-fall turn his vans and wheels
to more account than by any crank under his hands?




3IO            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
This vision is not for show, like gilt pipes on the
old organs. In nothing is such use. The Indian had
it when he praised a United States President, and
pronounced him polite, for turning his back so as not
to see how much his guest ate or drank. So in our
war had the wounded soldier, with a bleeding mouth
and burning thirst, refusing the officer's canteen lest
with his blood he should hurt it for the other men.
When Putnam, going to the Potomac, said, "' Mother,
it is easy to give life, terrible to take it," he bore
the glory of Christ's lowly boast under his lieutenant's
belt. The man had it who took me up on the windy
road, and apologized for the little room in his chaise.
Our friend had it when he said, not "' go but come to
the war."  The Pilgrims had it when those staying
behind wondered what such fools were thinking of;
and they made us color-bearers of their idea, alive
not to drop what will glorify us when we die. The
savages in Central Africa, says a late traveller, still
prick the image of the cross into their own skins, and
weave it into their saddles. Do we not learn from our
Fathers to abjure showy emblems for humane sufferings and deeds?
Action from spiritual perception, to form character,
nmust complete the proof. When the English collier,
in his bucket with the broken rope, cries, " From uznder!" to those at the bottom of the shaft; when the
French soldier begs the surgeon to keep his ether for
those worse wounded, and stuffs his bloody handkerchief into his mouth to bear without noise the unrelieved
knife; when the fallen dying acrobat sings out,'" Look
after those girls on the trapeze;" when the conductor




CHARACTER.                311
runs forward on the track to save a little child, and
clears the stroke of the engine by a single foot; when
the engineer sticks to his locomotive rushing to ruin
like Cooper's boatswain going down with the ArieZ,of something inore than mortal there is proof. Can you
renounce the life you desire, turn your back on the
heaven you conceive, - willing, as said Dr. Hopkins,
to be damned for the glory of God, or like Paul to be
a cast-away, accursed for your kind? Do you consent
to be annihilated if that be best?  You have what
you give up!  Relinquishment is possession, and
death your mortgage on life. " I refuse not to die,"
said Paul to Festus. How kill what said that?
It is I, but not mine; it is you, but not yours. God
can take care of his property! Calvin's God is Saturn
over again devouring his own children. Love is executor of Law.  These two have no mediator but
whatever as momentary priest puts them  in immediate relation, to pronounce them  one.  A Boston
minister says, "What weight in the Sermon on the
Mount from the authority of.Him that said it! " Indeed,
is'the sermon true because he said it; or did he say it
because it was true?  Does authority or inspiration
make truth; or does truth make authority and inspiration? " The mistake is," says the same minister,'" to
set truth before Christ."  Then he made that mistake;
for he set the truth he was but part of before himself.
The worst sign of the times is this putting of what
Webster, replying to Hayne, calls " mutual quotation and commendation," in place of free inquiry, in
our religious press.
"' Touchl me not!"  We cannot touch him till we




3i 2           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
are transparent with goodness like him. Our Lord?
He is the beggar whom the seeker of the Holy Grail
shares his crust with, be he German or French; as
he was the child Christopher bore over the stream.
When one proposed in convention to resolve Christianity into love to God and man, it was objected, this
is the end to which Christianity is the means. But
as we learn to vote by voting, walk by walking, and
to swim by swimming; as in the race or regatta the
starting-point is to the rounding boat also the goal, -
so I know no way to love God and man but by loving
them.
We object to calling Christ a man, as if to be such
were mean: " A poor thing," said the poet Daniels,
" unless above himself he can erect himself."  Christ's
character is a flower human nature could not bloom
into, and a fruit that never grew on the family tree!
Which does this doctrine decry, mankind or its author? Have we ascertained the capacity of the soul,
as we measure the cubic contents of a ship or puncheon? Do we know what is coming out of it before
the time?  Who predicted  Homer, Shakespeare,
Raphael! WVe are told of ghosts so substantial as to
have their photographs taken; but no portraits of
such as have never existed or been embodied. Those
who maintain that Jesus, without human father, was
begotten of the Holy Ghost, do not deny he had all
the parts and properties of a man. Had any organ,
faculty, affection, been wanting, he would have been
a monster, and every moment of his life, each breath
he drew, a new miracle. Had he shown any virtue
beyond others' reach to practise, it would equally defy




CHARACTER.                 313
their ability to admire or understand. Your praise is
your potential possession of any excellence, in intellect
or morals, in science or art, music, painting, poetry,
or eloquent speech. Were it not latent in us as a
susceptibility which culture might unfold into accomplishment, we could not have the glow of one heartbeat of delight in it. We could not shout at the
oration, clap in the concert-room, or say Amen to the
prayer. Do I know what it was for Jesus to hang on
the cross, or drop the bloody sweat in the garden?
Then I could have agonized and hung there. The
stupid crowd- that throw up their caps with one genuine throb of gratitude or cordial cheer of applause,
as the hero or deliverer passes by, could every one have
dared or suffered as much as Grant at Richmond, or
Washington at Valley Forge. Did twenty millions
of men compose the funeral procession when Lincoln's body was borne across the States to the tomb?
Every sincere mourner had in him the germ of the
great President's martyrdom. Not a trait of the master but is a copy of the disciple's latent worth. Nothing actual in Jesus that is not possible in you and in
the feeblest babe in the crib.
It is not only incorrect, but injurious, to shut off
from the common soul any merit, or say it can only
be imputed or imparted, never indigenous; as if goodness were not native to the mind, but only immigrant
or an import. Superhuman is it?  Then certainly I
shall not try for it! Why should a man strain after
something beyond his manhood?  " Sltoi! STOP! 
cried a lad with his carpet-bag to a railway train
gliding from the station. I might as well try to arrest




314            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
qualities I cannot emulate. " What is the use of his
running?" said a fellow-passenger to me of a person
who expected to overtake the cars getting full underway. We do not want an unattainable standard held
up before us. It would be insult to our will, mockery
of our weakness, discouragement of our hope. Archangelic displays, by a being different in kind from us,
would but tantalize and torment.
But I challenge this peculiar superiority of traditional and historic virtue.  The preacher describes
the transcendent truth, love, meekness, conscience,
self-sacrifice, and says it is no use to attempt: you
cannot be as good as that. It can be passed over to
your credit if you believe in the atonement; but cannot, save by favor of the pleading and dying Advocate,
be really your own. Every honest drop of blood
resents this fiction of the court, which theologians
fancy for their forensic God, and tingles with the
assertion that it too can flow with sincerity or flow
out an offering to any worthy cause; as it did ten
years ago, to drench the land it saved, - not boastful
blood, though claiming the right to give itself, and
running so freely! What strikes us in these emptysleeved, scarred men, is their making so little of what
they did or endured in their wilderness on the Potomac, or Gethsemane of the Mississippi; their silence,
abstinence from profession, having to be drawn out to
speak of the scenes they passed through, and using the
lowest terms in their description, the farthest from
travellers' tales, and regarding all as within the line of
simple duty. What sin mixed with their holocaust?
Always so in tasks and trials thatare sublime.




CHARACTER.                 315
I do not disparage. past example, or dishonor the
holy biography, in saying it is matched by present
worth. Why do I declare what I have sometimes
the privilege to see, in living and dying men and
women, is equal to any sacred tale? Because I can
conceive nothing better than I behold. A woman,
listening many years ago to a famous sermon, said,
" That is as good as Christ."  "Oh no! rather good
as anti-Christ," said her friend. But what is indeed
Christian is as good as Christ; for it is the same thing
of divine inspiration. He would have said he was
not a Christian himself! If you question the supreme
worth of that patience, resignation, fearless departure,
or self-consuming devotion, which you witness to-day,
you confound with doubt the very glory and identical
element in the Saviour of the world. To be shocked
at its appearance in or ascription to another, is to suspect.it in him, and disbelieve it altogether. It is infidelity!
Was the light, air, water, in Judaea better than ours?
Had love, truth, purity, superior preciousness then?
Wonderful, Jesus forgave his foes! Cannot you? If
I feel I cannot afford to have an enemy, if strife is no
luxury to me, if I must love and help my adversary,
why tell me to find a better disposition in Canaan
two thousand years ago? The earth may be between
me and Jesus; I tread the ashes of fifty generations
fallen on his grave; but there is no thought betwixt
us, no misunderstanding; the ideas are common; we
occupy the same celestial globe.
But do you not make a mere man of him?  Not
at all;, there is no such thing as a mere man! I
never knew one any way or whee.    o'bu are not




316            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
a mere man, but fashioned in the Maker's image.
If species are diverse, none absolutely distinct; all
kinds in God's creation run into each other without
boundary or bar.  Mere man?  There is no mere
animal, without something human. There is no mere
vegetable.  The sponge drinks, the fly-catcher is a
flower that catches insects, the orchids grotesquely
mimic our fancies, the sensitive plant has nerves.
There is no mere mineral. The rock is not solid nor
at rest, but appears a whirl of atoms ready for transformation into regularity of higher rhythm  which is
life. The rock in me is resolution: I got my will
out of the cliffs that overhung my father's house.
God is my Rock, higher than I.  Your companion
deceased, you see in heaven. Was he a mere man
on earth?  Then how did he get up there, without
ladder or wings, or Tower of Babel, to climb by?
My dear friend Ephraim  Peabody appeared to me
in a dlream at the top of a hill lofty and steep as that
peculiar one I clambered up two thousand feet at
Dixville Notch; and he said, " Come up."  "I cannot!"  " Yes, you can; " and, buoyed by some strange
force that seized me, I rose to him as in a balloon.
But our rising to the seraph is no airy ascent. It is
getting out of one sort of nature, the human, into
another sort, the seraphic. It is not travelling, going
so Inany miles into space; but transmutation, impossible if we were mere men. You say of your dear
partner, She is an angel.  You see half-open the
spiritual pinions she will soar on. In every hour of
aspiration, we are conscious of forces not yet in use,
ready to uplift.




CHARACTER.                317
So when you talk of the simple humanity of Jesus,
my Unitarian brother or Humanitarian believer, I
must tell you, You cannot part man from God, and
keep the man. He would bleed to death; his manhood would perish. Jesus is of no other order nor
a class all by himself, but the supreme instance thus
far, in the verdict of history, of this common life with
Deity.
But, if we classify him with all the rest, where is his
honor, and what accounts for his place, pre-eminence,
and unrivalled influence?  I answer, The idea he
stands for, of the Divine Humanity. This is the signal
he hoists.  No signal-tender on the long road of our
race ever lifted one so high. Before him God was
outside, in the sky, among the elements, on a throne.
He was the Thunderer at Sinai, the Dropper of manna
in the desert, the Divider of the Red Sea. Men did
not dare to bring him down and domesticate him in
their own breasts. He was in some pew, easier to
get at in Jerusalem or Gerizim, till Jesus showed him
universal Spirit, whom neither Jew nor Samaritan
could own, but every gentile and barbarian shared.
He delivered God from keepers, and made the connection of trains we are all passengers in. He is Godman; and I hold it as unjust as ungrateful to dispute
this claim. It is no individual assumption. He is
our conductor; but will not follow us round the streets
after we arrive! He is the representative man. He
no more wishes to have dignity to himself than monopolize bread or heaven. "A white man's government!" said Frederic Douglass; "as well talk of a
white man's sun or moon! "  Sonship of Christ alone




318            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
with God were a worse exclusiveness. In whatever
he said of himself, he published the common privilege.
Son of God was he as well as Son of man?  Who is
not? There are no two natures: the human is divine.
But the Word became flesh! In that single instance
wholly and only? Is the Divinity an absentee from
your frame? Is Satan inmate of your flesh, and every
ill demon a birthright tenant of your babe? Then,
O Orthodox brother! if anybody is totally depraved,
it is you in having the babe. You have no business
with it! Wedlock is sin, the marriage vow is blasphemy, love is shame, the infant you hail the advent
of is your dumb accuser, and the nest of the cockatrice or serpent's den is a harmless thing, to be spared
till you have broken up your cradle. Else we are all
partakers of the incarnation. Something of the reason
of the All-wise, love of the All-good, sanctity of the Allpure, is embodied as inspired in us and our offspring.
But he is the Mediator between God and man! Yet
he was a man. So this is a function not confined to
any, but belonging in some measure to every man.
The mediation between God. and man goes on in
every bosom. In the electrical toy, called Dives and
Lazarus, a pendulum plays betwixt the full and empty
jar, and the fluid passes all the time. What is that
agent you are all acquainted with, ever going to and
fro between the Divinity and the humanity, to move
and check, guide and warn, cleanse and correct,
remove the dry rot of folly and vice, build and rebuild
of the sound timber of righteousness the inner fane?
It is the mediator between God and man in the human soul. Everybody that knows himself knows this




CHARACTER.                   319
other self, - third party or person of the inward
Trinity, day's man between us and God, operator
whose telegraph cannot be bought i up and never lies,
ambassador that will take no bribe, plenipotentiary
whose business is not to dissolve the personality, which
it makes ever more divine.  This incorruptible coBETWEEN reproves my coming short, will not let me
prevaricate, has a lash for my vice sharper than the
whip of scorpions, and imprisons me for staining my
brother's name or sister's honor in a dungeon darker
than that to which criminals against the State are sent.
There are those who can distinguish this agent in them,
as they discriminate between their body and soul.
They feel something not dependent on clay, but adequate to finer form or organization.  Such as reach not,
or distrust, this spirituality, Jesus serves as the apparition of God, a visible Holy Ghost. This is the
secret of his hold; the millions he has performed
this function for, and will still for whoever finds not
that heavenly factor he calls the Comforter, the something better than himself he promised. To be his,
and sit at his table, is to partake his vision of God and
immortality. Eating and drinking a little bread and
wine cannot make you one with him, unless you eat
his flesh and drink his blood, fed and stimulated with
his sense of eternal life.
This is the question of the world's unbelieving wisdom: Was Jesus aught but a credulous enthusiast, in
declaring an endless career? Show just where the
credulity lies! The Christian believes man is not an
ephemeral creature, that his soul is older than and will
outlast his flesh; and you, 0 sceptic! believe it is but




320            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
a transient property of his material composition, which
his birth lighted, and to which Death will say, "' Out,
brief candle! " You believe all these thoughts and hopes
and plans and feelings can but, with the ashes they
crumble into, line the tomb whose marble letters will be
a longer decoration; and, after the funeral procession
and the sexton's spade, not an idea or sentiment, that
once illumined and inflamed the mortal shape, shall
dare to " mutter or peep."  Once dead, you think
you " will not be able to pick yourself up," and there
will be nobody to pick you out of the dust. Well,
in this comparison between the man of Nazareth and
yourself, his critic, the credulity is not his but yours!
You bring the strain on faith. You are believing a
great deal, what is unbelievable, that death is annihilation, extinction of love, and disappointment of
hope. You believe that God deceives the expectations
he inspires, breaks his word, plays false with his
child, and is a person wanting veracity, on whom we
cannot rely. You believe the claim of the heart on
its objects, though it is constituted never to give them
up, is less valid than that to a farm or beach, or piece
of goods, or wild land in Kansas or Oregon, or field
or mine in Australia or California. That is a claim;
but the soul has none, no title. There is no deed
drawn up for it. Its talk about other mansions and
plains is mere pretence, delusion, impotent attempt
at usurpation. As between you and him you reject
my mind is made up. I go with the Galilean! My
faith compasses more with him; but it would be
stretched more with you.  WVhen report came of a
painless operation in mesmeric sleep, a doctor said




CHARACTER.                  32 I
he would swallow no such camel as that.  "Well,"
replied the surgeon, " in believing we were all mistaken, and the poor sailor here, whose limb I cut off,
is a false witness, you take down a dromedary, a
camel with two humps, with perfect ease."
Is the joy of Christ's faith no proof?  He did not
argue the matter. Much argument confounds the
instinct. " The more I reason about it," said one to me,
" the less I believe." The silent dropping by friends of
flowers and tears together on the coffin hinted immediately more than the loud voice of the priest proclaiming the resurrection of the body. Surely as fell
the blossoms and the holy water they shook fi-om their
eyes to keep them alive a little longer, the soul had
risen to Him who turns all blooming into the language
of his love to us, as of ours to each other. He can
make his chariot of these delicate leaves of the opening buds as well as of the mighty clouds that go
sounding through the sky with their rattling wheels;
and of the same soft vehicle that takes him to us a
vessel, on the return journey, to bear us back. Meantime we weep. But, with upward-looking eye, -
" The tear, that to the earth descends,
Belongs of right to the earth;
To its home above the soul ascends,
Where it had its heavenly birth."
This is no calculation; it is testimony. The act or
word that sets the world forward is always inspired.
Calculation is unbelief.' He looks like a fox," said
one of the portrait of a man.  " That is what he is,"
was the artist's reply.  Luther's  iere I stand, I cannot otherwise, shows the God-driven man, as the
21




322            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness.  Let s-uch
a man have credit, whatever he says!  Let him
say I as he will: it is no egotism, but God in the
world. Avoid the personal pronoun as the selfseeker may, he has no humility nor faith. What I
think, believe, hope, love, and sacrifice my lower self
to, differs from what I covet, lust after, indulge in,
am proud of, sell or forswear myself for. The selfallusion of the man who carries a mirror of vanity to
pulpit or platform, to look at himself in his discourse,
is not the same with that of him who makes it the
emphasis of truth and duty and the presence of the
Deity.  This self hood  was Christ's crown.  M.
Renan intimates a sentimental relation between Jesus
and the women. But his repulse of the one with
whom he was on the most tender terms, when she
rushed to salute him, saying, " Hands off; touch me
not; go to the disciples, and worship the common
Father," shows a deeper secret in his character than
the French biographer found. While we are so fond
of him as to fall short of his centre, we continue the
offence he rebuked. We are not with him till we
have gone beyond.




