ENDEAVORS
AFTER THE
CHRISTIAN LIFE.
JAMES i~ A RTI N EAT.
"Je sais que Dieu a voulu que les vdritds divines entrent du coeur dans l'esprit
et non pas de l'esprit dans le cceur. Et de lt vient qu'au lieu qu'en parlant des
choses humaines, on dit qu'il faut les connaitre avant que de les aimer; les Saints,
au contraire, disent, en parlant des choses divines, qu'il faut les aimer pour les cosnnaitre, et qu'on n'entre dans la vdritd que par la charite." - PASCAL: Pensles.
REPRINTED FROM  THE SIXTH ENGLISH EDITION.
BOSTON:
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION.
1876.




CAMBRIDGE:
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.




TO
REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM,
THIS VOLUME, THE EXPRESSION OF A HEART ENLARGED BY HIS FRIENDSHIP AND OFTEN AIDED BY HIS WISDOM,
IS DEDICATED,
IN MEMORY OF MANY LABORS LIGHTENED BY PARTNERSHIP, PURPOSES
INVIGORATED BY SYMPATHY, AND THE VICISSITUDES OF YEARS
BALANCED BY CONSTANCY OF AFFECTION.








PREFACE
TO THE FIRST SERIES.
IN a little work * published seven years ago, the
Author of the following Discourses intimated a desire to work out for himself and present to his readers,
a distinct answer to the question, "What is Christianity?" and the work then put forth was designed
as a mere preliminary to another, in which this great
inquiry should be prosecuted. The purpose then
announced still remains, and the materials for its execution are for the most part prepared. The present
volume, however, is not offered as any part of its
fulfilment; but rather in temporary apology for its
non-fulfilment.
Of his reasons for withholding for a time that promised volume, this is not the proper place to speak at
any length. A change in some of his views, and the
consciousness of immaturity in others, have certainly
* The Rationale of Religious Enquiry; or the Question stated of
Reason, the Bible, and the Church.




vi                  PREFACE.
had a share of influence in producing the postponement. But it has been occasioned chiefly by his desire
to lay aside for a while the polemical character, which
necessity, not choice, has impressed upon his former
writings; and which, until relieved by some task of
higher spirit, misrepresents the order of his convictions,
— engaging him upon the outward form of Christian
belief, while silent of the inner heart of human life
and faith.
Of his reasons for presenting this unpromised volume, the Author has but few words to say. As its
contents were written, so are they now published,
because he takes them to be true, and good to be
recognized as true by the consciousness of all men:
and not having been produced as taskwork, but out
of an earnest heart, they may possibly find a reader
here and there, to whom they speak a fitting and
faithful word.  Should the book avail for this, it
will sufficiently justify its appearance: should it not,
it will speedily disappear, and at least no harm be
done.
No formal connection will be found among the several discourses in this volume. Prepared at different
times, and in different moods of meditation, they are
related to each other only by their common direction
towards the great ends of responsible existence. The
title, indeed, expresses the spirit, more than the matter




PREFACE.                     11
of the book;- which " endeavors " to produce, rather
than describe, the essential temper of the "Christian
life."
The Author would have introduced a larger number
of discourses having direct reference, in word as well
as in spirit, to the divine ministry of Christ, did he
not hope to follow up the present volume by another
devoted especially to this subject, and a third on the
Christianity of Paul. In the meanwhile, he trusts that
those who, in devout reading of books and men, look
for that rather which is Christian, than which talks of
Christianity, will find in this little volume no faint
impression of the religion by which he, no less than
they, desires to live and die.
LIVERPOOL, June 20, 1843.








PREFACE
TO THE SECOND SERIES.
A GLANCE at the contents of this volume will show
that it does not fulfil the intentions avowed in the
preface to the former volume.  It does not refer
specially to the ministry of Christ, or to the Pauline
gospel: much less does it pretend to investigate the
proper definition of Christianity. The hope of treating these subjects, in a manner at all suitable to my
estimate of them, still recedes into the distance. The
materials indeed are not wholly unprovided; or I should
not have ventured on the pledge which still waits to
be redeemed: but a growing sense of their inadequacy
makes me wonder that I could ever think them worthy
of my readers' acceptance; and induces me to withhold them, till the deficiencies can be in some measure
supplied. Should the needful leisure never arrive, or
should I finally esteem myself not qualified for the
task to which, perhaps with presumptuous earnestness,
I once aspired, I shall indeed regret my inconsiderate




:X                    PREFACE.
promise, but be clear of reproach for less considerate
performance.
Though however the present volume, like its predecessor, is altogether practical and unsystematic, there is
a sense in which it may be regarded as a step towards
the completion of the original design. The prevalent
differences of belief on questions of theologylhave their
secret foundation in different philosophies of religion:
and these philosophies are the product of moral experience and self-scrutiny, so as always to reflect the
conception of human nature most familiar to the disciple's mind. Hence, controversies apparently historical cannot be settled by appeal to history alone: nor
metaphysical disputes, by metaphysics only; but will
ultimately resort for their answer to the sentiments and
affections wakened into predominant activity by the
literature, the teachings, and the social conditions of
the age. No one can observe the changes of faith and
the causes which determine them, without discovering,
that the order of fact reverses the order of theory; that
the feelings of men must be changed in detail, their
perceptions be awakened in fresh directions, their tastes
be drawn by new admirations, before any reasoning can
avail to establish an altered system of religious thought.
Who can suppose that the different estimates made of
the authority of Scripture are really the result of historical research, and are simply so many varieties of




PREFACE.                     xi
critical judgment? Is it not obvious that the sacred
writings are, in every case, allowed to retain precisely
the residue of authority which, according to the believer's view of our nature and our life, is unsupplied
from any other source?  If this be so, the psychology
of religion must have precedence — I do not say in
dignity, but in time- of its documentary criticism:
and every word faithfully spoken from the consciousness of a living man contributes a preliminary to the
inquiry as to the inspiration of ancient books. I am
not ashamed to confess, that extensive and, in the end,
systematic changes in the opinions I derived from sect
and education, have had no higher origin than selfexamination and reflection, -a more careful interrogation of that internal experience, of which the superficial
interpretation is so seductive to indolence and so prolific in error. And possibly, a volume like the present,
should it at all awaken in others the sentiments from
which it proceeds in myself, may indirectly lead to the
recognition, on their proper evidence of consciousness, of those very truths, which, in a more systematic
work, I could only aim to protect from the objections of philosophy, and reconcile with the results of
criticism.
I have preserved what I have to say in its original
form  of discourses prepared for the pulpit.  I have
always felt indignant with those preachers who, when




X11                   PREFACE.
they resort to the press, seem ashamed of their vocation, and disguise, under new shapes and names, the
materials originally embodied in sermons.  I should
as soon think of turning a sonnet into an epistle,
a ballad into a review, or a dirge into an obituary.
It must be a bad sermon that can be made into a
good treatise or even a good "Oration."  In virtue
of the close affinity, perhaps ultimate identity, of
religion and poetry, preaching is essentially a lyric
expression of the soul, an utterance of meditation in
sorrow, hope, love, and joy, from a representative of
the human heart in its divine relations. In proportion
as we quit this view, and prominently introduce the
idea of a preceptive and monitory function, we retreat
from the true prophetic interpretation of the office back
into the old sacerdotal: — or (what is not perhaps so
different a distinction as it may appear) from the properly religious to the simply moral. A ministry of mere
instruction and persuasion, which addresses itself primarily to the understanding and the will, which deals
mainly with facts and reasonings, with hopes and fears,
may furnish us with the expositions of the lectureroom, the commandments of the altar, the casuistry of
the confessional: but it falls short of that true " testimony of God," that personal effusion of conscience and
affection, which distinguishes the reformed preaching
from the catholic homily. Were this distinction duly




PREFACE.                  Xiii
apprehended, there would be a less eager demand for
extemporaneous preaching; which may be the vehicle
of admirable disquisitions, convincing arguments, impressive speeches; but is as little likely to produce
a genuine sermon, as the practice of improvising to
produce a great poem. The thoughts and aspirations
which look direct to God, and the kindling of which
among a fraternity of men constitutes social worship,
are natives of solitude: the spectacle of an assembly
is a hindrance to their occurrence; and though, where
they have been devoutly set down beforehand, they
may be re-assumed under such obstacle, they would
not spontaneously rise, till the presence of a multitude
was forgotten, and by a rare effort of abstraction the
loneliness of the spirit was restored. The faculty of
fluent speech is no doubt worthy of cultivation for
various civic and moral ends: but if it were once
adopted as the instrument of preaching, I am persuaded that the pulpit would exercise a far lower,
though perhaps a wider, influence; would be a powerful agent of theological discussion, of social criticism,
of moral and political censorship, but would lose its
noblest element of religion.  The devout genius of
England would have occasion' deeply to lament a
change, which would reduce to the same class with the
newspaper article a form of composition, enabling us to
rank the names of Taylor, Barrow, Leighton, Butler,




xiv                 PREFACE.
with the poets and philosophers of our country. At
all events, he who finds room under the conditions of
the sermon, to interest and engage his whole soul,
would be guilty of affectation, were he to disown the
occasion which wakes up his worthiest spirit, and
which, however narrow when measured by the capacities of other men, is adequate to receive his best
thoughts and aspirations. I am therefore well content
to mingle with the crowd of sermonizers.
It would be ungrateful, were I not to acknowledge,
as one of the results of the former volume of this
work, the delightful and unsought-for intercourse it
has opened to me with persons, whom it is an honor
to know, of various religious denominations. In the
divided state of English society, a work which touches
any springs of religious affection common to several
classes, performs at least a seasonable, though very
simple and natural, office.  It is happily an office
which every day renders easier to earnest men. For
there is undoubtedly an increasing body of persons in
this country, who are rapidly escaping from the restraints of sects; who are not unaware of the new conditions under which the Christianity of the present
day exists; and who are ready to join hand and heart
in order to give free scope to the essential truths and
influences of our religion, in combination with the
manly exercise of thought, and just concessions to mod



PREFACE.                      XV
ern knowledge. To find one's-self in sympathy with
such men is a heartfelt privilege, superior to all personal distinction: it is to share in an escape from the
worst prejudices of the present, and in the best auguries
of the coming age.
LIVERPOOL, September 2, 1847.








PREFACE
TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
BOTH Series of the "Endeavors after the Christian
Life " being out of print at the same time, I have
availed myself of the opportunity, in reproducing and
revising them, to throw them together into a single
volume: and I am glad to seek entrance for them
to a new class of readers by a reduction of price
which their more assured place now renders possible.
It was not without uneasiness that I began to correct the proofs of this new edition. The twenty years
which had elapsed since the sheets passed under
my eye had been marked by momentous changes in
theological feeling and belief, to which, in common
with my contemporaries, I could not pretend to have
been insensible. And it was natural to fear that a
book produced at the other end of that interval, must
now be out of date. I was relieved and surprised to
find how little it had been thrown out of tune by
b




Xviii                PREFACE.
the altered pitch of thought and sentiment; how
much less indeed it has to  apprehend to-day from
any jar against the prevailing tone of religion, than
at the hour of its first appearance. It would have
been far otherwise, had it treated of subjects whose
interest is critical or speculative, and which take new
aspects with the shifting light. But appealing mainly
to the simplest trusts and aspirations of the human
heart, it is compensated for having nothing new upon
its page, by having so much the tess that is liable to
grow old; and, while not pretending to trace any line
of progress in religion, gains a little shelter from its
permanence.  To heal the broken unity of Christendom, the scholar may rely on the ultimate establishment of his critical results; the ecclesiast may plan
treaties of peace and fusions of doctrine between
Church and Church; but, meanwhile, those who find
it more congenial to pass behind the whole field of
theological divergency, and linger near the common
springs of all human piety and hope, may perhaps be
preparing some first lines of a true Eirenikon.
LONDON, November 22, 1866.




CONTENTS.
DISCOURSE                                             PAGE
I. The Spirit of Life in Jesus Christ.....    1
II. The Besetting God.....     12
III. Great Principles and Small Duties....          21
IV. Eden and Gethsemane.........    30
V. Sorrow no Sin............  39
VI. Christian Peace...........  48
VII. Religion on False Pretences.......             58
VIII. Mamnmon-Worship..........   68
IX.  The Kingdom of God within us, Part I...       78
X. The Kingdom of God within us, Part II....        88
XI. The Contentment of Sorrow..    98
XII. Immortality............ 10 7
XIII.  The Communion of Saints........ 119
XIV. Christ's Treatment of Guilt.......    129
XV. The Strength of the Lonely....... 139
XVI. Hand and Heart........... 148
XVII. Silence and Meditation......... 158
XVIII. Winter Worship........... 168
XIX.  The Great Year of Providence.....          178
XX. Christ and the Little Child.....          191
XXI.  The Christianity of Old Age....... 201
XXII. Nothing Human ever dies...                  211
XXIII. Where is thy God?.......... 221
XXIV. The Sorrow with Downward Look..      234
XXV. The Shadow of Death......... 244
XXVI.  Great Hopes for Great Souls....... 254
XXVII. Lo! God is here..                                265
XXVIII. Christian Self-Consciousness....... 276




xx                      CONTENTS.
DISCOURSE                                           PAGE
XXIX. The Unclouded Heart......... 289
XXX. Help Thou mine Unbelief....... 303
XXXI. Having, Doing, and Being....... 312
XXXI. The Free-Man of Christ........ 323
XXXIII. The Good Soldier of Jesus Christ..... 333
XXXIV. The Realm of Order......... 344
XXXV. Christian Doctrine of Merit....... 354
XXXVI. The Child's Thought......... 365
XXXVII. Looking up, and Lifting up....... 377
XXXVIII. The Christian Time-View....... 388
XXXIX. The Family in Heaven and Earth..  99
XL. The Single and the Evil Eye...... 409
XLI. The Seven Sleepers.                          419
XLII. The Sphere of Silence. -1. Man's..    430
XLIII. The Sphere of Silence. -2. God's.... 440




DISCOURSES.
I.
THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST.
ROMANS VIII. 2.
THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST.
" A MAN," says the Apostle Paul, " is the image and glory
of God." And truly, it is from our own human nature,
from its deep experiences and earnest affections, that we
form our conceptions of Deity, and become qualified to
interpret the solemn intimations which creation and Scripture afford to us respecting him. Without the stirring of
divine qualities within us, without some consciousness of
that which we ascribe to the All-perfect, the names and
descriptions by which he is made known to us would be
empty words, as idly sent to us as treatises of sound to the
deaf, or some " high discourse of reason" to the fool. All
that we believe without us, we first feel within us; and it is
the one sufficient proof of the grandeur and awfulness of
our nature, that we have faith in God; for no merely finite
being can possibly believe the infinite. The universe of
which each man conceives, exists primarily in his own
mind; there dwell the angel he enthrones in the height,
and the demon he covers with the deep; and vainly would
he talk of shunning hell, who never felt its fires in his
bosom; or he converse of heaven, whose soul was never
pure and green as Paradise.
In virtue of this resemblance between the human and
1




2                THE SPIRIT OF LIFE
the divine mind, Christ is the representative and revealer of
both. God, by the very immensity of his nature, is a stationary being, -perfect, and therefore unchangeable: and
so far as Jesus Christ was " the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever; " so far as one uniform mind and power possessed
him, as one sacred purpose was impressed upon his life, - so
far is he the emblem of Deity; affording us, in speech, in
feeling, in will, in act, an idea of God, which nothing borrowed from the material creation or mortal life can at all
approach. His unity of soul, the unalterable spirit pervading all his altering moods of thought, - in short, his identity
with himself, is altogether divine. In so far, on the other
hand, as he underwent vicissitudes of emotion; in so far as
he spake, thought, acted differently in different periods of
his career, and a changed hue of soul came over him, and
threw across the world before him a brighter or a sadder
shade, —so far is he the ideal and picture of the mind of
man. His self-variations are altogether human.
The casual vicissitudes of feeling in Christ, his alternations
of anxiety and hope, of rejoicing and of tears, have often
been appealed to, as traces of his having had a like nature
with our own. The appeal is just; and shows us that he
was impressed, as we are, by those outward incidents which
may make the morning happy and the evening sad. But
besides these accidental agitations, which follow the complexion of our external lot, there is a far more important
set of changes, which the affections and character undergo
from internal causes; which occur in regular succession,
marking and characterizing the different periods of mental,
if not of physical life; and constitute the stages of moral
development through which the noblest minds visibly pass
to their perfection. The incidental fluctuations of emotion,
raised by the good or evil tidings of the hour, are but as
the separate waves which the passing wind may soothe to a
ripple or press into a storm: but the seasonal changes of
character, of which I now speak, are rather the great tidal




IN JESUS CHRIST.                  3
movements of the deep within us, depending on less capricious forces than the transient gale, and bearing on their
surface the mere film of tempest or of calm. The succession is distinctly traceable in the mind of Christ, making
his life a model of moral progression the most impressive
and sublime. He thus becomes in a new sense the representative of our duty, our visible and outward conscience:
revealing to us not only the end to which we must attain,
but the successive steps by which our nature reaches it; the
process as well as the result; the natural history of the
affections which belong to the true perfection of the will.
He is the type of the pure religious life; all its developments being crowded, by the rapid ripening of his soul, into
his brief experience: and we read in the gospel a divine
allegory of humanity, symbolical of those profound and
silent changes, of passion and speculation, of faith and love,
through which a holy mind rises to its most godlike power.
I propose to follow Jesus through the several periods, so
far as they appear, of his outward and inward history; and
to show the correspondence between their order and the
successive stages of growth in a religious and holy soul.
The only incident recorded of the childhood of Jesus
strikingly commences the analogy between his nature and
ours, and happily introduces him to us as the representative
of the great ideas of duty and God within the soul. The
annual pilgrimage from his village to the holy city, which
had hitherto been the child's holiday, full only of the wonder
and delight of travel, seized hold, on one occasion, of deeper
feelings, which absorbed him with their new intensity. The
visit which had become conventional with others appeared
at once with its full meaning to him: and with the surprise
of a fresh reverence he turned from the gay streets, and the
sunny excursion, and the social entertainment, to the quiet
courts of the temple, where the ancient story of miracle was
told, and the mystery of prophecy explained. Eager to prolong this new and solemn interest, he missed, you will re



4               THE SPIRIT OF LIFE
member, the opportunity of travelling back with the caravan
of Nazareth: and when told by his parents, on their return
in quest of him, "Thy father and mother have sought thee
sorrowing," he replied, with a tone not altogether filial,
"Know ye not that I must be about my Father's business? "
The answer is wonderfully expressive of the spirit of
young piety, taking its first dignity as an independent principle of action in the mind. The lessons of devotion' are,
for a long time, adopted passively, with listening faith; the
great ideas dwindling, as they fall from the teacher's lips,
to the dimensions of the infant mind receiving them. When
the mother calls her children to her knees to speak to them
of God, she is herself the greatest object in their affections.
It is by her power over them that God becomes Venerable;
by the purity of her eye that he becomes Holy; by the
silence of the hour that he becomes Awful; by the tenderness of her tones that he becomes Dear. That the parents
bend, with lowly look and serene result, before some invisible
Presence, is the first and sufficient hint to the heart's latent
faith; which therefore blends awhile with the domestic sympathies, simply mingling with them an element of mystery,
and imparting to them a deeper and less earthy coloring.
But the thoughts which constitute religion are too vast and
solemn to remain subordinate. They are germs of a growth,
which, with true nurture, must burst into independent life,
and overshadow the whole soul. When the mind, beginning to be busy for itself, ponders the ideas of the infinite
and eternal, it detects, as if by sudden inspiration, the
immensity of the relations which it sustains to God and
immortality: the old formulas of religious instruction break
their husk, and give forth the seeds of wonder and of love;
every thing that before seemed great and worthy is dwarfed;
and human affinities and duties sink into nothingness compared with the heavenly world which has been discovered.
There is a period when earnest spirits become thus possessed; disposed to contrast the grandeur of their new




IN JESUS CHRIST.                     5
ideal with the littleness of all that is actual; and to look
with a sublimated feeling, which in harsher natures passes
into contempt, on pursuits and relations once sufficient for
the heart's reverence. At such a crisis it was that Jesus
gave the answer to his parents; when his piety first broke
into original and self-luminous power, and not only took the
centre of his system, but threatened to put out those minor
and dependent lights which, when their place is truly understood, appear no less heavenly. IIe spake in the entranced
and exclusive spirit of young devotion. Well then may we
bear with the rebukes which this earnest temper is sometimes impelled to administer: for, by a mental necessity, all
strong feeling must be exclusive, till wisdom and experience
have trained it; till the worth of many things has been
ascertained; till God is seen, not sitting aloof from his
creation to show how contemptible it is, but pervading
it to give it sanctity; till it is found how much that is
human is also divine. None learned this so soon or so
profoundly as Jesus. And even now, the very sight of
home restored his household sympathies again: for when
he went to Nazareth with his parents, " he was obedient
unto them; and increased in favor " with "man," as well as
" God."
Nearly twenty years elapsed. Boyhood passed without
events. The slight flush of the youthful soul had fled.
Vainly did Mary notice how a light, as from  within, came
upon his features as he bent over his daily toil, or forced
him to pause, as if in some secret and ineffable colloquy.
Though the life of God within him was strong enough to
win the world, and give direction to its reverence for ever,
he was a villager still, serving the same necessities, and
pacing the same track of custom  as others. It was inevitable that the spiritual force within him should make insurrection against the narrow and cramping conditions by which
it was confined; that it should strive to burst its fetters,
and find or create a career worthy of itself: in short, that




6               THE SPIRIT OF LIFE
we should find Jesus no longer at Nazareth, but in the wilderness; led thither, in spite of himself, of interest and
comfort, of habit and home, by the beckoning of the divine
image in his heart. That solitude he was impelled to seek,
that he might grapple face to face with the evil and earthly
spirits that beset our path, disengage himself firom  the
encumbrances of usage and of doubt, and struggle into a
life befitting one who stands in immensity and dwells with
God. To the eye of the outward observer he may appear
altogether quiet, sitting on the bleak rock in the collapse of
feebleness and rest. Nevertheless, in that still form is the
most terrible of conflicts; anl exchange of awful defiances
between heaven and hell; a heaving and wrestling of
immortal powers, doing battle for the mind of Jesus, and
suspending on that moment the souls of millions and the
destinies of the world. His holy spirit won the victory;
the angels of peace and power led him forth; and the
transition was made from the obscurity of ordinary toil to
the glory of his everlasting ministry.
Now in the development of all earnest and noble minds
there is a passage corresponding with this scene. There
is a time when their image of duty grows too large for the
accidental lot in which it is encased, and seeks to burst it;
when human life changes its aspect before the eye; and
custom can no longer show it to us as a flat dull field, where
we may plough and build and find shelter and sleep; but
it swells into verdant slopes around the base of everlasting
hills, whose summit no man can discern, passing away as a
dim shape into the blue infinite above the lingering clouds.
There is a crisis when every faithful son of God is agitated
by a fierce controversy between the earthly and the divine
elements of his nature.  Self and the flesh seductively
whisper, "Thou hast a life of many necessities; earn thy
bread and eat it; and pay thyself for all thy trouble with a
warm hearth and a soft bed."  The voice of God thunders
in reply, " Thy life is short, thy work is great, thy God is




IN JESUS CHRIST.                  7
near, thy heaven is far; do I not send thee forth, armed
with thought and speech, and a strong right hand, to contend with the evil and avenge the good? Indulge no more,
or I shall leave thee: do thy best, and faint not: take up
thy free-will, and come with me." By some such conflict
does every great mind quit its ease to serve its responsibilities; part, if need be, with the sympathy of friends and the
security of neighborhood, in fidelity to duty; and suffer
wasting and loneliness, as in the bleakest desert, till temptation be vanquished, and hesitancy flung aside.
The course of Jesus was now taken. The peasant had
assumed the prophet's mantle and Messiah's power. How
calm and free his mind had thus become, how unembarrassed it dwelt in the pure atmosphere of its own convictions, is evident from this, that to his own village he went
and announced the change. In the very synagogue where
parents and neighbors worshipped, and aged knees to which
he had clung in infant sport were bent in prayer; where his
ear had first heard the music, and his soul felt the sublimity
of ancient prophecy,- there  Hlie opened the book, and found
the place where it was written,'The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor: he hath sent me to proclaim liberty to the
captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.' "
No wonder that as he spake in comment worthy of such a
text, his hearers "were astonished at the gracious words
that proceeded from his lips." The moment introduced, and
fitly represents, the first era of his ministry; during the
whole of which a joyous inspiration was on him. No sad
forebodings visited him: no doubts restrained his freedom:
no tears gushed forth to check his voice of mercy and delay
his word of power. It was a hopeful and vigorous career;
crowded with blessed deeds, and flushed with countless
benedictions that only kindled him to an alacrity more godlike. Nay, it seemed impossible for him to bear his own




8                THE SPIRIT OF LIFE
messages of love fast enougch: and first the Twelve, and
then the Seventy, were sent successively forth on a systematic mission, to multiply his power, and make ready the
paths of peace. The report of the Seventy, on their return,
declares the triumph of his name and spirit, not only in the
conquest of disease, bhut in the attachment of the poor and
the oppressed; and with the glow of glad devotion that
marks this period Jesus exclaimed, "I beheld Satan, as
lightning,fall from heaven." The Twelve brought far different tidings, which changed again the colors of his life.
Who does not discern, in the history of every faithful
mind, a period like this? - a period immediately following
the solemn league and covenant which we make with duty.
Throug,h sore and dark temlptattions the Christian first
enmerges into the free-will, by which he stands up and lives
in the likeness of God; and then, in the joy of his freedom
and sincerity, he springs, with self-precipitation, into the
mission Heaven assigns. That which he speaks -is it not
true? that which he feels is holy; that which he desires is
great and good. He loves the souls he would convert, and
knows them of the same family with his own. He has conquered in himself the weakness and the ills with which he
wars in others; and shall he not have faith? God is vaster
than the most gigantic wrongs; and h/is righteousness,
Twhich is as the great mountains, will speedily suppress them
in the abyss. In the power of this glorious faith, the true
servant and prophet of the Lord goes forth; makes a generous and confident rush upon evil; and — since it is the
immortal against the perishable -he trusts to sweep it off
and triumph in its flight. But, alas! the time is short, the
conflict long; and, faint and bleeding, he discovers that he
must fall, before the cry of victory.. And yet was that faith
of his most true. Its computation of forces was most unerring, for always shall evil be overcome by good, - with
mistake, you will say, in its dates; but that is only the
prophet's mistake, that sees the future as the present, and




IN JESUS CHRIST.                    9
considers the certainties of God superior to time.  This
right-souled man has uplifted his arm, and done a faithful
work: and the efforts of the wise and holy are not mere
momentary strokes dissipated and lost; hut an everlasting
pressure upon ill, with tension increasing without end, till it
drives the monstrous mass across the brink of annihilation.
Sad, however, is the hour when generous hope receives its
first check; and with mournful attention Jesus hears, on
the return of the Twelve, tidings of hostility and danger,
forcing on him the conviction that he must die; tidings
especially of the vigilance of Herod, recent murderer of
John the Baptist. The shock was somewhat sudden. He
retreated into solitude among the hills, that he might feel
awhile without obstruction  the refuge of his disciples'
friendship and his Father's power. And soon in the Transfiguration, where his mind conversed with prophets of an
elder age, the impression of his decease as the penalty of his
faithfulness becomes finally fixed. Thenceforth, as it seems
to me, not only did his views and expectations undergo a
great change and receive a large accession of truth, but the
spirit and moral tone of his ministry was different. Steadfast as before, even to " set his face to go to Jerusalem," he
is less joyous and more serene; more earnest and lofty, as
if his great aims had become sublimer for the distance to
which they had receded, and dearer for the price at which
they must be gained; more prone to tears, when asked for
by the griefs of others, more driven to prayer in wrestling
with his own. If his deeds of power — which by their
nature must be self-repetitions - are less frequent, he gives
himself more to speech, varying ever those words of eternal
life from which all ages learn divinest wisdom. And so he
passes on to his crucifixion: numbering the days only by
the duties that remain; devoting himself to the crowds of
Jerusalem by day, and to the family of Bethany at even; in
the morning teaching in the temple, and predicting its fall
at night; blessing the widow's charity, laying bare the




10              THE SPIRIT OF LIFE
priest's hypocrisy; found by his conspirators at midnight
prayer; in the trial, concerned for Peter; in the hall, convulsing the conscience of Pilate; on the fatal road, turning
with pity to the daughters of Jerusalem; and not exclaiming, " It is finished," till from the cross he looked on a
mother for whom he found a home, and a disciple whom he
made blessed by his trust.
And even this last change in Christ appears to be not a
mere external modification, but an internal ripening of his
perfect character, the last unfolding of its progressive
beauty: to which also there is a corresponding stage,
wherever the true religious life fulfils its course. When
the first sanguine enterprises of conscience seem to fail
(though fail they cannot, except to live as fast as our impatient fancies); when a cloud, like that which fell upon
Christ's future,, descends upon the prospects of the good;
when the evils against which he has taken up his vow, withstand the siege of his enthusiasm, and years ebb away, and
strength departs, with no visible impression made; and
friends become treacherous, and foes alert, and God's good
providence seems tedious and cruel, - then weak spirits
may succumb, able to keep faith alive no more; and even
the man mighty of heart may find the controversy great,
whether to go on and bear up against such sorrow of the
soul. But if he be wise, he clings more firmly to his fidelity,
and thinks more truly of his mission, wherein he is appointed
not to do much, but to do well. He too takes counsel of
the prophets of old, - the sainted spirits of the good, who
rebuke his impatience, and tell him that they followed each
other at intervals of centuries, and, as they found, so after
true service still left,the mighty work of good undone; that
the fruits of heaven will not ripen in some sunny hour, but
every noble mind must lend its transitory ray: and then,
when the full year of Providence has gone its round, perchance the collective sunshine of humanity may have
matured the produce of the tree of life. Such communion




IN JESUS CHRIST.                  11
does indeed speak to him of his "decease which he must
accomplish; " asks him to join the glorious succession of the
good; sends him  with transfigured spirit back into the
field of duty; gives him a sadder but more enduring wisdom, by which, with or without hope, in or out of peril, he
lives and labors on; renouncing power and success, yet
winning their divinest forms; and through self-crucifixion
gifted with immortality.




II.
THE BESETTING GOD.
PSALM CXXXIX. 5.
THOU HAST BESET ME BEHIND AND BEFORE, AND LAID THINE HAND
UPON ME.
PERHAPS it is impossible for us to represent God to our
minds under any greater physical image than that of his
diffused presence through every region of space. Certainly,
to feel that He lives, as the percipient and determining
agent throughout the universe, conscious of all things actual
or possible from the vivid centre to the desert margin of its
sphere, excluded from neither air, nor earth, nor sea, nor
souls, but clad with them as a vestment, and gathering up
their laws within his being, is a sublimer and therefore a
truer mode of thought, than the conception of a remote and
retired mechanician, inspecting from without the engine of
creation to see how it performs. Indeed, this mechanical
metaphor, so skilfully elaborated by Paley, appears to be,
of all representations of the divine nature, the least religious; its very clearness proclaiming its insufficiency for
those affections which seek not the finite, but the infinite;
its coldness repelling all emotions, and reducing them to
physiological admiration; and its scientific procedure presenting the Creator to us in a relation quite too mean, as
one of the causes in creation, to whom a chapter might be
devoted in any treatise on dynamics, and on evidence quite
below the real, as a highly probable God. The true natural
language of devotion speaks out rather in the poetry of the




THE BESETTING GOD.                   13
Psalmist and the prayers of Christ; declares the living
contact of the Divine Spirit with the human, the mystic
implication of his nature with ours, and ours with his;
his serenity amid our griefs, his sanctity amid our guilt,
his wakefulness in our sleep, his life through our death, his
silence amid our stormy force; and refers to him  as the
absolute basis of all relative existence; all else being in
comnl)arison but phantasm and shadow, and He alone the
real and essential Life.
Were we to insist on philosophical correctness of speech
in matters transcending all our modes of definition, we
should reject, as irrational and in truth unmeaning, the
question respecting any spiritual being, "wThere is he?"
Local position, physical presence, is a relation of material
things, and cannot be affirmed of mind without confounding
it with body. Thought, will, love, which have no size and
take up no space, can be in no spot, and move to none; and
to the souls of which these are attributes we can ascribe
neither habitation nor locomotion. It is only the bodily
effects and outward manifestations of mental force, —the
gestures of the visible frame and the actions of the solid
limbs, -to which place can be assigned: and when we say
that we are here and not there, it is to this organic system
connected with our spiritual nature, and to this alone that
we refer. Were we to press the notion further, and endeavor to settle the question where our minds are, the
intrinsic impropriety of the question would leave us altogether at a loss. There would be no more reason to attribute to the soul a residence within the body, than in the
remotest station of the universe; for God could as well
establish a constant relation between the mind and the
organism on which it was to act, at a distance thus vast,
as in the nearest proximity: and there would be no more
wonder in the movement of my arm on earth complying
with my will at the confines of the solar system, than in the
constant rush of our world on its career, in obedience to a




14               THE BESETTING GOD.
sun separated by distance so immense. It may be, after all,
but figuratively that we speak of any migration of the soul
in death. When the body appropriated to it as its instrument and expression falls, we cannot say that the mind is
here; we dream  of what we know not, if we fancy it to
require removal in order to present itself manifestly in
a higher region.  One order of physical relations being
dropped here, another may on the instant be assumed elsewhere, revealing the spirit to a new society, and giving it
the apparition of fresh worlds.
If we are unable to speak,otherwise than in figures,of the
place of our own minds, it is not surprising that God's presence is quite ineffable, and that we bow with reverent assent
to the poet's admission, " such knowledge is too wonderful
for me." But the confession of our ignorance once made,
we may proceed to use such poor thought and language as
we find least unsuitable to so high a matter; for it is the
essence and beginning of religion to feel that all our belief
and speech respecting God is untrue, yet infinitely truer
than any non-belief and silence. In whatever sense, then,
and on whatever grounds, we affirm the tenancy of our own
frame by the soul that governs it, must we fill the universe
with the everlasting Spirit of whose thought it is the development. His agency is all-comprehending, and declares itself
alike before us, from whichever side of the world's orbit,
from whichever phase of life we survey the spectacle of the
heavens or the phenomena of human history; nor can we
help regarding the physical laws of creation (the same in
all worlds) as his personal habits; the moral order of Providence as the unfolding of his character, the forms and flush
of the universal beauty as the effusion of his art; the griefs
and joys, the temptations, lapses, and triumphs, and all the
glorious strife of responsible natures, as the energy of his
moral sentiments, and his profuse donation of a divine freewill. It is true we do not everywhere alike discern him;
but this is our blindness and not his darkness. In the nar



THE BESETTING GOD.                  15
row ways of common life, amid the din of labor and traffic,
he seems to pass away; though it were well that his sanctity should be nigh, to cool the heats and guard the purity
of our toiling and tempted hours. But we acknowledge
space and silence to be his attributes; and when the evening dew has laid the noon-day dust of care, and the vision
strained by microscopic anxieties takes the wide sweep of
meditation, and earth sleeps as a desert beneath the starry
infinite, the unspeakable Presence wraps us close again, and
startles us in the wild night-wind, and gazes straight into
our eyes from those ancient lights of heaven.
And to the same Omnipresence which the individual
thinker thus consciously realizes, the collective race of men
is perpetually bearing an unconscious testimony. As if in
acknowledgment of the mystery of God, as if with an instinctive feeling that his being is the meeting-place of light
and shade, and that in approaching him we must stand on
the confines between the seen and the unseen; all nations
and all faiths of cultivated men have chosen the twilight
hour, morning and evening, for their devotion; and so
it has happened, that all round the earth on the bordering circle between the dairkness and the day, a zone of
worshippers has been ever spread, looking forth for the
Almighty Tenant of space, one-half towards the east, brilliant with the dawn, the other into the hemisphere of night,
descending on the west. The veil of shadow, as it shifts,
has glanced upon adoring souls, and by its touch cast down
a fresh multitude to kneel; and as they have gazed into
opposite regions for their God, they have virtually owned
his presence "besetting them  behind and before."  Our
planet, thus instinct with devout life, girded with intent
and perceptive souls, covered over, as with a divine retina,
by the purer conscience of humanity, is like a living eye,
watching on every side the immensity of Deity in which it
floats, and grateful for the rays that relieve its native gloom.
We sometimes complain of the conditions of our being as




16              THE BESETTING GOD.
nnfavorable to the discernment and the love of God; we
speak of him as veiled from us by our senses, and of the
world as the outer region of exile from which he is peculiarly hid. In imagining what is holy and divine, we take
flight to other worlds, and conceive that there the film must
fall away, and all adorable realities burst upon the sight.
Alas! what reason have we to think any other station in
the universe more sanctifying than our own? There is
none, so far as we can tell, under the more immediate touch
of God; none whence sublimer deeps are open to adoration; none murmuring with the whisper of more thrilling
affections, or ennobled as the theatre of more glorious
duties. The dimness we deplore,no travelling would cure;
the most perfect of observatories will not serve the blind;
we carry our darkness with us; and instead of wandering
to fresh scenes, and blaming our planetary atmosphere, and
flying over creation for a purer air, it behooves us in simple
faith to sit by our own wayside and cry, " Lord, that we
may receive our sight."  The Psalmist found no fault with
this world as setting God beyond his reach; but having the
full eye of his affections opened in perpetual vigil, he rather
was haunted by the Omniscient more awfully than he could
well bear, and would fain have found some shade, though it
were in darkness or the grave, from a presence so piercing
and a light so clear. Those to whom the earth is not consecrated will find their heaven profane.
God "besets us behind and before" in another sense.
He pervades the successions of time as well as the fields of
space, and occupies eternity no less than immensity. The
imagination faints beneath the weight of ages which crowd
upon it in the simplest meditation on his being, and in the
utterance of the most fiamiliar of our prayers. We call him
the " God of our fathers; " and we feel that there is some
stability at centre, while we can tell our cares to One listening at our right hand, by whom theirs are remembered and
were removed; who yesterday took pity on their quaint




THE BESETTING GOD.                  17
perplexities, and smiles to-day on ours, not wiser yet, but
just as bitter and as real; and who accepts their strains of
happy and emancipated love, while putting into our hearts
the song of exile and the plaint of aspiration. We invoke
him as the " God of Jesus;" and so doing we have contact
with a Mlind yet conscious of every scene in the tragedy of
Palestine, wherein the shadows of the lake-storm are uneffaced, and the cry of the Crucifixion is ringing still. We
speak to him as the" Ancient of days;" and so converse
with One who feels not the gradations of intensity that
make difference to us between the present and past, with
a consciousness that has no perspective; and we rest on the
surface of an unfathomable nature, comprising without confusion the undulation of all events, be it the tidal sweep of
centuries, or the surges of a nation's rage, or the small and
vivid ripplings of private grief. Nay, we pray to him  as
having abode " in heaven;" and we cannot lift our eye to
that pure vault without thinking how old are those stars
amid which our imagination enspheres him; how  they
watched over patriarchs in the plain of MamIre, and paced
the night in the same order and with like speed as yesterday; how they were ready there to meet the first human
sight that was turned aloft to gaze; and witnessed those
primeval revolutions that, having prepared the earth for
man, left their grotesque and gigantic vestiges as hieroglyphic hints to carry him back into the waste places of
eternity, and measure for him God's most recent step out
of the everlasting. How do the most vehement forims of history, the tempestuous minds that from ally other point of
view would terrify us by their might, - the sav:age hordes
that have swept as a whirlwind over the patient structure
of civilization, - how do they all, in this contemplation,
dwindle into momentary shapes, angel or demon spectres,
vividly visible and suddenly submerged! By the granite
pillars of God's eternity, deep-rooted in the abyss, we all in
turn climb to the surface for a moment, to slip again into
2




18              THE BESETTING GOD.
the night. But during the moment we are there, if we use
that moment well, we all see the same presence; turning
this way and that, we perceive only that he "besets us
behind and before." The Psalmist came up at a very different point of eternity from ourselves; and as he looked
fore and aft he could see only God. We, who are presented at a station where the Hebrew poet himself is quite
invisible, discern on every side the same immensity which
he adored. Well may we fall down and worship with
every creature, "Great and marvellous are thy works,
O Lord God Almighty! who art, and wast, and art to
come."
There is yet another sense in which we must confess that
God "besets us behind and before."  His physical agency
in all places is a great and solemn certainty; his ceaseless
energy through all time presents us with sublimer thoughts;
but there is a moral presence of his Spirit to our minds,
which places us in relations to him more intimate and sacred.
Surely there occur to every uncorrupted heart some stirrings
of a diviner life; some consciousness, obscure and transient
it may be, but deep and authoritative, of a nobler calling
than we have yet obeyed; a rooted dissatisfaction with self,
a suspicion of some poison in the will, a helpless veneration
for somewhat that is gazed at with a sigh as out of reach.
It is the touch of God upon us; his heavy hand laid upon
our conscience, and felt by all who are not numb with the
paralytic twist of sin. Even the languid mind of self-indulgence, drowsy with too much sense, complacent with too
much self, scarcely escapes the sacred warning. For though
it is quite possible that such a one may have no compunctions
in the retrospect which he takes from the observatory not
of conscience but of comfort; though he may even have
lapsed firom all knowledge of remorse, so that God has ceased
to " beset him from behind," - yet the future is not securely
shut against contingencies; and a moment of alarm, a shock
of death, a night of misery, may burst the guilty slumber,




THE BESETTING GOD.                19
and wake the poor mortal, as on a morning breaking in
tempest, with the flash of conviction, Behold!'tis God!
To most, I believe, there comes at least the casual misgiving that there is a destiny in reserve for them to which no
justice of the heart has yet been done; and to each, there
is the anticipated crumbling away of all his solid ground in
death; which even to the sternest unbelief is a lapsing into
the dark grasp of an annihilating God. So that the Almighty
Spirit besets even these most lonely of his children " from
before." And as for minds that are awake and at all in
quest of him, he haunts them every way. Oh that we could
but know how false it is that " the good man is satisfied from
himself "! When was there ever one of us who did not feel
his recollections full of shame and grief, and find in the past
the cup that overflowed with tears?  When, one that did
not look into the future with resolves made timid and anxious by the failures of experience, and distrust that breaks
the high young courage of the heart, and prayers that in
utterance half expect refusal? Which of us can stand this
day at the solemn meeting-point of past and future, without abasement for the one, and trembling for the other?without being beset by the Divine Spirit in penitent regrets
from behind, and in passionate aspirations from before?
And herein we should discover only this; that he has laid
his hand upon us, — has resolved to claim us to the uttermost, and will haunt us with his rebukes, though they
wither us with sorrow, till we surrender without terms.
It is not apparently the design of Heaven that we should
be permitted to seek rest and to desire ease in this aspiring
life; and it is the vain attempt to make compromise between
duty and indulgence, that creates the corrosions of conscience,
and the perpetual disquietudes of spirit, and disappoints our
own ideal from day to day and from year to year. There
is no way to the peace of God but by absolute self-abandonment to his will that whispers within us, without reservation
of happiness or self. Then, the relinquishment once made,




20              THE BESETTING GOD.
- our whole nature given up to any high faith within the
heart, — the sorrows of mortality, its reproaches, its fears,
will soon vanish, and even death be robbed of its terrors;
for, to quote the noble words of Lord Bacon, "He that dies
in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood,
who for the time scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind
fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good,doth best avert
the dolors of death."




III.
GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.
JOHN XIII. 14.
IF I THEN, YOUR LORD AND MASTER, HAVE WASHED YOUR FEET, YE OUGHT
ALSO TO WASH ONE ANOTHER'S FEET.
EVERY fiction that has ever laid strong hold on human belief
is the mistaken image of some great truth; to which reason
will direct its search, while half-reason is content with
laughing at the superstition, and unreason with believing it.
Thus, the doctrine of the Incarnation faithfully represents
the impression produced by the ministry and character of
Christ. It is the dark shadow thrown across the ages of
Christendom by his mortal life, as it inevitably sinks into
the distance. It is but the too literal description of the
real elements of his history; a mistake of the morally for
the physically divine; a reference to celestial descent of
that majesty of soul which, even in the eclipse of grief,
seemed too great for any meaner origin. Indeed, how
better could we speak of the life of Jesus than in the language of this doctrine, as the submission of a most heavenly
spirit to the severest burden of the flesh, —the voluntary
immersion within the shades of deep suffering of a godlike
mind, visibly radiant with light unknown to others, and
betraying its relation to eternity, while making the weary
pilgrimage of time?  It was the peculiarity of his greatness
that it - stooped, I will not say, but - penetrated without
stooping, to the humblest wants; not simply stepped casually aside to look at the most ignominious sorrows, but went




22     GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.
directly to them, and lived wholly in them; scattered glorious miracles and sacred truths along the hidden by-paths
and in the mean'recesses of existence; serving the mendicant and the widow, blessing the child, healing the leprosy
of body and of soul, and kneeling to wash even the traitor's
feet. In himself was the serene and unapproachable dignity
of a higher nature, a mind at one with the universe and its
Author; in his acts, a frugal respect for the most neglected
elements of human life, declaring that he came not to be
ministered unto but to minister. What wonder that, when
he had been ensphered in the immortal world, he appeared
to the affectionate memories of men as a divine being who
had disrobed himself of rightful glory to take pity on their
sorrows, and had put on for the gladness of praise the
garment of heaviness? The conception is at least in close
kindred with a noble truth, - that a soul occupied with
great ideas best performs small dilties; that the divinest
views of life penetrate most clearly into the meanest emergencies; that so far from petty principles being best proportioned to petty trials, a heavenly spirit taking up its
abode with us can alone sustain well the daily toils, and
tranquilly pass the humiliations of our condition; and that,
to keep the house of the soul in order due and pure, a god
must come down and dwell within, as servant of all its
work.
Even in intellectual culture this principle receives illustration; and it will be found that the ripest knowledge is
best qualified to instruct the most complete ignorance. It
is a common mistake to suppose that those who know little
suffice to inform those who know less: that the master who
is but a stage before the pupil can, as well as another, show
him the way; nay, that there may even be an advantage
in this near approach between the minds of teacher and of
taught; since the recollection of recent difficulties, and the
vividness of fresh acquisition, give to the one a more living
interest in the progress of the other. Of all educational




GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.    23
errors, this is one of the gravest. The approximation required
between the mind of teacher and of taught is not that of a
common ignorance, but of mutual sympathy; not a partnership in narrowness of understanding, but that thorough
insight of the one into the other, that orderly analysis of
the tangled skein of thought, that patient and masterly skill
in developing conception after conception, with a constant
view to a remote result, which can only belong to comprehensive knowledge and prompt affections. WVith whatever
accuracy the recently initiated may give out his new stores,
he will rigidly follow the precise method by which he made
them his own; and will want that variety and fertility of
resource, that command of the several paths of access to a
truth, which are given by a thorough survey of the whole
field on which he stands. The instructor needs to have a
full perception, not merely of the internal contents, but also
of the external relations, of that which he unfolds; as the
astronomer knows but little if, ignorant of the place and
laws of moon and sun, he has examined only their mountains
and their spots. The sense of proportion between the different parts and stages of a subject, the appreciation of
every step at its true value, the foresight of the section that
remains in its real miagnitude and direction, are qualities so
essential to the teacher, that without them all instruction is
but an insult to the learner's understanding. And in virtue
of these it is, that the most cultivated minds are usually the.
most patient, most clear, most rationally progressive; most
studious of accuracy in details, because not impatiently shut
up within them as absolutely limiting the view, but quietly
contemplating them from without in their relation to the
whole. Neglect and depreciation of intellectual minutiae
are characteristics of the ill-informed: and where the gr:nular parts of study are thrown away or loosely held, there
will be found no compact mass of knowledge solid and clear
as crystal, but a sandy accumulation, bound together by no
cohesion and transmitting no light. And above and beyond




24     GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.
all the advantages which a higher culture gives in the mere
system of communicating knowledge, must be placed that
indefinable and mysterious power which a superior mind
always puts forth upon an inferior; that living and lifegiving action, by which the mental forces are strengthened
and developed, and a spirit of intelligence is produced, far
transcending in excellence the acquisition of any special ideas.
In the task of instruction, so lightly assumed, so unworthily
esteemed, no amount of wisdom would be superfluous and
lost; and even the child's elementary teaching would be
best conducted, were it possible, by Omniscience itself. The
more comprehensive the range of intellectual view, and the
more minute the perception of its parts, the greater will be
the simplicity of conception, the aptitude for exposition, and
the directness of access to the open and expectant mind.
This adaptation to the humblest wants is the peculiar triumph
of the highest spirit of knowledge.
In the same way it is observable that the trivial services
of social life are best performed, and the lesser particles
of domestic happiness are most skilfully organized, by the
deepest and the fairest heart. It is an error to suppose that
homely minds are the best administrators of small duties.
Who does not know how wretched a contradiction such a
rule receives in the moral economy of many a home?-how
often the daily troubles, the swarm of blessed cares, the
innumerable minutia of arrangement in a family, prove quite
too much for the generalship of feeble minds, and even the
clever selfishness of strong ones? -how apetty and scrupulous
anxiety, in defending with infinite perseverance some small
and almost invisible point of frugality and comfort, surrenders the greater unobserved, and while saving money
ruins minds? - how, on the other hand, a rough and unmellowed sagacity rulzes indeed and without defeat, but, while
maintaining in action the mechanism of government, creates
a constant and intolerable friction, a grating together of
reluctant wills, a groaning under the consciousness of force,




GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.    25
that make the movements of life fret and chafe incessantly?
But where, in the presiding genius of a home, taste and
sympathy unite (and in their genuine forms they cannot be
separated), — the intelligent feeling for moral beauty and
the deep heart of domestic love, — with what ease, what
mastery, what graceful disposition, do the seeming trivialities of existence fall into order, and drop a blessing as they
take their place! how do the hours steal away, unnoticed
but by the precious fruits they leave! and by the self-renunciations of affection, there comes a spontaneous adjustment of various wills; and not an innocent pleasure is lost,
nor a pure taste offended, nor a peculiar temper unconsidered; and every day has its silent achievements of wisdom,
and every night its retrospect of piety and love; and the
tranquil thoughts that, in the evening meditation, come
down with the starlight, seem like the serenade of angels,
bringing in melody the peace of God! Wherever this
picture is realized, it is not by microscopic solicitude of
spirit, but by comprehension of mind and enlargement of
heart; by that breadth and nicety of moral view which
discerns every thing in due proportion, and, in avoidin( an
intense elaboration of trifles, has energy to spare for what
is great; in short, by a perception akin to that of God,
whose providing frugality is on an infinite scale, vigilant
alike in heaven and on earth; whose art colors a universe
with beauty, and touches- with its pencil the petals of a
flower. A soul thus pure and large disowns the paltry rules
of dignity, the silly notions of great and mean, by which
fashion distorts God's real proportions; is utterly delivered
from the spirit of contempt; and, in consulting for the benign
administration of life, will learn many a task, and discharge
many an office, from which lesser beings, esteeming themselves greater, would shrink as ignoble. But, in truth,
nothing is degrading which a high and graceful purpose
ennobles; and offices the most menial cease to be menial,
the moment they are wrought in love. What thousand




26     GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.
services are rendered, ay and by delicate hands, around
the bed of sickness, which, else considered mean, become
at once holy and quite inalienable rights!  To smooth the
pillow, to proffer the draught, to soothe or to obey the
fancies of the delirious will, to sit for hours as a mere sentinel of the feverish sleep,- these things are suddenly erected,
by their relation to hope and life, into sacred privileges.
And experience is perpetually bringing occasions, similar in
kind though of less persuasive poignancy, when a true eye
and a lovely heart will quickly see the relations of things
thrown into a new position, and calling for a sacrifice of
conventional order to the higher laws of the affections; and,
alike without condescension and without ostentation, will
noiselessly take the post of gentle service and do the kindly
deed. Thus is it that the lesser graces display themselves
most richly, like the leaves and flowers of life, where there
is the deepest and the widest root of love; not like the
staring and artificial blossoms of dry custom that, winter or
summer, cannot change; but living petals woven in Nature's
workshop and folded1 by her tender skill, opening and shutting morning and night, glalncing and trembling in the sunshine and the breeze. This easy capacity of great affections
for small duties is the peculiar triumph of the highest spirit
of love.
The same application of the loftiest principles to the most
minute details is still more perceptible when we rise a step
hiher, and, from the operations of knowledge and of love,
turn to notice thle agency of high religious faith. In the
mannagement and conquest of the daily disappointments and
small vexa:tions which bef all every life, - the life of the idle
and luxurious no less than of the busy and struggling,only a devout mind attains to any real success, and evinces
a triumphant power. Who has not observed how wonderfully the mere insect-cares, that are ever on the wing in the
noon-day heat of life, have power to sting and to annoy even
the giant minds around which they sport, and to provoke




GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.    27
them into the most unseemly war? The finest sense, the
profoundest knowledge, the most unquestionable taste, often
prove an unequal match for insignificant irritations; and a
man whose philosophy subdues nature, and whose force of
thought and purpose gives him ascendency over men, may
keep, in his own temper, an unvanquished enemy at home.
Nor is this found only in cases of great self-ignorance, or
impaired vigor in the moral sense. Even where the evil is
self-confessed and felt as a perpetual shame, where the
conscience sets up against it an honest and firm resistance,
it is quite possible that very little progress may be made,
and very little quietness attained. This is one of the many
forms of duty in which mere moral conviction, however
clear and strong, will continually fail. You may be persuaded that it is wrong to be provoked; you may repeat to
yourself that it is useless; you may command your lips to
silence, and breathe no angry word: and yet withal the perturbation is not gone, but only dumb; the conquest is not
made, but the defeat concealed. There is nothing in the
efforts of volition that has power to change the point of
mental view; these self-strivings do not lift you out of the
level of your trial; you remain imprisoned in the midst of
it, wrestle with its miseries as you may; wanting the uplifting faith, by which you escape from it, and look down upon
it. It may be very absurd, nay very immoral, to be teased
by trifles; but alas! while you remain in the dust, reason
as you may, it will annoy you; and there is no help for it,
but to retire into a higher and grassier region, where the
sultry road is visible from afar. We must go in contemplation out of life, ere we can see how its troubles subside and
are lost, like evanescent waves, in the deeps of eternity and
the immensity of God. A mind that can make this migration from the scene by which it is surrounded, is removed
from all vain strife of will, and gains its tranquillity without
an effort; feels no difficulty in being gentle and serene, but
rather wonders that it could ever be tempted from its pure




28     GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.
repose. How welcome would it often be to many a child
of anxiety and toil, to be suddenly transferred from the heat
and din of the city, the restlessness and worry of the mart,
to the midnight garden or the mountain top! And like
refreshment does a high faith, with its infinite prospects ever
open to the heart, afford to the worn and weary: no laborioius travels are needed for the devout mind; for it carries
within it Alpine heights and starlit skies, which it may
reach with a moment's thought, and feel at once the loneliness of nature, and the magnificence of God.
Nor is it only in the government of ourselves that high
faith is found the most efficient aid for the less dignified
duties. In the services which benevolence must render to
others, the same truth is exemplified; and the humblest and
homeliest form of benevolence - attention to the grievances
and sufferings of the body — receives its most powerful
motive from the sublimest of all truths, the doctrine of
human immortality. A different result might perhaps have
been anticipated. It might have been thought that for the
truest sympathy with the pains of disease and the privations of infirmity, we must look to the disciples of materialism and annihilation; that they who take the body to be
our all, would most vehemently deplore its fragility, and
most affectionately tend its decline; that no love would be
so faithful as that which believed, at the death-bed of a
friend, that the real last look, the absolute farewell, was
drawing nigrh. On the theory of extinction, oh, with what
close embrace would it seem natural to clin( to each sinking life, -like kindred in shipwreck that cannot part! The
vivid expectation of futurity, which has so often led the
believer to ascetic contempt for his own physical wants,
would appear only consistent,if it passed by in equal scorn
the bodily miseries of others. But it has not been so. In
this, as in all the other instances, it appears that the sublimest instruments of the mind are the best fitted to the most
homely offices of duty; and that truths the most divine are




GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.    29
the gentlest servitors of wants the most humiliating. In
the eye of one who looks on his fellow-man as a compound
being, the immortal element imparts, not meanness, but a
species of sanctity, to the mortal; just as the worshipper
feels that of the temple whose space has been set apart for
God the very stones are sacred, and the pavement claims a
venerating tread.  It is this constant penetration to the
mind within, this recognition of something that is not seen,
that overcomes the physical repulsiveness of corporeal want
and pain, and gives a tranquil patience to the Christian who
watches the ravages of disease and the approach of death.
Nay, when he sees the soul, which is the heir of heaven,
prostrated and tortured by a wretched frame, he thinks it
almost an indignity that so kingly a habitant should pine
in so poor a cell, and a native of the light itself cry thus
aloud in dark captivity; and with touched and generous
heart he flies to the sufferer, with such help and succor as
be may.
Let us, then, cherish and revere the great sentiments
which we assemble here to pour forth in worship, not as
the occasional solace or the weekly dignities of our existence; but as truths that naturally penetrate to the very
heart of life's activity, and best administer even the small
frugalities of conscience. Nothing less than the majesty of
God and the powers of the world to come can maintain the
peace and sanctity of our homes, the order and serenity of
our minds, the spirit of patience and tender mercy in our
hearts.  Then only shall we wisely economize moments
when we anticipate for ourselves an eternity and lose no
grain of wisdom, when we discern the glorious and immortal structure which its successive accumulations shall raise.
Then will even the merest drudgery of duty cease to humble us, when we transfigure it by the glory of our own
spirit. Seek ye then the things that are above, where your
life is hid with Christ in God.




IV.
EDEN AND GETHSEMANE.
1 COR. xv. 46.
AND SO IT IS WRITTEN, THE FIRST MAN ADAM WAS MADE A LIVING SOUL,
THE LAST ADAM3 WAS MADE A QUICKENING SPIRIT. HIOWBEIT THAT WAS
NOT FIRST WIIICH IS SPIRITUAL, BUT THAT WHICH IS NATURAL; AND
AFTERWARD THAT WHICH IS SPIRITUAL.
GREAT and sacred was the day of Adam's birth; if for no
other reason yet for this, -that he was the first man and
had a living soul. The impressions received by the original
human being, dropped silently at dawn from infinite night
upon this green earth, can never have been repeated. With
maturity of powers, yet without a memory or a hope; with
full-eyed perception, yet without interpreting experience;
with all things new, yet without surprise, since also there
was nothing old; he was thrown upon those primitive
instincts by which God teaches the untaught: left to wander over his abode and note the ever-living attitudes of
Nature, and from her bewildering mixture of the original
with the repeated, from rest and weariness, from  the confusion of waking and of dreams (both real alike to him),
flom  the glow of noon and the ftall of darkness and the
night, from  the summer shower and the winter snow, to
disentangle some order at length, and recognize the elelnentary laws of the spot whereon he dwelt.
Fast as five senses and a receiving mind would permit,
did he find where he was, and whenl he came, and by what
sort of scene he was environed; how the fair show of creation came round, each part in its own section of space and




EDEN AND GETHSEMANE.                 3t
time, persuading him to notice and obey. And when he is
thus the pupil of the external world, le is in training to
become its lord; by the discipline of submission learning the
faculty of rule. Beneath the steady eye of human observation, nature becomes fascinated, and consents to be the
menial and the drudge of man, doing the bidding of his
wants and will, and apprenticing her illimitable power to
his prescribing skill. And so was it given to the father of
our race, for himself and for his children, to subdue the
earth, to put forth the invisible force of his mind in conquest of its palpable energies, to give the savage elements
their first lesson as the domestic slaves of human life, and
make some rude advance towards that docility with which
now they till and spin and weave and carry burdens, with
the fleetness of the winds and the precision of the hours.
To a living and understanding soul, what wuas the unexhausted world but in itself a Paradise?  And was there
aught else for its earliest inhabitant but to discover what
fruits he might open his bosom to receive from the universe
around? Worthily does the Bible open with the story of
Eden, - the fresh dawn, the untrodden garden of our life.
Truly, too, whatever geologists may find and say, is that
day identified with the general act of creation; for in no
intelligible human sense was there any universe, till there
was a soul filled with the idea thereof. The system of things
of which Moses proposed to himself to write the origin, was
not a saurian's or a mammoth's world, not such a creation
as was pictured in the perceptions of huge reptiles and
extinct fishes; but such a universe as the spirit of a man
discerns within and so spreads without him; and of this it
is certain, that the instant of his birth was the date of its
creation. For had he been different,it would not have been
the same; had he been opposite, it would have been reversed; and had he not been at all, it would not have
appeared.  Whatever is solemn in the apparition of the
fair and infinite universe, belongs to the day of Adam's
birth.




32            EDEN AND GETHSEMANE.
Greater, however, and more sacred, was the day of
Christ's birth; of that " second man," as Paul says with
glorious meaning, of that "last Adam," who was "a quickening spirit," and the first parent of a new race of souls.
He, too, was placed by the hand of God upon a fresh world,
and commissioned to explore its silent and trackless ways;
to watch and rest in its darkness, and use and bless its
light; to learn by instincts divine and true of its blossoms
and its fruits, its fountains and its floods. But it was the
world within, the untrodden forests of the soul where the
consciousness of God hides itself in such dim light, and
whispers with such mystic sound, as befit a region so boundless and primeval,- it was this on which Jesus dwelt as the
first inspiired interpreter. To himn it was given, not to cast
his eye around human life and observe by what scene it was
encompassecd, but to retire into it, and reveal what it contained; not to disclose how man is materially placed, but
what he spiritually is; to comprehend and direct, not his
natural advantages of skill and physical power, but his
grief, his hope, his strife, his love, his sin, his worship. He
was to find, not what comfort man may open his bosom to
receive, but what blessing he may open his heart to give;
nay, what transforming light may go forth from the conscience and the faith within, to make the common earth
divine, and exhibit around it the mountain heights of God's
protection: to show us the Father, not as the great mechanic of the universe, whose arrangements we obey that
we may use them, but as the Holy Spirit that moves us with
the sigh of infinite desires, and the prayer of ever-conscious
guilt, and the meek hope -that stays by us so long as we
are absolutely true —of help and pity from the Holiest.
And if the affections are as the colored window, - near and
small and of the earth, or far and vast and of the sky,through which we receive the iminaes of all things, and find
them  change with the glass of our perceptions, hlow justly
does' the Apostle Paul deem  the work of Christ "a new




EDEN AND GETHSEMANE.                 33
creation"!  If he that makes an eye, calls up the mighty
phantasm  of the heavens and the earth; he that'forms a
soul within us remodels our universe and reveals our God.
Eden, then, is less sacred than the streets of Bethleheml
and the fields of Nazareth; though, as befits the cradle of
the natural man who needs such things, its atmosphere
might be purer and its slopes more verdant. Indeed in all
their adjuncts do we see the character of the two events,
and how " afterwards " alone came " that which was spiritual."  When the first man heard the voice and step of the
Most High, it was outwardly aiong the trees, — as was
natural to one born of the mere physical and constructing
energy of God, without a mother and without a home:
when Jesus discerned the divine accents, the whispers of
the Father were withiln him, the solemn articulation of the
spirit infinitely affectionate and wise;- a distinction altogether suitable to one born of that mother who hid many
things in her heart, — granted to us by that gentlest form
of the divine love, whence alone great and noble natures
are ever nurtured. When Adam entered life, the earth was
glad and jubilant; when Christ was born, the joy was testified by angels, and the anthem  sounded from the sky.
The "first man" subdued the physical world; the "last
man" won the immortal heaven.
Fellow-men and fellow-Christians, there is an Adam and
a Christ witliiin us all; a natural and a spiritual man,
whereof the father of our race and the author of our faith
are the respective emblems, both in the order of their succession and the nature of their mission. We are endowed
with powers of sense, of understanding, of action, by which
we cominunicate with the scene of our present existence,
and win triumlhs over external and finite nature; by which
we appropriate and multiply the fruits of Providence permitted to our happiness. And we are conscious, however
faintly, of aspirations and affections, of a faith and wonder,
of a hope and sadness, which bear us beyond the margin of
3




34             EDEN AND GETHSEMANE.
the earthly and finite, and afford some glimpse of the infinitude in which we live. By the one we go forth and discover our knowledge; by the other return within and learn
our ignorance: by the one we conquer nature, by the other
we serve God: by the one we shut ourselves up in life, by
the other we look with full gaze through death: by the one
we acquire happiness and sagacity and skill; by the other
wisdom and sanctity and truth: by the one we look on our
position and all that surrounds it with the eye of economy;
by the other with the eye of love. Our first and superficial aimrn is to be,like Adam, lord below: our last to be, like
Christ, associate above. In short, the individual mind is
conducted through a history like the sacred record of the
general race, and, if it be just to its capacities, passes
through a period of new creation; and every noble life,
like the Bible (which is " the book of life "), begins with
Paradise and ends with heaven.
Ere Jesus became the Christ, he was led into the desert
to be tempted. And before the lMessiah within us — the
messenger-spirit of God in the soul - can make his inspiration felt, and render his voice articulate and clear, we too
must have been called to severe and lonely struggles with
the power of sin. On no lighter terms can the natural man
pass into the spiritual, and Deity shape forth a dwelling
within the deeps of our humanity. In childhood, we live
in God's creation, as in the unanxious shelter of some Eden;
the innocent in a garden of fruits, where the tillage demands
no toil, and, with smallest restraint, we have little else but
to gather and enjoy: and the utmost duty is to abstain,
rather than to do; to keep the lips from  forbidden fruits,
not to spend the labor and sorrow of the brow or of the
soul, in order to raise and multiply the bread of nature or
of life. And many, alas! there are, who make their life
this sort of holiday thing unto the end, and retain its chlildislhness, only, from the nature of the case, losing all its
innocence; strolling through it as a mere fruit-gathering




EDEN AND GETHSEMANE.                   35
place, a garden of indulgence, a Paradise sacred no more
because empty now of God, and unvisited by the murmurs
of his voice. There comes a time to us all, when the sense
of responsibility starts up and rebukes our anxiety for ease;
tells us that we are living, fast and once for all, a life that
enlarges to the scale of eternity, and is embosomed everywhere in God; bids us spring from our collapse of selfishness and sleep, take up the full dimensions of our strength,
and go forth to do much, if it be possible, and at least to do
worthily and well. And full often is the conflict terrible
between the indolence of customn, the passiveness of selfwill, and this inspiring impulse of the divine deliverer
within us. Many a secret passage of our existence does it
make bleak as the wilderness, and lonely as the Dead-Sea
shore; in many an hour of meditation, seemingly the
stillest, does it inwardly tear us, as in the mid-strife of
heaven and hell, and leave us wasted as with fasting nigh
to death: but oh! if we are only true to the spirit that
declares "we shall not live by bread alone; " if we quietly
descend from the pinnacle of our pride (though sin may
pretend to make it sacred and call it a turret of the telnple); if we keep close to the meek appointed ways of Him
whom our presumption must not try: if we bend no knee
to the majesty of splendid wrong, but, in single allegiance
to the Holiest, drive away the niost glorious spirit of guilt
that honors our strength with his assault, - do we not find
at length that angels come and minister unto us; that the
waste appears to vanish suddenly away, and the desert to
blossom as the rose; that we are restored as to a garden,
not of the earth, but of the Lord, filled with the whispers
of divinest peace?  And so our energy is born from the
moments of weakness and of fear; and, were there no hell
to tempt us, there were no heaven to bless. From the
crisis of trembling and of doubt, we issue forth to tAke up
our mission gladly, with the unspeakable shelter of God
without us, and the hidden life of his love within us.




36             EDEN AND GETHSEMANE.
Again: he who gave us the Gospel was "the Man of
Sorrows;" and the glad tidings of great joy were pronounced by a voice mellowed by many a sadness. And not
otherwise is it with the messenger-spirit of our private
hearts; which does not become the Christ, the consecrated
revealer of what is holy, unless it be much acquainted with
grief. Heaven and God are best discerned through tears;
scarcely perhaps discerned at all without them. I do not
mean that a man must be outwardly afflicted, and lose his
comforts or his friends, before he can become devout.
Many a Christian maintains the truest heart of piety without such dispensations; and more, alas! remain as hard and
cold as ever in spite of them. That there is felt to be a
general tendency, however, in the blow of calamity and the
sense of loss, to awaken the latent thought of God and persuade us to seek his refuge, the current language of devotion in every age, the constant association of prayer with
the hour of bereavement and the scenes of death, suffice to
show. Yet is this effect of external distress only a particular instance of a general truth, viz., that religion springs up
in the mind whenever any of the infinite affections and
desires press severely against the fitite condclitions of our
existence. In ill-disciplined and contracted souls, this sorrowful condition is never fulfilled, except when some muchloved blessing is forcibly snatched away, and their human
attachment (which is infinite) is surprised (though knowing
it well before) at the violence of death, knocks with vain
cries at the cruel barriers of our humanity, and is answered
by the voice of mystery from beyond. But such was not
the sorrow with which Christ was stricken; nor is such the
only sorrow with which good and faithful minds are affected.
There are many immeasurable affections of our nature,
besides that which makes our kindred dear: the yearning
for truth, the delight in beauty, the veneration for excellence, the high ambition of conscience ever,pressiig forward
yet unable to attain, - these also live within us, and strive




EDEN AND GETHSEMANE.                   37
unceasingly in noble hearts; and there is an inner and
viewless sorrow, a spontaneous weeping of these infinite
desires, whence the highest order of faith and devotion will
be found to spring; so much so, that no one can even think
of Christ, visibly social and cheerful as he was, without the
belief of a secret sadness, that might be overheard in his
solitary prayers. Those who make the end of existence to
consist of happiness may try to conceal so perplexing a
fact, and may draw pictures of the exceeding pleasantness
of religion: but human nature, trained in the school of
Christianity, throws away as false the delineation of piety
in the disguise of Hebe, and declares tlhat there is something
higher far than happiness; that thought, which is ever full
of care and trouble, is better far; that all true and disinterested affection, which often is called to mourn, is better
still; that the devoted allegiance of conscience to duty and
to God — which ever has in it more of penitence than of
joy -is noblest of all. If happiness means the satisfaction
of desire (and I can conceive no other definition), then
there is necessarily somethingr greater, viz., religion, which
implies constant yearning and aspiration, and therefore nonsatisfaction of desire. In truth, that which is deemed the
happiest period of life must pass away, before we can sink
into the deep secrets of faith and hope. The primitive
gladness of childhood is that of a bounded and limited
existence, which earnestly wishes for nothing that exceeds
the dimensions of possibility, - of a human Paradise, about
whose enclosure-line no inquiry is made; and through sorrow and the sense of sin we must issue from those peaceful
gates, and make pilgrimage amid the thistle and the thorn
instead of the blossom and the rose, and( lie panting on the
dust, instead of sleeping on the green swar(l, of life, before
we learn through mortal weakness our immortal strength,
and feel in the exile of the earth the shelter of the skies.
T/en., however, the spirit of Christ, the man of sorrows,
gives us a re-birth of joy through tears. Before, we were




38           EDEN AND GETHSEMANE.
simply unheeding of death; then, we enter into the consciousness of immortality. Before, our will was restrained
by a law which we could not keep; then, it is emancipated
by a fresh love that more than keeps it; whose free inclination goes before all precept and authoritative faith; and
hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things;
nay, even can do all things, through the Christ that strengtheneth it.
Children then of nature, we are also sons of God; born
of the genial earth, we are to climb the glorious heaven;
and to the human lot that makes us of one blood with
Adam, is added the divine liberty of being of one spirit
with Christ. That liberty we cannot decline, for we are
conscious of it now; and if we look not on it as on the face
of an angel, it will haunt us with its gaze like the eye of a
fiend. The severe prerogatives of an existence half-divine
are ours. To wear away life in unproductive harmlessness
is innocent no more: with the glory we take the cross; and,
instead of slumbering at noon in Eden, must keep the midnight watch within Gethsemane. We, too, like our great
leader, must be made perfect through suffering; but the
struggle by night will bring the calmness of the morning; the
hour of exceeding sorrow will prepare the day of godlike
strength; the prayer for deliverance calls down the power
of endurance. And while to the reluctant their cross is too
heavy to be borne, it grows light to the heart of willing
trust. The faithful heirs of "the man of sorrows," transcending the trials they cannot decline, may quit the world
with the cry, " It is finished," and pass through the silence
of death to the peace of God.




V.
SORROW NO SIN.
LUKE XXIII. 28.
BUT JESUS, TURNING UNTO THEM, SAID, DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM, WEEP
NOT FOR ME, BUT WEEP FOR YOURSELVES AND FOR YOUR CHILDREN.
CHRIST then could invite to tears, — to tears over departing excellence, —to tears which men idly call selfish, -
tears "for themselves and for their children."  He whose
mission it was to teach the paternity of Providence, and
the serenity of the immortal hope; he who himself lived
in the divinest peace which they can give, thought it no
treason to these truths to weep. To the eye of the Man of
Sorrows, sorrow was no sin: nor did lie, who was emphatically the Son of God, see, in even the passionate utterance
of grief, any of that spirit of filial distrust towards God and
reluctant acceptance of his will, which have often been
charged on it by the hard and cold temper of his followers.
Religious professors have put their own congenial interpretation on the morality of Christ; and being themselves -
but too frequently - unfeeling and unsocial mystics, they
have multiplied the penances of natural emotion, and sublimed from the gospel its pure humanities. If we accept
their representations, our religion ailns to cancel our natural
affections, and substitute others at variance with them; the
impulses of gladness and grief are alike to be condemned,
as a rebel love of perishable things; the most agitating passages of our being, which convulse us to the centre, are to
be met with a rigid and tearless piety; the future, though
invisible and intangible, though approachable only by kin



40                 SORROW  NO SIN.
died imagination, is to be acknowledged as the only region
of the fair and good, and to supersede all other claims upon
our desire and regard.  The present, though the intensest
point of existence, is to be comparatively unfelt; and the
past, whereof the retroslect is sweet and solemn to the
travelled pilgrim,- the history of childhoodl and its unforgotten friendships, of youth and its unchecked aspirations,
of maturity with its worn yet deeper love, its more crushing
yet worthier anxieties, its purer but more melancholy wisdom, - all this because it is human and not divine, of earth
and not of heaven, is to be refused the tribute of a sigh.
For my own part, regarding our humrnan nature as the image
of its Divine Parent, and in nothing more truly that image
than in the impulses of its disinterested love, I bend in reverence before the emotions of every melted heart; believing
this present life to be the worthy childhood of futurity,
conceiving its interests, its happiness, to be substantially the
same, but framed upon a smaller scale and clouded with a
deeper shade, I see in its history nothing trivial, in its
events nothing contemptible, in its vicissitudes nothing
unworthy of a wise man's profoundest thought. And t:aking the gospel to afford a promise, not of the extinction of
human nature in heaven, but of its perpetuity, - an assurance not that we shall be converted into chill and pious
phantoms, but simply elevated into immortal men,- I
would gather from that hope a deeper veneration for all the
pure tastes and natural feelings of a good mind; I would
maintain the sanctity of human  joy and human grief; I
would protest against all stern censure on the outbreaks of
true sorrow; and would plead that to mourn-y, v, and
with broken spirit —the departure of virtue and of love,
is -not a resistance to a Father's will, not an oblivion of
his providence, not the expression of an ignoble selfislhness,
not a mistrust of a restoring heaven; but only a fitting
homage to God's most benignant gifts, the grateful glance of
a loving eye on blessings, than which nothing more holy,




SORROW  NO SIN.                  41
more peaceful, more exalting, is conferred by a guardian
benevolence on man.
Those who blame as unchristian the deep grief which
bereavement awakens, must extend their disapprobation
much farther, and censure all strong human attachments.
Sorrow is not an independent state of mind, standing
unconnected with all others.  It could not be cancelled
singly, leaving all other qualities of our nature in their
integrity. It is the effect, and under the present conditions of our being the inevitable effect, of strong affections.
Nay, it is not so much their result as a certain attitude of
those affections themselves. It not simplyflows from the
love of excellence, of wisdom, of sympathy, but it is that
very love, when conscious that excellence, that wisdom, that
sympathy have departed. The more intense the delight
in their presence, the more poignant must be the impression of their absence; and you cannot destroy the anguish
unless you forbid the joy. Grief is only the menzory of
widowed affection; and nothing but a draft of utter oblivion could lap it in insensibility. When the ties of strong
and refined attachment have long bound us to a home;
when the sympathies of those who share with us that home
have become as the needful light to our daily toil and the
guardian spirits of our nightly rest; when years have passed
on, and brought us many a sickness banished by their fidelity, many a danger averted by their counsels, inany an
anxiety rendered tolerable by their participation; when
often they too have gazed on us from the bed of pain, and
threatened to depart, but we have been permitted to rescue
them from the grave, and therein have doubled all our tenderness; when, from this close inspection of pure hearts,
we have learned to think nobly of human nature and hopefully of the providence of God; when their voices, common
enough to other ears, but fraughlt to us with unnumbered
memories of life, have beconme the natural music of the
earth, -- can this melody be silent, canll these virtues depart,




42                 SORROW  NO SIN.
can these remembrances be deprived of their living centre,
without leaving us trembling and desolate?  Can all these
fibres of our life be thus wrenched, and not bleed at every
pore?  And to forget, - it cannot be.  We daily pass
through places which are the shrine of a thousand recollections; we are startled by tones which pour on us a flood
of conviction; we open a book, and there is the very name;
we write a date, and it is an anniversary. These associations with the past I do not say excite sorrow, but to an
affectionate mind are sorrow. The morality, then, which
rebukes sorrow rebukes love. It is useless expatiating on
the evils which strong grief inflicts on ourselves and others:
you are bound to show that the affections, of which it is an
inseparable form, contain no counteracting good; that it is
more blessed, more holy, to freeze up the springs of emotion, than to suffer them perennially to fertilize our nature,
though they sometimes deluge it; that it is better to keep
loose from all that is human, and love nothing that we may
lose. You cannot sever them: grief and love must stay or
go together. And who can doubt that that is the truest
duty to God, which permits to us the most disinterested
heart for each other; thact the purest devotion which sanctifies and not chills our affections; that the most genuine
trust, which dares to cultivate to the utmost sympathies
wounded here and serenely blest only hereafter; that the
most filial hope, which, regarding the brotherhood of man
as an inference from the paternity of God, looks to heaven'as to another home?
There are doubtless cases not infrequent, in which the
mind is unduly overpowered by affliction; in which the
tranquillity of the reason is wholly overset, and the energy
of the will utterly prostrated. Here, beyond controversy,
is a state of mind morally wrong; for God never absolves
us from our duties, however he may sadden them. But to
rebuke the feelings of grief in such a case is to cast the censure in the wrong place: it is not that the sorrow is exces



SORROW  NO SIN.                   43
sive, but that other emotions are defective in their strength.
Nor is the distinction merely verbal and trivial. For the
natural effect of such misplaced blame surely is, that the
sufferer will endeavor simply to abate the intensity of his
sorrow, to extrude from his mind the emotions which are
charged with guilty excess: his aim will be purely negative,
clot to think so fixedly, not to feel so profoundly, respecting
the bereavement which has fallen upon his life. And this
aim is directed to an end both undesirable and impracticable. It is undesirable; for to touch the working of the
affections with partial torpor, to benumb the tenderness
without adding to the energy of the mind, to deaden the
susceptibility of memory without quickening the vividness of
hope, would surely be no improvement to the character;
it would be a mere deduction from the amount of mind:
and sorrow is at least better than dulness of soul. It is,
moreover, impracticable; for our nature affords us no
means of exerting a negative and destructive action upon
our own characters. One class of feelings can be extinguished only by the creation of another; one sentiment
banished only by inviting the antagonism  of another; one
interest supplanted only by the stronger occupancy of
another.  So long as this is unperceived, the over-grieving
heart will seek in vain to discipline itself. Thinking of its
sorrow as too much,instead of its sense of duty as too little,
it fails to meet pointedly its own remedy. The will feebly
casts about its efforts in the dark regions of the mind;
wastes its vigor in trying to forget: sometimes fancies forgetfulness, then pretends it; assumes a hollow tranquillity,
and affects to itself and others an interest in topics and
in duties which are not truly loved, for they have never
been truly and distinctly sought. From  all such aimlless
directions of the will there arises a far greater evil than
simple failure: an unconscious insincerity grows up, a hazy
perception of our real mental condition, a confusion of
actual and fictitious feelings, of emotions which we merely




44                 SORROW  NO SIN.
imagine with those which we truly experience, than which
few states of character can be more perilous to moral power
and progress.  The wise interpreter of his own nature
will let his mourning affections alone. To interfere with
them would be wrestling with his own strength. But he
will draw forth, into prominent light, sentiments now
sleeping idly in the shaded recesses of his mind. He will
summon up the sense of responsibility, to rouse him with
the spectacle of his relations to God his father, and his
brother,man; to recount to him the deeds of duty and the
toils of thought, which are yet to be achieved ere life is
done; to show him the circle of high faculties which the
Creator has given him  to ennoble and refine and keep
ready for a world where thought and virtue are immortalized.  He will call forth his affections for the living
who surround him, and whom yet it is his happiness to
love, and his obligation to bless. And these sympathies
will be fruitful in work for his hands, and interests refreshing to his heart. To preserve in his home the graceful order of pure and peaceful affections; to omit in the
world no delicate attention of friendship; to forget not
the claims of poverty and ignorance and sin to the compassion of all who would be faithful to their kind, - here
are invitations enoughl to the aspirings of benevolence, to
bid the drooping  soul look up.  And the sufferer will
evoke the spirit of Christian trust and hope. For, as the
memory of bereaved affection is grief, so is its hope the
restorer of peace: from the past is forced on us the sense of
loss; from. the future rises the expectation of recovery: in
traversing the past, our thoughts glide along a procession
of dear events arrested by a tomb; in conceiving of the
future, they behold the same events opening into renewed
being, and spre.ading themselves in all blessed varieties
along the vistas of interminable life: the sadnesses of each
successive point of remembrance are reversed, its losses
regathered; its tears, as it were, unwept before the smile




SORROW  NO SIN.                    45
of God; its plaints unsung amid the harmonies of heaven;
its sins untwined by the wounding yet healing hand of an
angel penitence. Invoke the spirit of this trust; and, though
sorrow may not dry its tears, it rises to a dignity above
despair.
It is not unusual to speak of sorrow for the dead as
expressing a distrust of the providence of God, and a doubt
of an eternal hereafter.  In this, however, there is but
little truth. True it is, wherever the reason actually disbelieves the great facts of a divine government and human immortality, bereavement must indeed fall upon the
heart with terrific weight. It is then a blow of tyrannic
fate, a visible stroke of annihilation, a triumph of pure and
final evil: and were it not that the mind of hopeless unbelief usually permits the susceptibility of its affections
to grow dull, and seeks protection from the gloom  of its
thoughts by a spontaneous incasement of insensibility, its
impressions from death would be appalling. But, though
unbelief may be a natural cause of uncontrolled sorrow, it
by no means follows that such sorrow implies unbelief. It
is easy to say that if we acknowledged God to be good
in all his dispensations, and trusted in some blessed spirit
secreted in the present loss, we could not deeply mourn. I
ask, is it reasonable to expect this abstract conviction to
overpower a visible privation? Assuage and sanctify the
grief it unquestionably will; but to heal entirely is beyond
its power.  The vacancy in home and heart is a thing
felt; its issue in good is a thingr believed in and imlgrined; that the blessings of the past are gone is a reality
in the present; that they will be restored is as yet but a
vision in the future. The degree in which faith imparts
consolation will somewhat depend on the natural vigor of
the imaginative faculty: affliction is a pressure of actual
experience; faith is a series of mental creations; its realities are invisible and intangible; a mind bound down by
the chain of experience, a mind whose memory is more




46                 SORROW  NO SIN.
f aithful than its conceptions are excursive, will catch but
faint and distant glimpses of the blessed idealities of hope.
And without one moment's murmuring against the benignity
of God, or doubt respecting his promised future, such a
mind may be ill able to reach the ever-flowing fountain of
his peace.
Nor is it less unjust to prefer against sorrow for the dead
the charge of selfishness.  Selfish! What, that pure affection bowed and broken to the earth! yearning only to discharge again, were it possible, but the humblest service of
love! What would it not do, what sacrifice of self would it
not make, what toils, what watching, would it not hold
light, might it be permitted to perform one office for the
departed! unseen, unfelt, unheard, without the hope of a
requiting smile, to shed on that spirit one silent blessing!
Surely this insult to human grief must be the invention of
cold hearts, needing a justification for their own insensibility. True it is, there is no need to mourn for those who
are removed. True it is, we weep not for them, but for
ourselves and for our children. It is we only that suffer
and are sad. But emotions are not selfish, simply because
they are experienced by ourselves; were it so, every joy
and sorrow would be branded by that odious name. They
are selfish only when they are full of the idea of self, when
self is their object as well as their subject; when they tempt
us to prefer our own personal and exclusive happiness to
that of others, and to trample on a brother's feelings in the
chase after our own good. Of this there is nothing in the
tears of bereavement: they are the tribute, not of our selfregarding but of our sympathetic nature. At last, indeed,
when the burst of grief has had its natural way, they lead
us to a generous joy. For, as we weep, we think how
blessed are the departed who "rest from their labors, while
their works do follow them:" their pure hearts jarred no
more by the harshnesses of this oft discordant life; their
earnest minds drinking at the perennial fount of truth;




SORROW  NO SIN.                  47
their frailties cast away with the coil of mortality they have
left behind; their sainted love waiting to receive us, as we
too may one by one pass the dark limits which sever us
from  their embrace, and seek with them  the peace and
progress of the skies.




