https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/2b42f56333c4e7d735a8d036aad339a3.pdf?Expires=1784764800&Signature=GxNOejrr8BPegAm4GM9o4f4u78o1kg7dT61qYuKu5olmGa9ySU7ufp6HRdih7z5ewZ1Cogonqhdd2Fxgca5ND6Y6AwlOzX%7EStDOM6Ix9u%7Epc-fC7VGL4FoS14CxDqNe4sqEwlZGqcgcz3C6a1P6ePfloigwJXPIDLCzZ8PFMla8qlPwRB7HjeLHOPOZ01t9riKXJ5S0UnROtMMfB9Rv2pH9Y-pfQIq5GZxffBodjdMKb1hwvqgTkUBqF9%7ER5W5sZI0Fqkc7ZNq%7EN4psv0KF1m6GQr7EFi5J2vA0FhJypY2H-yFjBEriA6716TosawShOk343u8tZoexRIKPF-4SrvA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2eedebd4b55ef471925d202983cedc17 PDF Text Text ■ THE EXAMINER: A Monthly Review of Religious and Humane Questions, and of Literature. Vol. I. —FEBRUARY, 1871. —No. 3. Article I.— Unitarian Leaders. [These sketches were written while watching the pro­ ceedings of the recent meeting of the Unitarian National Conference. Though slight, and hastily set down, they aim to be just. They refer in part to persons who were not present in the meeting alluded to.] REV. DR. BELLOWS Is well known to the general public. In the Conference he appeared as the President of the Council of Ten, which is the executive committee of the organization! His report in this capacity opened the work of the conference! In several respects Dr. Bellows stands in a position almost pontifical. His abundant energy, his large and broad intelligence in ethical and religious matters, his usual cath­ olicity of spirit, the exceptional warmth and vigor of his fraternal sympathies, and his great gifts as a writer and preacher, have justly entitled him to a position not accorded to any other among the leaders of Unitarianism. It is at the same time to be said, that a somewhat pontifical temper is thought by many of Dr. Bellows’s brethren to detract unhappily from his usefulness as unofficial primate of the denomination, while his long-time habit of giving way to LIBRARY South Place Ethical Society Kgsjx indiyidu^i....... xosKac.articles______ uot...indexe.d....... Class ..................................... Congress, in the year 1871, by Edward C. Towne, in the OfT.ce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. I �202 Unitarian Leaders. extreme inspirations, now in the direction of unrestricted liberty, and now as entirely in the opposite direction, gives great uneasiness to the less eminent but more consistent managers of denominational affairs. The more radical repress with difficulty their dissatisfaction with the conces­ sions which Dr. Bellows has made to extreme conservatism. On the other hand, the more conservative entertain un­ feigned disgust at the equal concessions which their primate has made to radicalism. It cannot be denied by any, how­ ever, that in the report made by Dr. Bellows he stood between the two extreme which divide his brethren, and * even stood above them, both in the gentleness and firmness of his entirely Christian spirit, and in his sincere effort to state the common ground occupied by the widely separated elements pf the caflamunion, that of faith in God, whether through the Christ off God or the Spirit of God, Christian union justly frecogjiized between all who believe in “the God behind both Christ and Spirit.” REV. E. E. HALE, , The popular preacher and magazinist of Boston, represents the onljheecognized denominational publication, “ Old and New,” of which Mr. Hale is the editor. Five thousand dollars was given by the American Unitarian Association towards establishing “ Old and New,” and some benevolent individuals gave the venerable “ Christian Examiner ” thirty-five hundred dollars to “ go up higher,” and it went, leaving the field.to Mr. Hale’s enterprise. In the opinion of some of the more thoughtful and scholarly of the Unita­ rian divines, Mr. Hale has not met just expectations. Not a few—Rev, Dr. Hedge for example—deem “ Old and New” of little off no account to any serious religious work, its notes of really religious utterance are so few and feeble. Some go so far as to energetically stigmatize the publica­ tion as unpardonably superficial, a sugared mush of pleasant words which can be liked once, can be endured a few times, but cannot be accepted for a moment as the latest literary �Unitarian Leaders. 