XIV.
GENIUS: FATHER  TAYLOR.
IN the year 1833, being a student in the Divinity
School in Cambridge, and learning that a Bethel
for Seamen was to be dedicated in Boston, withal
catching a rumor in the air of some peculiar gift in
the preacher, I walked in to North Square. As soon
as I entered the new brick building, so famous as a
sailors' harbor to all the world, and the master of
ceremonies appeared, I felt he was such a one as
I had never seen before in the shape of minister
or man. It was no decorous individual sitting silent and solemn in the pulpit-corner till the people
were all assembled, and it was time for the services to begin; but a figure of restless and uncontainable life, which no box of a pulpit seemed able to
hold. The chafing in such close quarters, the glance
that reached every point and seemed to fall on every
body, the swift step from side to side of the desk, the
radiant look, the voice strong and mellow as thunder
or a breaking wave, the gesture (whose lively expression could not have been bettered by Kemble or-Booth),
with which, saying, "'My pulpit has no doors," he
beckoned up such as could not find seats below, and




324            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
the white heat of enthusiasm which seemed no excitement, but a normal state, - proved that no pompous
ecclesiastic, droning parson, or strait-laced bigot was to
discourse that day and be primate and bishop of that
establishment. Last summer I was again in-the same
place. The human form, so long aflame with zeal
at its busy task, lay quiet enough at last. The contrast between life and death was never so great. My
friend had fallen into the sleep to which the sweetest
slumber known before is uneasiness.
This new hand indeed at the bellows, forging human
welfare, ought not to vanish without some memorial.
In all praise is a certain disrespect; yet such a duty
lies in the desire to speak, the presumption may have
pardon.  No American citizen, lawyer, scholar, or
statesman made an impression so unique, or left reputation more solid. Webster, Clay, Lincoln, Calhoun,
by no advantage of stormy debate or political prominence, printed their names deeper on their time than
this Methodist, whose method transcending limnits of
sect was all his own. How did a poor clergyman,
never leaving his own little spot, haunting with comfort
and rebuke of love the vilest part of the city, - beside
his boys, as were those on every quarter-deck of before
the mast, -draw all men unto hin? In the hall of
memory, what service puts his spiritual statue for ever
in its own niche?  Let us try to learn, lest without
record of biography or autobiography the name of
Taylor be scarce more than a tradition.
He belonged to no class.  He was not, for any
system of theology or philosophy, either leader or led.
He will be identified with no dogma or reform other




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.           325
or less than of the way of regarding and treating
those whom he served. He is the sailor's representative.  Those other great ones were landsmen.  HI-I
stands for the sea. He is the great delegate from the
waves to the congress of intellect. In thousands of
ships, by almost millions of mariners, to whom  by
baptism of the Holy Ghost he was father who christened their babes, his fame was borne to every port.
The sailor says he has been where the United States
had not been heard of, but never where Father Taylor
had not.  How did a man, - no discoverer in the
kingdom of ideas, no martyr of principle, nor marshal
of opinion, - so touch the common mind? The answer is that word about whose application we are
always in quarrel or doubt, -genius. It is a large
word. It signifies a universal quality. It is an office
and warrant to speak to or act on people of every sort,
to span every social gulf, and bring -all who differ or
are opposed into one mind. Such was his gift. As
the people say, he was a gifted man, perhaps the only
one of his generation among us to whom the term
genius absolutely belongs. May I show this by some
enumeration of marks?
First, genius possesses a man. Others have been
as intuitive as he, with perceptions as clear and judgment more harmonious, holding the glass steadier to
spiritual things, weighing values of thought more
coolly, analyzing subjects more keenly as in a mental
spectroscope, detecting correspondences more exactly
with the wide-open eye of imagination, and with
more masterly combining of old elements into new
maxims or ideas. But who has been with the truth




326         -RADICAL PROBLEMS.
so taken and carried away? His vision was passion.
It made a train of his faculties. His insight was enactment. It was said of one, "; In company he leaves
the scholar behind: in his study he is a different man."
Taylor never left nor lost himself, nor seemed made
up of parts and pieces. He moved altogether if he
moved at all. His casual talk was better than any
preparation; his impromptu, his finest performance.
A gown would have " wrapped his talent in a napkin."
He put on no dress nor garland. He was as inspired
at the street-corner as addressing a throng. There
was grandeur in his trivial converse, and humor in his
grave discourse. He provoked laughter in the congregation, and wet your eyes with his private greeting; put you in church with his grace at table,
made an April day of smiles and tears at his evening
vestry, or overcame you with solemnity in your house,
so that you were inclined to say it thundered, or an
angel spake to him. One said he was like a cannon,
better on the Common than in a parlor. But in your
sitting-room he could be a flute. He was a man-ofwar, or tender and soft as a maid. In accidental encounters he melted hard-faced persons with his pathos,
or surprised the despondent into good cheer with consolations'effectual because before undreamed. In all
this was no calculation. As the Spiritualists say, he
was under control. He was an Italian improvisator
in America, an extemporaneous speaker condensed
beyond example, with combustion and no dilution.
In many a wit we see the diamond shining: he was
the diamond burning.  "Do not get worn out," a
friend said to him. " I tear out," was his reply. He




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.            327
served some strange power, having its way with him,
and which he could not resist.  The spirit of this
prophet was not subject to the prophet.
After possession the second mark of genius is facility. There was in Taylor infinite ease. His display
of power cost him no more effort than for the sea to
roll or the wind to blow.  It would but have been
hard to resist his influx and inspiration. Never aught
violent or rough. To storm or scream is the false
note,- counterfeit that passes current with  many.
When a speaker raises his voice, and aggravates to
fury his manner, we say, It is all true, and I agree
with you; but do not cave in my head! Some orators
and readers collar us like a sheriff, or worry us like a
terrier-dog. They are ruffians with our minds. But
this man's persuasive magnetism drew us without interference of our will or his own. He had at his mercy
alike our pocket and our heart. Yet this gracious
respect had in it no weak gushing, nor the smallest
leak.' If he ever boiled, he never slopped over; like
George Washington, whose temper was a caldron, if
not an awkwardly lifted pail. He carried no lookingglass of self-admiration or mutual admiration. His extravagance was elevation. His glowing commendation
of the men and women, his fellow-laborers, was like
the lustre with which the sun flatters the mountain-tops.
His approach was no defiance or assault; but he
always accepted a challenge with courage that was
courtesy in the duel from which he never ran. He
was nothing if not spontaneous. His originality was
never insolence, like that of Mr. Brownson, who told
his audience their resentment of his doctrine proved
its truth.




328            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
The third mark of genius is communication. In
Taylor this was perfect. "Her very foot speaks,"
says Shakespeare. But in most persons not a tithe of
the frame bears witness. His marvellous suppleness
of fibre and organ made his whole body a tongue.
When the ballet-girls camne out in the theatre and
commenced their astounding pirouettes, he, sitting on
the front row, turned round to the spectators with a
look that diverted the house from the spectacle and
outdid all the mimicries of the stage.  He was as
ingrained an actor as Garrick or Kean. He did not
believe in preaching from notes; and, making a speech
at a meeting of his brethren, he took off a clergyman
confined to his manuscript, looking from  his page
to his hearers, gazing one way and gesticulating another, to the convulsive laughter of the victims he
scored. I remember his impersonating a dervish in
his spinning raptures, so that to see that Oriental
character one had no need to travel. There was in
his word a primitive force none could withstand.
"Move a little: accommodation is a part of religion,"
he said to some who took up too much room in a
crowded seat; and, as though his request were a favor,
and in such quaint phrase they had received a present, they moved. Every subject was to him such an
object, he marvelled at our philosophic self-fingering.' Height of the sky!" said William  Blake; "nonsense! see, I touch it with my stick." Taylor's thought
touched heaven. At eight years old he went through
all the motions of the minister's service, not stopping
with sermon and prayer. He must also have funerals.
But how get the bodies? By shying stones at chick



GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.            329
ens, and having obsequies over their remains. When
the supply failed, or perhaps, for the cruelty, his heart
misgave him, the little resurrectionist dug up the bodies for a second performance. Mourners, too, were
necessary; and that office he required the negro children on the place to fill. If words would not move
the lazy things, he whipped them into the traces of his
machine of grief. His acting was no illusion or trick,
but perfect nature, and so perfect art. He could not,
like Delsarte, have picked out the muscle to express
heaven or hell. How he did it he knew not. Great
orators have studied their motions in a glass. But, if
he ever saw his own face for a moment, he must have
straightway forgotten what manner of man he was.
Never was a less self-conscious countenance, — more
ignorant of its own looks. The Cape-Ann farmer
said Rufuis Choate could cant his countenance so as to
fetch tears out of you in two minutes. But there was
no canting in Taylor.
Of true genius sympathy is a mark. In him it was
raised to the highest power. He not only saw into
people, but out of them, or saw as they did from their
centre; and for his eye-glasses put on their eyes. His
word grew out of the occasion: his feeling was generated on the spot. His thought fell like an aerolite,
and did not crystallize like a gem. Dr. Channing had
views: he had visions.  He preached as the birds
sang. He could not help it or help himself. Where
he stood was a drama, not a desk. He was the character in " Midsummer-Night's Dream:" it mattered
not what part he took. Riches dropped from him unawares, like pearls from Prince Esterhazy's dress. His




330            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
concern was wide as his race. Genius is love. Was
Byron misanthrope? So far no poet. Taylor was no
cold peak. His mountain stood on fire. His was a
southern heart married to a northern brain. He went
back to Virginia, and asked to see Johnny, the little
boy he had played with at school fifty years before,
and they brought in a white-haired old man; and
Taylor came home and represented lad and graybeard with his marvellous transformations, needing
no stage-dress. He entered into every nature; with
the Dutch painter could have become a sheep, and
seemed only a larger one among the pigeons that
swarmed round him in his back-yard to be fed. As
he walked in the Public Garden, a sparrow  flew
startled from its bush. He stretched his hand after it,
saying, "I will not squeeze you." For a moment I
thought the bird might come.
In his illustration of genius, liberality was a mark.
A Methodist, Methodism. was not his gaol or goal.
Like the Indian on the prairie, he said he walked
large. He knocked at every door, Orthodox, Episcopal, Romish, Radical; and, as in the Arabian Nights'
tale, every door opened. He had the freedom of the
city. Thirty years ago he attended a meeting of the
Transcendental Club. There were in the company, as
he entered, doubtful looks! He was asked to speak,
and began in his chair; but soon saying, "I must get
up," he rose, rubbed the rumples out of his trowsers
with a laugh, and pictured our climbing like spiders
with such vivacity that when, as he concluded, another
ventured to speak, our leader said, " When the spirit
has orbed itself in a man, there is nothing more.to




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.           331
offer."  Who shall come after the king? Pentecost
was repeated, and we were full of new wine. He was
not humorous, but humor. He compared polemics to
two bands of turtles he had seen march on a ship's
deck, stretching out their necks to each other, till
from those that got their heads uppermost the other
party beat a retreat. The turtles would have been
content with their representative. To some Liberals,
denouncing the notion of hell-fire, he lifted thumb and
finger to his nostrils, and said, " We all have a sentimentality of that sulphur." No close communion for
him! He appraised others beyond their merits. His
liberality was worth something, making him ready to
do battle with intolerance. In his large toleration he
was a Radical, in his own order born before the time.
" Are you cheating the Unitarians, or are the Unitarians cheating you?" asked Dr. Beecher. "Doctor,
a third party has come in that wants to have all the
cheating to itself," answered the edge-tool the veteran
attempted to handle. He, that had been in the Spanish cruiser from  New Orleans, and the American
privateer Curlew from Boston, was a born soldier,
and knew how to carry arms.
Boldness is a mark of genius. He hated Spiritualism, and claimed to be an exorciser. " The spirits
never can do any thing after I come," he said: " they all
run away." His deck was always cleared for action.
When the clergy of the Methodist circuit were disparaged by a Unitarian as worth no more than the
small salary they were paid, how his battery blazed!
" I will set them foot to foot against any of you, with a
Bible in one hand and a wilderness of human souls




332            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
before them "  He bade a boastful British officer
remember we had whipped England. "What credit
to whip your mother?" growled the commodore.
"Not much," answered Taylor; " and I promise you
we will never whip the old lady again unless she gives
us very particular occasion." His repartees were droll
enough for harlequin with their grotesque style, but
always had earnest meaning. A young man having
upset the Bible, and stooping for it in his desk,
" Never mind," says Taylor; " I can put it up next
Sunday." How he strode up and down, patting the
book he loved, as if it were alive! "How  long
shall we compass this Jericho?" he cried at a revival
meeting in the vestry of the West Church. I suggested our conversion was not finished, and we
needed still food of humility more than the mince-pie
of praise. He left us hurt and hot. The next time I
met him, he embraced and kissed me in the street.
He was a placable enthusiast, charitable devotee,
fanatic but for his love. Entering a Boston church,
one said, " This seems so entirely dedicated to God as
to leave no room for man."  There was always room
for man where Tavlor was. How audacious to explode conventionalities!  Arguing with him  about
perfection, I asked if anybody had been as good as
Jesus.'"Millions," he replied; an answer which,
against my testimony, Unitarians and Methodists discredit and try to explain away. Of a great Rationalist
he said, -' There is a screw loose somewhere; but I
have laid my ear close to his heart, and have never
been able to detect any jar in the machinery.  He
must go to heaven; for Satan would not know what




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.             333
to do with him  if he got him.  Give the devil his
rations, it will change the climate, and the emigration
will be that way!" Of Transcendentalism he said,
" It is like a gull: long wings, lean body, poor feathers,
and miserable meat."  " Too far off: the King's business requires haste," he would tell the dull speaker
at his conference. His speech was seldom bitter or
biting, however sometimes wounding, it being to him
sacrilege to keep it back. His censure was a frigate's
broadside or a lion's roar; his praise was a medal, a
badge, or the freedom of the city in a gold box, the
terms were so solid and precious in which it was put.
He named the sailor-talkers, - one,'" pure Hebrew; "
another, " North of Europe;" a third, " Salvation set
to music."  But for the iron in his blood, and the
gauntlet on his hand, he would have been a spiritual
glue, a mere sympathy, a dissipated mind.
Beauty is a mark of genius.  Of the poor old
ministers he said, " They should be fed on preserved
diamonds.  They are camels in the desert, bearing
precious treasures and browsing on bitter herbs.;
The charm of his manners who, this side the Orient,
could match? At a distance, seeing you afar off,
he would touch his heart, his forehead, and his lips
with a salute that seemed too much for aught below
angels or less than the universe. His love was as the
sea; but never billow lapped the beach more softly
than his affection touched its object.  His untaught
courtesy, the delicacy of demonstrativeness, was conspicuous in his treatment of the other sex. The show
was a drop to the gulf behind. He felt the truth, that
no man is indebted to any other so much as to some




334            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
woman.  His purity was not ice, but flame. His
bearing was royal, and made every woman a queen.
No calamity could extinguish his cheer in the church
or by the way. At the funeral of the woman whom
he said he should claim and could not spare in heaven, he leaned his shining face out of the carriage,
and astonished the conventional gloom  by greeting people on the way. "You do not know that
old Irishwoman," one of the family said, trying to
put on him some decent restraint. " Why shouldn't
she have her share?" was his retort. He and Miss
Sedgwick once met suddenly in the middle of the
room. " Did you mean to kiss me?" she cried, starting back. " I only know," he answered, " I got
mine."
Veracity is a mark of genius; and that is a false
notion which makes it consist in any exaggeration,
which Dr. Johnson said all eloquence is. There is in
it no distortion or high color. It is true to Nature,
low and neutral when she is; and Taylor was a piece
of Nature hewn out of her rock. He was autochthon
as well as, and before he was, seraph. It was said of
Daniel Webster he gravitated to the truth, and could
not argue a bad case comparatively well, - as we
had melancholy proof.  Was it southern blood or
sensitiveness to the agitators' faults that hindered his
rank on the roll of any reform, save of the common
opinion and treatment of his dear sailors? One trait
of genius we might say he lacked, -foreszgih/.
He was no prophet of freedom, of unacknowledged
rights, or the fine arts. It was wonderful how a man,
in zeal and expression so extreme, kept the middle




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.           335
path. Prohibition he opposed; said, people arriving
tired and late ought to be allowed some refreshment;
and, being asked his views of the unexecuted pro
hibitory law, keenly replied, " I did not know there
was in Massachusetts any such law! "  For examiners
and lawyers he was a terrible man to have in the
witness-box.  Yet warmer friend of temperance
nobody could be. He said he would have "' all the
alcohol buried in a cave, and a planet rolled to the
door." What a Peter the Hermit he would have been,
enlisted in any cause!  But he thought reformers
overstated, and were dangerous and unjust. He was
too sympathetic for the work of those who have to
disown society, to put on John the Baptist's leathern
girdle, and war against base organic ways. To be a
crusader, he must have been made of sterner stuff.
Well that lhe did not leave his own stint. The commonweal is a factory, in which each operative must
be held mainly to his special task. The good genius,
that made him in general at once so brilliant and just,
and wrought mightily through him like the demon of
Socrates, was not always present.  Sometimes he
failed and floundered; and the friends or strangers,
that had come to be transported, hung their heads.
The engine was detached, and the train halted, though
he was often dextrous to recover himself and escape.
" I have lost my nominative case," he said once, " blt
I am on the way to glory."- A ship entangled in its
maneuvres is worse off than a skiff. All the movements of his mind were radical, and could suffer no
mortgage.' What are you going to preach about
next Sunday?" he was asked. " I do not know: I