VI.
CHRISTIAN  PEACE.
JOHN XIV. 27.
PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU: MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU: NOT AS THE
WORLD GIVETH, GIVE I UNTO YOU.
THIS was a strange benediction to proceed from the Man of
Sorrows, at the dreariest moment of his life, - strange at
least to those who look only to his outward career, his
incessant contact with misery and sin, his absolute solitude
of purpose, his lot stricken with sadness ever new from the
temptation to the cross; but not strange perhaps to those
who heard the deep and quiet tones in which this oracle of
promise went forth, - the divinest music from the centre
of the darkest fate. He was on the bosom of the beloved
disciple, and in the midst of those who should have cheered
him in that hour with such comforts as fidelity can always
offer; but who, failing in their duty to his griefs, found the
sadness creep upon themselves; while he, seeking to give
peace to them, found it himself profusely in the gift. It w:ls
not till he had finished this interview and effort of affection,
and from the warmth of that evening meal and the flush of
its deep converse they had issued into the chill and silent
midnight air; not till the sanctity of moonlight (never to
be seen by him again) had invested him, and coarse fatigue
had sunk his disciples into sleep upon the grass, that, having
none to comfort, he found the anguish fall upon himself.
Deprived of the embrace of John, he flew to the bosom of
the Father; and, after momentary strife, recovered in trust
the serenity he had found in toil: and while his followers




CHRISTIAN PEACE.                   49
lie stretched in earthly slumber, he reaches a divine repose;
while they, yielding to nature, gain neither strength nor
courage for the morrow, he, through the vigils of agony,
rises to that godlike power, on which mockery and insult
beat in vain, and which has made the cross, - then the
emblem of abjectness and guilt, -the everlasting symbol
of whatever is holy and sublime.
The peace of Christ then was the fruit of combined toil
and truest; in the one case diffusing itself from the ce-ntre
of his active life, in the other from that of his passive emotions; enabling him in the one case to cdo things tranquilly,
in the other to see things tranquilly.  Two things only can
make life go wrong and painfully with us; when we suffer
or suspect misdirection and feebleness in the energies of
love and duty within us, or in the providence of the world
without us: bringing, in the one case, the lassitude of an
unsatisfied and discordant nature; in the other, the melancholy of hopeless views. From these Christ delivers us by
a summons to mingled toil and trust. And herein does his
peace differ from that which " the world giveth,"- that its
prime essential is not ease, but strife; not self-indulgence,
but self-sacrifice; not acquiescence in evil for the sake of
quiet, but conflict with it for the sake of God; not, in short,
a prudent accommodation of the mind to the world, but a
resolute subjugation of the world to the best conceptions
of the mind. Amply has the promise to leave behind him
such a peace been since fulfilled. It was fulfilled to the
apostles who first received it; and has been realized again
by a succession of faithful men to whom they have delivered it.
The word " peace" denotes the absence of jar and conflict; a condition free fiom the restlessness of fruitless desire,
the forebodings of anxiety, the stings of enmity. It may
be destroyed by discordance between the lot without and
the mind within, where the human being is in an obviously
false position, - an evil rare and usually self-curative; or
4




50                CHRISTIAN PEACE.
by a discordance wholly internal, among the desires and
affections themselves. The first impulse of "the natural
man " is to seek peace by mending his external condition;
to quiet desire by increase of ease, to banish anxiety by
increase of wealth, to guard against hostility by making
himself too strong for it; to build up his life into a fortress
of security and a palace of comfort, where he may softly
lie, though tempests beat and rain descends. The spirit of
Christianity casts away at once this whole theory of peace;
declares it the most chimerical of dreams; and proclaims
-it impossible ever to make this kind of reconciliation between
the soul and the life wherein it acts. As well might the
athlete demand a victory without a foe. To the noblest
faculties of soul, rest is disease and torture. The understanding is commissioned to grapple with ignorance, the
conscience to confront the powers of moral evil, the affections to labor for the wretched and oppressed: nor shall
any peace be found till these, which reproach and fret us
in our most elaborate ease, put forth an incessant and satisfying energy; till, instead of conciliating the world, we
vanquish it; and rather than sit still, in the sickness of
luxury, for it to amuse our perceptions, we precipitate ourselves upon it to mould it into a new creation. Attempt
to make all smooth and pleasant without, and you thereby
create the most corroding of anxieties, and stimulate the
most insatiable of appetites within. But let there be harmony within, let no clamors of self drown the voice which
is entitled to authority there, let us set forth on the mission
of duty, resolved to live for it alone, to close with every
resistance that obstructs it, and march through every peril
that awaits it: and in the consciousness of immortal power,
the sense of mortal ill will vanish, and the peace of God
wvellnigh extinguish the sufferings of the man. "In the
world we may have tribulation; in Christ we shall have
peace.5"
This peace, so remote from torpor, - arising indeed from




CHRISTIAN PEACE.                    51
the intense action of the greatest of all ideas, those of duty,
of' immortality, of God, -fell according to the promise on
the first disciples. Not in vain did Jesus tell them in their
sorrows that the Comforter would comlle: nor falsely did
he define this blessed visitant, as " the spirit of truth," - the
soul reverentially faithful to its convictions, and expressing
clearly in action its highest aspirings.  Such peace had
Stephen: when before the Sanhedrim that was striving to
hush tp the recent story of the Cross, he proclaimed aloud
the sequel of the Ascension; and priests and elders arose
and stopped their ears and thrust him out to death; -bhe
had this peace: else how, - if a heaven of divinest tranquillity
had not opened to him and revealed to him the proximity
of Christ to God, —how, as the stones struck his uncovered
and uplifted head, could he have so calmly said, " Lord, lay
not this sin to their charge!"  Such peace had Paul, —at
least when he ceased to rebel against his noble nature, and
became, instead of the emissary of persecution, the ambassador of God. Was there ever a life of less ease and security, yet of more buoyant and rejoicing spirit, than his?
What weight did he not cast aside, to run the race that
was set before him?  What tie of home or nation did he
not break, that he might join in one the whole family of
God?  For forty years the scoff of synagogues and the outcast of his people, he forgot the privations of the exile in
the labors of the missionary; flying from charges of sedition,
he disseminated the principles of peace; persecuted from
city to city, he yet created in each a centre of pure worship
and Christian civilization, and along the coasts of Asia, and
colonies of Macedonia, and citadels of Greece, dropped link
after link of the great chain of truth that shall yet embrace
the world., Amid the joy of making converts, he had also
the affliction of making martyrs; to witness the sufferings,
perhaps to bear the reproaches, of survivors; with weeping
heart to rebuke the fears, and sustain the faith of maiiy a
doubter; and in solitude and bonds to send forth the effu



52                CHRISTIAN PEACE.
sions of his earnest spirit to quicken the life, and renovate
the gladness, of the confederate churches. Yet when did
speculation at its ease ever speak with vigor so noble, and
cheerfulness so fresh, as his glorious letters?-which recount his perils by land and sea, his sorrows from friend
and foe, and declare that "none of these things move" him;
which show him projecting incessant work, yet ready for
instant rest; conscious that already he has fought the good
fight, and willing to finish his course alnd resign the field;
but prepared, if needs be, to grasp again the sword of the
spirit, and go forth in quest of wider victories. Does any
one suppose, that it would have been more peaceful to look
back on a life less exposed and adventurous? -on a lot sheltered and secured? on soft-bedded comfort, and unbroken
plenty, and conventional compliance? No! it is only beforehand that we mistake these things for peace; in the retrospect we know them better, and would exchange them all
for one vanquished temptation in the desert, for one patient
bearing of the cross! WVhat, - when all is over, and we lie
upon the last bed, - what is the worth to us of all our guilty
compromises, of all the moments stolen from duty to be
given to ease? If Paul had cowered before the tribunal
of Nero, and trembled at his comrades' blood, and, instead
of baring his neck to the imperial sword, had purchased by
poor evasions another year of life, - where would that year
have been now? -a lost drop in the deep waters of time,yet not lost, but rather mingled as a poison in the refreshing stream of good men's goodness by which Providence
fertilizes the ages.
The peace of Christ, thus inherited by his disciples, and
growing out of a living spirit of duty and of love, contrasts,
not merely with guilty ease, but with that mere mechanical
facility in blameless action which habit gives. There is
something faithless and ignoble in the very reasoning
sometimes employed to recommend virtuous habits. They
are urged upon us, because they smooth the way of right:




CHRISTIAN PEACE.                  53
we are invited to them for the sake of ease. Adopted in
such a temper, duty after all makes its bargain with indulgence, and is not yet pursued for its own sake and with the
allegiance of a loving heart. Moreover, whoever has a
true conscience sees that there is a fallacy in this persuasion: for, whenever habits become mechanical, they cease to
satisfy the requirements of duty; the obligations of which
enlarge indefinitely with our powers, demanding an undiminished tension of the will, and an ever-constant life of
the affections. It can never be, that a soul which has a
heaven open to its view, which is stationed here, not simply
to accommodate itself to the arrangements of this world,
but also to school itself for the spirit of another, is intended
to rest in mere automatic regulalrities.  When the mind is
thrown into other scenes, and finds itself in the society of
the world invisible, suddenly introduced to the heavenly
wise and the sainted good, - what peace can it expect from
mere dry tendencies to acts no longer practicable, and
blameless things now left behind? No; it must have that
pure love which is nowhere a stranger, in earth or heaven;
that vital goodness of the affections, which adjusts itself at
once to every scene where there is truth and holiness to
venerate; that conscience, wakeful and devout, which
enters with instant joy on any career of duty and progress
opened to its aspirations. And even in "the life that now
is," the mere mechanist of virtue, who copies precepts with
mimetic accuracy, is too frequently at fault, to have even
the poor peace which custom promises. IIe is at home only
on his own beat. An emergency perplexes him, and too
often tempts him disgracefully to fly. He wants the inventiveness by which a living heart of duty seizes the resources
of good, and uses them to the last; and the courage by
which love, like honor, starts to the post of noble danger,
and maintains it till, by such fidelity, it becomes a place of
danger no more. It is a vain attempt to comprise in rules
and aphorisms all the various moral exigencies of life.




54                CHRISTIAN PEACE.
Hardly does such legality suffice to define the small portion
of right and wrong contemplated in human jurisprudence.
But the true instinct of a pure mind, like the creative genius
of art, frames rules most perfect in the act of obeying them,
and throws the materials of life into the fairest attitudes
and the justest proportions. He whose allegiance is paid to
a mere preceptive system  shapes and carves his duty into
the homeliest of wooden idols: he who has the spirit of
Christ turns it into an image breathing and divine. Children of God in the noblest sense, we are not without something of his creative spirit in our hearts. The power is
there, to separate the light from the darkness within us,
and set in the firmament of the soul luminaries to guide and
gladden us, for seasons and for years; power to make the
herbage green beneath our feet, and beckon halppy creat.
ures into existence around our path; power to mould the
clay of our earthly nature into the likeness of God most
tIigh; and thus only have we power to look back in peace
upon our work, and find a sabbath-rest upon the thought,
that, morning and evening, all is good.
But the peace which Christ felt and bequeathed was the
result of trust, no less than of toil. However immersed in
action, and engaged in enterprises of conscience, every life
has its passive moments, when the operation is reversed;
and power, instead of going from us, returns upon us, and
the scenes of our existence present themselves to us as
objects of speculation and emotion. Sometimes we are
forced into quietude in pauses of exhaustion or of grief;
stretched upon the bed of pain, to hear the great world
murmuring and rolling by; or lifted into the watch-tower
of solitude, to look over the vast plain of humanity, and
from a height that covers it with silence, observe its groups
shifting and traversing like spirits in a city of the dead. At
such times, our peace must depend on the view under which
our faith or our fears may exhibit this mighty " field of the
world;" on the forces of evil, of fortuity, or of God, which




CHRISTIAN PEACE.                 55
we suppose to be secretly directing the changes on the
scene, and calling up the brief apparition of generation after
generation. And so great and terrible is the amount of
evil, physical and moral, in the great community of men;
so vast the numbers sunk in barbarism, compared with the
few who more nobly represent our nature; so many and
piercing (could we but hear them) the cries of unpitied
wretchedness, which, with every beat of the pendulum,
wander unnoticed into the air; so dense the crowds that are
thrust together in the deepest recesses of want, and that
crawl through the loathsome hives of sin; that only two
men can look through the world without dismay: he, on
the one hand, who, suffering himself to be bewildered with
momentary horror, and in the confusion of his emotions, to
mistake what he sees for a moral chaos, turns his back in
the despair of fatalism, crying, "Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die;" and he, on the other, who, with the
discernment of a deeper wisdom, penetrates through the
shell of evil to the kernel and the seed of good; who perceives in suffering and temptation the resistance which
alone can render virtue manifest, and conscience great, and
existence venerable; who recognizes, even in the gigantic
growth of guilt, the grasp of infinite desires, and the perversion of godlike capacities; who sees how soon, were God
to take up his omnipotence, and snatch from his creature
man the care of the world and the work of self-perfection,
all that deforms might be swept away, and the meanest
lifted through the interval that separates them from the
noblest; and who therefore holds fast to the theory of hope,
alnd the kindred duty of effort; takes shelter beneath the
universal providence of God; and seeing time enough in
his vast cycles for the growth and consummation of every
blessing, can be patient as well as trust; can resign the
selfish vanity of doing all things himself, and making a finish before he dies; and cheerfully give his life to build up
the mighty temple of human improvement, though no




56               CHRISTIAN PEACE.
inscription mark it for glory, and it be as one of the hidden
stones of the sanctuary, visible only to the eye of God.
Such was the spirit and the faith which Jesus left, and in
which his first disciples found their rest. Within the infinitude of the divine mercy trouble did but fold them closer;
the perversity of man did but provoke them to put forth a
more conquering love; and though none were ever more
the sport of the selfish interests and prejudices of mankind,
or came into contact with a more desolate portion of the
great wastes of humanity, they constructed no melancholy
theories; but having planted many a rose of Sharon, and
made their little portion of the desert smile, departed in
the faith, that the green margin would spread as the seasons of God came round, till the mantle of heaven covered
the earth, and it ended with Eden as it had begun.
Between these two sources of Christian peace, virtuous
toil and holy trust, there is an intimate connection. The
desponding are generally the indolent and useless; not the
tried and struggling, but speculators at a distance from
the scene of things, and far from destitute of comforts
themselves. Barren of the most blessed of human sympathies, strangers to the light that best gladdens the heart of
man, they are without the materials of a bright and hopeful
faith. But he who consecrates himself sees at once how
God may sanctify the world; he whose mind is rich in the
memory of moral victories will not easily believe the world
a scene of moral defeats; nor was it ever known that one
who, like Paul, labored for the good of man, despaired of
the benevolence of God.
Whoever then would have the peace of Christ, let him
seek first the spirit of Christ. Let him not fret against the
conditions which God assigns to his being, but reverently
conform himself to them, and do and enjoy the good which
they allow. Let him cast himself freely on the career to
which the secret persuasion of duty points, without reservation of happiness or self; and in the exercise which its




CHRISTIAN PEACE.                    57
difficulties give to his understanding, its conflicts to his will,
its humanities to his affections, he shall find that united
action of his whole and best nature, that inward harmony,
that moral order, which emancipates fiom the anxieties of
self, and unconsciously yields the divinest repose. The
shadows of darkest affliction cannot blot out the inner
radiance of such a mind; the most tedious years move
lightly and with briefest step across its history; for it is
conscious of its immortality, and hastening to its heaven.
And there shall its peace be consummated at length; its
griefs transmuted into delicious retrospects; its affections
fresh and ready for a new and nobler career; and its praise
confessing that this final " peace of God " doth indeed " surpass its understanding."




VII.
RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES.
JOHN XV. 16.
YE HAVE NOT CHOSEN ME, BUT I HAVE CHIOSEN YOU.
ONE of the greatest difficulties which Christ encountered in
his ministry, was to shake off the adherents who came to him
on false pretences; and to reduce the motives of his disciples to the simple feeling of faith or fealty, which was the
only tie he could endure to recognize. Some followed him
because they " did eat of the loaves and were filled."  The
Sadducee enjoyed his invective against the Pharisee, and
the Pharisee was willing to use his refutation of the Sadducee. The kind-hearted rich approved of the good he was
doing among the poor; the severe delighted in his rebukes
of the popular corruption; the patriotic looked to him as
the ornament of his country and the marvel of his age; and
only the fewest clung to him because they were "of his
sheep," and knew and loved his voice. His many-sided
wisdom turned some phase of excellence or wonder towards
every spectator: and each in succession was worthy, not of
less, but of far more, admiration than it received. Yet he
declined the attachment of those who did not penetrate to
the central lines of all his truth and sanctity; refused to be
judged by the outward appearance, rather than the inward
principle of his life; never suffered himself to be regarded
as an object of others' choice, but himself selected for his
own such as were taken captive in soul by the power of so
divine a spirit. Those who would not vow allegiance to
him for his own sake, and take up for him the cross which




RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES..59
he would bear for them, might go their way, and sorrowing
feel that they were none of his.
This difficulty, of bringing the heart to a pure simplicity
of faith, was no accident peculiar to the personal ministry of
our Lord. Proceeding from causes which human nature
reproduces in every age, it still interrupts the genuine influence of his religion: which multitudes hold and profess on
false and insufficient grounds, adducing every variety of
excuse for sanctioning its authority; but which few receive,
as too great to be patronized, and too true to be proved.
The ingenuity and restlessness of men are perpetually dissipating the primitive impressions of their reason and conscience, devising elaborate justifications of that which best
justifies itself, and multiplying artificial foundations for that
which is natural. And the evil is, that when the insecurity
of all this comes to be detected, and the structure of our
own erection is found to be crumbling beneath us, it is not
easy to recover at once the genuine ground of nature. The
simple perceptions and deep intuitions of the soul become
so overlaid by acquired modes of thought and judgment,
that all faith in them, nay, even all clear consciousness of
them, is lost; and thus the original sources of all religious
conviction are dried up. Some of the spurious forms and
second-hand imitations of religious principle, always one
remove from the reality and sincerity of faith, I propose
briefly to trace.
Religion is frequently degraded, not only by its practical
supporters, but by its theoretical expounders, into a mere
tool of expediency; and upheld as the most approved
engine for the production of good morals and the maintenance of social order.  Support is invited to it, on the
ground that men are unmanageable without it; that, but
for its powerful hold on the human mind, the elements of
repulsion would become ascendant in the community, and
dissipate it into a multitude of individual self-wills. It is a
shameful spectacle, when its own representatives conde



60        RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES.
scend to plead for it thus; and go ignominiously round,
supplicating votes, in its behalf, for the vacant office of
Master of Police! What sort of obedience is likely to be
rendered to a creature of our own appointment, chosen
from prudence, and removable at pleasure?  Nothing can
be more evident than that such advocates are thinking only
of restraining others, and are by no means filled with the
idea of submission themselves. A heart occupied and softened by the genuine spirit of allegiance will make a quite
different appeal; will never dream that any suffrage can
add authority to the faith that rules it rightly; will perhaps
think it somewhat irreligious for even the most important
persons to offer to the Almighty the weight of their great
influence; and will feel that things divine are so much
higher than things serviceable, that to recommend them for
their use is to deny their essence and disown their obligation. Nay, does not a secret voice assure us all, that short
of the sacrifice of self-will, and the cheerful movement
within the limits of a supreme law, there is not even the
faint beginning of religion; and that this concern for the
common good, this idea of giving a sanction to the claims
of piety, is an evasion of that personal surrencer, which it is
so easy to approve in others, so hard to achieve within ourselves?  This temper feels as if it were outside the great
and solemn conditions of humanity, and in concern for
others' exposure to them lapses into forgetfulness itself; as
if it had nothing to do with the strife of temptation, and
the toil of duty, and the cry of grief. The complacent
patron of religion, —will he not dcie? will he not go, all
alone, into the silence of eternity, and personally look into
the reality of those things of which he has always helped to
keep up the show?  XWill he not stand face to face with the
God whose service he h:as liberally encouraged? — empty,
it is to be feared, of the only offerinog which he could
tranquilly present, - the offer of Mimself; and throw\%n upon
the Infinite, not as a child upon a parent's bosonm, but as a




RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES.              61
penitent in abasement before the Judge'? - Nor does this
seem so distant, that there is much time to play at pretences
with it in the meanwhile. As sure as this world is swimming fast through space and time, we are all afloat in the
same life-vessel, and have moreover a voyage before us, of
which even the stoutest heart may well think in earnest.
I do not, of course, mean that religious faith does not
conduce to the moral order of society; or that estimable
men may not innocently be aware of this and reckon on it.
But I do say, that it is not upon this that the obligatory
character of religion rests; that this social action is not the
source, but the effect, of its binding authority upon the
mind; and that to look first to its benefits, and then to its
sanctity, is to invert the true order of our moral life, and
set the pyramid of duty upon its point rather than its base.
If the great principles of religion were false, if it were all
a fiction that we lived under a God and in front of a heaven,
it is obvious that these beliefs would have no claim upon
us; that their relation to our conscience would even be
reversed; and that whatever support they might appear to
afford to the laws of rectitude and peace, our sole duty to
them, as delusions, would be to expose and expel them;
the looser dictates of expediency yielding at once to the
severer rule of veracity. And it is therefore not in their
usefulness, but in their truth, that their authority resides;
it is with that alone that our allegiance to them must stand
or fall; to that alone that our souls are permitted to bow;
nay, on that alone that all their moral excellence depends.
A devout man does his duty better than another, because he
sees his position more completely; gazes over the wide field
of his relations visible and invisible; exaggerates nothing
from its proximity, and overlooks nothing from its distance;
but, with the clear sense of moral proportion, receives from
all the true impression, and gives to all the fit affection.
He does not render his mental view false by ignoring the
whole region that lies beyond experience, and treating it as




62         RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES.
if it had no existence; or fever his passions and fret away
his peace by imprisoning the whole energies of his nature
within some narrow object, —a section only of the life
which they are qualified to fill. It is because his mind is
right, that his hand does right.
The same insult which is committed against religion by
representing it as the tool of social order is repeated, when.
it is prescribed as the only means of finding any semblance
of comfort in circumstances otherwise desperate. No one
can be ignorant that it is frequently exhibited in this light;
and that men are advised to lay by a prudent store of it, as
a resource of happiness during the dreary winter of distress.
Nothing can be more true to nature than the fact alleged:
nothing more false than the exhortation founded on it.
Certain it is, there is no real conquest of evil, except by the
devout mind, that can bleed beneath the thorny lot, yet
clasp it in closer love, like the piercing crucifix of self-mortification upon the breast. Certain it is, that a pure trist,
defying nothing that is sent of God, but bending with selfrenunciation before his whirlwinds sweeping by, feels least
resistance of terrible necessity chafing against its peace.
But in mere cupidity for the comforts of faith there is no
religion, —on the contrary, the total privation of all religion: there is precisely that deliberate reservation of self,
that fencing of it round against the assaults of unhappiness,
that mere service for hire, in which is the very essence of
disloyalty to Heaven. Nor does God ever award the least
success to these insurance speculations on his service; and
only those who give themselves up to him without a question find their happiness returned. Vain every way are all
these attempts to make that which is divine subordinate to
our personal ends: we only bring down the awful rebuke,
" Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you."
Religion again is often represented, not exactly as the
instrument for producing good morals, but as in fact the
very same with good morals. We hear the sentiment con



RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES.            63
stntly repeated, that, after all, the service of man is the
truest service of God. Now if this maxim mean that so
long as human good is effected, it does not signify on what
principles it is done, no statement could well be more false.
Let us only see. Here is a man, who serves the commonwealth from ambition, and merits the good-will of his neighbors, that he may mount by it. He selects some conspicuous
utility, labors at it visibly enough, and defends himself from
the aversion of the few by surrounding himself with the
plaudits of the many: and if you look at him, busy before
the face of his community, you will not fail to see tile rmanner of his diligence; that in proportion as they raise the
shout, he prosecutes the work; that when they are tired, he
grows idle; and when they can lift their voices no higher,
and no more can be gained by laboring for their good, either
he begins to toil in the opposite direction, or, throwing
down all implements of work, gives himself up to strange
gambols, at which the spectators who have exhausted all
their praise may at least gratify him by being astonished.
Here is another man, smitten, we will say, with honest pity
for the degradation and misery of the great mass of every
civilized society; indignant, it may be (who can help it? ),
that all citizens have not enough food and enough knowledge; studious of the economic causes which interfere with
such a result; but unhappily seeing no farther than the
mere sentient and intellectual man, and possibly dreaming
that their oppression and wretchedness have been aggravated, instead of assuaged, by the restraints of the moral
and the aspirations of the spiritual nature. You see him,
accordingly, - a benignant thinking animal, - enthusiastically devoted to projects for making the life of man comfortable, intelligent, and clean; primarily impressed with
the necessity of increasing the productiveness of the earth,
and therefore secondarily with the importance of improving man as the producing instrument; trusting to a preternatural development of the physical and rational faculties to




64         RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES.
supply some adequate counterfeit of moral order, that may
look the same from outside the heart; transferring to personal interest the venerated dress and badges of duty, but
really disowning any law higher than the collective forces
of self-will; loosening any particular ties with which the
feelings of mankind have connected a peculiar sacredness;
and suppressing, as an unmeaning weakness, any sentiment
above that of obtuse submission, in case of accident, to the
operation of crushing and fracture by the disordered mechanism of nature. And once at least there has been a CHRIST;
not seeking to thrust up human nature from below, but to
raise it from  above; knowing that its earth could produce
nothing, except for its pure and spreading heaven; and so,
coming down upon it, as an angel soul from the highest
regions of the spirit; speaking seldom to it of its happiness,
constantly of its holiness; dwelling little on the arrangements, and much on the responsibilities of life; pitying its
woes, as it pities them itself in moments of truest aspiration,
not with mere nervous sympathy, but with godlike and
healing mercy; assuming its plac iin the midst of God, and
on the surface of eternity, and from this sublime position as
a base computing its obligations and uttering oracles of its
destiny. Which now of these three, do you think, is truly
ne/ighbor to our poor nature, wounded and bleeding by the
way?  Which of them has really tended and restored it
from being half dead? It is impossible to deny to even the
least worthy of them the praise of rendering service to mail
but can we say of them all that there is a service of God?
Are all felt to be equally noble and venerable? or do we
measure our reverence for them by the scale and service of
their operation?  Is it not rather the different principle
which is at the root of each that determines the sentiment
we direct towards them? No one, I believe, sincerely feels
that the simply humane and prosaic view of life and men,
such as a naturalist or statist might take, is as true and high
a source of benevolent action as the reverential and divine,




RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES.             65
that commences with the spiritual relations, and thence
descends to the economy of the outward lot. If then the
maxim, that the service of men is the truest service of God,
is adduced to excuse the indifference of many an amiable
heart to the great truths of faith, and to palliate the defects
of a merely ethical benevolence; if it is the plea of social
kindness to be let alone on the subject of diviner obligations, -it cannot be admitted. But as self-justification is
seldom deficient in ingenuity, there is a sense in which this
aphorism is unquestionably true; in which indeed it does
but contain the sentiment of the apostle: "' He that loveth
not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God
whom he hath not seen?"  From  the love of man we do
not necessarily rise into the love of God; but from any true
love of God we inevitably descend into the love of man,his child, his image, the object of his benediction, and the
sharer of his immortality. Nor is this maxim without an
important application to our moral estimates of others,
whose acts alone are exposed to view, and of whose secret
motives and affections we cannot take cognizance. Whereveirwe see in our fellow-men the outward life which may
possibly be the fruit of religious principle, though perhaps
explicable as some inferior growth, we have certainly no
right to deny, the existence of the nobler root; but must
accept their service of man as presumption of their fidelity
to God. I only protest against that self-flattery, which permits our good-nature towards earth to lull to sleep our
aspirations to heaven.
Another spurious form of religion is discerned among
those who regard it as an incdispensable ornament of character; who speak much of the incompleteness of human
nature without it; and plead the claims of piety on the
groundl that it is an offence against mental symmetry to be
without it. The most palpable exhibition of this imitation
of faith is found among those who, after craniological
research, conceive that they have discovered a certain cere5




66        RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES.
bral provision for a god; and who therefore conclude that
the culture of devotion is necessary to physiological consistency. They speak at large of man's need of a religion, of
his unsatisfied wants without it; of the grace which it adds
to his moral stature, the dignity it gives to his affections,
the power which it administers to his will: and then they
issue orders to their ingenuity to devise a religion suitable
to this discovered want, precisely adapted to the cravings
of this appetite. Alas! however, this is not the way in
which a religion can be found: it cannot by any skill be
thus carved and constructed according to measurements
taken on purpose from  our nature. It is easy indeed to
imagine and invent a faith, seemingly just fitted to our
wants; but then comes the question, How are we to get it
believed? And here, it is to be feared, is the failure of this
school: they seem to have more faith in the religiousness of
man, than in the reality of God. The same danger attends
the idea, wherever found, of aiming constantly at our own
self-perfection, and, under the influence of this aim, striving
to put the last and saintly finish of a pure devotion to our
character. Surely there is something unsound and morbid
in thus resolving the whole idea of obligation and truth into
that of beauty. As long as we are but painting our own
ideal portrait, we can produce no living and substantial
goodness, but a mere canvas thing of surface dimension
only. Human character and life are something more than
mere matters of taste and propriety; and will attain to
nothing excellent till they are regarded in the spirit of an
earnest reality. Devotion can find no firm foundation in
the notion of its relative fitness to us, but must feel its foot
on the absolute truth of its glorious and sublime objects.
All else is abhorrent from the pure simplicity of faith, and
tends only to foster an indifference to truth, and an affectation of religion. God, refusing to be discerned through
the impure eye of expediency, reveals himself only to our
inward intuitions of conscience. The piety that loves him




RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES.           67
will recognize no third thing between yea and no. To
assume his reality, because the hypothesis seems to open
the best training-school for our human nature; to treat the
highest of all things as true, only because we want it to be
true, and shall be the better for it if it is, - what is this but,
under decent disguise, the French philosopher's charlacteristic exclamation, "If there were not a God, we should
have to invent one." To an earnest mind this air of protection and appropriation towards things divine and holy is
unspeakably offensive. It is for God to rule and guard our
conscience, not for our conscience to take care of God. And
to every pure submissive mind his voice within is heard
rebuking this presumptuous spirit, and repeating the words
of Christ: "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen
you."




VIII.
MAMMON-WORSHIP.
MATTHEW VI. 28.
CONSIDER THE LILIES OF THE FIELD, HOW THEY GROW; THEY TOIL NOT,
NEITHER DO THEY SPIN; AND YET I SAY UNTO YOU, THAT SOLOMON, IN
ALL HIS GLORY, WAS NOT ARRAYED LIKE ONE OF THESE.
IN no time or country has Christianity ever been exhibited
in its simple integrity.  The soul of its author was the only
pure and perfect expression of its spirit: it was at once the
creature and the sole director of his mind; — born within
that palace to be its Lord. In every other instance Christianity has been only one out of many influences concerned
in forming the character of its professors; and they have
given it various shapes, according to the climate, the society,
the occupations in which they have lived. The prejudices
and passions of every community, -the inevitable growth
of its position, -have weakened its religion and morality
in some points, and strengthened them in others. So that
all particular Christianities are distortions of the great original: like paintings placed in a false light; or rather like
those grotesque images seen in the concave surfaces of
things, which, - lengthen or shorten as they may, - spoil
the beauty that depends upon proportion. The student will
find in his religion the nutriment of divinest speculation, -
the tenets of a sublime philosophy in which heaven resolves
the great problems of duty, fate, and futurity; and when
his genius soars to the highest heaven of invention, he feels
that he is borne upon his faith as on eagle's wings. The
patriot, cast on evil times, without a glimpse of these contemplative subtleties, sees in it the law of liberty, — hears




MIAMMON-WORSHIP.                   69
in it a clear call, as from the trump of God, to vindicate the
rights of the oppressed: he delights to read how Christ
provoked bigots to gnash their teeth with rage, and Paul
proclaimed that of one blood were all nations made. The
peasant lays to heart its mercy to the poor, and its promise
to the good. The merchant takes it as the root of uprightness: the artist visits it as the source of moral beauty the
most divine. The system is edited anew in the mind of
every class.
We live in a country whose national character is very
marked, and on whose people certain prevailing habits and
employments are imposed by a peculiar soil, a northern
climate, and an insular position. Various causes, both social
and political, are filling England more and more with a
manufacturing and mercantile population. The fact, taken
in all its connections, is by.no means to be deplored; and ill
various ways comprises in it auguries of vast good. But
in the meanwhile it is attended with this particular result:
that the spirit of gain is ascendant over every other passion
and pursuit by which men can be occupied. Not pleasure,
not art, not glory, can beguile our people from their profits.
War was their madness once; but the temple of 3Moloch is
deserted, and morning and evening the gates of Mammnon
are thronged now. There is the idol from whose seductions
our Christianity has most to fear. Without indulging in
any sentimental declamation against the pursuit and influence of wealth, we may be permitted to feel that this is the
quarter from which, specifically, our moral and religious
affections are most in danger of being vitiated. The habits
which produce the danger may be inevitable, forced upon
us by a hard social necessity: still in bare self-knowledge
there is self-protection. For, the danger of a vice is not like
the danger of a pestilence, in which the most unconscious
are the most safe: the fear of contagion, which, in the one
case absorbs the poison into the veins of the body, repulses
in the other the temptation from the mind.




70                MAMMON-WORSHIP.
The excess to which this master-passion is carried per.
verts our just and natural estimate of happiness. It cannot
be otherwise when that which is but a means is elevated
into the greatest of ends; when that which gives command
over some physical comforts becomes the object of intenser
desire than all blessings intellectual and moral, and we live
to get rich, instead of getting rich that we may live. The
mere lapse of years is not life: to eat and drink and sleep;
to be exposed to the darkness and the light; to pace round
in the mill of habit, and turn the wheel of wealth; to make
reason our book-keeper, and turn thought into an implement
of trade, -this is not life. In all this, but a poor fraction
of the consciousness of humanity is awakened: and the
sanctities still slumber which make it most worth while to
be. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone
give vitality to the mechanism of existence; the laugh of
mirth that vibrates through the heart, the tears that freshen
the dry wastes within, the music that brings childhood back,
the prayer that calls the future near, the doubt which makes
us meditate, the death which startles us with mystery, the
hardship which forces us to struggle, the anxiety that ends
in trust,- are the true nourishment of our natural being.
But these things, which penetrate to the very core and
marrow of existence, the votaries of riches are apt to fly;
they like not any thing that touches the central and immortal consciousness; they hurry away from occasions of sympathy into the snug retreat of self; escape from life into
the pretended cares for a livelihood; and die at length busy
as ever in preparing the means of living.
With a large and, I fear, a predominant class among us,
it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that money" measureth
all things," and is more an object of ambition than any of
the ends to which it affects to be subservient. It is the one
standard of value, which gives estimation to the vilest
things that have it, and leaves in contempt the best that are
without it. It is set up as the measure of knowledge; for




MAMMON-WORSHIP.                  71
is it not notorious that no intellectual attainments receive a
just appreciation, but those which may be converted into
gold; that this is the rule by which, almost exclusively,
parents compute the worth of their children's education, and
determine its character and extent? It is not enough that
the understanding burns with generous curiosity for the
conquest of some new science, or the fancy for some new
accomplishment; it is not enough that a study is needed to
brace the faculties with health, or illumine the imagination
with beauty, or agitate the heart with high sympathies;
" but what is the use of it? " is the question still asked, -
as if it were not use enough, instead of a trader to make a
man. Research and speculation which do not visibly tend
to the production of wealth are regarded by all, except the
classes engaged in their pursuit, as the dignified frivolities
of whimsical men; and though they may bear the torch into
the darkness of antiquity, or open some unexplored domain
of nature, they must not expect more than a cold tolerance.
Still worse; money with us is the measure of morality; for
those parts and attributes of virtue are in primary esteem
which are conducive to worldly aggrandizement; and it is
easy to perceive that no others are objects of earnest and
hearty ambition. Industry and regularity, and a certain
easy amount of pecuniary probity, being indispensable instruments of prosperity, the great moral forces of trade, are
in no country held in higher worth; but the amenities which
spread a grace over the harsher features of life, the clear
veracity that knows truth and profit to be incommensurable things, and the generous affections whose coin is in
sympathy as well as gold, are the objects of but slight care,
and slighter culture. The current ideas of human nature
and character are graduated by the same rule, and err on
the side, not of generosity, but of prudence. The experienced are habitually anxious to give the young such an estimate of mankind as may prove, not the most true, but the
most profitable, - an estimate so depressed into caution as




72                MAMMON-WORSHIP.
to be altogether below justice. To escape one or two possi.
ble rogues, we must suppose nobody true; for the sake of
pecuniary safety, we must submit to the moral wretchedness
of universal distrust, and blacken the great human heart for
our private ease: as if it were not better to run the risk of
ruin, than grow familiar with so vast a lie; happier to be
bankrupt in wealth than in the humanities. But alas! with
us, money is the measure of all utility; it is this which constitutes the real though disguised distinction between the
English notions of theory and practice. A truth may be in
the highest degree grand and important, may relieve many
a cold and heavy doubt, and open many a fair and brilliant
vision; but unless it has some reference to money, it is pronounced a mere theory. A social improvement may be
suggested, which promises to remove some absurd anomaly,
to assert some comprehensive principle, or annihilate some
sufferings of mere feeling; but because it has no direct
relation to the mechanism of property, it is set aside as not
practical. By an unnatural abuse of terms, "practical men "
are, with us, not those who study the bearing of things on
human life in its widest comprehension, but those who value
every thing by its effect upon the purse.
In obedience to the same dominant passion, vast numbers
spend their term of mortal service in restless and uneasy
competition, in childish struggles for a higher place in the
roll of opulence or fashion, in jealousies that gnaw to the
very heart of luxury, in ambition that spoils the present
splendor by the shadow of some new want. JIappy they of
simpler feelings, who have taken counsel of a pure nature
about the economy of good; who know from what slight
elements the hand of taste can weave the colors into the
web of life, and from  what familiar memories the heart
draws the song of cheerfulness as the work proceeds; who
find no true pleasure marred because it is plebeian, nor any
indulgence needful because decreed by custom; who discern
how little the palace can add to the sincere joy of a loving




MAMMON-WORSHIP.                   73
and a Christian home, and feel that nature dwells at the
centre after all; who have the firmness to retire to that
inner region, and embrace the toils of reason, the labors of
sympathy, the strife of conscience, the exhaustless ambition
of duty, as Heaven's own way to combine the divinest activity with the profoundest repose.
The prevalent occupations of the community in which we
live have a tendency to pervert our moral sentiments and
social affections, no less than our estimates of happiness.
In a society so engrossed by ideas connected with property,
so eternally dwelling on the distinction of meum and tuum,
men naturally learn to think and speak of all things in the
language belonging to this relation; to use it as an illustration of matters less familiar to them, and apply its imagery
and analogies to subjects of a totally different character.
Over their property the authority of law gives them absolute right and control; no man may touch it with his finger,
or call them to account for its disposal. I need not stop to
acknowledge, what is too plain for any one to doubt, that
this sanctity of property from invasion is, to any society,
the very cement of its civilization. Yet there is an unquestionable danger of giving this notion of irresponsible possession an application beyond its proper range; of permitting
the sense of legal right to creep insensibly into the domain
of moral obligation, and spread there the feeling of personal
self-will, and set up the caprices of inclination for the deliberations of duty. Men are exceedingly apt to imagine, that
nothing can be seriously wrong, which they have a right to
do; to forget that the license which is allowed by law may'De sternly prohibited by morality. How little concern does
mny wise and conscientious principle appear to have with,he expenditure of private revenue, especially where that
-evenue is the largest!  How despotically there do mere
whim and chance suggestion appear to reign! How wastefully are the elements of human enjoyment squandered in
pernicious luxuries, or dissipated in random experiments of




74                MAMMON-WORSHIP.
benevolence, of which a little knowledge beforehand might
have taught the result just as well as the failure afterwards!
And if ever a gentle remonstrance is insinuated, how instantly does the vulgar and ignorant feeling leap forth,
"And may I not do what I like with my own?" No, you
may not, unless your liking and your duty are in happy
accordance. Morally you are as much bound to distribute
your own wealth wisely, as to abstain from touching another
man's; bound by the very same fundamental reasons, which
forbid the privation of human enjoyment no less than the
creation of human misery. As large a portion of well-being
may be sacrificed by an act of wilful extravagance as by the
commission of a dishonesty: and were it of a nature to be
definable by law, would merit as severe a punishment.
Shall any thing then deter us from saying that such selfindulgence is a thief?
But the feelings which are entertained towards property,
-the feelings of absolute and irresponsible control, -- are
very apt to extend to whatever it can purchase and procure;
and unhappily, to the services of those human beings who
yield us their labor for hire. There is nothing over which
a man exercises such uncontrolled power as his purse; and
(where no principle of justice and benevolence intervenes)
but one remove f rom this despotism are placed his depend-.
ants. In them the right of every human being to be appre —
ciated according to his moral worth is forgotten; and the
rule by which they are judged is, their mechanical use to
the master, not their excellence in themselves. That they
are responsible agents (except to their employers), that they
have an intelligence receptive of truth, hearts that may
shelter gentle sympathies, and a work of duty to carry oi%
beneath the eye of God, that their bodies are of the samt
clay and their life constructed of the same vicissitudes a
ours,-are thoughts that too seldom occur to lead us tc
consult their feelings, to allow for their temptations, to
respect their conscience and improvement, as would becomq




MAMMON-WORSHIP.                   75
a fraternal and a Christian heart. How hardly are they
judged! By how much more rigid a rule than that which
we apply to our friends or to ourselves! What order, what
punctuality, what untiringc industry, what equanimity of
temper, what abstinent integrity, is imperiously and mercilessly demanded by many a master, lax, and lazy, and passionate himself! Oh with what biting indignation have I
seen those most wretched of educated beings, the governess
in a family and the usher in a school, worked to the bone
without the help of a sympathy, moving in perpetual rotation, with no feeling but of the daily whirl, and of incessant
friction upon all that is most tender in their nature; expected
to have all perfections, intellectual and moral, and to dispense with the respect which is their natural due; copiously
blamed for what is wrong, but scantily praised for what is
right; paid, but never cheered; and when worn threadbare
at last, put away as one of the cast-off shreds of society,
that only deforms the house filled with purple and fine linen.
This is the consequence of that state of things in which (to
use the words of a Church Dignitary, who could find it
in his heart to write them without a syllable of regret or
rebuke) "poverty is infamous;" and in which knowledge
and virtue weigh nothing against gold. Let the children of
labor remember, that they are of the class which he of Nazareth dignified; that, peradventure, in his youthful days of
mechanic toil, he too was looked on by the coarse eye of
sheer power; and yet nurtured, amid indignities and neglect, the spirit that made him divinely wise.
The despotic temper which is apt to be engendered by
wealth in one direction, is naturally connected with servility
in the opposite. For the very same reason that we regard
those who are beneath us almost as if they were our property, we must regard ourselves almost as if we were the
property of those above us. There is little, I fear, that is
intellectual or moral in that sort of independence which is
the proverbial characteristic of our countrymen; it consists




76                MAMMON-WORSHIP.
either in mere churlishness of manner, or in overbearing
tyranny to those of equal or lower grade. It would be
inconsistent not to yield that respect to the purse in others,
which men are fond of claiming for it in themselves; and
accordingly it is to be feared that in few civilized countries
is there so much sycophancy as in this; so many creatures
ready to crawl round a heap of gold; so many insignificant
shoals gleaming around every great ship that rides over the
surface of society. It is a grievous evil arising hence, that
the judgments and moral feelings of society lose their clearsightedness and power; that the same rules are not applied
to the estimate of rich and poor; that there is a rank which
almost enjoys immunity from the verdict of a just public
sentiment, where the most ordinary qualities receive a mnischievous adulation, and even grave sins are judged lightly
or not at all. But it is a more grievous ill that the witchery
thus strikes with a foul blight the true manhood of the children of God; - the manhood, not of limbs or life, but of a
spirit free and pu'le;- of an understanding open to all
truth, and venerating it too deeply to love it except for
itself, or barter it for honor or for gold; of a heart enthralled by no conventionalisms, bound by no frost of custom, but the perennial fountain of all pure humanities; of
a will at the mercy of no tyrant without and no passion
within; of a conscience erect under all the pressure of circumstances, and ruled by no power inferior to the everlasting law of duty; of affections gentle enough for the humblest
sorrows of earth, lofty enough for the aspirings of the skies.
In such manhood, full of devout strength and open love, let
every one that owns a soul see that he stands fast; in its
spirit, at once humane and heavenly, do the work, accept
the good, and bear the burdens of his life. Its healthful
power will reveal the sickness of our selfishness, and recall
us from the poisonous level of our luxuries and vanities to
the reviving breath and the mountain heights of God.
There could be no deliverer more true than he who should




MAMIMON-WORSHIP.                 77
thus emancipate himself and us. Oh blessed are they who,
for the pence and ornament of life, dare to rely, not on the
glories which Solomon affected, but on those which Jesus
loved; — glories which even God may behold with complacency, -nay, in which he shines himself; glories of nature,
richer than of man's device; genuine graces, resembling the
inimitable beauties of the lilies of the field, painted with the
hues of heaven, while beuding over the soil of earth.




IX.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.
PART I.
MATTHEWV IV. 17.
FROM THAT TIMIE JESUS BEGAN TO PREACH, AND TO SAY, REPENT; FOR
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND.
BY the kingdom of Heaven was meant reformation upon
earth. Whatever difficulties there may be in filling up the
precise picture which the phrase would bring before the
mind of a Jewish audience, it was unquestionably the Hebrew formula for the expected golden age, and was the
popular symbol to denote perfected society; the final ascendancy of truth, justice, and peace; the expulsion of misery
and wrong; the eternal reign of all that is divine over the
world. This theocratic revolution was expected speedily,
when the words of the text were uttered. On the supposed eve of such a change, which would itself bring remedies for every imaginable ill, physical and moral, all earnest
efforts at social amelioration might appear to be superseded;
the nearer the crisis of restoration, the shorter would be the
triumphs of oppression, and the feebler the mischiefs of
sin: nay, if corruption ripens for judgment, a more vehement outblaze of human crime might even be welcomed by
some, as likely to hasten the interposition which was to
quench and to regenerate. The appropriate lesson of the
hour might be thought to be one of passive watchfulness;
to lie in wait for the hoped-for redemption; to relax even
the accustomed energies of life and duty, as on a world




THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.               79
grown old; and, in the words of one writing under the influence of this very expectation, to let "him that is unjust,
be unjust still; him that is filthy, be filthy still; him that is
righteous, be righteous still; him that is holy, be holy still;
for the time is at hand."
Instead of this, however, the great prophet of the hour
draws the opposite inference; and utters the exhortation
short and sharp, " Repent!"  A life of worldly acquiescence, of selfish habit, of unloving and barren ease, will
not do, he conceives, for the kingdom of Heaven; which, be
it what it may, is no system of mechanism for forcing men
to be wise and good without any trouble, but a social state
accruing from  wisdom and excellence previously    formed;
not a scene from which souls acquire sanctity, but one to
which they give it. Personal repentance, the transference
of the life from conventionalism to conviction, the kindling
of pure and productive affections, must precede and usher
in the reign of God upon the earth; men must truly venerate the Deity within them, and he will not be slow to
descend with his peace on society around them. The holy
and divine must first be recognized and enshrined in the individual and private heart; and then will follow its wider
conquests over humanity.  There is the home and citadel
of its strength, from which it sallies forth to win its public
triumphs, and establish its general rule; there the centre
whence its influence radiates, till it embraces and penetrates
even the outlying margin of barbarism and sin.
Christ, then, whose voice is Christianity, addresses himself first to the individual conscience; indulges in no dreams
of a renovated world without, till he has flung his appeal to
the man within; looks there for the creative and vital forces,
which are to make all things new. He speaks to his hearers, not as to passive creatures who might look about them
for some position in which it might befall them to be good,
but as to beings conscious of internal power to strive, and
win the excellence they love; to grapple athletically with




80       THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.
the oppositions of circumstance; and run the appointed race,
though with panting breast and bleeding feet.  Herein, I
conceive, did Christ preach a gospel wholly at variance with
the prevailing temper and philosophy of our times. It is
their tendency not to excite men to become what they ought
to be, but to manage them as they are. The age has been
prolific (like many of its predecessors) in inventions and
proposed social arrangements, by which we may sit still and
be made into the right kind of men; which will render duty
the smoothest thing on earth, by waning all interfering motives off the spot, and turn the Christian race into a stroll
upon a mossy lawn. The trust and boast of our period is
not in its individual energy and virtue, not in its great and
good minds, but in its external civilization, in schemes of
social and political improvement, in things to be done.for us,
rather than by us; in what we are to get, more than in what
we are to be. We have had systemns of education, which
were to mould the minds of our children into a perfection
that would make experience blush; systems of self-culture,
to nurse our faculties into full maturity; systems of socialism, for mending the whole world, and presenting every one
with a virtuous mind, without the le:ast trouble on his part.
Even those who escape this enthusiasm of system, are apt
to place an extravagant trust in sets of outward circumstances; and, dazzled by the splenrlid forms which modern
civilization assumes, to conceive of them as powers in themselves, independently of the minds that fill and use them.
Commerce, mechanical art, and more reasonably, but still
with some error, the school and the printing-press, are each
in turn cited as in themselves securing the indefinite progress of nations and mankind. It would be absurd to doubt
that these causes operate with constant and beneficent
power on the mind of a people; but on this very account
an exclusive and irrational reliance may be placed upon
them. It is obvious that two methods exist, of aiming at
human improvement, -by adjusting circumstances without




THE KINGDOM  OF GOD WITHIN US.               81
and by addressing the affections within; by creating facilities of position, or by developing force of character; by
mlechanismn or by mind. The one is institutional and systematic, operating on a large scale; reaching individuals circuitously and at last; the other is personal and moral, the
influence of soul on soul, life creating life, beginning in the
regeneration of the individual and spreading thence over
communities; the one, in short, reforming from the circumference to the centre, the other from the centre to the circumference. And in comparing these it is not difficult to
show the superior triumphs of the latter, which was the
method of Christ and Christianity.  Indeed the great peculiarity of the Christian view of life, is to be found in its
preference of the inward element over the outward; its reliance upon the least showy and most deep buried portions
of society for the evangelizing of the world; and still more
upon the profoundest and most faintly whispered sentiments
of the soul for the regeneration of the individual. It forbids us to say, " Lo, here!" or " Lo, there! " and assures us
that " the kingdom of God is within" us.
In attributing the sanctification and moral growth of personal character to an agency from  ucithin, Christianity is
surely confirmed by experience. Rarely do these blessed
chances originate in any peculiarities of the individual's lot,
visibly favorable;-else from  a knowledge of his circumstances, we should be able to predict the history of his
mind. Most often they arise, without any marked revolution in his condition, fiom secret and untraceable workings
of the soul, from native forces of the inner man, merely
taking from external circumstances an excuse for breaking
into energy, - an excuse which a thousand different situations would have supplied as well. Feeble mninds, in apology for their puny growth or premature decay in excellence,
complain of the climate in which God has planted them;
but where there is any vigor of life, the good seed will not
wait to burst, till it be removed to some sunny slope or lux6




82       THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.
uriant garden of the Lord: give it but a lodgment on the
rock, and feed it with the melting snow, and it will start a
forest on the hills, climbing with giant feet, fast as the
seasons can make steps. Whatever truth there may be in
the doctrine of circumstances, when applied on a large scale
to tribes of men,- however certain it may be that national
character is changed by the insensible influences of national
condition, -the application of the notion by individuals to
their own case is almost always fallacious; and the very
fact of their throwing upon their fate the blame of their
own faithlessness and sin, is a sure symptom that they have
not the living conscience which would turn a better lot into
a better life. The souls that would really be richer in duty
in some new position, are precisely those who borrow no
excuses from the old one; who even esteem it full of privileges, plenteous in occasions of good, fiequent in divine
appeals, which they chide their graceless and unloving temper for not lleeding more.  Wretched and barren is the
discontent that quarrels with its tools instead of with its
skill; and, by criticising Providence, manages to keep up
complacency with self.  I-Iow gentle should we be, if we
were not provoked; how pious, if we were not busy; the
sick would be patient, only he is not in health; the obscure
would do great things, only he is not conspicuous! Nay,
the infatuation besets us more closely still, and tempts us
to expect wonders from some altered posture of our affairs
totally inadequate to their production. What we neglect in
summer is to be done in winter; what present interruptions persuade us to forego is to be gloriously achieved at
some coming period of golden leisure, when confusion is to
cease, and life to be set into an order unattainable yet. As
if time and change, which should be our servants, and made
to do the bidding of our conscience, were to be waited on
by our servile will; as if the pusillanimous submission, once
made, could be at once recalled.  No; as the captive of
old was carried off from  the field of battle to the field of




THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.              83
slavery, the vanquished soul becomes temptation's serf,
and, after tears and repinings, learns to be cheerful at the
toil of sin. Once let a man insult the majesty of duty,
by waiting till its commands shall becomle easy, and he must
be disowned as an outlaw from her realm. If he calculates
on this or that happy influence which is to shape him into
something nobler; if he once regards his moral nature,
not as an authoritative power invested within its sphere
with a divine omnipotence that speaks and it is done, but
as passive material to be worked by the ingenuity of circumstances into somewhat that is good, — it is all over
with him; the ascendancy of conscience is gone; collapse
and ruin have begun. The mind has fallen into contentment with the mere conception, — the feeble and far-off
imagination of excellence; confounds the look of duty,
which indeed is a fair vision, with the strife and effort, the
weary tension of resolve, the doubt, the prayers, the tears,
which may bring our Christian manhood to exhaustion.
Pleasant is it to entertain the picture of ourselves in some
future scene, planning wisely, feeling nobly, and executing
with holy triumph of the will; but'tis a different thing,not in the green avenues of the future, but in the hot dust of
the present moment, -not in the dramatic positions of the
fancy, but in the plain prosaic now, - to do the duty that
waits and wants us, and put forth an instant and reverential hand to the noon-day or the evening task. It is a vain
attempt, - that of the Epicurean moralist: to " endure hardness" is the needful condition of every service, and above
all, for the good "soldier of Christ;" and no man can try
his utmost, with comfort to himself. Without great effort
was nothing worthy ever achieved; and he who is never
conscious of any strong lift within the mind, may know
that he is a cumberer of the ground.
This weak reliance then on outward occasions and influences for moral improvement is always ineffectual. And
it is the constant experience of those who indulge in it, that




84        THE KINGDOM  OF GOD WITHIN US.
to postpone the season is to perpetuate the sin. Instead
of being lifted easily by the mechanism of new and more
powerful motives into a higher life, the most overwhelming
vicissitudes sweep over them, and after beating upon their
defenceless affections, leave them where they were; not invigorated into effort, but simply wasted by passive anguish:
just as danger, which may but reveal to the strong his
strength, will sink the paralytic into death. But where, on
the contrary, the soul rests, with implicit dependence, not
on outward opportunities, but on inward convictions, on
some venerated idea of right, there is the true germ of
spiritual life, the element of a mighty power. This repose
upon a supreme ideal as the only real is the true Christian
faith; and he that has it, though it be little as a grain of
mustard-seed, is able to cast the mountain into the sea.
For, its force depends not on the greatness or rarity of the
thoughts which enter into it; the simplest faith, be it only
deep and trustful, the very smallest idea of a mission in life
assigned by God, be it only lovingly and clearly seen, " lifteth
the poor out of the dust," and " to them that have no might
increaseth strength." As of old it banished disease, and
couched the blind, and soothed the maniac, by miracles of
power, so does it still heal and bless by its miracles of love.
Who has not seen the frequent transformation it effects
in the wayward, frivolous, self-indulgent child, when some
living point has been touched within the heart; how it seems
to create wisdom, experience, energy, and serenity at a
stroke, and teaches her best to administer the daily and
nightly medicine of an unspeakable affection to the sufferings
of a sick brother, or the infirmities of an aged parent. It
puts a divine fire into the dullest soul, and draws in Saul
also among the prophets; it turns the peasant into the
apostle, and the apostle's meanest follower into the martyr.
I have spoken of the sudden change of mind effected by
a newly-opened faith. In the primitive Christian doctrine
such change plainly seems to have been recognized as pos



THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.                85
sible. And in spite of all that philosophers have written,
with some truth but not the whole truth, respecting the
power of habit, and the slow ancl severe pace of moral improvement and recovery, and the impossibility of abrupt
conversion, I believe there is a profound reality in the
opposite and popular belief;- as indeed there must be in
all popular beliefs respecting matters of mental experience.
It is quite true that instantaneous regeneration of the mind
is not a phenomenon of the commoner sort, especially in the
present day: but it is also true, that of all the remarkable
moral recoveries that occur (alas! too few at best), alrnost
the whole are of this kind. It is quite true that the upward
efforts of the will, when it exchanges the madness of passion
for the perceptions of reason, are toilsome, and, if successfuil,
tardy; and if all transformations of conscience were of the
deliberate and reasonable sort, philosophers could not say
too much about their infrequency and slowness. But the
process springs from  a higher and more powerful source;
the persuasion is conducted by some new and intense affection, some fresh and vivid reverence, followed, not led, by
the conscience and reason. The weeds are not painfully'
plucked up by the cautious hand of tillage reckoning on its
fruits, but burnt out by the blaze of a divine shame and love.
It is quite true that such a change cannot be expected,that to calculate on it is inexpressibly perilous; for the
deeper movements of the soul shrink back from our computations, refuse to he made the tools of our prudence, and
insist on coming unobserved or coming never; and lhe that
reckons on them  sends them  into banishment, and only
shows that they are and must be strangers to his barren
heart. It is quite true that self-cure is of all things the most
arduous; but that which is impossible to the mca  within uts,
may be altogether possible to the God. In truth, the denial
of such changes, under the affectation of great knowledge
of man, shows an incredible ignorance of men. WVhy, the
history of every great religious revolution, such as the spread




86        THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.
of Methodism, is made up of nothing else; the instances
occurring in such number and variety, as to transform the
character of whole districts and vast populations, and to put
all scepticism at utter defiance. And if some more philosophic authority is needed for the fact, we may be content
with the sanction of Lord Bacon, who observed that a man
reforms his habits either all together or not at all. Deterioration of mind is indeed always gradual; recovery usually
sudden; for God, by a mystery of mercy, has established
this distinction in our secret nature, - that while we cannot,
by one dark plunge, sympathize with guilt far beneath us,
but gaze at it with recoil till intermediate shades have rendered the degradation tolerable, -we are yet capable of
sympathizing with moral excellence and beauty infinitely
above us; so that while the debased may shudder and sicken
at even the true picture of themselves, they can feel the
silent majesty of self-denying and disinterested duty. With
a demon can no man feel complacency, though the demon
be himself; but God can all spirits reverence, though his
holiness be an infinite deep. And thus the soul, privately
uneasy at its insincere state, is prepared, when vividly presented with some sublime object veiled before, to be pierced
as by a flash from heaven with an instant veneration, sometimes intense enough to fuse the fetters of habit and drop
them to the earth whence they were forged. The mind is
ready, like a liquid on the eve of crystallization, to yield
up its state on the touch of the first sharp point, and dart,
over its surface and in its depths, into brilliant and beautiful
forms, and from being turbid and weak as water, to become
clear as crystal, and solid as the rock.
Meanwhile, though acknowledging, for the sake of truth
and the understanding of God's grace, the possibility and
reality of such changes, we must remember that, like all
vicissitudes of the affections, they neither come at the direct
command of our will, nor descend on those who watch for
external influences to produce them. There are those who




THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.              87
go about in passive waiting for a call from heaven; who
try this, and try that, and say, " Lo here! " and " Lo there!"
And they find that "the kingdom of God cometh not of
observation."  Wanting to be holy, for the sake of being
happy, they shall assuredly be neither; unless first the crust
of their selfish nature is broken by affliction, and bending
the head upon the shrine of sorrow, they cry with a contrition that forgets to be happy, — a cry that, it may be,
the Divine Spirit will not despise. The kingdom of God is
within us. In the latency of every soul there lurks, among
the things it loves and venerates, some earnest and salient
point, whence a divine life may be begun and radiate; some
incipient idea of duty, it may be, some light mist of disinterested love, appearing vague and nebulous and infinitely
distant within the mighty void, — a broken fringe of holy
light, seen only in the spirit's deepest darkness: and therein
may be the stirrings of a mystic energy, and the haze may
be gathered together, and glow within the mind into a star,
- a sun, - a piercing eye of God. But wherever the Deity
dwelleth within us, he will be unfelt and a stranger to us
till we abandon ourselves to the duties and aspirations which
we feel to be his voice; till we renounce ourselves, and unhesitatingly precipitate our life on the persuasion of our disinterested affections. While his " Spirit bloweth where it
listeth," yet certain it is that they only who do his will shall
ever feel his power.




X.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.
PART II.
iMATTHEW IV. 17.
FROM THAT TIME JESUS BEGAN TO PREACH, AND TO SAY, REPENT; FOR
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND.
THAT the reformation and improvement of individual character proceeds from within, not from without; that it usually
dates, not from any change in the condition and circumstances of life, but from the birth of some indigenous idea or
affection in the mind, - is the doctrine which I endeavored
to establish in the preceding discourse. HIowever natural
may be our reliance on external influences and marked
transitions in our lot, as facilities for a change of mind, that
reliance was shown to be delusive, and even to originate in
a state of feeling, which itself forbids the change. A new
and regenerative affection, wherever it finds root, springs
up (like a kingdom  of God within us), "not with observation," but silently and unconsciously; from suggerstions seemingly slight or even untraceable; with power often sud(den
and triumphant t;    in a seat within the soul profoland and
central; whllence a transforming   force radiates over the
whole character to its very form and visible expression.
From  the case of an individual man, we will now pass
to that of multitudes. In societies, the order of reformation
will be found to be the same;- fioni the centre to the circumference; from  a solitary point deep buried and unnoticed, first to the circumjacent region, and then over the




THE KINGDOM  OF GOD WITHIN US.              89
whole service; from the native force and inspired insight
of some individual mind, that kindles, first itself, and then,
by its irresistible intensity, a wider and wider sphere of
souls; spirit being born of spirit, life of life, thought of
thought. A higher civilization, by which I understand
neither superior clothes, nor better houses, nor richer wines,
nor even more destructive gunpowder, but a nobler system
of ideas and aspirations possessing a community, must commence, where alone ideas and aspirations can have a beginning, in somebody's mind. Hence, of all the more remarkable
social revolutions, the seminal principle, the primitive type,
may be traced to some one man, whose spiritual greatness
had force enough to convert generations and constitute an
era in the world's life; who preached with power some
mighty repentance or transition of sentiment within the
hearts of men, and thus rendered more near at hand that
"kingdom  of Heaven," for which all men sigh and good
men toil. Private "repentance," individual moral energy,
deep personal faith in some great conception of duty or
religion, are the pre-requisites and causes of all social
amelioration.
It might appear a waste of breath to make assertion of
so plain a truth as this, were it not for the disposition of
men to invert this order, to plan new systems of society in
order to perfect the individual, instead of seeking in the
individual conscience the germ of a nobler form of society.
Every vice and grievance, every evil, physical and moral,
which may afflict any class of a community, is apt to be
charlged exclusively upon faulty institutional arrangements;
upon llaws or the want of laws; on forms of government;
on economical necessity; on some external causes which
lift off the weighlt of responsibility from the individu:al will,
and make men passive and querulous under wrong, instead
of active and penitent. Their aspirations are turned outwards, rather than inwards; become complaints instead of
efforts; and spoil their tempers instead of ennobling their




90        THE KINGDOM  OF GOD WITHIN US.
energies. They must have the world mended, before they
can be expected to be better than they are: they reverse
the solemn exhortation of my text; and propose to make a
stir to get the " kingdom of IIeaven " established first; and
then repentance and moral renovation will follow of course.
The machinery of human motives being, we are sometimes
assured, altogether out of order, the manufacture of characters is unavoidably far from satisfactory. And not unfrequently a truly surprising amount of faith is manifested in
the skill of certain moral mechanists, who promise to rectify
the disorder, and form for us the only true specimens of
men. Self-interest is the one force by which all speculators
of this class propose to animate their new framework of
society; its application being ingeniously distributed so as
to maintain an unerring equilibrium, and smoothly execute
the work of duty. A hard-worked power is this self-interest; by which vulgar minds, in schools of philosophy or in
councils of state, have from an early age thought to subdue
and manage men; but from which, time after time, they
have broken loose in startling and remarkable ways. Against
this reliance for human improvement on institutions and
economical organization, apart from agencies internal and
spiritual, Providence and history enter a perpetual protest.
And it behooves all wise men to add their voices too: th'e
more so, because it is the tendency of our times rather to
criticise society, than to ennoble and sanctify individuals;
to apply trading analogies to great questions of human improvement; to place as implicit a faith in the omnipotence
of self-interest in morals as of steam in the arts; forgetting
that between the grossest and the most refined form of this
principle, there can only be the difference between the
cannibal and the epicure. Let us not glorify the body of
civilization, and overlook its soul; and while luxuriating in
its fruits, neglect the waters at its secret root.
The systematic socialist, who is confident he "can explain
the origin of evil," and no less sure that he can remove it




THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.                91
by a kind of mental engineering or exact computation of
hulman wants and desires, is the extreme exemplification of
this spirit. In order to indicate the fallacy of his scheme,
it is not necessary to travel beyond his own class of illustrations. He perpetually calls the arrangements into which he
proposes to fit the world, a " machine."  In every machine
there is a power to move, and a resistance to be overcome:
and in this particular project for curing the errors and
perfecting the minds of men, it is clear that the social
organization is relied upon as the power to repress the
human passions and will, considered as resistance.  Yet, as
organization is nothing in itself, but merely a disposition of
parts through which force may be transmitted from point
to point, no effect can ensue till it is filled and animated
with some energy not its own: nor in this case can the
boasted engine of improvement be worked but by the very
minds it is intended to control: and the power and the
resistance being thus the same, the machine must stand still,
as certainly as the inventions on which sciolists waste their
ingenuity for producing perpetual motion and self-revolving
wheels. Or, to take an illustration from morals. rather than
from physics, it is the same mistake, by which a disorderly
mind expects to acquire faithfulness and punctuality of conscience from a neatly-arranged list of employments, and wellfilled scheme for the disposal of the hours. While the force
of good resolve which produced the list remains, the selfmade law continues to be obeyed, and the programme looks
up with a grave and venerable authority. But the occasion
passes, the tension of the heart relaxes, temptations crowd
and hurry back: and the slips of conscience recommence,
and confusion triumphs again, though the paper plans of
duty are symmetrical as ever; looking now with vain remonstrance at our rebellion, till discarded and trodden
under foot for reminding us of our departed allegiance.
It is far from my desire to speak lightly of the importance of institutional and political change. But perhaps, at




92        THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHII US.
the present day, the true light in which to regard it is, that
its function is to check evil rather than create positive good;
to prevent, by timely removal, an injurious variance between
the mind of a people and its ways; and leave room for the
unembarrassed operations of all active causes of improvement that may spread from  the centres of private life.
More than this is usually expected; the intensity of political
passion exaggerates the magnitude of the stake: and hence,
measures, or the defeat of measures, of social innovation,
usually disappoint by the smallness of the result; while the
conceptions and acts of single minds, piercing the deeps of
human sympathy, and touching the springs of the human
will, often start from secrecy and neglect to a power transcendent and sublime. While the vastest and best-executed(
schemes of subversion and reconstruction are necessarily
transient, the creation of deep individual faith is the mightiest and most permanent of human powers.
For an example we need only turn to the grandest of
revolutions, the travels and triumphs of Christianity itself.
We do injustice to the gospel, and gratuitously lessen the
wonder of its spread, when we speak of it as a system, deliberately projecting the downfall of the existing order of
things, and urged on mainly by the physical power or illtellectual persuasion of miracle. No comprehensive scheme
of policy, no continuous plan, no study of effect however benevolent, carl be traced in our Lord's ministry.
These ingrenuities are the necessary resort of our feeble
mind(s, which h:lve to adapt themllselves with nicety to
foreign causes, to conciliate events instead of commanding
them, to accumulahte power by making each step contribute somethilig to the next.  But where there is an exuberance of strength, and every moment is in itself equal to
the demand made upon it, the soul may retain its divine
freedom, unchained by the successive links of preconceived
arrangerment.  Art and strategy constitute the wisdom of
those whose ends must be gained against the wills of others;




THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.              93
but are misplaced in those who act upon and by their loving
and consenting mind. There is a wisdom of the understanding, arising from foresight, which demands policy;
there is a higcher wisdom of the soul, derived from insight,
which dispenses with it. To discern "that which is before
and after," has been pronounced the great human prerogative: but to see clearly that which is within, is the divine.
And this was Christ's; the source of that majestic power
by which, as the hierophant and interpreter of the god-like
in the soul, he uttered everlasting oracles. He penetrated
through the film to the inner mystery and silence of our
nature: and when he spake, an instant music, - as of a
minster organ touched by spirits at midnight, - thrilled and
made a low chant within. Oh, when speech is given to a
soul holy and true as his, time, and its dome of ages, becomes as a mighty whispering gallery, round which the
imprisoned utterance runs and reverberates for ever! His
awful vows in the wilderness, the mournful breathings of
Olivet, the mellow voice that led the hymn at the Last Supper, the faint cries of Calvary, the solemn assurance that
heaven and God dwell in us, - do they not ring and vibrate
in our hearts unto this day? It was not chiefly the force
of external miracle on the convictions, not the logical persuasion of his mere authority, not even the soundness and
reasonableness of his doctrine, that gave to his religion its
penetrative power; but the mind itself, of which his life and
discourse were but the symbol and expression; the clearness
and beauty with which he revealed that portion of the Deity
that may dwell in man, and by action as well as words
proved the reality of holiness, cast to the winds the doubts
that hung as foul mists around all that was divine, and
drew it forth from  the world's background of night in
colors soft as the rainbow, yet intense as the sun. IHad the
soul of Christ been different, in vain would all external endowments of verbal truth and physical omnipotence have
been accumulated on him. It was that spirit within, — the




94        THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.
impersonation of heavenly love and light,- that retained
around him by unconscious attraction the little band of
simple men, to whom it was " the Father's good pleasure to
give " this " kingdom "-this transcendent dominion over
the human heart. It was this that imparted to them their
best inspiration, and made them missionaries and martyrs;
that followed them like an unearthly vision thlrough life, in
persecution and peril giving them  "that' very hour what
they ought to say;" in temptation and conflict coining as
"an angel to strengthen " them; in prison and in bonds
enabling them to say, " but none of these things move us."
Here was one of God's great powers abroad among men,
which it was impossible should die. True, the world's heart
seemed old and withered: the more perhaps would the new
element spread, like a fire bursting in the heart of a forest
dry and dead. Soon, in the dark and unvisited recesses of
many an ancient city, there lurked a living point of faith;
perceptible at first only in the altered countenance of the
Jew, whose lip no longer curled in scorn, and whose pride
was turned to mercy; or in the opened brow of the slave,
from whom abjectness seemed chased away; or in the murmurs of happy prayer, that strayed from  some wretched
cabin into the street, mingling there with the traffic, the
revelry, the curse. This was the faith which was to tread
the earth with royalty so great; precisely, be it observed,
because it thus began its march, conquering each individual
heart that came nearest to its reach, and leaving there a
garrison of truth and love, before passing on to newer victories. Thus before the holiness of Christ, which was and
is the supreme energy of the gospel, the craft of hierarchies,
and the force of governments, and the inertia of a massive
civilization, gave way. And while thousands of state-projects on the vastest scale have been conceived, executed, and
forgotten; while on the field of history the repeated tramp
of armies has been heard to approach, to pass by, to die
away; while the noise of shifting nations, and the shriek of




THE KINGDOM  OF GOD WITHIN'US.              95
revolutions, have gone up from earth to heaven, and left
silence once more- behind, - this meek power triumphs over
all; speaking with a persuasion which no vicissitudes of
language can render obsolete, and throughout the evervarying abodes of humanity singing its sweet songs to our
heavy hearts.
The revival of Christianity from its corruptions illustrates
the same truth; that the greatest social changes begin in
the creation of individual faith. I am aware that both the
origin and the reformation of our religion are sometimes
appealed to by sceptical and subversive minds, as justifying
contentment with their method of procedure, which consists
only in destroying something falsely esteemed venerable. No
doubt, on a first view, both these revolutions seem to have
overturned a great deal. But on nearer inspection this
character will be found to have belonged to them as a mere
accident, not as their essence; as a symptom of something
deeper, not as their ultimate spirit. Neither of them Nwas a
merely negative and disorganizing agency, simply annihilating a sacred system  of ideas: but each, on the contrary,
was a positive and creative power, putting into the mind,
not doubts, but faith; not emptying and closing up the
shrine of the secret heart, but consecrating and opening it
afresh for worship. As new faiths however demand new
forms, and a living religion cannot find a fitting church in
the dead body of an old one, temples, rites, and priests, that
once had greatness, ceased to be, replaced by other and
sincerer ones.  Thus, it is true, these revolutions overwhelmed ancient institutions, but only by creating new
ideas: their internal spirit was organic; their external
effect, only, subversive. The Reformation can never be
properly understood, so long as it is looked at either in
the light of a change of doctrines, or a publication of the
right of the intellect to free inquiry. It was, essentially,
a substitution of individual faith for sacerdotal reliance, of
personal religion for ecclesiastical obedience.  The same




96        THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.
spirit, in a less healthy form, reappeared, to reproduce the
same phenomena, when IMethodism arose, and diffused itself
with gradual but triumphant power from the earnest souls
of the Wesleys.  In all these instances, the regenerative
influence commences its action wthli the great mass of the
people: for it is an apparent law of Providence, that while
in society knowledge clescendcs, faiths Dascend: while science,
doubt, opinion, all ideas of the understanding, gravitate
from the few to the many; affections, convictions, truths
of the conscience and the heart, rise from the many to the
few.
Those who are unused to this mode of conceiving of
human improvement, as spreading from  secret centres to a
wide circumference, and who are accustomed to the notion
of civilization by external agencies, may perhaps adduce the
printing-press as an instance of a vast engine of amelioration, mechanical rather than moral. It is obvious however
that the press, with all its magic, is not a power in itself,
but a mere instrument; — a tool, whose influence, in kind
and degree, depends altogether on the spiritual forces that
wield it; which might be given to the savage, without producing the smallest fruits of culture; and to a community
of the vicious, without producing any culture that is good.
It is simply an implement for the transmission of mental
action; and it is the thought, not the machinery, that works
the wonders of which we boast. Its function is, to bring
into contact such minds as there are; and, as in private
intercourse, it depends on the character of those minds,
whether is circulated the vitality of health, or the contagion of disease. It is true indeed that, in the long run, the
highest spirits are always the strongest too: but this is a
law of nature, which human inventions did not make and
cannot alter: and the press, giving equal voice to all, leaves
the proportionate influence of different orders of minds
precisely where it was; widening the empire, but not redisposing of the victory. And after all, it cannot serve as




THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN US.              97
an equivalent to the living individual action of soul on soul.
Who will compare a printed Testament with the voice and
presence of an Apostle? The words may be the same, and
what is called the meaning may be apprehended: but see
how listlessly the poor laborer in his cottage turns over the
dead pa:ge, missing the comment of imploring gesture, and
kindling eye, and earnest tones, which doubtless pierced and
fired the audience of Paul!
To individual falithfulness then, to the energy of the private conscience, has God committed the real history and
progress of mankind. Illn the scenes wherein we daily move,
from  capacities common to us all, do drop the seeds from
which, if ever, the Paradise of God must grow and blossom
upon the earth. Ite that can be true to his best and secret
nature, that can, by faith and patience, conquer the struggling
world within, is most likely to send forth a blessed power to
vanquish the world without. Mysteries of influence fall flror
every earnest volition, to return to us, in gladness or in
weeping, after many days. No insult can we pass upon the
divine but gentle dignity of duty, no quenching of God's
spirit can we allow, that will not prepare a curse for others
as well as for ourselves: nor any reverence, prompt and due,
in act as in thought, can we pay to the God within, that will
not yield abundant blessing. " See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise."




XI.
THE CONTENTMENT OF SORROW.
ISAIAH LIII. 10.
YET IT PLEASED THE LORD TO BRUISE HIM; HE HATH PUT HIMI TO GRIEF.
FROM acge to age mankind have importunately sought for
the reasons of sorrow; and from age to age have returned
from the quest unsatisfied; for still is the question constantly renewed. How could it be otherwise? As sickness
entered house after house, and waste made havoc on generation after generation, it was inevitable that our terrified
hearts, ever clinging to that which must be wrenched away,
and warmed by that which must be stricken by the frosts of
death in our embrace, should cry, " Oh wily these cruel messages of separation, these decrees of exile thrown amid
groups of friends and kindred?"   But the angel of destruction makes no reply: silently he executes his mission:
only he relents not; and whether he be met by tears atid
prayers, or by frowns and the deplorable affectation of defiance, he does his sacred bidding, and passes on. It would
seeni that our passionate curiosity, whlich continues to urge
its "wLy? " is never to be satisfied; but still to hand down
its question as the eternal and unanswered cry of the human
race. And however impatient some minds may feel at our
helpless struggles with this difficulty, the thoughltful will
acquiesce in thlem tranquilly.  For they know that it is of
such unsolved problems, of such mental strife with the mysterious, which uses up our knowledge, and lets us fall upon
our conscious ignorance, that religion has its birth; and that
the perpetual renewal of this great controversy maintains




THE CONTENTMENT OF SORROW.               99
the soul in that intermediate position between the known
and the incomprehensible, the finite and the infinite, which
excludes as well the dogmatism of certainty as the apathy of
nescience and chance, and calls up that wonder, reverence,
and trust, which are the fitting attributes of our nature.
There is a sense in which the maxim has a profound truth,
that " ignorance is the mother of devotion; " —a sense however by no means justifying the continuance of any ignorance which can be removed, or can degrade one human
being below another; but tending to reconcile us to such as
may be rendered inevitable by the limits assigned to our
faculties. If men knew every thing, they would venerate
nothing: reverence is not the affection with which objects
of knowledge, as such, are regarded; and to place any object of thought under the eye of religious contemplation, it
imust be stationed above the region of distinct perception, in
the shadows of that infinitude which sleeps so awfully
around the luminous boundaries of our knowledge. In this
position is the great question respecting the amount of evil
in human life; near the highest summit of our knowledge,
and the deepest root of our religion.
To the demand of the human heart for less suffering and
a more liberal dispensation of happiness, no answer, as from
God, can be discovered in Scripture or in philosophy; and
all attempts to assign his reasons for the present adjustments of the world in this respect have, I believe, signally
failed. But it is otherwise when we attempt an answer, as
from  ourselves; when, instead of taking for granted that
the demand is just, and waiting till it obtains its reply from
without, we look into the demand itself, and ask whether it
is wise and right; whether it comes from a condition of
the understanding and the heart desirable and excellent,
or disordered and ignoble. Paradox as it may seem, it is,
I conceive, still true, that the state of mind which urges
the question is necessarily incapable of understanding the
answer.




100        THE CONTENTMENT OF SORROW.
At the foundation of all our difficulties and questionings
respecting the evils of our lot, is a secretly-cherished notion, that we have a right to a more advantageous condition. We imagine ourselves in some way ill-treated, and
think we might fairly have expected a happier life. We
speak as beings who had formed anticipations more sanguine than have been realized. The feeling that asks for
more happiness has evidently a private standard of its own,
by which it tries the sufficiency of its own enjoyment; - an
ideal measure which it applies in its judgment of the actual
providence of God; and this is the rule by which alone the
estimate of that providence is made. Now what is the
origin of this criterion to which we submit the decision of
the solemn question respecting the character of God? How
do we make up our conceptions of the amount of happiness
which we may fittingly expect? There is but one school in
which all our expectations are trained, viz. experience; but
one source of belief respecting the future, v.z. knowledge of
the past; that which actually has been, dictates all our ideas
of what possibly may be. That image then of adequately
happy life which we complain of not realizing, that picture
which would perfect our content, is a repetition of what we
have felt, a miniature of our habitual consciousness, painted
in the colors of positive experience. Our present ideal is
God's past reality; nor could we ever have framed even the
notion of such enjoyment, had not our own lot been one of
peace: by blessing us, he gives us the power to entertain
hard thoughts of him; and we take occasion, from his
claims upon our gratitude, to judge harshly of his government. Had he made us miserable (as we now count misery),
inured us to severities so constant as even to shut out the
conception of any thing better, we should have been ready
with a song of thanksgiving for the mercies of a lot now
raising only murmurs. Impious perversity, that thus renders to God evil for good, and, in answer to blessing, mutters forth a curse!




THE CONTENTMENT OF SORROW.              101
That the tacit claim which we make upon Providence
has really its origin in a happy experience, is confirmed by a
fact often noticed, that habitual sufferers are precisely those
who least frequently doubt the divine benevolence, and
whose faith and love rise to the serenest cheerfulness. Possessed by no idea of a prescriptive title to be happy, their
blessings are not benumbed by anticipation, but come to
them  fresh and brilliant as the first day's morning and
evening light to the dwellers in Paradise. Instead of the
dulness of custom, they have the power of miracle. With
the happy, it is their constant peace that seems to come by
nature, and to be blunted by its commonness, - and their
griefs to come from God, sharpened by their sacred origin:
with the sufferer, it is his pain that appears to be a thing of
course, and to require no explanation, while his relief is reverently welcomed as a divine interposition, and, as a breath
of heaven, caresses the heart into melodies of praise. When
the great Father, in his everlasting watch, paces his daily
and nightly rounds, and through these lower mansions of
his house gathers in the offered desires of his children,
where, think you, does he hear the tones of deepest love,
and see on the uplifted face the light of most heartfelt gratitude?  Not where his gifts are most profuse, but where
they seem most meagre; not where the suppliant's worship
glides forth from the cushion of luxury, through lips satiated
with plenty, and rounded by health; not within the halls of
successful ambition, or even the dwellings of unbroken domestic peace; but where the outcast, flying from persecution, kneels in the evening upon the rock whereon he sleeps;
at the fresh grave, where, as the earth is opened, heaven
in answer opens too; by the pillow of the wasted sufferer,
where the sunken eye, denied sleep, converses with a silent
star, and the hollow voice enumerates in low prayer the
scanty list of comforts, and shortened tale of hopes. Genial,
almost to miracle, is the soil of sorrow; wherein the smallest seed of love, timely falling, becomneth a tree, in whose




102        THE CONTENTMENT OF SORROW.
foliage the birds of blessed song lodge and sing unceasingly. And the ldoubts of God's goodness, whence are
they?  Rarely from  the weary and overburdened, from
those broken in the practical service of grief and toil; but
from theoretic students at ease in their closets of imedita.
tion, treated themselves most gently by that legislation of
the universe which they criticise with a melancholy so
profound.
There are indeed those who discern nothing sanctifying
in sorrow; who say that they are best when they are happiest, - of prompter conscience, of nobler faith, of more
earnest aspirations; who seeni stnk in apathy or stung into
irritability by affliction; and who pass through it, finding
therein no waters of life, but only a scorched desert, - where
the earth is as sand beneath, and the heavens as molten fire
above. Those whose sympathies thus dry up and wither in
grief, as if a hot wind had swept over them, are infected
with the fever of self. In the inner and subterranean clhamber of their nature are no cool springs of affection, collected
from the trealsured dews of heaven, but nether fires, glowing outwards to meet the heats that strike inwards from the
skies. They are given over to the insatiable idea of mere
happiness, in one form or other; and, this unngratified, find
refreshment in nothing more divine. Failing in the passive
half of life, they pride themselves on the energy with which,
in cheerful days, they execute their active duties. Burt it
is clear that these are not executed as dutties, - as due, that
is, to the high and holy law by which God rules us with pure
affection. They have no deep root of love, but grow from
some shallower sentiment, -the sense of propriety, the
respect of opinion, the taste for older, the suggestions of
ambition: for were there the true affectionate heart of reverence, how could it thus stipulate in favor of its own selfwill;-how  litigate with God for ampler wages; —how
refuse his willing service, unless the post of command and
action be given, and grow sullen to be appointed but a door



THE CONTENTMENT OF SORROW.              103
keeper at the gate of his tent of dwelling, on the outside of
its light and joy? Certain it is that no one possessed by this
temper can be the true disciple of the man of sorrows, or
look with the eye of Christ on nature and life. No holy
spirit fills and consecrates their scenes; no silken cords of
divine love weave together the whole tissue, dark or gay,
of human existence, and make it all as a garment of God,
more sacred than prophet's mantle.  What difference did
it make to Christ, whether in the wilderness he did fierce
battle with temptation; or sat on the green slope to teach
the people, and send them home as if God had dropped upon
their hearts amid the shades of evening: whether he stood
over the corpse, and looking on the dark eyes, said, " Let
there be light," and the curtain of the shadow of death drew
up; or saw the angel of duty approach himself in the dress
of the grave, and on the mournful whisper " Come away"
tendered his hand and was meekly led: whether his walk
was over strewn flowers, or beneath the cross too heavy to
be borne; —amid the cries of "Hosanna," or the murderous
shout? The difference was all of pain; — none was there of
conscience, of trust, of power, of love. Let there be a conscious affiliation with God; and as he pervadeth all things,
a unity is imparted to life, and a stability to the mind, which
put not happiness indeed, but character and will, above the
reach of circumstance: a current of pure and strong affections, fed by the fount of bliss, pours from hidden and sunlit heights, and winds through the open plains and dark
ravines of life, till its murmurs fall into the everlasting
deep.
Thus far our complaints against the evils of our lot would
appear to indicate a wrong state of mind towards God.
The disappointment in which they originate is the result of
happy experience; and had we never been blessed, we could
never be querulous. In the natural place of affectionate
retrospect, we suffer the intrusion of murmurs; and our
quarrel with the present is a hostile substitute for gratitude




104        THE CONTENTMENT OF SORROW.
towards the past. When the custom of God's mercies thus
tempts us to forget that they are gratuities, and hardens us
to make bold claims of prescriptive right; when we begin
to reckon among his gifts only the extraordinary and unexpected benefits of our lot, and, measuring his goodness
by the mere overflowings of the cup, become angry when
happiness does not rise to the brim, -it is time for our
pampered minds to learn, by discipline of grief, a less wayward temper: the canker of too long a comfort is eating
out the whole religion of our hearts. We are dressing up
our life, as if it were the eternal palace of a god, instead of
the brief halt and hospice of the pilgrim: and there were
mercy in the stroke that should lay it in ruins, and send our
unsheltered head into the storm, to seek our rest in a meeker
and more suppliant spirit. It is no mere superstition that
leads us sometimes to say, of a prosperity and outward peace,
that it is "too great to last;" not indeed that any blessing
is too great for God to give, but only too great for us to
receive. Freely might he continue it, but innocently we
should scarce enjoy it, in perpetuity; and it is the intuitive
perception of this, the secret consciousness that the upward
gush of gratitude is growing feebler,- that the incrustations
of ease are creeping over the wells of spiritual life,- that
causes us, amid our comforts, to tremble as in a day of wrath,
and occasionally sheds over the brilliant colors of enjoyment
a slight and mysterious tinge as from the shadow of guilt.'Tis awful and prophetic as the handwriting on the wall;
becoming a splendor, as of the heavens, to those who revere
it, and a blackness, as of doom, to those that neglect it.
Blessed are they that, turning an eye within, can discern
and interpret it betimes!
And if our complaints of trial and suffering result from a
wrong state of mind in relation to God, they no less imply
mistake in relation to ourselves and erroneous ideas of our
own welfare. At least our griefs of bereavement (which
are the severest of all), our expostulations with death, treat




THE CONTENTMENT OF SORROW.                 105
as utterly gone treasures whose best portion is with us still;
even proved to be present by the very tears that weep their
absence.  For wherein consists the value of parent, child,
or friend?  Is it in the use we may make of him, or in the
love we feel for him? Is it in his form, his voice, his features,- or in the dear memories and delightful affections
which these awaken in our minds?  As a foreign land differs
from  our own, not in its soil, but in its recollections; as
another house differs from  our own, not by its materials,
but by the spirit of its associated feelings, not as a substance,
but as a sign, -so does a friend differ from a stranger, not
in his person, but in his power over our hearts.  He is
nothing to us, but for the impression he leaves upon our
souls, to present which is the mission whereto God has sent
him, and the office for which we love him. Of all the ingredients that enter into that infinitely complex thing, a
human life, of all the influences that radiate froln it, and
proclaim it there, none surely are so essential as the affections
it kindles in others; and if beings around entertain of it a
blessed and noble conception, are filled by it with generous
aspirations, and feel the thought of it to be as a fire from
heaven, in this is its true and best existence; in this consists
its real identity, distinguishing it by strongest marks from
other minds. And all this does death leave behind, as our
indestructible possession: from our mere eyes he takes the
visible form of the objects of our love; for this is only borrowed: fromn  our souls he cannot take the love itself to
which that is subservient; for it is given us for ever. The
very grief that wastes us testifies that, in his true worth,
the companion we lament as lost is with us still; for is it
not the idea of him that weeps in us, his image that supplies
the tears?  His best offices he will continue to us yet, if
we are true to him; with serenest look, as through the
windows of the soul, rebuking our disquiet, bracing our
faith, quickening our conscience, and cooling the fever-heats
of life. Doubtless the thought of him  is transmuted fromn




106        THE CONTENTMENT OF SORROW.
gladness into sorrow. But will any true heart say that an
affection is an evil because it is sad, and wish to shake it
off, the moment it brings pain? Call it what you will, that
is not love which itself is anxious to grow cold: the emotions of a faithful soul never entertain a suicidal purpose,
and plan their own extinction: rather do they reproach
their own insensibility, and passionately pray for a greater
vitality. Whether then in anxiety or in peace, in joy or in
regrets, let the spirit of affection stay; and if the spirit stay,
the objects, though vanished, leave their best presence with
us still. No; that only is truly lost which we have ceased
to love: if there be a friend whom in our childhood or our
youth we venerated for the wisdom of virtue and beauty
of holiness, and whom now we regard with the aversion of
corrupted tastes, or the coldness of callous hearts, he indeed
is lost: if there be a companion whose hand was once locked
in ours with the vows, seemingly so firm, of our enthusiastic
years, and on whom now we look with a mind frozen by the
worldliness or poisoned by the jealousies and rivalries of
life, such a one is surely lost: but not the departed who left
our world with benediction, and fell close-locked in our embrace: such a one, though dead, yet speaketh; the others,
though living, are silent to our hearts. Of the alienated
the loss is absolute, an extinction of a part of our nature.
But the sainted dead shall finish for us the blessed work
which they began. They tarried with us, and nurtured a
human love; they depart from us, and kindle a divine.
Cease then, our complaining hearts, and wait in patience
the great gathering of souls!