203 legacy of Unitarianism to the American people. These would gladly give a handsome sum to induce “ Old and New ” to follow the “ Christian Examiner ” “ up higher.” Even Dr. Bellows, in his calm, judicious report to the Con­ ference, did not hesitate to mingle with kindly praise of his beloved friend’s labors, an earnest intimation that Mr. Hale had not yet done what he was supposed to be under a pledge to do, and decided warning that further disappointment on the part of the denomination would hardly be borne with patience. It is but just to say for Mr. Hale, that he has both consulted the market, which makes but a limited demand for any other than cheap work in popular maga­ zines, and his own genius, which is essentially genial rather than thoughtfull and interested more in strewing pleasure in the everyday path of common people, than in leading the march of the saints and thinkers, or heading the fray of zealous faith. REV. CHARLES LOWE, The popular secretary of the American Unitarian Associa­ tion, is a remarkable illustration of modest powers used with a wisdom hardly ever associated with a more striking and more daring order of genius. Of delicate physical constitution, of a peculiar sweetness of spirit and gentle­ ness of manner, cautious in thought and unambitious in action, he yet goes so directly to the point of every matter with which he has to deal, and takes his stand so conscien­ tiously and firmly, with such breadth of spirit and such profound sympathy with all things lovely and of good report, as to find himself recognized as one at least of the pillars of the Gate Beautiful of the Urratarian communion, if not in fact, in himself alone, the most exact contempo­ rary expression of the Christian Liberty through which Channing taught his disciples to seek entrance to the king­ dom of God. JWES FREEMAN CLARKE, As he likes to be called, without his titles, was the Secretary �204 Unitarian Leaders. of the Association, now represented by Mr. Lowe, during a p^iod ten years ago, when the seeds of present agitation were being sown; and at that time no one could have more nobly held up the Unitarian standard of spiritual freedom. As an earnest friend of Theodore Parker, and a sufferer from insisting upon Christian recognition of that great heresiarch, before Unitarianism had begun to build his monument,—when in fact it was still stoning him,—Mr. Clarke earned a most honorable fame among the earliest friends of the progress which has now become intensely radical, and this he did not in any respect forfeit during the period of his secretaryship in the American Unitarian Association. It was, however, always the case that Mr. Clarke belonged by his most cherished beliefs to orthodox Unitarianism. Few of Theodore Parker’s critics have appreciated his theology less than Mr. Clarke, or have more positively questioned that radical reformer’s success as a seeker for Christian truth. The recent eminence of Mr. Clarke,—now Dr. Clarke,—as a preacher and denomi­ national writer, has brought his theological conservatism into particular prominence, and has given the impression that age is cooling the more liberal sympathies of his earlier career. It can be pretty confidently said, neverthe­ less, that any wanderer from the stricter churches, or any fugitive from the darker faiths of the modern world, who may come to the Gate Beautiful alluded to above, will find himself passing very close to the ever-warm heart of one of the purest and noblest men now living, James Freeman Clarke. REV. F. H. HEDGE, D.D., Rarely presses to the front in any assemblage of liberal Christians, though he should be recognized as the finest thinker and ablest writer the denomination has had since Mr. Emerson withdrew to an exclusively literary position. Like Dr. Clarke, Dr. Hedge is in one direction conserva­ tive—that of a strenuous demand for close connection with the Christianity of the past; yet he is essentially a trans- �Unitarian Leaders. 20.5 cendentalist by the greatness of his intellect, a calm seer who looks out with clear eyes over the highest summits of human thought, and views both discussions and conclusions in the purest light of unclouded heavenly reason. Not even Mr. Emerson has more deeply penetrated the mystic secrets of divine reason, nor more happily separated in the spectrum of his thought the elements of the uncreated light which is to all religious minds the essence of revelation. If any man now living is competent to report to the ear of this generation the best echoes of eighteen Christian centu­ ries, and in fact the utterances of the “still small voice” in all ages and places of human faith, Dr. Hedge is entitled to such rank. REV. C. A. BARTOL, D.D., The successor of Dr. Lowell, in that