336            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
shall not forestall God!"  His quickness could not be
anticipated or outsped. " I never let a carriage go
before me," he said. His foot was the type of his
thought.  Beside the canonical Scriptures I know
not what he read but the old English divines; and
perhaps no man of note ever wrote so little, in the
modern world. " Why do you go round so, muttering
to yourself? " he was asked. " Because I like to talk
to a sensible man." But he had the broadest sight and
the deepest heart. He was charged with inconsistency
for sympathizing with both sides in a quarrel. But
he saw truth and right on both sides. " Disinterested!"
he said; " I like not the word: I am interested."  If
religion consists in fearing God, he was not a religious
man. " Do you see the black speck? " he said, lifting
a child to baptize. On no bed-plate of a creed did
his machinery move. His tenets were shrouds, only
better to help him spread his sails. Any resentment
in him of a new opinion was not ignorance, but forecast of the mischief into which he supposed it would
lead. He was a loyal:Christian; nor from his moorings could be torn. Yet he fed with his face, and
wanted to feed on all others' faces.  His artist nature
froze, and the shadow of an infinite grief fell on
him when he was misunderstood; and he could be
overheard sobbing and groaning in his room.  It is
the lot of genius! God taxes us on the amount of
our property; and to be driven to appeal to him is
the condition of excellence.  Yet he said he had
never seen an unhappy day. Boston was his crown.
How dear to him the Port Society! "Laugh till I
get back," was one of his farewells. He said of a




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.           337
gloomy theologian, " He seems to have killed somebody, and wants me to help bury the body."  The
reconciling is the highest mind. It was the glory of
Jesus. Taylor was an atonement for us. He said
the Good Samaritan did not "maul the wounded
traveller with texts."  "0 Lord! we.are a widow,"
was his prayer for a bereaved. wife. He threw a little
fish he had caught back into the sea, saying,'" There,
go tell your grandmother you have seen a ghost!"
The-chaise he once owned was always so full of ragged children, his own family could not get seats. But
all his sentiment was the soaring of common sense.
It was the weight not of a sparrow, but an eagle. In
the noble Methodist no jot of Methodist cant. The
little girl, who explained her kneeling at his coffin by
saying, "' He was my friend," and the orange-woman
who walked up the aisle of the crowded church with
her basket on her arm, were his witnesses.
Newness is a mark of genius. Taylor was full of
surprises and novelties. -He astonished a minister,
who had refused to enter his pulpit because a Unitarian
had been in it, by falling on his knees on the pulpitstairs and crying out, " 0 Lord! deliver us in Boston
from' two things, bad rum and'bigotry: thou knowest
which is worst, for I don't!"  When Lincoln succeeded Buchanan, he gave Father Abraham an outfit
of benediction and gracious prophecy. " But, 0 Lord!
as for this'stuff that is going out, we won't say much
about that!"  Reading a proclamation after an election, and pronouncing the words, "' God save the Comnmonwealth," he added, "-He did that last Tuesday'!"
He also prayed that the " creatures about tile Presi22




338            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
dent would not bore a hole through the sheathing of
his integrity." After some trivial talk was over, at a
conference, he informed the speakers he was glad to
see the " light stuff floating off."  " Won't you make
a prayer before you go?'" said a woman to him in her
house.  "What do you want?" he asked; "I can't
make a prayer."  He said of metaphysicians, " They
are like lightning-bugs in a cedar-swamp in Carolina:
snap, snap, and there seems a little light; then all
dark as ever." Mr. Webster ridiculed the Higher
Law, comparing it to the Blue Ridge and other things
above all practical concern. Taylor said, " Higher
Law! a meteoric-stone: stand from under!" It killed
Mr. Webster. His opposition to it was the unpardonable sin. He knew better. Taylor said to some
stolid worshippers, "I would as lief have so many
canes and umbrellas in the pews! I see some' fat
people, corpulent. That is swine's flesh."  How the
obesity shrank from his eyes peering round! - As a
visitor concluded his patronizing survey of the Mariner's House, Taylor said, "Now we will hear any
other up-town sinner who wants to confess."  He
explained the verdict of the governor on the " good
wine, kept until now," by saying it was the best of
water in the Jars, of which "that old soaker knew
not the taste." He said to a minister, some of whose
young folk a new pulpit celebrity had taken away,
"I understand he has had his shovel under your
garden-flowers." Leaving home, this was his picture of Providence: "' He, that gives the whale a cartload of herrings every morning for breakfast, will
take care. of my babes."' Called upon by an impatient




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.           339
throng, waiting for Webster to speak, he hushed them
by saying, "' I never saw such a crowd of good-nature."
The wonder of his pathos was, that when you cried,
and he was crying more, tears rolling down to bathe
his face, he kept on swift and even as the ten-feet
diameter wheels in an express train. He described
Channing dying, with the setting sun making its way
into the chamber through the clambering vines; and
melted his hearers with the charge, " Walk in the
light, walk in the light!" His wife gave him fifty
dollars to pay a bill. He brought the bill with no
receipt. "What have you done with the money?"
she asked. "'Why, I met a superannuated brother,
and how could I ask him to change fifty dollars?"
Describing some sot, he exclaimed, "I will pursue
that man, and never give him up!"  His little child
thought it was his face made the flower open, and
said, " It is sunshine, father; isn't it?" He loved like
God.
But his genius had authority too for its mark. He
denounced a troublesome shiftless character as an
" expensive machine."  His brain was camera and
battery too.  " Can a Calvinist be a Christian?" he
asked Dr. Bushnell. " Certainly!" was the reply.
" Don't be too quick! Suppose God should say to the
elect in heaven, Now I will turn this stick, and give
the other end a chance: would they be content?"
One, who had given information secretly about his
conduct in the sick-room, asked him to say grace at
table. He found her out; and, stirring his coffee, and
not shutting his eyes, but looking straight at her, said,
" Lord, deliver us from deceit, conceit, and tattling! "




340            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
The boy that ran away from home when nine years
old was, as Mr. Webster said of himself, rather hard
to coax, and harder to drive.  The reformers, he
thought, tried to drive him, and his back was up. He
could not be second, being first. He was called commodore, and felt he was in command. He curried
not the favor he got. When fashionable folk took the
sailors' seats in the Bethel, he told them they must
stand, and not Jack.  He was superbly polite and
deferential, but in no company subordinate or abashed.
No culture could exceed the polish his substance took;
but he was at the head. This guest was equal to any
host. He was a chief in his black cravat; and, when
he had been combed, how handsome he sat while the
wisest hung on his lips, from which every word was
an artist's piece in color! " The sea, majestic!" he
said; and his face was "the wrinkled sea," with all
its grandeur, and the incalculable laughter of which
zEschylus writes. For him  there must be " more
sea i " He had the- dignity of one on the quarter-deck.
" If my employers are not content, they shall see the
back seams of my stockings." He would have been
like Adoniram Judson, of whom the captain he took
passage with told me that, when the ship was attacked
by pirates, he loaded and fired faster than any man he
ever saw. Taylor was not mealy-mouthed. A Unitarian preacher having descanted on the ever-lingering
misery of sinful memory after repentance, he compared
him to a beetle-bug rolling over the sand his ball of
dirt.  Something supreme and final was always in
the sentence he pronounced. He was lowly and lordly
too. The belt of no man or woman was adorned with




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.           341
his scalp. "He will have his hide on the fence tomorrow," said a coarse man, of the way a certain
master would proceed with his opponent. Easy to be
entreated as Taylor was, he was ready for whoever
wanted to contend, and meant there should be no
drawn battle. Seeing a man in the pulpit whorn he
did.not like, he turned rapidly to leave the house.
His genius was no wandering impulse: he was borne
on as a billow, but with a mighty design. ~ There is an
inspiration to the will from the perception of truth
which gives the right to decide and direct. The doctrine of Infallibility is true, though not of the pope as
such.  Sixtus said the truth had been committed to
him, though he sometimes thought he had lost the
key! It is committed to every man who knows that
truth is truth, knows it when he sees it. Human fallibility is a mean phrase. Uncertainty is atheism and
despair. My beholding warrants my affirming. In
tuition justifies assumption; and Taylor, because he
transmitted, swayed.
A sure mark of genius is its clothing of grace.
Nature, says Goethe, is pledged to the protection of
genius; and she protects not only its life, but its action
and speech from all deformity and bad taste. Taylor's
most unforeseeable flights kept the line of order; and
accomplished philosophers were awkward and angular
before the flexile motions of his body and mind. In
his oddest figures we had to own a charm. When he
said of a famous soprano singer, "She screams like a
pea-hen," or of the two or three, that came to tle meeting, out of a great body, " These are the absorbents;"
he showed himself a detective of correspondences
Swedenborg might admire.




342           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Another note of genius is presence of mind, or the
whole man at the occasion, in what he says and does;
though we call its inattention and deafness to our
irrelevant trifles of talk and procedure absence of
mind. It knows where it is! " I feel," said Ole Bull,
after an improvisation on the violin, " as if I had been
in other worlds."  " The light that never was on land
or sea " is sometimes in a human face. Female vanity
hides little jets of gas-light under the hair to make a
halo round the head. But Taylor was like Moses: he
wist not that his face shone. Presence of mind in him
was sometimes absence of body as well as self-oblivion.
He forgot his wedding-day, and was out on Telegraph
Hill, in Hull, with a spy-glass, talking of his dear
Deborah, when she was waiting for him to keep his
appointment as a bridegroom in Marblehead. Nature
was strong in his character. This convert had no
change of heart; though listening to Mr. Hedding's
sermon he said, " I cried for quarters soon."
One more trait of genius is continuiz'ty. He did not,
like oratorical experts, hoard his good things to say
over again, so that following him round we had the
same old fund of commonplaces and store of jokes;
but went on, his word a marvel to everybody and not
less to himself, fresh as the morning or a new-blown
rose; because his was not Everett's art or Phillips's
genius for elocution, but his own of eloquence. He
was fearless of death, but stoutly said he would not
give up till he was dead. Being told he was going to
the angels:." Folks better than angels!" he said. He
was grieved because the last time a friend visited him
he could not wait upon her to the door.  Shortly




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.           343
before his death he went several times to the glass and
addressed himself as another man needing salvation,
saying, " I guess you are not ready; you, old man and
infidel, have not made up your mind:" then looked at
himself with silent scorn, as if comparing his reduced
estate with former glory.  His last audible prayer
was: "' Lord, what am I here for? What am I doing
here? I'm no use to anybody. The love my friends
have for me will soon be gone. The love I have for
my friends will soon be gone. Now, Lord, some
morning suddenly snatch me to thyself!"  The Lord
heard; the Lord did! He: went, as a sailor would,
just at the turn of the tide. It was ebb-tide here: it
was flood-tide somewhere. The death below was a
mighty birth above. Such a soul, beyond miracle or
prophecy, is proof of immortality. A brother once
said to him, " Give me a subject."  " It would be too
hot for you to hold," he answered. Marvellous such
a flame burnt so long! The fire has not gone out, but
the fuel. Must there not be more fuel for such a fire?
I ask leave to see it burn again! He was restless the
last nights; and his nurse, a man that slept by him,
tried to keep him in bed, as if with an unconscious
hand. "Do you know," Taylor said to him, " how
smoothly you are sinning? You are trying to cheat
the Devil; but he will find you out!" Happy continuation now is not that unrest?
Shall we not say he was one of the universal men?
He resists all sectarian claim or classification. He drew
every futrrow with a subsoil plough. He was not a
local celebrity, but an honor to mankind. Unknown
to literature, he will be a tradition in the common




344          i. RADICAL PROBLEMS.
mind. Across the line of party he stood a colossus
guarding the harbor for humanity. He was a Radical, not born late, out of due time, as Paul said, but
before the time.  Yet he was no heretic, but a uniter,
reaching the man in all men. He spoke not to one
set or sort of persons, but was understood with equal
delight by every class. Fine lady and scholar -Miss
Bremer and- Jenny Lind and Charles Dickensmixed, in the Bethel, with-the tars that had anchors
in India ink oni the back of their hands, or clumsy
rings in their ears, or vertebra- of sharks to hold the
kerchiefs round their necks.  Two hundred millions
of miles measure- the diameter of the earth's orbit for
the yard-stick of astronomy. The circuit of his revolutioh was a' parallax for the race.
Failh'is a mark of genius. Systems of doubt or
pessimism have been built by able logicians, but never
by intuitive men'. For every truth of the spirit is a lie
in the understanding; and the head, informed but by
the senses, is an infidel and atheist. The finer intellect of love and imagination discerns truth and being.
This intelligence in  Taylor was so perfect, - his
thought was in such contact with the ideal thing, -
that he never talked of faith. That seems to interpose a process between the faculty and it's object.
He knew, and had a lofty scorn for anybody's refusal
of the term  knowledge to spiritual matters.  He
owned the One God in some Trinitarian way, as the
Athanasian Trinity hints the infinite mystery better
than that bald Hebrew-and Unitarian monotheism in
which God is an individual; although a three-fold
Deity be not so good as a manifold.




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.           345
Once more, a mark of genius is joy. It denies the
reality of wickedness or woe, and affirms the prevalence of the Good. It chants the rhythm of the river
of God. The test of the soundness of any scheme is,
Can it be sung?  Is the essence of harmony and
poetry in it?  We are told there is a wedding of
misery and music in some famous compositions, as
Bach's St. Matthew passion-music, Dante's " Inferno,"
and Milton's "Paradise Lost."  But the wretched
tenets never inspired the tune. The wondrous score
of the Prince of harmonists means from his choral
soul more and other than the Calvinism attached to it.
The old dogmas hang as a weight on the wings of the
English bard, and make his poem, which Dr.'Channing called "' perhaps the noblest monument of human
genius," in parts heavy reading.  It is the justice,
not the curse, that gives such lurid glory to the
Italian's lines. Yet both these mighty works are of
the past, - Songs, as David says, of degrees, diminishing, - hardly of the present, not at all of the future,
and sure to feel the tooth of time as the conceptions
they grew out of are outgrown by the advancing
human mind. " Faust," for eschewing their fatality,
may outlast them, till itself yield to some deeper discovery of the gladness of creation's root.  Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom" and Pollok's "Course of
Time " are just expressions of the gloomy theology in
its discord of untruth, — the harmonies of Orthodoxy
being to those of the coming faith as Chinese gongs
to Beethoven's symphonies.  Taylor was the happy
nature.  He was a day of jubilee.  The Sun of
Righteousness was always rising on. him, and the




346            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
vapors could not stay.  The burden of sin, he declared, could be dropped in a moment. He admitted
no essential evil; and, though he said deviZ, he despised and routed that adversary as Luther did. With
his irresistible cheer, he practised the apostolic gift of
absolution to sad and despairing men, as well as Peter
or John. He was not tolerant on the surface and a
bigot at the core, like some Radicals, as sour when
they are ripe as when they are green. No dogmatism
sailed under the flag of his liberality, and no Indifferentism  stretched his charity so wide.  He was no
eclectic, with a patch-work of opinions picked from
every quarter; and no syncretist, in whose mind contradictbry notions throve together. He professed not
that large swallow for all sorts of belief, which is
called catholicity, and means crudity. Nor had he
any scrupulosity to thrust on others, by which to
square their conduct to his judgment, and sacrifice
God and man on the shrine of a morbid conscience.
He never flew in your face with ill-advised interference, nor crowded you with that self-pronouncing and
intruding individuality which by dint of present honesty and absent sympathy becomes the worst tyranny.
His weight was not oppression. He was no cynic,
taking exceptions; and, if he could roar, he did not
know how to bark. He was in no covert, conceiving
suspicions, pregnant with plots, or hatching any hate.
If he was ever for a moment angry, he never nursed his
spite. His presence was a lifting of the curtains and
letting in the sun. He was a medium, and God not a
scientific conclusion he waited for, or a metaphysical
abstraction constructed of arguments, like a child's




GENIUS: FATHER TAYLOR.            347
doll of rags, but a living spring, not to be cut from
the stream; appearing best not in the earth or the sky,
but that image of himself in which he made man.
Whence came this prodigy of power? What blood
of England or Italy flowed in his veins? Neither he
nor his seem to have known. He is our King Melchisedec, without father or mother, every thing hid
but his divine descent. We must claim for an American one whose patriotism would have made him
equally ready with Franklin to argue in a foreign
court, or with Farragut to lash himself to the mast in
the harbor of New Orleans.  He hated secession as
Satan; and, while at home with foreigners of every
nation, was proud of his native land as the crown of
the globe. He was a case of Nature's bounty in her
most royal mood, and, himself a true sovereign, the
head of every board at which he sat.  Doubtless in
him was something presiding that could not take the
inferior part.  When his little daughter, being chid
for ill-reading, took it to heart, he said: 1" Don't be a
fool. Why don't you go on?" -- " Because, father, I
am a fool."- " Yes," he rejoined, " that is a capital
thing to find out!" quenching in drollery his severity,
with that interplay of faculties always at his command.
Is not this genius, to blend all powers in one?  WVe
knew not what he would do next; only it would be
some happy turn; for he was not of that order of
mind that sees the dark side and flies to the sore spot,
the critic that spoils conversation and shuts out those
whom he is intent on convicting from enriching himself. It was Taylor's generosity to be open and
receptive, - to give and take as a child.