XII.
I M M O R T A LI T Y.
2 CORINTHIANS I. 9.
WE HAD THE SENTENCE OF DEATH IN OURSELVES, THAT WE SHOULD NOT
TRUST IN OURSELVES, BUT IN GOD WHO RAISETH THE DEAD. v,
PAUL, at his nearest view of death, obtained his firmest
1" trust in God who raiseth the dead." Socrates, with the
cup of poison in his hand, declares it powerless: and, taking
it as the pledge of temporary parting from  his weeping
friends, goes cheerfully forward to explore the future.  We,
who are in no such extremity, but at ease and in command
of the strong posts of life, are seduced into sceptic misgivings of its perpetuity, and are conscious of at least transient
doubts, whether soul and body do not go out together.
And so indeed it ever is. Amid the so-called goods of
existence, we most shudder at the view of its privations;
while from  active contact with its griefs, its grandeur
appears least doubtful, and, in the bold struggle with ills,
they prove a phantom  and slip away. From  the sunlit
heights of life, the deep vales and hollows of its necessities
look darkest: but to the faithful whose path lies there, there
is still light enough to show the way, and to no other eyes
do the everlasting hills and blue heavens seem so brilliant.
Our nobler-faith is not dashed, as we suppose, by the severities, but rather enervated by the indulgences, of experience:
it is on the bed of luxury, not on the rock of nature, that
scepticism has its birth.  Paul, the hardly-entreated apostle,
the homeless and ever-perilled missionary, -his back scarred
with stripes, his hands heavy with bonds, the outcast of




108                  IMMORTALITY.
Jewish hate and Pagan scorn, -writes as he flies, to ask
the voluptuous Corinthians, "THow say some among you
that there is no resurrection of the dead? " and to prove in
words that immortality of which-lVis life was the demonstration in action. And while from the centre of comforts
many a sad fear goes forth, and the warmest lot becomes
often filled with the chillest doubts, hidden within it like a
heart of ice that cannot melt, you may find toiling misery
that trusts the more, the more it is stricken, and amid the
secret prayers of mourners hear the sweetest tones of hope.
This paradox is far from being inexplicable. All true
religion is a sense of want; and where wants go to sleep
upon possession, it becomes bewildered, and, when occasionally opening its eyes, sees nothing with the clearness
of reality. Religion implies a perception of the infinite and
invisible; and where the finite is illuminated too strongly,
nothing else can be discerned, and all beyond appears, not
dim twilight shadow, but blank darkness. The full-orbed
brilliancy of life brings out the colors of the earth, and
makes it seem as vast and solid as.if there were nothing else:
in the midnight watch, it is felt only at the point beneath
our feet, and the sphere of stars in which it swims alone is
seen. Indeed the suspicion that this life is our all, appears
to be simply an example, upon a large scale, of a delusion
and disproportion of idea which we are continually experiencing in detail, and without which perhaps our discerning rand our practical energies would be ill-harmonized. I
allude to that exaggeration of the present moment, that concentration of anxiety and effort on the present object, which
makes the point of pending action every thing, and for a time
kills the reality of all beside.  Desire, else broken by dispersion, singles out project after project in succession, on
which to gather all its intensity: each in turn becomes the
vivid and sole point of life: as the eye applied to the
microscope may see the centre of the field without notice
of the margin of the very object beneath its view. This




IMMORTALITY.                    109
optical exclusiveness of mind, this successive insulation of
effort, is the needful condition on which the will performs
its work with gladness: for who would not sink and faint
upon the dust, if the whole task of existence were spread
before him at once?  Let us then in practice, as the laborers
of God, bless him for our blindness; but in meditation, as
the believers of God and explorers of his providence, not
on that account deny that there is light.  Our delusion,
operating in detail, is corrected by experience, which shifts
us ever to a new point of view: and bow often do we smile
in retrospect at the passionate self-precipitation, the silent
tension or stormy force of desire, with which we bent
towards some aim, that seemed for the instant the very goal
of life: the engle-eyed precision with which we fell, as on a
prey, upon something that now seems one of the most trivial
creatures that stirs the g rass! Our eyes once opened thus,
we say that it "was a dream."  And most truly: for those
who are awake always discover that they have been cdreaming;
but those Nwho dream never suspect that they shall quwake.
For the time, the images of sleep are the intensest of realities; they are the sleeper's universe; they agitate him with
hope and terror, with love and grief, with admiraltion and
transport, as genuine as human heart can feel; while they
continue to flit around him, they slhut in and limit his belief,
and totally exclude the conceptions suitable to the world on
which lie lies. And so is it with the long trance o'f human
life; we are ever dreaming to the present, and waking to
the past; clearly estimating each illusion when it is gone,
but too vividly occupied with new ones to expect ally morning summons to a correcting world beyond. Not till we
are startled by that call, and stand outside our existing
sphere of thought, can we discover how nmuch of phantasni
there is in life as a whole; but the wise will assuredly distrust their feeling of its exclusive reality; will know that
if it were a mere scenic image, a painted vacancy, environed
by immense and solemnn realities, this same feeling would




110                  IMMORTALITY.
hlave been no less strong; and they will rouse themselves
so far as at least to "' dream that they dream."
The feeling of impossibility which, I believe, haunts many
persons in adverting to the immortality of the soul, the vague
apprehension of some insuperable obstacle to the realization
of any thing so great, appears to arise from mere indolence
of conception; and vanishes in proportion as the affections
are deeply moved, andl the intuitions of reason are trusted
rather than the importunities of sense. There is certainly
nothing in our idceaof the mind, as there is in that of organization, contradictory of the belief of its perpetuity;- nothing( which involves the notion of dissolution, or of limited
duration. All the properties of the thinking principle, remembrance, imagination, love, conscience, volition, are irrespective of time; are characterized by nothing seasonal; are
incapable of disease, fracture, or decay. They have nothing
in their nature to prescribe their existence for an hour, a
century, a thousand years, or in any way to bring them to
termination. Were it the will of the Creator to change his
arrangements for mankind, and to determine that they should
henceforth live in this world ten or a hundred times as long
as they do at present, no one would feel that new soutls would
be required for the execution of the design. And in the
mere conception of unlimited existence there is nothing
more amazing than in that of unlimited non-existence; there
is no more mystery in the mind living for ever in the future,
than in its having been kept out of life through an eternity
in the past. The former is a negative, the latter a positive
infinitude. And the real, the authentic wonder, is the actual
fact of the transition having been made from the one to the
other; and it is far more incredible that from not having
been, we are, than that from actual being, we shall continue
to be.
And if there be no speculative impossibility in the immortality of the soul, it cannot be rendered inconceivable
by any physical considerations connected with death.  We




IMMQRTALITY.                    111
are apt, indeed, to be misled by the appearances of tile last
hour; appearances so appalling, so humbling, so associated
with the memories of happy affection and the approach of
bleakest solitude, that it would be surprising if we did
not interpret them amiss, and see them falsely through our
tears.  As we turn away fromn  that last agony, we are
tempted to say in our despair, -there, there, is the visible return of all to darkness; the proof that all is gone;
the fall of the lanip into the death-stream.  Yet it is
clear that neither the phenomena of death, nor any other
sensible impression, can afford the least substantive evidence that the mind has ceased to be. Non-existence is a
negation, which neither sight can see, nor ear can hear:
and the fading eye, the motionless lips, the chill hand, establish nothing, and simply give us no report: refusing us
the familiar expression of the soul within, they leave the
great question open, to be determined by any positive probabilities which may be sought in other directions. In life,
we never saw or heard the principle of thought and will
and love, but only its corporeal effects in lineament and
speech. If the bare absence of these signs were sufficient
to prove the extinction of the spirit which they obey, the
spectacle of sleep would justify us in pronouncing the
mind dead; and if neither slumber nor silence have been
found to afford reason for the denial of simultaneous thought,
death affords no better ground for the dreary inference. It
is to no purpose to say, that we have not experience of the
separability of consciousness from bodily life; for originally
there was no experience of the separability of consciousness
from bodily waking; and with the same reason which would
lead us to mourn the extinction of a friend's spirit in death,
might Adam have bewailed the annihilation of Eve in the
first sleep of Eden. Nay, if we are not to conceive of the
existence of a friend, where there is no physical manifestation, it will follow that till there was a visible creation, there
was no Infinite Spirit: and that if ever the Creator shall




112                  IMMORTALITY.
cast aside the mantle of his works, if the order, the beauty,
the magnificence, of the universe, through which he appears
to us and hides his essence behind the symbol of his infinitude, are ever to have their period and vanish, if ancient
prediction shall be fulfilled, and "the heavens pass away
with a noise, and the elements melt with fervent heat," that
hour will be, by the same rule which declares human annihilation, not only the end of all things, but the death of God.
Indeed there is that in the very nature of the irnmaterial
mind, which appears to me to exempt it from the operation
of all material evidence of its destruction. It is impossible
to form  a steady conception of thought, except as originating behind even the innermost bodily structures, and
intrinsically different from them. However much you refine
and attenuate the living organism, yet, after all, thought is
something quite unlike the whitest and the thinnest tissue;
and the most delicate of fibres, woven if you please in fairy
loom, can never be spun into emotions. Nor is it at all easier
to imagine ideas and feelings to be the results of organization, and to constitute one of the physical relations of
atoms; and if any one affirms that the juxtaposition of
a number of particles makes a hope, and that an aggregation of curious textures forms veneration, he affirms a proposition to which I can attach no idea. Agitate and affect
these structures as you will, pass them through every imnaginable change, let them vibrate and glow, and take a
thousand hues; still you can get nothing but motion, and
temlperature, and color; fit marks and cuIrious signals of
thought behind themselves, but no more to be confounded
with it, than are written characters to be mistaken for the
genius and knowledge which may record themselves in language.  The corporeal frame then is but the mechanism for
making thoughts and affections a pI)arelt, the signal-house
with which God has covered us, the electric telegraph by
which quickest intimation flies abroad of the spiritual force
within us. The instrument may be broken, the dial-plate ef



IMMORTALITY.                   113
faced: and though the hidden artist can make no more signs,
he may be rich as ever in the things to be signified.  Fever
may fire the pulses of the body: but wisdom and. sanctity
cannot sicken, be inflamed and die. Neither consumption can
waste, nor fracture mutilate, nor gunpowder scatter away,
thought, and fidelity, and love, but only that organization
which the spirit sequestered therein renders so fair and
noble. To suppose such a thing would be to invert the
order of rank which God has visibly established among the
forces of our world, and to give a downright ascendancy to
the brute energies of matter above the vitality of the mind,
which, up to that ploint, discovers, subdues and rules them;
to proclaim the triumph of the sword, the casualty, the pestilence, over virtue, truth and faith; to set the cross above
the crucified; to surrender the holy things of this world to
corruption, and shroud its heaven with darkness, and turn
its moon into blood. Think only of this earth as it floats
beneath the eye of God, —a speck in the blue infinite, -a
precious life-balloon freighted with the family of spirits he
has willed to come up and travel in this portion of his universe. Remember that at this very moment, and at each
tick of the clock, some fifty souls have departed hence, gone
with their tempestuous passions, their strife, their truth,
their hopes, into space and silence: not either with the appearance of forces spent and finished; for there are children
fallen away, with expectant look on life, nothing doubting
the secure embrace that seemed to fold them round; there
is youth, raised up to self-subsistence, not without difficulty
and sorrow, with the clear deep light of thought and wonder shining from within, quenched in sudden night; there is
many an heroic life, built on no delusion of sense and selfishness, but firm  on the adamant of faith, and defying
the seductions of falsehood and the threats of fear, —
sunk from us absolutely away, and giving no answer to our
recalling entreaties and our tears.  And will you tell me
that all this treasure, which is nothing less than infinite, is
8




114                 IMMORTALITY.
cancelled and puffed away, like a worthless bubble, into
emptiness?  Does God stand ahead of this mighty car of
being, as it traverses the skies, only to throw out the boundless wealth of lives it bears, and hurl them headlong into
the abyss midway on their voyage through eternity?  Put
the question in conjunction with any overwhelning calamity, which perceptibly plunges into sudden silence a
multitude of souls; like the dreadful destruction just announced from the Western world, of a ship* freighted with
priceless lives, with the wealth of homes, the hopes of the
oppressed, the lights of nations. Let any one think over
the contents of that fated ship, when it quitted the port at
even, amid the cheerful parting of friends, and consider well,where they were when the morning broke. There were
travellers from foreign lands, ready with pleased heart to
tell at home the thousand marvels they had gathered on
their way. There was a family of mourners, taking to their
household graves their unburied dead. And there was one
at least of rare truth and wisdom, of design than which
philanthropy knows nothing greater; of faith that all must
venerate, and love that all must trust; of persuasive lips,
from  which a thoughtful genius and the simplest heart
poured forth the true music of humanity. And does any
one believe that this freight of transcendent worth, — all
this sorrow, and thought, and hope, and moral greatness,
and pure affection, were burnt, and went out with flame and
cotton-smoke? Sooner would I believe that the fire consumed the less everlasting stars! Such a galaxy of spiritual
light and order and beauty is spread above the elements
and their power, and neither heat can scorch it, nor cold
water drown. The plaintive wind that swept in the morning over the black and heaving wreck would moan in the
* The steamboat Lexington, which left New York for Boston, 13th
January, 1840, and was burned that night in Long Island Sound, with
the loss of all on board except four. Dr. Follen was among the number
that perished. The present discourse was suggested by that event.




IMMORTALITY.                    115
ear of sympathy with the wail of a thousand survivors; but
to the ear of wisdom and of faith, would sound as the returning whisper and requiem of hope.
There appears to be a caprice in the dispensation of death,
quite at variance with the scrupulous regularity and economy
of nature in less momentous affairs; and strongly indicative
of a hidden sequel. The inferior departments of creation
are marked by a frugality and seasonal order, that seems to
gather up the very fragments of good, that nothing be lost.
Scarcely does a moment elapse before the cast-off structure
of plant or aninmal is put in requisition for some new purpose.
Such value seems to be attached to the tree, that its seed
is encased and protected with the nicest care, can retain its
principle of vitality for thousands of years, and hold itself
ready to germinate whenever the suitable conditions shall
be presented. The wild animals have a certain term of life
allotted to each species, which probably few  individuals
much exceed or fail to reach. Everything else seems to
have its well-defined circuit and range of functions, its season
of maturity and period of fall. But when we rise into the
only community dignified by minds, all looks in comparison
like confusion and fortuity. Infancy and age, strength and
imbecility, the pure and the corrupt of heart, the full and
empty souled, drop indiscriminately away; as if the spirits
of men were the cruel sport of some high and invisible
demon-game, - kindled and extinguished in remorseless and
capricious jest. And if such a supposition is excluded by
the harmony and exactitude which prevail in the other
regions of creation, nothing is left but to believe that we see
here only the partial operation of a higher law; that, we
witness no extinction, but simply migrations of the mind;
which survives to fulfil its high offices elsewhere, and find
perhaps in seeming death its true nativity.
Then, too, let us consider in what light we should see the
character of God, if the fall of the body is really the fall of
the soul; remembering that he has put into the hearts of




116                 IMMORTALITY.
most mnen, by intuition or providential suggestion, a divine
hope of something future. Turn once more to the thought
of that burning ship, and think of the memorial sounds that
went up thence in the night to God. When the stars came
out the first shriek ascended; two hours past midnight the
last was drowned. And in the interval did a hundred and
seventy mortals shiver and cry to him from frost and flame,
with faith and prayers of various and unspeakable contents,
— the cold heavens looking serenely down, and gliding on
as if thev enclosed nothing but peace. And what was the
answer of the hearer of prayer to that agony of despair?
Did he say, as no man or angel would have done, "Down,
begone for ever into darkness!"  And did he so answer,
with the full knowledge of his omniscience, that many a
survivor would return this awful frown with the sweetest
and most unconscious smile of resignation, hiding her mourning head with him as in the bosomn of a Father? Or, put
yourselves back into the presence of an earlier and sublimer
tragedy; remember the scene on Calvary, with the words
of assured hope and meek supplication that passed there from
holiest lips to God. When his own Christ gave the tranlquil
assurance, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise,"
did Hie who inspired that promise, and alone could fulfil,
overhear it with secret rejection and denial?  When the
fainting utterance exclaimed with most loving meaning, "It
is finished," did the ever-present Father put on that cry a
dreadful interpretation, "and make an end" of all things
to him -that Son of God?  And when he breathed forth
those last words, "Father, into thy hands I commit my
spirit," did the All-merciftl refuse the trust, and reply to
that pure faith, " Take away thy cry, for mine eye shall not
spare, neither will I hear with mine ear"?  Did he do thus
to the Galilean, knowing that, night and morning, friends
and followers and disciples for ages would converse with
him about this departed one, with a trustful hope which he
had thus turned into a lie? Were this possible, God were




IMMORTALITY.                    117
no " Father of Spirits," to waste and mock them thus; an(d
might no less fitly be termed the Destroyer than the Creator;
and every good man might feel an infinite pity for his kind,
diviner far than the very providence of heaven.
Thus, if the celestial hope be a delusion, we plainly see
who are the mistaken. Not the mean and grovelling souls,
who never reached to so great a thought; not the drowsy
and easy natures, who are content with the sleep of sense
through life, and the sleep of darkness ever after; not the
selfish and pinched of conscience, of small thought and
smaller love; no, these in such case are right, and the universe is on their miserable scale. The deceived are the
great and holy, whom all men, aye, these very insignificants
themselves, revere; the men who have lived for something
better than their happiness, and spent themselves in the rnce,
or fallen at the altar of human good; -Paul, with his mighty
and conquering courage; yes, Christ himself, who vainly
sobbed his spirit to rest on his Father's imaginary love, and
without result commended his soul to the Being whom he
fancied himself to reveal. The self-sacrifice of Calvary wa-s
but a tra.gic and barren mistake; for Heaven disowns the
godlike prophet of Nazareth, and takes part with those who
scoffed at him and would have him die; and is insensible
to the divine fitness which even men have felt, when they
either recorded the supposed fact, or invented the beautiful
fiction, of Chbrist's ascension.  Whom  are we to revere, and
what can we believe, if the inspirations of the highest of
created natures are but cunningly-devised fables?
But it is not so: and no one who has found true guidance
of heart from these noblest sons of Heaven, will fear to stake
his futurity, and the immortal life of his departed friends,
on their vaticinations.  These, of all things granted to our
ignorance, are assuredly most like the hidden realities of
God; which  may be greater, but will not be less, than
prophets and seers have foretold, and even our own souls,
when gifted with highest and clearest vision, discern as truths




118                  IMMORTALITY.
not doubtful or far off. In this hope let us trust, and be true
to the toils of life which it ennobles and cheers. Whoever
"fights the good fight" shall surely "keep the faith:" for
God reveals the secret of his filture will to those who worthily
do it in the present. This is our proper care. Putting ourselves into his hands, and living in submissive harmony with
his everlasting laws, let us "finish our course;" and leave it
to him to take us, when he will, where our forerunners are,
and the unfoldings of his ways are seen with open eye.




XIII.
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.
EPHESIANS II. 19.
FELLOW-CITIZENS WITH THE SAINTS, AND OF THE HOUSEHOLD OF GOD.
SOCIETY becomes possible only through religion. Men
might be gregarious without it, but not social. Instinct,
which unites them in detail, prevents their wider combination. Intellect affords light to show the elements of union,
but no heat to give them crystalline form. Self-will is prevailingly a repulsive power, and often disintegrates the most
solid of human masses. Even the moral sentiment, so far
as it recognizes man as supreme, and simply tries to make a
prudent adjustment of his vehement forces, can produce
among a multitude only an unstable equilibrium, liable
every moment to be subverted by the ever-shifting gravitation of the passions. Some sense of a divine presence, some
consciousness of a higher law, some pressure of a solemn
necessity, will be found to have preceded the organization
of every human community, and to have gone out and perished before its death. There is great significance in the
tradition which, in every people of apparently aboriginal
civilization, attributes an inspired character to their first
lawgiver, and pronounces their subjection to moral order a
task which only the force of Heaven could achieve. They
only whose voice could reach the sleeping tones of worship
in the hearts of men, and awaken some deep faith and allegiance, could so deal with their wild nature, as to chain the
savage passions and set free the nobler will. And although,
in old societies, the innumerable fibres of government, of




120          THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.
usage, of established ideas, supply a thousand secondary
bonds, which seemn to make the mighty growth secure as the
forest oak, yet all this system of roots has, I believe, its
secret nutriment from the devout elements of a nation's
mind: and if these should dry up in any Arctic chill of
doubt, or be poisoned by any Epicurean rot of indulgence,
it would silently decay within the soil, and leave the fairest
tree of history, first with a sickening foliage, and soon with
a perished life. The most compact and gigantic machinery
of society, - as experience shows, - falls to pieces, wherever religious and moral scepticism, by paralyzing faith an(l
heroism and hope, has cut off the supply of spiritual power.
Rome, at the commencement of our era, had reached the
utmost point of material force and visible mngnificence: her
organization held with an iron grasp the continents of
Europe and the East; her military chain spread with unbroken links from Lebanon to Gaul, and from the Caspian
to the AEthiopic Nile; her wealth and arts had called into
being ten thousand cities, - no mean imitations of her own
greatness; her institutions had diffused a universal repose',
and the functions of government were exercised with a
rapidity and precision never surpassed. What brought a
power thus mighty, - a power that called itself " eternal,"
to its dissolution? Shall we be content with a figure of
speech, and say that it broke asunder from its excessive
mass?  Apart from spiritual decline and causes of moral
disunion, I know of nothing to prevent a uniform civilization
from reaching the most enormous bulk. Shall we refer
rather to external dangers; and calling to mind the tempest
of barbarians that "roared around the gates of the empire,"
say that it perished like a mammoth, in a drift of northern
snows? Yet with far less imposing resources, she had
stood up and lived through fiercer storms. No; the stroke
was not of war, but of paralysis. The heart of religion had
ceased to beat: the high faith, the stern disinterestedness,
the sacred honor of the republic, had faded into tradition:




THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.                121
the sanctities of life were disbelieved even in the nursery:
no binding sentiment restrained the greediness of appetite
and the licentiousness of self-will: the very passions with
whose submission alone society can begin, broke loose again,attended by a brood of artificial and parasitic vices that spread
the dissolute confusion. Yet it was not that the conditions
of social union had become impossible. For observe; in
the midst of this corruption, in the invisible recesses of
profligate cities, a small point of fresh young life is already
to be discerned, like the bud of some fair growth thrusting
up its head among the putrefying leaves. A few poor
slaves and outcast Hebrews have heard the divinest whisper
borne to them from Palestine; have discovered by it that inner region of love and hope and trust, in which all fraternity
of heart begins; and are banded together with a spirit that
soon speaks out and prophesies in martyrdom.  While
Rome displayed its greatness even in death, and struggled
with the convulsions of a giant, the infant faith remained
unharmed; healing as it could the wounds which the mad
world suffered; and like a fair immortal child, winning a
blessed way by entrancing the souls of men with the forgotten vision of a divine simplicity and truth.  Christianity has
ever since been the bond of European civilization: and should
its spirit ever perish hence, this glorious family of nations
will be dissolved.
Let us look, with more detail, into some of the natural
groups which a genuine faith can form; and we shall find
nothing incredible in its strong combining power.
Worship exhibits its uniting principle under the simplest
form, in the sympathies it diffuses among the members of
the same religious assembly.
It is universally felt that devotion must sometimes quit
the solitude of the cell, forget its mere individual wants, and
speak as from humanity's great heart to God. The scruples
of the few who have objected to social piety have met with
no response; they are justly regarded as the eccentricities




122         THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.
of a stiff and petty rationalism, that will not stir without a
literal precept, and trusts any logical finger-post (possibly
set the wrong way by the humor of some sophistry), rather
than the cardinal guidance of those high affections which
are in truth the imperishable lights of heaven. To this
house we come, my friends, drawn not by arbitrary command
which we fear to disobey; not by self-interest, temporal or
slpiritual, which we deemn it prudent to consult; not, I trust,
from dead conventionalism, that brings the body and leaves
the soul; but by a common quest of some holy spirit to
penetrate andt purify our life; by a common desire to quit
its hot and level dust, and from its upland slopes of contemplation inhale the serenity of God; by the secret sadness of
sin, that can delay its confessions and bear its earthliness no
more; by the deep though dim consciousness, that the passinc weeks do not leave us where they find us, but plant us
within nearer distance, and give us a more intimate view, of
that fathomless eternity, wherein so many dear and mortal
things have dropped from our imploring eyes. It is no wonder that in meditations solemn as these we love and seek
each other's sympathy. It is easy, no doubt, to journey
alone in the broad sunshine and on the beaten highways of
our lot: but over the midnight plain, and beneath the still
immensity of darkness, the traveller seeks some fellowship
for his wanderings. And what is religion but the midnight
hemisphere of life, whose vault is filled with the silence of
God, and whose everlasting stars, if giving no clear light,
yet fill the soul with dreams of immeasurable glory?  It
will be an awful thing to each of us to be alone, when he
takes the passage from the mortal to the immortal, and is
borne along, - with unknown time for expectant thought,
— through the space that severs earth from heaven: and
till then, at least, we will not part, but speak w:th the common voice of supplicating trust of that which awaits us all.
There is however no necessary fellowship, as of saints, in
the mere assembling of ourselves together; but only in the




THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.              123
true and simple spirit of worship. All these occasions of
devotion assume that we have already some affections to
express; that we have discernment of the divine relations
of our existence; that we have souls seeking to cry out in
prayer, and waiting to lie down before God in tears. The
services of this place are quite mistaken by those who look
on them as the means of obtaining a religion non-existent
yet; who see in them only the instruments of self-disciplinle;
who perform here no personal act of the mind, but passively
wait such operation as may befall them; or who assume, in
their mental offerings, not the desires and emotions which
they really experience, but those instead which they only
ought to feel and hope to realize at last by persevering false
profession. The lips are to follow the heart and cannot lead
it: and we are here, not to make use of God for the sake of
our devotion, but to pour forth devotion for the sake of God.
Were every one in a Christian assembly to be all the while
intent on his own improvement, to be subordinating every
thing to his own case, and with morbid scrupulosity to be
prescribing throughout for his own temper, there would be
simply no proper worship at all: there would be not the
least union of hearts: each would sit insulated with his own
separate self, and would be more naturally placed in a solitary cell, than amid an unsocial multitude: there would be
none of that sublime ascent of soul, that common flight of
love, in which all individuality is lost, all personal regards
absorbed, and the vision of Heaven and God melts the
many minds and many voices of the church in one. Oh how,
within that Presence whose intimacy enfolds us here, can
we ever stay outside the spirit of worship, and perform mere
conscientious gestures of the mind, and act a part even with
ourselves alone as its spectator? Will nothing short of the
death-plunge into eternity steep us in its mystery, and strip
off the spirit-wrappings that cover us from the communion
of God?  We stand here, as in heaven's last resort for penetrating to the earnest centre of our nature: and if the




124         THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.
fountain of the secret life is still encased and does not flow,
no common shock can break the icy crust that binds it.
Think only, in simplest and briefest review, of the considerations that pass before us at our meeting here. At this hour
of prayer, when we stand within the reality of God, and face
to face behold his awfulness, and tell how we are glad at all
his graciousness; when we hear the sweet voice of Christ,mellowed and deepened as it floats over eighteen centuries
of meaning, - saying to us, as we bend beneath the weight
of life, "Come unto me, ye heavy-laden;" when we own
the shameful conquests of temptation, and repent of the
abandoned strife, and rebuild the fallen purpose; when
there is set before us the divine dignity of existence, and
the majesty of our free-will, and the high trust of duty, and
the tranquil power of faith; when we speak together of our
dead, and memory beholds their solemn forms so silent in
the shadows of the past; when we remember how, even
while we think' it, some souls are surely passing away, and
soon we too shall lay the burthen down and go; when, as
from the brink of being, we look into futurity, and the true
voice of judgment falls upon the ear, startling as the trump
of conscience or healing as the symphonies of the blest;
when all periods of life assemble before the Everlasting that
hath no age, and the light look of the child, and the steady
features of manhood, and the shaken head of age, denote
their several wants and prayers; when the tempted comes
to seek new strength, and the mourner sees his sorrows from
a higher point, and the anxious is beguiled into a loving reliance, and the contrite weeps his sin and distrusts his tears;
- at such an hour, if the disguises fall not from our hearts,
and leave us a disembodied fraiternity of souls sending the
chorus of common want to IIeaven, then indeed are we
slaves to the earthly life, without that enfranchisement of
spirit, that makes possible a "fellowship of saints," and
exalts us to " the household of God."
Where however a pure devotion really exists, the fellow



THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.             125
ship it produces spreads far beyond the separate circle of
each Christian assembly. A single company of pious men,
gathered together from among a race that could not worship, would indeed draw close their mutual sympathies at
the expense of alienation from their kind. But it is not so.
We are brought to stand side by side within this place by
no exclusive propensity, no whimsical peculiarity of the few:
the impulse is of nature, not of fancy; and we know this at
the moment we obey it. TWe meet, with the remembrance
that we are in the midst of brethren who meet too: and
every religious society, though physically shut in by its
sanctuary walls, kneels in secret consciousness of the presence of kindred fraternities without number, subdued by
the same sanctities, and pressing to the same end, not by
human agreement, but a divine consent. As every individual in a place of prayer, overhearing the like spontaneous
tones from many souls around him, cannot but deepen the
fervor of his own; so each assembly, feeling that its neigrhborhood is studded over with similar groups prostrate in
adoration like itself, sends to Heaven a more genial and
humaner cry; and every neighborhood, mustering to prayer,
thinks of the busy peals from clustered churches that cross
and crowd one another in each distant town, or the single
quiet chime in every village of the land, and finds in the
thought a gladder and a kindlier praise; and every land,
aware that it is but one of a company of nations, federally
bound of God by irrepressible aspirings to himself, chants
its mighty note with deeper meaning, as part of a universal
symphony heard in its unity in Heaven alone. Surely it is
a glorious thing to call up, while we worship here, the wide
image of Christendom this day. Turn your thoughts away
from the noisy discord of sects; believe nothing of their
mutual slanders; forgive the occasional weakness of superstition; and be not angry with the narrow vision of earnest
conviction that can see nothing but its own truth: and far
beneath the superficial divisions created by the intellect,




126          THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.
see in the Sabbath spectacle of the world evidence of a
deep and wide-spread union of hearts. Could we be lifted
up above this sphere, and look down as it rolls beneath this
day's sun, and catch its murmurs as they rise, should we not
behold land after land turned into a Christian shrine? The
dawn, that summons mortals from their sleep, bears them
to-day a new and sacred message; the sunbeam touches the
gates of ten thousand temples, and they burst open to
receive the record of countless aspirations; the morning
shoots across the desert atmosphere of a weary world,
strikes on the stony form of giant humanity, and brings out
tones of celestial music. In how many tongues, by what
various voices, with what measureless intensity of love, is
the name of Christ breathed forth to-day! What cries of
penitence, what accents of trust, what plaints of earnest
desire, pass away to God! What an awful array of faces
that gaze forth into immortality with various looks of terror
or of love! The vows and prayers whose millions crowd
the gates of mercy no recording angel could tell, but only
the infinite memory of God. Of how glorious a church,
then, are we members when we kneel within this place! in
how solemn an act do we take our part! with how sublime
a brotherhood do we own our fellowship!
But our worship here brings us into yet nobler connections. It unites us by a chain of closest sympathy
with past generations. In our helps to faith and devotion
in this place, we avail ourselves of the thought and piety
of many extinct ages. We reverently read those ancient
scriptures, which have gathered around them the trust, and
procured the heart-felt repose, of so many tribes and periods, since prophets and apostles first gave them forth. We
sing the hymns which a goodly company of pious men have
left as the record of their communion with Heaven. And
it is impossible to look at the consecrated names of those
"sweet singers" of Christendom, without feeling ennobled
by their communion, and even astonished at our sympathy




THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.               127
with them. Do not we, the living, take up, in adoration
and prayer, the thoughts of the dead, and feel thenm divinely
true?  Do they not come forth, as if flesh coined from our
own hearts? Indeed, could we ourselves so faithfully utter
the consciousness of our inner being, or shape so interpreting a voice for our secret life?  What an impressive testimony this to the sameness of our nature through every agre,
and the immortal perseverance of its holier affections! The
language of their confessions, their struggles, their desires,
speaks our own: the light that gladdened them, shines now
upon our hearts: and the mists they could not penetrate,
brood now upon our path. There is the choice minstrel of
Israel, true alike to the spirit of mourning or of joy; there
are the venerable fathers of the ancient church, whose vespers, chanted centuries ago, will suit this night as well;
there is the adamantine yet genial Luther, telling, with the
severity of an eye-witness, the awfulness of judgment;
there is the noble Milton, breathing his sweet and rugged
music out of darkness; there is the afflicted Cowper, sending out the tenderest strains from  his- benighted spirit:
with an attendant multitude of the faithful,- the confessor,
the exile, the missionary,- a chorus of sublime voices, with
which it is a sacred privilege to be in harmony. And these
are not merely the accents of the past, but the anthem of
the sainted dead, - the strains of immortals that look back
upon their toils, and behold us singing their songs of sadness here, while they have already learned the melodies of
everlasting joy. Blessed communion of earth with Heaven!
making us truly one family, below, above; and rendering us
fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the very household
of God!
And soon we too shall drop the note of earthly aspiration, and join that upper anthem  of diviner love.  The
hour cometh, when we shall cease the mournful cry with
which earth must ever pray to heaven, and grief ask pity
to its tears, and the tempted call for help in the crisis of




128         THE COMMUNION  OF SAINTS.
danger, and the laboring will implore a freshened strength.
Exiles as yet from the spirit of unanxious joy, we catch but
the echoes of that heavenly peace, and yield response but
faint and low. Yet even now the free heart of the happy
and triumphant shall be. ours, in proportion as we are true
to the condition of faithful service, which alone can make
us one with them. The communion of saints brings to us
their conflict first, their blessings afterwards; those who
will not with much patience strive with the evil, can have
no dear fellowship with the good; we must weep their
tears, ere we can win their peace. This sorrowful condition
once accepted, the sympathies of Heaven are not slow to arise
within the soul: it is the tension of sacred toil, that on the
touch of every breath of life brings music from the chords
of love. And then the tone that here sinks in the silence of
death, shall there swell into an immortal's fuller praise. We
shall leave it to others to take up the supplicating strain;
shall join the emancipated brotherhood of the departed;
and in our turn look down on the outstretched hands of
our children, waiting our welcome and embrace. Oh may
the Great Father, in his own fit time, unite in one the
parted family of Heaven and earth!




XIV.
CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF GUILT.
LUKE V. 8.
DEPART FROM ME; FOR I AM A SINFUL MAN, O LORD!
WHEN Simeon, on the verge of life, uttered his parting
hymn within the temple, he told Mary, with the infant
Jesus in his arms, that, by that child, "the thoughts of
many hearts should be revealed."  Never was prophecy
more true; nor ever perhaps the mission of our religion
more faithfully defined. For wherever it has spread, it
has operated like a new and diviner conscience to the
world; imparting to the human mind a profounder insight
into itself; opening to its consciousness fresh powers and
better aspirations; and penetrating it with a sense of imperfection, a concern for the moral frailties of the will,
characteristic of no earlier age.  The spirit of religious
penitence, the solemn confession of unfaithfulness, the
prayer for mercy, are the growth of our nature trained in
the school of Christ. The pure image of his mind, as it
has passed fiom land to land, has taught men more of their
own hearts than all the ancient aphorisms of self-knowledge:
has inspired more sadness at the evil, more noble hope for
the good that is hidden there; and has placed within reach
of even the ignorant, the neglected, and the young, severer
principles of self-scrutiny than philosophy had ever attained.
The radiance of so great a sanctity has deepened the shades
of conscious sin. The savage convert, who before knew
nothing more sacred than revenge and war, is brought to
9




130        CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF GUILT.
Jesus, and, as he listens to that voice, feels the stain of blood
growing distinct upon his soul. The voluptuary, never before disturbed from  his self-indulgence, coines within the
atmosphere of Christ's spiirit; and it is as if a gale of
heaven fanned his fevered brow, and convinced him that
he is not in health. The ambitious priest, revolving plans
for using men's passions as tools of his aggrandizement,
starts to find himself the disciple of one who, when the
people would have made him  king, fled direct to solitude
and prayer. The froward child blushes to think how little
there is in him of the infant meekness which Jesus praised;
and feels that, had he been there, he must have missed the
benediction, or, more bitter still, have wept to know it misapplied. Nay, so deep and solemn did the sense of guilt
become under the influence of Christian thoughts, that at
length the overburdened heart of fervent times could endure the weight no longer: the Confessional arose, to
relieve it and restore a periodic peace; and it became the
chief object of the widest sacerdotal order which the world
has ever seen, to soothe the sobs, and listen to the whispered
record, of human penitence.  Cities too, as if conscious
of their corruption, bid the silent minster rise amid their
streets, where, instead of the short daily or Sabbath service,
unceasing, eternal orisons might be said for sin; where the
door might open to the touch all day, and the lamp be seen
beneath the vault by night, and the passer-by, caught by
the low chant, might be tempted to interrupt the chase of
vanity without, for the peace of prayer within. And so, in
every ancient village church of Europe, there is a corner
that has been moistened with the burning tears of many
generations, and witness to the confessions and griefs that
prove the children's conscience and affections to be such as
their fathers' were: and the cathedral aisle, emblem of the
mighty heart of Christendom, has for centuries been swelled
with the plaint of a penitential music, shedding its sighs
aloft into the spire, as if to reach and kiss the feet of God.




CHRIST S TREATMENT OF GUILT.             131
In private dwellings, too, from the hearts of parents and of
children, every morning and evening for ages past has seen
many sad and lowly  prayers ascend.  Everywhere the
Christian mind proclaims its need of mercy, and bends beneath the oppression of its guilt; and since Jesus began to
"reveal the thoughts of many hearts," Christendom, with
clasped hands, has fallen at his feet and cried, " We are sinful men, 0 Lord!"
In nurturing this sentiment, in producing this solemn
estimate of moral evil and quick perception of its existence, the religion of Christ- does but perpetuate the influence of his personal ministry, and give prominence, on the
theatre of the world, to the feature which singularly distinguished his life, viz. his treatment of the guilty.  It is as
if he dwelt among us still, and we saw him  vexed and
saddened by our evil passions, and travelled with him on
the way, and felt his eye of gentleness and purity upon our
homes, and he told us that "we know not what spirit we
are of," and by these very words caused us to know it
instantly. Nor can we obtain any juster and deeper impressions of the temptations of life, and the tendencies of
all wrong desires, than by seizing that view of moral evil
which dictated the mercies and the severities of his lips
and life.
He lived amid dark passions and in evil days. Profligates and outcasts were near him: the ambitious and
ignorant were his disciples: hypocrites conspired against
him; and treachery was ready to be their tool. I-Ie had to
encounter malignant designs directed against himself, and
selfish arts of delusion practised on the people; to deal at
one time with the despised but affectionate penitent; at
another, with recently-detected shame; and again, with
artifice and insincere pretension hardened into system, and
administered by established authority. And in all is visible
the same spirit of blended sanctity and humanity, adapting
itself, with versatile power, to every emergency.




132       CHRIST S TREATMENT OF GUILT.
The guilty passions of his countrymen continually approached himself. They haunted his whole ministry, and
hated him as soon as disciples began to love. They mixed
with the multitudes whom he taught upon the hills; and he
saw their evil eye peering on him and watching his words
from amid the throngs that flocked round him in the temple. But they never embarrassed the flow of his dignified
utterance, or fluttered his spirit with a moment's resentment.
On occasion of the Feast of Tabernacles, - that annual jubilee of Jerusalem's heart, when the trees were robbed of
their branches to turn the streets into an olive-ground, and
make the city as verdant as the hills, - all was done that enmity could effect, to overcast his share of the national joy, to
silence his teachings to the wondering people, and stop his
efforts to extract from the picturesque and festive rites
some lesson of gladder tidings and deeper wisdom. He
saw amid the crowd the officers sent to take him, the wily
steps and hesitating wills with which they tracked his wanderings over the temple courts, the exchange of whispers
dropping into fixed attention with which they listened to
him  here and there. He stepped forward, and they recoiled, as he told them, with an air of divinest quietude,
that he should be there yet longer, but no hand would
touch him, and then he should be sequestered in a place
which their violence could not reach.  And there, day
after day, they saw him still gladdening attentive hearts,
and felt him subduing their own, so that again and again
they ceased to be his enemies and became his followers:
till on the last great day, they beheld him standing aloft on
the precipitous edge of Moriah's rock, watching the procession that climbed with the water-bowl from Siloam's stream
below, and as it entered with its pure libation, heard him
pronounce that solemn invitation, "If any man thirst, let
him come unto me and drink of living waters." They
returned, and the attestation burst from their lips, "Never
man spake like this man."




CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF GUILT.            133
Nor was it merely that he regarded these men as the
poor menials of others' designs, - hirelings of guiltier imen.
For the same impersonal tranquillity appears when he is in
contact with the original agents, who endeavored to crush his
cause, and actually comnpassed his death.  Whatever the
agony of Gethsemane may have been, it was no agony of
resentment: the controversy of that bitter hour was with
the Father whom  he loved, not with enemies whom  lie
feared. Indeed, the nearer these enemies came, the more
did the serene power of his spirit rise. After those convulsive prayers which had pierced the midnight, it seemed as if
angel-thoughts had stolen in to strengthen him. At the
moment when the tramp of feet was first heard upon the
bridge of Kedron, and the torches, as they passed, flashed
upon its rapid waters, he was prostrate in a devotion from
which tears and struggles had- now passed away. When,
later still, the hum of approaching voices became distinct,
and the lights gleamed nearer and nearer through the trees,
he was bending over his waking disciples, who overheard
him breathing the wish, that they could indeed sleep on
through the severities of that dreadful day, and be saved
from the faithless desertion, the memory of which would be
ever bitter.  And when at length the armed band confronts them, and he startles them  by stepping forth in
answer to his name; when the kiss of betrayal has been
given, and the momentary affray which Peter had challenged has been stopped by his healing power: when all are
moving from the place with sullen haste, - the priests, doubtless, eager to be back within the city before it can be discovered by what nocturnal exploit they, the conservators of
law and right, have sullied their dignity, —Jesus dives at
once into their conscience, flurried already with fear and
guilt, and asks, why such holy men, whom often he has seen
listening to his daily teachings, should choose so ruffian a
way, and so strange an hour, for a deed of public justice?
Throughout the scenes which followed, you well know how




134        CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF GUILT.
Jesus maintained the same majestic and unruffled spirit;
seeniing, nobler with every indignity, and of prompter selfforgetfulness with every added suffering; yet visibly agitating every person before whom he was brought, with the
consciousness of crime and horror in the transactions of
which he was the forgiving victim. Look where we may,
it is clear that resentient had not the faintest share in
Christ's feelings towards wrong: that the wrong was directed against himself, afforded no inducement for a severer
or more excited estimate of its enormity. He put it at a
distance from  him: its relations to its authors and to others
impressed him more than the suffering it brought upon himself; and every one must perceive that his eye is fixed, not
on its cruelty, but on its awfulness, its blindness, its guilt.
Yet did Jesus give no sanction to the morbid doctrine of
a sentimental fatalism, which forbids us ever to be angry
with the wicked, talks whiningly of our common frailty,
draws an immoral comfort from God's way of educing good
from evil, and comprises all possible cases of duty to wrongdoers under one formula, " Pity and forgive."  In nothing
do we notice the depth and truth of his moral perception
more clearly than in his different treatment of vice in its
several forms and stages. When he comes before "Scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites," we do not hear the tones of forgiveness, the pleadings of the mild apologist for human
infirmity, the effeminate offer of a futile pity. He pours
forth an intense stream  of natural indignation, and blights
them with the flash of a terrible invective; he tears the veil
from every foul purpose, and with severe justice brands
every deed with its own black name. Here, exposure, not
compassion, is the proper impulse and duty of a noble mind:
for the people must no longer be deluded, their reason perplexed with wretched quibbles, and their too-trusting conscience corrupted by the sophistries of sin. It were poor
genelosity, from tenderness to a selfish faction, to let the
good heart of a nation die. Nay, even for these deceivers




CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF GUILT.           135
themselves, this expression of moral anger was precisely the
most salutary appeal. For it echoed the secret sentence of
their own hearts, with which compassion would have been
altogether discordant. The self-condemnation, only whispered before, it sent in thunder through their hollow souls;
bringing many a hearer to tremble at the shock, who would
have scoffed at pity as a weak and puling thing. This principle, of simply giving voice to the present sentiments of
the conscience, and administering the feelings for which its
natural justice was making a demand, Jesus appears intuitively to have followed in all his dealings with the
vicious. When he reclined at the table of the Pharisee,
and shocked him by allowing a woman who had been a
sinner to find admission on the plea of discipleship, and the
new reverential affections of her nature broke forth in passionate gratitude, he gave no check and no rebuke, nor
simply a cautious sanction. The convictions which rebuke
serves to awaken were already there: to reproach would be
to crush the fallen: she had discovered the depth of her misery, and yearned for the profound compassion suited to so
great a woe: Jesus knew that one who had been stricken by
a love so pure and penitential as hers, needed only to have
that love fostered and trained to act; and so, casting himself
with a bold faith on the capacities of a truly melted soul,
he declared her sins forgiven. But where again no such
penitence appeared, and to resort to him was not spontaneous but compulsory, as in the case of the woman taken in
adultery, he observed a striking neutrality of treatment.
To a mind heated with so dreadful and public a shame, to
administer reproach would be cruelty, to give consolation
would be danger; and he simply wards off the savage penalties of the law, and turns all his direct dealings upon her
foul and sanctimonious informers.  Their conscience persuades them that he knows their secret history, and they
skulk away, the accused instead of the accusers; while on
the people that stand by is impressed the awful truth, that




136       CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF GUILT.
sinners are not fit to judge of sin. The blindness which is
induced by all deliberate injury to our moral nature, and
which thickens its film as the habit grows, is one of the
most appalling expressions of the justice of God. Moral
evil is the only thing in his creation of which it is decreed,
that the more we are familiar with it, the less shall we know
of it. The mind that is rich in holiness and the humanities,
appreciates every temptation, computes the force of every
passion, and discerns the degradation of every vice, with a
precision and clearness unknown to the adept in wrong.
When that wretched woman stood alone and confounded
before Christ, how little did she know of her own abased
and abject mind, how much less of the majestic being before
her, whose steady eye, as it looked upon her, she could not
meet! yet how vividly, and with what results of considerate
yet cautious sympathy, did the disorder of her moral nature present itself to him who knew no defilement! Like
the pure and silent stars that look down by night upon the
foulness and the din of cities, his heavenly spirit gazed direct
into the turbid hiding-places of' sin. He saw it indeed, simply as it will see itself in retrospect; not perhaps any retrospect in this life; but such as may be inevitable, when
the exchange of worlds takes place; when the urgency of
pursuit and the distractions of amusement shall have ceased,
and left us alone with our characters and our God; when,
one order of employments being ended, and the other not
yet commenced, there comes the appointed pause for thought
and judgment; and having waved the last adieu, we flit
away along that noiseless journey, on which we bear with
us only the memory of the past, to knock at the awful gates
of the unopened future.
What that retrospect may be, it is fearful, but not impossible, to think. To aid the thought, it has been remarked
by one of the most distinguished physical philosophers of
our own day, that no atmospheric vibration ever becomes
extinct; that the pulses of speech, when they have done




CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF GUILT.             137
their work and become to our ears inaudible, pass in waves
away, but wander still, reflected hither and thither, through
the regions of the air eternally. He conceives that, as the
atmosphere comprises still within itself the distinct trace of
every sound impressed on any portion of it, as thus the
record indestructibly exists, we have only to suffer a change
of position, and receive the endowment of an acuter sense,
to hear again every idle word that we have spoken, and
every sigh that we have caused. The truth is, that already,
and within the limits of our mental nature, there is a power
that will effect all this; it is fully within the scope of our
natural faculties of association and memory. It may be
doubted whether any idea once in the mind is ever lost,
and past recall: it may drop, indeed, into the gulf of forgotten things and the waves of successive thought roll over
it; but there are in nature possible and even inevitable convulsions which may displace the waters, heave up the deep,
and disentomb whatever may be fair or hideous there.
There needs only that associated objects should be presented, and the whole past, its most trivial features even, —
*the remnant of a schoolboy task or the mere snatches of a
dream, -will rise up to view. Make but a pilgrimage to
the scenes of your early days, when more than half of life is
gone; wander again over the peaceful fields, and stand on
the brink of the yet gliding stream, that were the witnesses
of youthful sports and cares; and are they not the records
of them  too?  Does not remembrance seem inspired and
commissioned to render back the dead? And do they not
come crowding on your sense, -faces and voices, and movin g shapes, and the tones of bells, and the very feelings too
which these things awakened once?  It is remarkable how
slight a suggestion is occasionally sufnent to bring back
vast trains of emotion. There are cases in which some particular function of the memory acquires an exquisite sensibility: and usually, as if God would warn us what must
happen when our moral nature is divorced from the physi



1.8        CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF GUILT.
cal, it is the memory of conscience that maintains this preternatural watch. In many a hospital of mental disease
(as it is called) you have doubtless seen a melancholy being,
pacing to and fro with rapid strides, and lost to every thing
around; wringing his hands in incommunicable suffering,
and letting fall a low mutter rising quickly into the shrill
cry; his features cut with the graver of sharp anguish; his
eyelids drooping (for he never sleeps), and showering ever
scalding tears. It is the maniac of remorse; possibly indeed
made wretched by merely imaginary crimes; but just as
possibly maddened by too true a recollection, and what the
world would esteem too scrupulous a conscience. Listen to
him, and you will often be surprised into fresh pity, to find
how seemingly slight are the offences, -injuries perhaps of
mere unripened thought, - which feed the fires, and whirl
the lash, of this incessant woe. He is the dread type of
hell. He is absolutely sequestered (as any mind may be
hereafter), incarcerated alone with his memories of sin; and
that is all. He is unconscious of objects and unaware of
time: and every guilty soul may find itself, likewise, standing alone in a theatre peopled with the collected images of
the ills that he has done; and turn where he may, the features he has made sad with grief, the eyes he has lighted
with passion, the infant faces he has suffused with needless
tears, stare upon him with insufferable fixedness. And if
thus the past be truly indestructible; if thus its fragments
may be regathered; if its details of evil thought and act
may be thus brought together and fused into one big agony,
- why, it may be left to " fools " to " make a mock at sin."




xv.
THE STRENGTH OF THE LONELY.
JOHN XVI. 32.
BEHOLD, TIIE HOUR COMETH, YEA, IS NOW COME, THAT YE SHALL BE
SCATTEIEI), EVERY MAN TO IHIS OWN, AND SHALL LEAVE ME ALONE:
AND YET I AM NOT ALONE, BECAUSE THE FATHER IS WITH MIE.
THE different degrees of self-reliance felt by different minds
occasion some of the most marked diversities in the moral
characters of men. There is a species of dependence upon
others, altogether distinct from  empty-minded imitation;
implying no incapacity of thought, no imbecility of judgment, but often connected with the best attributes of genius
and the choicest fruits of cultivation. It is a tendency
which has its root in the sensitive, not in the intellectual
part of our nature; and grows, not from the shallowness of
the reason, but from the depth of the affections. It arises
indeed from a disproportion between these two departments
of the mind; and would disappear, if force were either
added to the understanding, or deducted from the feelings.
It is the dependence of an affectionate mind, capable, it
may be, of manifesting great power, but trembling to feel
itself alone; — of a mind that has a natural affinity for sympathy, and cannot endure its loss or its postponement; but,
on whatever course of thought or action the faculties may
launch forth, finds them insensibly tending towards it for
shelter. This temper is not to be confounded with the vulgar and selfish craving after applause, that has no test of
truth and right but the voice of a multitude, and will sell
its conscience to buy off a firown. The feeling to which I




140        THE STRENGTH OF THE LONELY.
refer cares not for numbers or for praise; it deprecates
nothing but perfect solitude. It has but one reservation in
its pursuit of truth and reverence for duty; that they shall
not drift it away from every human support. Place near it
some one approving and fraternal heart, and its self-respect
rises at once; it can listen unabashed to scorn; it can stand
up against a menace with dignity; it can thrust aside resistance with energy. Lay to rest the trembling spirit of
humanity within; and the diviner impulses of the soul will
start to their supremacy.
This state of mind may be illustrated by reference to its
extreme opposite; and the contrast may bring out in clearer
light the strength and weaknesses of both. There are persons to be occasionally found whose minds appear to perform their operations as if they were in empty space; who
reflect, and plan, and feel in secret; of whose processes of
thought no one knows any thing more than happens to be
indicated by the result; who look on men and events only
as instruments for the execution of their designs; who are
little damped by universal discouragement, or elated by universal approbation; and rarely modify an opinion or repent
of a feeling, however singular may be their position in maintaining it. If others agree with their designs, it is so much
force to be reckoned in their favor; if they disagree, it is so
much resistance to be overcome. Human ties are formed,
and their energies are not improved; are broken, and their
energies are not weakened. In trouble, they apply themselves so promptly to the remedy, that, when you offer your
sympathy, it is not wanted: they are fond of the maxim,
" a good man is satisfied from himself;" and so truly act
upon it, that the genial heart and helping hand instinctively
shrink back from their hard complacent presence.
Each of these two forms of human character has a certain
species of power of its own. He who is independent of
sympathy is remarkable for power over himself. In speculation, his mind operates free from all disturbing forces: he




THE STRENGTH OF THE LONELY.             141
goes apart with his subject of contemplation, surveys it with
a serene eye, converses with it as an abstraction, having no
concern with any living interest. His faculties obey his
summons, and perform their task with vigor, paralyzed by
no anxiety, ruffled by no doubt, never lingering to plead
awhile for some dear old error before it go, nor pausing to
take the leap to truth entirely new. In action, his volitions
are executed at once; nothing intervenes (assuming him to
be a man of honest purpose) between his seeing a course of
wisdom and rectitude, and his taking it: he yields nothing
to his own habits; he waits for no man's support; if men
give it, it will show their good sense; if they withhold it,
it is the worse for themselves. He scorns concession either
to others or to himself; not in truth comprehending the
temptation to it. The past and the human have no power
over him; he needs no gathering of strength to tear himself
away; all his roots strike at once into his own present convictions; and whatever opposition may beat on him from
the elements around does but serve to harden them to rock,
and fix them there with immutable tenacity.
On the other hand, he who is dependent on human sympathy acquires far greater power over others. lIe reflects
and reciprocates the emotions of other minds; he understands their prejudices; he is no stranger to their weaknesses; he does not stare at their impulses, like a being too
sublime to comprehend them. He may not obtain that kind
of distant respect which is yielded to the man of cold but
acute and confident intellect;- a respect which is founded
in fear, - which suppresses opposition without winning trust,
- which silences objectors without relieving their objections;
- that unsatisfactory respect which we feel when conscious
that another is right, without perceiving where it is that
we are wrong. But he may earn that better power, which
arises from profound and affectionate knowledge of the
human heart. There is no human being to whom we look
with so true a faith, as to him who shows himself deep-read




142        THE STRENGTH OF THE LONELY.
in the mysteries within us; who seems to have dwelt where
Omniscience only had access, and traced momentary lines
of feeling whose rapid flash our own eye could scarcely follow; who puts into words weaknesses which we had hardly
dared to confess in thought; who appears to have trembnled
with our own anxieties, and wept our very tears. This
initiation into tile interior nature is the quality which, above
all others, gives one mind power over another. If it comes
upon us from the living tones of a friendly voice, we listen
as to the breathings of inspiration; if it act on us only from
the pages of a book, the enchantment is hardly less potent.
That a being, distant and unknown, perhaps departed,
should have so penetrated our subtlest emotions, and caught
our most transient attitudes of thought, should have so
detected our sophistries of conscience, and witnessed the
miseries of our temptations, and known the sacredness of
our affections, as to reveal us anew eNven to ourselves, truly
seems the greatest of the triumphs of' genius. It is a triumph
peculiar to those who love the sympathies of their kind, and,
because they love them, instinctively appreciate and understand them. It is essentially the triunmph which. Christ won
when the minions of tyranny and hypocrisy sllrunk back
from him in awe, saying, "Never man spake like this man."
With this quality, however, great feebleness of will, and
even total prostration of moral power, nmay sometimes be
found combined; and we may almost say, the greater the
intellectual endowments, the more likely is this to be the
case. If ordinary minds want symp:ithy before they can act
fieely, they can easily obtain it; their ideas and feelings are
of the common staple of humanity, and some one who has
thlem too may be found across the street. But if those of finer
mould should have the same dependence of heart, it may
prove a sore affliction and temptation to them; for who will
respond to the desires, and aims, and emotions most dear to
them? They wed themselves to a benevolent scheme;- it is
thrust aside as a chimera. They demonstrate a truth of start



THE STRENGTH OF THE LONELY.              143
ling magnitude;- it is acknowledged and passed by. They
describe some misery of the poor, the child, or the guilty;
- the world weeps, and the oppression is untouched. They
pour forth their conceptions of perfect character, and seek
to refresh in men's minds the bewildered sentiment of right;
every conscience approves, and not a volition stirs. And
thus they are left alone, without the practical support of a
single sympathy: what wonder that they think in one way,
and act in another, when the world reverences their thoughts,
and ridicules their actions?  Compelled by their nature to
desire what they are forbidden by men to execute; unable
to love any thing but that which is pronounced to be fit
only for a dream; secretly dwelling within a beauty of excellence which they would be held insane to realize, -what
wonader is it, if their practical energies die of dearth, - if
they begin to doubt their nobler nature, and, while cherishing it in private, dishonor it in the world, — if the pure
sincerity of their mind is thus at length broken down, and
they soil in act the spirit which they sanctify in thought;
and life wastes away in habits, on which the meditations
of privacy pour a flood of ineffectual shame, and in impulses
to better things, more and more passionate, as the springs
of the will become broken, and prayers for peace of more
mournful earnestness, as the vision sinks into melancholy
distance?
But the dangers of an excessive dependence upon sympathy are by no means confined to minds of this order.']'here are, within the range of every man's life, processes
of mind which must be solitary; passages of duty which
throw him absolutely upon his individual moral forces, and
admit of no aid whatever from another. Alone we must
stand sometimes; and if our better nature is not to shrink
into weakness, we must take with us the thought which was
the strength of Christ; "Yet I am not alone, for the Father
is with me." Jesus was evidently susceptible, in a singular
degree, to the influence of human attachments; he was the




144        THE STRENGTH OF THE LONELY.
type of that form of character. Such indeed it behooved
one to be who was to be regarded as the perfect model of
humanity; for while the self-relying and solitary temper
rarely, if ever, acquires the grace and bloom of human sympathies, the mind, originally affectionate, often, by efforts
of moral principle, rises to independent strength; the sense
of right can more readily indurate the tender, than melt the
rocky soul. And that is the most finished character which
begins in beauty, and ends in power; which wins its way
to loftiness through a host of angelic humanities that would
sometimes hold it back; that leans on the love of kindred
while it may, and when it may not, can stand erect in the
love of God; that shelters itself amid the domesticities of
life, while duty wills, and when it forbids, can go forth
under the expanse of immortality, and face any storm that
beats, and traverse any wilderness that lies, beneath that
canopy. The sentiment of Christ in my text, carried into
the solitary portions of our existence, is the true power by
which to acquire this perfection. What these solitary portions are will readily occur to every thoughtful mind. An
example or two may be briefly noticed.
The vigils of sickness, - of those, I mean, who watch by
the bed of sickness, - are solitary beyond expression. What
loneliness like that, which is the more dreadful in proportion
as the friend stretched at our right hand is more beloved?
Those midnight hours, poised between life and death, that
seem to belong neither to time nor to eternity, - claimed
by time, when we listen to the tolling clock, - by eternity,
when we hear that moaning breath; that silence, so solid
that we cannot breathe into it, so awful that we dare not
weep, and which yet we shudder to hear broken by the
mutterings of delirium; that confused flitting of thoughts
across our exhausted minds, strangely mingling the trivial
and the solemn, — beginning perhaps from the grotesque
shapes of a moonlit cloud, then sinking us deep into dreams
of the past, till a rustling near calls us to give the cup of




THE STRENGTH OF THE LONELY.               145
cold water, and that fevered eye that looks on us makes us
think, where soon will be the perturbed spirit that lights
it! - Oh, what relief can there be to this agony, what trust
amid this despair, but in the remembrance, " I am not alone,
for my Father is with me?"  Serene as the star in the cool
heavens without, gentle as the loving heart whose ebbing
life we watch, his Infinite Mind has its vigils with us, —the
vigils of eternal Providence, beneath whose eye, awake alike
over both worlds, sorrow and death vanish away. Into what
peace do the terrible aspects of things around subside under
that thought!  We are no longer broken upon the wheel
of fatalism, given over to fruitless and unmeaning suffering:
the feeling that life is going wrong, that all things are dropping into wreck, disappears. WVe rise to a loftier point of
view, and perceive how all this may lie within the perfect
order of benignity; how death in this world may be determined by the laws of birth into another; how our sensitive
is connected with our moral nature, and from deep trial
great strength may grow, —the capacious and endurin 
mind, the hardy and athletic will, the refined and gentle
heart, the devoted spirit of duty. Enfolded within the
Divine Paternity, we have one fixed and tranquil object of
our thoughts. From that centre of repose we can look forth
on the fitfulness of sickness without despair; the flying
shadows of fear seem cast by an orb of everlasting light.
He that in this spirit meets the trembling moments of life,
will gather the sublimest power from events that seem to
crush him, and come forth fiom the mourner's watch, not
with wasted and haggard mind, not morose and selfish, not
with passive and helpless air, as if waiting to be the sport
of every blast that beats, — but with ul)lifted conscience,
with distincter purpose, with will meeker towards others,
and sterner towards self, and character tending towards the
energy of the hero, and the calmness of the saint.
Again, we must be solitary when we are tempted. The
management of the character, the correction of evil habits,
10




146        THE STRENGTH OF THE LONELY.
the suppression of wrong desires, the creation of new virtues, -this is a work strictly individual, with which no
" stranger intermeddleth," in which the sympathy of friends
may be deceptive, and our only safety is in a superhuman
reliance. The relation of the human- being to God is altogether personal: there can be no partnership in its responsibilities. Our moral convictions must have an undivided
allegiance; and to withhold our reverence till they are supported by the suffrages of others, is an insult which they
will not bear. What can those even who read us best know
of our weaknesses and wants and capabilities? They would
have to clothe themselves with our very consciousness,
before they could be fit advisers here. How often does
their very affection become our temptation, cheat us out of
our contrition, and lead us to adopt some pleasant theory
about ourselves, in place of the stern and melancholy truth!
How often does their erring judgment lead us to indolence
and self-indulgence, to a dalliance with our infirmities, and
a fatal patience with our sins! If indeed there were a more
prevalent conscientiousness in the distribution of praise and
blame, - if all men felt how serious a thing it is to dispense
such mighlty powers, - friends might consult together with
greater security respecting their moral failures and obligations: penitence might pour itself forth into a species of
auricular confession no less safe than natural: the sense of
wrong would become more profound, when the violation
of duty had shaped itself into words; and the secret suggestions and resolves of conscience be doubly strong, when
echoed by the living voice of human tenderness.  Even
then, however, we must vigilantly guard our own moral
perceptions, clear the atmosphere between them and heaven,
and allow no sophistry to shade us from the eye of God.
At best, we must often have to forego a11 sympathy: none
can be with us in our multiform teml)tations. MIany a purpose fit only for ourselves, suited to the peculiarities of our
own character and condition, we must take up in private,




THE STRENGTH OF THE LONELY.              147
and in silence pile up effort after effort, till it be accomplished. And in these lonely struggles of duty, in this
invisible repression of wrong impulses and maintenance of
great aims, the inevitable loss of human aid must be replaced
by our affinity with God. While He is with us we are not
alone. He that invented human virtue, and breathed unto
us our private veneration for its greatness, - He that loves
the martyr spirit, scorning suffering for the sake of truth,He that beholds in every faithful mind the reflection of
himself, - I-Ie that hath built an everlasting world, at once
the shelter of victorious goodness, and the theatre of its yet
nobler triumphs, - enwraps us in his immensity, and sustains us by his love. The sooner we learn to lean on Him,
and find comfort in the society of God, the better are we
prepared for every solemn passage of our existence. It is
well, ere we depart, to confide ourselves sometimes to the
invisible: for then at least we must be thrust forth upon it
in a solitude personal as well as moral. The dying make
that pass alone: human voices fade away; human forms
retire; familiar scenes sink from  sight; and silent and
lonely the spirit migrates to the great secret. Who would
not feel himself then beneath the all-sheltering wing, and
say amid the mystic space, " I am not alone, for the Father
is with me?"




XVI.
HAND AND HEART.
JOHN XIV. 23.
IF A MAN LOVE ME, HE WILL KEEP MY WORDS; AND MY FATHER WILL
LOVE HIM, AND WE WILL COME UNTO HIM, AND MAKE OUR ABODE WITH
HIM.
THERE is no point in theoretical morality more difficult to
determine (if we may judge from the disputes of philosophers) than the'comparative worth and mutual relation of
good afections and good actions. Ought it to be the direct
and primary aim of the teacher of duty to produce a harvest
of beneficent deeds? or to impart clear perceptions and
prompt sensibility of conscience in relation to right and
wrong? If the former, his instructions will present an
inventory and careful valuation of all possible " voluntary
acts;" and his exhortations be addressed to the hopes and
fears, to the prudential apprehensions of good and evil,
which operate immediately upon the will. If the latter, he
will meddle little with cases of casuistry, or problems which
exhibit duty as an object of doubt; will define and illunminate the secret image of right that dwells within every
mind; and present as incentives those models of high faith
and disinterested virtue which kindle the reverence of the
heart. In this country, especially among those who have
been most anxious to "enlighten" its religion, the predominant attention has been given to external morality. The
practical temper of the English, impatient of loud profession
and sanctimonious inconsistency, reasonably enough cried




HAND AND HEART.                  149
out for "fruit."  Philosophy caught this spirit, and embodied it in a system of no small pretensions. Seeing that
fine sentiments are worthless without good deeds, the masters of this school have decided, that the affections have no
excellence except as instruments for producing action; that,
intrinsically, they are all alike, without any distinction of
good or bad; that moral qualities primarily attach merely
to practice, derivatively only to the mental tendencies towards practice, and in any case are constituted by the effects
of conduct in producing enjoyment or pain; that the moralist has no concern with the motives of an agent, provided
he does that which is useful; that the only measure of virtue, in short, is the amount of pleasure it creates.
This system has been embraced and is still held by many
Christians, chiefly among the churches within the sphere of
Dr. Priestley's influence. It is expounded, in a form full of
inconsistency and compromise, by Dr. Paley, in a work
whose popularity appears to me rather a discredit to England than an honor to him: and though it has been a general
favorite with irreligious moralists, and appears in natural
reaction from the enthusiasm of the most earnest pietists, it
has seldom been considered hostile to Christianity itself.
This is no fit occasion for discussing its philosophical pretensions: and were it not for the extent and nature of its
practical influence, it might be abandoned to the academic
lecture-room, where the rigorous methods of thought necessary for its examination would not be misplaced. But there
is one particular view of it which may naturally enough be
presented here. Its characteristic sentiment may be placed
side by side with those of the Christian morals, and the
relation between them ascertained. And no one, I imagine,
can perceive in it a trace of Christ's peculiar spirit: few
surely can be wholly unconscious of the wide variance
between its leading ideas and his: and all who have abandoned their minds to the impression of his teachings, must
feel that he assigned a very different rank to the affectionate




150               HAND AND HEART.
elements of character; that, not content with tasking the
hand, he makes high demands upon the heart; that public
benefit is subordinate with him to personal perfection; and
that, instead of merging the individual mind in the advantage of society, he is silent of the happiness of society,
except as involved in the holiness of the individual. Nothing surely can be further from the spirit of Jesus than to
measure excellence by the magnitude of its effects, rather
than the purity of its principle: else he would never have
ranked the widow's mite above the vast donatives of vanity; or have praised the profuse affection of the penitent
that lavished on him costly offerings, esteeming them yet
less precious than the consecrating tribute of her tears.
Here, it was not the deed whose usefulness gave worth to
the disposition, but the disposition whose excellence gave
value to the deed. And this is everywhere the character of
Christianity. It plants us directly beneath an eye that looketh at the heart: it forgives, in that we " have loved much ":
it throws away without compunction the largest husk of ceremony, and treasures up the smallest seed of life: instead
of sharpening us for casuistry, it prostrates us in worship;
reveals to us our inner nature, by bringing us in contact
with God who is a spirit, and to whom we bear the likeness
of child to parent; gives us an intermediate image of him
and of ourselves, Christ the meek and merciful, whose life
was a prolonged expression of disinterestedness and love;
and imposes, as the sole condition of discipleship, "faith in
him," - implicit trust, that is, in the spirit of his mind; —
self-precipit~ation upon a piety and fidelity like his, without
concession to expedliency, without faltering in danger, without flight from suffering, without slackened step, though
duty should conduct us straight into the arms of ignominy
and death.
That Christianity does make high demands upon our
affections must theii be admitted. Indeed this is virtually
confessed by the enthusiastic forms into which it has burst,




HAND AND HEART.                    151
by the outbreak of fervor from which every new church is
born, and the eager efforts made to sustain this vivid life.
Nay, it is privately confessed by every cold and languid yet
honest heart, that cannot lay open before it the story of
Christ, without the secret consciousness of rebuke. It is
confessed by the anxieties of many good minds, that are
ashamed of the slow fires and faint light of their faith and
love; that can spur their will, more easily than kindle their
affections; and wish they were called upon only to do, and
not also to feel. They cast about the vaguest and vainest
efforts after deeper impressions of things holy and sublime:
they wonder at the apathy with which they dwell amid the
infinitude of God: they convince themselves how untrue is
that state of mind which treats the "seen and temporal " as
if there were no "unseen and eternal; " they assure themselves how terrible must be the disorder of that soul, whose
springs of pure emotion are thus locked in death. But with
all this they cannot shame, or reason, or terrify themselves
into any nobler glow: the avenues of intellect, and judgment, and fear, are not those by which a new feeling is permitted to visit and refresh the heart. The ice cannot thaw
itself; but must ask the warmer gales of heaven to blow,
and the sun aloft to send more piercing beams. There is
nothing vainer or more hopeless than the direct struggles of
the mind to transform  its own affections, to change by a
fiat of volition the order of its tastes, and the intensity of
its love. Self-inspiration is a contradiction: and to suspend,
by upheavings of the will, the force of habitual desire, is no
less impossible than, by writhings of the muscles, to annihilate our own weight.
This, you will say, is a hard doctrine; that our religion
demrands that which our nature forbids, - invites a regeneration of the heart, after which the will may strive in vain.
Yet, I think, you must be conscious of its truth, and acknowledge that no spasm of determination can make you
regard with hate that which is now an object of your love.




152              HAND AND HEART.
But if Christianity presents the perplexity, its spirit affords
the solution. It shows us, indeed, that to gain a pure and
noble mind, great in its aims, resolute in its means, strong
with the invincibility of conscience, yet mellowed with reverential love, is the end of all our discipline here. But it
nowhere encourages a direct aim at this end, as if it could
be reached by the struggles of a day or of a year: it nowhere
invites a morbid gaze upon our own feelings, as if by selfvigilance we could look ourselves into perfection. In Christ
it furnishes us with an image of divinest beauty that we
may turn our eye on that, not upon ourselves: and perverse,
even to disease, is the temper, which, instead of being
engaged with that sublilnest work of the great Sculptor of
souls, whines rather over its own deformity, and seeks to
cure it by unnatural contortions.  Christianity sends each
faculty of our nature to its proper office; our veneration, to
Christ; our wills, to their duty. It precipitates us on action
as the proper school of affection; and, reversing the moralist's principle, values not the pure heart as the tool for
producing serviceable deeds, but the good deeds as at once
the expression and the nourishment of that greatest of possessions, a good mind. It was not by retiring into himself,
but by going out of himself, that Christ overcame the world;
not by spiritual pathology and self-torture, but by veritable
" sufferings," that he " became perfect;" not by measuring
his own emotions, but by oblivion of them amid a crowd of
toils, a succession of fulfilled resolves, a profuse expenditure
of life and effort having others for their object, that he rose
above the dignity of men, and ripened the divinest spirit for
the skies.
Struck then by the word of Christ, the moral paralytic
must "take up his bed and walk." It is surprising how
practical duty enriches the fancy and the heart, and action
clears and deepens the affections. Like the run into the
grieen fields and morning air to the fevered limbs and tightened brow of the night-student, it circulates a stream of




HAND AND HEART.                   153
unspeakable refreshment, " and renews our strength as the
eagle's." Indeed, no one can have a true idea of right,
until he does it; any genuine reverence for it, till he h s
done it often and with cost; any peace ineffable in it, till
he does it always and with alacrity. Does any one complain, that the best affections are transient visitors with
him, and the heavenly spirit a stranger to his heart? Oh
let him not go forth, on any strained wing of thought, in
distant quest of them; but rather stay at home, and set his
house in the true order of conscience; and of their own
accord the divinest guests will enter; lhe hath "kept the
words " of Christ, and the " Father himself will love him,"
and they "will come unto him, and make their abode with
him." The man most gifted with genius and rich in intellectual wisdom, but withal barren of practice and self-indulgent, can call up before him  no conception of moral
excellence so authentic, so divine, as many an obscure disciple, who, through frequent tribulation, has done and
borne the perfect will of God. Even the smallest discontent of conscience may render turbid the whole temper of
the mind; but only produce the effort that restores its
peace, and over the whole atmosphere a breath of unexpected purity is spread; doubt and irritability pass as clouds
away; the withered sympathies of earth and home open
their leaves and live: and through the clearest blue the
deep is seen of the heaven where God resides. And here
too we may observe the opposite effects which action and
experience produce upon our preconceptions of wrong and
of right. Do the right, and your ideal of it grows and perfects itself. Do the wrong, and your ideal of it breaks up
and vanishes. The young and pure mind, stranger yet to
the vehemence of appetite and revenge, looks on sin as a
dreadful and demon image, and shrinks with awe from its
approach; shudders at the laugh of guilty revelry, and
gazes on the face of acknowledged crime, as if it were a
phantom of the abyss. Guilt is then a thing unearthly and




154               HAND AND HEART.
preternatural, whose grasp is more terrible than death.
And truly, if this being, now innocent, should ever become
its prey, it will be through a struggle deep and deadly, as
with the tender mercies of a fiend. But once let that struggle
be over, and the fiend vanishes for ever; passes into plain
flesh and blood, that "is by no means so dreadful as was
imagined;" nay, even assumes the air of the jovial companion, and turns the dance of death into a comedy. The true
" superstition " of early years flies before the false " experience" of maturity. The ideal, so much juster than the
actual, is gone; and there falls upon the heart that folly
which'" makes a mock at sin."
In saying that action is the school of affection, it is clear
that we cannot mean mere manual or physical labor, or
activity in business, or even the mechanical routine of any
practical life, however unexceptionable be its habits. The
regularities of constitutional goodness, the order of a simply
blameless existence, do not reach that pitch of energy which
sustains the noblest health of the soul: these may continue
their accustomed course, and yet the springs of inward life
and strength dry up. In the mere negative virtue which
abstains from gross outward wrong, which commits neither
theft, nor cruelty, nor excess, and paces the daily round of
usage, there is not necessarily any principle of immortal
growth. The force requisite to maintain it becomes continually less, as the obstructions are worn down by ceaseless
attrition; and the character may hence become simply automatic, performing a series of regularities with the smallest
expenditure of soul. To nourish high affections, worthy of
a nature that hath kindred with the Father of spirits, more
than this is needed: positive and creative power, spontaneous and original force, conquering energy of resolve, must
be put forth: from the inner soul some central strength
must pass upon the active life, to destroy that equilibrium
between within and without which makes our days mere
self-repetitions, and to give us a progressive history. There




HAND AND HEART.                    155
is a connection profound and beautiful between the affectionate and the self-denying character of Christianity. The
voluntary sacrifices feed the involuntary sympathies of virtue: and he that will daily suffer for his duty, nor lay his
head to rest till he has renounced some ease, embraced some
hardship, in the service of others and of God, shall replenish the fountains of his holiest life; and shall find his soul
not settling into the flat and stagnant marsh, but flowing
under the most delicious light of heaven above, over the
gladdest fields of Providence below. I know that the moralists of whom I have before spoken, - they that turn the
shrine of duty into a shop for weighing grains and scruples of
enjoyment, - entertain a great horror of the notion of selfsacrifice, and ridicule the doctrine of denial as ascetic.
Any interference with the luxury of virtue is to be deplored;
disturbance to its repose must be admitted to be disagreeable, and, "so far as it goes, an evil ": and though clashing
pleasures will sometimes present themselves, we must take
care never to let go the nearer, till we have in our hands the
title-deeds of the remoter.  It is surprising, we are told,
how pleasant a thing true goodness is, if we will only believe it. It may be so; or it may not be so: but at all events
he who goes to it in this spirit has no true heart for it, and
shall be refused the thing he seeks. God will have us surrender without terrns; and till then, we are fast prisoners,
and not free children, in his universe. So needful is sacrifice
to the health and halrdihood of conscience, that if the occasions for it do not present themselves spontaneously in our
lot, we must create them  for ourselves: not reserving to
ourselves those exercises of virtue which are constitutionally pleasant, but, on the contrary, esteeming the asperity
of a duty as the reason why we should put our hand to it
at once; not acquiescing in the facility of wisely-adjusted
habits, but accepting the ease of living well as the peremptory summons of God to live better.  He, in short, is no
true soldier of the Lord, nor worthy to bear the Christian




156               HAND AND HEART.
armor, who, in service so high, will not make an hour's
forced march of duty every day. So tasked and tested,
the inner power, the athletic vigor, of our moral nature,
will not waste and die.  The perceptions of goodness,
beauty, truth, become, when we are thus faithful, singularly clear: there ripens within us the fullest faith in the
moral excellence of God; the ties that bind us to him and
to his children are drawn more closely round; and in this
world we dwell as in the lower mansion of his house, where
also the " Father loveth us, and maketh his abode with us."
By such practical performance alone, can any genuine
love of man be matured in us. Beneficence is the true school
of benevolence. We are not to wait, till sonie deseendinlg
spirit, uninvoked and unearned, enters us, and makes the
labor of sympathy delightful; but to go and do the deed
of mercy, though it be with reluctant step, with dry and
parched spirit, and without the grlace of a free charity.
Perhaps we may return with more genial mind and liberated affections: and, if not, we must the sooner and the
oftener do the act of blessing again, though it be amid selfrebuke and shame, and recoil with no peace upon the soul.
le that with patience will become the almnoner of God to
the poor and sad, and ask no portion of the blessing for himself, shall catch the spirit of the divine love at length: those
whom he steadfastly benefits he will rejoice in at the end.
Even with God this is the order too: we begin with being his
beneficiaries, and end with being his children. He created
us first (and that was blessing), placed us in the glory and
immensity of his universe, and conferred upon us the high
capacities and multiform nature that makes us his own
image: and then regarded us with his divine affectionateness, and embraced us in his everlasting Fatherhood.
By such practical performance alone, can we dismiss the
clouds of doubt and ignoble mistrust, which, really covering
our own disordered minds, seem to cast shadows around
the Most High, and to blot out the heavens from us. The




HAND AND HEART.                    157
merely worldly man, interred amid mean cares, doubts the
majestic truths of religion, simply from their sublimity and
vastness, which render them incommensurable with his poor
fraction of a mind: let him go and do a few noble deeds,
and elevate the proportions of his nature, and it is wonderful what mighty things seem to become possible: Deity is
near and even present at once, and immortality not improbable. And as for the self-inclosed and anxious student, his
difficulties may be referred to the diseased and ascendant
activity of a subtle understanding, without the materials of
a deep moral experience on which to work. Let him remedy this fatal dearth; rouse the slumbering strength of conscience; and, quitting the theoretic problems, take up the
practical responsibilities of life: and his work will clear his
thought, rendering it not less acute, and more confiding and
reverential. Seeing more into his own nature, he will penetrate further into all else, especially the source whence it
proceeds, the scene in which it is, and the issue to which it
tends. Of all depressing scepticism, of all painful solicitude,
not the agility of thought, but the alacrity of duty, is the
fit antagonist. At least, until we do the will of God, it
becomes doubt to be humble: and when we do it, assuredly
it will be yet humbler.




XVIT.
SILENCE AND MEDITATION.
PSALM LXIII. 6.
I REMEMBER THEE UPON MY BED, AND MEDITATE ON THEE IN THE
NIGHT-WATCHES.
THE elder Protestant moralists laid great stress, in all their
teachings, on the duties of self-scrutiny and prayer.  And
though their complaints show  that there was a frequent
neglect of their injunctions, it cannot be doubted that, in
our forefathers' scheme of life, the exercise of lonely thought
filled a much larger space than it does in ours. It was
deemed shameful and atheistical to enter the closet for nothing but sleep, and quit it only for meals and trade: passing
the awfulness of life entirely by, and evading all earnest
contact with the deep and silent God. A sense of guilt
attached to those who cast themselves from their civil life
into their dreams, and back again. That the merchant or
the statesman should be upon his knees, that the general
should pass from his -despatches to his devotions, and turn
his eye from the hosts of battle to the host of heaven, was
not felt to be incongruous or absurd. Milton's mind gave
itself at once to the discord of politics below, and the symphonies of seraphim above: Vane mingled with the adrministration of colonies, and accounts of the navy, hopes of a
theocracy, and meditations on the millennium; and it was
no more natural for Cromwell to call his officers to council
than to prayer. Nay, without going back so far, there are
few famiiies of any standing, that do not inherit the pious




SILENCE AND MEDITATION.                159
diaries of some nearer ancestry, betraying how real and large
a concern to them were the exercises of the solitary soul.
It cannot be denied that there is a great difference now.
Not that Christians may not be found in many sects, and
copiously in some, with whom the old devout habit is maintained in all integrity; of whose existence it is a simple and
sincere ingredient; who'still find an open door between
heaven and earth, and pass in and out with free and earnest
heart. But these represent the characteristic spirit of a
former, rather than of the present age. The sentiments of
our own tines everywhere betray the growing encroachments of the outward upon the inward life. How different
is our modern " saying our prayers" from those wrestlings
of spirit, and groans and tears that convulsed the Covenanters of old: nay, how much is there in this, - that, unless
there is a printed page before us, we know not what we
want, and left to ourselves should scarcely find we had a
want at all! Prayer by the printing-press is surely a very
near approach to piety by machinery. The public changes
in the faith of churches which are conspicuously taking
place around us, indicate the same loss of depth and earnestness in personal religion: for what do the new doctrines
say? " I cannot stand alone with God, and seek his pity
to my solitary soul; I must put myself into the visible
church, and appropriate a share of his favor to that spiritual
corporation; I can find no sanctification by direct contact
of spirit with spirit, and must get it done for me through
priests and sacraments." And what is this but an open
proclamation that private audience with God has become
impossible, and he can be approached only through ambassadors? Everywhere strength seems to have gone out from
the devotional element of life. Those who display most of
this element are no longer, like the Puritans, the strongest
men of their day, niost resolute, most simple, most powerful
in debate, most direct in action; but are felt to be fenlinine
and subtle, without manly breadth of natural heart, and firm




160          SILENCE AND MEDITATION.
footing upon reality. The moments each man spends in it
are seldom his truest and most unforced; it is not, as once,
the clear, deep eye of his nature that he turns to Heaven,
but the dead and glassy; and he who is without his sincerity in his closet, and with only half of it at church, flings it
all into the work of civil life. In individual character, and
in society at large, power seems to have gone over from the
spiritual to the secular.
This change is no fit subject for unmixed complaint;
much less must we desire to terrify men, like culprits, into
an alarm at their impiety, and an affected resumption of
the ancient discipline. Old ways of life are not thrown
aside, until they become untrue: and when they have become untrue, their sanctity is gone; though the usage of
churches may plead for them, the laws of God are against
them. Who can recommend prayer to one who has lost
the heart to pray? —confession to one who is stricken by
no penitence? - the words of trust to one whose God has
gone into the darkness of fate?- self-examination to one
who, in too fine a knowledge of what passes within, finds
no power to do the duty without?  The state of mind
which unfits men for the habits of our fathers, may be lower
or may be higher; but be it what it may, there is no virtue
in retaining what has grown false: let all, in their belief or
unbelief, their clearness or perplexity, ground themselves
only upon reality, and live out the highest conviction not
of yesterday but of to-day, and however the forms of our
being may change, its spirit will remain unceasingly devout.
If you ask, "W'Vhat is it that has rendered the lonely piety
of our forefathers less natural and possible to us?" I believe the reason to be this: - their lot was cast near the
age of the Reformation; they breathed its spirit and lived
its life; and as Protestantism was at first a simple insurrection against formalism and falsehood, and gave to the
faith within the authority which it denied to the church
without, so did it exclusively develop the inward religion




SILENCE AND MEDITATION.              161
of the soul, and put it in artificial contrast with outward
interests and human duties. Installing the private conscience in the place of the anointed priest, it gave that
conscience much of the priestly character, inquisitorial,
casuistical, vigilant and stern; and sent a man to his selfexamination, as before he would have gone to his confessional, to question himself as the church would have
questioned him before, only with severity more searching
as his consciousness knew better what to ask. Hence arose
an anxious scrupulosity of mind; a loss of all dependence
except on the divine offices of the solitary soul; a feeling
of terrible necessity for the help and strength of God; a
keen scrutiny into all the doublings of the heart, and an
apprehension of every sophistry of sin; passing over at once
from the gay laxity of the Catholic into a grim and solemn
earnestness. The change was noble and healthy, only, like
all reactions, capable of excess. Men may learn too much
of what goes on within them; their' spiritual analysis may
be too fine; a morbid self-consciousness may be produced,
which in giving sensitive knowledge, takes away practical
power; and he who will microscopically look at the ultimate
fibres of his life-roots, scrapes away the element in which
they thrive, and withers them in the light by which he sees.
We must ever grow from darkness and the earth; enough
if the blossom and the fruit be worthy of the sunshine and
the heaven. Ouer days witness a recoil from the extreme
inwardness of our forefathers' religion: human affections
warm us more; human duties are nobler in our view; social
interests are of deeper moment; and the whole scene of
man's visible life, no longer the mere vestibule of an invisible futurity, has a worth and dignity of its own, which
philanthropy delights to honor, and only fanaticism can
despise. For my own part, I think the change a sign of
nature's restorative power, and see in it the stirrings of new
health: even though partially brought about by temporary
scepticism, I cannot deplore it, for it shows that the con11




162          SILENCE AND MEDITATION.
science cannot go on living in a pretence, but, in retreating
from things of which it doubts, gets its foot upon duties
which it knows. In this are the first beginnings of new
religion to replace the old: if the divine earnestness within
us only shifts and does not die, it matters little what becomes
of our mere theology; and deep-hearted practical faithfulness is not separable long from true-thoughted practical
faith.
Let us admit then that our revolt against the old spiritualism has come about in quite a natural way; that the Puritan
sentiment was fast going down into mere moral hypochondria: and that, to work the cure, it was inevitable that
the world (as divines opprobriously term it), i.e. the opportunities of action with a view to temporal good, whether
personal or social, should re-assert its sway. Like the sick
physician, who cannot let his pulse alone or cease to speculate on his sensations, Christendom, bewildered by its own
deep knowledge of the human heart, kept too inquiring a
finger on the throbs of its emotions, and fancied many an
action of healthy nature into a symptom of fatal disease:
and we are not to find fault with the remedy of Providence
-a turn-out into the open air and various industry of life;
a resort to the plough, the loom, the ship, and all the arts
by which it is given to man to make the earth at once his
subject and his friend. But let us also admit that the outward life has for some time past tyrannized over us; extravagantly invading our private habits; narrowing our
modes of thought and sentiment; benumbing our consciousness of a spiritual nature; and impairing to us the reality
of God. Let us own that the Divine Spirit is gone into distance and strangeness from us, and is hard to reach; that
solitude brings no unspeakable converse, no ready consecration; that things just next the senses and the understanding
seem nearer to us than those that touch the soul; that the
crowd and noise are too close and constant on us, confusing
our better perceptions, and leading us always to look round,




SILENCE AND MEDITATION.              163
seldom to look up; that the glare of the lamps has destroyed
the midnight and put out the stars.
Now this despotism of the outward over the inward life,
this suppression of every attribute not immediately wanted
for business or society, is a misfortune which every noble
mind will assuredly withstand. It is not right to live as
if God were asleep, and heaven only a murmur from his
dreams. It should make some difference to a man, whether
his Creator be here in the present, or gone off. into the past;
whether he himself dwells in the hollow of a living hand,
or, with nothing beyond him but necessity, struggles for his
place in a dead, deserted world. And this difference will
not be realized, nor any lofty truth of character attained,
by those who disown the claims of lonely thought and silence
in religion.
There is an act of the mind, natural to the earnest and
the wise, impossible only to the sensual and the fool, healthful to all who are sincere, which has small place in modern
usage, and which few can now distinguish from vacuity.
Those who knew what it was, called it meditation. It is
not reading, in which we apprehend the thoughts of others,
and bring them to our critical tribunal. It is not study, in
which we strive to master the kniown and prevail over it,
till it lies in order beneath our feet. It is not reasoning, in
which we seek to push forward the empire of our positive
conceptions, and by combining what we have, reach others
that we have not. It is not deliberation, which computes
the particular problems of action, reckons up the forces that
surround our individual lot, and projects accordingly the
expedient of the right. It is not self-scrutiny, which by
itself is only shrewdness or at most science turned within
instead of without, and analyzing mental feelings instead of
physical facts. Its view is not personal and particular, but
universal and immense, - the sweep of the nocturnal telescope over the infinitely great, not the insight of the solar
microscope into the infinitely small. It brings, not an in.