348            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
How account for this phenomenon of genius?  It is
easier to assign its characteristics than its conditions.
We shall trace its origin, when we can give the genesis of God. There is nothing a metaphysician will
not attempt; but no manufactory has yet been set
upI to deliver such articles as I have described, run
smoothly as the barren machine of a theory will.
"Who shall tell his generation?" Even the Christ
Christendom worships is no pure historic person, but
in part a creation of the human mind. Glory of
Greek myth through John's Gospel flows in to fill out
the synoptic figure of the other evangelists into sublimity; and Paul is so entranced with the ideal
Saviour of inward revelation, he does not want to see
the actual one of flesh and blood; while we never
hear of Thomas as inspired to do aught with his
proof of fingers in the print of the nails, and hand
thrust into the side! Plato translates into poetry the
Socratic prose.  But Jesus was the poet of God.
What-he showed and acted he melodiously spoke.  It
was a near and intimate fact.  In something like the
same solution was Nature in this loyal disciple's mind.
He used no telescope of philosophic thought. Nothing
was far from him. Such manifestations as came from
the untaught mariner's minister escape analysis. The
breathing they articulate who can measure or understand?




XPRIENCE.
EXPERIENCE.'~TNHEN  Paul spoke of himself, he said he spoke
as a fool. Yet how glad we are he spoke!
In the assizes, answering to the apostle's confession,
held for a minister on his anniversary days, he seems
to have an unfair advantage. He is judge, jury, advocate, witness on the stand, sheriff, and prisoner in the
box, which the pulpit is. He is all but the spectators
in court. Yet they are the silent bench with which
lies the decision of his competency. I plead guilty,
after protracted illness, of which I gave no speech or
voluntary sign. To all- concerned, let me say, the
confession could have come earlier only as a groan.
Now it is detached from experience into a thought, I
feel that any suspicion of my wrongly remaining a
minister tallies with my own judgment.
" Superfluous lags a veteran on the stage."
I have lingered, hoping to be a helper still, haunted
by some dream of being more useful because of what
I have endured. But I would especially give a lesson
of sympathy for that class of patients I have belonged
to, called nervous, always numerous in a community




350            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
under high pressure, and with many cases arising
from  the tremendous strain of our civil war. Is this
sort of sickness hard to bear with? It is harder to
bear!  What are its symptoms?  Loss of appetite,
loathing of exercise, and greater disgust of quiet, discontent alike with motion or rest, irritability of fibre,
magnifying of trifles of dispute, indecision, and dissatisfaction with either alternative, preference of the
thing we did not choose or was not chosen for us,
impotent thought. fugitive sleep. Sleep He gives to
his beloved: does he hate those from whom it is withheld? Sleep, God's sub-creator of the human body
and soul, his aeon or emanation needful to plants and
animals, preserver of reason, fender-off of death, more
to us than food; sleep, which we must have, even at
the cost of a poisonous drug, else expire or become
insane; sleep, for which God made poppy, opium,
and ether, and chloral, -that is the banished friend,
vainly implored visitor of the weak or disordered
brain that needs it most.
"0  gentle sleep, how have I frighted thee?"
"Macbeth hath murdered sleep."
It was the worst of all capital crimes. Young man
or woman, do no evil or excess to kill your sleep!
" When restless on my bed I lie,
Still courting sleep, which still will fly:"
How often, as the midnight hours rolled slowly on,
and my bed became not a refuge, but a rack, have I
repeated and thanked that good bishop Noel for the
lines his own necessity must have inspired!  How
often have I lain, and noted the signs of the city's




EXPERIENCE.                351
waking: the scream of an early train near the station,
-an affront to the sick that ought to be put away by
some substitute of noiseless signals, -the tread of
some preposterous walker before peep of dawn, the
rattle of a milk-cart getting the start of any coach; at
last, the street official putting out the gas-light, without
- let us be thankful for so much -his noisy ladder
now; and, all through, alternating with fits and
snatches of uneasy slumber, the clang of the neighboring town-clock, telling the hours or tolling them for
whom, - man or woman, - in the glare of some
night-lamp drawing the last breath!  Putting the
head in a particular position, counting mathematical
figures, walking like Franklin round the chamber,
and many other specifics against sleeplessness, have
been prescribed.  I have found tranquil prayer for
sleep the best. He who does not sleep is never truly
awake. The calenture of the night succeeds comatose dozing in the day. Capacity for comfort fails:
the charm of life is gone.
The sufferer endures a curious divorce of eye and
heart. He sees clearly what he cannot enjoy. " Beautiful!" cried those who rode with me through woods
and flowers, along the Connecticut banks, round Sunday Mountain, in New Hampshire, or curving in and
out of the beaches and tide-lapped indentations of
Cape Ann. " I perceive it," I answered, " but do not
feel. Strange! I who have felt such things so much."
"Sublime! " sang my fellow-voyagers of the sea, roofing its calm floor with the eternal vault, or rolling its
surface into floating crests that mocked the fixed ones
of the everlasting hills.  res: I could give it an




352            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
understanding, but no heart or tongue!  The great
Atlantic, shouildering with the weight of a thousand
leagues of billows against the harborless Azores, the
ship-devouring rocks, like tusks, the light froth on
which I could distinguish three miles off'; Fayal,
with its lovely gardens to match almost those of Kew
or Versailles; Madeira, frequented by English invalids, a huge emerald, with color more enchanting
for the mist that laced its sides, and curled through
every rugged gorge; Teneriffe, like which, Milton
says, Satan stood, but which seemed to me not defiant,
rather as one that bore a smoking censer, and worshipped before God; Oritava, a town creeping safe
into the hollows betwixt its spurs of brown volcanic
tufa and the boundless surge, - these are pictures I
gaze at now, with my mind's eye, with tenfold more
pleasure than when I saw them indeed. As I leaned,
and would scarce have resented or resisted being
thrown over the gunwale, the floating sea-weed on
the blue water seemed less adrift and more at home
than I. The pine barrens of that big sand-bank, and
last bit of the continent which the Gulf slipped off
from, - Florida, - delight me in reflection as they did
not when I wandered through them, and picked from
the rugged waste, in February, as delicate blossoms
as New England Afield or garden can show in June.
It is a question, through which we get most, the
eye or ear. The deaf and blind would not agree! I
should say the eye; yet, in some conditions of debility, more from the ear, partly that it is a more
passive organ.  There never was a time when a
hymn sweetly sung by a human voice, or the piano




EXPERIENCE.                353
struck by a friendly hand, or the church-organ making
the pews tremble, or gushing through the windows,
as I wandered outside, too weak to go in,'could not
soothe a little the agitated soul. But Jesus was right,
as he always is: the Spirit is the Comforter. When
I could not enjoy conversation, or write a letter, or
without reluctance sign my name, or visit a friend, or
do the terrible business of shaving my beard, or read
a book or columnn of a newspaper, save sentence by
sentence, and nobody wrote to me, because I wrote to
nobody; when my nature recoiled from a familiar
face, like the hand of a boy first touching a galvanic
battery; when the Diary I took abroad with me to
make notes in came back blank ags it went, without
one record; when I could not think or love or pray,
save as in lucid intervals the pall lifted to shut me in
again, - then, the sun being gone, some One, as in
the English Hunt's picture, came with a lantern. The
blaze of ideas, whence I knew Inot, visited my
wintry season; as the earth's procession through the
shower of countless stars comes at the dismal November
section of its annual round. Talk of poor Joseph cast
into an empty pit! This mental depression is a pit of
deeper vacuity,- harder than solitary confinement in
jail. - When a noble woman, living companionless
with her disease, was admonished for saying God's
dealing with her had been rather hard, she answered,
smiling::" Oh, I tell him worse things than that when
I am with him alone!"  Have you never been tempted
to remonstrate like Job, or cry, with Luther, " God,
art thou dead? "  The medicines in his chest, like the
arrows in his quiver, exceed computation. Yet "' how
23




354+           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
long, O Lord?" Why wonder what Christ meant by
being abandoned?  Has not everybody been in Gethsemane? Travelling does not take you there.'Tis
not by steam or rail you arrive.  I want no commentator to tell me what particular Psalm he quoted
from. I have been down with him, unable to cope
with Nature or struggle with the crowd, -'the world
too many for me," as said poor dying Tulliver, in the
story.  The earth rejected me, too weary to stand or
walk; the air rejected me, chilled with its slightest
east or northern flaw; the sea rejected me,-sick of its
easiest motion. I was the man overboard, with head
under and hand uplifted, whom no rope is thrown to.
What shall I do? Whither can I go?  "Why hast
thou forsaken me?" 
When the substance of anguish had passed, a long
comet's tail, such as you have seen athwart the
heavens, of thinness and inefficiency, drew after. But
" in a hundred and fifty days," we read, the deluge
abated, " and the tops of the mountains were seen."
Every cloud is fugitive: thfe sun remains, holds his
station, and is bigger than any cloud. By imperceptible degrees, strength returns; grain by grain, too
small for a month of them to be weighed; atoms from
the ground through a million foot-falls, particles from
the atmosphere to the convalescing invalid the very
breath and Spirit of God, undulations from the light
the sick man lies and suns himself in, as beams of His
countenance. He seems conscious of invisible increments from the jar and jolt of every ship or carriage
that drags or tosses him across the hobbly land, or
over the shifting, uneven deep; most of all from looks




EXPERIENCE.                 355
of that unaltered human love, best witness of the
Divine. I was in need, and found help. After breaking the bread, I was famished myself. Then I fed on
friends' faces. Others' death and sorrow, which I had
grappled with, got me in their grip. Why did I not
give up my Church? I was too selfish. I was so
identified with it, in a common circulation, I felt I
was gone if I gave it up; I should have died.  I
clung to it as my life-boat. I hung to it as a sailor to
a spar aloft in a hurricane, or half-drowned in the
boiling gulf. If I could not keep hold of some support, I was lost. My office was my support. The
line of good-will which I grasped, I was buoyed up
by. If others' patience gave out, they never told me,
and I knew it not. If God be as considerate as man
and woman, there is nothing to fear.
In my enforced vacation, I wrote a dozen discourses,
as an anxious squirrel lays up nuts for winter in his
nest. I have scarce looked at them since. Thank
God not for ease, but for work! Complaint of labor,
in mill, shop, trench, or dock? The privilege is to
toil.  If I can do it any way, - at desk or tackle,
with hammer or pen, - my neighbors may have all
the play. I had envied the dogs in Jacksonville that,
as I sat tired on some door-stone, licked the sores not
of my flesh, but my heart. I thank those dogs! My
pain is mine, my property. I have been rich in it,
made a large investment: I cannot part with, and nobody can rob me of. I suppose it would be accounted
no charity to give it away. But it pays well. It has
cancelled self-love, quenched worldly ambition, signed
and sealed me to sincerity, offset undue love of life,




356            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
made the grave attractive, assayed the worth of many
a friendship, wiped out worthless securities; reckoned
up, among various obligations, the bad- debts, like
notes all have held, - the sums not worth the paper
they are written on, - and left a great remainder -on
the credit side. Be sick or sad, and who is cruel or
kind you will find out fast enough!
But, partially competent again in body, am I so in
mind? Have I got softening of the brain? Are my
views infidel and unsound? I have refused to swear
by any words or symbols of sect.  Ecclesiastical
independence, absolute freedom of thought, — have I
by these wasted my Lord's goods? Long accounted
a poor sort of believer,, sometimes denied entrance to
Unitarian or Universalist pulpits, given to understand
that religious organs would not welcome contributions
from  my pen, -if I am now invited to write, and
find myself unexpectedly no outcast from either wing,
in full communion of good-will with Radical and Conservative schools, I  take it as a sign of the advance of
ideas in Theology.  I would help both sides with
what is true'in either, but commit myself to none.
The trifling touch of martyrdom, the little taste of
excommunication, has been' to me no injury, but a
real treat. I early discovered that reputation, popularity for actor or preacher, so far frolm being a thing
to be seized or coveted, is the chief danger, and almost
inevitable harm. When David said, " I am smnall and
despised," did he reflect but for that he would never
have written his psalm?  It is a great blessing to be
obscure and unnoticed, not run after or asked to speak
on platforms, to pray on great occasions, or say grace




EXPERIENCE.                 357
at public tables.  " I am nobody," said a good woman,
after telling me what she thought. - "Is it," I answered, "because you are all spirit?"   It is very
good to be no body, and go down into this cavern of
nothingness, where no human favor follows, and love
of approbation cannot breathe. Does not the miner
get his treasure out of the rayless bowels of the earth,
as the diver fetches up pearls, and ingots of sunken
ships, from airless depths where no-lungs but his could
hold their own? So spiritual riches are drawn out of
the humiliations where mortal vanity dies, and nought
but irrepressible persuasion can survive.  Thus we
learn the Spirit is more and greater than any form of
religion, superior to and including Christianity, using
it as prime minister.
Of this teaching, the test is the opposition it waxes
through, like the day-star. Its seal is the sickness and
grief it suffices for. -Its demonstration is in souls content- with information from that secret tongue all scriptures are but sentences of, dropped by the way, and, like
your conversation -of yesterday, forgot in new calls-!
From everlasting to everlasting its speech of instruction and consolation. God's accessibility to man and
man's to God is all. The explosion of the old dogma
of verbal inspiration, falling before geology like Metz
and Strasbourg at the tread of the German hosts, drives
us from the letter that killeth, to refuge in the pavilion of Real Presence. The miracle to which study
turns all creation dwarfs special wonders. The proof
of one God appears not in the first verse of Genesis,
but in the style of Nature graven on pages of rock
and in tables of the heart.  It is not made of meta



358            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
physic star-dust, like the solar system of nebula, but
inborn. The depth saith, It is not in me; and the sea
saith, It is not with me; but God knoweth the place
of wisdom. The evidence of immortality rises in our
consciousness of qualities that cannot perish, of whose
endurance no. resurrection is more than a sign. Can
science, groping among things ponderable or imponderable in its scales, grub up any demonstration apart
from that con-science which is its own head and king?
The Church I rejoice in is aloof from strife, -a stepping-stone between contending sects, and across the
wildly running stream of controversy.
But these themes may be dwelt upon too much, to
the sacrifice of health! To this judgment I demur.
Whatever injury may arise from imprudent habit or
undue sensibility, honed like a razor by social duties, I
impute none to an over-wrought intellect, least of all to
the particular line of investigation pursued, or the conclusions reached. Free-thinking has odium enough
to bear, without being made the scapegoat of private
infirmities. When I have had to contrive all sorts of
ways, - gazing into shop-windows, perusing the panorama of faces unrolling on the high-way, riding in
cars, lifting in gymnasiums, rowing in boats, looking
at pictures, doing mechanical jobs about the house,
and falling so low as to play backgammon, to get along
and make the day pass; when time became the pillory I stood in, not the chariot I was borne by, and an
hour was a heavy thing for me to carry; — how amusing to be told, " Don't work too hard, but rest! These
ingenious investigations are doing you or anybody no
good." As Horatio said to Hamlet, it was hinted to me,




EXPERIENCE.                 359
"'Twere to consider too curiously,
To consider so."
Alas! not work, but to be forced to strike work, is
what kills. I was dying in the Sahara of a barren
brain, starving for want of bread from the mouth of
God. Duty is restoration.  It makes the desert in
us blossom  as the rose.  Is this but a fond fancy of
returning faculty, when the actual power is gone?
As Nature hides ruins with moss, she may conceal the
inward ruin of men growing in years with an illusion
of freshness and wonted strength. The hunter leaves
the hollow tree he has rifled of its honey: people will
not resort to us for knowledge, when no more sweetness is left in this hive of the brain, or only some
whimsical, solitary bee, in the shape of an odd notion,
buzzes in the bonnet of one's head.  There is not
much more music in him: he is getting old, and rides
his hobby! Is that hobby an eternal idea, deserving a
better name?  Has the minister any thing more to
say? Affection, however tender, will not draw people
to the failing voice, on whose resources of vital vigor
they once hung. I have nothing to say to gather a
throng. What the multitude follow, I cannot furnish;
for I do not follow it myself. Where it is afforded, I
could not, save as a task, go to meeting. When I see
by what cheap gifts the masses of men are summoned; how even the Liberal Church is led not by
its wisest, but some of its shallowest men; when, in
what is vulgarly considered eloquence, I note the
violence, as of a deafening gun, while those whose
accents thrill me have no wide -hearing, - then I
ponder the truth of Christ's text of the broad and




360            RADICAL- PROBLEMS.
narrow w'ay. The multitude ran after him not for
doctrine or miracle, but for the loaves. Said a magazine editor: "I could improve my articles fifty per
cent, and diminish my subscription list at the same
rate." You can fill your pews, as you can your pockets, with what would never fill or feed, but only make
lean, your souls. Do I cheapen others' gifts to chant
my own wares?: I value captivating qualities, if
solidity go along with show. Be fascinated, if you
can be saved! But take some organ of principle, not
a compromiser who can play well, using an audience
as the instrument to accompany the tones with which
he voices his own love of influence or ambition of fame!
A minister no more than any other man can thrive
without fellowship. Self-sustaining as we may be,
doubtless they keep us alive who persuade us we are
of some importance, and that there is reason for us to
stay yet for a time in the world. So Jesus was encouraged by Martha and Mary, by Lazarus and John,
and all those common people who heard him gladly,
because they had more sense than the deaf Pharisee
or Scribe.
Sickness is a thing to be ashamed of. Somebody
has blundered! The ignominious egotism, to which
no reader will suppose -vanity could tempt, may have
value of testimony, especially as regards health.' My
child is prostrate," said one: " what has cured youz?"
The answer is, perpetual open air, with its slow
uplifting of the body, like the Spirit's of the soul.
Nature, and no man, is the resurrection doctor. The
roof and the furnace are our foes. Embrace Nature,
and she will befriend you. The earth is the Lord's.




EXPERIENCE.                36I
We must respect it in us and out of us, or it will take
its revenge, and resolve us from this sensitive frame
into itself.
But the moral relief is not less signal. Have you
suffered any grief, calamity, disappointment, or treachery, through whose wound from a falsely trusted hand
your life threatens to bleed away? Take it with you
to the temple, the house of God, which he makes of
beauty and strength, without hands; and you will soon
find you have left it behind. My Judas did not go
with me into the woods, and I could not discover my
sorrow on the sea. The dust of the ground stanched
my stabs; the rippling air cooled the fever of my
mind, and the chasing waves bore off every trouble
faster than the sailing ships. What power, without
intruding, entered so deep?
The elements are the nurses, too, of faith. When
my life was fading away, I took my companion with
me to the beach; and, as the billows rolled and retired, and the sandy channels creased themselves every
moment anew, I said to him what I here repeat, that
no miracle or prophecy, no ancient promise or written
text, but the trust in God coming to the heart in a
whisper from his work, is my token of immortality.




XVI.
HOP E.
PERFECT human spirit would have no argument about a future' lot. Evidences of immortality could be no more sought by it than by an angel.
When we project our thought to the place in the
ground where our flesh shall lie, or query what is for
us beyond, we have fallen from grace and lost the
everlasting present of duty and joy. God might as
well doubt his continuance as we ours, when in communion with him.  But this height is so rare and
momentary in the best souls, the question of destiny
cannot be escaped. The boy I met, crying because
he did not know where his father was, expressed an
anxiety wide as the world about vanished friends. No
question but. something, every thing some way, must
last. The knowledge and love that light and kindle
these chambers of the breast will blaze on. But will
it be our light and knowledge when the walls are
taken down? or will the occupant be crushed, like
those islanders of St. Thomas under the ruins the
hurricane made of their abodes? We are tenants at
will, liable any moment to be served with a notice to
quit; living some of us in old mansions which, as Mr.




HOPE.                    363
Jefferson said of himself, the owner refuses to repair.
What a spectacle! mankind marching up, rank after
rank; each generation, as it crosses the stage, taking
a look at the magnificent picture, then passing on to
give place -to the next; the world a great inn, and
every soul a guest at the table, well fed and waited on,
but resigning his chair to the coming traveller; as the
Northman said, like a bird flying in at one window,
and out at the other, - from  darkness to darkness.
As a visitor of Titian's paintings said, it seems as
if we were the shadows.  Is matter solid, and spirit
the reflection  it casts?   That is: an absurdity to
thought.
But what proof of immortality? None, we must
confess, but the hole.   Elijah's ascension  in the
chariot of fire, if such a spectacle astonished Elisha;
Enoch's translation, if God took him, sending no angel
of death; Christ's raising of Lazarus, or his own resurrection,- were no assurance.  I see many persons
counted worthy of things I do not attain; and some
of the ancients held to the immortality of great souls,
but not of common people. The ghosts, which my
friends the Spiritualists tell me of, do not show themselves to me; and, if they did, they might cross where
I should slip.
I fall back on my Hope. No demonstration, - only
a hope? That is all; but what is that? By whom is
that candle lit that sends its beams so far?  Who put
it into my head that I am going to outlive my body,
outshine the stars with my eyes, and be when the
heavens are no more? No mortal did it. I did it not
myself. What hand dropped in the human bosom the




364            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
seed of this blossom of faith, fairer than from the sod
of any sepulchre? My Hope is my argument. It is
a note of hand which needs no indorser, which the
drawer will pay though the name of never a prophet
were written on the back. My constitution to aspire
to endless being is evidence which no miracle can
strengthen. It is a prophecy Job or Jesus cannot add
to, though their lamp carried through the inward crypts
help me to read the Maker's record. Make out hope
as part of your nature,- no accident or whim, but an
angel He despatched, - and the case is won. A man
is indicted at the law for exciting expectations he did
not fulfil. That is a crime God does not commit. I
saw the remains of a dear mother borne to their rest.
Silently the coffin was lowered.  No gravel from
sexton's spade rattled on the lid.  No burial-service
was said at the grave. Heaps of flowers from hands
of mourning friends dropped after, with showers of
tears to keep them alive a little longer above the more
precious human flower fading away. Hope soared
over-head to say, only the broken vase where it had
bloomed was there, like that which, when you transplant, you cast away.  The real flower was in another garden.  A deceiver, a lying spirit is it, sent
only to tantalize, torment, and disappoint?  Then
talk no longer of the God of hope, but let Deity and
immortality go together, and introduce a new worship
of the demon of despair.
Hope is the parent of faith. I believe in the Heaven
I[ am made to forecast, whose horoscope no human
hand constructed. Marius the Roman general meditates among the ruins of Carthage.  Amid what




HOP1E.                   365
wrecks human hope will sit  The soul, distressed
and afflicted, impoverished and bereaved, yet never
surrenders, but yearns and longs and anticipates still.
God cannot shake it off, smite and buffet it as he will.
It takes sides with him  against itself.  David from
his depths cries out, "' It is good that I have been
afflicted;" and in an old Bible I have read the pencilling of one in sore grief against his text: " With
my whole heart I acknowledge this." What is it that
accepts misery from the Most High, defends the Providence that inflicts its woes, espouses its chastiser's
cause, purges itself in the pit of its misery of all contempt of his commands, and makes its agonies the
beams and rafters of the triumph it builds? It is an
immortal principle.  It is an indestructible essence.
It is part and parcel of the Divinity it adores. It can
no more die than he can. It needs no more insurance
of life than its author does. Prove its title?  It is
proof itself of all things else. It is substantive, and
every thing adjective beside.  It is the kingdom all
things will be added to. "My mind a kingdom  is,"
pass popedoms and empires and temporalities as they
will.
But this is not argument: it is ecstasy. What is
ecstasy?  An uplifting to some position above our
usual stand.  We always see more, as we get up
higher on a tower or hill. On yonder cape, whose
name of Ann some love of woman gave, I have been
amazed at revelations of beauty, from rising forty or
fifty feet into the air: forests in the dim horizon,
intervales stretching along the banks of streams, and
the far-off Atlantic swell and'roll girdling with foam




366           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
the isles. It is an ecstasy to be on Mount Washington
or Mont Blanc: it extends the view.  Some years
ago, I sailed with some friends to pick up that little
pin on the floor of the deep, -the island of Fayal.
As we surmised from observations of the sun that we
were nearing the latitude where it is laid down, there
was debate whether a vague cloudy line we saw in
the distance was land or mist.  But a great surge
tossing the vessel brought out plainly the hump
of vineyards washed with breakers and laced with
streams, to our exclamation of unanimous joy. So
from the surge of feeling we may descry the heavenly
shore, hid from the level survey of common-place life.
It is no halcyon. but a stormy, sea that lifts us to the
vision. Not on the bright glassy surface of our prosperity, but on the sullen, heaving tide of sorrow, shall
we behold the port we would make. Gray weather
softens the landscape, and assists the sight. It was
said of England, she imagines she sees further on
a cloudy, threatening day than with all clear. So
through gloom we discern glory. The storm throws
up the sea-weed to enrich the land. Foul weather
is needed to make the fair fruitful.  The bolt that
shatters your roof directs your eye upward.  The
Almighty blesses us with menace as with promise.
When our children, the heirs we hoped to leave our
lodging to, are carried dead from its door, we seek a
city that hath foundations; for we, too, on our own
thresholds must turn our back, and, able to walk no
more, be led and lowered through the same low gateway.
No argument, but the operation of the human mind,




HOPE.                   367
the divine order of mortal life and the anticipation
our Creator stands sponsor for, —of immortality.
But the trial is to dissociate the spirit from the
body; which we keep unburied long as we can, and
but for the offence would keep for ever.'Does the
objection to incremation arise from an apprehension
that from the deeper hurt of fire the mortal figure may
not be restored?  We cannot separate our idea of
spirit, in God or man, from form. -We understand,
the form must pass. But it has been the tabernacle
of the mind.  Some celestial form corresponds to it,
the faintest earthly likeness to which our piety would
cherish, till Nature, in whose lap we  lay it, resolve it
into mother dust. Something of the, familiar appearance and expression of' our beloved must go up, for
us to know them by, when our turn comes. Fa'ther
Taylor said, when told he was going among the angels: " PFolks better than angels."  But angels are
folks. An aged woman- objected to dying, and going
where she was not acquainted.  Shall we not find
our acquaintance there?
Beauty and power reside not in the grosser masses,
but the finer elements,- the atoms and rays, the
undulations and electric streams.  Whoever credits
God as being can trust his provision of fit frame for
the picture and living image of his creation, when the
coarse setting of clay cracks and falls.  There is in
death, as the Psalmist says, a shadow; but, through
that alone -the vista shines. Darkness is the condition of lustre. It is the great: Painter's background.
Sadness has brightness which no hilarity can show.
There is a flower, though growing in gloomy places,




368             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
the most brilliant that blossoms in our woods, which
is yet not gay, - not for merry-making. No maiden
would wear it in her hair at the party for a dance,
or use it for a wedding-favor, or put it, like a rose
or lily, in her breast. In its scarlet or crimson leaf
is a purple tinge, which as we gaze may draw a tear.
But its shape and color outgrace in the damp pool all
the bloom of the garden. It is the Cardinal Flower,
deserving its princely name, as an emblem of that
hope which springs so splendid in the shady spots of
our fortune and dim recesses of the heart.
To build immortality on any bodily resurrection is
a mistake. The ascension of Christ's mortal flesh to
eternal glory, what a monstrous conception which
Unitarian and Trinitarian still hold, with the logical
inference that the flesh of all his followers out of corruption shall rise! In Indiana, an aeronaut, missing
his seat, but clinging to the cords of his balloon, rose
a mile into the air, and then, exhausted, fell to the
ground. All bodily rising must end in fall. Not so
the good father, not so the dear child, will rise. Risen
they have, and gone forth; leaving, like Jesus, the
linen garments, as the roused sleeper does his bedclothes behind.
Meantime how fruitless the quarrel about dialectic
names! Intuition, consciousness, demonstration and
revelation, are the correlation of one proof, and end in
one sense of continuance. Science bids us wait for it
to decide if the future life be a fact. But that "fell
serjeant, death," will not wait. WVVe cannot postpone
the coffin and the grave. Shall the question of destiny
lie on the table to give posterity a monopoly of solace?




HOPE.                   369
Immortality as an external conclusion were but a
mortal affair.  Its definition is knowledge inherent
in the soul.  What does it consist in but our community with God?  Were our nature an island, or
planet rolling outside, no space could be certified in
his eternity.  But if he is our Common, we can be
conscious of him as the lower animals are of us.
When the birds altered the style of their nests to
accommodate themselves to the settlement of New
England, were they not conscious of the immigrants?
" My horse understands me. If I do not pat him, as
usual, when I go into the barn, he is mortified, and
hangs his head."  The centaur was no monster, but
a cordial figure of man and horse in sympathy. There
is no such thing as boundary.  Man is a bridge.
What is the angel that stood one foot on the sea and
one on the land, but our nature arching the stream
of time, and uniting the cherub with the beast; finding
that not its degradation, but dignity, is in its mighty
span. Our family tree has its roots in the ground and
boughs in the heavens; and our journey is no declivity
firom paradise, but up from the savage that grovels
to the seraph that sings. Not alone, as Wordsworth
tells, in childhood are we
"Moving about in worlds unrealized."
Evermore, as grown men, we converse with things
that pass understanding.
But, if conscious of divinity, is it not absurd to say
conscious of immortality, - that is, of some thing yet
to come?  I answer: we are conscious of durability
as a quality, if not of future duration as a fact. The
24




370           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
date of a century-old structure is implied in the solidity of the work. Why is a gem so precious? See
the greedy diggers rush to South Africa for diamonds!
What makes for a diamond the rate of valuation?
Not only the splendor and the brilliant polish the
stone will take, but the property of hardness, to hold
for ages the glittering angles unworn. How without
stain or fracture it goes from one crown and tiara and
empire to another, while king and queen and lord
and pope pass! It is drawn sparkling as ever from
the thousandth finger, where love and fealty put it,
and triumphs over the ashes of corse and shroud, ages
without end.  Shall its composition and  not the
mind's endure?  Is our perception or affection, in
identity with its supernal object, of texture less tough?
In my boyhood I bought a silver pencil; and, looking
at the screw, asked the Swedenborgian jeweller if it
would wear out. "Every thing," he said, "' material
will." But will ideas and principles? or the soul they
are espoused by? or any one that dies for them?
"Lasting" the maker calls a certain kind of cloth:
what is everlasting? Do we call God so because we
have applied any measure to him? No; but because
the absoluteness of his being defies time.  Sounding
it, we lose our sinker in the sea.
What gracious human sentiment can be gauged?
The Danube, forcing its way through the hills, hints
the flowing charity that overcomes and wears away
our flinty creeds. Mr. Huxley says, it is not the land
that is solid, but the sea holding its level, while that
of the earth shifts every year. So generous feeling
outlives the hardest dogma. Chronology of world or




HOPE.                    371
mind follows reality like a waiter or.shadow. The
French name a man's constitutional limit his viability,
as Mr. Weston's is the time he can keep on his legs.
What is the viability of the spirit? Can it be dead.?
It were a contradiction!  The noble mind believes in
destiny, and admits no doom. David says, God will
not suffer his holy one to see corruption.  Goethe
thinks his fidelity entitles him to another' body.
Vaughan feels, -
"Through all this fleshly dress,
Bright shoots of everlastingness."
Jesus declares, "He that will lose his life shall save
it;"  and tells his Father, "Now  come I to thee."
Friends, taken from flood or fire,; are found locked in
each other's arms: was that quenched or burnt which
prompted the last embrace?   The scholar's manuscripts lie like white thunder round him,  a. concentric battery against old forts of error and sin: shall
the moral. cannoneer perish? The spotless boy could
remember nothing to repent of, but that he, had once
whistled on the stairs when his grandmother was
sick: is that tender conscience extinct?  The heart
will bleed. As we say of a flesh wound, let it bleed,
and so not fester! But its love abides.
My friend says he cannot credit immortality: it is
too wonderful. I tell him I am wonder-struck here!
Once in, nothing can amaze me. I never expect to
be so much astonished again, though all the hierarchies of heaven deploy in my sight. You do not
believe?  Then you do not. It is a sad fact.  So
much the worse for you! Drawing the hand over the




372             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
skin or hair in some persons fetches the electric spark.
Will some wiseacre doubt the statement, because it is
not noticed or verified in other persons?  Faith is
worth somewhat as a characteristic, and it is an attribute of the noblest natures, - of Plato and Socrates,
Newton and Miltol, Jesus and Paul, - and to be respected as of so much value, just as to be ductile or
volatile is an attribute of price in any mineral or metal.
But people have believed all sorts of things: witches,
fairies, apparitions, demons, possessions and obsessions; visions of heaven and hell and distant transactions on earth, like the Swedish seer's; presentiments,
premonitions, and spiritual communications. Belief
is nothing! But, I ask, from no beauty did all these
shadows fall? Justify your domestic love, and I will
vindicate my divine confidence. Science is substantial.
But the soul's apprehension of rectitude is as exact as
of arithmetical numbers or geometrical lines.
We must, say some Free Religionists, be willing to
sacrifice the belief in God and Immortality on the
altar of truth. What is truth, but the very thing you
are thus ready, if required, to sacrifice on its shrine!
If God or the soul be not truth, we have lost the
definition; and, in default of worship of the Spirit,
we make an idol of our lexicon, as if verity and Divinity were two things. There are, indeed, inveterate
or congenital deniers.  So there are deaf-mutes, persons born blind, and men with no music in their souls.
But they are wanting in themselves who think they
have measured the realm of reality with their individual rod and chain. Unbelief is lack of character.
We hear how noble unbelievers are. A sceptic may




HOPE.                   373
be honest and kind in exchanges and tokens of friendship and trade.  If that be all, let one cloth cover
body and soul! But if aspiration for excellence opens
and dawns into a perfection, whose standard dwarfs
every example and shames all biography, faith in
opportunity to realize our ideal is part of virtue. I
have heard persons profess no repugnance to annihilation.  They could hardly have had such an ideal.
They lacked the fiery spark in Jesus which said, " I
have power to lay down my life, and power to take it
again."
Faith seems, in the best men, no permanent state,
but a temporary exaltation or shifting mood.  But,
though the clouds close in, one perception of the
celestial land is, for evidence, enough. At Rhigi or
Mount Washington, travellers wait for weeks for a
good ascent.  Hundreds toil to the top, in the rack
and haze, to miss the panorama from the peak. But
against all failures, holds the view of those whose eyesight reaches from the summit to the shining lake or
the rolling sea.  So, when a friend, going, leaves a
track of light across the dark valley and an open door
into upper rest, the impossibility, in your vision, of
doubt is a recollection for faith to live on for ever.
The use of prophets is to make the assurance of
such beholding accepted by the unbelieving world.
" I am the resurrection and the life:" of every burialservice, from the Charles to the Rhone, such words
are the balm. One shaft of darkness in Gethsemane
across the blazing sun proves Jesus to be a man and
our model.' " Father, forgive them; for they know
not what they do:' was this a piece of sentimental




3 74           RADICAL PROBLEMS.
acting, from a deluded tongue, that found no hospitable ear?  I can entertain your scholarly doubts
about manuscripts and versions, and your scientific
balking at a blasted fig-tree or multiplied fishes and
loaves. But: experience was mother of that record!
Virtue composed that story. That language was uttered and heard. In some blind alley or Ishmaelite
pit, it may prove our register.
Life has been called a tragedy; but triumph is the
close.  No dirge, but a jubilee, for that new beginning out of the seeming end! Such faith is born of
that sympathetic imagination which is the kindler
of love, solvent of pride, secret door of inspiration,
crown of beauty, consummation of excellence, common benediction and boon. When Jesus or his disciple gives up life, is it the same life which he saves? 
No: sacrifice of the meaner feeds the grander self.
That is no accident for death to sweep away. We
have all some acquaintance with that glorious stranger,
which has warrant in us to survive every earthly show.
Is this a purely human property, no spark of which
glimmers in the beast? Although the parallelism of
the human and animal brain hints rudimentary correspondence of mind, vast difference of degree seems
tantamount to diversity of kind. Yet what likenesses
exist! A dog defends his master's property with his
own life; yet who thinks it deserves the name of devotion? Would you be safe from the mastiff at the
gate? let him  see you speak on good terms with
the owner, and the understanding is quick as light.
The walrus intervenes with her body between her
offspring and the hunter's spear.  If the human




HOPE.                   375
reaches the three hundred and sixtieth, the animal act
touches, at least, the first degree of the same round.
If there are bestial hints of displays like Peter's in
the dungeon, Christ's on the cross, and Brown's on
the scaffold, of what inconceivable glories are these
latter the germs? Nor need we search for them afar.
Do we not see, in daily experience, what nothing in
history can surpass? " Two things," says Kant, 1" are
sublime, - conscience and the stars." I lately beheld
a soul pass with majesty before which the heavens
shrink; when dying was the thing to do, laying down
earthly things with a smile so sunny, death was a flying shadow, till the chamber became a place for tabernacles. There was a babe that must go to heaven to
know its mother, and the mother was only concerned
nobody should think her babe the cause of her disease,
and could serenely say, Beautzrzfu! to the phantom
from the tomb, and declare, God makes no mistake.
Why wonder how Stephen's face shone as it were an
angel! This is to be sick and die to some purpose.
Many flowers on the coffin: I could but see the one
in it.
We ask for evidences of faith. Faith is the evidence. — It shows how the habit of God's presence
heals and lifts the soul, as perpetual atmosphere does
the body. He is our native air. Whatever thing or
person'beneath him we rest in is our fetish. In the
noblest mortals, beauty comes and goes. Be any
man's devotee, and your fondness will be the cloak
of self-seeking. Our idolatry of Jesus makes him the
frame in which our own portrait is set! The only
escape from selfish conceit is spiritual worship.