164           SILENCE AND MEDITATION.
tense self-consciousness and spiritual egotism, but almost a
renunciation of individuality, a mingling with the universe,
a lapse of our little drop of existence into the boundless
ocean of being. It does not find for us our place in the
known world, but loses it for us in the unknown. It puts
nothing clearly beneath our feet, but a vault of awful beauty
above our head. It gives us no matter for criticism and
doubt, but everything for wonder and for love. It does not
suggest indirect demonstration, but furnishes immediate
perception of things divine, eye to eye with the saints,
spirit to spirit with God, peace to peace with Heaven. In
thus being alone with the truth of things, and passing from
shows and shadows into communion with the everlasting
One, there is nothing at all impossible and out of reach.
He is not faded or slow to bring us light, any more than is
that sunshine of his, which is bright and swift as ever. He
was no nearer to Christ on Tabor or in Gethsemane, than to
us this day and every day. Neither the nature he inspires,
nor his perennial inspiration, grows any older with the lapse
of time; every human being that is born is a first man, fresh
in this creation, and as open to Heaven as if Eden were
spread round him; and every blessed kindling of faith and
new sanctity is a touch of his spirit as living, a gift as immediate from  his exhaustless store of holy power, as the
strength that befriended Christ in temptation, and the
angel-calm that closed his agony. Is it not promised for
ever to the pure in heart that they shall see God? Let any
true man go into silence; strip himself of all pretence, and
selfishness, and sensuality and sluggishness of soul; lift off
thought after thought, passion after passion, till he reaches
the inmost depth of all; remember how short a time, and he
was not at all; how short a time again, and he will not be
here; open his window and look upon the night, how still
its breath, how solemn its march, how deep its perspective,
how ancient its forms of light; and think how little he
knows except the perpetuity of God, and the mysterious



SILENCE AND MEDITATION.              165
ness of life:- and it will be strange if he does not feel the
Eternal Presence as close upon his soul, as the breeze upon
his brow; if he does not say, " O Lord, art Thou ever near
as this, and have I not known thee? "- if the true proportions and the genuine spirit of life do not open on his heart
with infinite clearness, and show him the littleness of his
temptations, and the grandeur of his trust. He is ashamed
to have found weariness in toil so light, and tears where
there was no trial to the brave. He discovers with astonishment how small the dust that has blinded him, and from
the height of a quiet and holy love looks down with incredulous sorrow on the jealousies and fears and irritations that
have vexed his life. A mighty wind of resolution sets in
strong upon him, and freshens the whole atmosphere of his
soul; sweeping down before it the light flakes of difficulty,
till they vanish like snow upon the sea. He is imprisoned
no more in a small compartment of time, but belongs to an
eternity which is now and here. The isolation of his separate spirit passes away; and with the countless multitude
of souls akin to God, he is but as a wave of His unbounded
deep. He is at one with Heaven, and hath found the secret
place of the Almighty.
Silence is in truth the attribute of God; and those who
seek him from that side invariably learn that meditation is
not the dream but the reality of life; not its illusion but its
truth; not its weakness but its strength. Such act of the
mind is quite needful, in order to rectify the estimates of
the senses and the lower understanding, to shake off the
drowsy order of perceptions, in which, with the eyes of the
soul half closed, we are apt to doze away existence here.
Neglecting it now, we shall wake into it hereafter, and find
that we have been walking in our sleep. It is necessary
even for preserving the truthfulness of our practical life.
It is always the tendency of action to fall into routine and
become mechanical; to become less and less dependent on
the living forces of the will, and to continue itself by mere




166           SILENCE AND MEDITATION.
momentum  in the direction it has once assumed. When
conscience and not passion presides over life, this tendency
is not abated but confirmed: for conscience is essentially
systematic, subdues every thing to a fixed order, and then is
troubled or content, according as this is violated or observed. But the inner spirit of the mind, which all outward
action should express, is not naturally thus inflexible: it
drifts away from its old anchorages, and gets afloat upon
new tides of thought; as experience deepens, existence
ceases to be the same, and the proportions in which things
lie within our affections are materially changed; as the
ascent of time is made, life is seen from a higher point,
and fresh fields of truth and duty spread before our view.
Habit being conservative, faith and feeling being progressive,
unless their mutual relation be constantly re-adjusted by
meditation, they will cease to correspond, and become miserably divergent; our action will not be true, our thought
will not be real; both will be weak and dead; both distrustful as a culprit; both relying on hollow credit, and empty
of solid wealth; and our whole life, begun perhaps in the
order of conscience, and moving on externally the same,
may become a semblance and a cheat. Bare moral principle, unless holding of something more divine, has but an
unsafe tenure of the wisdom and the strength of life.
And even when the right is clearly seen, meditation is
needed to collect our powers to do it. It is the great storehouse of our spiritual dynamics, where divine energies lie
hid for any enterprise, and the hero is strengthened for his
field. All great things are born of silence. True, the fury
of destructive passion may start up in the hot conflict of
life, and go forth with tumultuous desolation. But all beneficent and creative power gathers itself together in silence,
ere it issues out in might. Force itself indeed is naturally
silent, and only makes itself heard, if at all, when it strikes
upon obstructions to bear them away as it returns to equilibrium again. The very hurricane that roars over land and




SILENCE AND MEDITATION.               167
ocean, flits noiselessly through spaces where nothing meets it.
The blessed sunshine says nothing, as it warms the vernal
earth, tempts out the tender grass, and decks the field and
forest in their glory. Silence came before creation, and the
heavens were spread without a word. Christ was born at
dead of night; and though there has been no power like his,
"He did not strive nor cry, neither was his voice heard in
the streets." Nowhere can you find any beautiful work, any
noble design, any durable endeavor, that was not matured
in long and patient silence, ere it spake out in its accomplishment.  There it is that we accumulate the inward power
which we distribute and spend in action; put the smallest
duty before us in dignified and holy aspects; and reduce
the severest hardships beneath the foot of our self-denial.
There it is that the soul, enlarging all its dimensions at
once, acquires a greater and more vigorous being, and gathers up its collective forces to bear down upon the piecemeal difficulties of life, and scatter them to dust. There
alone can we enter into that spirit of self-abandonment, by
which we take up the cross of duty, however heavy, and
tread the dolorous way with feet however worn and bleeding. And thither shall we return again, only into higher
peace and more triumphant power, when the labor is over
and the victory won, and we are called by death into God's
loftiest watch-tower of contemplation.




XVIII.
WINTER WORSHIP.
JOHN V. 13.
AND HE THAT WAS HEALED WIST NOT WHO IT WAS.
IF the first power of Christianity was embodied in miracle,
it was in miracle so distinctly expressive of its spirit, and so
analogous to its natural agency in the world, as to invite
rather than repel our imitation. Whatever be meant by the
two great preternatural endowments entrusted to its earliest
missionaries, - the gift of tongues and the gift of healing,
-they represent clearly enough the two grand functions of
our religion, -to bear persuasion to the minds, and bring
mercy to the physical ills, of men. On that summer morning in Jerusalem, when the men of Galilee stood forth
within the temple courts to preach the first glad tidings to
the strangers of Parthia, and Greece, and Rome, and with
their speech reached the minds of that multitude of many
tongues, what better symbol could there be of that religion,
whose spirit is intelligible to all, because it addresses itself
to the universal human heart, and speaks, not the artificial
jargon of sects and nations, but the natural language of thle
affections, which are immortal. And when the crowd of
weary sufferers thronged around the Apostles' steps in the
city, the blind supporting the lame, and the lame eyes to
the blind; or when the solitary leper saw them in the field,
and made his gesture of entreaty from afar, and all were
healed, -how better could be represented the character of
that faith, which has never set eyes on pain without yield



WINTER WORSHIP.                  169
ing it a tear;-which, in proportion as it has been cordially
embraced, has sickened the heart of scenes of suffering and
blood, and lessened, age after age, the stripes wherewith
humanity is stricken. We neither clainl nor ask for the
cloven tongues of a divine persuasion: we boast not of any
arm of miracle which we can lay bare in conflict with disease and sorrow: but in the spirit of these acts of Providence we may participate. While fanatics vainly pretend
to repeat their marvellousness, we may choose the better
part, and copy their beneficence. The world needs the
preachers of wonders, less than the apostles of charity.
And, whatever its accessories of miracle, nothing could be
more unostentatious than the diffusion of Christ's mercy by
its niissionaries in the days of old.  Beginning with the
provinces of Palestine, it passed, from village to village of
the interior, from city to city of the vast empire's various
coast: along the shores of Asia, beneath the citadels of
Greece, to the world's great palace on the Tiber, it stole
along, fleet and silent as the wind that bloweth where it
listeth, sweeping through many a foul recess, and leaving
health where it found pestilence.  Our imagination, corrupted by the pomp of history, dwells perhaps too much on
the more brilliant positions and marked triumphs of the
ancient gospel. We follow Paul through his vicissitudes,
and feel an idle pride in his most conspicuous adventures:
and when he stretches forth the hand and speaks before
King Agrippa; when idolators mistake the bearer of a godlike message for a god, and bow before him, as to Mercury;
when in Ephesus he becomes the rival of Diana, and ruins
the craftsmen of the silver shrines; when philosophy listens
to him on Areopagus, and the Furies still slumber within
hearing in their grove, - we vainly think that he derives his
greatest dignity from the scenes in the midst of which he
stands, a contrast and a stranger. As we would deserve the
Christian name, let us look more deeply into his mission,
and adopt more fully the spirit of his mind. Watch him




170              WINTER WORSHIP.
even in Rome, where he dwelt, though a prisoner, in his
own hired house; and where shall we seek for him in that
dazzling metropolis?  He was not one to pass through its
scenes of magnificence with st-upid and fanatic indifference,
to find himself surrounded by the monuments of ancient
freedom, and listen for the first time to the very language of
the world's conquerors, without catching the inspiration of
history, and feeling the solemn shadow of the past fall upon
him. I do not say that he never paused beneath the senatehouse to think of the voices that had been heard within its
walls; or climbed the capitol, once the palace of the republic, now its shrine; or started at the fasces, stern emblem of
a justice now no more; or went without excitement into the
imperial presence through the very gardens where his own
blood should hereafter be shed in merriment. But his daily
walks passed all these splendors by: they dived into the
lanes and suburbs on which no glory of history is shed, and
which made Rome the sink and curse, while it was the ruler,
of the nations: they found the haunts of the scorned Hebrew: they startled the degraded revels of the slave: they
sought out the poor foreigner, attracted by the city's wealth,
and perishing amid its desolation: they crept to the pallet
on which fever and poverty were stretched, tendering the
hand of restoration, and whispering the lessons of peace.
This was his noblest dignity: not that he publicly pleaded
before princes, but that he secretly solaced the outcast and
the friendless; not that he paced the forum, but that he
lingered in the dens of wretchedness, and refreshed the
hardened heart with gentle sympathies, and linked the alien
with the fraternity of men, and shed upon the darkest lot
a repose on Providence and a light of hope. And what is
true of this great apostle, is true of the religion which he
spread, and which we profess. Its true dignity is, that unseen it has ever gone about doing good. Link after link has
it struck from the chain of every human thraldom: error
after error has it banished: pain after pain has it driven




WINTER WORSHIP.                   171
fromn body or from mind: and so silently has the blessing
come, that (like the lame whom Peter made to walk) "he
that was healed wist not who it was."
It can never be unseasonable for those that bear the name
of Christ to imitate his spirit, and to address themselves to
the great mission which Providence has assigned to their
religion (that is, to themselves), as the antagonist power
to those human sufferings, which may be lightened at least,
if not remedied. But this period of the year* brings with
it a distinct and peculiar call to remember with a thought of
mercy the several ills that flesh is heir to. Every season
has its appropriate worship, and demands an appropriate
recognition: for each presents in some peculiar form the
physical activity of nature, which is, in fact, the immediate
energy of God.  If, in the picturesque spirit of ancient
tiimes, we had our annual festivals fo  l remembering the
several aspects of our lot, and bringing successively before
the eye the many-colored phases of human existence, we
should cast lots among the days of sprling for an anniversary
of life and health, when earth is unburdening her heart to
God, and framing from a thousand new-born melodies an
anthem of brilliant praise. For the celebration of disease
and death we should resort to the days of the declining
year: and instead of leaping on the green sod and pouring
forth the hymn of joy, we should kneel upon the rotting
leaves and pray. IHowever constant the visitations of sickness and bereavement, the fall of the year is most thickly
strewn with the fall of human life. Everywhere the spirit
of some sad power seems to direct the time: it hides from
us the blue heavens; it makes the green wave turbid; it
walks through the fields, and lays the damp, ungathered
harvest low; it cries out in the night wind and the shrill
hail; it steals the summer bloom from the infant cheek; it
makes old age shiver to the heart; it goes to the churchyard, and chooses many a grave; it flies to the bell, and
* This Discourse was preached at the end of November.




172               WINTER WORSHIP.
enjoins it when to toll. It is GOD that goes his yearly
round; that gathers up the appointed lives; and, even where
the hour is not come, engraves by pain and poverty many a
sharp and solemn lesson on the heart.
How then shall we render the fitting worship of the season? We do so, when we think of these things in the
spirit of religion; when we regard them in their relation
to the great Will which produces them; when, instead of
meeting them in the spirit of recklessness, or viewing in
them the triumph of disorder, or shrinking from them in
imbecile fear, we recognize their position in a system of
universal Providence, various in its means, but paternal in
its spirit and beneficent in its ends; when "none of these
things move us," except to a more reverential sense of mystery, and a serener depth of trust. In a season of mortality,
it is surely impossible to forget the relations of other scenes
to this; that departure from this life is birth into another;
that the immortal rises where the mortal falls; that the farewell in the vale below is followed by greetings on the hills
above; so that, if sympathy with mourners here permit, the
sorrows of the bereaved on earth are the festival of the
redeemed in heaven.
We render the appropriate worship of the season, when
we think of the painful passages of human life, not " merely
as proceeding from God, but as incident to our own lot; not
merely in the spirit of religion, but in that of self-application. It is difficult for the living and the vigorous to
realize the idea of sickness and of death: and though within
a few paces of our daily walks there are beings that lie in
the last struggle, and some sufferer's moan escapes with
every breath that flies, yet whenever pain fairly seizes our
persons in his grasp, or enters and usurps our homes, we
start as if he were a stranger. And perhaps it will be
asked, " Why should it be otherwise?  Why forestall the
inevitable day, and let the damp cloud of expectation fall on
the illumined passages of life? "  I grant that to remember




WINTER WORSHIP.                 17 3
the conditions of our existence with such result as this, to
think of them in an abject and melancholy spirit, is no act of
wisdom or of duty. I know of no obligation to live with an
imagination ever haunted by mortality; to deem every enjoyment dangerous, lest it cheat the heart into a happy repose
upon the present, and every pursuit a snare, which fairly
embarks the affections upon this world; to consider all
things here devoid of any good purpose except to tempt us.
The theory which crowds this life with trials, and the other
with rewards, which brightens the future only by blackening
the present, which supposes that the only proper office of
our residence here is to keep up one prolonged meditation
on the hereafter, is a mere burlesque of nature and the gospel. Futurity is not to mar, but to mend, our activity; and
earth is not given that we may win the reversion of heaven,
so much as heaven revealed to ennoble our tenure of earth.
I know of no peculiar preparation for immortality beyond
the faithful performance of the best functions of mortal life;
and if it were not that these will be more wisely discharged,
and the attendant blessings more truly felt, by those who
remember the sadder conditions of our lot than by those
who forget them, there would be no reason why they should
ever appear before the thoughts. But they are facts, solemn
and inevitable facts, which come with least crushing power
on those who see them from afar, and become reconciled to
them, and even fill them by forethought with peaceful suggestion. The sense of their possibility breaks through the
superficial crust of life, and stirs up the deeper affections of
our nature. It refines the sacredness of every human tie:
it dignifies the claims of duty: it freshens the emotions of
conscience: it gives promptitude to the efforts of sympathy;
and elevates the whole attitude of life.
But, above all, we pay the fitting worship of the season,
when we greet its peculiar ills in the spirit of humanity;
when we think of them, not simply as they come from God,
and may come to ourselves, but as they actually do befall




174              WINTER WORSHIP.
our neighbors and fellow-men. It were selfish to gather
round our firesides, and circulate the laugh of cheerfulness
and health, without a thought or deed of pity for the poor
sufferers that struggle with the winter storms of nature or of
life. Who can help looking at this season with a more considerate and reverential eye upon the old man, to think
where he may be? Year after year he has been shaken by
the December winds, but not yet shaken to his fall: deeper
and deeper the returning frost has crept into his nature;
and will it reach the life-stream now? You watch him as
you would the last pendulous leaf of the forest, still held by
some capricious fibre, that refuses perhaps to part with it to
the storm, and then drops it slowly through the still air.
You gaze at him as he stands before you, and wonder that
you can ever do so without awe; for the visible margin of
existence crumbles beneath him, and he slips into the unfathomnable. And as the tempest wakes us on our pillow, it is
but common justice to our human heart, to send out a
thought over the cold and vexed sea in search of the poor
mariner that buffets with the night, or perhaps sinks in that
most lonely of deaths, between the black heavens that pelt
him from above and the insatiable waste that swallows him
below. Nor will generous and faithful souls forget the
dingy cellar or the crowded hovel, where in a neighboring
street the fevered sufferer lies, and the ravings of delirium
and the sport of children are heard together, or life is ebbing
away in consumption, hurried to its close by the chill breath
of poverty and winter. Oh could we but see the dread gripe
of want and disease upon hundreds of this community at
this noment, and hear the cries of hungry children and the
moans of untended sickness, the only difficulty would be,
not to stimulate our generosity to do enough, but to persuade it to work out its good with patience and with
wisdom!
And here indeed is a difficulty, which every considerate
mind will feel to be grave, and even terrible. The multi



WINTER WORSHIP.                   175
tude of miseries spread around us make humanity easy, a
wise direction of its impulses, most difficult; the very spectacle which gives to benevolence its intensity, throws it also
into despair. The perplexity arises partly from the state of
society in which we live; from relations among its several
classes altogether new, and rendering the ancient and traditional methods of doing good in a great degree inapplicable. A slave-owning or feudal community, by killing out
from the great mass of men every thing above the rank of
hunger, reduces the office of compassion within a very
narrow compass: and the dish from the rich man's table, or
the garment from his wardrobe, sent as to the domestic animals of his estate, to stop their cries and soothe them to
sleep, are the only boons that are required, or possibly that
can be given without peril of social revolution. Happily,
- yet not without much unhappiness too, -such revolution
is now effected or in progress; greatly through the influence
of that Christianity, which pronounces all to be children of
One who is "no respecter of persons;" and assures us that
whenever we say, "Be thou warmed and filled," it is no
other than " a brother or sister" that comes before us
"naked and destitute of daily food."  Our current notions
of benevolence have descended to us from the recent times
of feudalism: yet we are conscious that they do not come
up to the higher demands which have arisen, or adapt themselves to the new intellectual and moral wants comprised in
any Christian estimate of the poor of this world. The ease
of ancient condescension is gone: the graceful recognition
of human brotherhood is not attained. To aim at making
men like ourselves into creatures with enough to eat, —
though a thing unrealized as yet, - is felt to be insufficient;
and how to raise them into the likeness of the children of God
we cannot tell,- the very notion receiving at present but a
timid acknowledgnment. This, however, if we are in earnest,
is but a temporary difficulty, attending on a state of hesitancy and transition. Let the mind fairly emancipate itself
from that debasing valuation of a human being which the




176              WINTER WORSHIP.
mere sentiments of property would dictate; —trust itself,
with high faith, to the equalizing spirit of Christian piety
and hope; and in paying, to all, the reverence due to an
immortal, it will attain to the freedom and power of a divine
love: it will speak to sorrow with the voice of another
Christ, and restore his holiest miracles of mercy. Who can
doubt that, were his spirit here, the work of good need not
despair?
But, for want of this spirit in perpetuity, another obstacle
obstructs the course of bewildered charity. We form our
good intentions too late: and while benevolence, to be successful, must work in the way of prevention and anticipation,
— at the very least putting resolutely down each confused
and hurtful thing as it appears, -men rarely bestir themselves till evils get ahead, and by no effort can well be overtaken. The physical, moral and religious condition of the
poor, which in our days begins to excite so much attention,
should have been studied thus half a century ago; easy in
comparison had it then been to prevent the ills which now
we know not how to cure. We permit a generation to
grow up neglected, with habits a grade below their fathers';
and then consider how they may be reclaimed. We suffer
a new manufacture to start into existence, and seize, with
the hands of a needy giant, on infant labor; and when it
has appropriated a generation to itself, and boldly insists
on its prescriptive right to be fed for ever from the same
life-blood of our humanity, we look round on the degenerate
bodies and stunted minds of an enormous population, and
begin to cry out for an efficient public education, against
which the immediate physical interests of poor as well as
rich are now combined. The providence of God is retributory: and too often it happens that the sinful negligence of
one age cannot be repaired by the penitent benevolence of
many: the unpaid debt accumulates its interest, till discharge
becomes impossible: misery grows impatient and clamorous; and repays at length in fury the injuries inflicted by
ancient wantonness and neglect. Neither in communities,




WINTER WORSHIP.                  177
nor in individuals, does God give encouragement to deathbed repentance: and societies that trust to it shall find
themselves, after short delay, under the lash of demons and
near the seat of hell. Let them be timely wise, and maintain the vigils of benevolence, while the accepted hour
remains.
Amid all controversies respecting the quarter froln which
the assault on the evils of indigence is best commenced,
whether the physical wants should be remedied through the
moral, or the moral through the physical, whether most is
to be hoped for from legislative measures, or from individual
efforts, one principle may be regarded as certain, and, considering the tendencies of our age, not unseasonable. You
cannot mechanize benevolence: you cannot put Christian
love into an act of Parliament or a subscription list: and
however necessary may be the remedial action of laws and
institutions, on account of the comprehensive scale of their
operation, the ties between man and man can be drawn
closer only by personal agency. Not one new sympathy
can arise but by the contact between mind and mind: inll
the spiritual world life is born only of life: nor is any
abrogation possible of that law of God which requires that
we seek whatever we would save. The good comfort which
with willing soul we tender to each other is of all things
most precious to the heart. As the blow of calamity falls
with three-fold weight when it descends fiom the injustice
of men, so the deliverance brought by their pity and affection is a blessing infinitely multiplied. The one poisons
and prevents our submission, as to a will of God; the other
sweetens and elevates our gratitude to him: the one cancels,
the other creates, what is most divine in the dispensation.
Only so far as there is a " charity" that "never faileth"
from the souls of men, can they live in communion together
on this earth: and from Christendom every "faith" shall
be cast out as a dead heathenism, except such as " worketh
by love."                  12
12




XIX.
THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.
2 PETER III. 4.
WHERE IS THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING? FOR, SINCE THE FATHERS FELL
ASLEEP, ALL THINGS CONTINUE AS THEY WERE FROMI THE BEGINNING
OF THE CREATION.
CHRIST quitted the world in benediction, and left upon it
a legacy of inextinguishable hope. The first manifestation
of the hopeful spirit of his religion was in the expectation,
confidently held by the Apostles and their followers, that
within "that generation" he would return from heaven in
triumph, gather together a faithful community, exterminate
the ills of human life, and become monarch over a renovated
and immortal world. Sufferers of every class (and the
church had mercy for them all) laid this hope to heart, and
stood silent beneath scorn and persecution, believing that
the lashes of oppression were numbered now. As the yeals
passed on, and the outer limits of the generation were approached, the flush of expectation became more intense.
One after another the Apostles dropped off, without witnessing the desire of their eyes; till at last the protracted
life of John became the solitary and fragile thread on which
this splendid anticipation hung. He too died, and Jesus
had not returned: and the church, unwilling to confess its
disappointment, extended the term of hope by a liberal construction of the promise. Here and there among the communities of disciples there lingered a few aged men, whose
life reached back to the years of Christ's ministry: and till
they were gone, it was not too late for the Son of AMan to




THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.             179
come. Expectation became more anxious and feverish every
year: passing events were perverted into auguries of its
impending realization: the rout of an army, the incursion
of a new invader, the rumor of an earthquake, the blaze of
a meteor by night, or a stroke of lightning upon a Pagan
shrine, was caught at with breathless eagerness, and watched
as a herald to the last act of human things. But as storm
after storm passed off and brought no change; as life after
life disappeared, and even rumor could find nowhere a surviving representative of Christ's generation, hope fainted
into doubt; and despair broke loose and cried, "Where is
the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep,
all things continue as they were from the beginning of the
creation."  No brilliant exultation longer cheered the woes
of the church and of the world: they fell back again with
their dull weight upon the heart. The Christian mother
wept now for her martyred son, whom, in the thought of
instant restoration, she had forgot to mourn: the despised
teacher began to cower before the heathen's or the Hebrew's
scorn, which he knew no longer how to answer: and the
irons of the Christian field-slave, to which for years his faith
had given a farewell look each night before he slept, grew
heavy on his limbs again.
Almost eighteen hundred years separate us from the disappointment of this singular expectation; and the calmness
with which we can look back on a scene so distant, enables
us to draw from it a sacred lesson of Providence. Well
might God rebuke and disappoint this affectionate but erring
hol)e: for whlat did it assume? - That a few years' preachilng of a pure religion and the forcible enthronement upon
earth of one who had lived in heaven, were all that was
necessary for perfecting the world, for driving sin and sorrow from the hearts and homes of men, and giving life its
final sanctity. How imperfect was the estimate of this regenerative work, which could assign it to instruments so
inadequate, and a process so brief! God has taught us now,




180       THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.
that a moral change so various and stupendous, implying
the civilization of barbarism, the illumination of the ignorant,
the rescue of the oppressed, the pacification of nations, the
multiplication of Christ's own spirit of humanity over the
globe, is not to be wrought in an hour by Omnipotence itself; is beyond the reach of any mechanical scheme of rule,
though conducted by beings of another world; and must
wait on the silent operation of those spiritual laws of the
human mind which neither the individual nor the race can
be permitted to outstrip. We look back over the centuries
by which we have retired from the fountains of our faith,
and learn how solemn is the task of God's providence on
earth; for he labors at it still; and though its progress has
been visible to this hour, it seems but starting on its cycle
yet.
Who will not confess a strong sympathy with the early
Christians' delight, in anticipating certain great and divine
revolutions within their own generation? That human life
is too short to witness the fruits of its own efforts, that it
scatters in seed-time, but may not put the sickle to its own
harvest, that its whole career from infancy to age scarce
measures a solitary step in the march of humanity, has
always been felt to be an arrangement hard to bear. And
there is a peculiar fascination in the thought of personally
experiencing the realization of one's social dreams, of quickening a too tardy Providence to the pace of our fleeting
years, and finding the race of man give promise of perfection
during our mortal instead of our immortal lives. It is the
severest and sublimnest duty of philanthropy to toil in faith
and die in tears; to grapple with ills that must survive it,
and may destroy; to remonstrate with oppression, and only
see its gripe tightened on its victim in revenge. The mlistake of the early church is not theirs alone: it is a human,
rather than a theological, error. All men have the prime
element of such a superstition in themselves; an impatience
at the slow step of advancement, an eagerness for some visi



THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.             181
ble and palpable progress in every thing which is thought
capable of indefinite improvement.  Such " delusion " is the
only way in which the human soul can enter into God's
"everlasting NOW."  Yet, while really springing  from  a
noble faith, it produces, in its reaction, many an ignoble
doubt. This disposition looks, for example, at the individual mind; and seeing it become stationary, the dull slave
of habit, declares that it cannot be immortal.  Or it contemplates the general community of men; and imagining
its state little superior to some former condition of the world,
denies it the hope of unlimited amelioration. This spirit
of despondency is especially liable to visit us, when we stand
at one of the pauses of our time,- at the end of a season,
of a year, of a life, -of any unit that has had a predecessor,
and will have a successor, just like itself: still more perhaps,
when we review the progress (ever small compared with
our desires) of some benevolent work,* to which, from its
niagnitude and character, we can see no definite termination.
The retrospect of a few years often seems to exhibit to us
a sameness the most depressing; to show us how little we
have done; to persuade us that, —as if in rebuke of our
hopes, — " all things continue as they were,"' and no advent
of a better life is heralded as yet. The same evils which
met our eye and our pity of old, encounter us this day: and
if in any instance they have been cancelled, others, not less
frightful, seem ever ready to rush up into their place: so that,
in turning to the future, no visible end appears to the saddening task of Christian mercy. Under the influence of
this thought, the mind is haunted and harassed by the
image of all things circulating; whirling in mysterious selfrepetition; looking in upon us with the fixed full eye of an
ancient fatalism. And we are deluded into the fear that
nothing is ever to be better; that our faith in the progress
of our religion and our kind must be dragged into the vortex
* This Discourse was preached in behalf of the London Domestic
Mission, April, 1841.




182      THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.
of a wearisome periodicity, and expire in the exclamation,
" Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers
fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation."
This distressing impression might be relieved, if we
could only discriminate, by any rule, between those series
of events which are periodical, and those which are eternal;
— between those changes in the moral world which visibly
complete themselves, and those which at least may be interminable. Change of some kind is the law of the universe:
every thing which God does is progressive: and the present
question is, whether any of his progressions having reference
to human beings appear to run on into infinitude?
Now in seeking for an answer to this question, we are encountered by an apparent law of the organized, or at all
events of the sentient creation, of a truly remarkable character;- a law which, though discernible only in fragments
and interrupted by seeming exceptions, holds with sufficient
consistency to disclose the general method of nature; —
viz., that in proportion to the excellence and dignity of
any form of existence, is it long in coming-to maturity;
that the cycles of things are great, in proportion to their
worth. It is needless to say that there is no other criterion
of the worth of a being than the magnitude of its capacities,
and the number of its functions.
In glancing our eye up the chain of animal races, however difficult it may be to arrange them symmetrically in
an ascending series, the outlines of this law are surely sufficiently obvious. The creatures which, by universal consent,
would be placed at the lower end of the scale, seem to come
into life perfect at once, or, if they grow, to grow only in
quantity: as if of an existence so inferior no part could be
spared as preface to the rest.  The perfect formation of
creatures of a superior order divides itself into several distinguislhable stages: and the greater the number of faculties
and instincts, the longer is the period set apart for the




THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.              183
process of development. The lion has a longer infancy
than the sheep, and the sagacious elephant than either. The
human being, lord of this lower world, is conducted to this
supremacy through a yet more protracted ascent: none of
the creatures that he rules have an infancy so helpless or so
lasting: none furnish themselves so slowly with the knowledge needful for self-subsistence: — as if to him time were
no object, and no elaboration of growth were too great for
his futurity.
Compare also the different faculties and feelings of the
individual human mind. You find them appear in the
order of their excellence; the noblest approaching their maturity the last. Sensation, which belongs to man in common
with a11 other sentient beings, is the endowment of his
earliest days. Memory, which simply prevents experience
from perishing, which furnishes language to the lips, and
preserves the materials of the past for future treatment by
the mindl, ripens next. The understanding, which makes incursions and wins trophies in the field of abstract truth, which
devises measures for the dimensions of space and the successions of time and the great physical movements that
circulate within them, is of later origin: while the great
inventive power which distinguishes all genius, which seems
to sympathize with the devising spirit of the Artificer of
things, and apprehend by natural affinity the most subtle
relations he has established, and anticipate by mysterious
intimacy the future secrets of nature, and from  old and
gross ingredients create the useful, the beautiful, the true,
is the last as it is the rarest and most glorious of intellectual
gifts. And the moral powers, — so far as they can be regarded separately from these, - are seen and felt expanding
later still. The true appreciation of action and character,
the faithful and impartial love of whatever things are pure
and good, the correct and profound estimate of life, the
serenest spirit of duty and of faith, are scarcely found till
most of the lessons of our mortal state have been read, and




184      THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.
the soul has caught some snatches of inspiration from the
"still sad music of humanity."  We may even say, that
perhaps not all our faculties develop themselves here; and
whole classes of emotions and conceptions may wait to be
born beneath other influences. Certain at least it is, that
one who dies in infancy can have little idea of any thing
beyond sensation; that one who falls in childhood cannot know the toils and triumphs of the pure reason;
that one who dies in youth has not yet learned the sense
of power which belongs to the practised exercise of crea.
tive thought, and the sacred peace of disinterested duty
long tried in trembling and in tears. Certain too it is,
that to the open ninjd flesh gleams enter to the last;
strange stirrings of diviner sympathies; waves of thin transparent light flitting through the spaces of the aged mind,
like the aurora of the north across the wintry sky. Even
therefore when "maturity" has been passed, we may die,
peradventure, ignorant of the secret fountains of illumination that may be sequestered in the recesses of our nature:
and when we depart at three-score years and ten, our
experience may be as truly imperfect, - as much a mere
fragment, - as when we lapse in a mortality falsely called
"premature."
From the individual mind turn to the successive developments of society at large; and the same law is perceptible
still; that the superior attributes are of the longest growth.
The most rapid of social changes is found in the progress of
material civilization; and certainly it is the least dignified
element in the general advancement, though essential to the
rest. Of the rapidity with which a new art may be perfected, new channels of commerce filled, a new manufacture
start into gigantic existence, no age or country affords more
striking instances than our own. Let gain supply the adequate motive; and a few years suffice to reclaim the wilderness, and make the harvest wave where before the forest
rose; or to cover the soil with cities, busy with congregated




THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.             185
labor; or to enliven the sea with traffic, where none had
disturbed its solitudes before. How much longer does it
require to penetrate the mass of a community with knowledge; to fill a land with intelligence, than to throng it with
life! Even in the long lives of nations, few have arrived at
that season, when the demand for general instruction naturally appears, and the truth goes forth, that the people are
not a herd of mere animals or instruments of mere wealth,
but beings of rational nature, who have a right to their powers of thought: and even where this demand has arisen,
scarce a people yet has lived long enough to answer it. The
morality of a community cannot be matured till its intelligence is unfolded: in societies, as in individuals, character
cannot set, till reason has blossomed. The pure tastes of
virtue cannot be looked for in those who have never been led
beyond their senses; nor even a wise self-interest be expected, where no habits of foresight have been acquired, and
the intellect has not been taught to respect the future. I
do not even suppose that the moral amelioration of a country immediately follows on the "diffusion of knowledge."
On the spread of education it may: but it must be an education which comprises a principle of sympathy as well as
of instruction; which has a discipline for the heart as well
as for the understanding; which remembers the composite
structure of our nature, and applies knowledge to no more
than its proper office of enlightening the reason, and summons up feelings of right as the fit antagonists to passions
that tend to wrong. But slower still than this is the religious civilization of a country: so that the history of a religion is usually a much longer and vaster one than the
history of any people; a faith embracing many nations,
but no nation many faiths. The most sacred ideas attach
themselves with the greatest tenacity to the mind; entwine
themselves with the principles of action and forms of the
affections; and being most distrustful of change, are most
tardy of improvement.  The history of the past confirms




186      THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.
these positions. Those countries whose progress has been
the noblest and most durable, have attained their eminence
by slow and imperceptible steps. And, on the other hand,
the oriental tribes that have rushed into sudden splendor,
have either stopped with the material or at best the intellectual form of greatness, without rising into the moral and
spiritual: or else, their religion, resting on no adequate substrata of the lower ingredients of civilization, wanted an
element of stability; manifesting the nomadic strength for
conquest and weakness for repose; and becoming enervated
by the arts and opulence and science which it first called
into existence, and then could not command.
Wherever we look then, — to the chain of animal existence, to the faculties of the individual mind, or the stages
of collective society, —we discover distinct traces of the
same general law; that in proportion to the excellence of
any form of being, is its progress tardy and its cycle vast.
Contract the limits of any nature, and its changes become
quick and visible: enlarge them, and its vibrations become
slow and majestic. On the surface of a pool, the wind
raises rapid billows that would agitate an insect; on the
ocean, mighty oscillations that give a frigate time to think.
"Like tide there is in the affairs of men:" and if we think
nobly of the great element on which it rides, if we take
humanity to be no foul and shallow marsh, but a boundless
and unfathomable deep, we shall not marvel that our little
life scarce feels its deliberate and solemn sweep. Why,
even in physical nature, the more complex and extensive
any system of bodies is, the longer is the period of its revolution, and the less perceptible its velocity as a whole. Our
single earth, revolving round the sun, soon comes to the
point from which it started: add the moon to it, and the
three orbs demand a greatly increased duration to return
to the same relative position: collect the planets into a
group, and their cycle of return when every perturbation shall have ha:d its revolution, and they shall look at




THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.            187
each other as they did at first, becomes immense, and,
in our poor conceptions, almost coincides with eternity
itself: and the solar system, as a whole, is travelling on all
the while, astronomers assure us, towards the constellation
Hercules. Such are the natural periods of the moral world,
in proportion to the grandeur of its parts and relations;
such, the tendencies of man and society, considered as a
complex whole: however insensible the parallax of their
progression, they doubtless gravitate incessantly to sonme
distant constellation in the universe of brilliant possibilities,
-to some space in the future where dwell and move forms
of power and of good which it is no fable to believe gigantic and godlike.
In proportion then as we think well of our nature and of
our kind; in proportion as we estimate worthily the task
of Providence in ripening a world of souls, shall we be
reconciled to the tardy and interrupted steps by which the
work proceeds. We shall be content and trustful, though
our personal portion of the work, and even the sum of our
combined endeavors while we live, should be inconspicuously small. Have you resolved, as much as in you lies, to
lessen the number of those who, in this metropolis of the
charities, have none to help them, or lift them from the
darkness wherein they exist and perish unseen? It is good.
Only remember, that if the ministry, which thus dives into
the recesses of human wretchedness, and carries a healing
pity to the body And the soul, which speaks to tempted,
fallen, stricken men, from  a heart that feels their struggle
terrible, yet believes the conquest possible, be really right
and Christian, then its slowness is but the attendant and
symptom of its worth: and to despond because a few years'
labor exhibits no large and deep impression made on the
wickedness and miseries of this great city, would be to
slight the work and forget its dignity. When London,
mother of mighty things, after the travail of centuries,
brings forth woes, how can they be other than giant woes,




188      THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.
which no faint hope, no puny courage, but only the enterprise of high faith, can manacle and lay low?  Surely it is
an unworthy proposal which we sometimes hear respecting
this and other deputed ministries of good, " Well, it is a
doubtful experiment, but let us try it for a few years."  If,
indeed, this means that, in case of too small a measure of
success, we are to do something more and greater; that we
must be content with no niggardly and unproductive operation, but recognize in scanty results a call to stronger efforts;
that, failing a delegated ministry, we will go forth ourselves
into the places of want and sin, and make aggression on
theim with a mercy that can wait no more; in this sense,
let the mission pass for a temporary trial. But if it be
meant that, disappointed in our hopes, we are to give up
all and do nothin g; that, having once set plainly before our
face the beseeching looks of wounded and bleeding humanity stretched upon our plath, we are to "pass by on the
other side," thinking it enough to have "come and seen
where it was," —then I must say that any work, undlertaken in this spirit, has failed already. For my own part,
I should say that were we even to make Moo visible progress,
were we able to beat back the ills with which we contend
by not one hair's breadth; — nay, were they to be seen
actually advancing on us, still no retreat, but only the more
strenuous aggression, would be adumissible. For what purpose can any Christian say that he is here in life, with his
divine intimation of what ought to be, and his sorrowing
perception of what is, if not to put forth a perpetual
endeavor against the downward gravitation of his own
and others' nature? And if in the conquest of evil God
can engage himself eternally, is it not a small thing for us
to yield up to the struggle our three-score years and ten?
Whatever difficulties may baffle us, whatever defeat await
us, it is our business to live with resistance in our will, and
die with protest on our lips, and make our whole existence,
not only in desire and prayer, but in resolve, in speech, in




THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.             189
act, a remonstrance against whatever hurts and destroys in
all the earth. Did we give heed to the counsels of passiveness and despondency, our Christendom, faithless to the
trust consigned to it by Heaven, must perish by the forces
to which it has succumbed. For, between the Christian
faith, teaching the fatherhood of God and the immortality
of men, — between this and the degradation of large portions of the human family, there is an irreconcilable variance, an internecine war, to be interrupted by no parley,
and mitigated by no quarter: and if faith gives up its
aggression upon the evil, the evil must destroy the faith.
If the world were all a slave-market or a gin-palace, what
possible place could such a thing as the Christian religion
find therein? Who, amid a carnival of sin, could believe in
any deathless sanctity? or, through the steams of a besotted
earth, discern the pure light of an overarching heaven? or,
through the moans and dumb anguish of a race, send up a
hymn of praise to the All-merciful? And are there not
thousands already, so environed and shut in, that their
world is little else than this? In proportion as this number is permitted to increase, does Christianity lose its evidence and become impossible. Sensualism and sin cannot
abide the clear angelic look of Christian faith; but if once
that serene eye becomes confused and droops abashed, the
foe starts up in demoniac triumph, and proclaims man to be
a brute, and earth a grave.
As we love then the religion by which we live, let us give
no heed to doubt and fear. In the spirit of hope and firm
endeavor let us go forward with the work we have begun;
undismayed by difficulties which God permits us to hold in
check, but not to vanquish; and stipulating for no rewards
of large success as the conditions of our constancy of service. Our reliance for good results, and our consolation
under their postponement, is in the essentially religious elements of this ministry: were its methods purely economic,
addressing themselves exclusively to the bodily wants of its




190       THE GREAT YEAR OF PROVIDENCE.
objects; or intellectual, working at their self-interest and
sclf-will, -I for one should despair of any return worthy
of much patience. But going forth as we do with that divine and penetrative religion, to whose subduing energy so
many centuries and nations have borne their testimony, and
continuing only that evangelizing process, before which so
much wretchedness and guilt have already yielded, we take
our appointed place in the long history of Christianity, and
attempt a work for which, like Providence, we can afford to
wait. It is human, indeed, to desire some rich success; and
each generation expects to gather and taste the produce of
its own toil: but the seasons of God are eternal; he "giveth
the increase," not for enjoyment only, but for reproduction;
and ripens secretly, beneath the thick foliage of events,
many a fruit of our' moral tillage, for the sake of the little
unnoticed seed, which, dropped on the soil of his providence, shall spread over a future age the shelter of some
tree of life. Be it ours in word to proclaim, in deed to
make ready, the " acceptable year of the Lord."




XX.
CHRIST AND THE LITTLE CHILD.
LUKE XVIII. 17.
VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, WHOSOEVER SHALL NOT RECEIVE THE KINGDOM
OF GOD AS A LITTLE CHILD, SHALL IN NO WISE ENTER THEREIN.
BY the kingdom of God was meant neither the future state
of the righteous, nor the dominion  of Christianity in the
world; but the personal reign of Messiah over a favored
and faithful people, on a renovated earth. The prospect of
this period was, however, to the people of Palestine, nearly
what the hope of heaven is to the Christian: — it embodied
all their ideas of divine privilege and happiness, and, coinciding with their conception of religious existence, became
their great symbol, by which to express the most blessed
system  of relations between the human mind and God.
Into this system they esteemed it their birth-right to enter:
the title and prerogative were in their blood, -the blood
of patriarchs whom they had ceased to resemble, and of
prophets of whose spirit they had none. At the gate of the
kingdom they looked with no meek and far-off desire; they
knelt and knocked with no suppliant air, breathing such
confessions of unworthiness as give security for gratitude;
but turned on it the greedy eye of property, and rushed to
it with intent to "do what they liked with their own," -
so that "the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the
violent would take it by force." Scarcely were they content
with the notion of admission as its subjects; they must be
its lords and administrators too. For them, thought the'




192       CHRIST AND THE LITTLE CHILD.
Pharisees, were its dignities and splendors created, for them
its patronage reserved; and the glorious sovereignty of God
was to be not over them, but by them: so that, in every
proffer of their services to Him, they contemplated, not the
humility of submission, but the pride of command. Before
such it was that Jesus held in his arms a child, gazing on
his face, no doubt, in wonder, not without a pleased look of
trust, and said, "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom
of God as a little child, shall in no wise enter therein."
The occasion was slight and transient; the sentiment is
profound and universal. In no other way could our Lord
have made the irreligion of the Pharisees' temper more
obvious, because nowhere could he have found a more genuine emblem of the pure religious spirit, than in a child.
Not, as will hereafter appear, because a child's heart is
peculiarly devotional; nor because the moral qualities of
early life possess the romantic purity and perfection sometimes ascribed to them; much less because maturity affords
a less fitting scope for the exercise of a holy mind: but
because the relations of infancy resemble the religious relations; the natural conditions of its existence are the same
that are felt by the devout heart; and hence, without any
singularity of merit, the spirit of childhood, acquired by
simple accommodation to the law of its being, is a just representative of the temper which devotion imparts to the
mature. Let us trace some of the analogies between the
spirit of childhood and the spirit of religion.
Religion, it is obvious, can have place only in created and
dependent minds. God cannot be devout: and though we
have a term, viz. "holy," applicable, as an epithet of moral
description, to him in common with good men, the word,
singularly enough, expresses, in reference to the human
mind, precisely the only quality which cannot possibly
attach to the Divine; - " a holy man " meaning one whose
excellence has a religious root,-"a holy God" denoting
the only being in the spiritual universe, whose perfections




CHRIST AND THE LITTLE CHILD.              193
are unsusceptible of the colors of religious emotion. He
who has no higher than himself must be stranger to the
unspeakable reverence that gazes upwards on a goodness
not its own: he who is himself the measure of all that is
divine is unconscious of the presence of a yet diviner: and
though we cannot speak of his moral attributes, without
implying that he respects and loves the right, yet his venerating regards must look for this great idea, notforth, as on
some outward being who furnishes the conception, but
within, where alone is the infinitude that befits the Infinite.
Yet it is not strictly Deity alone whose nature may exclude the possibilities of religion. This peculiarity may
arise without our seeking it at that supreme height. A
mind possessed, not of literal omniscience, but of power
simply equal to its conceptions, a mind absolute within its
own realm, and limited only by its desires, would be incapable of veneration, because unconscious of a superior: and
though he might really live in a narrow ring environed by
the immeasurable deep of things, - so long as he mistook
its circle for the total universe, he would feel, not as dependent, but as God, — lord of his little island in the sea
of things, and ignorant of all beyond. Not till we are
embraced by some necessity, and see its limits closing us in,
can the opportunity and spirit of religion begin. So long
as self-will is the sole law, and sits upon its throne, surrounded by obedient servitors, and in unresisted practice of
command, the relations from which piety springs do not
subsist. The exercise of power will not induce the idea of
obligation, or the temper of submission. It is when we are
struck down by some blow that extorts the cry of dependence, when we feel the pressure of foreign forces like a
weight of darkness on us, when within us moves the strife
that ends sometimes in the triumphs of success, sometimes
in the collapse of weakness, that the heart acknowledges a
relation to that which is above, as well as to that which is
beneath. And even then, though submission is clearly inev13




194        CHRIST AND THE LITTLE CHILD.
itable, not so are the sentiments of religion: for there is
still a question, submit with hate, or submit with love? And
it is the blessed peculiarity of devotion, that it abdicates
self-will, not sullenly, but with joy, has no enmity to the
power that restrains it, but a reverence deep and tender, so
that to feel the controlling presence becomes the prime condition of its peace, and to be stricken of God and afflicted
is better than to be left to itself,:and be at peace. "Let me
alone, and torment me not," is the cry of discontent: "break
me in sorrow, but depart not from me," is the prayer of
piety. Such a suppliant has found the force of compulsion
turned into the law of duty; and, inverting its direction,
instead of crushing to the earth, it lifts him to the skies: if
once he said with deep reluctance, "J1 must, therefore I
will," he has now fused a divine element into that bitter
word, and finds it a glad thing to say, "I ought, therefore I
will."  Ought is the heavenly reading for "mu tst."  From
the iron sceptre of necessity he has forged a weapon of
ethereal temper; wherewith may be won victories more
sublime than all the achievements of physical omnipotence.
Self-will then, so far as it operates, excludes the sentiments of religion; while it is of their very essence to live
reverently and happily under a law not always coinciding
with self-will. It is this which presents us with the first
analogy between the spirit of childhood and the spirit of
religion.
What indeed can be a truer picture of man in creation,
than the position of a child in its own home? How silently,
yet how surely, does the domestic rule control him, dating
his rising and his rest, his going out and coming in, apportioning his duties and his mirth, ordering secretly the very
current of his thoughts, whether it sparkle with gladness,
or overflow with tears! Yet how rarely has he any painful
sense of the constraining force which is every moment on
him! Hemmed in on every side by a power more vigilant
than the most jealous despotism, yet look at his open brow,




CHRIST AND THE LITTLE CHILD.             195
and say, whether creature ever was more free? And why?
Not certainly because childish minds are destitute of selfwill that would seduce them into transgression; but because,
where reverence and love make melody in the heart, the
tempter is charmed and sleeps. Light therefore as the
weight of the circumamlbient atmosphere upon the body,
is the pressure of home duty upon the child; easy by the
constancy and completeness with which it shuts him in;
inseparable from the vital elements of his being. HIis life
is an exchange of obedience for protection: he gives submission, and is sheltered. Folded in the arms of an unspeakable affection, he is screened from the anxieties of
self-care: not yet is he left alone upon the infinite plain of
existence, to choose a path by the dim, sad lustre of his own
wisdom, but is led gently on by the unextinguished lamp
of a father's experience, and the meek starlight of a imother's
love. In strangeness and danger, how close he keeps to the
hand that leads him! In doubt, how he looks up to interpret the eye that speaks to him! In loss and loneliness,
with what cries and tears he sits down to lament his freedoni! He asks, but claims nothing; his momentary frowardness is stilled perhaps by a mere word; and, if not, yet his
spontaneous return, after an interval, to his accustomed
ways, confesses that in the order of obedience is the truest
liberty.
In a like free and natural movement within the limits of
a higher law, in like obedience refreshing because reverential, in like consciousness of a wiser and holier presence,
from whom we withhold nothing, not even ourselves, consists the spirit of true piety: nor can any dwell on earth or
in heaven, finding it a kingdomn of God, but as the loving
child dwells within his home. Unhappily, this temper is
apt to be worn away by the hard attrition of maturer life.
Our human relations are then reversed; we succeed, in
natural course, to habits of command; the pride of power
spoils us; the mental attitudes of reverence become uneasy;




196        CHRIST AND THE LITTLE CHILD.
the eye bent unceasingly down on the petty realm of which
we are lords, omits to look up on the infinite empire of
which we are subjects. And thus might we become shut
up in the dry crust of our self-will, if no embassage of suffering descended, and loosed the fountain of grief. Then
the spirit of early years returns upon good hearts, and they
become ashamed, not of their new submission to the Great
Parent, but of their long estrangement from his abode. A
piety, like that of Christ, thus brings together the characteristic affections of different periods of life, and keeps fresh
the beauty of them all: it puts us back to whatever is blessed
in childhood, without abating one glory of our manhood;
upon the embers of age it kindles once more the early fires
of life, to send their genial glow through the evening chamber of the soul, and shine with playful and mellowed lightthrough its darkened windows, -brightest sign of a cheerful home to the passer-by in storm and rain. By this restoration, let me repeat it, the religious mind loses no one
glory of its manhood: it is not a substitution of passive
meekness for active energy, of a devout effeminacy for
natural vigor. For while the habit of successful rule, taking the lead, is apt to disqualify for submission, and render
the mind restive under necessity, there is nothing in a deep
reverence of soul which encroaches on the capacities for
command. What was it that armed the Maid of Orleans
for field and siege, and enabled her to erect again the prostrate courage of a nation?  What was it that endowed a
Washington with a power, in arms and peace, which no
veterans could break, nor any rival supplant? It was this:
that with them the exercise of command was itself the
practice of obedience; —obedience to a high faith within
the heart, -to a venerated idea of duty and of God; and
authority, thus deprived of its imperiousness and its caprice,
thus moderated to an inflexible justice, and worn with a
divine simplicity, strikes into human observers an awe, a
delight, a trust, which are themselves the highest fruits of




CHRIST AND THE LITTLE CHILD.             197
power. When men perceive that their very rulers are susceptible of obedience, and are following the guidance of
reverential thoughts, it establishes a point of sympathy, and
softens the hardships of submission. What parent knows
not that then only are his orders listened to as oracles, when
they are sent forth, not with the harsh clangor of self-will,
but in the quiet tones that issue from behind the shrine of
duty?
In the construction which I have given to the sentiment
of Christ, it is not necessary to assume that the infant mind
is peculiarly susceptible of religious impressions; or that,
because it is taken as the emblem of the kingdom of heaven,
it must on that account be laboriously and prematurely
crowded with theological ideas: the issue of which would
be, an artificial assumption of states of sentiment, and an
affectation of desires, wholly unnatural and unreal, and
absolutely incapable as yet of any deep root of sincerity.
Except in circumstances of sickness or grief, which prematurely ripen the mind and make its wants anticipate its
years, childhood has little need of a religion, in our sense
of the word; for God has given it, in its very lot, a religion
of its own, the sufficiency of which it were impiety to doubt.
The child's veneration can scarcely climb to any loftier
height than the soul of a wise and good parent: —well
even, if he can distantly, and with wistful contemplation,
scan even that. How can there be for him diviner truth
than his father's knowledge, a more wondrous world than
his father's experience, a better providence than his mother's
vigilance, a securer fidelity than in their united promise?
Encompassed round by these, he rests as in the embrace
of the only omniscience he can comprehend. Nor let this
domestic faith suffer disturbance before its time. It is
enough if he but sees the parents bend with silent awe, or
hears them speak as if they were children too, before a
holier still: this will carry on the ideal gradation of reverence, and show the filmy deep where the steps ascend the




198       CHRIST AND THE LITTLE CHILD.
skies. And then, when the time of free-will is come, and
youth is cast forth from its protection into the bewildering
forces, now fierce and now seductive, of mid-life, religion
comes in, as the just and natural successor to domestic influences; shaping forth, for the heart's shelter in the wild
immensity, the walls of an adamantine Providence, and
spreading over the uncovered head the dome of immortality.
Oh it is thus only that we mortals, in our maturity of energy
and passion, can dwell on earth in purity and peace. By a:
polity of self-interest, and adjustments of promotion, and
agencies of fear, we might no doubt have the world governed as a camp or a prison; but by faith alone can we
dwell in it as a home, and nestle domestically in our allotted
portion of space and time. Taught by Christ, we glance
at the visible creation, once so awful, so full of forces rushing we knew not whither, and involving us in their indomitable speed, - and it becomes the mansion of God's house,
peaceful as a father's abode; the sun that warms us in our
domestic hearth; and the blue canopy roofs us in with unspeakable protection. And as for life and its struggles, its
stormiest conflicts are but the mimic battles, whereby the
spiritual athlete trains himself for a higher theatre; and if
perchance, among the restless multitude that hurry over the
scene, a neighbor should fall, shall I not help him, though
it be his own demon passion that rends him? O child of
my Father, wounded, bleeding, and worn by inward woes,
turn not thy face away! let me lift thee from thy bed of
rock, and stretch thee on the green sod of a pure affection;
for am I not thy brother, stricken in thy stripes, and healed
in thy rest?
This restoration to us of the filial feelings is the main
illustrative point in our Lord's analogy between the spirit
of piety and that of infancy. But there are other characteristics of childhood, which religion renders back to us,
freshened and ennobled.  To the child, the time before him
seems to have no end. It is long before lie essays to maeas



CHRIST AND THE LITTLE CHILD.             199
ure it at all; and when he does, it is only to prove it immeasurable. The next year is as a gigantic bridge that
joins the two eternities; and as for all beyond, it is a
land boundless, safe; verdant as the spring meadow, and
flooded over with gladdest sunshine. The open graves lie
hid among the grass; and the horizon shows not the little
cloud, that shall bring up the overcasting of the heavens.
Let a few years pass, and how does the vast field contract
itself, and the stability of things seem shaken! The mer ry
playmates, whose laugh still rings in our memory, by what
storms have they been shattered; and now wander dispersed, like a shipwrecked crew, whose faithful hearts could
keep together no longer against necessities so sharp! Before the middle of our natural career the wastes of vicissitude become deplorable: nor could any thoughtful man, if
abandoned to physical impressions, feel the great mountain
of life crumbling away beneath him, and see portion after
portion dropping into the abyss on which it seems built, till
but a film separates him too front the gulf, without the chill of
an awe most sad. But this impression of a mournful brevity
in our existence, the spirit of our faith corrects. To the
life which had begun to appear like a process of continual
loss, it adds another which is an everlasting gain; and we
look again upon the future with eyes of childlike joy, seeing
that, as our infant hearts had said, it Aath no end, nor any
grief that can endure. From the cypress-tree beneath whose
shadow we had placed ourselves to weep, we pass on with
lightened step into the paradise of God, where is a rustling
as of whispers of divinest peace, and hills, truly called
eternal, close us round.
011 blest beyond expression are they who, by this spirit of
Christ, call back the freshness of their early years, and shed
it over the wisdom of maturity; who, by attaching the
great and transforming idea of God to every thing, deprive
the humblest existence of its monotony! who hear in the
speech, and behold in the incidents, of every day, somewhat




200       CHRIST AND THE LITTLE CHILD.
that is sacred! For them life has no satiety, disappointment no sting. They bear within them a penetrative power,
which pierces beneath the earthy surface of things, and detects a meaning that is heavenly; enriching common sentiment with profound truth; lifting common duties from the
conventional and the respectable into the holy and divine;
and amid trials of the hour, giving dignity to that which
else were humiliating and mean.




XXI.
THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  OLD  AGE.
PHILEMON 9.
FOR LOVE'S SAKE I RATHER BESEECH THEE, BEING SUCH A ONE AS PAUL
THE AGED.
THE reverence for age is a striking and refreshing feature
in the civilization of ancient and Pagan times. The frequent
traces of it in the literature of Greece and Rome, compared
with the silence of Christian precept on the subject, might
be thought to indicate, that this sentiment owes no obligation to Christianity, and has a better home in the humanities
of nature than in the suggestions of faith. The conclusion,
however, would be wholly unwarrantable; and would never
occur except to those who do not look beyond the letter
into the spirit of a system, and who think to understand a
religion by arithmetical reckoning of its maxims. Every system naturally strengthens most its weakest points.  That
Cicero wrote a treatise upon age, and expended oni it all
the ingenuity of his philosophy, and the graces of his dialogue, proves that he regarded this department of morality
with anxiety and apprehension: nor would Christianity
have left the topic untouched, if its spirit and faith had
not lifted this class of duties beyond the danger of neglect.
A decline of tenderness towards the aged, - mean or even
melancholy sentiments with respect to their infirmities, —
can never arise without scepticism of human immortality,
and a total defection from the Christian mind.
The dignity of age, in the ancient world, was sustained
by many considerations, of mingled expediency and affection,




202        THE CHRISTIANITY OF OLD AGE.
which retain with us but little force. Of how many honors
has the printing-press alone deprived the hoary head! It
has driven out the era, so genial to the old, of spoken wisdom,
and threatens a reign of silence by putting all knowledge
and experience into type. The patriarch of a community
can never be restored to the kind of importance which he
possessed in the elder societies of the world. He was his
neighbor's chronicler; bearing within him the only extant
image of many departed scenes and memorable deeds, and
able to link the dim traditions of the past with the living
incidents of the present. He was their most qualified counr
sellor; his memory serving as the archives of the state, and
supplying many a passage of history illustrative of existing
emergencies, and solving some civic perplexity. He was
their poet; representative of an age already passed from
the actual into the ideal; associate or contemporary of men
whose names have become venerable; and in the oft-repeated
tale of other days, from which time has expelled whatever
was prosaic, weaving the retrospect of life into an epic.
He was their priest; loving to nurture wonder and spread
the sense of mystery, by recounting the authentic prodigies
of his own or his fathers' years, when omen and prophecy
were no dubious things, but sober verities which Providence
had not yet begrudged the still pious earth. From all these
prerogatives he is now deposed, supplanted in his authority
by the journal and the library; whose speechless and impersonal lore coldly, but effectually, supplies the wants once
served by the living voice of elders kindling with the inspiration of the past.
By far other and higher considerations does Christianity
sustain reverential sentiments towards age. In the shape
which they formerly assumed, they were the effects and
marks of an imperfect intellectual civilization: surviving
now, they are a part of the devout humanities diffused by
the spirit of Christ. But for that spirit, every change which
made the old less useful would have made them less revered.




THE CHRISTIANITY OF OLD AGE.             203
But the merely social and utilitarian estimate of human
beings can never become prevalent, so long as faith in the
immortal soul is genuine and sincere, and Jesus is permitted
to teach in his own way the honor that is due to all men.
To him did God give it to be the great foe of all scorn and
negligence of heart; nor are there any tenants of life on
whose lot he has shed a greater sanctity, than on those who
are visibly on the verge of their departure. Let us observe
for a few moments how Christianity teaches the world to
look upon the aged.
Not, certainly, as its worn-out tools, who have done their
work, and are fit only to be flung aside to rust amid worthless things. Not with sordid discontent, as on unwelcome
and tedious guests, that they linger still to consume a hospitality which they will never repay, and keep possession of
sources of enjoyment, on which more vivid appetites are
impatient to enter. For wherever the slightest vestige of
such feelings exists, there can be no remembrance of that
higher field of service, of that nobler and more finished work,
for which time, to its last beat, continues to prepare. So
Epicurean a thought harbors in the low grounds of selfishness and sense, and has never felt the pure breath of faith
and reverence. Is there nothing which can drive us from
this infatuation, and persuade us to look at a human being,
not for what he has, but for what he is?  Is he nothing
then but a pensioner of Mammon, whose pittance is a pleasant sight for greedy eyes? Can we see him decline step by
step to the brink of the dark abyss, till the ground crumbles
beneath him and he slips in, and yet spend all our anxiety
on the dropped cloak he has left behind?
Nor are the mere feelings of instinctive compassion towards weakness and helplessness those with which Christianity
encourages us to look on age. For, these contemplate only
its physical attributes; they virtually deny or overlook all
its claims, except those of its animal infirmities; and show
a mind forgetful of the capacities within, latent perhaps,




204       THE CHRISTIANITY OF OLD AGE.
but yet imperishable, that have t.oiled in a great work, and
are on the threshold of a greater; that can know no eclipse
but that of shame, nor any decrepitude but that of sin.
It has been imagined that religious faith does not like to
draw attention to the decline which precedes, often by years,
the approach of death; that the spectacle of a human being
in ruins terrifies the expectation of futurity, and humbles
the mind with mean suspicions of its destiny. Scepticism,
which delights in all the ill-bodings which can be drawn
from evil and decay, takes us to the corner where the old
man sits; shows us the bent frame, and fallen cheeks, and
closing avenues of sense; points to the palsied head, and
compels us to listen to the drivelling speech, or perhaps the
childish and pitiable cry; and then asks, whether this is the
being so divinely gifted and so solemnly placed, sharer of
the immortality of God, and waiting to embark into infinitude? I answer, - assuredly not: neither in the wrecked
frame, nor in the negation of mind, is there any thing immortal: it is not this frail and shattered bark, visible to the
eye, that is to be launched upon the shoreless sea. The mind
within, which you do not show me, whose indications are
for a time suppressed, -as they are in every fever that
brings stupor and delirium, in every night even that brings
sleep, - the mind, of whose high achievements, whose capacious thought, whose toils and triumphs of conscience and
affection, living friends will reverently tell you,- the mind,
which every moment of God's time for seventy years has
been sedulous to build, and from which the deforming scaffold is about to fall away, -this alone is the principle for
which we claim.immortality. Say not that, because we
cannot trace its operations, it is extinct: perhaps, while
you speak, it may burst into a flame, and contradict you.
For sometimes age is known to wake, and the soul to kindle,
ere it departs; to perforate the shut gates of sense with
sudden light, and gush with lustre to the eye, and love and
reason to the speech; as if to make it evident, that death




THE CHRISTIANITY OF OLD AGE.              205
may be nativity; as if the traveller who had fallen asleep
with the fatigues of the way, conscious that he drew near
his journey's end, and warned by the happy note of arrival,
looked out refreshed and eager through the morning air
for the fields and streams of his new abode. And if any
transient excitement near the close of life can, even occasionally, thus resuscitate the spirit; if some vehement stroke
upon a chord of ancient sympathy can sometimes restore it
in its strengrth, it is there still; and only waits that permanent rejuvenescence which its escape into the infinite may
effect at once.
It is not a little difficult to understand, in what way these
objectors would desire to improve the adjustments of life,
in order to get rid of the grounds of their scepticism.
Would they totally abolish the infirmities of years, and
maintain the energy of youth unto the end?  Then would
there remain no apparent reason for removal or change:
death would have looked tenfold more like extinction than
it does now: and we should assuredly have reasoned, "If
the Divine Father, in his benignity, had intended us to persevere in life at all, he would have left us in peace in this
dear old world."  As it is, there appears, after the decrepitude of age, an obvious need of some such mighty revolution
as death: the mortality of such a body becomes a clear
essential to the immortality of the soul: and our departure
assumes the probable aspect of a simple migration of the
mind, - a journey of refreshment, - a passage to new scenes
of that infinite universe, to a mere speck of which, since we
can discover its immensity, it seems unlikely that we should
be confined.
Or is the demand of a different kind; not for immunity
from bodily decline, but for an exemption of the soul from
its effects? for faculties unconscious of the sinking frame,
— dwelling in a tenement of whose changes they shall be
independent?  And what is this, when you reflect upon it,
but to ask for a total separation of the material from the




206       THE CHRISTIANITY OF OLD AGE.
spiritual element of our nature, -for the very boon which
we suppose to be obtained in death, a disembodied mind?
For, a corporeal frame that did not affect the mental principle, would no more be any proper part of us, than the
limbs of another man or the substance of the sun: its mere
juxtaposition or coincidence in space with our sentient soul
(even could such a thing be truly affirmed) would not mix
it up with our identity. Unless it were the interposed
medium through which we communicated with the external
world, - the appointed pathway of sensation; unless, that
is, we experienced vicissitudes of internal consciousness precisely corresponding to all its external changes, - we should
have no interest in it, and it would have as little concern
with our personality as the clothes or the elements in which
we live. A hand that should leave us affected in the same
way, whether it touched ice or fire; a tongue that should
recognize no difference between food and poison; an eye
that should convey to us the same impression through all
its altering states, -would be unfitted for all its functions,
and be a mere foreign encumbrance upon our life. That
our organization reports instantly, - with a speed that no
magnetic signal can surpass, -to the mind within; that it
works changes in our conscious principle precisely proportionate to its own, and affording a true measure of them, -
is the very attribute which constitutes its exactitude and
perfection. If then it were absurd to wish for limbs that
could undergo exhaustion and laceration without our feeling
them, and nerves that would give no knowledge of fever
or inflammation, it would be no less irrational to desire a
release of the mind from those infirmities of age, which
are but a long fatigue, -life's final disease. All the lights
of perception and emotion flow in upon us through the
colored glass of our organic frame; and however perfect
the power of mental vision may remain, if the windows be
darkened, the radiance will be obscure.
And in the two most marked characteristics of old age, —




THE CHRISTIANITY OF OLD AGE.            207
the obtuseness of immediate perception, and the freshness
of remote memories, — may we not even discern an obvious
intimation of the great future, and a fitting preparative for
its approach? The senses become callous and decline, verging gently to the extinction which awaits them, and in their
darkness permitting the mild lustre of wisdom and of faith
— if it be there — to shine forth and glow; and if not, to
show in what a night the soul dwells without them. And
that the mind should betake itself, ere it departs, with such
exclusive attachment to the past, is surely suitable to its
position. True, the enthusiastic devotion of an awed spectator, standing near to say farewell, naturally takes the
opposite direction, and steals before the pilgrim to his home,
and wonders that the old man's talk can linger so around
things gone by. But is it not that already the thoughts
fall into the order of judgment, and practise the incipient
meditations of heaven? In that world of which we have
no experience, we can at first have no anticipation: and in
the place whither we go for retribution, we must begin with
retrospect. All things and thoughts, all passions and pursuits, must live again: stricken memory cannot withhold
them: there is a divination of conscience, at which their
ghosts must rise, to haunt or bless us. And when the old
man incessantly reverts to years that had receded into the
far distance, and finds scenes that had appeared to vanish
come back even from his boyhood and stand around him
with preternatural distinctness, when ancient snatches of
life's melodies thrill through his dreams, and the faces of
early friends look in upon him often, the preparation is significant. He is gathering his witnesses together, making
ready the theatre of trial, and collecting the audience for
judgment. These are they that were with him in his manifold temptations, and can tell him of his victory or his fall;
that exercised such spirit of duty as was in him; whom his
selfishness injured, or his fidelity blessed. Remembrance
has broken the seals of its tombs; its sainted dead come




208       THE CHRISTIANITY OF OLD AGE.
forth at the trump of God within the soul, and declare the
tribunal set.
With emotions then far different from the meanness of
animal compassion, and the coldness of doubt, does the spirit
of Christ teach the world to look on age. The veneration
for it which our religion inspires, comes not from the past
alone, but rather from the future. In any view indeed, the
long-travelled and experienced mortal, in whose mind alone
survive the pictures of many vanished scenes, and the landscape of time sleeps in true perspective, must be regarded
with strong interest. If life were but a brief reality, that
fleetly passed into a shadow and nothingness, the point of
vanishing would not be without its solemn grandeur. But
with how profound a reverence must we look on its last
stage, as entering the margin of God's eternity; as the landmark of earth's boundary-ocean, fanned already by the
winds, and feeling the spray, of the infinite!
Nor are the feelings less humanizing and holy with which
Christianity teaches the aged disciple to regard the world
and himself. He leaves it, - if he be a disciple, - not with
censoriousness, but with faith; knowing that, with all its
generations, the earth, as well as his own mind, is a thing
young in the years of eternal Providence:  He has too large
a vision to be readily cast down about its prospects. If its
social changes are not to his desire, if that for which he
battled as for the true and good seems even to be retreating
from his hopes, and questionable novelties to be deceiving
the hearts of men, —yet he sinks without despair, and
waves, as he retires, a cheerful and affectionate adieu. He
has too vivid a sense of the brevity of a human life, to
despond at any vicissitudes that may occur, any tendencies
that may disclose themselves, within such space. He freely
blesses God, that when, from its altered ways, the world has
become no longer congenial to him, he is permitted to leave
it; and he can rejoice that those who remain behind behold
it with different eyes: for he recognizes and admires God's




THE CHRISTIANITY OF OLD AGE.            209
law, that those who are to live in the world shall not be out
of love with it. From the mental station which he occupies
it certainly seems as if twilight were gathering fast and leading on the night: and so for two things he is thankful; that
the vesper-bell flings its note upon his ear, and calls him to
prayer and rest; and that on others of his race, who gaze
into the heavens from a different point, the morning seems
to be rising, and its fresh breeze to be up, and the Inatin
rings its sumnlons:- for always there must be prayer; only
at dawn it leads to labor, and at eve to rest. Nor does he
leave the world which has been his locality so long, as a
scene in which he has no further interest. Possibly, even,
its future changes may not be hidden from his view: and at
all events his sympathies dwell and will dwell there still:
and all that most truly constitutes his being, the work he
has done, the wills he has moved, the loving thoughts he
has awakened, remain behind; enter the great structure of
human existence, and share its perpetuity.
The aged, ere they depart, are able to report to us something of the exactitude of the divine retribution. The justice of God does not always delay and postpone its sentence
till it is inaudible to the living. There are some of our
human works that " go before us to judgment;" and the
verdict may be apprehended by every attentive mind. Our
nature does not all die at the same moment; but the animal
elements begin to vanish, while the moral still remain. And
truly those in whom the lower self has been permitted to
gain a terrible ascendency, those whose life has been in obedience to the precept " eat and be filled," meet their dreary
recompense in age: one part of their moral probation is
visibly and awfully brought to its close; and in the miseries
of a bllank and chafing mind, a querulous imbecility of temnper, a heart unrefreshed by a warm sympathy, every eye
may discern the issue. But when the soul has been faithful
to the higher purposes of existence; when there has been a
benign observance of the moral relations which give dignity
14




210       THE CHRISTIANITY OF OLD AGE.
to life; when the sympathies of kindred and neighborhood
and society, the exercise of intelligent thought, the practice
of unostentatious benevolence, the tranquil maintenance of
faith and trust, have engaged and consecrated the years of
best vigor, - there, even though the nobler fires of nature
grow languid and decline, the mild light of a good heart
shines to the last, cheerful to all observers, and casts no faint
illumination on past and future. The peace of God full
often survives the lapse of meaner comforts, and drives
away every trace of fretfulness from age and terror from
death; leaving simply the rest incident to the completion
of a good and worthy fight; and preparing all hearts to
hope for a quiet migration to a better country, even a heavenly. Calm as this, after a fiery career, was the retirement
of " such a one as Paul the aged," when " the time of his
departure was at hand."




XXII.
NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES.
ECCLESIASTES VII. 17.
WHY SHOULDST THOU DIE BEFORE THY TIME?
THE only resource for a man without faith is to be also
without love; which indeed, by the compassion of Heaven,
he will naturally be. For scarcely can any thing be more
serious, than the aspect which life assumes, when any considerable portion of it lies in retrospect, beneath an affectionate eye that can discern no more than its visible and
palpable relations. A few years of unconscious gain, followed by a long process of' conscious loss, complete the
story of our being here. The best shelter that the world
affords us is the first, - the affections into which we are
born, and which are too natural for us to know their worth,
till they are disturbed; -for constant blessings, like constant pressures, are the last to be discovered. During the
whole period of childhood, when the most rapid and astonishing development of vitality and acquisition of power are
going on, the wonder and the bliss are hidden from our
eyes; gratitude is scarcely possible; and the delighted gaze
of the contemplating spectator is unintelligible. We wake
up at our first grave affliction; our blindness is removed by
pain; the film is purified by tears, and alas! the moment
sorrow gives us sight, the good that we behold is gone.
And thenceforth we love knowingly, and lose constantly;
and after dreaming that all things were given to us, or were
even by nature our own, we find them only lent, and see in
our remaining years the undecyphered list of their recall.




212          NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES.
Standing on the shore which bounds the ocean of the past,
we see treasure after treasure receding in the distance, or
thrown into that insatiable waste, on whose surface they
make a momentary smile of light, then leave the gulf in
darkness. Into that deep, year after year has sunk, no less
rich than this* in spoils from the human heart. Our fathers
and our early homes, the dream of our first friendships, the
surprise of new affections, and all the delicious marvels of life
yet fresh, have vanished there. And soon, when we have
been the losers long enough, we shall become the lost; and
vainly struggle with the sweep of the unfathomable sea.
Whether death, which treads closely on the steps of life
upon our world, shall ever absolutely overtake it, and finally
stop the race of beauty and of love, which now is perpetually begun afresh; - whether the chills of winter, transient
now, will become eternal, and suppress for ever the flowers
which can yet steal out again on the bosom of the earth; —
whether the frosts of mortality shall hereafter arrest the lifestream of our race, and dismiss us to that extinction which
has fallen on other tribes before us; — and the clouds fly, and
the shrill hail fall over a naked world, — we know not. But
to us, in succession, all things die. The past contains all
that time has rendered dear and familiar; and that passes
silently away: the future contains whatever is cold and
strange: and its mysteries come swiftly on us.
Yet in this melancholy retrospect, natural as it is to our
affections, there is a great deal of illusion, which is the occasion of half its sadness. When we go out of ourselves
and our affairs, and seize a higher point of view, we see
that this world is no such collection of perishable things,
after all: that as God lives ever in it, he gathers around
him all that is most like him, and suffers nothing that is excellent to die. There are things in his world which are
not meant to perish; — works which survive the workmen,
and multiply blessings when they are gone, and which make
* This Discourse was preached on the last day of the year.




NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES.                213
all who lend a faithful hand to them, part of the husbandry
of God, laborers with him on that great field of time, whose
culture and whose harvests are everlasting. The pains we
spend upon our mortal selves, will perish with ourselves; but
the care we give out of a good heart to others, the efforts of
disinterested duty, the deeds and thoughts of pure affection,
are never lost: they are liable to no waste; and are like a
force that propagates itself for ever, changing its place but
not losing its intensity. In short, there is a sense in which
nothing human ever perishes: nothing, at least, which
proceeds from the higher and characteristic part of a
man's nature; nothing which comes of his mind and conscience; nothing which he does as a subject of God's moral
law. His good and ill live after him, an endless blessing
or a lasting curse; a consideration this which gives dignity
to the humblest duty, and enormity to careless wrong. I do
not now refer to the consequences of conduct in a future
life; but to a certain perpetual and indestructible influence
it must have upon this world. It is a mistake to suppose
that any service rendered to mankind, any interesting relation of human life, any exhibition of moral greatness, even
any peculiar condition of society, can ever be lost: their
frrm only disappears; their value still remains, and their
office is everlastingly performed.  Material structures are
dissolved, their identity and functions are gone. But mind
partakes of the eternity of the great Parent Spirit; and
thoughts, truths, emotions, once given to the world, are
never past: they exist as truly, and perform their duty as
actively, a thousand years after their origin, as on their
day of birth. I would endeavor to illustrate this in some
separate instances.
(1.) The acts of our individual minds are never lost.
Every human deed of right or wrong fulfils two offices:
it produces certain immediate extrinsic results; and it
contributes to form some internal disposition or affection.
Every act of wise benevolence goes forth, and alleviates a




214          NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES.
suffering; it goes within, and gives intenser force to the
slirit of mercy. Every act of vindictiveness goes forth and
creates a woe; it goes within, and inflames the diseases of
the passions. In the one relation, it may be momentary
and transient; in the other, permanent and beyond arrest.
In the one, its dealings are with pain and physical ill; in
the other, with goodness or with guilt, and the solemn
determinations of the human will. And inasmuch as physical ill is temporary, while moral agencies are eternal
(for death is the end of pain, but where is the end of sin?)
inasmuch as a disinterested and holy mind is the sure
fountain of healing and of peace, —and a heart torn by
passions fierce or foul is at once the seat and source of a
thousand miseries, — no particular natural good or evil can
be compared in importance with the eternal distinctions
between right and wrong; nor any effect of an action be
ranked in magnitude with its influence on human affections
and character. The great office of virtue (we are told) is
to bless mankind: very well; but then the greatest blessing
is in the increase of virtue.  The essential character therefore of every choice we make is to be found in its tendency
to promote or to impair the purity and good order, the
generosity and moral dignity, of the mind: and this element
of our actions can never die; but survives in our present
selves, more truly than the juices of the soil in the leaves
and blossoms of a tree.  Such as we are, we are the offspring of the past; "the child is father to the man;" our
present chlaracters are the result of all that we have desired
nlid done; every deed has contributed something to the
structure, and exists there as literally as the stone in the
pyramid on whose courses it was once laid. The action
of the moral agent does not consist in the contraction of a
muscle or the movement of a limb, - and this is all that
is really transitory, -but in the dispositions of the mind,
which are indelible. Our guilt as well as our goodness, once
contracted, is ineffaceable. No power within the circuit of




NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES.              215
God's providence can blot out an idea from the pages of
the secret heart, or cancel a force of desire that has once
gone forth. How vain then is the effort of thought to fly
from the deed of sin, the moment it is finished, -the hurry
of conscience to reach a place of greater peace, - the eager
whisper of self-love that says, the lapse is over, and a firmer
march of duty may be forthwith begun! If the foul thing
were cemented to the hour that witnessed its commission,
you might escape it; but being in the mind, you have it
with you still, however fast you fly, and however little you
look behind. Do you imagine that, the evil passion having
spent its energy, you will be safer in its weakness now? It
is the falsest of all the sophistries of sin! A moral impulse,
unlike a physical force, is not exhausted, but augmented,
by every effort it puts forth; not only does it part with no
portion of its power, - but it receives a fresh intensity.
There still does it abide, more ready than ever to come forth
and assert itself with strength. Every one's present mind
is, in truth, the standing memorial, distinct and legible to
the eye of God, of all that he has willed in time past: the
conduct and feelings of to-day are the resultant of ten thousand forces of previous volition; nor would any act remain
the same if any one of its predecessors were withdrawn or
changed. Even the silent and hidden currents of desire and
thouglht leave their traces visible; as waves in the deeper
sea are discovered, when the waters ebb, by the ripple-mark
congealed upon the sand. Thus the acts of our will do not
and cannot perish: they then truly begin to live, when
they are past; for then only do they become deposits in our
memory, and contributions to our affections; then only does
their internal and mental history commence, and they put
forth that viewless attraction by which, more than before,
the heart gravitates towards good or ill. There is consolation as well as terror in this thought. No strife of a good
heart, no performance of a kind hand, has been without
effect. Not in vain have been the struggles, however trivial




216         NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES.
they seem, of our early conscience, the dreams of a departed
enthusiasm, - the high ambition of our untried virtue: these
things are with us always, even unto the end: in our colder
maturity, even in the frosts of age, their central glow is
with our nature secretly, and relaxes unobserved the binding crust of years. Perishable deeds and transient emotions
are the materials wherewith God has given us to build up
the eternal character; and to raise the tower by which we
escape the floods of death, and, with no impious intent,
climb the mansions of the skies. Steadily must the structure
rise, like the walls of the persecuted Jerusalem of old, at
which some toiled while others watched. Unceasingly we
must build; parched, it may be, beneath the sultry sun,
faint and sinking but for draughts from the " wells of salvation; " on the side of the desert, it may be, where we should
shudder at the tempest's moan, but for sweet songs of Zion
that float to us from within; —exposed, it may be, to
treacherous and banded foes, whose surprises would terrify,
but for the trusty weapon and the well-trained arm; — at
midnight and alone, it may be, cheerless but for the eyes
of Heaven that look upon our toil, and the streaks of the
east, which promise us a day-spring.. Ye must build, over
the valley and on the rock, till a wall of impregnable protection is thrown around the sanctuary within, and in securest peace ye can go in and out the temple of God's spirit;
-" which temple ye are."
(2.) The social and domestic relations whose loss we
mourn do not really perish, when they seem to die.
Those relations, it is needless to say, do not consist in the
mere juxtaposition of so many human beings. A certain
number of animal lives, that are of prescribed ages, that
eat and drink together, and that sleep under the same roof,
by no means make a family. Almost as well might we say
that it is the bricks of a house that make a home. There may
be a home in the forest or the wilderness; and there may be
a family, with all its blessings, though half its members be in




NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES.                217
foreign lands, or in another world. It is the gentle memories,
the mutual thought, the'desire to bless, the sympathies that
meet when duties are apart, the fervor of tihe parents' prayers,
the persuasion of filial love, the sister's pride and the brother's
benediction, that constitute the true elements of domestic
life, and sanctify the dwellings of our birth. Abolish the
sentiments which pervade and animate the machinery and
movements of our social being, and their whole value obviously disappears. The objects of affection are nothing to
us but for the affection which they excite; it is for this that
they exist; this removed, their relation loses its identity;
this preserved, it undergoes no essential change. Friends
are assigned to us for the sake of friendship; and homes for
the sake of love; and while they perform these offices in
our hearts, in essence and in spirit they are with us still.
The very tears we shed over their loss are proofs that they
are not loss; for what is grief, but love itself restricted to
acts of memory and longing for its other tasks, - imprisoned
in the past, and striving vainly to be free? The cold hearts
that never deeply mourn lose nothing, for they have no stake
to lose: the genial souls that deem it no shame to weep,
give evidence that they have, fresh and living still, the sympathies, to nurture which our human ties are closely drawn.
God only lends us the objects of our affection; the affection
itself he gives us in perpetuity. In this best sense, instances
are not rare in which the friend or the parent then first
begins to live for us, when death has withdrawn him from
our eyes, and given him over exclusively to our hearts: at
least I have known a mother among the sainted blest, sway
the will of a thoughtful child far more than her living voice;
brood with a kind of serene omnipresence over his affections
and sanctify his passing thought by the mild vigilance of
her pure and loving eye. And what better life for him
could she have than this?  Nay, standing as each man does
in the centre of a wide circumference of social influences,
recipient as he is of innumerable impressions from  the




218         NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES.
mighty human heart, his inward being may be justly said
to consist far more in others' lives than in his own; without
them and alone, he would have missed the greater part of
the thoughts and emotions which make up his existence;
and when he dies, he carries away their life rather than his
own. He dwells still below, within their minds: their
image in his soul (which perhaps is the best element of their
being) passes away to the world incorruptible above.
(3.) All that is noble in the world's past history, and
especially the minds of the great and good, are, in like
manner, never lost.
The true records of mankind, the human annals of the
earth, are not to be found in the changes of geographical
names, in the shifting boundaries of dominion, in the travels
and adventures of the baubles of royalty, or even in the
undulations of the greater and lesser waves of population.
We have learned nothing, till we have penetrated far beyond these casual and external changes, which are of interest only as the effect and symptoms of the great mental
vicissitudes of our race. History is an account of the past
experience of humanity; and this, like the life of the individual, consists in the ideas and sentiments, the deeds and
passions, the truths and toils, the virtues and the guilt, of
the mind and heart within. We have a deep concern in preserving from destruction the thoughts of the past, the leading conceptions of all remarkable forms of civilization; the
achievements of genius, of virtue, and of high faith. And
in this, nothing can disappoint us: for though these things
may be individually forgotten, collectively they survive, and
are in action still. All the past ages of the world were
necessary to the formation of the present; they are essential
ingredients in the events that occur daily before our eyes.
There is no period so ancient, no country so remote, that it
could be cancelled without producing a present shock upon
the earth. One layer of time has Providence piled up upon
another for immemorial ages: we that live stand now upon




NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES.              219
this " great mountain of the Lord; " were the strata below
removed, the fabric and ourselves would fall in ruins. Had
Greece, or Rome, or Palestine, been other than they were,
Christianity could not have been what it is: had Romanism
been different, Protestantism could not have been the same,
and we might not have been here this day. The separate
civilizations of past centuries may be of colors singly indiscernible; but in truth, they are the prismatic rays which,
united, form our present light. And do we look back on
the great and good, lamenting that they are gone?  Do we
bend in commemorative reverence before them, and wish
that our lot had been cast in their better days? What is
the peculiar function which heaven assigns to such minds,
when tenants of our earth? Have the great and the good
any nobler office than to touch the human heart with deep
veneration for greatness and goodness?-to kindle in the
understanding the light of more glorious conceptions, and
in the conscience the fi'es of a holier virtue?  And that we
grieve for their departure, and invoke their names, is proof
that they are performing such blessed office still, -that this,
their highest life for others, compared with which their personal agency is nothing, is not extinct. Indeed, God has so
franled our memory that it is the infirmities of noble souls
which chiefly fall into the shadows of the past; while whatever is fair and excellent in their lives, comes forth from the
gloom in ideal beauty, and leads us on through the wilds
and mazes of our mortal way. Nor does the retrospect,
thus glorified, deceive us by any fallacy; for things present
with us we comprehend far less completely, and appreciate
less impartially, than things past. Nothing can become a
clear object of our thought, while we ourselves are in it:
we understand not our childhood, till we have left it; our
youth, till it has departed; our life itself till it verges to its
close; or the majesty of genius and holiness, till.we look
back on them  as fled. Each portion of our human experience becomes in succession intelligible to us, as we quit it




220         NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES.
for a new point of view. God has stationed us at the intersecting line between the known and the unknown: he has
planted us on a floating island of mystery, from which we
survey the expanse behind in the clear light of experience
and truth, and cleave the waves, invisible, yet ever breaking, of the unbounded future. Our very progress, which is
our peculiar glory, consists in at once losing and learning
the past; in gaining fresh stations from which to take a
wiser retrospect, and become more deeply aware of the
treasures we have used. We are never so conscious of the
succession of blessings which God's providence has heaped
on us, as when lamenting the lapse of years; and are then
richest in the fruits of time, when mourning that time steals
those fruits away.