376            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Faith is moral. Character is the office where it is
insured. It is not possible to think of any one as dead
who has shown great qualities. Will it be an interpolation to tell of a nobleman by nature, who was for
thirty years United States consul at Fayal? How vivid
the picture to me still of his coming off in his boat,
on. the rough waters of the harborless Azores, to take
to his hospitable house a sea-worn sick man, and treat
him with the double bounty of his ample board and
of his sympathy with free thought in religion! How
the proper fruit of the tree of liberty appeared in his
goodness to many an invalid; in his open purse to the
poor of the island; in his equal courtesy to humble
Portuguese or proud Englishman; in his lavished resources in time of famine; in his creation for the
natives of a profitable trade at his own risk; and in
the beauty his art added to Nature in his almost matchless garden, set over volcanic ground in the azure sea!
In what other soil must there not be food and blossom
for him now? Is nothing immortal in mortal person
and name? or has Dabney found King, who once
found him, over-sea? Are the believers and lovers a
joint-stock company that have failed? and is all our
confidence in sacred story frail as the printed verse
that fades or is blown away? No: the soul but rests
on some brave prophetic sentence, as a sea-bird for a
moment on the ground-swell, till ready for its instinctive flight.
Only what is pure is immortal. Love lives, and
vengeance dies. Yonder Somerville hill shows how
Romanist and Rationalist agree at last that fine houses,
better than charred and mouldering walls, adorn the




HOPE.                   377
summit where the Catholic convent was burnt by a
Protestant mob.  I shall live while I can grow
Progress is the law. Why reproach me for not saying
still what I said thirty years ago? Is my anchorage
and mortgage in the past? There is no such idolater
as memory. Paul is anxious especially that Timothy
should fetch his parchments; but we never hear of
them  afterwards.  He must have forgot his notes,
after all! I write and preach my sermons with heartbeats and tears; and, after a few years, send them
by the thousand, without compunction, to the papermill.  Our brother, with admirable and instructive
industry, expounds the great systems that have prevailed of religious belief. A step forward beyond
them all must we not take?  What the age is with
child of, who in words shall tell? But the Jews had
no monopoly of messiahs: we, too, ever expect a
Saviour's birth.  We cannot abide in any letter or
rite. Does the Grand Army of the Republic worship
the flag, or the liberty and reunion it means?
But thq executive department must not be overlooked. WTe cannot stop with vision. Not only the
discoverer, the organizer too of principles deserves
our honor; and the seer waits on the reformer. How
secure unity without compromise, and co-action without coercion?  We would get the flock along, and
keep the flock together. This is the problem for the
church, as it was to Abraham Lincoln, shepherd of
States. No Radicalism alone can solve it. It requires
consummate wisdom combined with clear sight. On
ethics of concession we subsist.  We would not use
what a statesman called his foolomeler. Yet a com



378            RADICAL, PROBLEMS.
pensation pendulum keeps the best time; and truth
for us is not absolute, but a relation. It is an atonement of opposites.   It is a reduction of discords
to harmony.  It is fulfilment of those conditions of
social solidarity by which men cohere and move on.
Yet the honest word is a main factor, — a term that
in the sum of human welfare never disappears. It
is everlasting, - finished in no book.
Utterance, as unreserved as any Indian eloquence,
is among the grounds of that hope which regards not
only individual persistence, but the prospects of mankind. Our definition of immortality runs on the line
of earthly fortunes, and is not restricted to a heavenly
bliss. Whatever notions cannot be converted to practical benefit, with a smile let us leave. The brain in
sohne brings forth empty wind.  It is a bank that
passes its dividend, or declares one not of sterling
value; but worthless stock. Yet let us be slow to pronounce any speculation barren! In a ship-yard the
straight timber is good for masts and; yards; but
the crooked serves for knees and joints, and many a
stick lies for years before it comes into play. Thought,
fresh as it is free, is not only building material, but
motive power.  How many factories buzz and spin
in Great Britain to contribute tools for every useful
art wider than her drum-beat round the globe! But
the realm fears the giving out of her coal-beds. Then
how mill and maker, pilot and steamer, would be at a
loss-! The master with sailing directions for the ship
of Union, which Longfellow sings, and the stoker at
the moral furnace, would find their occupation gone,
should the mines of wisdom  fail, or cease to be




HOPE.                   379
wrought with new yield for the need of every
year.
The assumption that our precedents suffice,- that
all truth is laid down, and we have but to go to the
huge cellar of past revelation for food and fuel to feed
and warm all generations " to the last syllable of recorded time," -the exigencies of society perpetually
refute.  The Bible is a mighty bin; but it gives out,
and we are forced to resort to new growth. I recited to a reverent church Paul's chapter to the Corinthians on the relations of men and women. In a
quite different way from Christ's hearers, they were
astonished at the doctrine. Some admired my courage; some suspected irony; and some said the minister
might have made a better selection. But the apostle
meant well enough! Corinth, with all its Greek polish, was a loose place.  Men kept their hats on in
meeting, and got drunk at the Lord's Supper*; while
women took off their bonnets, and let down their
hair. Paul acted as police. The absurdity is, on the
ground of verbal inspiration, to make his text an everlasting canon, when the reasons are so shallow; his
major premise being but the old fable of woman's
formation from the man, whom anatomy finds never
to have missed the rib out of which she was made!
What shall we say of his not suffering a woman to
teach, when women are the best teachers in all the
Sunday schools in Christendom? Would not some
very orthodox and conservative folk be discomposed,
if his decrees about long hair in men, and plaited
hair, pearls, gold, and costly array in women, were
enforced by beadles on the spot in a religious com



380             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
pany, like a prohibitory law, or Louis Napoleon's orders, by his instruments in the coup d'Xeat?  The
executives would have their hands full, and find themselves in business, so shearing either Episcopal or
Methodist flocks!
Modern science, scholarship, and common sense
command that the Bible be criticised as well as explained. Does it hold so many rations, one for every
day, -as the frontier-woman seemed to think, when
she told the colporteur she did not know she was so
near out of it, bringing to the door a torn leaf. No:
there must be more Bible, and better than some of
that we have! The Romanists, wiser than the Protestants, affirm that the truth within sacred lids needs the
supplement of the living voice of the Church, from
which it came.
The worst of bibliolatry is its strain on clerical
candor; for no man or minister, however he pretend,
can'practise as he preaches any theory of the omniscience of the written word. The case is kept on foot
by the old policy, of one doctrine of the philosopher
for the people, and another for his peers, - one view
in the study, and a different in the desk; on epistolary
authority, meat for men, and milk for babes. How
condescending, in educated men, to say, "You must
give according to men's capacity to receive!"  So
we might, were men and women infants in these
days.  But many of them, reading and reflecting,
know more than the priests. The minister has not
before him so many narrow-necked bottles, into which
to pour a little of his wondrous information with care.
He will not find his best thoughts so premature as he




HOPE.                   38I
fears!  The plate is prepared for his finest photography. His locomotive is not so much ahead of the
train. We will excuse him from the benevolent conceit that he has convictions about the nature of God
or origin of man, for which the community of intelligence, that bears him up as a crest-wave on a groundswell, is not ready.
The teacher's is a threefold qualification, - of
intelligence, sincerity, and love. But how is it possible to hold as final the holy writ that allows slavery,
polygamy, retaliatory capital punishment, fighting because God is a man of war, or deep draughts of mirac
ulous wine at a wedding; and decrees subjection of
woman to man, because of his being as superior to
her, as Christ to a common person, or God to Christ?
The letter is a block, drawback, and drag to the most
needful reforms.  How  much wire-drawn  subtilty
is used to prove that it confines and exhausts the
spirit nevertheless!   We lie for our sect, for our
party, despite the prophetic warning not to speak
deceitfully for God or what we account his word.
Woman's rights men and women, with disingenuous
ingenuity, try to argue the hard texts of the Old and
New Testament into consistency with their views.
So the Northern pulpit labored to prove that Hebrew
slavery did not justify American or any other. The
advocates of abstinence will have it that tie wine
made at Cana was not intoxicating; while those who
consider the extreme penalty of the law as legal
murder explain away the text in Genesis from  a
statute to a circumstance; and the non-resistants balk
at Psalms and Chronicles, and have to make a piece




382            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
of rhetoric, in Christ's mouth, of the two swords
unsheathed and shining in his eyes! When a woman
undertook to speak in a late Prohibitory Convention,
in Boston, the Baptist Boanerges of the cause resisted
her as an infidel. Who would have thought Paul's
verse about not suffering a woman to teach would,
like a bomb-shell of long range over land and sea, fall
and explode in Tremont Temple? How much of the
blood in our Civil War flowed from a Southern superstitious ministry's sincere defence of the system of
bondage on Scriptural grounds! Ten thousand teachers were not pure hypocrites. Do not half the human
race likewise stiffer prejudice of their claims to the use
of their own persons and property and the exercise of
social and civil rights?
Doubtless some act on the Jesuit principle of reserve.
Many clergymen, too well instructed to accept the
old letter as decisive of the new questions, and fearing
to make trouble with their creeds and congregations,
take up other themes, let the- moot toints go. They are
guilty, if not of false witness, yet of the crime called
suppression of the truth. " I am very careful," said
a preacher, " not to tell any lies."  So he avoided
the offence of being a Radical. But was he settled
simply not to tell lies? Did he keep his ordination
oath of telling the whole truth? How many cowards
there are in the priest's order of Melchisedec, be they
called orthodox or liberal, it is no satisfaction, but a
grief and shame to think.
Only one position is tenable.  All these matters
of reform which stir the public mind at the present day, however illustrated from profane or sacred




HOPE.                   383
history, must be argued on their own merits at the
tribunal of reason, not of Moses or Paul. I am not
of those who think alcohol, under all circumstances, a
poison, and never a medicine; but I would not have
the extremists in Temperance embarrassed with an
ancient miracle and a text.  Debate the sumptuary
law in the modern light, and God defend the right!
What hypocrisy is generated otherwise! At a great
meeting of a society of doctors, many years ago, the
leader and president got a unanimous vote that every
drop of ardent spirits was in the human system a
bane: whereupon one member rose and asked if they,
all preparing medicines with alcohol, were not, in the
extravagance of their statement, presenting themselves
as a pack of fools and knaves. Water is put for wine
on some communion-boards. May not the element as
well be dispensed with, when it comes to that?  A
form is destroyed when it is changed. How else can
this momentous cause of Temperance be promoted
than with Truth, from which no enterprise of philanthropy will bear to be divorced? But all Scripture
is not truth. So from such as find no deeper basis,
and cannot themselves build on the same foundation
with apostles and prophets, instead of building on
them, we have abundance of double-dealing and special pleas. The Devil, in the old proverb, can quote
Scripture: is it not because he has tried his hand in
making some? Surely, cruelty to the Canaanites and
oppression of the children of Ham were among his
texts!  Had our construction of the Book but antiquarian interest, we might let men sleep in their prejudice. But it touches every imminent issue and live




384            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
question of the day. The pulpit's sin of reservation
is a projectile of pure insult to the people. The prince
of the virtues is the noble apostle's own, — to speak
~with all boldness as we ought.
The old theology does not atone for its gloom by
moral effect. Whatever reason it had for being, it has
for now ceasing to be. Under its existing frame its
heart is eaten out.  It is what Sherman called the
South, -a shell.  No Genevan or Florentine or
Swedenborgian or Miltonic genius can keep hell distinct from heaven, or the Devil as a rival of God. It
has been said by liberal critics that a grain of Calvinism does not hurt the flavor of the bread, and that
it has under its ugly look a musical soul.  It sang
once of civil freedom, which has nobler minstrels
now; but not a note any longer of spiritual truth.
It has lost its voice! In a rude age it made God felt
as an iron power; and out of its shadow a glory came
like the sunrise from the storm-cloud whose spent fury
settles in the East; but the Orient for the coming day
is a more generous faith that absorbs its lurid lustre,
as I saw the ascending sun take all the grim and
ruddy pomp out of the vaporous horizon to itself.
Nursed on the unadulterated diet of the New-England
creed fifty years ago, may one not be a better witness
than an observer whose cradle lay inside the liberal
fold? Imagination is quick to make of the present
writer a boy, not suffered to leave the close parlor on
the Sabbath, though sunshine and green field so invited him as to make it a sore prison, - save to walk
straight to the church, whose clamor of denouncement, without one gentle strain of nature, still rings in




HOPE.                   385
his ear.  Those who fainted  in the ill-ventilated
building, he thought, were borne out to be judged.
In his solitary walks, in his seventh year, he had begun to hang his head; and remembers how for hours
he would repeat the one sentence, " God be merczful
to me a sinner; " though he wondered what the guilt
was that should forbid him to lift his eyes to heaven,
and had eclipsed the beauty of the world.
Too much has been put between the soul and its
Author. Comfort is too far to seek in Judea. We
want our own Immanuel, God with us. No imported
can equal an indigenous faith.  The soul in its
extremity must have immediate help. No circumlocution avails like the direct whisper.  Our hope
beyond the dead-line is no letter, promise, miracle,
or bodily rising, but trust in the Power that made
us. If my life is of no consequence to him, it is of
none to me. What is best, he will do, and I accept.
No ticket of vicarious redeeming in my hand, no selfsalvation, no insurance against accidents on the road;
but such acceptance is all my immortality, present and
to come.  The property is his to reinvest or throw
away. This is the rising faith with Internationals of
the Spirit! The ecclesiastic bar loses its terror. Conscience is a tribunal that dispenses better justice. The
assizes are no longer remote, beyond the sound of
trumpets and the quickening of a million generations'
dust. The Judge standeth at the door. God's bench
is the human mind. When the consul said to the
Portuguese priest, " Why do you, knowing better,
still apply the Romish scheme?" the priest answered,
" C'est mon metier," - it is my trade! But religion,
2S




386             RADICAL PROBLEMS.
as a business and function, must yield to vision of the
fact.
Every thinker has his prospect of improvement for
the human race. We make our prophetic sketch. So
it will be, we say, in politics, society, worship, or
affairs; " but we shall not live to see the day! "  Dr.
Franklin wished to come back, after some ages, and
look on the renovated world. Perhaps he does, and
we shall, in a way unlike his fancy.  This anticipation of earthly progress is token of divine destiny.
Meantime how pleasant to contemplate the renewing
force! After the bitter week, that had brought the
earth near to zero, I went to Gale's Point, on the coast.
The broad harbor between the headlands was frozen to
the channel, and resisted the tide that crunched against
the encroaching ice.  Down the slope of the land
flowed the image of an arrested cataract of water,
hard as the congealed masses in which the northern
whalers met their fate. But where this stiffened torrent started was a living spring, lifting its sandy
columns as it bubbled noiseless from the earth, to keep
its surface soft and smooth as a summer breath.  It
told the gentle, resistless persistence of a higher life
than its own. Death is before us.  But what an
advantage for them who have it behind! Their position we shall find no marvel, but natural as the dawn
when it shall become ours.
Meantime let us discuss radical problems without
fear.  Religion depends not on the institutions she
forms. Were all bibles and churches swept away,
she would spring immortal; as out of the burnt forests
of Wisconsin time is bringing other trees, perhaps ot