XXIII.
WHERE IS THY GOD?
EZEKIEL VIII. 10-12.
80 I WENT IN AND SAW; AND BEHOLD EVERY FORM OF CREEPING THINGS
AND ABOMINABLE BEASTS, AND ALL THE IDOLS OF THE HOUSE OF
ISRAEL, PORTRAYED UPON THE WALLS ROUND ABOUT; AND THERE STOOD
BEFORE THEM SEVENTY MEN OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL,- WITH EVERY
MAN HIS CENSER IN HIS HAND; AND A THICK CLOUD OF INCENSE WENT
UP. THEN SAID HE UNTO ME, SON OF MAN, HAST THOU SEEN WHAT THE
ANCIENTS OF THE HIOUSE OF ISRAEL DO IN THE DARK, EVERY MAN IN
THE CHAMBERS OF HIS IMAGERY?
To a wise man there is. no surer mark of decline in the spirit
of a people, than the corruption of their language, and the
loss of meaning from their highest and most sacred words.
In the affairs of government, of morals, of divinity, we retain
the phrases used by our forefathers in Shakspeare's time:
but it is impossible to notice the dwindled thought which
they frequently contain, without feeling that the currency
struck for the commerce of giant souls has been clipped
to serve the traffic of dwarfs. Observe, for example, the
lowered meaning of the word RELIGION. If you ask, in
these days, what a man's religion is, you are told something
about the place he goes to on a Sunday, or the preacher he
objects to least; of his likings and dislikings, his habits and
opinions, his conventional professions. But who, from all
this, would draw any inference as to his character?  You
know where to find him, and how he looks; but have obtained no insight into what he is. Yet, can it be doubted
that if we knew his religion in the true and ancient sense,
we should understand him perfectly? —should see him, as




222             WHERE IS THY GOD?
God alone can see him now, stripped of the disguises that
hide him even from himself, and with the vital pulse itself
of thought and act laid bare to view? The divine Omniscience, in relation to our nature, may be said to consist in
nothing else than a discernment of our several religions.
Not indeed that in his infinite reason he knows any thing
about Churchmen, and Methodists, and Quakers; or distiniguishes the silent meeting from the organ's pomp; or
takes account of vestments black or white. These things
only denote what a man will call himself when he is asked;
they refer, even when most sincere, to nothing that has
necessarily any deep seat within the character; only to
certain emblems, either in conception or in outward habit,
adopted for the expression of affections the most various in
direction and intensity. But whoever can so look into my
heart as to tell whether there is any thing which I revere:
and, if there be, what thing it is; he may read me through
and through, and there is no darkness wherein I may hide
myself. This is the master-key to the whole moral nature;
what does a man secretly admire and worship?  What
haunts him with the deepest wonder? What fills him with
most earnest aspiration?  What should we overhear in the
soliloquies of his unguarded mind? This it is which, in
the truth of things, constitutes his religioz; — this, which
determines his precise place in the scale of spiritual ranks;
— this, which allies him to hell or heaven; —this, which
makes him the outcast or the accepted of the moral affections of the Holiest. Every man's highest, nameless though
it be, is his " living God:" while, oftener than we can tell,
the being on whom he seems to call, whose history he
learned in the catechism, of whom he hears at church, —
with open ear perhaps, but with thick, deaf soul, - is his
dead God. It is the former of these that gives me his genuine characteristic: that uppermost term in his mind discloses
all the rest. Lift me the veil that hides the penetralia of his
worship, let me see the genuflexions of his spirit, and catch




WHERE IS THY GOD?                 223
the whiff of his incense, and look in the face the image at
whose feet he is prostrate; and thenceforth I know him well;
can tell where to find him in the world; and divine the temper
of his home. The classifications produced by this principle
are not what you will meet with in any " Sketch of all religions."  Their lines run across the divisions of historical
sects, wholly regardless of their separations: but as they are
drawn by the hand of <nature and of conscience, rather than
by that of pedants and of bigots, to study them is to gain
insight into divine truth, instead of wandering through the
catalogue of human errors. Let us endeavor then to distinguish between real and pretended religion, by adverting
to the several chief aims that manifestly preside over human
life.
Of many a man you would never hesitate to say, that his
chief aim was to obtain ease, or wealth, or dignity. These
are the objects manifestly in front of him, and, like some
huge magnetic mass, drawing his whole nature towards
them. The fact is apparent, not altogether from the amount
of time which he devotes to them; for often the thing dearest and most sacred to the heart may fill the fewest moments,
and, though providing the whole spirit, may scarcely touch
the matter, of our days; nor even from the topics of his
talk; for there are those who, in conversation, seek rather
to learn what is most foreign to them, than to speak what
is most native; but from certain slight though expressive
symptoms, hard to describe in detail, yet not easily missed
in their combination. The engagements to which he takes
with the heartiest relish, the sentiments that raise his quickest response, the occasions that visibly call him out and
shake him free, the moments of his brightening eye, and
genial laugh, and flowing voice, leave on us an irresistible
impression of his sincerest tastes and deepest desires. And
above all does he reveal these, when we disCover the persons
who most occupy his thoughts; in whom he sees what he
would like to be or to appear, and whose lot or life he feels




224             WHERE TS THY GOD?
it would be an ascent to gain. Judged by signs infallible
as these, how many are there, surrendered to a low epicurean life! - who know no higher end than to be comfortable or renowned! -whose care is for what they may have,
and not for what they might be! If they achieve any real
work, it is only that they may reach its end and take their
ease. If they do a deed of public justice, it is as much due
to the publicity as to the justice. If they are detected in
a charity, it is with the smallest possible mercy of heart,
and is performed as a slothful riddance of uneasiness, or a
creditable compliance with convention. If they pray not
to be led into temptation, it is only the temptation to imprudence and social mistake; if to be delivered from evil,
it is but the evil of trouble or derision. To make the largest
use of men, rendering back the smallest amount of service, to
reap the greatest crop from the present, and drop the scantiest
seeds for the future, is their true problem of existence. They
never rush on toil and struggle that bring no price; or
stretch their reason till it aches in search of truth; or crucify their affections in redemption of human wrongs; or
spend their reputation and their strength in rousing the
public conscience from its sleep. Their whole faculties are
apprenticed to themselves. Unconscious of a heaven above
them and around, they live and die on principles purely
mercantile; and the book of life must be a common ledger,
if their names are written on its page.
It is needless at present to settle the comparative rank of
these three seducing aims; else we might decide, perhaps,
that, as a primary object of pursuit, ease is more ignoble,
and reputation less, than wealth, which excites the more
prevailing desire. The great thing to be observed is common to them all. They do not carry a man out of himself,
or show him any thing higher. He is the centre in which
they all terminate: he spins upon his own axis in the dark,
ineffectually shaping and rounding his particular world, but
wheeling round no glorious orb, feeling no celestial light,




WHERE IS THY GOD?                  225
flushed with no colors of morn and eve, and barren of seasonal foliage and fruit.  What is his habitual day-dream?
What the conception that moves before him in secret vision,
and strives for realization?  Is it the thought of the heroes
and the saints of history? or of friends at his right hand,
whose noble spirits shame his weakness?  Is it not simply
the image of himself easy, himself rich, hilmself grandz and
fatmous?  This one corruplting picture is the substitute
in him for the whole pantheon of great souls; for sages,
prophets, martyrs, and whatever of beauty and sanctity has
ever dwelt in earth or heaven.  His whole system of desires
is mere personal greecd: he stands upon his own flat, without
an aspiration. Nothing has a divine right to him, but he
has a human appetite for all things. He worships nothing;
he serves nothing: if God were away and heaven were not,
it would make no difference to him; he would never miss
them: his life is Godless! he is an atheist.
This, in fact, is the strict and proper meaning of the word,
atheism; the absence from a man's mind of any object of
worship; so that he is left with nothing above him, anll
lives wholly to himself. Hence this term, though often
applied unjustly to very different states of mind, is properly
one of odium: for it is impossible to contemplate such a
condition of character without strong aversion; or to conceive of its production without a large operation of moral
and voluntary causes. We may observe too, that the effects
of this irreligion are as disorganizing in society, as they are
debasing to the individual. It wholly dissolves the great
tie which binds men together, and is alone capable of forming them into a fraternity, - the sentiment of mutual reverence.  Do you say, that among the servants of wealth or
of fame also this sentiment has place, because he who has
little is found to admire him who has more, and to wait
upon him with vast humility?  Ite does no such thing. He
admires the lot, but cares nothing for the man; and this
combination of positive and negative feelings, - aspiration
15




226              WHERE IS THY GOD?
after another's state without any love for the person in it,
- is not honor, but simply envy. And as for the so-called
humility of the poor menial in this career, in the presence
of his worldly superior, the quality has no right to a moral,
much less to a Christian name. It is mere unmanliness
arising from the failure of self-respect as well as of mutual
reverence: human attributes are wholly emptied out of the
relation, and human possessions alone remain to look one
another in the face; and the men, losing all higher significance, are left in each other's presence, as two degrees of
comparison in the vocabulary of Mammon. Nay, in many
a one, this seeming subserviency is even worse; it is an
admiration of himself as he is to be, and no less full of pride
than it is of meanness. To mistake this servility for the
lowly dignity of worship, is to confound the slouch of
pauperism touching the hat, with the uplifted look of Mary
sitting at the feet. And what kind of community would
that be, whose moral composition was from these two elements, universal self-seeking, and general dearth of mutual
reverence?  Go to the heart of the matter, and every man
would be a centre of repulsion, held to his particular sphere
of human atoms by an external frame-work of precarious
interests; instead of taking his place in a system of natural
attractions, which would endure though the world itself
were to sink away.
Beyond this stage of character, which I have described
by the word atheism, the smallest step introduces us to
some form of religion.  There is no further condition of
mind, that is not marked by the consciousness of something
spiritually higher; something that has divine right over us;
something therefore which, to say the least, stands for us
in the place of God. Still, ere we reach the limit of pure
and perfect religion, which is that of Christ, there is an
amplle rainge of error and imperfection, which may be designated by the general name of idcolatry. This offence against
truth is far from being an obsolete historical affair, that is




WHERE IS THY GOD?                 227
gone out with the Old Testament, and of no concern except
to missionaries now. It abounds (taking the strictest and
most philosophic meaning of the term) in every Christian
land, and every Christian sect; though it certainly constitutes
a partial apostasy from the true faith of Christendom. To
make this plain, let me ask you to reflect, what is the real
essence of idolatry, and how we are to distinguish it from
pure religion.
Some will affirm, that true worship addresses itself direct
to the living God himself; appearing before him face to face,
and discerning him as he is in his own nature; while idolatry interposes, before the eye of the body or the mind, some
image, which is not God, but only represents him.
It is, however, impossible to rest the distinction thus,
upon the absence of symbol in one case, and its presence in
the other; for it is equally found in both, and is wholly indispensable to religion itself. On these terms, we should all
(not men alone, but angels too) be idolaters alike. For God,
being infinite, can never be fully comprehended by our minds:
whatever thought of him be there his real nature must still
transcend: there will yet be deep after deep beyond, within that light ineffable; and what we see, compared with
what we do not see, will be as the rain-drop to the firmament. Our conception of him can never correspond with
the reality, so as to be without omission, disproportion, or
aberration; but can only represent the reality, and stand for
God within our souls, till nobler thoughts arise and reveal
themselves as his interpreters. And this is precisely what
we mean by a symbolical idea. The devotee who prostrates
himself before a black stone, — the Egyptian who in his
prayers was haunted by the ideal form of the graceful ibis
or the monstrous sphinx, —the theist who bends beneath
the starry porch that midnight opens to the temple of the
universe, -the Christian who sees in heaven a spirit akin to
that which divinely lived in Galilee, and with glorious pity
died on Calvary; - all alike assume a representation of Him




228             WHERE IS THY GOD?
whose immeasurable nature they can neither compass nor
escape. And the only question is, whether the conception
they portray upon the wall of their ideal temple, is an
abominable idol, or a true and sanctifying mediatorial
thought.
Others, who admit the necessity of representative ideas
in religion, will say that idolatry consists in making the
symbol visible, while true religion leaves it mental and
invisible.
Yet it could hardly be deemed impossible for a blind man
to be an idolater: superstition and sin are not to be escaped
through mere physical privation. And if an image, present
to the mind's eye alone, suffices to constitute an idol, then
nothing remains for true religion, but to think in mere
abstractions; to worship, not a thinking, ruling, loving,
holy _Being, but thought, and power, and love, and holiness
themselves; to adore, not a divine Architect of creation,
but the bare skill itself of the architectulre; to avoid all
approach to impersonation of divine attributes, and to fly,
as from a sin, before the uprising of a concrete and a livinlg
God. Yet, I need not say, this is an impossible and untenable state of mind: the aim at it is that which constitutes a
lifeless pantheism; and the mere poetical contemplation of
nature does not deepen into the adoring service of God, till
we feel creation and life to be at the disposal of a present
Mind, a personal and moral Will, with absolute love of good
and perfect abhorrence of evil, with distinct and self-directing activity, to which the laws, the order, the beauty, the
scale, the progression, the issues of all things, are devoutly
referred. And wherever such a faith exists, there is a conception in the mind, as truly representative and as little restrained within the limits of abstract thought, as the notion
we may entertain of a character in history whom we have
never seen, or of an angel in heaven whom we cannot see.
There is no one even, through whose prayers and nieditations transient lights of beauty and floating fringes of ila.




WHERE IS THY GOD?                 229
agery will not be found to pass; nor is it in mortal thought
otherwise to realize the majesty, the purity, the constancy,
the tenderness of God.
The genuine characteristic of all idolatry, then, can only
be found in this: that the symbol it adopts in worship is
a fjlse and needlessly partial representation of the divine
nature; while pure religion holds to one which is trute andCL
perfect, wanting of the reality, not in the quality of its spirit,
but only in the scale of its dimensions. Our minds are so
ill-proportioned, and through ignorance and evil violate so
much the proper symmetry of a spiritual nature, that, left
to their own wilful ways, they misrepresent to us the true
essence of perfection; and many an image does our adoring
fancy grave, and then obey, which cannot innocently stand
in the place of God, and supplants a worship of diviner
right.  Thus, there is the philosophLer's idol, shaped and
set up by intellect unsanctified of conscience. To this is
attracted an exclusive reverence for wisdom, thought and
skill: the votary has learned how little is all he knows, and
stands with serene aspiration before the presence of Infinite
-Reason; unconscious meanwhile of his children neglected
at his feet, and the cries of humanity bleeding near him in
the dust. There is the artist's idol, portrayed upon the
wall of nature with the pencil of beauty, and reflecting a
flush of loveliness over heaven and earth: many a glorious
soul has bowed down before this, and been inspired by it
to do great and wondrous things; yet how often betrayed
at the same time into passionate license, and mean peevishness! There is the stoic's idol, chiselled by austere conscience, from the granitic masses of spiritual strength, and
worshipped as the image of divine justice, majesty and
holiness. This has won and held captive the noblest spirits
that are not wholly Christian, and glorified them to a manliness approaching something divine; yet wanting still the
mellowing of pity, and the grace of sweet and glad affections. And there is the woman's idol, with Madonna look,




230             WHERE IS THY GOD?
captivating to gentler minds; embodying and awakening
the reverence for mercy and disinterested love; and, by
omission, enfeebling the severe healthfulness of duty, and
merging the struggling heroism of this life in the glorified
saintship of another. All these are but delusive impersonations of separated attributes of God; of his intellect; his
creative thought; his will; his affectionateness.  They
are mutilated representations of his nature; idols of the
worshipper's heart, the serving of which will rather confirm
and exaggerate, than remedy, the defective proportions of
his soul; elevating him indeed above himself; but still leaving him below his powers. Nor is there any security against
this devotion to idols of the mind, except that which Heaven
itself has furnished to all Christendom; the reverential
acceptance of Christ as the highest image of the invisible
God, the complete and finished representation of his moral
perfections. Here, nothing is exuberant, nothing deficient;
here prevails a harmony of spirit absolute and divine. In
the Eternal Providence that rules us, reason can conceive,
conscience can demand, affection can discern, nothing which
has not its expression in the author and perfecter of faith.
In worshipping the combination of attributes, through which
he has shown us the Father, there can be no fear that any
duty will be forgotten, any taste corrupted, any aspiration
laid asleep. Drawn upward by such an object, nothing in
us can remain low and weak: the simplicity of the child,
the strength of the man, the love of the woman, the thought
of the sage, the courage of the martyr, the elevation of the
saint, the purity of the angel, press and strive to unite and
realize themselves within our souls. Standing before a God,
of whose mind the universe, of whose spirit the Man of
Nazareth, is the accepted symbol, we must become, in proportion to the sincerity and depth of our devotion, transfigured with the divinest glory of reason and affection, that
can rest upon a nature like ours; and raised to a comprehension of that "love of Christ which passeth knowledge,"




WHERE IS THY GOD?                  231
our souls must not only attain a fairer proportion, but expand also to nobler dimensions, as they become "filled with
the fulness of God."
Thus, "to as many as receive him," does Christ "give
power to become sons of God." By such worship is the
nature of the individual disciple glorified. And what is
true of a single mind, is no less true of communities of men.
They also have their atheisms, and their several idolatries;
from which they too can be recalled and preserved only in
proportion as they find their principle of combination, and
their mode of action, in the deep love and reverence of the
perfectness of Christ. No age, since the Reformation, has
been so marked by idol-worship as our own; —so prolific
of favorite and one-sided schemes of social improvement,
founded on the sense of some solitary want of human nature,
but barren of good from neglect of all the rest. Our Christianity is no longer catholic, rich in provisions for the whole
faculties and being of man. WVith the expansion and complication of our life, religion has lost its comprehensive grasp
of all the elements of our well-being, and permitted them
to escape and break up in mischievous analysis, and consign
themselves to separate trusts. In answer to the earnest cry
of society, " What shall we do to be saved from all our miseries and sins?" there are countless fragmentary answers,
in pl.ce of the deep full harmony of response, from the soul
of Christian inspiration. " Give us more bread," says one;
"more money," says a second; " more churches, more belief,
more priests," say others in their turn; and not the least
intelligent and worthy will exclaim for the diminution of
distilleries, or the multiplication of schools. For my own
part, I believe that human nature is not like a house, which
you may build up piecemeal, - first the stone, then the
wood, —to its true finish and proportion; but, rather, like
the lily or the tree, which grow in all parts,- the stem, the
root, the leaf, -at once, and keep a constant symmetry. It
must be nourished and unfolded simultaneously in all its




282             WHERE IS THY GOD?
dimensions, or its enlargement is mere distortion and disease. There is truth with those who idolize the physical
means of augmenting the comforts of the people; but it is
only the truth which lurked in the foul Egyptian adoration
of the prolific powers of nature. There is truth with those
who trust in the ameliorating energy of knowledge and of
art; but it is the truth which filled Athens with the worship
of the wise Minerva, and which left it still, in the estimate
of the Christian apostle, "in all things too superstitious."
There is truth with those who say we want more faith and
devout obedience; but if the temple of our life be denied
the light of thought, then, though every man stands, saintlike, with his censer in his hand, he will just repeat " what
the elders of Israel did in the dark," — send up his foolish
cloud of incense before "creeping things and abominable
beasts."  Society, to avoid corruption in any of these
agencies, must concurrently avail itself of all. And there
is no power, which embraces them all, and assigns to each
its proper rank, except that divine religion which makes
Christ the model and the end of life. Trusting to inferior
forces, we shall find that each is blind to all that lies above
it, and provides for the world only up to its own level. But
Christian faith, in aiming at once at the highest elements
of good, necessarily includes the lowest; it contains within
itself an epitome of all the parts of human perfection; and
in the heart of a nation, as of a man, it is the grand source
of moral salubrity and inextinguishable hope. In proportion
as they have receded from this, have states and generations
slipped into thraldom to partial theories and unworthy aims;
and in the devouring haste of gain, or the mad passion for
war, or the blindness of mutual distrust, have brought down
the weighty penalties by which Heaven recalls society from
its unfaithfulness. But while the image of Christ remains
as the central and holy light of every home, the moral delusions that waste a people's strength can find no place of
entrance; and moderate desires in private life, with a para



WHERE IS THY GOD?               233
mount sense of justice in the state; - guardianship over the
weak, with vigilance against the strong; care of neglected
childhood, reverence for lingering age, and a share of willing honor for all men; with a hearty homage to all truth
as the reflected light, and duty as the express law of God,
must characterize and consolidate that happy people, from
whom no cloud of idol-incense yet hides the beauty of the
Son of Man.




XXIV.
THE SORROW WITH DOWNWARD LOOK.
-4MARK x. 20-22.
AND HE ANSWERED AND SAID UNTO HIMI A " MASTER, ALL THESE THINGS
HAVE I OBSERVED FROM MY YOUTH." THEN JESUS, BEHO(LDING HINT,
LOVED HIM, AND SAID UNTO fTIM, "O( )NE THING THOU LACKEST; GO THY
WAY, SELL W'HATSOEVER THOU HAST, AND GIVE TO THE POOR, AND
THOU SHALT HAVE TREASURE IN HEAVEN; AND C(OME, TAKE UP TIIE
CROSS, AND FOLLOW ME." AND HE WAS SAD AT THAT SAYING, AND
WENT AWAY GRIEVED; FOR HE HAD GREAT POSSESSIONS.
WHAT made this young man retire in sorrow from before
the face of Christ? That the demand made upon him was
quite irrational, all political economists would confidently
assure him. That he had every reason to be satisfied with
a life so pure and orderly, would be declared by every
worthy neighbor and all judicious divines.  And if he
carried home with him any traces of the sadness with which
he turned from the eye of Jesus, no doubt he was cheered
up, as far as might be, by the loving rebukes of wife or
friends, chiding his misgivings, and laughing his thoughtfulness away. If a man who keeps all the commandments may
not be happy, who may! With a memory clear of reproach
from the youth up, whence can he have drawn the cloud to
shade so innocent a soul? All the sources of inward care
and conflict seem to be excluded here; and we appear to
have the perfect representative of a life at peace. To say
nothing of the ruler's property, which was ample for external comfort, he had fulfilled the one grand requisite of moral
contentment and repose; he had established a harmony
between his perceptions and his actions, and framed his




THE SORROW  WITH DOWNWARD LOOK.    235
modes of conduct by his sentiments of right. Now there is,
apparently, no other condition of inward peace than this.
All men feel the worth of the spiritual affections that solicit
them, and revere the obligation of the better to exclude the
worse. All men feel also the comparative strength of these
same affections, and find in some a power which others
ineffectually dispute.  Wherever the order of strength
agrees exactly with the order of worth; wherever the desire
known to be the highest is also the most intense, and no
brute passion usurps the throne instead of serving as the
footstool; wherever the habits are shaped and proportioned
by the scale of excellence and beauty within; there, strife
and sorrow cannot be; there, is the glad consent between
hand and heart, the concord between our worship and our
will, which charms away the approach of care. This harmony may be attained in either of two ways: by tuning up
the life to the key-note of thought; or by letting down the
thought to the pitch of the actual life. He who will persistently follow his highest impulses and convictions, who will
trust only these amid noisier claims, and constrain himself
to go with them  alike in their faintness and their might,
shall not find his struggle everlasting: his wrestlings shall
become fewer and less terrible: the hand of God, so dim to
him and doubtful at the first, shall in the end be the only
thing that is clear and sure: his best shall be his strongest
too. But this, which is a holy peace, is not the only rest
open to the contradictions of our nature. There is also an
escape from discord by an inverse and descending path.
And if a man will steadily follow his strongest impulses,
without regard to their vileness or their worth, will give no
heed to any whispering compunction, will do only and
always what he likes; from him too the jarring and conflict
of nature shall pass away: God's spirit will not always strive
with him, to turn his wilful steps: the angels that beset his
path with entreaty, with protest, with defiance, will thin off
till they ai-e seen no more: he will enjoy a cheerful and




236    THE SORROW WITH DOWNWARD LOOK.
comfortable exemption from any thing divine; and, by
withdrawal of all else, his strongest affections will become
his best. So far as mere ease and pleasure are concerned,
there is not perhaps much to choose between these two
opposite modes of self-reconciliation. If a man resolves to
disown the upper region of his nature, he may find entertainment, if that be all, in the lower; and care may be made
to fly before the gas-lamps and merriment of the vault, as
well as beneath the star-light of the observatory and the
silence of the skies. The difference is not sentient, but
moral; between the harmonies of the world above, and the
enchantments of Circe's isle; the one, a music straying from
the gate of heaven, and waking the soul to share the vigils
of immortals; the other, composing it to sleep upon the
verge of hell. It was, however, in the nobler way that the
young man in the text had established his right to an unanxious life, and attracted the love of Christ: he had conformed his habits to his moral sense, not sunk his moral
sense to the level of his habits. What then had happened
to disturb the rest arising from their concord?
The truth is, this young ruler had had all the content
that noble minds can derive from the order of a well-regulated life. He had come to the end of all such satisfactions,
and found them fairly spent. They had become to him
mere negative conditions of repose, without which indeed
he would sink into self-contempt; but with which he rose
into no self-reverence, and scarce escaped the hauntings of
a perpetual penitence. He felt that if this were all — this,
which was but the native path and beaten track of his soul,
— the field of duty was no such glorious thing; and some
diviner terms might have been asked, ere this flat earth
should win eternal life. A store of unexhausted power, a
pressure towards loftier aspiration, led him to fix an eager
eye on Christ, and be ready for intenser work; and to be
referred only to the old commands, and sent back to the
familiar task, spread the dull shade over his heart again.




THE SORROW WITH DOWNWARD LOOK.    237
Ite had reached the stage of character, which all men, as
they are more faithful, the sooner reach, when the conscience breaks out beyond the life, and demands a sphere
of enterprise larger than the home domain with all its settled
ways. There is, there can be, no list of actions, no scheme
of habits, that will permanently represent your duty, and
stand as a perpetual diagram of right. Only while it is yet
unrealized, while it rises ideally above you, and reproaches
your slurred and broken lines of order, is it truly the
emblem of your obligations: the moment you overtake it,
and fall into coincidence with it, its function is gone, and it
guides and teaches you no more; it becomes simply what
you are, which is always parted by an interval from what
you ought to be. Moral excellence is a state of the affections, and must be measured by their purity and depth; and
in doing merely what is habitual the affections cannot keep
awake: they live upon fresh thoughts and demand ever
new toils: their eye is intent upon the future, drawn thither
by a holy light; and if once it retires upon the present, it
droops into a fatal sleep. Obedience to a perfect God can
be nothing less than a service constantly rendered by the
will; a voluntary effort, given largely and ungrudgingly in
proportion to the gratefulness and magnanimity of the soul,
and not therefore stinted in the angel, while it is lavished
in the man. But frlom all that is customary the living forces
of the will retire.; achieving ease, it loses sanctity: it is a
slain victim, acceptable to-day, unclean to-morrow; for God
will have at his altar the very breath and blood of life, and
not alone its shape and shell. And so it is, that there is
something truly infinite in duty: it is a region that can
never be enclosed; we pitch our tent upon its boundary
field, and as we survey it, we detect an ampler realm beyond.
As the body could, by no far travelling, find a station where
the arm might not yet be stretched forth; so the soul can
be borne by no progress to a point where the freewill shall
not take another step. Hence it is evident that, in the mind




238    THE SORROW  WITH DOWNWARD LOOK.
of all responsible beings, there must be a perpetual alternation between two opposite states, of rest and unrest, succeeding and reproducing each other.  While the moral
conceptions are in clear advance of the actions, there is a
secret shame which forbids repose: a sense of sorrowful
aspiration impels the will to earnest effort, and sends it
panting after the divine form that invites it on. At length
faith and resolution overtake the image; the interval is
conquered, and that which was a vision in the past is a
reality of the present: the outer and the inner life concur;
and for awhile the healthy joy of a good conscience touches
the features with its light. But in this absence of moral
confusion, and under the shelter of a sacred peace, the
energies of a pure mind, released from severer action, push
forward to the seizure of higher thoughts. The conscience,
wounded and bleeding no more, and cherished by the
healthful air of God's approval, is sure to open into nobler
dimensions. In truth it is the chief good of a well-ordered
structure of habits that it protects the living soul Within,
frees it from  mean dangers, and gives it leave to grow.
And so the sentiments of duty burst from their confinement,
and leave the life again behind; restoring the spirit to its
strife, till the intolerable chasm be traversed as before.
This systole and diastole of the moral nature is as truly
needful to its vital action, as the pulsations of the heart to
our physical existence. Only, their period is indefinitely
various, from a moment to a life. Some men you may find,
whose habits and whose conscience settle down in fixed
partnership for this world, and are never seen diverging;
not, alas! from the agility of their habits, but from the
sluggishness of their conscience. Their moral perceptions
are absolutely stationary, or show them even less of heaven
in their manhood than in their youth. Doing what they
think right, and thinking nothing right but what they do,
they approve themselves and look up to nothing. They are
not, however, exempt from the great law of alternation;




THE SORROW  WITH DOWNWARD LOOK.    239
only, its oscillation is dull and slow; and its sweep of rest
having occupied this life, its sorrowful return must begin
another. In nobler men, the period of the soul is quicker:
for awhile, they fulfil their moral aims, and after conquest
enjoy the victory; they pitch their tent upon the field, and,
not without a glad thanksgiving, accept a brief repose. But
high hearts are never long without hearing some new call,
some distant clarion of God, even in their dreams: and soon
they are observed to break up the camp of ease, and start
on some fresh march of faithful service. And to such productive wills the era of rest, like the Creator's Sabbath, is but
as a sixth - and that all filled with hallowed hours, - to the
working days whose morning and evening enclose and reclaim some realm of beauty out of chaos. And finally, looking higher still, we find those who never wait till their
moral work accumulates, and who reward resolution with
no rest; with whom therefore the alternation is instantaneous and constant; who do the good only to see the better,
and see the better only to achieve it; who are too meek
for transport, too faithful for remorse, too earnest for repose; whose worship is action, and whose action ceaseless
aspiration.
This last case, in which the law of alternation has its
period reduced to a vanishing interval, fulfils our conception
of an angel-mind.  To higher natures it belongs to have
nothing discordant, nothing intermittent: their thought
ever advancing, their will never lingering, the disturbance
between them is annihilated as fast as it is created; and
with activity more glorious than ours, they substitute for
our human periodicity a diviner constancy.  If, as the
prophet's dream  proclaims, there is " no night" in the
better world, the scene, unshaded by the darkness, unkindled by the blaze of day, is the fitting residence for
beings exempt from the ebb and flow of energy and repose;
who have no morning and evening sacrifice, but from whose
fragrant and fervid mind the cloud of incense eternally




240    THE SORROW WITH DOWNWARD LOOK.
ascends; whose affections send forth no interrupted anthem,
but in ever-living harmony continually cry, " Holy, Holy,
Holy Lord God Almighty, who art, and wast, and art to
come." This characteristic in our conception of more heavenly natures presents them to us under an aspect of intent,
yet passionless, serenity. We attribute to them a perfect
moral beauty, - a godlike symmetry of goodness, - which
fills us with reverence, trust, affection, which draws from us
the sigh of hope, and refreshes us in the weariness of our
harsher life. But we ascribe to them no merit; we desire
for them no reward; no plaudits burst from our hearts as
we meditate their high career. As soon almost should we
think of applauding the perfectness of God. A spirit that
undergoes no struggle is out of the sphere of recompense;
being either below the point of noble strife, so as not to cleserve reward; or above, so as not to need it. The perfect
proportion between power and perception which we recognize in diviner natures excludes all idea of resistance: there
is no hesitation for volition to encounter; whatever is felt
to be best is also loved as dearest, and simply pursued without a rival in the thoughts. This entire coalescence of the
order of goodness and the order of desire, this instant and
spontaneous adaptation of the will to the conscience through
every stage of moral progression, distinguishes our notion of
saintly excellence, and furnishes our clearest image of a
higher world.
The conditions of this world, however, are of a lower and
less glorious kind. We must rise by successive stages, not
by perennial flight. We have always something to overtake;
and there is a distance, but too appreciable, between what
we are and what we ought to be, - between what we wish
and what we reverence. This distance can be recovered
only by successive paroxysms of effort, prolonged into patient perseverance. We cannot hope to be released from
this demand upon our half-reluctant powers, and must hold
ourselves ready, with resolute alacrity, now to lash and




THE SORROW WITH DOWNWARD LOOK.    241
now to cheer them on. When we have fairly won a point,
and brought up our habit to our conscience, the penitential
interval, destroyed for the moment, instantly begins to grow
again. For, while action, breathless with successful toil, sits
down to rest, affection, which has long been there, is moving
on. While our moral love is ever in the future, our will
becomes entangled in the past; detained by clinging habits
and lulled by old contentments, it sleeps upon its triumphs
till it is surprised by sudden foes. Every new perception
of good, every dawning upon us of higher obligations, finds
our active forces pledged and pre-engaged to some poorer
work, from which we have to tear ourselves away. This it
is that makes all human faithfulness not holy but strenuous,
and constitutes the difference between the saint and the
hero. In proportion to the resistance which is felt, and the
effort set up against it, in proportion to the strength of natural desire which is put aside for its inferior worth, -is the
virtue admitted to be noble and heroic: we praise it with a
glad and glorious heart: we celebrate it as a triumph; and
cry - what we could never say to angel or to God, -" Well
donle!" The sentiment seems to imply that the achievement is something more than could be expected. But if
such crisis of conflict comes to ourselves, we know well that
it is not in our option to shrink from it with innocence;
that to discern a moral good as possible, is to come under
the obligation to make it real. And if the effort is faithlessly declined, there inevitably creeps upon us, first, an
ignominious sorrow; and next, a sadder and more fatal loss
of the sorrow, and of all true worship of the heart.
This first grief it was that took the young ruler with
mournful steps away: and an anticipation of the second that
led Jesus to look on him with a boundless pity. Christ saw
in him the soul, which, if it could but be the hero, would
become the angel; if not, would sink, with many an ineffectual horror, into infinite depths.  The man's early life
had enabled him to see, what was hidden from consciences
16




242    THE SORROW WITH DOWNWARD LOOK.
more confused, the divine perfectness of Christ. The chief
value of his good ways, of his steady heed to the commandments, was that it just brought him favorably to this
very moment, and set him with open-eyed perception before
MIessiah's face.  By the vision of so holy a spirit, as it
passed near him, he had caught the feeling of a higher
life than that of well-ordered habit; had been irresistibly drawn to put the question so fatal to his peace; had
heard his own consciousness repeated, and sent like a bellstroke to his heart, in the deep words, "Yet lackest thou
one thing;" yet withal he had not strength to follow, and
went away with the cloud settled on his spirit. And once
having seen and refused a better life, he finds that the
merely good life, adequate before, has lost all its sacredness.  Henceforth it is without a charm, and empty of
every inspiration; and lies before him with dead and
leaden aspect, tinged with no glory, and promising no heaven.
And every mind of imperfect earnestness has to bear a like
burden of sorrow;- not the Christ-like sorrow of infinite
aspiration, chasing a good it cannot fully overtake; for that
is a sorrow with upward look, piercing the heavens with a
gaze of prayer — but the shameful sorrow of penitent infirmity, retreating from the good it has refused to follow;
a sorrow with ever downcast look, to which the heavens are
hid, and the earth bereft of beauty and soiled with common
dust.
All men are liable to this grievous experience; for all are
visited by gleams of s )methling fairer and more faithful than
their own lives. But those are most fearfully exposed to it,
who have the dangerous yet glorious gift of high powers
and opportunities. Had Christ never crossed the path of
that youth of great possessions, his imagination would have
remained without its divinest picture, and his conscience
without its deadliest reproach. Or had he been rich only,
and not thoughtful too, he might have passed that consecrated figure by, and felt no shadow fall on his content.




THE SORROW WITH DOWNWARD LOOK.    243
The privilege and the sadness came together. And those
who are haunted by no visions of higher good, who see only
what the sun or moon may shine upon; — on whom no lifted
veil lets in the splendors so kindling to the nobler reason,
so fatal to the feeble will, —escape the sighs of bitterest
regret. Whoso is placed of God upon the loftiest heights,
is on the verge of the most enshadowed chasmns. The revelations of thought and conscience are awful privileges, vainly
coveted by profane ambition, and, even to the devout and
wise, safe only when received with pure self-renunciation.
The richest lights that fall upon the soul lie next to the
deepest tones of shade. Messiah's first gaze ofr divine affection on the half-earnest youth would doubtless send through
his heart a hopeful joy: but afterwards, when he had lapsed
into the old and common self, that very glance would become
a terrible remembrance. And so is it with us all: every
light of moral beauty, permitted to enter, but not allowed
to guide us, becomes, like the after-image of the sun when
idly stared at, a dark speck upon the soul, which follows
us at all our work, adheres to every object, approaches
and recedes in dreams, and is neither evaded by movement,
nor washed out by tears. If the fairest gifts are not to be
turned into haunting griefs, it can only be by following in
the ways of duty and denial along which they manifestly
lead; and, while yet they look upon us, like the eye of
Christ, with a sacred love, resolving on that quiet selfsurrender, which shall meet their solemn claim, and prevent
our ever hearing again the words, " Yet lackest thou one
thing."




XXV.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
PHILIPPIANS I. 21.
FOR TO ME, TO LIVE IS CHRIST, AND TO DIE IS GAIN.
IT is natural to conclude that one who could feel death to
be a gain, must have had few treasures in life to lose. The
sentiment evidently belongs to a heart that had either outlived the objects of affection and favorite pursuit; or else
had loved little, while capable of loving much, and was
unattached to the scene of human existence except at its
points of duty. It is perfectly conceivable that a mind disengaged from external realities, keeping together and entire
in its own feelings, interested most profoundly in the abstractions of its own faith and hope, may welcome the transition to another form of being, in which it will retain its
individuality complete, and be surrounded by new objects
tempting it at length to open forth. He that has no deep
root in this world, may suffer transplantation without pain.
And thus it was with Paul. His ardent and generous soul
had fastened itself on no one living object, but on an abstraction, a thing of his own mind, the truth. For half his life
a wanderer over the earth, no place looked up at him with a
domestic eye. Called as he was into ever new society, and
passing rapidly through all orders of men; accustomed to
study in quick succession the feelings of slave and philosopher, of Jew, of Asiatic, of Athenian and Roman, his personal sympathies were disciplined to promptitude rather
than to profundity. He rested nowhere long enough to




THE SHADOW  OF DEATH.                 245
feel his nature silently yet irrevocably depositing itself
there; but was at all times ready to gather up his feelings
and pass on. Christ and God, the objects of his most earnest love, were viewless and ideal here, and would become
realities only when death had transferred him to the future.
It is true that a noble attachment bound him to his disciples; but he loved them, less in their individual persons and
for their own sakes, than as depositaries of the truth, - as
links of a living chain of minds by which that truth would
complete its circuit, and find a passage for its renovating
power. Nor was there any thing in his outward condition
to which his desires could eagerly cling. The world, as a
place of shelter, had been spoiled for him by the gospel:
his pure tastes were revolted, his sympathies stung at every
turn: at Jerusalemn, the impending fate of friends and country brooded on his spirit like a cloud: in Rome, the springs
of social enjoyment were poisoned by the penetrating taint
of a voluptuous polytheism; at every table was the altar, on
every tongue the light oath, of idolatry. In every aspect
society presented a scene, not for rest, but for toil: not to
be enjoyed, but to be reformed: it offered no place where
the Christian might innocently retreat within the sanctity
of a home; but summoned him forth, in the spirit of an
earnest and almost impatient benevolence, to purchase, by
his own good fight of persuasion and of faith, a fuller purity
and peace for coming times. In this noble conflict, life
afforded to Paul the satisfactions of moral victory; but
death offered the persecuted Apostle the only prospect of
personal release: from the prison it would transfer him to
the skies; and the fetters would fall from his hand in the
freedom of immortality.
That Paul, thus insulated from earthly attachments, should
feel a deeper interest in the future than in the present, is
perfectly natural. But when Christians take up this feeling
as essential to every disciple; — when they proclaim it a solemn duty to postpone every human feeling to the attrac



246            THE SHADOW  OF DEATH.
tions of the eternal state; - when they say, " it is not enough
to take the promises to your heart as true comfort in your
sorrow, but even in glad scenes of life, in youth, amid the
ties of nature, in the very jubilee of the affections, you must
yearn towards heaven more than to the world, and feel
that to go is far better than to stay;" -they are guilty of
an insincere and mischievous parody on the sentiments of
the Apostle. If we are to believe the rhapsodies of a prevalent fanaticism, no one has any vital religion, who does not
think the world a waste, and life a burden, and all human
affections snares of sin: whose impressions of God, and
emotions towards Christ, do not far transcend in their intensity the love of kindred and of men; and who do not, in all
earnest moments of reflection, sigh for the hour which shall
rescue them from their mortality. If a shade creeps upon
the countenance at the consciousness that youth departs,
and that the foot has already entered the declining path;
if we cannot think of the wreck of vigor without regret, or
look into a grave without a sigh; if we manifest in any way
that the mystery of mortality presses upon our hearts to
sadden them; -the only comfort that is offered us is, that
we can have no real Christianity within us; and, since we
shrink from the thought of death so much, and yearn for
heaven so little, we must expect the retribution that never
ends. Even those who hold a creed more merciful than this,
regard such feelings with grave disapprobation, and suppose
them to have their root in distrust of Providence, and doubts
of immortality. Yet the human heart quietly vindicates its
own right, and still weeps for death: the last hour is still
felt to be a trial, not a joy, - a fitting time for resignation
and meek trust, not for transport; and to bear it well is
held sufficient proof of a good and faithful hope. In spite
of the imagined eagerness to depart and be with Christ.
even the elect preserve their mortal life with no less care
than the unbeliever; and religious suicides, in impatience
for an assured salvation, are crimes unheard of yet: nor is




THE SHADOW  OF DEATH.                 247
the funeral converted yet from a scene of grief into an ovation. It is obvious then that in this assumption of the
apostolic sentiment there is a latent insincerity, - an unconscious self-delusion,- as indeed there always is, where
states of feeling rarely attainable are insisted on as essential
duties. Unhappily, this hollow and inflated religion is far
from being a harmless self-deception. Sarcastic sagacity
sees its emptiness and scoffs. Minds affectionate and refined are revolted by a faith, calling for the excision of
human affections which are an integral portion of their life,
and scowling on that lofty melancholy which has been often
declared inseparable from superior natures. And thus the
profession of religion, in its more earnest form, is apt to
be found in association with the cold heart that, caring but
slightly for any thing here, gains an easy credit for sublimer
aspirations; that reviles a scene of existence to whose beauty
it is insensible, and plumes itself on freedom from human
attachments, which it is not noble enough to feel; that has
no better way of clothing the heaven above with glory,
than by making the earth below look hideous. In order to
present some counteraction of conceptions so injurious, it
may be useful to define the actual place which the immortal
hope should occupy in our regards.
The true and natural state of mind is found, I apprehend,
when the futurity offered to our hopes is less loved than
happy and virtuous existence on earth, but more loved than
life here upon unfaithful or forbidden terms;- when, leaving unimpaired our content with permitted happiness, it
brings the needful solace to affliction. It matters not that
the realities of that higher world will doubtless transcend
our happiest life, and the successive stages of our being be
ever progressive in excellence. The reality can affect us
only through our ideas of it; and these ideas present us
with so faint an image of the truth, that its vividness must
be surpassed by the warmer and nearer light of our actual
and happy experience.




248           THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
The future cannot reasonably be expected to compete
with the present in our desires, because our conceptions of
it are necessarily nothing more than a selection from the
present. The scenery of our immortal hope is constructed
from the scattered elements of our mortal life. We borrow
from memory its peaceful retrospect, from conscience its
emotions of satisfied duty, from reason its delighted perceptions of truth, from affection and faith the repose of
human sympathy, and the glow of diviner aspiration: and,
combining all into one full thought glorified by the element
of eternity, we see before us the future of our hopes.
Whatever other resources the great reality may contain,
whatever impenetrable mysteries lie within the ample folds
of its duration, must be inoperative on us, because not present to our minds. We look therefore at earth as comprising all the good which we have ever experienced: we
look at heaven as repeating some. And though in words
we may be assured of the superior intensity of the latter,
in thought we can but dwell on it as it has been felt; - he
who has felt profoundly, anticipating vividly; — he whose
emotions are obtuse, looking on nothing but a blank. Nor
does the conception of immense duration practically impart
much brilliancy to the impressions of faith; for time is
nothing to us, except as it is replete with events, compounded of successive points of consciousness; and we have
no adequate stock of conceptions of the future wherewith
to fill so mighty an expectancy, and people with various
interest the vacuity of infinite ages. The actual effect of
the eternal hope is derived from the imagination of single
passages of experience, -from the instantaneous glance of
some moment of blessedness or awe, — the smiting of a
reproachful thought, — the solution of a sad perplexity, —
the vision of a recovered friend. It is not in ordinary human nature to prefer the fragmentary happiness of heaven,
as alone it can appear before our thoughts, to the complete
and well-known satisfactions of this life in its peaceful
attitudes.




THE SHADOW  OF DEATH.              249
Again, the future is to us an abstraction, a phantom, a
floating vision, which cannot reasonably be expected to rival
in interest the positive recollections of the actual scene in
which we are placed. Sensible impressions, ideas of visible
and audible objects, would seem indispensable to the existence of distinct and vivid conception: and when they
depart, and we are called to think of events without any
scenery; of emotions without utterance; of love without
a hand to grasp; of knowledge without the converse with
men and books, without the real study of light and air and
water, and the solid rocks, and the living things of the forest
and the ocean; of moral growth without a known theatre
of action; -the vision is apt to flit away in impalpable and
spectral forms. It is not that we derive our chief enjoyment from the senses: but material impressions are needful
as the centres, the fixed points, round which feelings andl
recollections and imaginations cluster, and without which
they are speedily dissipated. We love them, not on their
own account, but as the shelter and the shrine of sentiments
ineffably dear. The memories of childhood, - how do they
rush upon the heart when we revisit the very scenes in
which they had their birth! One tone of a bell whose summons we were accustomed to obey, — the sight of a fieldl
where we met the companions of some favorite sport, -
the re-entrance beneath a roof under which we gathered
with brothers and sisters around the Christmas fire, - how
do they do blessed violence to time, and snatch us into the
past! How do they make the atmosphere of our thoughts
ring with the merry shout of playmates, or paint on the
very space before us the smile of some dear absent face, or
whisper the meek counsel of some departed voice! So
dependent are we on such outward things, that even slight
changes in the parts of such a scene disturb us; and the
disappearance of a building or a tree seems to bereave us
of a thousand sympathies. Long habit endears even the
most homely familiarities of our existence, and we cannot




250           THE SHADOW  OF DEATH.
part with them without a pang: we hang our thoughts upon
the surfaces of all things round us, —on the walls of our
home, the hours of the day, the faces of neighbors, the quiet
of country, or the stir of town. And then, too, the domesticities of life! 0 God! they would be too much for
our religion, were they not themselves in pure hearts a very
form of that religion. If we could all go together, there
would be nothing in it: but that separate dropping off, -
that departing one by one, -that drift from our anchorage
alone, - that thrust into a widowed heaven, - who can
deny it to be a lonesome thing? It is mere ignorance of
the human mind to expect the love of God to overpower all
this. Why, the more we have thought of him, the more we
have venerated and trusted him, so much the more closely
has he too become associated with the familiar scenery and
companions of our life; they have grown into his image
and interpreters; they have established themselves as the
shrine of our piety, the sanctuary of his spirit, the expression of his love: and when we are torn from them, we seem
to retire to a distance from his shelter. If Christ felt the
cup to be bitter, and turned for a moment from the draught;
if he trembled that he should see no more the towers of
Jerusalem, though to see them had drawn forth prophetic
tears; if he sorrowed in spirit to bid adieu to the family of
Bethany, though the tie was that of friendship and not of
home; if he hid his head at parting in the bosom of the
beloved disciple, though to AMary the mother that disciple
was needful still; if he had rather that the immortal spirits
of the elder time should come to commune with him under
the familiar oaks of Tabor, than himself be borne to them
he knew not whither; if the MIount of Olives, his favorite
retreat of midnight prayer, and the shore of the Galilean
Lake, witness to the musings and enterprises of his opening
ministry, and the verdant slopes of Nazareth, sacred with
the memories of early years, seemed to gaze in upon his
melted soul with a beseeching look that he would not go;




THE SHADOW  OF DEATH.                251
- may not we, without the reproach of impiety or the suspicion of unacknowledged doubts, feel that to depart is no
light struggle, and cast a lingering glance at the friendly
scene we quit? It is not the animal conflict of death, the
corporeal pain of an organization ceasing to be: to be much
concerned about that were an unmanly fear. It is not any
torturing apprehension about the mysterious future, any
dread of the great secret, any questioning whether all will
be well there: for a good man to be disturbed with such
feelings, shows a morbid timidity of faith, a feeble distrust
of the benignity of Providence, with which an affectionate
piety will have no sympathy. It is simply and solely the
adieu to things loved and left, the exchange of the familiar
for the new, from which our hearts may be justified if they
recoil. Doubtless, the time will come, when successive
strokes of bereavement have fallen upon our homes, for that
recoil to cease. When in the sanctuary of the affections
the lights are almost extinguished, and those that remain
only enable us to read the inscriptions on the multitude of
surrounding tombs; when, in fact, the solitude would be,
not to depart, but to remain, - we may well and naturally
feel that it is time to go, and our prayer may be to be
speedily withdrawn to the place of rest. For now, whatever may be the indistinctness of the future, the groups of
friendship are there; they make the best part of its scenery;
and wherever they are is a shelter and a home. However
strange to us the colony may be in which they dwell, if, as
we cross the deeps of death, their visionary forms shall
crowd the shore, and people the hills of that unvisited abode,
it will be to us " a better country, even a heavenly."
There is then a glow in this world more genial and less
faint than the orb of everlasting hope; and yet a darkness,
too, most thankful for its mild and holy beams. Pale at
our mid-day, it attains its glory at our noon of night; and
if it does not light us at our work, lifts us when we watch
and pray. The proper entrance for faith and hope lies




252           THE SHADOW  OF DEATH.
between the ripeness of blessing and the deepening of sadness; between the crown and the cross of life. Do you
think that so modest a place for so great an expectation is
injurious to the dignity of religion? Perhaps it is in the
better harmony with its humility: at least it seems not
unsuitable to a mind which is so grateful for the present,
as to shrink from pressing anxious claims upon the future:
which loves so well the given world of God, as not often
to remind him of the promised one. Were this the only
eclipse which the immortal prospect is liable to suffer, there
would be little need to lament the languor of its light.
That causes less excusable also intercept its influence, is not
indeed to be denied: but when are we to seek the remedly?
Shall we endeavor to loosen the affections from this life,
and forbid all heart-allegiance towards a scene to which we
are tempted so strongly to cling?  Alas! we shall not love
heaven more for loving earth less: this would be a mere
destruction of one set of sympathies, in no way tending to
the creation of another. The love of God may even find its
root in the love of kindred; and admiration of his works
and ways is the germ of adoration of himself. If it is from
the blessings of the present that we construct our conception
of the future; to enfeeble our sense of these blessings, is to
take away the very materials of faith. No; the needfidl
thing is not that we abate, but that we consecrate, the interests and affections of our life; entertain them with a
thoughtful heart; serve them with the will of duty; and
revere them as the benediction of our God. The same spirit
which takes the veil of Deity from the present will drive
away the clouds that overhang the future: and he that
makes his moments devout, shall not feel his eternity to
be cheerless. And as it is the fascinations of affectionate
memory that hold us back, they may be not a little counteracted by the creations of sacred hope. We shall be less
servilely detained among things seen, when we are less
indolent in our conceptions of things unseen; when we




THE SHADOW  OF DEATH.                 253
freely cast into them every blessed remembrance, every high
pursuit, every unanswered aspiration, every image pure and
dear; and invest them with the forms of a divine and holy
beauty. If the particular good which we imagine should
not arrive, it can only be because God will present us with
far better. Without this free license for the creations of
faith, I see not how, while we are mortals yet, immortality
can exercise its due attraction upon our minds. To die, c:an
never, without an enthusiasm which does violence to reason
and little credit to the heart, be an act of transport: so low
as an act of submission it need not sink; for that would
imply a belief that the change from the present to the future
is for evil. It is most fitly met in the spirit of trust, - an
unbroken belief that it is for the better, but a feeling of
reluctance, which we distrust and check, as though it were
for the worse; a consciousness that if we chose for ourselves,
we should remain where we are, yet not a doubt of the
greater wisdom and goodness of God's choice, that we
should go. If this spirit of humble faith be not highwrought enough, may God forgive the loving hearts that
can attain no better!




XXVI.
GREAT HOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.
1 CORINTHIANS XV. 48.
AS IS THE HEAVENLY, SUCH ARE THEY ALSO THAT ARE HEAVENLY.
THE contempt with which it is the frequent practice of
divines to treat the grounds of natural religion, betrays an
ignorance both of the true office of revelation, and of the
true wants of the human heart.  It cannot be justified,
except on the supposition that there is some contradiction
between the teachings of creation and those of Christ, with
some decided preponderance of proof in favor of the latter.
Even if the gospel furnished a series of perfectly new
truths, of which nature had been profoundly silent, it would
be neither reasonable nor safe to fix exclusive attention on
these recent and historical acquisitions, and prohibit all reference to those elder oracles of God, by which his Spirit, enshrined in the glories of his universe, taught the fathers of
our race. And if it be the function of Christianity, not to
administer truth entirely new, but to corroborate by fresh
evidence, and invest with new beauty, and publish to the
millions with a voice of power, a faith latent already in the
hearts of many, and scattered through the speculations of
the wise and noble few, -to erect into realities the dreams
which had visited a half-inspired philosophy, interpreting
the life and lot of man; — then there is a relation between
the religion of nature and that of Christ, — a relation of
original and supplement, -which renders the one essential
to the apprehension of the other. Revelation, you say, has




GREAT HOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.             255
given us the clew by which to thread the labyrinth of creation, and extricate ourselves from its passages of mystery
and gloom. Be it so; still, there, in the scene thus cleared
of its perplexity, must our worship be paid, and the manifestation of Deity be sought. If the use of revelation be to
explain the perplexities of providence and life, it would be
a strange use to make of the explanation, were we to turn
away from the thing explained. We hold the key of heaven
in our hands; what folly to be for ever extolling and venerating it, whilst we prohibit all approach to the temple,
whose gates it is destined to unlock!
The great doctrine of human immortality has received
from Christianity its widest and noblest efficacy; has been
lifted for many a generation from  a low point of probability to the confines of certainty; and has found in the
glorified " Finisher of faith" an answer to the difficulties
which most embarrass the divine hope of the human mind.
But the influence which is most effectual in diffusing a
truth in the first instance, is not always the best for creating
the latet and calmer faith of the reflecting heart: and when
the historical illustration has parted with something of its
power, it may be useful to the feelings and imagination to
dwell on considerations, of feebler force perhaps, but of
nearer and deeper interest.  Thus it is with the natural
indications of human immortality.  Nature and life, our
sins and sorrows, our virtues and our peace, have on them
the traces of a great futurity; and to neglect these is to pay
a dubious and even a fatal honor to revelation. The Christian history is a matter long past; the resurrection of our
great Prophet is viewed by us at the remoter end of a series
of centuries; and the vibration with which it should thrill
our affections is almost lost in traversing so vast a gulf.
But if in the actual phenomena of human life and its distribution of good and ill, —if in the very constitution of our own
minds, there are evidences of a cycle of existence beyond
the present, we have here a voice, not of history, but of




256       GREAT HOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.
experience, bidding us look up; a warning from the living
present, not from the tomb of the past: and though it may
be less clear in its announcements, yet may the gentlest
whisper at our right hand startle us more than the loudest
echo from afar. It is a solemn thing, when we gaze intently at the dial of our fate, and listen to the beats that
number our vicissitudes, to see its index distinctly pointing
to eternity. The exclusive appeal to the historical evidence
of futurity is one great cause, I believe, of the feeble effect
of this mighty expectation.  Till it is felt that heaven is
needed to complete the history of earth, till men become
conscious of capacities for which their present sphere of
action is too contracted, till the wants of the intellect and
the affections cry aloud within them for the boundless and
eternal, the distant words of Christian promise will die
away, ere they reach their hearts; there will be no visible
infinitude of hope; and amid the incessant verbal recognition of the great hereafter, practical doubts will brood over
the feelings, which will blight all true sincerity of faith.
The character of some of these doubts I proceed to indicate,
- doubts, not of direct speculation, not arising from any
perception of fallacy in the evidence, not therefore leading
to any denial of the doctrine of futurity, - but doubts that
lurk obscurely in the feelings, cold, silent,'undefined; that
come and go like spectres, - come when we abhor, and vanish when we seek them; that shun the steady gaze of tile
intellect, and haunt with fiend-like stare the uplifted eye of
broken hope and trembling love. It will appear that these
doubts are peculiar to our inferior states of character; that
when the higher parts of our nature are developed, and the
adaptation of immortality to our true wants is felt, they
disappear.
There are doubts obtruded on us by our animal nature.
It is not at all surprising that in proportion as we attend to
the perishable part of our nature, our nature should appear
perishable; and that in proportion as we neglect the mind,




GREAT HOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.             257
which alone has any heritage in the future, the future should
become obscure. True though it is that we are fearfully and
wonderfully made, there is something humiliating in the
protracted and exclusive study of man's physical organization; and whatever indications it affords of the designing
benevolence of God, it rather troubles than assists the conception of the immortality of man: for that benevolence,
being equally manifested in the structures and laws of the
brute creation, cannot direct us to the hopes of higher
natures. When the thoughts have been intently fixed on
the physiology of the human body, when the frame has
been analyzed into its several organs, and the functions of
our corporeal life described; or when, in studying the natural history of man, we are led to compare him with the
other tribes that people the earth, the imagination rises
from such studies with secret uneasiness: it has been, for
the sake of knowledge, to the meaner haunts of our being,
just as the philanthropist, for the sake of benevolence, frequents the dingy recesses of sin and misery: it finds itself
surrounded with clinging impressions of materialism, from
which it must shake itself free, before it can again realize
the holier relations and loftier prospects of human existence. Nor is it unusual for death to be presented to us in
an aspect which unreasonably, hut irresistibly, troubles the
heart's diviner trust. Sometimes indeed the last hour of a
human life comes on so gentle a wing, that it seems a fit
passage of a soul to God: the feeble pulse which flutters
into death, the fading eye whose light seems not to be
blotted out but only to retire within, the fleeting breath
that seems to stop, that the spirit may depart in reverent
silence,- are like the signs of a contented exchange of
worlds, of a mind that has nothing for which to struggle,
because it passes to the peace of God. But when the strife
is strong, - when, at the solemn point of existence which
seems most to demand an intent serenity of soul, the animal
nature starts to its supremacy and fiercely claims the mas17




258       GREAT HOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.
tery, and clings with convulsive grasp to the margin of mortality, our imaginations are visited with a deeper trouble
than would arise merely from sympathy with the departing
sufferer. "Is this," we think, "the transition to the skies,
— this, more like the end of hope than the beginning of
peace, more like a thrust into the blackest night, than an
ushering into the beautiful dawn of the eternal land?"
And why is this?  It is the tyranny of our animal sympathies; which may well be sceptical of immortality, for it is
not for them. The corporeality of our nature is for the
time so vehemently forced upon the attention, that we forget what else there is: the half of the being is taken to
represent the whole; and that half is really coming to a
close. When we retire from the dread impression of this
scene, and remember the bright mind eclipsed only during
the last hour; when we recognize in its history many a
noble toil for truth, many a holy effort of duty, many an
exhibition of moral and mental capability too great and
gentle to find their gratification here, we gradually return
from the shock of nature to the quietude of faith. But this
return depends on regarding the body as the instrument of
the mind; and there are people who never do this,-men
who take their limbs to be their life, and confound their
senses with their soul, —who say wise things about the
blessings of health and ease, and hear only empty words
when there is mention of a full mind, and pure and resolute
sentiments of conscience, and earnest affections human and
divine. To such, -the sensual, - there is nothing else in
mall but body; take that from their conceptions, and nothing remains. What then but an absolute blank before their
mind can be an existence in which the material interests of
our present being utterly vanish, and a spirituality unknown
to them even in idea assumes the place? To say that they
must look forwards to it with the same kind of feeling as
the musician to becoming deaf, and the artist to becoming
blind, fails to convey an adequate idea of the emptiness, the




GREAT HOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.              259
absolute nothingness, of their anticipation. If we could
conceive a being created with no inlet of consciousness but
the sense of sight, — without thought, without emotion,
without other sensation, -a being in fact all eye, we perceive that it would be the same thing to him, whether his
vision be paralyzed, or he himself be planted in the midst of
deep and rayless night. To such a one, both conditions
would be a total annihilation: as life was nothing more than
visual perception, so the privation of such perception would
be death: the preservation of the organ would be attended by
no consciousness: in eternal darkness, its function, its pleasures and its pains, are for ever gone; and had it never been,
its non-existence could not be more perfect. Precisely similar is the view of futurity, -the futurity of the intellectual
and social and moral powers of our nature, -to the sensual
in whom these powers sleep. All the functions of existence
with which he is familiar vanish from him; and as well
might he himself be blotted out, as be placed where all the
offices and elements of his life disappear. He is an eye
dipped in darkness, - an ear left alone in an infinitude of
silence; immortality is to him but prolonged paralysis; it
has nothing to distinguish it from  death. What wonder
then that, in proportion as we resemble such a being, our
feelings are harassed by a thousand doubts of renovated
life! The doubts are indeed perfectly well founded: for
this nature there is no further life; its mechanism wears
out, and death casts it aside for ever: and, till that higher
nature, of which it is the organic instrument, is born to full
life within us, we have no kindred or affinity with the
eternal state. But when, by nobler culture, by purer experience, by breathing the air of a higher duty, vitality at
length creeps into the soul, the instincts of immortality will
wake within us. The word of hope will speak to us a language no longer strange. We shall feel like the captive bird
carried accidentally to its own land, when, hearing for the
first time the burst of kindred song from its native woods,




260       GREAT HOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.
it beats instinctively the bars of its cage in yearning for the
free air that is thrilled with so sweet a strain.
There are doubts forced on us by our selfish nature. A
hard and self-enclosed mind is destitute of the feelings that
look most intently on the future, and make it most credible,
because most urgently needed, by us. It is rather our sympathetic than our personal happiness that is wounded by the
conditions of our mortal being. For ourselves alone, if we
love not deeply our own kind, it is usually possible to preserve a decent and sober life, a small order of happiness,
respectably ensured from ruin, which will never feel impelled
to look up and cry aloud to God. It is when we suffer ourselves to seek a profounder but a frailer bliss; when the
heart possesses a terrible stake in existence; when we yield
ourselves to the strongest love, and yet can love nothing
that we may not lose; that we feel capacities which are
mocked by the brevity of life, and totally incapable of exhaustion here. It is our affections chiefly that are disproportioned to our condition: they are an over-match for us
in this world. God would never launch so frail a vessel on
so stormy a sea, where the roll of every wave may wreck
us, were it not designed to float at length on serener waters,
and beneath gentler skies. O God! it is terrible to think
what may be lost in one human life; what hope, what joy,
what goodness, may drop with one creature into the grave!
how all things, now so full of the energies of a cheerful
being, so copious in motive and in peace, so kindled by the
smile of Providence, and ringing with the happy voices of
nature and our kind, may droop and gloom before us by one
little change! It is not from without, but from within, -
from the sacred but changing orb of our own love, — that
the light and colors come, in which we see the scenery of
existence clad; and if there be an eclipse within, creation
mourns beneath a film of darkness. It is, however, in such
moments of sorrow, and in the perpetual consciousness that
they may come, that we find the strongest call of thought




GREAT HOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.             261
to a more peaceful and stable being; and that we are urged
to fly to the distant regions in which the intercepted light
still shines. But all this the heart of the selfish can never
know: his sympathies are well proportioned to the dimensions and the securities of this state: for all that he yet
feels, an eternal life would be an enormous over-provision:
he has no passionate tenacity of love that clings imploringly
to any blessing; but is able to shrink into his shell of personal ease, and sleep. Nor does the wider benevolence, the
spirit of Christian philanthropy to which the selfish man is
equally insensible, stimulate less urgently the demand for
immortality. How is it possible to study deeply the lot
of the great majority of men; — to see them ground down
by toil; spending their years in bare self-continuation,
and ending life without tasting of its fruits; filled to satiety
with labor and starved to death within the mind; - how
is it possible to see so much noble capability wasted, so
much true blessedness lost, so many, first created a little
lower than the angels, and then forced nearly to a level
with the brutes, - without providing in our thoughts a
future vindication of the Creator, — a life in which the
fearful inequality will be compensated, and the suspended
good at length born?  But the cold and self-regarding
mind cannot understand a sentiment like this. It has no
such sympathy with the well-being of others as to feel that
their habitual privations constitute a moral claim upon the
benevolence of God. It has no generous faith in the possibilities of human improvement; but, thinking meanly of
its kind, is not disconcerted by the meanness of its destiny.
Ignorant of the immeasurable contents of our nature, of
the resources of our human affections, of the heroic energies of duty, and the sublime peace of God, he sees nothing worth immortalizing; and because h-e himself would
be an anomaly in heaven, he fancies heaven too good for
man. Thus selfishness, like sensuality, secretly conscious of
its ignobility, and interpreting by its own experience the




262       GREAT HOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.
whole race of human kind, stifles within us the eternal
hope.
Causes, not moral, like the foregoing, but merely intellectual, tend also to disturb the feelings with doubts on this
subject. Very contracted knowledge and feeble imagination will usually possess but a fluctuating faith in all truths
remote from experience. Though our faith may go far
beyond our experience, it must always be chained down by
it at a distance: our conceptions of probability are limited
by the analogies within our reach: the magnitude of each
one's possible must bear some proportion to his actual: the
invisible scenes which he imagines will be graduated by the
visible which he beholds. In proportion, therefore, as our
ideas are few, and the circle of our intellectual perceptions
more narrowly bounded, will it be difficult for us to feel the
possibility of a state so totally new, so little familiarized to
us by any known resemblances to our present condition, as
the futurity to which we tend. This incompetency of religious imagination is far from being exclusively attendant on
what the world calls ignorance. It may be found often
beneath the polished speech, the practised address, the agile
faculties of men conspicuous in affairs; being as much the
creation of voluntary habit, as the consequence of helpless
incapacity. Aptitude for business is not power of reason;
and a grandee on the exchange may be a pauper in God's
universe. To calculate shrewdly is different from meditating
wisely; and, where turned into an exclusive engagement,
is even more hostile to it than the torpor of the entire mind.
The pointed, distinct, and microscopic attention which we
direct upon the details of human existence here, is unfavorable to the comprehensive vision of a boundless sphere: the
glass through which we best look at the minutiae near us,
serves but to confuse our gaze upon the stars. Growing
knowledge, enlarging thought, the reverent estimate of truth
and beauty, furnish us with a thousand facilities for illustrating and realizing the unseen, and replenishing its blank




GREAT IOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.             263
abyss with bright creations. Nay, the mental horizon spreads
by mere extension of the physical; and as our station rises
above the world, our range of possibilities and our willingness of faith appear to grow. For who can deny the effect
of wide space alone in aiding the conception of vast time?
The spectator who in the dingy cellar of the city, under the
oppression of a narrow dwelling, watching the last moments
of some poor mendicant, finds incongruity and perplexity in
the thought of the eternal state, would feel the difficulty
vanish in an instant, were he transplanted to the mountaintop, where the plains and streams are beneath him, and the
clouds are near him, and the untainted breeze of heaven
sweeps by, and he stands alone with nature and with God.
And when, in addition to the mere spectacle and love of
nature, there is a knowledge of it too; when the laws and
processes are understood which surround us with wonder
and beauty every day; when the great cycles are known
through which the material creation papses without decay;
then, in the immensity of human hopes, there appears nothing which need stagger faith: it seems no longer strange,
that the mind which interprets the material creation should
survive its longest period, and be admitted to its remoter
realms.
Thus, in proportion as our nature rises in its nobleness,
does it realize its immortality. As it retires from animal
grossness, from selfish meanness, from pitiable ignorance or
sordid neglect, - as it opens forth into its true intellectual
and moral glory, — do its doubts disperse, its affections
aspire: the veil is uplifted from the future, the darkness
breaks away, and the spirit walks in dignity within the
paradise of God's eternity. What a testimony this to the
great truth from which our hope and consolations flow!
What an incitement to seek its bright and steady light by
the culture of every holy faculty within us! The more we
do the will of our Father, the more do we feel that this
doctrine is indeed of him. Its affinities are with the loftiest




264       GREAT HOPES FOR GREAT SOULS.
parts of our nature; and in our trust in it, we ally ourselves
with the choicest spirits of our race. And while we sympathize with them in their past faith, we prepare to meet
them where we may assume their nearer likeness. Ever
seek we therefore the things which are above.




XXVII.
LO! GOD  IS  HERE!
ACTS XVII. 30.
AND THE TIMES OF THIS IGNORANCE GOD WINKED AT; BUT NOW
COMMANDETH ALL MEN E;VERYWHERE TO REPENT.
PAUL, it would appear, looked with a very different feeling
on times past, and times present. Behind him, he saw the
age of ignorance and irreligion, so dark and wild, that life
appeared to lie quite outside the realm of Providence, and
earth to be covered by no heaven. Around him, he beheld
the very era of God, in which the third heaven seemed
almost within reach, and life was so filled with voices of
duty and hope, that it appeared like some vast whispering
gallery, to render what else had been a divine silence and
mystery, aidible and articulate. Behind, he saw a world
abandoned; from which the great Ruler seemed to have
retired, or at least averted the light of his countenance; to
which he spake no word, and gave no intelligible sign;
about whose doings it were painful to say much; for so little
were they in the likeness of his government, so abhorrent
from the spirit of his sway, that they must have been enacted during the slumber of his power. But now, the hour
of awakening had arrived: the foul dream of the world's
profaneness must be broken; and Heaven would forbear no
more. The divine light was abroad again: divine tones
were fon+t' -  through this lower atmosphere, and came, like
a solemn music, across the carnival shouts of sensualism and
sin. Out of hearing of these tones the far-travelled Apostle




266              LO! GOD IS HERE!
never passed: they reached him through the rush of waters,
as he sailed by night over the A.Egean: the voluble voices
of Athens could not drown them: they vibrated through
the traffic and the cries of Roman streets, and even pierced
the brutal acclamations of the amphitheatre; they were
ubiquitous as God, who was everywhere commanding all
men to repent. Whether in his own life, or in the world,
Paul found the past to be profane, the present, divine.
With us this order is reversed. Our faith delights to
expound, not what God is doing now, but what he did once;
to prove that formerly he was much concerned with the
affairs of this earth and the spirits of men, though he has
abstained from personal intervention for many ages, and
become a spectator of the scene. The point of time at which
our thoughts search for his agency, and feel after him to
find him, lies not at hand, but far; belongs not to to-day, but
to distant centuries; and must be reached by an historical
memory, not by individual consciousness. To our feelings,
the period of Divine absenteeism is the present; wherein
we live on the impression, half worn out, of his ancient
visitations; obey as we can the precepts he is understood
to have given of old; and, like children opening again and
again the last tattered letter from a parent mysteriously
silent in a foreign land, cheer ourselves with such assurance
of his love as he may have put on record in languages anterior to our own. "0  happy age," - we think, - " that
really heard his voice! 0 glorious souls, that felt his living
inspiration! 0 blessed lot, though it passed through the
desert and the fire, that lay beneath the shelter of his peace! "
In short, our experience is the opposite of Paul's. That
voice which commanded all men to repent, resounds no
more; its date has gone clear away into antiquity; and it
can faintly reach us only through the dead report of a hundred witnesses. Once it was the very spirit of God quivering over the soul of man, -a mountain-air stirring on the
face of the waters. The frosts of time may have fixed the




LO! GOD IS HERE!                 267
surface, and caught the form; but how different this from
the trembling movement of our humanity beneath the sweep
of that living breath! No such holy murmur reaches us, to
wholn the present is earthly, and the past, divine.
Perhaps some one may deny that there is any real variance between Paul's estimate and ours; on the ground that,
in his view, the time sacred above all others was his olwn;
and in our retrospect that time remains so still. Yet it may
be conjectured, that if we could be put back into his age,
we should hardly see it with his eyes. Possibly enough,
we might look about to no purpose for that presence of the
Holiest which followed him through life; and listen with
disappointed ear for that whisper that "everywhere " came
to him from the Infinite; and though at his side when he
was in the third heaven, might see nothing but the walls of
his apartment, in coldest exile from the transports of the
skies. If you go into the tent-maker's warehouse, where he
worked at Corinth, you find the canvas and the tools, and
even the men that ply them, such as you may pass without
notice every day. The lane in which he lived in Ro.me
seems too dingy for any thing divine, and the noisy neighbors too ordinary to kindle any elevated zeal. The city's
heat and din, the common crush of life, the hurry from task
to task, seem far enough from the cool atmosphere of prayer,
and the glad silence of immortal hopes. And if you converse with the men and women for whom the Apostle gave
his toils and tears, who received the whole affluence of his
sympathies, you may be amazed, perchance, that he could
find them so interesting; and lament to discover, in such
an age of golden days, the vulgar speech, the narrow mind,
the selfish will, the envious passions, of these later times.
And, taking the converse supposition, - think you, if he
had been transplanted from Mars Hill to Westminster, he
would have been beyond the hearing of that voice of God
which he proclaimed and obeyed? -that the celestial light
which rested upon life would have passed away? - that his




268              LO! GOD IS HERE!
hope would have been as faint, his worship as unreal, his
whole being as mechanical, as ours?  Ah, no! let there be
a soul of power like his within; and it matters not what
weight of world may be cast on it from without. Be we in
this century or that, - nay, in heaven or on earth, — it is
not that we find, but that we must make, the present holy
and divine.
In vain then do we plead, that our view of time coincides
with that of Paul.  With such temper as we have, we
should have listened to him on Areopagus in the spirit of
the Epicureans that heard him; not refusing perhaps to
join the light laugh at his enthusiasm; and wondering how
a man, with his foot on the solid ground of life and nature,
can cast himself madly into the abyss of a fancied futurity,
and an absent God. And as, in yielding to the suggestions
of such temper, we should have felt falsely, and have looked
on Paul's age with a deluded eye, so would his be the true
vision of our times; and his earnest proclamation of the
continued sanctity of existence would show his discerning
intuition of realities concealed from us. For God has not
faded into a remembrance: he has not retired from this
scene with the generations known only to tradition. His
energies have no era; his sentiments cannot be obsolete;
" his compassions fail not."  Why, even sense and material
nature, his poorest and faintest interpreters, rebuke this
foolish dream, - that he was, rather than is. They forbid
us to think of him thus, were it only in the mere character
of Creator.  They show us, in the very structure of our
globe, - in the rocks beneath our feet, - in the vast cemeteries and monuments they disclose of departed races
of creatures, -that creation is not single, but successive;
not an act, but a process; not the work of a week or of a
century, but of immeasurable ages; not moreover past, but
continuous and everlasting; as busy, as mysterious, as vast,
now, as in the darkest antiquity: so that Genesis tells the
story of last week, as truly as of the six days that ushered




LO! GOD IS HERE!                 269
in the world's first Sabbath. The universe indeed is not so
much a definite machine which once he made, and beyond
which he dwells to see it move, as his own infinite abode
and ever-changing manifestation; -living, because the
dwelling of his power; boundless, because the chamber of
his presence; ever fresh, because the receptacle of his designs; fair, because the expression of his love. Now, as of
old, he that will listen with the open ear of meditation, may
surely hear the Lord God walking in his garden of creation
in the cool of every day.
The same temper which leads us to search for Deity only
in distant times, causes us to banish him also into distant
space; and persuades us that he is not here, but there. He
is thought to dwell above, beneath, around the earth; hut
who ever thinks of meeting him on its very dust? Awfully
he shrouds the abyss; and benignly he gazes on us from the
stars: but, in the field and the street, no trace of him is felt
to be. Under the ocean, and in the desert, and on the
mountain-top, he is believed to rest; but, into the nearer
haunts of town and village, we rarely conceive him to penetrate. Yet where better could wisdom desire his presence,
than in the common homes of men, —in the thick cares,
and heavy toils, and grievous sorrows, of humanity? For,
surely, if nature needs him much in her solitudes, life requires him more in the places of passion and of sin. And
in truth, if we cannot feel him near us in this world, we
could approach him, it is greatly to be feared, in no other.
Could a wish remove us bodily to any distant sphere supposed to be divine, the heavenly presence would flit away
as we arrived; would occupy rather the very earth we had
been eager to quit; and would leave us still amid the same
material elements, that seem to hide the infinite vision from
our eyes. Go where we may, we seem mysteriously to
carry our own circumference of darkness with us: for who
can quit his own centre, or escape the point of view, - or
of blindness, — which belongs to his own identity?  He




270              LO! GOD IS HERE!
who is not with God already, can by no path of space
find the least approach: in vain would you lend him the
wing of angel, or the speed of light; in vain plant him
here or there, —on this side of death or that: he is in the
outer darkness still; having that inner blindness which
would leave him in pitchy night, though, like the angel of
the Apocalypse, he were standing in the sun. But ceasing
a11 vain travels, and remaining with his foot upon this
weary earth, let him  subside into the depths of his own
wonder and love; let the touch of sorrow, or the tears of
conscience, or the toils of duty, open the hidden places of
his affections;- and the distance, infinite before, wholly
disappears: and he finds, like the Patriarch, that though
the stone is his pillow, and the earth his bed, he is yet in
the very house of God, and at the gate of heaven. 0 my
friends, if there be nothing celestial without us, it is only
because all is earthly within; if no divine colors upon our
lot, it is because the holy light is faded on the soul; if our
Father seems distant, it is because we have taken our portion of goods and travelled into a far country, to set up for
ourselves, that we may fbolishly enjoy, rather than reverently serve. Whenever he is imagined to be remote and
almost slumbering, be assured it is human faith that is really
heavy and on the verge of sleep; drowsy with too much
ease, or tired with too much sense: that it has lapsed from
the severe and manly strivings of duty and affection, and
given itself over to indulgence, and become the lazy hirelihg of prudence. An Epicurean world inevitably makes
an Epicurean God: and when we cease to do any thing
from spontaneous loyalty to the great Ruler, we necessarily
doubt whether he can have occasion to do any thing for
us. Such doubts are vainly attacked by speculative proof,
and evidence skilfully arranged: the clearest and the cloudiest intellect are liable to them alike: for they arise from
the practical feebleness of the inner man; from a dwindled
force in the earnest, self-forgetful affections; and can be




LO! GOD IS HERE!                 271
dissipated only by trustful abandonment once more to some
object of duty and devotion. The times and people that
have vividly felt the proximity of God have always been
characterized by hearty and productive affections; by vast
enterprises and great sacrifices; by the seeds of mighty
thought dropped upon the world, and the fruits of great
achievements contributed to human history. In contact
with every grand era in the experience of mankind will
be found the birth of a religion; — a fresh discovery of the
preternatural and mysterious; a plenary sense of God; the
descent of the Holy Spirit on waiting hearts; a day of Pentecost to strong and faithful souls, giving them the utterance of a divine persuasion, and dispersing a new gospel
over the world. We, alas! are far enough, - far at least as
the days of Wesley, - from any such period of inspiration in
the past; - perhaps, however, the nearer to it in the future,
as there is no night unfollowed by the dawn. It is not per-.
mitted us too curiously to search the hidden providences
of our humanity; but one thing we cannot fail to notice:
that a return to simple, undisguised affections, - to natural
and veracious speech, — to earnest and inartificial life,has characterized every great and noble perio(l, and all morally powerful and venerable men. To such taste and affections, and to the secret rule of conscience which presides
among them, we must learn to trust, whatever be the seductions of opinion, and the sophistries of expediency, and even
the pleadings of the speculative intellect. When thus we fear
to quench his spirit, God will not suffer our time to be a
dreary and unconsecrated thing. Swept by the very borders of his garment, we shall not look far for his glorifying presence. The poorest outward condition will have
no power to obliterate the solemnity from life.  Nay, of
nothing may we be more sure than this; that, if we cannot
sanctify our present lot, we could sanctify no other. Our
heaven and our Almighty Father are there or nowhere.
The obstructions of that lot are given for us to heave away




272              LO! GOD IS HERE!
by the concurrent touch of a holy spirit, and labor of a
strenuous will; its gloom, for us to tint with some celestial
light: its mysteries are for our worship; its sorrows for
our trust; its perils for our courage; its temptations for our
faith. Soldiers of the cross, it is not for us, but for our
Leader and our Lord, to choose the field: it is ours, taking
the station which he assigns, to make it the field of truth
and honor, though it be the field of death.
It is part of the illusion which contrasts us with Paul,
that we esteem God to be without us, rather than within us;
a mode of conception which I believe to be ultimately fatal
to that religious life, from the incipient feebleness of which
it originally springs. What has been really meant by those
devout men who have freely spoken of God's communion
with them, and of the thoughts which he has put into the
heart? That these thoughts did actually arise and must be
accepted as facts, will hardly be denied. Nor will it be
doubted that, in the thinker's view, they appeared most high
and solemn; and that in no other way could their beauty
and authority be expressed, than by calling them emanations
from the supreme Source of the binding and the beautiful.
To affirm the purest and deepest movements of our nature
to be from God, is the natural utterance of full reverence for
them; to deny their origin from him, is a distinct profession
that that reverence has declined: they are sought for at a
lower source, because they have descended to a meaner place.
And while this denial indicates a fainter piety, it is no sign
of stronger reason. What emboldens you to contradict the
universal testimony of souls aloft in worship, -the natural
language of poet, saint and prophet? How do you know
that in the affections that most glorify their hearts, there is
no immediate light of Heaven?  You say, perhaps, they are
experienced by the worshipper's own mind, and must be
parts of the nature that feels them. But it does not follow
that, because they are included in the consciousness of men,
they indicate no presence and living touch of God. Or you




LO! GOD IS HERE!                 273
say, there is no miracle in them, and they come and go by
laws not quite untraceable. But this only shows that the
divine agency, if there, is free from disorder and caprice,
and loves to be constant in behalf of those who are faithful
to its conditions. Or do you complain of the idle fanaticisms, which often have preferred this tempting claim?
Idle they may be to you, to whose mind they stand in quite
different relation; but not perhaps to those whom assuredly
they raised to higher life. We are not all alike; and God
does not exist for any miserable egotist alone. We are all
indeed set in one infinite sphere of universal reason and
conscience; but scattered over it to follow separate circles,
and attain every variety of altitude in faith. Like stars
upon the same meridian, whose culminating points cannot
be alike, we touch our supreme heights at different elevations; and the measure which is far down on the course of
one mind, may be the acme of religion in another. And it
is as worthy of God to lift every soul to the ethereal summit
proper to it, as to roll the heavens, and call forth their lights
by interval and number, and see that "not one faileth."
And as there is no ground in experience for rejecting the
old language of devotion, neither is there any in the claim
of consistent philosophy. We find men ready enough to
allow that there is no place where God is not, perhaps no
time when his external power is not active in some realm
or other. And why then withhold from him that internal
and spiritual sphere of which all else is but the theatre and
the temple? What can dead space want with the divine
presence, compared with the ever-perilled soul of man, perpetually trembling on the verge of grief or sin?  Shall we
coldly speculate on the physical omnipresence of the Infinite,
and question the ubiquity of his moral power? — diffuse
him as an atmosphere, and forget that he is a Mlind? - plead
for his mechanical action on matter, and doubt the contact
of spirit with spirit? —admit the agency of the artist on
his work, and deny the embrace of the Father and the child?
18




274              LO! GOD IS HERE!
It were indeed strange if this anomaly were true. Where
is this blessed object of our worship, if not within our souls?
What possible ground is there for affirming him to be elsewhere and not here?  Far more plausible would the limitation be, if we were to declare him manifestly existent here
alone. All external things are apprehensible by sense, and
it is to discover the outward creation that the senses are
given. All internal things are apprehended by thought,
and it is to seize this far higher order of realities, that
thought is given. Never was eye or ear made perceptive
of Deity: "no man hath heard his voice at any time or
seen his form:" he is the object of simply spiritual discernment, the holy image, mysteriously shaped forth from the
quarries of our purest thought, and glowing with life, beauty
and power, in the inmost sanctuary of the mind. And his
reality there is a certainty of the same rank as the existence
of the universe without. There is truth then, and only a
wise enthusiasm, in the established strains of Christian piety;
invoking the presence of the Holiest to the soul as his loved
retreat, and humbly referring to him the purest thoughts
and best desires. I pretend not to draw the untraceable
line that separates his being from ours. The decisions of
the will, doubtless, are our own, and constitute the proper
sphere of our personal agency. But in a region higher than
the will,- the realm of spontaneous thought and emotion,
- there is scope enough for his "abode with us."  Whatever is most deep within us is the reflection of himself. All
our better love, and higher aspirations, are the answering
movements of our nature in harmonious obedience to his
spirit. Whatever dawn of blessed sanctity, and wakening
of purer perceptions, opens on our consciousness, are the
sweet touch of his morning light within us. htis inspiration
is perennial; and he never ceases to work within us, if we
consent to will and to do his good pleasure. He befriends
our moral efforts; encourages us to maintain our resolute
fidelity and truth; accepts our co-operation with his designs




LO! GOD IS HERE!                 275
against all evil; and reveals to us many things far too fair
and deep for language to express. But, while he is thus
prompt to come with his Spirit to the help of seeking hearts,
he is expelled by the least unfaithfulness; and when the
" spirit of truth " is driven away, this holy " Comforter " no
more remains. To receive the promise, we must deserve
the prayer, of Christ, - that we "may be kept from the
evil," and "sanctified through the truth."  Finding a holy
of holies within us, we need not curiously ask whether its
secret voices are of ourselves or of the Father. Christ felt
how, within the deeps of our spiritual nature, the personalities of heaven and earth might become entwined together
and indissolubly blended: "Thou, Father, art in me, and
I in Thee, and they also one in us." And so, the holy
spirit within us, the spirit of Christ, and the spirit of God,
are after all but one;- a blessed Trinity, our part in which
gives to our souls a dignity most humbling yet august.




XXVIII.
CHRISTIAN  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
GENESIS III. 22.
AND THE LORD GOD SAID, BEHOLD, THE MAN IS BECOME AS ONE OF US, TO
KNOW GOOD AND EVIL.
IT is a favorite doctrine of one of the wisest thinkers of our
day, that "if Adam had remained in Paradise, there had
been no anatomy, and no metaphysics." In other words, it
is only on the lapse from the state of health, that we find
we have a body; and on the loss of innocence, that we
become conscious of a soul. Disease and wrong are the
awakeners of our reflection: they bring our outward pursuits to a pause, and force us to look within: and the extent
of our self-study and self-knowledge may be taken as a
measure of the depth to which the poison of evil has penetrated into our frame. The man who, instead of being surrendered to spontaneous action, voluntarily retires to think,
has fallen sick, and can effect no more. The art which has
recovered from its trance of inspiration and found out that
it has rules, begins to manufacture and ceases to create.
The literature which directs itself to an end, and critically
seeks the means, may yield the produce of ingenuity, but
not the fruit of genius. The society which understands its
own structure, talks of its grievances, plumes itself on its
achievements, and prescribes fobr its own case, is already in
a state of inevitable decadence. And the religion which
has begun to inquire, to sift out its errors, and treasure up
its truths, has lost its breath of healthy faith, and only gasps




CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.           277
in death. With sighs and irresistible longings, does this
noble writer look back upon imaginary ages of involuntary
heroism, when the great and good knew not their greatness
and goodness, and genius was found which was a secret to
itself, and men lived for God's sake, instead of for their own.
Could he realize his dream of perfection, he would stock the
world with unconscious activity, and fill it with men who
know not what they do.
This celebrated paradox could never occupy a mind like
MIr. Carlyle's, did it not envelop an important and seasonable truth. But before we give ourselves up to the despoudency it must inspire, it is as well to see whether there is
no illusion in its sadness; and whether its pathetic complaints may not even be turned, by an altered modulation,
into a hymn of thanksgiving.
To sigh after an unconscious life, - what is it but to protest against the very power of thought?  To think is not
merely to have ideas, —to be the theatre across which
images and emotions are marched; — but to sit in the midst
as master of one's conceptions; to detain them for audience,
or dismiss them at a glance; to organize them into coherence and direct them to an end. It implies at every step
the memory and deliberate review of past states of mind,
the voluntary estimate of them, and control over them. It
is a royal act, in which we possess the objects which engage
us, and are not possessed by them. It is an act of intense
self-consciousness, whose whole energy consists in this, that
the mind is kindled by seeing itself: as if the light were to
become sensitive, and turn also to vision.
Again, to sigh for an unconscious life, is to protest against
conscience.  For what is this faculty but, as its name
denotes, a knowledge with one's-self of the worth and excellence of the several principles of action by which we are
impelled?  Shall we desile to be impelled by them  still,
only remaining in the dark as to their value and our obligations?-to be the creature of each, as its turn may come,




278        CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
without choice between the baser and the nobler, or perception of difference between appetite and inspiration? Duty
implies, in every form, that a man is entrusted with himself;
that he is expected to overlook and direct himself; to maintain therefore an open eye on the spiritual world within,
and preserve throughout a sacred order.
And once more, to pray for an unconscious life, is to
desire an incapacity for faith.  For what is faith, but trust
in an Infinite and Holy One, of whom we could have no
conception, if our aspirations did not transcend our realities; if the ideal faculty did not survey the actual and find
it wanting? Our own spirit is the vestibule which we must
enter, as threshold to the temple of the Eternal, and wherein
alone we can catch any whisper from the Holy of Holies.
A man who had never found his soul, could assuredly never
see his God.
Scarcely can we admit a theory to be true, which implies
that thought, duty, will, and faith are so many diseases
in our constitution, over which it becomes us to weep the
tears of protestation.  These, and the self-consciousness
which renders us capable of them, are the supreme glory of
our nature; raising it above the mere instinctive life of the
brute creation, making it agent as well as instrument, and
giving it two worlds to live in instead of one.
If, however, this power of self-consciousness be assigned
to us as our special dignity and strength, it may be turned
to our weakness and our shame. The peculiar faculty in
man, of overlooking himself, is but the needful condition and
natural preparation for another,- that of directing himself.
Why show him his place, but that he may choose his way?
Why wake him up, - alone of all creatures, - if the nightmare of necessity is to sit upon him still? If his course be
determined for him, and not by him, why not lock him fast,
like all similar natures, in the interior of his perceptions and
impulses, as in the scenery of a dream, instead of carrying
him outside to survey them? A thing that is entirely at




CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.             279
the disposal of foreign forces, that is moved hither and
thither by laws imposed upon it, would plainly be none the
better for the gift of self-knowledge. If the planet, urged
through an inflexible orbit by determinate mechanism, were
made aware of its own history, no hair's-breadth of guidance
would the revelation give. If the tree could study its own
physiology, its growth would be no nobler, and its fruit no
fairer.  If the animal could scrutinize its instincts, they
would perform no new function, and afford no happier guidance. And if man can superintend his own mind, it is
because he is nzot, like the planet, the tree, the brute, the
mere theatre on which forces display themselves, but a fresh
power in himself, able to originate action in the same sense
in which God originates the universe. Every sentient being
perceives enough for its own direction: if you look round
the circle of its perceptions, you ascertain the sources of its
guidance. Animals, that are at the exclusive disposal of the
external objects related to them, are alive to the external
world alone. Man, capable of withstanding extrinsic agencies, and having a creative centre within him, is alive to his
own soul as well. Shut us fast up in the line of nature, and
nature is all that we want to know. Set us free to stand
above nature, and live with an upper region of the spirit
stretching beyond her realm, not subject only but also lord,
and we need for the first time that self-consciousness which
is the condition of liberty, and the first element of wisdom.
It is because we have a work of choice assigned us, because
we are entrusted with the power to control our instincts,
and subject the spontaneous natural life to the voluntary
and the spiritual, that we alone have the faculty of reflection. It is the superior light awarded to our special obligations.  Self-consciousness, thus superadded to our mere
sentient nature, becomes, by this association, not less our
temptation than our dignity. If pain and pleasure constituted the ultimate interests of life, we could dispense with
the attribute of self-inspection as well as the brutes: in




280        CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
short, we should be in that case but a nobler sort of brute,
differing from  other species only in having more numerous
resources for our sensitive nature,-a richer table spread
for more varied appetites, of the palate or of the mind.
Senses, however multiplied; taste, however exquisite; capacities for enjoyment, never so fine, -want no faculty of
reflection, and must know that it is not for themn. But
while it is not for their sakes, it is of necessity in their
presence, and within their hearing, that the arcanae of life
are revealed to us.  Appetite and conscience, like two
spirits of the lower and the upper world, live together in
the same house, so that the revelation made for one is little
likely to remain secret from  the other; and it is in the
power of the fiend to steal the privity of the angel, and
break the seals of the divinest message. Hence there comes
about an impious abuse of the godlike gift of self-conscious
life; and instead of serving as the handmaid of duty, it is
degraded into the pander of appetite.  Nothing can be
baser than this sweet poisoning of moral truth for the relish
of sin. Thus to use our human secret as a cunning way of
getting an advantage over the brutes, is a downright betrayal of the confidence of God,- a bartering in hell of
that which we have overheard in heaven.
This faculty, then, of reflection upon himself, his life, his
nature, his relations, is the peculiarity which, in proportion
as it becomes marked, places man at a distance from the
brutes.  When applied to its true purpose, of surveying his'
responsibilities, judging his modes of activity and affection,
and enforcing a Christian order throughout his soul, it
becomes a godlike prerogative, and lifts him to an angellife. When perverted to a false purpose, of prying into his
passive sensations, and discovering the means of getting
(lrunk with instinctive pleasures, and turning the healthy
hunger of nature into the feverish greed of Epicurism, it
becomes a fallen spirit, and allies its possessor with the
fiends.  Man, the self-conscious animal, is the  saddest




CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.              281
spectacle in creation: man, the self-conscious Christian,
one of the noblest.  Reflecting vitality is hypochondria and
disease: reflecting spirituality is clearness and strength.
This general doctrine has a direct bearing upon a question which is often raised, and which presses upon the attention of the present age with an anxious earnestness:What is the effect on human character of a high and complicated civilization? Are its vast accumulation of comJnodities, its rapid circulation of activity and thought, its minute
division of employments, its close interlacing of interests,
its facilities for class-organization, to be looked upon with
joy and gratulation, as so many triumphs of intelligence and
refinement over ignorance and barbarism; or with grief
and consternation, as the gathering of an uncontrollable and
aimless power, destined, like the mad HIercules, to destroy
the offspring of its strength?  The exulting and jubilant
feeling on this matter which prevailed solne years ago, is
now generally replaced, I believe, in thoughtful minds, by
a more sober and even melancholy order of expectations.
The change may be justified, if it be made a step, not
to passive despair, but to the faithful and energetic performance of a new class of social duties.  Let us search for
some principle which may aid in the solution of this great
problem.
The specific effect on human character produced by a high
state of civilization may be expressed in a single phrase: it
develops the self-consciousness of men to ain intense degree,
or, to borrow the venerable language of Scripture, imrnneasurably increases their "knowledge of good and evil."  This
indeed arises necessarily from  our living so closely in the
presence of each other. A  perfectly solitary being, who
had a whole planet to himself, would remain, I suppose, for
ever incapable of knowing himself and reflecting upon his
thoughts and actions.  He would continue, like other creatures, to have feelings and ideas, but would not make them
his objects and bring them  under his will.  This human




282        CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
peculiarity would remain latent in him, till he was introduced before the face of some kindred being, and he saw
his nature reflected in another mind.  Looking into the
eyes of a living companion, changing with laughter and with
tears, flashing with anger, drooping with sleep, he finds the
mirror of himself; the passions of his inner life are revealed
to himn; and he becomes a person, instead of a living thing.
In proportion as society collects more thickly around a man,
this primitive change deepens and extends: the unconscious,
instinctive life, which remains predominant in savage tribes,
and visible enough in sparse populations everywhere, gradually retires. He knows all about his appetites, and how to
serve them; can name his feelings, feign them, stifle them;
can manage his thoughts, fly from them, conceal them; can
meditate his actions, link them into a system, protect them
from interrupting impulse, and direct them to an end; can
go through the length and breadth of life with mind grossly
familiar with its wonders, or reverently studious of its wisdom; and look on death, with the eye of an undertaker, or
through the tears of a saint. In an old and artificial coInmunity, all the common products of experience appear stale
and exhausted, and ingenuity is plied for the means of
awakening some new emotion. The inmost recesses of our
nature are curiously explored, and its most sacred feelings
submitted to the coolest criticism, and brought under the
canons of art. The self-consciousness of individuals is sharied
by society at large: it studies itself, talks of its past, is anxious about its future; becomes aware of its own mechanism,
and tries to estimate its strength. And with a universal
discussion of wide social problems, an unparalleled egotism
and isolation are apt to seize upon every sect, class, and
nation.
If this be true, then we must admit that a high civilization unfolds the characteristic endowment of our nature;
and so far, may be said to raise and dignify it, and leave
far behind the mere animal and instinctive life which be.




CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.           283
longs to beings of lower grade. The most ignorant man
in England possesses a knowledge of good and evil, and a
various skill in commanding them, which the hoariest patriarcll in a barbarian village would look upon with awe.
It is only however in the naturalist's scale, not in the
Christian, that man is elevated by the influences of artificial society. He becomes a well-marked specimen of his
kind, broadly separated from other races upon earth: but
how he ranks among spiritual beings, - whether he approaches the confines of heaven, or touches the verge of
hell, —is wholly undecided still.  Superior knowledge of
good and evil involves no change in the proportionate love
of themn; self-consciousness being a neutral faculty, the condition alike of whatever is pure and noble, and of all that
is most foul and mean; the ground at once of the fidelity
of Ab)diel and the guilt of Lucifer. Hence it is that the
mere progress of civilization involves no spiritual advance,
and miserably disappoints those who trusted that it was to
deliver men from the yoke of their follies and their sins.
Vast as is the spectacle of our material magnificence, and
intense as may be the traces of mental vitality, there is
no certain decline of selfishness and corruption in any class:
or if on the right hand you can point to some evil extinguished, on the left there springs sonle new enormity to
balance the success.  How  many are there who basely
avail themselves of all the ease and luxury of our complicated civilization, compared with the few who feel its obligations, and take up its work! How little security do the
most practised thought and refined scholarship seem to afford against shameful jesuitry and  abject superstition!
And how often is the nimble intelligence of the artisan
wholly unproductive of any self-restraint or reverence!
The mere cleverness indeed of the modern townsman, derived from  the heated and sensitive atmosphere around
him, implies no hardy spiritual life within him, and ensures no moral thoughtfulness or wisdom. It is a more




284        CHR;ISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
aptitude for the germination of ideas of any sort; whereby
flowers of Paradise may come sprouting up without ripening their proper fruits, or the deadly nightshade drop its
poison unperceived. Intellectual irritability may leave the
conscience wholly dead. And assuredly only that knowledge which a man wins for himself by the spontaneous
efforts of his own mind has the proper and purifying effect
of trutth on him, and renders his nature clearer than it was
before.
And unhappily this self-acquired knowledge and faculty
are, in one respect, less likely to be found among us in these
days than of old. The direct influence of occupation is less
and less favorable to their production.  Nothing that has
ever been advanced by economists can convince me, that
the extreme division of employments which characterizes
modern industrial operations, is any thing but deadening
and unhealthy to the mental nature of those engaged in
them. To spend every working day of half or the whole
of life, not in a craft of various nicety and skill, but in a
solitary process of a single manufacture, in tying threadcls or
pointing pins, can assuredly give no discipline to any faculty, unless those of muscular alacrity or mental patience:
and compared with the work of an earlier world, I should
as little call this skill, as I should class among literary men
a scribe who should devote his life to crossing t s and dotting is. With long habit the monotony of such a lot may
cease to be positively felt. But it taxes no worthy power:
it enlists no natural interest: it presents only vacancy and
Tistlessness to the thought: and the more so, as the work is
another's, and not the laborer's own. The occupation does
not educate the man. It may be true, in point of fact,
that workers of this class are as intelligent as others.  But
if so, this is owing to influences extrinsic to the cause on
which I dwell, and in spite of it; especially to their residence in the stimulant atmosphere of great cities, and tho
habit of association with large bodies of men. And this in



CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.           285
tellectual counteraction itself, there is reason to fear, is purchased at the cost of vast moral dangers. For, in proportion
as men cease to have an intelligent interest in their work,
and go through it with the weariness of a necessary task,
do they quit it with a susceptibility to foreign excitements, and a more open avidity for the temptations of the
passions: and losing the even glow of a constant activity,
they fall under fearful inducement to alternate the stagnant
blood of dulness with the throbbing pulse of revelry.
Who then can be so blind as to deny the dangers amid
which we live?  We have created around us a scale of opportunity, and temptation, and risk, frightfully vast. We
are wholly out of reach of the narrow safety of simple and
instinctive life.  We stand in the presence of a gigantic
amount of good and evil. Yet we have not stronger spirits
to bear the mightier strain. So far as our condition forms
us, we are less complete men, and therefore of less massive
stability, than were our forefathers. The moral structure of
society partakes of the character of those huge machines
which have done so much to make at once its wealth and
weakness: each man being but as a screw or pinion of the
whole, locked into a system that holds him fast or whirls
him on, and having no longer a separate symmetry and
worth. The results indeed which are turned out from this
involuntary co-operation of parts, are of overwhlelming
magnitude and wonderful variety. Our country is a vast
congeries of exaggerations. Enormous wealth and saddest
poverty, sumptuous idleness and saddest toil, princely provision for learning and the most degrading ignorance, a
large amount of laborious philanthropy, but a larger of unconquered misery and sin, subsist side by side, and terrify
us by the preternatural contrast of brilliant coloring with
blackest shade. It is appalling to think of the moral cost (a
cost most needless too) at which England has become materially great. Do you found that greatness on the culture of
the soil?  Alas! where is the laborer by whose hand it has




286       CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
been tilled?  In a cabin with his children, where the doinestic decencies cannot be, and where Christ, did he enter,
might give his pity, but could hardly ask obedience. Or do
you point rather to our mineral wealth? See the picture,
which has scarcely ceased to be true, of crawling women,
and harnessed children, of whose toil this glory comes! I
know not which is most heathenish, the guilty negligence
of our lofty men, or the fearful degradation of the low.
But this I do believe, that unless some holier spirit dart
quickly down for the conversion of our rich and great,
put into them a wise and Christian heart, and dispose them
to sacrifices never dreamt of yet, our social repentance will
come too late, and we shall die with our Jerusalem, seeing
only the image of a tearful Christ, and hearing the words,
" Oh that thou hadst known, at least in this thy day, the
things that belong to thy peace!"
Moreover, we live, as we have seen, in an age of excited
and self-conscious men. And in all minds awakened and
reflective to even a very moderate degree, there arises and
accumulates a secret fund of dissatisfaction; a dark, mysterious speck of care upon the heart, which turns to a point
of explosive ruin in bad men, to a seed of fruitful sorrow
with the good. The natural mind, untouched by religious
wisdom, always refers its wants and miseries to outward
things, which alone it strives to mend and change. So
this hidden discontent leads men to love themselves the
more, and quarrel with their neighbors, until they become
Christians in soul: and then it shows them  a far higher
truth, and leads them to love their neighbors and reproach
themselves. The strife and struggle which are inseparable
from our self-conscious life, are directed to mutual hate,
while under the guidance of self; to common aspiration,
under the discipline of Christ. Who can doubt that under
our present spiritual condition, it is the anarchy, and not
the love, to which this feeling tends? And who would not
pray for an infusion of the light of God to paint the bow of




CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.            287
peace and promise on the cloud where the muffled thunder
growls? Oh that to us, otherwise than to Elijah in the cave,
it may be given to hear the still small voice, not after, but
before, the strong wind, the earthquake, and the fire!
To avert the dangers, and remedy the peculiar evils of
our social condition, many conjoint agencies are doubtless
required. But there is not one whose neglect offers more
certain peril, whose right and timely application presents
more reasonable hope, than a Christian training for the new
generation of our people. Could this, indeed, be universally given, could all good men set to work with one heart
and hand, and see to it that no desert spot be unreclaimed,
all would yet be well. But, alas! we are so afraid of each
other's doctrines, that we cannot cure each other's sins; and
while the most appalling evils threaten us, and more than
once the symptomatic smoke has puffed up from the social
volcano, we stand round the crater and discuss theology!
Ah! how much more is there in our Christendom  of the
contentious mind, than of the disciple's pure and unperverted heart! Which, I would know, is the worse evil, an
actual gin-shop, or a possible heresy? Yet in dread of the
latter, we cannot unite together in the only means of putting down the former. However, by such means as our
infirmities still leave open, we must go and teach this people.
In proportion as their occupations educate them less, and
their circumstances tempt them more, a direct and proposed
culture must be provided; - a culture which keeps in view
the great primary end of responsible existence; which looks
not at their trade, but at their souls, and brings them not as
apt servants to the mill, but as holy children to their God.
Education, in the Christian sense, is truly everlasting: childhood preparing for maturity, maturity for age, and the whole
of life for death and heaven. The early training of the
young is but that portion of this series, which prepares for
self-government and the exercise of free-will within the
limits of Christ's law. Doubtless the responsibility of this




288       CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.
task rests, by the decree of Nature and Providence, with
the parents to whom the young life is committed as a trust;
nor will it ever have settled on its genuine basis, till there
shall exist, in every class, an effective domestic sentiment,
sufficient to sustain it. But amid the grievous decay of the
old and healthful parental conscience, it becomes needful to
awaken a wider interest in the work, and to call upon neighborhood and country to take up the neglected office of the
home. Nor should any individual, or any family, exempt
from the constant cares of subsistence, be held to have discharged the obligations of the Christian life, till they freely
give some steady help to this essential work; and provide
some fitting care for the neglected child, as still an infant
disciple claimed by the arms, and consecrated by the benediction, of the heavenly Christ.




XXIX.
THE UNCLOUDED HEART.
--
JOHN v. 30.
MY JUDGMENT IS JUST, BECAUSE I SEEK NOT MINE OWN WILL, BUT THE
WILL OF THE FATHER WHICH HATH SENT ME.
FOR the training of goodness, the ancient reliance was on
the right discipline of habit and affection: the modern is
rather on illumination of the understanding. The notion
extensively prevails that vice, being only the mistaken pursuit of that personal happiness for which virtue is an equal
but more sagacious aspirant, is a blunder of the intellect; a
defective or erroneous view of things; and, like the optical
delusions incident to weak eyes, to be cured by use of the
most approved instruments for seeing clearly. The guilty
and degraded will, it is said, differs from  the pure and
noble, not by aiming at a less innocent end, but by being
less happy in its choice of means: point out the miscalculation, instruct it to weigh causes with greater nicety in
future, and you cannot fail to promote the needful reformation. The sinner is but the most deplorable of fools; and
if you banish folly, you extinguish sin.
This prescription for the advancement of human excellence possesses an apparent simplicity, which gives it a
great attraction to some minds. All the varieties of character among men it reduces to an arrangement easily understood; distributing them along a single line, in the order of
their intelligence. It seems to take away all mystery from
the moral emotions, whose rapidity and intensity had awed
and startled us; and by converting them into plain judg19




290           THE UNCLOUDED HEART.
ments of the intellect, makes them the voice of man instead
of God. Unhappily, however, the value of this tempting
theory disappears the moment we seek to use it. Let its
most ingenious advocate try it upon the miser, the cheat,
the insane candidate for glory; let him reason with them
on their ignorance and imbecility of judgment, expose every
fallacy of self-justification, and establish against them an
unanswerable case of mistake; and then let him come and
tell us whether he has made them generous, just, and meek.
Perhaps he will confess his failure, but persevere in ascribing it to the unhappy state of his pupils' understanding,
rather than any distinct affection of their passions.  "' I
could not convince them," he will say, "of their error; or,
if my arguments impressed them at the moment, the persuasion passed away; and habit proved the more successful
advocate, because it was, though not the truer, yet the more
importunate."  But were not your appeals just and forcible,
and your instructions indisputably true? Then there must
be something in the heart where evil passions dwell that
baffles the chance of reason, that takes from evidence its
natural force, and gives to error an unmerited triumph.
And what advantage do we gain by representing men as
the subjects, and their morality as truths, of the pure intellect, if it be an intellect that may lose its distinguishing
function, and become inaccessible to just persuasion? What
comfort is it to know that guilt is only error, if it be error
so peculiar as to be insensible to the merits of the most unquestionable proof? Why tell us that right and wrong are
but the love of happiness making its computations, when it
is admitted that passion was never computed out of the
heart, and that self-interest itself is whiffed away by the
tempest of its rage?  It is true that you have only to give
the slave of guilty passions a different view of the objects
of desire, and he is set free from his miserable thraldom.
It is equally true that you have only to make the collapsed
paralytic start up and run, - and he will be well.




THE UNCLOUDED HEART.                291
No doubt, the weakest reason and the most ungovernable
desires are constantly found together. But there are at
least two ways of reading connected appearances like these.
The attempt to resolve all the phenomena of character into
a condition of the understanding is a futile exaggeration.
The great author of Christianity, reversing the order of
the explanation, placed the truth in a juster point of view.
He well knew that if, sometimes, because the reason is darkened, the passions are awake, it more often happens that
because the passions are awake, the reason is eclipsed. To
him it could not but be clear, from consciousness itself, that
pure sympathies make a clear intellect, and, with their sweet
breath, wonderfully open to the mind new perceptions of
things heavenly. While auditors, feeling " that never man
spake like this man," asked "how knoweth he letters, having never learned?"  Jesus led them to a different explanation of his wisdom, "MAy judgment is just, because I seek
not mine own will, but the will of the Father who hath sent
me."  And he instructed others how to gain a like discernment of things divine, when he said, " If any will do his
will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or
whether I speak of myself." The words express a universal
truth. Whatever be the work on which the judgment may
be engaged, it will be invariably aided by the natural sympathies of a just, disinterested, and holy mind.
Even in his abstruser toils, these are often the wise man's
mighl-ltiest power. The most turbid clouds that darken the
vision of reason are those which interest, and fear, and
ambition spread: and these the pure affections sweep away.
They give to the soul the unspeakable freedom of just
intents and elevated trusts: and where there exist no complicated aims, no retarding anxieties, but the whole absolute
energy of a mind is gathered upon the search of truth, it is
amazing what vast achievements may be made. How often
will a child, by mere force of unconsciousness and simplicity,
penetrate to the centre of some great truth with a startling




292            THE UNCLOUDED HEART.
ease and directness! And in this the greatness of genius
is like the power of a child: it is as much moral as intellectual; it arises from emotions so distinct and earnest as to
secure singleness of purpose and vivacity of expression;
from sohe absorbing reverence which disenthrals the mind
from lower passions, and gives it courage to be true. There
is always a presumption that a pure-hearted will be a rightminded man; and it is delightful to see such a one stand
up before the ambitious sophist, and dart on his ingenuities
a clear ray of conscience that scatters them like mist. The
divine light of a good mind is too much for the mystifications of guilt. "The foolishness of God is wiser than the
wisdom of men."
All the great hindrances to impartiality in the quest of
truth have obviously their seat in some class of selfish feelings. Interest, promising to one set of opinions emolument
and honor, and to their opposite poverty and disgrace; or
passing over to the future world, and there displaying to us
the alternative of absolute blessedness or ruin, - crushes the
natural justice of the understanding, and offers stupendous
temptations to palter with evidence, and shuffle inconvenient
doubts away. No inquirer can fix a direct and clear-sighted
gaze towards truth, who is casting side glances all the while
on the prospects of his soul. Again, the excessive eagerness
about reputation produces a thousand pitiable distortions of
understanding. In one it takes the shape of a determination to be original (which, I suppose, never befell any man
by deliberate resolve), and so extinguishes his perception of
all ancient excellence, and confines his appreciation to his
own obscurities and affectations. In another it passes into
an opposite folly, -the pride of being peculiarly moderate
and sound; and so he dreads eccentricities far more than
falsehoods, and weighs proprieties, instead of investigating
truths. And what is the partisanship that wearies every
good man's heart, but a collection of selfish feelings, fatal to
all the equities of reason; a gross association of the idea of




THE UNCLOUDED HEART.                 293
self with abstract questions? It is said to be of service in
keeping alive the mental activity of the community; but
how poor a service, when the activity consists so largely in
the ferment of bad passions, and conducts the tranquil tasks
of reason in the spirit of a gamester. Argument, in such
case, loses its natural power of persuasion, and operates like
a weapon of vengeance; only raising higher the note of
triumph in those who wield it, and irritating instead of convincing the minds that it assails. Indeed, it is humiliating
to think how poor a pittance of reasoning conducts the
gigantic mutations of human sentiment; how arguments, at
which a quiet understanding would smile, rise to grave importance in the confusion of polemic rage; how light the
sophistries which sway the tide of success when the hosts
of party wrestle in the fight; how foolish the sounds that
seem to award possession of that great capitol of opinion
which overlooks the empire of the world.
Though, however, narrow feelings and selfish desires, intruding on the province of the understanding, prevent its
judgments from being just, it is not true that their simple
absence constitutes the best state for speculative research.
It is sometimes said, that, were it possible, the inquirer's
mind should be absolutely emptied of every desire, and be
exposed, in entire passiveness, to the action of evidence
brought before its tribunal; that a being incapable of emotion, a mere machine for performing logical operations,
would be the most efficient discoverer. But surely his impartiality, however perfect, would accomplish nothing without an impulse: intensity of intellectual action is needed, as
well as clearness of intellectual view. And this will be
most certainly found, not in one who follows the light without
deep love of it; not in one who simply finds it a personal
convenience, and desires it for its use; not even in one who
has simply a relish for mental occupations, and prolongs
them from pure taste; but in him who traverses the realm
of thought, as if "seeking the will of One that sent him;"




294           THE UNCLOUDED HEART.
who reverently looks on the features of truth as on the face
of God, and listens to its accents as to its whispered oracle;
who trusts it with a "love that casteth out fear," and feels
on him the blessed light of heaven, when bigots pronounce
him in a dreadful gloom.
On questions of practical morals, yet more emphatically
than on subjects of speculative research, is it true that pure
sympathies produce a clear intellect, and that his judgments
are most likely to be just, who most habitually seeks the
will of the eternal Father. The moral habits and tastes of
men form their opinions, much more frequently than their
opinions form their habits:- so that often their theoretical
sentiments are little more than a systematic self-defence
after the act, and afford an approximate index to the character of themselves and the society in which they live.
The positions they assume having been taken up first, the
reasons for maintaining them are discovered afterwards:
and it is surprising to observe the confidence with which
questions of morals are discussed, as if on grounds of absolute philosophy, when every quiet observer perceives that
the alleged premises would appear ridiculous except to
persons already possessed of the conclusion. There is a
test, — imperfect I admit, —by which to judge whether
this is so or not, and to disenchant the imagination of the
mere effect of usage. Any moral practice which admits of
genuine defence, and has a permanent foundation in nature
as well as in custom, might surely be recommended to an
intelligent community hitherto ignorant of it, and successfully urged upon their deliberate adoption. Yet how many
things are we accustomed to palliate or uphold, which we
should be ashamed to submit to this criterion, and which
the very act of expounding to child or stranger would sufficiently condemn!  In how many societies are the misnamed laws of honor, for example, still justified, as if they
satisfactorily met the conditions of a problem else insoluble!
But if they be so sound and useful, it would be safe to try




THE UNCLOUDED HEART.                295
the argument in their behalf on those to whom the whole
system of ideas is entirely new; to preach the admirable
wisdom of the duel to some tribe having only such civilization as may be attained without it; and proselytize to it as
if it were an'a priori invention of philosophy. If the apostles of the world's law feel that in a mental clime so new,
they would plead in vain, should they not suspect that they
may be talking absurdities at home, which have no force
but in the social prepossessions in their behalf? It is fearful
to reflect indeed to what an extent our native moral sentiments are modified by the atmosphere of social influence
perpetually spread around us; how the indications of the
unperverted conscience may become obscured and lost, and
a fatal blindness and sleep disqualify it for its waking office.
It is the natural mistake of just minds to believe it vigilant
and incorruptible as God. When we fix our gaze on some
dread crime; when we see, it may be, the outrages of a tyrant's profligacy and vengeance, crushing the life of resolute
purity, or consigning to the dungeon the virtue which it
fears; — under the impulse of poetic justice, we imagine
the perpetrator secretly agonized by the consciousness of
guilt; writhing at midnight beneath the lash of a fiery remorse, while his chained victim sleeps the light slumbers
of innocence, and wakes with a brow cooled by the peace
within. But we impose upon ourselves by a natural illusion:
we conceive a wretch to judge himself by a good man's conscience, and to view his own deeds in a light which, had it
been accessible to him, must at least have induced a hesitation about their commission. No, remorse is the attribute,
not of the simply guilty, but of the fallen: it is the bitter
memory which sin, yet fresh, retains of departed goodness;
the mind's convulsive grasp on the retreating purities of
the past: and, however vehemently it protests against
moral deterioration, the consolidated guilt of habit it lets
alone. Shall any one then assure himself that all is right,
because he is clear of compunction?  Shall he suffer his in



296            THE UNCLOUDED HEART.
dulgent years to ebb idly away, because they are placid as
the summer wave?  Shall he thrust aside the pleadings of
those who would kindle in him higher thoughts and brace
him to nobler deeds,- by saying that he is comfortable and
does not need them? If so, he satisfies himself by the
same argument which sophists use in defence of slavery;
— the creatures are easy, have been seen to laugh merrily
by day, and are known to sleep well at night! As if it
were the whole life of man to have a sleek skin and a
drowsy brain! As if any existence upon ideas were not
better than any without them; and to perceive one's
misery were not the best consolation for its infliction;
and to aspire to a nobler existence, though with faintest hope, to chafe against the chain that binds us, though
it gnaws our flesh, were not preferable to that most abject condition of humanity in which conscious degradation becomes impossible.  We should beware then how
we rely on this unconsciousness as a security. Of every
low state of character this apathy towards all that is above
it is the worst symptom.  This torpor should not lull,
but rather terrify.  When this motionless repose reigns
within, - this breathless atmosphere of the heart, — the
freshness of health is no longer there: it is the pestilent
dreariness of the waste; the awful silence of moral death.
In its judgment of Hlman character, more even than in
matters of personal morals, a mind under the governance of
pure and disinterested affections will evince the clearest
insight. He would be the most impartial spectator of the
great theatre of human life, who should be raised into a
sphere of pure contemplation above its scenes; to a position
beyond its competitions, its disappointments, its rewards;
where the voice of its restless multitudes floated but in
whispers, articulate enough to report its passions with precision, but not thrilling enough to agitate the spirit by their
power. Such an observer, himself acted on by no sympathies but those of conscience, - perfectly perceptive, but




THE UNCLOUDED HEART.                S
entirely passionless, - would behold us in true relations and
proportions. The pure affections create a mental position
somewhat similar to this. They still the confusion of the
senses. They remove all motive for not seeing men and life
exactly as they are. One who looks on the world as his
appointed post of strenuous duty, and feels on him the
divine charge to leave it better than he found it, must close
neither eye nor heart against any of its ills. And as for its
good, — for the charities that bless, the virtues that ennoble,
the genius that illuminates our human lot,- delighting in
them all, he discerns them all: bringing to him as they do
the refreshment of a generous veneration, what temptation
has he to doubt, decry, and disbelieve them?  In a mind
where any selfish end habitually prevails, men are regarded
as tools: their services are wanted, and their complacency
must be secured: they are looked upon as objects of managemlent, on whom  the arts of influence must be tried.
Hence the mental eye is insensibly trained to a sly and circumventing gaze upon our fellows: the hand of cautious
power steals forth, and makes a lever of their weaknesses:
the tongue, encouraged by its first experiments of delicate
insincerity, grows rash and voluble in flattery. And those
whom a man is conscious of praising too much, he is sure to
value too little. Accustomed to speak of good qualities
which they do not possess, to invent merits of which they
are empty, his mind is always dwelling on the negation of
excellence, and growing familiar with it exclusively as an
object of fiction; till at length he ceases to believe in its
reality, and attributes to every thing human the hollowness
which he practises himself. By the interposition of his own
selfishness, the nobler half of human nature undergoes total
and permanent eclipse. How should it be otherwise? For
who would spread the tender colors of the soul before an
eye like his, where they can bask in no light of love? Who
would lay the head to rest on a bosom cold as marble? Will
any make confession of an unworldly aspiration to one, who




298            THE UNCLOUDED HEART.
keeps always ready some vile interpretation of whatever
seems most excellent; who sees in the pious only traders in
hypocrisy, in the patriot a speculator in power, in the martyr
a candidate for praise? All that is beautiful shrinks from
the presence of one who delights to soil it with instant dust.
Oh how unblest are they who have fallen into an incapacity
to admire, and bid adieu to the solace of a deep reverence;
who can take up without awe the leaves scattered on the
earth by departed genius, or read of the struggles of liberty
without enthusiasm, or follow the good in their pilgrimage
of mercy without the heavings of a mighty joy! No grief
deserves such pity as the hopeless privations of a scornful
heart.
Those who seek only their "own will" lose, then, by
natural process, the faculty of judging justly respecting
human character. They are liable to fall into no less mistake in their anticipations of those changes in society which
are brought about by the nobler forces of the human will.
It is happy for the world, that over the vision of its greatest
enemies their own selfishness spreads a film, concealing from
them, as in judicial blindness, the generous powers which
will effect their overthrow. Tyrants and self-seeking rulers
are, by nature, Machiavelian moralists: they have no faith
but in the most vulgar incentives to action, and are familiar
with no engines of influence but force and corruption. Accustomed to rely on these, they know not that there are
emergencies, in which even a herd of slaves may be inspired
with an enthusiasm that makes such implements of no avail;
— when high sentiments of social justice, or aspirations
towards an invisible God, vibrate through the dull clay of
ordinary men. Thus, often has the pampered despot been
blinded to his fate, and led unconscious on, like a decorated
and sportiNve victim, to the sacrificial altar of a people's
indignation. In spite of all his vigilance, conspiracy, conducted by lean and praying patriots, has gone on unnoticed
beneath his very eyes. While the sunshine smiles upon his




THE UNCLOIUDED HEART.               299
palace, and glances from the swords of faithful troops, he
despises the gathering clouds of a nation's frown: till suddenly the tempest bursts upon the hills, and the heavy
tramp, as of the men of toil, thunders on the ground; and,
after a flash of vented wrath, the veterans and their leader
lie low upon the field, and the thanksgiving of the free goes
up into a sky serene. Thus it is of the very nature of guilty
power to be surprised by the apparition of high-minded
virtue in a people. And though the resistance it offers to
the demands of conscience may, on this very account, be
the more exasperated, and the vindication of an abstract
right, like that of free worship, may cost a country the
life of her best sons, we may yet be permitted to rejoice
at the infatuation of selfish rule: for even the sanguinary
triumph of a great and righteous principle is often better
than the sly and bloodless ascendancy of a bad one. War,
with all its horrors, may be half forgotten in two generations: but the rights which it may establish may prove the
causes of perennial peace. Men, at the best, must die as
the grass; but the principles of justice are blessings for
evermore.
The selfish, then, in perpetually seeking their own will,
and contemplating mankind chiefly as possible instruments
for its accomplishment, necessarily overlook the best elements of our nature, and form judgments that are not just
of human character, and its collective effects on the condition of the world. Moreover, while selfishness makes some
men tools, it finds in others rivals; and, under the form of
jealousy, dlraws another cloud over the judgment, and hides
from it all that is fairest in kindred minds. He that cannot
enjoy, with genuine exultation, the reputation of another,
and admire with tranquil spirit the excellence that borders
on his own, loses the best joy of a good heart. To the very
merits which, from being most akin to his own, he is most
fitted to appreciate, he becomes insensible: and a bitter
poison drops into the fountains of his most generous peace.




300            THE UNCLOUDED HEART.
There is no more melancholy sight than that of a mind,
otherwise great, succumbing beneath a mean tand fretful
passion like this; indulging in petty cavils at worth, before
which he should lead on the multitude to bend the knee;
so visibly greedy of others' praise, that the most vulgar
observer laughs to think that the great man is just like himself. It was a grief, like an absolute bereavement, to find
that our own Newton, who should have lifted a brow as
pure and smooth as the heavens he interpreted, and have
greeted all that was good beneath them with a smile of
godlike benediction, could tease a brother laborer, like
Flamstead, and shrivel up his temper into peevishness, and
be driven hither and thither by trivial suspicions, like a
blind giant led about by a little child. Let us hope, what
indeed there is some reason to believe, that all this was
rather the tremulousness of shattered nerves, than the perturbations of the native mind. Yet is it sad to have even
to make excuse for such as he.
Our judgments of human character and relations will not
be right, unless our sympathies be not disinterested only
but pure. The moral feelings must transcend the social;
the sense of duty be stronger than the instincts of affection.
In addition to the negative qualification of not seeking our
own will, we must have the positive one of seeking the will
of the Father who is in heaven. The partialities of the
affections are nobler every way than those of self-love: but
they are partialities still; and while they make our judclgments merciful, may prevent their being just. They may
bewilder our moral perceptions, and, in pure tenderness for
the guilty, seduce us to think lightly of the guilt. There
are in life few temptations so severe as those which our
human love may thus offer to our conscience. If, for example, children around a mother's knee betray their first
unanswerable suspicion of their father's vices, and urge
her with wondering questions, which she has long dreaded
to hear, that press hard upon his guilt; what is she to do?




THE UNCLOUDED HEART.                  301
Is she to hide the anguish that trembles on her features,
and, in fidelity to him, be, for the first time, untrue to
them?  Is she to say the evil thing of him for whom she
lives, and make him  as a byword and a warning on his
children's lips? And yet, is she to take it on herself to
soil the purity and simplicity of their moral perceptions,
and blow, with the foul breath of falsehood, on the lamp
of God within their hearts? Her first duty is, doubtless,
to the sanctities of their young minds; but so hard a lot
forces us to think how dreadful is the guilt that makes a
contradiction between the sympathies of virtue  and of
home, and turns into a sin the natural mercy of disinterested love.
Whatever then be the office required of the judgment;
whether to seek truth along difficult ways, or, amid the
sophistries of custom, to interpret our own responsibilities;
whether it is invited to the generous appreciation of excellence, or summoned to the stern duties of disapprobation
and rebuke; he only who can abandon his own will, and
seek that of the Father in heaven, will either discern his
position clearly, or discharge its obligations with simplicity
and courage. Nor will this clearness of view and directness of aim be likely to desert him in the greater emergencies of life. Then it is that meaner principles of action, all
mere personal desires, collapse in weakness and bewilderment. In times of danger, where it is needful to risk something or lose every thing, men, possessed of no higher
inspiration, lose their presence of mind: and while they
stand in timid calculation, the one only moment of faithful
duty slips away. They will profess perhaps to have been
overpowered by the sense of their responsibility; — anl unconscious acknowledgment of the confusion into which all
self-regarding feelings throw the mind; - for no man, truly
earnest about an object, critically pauses or turns aside to
examine how he is acquitting himself.  No! great as are the
achievements of inferior principles of action, — the love of




302           THE UNICLOUDED HEART.
power, the pursuit of glory, — the only heroism, fitted for
the last extremity of circumstance, is that of disinterested
duty. Others may skilfully and firmly use up their outward
resources to the last: but the Christian hero, when all these
are gone, has yet to spend himself.




XXX.
"HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF."
MARK IX. 24.
LORD, I BELIEVE; HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF.
THAT this is an age most sensitive as to its belief, is evident
on the slightest inspection of its moral physiognomy. A
profound curiosity is awakened respecting the foundations
of faith, and the proper treatment of those high problems
which religion undertakes to solve. An unexampled proportion of our new literature is theological; of our new
buildings, ecclesiastical; of our current conversation, on the
condition and prospects of sects. The social movements
which are watched with the most anxiety on the one hand,
and hope on the other, are recent organizations of religious
sympathy and opinion. Even the interests of industry and
commerce find, for the moment, rival attractions to dispute
their omnipotence; and the church is almost a balance for
the exchange. A converted clergyman is as interesting as
an apostate statesman; a visit to Rome, as a mission to
Washington; a heresy from Germany, as a protocol from
Paris; and a new baptism is no less the theme of talk than
a new tariff. If theological gossip were the measure of
religious faith, we should be the devoutest of all human
generations.
Yet with all this currency of holy words, rarely, I believe,
has there been a scantier exchange of holy thought. We
do not meet, eye to eye and heart to heart, and say, with
bosomed breath, "Lo, God is here!"  But, rather, with




304         HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF.
quick observant glance, and loud harsh voice, we notice the
postures of others, and discuss the things they say; and go
round like a patrol to look in upon the world at prayers.
The talk is all critical, about the length or shortness of some
one's creed, the warmth or coldness of a people's worship.
It tells you what each church thinks of all of its neighbors,
and repeats to you the image of Christendom in every phase.
But, flitting from image to image, we nowhere alight upon
the reality. We stand in one another's presence, like so
many mirrors ranged round empty space: turning to each,
you see only a distorted grouping of all the rest; which
being gone, it would be evident at once, that that polished
face could show merely vacancy without a trace of God.
Of old, when the saints and prophets lived whose names
we take in vain, the language of religion was itself the very
incense that rose from burning, fragrant souls to heaven:
now, it does but analyze the smoke, and explain of what
chemistry it comes. Chrlist " came to bring fire upon earth;"
and his disciples, after eighteen centuries, are discussing the
best patent match to get it kindled!
There is one feature in the professions of the present
times, as compared with past, on which it is impossible to
reflect without astonishment.  There is everywhere the
sharpest discernment of unbelief in others, with an entire
freedom from it in one's self. The critic, if you will only
go round with him, can show you how it is lurking here and
there. He keeps a list of all that his neighbors do 9not
believe. Through the powerful glass of his suspicions he
can make you aware of the nicest shades of heresy: and
from writers who open new veins of thought, can pick out
passages so dreadful as to constitute a kind of infidel anthology. From whatever class you choose your guide, this
is what he will point out to you. Yet if you turn round
and say, " And now, good friend, what of thine own faith?"
you will be delighted to find that it has altogether escaped
the universal malady: it has never had a shake; or, if ever




HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF.               305
ailing, has long got up its good looks, and remains quite
sound and firm. Trust, in short, the churches' report of
one another, and godlessness is universal; trust their account of themselves, and scepticism is extinct. Nobody
hesitates about any thing which it is respectable to hold;
and the clearest atmosphere of certainty overarches every
life, and opens a heaven undarkened by a doubt. And who
are these men, before whom the universe is so transparent;
for whom the veil of mystery is all withdrawn, or at least
hides no awful possibilities? who are always ready to say
the proud words,' Lord, I believe! " but would look askance
at the brother who should meekly respond, " Help thou mine
unbelief!" — Smooth, easy men, with broad acres in the
country, or heavy tonnage on the sea; with good standing
in their profession, or good custom at their shop; living a
life so rounded with comfort, and showing a nmind so content
to repose on it, that, while rents and freights keep up, you
cannot fancy they would much feel the loss of God: and
to part with the reversion of heaven would hardly affect
them like the news of a large bad debt. They believe
soundly, in the same way that they dress neatly: it no more
occurs to them to question their habitual creed, than to think
in the morning whether they shall put on a toga or a coat:
it is a matter of course, that the proprieties be observed,
and things that are settled for us be left untouched. Besides, what could be done with the "common people," if it
were not for God?
Now from this easy faith, sitting so light upon our modern men, I turn to the old Puritan, and amn startled by the
contrast. However much you may dislike his uncouth looks,
and be offended with his whining voice, he is not a man
without religion; -a pity, it may be, that he has taken the
holiness and left the beauty of it. Missing it, however, in
his person and his speech, you find it penetrating his life,
and shaping it to high ends of truth and right. He can act
and suffer for God's sake; can stand loose from the delu20




306          HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF.
sions of property, - say that nothing is his own, —and
occupy his place as a fiduciary fief from the Lord Paramount
of all; can despise gaudy iniquity and see to the heart of
every gilded flattery; — can insist on veracity in the council, and simplicity in the church;- feel the Omniscient eye
on his State-paper as he writes; and the Eternal Spirit
directing the course his persecuted step shall take. Yet
look into this man's diary, and stand by and overhear his
prayers.  He loudly bewails his unbelief; - confesses a
heart chilled with the very shadow of death; — complains
that the Most High has hid his face from him; and with
tears and protestations calls on the spirit of Christ to exorcise the demons of doubt that are grappling with his soul.
Surely this is a strange thing. Here is a man plainly living
for sublime ends, beyond the baubles of this world; a man,
who has got fear and pain beneath his feet;-who welcomes self-denial as an angel of the way, and watches every
indulgence as a traitor offering the kiss; — to whom the
purest human love appears a snare tempting him to linger
here; —who walks the earth, as in the outer fringe of the
beatific vision: and his cry is, " Help thou mine unbelief!"
And here are we, strangers to wrestlings such as his; who
sleep soundly by nights, and manage prosperously by day;
whose grand care is to get a living, rather than to live, and
to cure by rule the health impaired by luxury: - we, to
whom the earth answers well enough as a kitchen, a parlor,
an office, or a theatre, but hardly as a watch-tower of contemplation, or a holy of holies for the oracles of God: — we
can stand up, and have the assurance to say, "Lord! we
believe!"
The difference between these two states of mind does not
require that we should charge either of them with hypocrisy. There is truth in the professions of them both; truth
enough to vindicate their veracity, though not to equalize
their worth. The unbeliever in the one case and the believer in the other are measured off from a different scale;




HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF.              307
our fathers looking up to the faith they ought to gain, their
children looking down to the faith they have yet to lose.
The former had so lofty a standard, that every thought
beneath the summit-level was reckoned to their shame: the
latter have so low a standard, that all above the dead level
at the base of life is counted to their praise. Nor is this at
all inconceivable, even though we were to reduce all religion to a single article of faith. To me, I confess, it seems
a very considerable thing, just to believe in God;- difficult
indeed to avoid honestly, but not easy to accomplish worthily, and impossible to compass perfectly: - a thing, not
lightly to be professed, but rather humbly to be sought;
not to be found at the end of any syllogism, but in the inmost fountains of purity and affection;- not the sudden
gift of intellect, but to be earned by a loving and brave life.
It is indeed the greatest thing allowed to mankind, —the
germ of every lesser greatness: and he who can say, "I
have faith in the Almighty," makes a higher boast than if
he could declare, "The Mediterranean is in my garden, and
mine is every branch that waves upon its shores, from the
cedars of Lebanon to the pine upon the Alps." How often,
in the stifling heat and press of life, when trivial cares rise
with dry and dusty cloud to shut us in, do we wholly lose
our place in the great calm of God, and fret as if there were
no Infinite Reason embracing the voitex of the world! In
loneliness and exhaustion, when the spirits are weak, and
the crush of circumstance is strong; - when comrades rest
and sleep, and we must toil and watch;-when the love of
friends grows cold, and the warm light of youth is quenched,
and the promises of years seem broken, and hope has but
one chapter more; —how little do we think, as the boughs
drip sadly with all this night-rain, that we lodge in Eden
still, where the voice of the Lord God rustles in the trees,
and bespeaks the blossom and the fruit that can only spring
from tears! Fear too, in every form except the fear of sin,
is a genuine atheism. The very child knows that: for if a




308          HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF.
terror comes on him because he is in the field alone by night,
he chides himself for his false heart; stops and looks tranquilly round; relaxes the rigid limbs, and lets go the stifled
breath; putting forth a thought into the Great Presence,
and drawing a holy quiet from the stars. And through all
manhood's fears, no one loses his presence of mind, who has
not lost the presence of his God. In the battle-field, where
justice sometimes makes appeal to the Lord of Hosts: in
the shipwreck, where death seizes the storm as his trumpet,
andl, with the lightning as his banner, comes streaming down
the sky: in courts of sacerdotal inquisition, where the
branding-iron is hot, and instruments of torture tempt the
lie: in the careless world, where prosperity is worshipped,
and nice scruples are laughed down: in the sleepy church,
which can wink at oppression, and give comfort to unrighteous Mainmmon, and cover with obloquy the heroes of God's
truth: - no man could sink into an unworthy thing, did he
keep within his everlasting fortress, instead of rushing unsheltered into the wild.
There is then every gradation even of this simple faith,
spreading over a range quite indefinite. Only by a reference to its two extremes can we describe the position of
each mind and of each age.  Complete belief is attained,
when God is realized as much in the present as in the past.
Complete unbelief, when God is excluded from the past as
much as from  the present. Measuring from  this lowest
limit, we are certainly in a state of imperfect atheism. We
do not negative as yet the sanctities of old: we only deny
the inspirations of to-day. We recognize certain ages of
the bygone world, as the real centres of divine activity, -
the sole witnesses of creation and of miracle, the happy
points where heaven vouchsafed to commune with the
earth. They lie in our imagination, like brilliant islands
rising distant in the seas of time; vainly dashed by the
dark waters of human history; and lighted by a glorycolumn from above, piercing the leaden heavens that else



HELP THOU MiNE UNBELIEF.               309
where overhang the waste.  There, in old Palestine, we
think, the august voice broke for a moment its eternal silence. There, upon the mountains, was a murmur more
than of the wind; and in the air a thunder grown articulate; and on the grass a dew of fresher beauty; and in the
lakes a docile listening look, as if conscious of a Presence
higher than the night's. In this retrospect, it will not be
denied, lies the ground of our prevalent religion: it contains the strength of our case: our assurance of divine things
refers pre-eminently thither, and scarcely at all to any more
recent age. "The men in those days" (we virtually say)
"had the best reasons for believing and recognizing God.
Had we too been there, we should have known for ourselves, and have shared the great fear and faith that fell on
all. But as we are placed afar off and have the sacredness
at second hand, we must take their reasons upon trust, having none that are worth much of our own." Our faith, therefore, is not personal, but testimonial: it is an hypothesis, a
tradition. It thinks within itself, " If we had stood where
Moses was, and travelled at the right hand of Paul, we
should have felt as they." And this justification of their
ancient state of mind makes the substance of our belief today. And with like view do we turn our gaze upon the
futture. That also spreads before us radiant with a light divine. There we shall find better reasons for our faith than
meet us here; an audience-hall of the Most High where his
spirit may be felt; a clear touch of his living presence,
glowing through our thought with conscious truth, and
spreading through our hearts a saintly love, denied us in
this court of exile. And so it happens, that ages gone, and
ages coming, absorb from us the whole reality of God, and
leave the life on which we stand an atheistic death. The
heaven that spans us touches the earth on the right hand
and the left, at an horizon we cannot reach, but keeps its
infinite zenith-distance overhead.  We believe in One who
looks at us, but not in One who lives with us. We are in




310          HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF.
the hlouse he built; but we work in it:alone, for he is gone
up among the hills, and will only come to fetch us by-andby. And it is no wonder that, in a banishment like this,
our worship loses its immediate reality, and prays no more
with a fresh strong heart. It is not bathed in the flowing
tides of Deity, but keeps dry upon the strand from which
he has ebbed away. If ever it says, "Lo, God is here! " it
instantly belies itself, by drawing out the telescope of history to look for him. It is not a communion face to face,
wherein he is near to us as the light upon our eye or the
sorrow on our hearts. It has become a commemoration,
telling what once he was to happier spirits of our race,
and how grateful we are for the dear old messages that
faintly reach our ear, how we will cherish the last remnant
of that precious and only sure memorial, —the fragile and
consecrated link between his sphere and ours. Thus our
worship is a monument of absent realities, and serves at
best but to keep alive, like an anniversary, the remembrance of things else fading in the distance. Or, if we
direct our face the other way, and look towards the future, we throw our prayers still farther from the actual duties at our feet. We plainly say that there can be no true
worship here, — it is too poor and dull a state:- we
only expect it hereafter, and would bear that greater prospect in our mind. And so we fall into the insincerity of
coming before God by way of keeping ourselves in practice,
and turning our religion into a rehearsal. What wonder
that, amid these histrionic affectations, the healthy heart of
faith gets sicklier till it dies?
To approach again to the theocratic faith of our fathers,
we must leave the atmosphere of sacredness upon the past
and the future; only spread its margin either way, till it
envelops and glorifies the present. For my own part, I
venerate not less than others the birth-hour of Christianity,
and the creative origin of worlds. But I do not believe that
God lived then and there alone; or that if we could be




HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF.             311
transplanted to those times, we should find any such difference as would melt down the coldness of our hearts, or
leave us more without excuse than we are now. There is
no chronology in the evidence, any more than in the presence, of Deity. Since the fathers fell asleep, all things
continue as they were from the beginning, -or rather the
unbeginning, - of creation. The universe, open to the eye
to-day, looks as it did a thousand years ago: and the morning hymn of Milton does but tell the beauty with which our
own familiar sun dressed the earliest fields and gardens of
the world. We see what all our fathers saw. And if we
cannot find God in your house and mine, upon the roadside
or the margin of the sea; in the bursting seed or opening
flower; in the day-duty and the night-musing; in the genial
laugh and the secret grief; in the procession of life, ever
entering afresh, and solemnly passing by and dropping off;
I do not think we should discern him any more on the grass
of Eden, or beneath the moonlight of Gethsemane.  Depend upon it, it is not the want of greater miracles, but of
the soul to perceive such as are allowed us still, that makes
us push all the sanctities into the far spaces we cannot
reach. The devout feel that wherever God's hand is, there
is miracle: and it is simply an indevoutness which imagines
that only where miracle is, can there be the real hand of
God. The customs of heaven ought surely to be more sacred
in our eyes than its anomalies; the dear old ways, of which
the Most High is never tired, than the strange things which
he does not love well enough ever to repeat. And he who
will but discern beneath the sun, as he rises any morning,
the supporting finger of the Almighty, may recover the
sweet and reverent surprise with which Adam gazed on
the first dawn in Paradise.  It is no outward change, no
shifting in time or place, but only the loving meditation
of the pure in heart, that can re-awaken the Eternal from the
sleep within our souls; that can render him a reality again,
and vindicate for him once more his ancient Name of "THE
LIVING GOD."




XXXI.
HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.
1 JOHN II. 17.
THE WORLD PASSETH AWAY, AND THE LUST THEREOF; BUT HE THAT
DOETH THE WILL OF GOD ABIDETH FOR EVER.
FEw things can strike a thoughtful man with greater wonder,
than the different estimate he makes, in different moods, of
the same portion of time. To-day, he is engaged with some
speculation, in which a millennium is not worth reckoning:
to-morrow, he is brought to some experience, in which a
minute bears the burden of an eternal weight. With the
geologist, we may go out beyond the limits of human events,
and grow familiar with those vast periods during which the
earth's crust was deposited in the oceans, or smelted in the
furnaces, or upheaved from the gas-caverns, of nature: and,
accustomed to call the Alps and Andes recent elevations,
and to treat all living species as only the newest fashion of
creative skill, we may well feel as though the hasty sands
of our particular generation were lost, and God could have
no index small enough to count our individual life. With
the astronomer, we may take a station external to this earth
itself, recede to an era when possibly the solar system was
but one of creation's morning mists, and trace its history
as it first spun itself into orbital rings, and then rolled itself
up into planetary globes: and with an imagination occupied
by cycles so capacious, for which the old granite pillars of
the world can scarce, with utmost stretch of age, afford a
unit-measure, it is not strange if we deem ourselves trivial




HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.              313
as the insect, and transient as the flake of summer snow.
Whoever approaches the human lot from this side of thought,
descending upon it fron tile maxzima, instead of ascending
from the minima of calculable thilngs, will be apt to think
it a poor affair, and to regard it as a dream, really compressed into a moment, but with a delusive consciousness
of years. Seeing at night how calm and silent are the stars
far greater than ours, sending down the same cold sharp
light as they did on the first traveller lost upon the mountains
or sinking in the sea, he may naturally look with a smile or
a sigh at the ferment of human passion and pursuit, and
gaze on it as on the dust-cloud of a distant army marching
to immediate death. "What," he might say, "are the
achievements of your mightiest force, and the last triumphs
of your boasted civilization?  What do you effect by the
vaunted efforts of your locomotive skill? Only certain
glidings, which, a short way off, are but invisible changes
of place on the surface of a bead. And what is the end of
all your successive systems of health and disease?- what
the utmost hope of the skill of all physicians, and the cries
and prayers from the whole infirmary of human ills? Only
this, — that a little respite may be given, till the rising
pendulum shall have reached its fall. Nay, what is the aim
even of your nobler institutions, devoted to the mind? On
what do your ancient schools and universities, with generation after generation of students, spend themselves amid
the murmurs of polite applatuse?  On the attempt to recover
a few snatches from the sayings and doings of spirits that,
like yourselves, had to vanish at cock-crowing. And all the
while, as you pant and strive and hope, the great immovable
God is with you close at hand, and could tell you all by a
whisper, if he would  "
It is quite possible, in this way, by bringing the human
career into comparison with the stupendous cycles that lie
around it, to dwarf its magnitude, and throw contempt upon
its purposes. The prevailing tendency, however, is all iln




l314         HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.
the opposite direction. The thoughts which science presents
may operate as a telescope to show us what else there is
besides ourselves, and persuade us that we are but as the
trembling leaf in the boundless forests of existence. But
those which are offered by affection and natural experience
are rather apt to interpose a microscopic medium; and,
instead of diminishing by comparison the whole of life, to
magnify every part by concentration. If that life, as you
affirm, be but a short visit to this sphere, it is yet our only
visit; and the moments of our stay acquire an intenser
worth. If it has just begun, and is also on the verge of
close, then we must revere it doubly, as a fresh thing, and
as a thing about to perish: two sanctities comprise it all, -
a first day and a last; antd there is no timle for custom  to
dull the space between the welcome and the adieu. Nor,
after all, is any conscious life proper to be compared with
the huge periods of the inanimate world.  Their giant
strides may roughly step from century to century, and have
less it them than its quivering undulations over the smallest
surface of time. The two things are absolutely incommensurable; and there is no chronometer that can reckon
both. In moments of deep sorrow, or high faith; when we
either fear the last extremity, or hope for the dawn of new
deliverance; when we are sinking to the point of lowest
depression, or struggling on the wing of highest resolution;
in startling agonies of duty that goad our jaded strength;
in helpless vigils, when we must sit with folded hands and
wait; in all crises of duty, of misery, of joy, of aspiration;
-- how little can the beat of any clock count the elements
of our existence then! The moments are stretched into
an awful fulness; and while the midnight star strikes the
meridian wire, we pass through more than common years.
Hence it is, that no familiarity with physical periods can
induce us to think lightly of the contents of life. If God,
affluent in eternities, is lavish of time upon his universe,
he is economic of it with us: filling it with unutterable




HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.              315
experiences, and charging it with irrevocable opportunities.
With so small an allowance of it here, every part of it may
well appear a priceless treasure. And though too often
we grow careless of the portion which we have, we complain if there is any that we seem to lose. We throw away
whole handfuls of time in heedless waste, and suffer no
compunction; but if God, with heavenly will, take from us
any expected hours, we burst into faithless tears. The term
assured to us, we think, has been cut short; and the promised
value cruelly withheld.
The truth is, that neither of these views, - that which
looks with philosophic slight on the whole of mortal life,
and that which clings with human fondness to every part,
especially if it be denied, — can stand the light of devout
and Christian thought. On the one hand, that cannot be
insignificant which God has deemed it worth while to call
out of eternity, and to set upon a theatre like this, fresh
with duty ever new, and old with memories ever sacred;
rich as Paradise with wonder and beauty, only covered now
through sorrow with a conscious heaven. And that which
God himself has brought hither to look for awhile through
real living eyes of thought and love, transparent to the
answering gaze, can scarce, if we reflect on the difference
between its presence and its absence, be of less than infinite
value. Yet, on the other hand, it were wrong to measure
its worth to us by the mere duration of its stay. It would
be a far inferior treasure, were it calculable thus: and we
can say nothing so depreciatory of a human life, as that we
have lost half its value, because it was not twice as long.
If this be so, the function it performs for us must be of the
lowest order; not to our love, and faith, and aspiration,
which, once awakened, can be doubled by no addition and
consumed by no subtraction of mnoments; but to our pleasures or our gains, to which alone this arithmetic of quantity
can be applied. To treat a life as incomplete, is to say that
its proper end is unfulfilled; is to assume that a certain




316         HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.
amount of time was needful to realize that end; and that,
for want of such amount, the existence granted becomes an
aimless fragment. Some lives do, no doubt, present so poor
an aspect, that only by an effort of strong faith can we
refrain from thinking thus: but else, it is of the mere meanness and penury of our own spirits, that we lapse into so
unworthy a complaint. If we look for a few moments into
the different ends to which men live, we shall soon see,
which of them are measurable by quantity, and proportioned
to the time spent in their attainment.
Some men are eminent for what they possess: some, for
what they achieve: others, for what they are. IHaving,
Doing, and.Being, constitute the three great distinctions
of mankind, and the three great functions of their life.
And though they are necessarily all blended, more or less,
in each individual, it is seldom difficult to say, which of
them is prominent in the impression left upon us by our
fellow-man.
In every society, and especially in a country like our own,
there are those who derive their chief characteristic from
what they have; who are always spoken of in terms of
revenue; and of whom you would not be likely to think
much, but for the large account that stands on the world's
ledger in their name. In themselves, detached from their
favorite sphere, you would notice nothing wise or winning.
At home, possibly, a dry and withered heart; among associates, a selfish and mistrustful talk; in the council, a style
of low ignoble sentiment; at church, a formal, perhaps an
irreverent, dulness; betray a barren nature, and offer you
only points of repulsion, so far as the humanities are concerned: and you are amazed to think that you are looking
on the idols of the exchange. Their greatness comes out in
the affairs of bargain and sale, to which their faculties seem
fairly apprenticed for life. If they speak of the past, it is
in memory of its losses and its gains: if of the future, it is
to anticipate its incomings and investments. The whole




HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.               317
chronology of their life is divided according to the stages of
their fortunes, and the progress of their dignities. Their
children are interesting to them principally as their heirs:
and the making of their will fulfils their main conception of
being ready for their death. And so completely do they
paint the grand idea of their life on the imagination of all
who know them, that when they die, the Mammon-image
cannot be removed, and it is the fate of the money, not of
the man, of which we are most apt to think. Having put
vast prizes in the funds, but only unprofitable blanks in the
admiration and the hearts of us, they leave behind nothing
but their property; or, as it is expressively termed, their
" effects," - the thing which they caused, the main result of
their having been alive. How plain is it that we regard
them merely as instruments of acquisition; centres of attraction for the drifting of capital; that they are important
only as indications of commodities; and that their human
personality hangs as a mere label upon a mass of treasure!
Every one must have met with a few instances in which this
character is realized, and with many in which, notwithstanding the relief of some redeeming and delightful features, it
is at least approached. In proportion as this aim, of possession, is taken to be paramount in life, length of days
must no doubt be deemed indispensable to the human destination. The longer a man lies out at interest, the greater
must be the accumulation. If he is unexpectedly recalled,
every end which he suggested is disappointed: the only
thing he seemed fit for cannot go on; he is a power lost
from this sphere, an incapacity thrust upon the other;
missed from the markets here, thrown away among sainted
spirits there. For himself, and for both worlds, the event
seems deplorable enough: and it is difficult to make any
thing but confusion out of it. An imagination tacitly filled
with this conception of life, as a stage prepared for enjoyment and possession, must look on a term that is unfulfilled
as on a broken tool, dropping in failure to the earth.




318         HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.
Of those who have thus lived to accumulate and enjoy,
history is for the most part silent; having in truth nothing
to say. Not doing the work, or joining in the worship of
life, but only feasting at its table, they break up and drive
off into oblivion as soon as the lights are out and the wine
is spilt. Belonging entirely to the present, they never appear in the past; but sink with weight of wealth in the dark
gulf: -- unless perchance some Criesus the rich is fortunate
enough to fall into association with a Solon the wise. There
are no historical materials in simple animal existence, nor in,
the mere sentient being of a man, considered as the successful study of comfort and receptacle of happiness. History is constructed by a second and nobler class, - those
who prove themselves to be here, not that they may have,
but that they may do; to whom life is a glorious labor; and
who are seen not to work that they may rest, but only to
rest that they may work. No sooner do they look around
them, with the open eye of reason and faith, upon the great
field of the world, than they perceive that it must be for
them a battle-field: and they break up the tents of ease, and
advance to the dangers of lonely enterprise and the conflict
with splendid wrong. Strong in the persuasion that this is
a God's world, and that his will must rule it by royal right,
they serve in the severe campaign of justice; asking only
for the wages of life, and scorning the prizes of spoil and
praise. Wherever you find such, whether in the field, in
the senate, or in private life, you see the genuine type of
the heroic character, - the clear mind, the noble heart, the
indomitable will, pledged all to some arduous and unselfish
task: and whether it be the achievement, with Cobden, of
freedom of pacific commerce between land and land; or,
with Clarkson, of freedom of person between man and man;
or, with Cromwell, of freedom  of worship between earth
and heaven; the essential feature is in all instances the
same: the man holds himself as the mere instrument of
some social work; commits himself in full allegiance to it;




HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.             319
and spends himself wholly in it. These "have a baptism to
be baptized with; and how are they straitened, till it be
accomplished!"  During the glorious conflict of such lives
it is impossible not to look on with breathless interest.
Once possessed of their great design, we watch its development with eager eye and beating heart. And if, early in
the day, they are struck down, we clasp our hands in sudden anguish, and a cry goes up that the field is lost. And
though this despair is a momentary lapse from true faith;
though God never fails to rally the forces of every good
cause that has mustered for battle on his earth; yet, no
doubt, the victory in such a case is deferred: the plan is
broken off: the painful sense of a suspended work, that
might have been finished, remains upon survivors' hearts.
On behalf of the noble actors themselves, indeed, we have
no embarrassment of faith: there is that within them which
may well find a home in more worlds than one, and meet a
welcome wherever Almighty Justice reigns. We are not
ashamed, as with the man of mere possession, to follow them
into the higher transitions of their being, and knock for
them at the gate of better spheres.  But there appears
something untimely and deplorable in the providence of the
world they quit. Tlie fruit has not been permitted to ripen
ere it dropped. The great function of their life required
time for its fulfilment; and time has been denied. Their
beneficent action was wholly through the energies of their
living will: and these energies are laid for us in unseasonable sleep. And thus, while we are ashamed at the grave
of the Epicurean, we weep over the departure of the hero.
But there is a life higher than either of these. The
saintly is beyond the heroic mind. To get good, is animal:
to do good, is human: to be good, is divine. The true use
of a man's possessions is to help his work: and the best
end of all his work, is to show us what he is. The noblest
workers of our world bequeath us nothing so great as the
image of themselves. Their task, be it ever so glorious, is




320         HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.
historical and transient: the majesty of their spirit is essential and eternal. When the external conditions which
supplied the matter of their work have wholly decayed
from the surface of the earth, and become absorbed into its
substance, the perennial root of their life remains, bearing
a blossom ever fair, and a foliage ever green. And while
to some God gives it to show themselves through their
work, to others he assigns it to show themselves without
even the opportunity of work. He sends them transparent
into this world; and leaves us nothing to gather and infer.
Goodness, beauty, truth, acquired by others, are original to
them; hiding behind the eye, thinking on the brow, and
making music in the voice. The angels appointed to guard
the issues of the pure life, seem rather to have taken their
station at its fountains, and to pour into it a sanctity at first.
Such beings live simply to express themselves: to stand
between heaven and earth, and mediate for our dull hearts.
With fewer outward objects than others, or at least with
a less limited practical mission devoting them to a fixed
task, their life is a soliloquy of love and aspiration; the soul
not being, with them, the servant of action, but action
rather the needful articulation of the soul. Not, of course,
that they are, in the slightest degree, exempt from  the
stern and positive obligations of duty, or licensed, any
more than others, to dream existence away. If once they
fall into this snare, and cease to work, the lineaments of
beauty and goodness are exchanged for those of shame and
grief. Usually they do not less, but rather more, than
others; only under somewhat sorrowful conditions, having
spirits prepared for what is more than human, and being
obliged to move within limits that are only human. The
Tworth of such a life depends little on its quantity: it is an
affair of quality alone. These highest ends of existence
have but slight relation to time. Years cannot mellow the
love already ripe, or purify the perceptions already clear,
or lift the aspiration that already enters heaven. It is with




HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.              32t
Christ-like minds, as it was with Christ himself. His divine
work was not in the task that he did, but in the image
which he left. You cannot say that there was any great
business of existence, estimable by time, which he set himn
self to achieve, and which you can even imagine to be
broken off by his departure. He lived enough to manifest
the heavenly spirit and solemn dignity of life. At thirty
years he passed away: and no one, I suppose, was ever
heard to lament that he did not stay till sixty. He thought
indeed, as the faithful must ever think, that there was a" work
given him to do;" unaware that, by his very manner of
devotion to it, it was already done. So eager was bhe
worthily to finish it, that, of all his sorrows, to be cut short
in it was the bitterest cup that might not pass from him
except he drank it; unconscious that the spirit and the conquest of that agony did actually bring it to the sublimest
close. His life stood in different relations to himself and
to the world. To himself it was a solemn trust; to the
world, the truth and grace of God: to him, it was given
as the subject of achievement; to the world, as the object
of new faith and love. And so, the early cross, so dark to
him, becomes the holiest vision of our hearts. It broke
nothing abruptly off for us; and enabled him to leave a
presence upon the earth, sufficient to soothe the sorrows,
inspire the conscience, and deepen the earnestness, of succeeding ages. And so is it with the least of his disciples,
whose mind is truly tinged with the hues of the same
heavenly spirit. The very child, of too transient stay, may
paint on the darkness of our sorrow, so fair a vision of
loving wonder, of reverent trust, of deep and thoughtful
patience, that a divine presence abides with us for ever, as
the mild and constant light of faith and hope. WVhat we
had deemed a glory of the earth may prove but the image
of a star upon the stream  of life, effaceable by the first
night-wind that sweeps over the waters. But that we have
seen it, and looked into the pure depths given for its light,
21




322         HAVING, DOING, AND BEING.
is enough to assure us that, though visionary below, it is
a reality above, and has a place among the imperishable
lustres of God's universe. Thus, with attributes of being
that have little concern with time, the reckoning of moments
is of less account. The transitory reflection points to an
eternal beauty. And while human things are learned by
the lessons of a slow experience, a momentary flash of
blessing may give us what is most divine; and like the
lightning that strikes us blind, leave a glory on the soul,
when our very sight is gone.




XXXII.
THE FREE-MAN OF CHRIST.
1 CORINTHIANS VII. 22.
HE THAT IS CALLED IN THE LORD, BEING A SERVANT, IS THE LORD'S
FREE-MAN: LIKEWISE ALSO, HE THAT IS CALLED, BEING FREE, IS
CHRIST' S SERVANT.
FRnEEDOM, in the most comprehensive sense of the word,
can evidently belong to Omnipotence alone. To be exempt
from all controlling force without, is the exclusive prerogative of a Being, within whose nature are folded all the active
powers of the universe, and to whom there is no external
cause but the acts projected from his own will. To be at
rest from all conflict within, can be the lot of no mind, susceptible of progressive attainment in excellence: for moral
growth is but a prolonged controversy in which conscience
achieves victory after victory: and He only whose holiness
is eternal, original, incapable of increase or decline, can have
a mind absolutely serene and unclouded; of power immense,
but rapid and unreluctant as the lightning; of designs, however majestic, bursting without appreciable transition from
the conception to the reality. Descend to created natures;
and whatever force they comprise, is a force imprisoned and
controlled; if by nothing else, at least by the laws of that
body which gives them a locality, and affords them the only
tools wherewith to work their will. The life of beings that
are born and ripen and die, or pass through any stages of
transition, floats upon a current silent but irresistible. In
other spheres there may possibly exist rational beings un



324           THE FREE-MAN OF CHRIST.
conscious of the restraining force of God exercised upon
them; whose desires do not beat against their destiny;
whose powers of conceiving and of executing, whether
absolutely small or great, are adjusted to perfect correspondence. And since we measure all things by our own
ideas, he whose conception never overlaps his execution,
can never detect the poorness of his achievements, how
trivial soever they may be in the eye of a spectator. But
man, at all events, palpably feels his limits; receives a
thousand checks, that remind him of the foreign agencies to
which he is subject; glides like a steersman in the night
over waters neither boundless nor noiseless, but broken by
the roar of the rapid, and dizzy with the dim shapes of rocky
perils. Our whole existence, all its energy of virtue and of
passion, is, in truth, but the struggle of free-will against the
chains that bind us:- happy he, that by implicit submission
to the law of duty escapes the severity of every other! Our
nature is but a casket of impatient necessities; urgencies
of instinct, of affection, of reason, of faith; the pressure of
which against the inertia of the present determines the living
movements, and sustains the permanent unrest, of life. To
take the prescribed steps is difficult; to decline them and
stand still, impossible. We can no more preserve a stationary attitude in the moral world, than we can refuse to
accompany the physical earth in its rotation. The will may
be reluctant to stir; but it is speedily overtaken by provocatives that scorn the terms of ease, and take no heed of
its expostulations. Driven by the recurring claims of the
bodily nature, or drawn by the permanent objects of the
spiritual, all men are impelled to effort by the energy of
some want, that cannot have spontaneous satisfaction. The
laborer that earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, is
chased by the hindmost of all necessities, -animal hunger.
The prophet and the saint, moved by the supreme of human
aspirations, —the hunger and thirst after righteousness, —
embrace a life of no less privation and of severer conflict.




THE FREE-MAN OF CHRIST.              325
And between these extremes are other ends of various kinds,
— renown for the ambitious, art for the perceptive, knowledge for the sage, - given to us to graduate and allow in
fair proportion. All these are conscious powers, but all
imply a conscious resistance. Each separately precipitates
the will upon a thousand obstacles; and all together demand
the ceaseless vigilance of conscience to preserve their order,
and prevent the encroachments of usurpation. Thus, all
action implies the presence of some necessity.  And if
other and more liberal conditions are requisite to perfect
freedom, then can no man be ever free.
Exemption then from the sense of want and the need of
work is not that which constitutes freedom to the human
being. Another form of expression is sometimes resorted
to, in order to discriminate the free from the servile mind,
and contrast the nobleness of the one with the abjectness
of the other. It is said that the free-man acts from within,
on the suggestion of ideas; while the slave is the creature
of outward coercion, and obevs some kind of physical force.
But this language still conceals from us the real distinction.
Even the man whose person, as well as mind, is in a condition of slavery, is not necessarily, or usually, under any external and material constraint. Hour by hour, and day by
day, he enjoys immunity from bodily compulsion; and
habitually lives at one remove or more from the application of direct sensation to his will. He too, like other men,
is worked by an ideal influence, —a fear that haunts, an
image that disturbs him.  When the field-serf plies his
spade with new energy at the approaching voice of the
steward, it is not that any muscular grasp seizes on his
limbs and enforces a quicker movement; but that a mental
terror is awakened, and the phantom of the lash flies
through his startled fancy. And, in higher cases of obedience, it is proportionally more evident, that the physical
objects which are the implements for procuring submission
fulfil their end by the mere power of suggestion. The




326          THE FREE-MAN OF CHRIST.
eagle of the Roman legion, the cross in the battles of the
crusades, reared its head above the hosts upon the field;
and wherever this instrument, made by the chisel and the
saw, was moved about hither and thither, it drew to it the
wave of fight, and swayed the living mass, content to be
mowed down themselves, if it alone were saved. It was
an emblem of things most powerful with their hearts; and
illustrates, by another example, the truth, that the force
which persuades the submissive will is, in all instances, from
the highest to the lowest, internal and ideal. The difference between the free and the servile must be sought, not
in the distinction between a physical and a mental impulse,
but in the different order of ideas in which the action of the
two has its source.
There are two governing ideas that, without material
error, may be said to rule the actions of mankind, and share
between them the dominion of all human souls; the idea
of pleasure andpain; and the idea of the noble and ignoble.
Every one, in every deed, follows either what he enjoys, or
what he reveres. Now he and he only is free who implicitly submits to that which he deeply venerates; who
takes part, offensive and defensive, with the just and holy
against the encroachments of evil; who feels his self-denials to be his privilege, not his loss; a victory that he has
won, not a spoil that he has been obliged to forego. Such a
one is free, because he is ruled by no power which he feels
to be unrightful and usurping, but maintains in ascendency
the Divine Spirit that has an eternal title to the monarchy
of all souls; because he is never driven to do that which he
knows to be beneath him; because he is conscious no longer
of severe internal conflict, or it issues in secure enfranchisement; because self-contempt and fear and restlessness, and
all the feelings peculiar to a state of thraldom, are entirely
unknown. And they all are slaves, —liable to the peculiar sins and miseries of the servile state, — to its meanness, its cowardice, its treachery; - who either have




THE FREE-MAN OF CHRIST.                327
nothing which they revere, or, haying it, insult its authority, and trample it under the Bacchanalian feet of pleasure.
It is the worst and last curse of actual personal slavery, that
it extinguishes the notion of rights, and with it the sense
of duties; that it quenches the desire and conscious capacity
for better things; that degradation becomes impossible;
that blows may be inflicted, and the pain go no farther
than the flesh; and that by feeding the eyes with the
prospect of pleasure, or brandishing the threat of infliction,
you may move the creature as you will. And whenever, by
men at large, nothing is esteemed holy and excellent, and
enjoyment or suffering are the only measures of good, the
essence of the same debasement exists. The slave flies the
idea of pain; the voluptuary pursues the idea of pleasure:
a menace or a bribe is the force that makes a tool of both;
and they must be referred to the same class. Nor does the
analogy between them fail in cases of mixed character and
imperfect degradation. If the serf has not sunk to the level
which it is the tendency of his condition to reach, if he has
still his dreams of justice, his half-formed sense of human
dignity; it is then his privilege to be wretched; to feel an
agonizing variance between his nature and his lot, and
writhe as the iron enters his soul. And a like miserable
shame does every one suffer, who offers indignity to his
own higher capacities; Who suppresses in silenc6 and inaction the impulses of his devout affections, and is seduced
or terrified into conscious vileness. It is not without sufficient reason that all those whose wills are of self-indulgent make, are charged with being enthralled. Their minds
have the very stamp of slavery.
The essential root then of all dependence and servility of
soul lies in this, that the mind loves pleasure more than God.
The essence of true spiritual liberty is in this; that the
mind has high objects which it loves better than its own
indulgence; in the service of which hardship and death are
honorable and welcome; which must be subordinated to




328           THE FREE-MAN OF CHRIST.
nothing; which men are not simply to pursue in order to
live; but which they live in order to pursue. In acknowledging the pleasurable as supreme, consists the real degradation and disloyalty of the one: in vowing undivided
allegiance to what is worthy, true, and right, consists the
power and freedom of the other.
Let the Christian beware, as he loves the birth-right of a
child of God, how lie takes up any other and more superficial idea of moral liberty than this. Especially let him not
yield to the prevalent and growing feeling of these days,
that there is something disgraceful in obedience altogether;
-that it is an unmanly attitude of mind; and that if occasions do occur in human life when self-will must succumb, it
is best to slur over so annoying a crisis, and at all events
avoid the appearance of capitulation., The heart that
secretly feels thus has never felt the contact of Christ's
divine wisdom: the slightest touch of but the hem of his
garment in the press and crowd of life, would have cured
the burning of this inward fever. For, is not this insubordinate will fighting with its lot, instead of loving it, - trying
bolts and bars against it, and standing hostile siege; instead
of throwing open its gates, and with reverent hospitality
entertaining it as an angel visitant? Great and sacred is
obedience, my friends: he who is not able, in the highest
majesty of manhood, to obey, with clear and open brow, a
Law higher than himself, is barren of all faith and love;
and tightens his chains, moreover, in struggling to be free.
A childlike trust of heart, that can take a hand, and wondering walk in paths unknown and strange, is the prime requisite of all religion. Let the Great Shepherd lead; and by
winding ways, not without green pastures and still waters,
we shall climb insensibly, and reach the tops of the everlasting hills, where the winds are cool and the sight is gloiious. But, in the noon of life, to leap and struggle against
the adamantine precipice will only bruise our strength, and
cover us with sultry dust. Among the thousand indications




THE FREE-MAN OF CHRIST.               329
how far men have wandered from this temper, and poisoned
their minds with the sophistries of self-will, this is enough:
-that there are some who, instead of self-abandonment to
God, appear to think that they can put him and his truth
under obligation to themselves, and that they confer a great
favor in encouraging the public regard to his will and worship; who, having made up their minds that Christianity is
useful in many ways, and of excellent service in managing
the weaker portion of mankind, resolve to patronize it.
Well;- it is an ancient arrogance, lasting as the vanities of
the human heart. The Pharisee, it would appear, belongs
to a sect never extinct: he lives immortal upon the earth;
and in our day, like Simon of old, graciously condescends to
ask the Lord Jesus to dine!
Nor is there any truth in the notion that it must be disgraceful to serve and obey the will of our fellow-men; of
our equals; of those even who are weaker and not wiser
than ourselves. It depends altogether on the feeling that
prompts the submission; whether it be self-interest or reverence. To be controlled by others against our idea of the
pleasant, is by no means necessarily debasing: to be controlled by them against our idea of the right, is. The gross
conception of liberty, which takes it to consist in doing
whatever we like, tends only to a restless personal indulgence,
- to a burning, insatiable thirst for selfish happiness, the
importunity of which renders this fancied freedom bitter
as the vilest slavery. Does any one doubt, whether subjection the most absolute can ever be noble? Go into a
home where a child lies sick, - one of a joyous family where
often merry voices ring from morn to night. Silence, the
unconscious forerunner of death, flits through the house,
touching with her seal the lips even of the gayest prattler;
and when the faint cry of feverish waking frets forth from
the pillow, how fleet the answer to the call! how soft the
mother's cheerful words from out the anguished heart! how
prompt the father's hand with the cup of cold water to cool




830          THE FREE-MAN OF CHRIST.
the parched tongue! Every wayward wish, perhaps discarded soon as formed, swift messengers glide to and fro
to gratify: every burst of impatience falls softly and without recoil on playmates never wounded so before. No
despot was ever so obeyed as this little child, whose will
is for awhile the sole domestic law: for despots acquire no
such title to command. But this title, recorded in God's
hand-writing of love on the tablets of our humanity, we
must recognize and obey. The terms of it proclaim, in
defiance of the pretensions of self-will, that the service of
others is our divinest freedom; and that the law which rules
us becomes the charter that disenthrals us. Nay, to work
patiently in faith and love, to do not what we like, but
what we revere, confers not liberty only but power. He
at least who, of all our race was the most indubitably free,
and the great emancipator too, had in him this attribute,
that " he pleased not himself," and esteemed it his mission
"not to be ministered unto, but to minister."  And therefore did he obtain a name above every name, and put the
world beneath his feet. Having claimed nothing, not even
himself, it is given him to inherit all things. His power
indeed over men was slow in gathering, and they that loved
him in his mortal life, and lived and suffered for his sake,
were few. Had he needed then a rescue and a retinue, he
must have looked to the "legions of angels" who alone
were qualified for a reverence and fidelity so true. But
noow let him come; and would not the legions of our world
throng forth to meet him; casting the will of pride beneath
his feet, strewing his path with flowers of joy which he
has caused to bloom, and flinging their glad hosannas to
the sky!
By the meekest ministrations did the Lord acquire his
blessed sway. How different is the method usually resorted
to in order to obtain the services of others! Instead of
thinking, speaking, acting freely, and in the divine spirit
of duty, and leaving it to God to append what influence and




THE FREE-MAN OF CHRIST.              331
authority he may see fit, men begin by coveting the services
of others, and resolving to have them: and, being sure that
they can at least be purchased by money, they " Inake haste
to get rich;" often hurrying over every species of mean
compliance for this purpose, in the wretched hope of earning
their enfranchisement in the end. This process of making
their moral liberty contingent upon the purse, is characteristically termed " gaining an independence."  This very
phrase is a satire upon the morals of the class that invented
it, and the nation that adopts it. We then are a people
who express by the same word the freedom of the mind,
the high rule of conscience and conviction, and a thing of
gold, that can be kept at a bank, or invested in the funds.
With us, broad acres must go before bold deeds: one must
possess an estate before he can be a man. And so, to "win
an independence," many an aspirant becomes a sycophant:
to "win an independence," he licks the feet of every disgrace that can add a shilling to his fortune: to "win an
independence," he courts the men whom he despises, and
stoops to the pretences that he hates: to "win an independence," he solemnly professes that which he secretly
derides, and grows glib in uttering falsehoods that should
scald his lips. Truly, this modern idol is a god, who compels his votaries to crawl up the steps of his throne. And
when the homage has been paid, and the prize is gained,
how noble a creature must the worshipper issue forth,
who by such discipline, has achieved his "independence"
at last!
This miserable heathenism is simply reversed in the
Christian method and estimate of liberty. The road to
genuine spiritual freedom, taking, it may seem, a strange
direction, lies through what the older moralists term " Selfannihilation." Renounce we our wishes, and the oppositions that bear against us inevitably vanish. As force is
made evident only by resistance, necessity is perceptible only
by the pressure it offers to our claims and desires. He who




332          THE iFREE-MAN OF CHRIST.
resists not at all, feels no hostile power; is chafed by no
irritation; mortified by no disappointment. He bends to
the storm as it sweeps by, and lifts a head serene when it
is gone. Nor is his liberty merely negative: self-will is
displaced only to make way for God's will: and weakness
is surrendered that almightiness may be enthroned. The
positive empire of the right takes the place of a feeble and
contested sway. The efficacy of the change is sure to be
seen in achievement no less than in endurance. Over him
that shall undergo it, the world and men lose all their deterring power. Do what they may with their instruments
of persecution and derision, none of these tilings move him.
They cannot sting him into scorn. His ends lie far beyond
their reach. Who can hinder him  from  following that
which he reveres; from embracing in his love the world
that crushes him; and remaining true to the God that tries
him as by fire? It is the Son that has made him free, and
he is free indeed!