HOPE.                  387
nobler growth. Orthodoxy must show us better fruit,
in our neighbors and their children, before the demoralization charged on Liberality will stir any alarm.
Looking back at the long line in my own Church, how
the names of Hooper, Mayhew, Howard, and Lowell
shine to signify no novelty in free thought and independent speech! But to make an idol even of liberty
is as narrow as it is profane. Let our inspiration be
wrought into the social body, which is our incarnate
nature and common flesh. Every talent and human
element we need.  Great expectations should they
have, who number scholars like Martineau and Hedge,
organizers like Bellows and Hale, and mediators like
Collyer and Clarke. There may be room for whatever
thoughts are here repeated, because men and ideas are
alike dear.
All powers, in all ways, however diverse or contrary, compose the resultant harmony. The ground
of fellowship is reverence. Fun or humor to make
light of things has its place; but a mere entertainer is
a low character. I thought it great praise when my
friend called Jared Sparks a serious man. The child
in Willis's poem is " tired of play; " and how weary
we get of those who spoil conversation and insult our
convictions with their untimely wit, turn on our talk
the jet of water instead of flame, or would make fireworks for amusement of all the light and heat of the
soul; and, when the dove of the Holy Ghost is just
hovering to light, shoot it with a jest!  They must
worship, who would commune. Why cannot those
two persons abide each other? They belong to the
same church, neighborhood, and social circle; they




388            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
dress with equal elegance; they sit side by side at the
concert or play; they drive hard after each other over
the fashionable road, but cannot set their horses together. What is the foil to a hundred sympathies of
interest, pursuit, and taste?  What these human pithballs are mutually repelled by is the same electricity
of self-conceit! They keep each other at -such a respectful distance, because they have no meeting-place
in God.  Pope said Addison was very "' civil," after
his famous satire on him under the title of Atticus.
What can have alienated your old friend?  Your
vanity or his! Self-pronunciation is secession: ambition to lead is disunion. Caesar and Antony, Octavia
and Cleopatra, could not inhabit one sphere.  How
many seek to king or queen it, to set the fashion,
captain the troop, or champion the ring, like the
as finely dressed and feathered cock of the walk!
They grind each other to pieces with identical sharp
corners, that can find no counterpart, and are walking figures of irony on their own several pretence!
Chanticleer wishes his note to resound without reply.
O friends, love and serve together the Infinite Being
and Beauty; and, in what smooth gear, soft as a
psalm, you would run! " Behold, he prayeth," was
reason enough for Ananias to visit Saul, or Channing
to honor Rammohan Roy, or Dean Stanley to embrace Chunder Sen.  When we learn that Christ's
ascension was a daily habit, and no bodily act, we
shall understand that his board is not spread for a private entertainment; and none, revering his character,
can by any master of ceremonies be driven from his
feast. The Ideal, that floated over him, can lift us




HOPE.                   389
out of sight of all outward rising. The line of beauty,
once discovered, is discovered for ever; and how he kept
that faultless curve! He held Nature in solution as a
sea of love, and was full of the element in which he
moved.  It is enough if we be among the snowywinged comrades in his convoy, though we follow in
graceful freedom, and no rigid lines, the flag-ship.
Our political union has for its condition some honest
reverence and loyalty, not any uniform  faith.  Let
Christians cease their unchristian clamor to name
their religion in the Constitution! God and Christ
will be in it, unmentioned, when the government is
just to black and white, to copper Indian and yellow
Chinese.  Equity to Jew and Mormon shall be our
Book of Common Prayer. Protection of atheist and
infidel is the best petition.  More than thirty years
ago, I was blamed for signing a request that Abner
Kneeland should not be punished for blasphemy. A
venerable parishioner said it was the first mistake his
young minister had made; and the remark came to
me for an admonition on the lips of a distinguished
counsellor, afterwards judge, still living, but not disposed to move or consider such a bill of indictment
now.
Shall you fellowshz'i the Radicals?  If you find in
them that reverence which is the root of sympathy!
"I did not go to Theodore Parker's meeting," said
one; "  but I never knew one that did, who was not
zealous for good works." Over the coffin of a reputed
sceptic that heresiarch said: " O God! if he doubted
thy being, he lived thy law."  " We must have larger
contribution-boxes in our great society," I heard a




390            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
man inform the sexton; and must we not, of our communion-board, make an extension-table? " I am a
wide liker," said Allston, when somebody disparaged
pictures of a style different from his own.  "' I prefer
Mozart and Beethoven to Schubert," remarked one to
Perabo: " they come down upon us with such an
elephantine tread."  The pianist replied: "This elephant is just as big, only a little further off!" A French
writer tells us: " Not to praise warmly is a sure sign
of intellectual mediocrity." It is a proof of irreligion,
too. Contumely to man is disrespect for God. Adoration inspires magnanimity. An English hunter, in
Omaha, coming suddenly upon a violet peeping out
of the snow, could not pluck the flower, it so overcame him with thoughts of home. Remembering the
homestead we all belong to, we shall be tender to our
kind.




XVII.
I DEALITY.
T-HE idealist we count impotent, only impressible
as a photograph-plate; prey of wandering fancy.
But ideas are active powers to revolutionize and reform. God is the great visionary, enacting his thought
in every stage of his work.  A late French writer
holds that freedom to think and to speak implies freedom to act with no let of law.  In a perfect mind
it does. But God, says one, is the only being who
is thoroughly awake. All men are somnambulists.
Their murder and theft, lying and lust, are a sort of
sleep-walking. In a fine sense, Mr. Choate's defence
of the famous Tirrell was true. But we share with
the Creator as we open our eyes.
First, as partners in making the world. What is
the earth?  Not so much crude bulk, finished when
God rested on the seventh day. Is not the line of
steamers, Pacific railway, telegraph wire, storm signal,
mill on the stream, and Mont Cenis or Hoosac tunnel, part -f the universe as much as Niagara, the Merrimac, a hill in Switzerland, or the morning star?
Is a picture less solid, a symphony more transient, than
tree or rock? " The works of God are great," said an




392            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
admirer of art, " but the works of man are wonderful! "
The Supreme Artist left his sketch for his children
and pupils to complete; and their orderly continuationi
is as good as his beginning. " Is your lecture done?"
I asked mv friend. " Never," he said. So with Nature.
But in a deeper sense we co-act with Deity. Nothing is what it is in itself, but in its relation to every
thing else; and that relation is ideal. What a false
notion, that, with none to behold it, the planet would
be just the same! It is nought, separate from sight.
Could all that lives lie down in one mighty sepulchre,
no constellation would shine on that grave. Without perception, no light. God - infinite mind — said,
"6 Let it be; " but human intelligence was part of the
fiat.
This is no hypothesis, but a truth in which imagination and science meet. Has matter a single independent
property? It looks, feels, smells, tastes, sounds, so we
say; but it could do no such thing without reason and
the sensitive nerve. The secondary qualities - form,
color, odor, audibleness, and touch -we all allow to
be a spiritual addition to the outward scene. The primary ones too, weight and extension, supposed inherent in external things, are but part; the intellect,
counterpart and constituent; space and time, modes of
understanding.
If the elements have intrinsic, why such shifting
worth? The dog looks on the same prospect with his
master; the lynx and vulture have a keener than the
hunter's glance; the eagle is said to gaze undazzled on
the sun; beasts and birds of night discern and find
their way through what we call pitch dark. What




IDEALITY.                393
but some new chamber in the brain or joint in the spyglass reveals to us, in the common house, a size and
store hid from their view? To our ideality it expands
into many mansions. To their sensuosity it contracts
to a den under ground, a nest in the tree, so much air
to sail through, or so many holes to worry their game
in. How low Hamlet, in his melancholy, reduced
the sphere he so grandly described! But to the hawk,
what but a barn-yard is the land, or fish-pond the sea?
Schopenhauer makes the world a mental projection;
and Wordsworth says the glories Nature lures us with
are not hers, but born of a luminous cloud that issues
from our own soul. To the Bible-seers she waxes old
like a garment to be folded up, and flees before her
King to find no place; and how modern philosophy
verifies ancient poetry, resolving masses and particles,
heaven and earth, into pure force! But that such conceptions ever entered the head of any animal we want
proof. I noticed a setter looking through a car-window, and seeming to take some pleasure in surveying
the landscape; but his ear played active as his eye,
and I queried whether he observed that integrity which
is beauty, or was looking after his natural enemy, and
watching if aught appeared he could serve his master's
sport by beating the field to start. Without spectator
were no spectacle fair and sublime. The mind is busy
to make what it beholds. What signifies calling such
doctrine the peculiarity of some moon-struck man?
Nobody so practical or gross, so bent on his crop, grist,
or hoard; no hewer of wood or drawer of water; no
smelter of ore or digger in the trench; no cunning politician or Tammany thief, - but, because he is a man,




394            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
and of his human nature cannot be rid, must scan and
construe the world differently fiom the brute. We all
idealize, and only so realize; for of no marriage but
of the actual with the ideal is reality born. Mind is
term, as it is source of matter; and our thought a factor of every thing.
Our idea is a needful factor of the people too.
" What do you make of him?"  To the pure all
things are pure, because they generate purity in whatever they touch. Mephistopheles comes at the call of
Faust; but it is an ill-principled will that creates himn,
-not, in Shakspeare's phrase, "the heat-oppressed
brain." Edmund Burke holds man a wise unwise animal, and Thomas Carlyle calls the population of a country forty millions " mostly fools."  The difference of
judgment shows how much higher on the scale of genius the sober statesman reached, than the wilffil though
splendid pamphleteer. He that considers his race a
knavish set betrays lack of that insight which produces
their goodness.  He is the Alfonso who could have
counselled God! To like your kind is your virtue and
theirs.  Sympathy is the hand to renew and eye to
behold.  In a smoking-car, amid cards and tobacco
juice, and coarse wbrds and peanut-shells, from hornyfisted lumbermen and brawny-necked sailors with brass
rings in their ears, I have witnessed a politeness to give
up their place to one less tired than they which few
Boston parlors could match; while well-dressed women
of fashion in the train behind were covering the seats
with their spreading skirts and selfish bags.  One
woman told two lies, saying the seat was engaged.
My thanks are not more for gentlemen and ladies than




IDEALITY.                395
for civil conductors, courteous brakemen, and grimy
but smiling engineers. On what slight provocation of
your fellowship the love and good works will come!
It was the making of him, we say of some small furtherance of a young man.  A  country bachelor's
objection to the fair sex was their liking to be made of.
O strong and resolute husband, do you know how
much you can make of that tender and malleable
nature you name your wife? The woman lifts the
man into her circle: the man sinks the woman to his;
but either can turn the other into a vessel of beauty or
sharpened steel.  In Eugene Sue's story the words
heart and honor open to the vile ChZourineur a new
career. We, like God, create in our own image, and
as he made every creature, " after his kind." I shall
be to you what you ask, with your character as well
as your tongue.
A nation in its need regenerates its children. When
some old friend of Jefferson Davis and political sympathizer with the South was startled from that leaning
by the gun at Sumter into a war-democrat, why
charge with being insincere one who is but patriotically new-born so to help the land, that the Confederate president becomes not a martyr, but a cipher? The
fouler the corruption, the purgation more sure!  If
dirty water must fetch the pump, there is clean in the
well. You cannot kill conscience more than oxygen.
The thunderbolt forms and lurks in the heavy sky of
municipal robbery and intrigue; and the crashing of
base authority in the metropolis of the land proves
public virtue, in its excessive reserve, yet an overmatch to annihilate official guilt, though more hands




396            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
than appeared bore the stain of the enormous bribe.
"I would rather," said one, " be a door-keeper to the
Committee of Seventy than dwell in the marble halls
of Tweed."  But how different a tune the moral sense
has set for Tweed now to sing!
"I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls."
When thieves refuse bail to their head, we see honesty
rising as a power to break every wicked Ring. It is
ideal holiness certain to conquer iniquity, and triumph
over all shame.
So we make the Christ of our faith. Christians are
disturbed by any hint that their Saviour cannot be
certainly drawn, with every word and prodigy, out of
the historic details.  What if we cannot circumstantially verify the image of the God-man? Is that image
therefore a vapor that passeth away? Fact is never
the ground of principle; but principle the womb of
fact. All the texts and wonders illustrate, but do not
procreate spirit.  We are grieved at discrepancies in
the Gospel tales, and the impossibility of proving the
miracles even if they occurred.  But though, in the
mouth of many witnesses, every word could be established, or the portents rewrought before our eyes, we
could get from them no saving belief.  Faith is a
principle, not a conclusion.  The test of a man is
what he builds on, an incident or an idea. The letter
that killeth is not only a written sentence, but every
outward appearance.  Sun and moon, sea and star,
are but an alphabet. The world is God's metaphor!
All cognitions of sense are signs and counters. of
conception. We do not want a factitious redeeim.er.




IDEALITY.                 397
A purely historic creed is the house Jesus spoke of,
reared on the sand, and sure to go before the storm.
None but the ideal underpinning will stand. A miracle over the greed of the multitude was noble; but a
multiplication of baked bread and fish that never grew
as wheat or swam  in the sea, what a lie of God or
Nature! The ideal foundation is so firm, every man's
constitution forces him to fashion his Lord according
to his light after his own heart. To the Jew Jesus was
a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness; but
to whoever believed, God's power and wisdom. To
such as could receive him, he became righteousness
and sanctification and redemption. Paul saw him, and
Thomas did not! To Mary angels were in the sepulchre, to Peter a linen roll. John the Baptist was a
reed shaken in the wind, a figure in soft raiment, or a
prophet in the van of the whole line, as the vision of
one or another varied in the wilderness. Jesus was a
Jew: the Christ was born of the wedded Greek and
Jewish mind. I doubt not the depth of that immense
personality would justify more than all we can say.
But the personality is not constructible from ally particulars of the story without imaginative help.  I
should not believe the narratives so heartily, did they
all four agree, or if Paul had nothing more to tell us
than Mark.   Eye-witnesses, every lawyer knows,
always differ. Sir Walter Raleigh, noticing what diverse accounts several relators, with equal opportunity,
gave of the same events, wondered at his own undertaking to write annals, as if any thing could be exactly
reported or found out. We say Genesis is a fable. Is
Moses, or whoever wrote it, less trustworthy than




398            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
Gibbon or Hume?  We dispute about what was done
by John Adams or General Greene. In a few years
how many myths there will be respecting Abraham
Lincoln and John Brown, and the power gone to distinguish between fiction and fact; but, as to the devotion to country and humanity, what doubt?
If a man or clergyman is incapable of this spiritual
idea of a divine humanity latent in every breast, preeminent in the Nazarene, he will not be at home in the
Unitarian, Liberal, or Radical fold. Like a tired soldier, he will drop out of line: he will join some larger
army for an easier march. Why have Spurgeon and
Beecher more following than Martineau and Hedge?
Because the ideal faculty is so feebly developed; and
the popular preachers are with the animal crowd, who
must be met on their own level to be usefully served.
Lament not the departure of whoever can act with
more power elsewhere! Doubtless men and ministers
are sometimes misplaced.  Had I any voice in the
Church, I would recommend the custom in war, of an
exchange of prisoners.
Christ is the increment of Jesus,-the individual
expanding to an ideal. He is spiritual formation, not
literal fact. He is a creation of the human mind, not
a deduction from particulars. He is a development,
like his Church.  But does not this view undermine
his permanence? How can he so be " the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever "? I answer his spirituality is his durability. The interior is a citadel for him
no hostility can shake. Were it but demonstrable facts
he rested on, Christianity, like yonder sea-wall, would
be washing away with every wave of time.  Is the




IDEALITY.                399
solidity of the material world sapped by the science
that proves its dependence on the mind? No: this
ideal quality is the reason it cannot, by God himself,
be unmade.
" He can create, and he destroy,"
writes the poet. The latter part of the proposition
let me doubt! He cannot shake off this great-coat
of Nature he wears. It is alive like himself. WVe
piously say, He can do as he pleases. Can he contradict himself, commit suicide, break his own laws,
annihilate a soul?  We are not independent of him:
is he independent of us? Not if I and my Father are
one; for the Father's unity is constituted by the childhood, which is no accident or growth of time.
I know the Trinitarian theory assumes a peculiar and
limited sonship of Jesus, generated solitary and eternal. But the divine personality degenerates thus into
individuality. Two individuals were from everlasting,
one Almighty, the other co-equal as co-eval!  Unitarian people and priests backslide into this heresy from
incapacity of that inward vision which comprehends
in unity the Parent and all his house. Jesus effected
the passage from the human to the divine for the common-sense of mankind, like a man throwing the line
across Niagara or Menai fobr the suspension-bridge.
But on the firm structure once laid all men are as free
to walk as himself,- nay, he but shows the way over
an old road already made, though blocked up or overgrown. These sporadic cases of reaction to an orthodox or semi-orthodox faith only show who is weak
and imperceptive enough to be diverted by a false




400            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
scent from the narrow way of that true direction which
intelligence and character are bound in fine to take,
however the fondness of multitudinous sympathy seduce into the broad one, to mistake large following
for great; while the votes that are to be weighed and
not counted are cast by genius and science against the
evangelical clamor of numerical superiority in disciples
however zealous, and superficial preachers of whatever
notable fame. This method of the ancient religion,
spite of sceptics, will vindicate itself. Deism was the
doctrine of God excluding, but Itheism including, Christianity, -a singular aggrandizement of an identical
term. The theist fulfils Paul's prophecy of the Son's
subjection that God may be all in all; for how absurd
to make that a matter of chronology, instead of widening inward sight!
This divine humanity, being the soul's essence,
dates or derives not wholly from Christ. An American bishop told me, when, being weary in his journey, he dragged himself in a lonely by-way of India
into a deserted hut, perhaps to die, one, of the most
despised sect, rescued him and lent money to the stranger, trusting his remittance firom Europe. What more
could Hebrew  Rothschild or Christian Baring do?
Not long since, in New Zealand, an Englishman, on
some local charge, was ready by the savage executioners to be cut down, when a woman whose husband
the British had killed rose from the gloating dusky
crowd, slowly walked across the space to the centre
where the victim stood and the knives were half
unsheathed, and sat down at his feet.  At once fell
paralyzed the hand of revenge! The reprieved pris



IDEALITY.               401
oner rose, mounted his horse and rode away. Can
Christendom show aught more fine?  The glory of
the gospel is its education of mercy in the normal
school of mankind. In this signz, we conquer: the old
Latin motto hints better victories than of arms. Walking along the W'estern avenue last winter, on the lowest edge of the marsh I encountered a throng gazing
curiously where the sluggish tide crept to and fro
through the flats. Day after day I met them. They
gathered month after month. A poor Irish girl had
there been violated and murdered by a yet undiscovered
man, to liken whom to any four-footed creature that
crawls on its belly or honestly walks were insult to
the beast. But that continual presence at the spot was
human nature, -to pity the unfortunate and disown
the shameful deed.  I asked one wet-eyed lad if he
knew her. No, he replied. But the Christian touch,
to reach the lowest ignorance, was shown in rude
carvings on the fence of the cross, beside the name
of the doubly-slain, K. Leesan, from whose dreadful struggles the compassion of God released the soul,
while the Christian compunction in fellow-creatures
would do more than any execution on the gibbet to
prevent repeated crime.
The test of Christianity is not any substitute or mediation, but closer introduction of Deity. The Chinaman in San Francisco, lazy at his work of dusting the
church, hearing the shout of the concealed sexton,
cried out, God, is that you? -his own conscience
becoming the God of the temple to rebuke his sloth.
The Israelites made them  gods of gold.  We, too,
have a hand to make our God after our mind. God
26




402            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
made man in his own image; and man, it has been
said, returns the compliment by making God in his.
How else can he make him? Making God a person
is objected to as confining him to human measure.
What measure have we else? Can we get beyond our
own thought? A God foreign to human nature is none.
If He be not implicated in us, and we in Him, He is
not, and we were not! Your God will be no better
than you,-your inmost self.  "'Like master, like
man," runs the old proverb. Like owner, like dog,
we might add; for I have noticed how the mastiff at
the gate represented the occupant of the house, and
they would be surly or sweet together, -the man a
commentary on the dog, the dog on the man. Perhaps natural selection of the animal, or careful cultivation, or the dog's keeping good or bad company,
accounts for the remarkable fact!
We must retain or do away with God and Christ
and man all together.  A Spiritualist correspondent
insists that the Christian Deity must go. The castle
of faith will stand not by any literal, but an ideal,
defence. Based on any text, with any miracle for its
corner-stone, or special pre-existence for its cement,
its architecture will crumble under the blows of criticism, or yield to the tooth of time. As an existence
and entity in the human soul, suggested, illustrated,
and confirmed by recorded words and events, it will
survive.  The assailant of true Christianity will not
have the easy victory he beforehand so loudly boasts.
He is fighting not a doubtful register, but an Ideal of
the human mind, formed from many an age and race,
with solidarity of communion through a hundred




IDEALITY.                403
generations and what woven fellowship of manifold
tongues! He defies an inward standard, with a metaphysical phrase. Whatever new dispensation may
arrive, the old banner will not be hauled down before
any ambitious individual flag.  No private notion
or interpretation can prevail over the force of the
common life, the general incarnation of truth, and
embodiment of the Holy Ghost.
We, like Paul, may claim to work with God
forming others and ourselves. Character is creation,
his and ours. But what God? No dogma of the
Bible, or abstraction of the mind, no internal particle
peculiar to an individual, but the atmosphere of souls!
God makes man, but not any one man, in his image.
Each of us has but a share in his likeness. It takes
us all to make it. " I must," said one, " act my own
ideal." Nobody owns one! It is common, and owns
him: not possessed or originated by any person, —
Jesus more than Judas; but an admitted law claiming
all for its inspiration and property, repudiated by
come-outers and seceders from that faith and instinct
of their kind by which every renovator from Luther
to Bismarck is stirred; and cutting off from which,
to be agitator and destructive is all one can attain.
No greatness or goodness stands alone. Teneriffe and
Katahdin seem solitary, - unlike Mont Blanc, which
is the last uprise of a thousand, or Mount Washington amid its cabinet of hills; but the granite
of the Maine mountain joins it to the New Hampshire range, and the volcanic tufa near the African
shore reaches to Madeira and Fayal. So the monuments of human genius and virtue tower from some




404            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
general base.  The triumphs of literature and art,
in Homer and zEschylus, Shakspeare and Milton,
Michel Angelo and Raphael, grew from  a soil, fed
on a stream, flourished in an air of congenial circumstances and favoring events, in Britain and Italy and
Greece; to make such delegates to all countries of
their own land, and spokesmen for the age of Elizabeth, Pericles, or the Pope. A great naturalist thinks
the universe of life sprang from no single vesicle or
monad, but an ocean of germs; and the human community has put forth all nobilities of private worth as
leaves.  O complainer of the multiplication of your
kind, which samples will you reject? Your own is a
specimen to be saved! Little sinner, we say to the
babe: what ne'er-do-well has blossomed at last into
your virtue? England, New England, Virginia, New
York, shrinks from the sight of its own cradle.
Have we a natural right to vote ourselves immortal? No, we must earn our heaven, laboring with
God!  Continuance is the incident of immortality,
truth the essence, love the assurance; and this a
contribution to our conviction from our kind. The
separate soul could never credit an endless life! -My
faith is a flower out of the stem on the stock of my
race; and, without these encouraging affections, I
were a helpless infidel.' They teach me identity with
my Source; that the world is not a whim which the
Almighty after a past eternity took it into his head to
make, but an expression inextricable from that being
his goodness names. Love informs, when it rests in
its object and does. not cat-like rub round it to come
back again. resembling the-devotion that beats and




IDEALITY.                405
breaks the idol which does not in danger deliver the
devotee. Of that love which is the acquisition of sacrifice, time cannot rob us, nor God will. This natural
communism of spiritual worth, this concrete trust in
God and destiny, the Power will justify which instigated and ordained.  The Fashioner forsakes not
the work of his own hands. No metaphysic sponge
can wipe off from the black-board of history fact or
wonder which the miraculous soul begets.  From
my balloon, staging, or ladder, I may have to come
down; but not from the elevation to which the rising
spiritual continent lifts; and from  that the perfect
whole is the view! Youth may rejoice without the
vision; but old age is dismal if it lay not hold of
eternal life. " Five minutes to tAe cataract," shouted
a German to an Englishman abroad, gliding down a
river in his canoe.  How near are we to the final
plunge? We want the beaver's sense to double-line
his dam against unwonted cold! By no theory or
ceremony can we be guided and sustained. To know
Christ's rank will be nought to breathing his love.
The stained windows that make corpses of the congregation will throw no light on the last darkness.
Only One, revealed within, whom we partake of, can
be our Sun and Shield. To call God an Idea, some
think, makes him unreal. But the Ideal is the Real.
To speak of an ideal, is to speak of an imagined but
not imaginary Christ.  " Is not this th.e son of
Mary?" the gaping wonderers asked.  It was, and
something more! Which was true, -the girl Beatrice,
Dante saw in the street, or the glory in Paradise?
His fancy exaggerated not, but fell short. Why did




406            RADICAL PROBLEMS.
the cross I gazed at, cut with a jackknife on the
unplaned board, enlarge to my eye, outshining those
on cathedral spires? It was an Inner Light mixing
with the beams of the sun!  What makes immortality? No selfish wish. I shall be immortal if anybody wants me to be. If I am not wanted in heaven,
I will not go! But God, who is my Cause, is my
Causeway.  Prayer is his inhalation and exhalation
in my breast.
Because Jesus felt this, he is representative between
both parties, and joins man with God. To call him
ideal is not to deny he is personal; for ideal, real,
and personal are all the same.  Wind and sound,
spirit and person, how he, whose life is a divine
sonnet, identifies in his talk with Nicodemus! He
was the soundizg forth of the mind of Him whose
own personality is the meaning of all the motion of
the world; but whose word and image the whole
humanity is, more than any one member, though
with title of Christ; and the date of whose road and
right of way to the soul what man or angel can tell?
When, in some famous biography, the literal Jesus is
put for the infinite God, in childish ignorance of all
scholarship and science, we must needs have a new
spiritual departure in religion, lest, in the yawning
gulf between ecclesiasticism and conmmon sense, the
Church as a school of honesty and wisdom be swallowed up. That Ideal, insulated in no individual, is
not all above, but stoops to our side. "You may,"
one said, " idealize your wife; but you cannot kiss
the portrait you make." Nay, nothing but the portrait can you kiss! The ideal is the real woman:




IDEALITY.                   407
the flesh and blood are but the painting or pigments
with which, by the Artist, the picture is ever improved.
When you put her into any act of sense she is gone!
In your definition of her she dies. Only as representative of spirit is she yours.  " In thee," said the expiring Bunsen to his wife, " I have loved the Eternal."
That is not love for any mortal which stops short of
the unseen.
Cambridge: Printed by John Wilson & Son.








A. 1EALMAH.  A  Story.  Price $2.00.
2. CASIMIR  MAREMMA.  A  Novel.  Price $2.oo.
3. COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. Price $i.50.
4. ESSAYS WRITTEN IN THE INTERVALS OF BUS
INESS.  Price $I.5o.
5. BREVIA. Short Essays and Aphorisms. Price $I.5o.
6. CONVERSATIONS ON WAR AND GENERAL CULTURE. Price $r.5o.
7. THOUGHTS UPON GOVERNMENT. Price $2.25.
From the London Review.
s ZThe tale (REALMAH) is a comparatively brief one, intersected by the
conversations of a variety of able personages, with most of whose names
and characters we are already familiar through'Friends in Council.'
Looking at it in connection with the social and political lessons that are
wrapt up in it, we may fairly attribute to it a higher value than could pos.
sibly attach to a common piece of fiction."
From a Notice by Miss E. M. Converse.
"There are many reasons why we like this irregular book (Realmah), in
which we should find the dialogue tedious without the story; the story dull
without the dialogue; and the whole unmeaning, unless we discerned the
purpose of the author underlying the lines, anid interweaving, now here,
now there, a criticism, a suggestion, an aphorism7 a quaint illustration, an
exhortation, a metaphysical deduction, or a moral inference.
" We gladly place' Realmah' on the' book-lined wall,' by the side of
other chosen friends -the sharp, terse sayings of the' Doctor'; the suggestive utterances of the' Noctes'; the sparkling and brilliant thoughts of
Montaigne'; and the gentle teachings of the charming' Elia.'"
From a Notice by fMiss H. W. Preston.
"' It must be because the reading world is unregenerate that Arthur Helps
is not a general favorite. Somebody once said (was it Ruskin, at whose
inmperious order so many of us read'Friends in Council,' a dozen years
ago?) that appreciation of Helps is a sure test of culture. Not so much
that, one may suggest, as of a certain native fineness and excellence of
mind. The impression prevails among some of those who do not, read;..,
that Helps is a hard writer. Nothing could be more erroneous. His man.
ner is simplicity itself; his speech always winning, and of a silvery dis.
tinctness. There are hosts of ravenous readers, lively and capable, who,
if their vague prejudice were removed, would exceedingly enjoy the gentle
wit, the unassuming wisdom, and the refreshing originality of the author
in question. There are men and women, mostly young, with souls that
sometimes weary of the serials, who need nothing so much as a persuasive
guide to the study of worthier and more enduring literature. For most of
those who read novels with avidity are capable of reading something else
with avidity, if they only knew it. And such a guide, and pleasantest of all
such guides, is Arthur Helps. * * Yet'Casim'ir Maremma' is a charming
book and, better still, invigorating. Try it. You are going into the country
for thile summer months that remain. Have' Casimir  with you, and have'Realmah,' too. The former is the pleasanter book, the latter the more powerful. But if you like one you will like the other. At the least you will rise
from their perusal with a grateful sense of having been received for a time
into a select and happy circle, where intellectual breeding is perfect, and the
struggle for brilliancy unknown.
Sold everywhere.  Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of advertised price, by the Publishers,
ROBERTS BROTHERS, 1BosToN.




THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT.
By HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD,
Author of " The Amber Gods," "New England Legends," &c. 1 vol.
16mo. Price $1.25.
From the Literary World.
It is a long time since Mrs. Spofford has let loose a novel upon the world,
but it is plain that her right hand has not lost its cunning. She manipulates
the thunderbolts of rhetoric with the same easy vehemence that amiazed
the readers of " The Amber Gods " a dozen years ago. Yet there is more
method in her thought, and in her style. The former is deeper and more
intense, and the latter shows the chastening influence of time.... In
reading her writings one's intellect and sensibilities.are at variance; the
former protesting and resisting, and the latter helpless, but happy under
the fascinations of her marvellous words. Blest is he who can give himself
up to the delights of her entertainment, and feast on its dainties without a
doubt of their wholesomeness, and without fear of possible mental bewildermlent or moral headache.
" The Thief in the Night " is a very peculiar story, not less in its conception than in the manner of its execution. It opens with a murder, -a
mysterious tragedy, — the victim of which lies pale on his bloody bed, with
weeping friends about him. His widow, and the manll who loves her, and
whom she has loved, stand together looking at the dead man; and then the
author drops the curtain, to be raised again in due season. The conviction
of every reader at the end of this scene is that the husband has been slain
by the wife, for love of him who was dearer to her.... This book will
have many readers; its fascinations are undeniable; the author has no
superior in our literature in the deft manipulation of words, and this
felicity is attended, somewhat incongruously, it seems, by a power of intense.
dramatic expression that gives substantial strength to her stories.
From a Regular Corresmpondent of the New Yorhk Tribmze.
BOSTON, Feb. 29.- The variety of thieves is infinite. Some plunder
custom-houses, and some steal hearts, and between these offences are
various gradations. The arch thief of souls is not the only one who comes
to us in the guise of an angel of light. A very captivating thief, indeed, was
the one who last night robbed me alike of sleep and ennui, -" A Thief in
the Night;" for that is the quaint title of a book by Mrs. Harriet Prescott
Spofiord, a new and really wonderful romance, which Roberts Brothers
are about to publish. The reader does not willingly lay it -down between
commencement and finis..... There is no break in the breathless interest;
no trace of weariness or flagging anrywhere; no place where it seems to
you that the wonderful story which holds you like the eye of the Ancient
Mariner could have known a pause.... The whole interest is concentrated
in three strong hIman souls, brought out with lights and shades as vivid
as Rembrandt used in his pictures, -souls which terribly suifered and
sinned, but with the likeness of the Divine in them still. It is not uncommon, in books at least, to marry the wrong man, thinking him to be
the right one. Catherine made the less coimmon mistake of marrying the
right man,1 believing him to be the wrong one; and out of this misconception grows the tragedy of the tale.
Sold everywlhere.  Mailed postpaid by the Publishers,
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MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS.
REV. C. A. BARTOL'S NEW BOOK.
RADICAL PROBLEMS.
~ RY REV. C. A. BARTOL, D.D.
CONTENTS. -Open Questions; Individualism; Transcendentalism; Radicalism; Theism; Naturalism; Materialism;
Spiritualism; Faith; Law; Origin; Correlation; Character;
Genius: Father Taylor; Experience; Hope; Ideality.
One volume, i6mo.  Cloth.  Prce $2.oo00.
PROFESSOR PARSOrNS'S VE W BOOK.
THE I NFINITE AND THE FINITE.
BY THEOPHILUS PARSONS.
AUTHOR OF 4 DEUS HOMO, X ETC.
One neat I6mo  volume.   Cloth.  Price  $I.oo.
"No one can know," says the author, " better than I do, how poor and dim a
presentation of a great truth my words must give. But I write them in the hope
that they may suggest to some minds what may expand in their minds into a truth,
and, germinating there, grow and scatter seed-truth widely abroad. I am sure
only of this: The latest revelation offers truths and principles which promise to
give to man a knowledge of the laws of his being and of his relation to God, - of
the relation of the Infinite to the Finite.... And therefore I believe that it will
gradually, -it may be very slowly, so utterly does it oppose man's regenerate
nature, -but it will surely advance in its power and in its influence, until, in its
own time, it becomes what the sun is in unclouded noon."
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MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICAT10NS.
THE To-MORROW OF DEATH;
OR,
THE FUTURE LIFE ACCORDING
TO SCIENCE.
By LOUIS FIGUIZER.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, BY S. R. CROCKER.  I vol. z6mo. $1.75.
Fromt the Literary World.
As its striking, if somewhat sensational title indicates, the book deals with the
question of the future life, and purports to present "a complete theory of Nature,
a true philosophy of the Universe." It is based on the ascertained facts of science
which the author marshals in such a multitude, and with such skill, as must command the admiration of those who dismiss his theory with a sneer. We doubt if
the marvels of astronomy have ever had so impressive a presentation in popular
form as they have here....
The opening chapters of the book treat of the three elements which compose
man, - body, soul, and life. The first is not destroyed by death, but simply changes
its form; tie last is a force, like light and heat, - a mere state of bodies; the soul
is indestructible and immortal. After death, according to M. Figuier, the soul becomes incarnated in a new body, and makes part of a new being next superior to
man in the scale of living existences, - the superhuman. This being lives in the
e her which surrounds the earth and the other planets, where, endowed with senses
and faculties like ours, infinitely improved, and many others that we know nothing
of, he leads a life whose spiritual delights it is impossible for us to imagine....
Those who enjoy speculations about the future life will find in this book fresh and
pleasant food for their imaginations; and, to those who delight in the revelations
of science as to the mysteries that obscure the origin and the destiny of man, these
pages offer a gallery of novel and really marvellous views. We may, perhaps, express our opinion of "The To-Morrow of Death" at once comprehensively and
concisely, by saying that to every mind that welcomes light on these grave questions, from whatever quarter and in whatever shape it may come, regardless of
precedents and authorities, this work will yield exquisite pleasure. It will shock
some readers, and amaze many; but it will fascinate and impress all.
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