XXXIII.
THE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.
2 TIMOTHY II. 3.
THOU THEREFORE ENDURE HARDNESS, AS A GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS
CHRIST.
THERE would seem to be an incurable variance between the
life which men covet for themselves and that which they
admire in others; nay, between the lot which they would
choose beforehand, and that in which they glory afterwards.
In prospect, nothing appears so attractive as ease and
licensed comfort; in retrospect, nothing so delightful as
toil and strenuous service. Half the actions of mankind are
for the diminution of labor; yet labor is the thing they
most universally respect. We should think it the greatest
gain to get rid of effort; yet if we could cancel from the
past those memorable men in whom it reached its utmost
intensity, and whose whole existence was a struggle, we
should leave human nature without a lustre, and empty
history of its glory. The aim which God assigns to us as
our highest is indeed the direct reverse of that which we
propose to ourselves. He would have us in perpetual conflict;- we crave an unbroken peace. He keeps us ever
on the march; - we pace the green sod by the way with
many a sigh for rest. He throws us on a rugged universe;
-and our first care is to make it smooth. His resolve is
to demand from us, without ceasing, a living power, a force
fresh from the spirit he has given; ours, to get into such.
settled ways, that life may almost go of itself, with scarce




334     THE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.
the trouble of winding up. So that time, administered by
him, is always breaking up the old: by us, is riveting and
confirming it. With him, it is the source of new growths
and fresh combinations; which we proceed, as long as we
can, to cut down and accommodate to the order which they
interrupt. He employs it in rolling the forest into the river,
and turning the stream from our abodes; in burying our
fields and villages beneath the shifting sand-hills, which we
strive to bind with grassy roots; in bringing back the marsh
on our neglected lands, and setting us again the problem
of pestilence and want. Every way he urges our reluctant
will. He grows the thistle and the sedge: but expects us
to raise the olive and the corn; having given us a portion
of strength and skill for such end. He directs over the earth
the restless wave of human population, and brings about
those new conditions from which spring the rivalries and
heats of nations: and expects us to evolve peace and justice;
having inspired us with reason and affection for this end.
He leaves in each man's lot a thicket of sharp temptations:
and expects him, though with bleeding feet, to pass firmly
through; having given him courage, conscience, and a guide
divine, to sustain him lest he faint.
And, after all, in spite of the inertia of their will, men are,
in their inmost hearts, on the side of God, rather than their
owln, in this matter. They know it would be a bad thing
for them to have nothing to resist. They would like it, but
they could not honor it; and in proportion as it was comfortable, it would be contemptible. They have always paid
their most willing homage to those who have refused to sit
down and break bread with evil things, and have made a
battle-field of life. Even out of the primitive conflict with
brute Nature, in which rocks were split, and monsters tamed,
they evoked a God; and, under the name of IIercules, invented an excuse for their first and simplest worship. No
sooner is this physical contest closed, and the earth compelled to yield a roadway and a shelter to men, than the




THE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.    335
scene of struggle is changed, and they come into conflict
with each other. Instead of dead resistance they encounter
living force: from obstructive matter their competitor rises
to aggressive mind: and whoever shows himself master of
the higher qualities demanded in the collision, for justice'
sake, of man with man, —the fixed resolve, the dauntless
courage, the subjection of appetite, the sympathy with the
weak and the oppressed, - is honored by all as a hero, and
remembered by his nation as its pride. But when the game
of war is done, it is found that in struggling to a firm and
established order of society, men have not got rid of all
their foes and driven evil from off their world. Inward
corruption may waste what outward assault could not destroy. Amid the luxuries and repose of peace, the springs
of moral hardihood become enfeebled; guilty negligence,
indulgent laxity, plausible selfishness, and even greedy
hypocrisy, eat into the world's heart. A secret spirit of
temptation, too powerful for its degeneracy, hovers over it
and threatens to darken it into a hell: when lo! at the
crisis of its fate, there comes forth one to meet and to defy
even this invisible fiend of moral evil, and by the wonders
of prayer and toil and sorrow, make Lucifer as lightning fall
from heaven; one, far different from the strong arm that
subdues creation, and the brave heart that conquers men;
being the Divine Soul that puts to flight the hosts of Satan,
and, as the leader and perfecter of faith, pushes the victories of men into the only unconquered realn, — the shadowy
domain of sin and its dread prisons of remorse. Thus the
primitive conflict with nature, which makes a Hercules,
rises into the conflict with man, which makes the hero, and
culminates in that infinitely higher conflict with the spirit
of evil, which is impersonated in Christ. WVe instinctively
do homage in some sort to them all; only admiring the
former as manly; and reverencing the last as godlike. And
it may be remarked that, as the world has passed through
these several stages of strife to produce a Christendom; so,




336    THE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.
by relaxing in the enterprises it has learnt, does it tend
downwards, through inverted steps, to wildness and the
waste again. Let a people give up their contest with moral
evil; disregard the injustice, the ignorance, the greediness, that may prevail among them, and part more and more
with the Christian element of their civilization; and, in
declining this battle with sin, they will inevitably get embroiled with men. Threats of war and revolution punish
their unfaithfulness: and if then, instead of retracing their
steps, they yield again and are driven before the storm;the very arts they had created, the structures they had
raised, the usages they had established, are swept away:
" in that very day their thoughts perish." The portion they
had reclaimed from the young earth's ruggedness is lost;
and failing to stand fast against man, they finally get embroiled with Nature, and are thrust down beneath her everliving hand.
The law of conflict which God thus terribly proclaims in
the history of nations, is no less distinctly legible in the
moral life of individuals. In an old and complicated structure of society, the number is multiplied of those who exist
in a state of benumbed habit; who walk through their years
methodically, not finding it needful to be more than half
awake; who take their passage through human life in an
easy chair, and no more think of any self-mortifying work
than of the ancient pilgrimage on foot; and are so pleased
with the finish and varnish of the world around them, as to
fancy demons and dangers all cleaned out. And thus the
perfected customs, the smooth, macadamized ways of life,
which are all excellent as facilities for swifter activity, have
the effect of putting activity to sleep; the means of helping
us to our proper ends become the means of our wholly
forgetting them; and looking out of the windows, we leave
behind the commission on which we are sent, and set up as
travellers for pleasure. This kind of peril is the peculiar
temptation which besets all, and makes imbeciles of many,




THE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.    337
in an artificial community like ours. The battle of life is
not now, so often as of old, thrust upon us from without; it
does not give us the first blow, which it were poltroonery
to fly; but it is internal and invisible; it has to be sought
and found by voluntary enterprise; it is not with palpable
flesh and blood beneath the sun, but with viewless spirits,
that cling to us in the dark. To capture the appetites and
make them  content with their proper servitude; to change
the heart of ambition, and turn its aspiring eye from the
lamp of heathen glory to the starlight of a Christian sanctity; to seize anger and yoke it under curb of reason to the
service of justice and of right; to lash the sluggish will to
quicker and more earnest toil; to charm the dull affections
into sweeter and more lively moods, and tempt their timid
shyness to break into song and mingle voices with the
melody of life; to rouse pity from its sleep and compel it to
choose a task and begin its plans; — all this implies a vigilance, a devotion, an endurance, which, though only natural
to the " good soldier of Jesus Christ," are beyond the mark
of the sceptics and triflers of the present age.
I have said, sceptics and trifjers.  And be assured that
the conjunction is true and natural. The shrinking from
difficulty, the dread of ridicule, the love of ease, which drain
off the sap of a man's moral earnestness, soon dry up the
sources of all moral faith from the very roots of him.
Though in one sense it is true that he must believe before he acts, yet assuredly he will not long go on believing,
when he has ceased to act. The coward who skulks from
the fight mutters, as he retires, that "there is really nothing worth fighting for." And those who decline the high
battle of the Christian life persuade themselves, that there
is no worthy field, no peremptory call, no dreadful foe; and
the clarion of God, which pierces and inspires faithful souls
is no more to them than the pipe of hypocrites. The plain
of prophet's warfare, where every step should be circumspect, becomes in their eyes a soft and fruitful stroll; and
22




338    THE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.
the sins which good men have spent themselves in driving
back, turn out to be the pleasantest companions, of whom it
was quite a bigotry to think harm. Instances of this kind
of self-sophistication must have presented themselves to the
observation of all. They plainly show, that any truth a
man ceases to live by necessarily becomes to him, if he only
persevere, an entire falsehood. God insists on having a concurrence between our practice and our thought. If we
proceed to make a contradiction between them, he forthwith begins to abolish it; and if the will does not rise
to the reason, the reason must be degraded to the will.
This is no other than that "giving over of men to a
reprobate mind," by which " the truth of God is changed
into a lie."
It is needless to point out the several devices by which
practical unfaithfulness contrives to bring about speculative
unbelief. They are almost as various as the individual
minds producing them: and agree only in their result; viz.
the loss of all moral earnestness; the decline of any feeling
of reality about the higher ends of life; the disinclination
to any thing that interrupts the easy play of self-love;
and the subsidence of the mighty wind of resolution which
should sweep direct and steady through the true man's
course, into fitful airs of affectation and puffs of caprice.
It is not the failure of this or that doctrinal conviction, that
we need in itself lament; of this sort we could part perhaps with a good deal of helpless trying to believe, without
being at all the worse: but it is the loosening of moral
faith; the fluctuating state of the boundary between right
and wrong, or even the suspicion of its non-existence; the
absence from men's minds of any thing worth living and
dying for; the lawyer-like impartiality, consisting of an indiscriminate advocacy, for hire or favor, of any cause irrespective of its goodness, — this it is that marks how we are
drifting away from our proper anchorage. We seem to
have reached an age of soft affections and emasculated con.




THE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.    339
science, full of pity for pain and disease, of horror at blood
and death; but doubting whether any thing is wicked that
is not cruel, and reconciling itself even to that on sufficient
considerations of advantage.  Does the complaint appear
too strong and eager? It is, however, solemn and deliberate: for when I look back over a few years, I find there
is no sort of personal libertinism, or domestic infidelity, of
mercantile dishonesty; no breach of faith in states, no mean
dishonor in officials, no shuffling expediency in public life;
no kindling of national malignity, no outrage of military
atrocity, no extreme of theological jesuitry, — which we
have not heard excused by amiable laxity, and shrugged off
into the dark; or palliated in books enjoying disgraceful
popularity; or defended and admired by statesmen who
should elevate and not deprave a nation's mind. Is it then
too much to fear, that the new generation may grow up
with bewildered vision; without the clear and single eye of
conscience full of light; and therefore without the resolute
and hardy will of one who plainly sees what he is to avoid
and what attain?  There is a remarkable intellectual subtlety engaged now-a-days in perplexing men's moral convictions. On the one hand, there is the celebrated doctrine
of happiness, ingeniously spun into a logical texture, to entangle those who are neither fine enough to pass through
its meshes, nor strong enough to rend them: — the doctrine which assures you that enjoyment is the great end of
existence, and is the only real element of worth in the objects of our choice. Of this I will say no more at present,
than that it plainly makes all duty a matter of taste, and
reduces the distinction between evil and good to the difference between pills and peaches: and that it puts an end to
the spirit of moral combat in human life, and metamorphoses the "good soldier of Jesus Christ " into one knows
not what strange sort of mock-heroic insincerity. At the
feet of Epicurus a man must needs lay the Christian armor
down: for one can hardly fancy the most logical of mortals




340    THIE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.
tying on a breastplate of faith, seeking the battle-field, and
fighting -to be happy. But there is a more insidious doctrine than this, largely infused, from the philosophy of a
neighboring country, into the literature of the age; a doctrine not of the appetites, but of the imagination; not the
utilitarian, but the Aesthetic, contrary of the true faith of
duty. This would persuade us, that the moral faculty is all
very well as one of the elements of human nature; is highly
respectable in its proper place among the rest, and could not
be absent without leaving a grievous gap, interruptive of
the symmetry of the man: but that it must aspire to no more
than this modest participation with its companions in the
perfection of our being; that it must not presume to meddle
with what does not belong to it, or refuse to make liberal
concessions to the demands of beauty, expediency and selflove; and that it would be very narrow-minded, or, in fashionable phrase, very one-sided, to try every thing before the
tribunal of this solitary power. Here also, only under more
artful disguise, is a complete denial of all responsibility.
Something, it is true, appears to be allowed to conscience; a
part is given it to play; and the point professedly disputed
is not its existence with an appropriate function, but its exclusive pretensions and absolute authority.  Unhappily,
however, when this much is discarded, it is only in semblance
that any thing remains. A moral faculty with a merely concurrent jurisdiction, or from whose decisions there is some
appeal, is a palpable self-contradiction. As well might we
propose to frame a government without any one highest.
Conscience is authority, - divine authority, - universal authority; or it is nothing. It is a right-royal power, that
cannot stoop to serve: dethrone it, and it dies. Not even
can it consent to be acknowledged as a "citizen-king,"
chosen by the suffrages of equals, open to their criticism,
and remnovable at their pleasure. Either it must be owned
as bearing a sacred and underived sovereignty, against
which argument is impiety, and dreams of redress incur




THE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.    341
the penalties of treason; or it will decline the earthly
sceptre and retire to heaven. It reigns not by the acquiescent will of other powers, but is supreme by nature
over all will: nor rules according to any given law, being
itself the fountain of all law, the guardian of order, the
promulgator of right.  Its prerogatives are penetrating and,
paramount, like God. In the noble words of an old writer,
"Of (moral) Law there can be no less acknowledged, than
that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony
of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage,
the very least as feeling her care, the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different
sort and manner, yet all with uniform  consent, admiring
her as the mother of their peace and joy."*
Let none then prevail with us to think, that there is any
period of life, or any sphere of our activity, or any hour of
our rest, which can escape the range of right and wrong,
and be secluded from the eye of God. Not that we neel
grow stiff with the posture of unnatural vigilance, or assume
the circumspection of a scrupulous and anxious mind; th/at
would only show that the formal and obedient will was yet
hard and dry; that it was chiselled still into fitting shapes
by the severe tool of care, instead of flowing down into the
graceful moulds of a loving and trustful heart. The rule
of a divine spirit over our whole nature is, in truth, of all
things the most natural; natural as the blossom that crowns
the tree, without which it would miss half its beauty, and
all its fruit. Nothing can be more offensive to a good mind
than the eagerness to claim, for some portions of our time,
a kind of holiday-escape from the presence of duty and the
consecration of pure affections; to thrust off all noble
thoughts and sacred influences into the most neglected
corner of existence; and drive away religion, as if it were
a haggard necromancer that must some time come, instead
* Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity: end of B. I.




342    THE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.
Of a guardian-angel that must never go. It were shameful
to sanction the low-minded sentiment which so often says
of early life, that it is the time for enjoyment, and makes
this an excuse for dispensing with every thing else, and
declining all demands upon the hardness of the " good
soldier of Jesus Christ."  According to the canons of this
wretched criticism, life would have no secret unity: it
would be no sacred epic, sung throughout by any constant
inspiration; but a monster of incongruity; its first volume,
a jest-book; its second, a table of interest; and its last, a
_mixture of the satire and the liturgy. For my own -part, I
can form no more odious image of human life, than a youth
of levity and pleasure, followed by a maturity and age of
severity and pietism. Both sights, in this succession, are
alike deplorable: a young soul without wondelr, without
reverence, without tenderness, without inspiration: with
superficial mirth, and deep indifference: standing on the
threshold of life's awful temple, with easy smile, without
uncovered head, or bended knee, or breathless listening! Is
that the time, do you say, for enjoyment? Yes; — and for
enthusiasm, for conviction, for depths of affection, and devotedness of will: and if there be no tints of heaven in that
morning haze of life, it will be vain to seek them in the
staring light of the later noon. And therefore is that other
sight most questionable, of religion becoming conspicuous
first in mid-life, and presenting itself as the mere precipitate
from the settling of the young blood. Every one may have
noticed examples of men, long spending their best powers,
the mellow heart, the supple thought, the agile will, in the
service of themselves, - at length, with the retreating juices
of nature and sin, baked by the drying heats of life into the
professing saint; —like the rotting-tree, simply decaying
into the grotesque semblance of something human or ghostly,
which is no product of its proper vitality, and does but
mimic other natures when the functions have departed from
its own. Who can avoid looking on such cases with a




THE GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.    343
somewhat suspicious eye?  If indeed the youth has been
intrinsically noble, it is not for us to deny, that some undercurrent thence, after seeming loss in dark caverns of the
earth, may reappear to fertilize the meadows, and raise the
sweet after-grass of autumnal life. But it is not often that
truth can allow the interpretation thus suggested by hope
and charity. Usually, the religion thus embraced is taken
up, less because it is heartily believed and trusted, than
because a distrust has arisen of every thing else. It is the
penance of an uneasy mind; — a memorial for pardon addressed as to an enemy, not the quest of shelter with an
Eternal Friend. Vainly shall we attempt to get the wages
of a campaign that has not been fought, and seize the crown
of mastery, without having "contended lawfully." The
repose of honest victory can only follow the strife of noble
conflict: and the true peace of God is the appointed pension
of " the good soldier of Jesus Christ."




XXXIV.
THE REALM OF ORDER.
1 CORINTHIANS XIV. 33.
GOD IS NOT THE AUTHOR OF CONFUSION, BUT OF PEACE, AS IN ALL
CHURCIIES OF THE SAINTS.
IN the production and preservation of order, all men recognize something that is sacred. We have an intuitive conviction that it is not, at bottom, the earliest condition of
things; that whatever is, rose out of some dead groundwork of confusion and nothingness, and incessantly gravitates thitherwards again; and that, without a positive energy
of God, no universe could have emerged from the void, or
be suspended out of it for an hour. There is no task more
indubitably divine than the creation of beauty out of chaos,
the imposition of law upon the lawless, and the setting forth
of times and seasons from the stagnant and eternal night.
And so, the Bible opens with a work of arrangement, and
closes with one of restoration; looks round the ancient
firmament at first, and sees that all is good, and surveys the
new heavens at last, to make sure that evil is no more. Far
back in the old eternity, it ushers us into God's presence:
and he is engaged in dividing the light from the darkness,
and shaping the orbs that determine days and years; turning the vapors of the abyss into the sweet breath of life,
teaching the little grass to grow, and trusting the forest tree
with the seed that is in itself, to be punctually dropped
upon the earth; filling the mountain slope, the sedgy plain,
the open air, the hidden deep, with various creatures kept




THE REALM  OF ORDER.                 345
by happy instincts within the limits of his will; and setting
over all, in likeness of himself, the adapting intellect, the
affectionate spirit, and mysterious conscience, of lordly and
reflective man. The birth of order was the first act of God,
who rested not till all was blessed and sanctified. And far
forward in the eternity to come, we are brought before his
face again for judgment. The spoiling of his works, the
wild wandering from his will, he will bear no more: the
disorder that has gathered together, shall be rectified: he
will again divide the darkness from the light; and confusion
and wrong, - all that hurts and destroys, - shall be thrust
into unknown depths; while wisdom and holiness shall be
as the brightness of the firmament and as the stars for ever
and ever. As it was when he was Alpha, so will it be when
he is Omega. Hie is one that "loveth pureness" still: and
the stream  of Providence,- the river that went out of
Eden, — however foul with the taint of evil while it takes
its course through human history, shall become the river
of the water of life, clear as crystal, that nurtures the secret
root of all holy and immortal things.
This divine regard for order proceeds from an attribute
in which we also are made to participate, and which puts
us into awful kindred with God's perfections. Intelligent
fiee-will, - a self-determining mind, - is the only true, originating cause of which we can even conceive; the sole
power capable of giving law where there was none before, and
of creating the necessity by which it is thenceforth obeyed.
There was a will, before there was a must. Nothing else,
we feel assured, could avail, amid a boundless primeval unsettledness, to mark out a certain fixed method of existence
and no other, and make it to be; could draw forth an actual,
defined, and amenable universe from the sphere of infinite
possibilities. The indeterminate, the chaotic, lies in our
thought behind and around the determinate and constituted;
and to sketch a positive system and bid its vivid lines of
order shine on the dark canvas of negation, is the special




346            THE REALM OF ORDER.
office of the free self-moving spirit, whereby God lifts us up
above nature into the image of himself. Hence we too, in
proportion as we approach him, shall put our hand to a like
task; shall organize the loose materials that, touched by a
creative will, may cease to be without form and void;
shall set out our expanse of years into periods ruled by the
lights of duty, and refreshed by the shades of prayer; shall
mould every shapeless impulse, subdue every rugged difficulty, fill every empty space of opportunity with good, and
breathe a living soul into the very dust and clod of our
existence. As " God is not the author of confusion, but of
peace," so the service of God infuses a spirit of method and
proportion into the outward life and the inward mind; and
pure religion is a principle of universal order.
No two things indeed can be more at variance with each
other than a devout and an unregulated life. Devotion is
holy regulation, guiding hand and heart; a surrender of
self-will, -that main source of uncertainty and caprice,and a loving subordination to the only rule that cannot
change. Devotion is the steady attraction of the soul towards one luminous object, discerned across the passionless
infinite, and drawing thoughts, deeds, affections, into an
orbit silent, seasonal, and accurately true. In a mind submitted to the touch of God, there is a certain rhythm of
music, which, however it may swell into the thunder or sink
into a sigh, has still a basis of clear unbroken melody. The
discordant starts of passion, the whimsical snatches of appetite, the inarticulate whinings of discontent, are never
heard: and the spirit is like an organ, delivered from the
tumbling of chance pressures on its keys, and given over to
the hand of a divine skill. Nay, so inexorable is the demand of religion for order, that it shrinks from any one
allowed irregularity, as the musician from a constant mistake in the performance of some heavenly strain. Its perpetual effort is to prevail over all things loose and turbid;
to swallow up the elements of confusion in human life; and




THE REALM OF ORDER.                 347
banish chance from the soul, as God excludes it from the
universe.  It is quite impossible that an idle, floating
spirit can ever look with clear eye to God; spreading its
miserable anarchy before the symmetry of the creative
Mind; in the midst of a disorderly being, that has neither
centre nor circumference, kneeling beneath the glorious
sky, that everywhere has both; and from a life that is all
failure, turning to the Lord of the silent stars, of whose
punctual thought it is, that " not one faileth." The heavens,
with their everlasting faithfulness, look down on no sadder
contradiction, than the sluggard and the slattern at their
prayers.
To maintain the sacred governance of life is to recognize
and preserve the due rank of all things within us and without.  For there is a system of ranks extending through
the spiritual world of which we form a part. The faculties
and affections of the single mind are no democracy of principles, each of which, in the determinations of the will, is
to have equal suffrage with the rest; but an orderly series,
in which every member has a right divine over that below.
The individuals composing the communities of men do not
arrange themselves into a dead level of spirits, in which
none are above and none beneath; but there are centres
of natural majesty that break up the mass into groups and
proportions that you cannot change. And man himself, by
the highest will, is inserted between things of which he is
lord, and obligations which he must serve. In short, the
hierarchy of nature is episcopalian throughout: and in
conforming to its order, the active part of our duty consists in this: that we must rule and keep under our hand
whatever is beneath us; assigning to every thing its due
place.
The whole scheme of our voluntary actions, all that we
do from morning to night of every day, is beyond doubt
entrusted to our control. No power, without our consent,
can share the monarchy of this realm, or constrain us to lift




348             THE REALM  OF ORDER.
a hand or speak a word, where resolution bids us be still
and silent. And from our inmost consciousness we do
know, that, whenever we will, we can make owerselves execute whatever we approve, and strangle in its birth whatever we abhor. To-morrow morning, if you choose to take
up a spirit of such power, you may rise like a soul without
a past; fresh for the future as an Adam  untempted yet;
disengaged from the manifold coil of willing usage, and
with every link of guilty habit shaken off. I know indeed
that you will not; that no man ever will; but the hindrance
is with yourself alone. The coming hours are open yet, -
pure and spotless receptacles for whatever you may deposit
there; pledged to no evil, secure of no good; neither mortgaged to greedy passion, nor given to generous toil. There
they lie in non-existence still; ready to be organized by a
creative spirit of beauty, or made foul with deformity and
waste. Perhaps it is this thought, this secret sense of moral
contingency, that gives to so simple a thing as the beat of
a pendulum, or the forward start of the finger on the dial, a
solemnity beyond expression. The gliding heavens are less
awful at midnight than the ticking clock. Their noiseless
movement, undivided, serene, and everlasting, is as the flow
of divine duration, that cannot affect the place of the eternal God. But these sharp strokes, with their inexorably
steady intersections, so agree with our successive thoughts,
that they seem like the punctual stops counting off our very
souls into the past; — the flitting messengers that dip for a
moment on our hearts, then bear the pure or sinful thing
irrevocably away; —light with mystic hopes as they arrive,
charged with sad realities as they depart. So passes, and
we cannot stay it, our only portion of opportunity: the
fragments of that blessed chance which has been travelling
to us from all eternity, are dropping quickly off. Let us
start up and live: here come the moments that cannot be
had again; some few may yet be filled with imperishable
good.




THE REALM  OF ORDER.                 349
There is no conscious power like that which a wise and
Christian heart asserts, when resolved to absorb the dead
matter of its existence, and from  the'elements of former
waste and decay to put forth a new and vernal life. The
accurate economy of instants, the proportionate distribution
of duties, the faithful observance of law, as it is an exercise
of strength, so gives a sense of strenuous liberty. Compared
with this, how poor a delusion is the spurious fieedom which
is the idler's boast! He says that he has his time at his
disposal: but in truth, he is at the disposal of his time. No
novelty of the moment canvasses him in vain: any chance
suggestion may have him; whiffed as he is hither and
thither like a stray feather on the wandering breeze. The
true stamp of manhood is not on him, and therefore the
image of godship has faded away: for he is lord of nothing,
not even of himself; his will is ever waiting to be tempted,
and conscience is thrust out among the mean rabble of candidates that court it. The wing of resolution, mighty to
lift us nearer God, is broken quite, and there is nothing to
stay the downward gravitation of a nature passive and heavy
too. And so, first a weak affection for persons supplants
the sense of right: to be itself, in turn, destroyed by a
baser appetite for things.  This woful declension is the
natural outgoing of those who presume to try an unregulated life.  A systematic organization of the personal habits, devised in moments of devout and earnest reason, is a
necessary means, amid the fluctuations of the spirit, of
giving to the better mind its rightful authority over the
worse. Those only will neglect it, who either do not know
their weakness, or have lost all healthy reliance on their
strength.
It is a part then of the faithfulness and freedom of a
holy mind, to keep the whole range of outward action under
severe control: to administer the hours in full view of the
vigilant police of conscience; and to introduce even into
the lesser materials of life the precision and concinnity




350            THE REALM OF ORDER.
which are the natural symbols of a pure and constant spirit.
And it belongs to the humility of a devout heart, not to
trust itself to the uncertain ebb and flow of thought, and
float opportunity away on the giddy waters of inconstancy;
but to arrange a method of life in the hour of high purpose
and clear insight, and then compel the meaner self to work
out the prescription of the nobler. Yet this, after all,
though an essential check to our instability, is but the
beginning of wisdom. The mere distribution of action in
quantity, however well proportioned, does not fulfil the
requisites of a Christian order. This surveyor's work, —
this partitioning out the superficies of life, and marking off
the orchard and the field, the meadow and the grove, -will
make no grass to grow, will open no blossom and mature
no seed. The seasonal culture of the soul requires all this;
yet may yield poor produce, when this is done. Without
the deeper symmetry of the spirit, the harmonious working
of living powers there, the boundaries of action, however
neat, will be but a void framework, enclosing barrenness
and sand. Despise not the ceremonial of the moral life; it
is our needful speech and articulation; but oh! mistake it
not for the true and infinite worship that should breathe
through it. Mere mechanism, however perfect, has this
misfortune, that it cannot set fast its own loose screws, but
rather shakes them into more frightful confusion; till the
power, late so smooth, works only crash and ruin, and goes
headlong back to chaos. And so it is where there is nothing
profounder than the systematizing faculty in the organization of a man's life. Destitute of adaptive and restorative
energy, with no perception of a spiritual order that may
remain above disturbance and express itself through obstructions all the more, interruptions bewilder and upset
him. Ill health in himself or the afflictions of others, that
stop his projects and give him pause by a touch on his
affections, irritate and weary him; he grows dizzy with the
inroads on his schemes, gives up the count so hopefully




THE REALM  OF ORDER.                 351
begun, and runs down in rapid discords. The soul of
Christian order has in it something quite different from
this; more like the blessed force of nature that consumes
its withered leaves as punctually as they fall, and so makes
the spread of decay a thing impossible: that has so unwearied an appetite for the creation of beauty and productiveness, that it makes no complaint of rottenness and
death, but draws from them  the sap of life, and weaves
again the foliage and the fruit. No less a vital spontaneity
than this is needed in the Christian soul; for in human life,
as in external nature, the elements of corruption and disorder are always accumulating; and unless they are to breed
pestilence, must be kept down and effectually absorbed.
As in science, so in practical existence, our theory or ideal
must ever be framed upon assumptions only partially true.
The conditions required for its fulfilment will never be
present all at once and all alone: so that the realization will
be but approximate; and a constant tension of the soul is
needed to press it nearer and nearer to the ultimate design.
For want of a religious source, an exact apparent order in
the life may coexist with an essential disorder secreted
within. Are we not conscious that so it is, whenever the
toil of our hands, though punctually visited, receives no
consent of our hearts; when the spirit flies with heavy wing
from reach to reach of time, and, like Noah's dove, seeing
only wave after wave of a dreary flood, finds no rest for the
sole of its foot, till it gets back to the ark of its narrow
comforts? Is it not a plain inversion of the true order of
things, when we do our work for the sake of the following
rest, instead of accepting our rest as the preparative for
work? And while this continues to be the case, there will
be a hidden aching, a dark corroding speck within the soul,
which no outward method or proportion can ever charln
away. Nor can the precision of the will be even sustained
at all without the symmetry of the affections. As well
might you think to set your broken compass right by hand:




352            THE REALM OF ORDER.
if it be foul and stiff, swinging and trembling no more in
obedience to its mysterious attraction, its blessed guidance
is gone; and after the first straight line of your direction,
you sail upon the chances of destruction.
To prevent this evil, of method just creeping up the lower
part of life, and passing no farther, no positive rule, from
the very nature of the case, can well be given. We can
only say that, besides subjecting whatever is beneath us,
there is also this passive part of Christian order, that we
must surrender ourselves entirely to what is above us; and
having put all lesser things into their place, we must then
take and keep our own. Could indeed this proportion of
the affections invariably remain, it would supersede all our
mechanism, and take care of the outward harmony: and
we should have no need to apply the rules of a Franklin
to the spirit of a Christ. But even short of this blessed
emancipation, we should rise into a higher atmosphere;
escaping the wretched thraldom  of reluctant duties; and
should yield a free consent, through love, to that which else
were irksome; quietly depositing ourselves on every work
that brings its sacred claim, and moving in it, instead of
writhing to get beyond it. They tell you that habit reconciles you in time to many unwelcome things. Let us not
trust to this alone. Custom indeed sweetens the rugged
lot when the cheerful soul is in it: it does but embitter it
the more, when the soul stays out of it. But when harshnesses are borne, and even spontaneously embraced, for the
sake of God who hints them to our conscience, a perfect
agreement ensues between the spirit and the letter of our
life. We feel no weariness; delivered now from the intolerable burthen of flagging affections. We are disturbed by
no ambitions; conscious of no jealousies of other men; for
competition has no place in things divine: and even in lower
matters, it is, to the thoughtful and devout, but a quiet
interrogation of Providence; and the true heart that prefers
the question cannot be discontented with the answer. We




THE REALM  OF ORDER.                353
cease to desire a change: we feel that life affords no time
for restlessness; that in persistency is our only hope: and
a blessed conservatism of spirit comes over us, that claims
nothing but simple leave to go on serving and loving still.
And so existence, to the devout, becomes, not confused, but
peaceful, like a service in the churches of the saints.
23




XXXV.
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.
LUKE XVII. 10.
SO LIKEWISE YE, WHEN YE SHALL HAVE DONE ALL THOSE THINGS WHICH
ARE COMMANDED YOU, SAY, " WE ARE UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS; WE
HAVE DONE THIAT WHICH WAS OUR DUTY TO DO."
To a thoughtful interpreter of human nature, nothing so
plainly reveals the hidden principle of a man's life, as the
estimation in which he holds himself. Whether the standard which guides him be conventional, moral, or divine;
whether the invisible presence that haunts him be that of
the world's opinion, or his own self-witness, or the eye of
God, —may be seen in the contented self-delusion, or intelligent self-knowledge, or noble self-forgetfulness, which
reveal themnselves through his natural language and demeanor. Too often you meet with a man who manifestly
looks at himself with the eyes of others; and those too, not
the wise who are above him, but the associates on the same
level or the inferiors beneath it, to whom he may be supposed an object of conspicuous attention. He stands well
with himself, because he stands well with them: and nothing
would make him angry with himself, except the forfeiture
of his position among them. Their expectations from him
being satisfied, or somewhat more, he thinks his work is
done, and turns loose into a holiday life, to do as he likes
at his own unlicensed will. Their sentiments are the mirror
by which he dresses up his life; as his self-complacency is
but the reflection of their smiles, his self-reproach is but an
imitation of their frowns, -mere regret for error, not re



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.            355
morse for wrong; — overheard in the cry of vexation, "Fool
that I am!" not in the whisper of penitence, "God be
merciful to me a sinner!" He every way impresses you
with the conviction that, if nothing were demanded of him,
nothing would be given; that he simply comes into the
terms imposed by men as conditions of peace and good
fellowship; and, did all men resemble him, the cynic's
theory would be not far wrong, that morality is but the
conciliation of opinion, and society a company for mutual
protection.
However, if all men were such as he, and brought no
strictly moral element into human affairs, it is plain that
this much-vaunted power of " public opinion " could never
get formed. Till somebody has a conscience, nobody call
feel a law. Accordingly, we everywhere meet with a higher
order of men, who not only comprehend the wishes, but respect the rights, of otherls: who are ruled, not by expectation
without, but by the sense of obligation within: who do, not
the agreeable, but the just; and, even amid the storm of
public rage, can stand fast, with rooted foot and airy brow,
like the granite mountain in the sea. Noble however as
this foundation of uprightness always is, there may arise
from it a self:estimate too proud and firm. If the stern
consciousness of right have no softening of human affection and kindling of diviner aspiration, it will give the lofty
sense of personal merits that makes the stoic, and misses
the saint.  To walk beneath the porch is still infinitely
less than to kneel before the cross. We do nothing well,
till we learn our worth; nothing best, till we forget it.
And this will not be till, besides being built into the real
veracious laws of this world, we are also conscious of the
inspection of another: till we live, not only fairly among
equals, but submissively under the Most High; and while
casting the shadow of a good life on the scene below, lie in
the light of vaster spheres above. Virtue. feeling its deep base
in earth, lifts its head aloft: sanctity, conscious of its far-off




356        CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.
glimpse at heaven, bends it low. And yet, outwardly, they
are not different, but the same: one visible character may
correspond with either; only standing amid relations incomplete in the one case, completed in the other. They are but
as the different aspects of the granite isle of which we
spake. Let clouds roof out the heaven and shut a darkness
in, and its gray crags look down, with the grandeur of a
gloomy monarch, sheltering the thunder and defying the
flood. Sweep the rack away, and throw open the hemisphere of morning air, and it lies low in the soft light anal
sleeps with upturned gaze, like a sunny child of deep and
sky, cradled on the summer sea.
How is it that minds, equally engaged in the outward service of duty, think of themselves so differently? Whence
the self-reliance, bordering on self-exaggeration, of a Zeno,
a Franklin, a Bentham? -the divine humility of a Pascal,
a HIoward, a Channing, and of the Master whose lineaments
they variously reflect? The answer will present itself spontaneously, if we inquire into the true doctrine of mnerit.
This word, which has its equivalent in every language,
expresses a meaning familiar, I suppose, to all men; and
by referring to a few common modes of speech and thought,
the contents of that meaning may be unfolded and defined.
There is no merit in paying one's debts. To make such
an act a ground of praise infallibly betrays a base mind
and a dishonest community. This cannot well be denied by
any clear-thoughted man, free from the influence of passion. Whatever be the practice of society with respect to
the insolvent, surely it is a mean perversion of the natural
moral sense to imagine that his temporary inability, or length
of delay, can cancel one iota of his obligation: these
things only serve to increase its stringency; tardy reparation being a poor substitute for punctual fidelity. I am
far from denying that circumstances of special and blameless misfortune may justify him in accepting the voluntary




CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.            357
mercy of friends willing to "forgive him  all that debt."
But whoever avails himself of mere legal release as a moral
exemption, is a candidate for infamy in the eyes of all uncorrupted men. The law necessarily interposes to put a
period to the controversy between debtor and creditor, and
prohibit the further struggle between the arts of the one
and the cruelty of the other: but it cannot annul their
moral relation. Obligation cannot, any more than God,
grow old and die: till it is obeyed, it stops in the present
tense, and represents the eternal now. Time can wear no
duty out. Neglect may smother it out of sight: opportunity may pass, and turn it from our guardian angel into our
haunting fiend: but while it yet remains possible, it clings
to our identity, and refuses to let us go. It was the first
sign of the rich publican's change from the heathen to
the Christian mind that he "restored four-fold" the gains
that were not his. And our conversion yet remains to be
wrought, until, instead of applauding as of high desert the
man who repairs at length the mischief he has done, we
condemn to shame every one who can buy an indulgence
with an unpaid debt.
Again, there is no merit in speaking or acting the simple
truth; in keeping one's promissory word, and doing one's
stipulated work. In this there is no more than all men are
entitled to expect from us. It is their manifest right: and
if, instead of respecting its demands, we give them falsehoods with our lips and life, we not merely lose all claim to
their praise, but, sinking far from innocence, become obnoxious to their reproach. From this rule there are, no
doubt, many apparent departures in the practical conduct of
human affairs; and we often make it a theme for public
eulogy that a citizen has lived among us with unbroken
pledge and faithful achievement. This, however, is hardly
an example of the strict and unmixed judgment of conscience, but rather a concession from that pity and fear
with which we look on human nature tried with so long a




358        CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.
strife. It springs up on the retrospect of an entire life with
its visible temptations prostrated and its strength triumphant; and would be put to silence by a single instance of
evident bad faith. Moreover, in cases of such unviolated
truth, there is always something more than simple abstinence from wrong. They imply, by their very persistency,
a force of character, which cannot have spent itself in mere
standing still, however firm.  The man who, under all
deflecting importunities, can keep an immovable footing
against the wrong, has a life within him that, when the assault is over, will push on the victories of right: and we
justly accept the negative strength, as symptomatic of the
positive power of conscience. On this account it is that we
honor him who never lies, nor cheats, nor stoops to mean
evasions; not that it would be otherwise than shameful if
he did; but to be throughout clear of all such shame is the
sign that he has not a passive, but a productive, soul: and
we praise him for what he is, rather than for what he is
not.
Once more: there is no merit in restraining the appetites
from excess; in the avoidance of intemperance and waste;
in freedom from wild and self-destructive passions, that bear
the soul away on a whirlwind it cannot rule. We expect
of every man, that he shall remain master of himself; and
we feel that he does not reach the natural level of his humanity, unless he governs what he knows to be beneath
him, and, as "a faithful and wise steward," manifests a
moral prudence in administering the domain of his own
spirit. A well-ordered economy of the personal habits
brings so evident a return of value to those who practise it,
and is so fit a consequence of the natural rights of reason
over the will, that it is rather the assumed ground and
indispensable condition, than the actual essence, of any
excellence we can honor and revere. If ever we bestow
upon it more than a cold commendation, it is in cases where
it may be taken as a pledge of something further, that does




CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.           359
not directly meet the eye: where it appears, for instance,
amid examples of guilty license, and inducements to a low
and lax career; and can only have grown up by the triumph
of pure and divine energy within, under the obstructions
of circumstance and the contradictions of men. But except
when we thus find some saint amid the brood of Circe, we
deem it but poor praise to a human soul, that it is not like
the brutes, the creature of impulse and slave of chance
affection.
From these instances it is easy to collect one of the essential characteristics of all merit. There is no room for
it in the sphere of personal and prudential conduct: it can
arise only in the case of duty to others. And there it obtains
no admission, so long as we merely satisfy the claims of
justice, and comply with that which law or honor have
written in the bond. Failing in this, we incur guilt and
demerit; not failing, we are entitled to no praise. The
first entrance of merit, according to the sentiments of all
men, is where our performance goes beyond the acknowledged
rights of another; and we spontaneously offer what human
obligation could not ask.
There is a second characteristic admitted to be essential
to every meritorious act. It must be all our own, the
spontaneous product of our individual will and affection.
If in the delirium of fever, or the fancies of somnambulism,
you are led, by the command of some guide who wields you
at his word, to put forth a deed of outward charity, you will
take no more credit for it, than for the heroic achievements
you may accomplish in your dreams. You had no more to
do with the act than with the sin of Lucifer. You were
not the agent in the case; you were only the stage on which
the phenomenon took place. And show me, in any instance,
that a man is not the originating cause of his own apparent
deed, but, in this manifestation of him, only an effect of
some extraneous power; show me that he would never have
done the kindly thing, had he not been put up to it by a




360        CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.
force that pulls the wires of his obedient mind; show me
even, that he had some personal end in view, and proposed
to make an investment in generosity;- -and it is in vain
that you ask for my admiration: as soon could I respect
the industry of a clock, or the energy of a galvanized limb.
If the prompter once peeps out, I know the whole to be a
piece of acting, and the illusion of reality is instantaneously
gone; only, instead of the avowedly fictitious, I have the
insidiously false, and am the dupe, not of professed entertainment, but of real deception. Spontaneity then is an
essential to each man's good desert; and in precise proportion to the partnership there may be in his agency, will
be the diminution of his share.
Here then we have the two requisites and characteristics
of every meritorious act: it must overlap the limits of mere
justice, and go beyond the strict rights of the being to
whom it is directed: and it must be all our own. Take
away either of these properties, and merit disappears.
Now it is the characteristic of all moral systems, as such,
that they allow the reality of human merit; of all religious
systems, as such, and of the simply religious heart that has
no system at all, that they disown it. The different forms
of faith, however, do this in different ways; and the following distinction is to be carefully observed: —the spurious
representations of Christianity take away all demerit at the
same time; while the true have in them this mystery, that
while they remove the lustre of merit, the shadow of demerit
remains.
Every Fatalist or Predestinarian scheme destroys merit
by denying that our actions are our own, and referring them
wholly to powers of which we are not lords but slaves. We
are ourselves, it is contended, true creators of nothing; but
creatures, absolutely disposed of by mightier forces, like clay
rwhirled upon the potter's wheel, and moulded by his hand;
— determinate products turned out from the great workshop of the universe, with functions purely mechanical, like




CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.              361
a more complex kind of tool. That we seem to have a selfmoving power, to put forth spontaneous and underived
effort belonging wholly to our personality, is, in the view
of this doctrine, an illusion of our short-sightedness, due
only to our ignorance or forgetfulness of the prime mover
of our energies. All this, like the heaving of a steam-engine,
or the laboring of a ship at sea, is done for and upon us,
not by us: and when, in our remorse for the past, and our
resolves for the future, we assume that we are in a responsible trust for our own spiritual state, we are dupes of an
ignorant delusion, at which philosophic spirits stand by and
smile. Fast locked within the series of natural effects, we
are the ground on which phenomena appear for their display,
but not their cause; the inventor and exhibitor stands
behind the scenes, and shows us off. Life, in short, is but
the long phantasm of the sleep-walker; replete with the
consciousness of nimble thoughts, and vivid passions, and
precarious glories, and strenuous deeds, - a perfect conflict
of awful forces to him that is within it; but to the eye of
waking truth outside, still and passive as the sculptured
slumber of a marble image; a casket of mimic battles and
ideal woes. With the particular sources of fallacy in this
scheme, I have not now any direct concern. I merely wish
to point out that, as it is destructive of any proper agency
in the human being, it annihilates at once merit and demerit; sinks man from a person into a thing; loses all
moral distinctions, by representing character as an incident
in one's lot, like health or disease, the color of the hair or
the robustness of the limbs; and renders obligation altogether impossible. And so, along with the inflation of
self-righteousness, which it certainly excludes, this scheme
carries away also the healthful sorrows of remorse. Its
humility is not the moral consciousness of unworthiness of
character, but the physical sense of incapacity of nature;
and the disciple looks on himself, not as the fallen angel,
but as the ennobled animal.




362        CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.
Now, with all this Christia'nity appears to me to stand
in strongest contrast. It annihilates merit, not by reducing
obligation to nothing, but by raising it to infinitude. Leaving us the originating causes of our own acts, as we had
always supposed ourselves to be, —confirming us fully in
the partnership we thus enjoy with the creative energy of
God, —it resists all encroachment on our responsibility.
But then, it takes away from us the other element of merit.
It renders it impossible for our performance ever to overlap
and exceed the claims upon our will. For it changes the
relations in which, with a conscience simply looking round
over the level of our equals, we had felt ourselves to stand.
Putting us under heaven as well as upon the earth, within
the presence and sanctuary of God, while we are at the
hearths of our friends and in the streets with our fellows,
it swallows up our duties to them in one immense sphere
of duty to him. Into all our transactions with them, it
introduces a new and awful partner, to whom we cannot
say, " Thou hast no business between them and us; if we
satisfy each other, stand thou aloof! "  As the holy prompter
of our conscience, and guardian of their claims, he must be
omnipresent with his interpositions. To him therefore our
religion makes over all their rights; and thereby not only
consecrates and preserves them, but gives them boundless
extension. Instantly, we discern as a true demand upon us
a thousand things which before we had fancied to be at our
discretion, and to redound to our praise, if we conceded
them. Charity merges into justice; love and pity are offerings that may not be withheld; and every former gift
becomes a debt. All good that is not impossible is a thing
now due, and is to be performed, not like eye-service unto
men, but as to God: a solemn transfer of responsibilities
has taken place, and all our doings are with the Highest
now: and beyond his acknowledged rights we can never
go, so as to deserve any thing of him. Towards him, obligation is strictly infinite: it covers all our possibilities of




CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.            363
acblevternent: for, the very circumstance of any good and
noble thing being possible, and revealed to our hearts as
stuch, constitutes and creates it a duty. Thus suggested,
it is one of the trusts committed to us by God, -the work
which he, the great spiritual Artificer, puts into his true
laborer's hands to execute; to keep the material, and not
weave the texture, of his designs, were a false and unfaithful
thing. Nor, when we have completed it, can we establish
any title to even the most insignificant reward. For what
are wages after all?  Are they not, in effect, the laborer's
share of the produce created, only paid in anticipation
of the finished task, - an advance founded on his right to
subsist while he toils? And do they not cancel all his
claim to participate afterwards in the product of his skill?
This perpetual loan by which he lives, and which he works
off by exertion ever renewed, he cheerfully accepts in discharge of all his rights. And what recompenses are ever
prepaid so freely as those of God?  He waits not for a
week's, not even for a moment's industry, but is beforehand with us every way. We have never earned the living
which he gives us in this world; we cannot plead that we
have a right to be. The field and the faculty of work
are alike furnished forth by him. A little while ago, and
we were not here; a little while again, and we shall be
gone from our place: and have we not then been wholly
set up at our post in this universe by our great Taskmaster? and does he not, 4by the fact of existence itself,
make us his perpetual debtors? Yes: the successive moments, as they pass, are the counters of his constant payment; which we can neither reckon nor refuse, but only
hasten to seize and to employ. And so, it is impossible for
us ever to overtake his advances. With our fastest speed
they fly before ps still, like the shadow which his light
behind us casts, only lengthening as we go, till it stretches
over the brink of time, and covers the abyss of eternity.
Resign we then every high pretension, and stand with




364        CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MERIT.
bended and uncovered head of self-renunciation; grateful
for every blessing God may send; eager for all the work
he may appoint; but saying, when all is done, " we are unprofitable servants; we have done that" alone, - and alas!
far less, - "which was our duty to do."




XXXVI.
THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT.
1 CORINTHIANS XIII. 11.
WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I SPAKE AS A CHILD, I UNDERSTOOD AS A CHILD,
I THOUGHT AS A CHILD; BUT WHEN I BECAME A MAN, I PUT AWAY
CHILDISH THINGS.
THE noblest prophets and apostles have been children once;
lisping the speech, laughing the laugh, thinking the thought
of boyhood. Undistinguished as Paul then was amid the
crowd, unless by more earnest and confiding eye, there was
something passing within him of which, it would seem, he
preserved, in the kindling moments of his manly soul, the
memory and the trace. And there are few men, I suppose,
who do not at times send back a gentle glance into their
early days; not only looking upon faces vanished now, and
listening to voices that have become as distant music to the
mind; but remembering the throbbing pulse of their own
hopes, the strain of heroic purpose, and the awful step of
wonder unabated yet. Between ourselves and the apostle,
however, there is an expressive difference here. We usually
turn from the past with a sigh, and a secret sense of irrevocable loss; he, with hands clasped in thanksgiving, as in the
glory of an infinite gain. We envy our own children, and
would fain put back the shadow on our dial, to feel again
the morning sun that shines so softly upon them; he springs
with glad escape out of hours too recent from the night, and
welcomes the increasing glow of an eternal day. To us, the
chief beauty, the only sanctities of life, are apt to appear in




366            THE CHILD' S THOUGHT.
the shelter of our early years: they are like a home that we
have deserted, a love that we have lost, a faith cheated from
our hearts. As we ascend the mountain-chain of life, so
long a towering mystery to our uplifted eye, they lie beneath
as the green hollow of the Alpine valley; to whose native
fields return is cut off for ever; whence the incense of our
faith went up straight to heaven, like the first smoke from
the village hearths into the clear, calm air; whose sunny
grass thaws the very heart of us, nipped by the glacier's
keenest breath; whose stately trees, still dotting the ground
with points of shade, seem to leave us more exposed amid
the scant and stunted growths of this wintry height; and
whose church-peal, floating faintly on the ear, makes us
shudder all the more at the bleak winds near, booming in
icy caverns, or whispering to the plains of silent snow. But
Paul, though not untouched perhaps by the poetry of childhood, regarded it without regret. WVith, him, its inspiration
had risen, not declined; its unconscious heaven had not
retreated, but pressed closer on his heart, till it had mingled
with his nature, and articulately spoken there. He was not
going up into life to lose himself amid the relentless elements, and get buried by the avalanche of years in chasms
of fate; but, to conquer Nature and look down; to stand
upon her higher and higher watch-towers, till he found a
way clear into the climate of the skies; and, like Moses on
Mount Nebo, with " his eye not dim," could discern, at the
pointing of God, " the whole land " of life " unto the utmost
sea;"- and then pass where no horizon bounds the view.
WVAe, too often, in putting away childish things, part with
the wrong elements; losing the heavenly insight, keeping
the earthly darkness. We put away the guileless mind, the
pure vision, the simple trust, the tender conscience; and
reserve the petty scale of thought, the hasty will, the love
of toys and strife. Paul put away only the ignorance and
littleness of childhood, bearing with him its freshness, its
truth, its God, into the grand work of his full age. And




THE CHILD S THOUGHT.                  367
hence, while our religion lies somewhere near our cradle,
and is a kind of sacred memory, his lived on to speak for
itself instead of being talked about. It fought all his conflicts: it took the weight out of his chains: it condensed
the lightning of his pen; and kindled the whole furnace of
his glorious nature.
There is a natural difference between the religion of childhood, of youth, and of maturity, which appears to be very
much overlooked in our expectations and practices with
regard to each. The human mind is not the same in all
periods of its history: its wants, its faculties, its affections,
shift their relative proportions, as that history proceeds:
and a power, which, like religion, is to hover over it continually, and to lift it by a constant attraction, must not
always suspend itself over the same feelings, and offer one
invariable representation.  Its resources are infinite: its
beauty is inexhaustible; its truth dipped in every color into
which the light of heaven is broken by the prism of' thought:
and it must adapt itself to the characteristics of every period
which needs its sway. Nor is there the least art or cunning
policy implied in this; but only a soul of natural sympathy,
to take on it at will the burdens of the child, the youth, the
man; to see their love, their fear, their admiration; to doubt
their doubts, and pray their prayers; and simply to avoid
the cruelty of offering the garment of grief to the spirit of
joy, and singing songs to the heavy heart. Some features
belonging to the early period of life, which should be borne
in mind in the conduct of religious education, I would
briefly indicate.
Childhood is emphatically the period of safe instincts;
permitting it to try for awhile the unreflective life of creatures less than human.  Only the ingenuity of artificial
corruption can spoil them. In themselves, they are incapable of excess, and offer few temptations to wrong, that are
not adequately counteracted by some balancing affection.
They simply ask to be let alone, and suffer no perversion:




368            THE CHILD'S THOUGHT.
give them room to open out; use no premature compression
to drive them back; and they will check each other, and
find a fairer proportion than can be given by your rules.
In these shrewd days, in which it has become the cleverest
thing to suspect the Devil everywhere, and God nowhere, it
is thought romantic to believe in the innocence of childhood; pardonable perhaps in a woman, but an intolerable
softness in a man. And possibly it is, if applied to the
actual children, once born in the image of God, but long
ago twisted into our miserable likeness, by the sight of our
luxuries, the contagion of our selfishness, the hearing of our
lies: possibly it is, if applied to those whom the church
teaches to blaspheme their own nature, to confess a sham
guilt, and prate of an unreal rescue from an unfelt danger.
For the world is often right in fact, though wrong in truth:
and the church has acted with a cunning theology in this
matter; having first spoiled all the children with its inanities, and then produced them in its court in evidence of
original depravity.  But if both world and church will
only learn what the child's simple presence may teach,
instead of teaching what he cannot innocently learn, the
truth may dawn upon them, that he seldom requires to be
led, -only not to be misled. A reform in the nursery will
change the creed of Christendom; no hierarchy can stand
against it; and the pinafore of the child will be more than
a match for the frock of the bishop and the surplice of the
priest. If it be romance to look with something of reverent
affection at the being not yet remote from God, it is at least
a romance that has come to us on a voice most full of grace
and truth: it breathes fresh from the hills of Nazareth; and
its emblem is that wondering infant in the arms of Christ,
visible thence over all the earth, as the chosen watch at the
gate of heaven. Whatever be thought of this doctrine, it
cannot be denied that there is, in early years, an openness
to habit, which, while it quickly punishes our neglect, as
quickly answers to our care. No ready-made obstruction,




THE CHILD S THOUGHT.                 369
no ruined work, is given us to undo. Wise direction alone
is needed; and such frame-work and moulding for the life
as we may advisedly construct, will receive the growing
nature as its silent occupant.  Nay, this is largely true, not
only of the acts of the hand, but of the methods and persuasions of the mind: for childhood has a reacly faith, thait
may be most blessedly used or most wickedly abused; a faith
so open to the sense of God, that almost unspoken, and as
by look of holy sympathy, it may be given; so eager, that
it will seize on all the aliment of thought within its reach;
so trustful, that it feels no difficulty, and will cause you
none. Your problem of guidance will therefore be, not so
much to evade present embarrassments, as to prevent the
shock of future perplexities, that must arise, when finite
thought attempts to grasp an infinite faith, and reason
descends to find its own ground, which it ever carries with
it as it dives. Nor is there any positive way of avoiding
such a crisis of the soul. Only, there is a negative wisdomn
in not shutting up the faith; in leaving a place for future
acquisitions, and verge enough for the larger operations of
the mind. Meanwhile, one thing is to be immediately and
always observed. Through the susceptibility of the religious principle, you may make the child believe in any God,
from the Egyptian cat to the inspirer of Christ. But there
is only one God that can really possess him with an awful
love; namely, such a one as seems to him the highest and
the best. And of this there can be no constant conception
through life; it changes as experience deepens, and affections open and die away. Yours cannot be the same as
his: and if you speak without sympathy, if you forget your
different latitude of mind, you may repel rather than instruct, and give root to a choking thorn of hatred, instead
of a fruitful seed of love. If the name of God is to be
sweet and solemnn to young hearts, it must stand for their
highest, not for ours: and many a phrase, rich and deep in
tone to us, must be shunned as sure to jar on spirits differ24




370            THE CHILD'S THOUGHT.
ently attuned. Oh how many obstructions have not veracious men to remove ere they can find their true religion!
How long do they say their prayers, before they pray, and
hear and speak of holy things without a touch of worship!
How many years did we look up into only damp, uncomfortable clouds, that did but wet and darken life, ere the
pure breeze set in, and swept the curtain from the eternal
sky, and mingled us with the genuine night, and set us-eye
to eye with the watchful stars! If when 1 thought as a
child, I had also dared to speak as a child, should I not
have said, "Talk to me no more; I hate the name of God"?
- yet, not the God that ever lives and loves, but the stiff
idol of the catechism, looking rigorous from the narrow
niche of a decaying Puritanism. Not the God, whose kiss
is in the light, whose gladness on the riding sea, whose
voice upon the storm; -who shapes the little grass, and
hides in the forest, and rustles in the shower; who bends
the rainbow, and blanches the snow: for children delight
in nature, and from wonder at its beauty easily slide into
adoration of its Lord. Not the God, who moulded the orbs
that Newton weighed, and traced the curves he measured,
and blended the colors he untwined; who was on the earth
when no man was, and buried the tribes now dug from the
mountains and the plains; who thinks at this moment every
thought that science shall develop, and reads the folded
scroll of future history: for children delight in knowledge,
and will kneel with joy to Him, with whom it is at once
concentred and diffused.  Not certainly the God, who
looked out upon our life and death, our strife and sorrow,
through the soul of Christ; who can no more abide the
hypocrite and the unjust that walk the streets to-day, than
Jesus the whited sepulchres of old; who lets no widow's
mite escape his eye, no grateful heart, though of the leper
and the heretic, go without its praise: for children love
justice, mercy, and truth, and will trust themselves freely to
Him in whom they dwell beyond degree.




THE CHILD'S THOUGHT.                 371
Nor is it only in its conception of God, that the faith of
the child must differ from that of the man. Its moral element is also peculiar.  To him religion, applied to life, presents itself exclusively as a law, - and a law that there is
no serious difficulty in peLfectly obeying. Prescribing a
clear scheme of duty, and a natural and delightful state of
affection, it seems to him so simple and practicable, that he
is full of courage, goes forth with joyous step, and with
confiding look gazes straight upon the open countenance of
the future. He cannot understand the penitential strains
that float from the older world around him: what have
these people been about, that they have so much evil to
bewail?  They appear to him very worthy, nay altogether
faithful and meritorious, Christians; and it is very strange
they should speak so grievously to God, and stand before
him with a culprit air and streaming tears. In all this,
though it has no shadow of pretence, he cannot join; it
comes of a deeper truth of nature than he yet has reached.
His circle of life is narrow, and his idea of life lies quiet
within it: the thing which he thinks in his conscience in the
morning, he can do with sedulous hand before night. His
conception of duty is legal and human only, not spiritual and
divine: it has not yet burst into transcendent aspiration,
whose infinite glory in front spreads the inseparable shadow
of sorrow and ill behind. Sin therefore remains to him a
dreadful image from some foreign world; a spectre of horrid
witchery, whose incantations overflow from the cursing lips
of bad men, and whose fires gleam from their impure eyes.
But it is a thing that is preternatural still: he looks at it
outside his nature, as haunting history and the world; it is
not yet a sorrowful reality within. His religion therefore is
a cheerful reverence; and with its sweet light no tinge should
mix from  the later solemnity and inner conflicts of faith.
Let him take his vow with a glad voice: if you drive him
prematurely to the confessional, you make him false. The
nmatin-hymn of life to God is brilliant with hope and praise:




372            THE CHLD' S THOUGHT.
and, without violence to nature, you cannot displace it for
the deep, low-breathing, vesper-song: the rosy air of so fresh
a time was never made to vibrate to that strain. Even
from the stony heart of old Memnon on the waste, beams
vivid as the morning wrung a murmur of happy melody:
and only at the dip of day did a passing plaint float through
the desert's stately silence. It is, I am persuaded, a fatal
thing, when we men and women, who make all the catechisms, and shape all the doctrines, and invent all the language of Christian faith, force our adult religion, with its
meditative depth, upon the heart of childhood, not yet capacious enough to take it in. Puritanism, - fit faith for the
stalwart devotion of earnest manhood in grim times, - cannot be adapted to the childish mind; and the attempt to do
so will inevitably produce distaste, and occasion reaction.
This indeed we can hardly doubt is one great and permanent cause of the alternations observable from age to age
in the faith and spirit of communities; alternations from
enthusiasm to indifference, from scepticism to mysticism,
from the anxieties of moral law to the fervor of devout love,
from a religion of excessive inwardness to one of outward
rites or daily work. These changes, though often lon, in
openly declaring themselves, really and at heart take place
by generations. The true seat of the revolution is in the
nursery and the school: the children being unable to receive
what their fathers insist upon giving; getting gradually loosened from a thing that never held them in the hollow of its
hand, but only detained them by the skirts of the garment;
and obliged at last to begin anew, and try the power of
faith's neglected pole.
As childhood merges into youth, the characteristics I
have described undergo a rapid and momentous change.
The early security is gone. The stronger powers demand
a sterner police of conscience to maintain their peace and
]alrmony. The whole soul displays, - in its intellect, its desires, its sentiments of duty, —the great transition from




THE CHILD' S THOUGHT.               373
the natural to self-conscious and reflective existence. A
greater openness to beauty, a more spontaneous quickness
of affection, a more plenary enthusiasm for goodness, combine to waken up unutterable aspirations, and put upon the
countenance of life, as it gazes into the young eyes, an expression of divinest glory. New conditions are reached
under which the simple, light-hearted piety cannot longer
stay. Duty is more than the child's task-work now. So
grand and awful does it rise, that it makes the actual deeds
that lie beneath look small, like the cultured garden at the
Andes' base.. Hence, to even the most brave and buoyant
spirit, the sigh that seemed once so strange is not unknown.
There is an incipient experience of that sad interval between conception, now so rich, and execution still so poor,
which traces the lines of deepest care upon the face of men;
-not however settled yet into that' steady and wonderful
shadow of guilt, which has spread over the purest and most
strenuous souls of Christendom; but coming fitfully and
vanishing again; taking its turn with the bold young faith
that nothing worthy can be hard to good resolve; and only
dashing the familiar joy with new longings and repentances. Amid the fiercer struggle that sets in, the great
thing needed is strength of moral denial, the courage to say
no to all questionable men and unquestionable fiends. Meanwhile, the very faculties of thought are changing too. The
appetite for facts is passing into an eagerness for truth, full
also of deep anxieties. Sometimes this noble passion degenerately tends to a disagreeable dogmatism, from the
mind's having lost its childish source of trust, and not yet
having gained the manly, and for awhile holding the faith
neither in weak dependence on authority, nor in genial repose on the universal reason and conscience, but by the little personal tenure of private argument. And, sometimes,
it is productive of dark agonies of doubt and loneliness,
drearier than death; leaving the soul exposed upon the
field of conflict, without a God to strive for, or a weapon




374            THE CHILD S THOUGHT.
for the fight. Happily, however, the moral struggle of this
period comes before the mental; and is well over with the
faithful, ere the needed strength is broken; and oftener
than is guessed, I am convinced, it is the issue of the earlier
battle of the conscience, that really determines how the
later strife of the intellect shall end. Men that have lived
a few years of hardness for God's sake, are rarely left by
him to roam the wilds of doubt alone.
It is not much perhaps that direct and purposed teaching
can contribute to the efficacy of the religious sentiments.
But its happy avail, whatever it be, depends on its conformity with the conditions we have traced. If only we
will not hinder, God has a providence most rich in help.
Judge not the child's mind by your own; nor fancy that
you have a religion to create against some powerful resistance, which skill is needed to evade or proof to overcome.
His spirit, if unspoiled, is with you, not against you, when
you speak of God. Faith is the natural and normal state
of the human heart; doubt is its feverish disease: and that
which may be the fit remedy for your sickness, may be the
poison of his health. He needs but the fresh air and pure
nourishment of life; give him not the pharmacopoeia of
theology, instead of the bread of heaven. Disturb him not
with unprofitable "Evidences:" they are burdensome as
the statutes-at-large to the heart of spontaneous justice;
— misplaced as a court of chancery in heaven. He has
already the truth which, at best, they can only have prevented you from losing: it is not the tenure, but the scope,
of his belief that is given you to improve. And in your
efforts to enlarge it, it is well to proceed outwards rather
than inwards; to awaken apprehension of facts, more than
reflection upon feelings; to glorify for the young disciple's
eye the world around him, by lifting the veil from what
is beautiful in nature and great in history; and not drive
devotion back upon self-wonder and self-scrutiny.  The
attempt to elicit a religion by interrogating his conscious



THE CHILD'S THOUGHT.                375
ness, and to find in his heart all the mysteries of a metaphysical and moral experience, will end only with affectation
in the appearance, and unsoundness at the very core, of his
nature. The green fruit may be sweetened by confectionery
arts; but the fermentation of the oven is not like the ripening of the sun; if it hastens the relish of the moment, it
kills the seed of future hope. Scarcely need the child know
that he has a soul; it is ours to take care that, when at
length he finds it, it shall be a noble and august discovery;
full of admirations never to be superseded, and of love that
shall bring no repentance. For this end, his teaching should
be mainly external and objective; given with an eye ever
fixed on the true good which he most readily discerns to
be great and sacred. Let Palestine be to him, as to so many
ages it has been, a Holy Land; and Jesus, in his gentle
majesty, the fixed and realized representative of God; and
the high deeds and souls of the past be claimed as the expressions of his will; and opening glimpses be afforded into
that natural universe which he rules in the spirit of the
divine Nazarene. Yet withal, the exigencies of a more
advanced age, though not anticipated, need not be forgotten. Some prospective regard may be had to the reflective
years which will bring their wants at length; and without
teaching any present theory of religion, its future demands
may be remembered in a thousand ways. If you would
prepare, not a mere baby-house, but a right noble structure
of faith, in which the soul shall have a life-interest, you will
not only lay the foundation broad and deep, but avoid filling
in with mean and perishable materials the parts, of which
the childish eye may see the surface, but which only the
manly thought can build in strength. The unnoticed outline of system may be so drawn, that painful and deforming
erasures hereafter may be spared; and by mere expansion
of the old boundary, and insertion of new beauty and new
wealth, the earnest veracity of the philosopher may be but
the glorified piety of the child. As larger views of the uni



376             THE CHILD'S THOUGHT.
verse and life are opened out, a Providence will be felt to
abide there still: the laws whi(h are detected, the unsuspected grandeur that is revealed, will be entered in some
orderly manner, as parts of the mighty scheme; and, instea(l
of subverting the central and divine authority, will be but
a province added to its sway. And as the years of deep
and subjective religion come, and the mind sinks in wonder
before its own mysteries, the self-consciousness, as it wakes
and starts up, will on the instant see God standing in the
midst. Such at least is the, tendency of instruction wisely
given. Still we must remember, that religion is after all
beyond the range of mere tuition. It is not a didactic thing
that words can give, and silence can withhold. It is a spirit;
a life; an aspiration; a contagious glory from soul to soul;
a spontaneous union with God. Our inward unfaithfulness
is sure to extinguish it; our outward policy cannot produce
it. To love and to do the holy will is the ultimate way,
not only to know the truth, but to lead others to know it
too.




XXXVII.
LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.
-4ROMANS XV. 1, 3.
WE THEN THAT ARE STRONG OUGHT TO BEAR THE INFIRMITIES OF THE:
WEAK, AND NOT TO PLEASE OURSELVES: —FOR EVEN CHRIST PLEASED
NOT HIMSELF.
IN the grouping of nature, dissimilar things are invariably
brought together, and by serving each other's wants and
furnishing the complement to each other's beauty, present
a whole more perfect than the sum of all the parts. The
world we live in is not a cabinet of curiosities, in which every
kind of thing has an assortment of its own, labelled with its
exclusive characters, and scrupulously separated from objects
of kindred tribe. The free creative hand distributes its
riches by other order than the formal arrangements of a
museum; and, for the happy life and action of the universe,
blends a thousand things, which, for ends of knowledge
only, would be kept apart. A single natural object may
be the focus of all human studies, and present problems to
puzzle a whole congress of the wise. A tropical mountain,
for instance, is a seat for all the sciences; and from the
snows of its summit to the ocean at its base, ranges through
every realm of the physical world, and presents samples of
the objects and forces peculiar to each. Its granite masses
stand up as the monumental trophy of nature's engineering;
while each successive stratum piled around their pedestal
is as a notch on the score and chronicle of her operations.
Its melting glaciers and its poised clouds keep her chemical




o 7 8       LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.
register; showing the temperature of her laboratory, and
marking the dew-point every hour. And from  the lichen
and the moss that paint its upper rocks, through the fields
and forests of its slope, to the sea-weeds that cling around
its roots, it carries gradations of vegetable and animal life
more various than can be told by the most accomplished
physiologist. And perhaps from  some platform on its side
the observatory may be raised; whence the astronomer
obtains his glimpse at other regions of creation, surveys the
lordly estate of the sun of whom our holding is, and espies
the realm of space beyond, where worlds lie thick as forestleaves.  In this, we have only a representation of the
harmonizing method of creation everywhere, which combines the most unlike things into a perfect unity. Tile
several kingdoms of nature, as we term them, are not like
our political empires, enclosed with jealous boundaries, thick
with commercial barriers, and bristling with military posts.
They pervade and penetrate each other: they form together
an indissoluble economy; the mineral subduing itself into
a basis for the organic, the vegetable supporting the aniln:l,
the vital culminating in the spiritual; weak thin(os clinl'ing
to the strong, as the moss to the oak's trunk, and the insect
to its leaf; death acting as the purveyor of life, and life
playing the sexton to death. Mutual service in end(less
gradation is clearly the world's great law.
In the natural grouping of human life, the same rule is
found. It is not simnilarity but dissimilarity, that constitutes
the qualification for heartfelt union among mankind: and
the mental affinities resemble the electric, in which like
poles repel, while the unlike attract.  A  family, — l t:n
which there is no more genuine type of nature's method of
arrangement, — is throughout a combination of opposites.~
the woman depending on the man,- whose very strength
however exists only by her weakness; the child hanging on
the parent, — whose power were no blessing, were it not
compelled to stoop in gentleness; the brother protecting




LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.              379
the sister, — whose affections would have but half their
wealth, were they not brought to lean on him with trustful
pride: and even among seeming equals, the impetuous
quieted by the thoughtful, and the timid finding shelter
with the brave. That there " are diversities of gifts" is
the reason why there " is one spirit:" and it is because one
is reliable for knowledge, and another for resolve, and a
third for the graces of a balanced mind, that all are held in
the bonds of a pure affection.
The same principle distinguishes natural society from
artificial association. The former, springing from the impulse of human feeling, brings together elements that are
unlike: the latter, directed to specific ends, combines the
like. The one, completing defect by redundance, and coinpensating redundance by defect, produces a real and living
unity: the other, multiplying a mere fraction of life by
itself, retires further and further from any integral good,
and results only in exaggerated partiality. I do not suppose
that society arises, as some philosophers represent, from the
sense of individual weakness, and the desire for consolidated
strength; but, it must be owned, the instinctive propensities
of mankind create nearly the same natural classes, as if it
were so. The first social group would contain a selection
of the elements least able to subsist apart, and most compact when thrown into a system. We all look with involuntary admiration on the gifts and excellences which
are wanting in ourselves: and so, ignorance is drawn to
knowledge, and artlessness resorts to skill; thought is astonished at the achievements of action, and action wonders
at the mysteries of thought; the irresolute trust the courageous, and all find a refuge in the noble and the just.  So
long as personal qualities and spontaneous attractions determine the sorting of mankind, they will dispose themselves
in classes, containing each, in rugged harmony, the elementary materials of our humanity. And when discord arises,
it is from the presence of too many similar elements, which




380        LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.
have no respect for one another, no mutual want, no reciprocal helpfulness, and which cannot therefore coexist
without risk of dissension.  Say what you will, nature is
no democrat, but filled throughout with the most indisputable ranks: and it is only in proportion as we recede from
the natural affections, and enter upon the life of isolated
self-will, that dreams of social equality take the place of
the reality of social obedience.
Now the assortments of an old civilization follow a law
precisely the reverse of that which we have ascribed to the
Providential rule. It unites all elements that are like, and
separates the unlike. Instead of throwing men into harmonious groups, it analyzes them into distinct classes; conferring upon each sort of human being a kind of charter
of incorporation; giving them something of a collective
will, a feeling for their order, and a conscious pursuit of its
special ends. The mutual dependence of differently endowed men is not indeed destroyed or even lessened; but
it is shifted from the individual to the class. Where, before,
person was helpful to person, nation now supplies the want
of nation, and one mass of labor fills up the deficiency of
another. This makes the greatest difference in the whole
moral structure of human life. The contact of the dissimilar
elements, I need not say, is much less close: vast circles,
embracing collections of men, hang upon one another; but
not the people within them, taken one by one. The daily
life of each is passed in the presence, not of his unequacls,
but of his equals. He lives within his class: he mixes with
those who have much that he possesses, and little that he
wants: and who in their turn want little that he can give,
and much of which he is empty. He finds his own feelings
repeated, his own tastes confirmed, his own judgments defended, his own type of wisdom reproduced; and becoming
an adept in the characteristics of his order, he misses the
perfection of his nature. He is esteemed in proportion as
he exaggerates the peculiarities of his class; and he ceases




LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.              381
to be its model and its idol, the moment he seeks to infuse
into it the elements of some foreign wisdom, and treats
with respect the depositary of some opposing truth. How
completely this association by sympathy has taken place of
association by difference, is plain to all who look upon the
world with open eyes. Only those who are of the same
sect, of equal rank, of' one party, of kindred pursuit, of
pretty equal knowledge, and concurrent tastes, are found
often in the same society. In education, the graduated
distribution of nature is entirely broken up; all the boys
collected into one set, all the girls into another; and the
several ages, combined in the system of Providence, are
separated  by  the  arrangements of man.  Everywhere,
mechanism and economy are substituting, over our world,
the classifications of an encampment for the organism of a
home.
I am far from supposing that all this is entirely evil. It
is a noble distinction of civilized above barbarous man, that
he can bear the habitual presence of others like himself,
without a coercion always suspended over his passions; can
sympathize with them, and join in hearty fraternity for
common ends of good. To live among our equals teaches,
without doubt, the twofold lesson of self-reliance and selfrestraint: it enforces a respect for others' rights, and a
vigilant guardianship of our own: it substitutes prudence
for impulse; and trains the sentiments of justice and veracity. But, while it invigorates the energies of purpose,
it is apt to blight the higher graces of the mind; and, in
confirming the moralities of the will, to impair the devoutness of the affections. A man always among his equals is
like the schoolboy at his play; whose eager voice, and disputatious claim, and bold defiance of the wrong, and merciless derision of the feeble, betray that self-will is wide awake,
and pity lulled to sleep. But see the same child in his home:
and the genial laugh, the deferential look, the hand of
generous help, the air of cheerful trust, show how, with




382        LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.
beings above and others beneath him, he can forget himself
in gentle thoughts and quiet reverence. And so it is with
us all. The world is not given to us as a play-ground or
a school alone, where we may learn to fight our way upon
our own level, and leave others scope for a fair race; but
as a domestic system, surrounding us with weaker souls for
our hand to succor, and stronger ones for our hearts to
serve. If the one set of relations is needful for the formatioll of manly qualities, it is the other that gives occasion
to the divine. And if in our own day and our own class,
the moral and intellectual elements of character have become completely and deplorably ascendant over the religious;
if, in our honor for truth and justice as realities, we have
got to think all piety a dream; if life, in becoming a vigorous work, has ceased to be a holy worship; if its tasks are
done, and its mysteries forgotten, and in being occupied by
our will it is emptied of our God: if, in the better rule of
our finite lot, we forget to serve its Infinite Disposer; -it
is, in part, because we live too exclusively with our equals;
the weak herding with the weak, the strong meeting with
the strong; the rich surrounding themselves with the rich,
and the taught fearing the more taught. We associate
with those who think our thought, feel our feelings, live our
life; we read the books which repeat our tastes, justify our
opinions, confirm our admirations; we encourage each other
in laughing at the excellence to which we are blind, and
disbelieving the truth to which we have never opened our
reason, and shuffling away from the affections and obligations to which we have a distaste. And thus our existence
shrinks into a miserable egoism: the theatre on which we
stand is surrounded by mirrors of self-repetition; and we
render it impossible to escape the monotonous variety of the
poor personal image.
Now, to break this degrading moral illusion, we have only
to study and adopt the grouping of the Christian life; which
corrects the classifications of our artificial state, by restoring




LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.             383
the arrangements of nature. The faith of Christ throws
together the unlike ingredients which civilization had sifted
out from one another. Every true church reproduces the
unity which the world had dissolved; and for the precarious
cohesion of similar elements substitutes again the attraction
of dissimilar. This is done not merely by placing us all, as
responsible agents, in the same venerable relations, and
so strengthening the bonds of earnest brotherhood. This
also is a noble and humanizing thing. But Christianity has
other influences operating to the same end. The moment
a man becomes a disciple, his exclusive self-reliance vanishes:
the rigid lines of his mere manly posture become softened:
he trusts another than himself: he loves a better spirit than
his own; and, while living in what is human, aspires to
what is divine. And in this new opening of a world above
him, a fresh light comes down upon the world beneath him:
the infinite glory of the heaven reveals the infinite sadness
there is on earth. Standing  no longer on his own level, as
if that were all, he feels himself in the midst, between a
higher existence to which he would attain, and a lower to
which he would give help. Aspiration and pity rush into
his heart from opposite directions: he forgets himself: the
stiff strong footing taken by his will gives way; and he is
mellowed into the attitudes of looking upw and lifting up.
These, it always appears to me, are the two characteristic
postures of the Christian life; without which our minds,
whatever their opinions, are empty of all religious element,
and our hearts, though still humane, lie withered in atheistic
death. If there were no ran/ces of souls within our view;
if all were upon a platform of republican equality; if there
were but a uniform  citizenship of spirits, and no royalty
of goodness, and no slavery to sin; if nothing unutterably
great subdued us to allegiance, and nothing sad and shameful roused us to compassion; —I believe that all divine
truth would remain entirely inaccessible to us, and our
existence would be reduced to that of intelligent and aini



384         LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.
able animals: the noblest chamber of the soul, the vault
of its hidden worship, remaining locked, the corresponding
region of the universe, the hiding place of thunder —the
secret dwelling of the Alnighty, - would be closed against
our most penetrating suspicionrs. And as the arrangements
by which we stand — members of a graduated series, —
with beings above and beings below, is the origin of faith;
so is the practical recognition of this position the great
means of feeding the perpetual fountains of the Christian
life.
A great German poet and philosopher was fond of defining religion as consisting in a reverence for ifferior beings. The definition is parladoxical: but though it does not
express the essence of religion, it assuredly designates one
of its efects. True, there could be no reverence for lower
natures, were there not, to begin with, the recognition of a
Supreme Mind: but the moment that recognition exists, we
certainly look on all that is beneath with a different eye. It
becomes an object, not of pity and protection only, but of
sacred respect; and our sympathy, which had been that of
a humane fellow-creature, is converted into the deferential
help of a devout worker of God's will. And so, the loving
service of the weak ancd wanting is an essential part of the
discipline of the Christian life. Some habitual association
with the poor, the dependent, the sorrowful, is an indispensable source of the highest elements of character. If we
are faithful to the obligations which such contact with infirmity must bring; if we gently take the trembling hand
that seeks our guidance, and spend the willing care, and exercise the needful patience; —why, it makes us descend
into healthful depths of sorrowful affection which else we
should never reach: it first teaches us what it is to wear
this nature of ours, and shows us that we have been men
and have not known it. It strips off the thick bandages of
self, and the grave-clothes of custom   and bid's us awake to
a life which first reveals to us the death-like insensibility




LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.            385
from which we are emerging. Yes; and even if we are unfaithful to our trust; if we have let our negligence have
fatal way; if sorrows fall on some poor dependent charge,
from which it was our broken purpose to shield his head;still, it is good that we have known him, and that his presence has been with us. Had we hurt a superior, we should
have expected punishment from him: had we offended an
equal, we should have looked for his displeasure; and, these
things once endured, the crisis would have been passed.
But to have injured the weak, who must be dumb before
us, and look up with only the lines of grief which we have
traced; - this strikes an awful anguish into our hearts: a
cloud of divine justice broods over us, and we expect from
God the retribution which there is no man to give. The
rule of heavenly equity gathers closer to us than before;
and we that had neglected mercy are brought low to ask it.
Thus it is that the weak, the child, the outcast, they that
have none to help them, raise up an Infinite Protector on
their side, and by their very wretchedness sustain the faith
of justice ever on the throne.
The other half of Christian discipline is of a less sad and
more inspiring kind; and yet scarcely more welcome to the
vain and easy and self-complacent heart. There are those who
pass through life with no greater care than to keep in good
humor with themselves; who dislike the spectacle of any
thing that greatly moves or visibly reproaches them; who
therefore shun those that know more, see deeper, aim higher,
than themselves; who are ever on the search, not for correction of their errors, but for confirmation of their prejudices;
not for rebukes to their littleness, but for praises of their
greatness; and who hurry away from the uneasiness of selfconfession, if it ever begins to flow, amid the mists of selfjustification. This form of selfishness may not be utterly
inconsistent with the duty on which I have insisted, of lifting up the beings beneath us: but it is the direct contrary
of the other portion of the devout life, which consists in
25




386         LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.
looking'up to all that is above us. It is the more needful
to guard against the approach of such a temper, because
aspiration is more easily stifled than compassion. Its faint
breathings subside through mere forgetfulness: but the
paroxysms of pity can be quelled only by an active selfishness: and admiration may die from dearth of objects,
while sympathy is in danger rather of exhaustion by their
multitude. The intercourse with suffering which sustains
the natural spirit of mercy is so near our doors, as hardly
to be avoided without compunction: the intercourse with
excellence which keeps resolution at its height is a privilege
so rare as not to be attained without an effort. Yet, without it, the higher elements of the Christian life must fatally
decline. The soul cannot from its own fuel permanently
feed its nobler fires: it needs at least some stream of pure
air from aloft to kindle the smouldering thoughts, and make
the clouds of doubt and heaviness burst into a flame. Only
the fewest and sublimest natures, - bordering almost on the
perfectness of Chlrist, - can remain in the perpetual presence, though for ends of genuine mercy, of infirm or
depraved humanity, without a lowering of the moral conceptions, and a depression of hope and faith. And by a
natural retribution, through which God rebukes every partial unfaithfulness, and forbids any spiritual grace permanently to grow without the concurrent culture of them all,
the tone of pity itself must gradually sink under this deterioration; and every loss from the enthusiasm of a just
devotion brings a duller shade on the light of human love.
Hence, the anxiety of every one, in proportion to the noble
earnestness with which he looks on life, to hold himself in
unbroken communion with great and good minds; never to
depart long from the touch of their thought and the witness
of their career; but to intermingle some divine light of
beauty thence with the prosaic story of his days. He knows
that the upper springs of his affections must soon be dry, unless he asks the clouds to nourish them. He finds that the




LOOKING UP, AND LIFTING UP.             38T
near inspection and familiar converse of wise and holy men
is the appointed way by which the infinite Godl lifts us to
himself, and draws us upward with perpetual attraction. They
are the mediators between the earth and heaven, between human realities and divine possibilities, between the severities
of duty and the peace of God; compelling us to own, how
glorious when done are the things most difficult to do; how
surely the dreams of conscience may become the fixed products of history; and how from the sighs of achievement
may be composed the hymn of thanksgiving. If, therefore,
"there be any virtue, if there be any praise," whoever
would complete the circle of the Christian life will "think
on these things:'" will thrust aside the worthless swarm of
competitors on his attention; in his reading will exclusively
retain, in his living associations will never wholly lose, his
close communion with the few lofty and faithful spirits that
glorify our world: and, above all, will at once quench and
feed his thirst for highest wisdom, by trustful and reverent
resort to Him in whom sanctity and sorrow, the divine and
the human, mingled in ineffable combination.




XXXVIII.
THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.
1 CORINTHIANS VII. 29, 31, 32.
BUT THIS I SAY, BRETHREN, THE TIME IS SHORT:-THE FASHION OF THIS
WORLD PASSETH AWAY. —I WOULD HAVE YOU WITHOUT CAREFULNESS.
PAUL said this with a meaning which cannot now be restored to the words, and which makes them one of the
grandest expressions of the true Christian mind. In no
vague indeterminate sense, such as ours, did he declare the
relnainder of this life "short:" and we should much misunderstand his feeling here, if we took it for a commonplace
sigh over the brief lodgement permitted to man on earth.
It was not that he thought the natural term of our presence
upon this scene too slight for earnest pursuit and resolute
achievement; not that he preached any sickly and selfish
indifferentism, esteeming our days too transient for love,
and our generation too perishable for faithful service. He
had no idea that the natural term would be completed, or
the generation run itself out. Yet he felt assured that he
and his disciples would be survivors of its destruction; and
so urges on them pursuits of immeasurable amplitude, love
of a passionless depth, and the service of none but eternal
obligations. Instead of thinking, as any man might do,
" Frail tenants are we of this solid globe, - phantoms that
come and vanish; leaving nothing permanent but the forms
of human things, which remain while the beings change, and
the scene over which we are passed like troops of successive
apparitions; "- the Apostle says, "My friends, we should
be of quiet heart; we alone are immortal amid perishable




THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.             389
things, and among the vain shows of creation remain, the
realities of God: this world, though it seems like rooted
adamant, is melting, like a painted cloud, away; the forms
of human life, the structure of communities, the instinctive
relations of mankind, which alone appear unchangeable, are
alone about to cease; and our individual being, of all things
seeming the most precarious, is alone incapable of death."
Paul actually looked around him with the persuasion, that
the stable products of history by which he was environed,
the gigantic institutions, the proud traditions, the accumulated wealth, the disciplined force, the heartless slavery,
that lay within the grasp of Roman power, existed by a
feebler tenure than the sickliest infant's life: he looked to
see them all, and the mighty arm that held them, crumble
into sand before his eyes. A strange and wondrous expectation this, seen from our point of view! Afloat upon the
tide of human things, in that poor frail skiff of a Christian
Church which he took to be an ark of God, how could he
look at such frowning skies, and hope to ride the storm
alone?  But, in truth, it was no common tempest that he
thought to see: rather did he sail on in the belief, that the
very seas of time beneath him were about to sink and flee
away; bearing with themn the mighty fleet of human things
into nothingness and night; and leaving only that sacred
ark suspended in the mid-heaven of God's protection, to
grow into a diviner world. Well might he exhort his
disciples to disentangle themselves from the elements about
to perish; to disregard the perils, and forget the toils, and
transcend the anxieties, that beset them. Well might he
remind them that they were living upon a scale, that made
it shameful to brood on these things like an eager and wayward child; that they might live in obedience to their largest thoughts, and compute their way as through the first
spaces of an infinite perspective; and that, to minds so
placed, nothing was so fitting as a serene spirit of power;
quiet, not from the extinction, but from the doubling of




390          THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.
emotion, gathering into the same instant the feelings of
opposite times, and making "those that weep as though
they wept not, and those that rejoice as though they rejoiced
not, and those that use this world as though they used it
not;" and all, reposing " without carefulness " on the will
of God, seeing how soon " the fashion of this world passeth
away."
This was the Apostle's manner of regarding life: and
though we may say his expectation was false, we may doubt
whether any man since has had one half as true. It is, at
a1ll events, unlike the error of our lower spirits, and arises
from a mind, not too short-sighted, but too far-seeing, for the
(onditions of our mortal state. It rightly answers the great
problem between true and false religion, - I should rather
say between religion and no religion, — " Which is the permanent reality, life, or the scenery and receptacle of life;
the soul, or the physical objects of the soul?"  Whoever
deeply feels that one of these is eternal, must see the other
to be evanescent: for the duration of either is simply
relative to the other, which is its only measure: the elongation of the one is to us the abbreviation of the other; and
he who takes an absolute stand of faith on the stability of
either, beholds the other passing into nought. To dull and
heavy souls, — nay, to the lower minds of all men, - nothing seems so real as the objects of the senses, nothing so
secure as the material forms of nature, to which from the
first every human life has stood related; and in proportion
as physical science confirms this habit of thought, in proportion as masses and weights and mechanism engage us, or
the laws of organization, or the outward conditions of social
life, are we oppressed by the solid sameness of these things;
individual existence seems the sport of a dead fatalism,
swallowed up by the hunger of an insatiable necessity. To
souls like that of Paul, not passive and recipient, but vivid
and productive, - souls that put all things into different
attitudes by a pure act of meditation, and feel how the uni



THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.               391
verse approaches or recedes before the changing eye of
thought, - its constancy, nay its reality, seems purely relative: it lies submissive at the feet, like storm and calm
before the eye of Christ: the primary force of God's creation appears to be the free spontaneous soul; whose existence is the great miracle and mystery of heaven; whose
tendency is ever towards a higher life; which communes
through the screen of outward things with the inner mind
of God, feeling both spirits immortal, and only the veil
between condemned to drop away. And just in proportion
as the worshipper stands up before eternity face to face,
and feels it there, must this earth and its time-relations
shrink beneath his feet, till he rests upon a point that soon
will vanish. Paul, wholly absorbed in the immensity of
existence, could by no means measure the objects of existence by our finite rules: the depth of his perspective put
even distant things into his foreground; and if this be
chronological error, it comes in with the shadow of religious
truth: the delusion is scarce distinguishable from the inspiration of the prophet, and is even akin to the perception of
God. No one could thus look the earthly into nothing, but
by filling all things with the divine.
It was not then, I conceive, the historical misapprehension
about the end of the world, that led to the belief of human
immortality: it was the intensity of the belief in immortality, that produced the idea of the approaching end of the
world. This is apparent in a way by which you may always
distinguish a primitive from a derivative doctrine: the former is everywhere assumed, and appears as an all-pervading
and unconscious faith; the lI:tter is frequently argued and
expounded, and appears as an avowed opinion. The combination of the two, however, has had important effects on
the development of our religion; and it may be doubted
whether, without it, Christendom could ever have taken to
heart that solemn sense of the infinite scale of human life,
which is the great characteristic of its theory of existence.




892          THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.
Paul kept a whole generation of the church in awful and
breathless suspense; listening for the approaching peal of
doom, till earthly sounds fell as faint unrealities upon their
ear; straining their vision aloft, as through a long watchnight, for the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; till their
footing seenled loosened beneath them, and the landscape
sank into the dark away. Thus alone, I believe, could the
invisible world be raised into the great reality to man. The
first age of Christendomn, sequestered from all else, and spent
on its very front, obtained a divine insight that has not
been lost.  The heavenly breath that swept across the
margin, made it felt how the heats of the present should
be cooled, and the fever of the passions purified. Our poor
minds can take in only one great conception at a time, and
must be left alone with it for a full lifetime, if it is to be
incorporated with the character, and ennoble the history,
of succeeding ages. Moreover, great religious faiths must
be the visible basis of practical life to one period, ere they
can be rooted in the acceptance of another: and had not
the early Christians watched their hour for Christ, their
fellow-disciples ever after would have fallen asleep in the
fatigues of this world, deaf to the voice of its divinest
sorrows, and missing the angels of preternatural strength.
The superstition therefore of one age may become the truth
and guidance of all others.
That Christianity did really give an infinite enlargement
to the scale of human life, and that this is one of its great
features, is conspicuous enough on comparing it with the
religions it supplanted. It was not indeed that Pagan
societies were without the conception of a future: but
Christianity first got it cordially believed. Even the meditative philosophy of Greece can present no clear instances
of hearty and deep conviction, except in Plato and his
master; and, whatever we may think of the rhetorical
leanings of Cicero in the same direction, the practical
earnestness of Rome was wholly given up, for want of




THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.               393
higher thoughts, to material interests and outward magnificence. The faint and spectral fancies of a possible future,
that floated before the mind of the people, scared away
no crime, tranquillized no passion, disenchanted no instant
pleasure. They lay fevered and restless beneath the broad,
burning orb of this immediate life, drunk with hot indulgence, and asleep to the midnight hemisphere of faith which
is open to the vigils of the purer soul. Throughout Christendom, on the other hand, this boundless night-scene of
existence has been the great object of contemplation; has
swallowed up the clay; has reduced the meridian glare of
life to an exaggerated starlight, truly seen as such from
more central positions where the apparent does not distort
the real. The difference between the ancient and modern
world is this: that in the one the great reality of being was
now; in the other it is yet to come. If you would witness
a scene characteristic of the popular life of old, you must
go to the amphitheatre of Rome, mingle with its 80,000
spectators, and watch the eager faces of senators and people: observe how the masters of the world spend the wealth
of conquest, and indulge the pride of power: see every wild
creature that God has made to dwell from the jungles of
India to the mountains of Wales, from  the forests of
Germany to the deserts of Nubia, brought hither to be
hunted down in artificial groves by thousands in an hour:
behold the captives of war, noble perhaps and wise in their
own land, turned loose, amid yells of insult more terrible
for their foreign tongue, to contend with brutal gladiators
trained to make death the favorite amusement, and present
the most solemn of individual realities as a wholesale public
sport: mark the light look with which the multitude, by
uplifted finger, demands that the wounded combatant be
slain before their eyes: notice the troop of Christian martyrs
awaiting hand in hand the leap from the tiger's den: and
when the day's spectacle is over, and the blood of two
thousand victims stains the ring, follow the giddy crowd




394         THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.
as it streams from the vonlitories into the street, trace its
lazy course into the forum, and hear it there scrambling for
the bread of private indolence doled out by the purse of
public corruption; and see how it suns itself to sleep in the
open ways, or crawls into foul dens till morning brings the
hope of games and merry blood again; — and you have an
idea of that imperial people, with their passionate living
for the moment, which the gospel found in occupation of
the world. And if you would fix in your thought an image
of the popular mind of Christendom, I know not that you
could do better than go at sunrise with the throng of toiling
men to the hillside where Whitefield or Wesley is about
to preach. Hear what a great heart of reality in that hymn
that swells upon the morning air, - a prophet's strain upon
a people's lips! See the rugged hands of labor, clasped and
trembling, wrestling with the Unseen in prayer! Observe
the uplifted faces, deep-lined with hardship and with guilt,
streaming now with honest tears, and flushed with earnest
shame, as the man of God awakes the life within, and tells
of him that bare for us the stripe and cross, and offers the
holiest spirit to the humblest lot, and tears away the veil
of sense from the glad and awful gates of heaven and hell.
Go to these people's homes, and observe the decent tastes,
the sense of domestic obligations, the care for childhood,
the desire of instruction, the neighborly kindness, the conscientious self-respect; and say, whether the sacred image
of duty does not live within those minds: whether holiness
has not taken the place of pleasure in their idea of life:
whether for them too the toils of nature are not lightened
by some eternal hope, and their burden carried by some
angel of love, and the strife of necessity turned into the
service of God. The present tyrannizes over their character
no more, subdued by a future infinitely great: and hardly
though they lie upon the rock of this world, they can live
the life of faith; and while the hand plies the tools of earth,
keep a spirit open to the skies.




THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.               395
There is something very ennobling to humnan character in
thle possession of a large time-view: and its effects are visible in many cases not directly religious. Next to having a
noble future before us, is it well to have a wide and worthy
past. This it is that renders the old man venerable. hIis
actual momentary life is often poor and sad enough: the
windows of sense and soul shut on the light and stir of the
world without, and the avenues choked up through whicl
the interests and passions of the hour should vibrate to his
heart. But, while shaded from the dazzle of the instant,
the tranquil light of half a century is spread beneath his
eye. Many a gaudy bubble he has seen rise, and glitter,
and burst; — many a modest good take secret root and
grow. Every game of hope and passion he has seen played
out, and for every passage presented on the living stage
can find a parallel scene in the old drama whose curtain
never drops. The heroes and the wise of the past age,
ideal to others, were real to him; his familiars are among
the dead, dear yet to many hearts; and as he explores
again that silent past, and climbs once more its consecrated
heights, and loses himself in its sweet valleys, and rebuilds
its fallen fragments, he feels something of an historic dignity, which sustains the trembling steps, and gives courage
to the sorrowful decline. And so is it too with family recollections. To have had forefathers renowned for honorable
deeds, to belong by nature to those who have bravely borne
their part in life and refreshed the world with mighty
thoughts and healthy admiration, is a privilege which it
were mean and self-willed to despise. It is as a security
given for us of old, which it were false-hearted not to redeem: and in virtues bred of a noble stock, mellowed as
they are by reverence, there is often a grace and ripeness,
wanting to self-made and bran-new excellence. Of like value
to a people are heroic national traditions, giving them a
determinate character to sustain among the tribes of men,
making them familiar with images of great and strenuous




396          THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.
life, and kindling them with faith in glorious possibilities.
No material interests, no common welfare, can so bind a
community together, and make it strong of heart, as a history of rights maintained, and virtues uncorrupted, and
freedom won: and one legend of conscience is worth more
to a country than hidden gold and fertile plains. It is but
an extension of the same influence that we discern in the
Christian theory of life: only that it opens out our timeview alike in the future and the past. It makes both our
lineage and our destiny divine; proclaims us sons of God,
and heirs. No tie can so fasten on us the feeling, that we
belong not to the present, and that we degrade our nature
whenever we live for the passing moment only; that we are
not our own, but the great Father God's. Our lot is greater.than ourselves, and gives to our souls a worth they would
not else have dlared to claim. Hence the humbleness there
always is in Christian dignity. The immortal lot infinitely
transcends our poor deserts: how we are to grow into the
proportions of so high a life, it is wonderful to think. And
yet, though it be above us always,-nay, even because it is
above us, - there is something in it true and answering to
our nature still: so that, having once lived with it, we are
only half ourselves- -and that the meaner half - without
it. The infinite burden of duty which good hearts are constrained to bear, is tolerable only to an immortal's strength.
The unspeakable, imploring homage with which we look on
truth and wisdom and greatness in other souls, is but sorrow
and servitude, except to a spirit freed with an eternal love.
The Christian hope gives peace and power by restoring the
broken proportions of the mind; and tranquillizes the restlessness of a spirit unconsciously " cabined, cribbed, confined." It is this truthfulness to our best and deepest nature,
- the power we receive from it, the quiet we find in it,that gives to the Christian estimate of life its most irresistible persuasion upon the heart. For my own part, I confess
it is the only evidence that seems to give me true, serene,




THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.               397
absolute faith; and when, in lower moods of thought, I am
driven to cast about for a limited, intellectual ground of
trust, and become a disciple according to argument, I sometimes doubt whether I do more than fancy I believe.
With what temper then does this great faith send us forth
to our immediate work? M With the assurance that the true
life is not yet; that nobler forms of being and affection are
in reserve for faithful minds; that the present derives its
chief interest and value, not from  itself, but from its relations. To live, in short, consists not in enjoying the day
and forgetting in the night; but in a waking conscience, a
self-forgetful heart, an ungrudging hand, a thought ever
earnest for the truth; in a perpetual outlook of hope from
our lower point upon an upper and infinite glory. We need
not let the present be so eclipsed by the future, -we need
not look upon its scenes or upon ourselves as so mean beneath that ulterior resplendence, - that life now should be
darkened by the contrast, instead of cheered by the connection. It is no sad lot of expiation that we suffer, no pe nance that our years on earth perform, purifying by tears and
mortification, a natural disqualification for any higher state.
On the contrary, the germs of the immortal growth are
within us now, and will spring up, not by the bruising and
crushing of our nature, but by its glorious opening out. WVe
are here to try and train our faculties for great achievements and harmonious residence within the will of God.
Nor is the theatre unworthy of our best endeavors. Only
let us not, in action or in suffering, sink down upon the
present moment, as if that were all. Amid the strife and
sorrow that await us, let us remember, that the ills of life
are not here on their own account, but are as a divine challenge and godlike wrestling in the night with our too reluctant wills; and since, thus regarded, they are truly evil no
more, let us embrace the conflict manfully, and fear no defeat to any faithful will. W hen all is well with us in this
world,let us not forget that its enjoyments also are not here




398          THE CHRISTIAN TIME-VIEW.
on their own account: the cup is not to be tossed off in
careless draughts. They too stand in relation to the affections and character of the soul, and thence derive their
truest worth: it were sin to take them to our selfish sensibilities alone; and they must warm us with a grateful and
a generous mind, more trustful in the love of God, more
prompt with a true pity for man. And when we best and
most strenuously follow the obligations of our career, we
can permit no flutter of self-gratulation to disturb the quiet
meekness of the heart. For only look up on that which we
dare to hope, and how  are our mightiest achievements
dwarfed. All insufficient in themselves, -poor spellingsout of the mere alphabet of eternal wisdom, - they are but
signs of willing pupilage, -the upturned look of a disciple
sitting at the feet. As symbols of faith and service, God
will be graciously pleased to accept them from us; and discern in them the early essays of a soul that shall assume at
length dimensions more divine.




XXXIX.
THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH.
EPHESIANS III. 14, 15.
OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, -OF WHOM THE WHOLE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND
EARTH IS NAMED.
JEsus was never so much one with his disciples, as when
he was no longer with them: they were never so widely
severed from him, as when, with unawakened and dirn-discerning heart, they lingered around him, with eyes so holden
that they did not know him. The nearest in person may
clearly be the furthest in soul: they may eat at the same
table, and morning and night exchange the greeting and the
parting look, yet each remain outside the spirit of the other,
- severed even by an impassable chasm, to which the earth's
diameter would be less than an arm's length. But where
the inner being, rather than the mere outer, has been passed
togetller, and we have found in some fraternal heart the
appointed confessional for the doubts and strife and sorrowful resolves of our existence, no amount of land or water
can break the mutual affiliation: the reciprocation of pity
and of trust, the placid memories, the joint courage to bear
well the solemn weight of life, which enrich a present love,
may consecrate the absent too. Nay, distance may even
set a human life in truer and more affectionate aspect before us, by stlipping off its trivialities, and bringing out its
essential features, and urging our thought to conceive it
as a whole from its beginning to its close: and in the want
of any lighter union, we fold ourselves in the embrace of




400     THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH.
the same divine laws, and compassion for the same mortal
lot.
With the boldness of a true and inspired nature, the
Apostle Paul gives an immeasurable extension to this
thought; and speaks, with incidental ease of one "famiily,"
distributed between heaven and earth. There is, it seems,
a domesticity that cannot be absorbed by the interval between two spheres of being;- -a love that cannot be lost
amid the immensity, but finds the surest track across the
void; — a home-affinity that penetrates the skies, and enters
as the morning or the evening guest. And it is Jesus of
Nazareth who has effected this; —has entered under the
same household name, and formed into the same class, the
dwellers above and those beneath. Spirits there, and spirits
here, are gathered by him into one group; and where before
was saddest exile, he has made a blest fraternity. Let us
observe in what instances, and by what means, the spirit
of Christ draws illto one circle the members of some human
society separated else by hopeless distance.
Members of the samne home cannot dwell together, without either the memory or the expectation of some mutual
and mortal farewell. Families are for ever forming, for ever
breaking up; and every stroke of the pen.dulum carries the
parting agony through fifty homes. There is no one of
mature affections from whose arms some blessin( of the
heart, - parent, sister, child, —has not died away, and
slipped, not as once into extinction, but (chief thanks to
the Son of Man) into eternity. All we who dwell in this
visible scene can think of kindred souls that have vanished
from us into the invisible. These, in the first place, does
Jesus keep dwelling near our hearts; making still one family
of those in heaven and those on earth.
This he would do, if by no other means, by the prospect
he has opened, of actual restoration. Hopeless grief for
the dead, in being passionate, is tempted to be faithless too:
for it has no remedy but in suffering remembrance to fade




THE FAMILY TIN HEAVEN AND EARTH.    401
away, and employing the gaudy colors of the present to
paint over the sacred shadows of the past. On the other
hand, the most distant promise of a renewed embrace is
sufficient to keep alive an unforgetful love.  Come where
and when it may, after years or ages, in the nearest or the
furthest regions of God's universe, it passes across our minds
the vision of reunion: it opens a niche in the crypt of the
affections, where the images of household memory may
stand, and gaze with placid look at the homage of our sorrow, till they light up again with life, and fall into our arms
once more. It matters little at what point in the perspective of the future the separation enforced by death is
thought to cease. Faith and Love are careless time-keepers:
they have a wide and liberal eye for distance and duration:
and while they can whisper to each other the words "' Meet
again," they can watch and toil with wondrous patience, -
with spirit fresh and true, and, amid its most grievous loneliness, unbereft of one good sympathy. And since the grave
can bury no affections now, but only the mortal and familiar
shape of their object, death has changed its whole aspect
and relation to us; and we may regard it, not with passionate hate, but with quiet reverence. It is a divine message
from above, not an invasion from the abyss beneath; not
the fiendish hand of darkness thrust up to clutch our gladness enviously away, but a rainbow gleam that descends
through tears, without which we should not know the various beauties that are woven into the pure light of life.
Once let the Christian promise be taken to the heart; and
as we walk through the solemn forest of our existence, every
leaf of love that falls, while it proclaims the winter near,
lets in another patch of God's sunshine, to paint the glade
beneath our feet, and give "a glory to the grass."  Tell me
that I shall stand face to face with the sainted dead; and,
whenever it may be, shall I not desire to be ready, and to
meet them with clear eye and spirit unabashed?  Shall I
not feel, that to forget them were a mark of a nature base
26




402    THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH.
and infidel? -that under whatever pleasant shelter I may
rest, and over whatever wastes I may wander as a wayfarer
in life, I must bear their image next my heart; —like the
exile of old, flying with his household gods hidden in his
mantle's secret folds? That the gospel leaves undetermined
the period and place of restoration; -that we call it " hereafter" and know not when it is; that we call it "heaven"
and know not where it is;- detracts nothing from its power
to unite into one family the living and the departed. It
is the office of pure religious meditation to thin away the
partitions of time till they vanish, and cast a zone around
space and enclose it all within the mind; to feel that whatever is certain must be soon, and whatever is real must be
near at hand. And hence, it is the characteristic of Christianity to be indifferent as to the time and locality of the
events in which it excites our faith. Content with scattering great and transforming ideas, it allows every kind of
misplacement in these accidental relations; for, if true portions of the invisible are given to our belief, what matters
the disposition into which our thoughts may throw them?
Early or late, near or far, are alike in the eye of God, and
may well be left open to mutable interpretation from the
wants and affections of men. Jesus himself spake much,
before his crucifixion, of his reunion with his disciples. It
was his favorite topic throughout that parting night; — the
subject, now of promise, now of prayer; — the vision from
which, in that hour of anguish, he could never, for many
moments, bear to part. Hle leaves the impression that it
would be very speedy; and so thought the apostles ever
after. And as to place, his expressions fluctuate somewhat
between here and there; though his hearers thenceforth
looked, and looked in vain, for him to come back to be with
them. But of what concern was this? For were they not
ready to meet him, be it where it might? Did not that
hope keep alive within their hearts the divine and gracious
image of their Lord, and, at the end of forty years of vari



THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH.    403
ous toil, still evoke it, beaming and breathing as though it
were of yesterday?  Worlds above and worlds below;mansions are they all of the great Father's house: and the
disciples' greeting would be equally blessed, whether the
immortal Galilean descended to the embrace on this vestibule of finite things; or summoned them rather across its
threshold into the presence-chamber of the Infinite. And
no less indifferent to our affections are the localities beyond
the grave. Having faith that the lost will assuredly be
found, our souls detain them lovingly in the domestic circle
still, and own one family in heaven and on earth. We may
cease to ask, in which of the provinces of God may be the
city of the dead; a guide will be sent, when we are called
to go.
Such and so much encouragement would Christianity
give to the faithful conservation of all true affections, if
it only assured us of some distant and undefinable restoration. But it appears to me to assure us of much more than
this; to discountenance the idea of any, even the most temporary, extinction of life in the grave; and to sanction our
faith in the absolute immortality of the mind. Rightly understood, it teaches not only that the departed will live, but
that they do live, and indeed have never died, but simply
vanished and passed away. It opens to our view the diviner
sphlere of Christ's ascension, wherever it may be, not as a
celestial solitude, where he spends the centuries alone; but
as the ever-peopling home of men and nations, where predecessors waited to give him welcome, and disciples go to
call him blessed. It is a great thing, thus totally to abolish
the idea of any annihilation, however momentary, in death,
and to reduce it to simple separation. For it is a perilous
and even fatal concession to the power of the grave, to admit that it holds any thing in non-existence, and absolutely
cancels souls; swallowing up every trace of their identity,
and necessitating the creation of another, though corresponding, series. Once let an object of deep love drop




404    THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH.
into that abyss and sink in its privative darkness, and how
shall I recover it again?  Faith stands trembling on the
awful brink, and with vain cries and broken supplications,
owns herself unequal to the task: for, between being and no
being, who can fathom the infinite depth? The very creature that has really ffallen through it, scarcely can Omniipa,tence bring back; though it produce another like in every
feature, giving us the phantasm and not the essence. But
neither to God's power nor to our faith, does death present
any serious perplexity, if it be only the migration of a
spirit that does not cease to live. Thus regarded, it interposes nothing but physical distance between us and the objects of our affectionate remembrance. While we poor
wayfarers still toil, with hot and bleeding feet, along the
highway and the dust of life, our companions have but
mounted the divergent path, to explore the more sacred
streams, and visit the diviner vales, and wander amid the
everlasting Alps, of God's upper province of creation. The
memorial which our hand affectionately raised when they
departed, is no monument to tell what once had been and is
no more; it is no symbol of hopeless loss; but the landmark from which we measure off the miles of our solitary
way, and reckon the definite, though unknown, remnant of
our pilgrimage: and as the retrospect is lengthened out,
the prospective loneliness is shortening to its close. And so
we keep up the courage of, our hearts, and refresh ourselves
with the memories of love, and travel forward in the ways
of duty with less weary step, feeling ever for the hand of
God, and listening for the domestic voices of the immortals
whose happy welcome waits us. Death, in short, under the
Christian aspect, is but God's method of colonization; the
transition from this mother-country of our race to the fairer
and newer world of our emigration. What though no other
passage thither is permitted to all the living, and by neither
eye nor ear we can discover any trace of that unknown receptacle of vivid and more glorious life? So might the




THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH.    405
dwellers in any other sphere make complaint respecting our
poor world. Intensely as it burns with life, dizzy as our
thought becomes with the din of its eager passions, and the
cries of its many woes, yet from the nearest station that
God's universe affords, - nay, at a few miles beyond its
own confines, - all its stormy force, its crowded cities, the
breathless hurry and ferment of its nations, - the whole
apparition and chorus of humnanity, is still and motionless as
death; gathered all and lost within the circumference of a
dark or illumined disk. And silent as those midnight
heavens appear, well may there be, among their points of
light, some one that thrills with the glow of our lost and
immortal generations; busy with the fleet movements, and
happy energies, of existence more vivid than our own;
where, as we approach, we might catch the awful voices of
the mighty dead, and the sweeter tones, lately heard in the
last pain and sorrow, of our own departed ones.
But it is not merely the members of the same literal
home that Christ unites in one, whether in earth or heaven.
He makes the good of every age into a glorious family of
the children of God; and inspires them with a fellow-feeling, whatever the department of service which they fill.
Discipleship to Christ is not like the partisanship of the
schools, — an exclusive devotion to partial truth, an exaggeration of some single phase of human life. Keeping us
ever in the mental presence of the divinest wisdom and in
veneration of a perfect goodness, it accustoms us to the
aspect of every grace that can adorn and consecrate our nature; trains our perceptions instantly to recognize its influence or to feel its want. It looks with an eye of full and
clear affection over the wide circle of human excellence.
Had we not been followers of one, whose thoughts were
often deep and mystic, showing how simplicity touches
upon wonder, and wonder elevates simplicity; we mirghlt
have overlooked the high problems of our life, and held in
light esteem the souls agitated by their grandeur, perhaps




406    THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH.
lost in their profundity. Had we not sat at the feet of One,
before whose gentle tones and patient looks the shrinking
child and the repentant woman might feel it a safe and
healing thing to stand, we might have despised that faith of
love which, in being feminine, does not cease to be manly,
and have allowed no recess of honor in our hearts to the
apostles of meekness and mercy. Had we not heard, from
a Master's lips, the blighting severities before which Pharisees and hypocrites flinched and stood aghast, we might
have softened unworthily the austere claims of truth and
justice, have lost the healthy horror at sin, and refused our
thanksgiving to the patriots and prophets, whose flashing
zeal has purified the atmosphere of this world. And were
it not for the words so infinitely graceful, and prayers of
deepest aspiration, that fell from the Man of Sorrows, the
very soul of Christendom would have been steeped in colors
far less fair: we might never have felt how soon the kindred
fountains of sanctity and beauty blend together; and have
denied to the poet, as the priest of nature, his fit alliance
with the priest of faith. But thrown as we are into reverence for no disproportioned and unfinished soul, we cannot
but contract a catholic sympathy for every noble form assumed by our humanity. Philosophy and art, the statesman
and the bard, the reformer and the saint, all take their place
before us in the Providential sphere, and in proportion as
they are faithful to their trust, draw from us an admiring
recognition. We see in them selections from the exhaustless inspiration of the infinite wisdom; streaks of divine
illumination, rushing in through the cloud-openings of oui
world. No genuine disciple can be sceptical as to the ex
istence, or fastidious in the acknowledgment, of any true
worthiness. We owe it largely to the Author of our faith,
that we cannot encounter the great and good in the generations of the past, without affectionate curiosity, and even
strong friendship. Christ, himself the discerner of the Samaritan's goodness and the alien's faith, has called the




THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH.    407
noble dead of history to a better life than they had before,
even in this world: their memory is dearer; their example,
more productive; their spirit, more profoundly understood.
Thus is there a fraternity formed that disowns the restrictions of place and time; a Church of Christ that passes the
bounds of Christendom: and though, in the general chorus
of great souls, disciples only can well apprehend the theme
and put in the words, yet the glorious voices of Socrates
and Plato, of Alceus and Pindar, of Aristides and Scipio,
of Antoninus and Boethius, richly mingle as preluding or
supporting instruments, filling the melody, though scarce
interpreting the thought. Nor is this brotherhood confined
even by historic bounds: it spreads beyond this sphere and
makes one family in heaven and earth. The very faith that
the honored men of old still live, and carry on elsewhere
the appointed work of faithful minds, unspeakably deepens
our interest in them; forbids us to sigh after them as irrecoverable images of the past; enrolls them among our contemporaries; and from the lights of memory transfers them to
the glories of hope. If Pascal's "thoughts" are not half
published yet, but are pondering for us the secrets of sublimer themes: if Shakspeare's genial eye is withdrawn from
the stage of life only that it may read the drama of the
universe: if Paul, having testified for what a Christ he
lived, shall yet tell us with what a gain he died: if Isaiah's
harp is not really silent, but may fill us soon with the glow
of a diviner fire;- with what solemn heart, what reverential hand, shall we open the temporary page by which,
meanwhile, they speak with us from the past! Such hope
tends to give us a prompt and large congeniality with
them; to cherish the healthful affections which are domestic in every place and obsolete in no time; to prepare
us for entering any new scene, and joining any new society
where goodness, truth, and beauty dwell.
Even this wide friendship need not entirely close tho
circle of our fraternity. Beyond the company of the great




408    THE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH.
and good, a vast and various crowd is scattered round: no
line must be drawn which they are forbid to pass; some
span of sympathy must embrace them too. No proud
mysteries, no secret initiation, guards the entrance to the
Christian brotherhood; even wandering guilt must be sought
for and brought home; and penitence that sits upon the
steps must be asked to come within the door. Christ will
not remain at the head of the " whole family," if its forlorn
and outcast members are simply put away in selfish shame,
and no gentle care is spent to smooth the pathway of return.
He gives to some a present joy in one another: he denies
to none a hope for all. The alliance of our hearts is itself
founded on the kindred in our being: and is but the actual
result of affections not impossible to any. The affinities
of nature lie deeper than the sympathies of taste; and
should be accepted as guarantees for the equal tenderness
of God, amid the alienations of our foolish passions. And
whoever will take to heart, how the same human burthen
is laid on all, and the divine relief so nobly used by some
is for awhile so sadly missed by more; how much resemblance lurks under every difference between man and man;
how small a space may often separate the decline into
grievous failure and the ascent into glorious success; must
surely feel the yearnings of a fraternal heart towards all
who have borne the earthly mission: must look on the
apparition and disappearance of generation after generation
on this scene with an almost domestic regret and household
pity for his kind: consoled and elevated by the trust, that
men and nations who have performed the parts of shame
and sorrow here are trained to nobler and more natural
offices elsewhere.




XL.
THE SINGLE AND THE EVIL EYE.
MATTHEW VI. 22, 23.
THE LIGHT OF THE BODY IS THE EYE: IF TIHEREFORE THINE EYE BE
SINGLE, THY WHOLE BOIDY SHALL BE FULL OF LIGHT; BUT IF THINE
EYE BE EVIL, THY WHOLE BODY SHALL BE FULL OF DARKNESS. IF
TIHEREFORE THE LIGHT THAT IS IN THEE BE DARKNESS, HOW GREAT IS
THAT DARKNESS!
GREAT indeed! because it not only hides realities, but produces all kinds of deceptive unrealities; to the blinding
character of all darkness, adding the creative activity of
light; suppressing the clear outline and benign face of
things, and throwing up instead their twisted and malignant
shadows. This is the difference, so awfully indicated by
the greatest of Seers in the words just cited, between the
evil eye, and no eye at all. The latter only misses what
there is: the former surrounds itself by what is not. The
one is an innocent privation, that makes no pretence to
knowledge of the light: the other is a guilty delusion, proud
of its powers of vision, and applying its blind organ to every
telescope with an air of superior illumination. The one is
the eye simply closed in sleep: the other, staring with nightmare, and burning with dreams; whose strain the gloom of
ni(lnight does not relieve, and whose trooping images the
dawning light does not disperse. He whose very light has
become darkness, treats the privative as positive, and the positive as privative; he sees the single, double, and the double,
single: with him nothing is infinite, and the infinite is nothing. The great spectrum of truth is painted backward, and




410       THE SINGLE AND THE EVIL EYE.
the rainbow of promised good is upside down: and while
he cannot espy the angel standing in the sun, he can read
the smallest print by the pit-lights of Tophet, that threaten
to blind the spirits, and smoke out the stars. To the evil
eye the universe is not simply hidden, but reversed.
This will not appear strange to any one who considers
that two things are requisite for perception of any sort; viz.,
an object, and an instrunment, of perception; — an outward
thing, and an inward faculty. Sunshine is of no use in an
eyeless world; and the most sensitive retina is wasted in
the dark. The impressions we receive are the result of a
relation between the scene by which we are environed, and
the mind with which we survey it: take away either term
of this relation, and the other disappears. In like manner,
alter the character of either term, and the relation ceases to
be the same. The sweet may become bitter, not only by
chemical changes in the substance, but by the sick palate of
the taster. And if it were the Creator's will to paint afresh
the spectacle of his works visible from this earth, and make
the heavens green and the grass like fire, he might work the
miracle, either by revising the laws of light and color, or
by fitting up our visual power anew, and tingeing its glass
with different shades. Nor could we ever, in such case,
tell 1which it was; our consciousness commencing with the
effect and not reaching back to the cause. Just as it would
be, if all our measures of time were to be simultaneously
accelerated to a double speed. Under such conditions, an
apparent revolution would take place in the duration of all
phenomena. It would seem, that human life had resumed
its patriarchal length, and all recent history would appear
as through a diminishing medium. Nor indeed is it any
idle fancy that such changes are possible. We even feel
the warning touch of them day by day: and their faint
breath, like a passing chill trespassing from the invisible,
sweeps by and leaves an awe on thoughtful hearts. If selfforgetful activity, or the lively commerce of mind with




THE SINGLE AND THE EVIL EYE.             411
mind, can dwindle hours into minutes, while a dull and
heavy sorrow may protract a night into an age; if the dream
of a few instants can comprise the history of years; - how
evident is it that our apparent time, which is our real life,
stretches or shrinks with the variable moods of the mind;
that not only does the way we go become as the moist
meadow or the parched desert, according as we gaze through
the cool lens of a pure health, or the throbbing eye of fever,
but by the quicker or slower pace of thought, we may be
made to fly across the soft grass of our refreshment, or
crawl over the hot sands of our torture; that, by only such
shifting of our time-measures as occurs in each night's sleep,
a thousand years might become to us also as one day, or
one day as a thousand years; that thus the smallest element
of joy or woe might be multiplied into infinite value, and
a heaven or hell be constructed from the feeling dropped
by a moment's passing wing! Here, at least, the veil of
tender mercy becomes transparent, which alone screens us
from a lot more terrible than death.
So far however as our views of things are determined by
the endowments conceded to our nature, we accept them
with a calm content. We know indeed that God might
have made us otherwise, and so have set quite a different
universe before us: nor have we the smallest power of comparing that possible system of phenomena with this actual,
so as to demonstrate which of them may best agree with the
truth of things. This is a matter which, like all the foundations of our being, must rest on faith: it is one of our very
roots, which we cannot manufacture for ourselves in the
dry light; — which we cannot even scrape up to look at,
how it lives; — but which insists on growing down into the
darkness, and spreading its fibres through the subsoil of
nature. It is plain, that if our faculties were in themselves
incapable and deceptive; or if they were hopelessly vitiated
by secret and resistless causes, - there would be no help
for us. We could no more lift ourselves above our illusions




412       THE SINGLE AND THE EVIL EYE.
and perversions, than the ape could raise himself into a man,
or the man into an angel. We cannot issue from ourselves,
and alight upon a station outside our own nature: that
nature is with us when we judge it, and does but pass
sentence on itself. We cannot think of the laws of thought,
but by remaining within them; or estimate what we know,
except as an element of knowledge. However often the
drop may turn itself inside out, and circulate its particles
from  centre to surface, and from pole to pole, it remains
the same constant sphere, reflecting the same vault that
hangs over it, and yielding to the same attractions stirring
within it. And while there would be no help for such
human incapacity, there could be no consciousness of it.
To be conscious of it, would be to escape it, -to have a
rule of judgment exempted from its operation; for he who
sees that he has missed the truth, misses it no more. Faith
therefore in our own faculties, as God has given them, is at
the very basis of all knowledge and belief, on things human
or divine;- an act of primitive religion, so inevitable that
without it scepticism itself cannot even begin, but wanders
about through the inane, in fruitless search for a point on
which to hang its first sophistic thread. And each one of
our natural powers is to be implicitly trusted within its own
sphere, and not beyond it: the senses, as reporters of the
outward world; the understanding, in the ascertainment
of laws and the interpretation of nature; the reason and
conscience, in the ordering of life, the discernment of God,
and the following of religion. Whoever tries to shake their
authority, as the ultimate appeal in their several concerns,
though he may think himself a saint, is in fact an infidel.
Whoever pretends that any thing can be above them, - be
it a book or a church, - is secretly cutting up all belief by
the roots. Whoever tells me that prophet or apostle set
himself above them, and contradicted, instead of reverently
interpreting and rendering audible, the whispers of the
highest soul, is chargeable with fixing on the messengers of




THE SINGLE AND THE EVIL EYE.             413
God the sure sign of imposture or of wildness. To tell me,
with warnings against my erring faculties, that a thing is
divine which offends my devoutest perception of the true
and holy;- as well might you persuade me to admire the
sweetness of a discord by abusing my sense of hearing, or
to prefer a signboard to a Raphael by enumerating optical
illusions and preaching on the imperfections of sight. Amid
the clamor of dissonant theologies, let us sit then, with a
composed love, at the feet of him who pointed to the way,
- which no doubt can darken and no knowledge close, -
of seeing God through purity of heart. That clear and
single eye, filling the soul with light; - what is it but the
open thought and conscience by which the truth of heaven
streams in? And does not Jesus appeal to this as our only
rescue from utter darkness and spiritual eclipse? If so,
then men can see for themselves in things divine. They
are not required to take on trust a rule of life and faith, in
which they would discern no authority and feel no confidence, were it not for the seal it professes to carry, and the
affidavit with which it is superscribed. A system, indeed,
befriended on the mere strength of its letters of recommend~ation misses every thing divine. A rule which cannot
authorize itself is no rule of duty, no source of obligation;
but, at best, only a maxim of policy and instruction to selfinterest. Till it touches us with its internal sanctity and
excellence, and we can no longer neglect it without shame
and remorse as well as fear, our adoption of it is not moral,
but mimetic: we imitate the things which may be duty to
persons who have a conscience, but which are no duty to
us. If Christ alone had personal and first-hand discernment
of the truth and authority of Christianity, and all other men
have to take it solely on his word, then Christianity wholly
ceases to be a religion, and the compliance with it becomes
a mere simial observance of the movements of a great
posture-master of the soul. It is as if God had sent one
solitary being gifted with eyesight into a world of the blind,




414        THE SINGLE AND THE EVIL EYE.
to teach them to act as though they could see; groping
about in dark places and shading their faces in a blaze: in
which case, the actions, proceeding from no vision, would
have no meaning, and though displaying docility, would
border on foolishness and hypocrisy. Turn the matter as
we may, it will appear that the fullest, most unqualified
admission of a moral and rational nature in man, whose
decisions no external power can overrule, and which constitutes God's ever open court for trying the claims of
scripture and prophecy, no less than of philosophy, is the
prime requisite of all devout faith; without which, duty
loses its sacredness, revelation its significance, and God himself his authority.
Though, however, our first act of faith must be an implicit trust in the powers through which alone divine things
are apprehensible by us, it must be a trust in the intrinsic
nature which God has given them, not in the actual state to
which we may have reduced them. They are liable to the
same law as the inferior endowments which connect us with
material things; attaining clearness and precision with faithful use; vitiated and discolored by abuse; benumbed and
confused by disuse. The eye that had been long closed in
privation opened at first with so little discernment as to see
"men like trees, walking."  And the soul shut up from
earnest meditation, and drowsy amid the heavenly light to
which it should direct its patient gaze, is likely to see God,
like Fate, sleeping; or, like a ghost, unreal; or, like the
mnaster-builder, retreating from the ship he has launched
upon the waves; or, like the spectrum of the sun, a patch
of darkness perforating the heavens, where once looked
forth a glorious orb, "of this great world both eye and
soul." Surely it is a truth of personal experience, that our
views of God, of the life we live, of the world we occupy,
materially change according to the caprices of our own
mind. When the spirits are sinking, and the press of the
world arises in its strength; when the will trembles and




THE SINGLE AND THE EVIL EYE.             415
faints beneath its load, and the hours seem to dash exulting
by and leave us at a cruel distance; when the presence of
more energetic and devoted souls fills us with a sorrowing
reverence, and humbles us to the dust with self-reproach;
when the silent shadow of lost opportunity sits cold upon
us, and the memory of misspent moments drips upon the
sad heart, like rain-drops from the wintry boughs; — then,
no peace of God, no tranquil order of life, no free and open
affection, seems possible again: the bow of hope has fled
from heaven, and the green sod of the earth is elastic to our
feet no more: the very universe seems stricken with a rod of
disappointment that has turned it into lead: and Providence either vanishes utterly from our view, or appears to
us as a hard taskmaster, that lashes a jaded strength, and
lays on us a burden greater than we can bear. At other
times, when perhaps some affliction casts us down, or some
call of arduous duty startles us, we have clearness enough
left to pray with a mighty and uplifted heart. God seems
to behold the silence of our surrender, and snatches us up
into his infinite deliverance. The soul retreats within, and
sees his light: it spreads without, and feels his power. We
can put our heel on toil and fear, and move over them with
the spring of resolution. A glory spreads over the clouds
of sorrow, that makes them majestic as the serene and open
sky: they hang over us as a canopy of heavenly fire, the
hiding-place of a thunder that terrifies us not; or as the
piled mountains of a sublimer world, in whose awful valleys
we would abide, though threatened by the roar of the avalanche, and the advancing glacier of inevitable death. The
things so huge to the microscopic eye of care retreat into
infinite littleness before the sweep of a more comprehensive
vision.  Whole floods of trouble, peopled with terrors,
become as dew-drops on the glass: and the very earth itself,
with its crowd of struggling interests, appears as a calm orb
floating in the deeps of heaven. Moments like these occur
in the history of all tried and faithful minds; and comprise




416       THE SINGLE AND THE EVIL EYE.
within them a larger portion of existence than years of the
eating, drinking and sleeping, the bargaining and bookkeeping, which men call life. They are the beacons and
landmarks of our spiritual way, often remaining visible over
long reaches of our career. Nor do they stand alone, to
show how our own mood affects, for better or worse, the
views we take of things above us. Let a man go suddenly
from the meal of luxury to the deathbed of selfishness,
where no love lingers and tears only pretend to flow: let
him pass fiom the sense of animal enjoyment to the spectacle of animal extinction; - and he will inevitably believe in
annihilation. The saintly words of everlasting hope will be
as a strange jargon in his ears: the death-rattle on the bed
will put out all the silent possibilities of eternity: he will
shake off the remembrance of them as the remnants of a
troubled dream; and return, with a shrug, to the table of
his enjoyment, to " eat and drink, since to-morrow he dies."
But only let the heart beat with love, and the eye look upon
the scene through the perspective of an infinite sorrow: let
it be the child, catching the last accents of a parent venerated for richness of wisdom and greatness of life; or the
parents, resigning the child whose infancy is the most graceful picture in their memory, to whose opening wonder they
have held the guiding hand, whose expanding reason they
h:ave sought to fill with order and with light, whose dbepening earnestness of duty and trust of pure affection has
revived their fainting will, and refreshed them with a thankful mind: and do you think that any doubt will linger
there?  Do you suppose that that father or that child will
be buried in the earth or sea? - can be hidden from the
eyes by mountains of dust, or the waves of any unfathoilable ocean?  Ah no! All matter becomes transparent to
inextinguishable light like this: and soil, and air, and water,
and time, and the realm of death, must let this lamp of God
shine through: and we follow it as it recedes in the holy
darkness: till we too await the divine hand, and hope, with




THE SINGLE AND THE EVIL EYE.              417
that help, to overtake it once again. Nay, can any one
deny, that it is often possible to foreknow a man's moral
and religious faith by mere acquaintance witlh the general
temper of his mind?-that even his outward professions
themselves go for little with us, if they are violently at
variance with this natural expectation? It is useless to tell
me, of a libertine and Epicurean, that he believes in the
divine rule, and is a devout worshipper at church. I know
him to be an atheist by a surer mark than words and postures, - by a necessity of corrupted nature, which can only
be reversed by a renovated life. Nor need you try to persuade me that a soul pure, tender, merciful, has any real
faith in a relentless hell, where the cry of penitence can
avail no more. Such things may stand written in creeds
which those gentle lips may still repeat: but let the heretic
friend or son die away from her arms, and she will find some
divine excuse for keeping the torment far away. The eye
of love is too clear and single, to allow of the light that is
in it becoming so dread a darkness as that impossible faith.
Such then as the man is, such is his belief: and the faith
to which he bears his testimony, testifies in return of him.
He sees such things as his soul is qualified to show him; nor
can he describe the prospect before him without betraying
the direction to which his window turns. Let it not be
supposed that truth and falsehood are thus rendered arbitrary and precariously distinguished; that, as there is a
different interpretation of life and discernment of God for
every temper of the mind, all are probable alike, and none
deserving of our trust. It would be so, if we were always
imprisoned in the same temper, and unable to compare it
with another; or if, on the admission of such comparison,
we could perceive no ground of difference, no reason of
preference. But we are ever passing from mood to mood
of thought; and it is not hidden from  us which are sound
and worthy, which are corrupt and mean. We know our
shameful from our noble hours; and we cannot honestly
27




418       THE SINGLE AND THE EVIL EYE.
pretend to confide in the insinuations of the one, as we do
in the inspirations of the other. Who can affect unconsciousness of the times when the climate of his soul is dull
and stagnant, and thick with fog; and when it is clear and
fresh, and eager to transmit the light? Who can presume
to compare the murky doubts and damp short-sightedness
of the one, with the sunny outlook and far horizon of the
other; or ask, in good faith, "how do I know which of these
views is true?" So long as the cloud does not fixedly close
upon the heart, but light enough darts in to show us the
intermediate darkness, excuse is shut out, and hope remains.
The slightest opening left may be enlarged; heaven will
look in, and may melt the margin as it passes through.
Whoever will reverence the glimpses of his better mind
shall find them multiplied; and even whilst they pass, they
may be rich in revelations. Faithfully used, the momentary
transit may expound an everlasting truth; and by predicting, may procure, the recurrence of like happy instants.
Ashamed of no pure love, distrustful of no worthy aspiration, forgetful of no clear insight once granted to the soul,
we shall find the weight of gloom and fear fast break away,
and beneath the open hemisphere of faith shall bend in the
worship of joy, and say, " Thou art light, and in thee is no
darkness at all."




XLI.
THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
ISAIAH XLVI. 9, 10.
REMEMBER THE FORMER THINGS OF OLD. FOR I AM GOD, AND THERE IS
NONE ELSE: I AM GOD, AND THERE IS NONE LIKE ME; DECLARING THE
END FROM THE BEGINNING, AND FROM ANCIENT TIMES THE THINGS
THAT ARE NOT YET DONE! SAYING, MY COUNSEL SHALL STAND.
THE fictions of popular piety are usually inconstant and
local. But there is a legend of the early Christianity, whose
ready acceptance within a few years of its origin is not
less remarkable than its wide diffusion through every country frlom the Ganges to the Thames; — a legend which has
spread over West and East from the centres of Rome and
Byzantium; which you may hear in Russia or in Abyssinia;
and which, having seized on the ardent fancy of Mohammed, is found in the Koran, and is as familiar to the Arab
and the Moor, as to the Spaniard and the Greek.
In the middle of the fifth century, the resident proprietor of an estate near Ephesus was in want of building-stone
to raise some cottages and granaries on his farm. His fields
sloped up the side of a mountain, in which he directed his
slaves to open a quarry. In obeying his orders they found
a spacious cavern, whose mouth was blocked up with masses
of rock artificially piled. On removing these, they were
startled by a dog, suddenly leaping up from the interior.
Venturing further in, to a spot on which the sunshine, no
longer excluded, directly fell, they discovered, just turning
as from sleep, and dazzled with the light, seven young men
of dress and aspect so strange, that the slaves were terri



420            THE SEVEN  SLEEPERS.
fled, and fled. The slumberers, on rising, found themselves
ready for a meal; and, the cave being open, one of them
set out for the city to buy food. On his way through the
familiar country (for he was a native of Ephesus) a thousand surprises struck him. The road over which yesterday's
persecution had driven him  was turned; the landmarks
seemed shifted, and gave a twisted pattern to the fields:
on the green meadow of the Cayster had sprung up a circus
and a mill.  Two soldiers were seen approaching in the
distance: hiding himself till they were past, lest they
should be emissaries of imperial intolerance, he observed
that the accoutrements were fantastic, the emblems of Decius were not there, the words that dropped front their talk
were in a strange dialect, and in their friendly company
was a Christian presbyter.  From  a rising ground, he
looked down the river to the base of Diana's hill; and
lo! the great temple, - the world-wide wonder, - was nowhere to be seen. Arrived at the city, he found its grand
gate surmounted by a cross. In the streets, rolling with
new-shaped vehicles filled with theatrical-looking people, the
very noises seemed to make a foreign hum. He could suppose himself in a city of dreams; only that here and there
appeared a house, all whose rooms within he certainly
knew; with an aspect, however, among the rest, curiously
dull and dwindled as in a new window looks an old pane,
preserved for some line scratched by poet or by sage. Before his errand is quite forgot, he enters a bread-shop to
make his purchase; offers the silver coin of Decius in payment; when the baker, whose astonishment was already
manifest enough, can restrain his suspicions no longer; but
arrests his customer as the owner of unlawful treasure,
and hurries him before the city court. There he tells his
tale: that with his Christian companions he had taken
refuge in the cave from the horrors of the Decian persecution; had been pursued thithler, and built in for a cruel
death; had fallen asleep till wakened by the returning sun,




THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.               421[
let in again by some friendly and unhoped-for hand; and
crept back into the town to procure support for life in
their retreat. And there too, in reply, he hears a part of
the history which he cannot tell: that Decius had been
dethroned by death nearly two centuries ago, and paganism
by the truth full one: that, while heaven has wrapped hli
in mysterious sleep, the earth's face, in its features physical
and moral, had been changed: that the empire had shifted
its seat from the Tiber to the Bosphorus: that the temple
had yielded to the church; the demons of mythology to the
saints and martyrs of Christendom; and that he who had
quitted the city in the third century, returned to it in the
Jfifth, and stood under the Christian protection of the second
Theodosius. It is added, that the Ephesian clergy and their
people were conducted by the confessor to the cave, exchanging wonders as they conversed by the way; and thiat
the seven sleepers, having attested in their persons the preserving hand of God, and re-told the story of their life, and
heard snatches of the news of nearly two hundred years,
gave their parting blessing to the imultitude, and sank in
the silence of natural death.
For the purpose of mental experiment, fable is as good as
fact. To reveal our nature to itself, it is often more effectual for the imagination to go out upon a fiction, than for
the memory to absorb a chronicle. When the citizens and
the sleepers met, each was awe-struck at the other; yet no
one had been conscious of any thing awful in himself. The
youths, startled by the police of paganism, had risen up
from dinner, leaving their wine untasted; and on arriving
breathless at their retreat, laid themselves down, dusty,
weary, ordinary creatures enough. They resume the thread
of being where it hung suspended; and are greeted everywhere with the uplifted hands, and shrinking touch, of
devout amazement. And the busy Ephesians had dressed
themselves that morning, and swept their shops, and run
down to the office and the dock, with no idea that they




422            THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
were not the most commonplace of mortals, pushing through
a toilsome and sultry career. They are stopped mid-day to
be assured, that their familiar life is an incredible romance,
that their city is steeped in visionary tints, and they themselves are as moving apparitions. And they are told this,
when they cannot laugh at it, or brush it, like Sunday memories, away. For who are they that say such things, gazing
into them with full, deep eyes? Counterparts in their looks
of all the marvels they profess to see; — proofs that the old,
dead times were once alive, warm with young passions, noble
with young faith; astir with limbs that could be weary, and hiding sorrows whose sob and cry might be overheard. WVould
not the men, returning to their homes, be conscious of understanding life anew? Would they not look down upon
their children, and up at the portraits of their ancestors,
with a perception fromn which a cloudhad cleared away?
Would the fashion of the drawing-room, the convention of
the club, the gossip of the exchange, retain all their absorbing interest; and the wrestlings of doubt and duty, the
sighs of reason, the conflicts of affection, the nearness of
God, spoken of by prophets in the trance of inspiration, and
by the church in its prayer of faith, appear any more as
idle words? No; the revelation of a reality in the past,
would produce the feeling of an unreality in the present.
Many invisible things would shape themselves forth, as with
a solid surface, reflecting the heavenly light, and sleeping in
the colors of pure truth: many visible things would melt in
films away, and retreat like the escaping vista of a dream.
When the people's anthem went up on the Sabbath morning, " O God of our fathers! " that grave, historic cry would
not seem to set his spirit far, but to bring it overhanging
through the very spaces of the dome above. When the
holy martyrs were named with the glory of affectionate
praise, their silent forms would seem to group themselves
meekly round. And when the upper life of saints and
sages - of suffering taken in its patience and goodness in




THE SEVEN  SLEEPERS.               423
its prime, of the faithful parent and the Christ-like child —
was mentioned with a modest hope, it would appear no
fabled island, for which the eye might stretch across the
sea in vain, but a visible range of everlasting hills, whose
outline of awful beauty is already steadfast above the
deep.
Now whence would spring an influence like this? what
source must we assign to the power which such incident
would have exerted over its witnesses? The essence of it
is simply this: the past stood up in the face of the present,
and spake with it: and they found each other out: and
each learned, that he beheld the other with true eye, and
himself with false. The lesson is not set beyond our reach.
No miracle indeed is sent to teach it; no grotesque extracts
from bygone centuries walk about among us. But our ties
with other days are not broken; fragments of them stand
around us; notices of them lie before us. The recesses of
time are not hopelessly dark; opened by the hand of labor,
and penetrated by the light of reason, their sleeping forms
will rise and re-enter our living world, and in showing us
what they have been, disclose to us what we are. The
legendary youths are but the impersonations of history;
and their visit to the Ephesians, but a parable of the relation
between historical perception and religious faith.
The great end, yet the great difficulty, of religion is, so
to analyze our existence for us, as to distinguish its essential
spirit from its casual forms, the real from the apparent, the
transient from the eternal. Experience mixes them all up
together, and arranges nothing according to its worth. The
dress that clothes the body, and the body that clothes the
soul, appear in such i'variable conjunction, and become so
much the signs of one another, that all run into one object,
and tempt us to exaggerate the trivial and depreciate the
great. That which a man has, and that which he is, move
about together, and live in the same house; till our fancy
and our faith grow too indolent to separate them; we




424             THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
fasten him to his possessions, and when they are dropped
in death, think that he has gone to nought. It is the business of faith to see all things in their intrinsic value: it is
the work of experience to thrust them  on us in accidental
combinations: and hence the flattering, sceptical, blinding
influence of a passive and unresisted experience.  Hence it
is that time is apt to take away a truth for each one that
he gives, and rather to change our wisdom than to increase
it; and while foresight assuredly comes to the man, insight
will often tarry with the child. When the eye first looks
on life, it is not to study its successions, but to rest upon its
picture: its loveliness is discerned before its order: its
aspect is interpreted, while its policy is quite unknown.
Our early years gaze on all things through the natural glass
of beauty and affection, which in religion is the instrument
of truth. But soon it gets dimmed by the breath of usage,
which adheres to all except natures the most pure and fine:
and a cold cloud darkens the whole universe before us.
Day by day, the understanding sees more, the imagination
less, in the scene around us; till it seems all made up of soil
to grow our bread, and clay to build our house: and we
become impatient, if any one pretends to find in it the depth
which its atmosphere has lost to us, and the grandeur which
has faded from our view. We dwell in this world, like dull
serfs in an Alpine land; who are attached indeed to their
home with the strong instincts of men cut off from much
intercourse with their kind, and whose passions, wanting
diffusion, acquire a local intensity; who therefore sigh in
absence for their mountains, as the Arab for his desert; but
in whom there is no sense of the glories amid which they
live; who wonder what the traveller comes to see; who in
the valleys close by the glacier, and echoing with the torrent, observe only the timber for their fuel, and the paddock
for their kine. We are often the last to see how noble are
our opportunities, to feel how inspiring the voices that call
us to high duties and productive sacrifice: and while we




THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.                425
loiter on in the track of drowsy habit, esteeming our lot
common and profane, better hearts are looking on, burning
within them to stand on the spot where we stand, to seize
its hopes, and be true to all its sacredness. It is an abuse
of the blessings of experience, when it thus stupefies us with
its benumbing touch, and in teaching us a human lesson,
persuades us to unlearn a divine. The great use of custom
is to teach us what to expect, to familiarize us with the
order of events from day to day, that we may compute our
way aright, and know how to rule whatever lies beneath
our hand. This is the true school for the active, working
will. But for the thoughtful, wondeiring affections, a higher
discipline is needed; an excursion beyond the limits where
the senses stop, into regions where usage, breathless and
exhausted, drops behind; where the beaten ways of expectation disappear, and we must find the sun-path of faith
and reason, or else be lost. Only by baffled anticipation do
we learn to revere what is above our hand: and custom
must break in pieces before us, if we are to keep right the
everlasting love within us, as well as the transient life without. Surrendering itself to habit alone, the mind takes step
by step right on, intent on the narrow strip of its own time,
and seeing nothing but its linear direction. But brought
to the untrodden mountain-side, it is arrested by the open
ground, and challenged by the very silence, and compelled
to look abroad in space, and see the fresh, wide world of
God; where all roads have vanished, except the elemental
highways of nature, - the sweep of storm-felled pines, and
the waving-line where melted waters flow. Now, in shaking
off the heavy dreams of custom, and waking us up from the
swoon so fatal to piety, religion receives the greatest aid
from history; and though they seemed to be engaged in
opposite offices, they only divide between them the very
same. Religion strips the costume from the life that is:
History restores the costume to the life that wtas: and by
this double action we learn to feel sensibly, where the mere




426             THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
dress ends and the true life begins; how much thievish
time may steal, and corroding age reduce to dross; and
what treasure there is, which no thief approacheth or moth
corrupteth. Those who are shut up in the present, either
by involuntary ignorance, or by voluntary devotion to its
immediate interests, contract a certain slowness of imagination, most fatal both to wisdom and to faith. Restrained
in every direction by agglutination to the type of personal
experience, their thought cannot pass beyond vulgar and
material rules; cannot believe in any aspect of existence
much different from things as they are; in any beings far
removed from those that walk the streets to-day; in any
events that would look absurd in the newspaper, or affect
sagacious politicians with serious surprise. Their feeling
can make nothing of the distinction between the mortal and
the immortal, the spirit and the form of things. If they
moralize on human affairs, it is only to say one of the two
things which, since the days of Ecclesiastes, have always
fallen from Epicurism in its sentimental mood: that all
things continue as they were, and there can be nothing new
under the sun; or that nothing can continue as it is, and
all that is sublunary passes as the shadow; and as this dieth,
so dieth that. A mind, rich in the past, is protected against
these mean falsehoods; can discriminate the mutable social
forms, from that permanent humanity, of whose affections,
whose struggles, whose aspirations, whose Providential
course, history is the impressive record; and thus trained,
finds it easy to cast an eye of faith upon the living world,
and discern the soul of individuals and of communities
beneath the visible disguise, so deceitful to the shallow, so
suggestive to the wise. The habit of realizing the past is
essential to that of idealizing the present.
But, besides this general affinity between historical
thought and the religious temper, a more direct influence
of knowledge upon faith is not difficult to trace. The great
objects of our belief and trust cannot be conceived of, ex



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.                427
cept in the poorest and faintest way, where all is blank
beyond mere personal experience. A man to whom  the
present is the only illuminated spot, closely pressed by outlying darkness all around, will vainly strive to meditate, for
example, on the eternity of God. What sort of helpless
attempt even can he make towards such a thing? He knows
the measure of an hour, a day, a year: and these he may
try to multiply without end, to stretch along the line of the
infinite life. But this numerical operation carries no impression: it has no more religion in it, than any other long
sum. The mere vacant arithmetic of duration travels ineffectually on; glides through without contact with the
Living God; and gives only the chill of a void loneliness.
Time, like space, cannot be appreciated by merely looking
into it. As in the desert, stretching its dreary dust to the
horizon, all dimensions are lost in the shadowless sunshine;
so, over a mere waste of years the fancy strains itself
only to turn dizzy. As, in the one, we want objects to
mark the retreating distance, the rising spire, the sheltered
green, the swelling light on headland slope; so, in the other,
we need visible events standing off from view to make us
aware of the great perspective. And for the ends of faith,
they must be mzoral vicissitudes, the deeply-colored incidents of human life: or, the vastness which we see we shall
not love: we shall traverse the infinite, and never worship.
Science, as well as history, has its past to show: - a past,
indeed, much larger; running, with huge strides, deep into
the old eternity.  But its immensity is dynamical, not
divine; gigantesque, not holy; opening to us the monotonous perseverance of physical forces, not the various struggles
and sorrows of free-will. And though sometimes, on passing from the turmoil of the city, and the heats of restless
life, into the open temple of the silent universe, we are
tempted to think, that there is the taint of earth, and here
the purity of heaven; yet sure it is, that God is seen by us
through man, rather than through nature: and that without




428             THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
the eye of our brother, and the voices of our kind, the winds
might sigh, and the stars look down on us in vain. Nor is
the Christian conception of the second and higher existence
of man heartily possible to those who are shut out from all
historic retrospect. At least the idea of other nations and(
other times, the mental picture of memorable groups that
have passed away; the lingering voices of poets, heroes,
saints, floating on the ear of thought; are a great, if not an
indispensable aid to that hope of the future, which can
scarcely maintain itself without attendant images.  That
old, distant, venerable earth of ours, with its quaint people,
lies silent in the remote places of our thought: and is not so
far from the scene of scarcely more mysterious life, where
all now  abide with God: the same perspective embraces
them both; it is but the glance of an eye from below to
above: and as the past reality of the one does not prevent
its being now ideal, so the present ideality of the other is
no hindrance to its reality. The two states, —that in the
picture of history, and that on the map of faith, - recede
almost equally from  our immediate experience; and the
conception of the one is a sensible help to the realization of
the other. Indeed there is not a truth of relioion in reference to the future and the unseen which the knowledge of
the past does not bring nearer to our minds. And when we
invoke this aid to faith, we give it an ally, not, as might
seem, accessible to learning only, but singularly open to the
resources of ordinary men.  Happily, the very fountains
and depositories of our religion are historical; and records
of human affairs, not theories of physical nature, are supplied in the sacred writings, from which we learn the lessons
of Providence. Apart from  all questions of inspiration,
there is no grander agent than the Bible in this world. It
has opened the devout and fervid East to the wonder and
affection of the severer West. It has made old Egypt and
Assyria more familiar to Christendom than its own lands:
and to our people at large the Pharaohs are less strange




THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.               429
than the Plantagenets, and Abraham is more distinct than
Alfred. The Hebrew prophet finds himself in the presence
of the English tradesman, or domesticated in the Scotch
village; and is better understood when he speaks of Jordan,
than the poet at home who celebrates the Greta or the
Yarrow.  Scenes of beauty, pictures of life, rise on the
people's thought across the interval of centuries and continents. Pity and terror, sympathy and indignation, fly over
vast reaches of time, and alight on many a spot else unclaimed by our humanity, and unconsecrated by the presence
of our God. It is a discipline of priceless value; securing
for the general mind materials of thought and faith most
rich and varied; and breaking that servile sleep of custom,
which is the worst foe of true belief and noble hope. From
the extension of such discipline, according to opportunity,
whosoever is vigilant to keep a living faith will draw ever
fresh stores; and, that he may better dwell in heart with
Him "who declareth the end from the beginning," will
"remember the former things of old."




XLII.
THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.
I. MAN'S.
LUKE VI. 45.
OF THE ABUNDANCE OF THE HEART, THE MOUTH SPEAKETt.
IT is often assumed, as if implied in these words, that whatever is a fit subject for thought is necessarily the fit subject
of conversation. As language is but the expression of the
mind, it seems natural to suppose that the mind must appear
through its medium; that the matters which occupy the lips
must be those which engage the heart; and that no deep
and powerful interest can fail to overflow, in its full proportion, on our communications with each other.  That
about which silence is the habit, and speech the exception,
- which, even in the sweet counsel of friends, glides in but
for the moment and flits away, - cannot, it is affirmed, have
any strong and constant hold upon men; and by its transiency confesses itself to be an evanescent interest. Many
there are who apply this rule to religion; and who would
measure the reality and force of its influence on the character by the frequency and explicitness of its appearance in
our intercourse. If we are truly penetrated with the same
highest concerns; if we are standing in the same attitude
before God; if the same solemnity of life covers us with its
cloud, and the same glory of hope guides us by its fire;how can we do otherwise than always speak together of a
lot so awful and a faith so high? May it not be fairly
doubted, whether those who are drawn by no experience,




THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.               431
inspired by no joy, melted by no sorrow, to break their
reserve on these things, have any devout belief of them
at all?
There seems to be a show of reason in this: and when it
is urged on the modest and self-distrustful, they often gather
from it a lesson of inward reproach, and know not how to
answer. Yet the appeal has always failed to gain its end.
It has not unsealed the lips of men to converse of divine,
as they would of human, things: a certain loneliness, which
cannot be removed, still hangs over their loftiest relations;
and they are stricken, as with dumbness to one another,
before God. There is, indeed, a foundation in our unperverted nature for this repugnance to mingle talk and worship, to look into another's eye and say the thought of
inward prayer; and it is a harsh and false interpretation to
take such repugnance as the sign of irreligion. Many an
earnest and devout heart, too lowly to teach others, too
quiet to proclaim itself, you may find watching the scene
of human things through a constant atmosphere of piety;
recognizing a holy light on all; touching each duty with a
gentle and willing love; yet saying not a word, because
unable to make a special tale of that which is but the truth
of nature. And many a family group may be observed,
gathering round the decline of some venerated life, well
knowing whither it fast tends: and he who discerns nothing
beneath the surface, may think it but a worldly thing, that
all the care seems spent in providing outward alleviation,
and sheltering from inward shock, and keeping some glow
of tempered cheerfulness about the slackening pulse and
deepening chill of life. But an eye less obtuse may often
read a secret meaning in all this, and recognize in it the
symbol of an unspoken mystery: the sacred hope, the perfect trust, the will laid low, the love raised high, make their
confession by faithful act, and learn the right of a holy
silence. And, assuredly, he to whose ready speech the
sanctities most quickly come, who has no difficulty in run



432            THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.
ning over everlasting things, and never pauses at the awful
name, and can coin the words for what is most dear and
deep, is not often the most truly devout.  The sects an d
classes, moreover, who make the greatest point of bringing
their Christianity into the drawing-room, the street, or the
senate, after beguiling you into respect and perhaps admiration, continually let out the other half of the truth by some
surprising coarseness, or some selfish intolerance. Yet, in
spite of these appearances, it is altogether true that " of the
abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh."
Language  has two functions, easily distinguished, yet
easily forgotten. It is an instrument of communication
with one another; and an instrument of thought within
ourselves. Plato used to say that thought and speech are
the same: only that thought is the mind's silent dialogue
with itself.* It need not however be always silent: in its
higher moods it presses for utterance: it cannot go on to
rise without casting away the burthen of its words; and
outbursts of song and pulses of prayer are as successive
strokes of the ever-beating wing of aspiration.  But in this
we want no one to hear us: we could bear no watchful
human presence: the voice is but the relief to the spirit
overcharged; and our nature could not thus revolve in its
own circuit, except in the loneliness which shelters it from
foreign attractions.  Speech therefore assumes two forms;
converse, and soliloquy: the one intended to convey our
thought abroad; the other to detain it at home: the one,
opening what we wish; the other, what we hide: the one,
the common talk of life; the other, equivalent to silence,
* The definition is so apposite that I am tempted to subjoin it: -
WE. Oi'KOcO &Ldvoia IEv cai AX4yos'rarov' u-4 X' 6 0Al o V'rbrs 7-rs UvXi1s
7rpbs av7,rY' rdaxAoyos yveuv Lwv's yYLP4YEVoS T'oOrT' avT'b l. y7v EXrwvo/Ld'Ol7J, 8dioia;
OEAI.  ldvyv zEvY ovY.
Sophista 263. E. The same thought is more fully presented in the
Thesetetus, 189. E. 190. A.




THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.               433
except to those who may overhear. Of the latter only did
Jesus say, that " out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth
speaketh." He knew that what men utter face to face is
often far different from the real thought of their minds;
that they are no less ashamed of their best feelings than of
their worst: and that, by watching the coin of words that
passes between them in the openi commerce of life, you can
ill judge of the secret wealth or insolvency of their souls.
To estimate them aright, you must wait till the company
disperse; and linger near them when they speak, amid the
silence of God, not to others, but from themselves. Nor
does this divergence of their private thought from their
public conversation imply the slightest approach to artfulness and duplicity: on the contrary, it is possibly the most
artless of whom it is most true. The false man has lost
the half of himself which makes this variance. The doubledealer has but a single nature: but in the pure and guileless,
there are two souls; of which the one comes forward amid
human things with quick and genial speech, while the other
ever sits with finger on the lips. The one achieves its end,
with energy and stir like that of the city's industry; the
other noiselessly, like the spring growth of forest and of
field: the one opens gladly out, the other shrinks, as if
scorched, within, at the liaht of the human eye. Our nature
is as a flower that shines of itself with one color by night,
and reflects from the sun another by day; and those who
see only its borrowed gayety at noon know nothing of its
own fainter beauty beneath the stars. The truth is, the
presence of our fellows, and the exchange of looks and
words with them, are the great instruments of self-consciousness, and are suitable for all those parts and faculties of a
man which are improved by study and attention. But there
are elements of our being that were never meant for this;
which change their character by being breathed upon; or
which vanish in the sound that utters them. They will
insist on flowing unobstructed in their natural bed: and if
28




434          THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.
gossip will arrest and dam them up, they are turned from
the torrent of health into the marsh of pestilence.
There are things too low to be spoken of; which indeed
become low by being spoken of. The appetites are of this
kind. They were meant to be the beginnings of action, not
the end of speech: and under the dropping of words, they
are as wholesome food analyzed into constituent poisons.
God lights that fire, and does not want our breath to blow
it, or the fuel of our thought to feed it. The inferior impulses in man are glorified by being placed at the natural
disposal of higher sentiments; they are submitted to the
transforming power of generous aspiration and great ideas.
Wielded by these, they are far above the level of sense;
and are not only controlled by conscience, but dignified by
the light of beauty, and ennobled by the alliance of affection.
Their just action is secured far less by repressive discipline
against them, than by nourishing the strength of the humanities that use them; by keeping them wholly inattentive to
themselves; by breaking every mirror in which their own
face may be beheld. Purity consists, not in the ascetic abnegation of the lower, but in a Christian merging of the lower
in the bigher; in the presence of a divine perception so quick
to recoil from degradation, that avoidance aforethought need
not be studiously provided. And purity of mind is forfeited,
less by exceeding rules of moderation, than by needing
them; —by attention to the inferior pleasures, as such.
There might be less of moral evil in the rude banquet of
heroic times, marked perhaps by excess, but warmed by
social enthusiasm, and idealized by lofty minstrelsy, than
in many a meal of the prudent dietitian, setting a police
over his sensations, and weighing out the scruples of enjoyment for his palate. Not rules of quantity, but habits of
forgetfulness, constitute our emancipation from the animal
nature. You cannot make any good thing of the voluptuary's mind, regulate it as you may. It may be covered
over with an external disguise: it may be strengthened by




THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.             435
self-restraint for social use; but with all its wise ways, what
trace can God behold there of his own image? He sees
at best Aristotle's "rational animal," not one of Christ's
"children of the Highest."  Most futile is the attempt so
prevalent in our days, to base the morality of the appetites
on physiology; to open the way to heaven with the dissecting knife; to give up the Prophets for the " Constitution
of Mian;" and with a gospel of digestion to replace the
Sermon on the Mount. Let us indeed accept such help as
may come from this source also: but let us rate it at its
worth and assign it to its place. Good for the remedy of
bodily disease, it is not good for the formation of character;
and it is odious as the substitute for religion. WVho ever
found himself nearer God by inspecting drawings of internal
inflammation? There may be those, to whom the check of
abjectness and fear may be of service, and who must walk
a hospital before they can respect a law. But as an element of education this kind of teaching is fatally misplaced.
The ideas it communicates cannot co-exist with the high,
devout affections, which are the natural guides and safeguards of a pure heart: they can occur only in uneasy
succession with them, and are repelled by them with unconquerable antipathy. Indeed, in good minds, not needing
recovery from fall, all mere physical and prohibitive morality
is liable to be a source of direct contamination. By simply
talking about your rules, you may turn innocence into guilt.
The mere discussion of a habit necessarily converts it into
a self-conscious indulgence or privation; and thereby totally
alters its real character and its moral relations; and may
make that evil which was not evil before. And thus, the
very cure of outward excess may sometimes be attended
with the creation of inward corruption; and what was
harmless till you mentioned it, becomes sinful by being
named. So are words great powers in this world; not only
telling what things are, but making them what else they
would not be: and they cannot encroach upon the sphere




436            THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.
of silence, without desecrating the sanctuary of nature, and
b!iinishing the presence of God.
There are also things too high to be spoken of: and which
cease to be high, by being made objects of ordinary speech.
Language occupies the mid-region of our life, between the
wants that ground us on the earth, and the affections that
lift us to the skies. If we were all animal, we could not
use it: if we were as God, we should give it up, and lapse,
like him, into eternal silence. It is the instrument of business, of learning, of mutual understanding, of common action; the tool of the intellect and the will; the glory of a
nature more than brutal, the mark of one less than the
divine; as truly the characteristic of labor in the mind, as
the sweat of the brow of the body's toil; emblem at once of
blessing and of curse; recalling an Eden half remembered,
while we work in the desert that can never be forgot.
When we try to raise it to higher functions, it only spoils
the thing it cannot speak; which becomes, like an uttered
secret, a treasure killed and gone. Religion in the soul is
like a spirit hiding in enshadowed forests: call it into the
staring light, it is exhaled and seen no more; or as the
whispering of God among the trees; peer about behind
the leaves, and it is not there. Men in deep reverence do
not talk to one another, but remain with hushed mind side
by side. Each one feels, though he cannot tell how it is,
that words limit what faith declares unlimited; that they
divide and break to pieces what it comprehends and embraces as a whole; that they distribute into dead members
what it discerns as a life of beauty indivisible; that they
reduce to successive propositions what it adores as a simultaneous and everlasting reality. The whole operation of
the mind in communicating by speech is thew direct opposite
of that which bends in worship; the one laboring after
definite conceptions and scientific reasoning; the other
intuitively evading both, and bursting the fetters which the
provinces of nature own, but the infinity of God rejects.




THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.               437
Hence it is that men lower the voice as they distantly approach these things, and deem it fit to let their words be
few. Spoken reverence passes into cant: or, in more elaborate forms, into philosophy. I do not say that there may
not be an intermediate period, when earnest men are able to
establish a mutual language of religion which, in their day,
is true to them: but from the moment of its first freshness
it begins to fade; and the hour of its birth is the beginning
of its death. And soon the devoutest spirits will be those
that say the least; and the currency, once priceless, now
debased, will remain chiefly with Pharisees and professional
divines. True, there is a sceptic as well as a devout silence
on the highest things. But who is there that cannot tell at
a glance the difference between the shrinking of unbelief,
and the shrinking of reverence? Look only at their eye;
and the shallow gloss of the one is not like the deep light of
the other. The one pushes the matter externally away; the
other hides it internally from view. The one is averse to
take the divine ideas into the mind; the other recoils froin
putting them out. The one yields to the repulsion of dislike; the other exercises the shelter of an ineffable love.
There was truth, and not absurdity, in the Friends' silent
meeting before God; — a truth indeed too great and high
for a permanent institution addressed to our poor nature,
but affording an infallible memorial of the genuine inspiration that once breathed through that noble people. And
what even were the whining voice and tremulous speech,
but the instinctive attempt to escape from the vulgarities of
life, and reach the strange music, broken, dissonant, and
sweet, in which divine and human things conflict and reconcile themselves? Nor is it essentially different in any worship: for, though we meet together, it is not to speak with
one another: it is not even to be spoken to and taught; for
that could produce nothing but theology: if it is not for
absolute silence of devotion (which were best, if it were
possible), it is only for soliloquy; which is but the thought




438          THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.
before God, of one, for the guidance of a silence before God,
of all. It is to Him we lay ourselves open, and not to our
neighbor: only, the sense of brethren near who have concerns like our own that bring them hither, who feel with
us his mystic touch, and look up to his heavenly hope, and
remember the healing sorrows of his mercy, and expect his
early call, and trust his everlasting shelter, -is a mighty
help to those deep realities which are too great except for
the consentaneous grasp of our collective soul. Prayer, like
poetry, can never be any thing but thought aloud: if ever
it is " said for the sake of them that stand by," it is a mockery and a pretence, from which every soul that is akin to
Christ will shrink with abhorrence and with awe; and which
none who had been altogether steeped in his spirit could
ever ascribe to him. Nor let any one say that this makes
the office of religion one of uncertain imagination, transient
as the colors of beauty, and vague as the impressions of a
dream. Never do we more completely deceive ourselves,
than when we fancy that the work of the understanding is
durable, while that of our richer genius is evanescent; that
what we know is solid, what we aspire after and adore in
thought is unsubstantial: that the achievements of physical
discovery are the fixed products of time, while the visions
of poetry are but the adornments of a passing age. How
plainly does historical experience contradict this estimate!
Of no nation, of no period, within the limits of known and
transmitted civilization, does the most advanced science
remain true for us: while of none has the genuine poetry
perished: Thales and Archimedes have been obsolete for
centuries; while old Homer is fresh as ever, and delights
the modern schoolboy only less than he did the Greek hero.
The acuteness of the Athenian intellect has left us no account of any law of nature, which the greatest masters of
ancient knowledge deciphered as we do now: but the strains
of Job and the rapt song of Isaiah will never be worn out,
while a human soul is on the earth, and a divine heaven




THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.              439
above it. The readings of philosophy, the creeds of theology, are alike transitory: but the discernment of sacred
truth and beauty is perpetual, and without essential change.
Never knowing but in part, we find all our knowledge successively vanishing away: but in adoring the grandeur, feeling the solemnity, and aspiring to the perfection of the
whole, the inspirations of genius and the yearnings of faith
are consentaneous and eternal.




XLIII.
THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.
II. GOD'S.
JOHN I. 1 & 14.
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD: AND THE WORD WAS WITH GOD;
AND THE WORD WAS GOD. AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, AND
DWELT AMONG US (AND WE BEHELD HIS GLORY, —TIIE GLORY AS OF
THE FATHER'S ONLY-BORN) FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH.
HUMAN speech, it has already been observed, is employed
in two different ways, issuing from states of mind distinct
and almost opposite. We speak to impart information;
and we speak in confession of ourselves; in intentional
address to the minds of others, or in unconscious revelation of our own; drawn by an external end which we wish
to compass, or propelled by internal feeling which we
cannot but express. In the one case, we begin with our
purpose, and then lay, with such skill as we can command,
our train of approach towards its realization: in the other,
we start from the emotion that occupies us, and advance
along a line of tendency, never lawless, yet ever unforeseen.
The one discloses the policy at which our action aims; the
other, the affection whence it issues. In the one, we teach,
we expound, we report the past, we predict the future: in
the other, we remember, we hope, we paint the soul's immediate vision, and own its everlasting faith. In the one, we
talk and reason: in the other, we meditate and sing. History and science are the birth of the one; art and religion,
of the other; morals and philosophy, of both.




THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.              441
But man is not the only being that has this two-fold
voice. God also puts to a double engagement his silent
instruments of expression. He too lives amid a company of
minds; and to them he has to say something of what already he has done, and of what he yet designs to do, -to
communicate the order of the scene on which they stand,
aled put into the hand of expectation a clew  of faithful
guidance. But he also is a Mind, reserving within himself
infinite powers, ever awake and moving; thought, large as
space and deep and solemn as the sea; holiness, stern as
the mountains, and pure as the breath that sighs around
them; a mercy, quick as the light, and gentle as the tints
that make it. It is not for these to remain inert and repressed, as though they were not. They must have way,
and reach their overflow: and if only we place our spirits
right, we may catch the blessed flood, and find it as the waters of regeneration.  Beyond and behind every definite
end of which it is needful to apprise us, there actually exists
in the divine nature an indefinite affluence of living perfection, which cannot go for nothing in the universe. It may
have not a word to say to others; but whispers will escape
it on its own account: it may not be heard; and yet articulately overheard: and, could we only find the focus of those
stray tones, we should understand more than any knowledge
can tell: we should learn the very prayers that Heaven
mak.es for only Heaven to hear; and should catch the soliloquy of God. And not only can we find it, but we are
ever in it; and beneath the dome of this universe, which is
all centre and no circumference, we cannot stand where the
musings of the eternal mind do not murmur round us, and
the visions of his lonely, loving thought, appear.
Works of science and history are the medium in which
men speak to us; works of poetry and art, that in which
they speak from themselves. With these the heavenly dialects precisely correspond; being in fact the great originals,
whereof these are but faint echoes.  The outward objects




442           THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.
of science and history, - the'phenomena recorded by the
one, and the events narrated by the other, - all the calculable happenings of the frame and order of things, are God's
didactic address, in which he gives us the information we
most need about his ways. And that which awakens poetry and art, the invisible light that bathes the world - the
nameless essence that fills it,- the devout, uplifted look of
all things, - is the personal effusion of God's spirit, by which
the secret spreads of what he is. In the system of nature
and life he teaches us his will: in the beauty of nature and
life, he meditates from himself. If we and all similar beings were away, the former would become unmeaning; and
the busy movements, the mighty forces, the mechanical successions, the breathless haste of moments, the patient roll of
ages, would seem to be superseded, and to be a mere senseless stir, were they not in sympathy with teeming life, and
a discipline of countless minds. But, in our presence or our
absence, the everlasting beauty would still remain: all that
lay beneath the eternal eye would sleep in the serene light,
and wait no leave from us.  That is a thought which God
has writ only for himself: a Word of his that asks no audience. Yet he cares not to hide it from us: and he has
made us so like himself, that a glance suffices to interpret,
and to fill us with his blessed inspiration.
God is related to his works and ways, just as genius to
the creations of poetry or art that issue from it: and both
must be apprehended in the same manner, -by the softened
gaze of reverence, not by the dry sharpsightedness of knowledge. All our acute study of such things is but a delusion
and a flattery, if we suppose it really to open to us the
sources from which they come. You may analyze, if you
will, the dramas of Shakspeare, the paintings of Raphael,
the music of Beethoven; you may disengage for separate
inspection, action, character, sentiment and costume; grouping and colors; theme and treatment; and you may thus
know each composition at every turn; discern its structure;




THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.               443
recognize its proportions; lay your finger on its happiest
lights. But do you reproduce the state of mind that first
created it? Do you get upon the traces of the author's way
of work? Are your rules and laws, when you have drawn
them out, a faithful representation of the soul from whose
expression you have deduced them?  Can they spread, beneath any other view, the many-clustered plain of life, as it
lay beneath the player's large and genial eye: or fill the
world again with the rich tints and noble forms that reflected their repose upon the painter's face: or send through
any second heart the wild night-winds that sighed and sung
through the deaf musician's soul? This, you will own, your
criticism cannot do. At best, it does but sketch an artificial method, which, if it could be perfectly obeyed, might
be a substitute for the natural one. Only, it cannot be
obeyed; and when the attempt is made, it produces not
a living likeness, but a dead imitation; human nature turned
into wax, and the heavens flattened to the canvas, and the
passion of melody reduced to an uneasiness among the
strings. The canons of taste, so far from being an approach
to the mind of the artist, are the extreme point of departure
from it; being the expression of a dissecting self-conscious
ness, the intrusion of which would have been fatal to his
work.
Now this principle appears to me to be rigorously applicable to our contemplation of the works and ways of God.
What we call science is nothing but our critical interpretation of nature; our reduction of it into intelligible pieces
or constituents, that we may view successively what we
cannot grasp at once. And it no more exhibits to us the
real sources from which creation sprang, or the modes of its
appearing, than the critic's system shows us the poet's soul.
The supposition is as derogatory to God in the one case, as
it is insulting to genius in the other. The books which
repeat to us the laws of the physical world usually mislead
us on this matter. They enumerate certain forces, with




444           THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.
which they pretend to be on the most intimate footing, and
which are able to do great things in the universe; and by
putting them together, in this way and that, they show what
events would come about: they then point out, that such
events do actually occur; and think it proved that the real
phenomena are manufactured after their pattern, and truly
spring from the causes in their list. Thus Newton is said
to have detected the powers that determine the planetary
orbits.  tie found them, we are assured, to be but two; one,
the primary impulse that commenced the motion of each
globe, and sent it careering on its way; the other, the constant attraction that curves it ever to the sun. So fixed is
this representation in our thoughts by the exposition of
astronomers, that it is generally accepted as a true picture
of the fact: and, in order to trace the ellipse of our Earth
or Mars, the two forces are supposed to have been, once
upon a time, actually put together, and, like the separate
parts of a machine, brought to co-operate. Yet, fondly as
this image clings to our fancy, no thoughtful man can seriously hold to so gross an error. Was there then really a
certain moment in the past, when the divine hand shot
forth the globes, and then condensed into the sun the power
to bend them into their ever-circling course? Is it an
historic fact in the universe, that this artillery of the skies
was once played off, and might be seen by any spirit-witness
passing by? No: the planets are not a mere set of bowls;
nor was the great court of the zodiac bounded and made
plane for such a game as that! No one can well believe
that this is an account of what actually occurred: travel
through the past with the most vigilant eye, you nowhere
arrive at such event. The imagination of it is a pure fiction
wlhich begins and ends with the mind that thinks it. What
then, you will say, has Newton done?  He has done this:
he has found or defined two forces which, if they were to
operate under the conditions prescribed, would produce just
such phenomena as we observe. He has discovered a way




THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.                445
in which the same thing might be done; has detected, not
the actual causes, but a system of equivalents that will serve
the end as well. By laying these before us, he fulfils the
aim of knowledge: he gives us a rule by which to compute
the course of nature, and fromn the present to foretell the
approaching attitudes of things. IIe draws a true picture
for us of all the future, and of all the past, that lies within
the existing order: but of the source of that order, or the
posture of aftfirs before it rose, he cannot afford the faintest
glimpse. And so is it throughout the sciences. Whenever
they give you a report of causes, they tell you, not the real
process, but its equivalent: that by which we should work,
not that by which God does work. The optician enumerates
the several colors of which light is made: but who can think
that thus we learn the order of God's creation, - and that
first he provided the yellow, red, and blue, and then put them
together to form the one white ray? The chemist will give
you a list of what he finds in the bursting seed, the shooting
plant, the growing animal; but do you suppose that the divine
hand really measures these doses of hydrogen and carbon;
that in bringing out the gentle grass, and shedding its glory
on the forest tree, and tracing the dear human face, and putting a strange depth into the eye, God works by the pharniacopceia or the scale of chemical equivalents? Ah no! else
were he not the Creator, but the manufacturer,* of this universe; a mixer of ingredients; a worker in wood and iron:
little more than a Vulcan, Neptune, or ~sculapius, with another name. To be chief artificer, chief dyer, chief engineer;
to be able to construct a world, to tincture the drapery of
clouds, and poise the clustered stars; —this is not to be the
everlasting God. The steps by which we slowly understand
are not the order in which he instantly discerns and eternally executes. The laws which we extract are but the
patient aldphabet in which he spells out successively to us the
tendencies of his spontaneous thought. They are the rules
* Not 7ro0l —s, but 8qt1Loupys.




446           THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.
which our criticism draws from the analysis of his productions: but like the precepts taken from the study of
ancient art, they express our afterthought, not his forethought; and though they are a true light to our knowledge,
they are a false shadow on our religion. In one sense, no
doubt, they are the voice of God. As men talk to us and
tell us what they have been doing and what they still intend to do; yet shelter from us, perhaps almost from themselves, their inmost love and worship; so here does God
adopt our speech, address himself to our instruction, and
teach us the outward purpose of his will; but opens not
the infinite well-spring whence all the power and the order
flow.
Is this then the only voice of His that comes to us from
the physical world? It is the only voice in which he
directly accosts us, and commands our obedience. But we
are always in his presence; and there would seem to be
when he forgets that we are by; and his own nature confesses itself through all the loneliness of space; and we
may apprehend its essence rather than its act. To do this,
we have but to look on creation as a picture, instead of
examining it as a machine. It must fix our eye as a work
of beauty, not as a structure of ingenuity. The simplest
impressions from nature are the deepest and most devout:
and to get back to these, after spoiling the vision with the
artificial glasses of science, is the difficult wisdom of the
pure heart. The modest flower, nestling in the meadow
grass; the happy tree, as it laughs and riots in the wind;
the moody cloud, knitting its brow in solemn thought; the
river, that has been flowing all night long; the sound of the
thirsty earth, as it drinks and relishes the rain; these things
are as a full hymn, when they flow from the melody of
nature, but an empty rhythm, when scanned by the finger
of art. The soul, as it sings, cannot both worship and beat
time. The rainbow, interpreted by the prism, is not more
sacred(, than when it was taken for the memorandum of




THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.              447
God's promissory mercy, painting the access and recess of
his thought. The holy night, that shows us how much
more the sunshine hides than it reveals, and warns us that
the more clearly we see what is beneath our feet, the more
astonishing is our blindness to what is above our heads, is
less divine, when watched from the observatory of science,
than when gazed at froni the oratory of private prayer.
To the one it is the ancient architecture, to the other the
instant meditation of the Most High. And so is it with all
the common features of our world. The daily light, fresh
as a young child every morning, and dignified as the mellowness of age at even; the yearly changes, less fair and
dear to our infancy than to our maturity, - the weariness
of nature as she drops her leaves, the glee with which she
hangs them out again, -the silver mists of autumn, the
slanting rains of spring, the sweeping lines of drifted snow;
all are as the natural language of God, —the turns of his
almighty thought, — to the spirit that lies open to their
wonder: to others, they are but a spinning of the earth, an
evaporation of the waters, an equilibrium in the winds.
It is the same in the case of human life, as in that of the
outward world. There also our knowledge does not represent God's ways; our knowledge being a critical deduction
of rules which his ways indeed have furnished but did not
follow. There also we should think of him, not as constructing mechanically for an end, but as creating spontaneously from himself. In our review of ancient or modern
nations, we are anxious to account for the peculiarities that
mark them, and the influence they have had upon mankind;
and we search their climate and geography, their inheritance
of language and tradition, their relative position and experience, for the causes of their special genius and institutions. And such enumeration is invaluable in its fruits of
practical and political wisdom. Only let us not imagine
that God works by the sort of composition of causes, which
our poor intellect is obliged to fancy to itself. He did not




448           THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.
model the Hebrew, or fabricate the Greek, after the fashion
of our historical analysis, saying to himself " This climate
will do, but then it must have that organization, and be
mixed with such and such sort of memories." It were contemptible to think that he thus moulds and serves up the
nations, like one that holds a receipt-book in his hand.
And so too with the individual mind. Philosophy, justly
curious to observe the structure of our faculties, and the
nature of those wondrous operations by which man alone,
of all creatures, has acquired a history, endeavors to untwine
the finished web of thought, and lay out the variegated
filaments, -the warp of constant nature, and the woof of
flying experience, - from which the texture seems to have
been composed. And this also is well: opening to us the
deepest problems and yielding many useful lessons. Only
we must not suppose that God makes men after the pattern
of Locke's or Mill's human nature; providing the raw
material of so many simple ideas, with measured lots of
pleasure and pain, to be mixed up into a Plato, or fused
down into a Channing. Nor ought we to think that he
preconceives a particular task to be accomplished for the
world, and then proceeds to make and move men, like fitting
puppets, to perform it. The souls of the sons of God are
greater than their business; and they are thrown out, not
to do a certain work, but to be a certain thing; to bear
some sacred lineaments, to show some divine tint, of the
Parent Mind from which they come. The mighty spirits
of our race are as the lyric thoughts of God that drop and
breath.e from his almighty solitude; —transient chords flying forth from the strings as his solemn hand wanders over
the possibilities of beauty. One only finished expression
of his mind, one entire symmetric strain, has fallen upon
our world. In Christ, we have the overflowing Word, the
deep and beautiful soliloquy, of the Most High; not his
message and his argument, — for in that there were no
religion, — but the very poetry of God, which could not




THE SPHERE OF SILENCE.              449
have been told us face to face, but only cast in meditation
upon the silence of history. Not more certainly do we discern in the writings of Shakspeare the greatest manifestation
of human genius, than in the reality of Christ the highest
expression of the Divine. Not more clearly does the worship of the saintly soul, breathing through its window
opened to the midnight, betray the secrets of its affections
— than the mind of Jesus of Nazareth reveals the perfect
thought and inmost love of the All-ruling God. Were he
the only-born, - the solitary self-revelation, - of the Creative
Spirit, he could not more purely open the mind of Heaven:
being the very Logos, - the apprehensible nature of God,
— which, long unuttered to the world, and abiding in the
beginning with him, has now come forth, and dwelt among
us full of grace and truth.
Cambridge: Press of John Wilson & Son.