watch-tower of spirit­ ual edification, the pulpit of the West Church, Boston, is one of the beloved and distinguished leaders of Unitarianism, in spite of his life-long determination to abstain from all sectarian connection. He is a rare example of the spir­ itual insight which makes a. successful preacher, the power to look through forms to sympathies, and touch the deeper chords of feeling, in the vibration of which the Christian heart most readily recognizes the visitation of the divine compassion. Had he so chosen, Dr. Bartol might have cul­ tivated, with eminent success, the difficult field of theologi­ cal speculation, and he does not, with all his simplicity and gentleness, lack the robust qualities necessary to the high controversy of religious opinion. It was his deliberate choice to entirely devote himself to edification through pulpit ministry and pastoral labor, and here he stands second to none among his brethren. REV. WM. H. FURNESS, D.D., Of Philadelphia, is in the same category as Dr. Bartol: he 1 is a Unitarian leader, without ever meddling with the con­ duct of denominational affairs. The most genial of natures is in him matured by thorough and varied culture in litera- �206 Unitarian Leaders. ture, art, and social graces, until he justly ranks among the most charming masters of the interpretation and illustra­ tion of Christian grace and truth. It has been the single study of Dr. Furness, through all his active life, and by many successive efforts, to reproduce the true likeness of ideal humanity, as he reads it in the person of Christ. The consummate art of the painter appears in every stroke of his work, but, with most readers, it is less easy to be sure of the historical fidelity of the picture. The latest, and probably the final attempt of Dr. Furness to interpret the person and career of Christ to the modern world, will be found in a new book from his pen, bearing the simple title “ Jesus,” which has just issued from the press of J. B. Lippincott & Co. REV. W. P. TILDEN, Who conducted the opening service of the Conference, and gave to that service a tone of profound faith in the broadest communion,—through the presence of the indwelling Father, in the children now, as in the Master eighteen cen­ turies ago, “ God in us as in him,”—deservedly ranks with the leaders of the denomination, for his single-hearted fer­ vor of faith, and hope, and charity, and his zealous labors for the promotion of practical Christianity. Originally a New England ship-carpenter, his largeness of spiritual nature and irrepressible enthusiasm for humanitarian and religious work, pointed him out to Rev. Caleb Stetson, one of the eminent Unitarian leaders of the last generation, as peculiarly qualified for effective service in the liberal pulpit; and this anticipation has been fully justified by all the events of Mr. Tilden’s career. Without attempting to share the special labors of Unitarian learning and thought, Mr. Tilden, who is now among the elder men of the body, has established a just claim to be considered one of the practi­ cal apostles of the work and fellowship of Unitarianism. And in the same category should be set that worthiest of good men, and most excellent and earnest of fathers in the church, �Definitions from Carlyle. 207 REV. SAMUEL J. MAY, "Whose long life has beautifully exemplified the power of zealous goodness, and the charm which always attaches to a character of which simplicity, sincerity, and the fervor of unmixed kindness are the chief elements. Mr. May was magna pars of the great anti-slavery conflict, and has lately embodied in an interesting and valuable volume, his “ Rec­ ollections” of that holy war. In ripe old age, he is as fresh in fervor as if youth still kept the fountain of his life, and almost promises to stay here indefinitely, unless the powers up higher repeat in full, as they have in great part, the experiment of the patriarch who walked with God, and was not, for God took him. Article II.—Definitions, from Carlyle, of Religion, of Pa­ ganism, and of Christianity. “ Religion. . m The thing a man does practically believe (and this is often without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay tc heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there.” “ Recognition of the divineness of nature 1 sincere com­ munion of man with the mysterious invisible Powers visi­ bly seen at work in the world around him, . . is the essence of all Pagan mythology, H. . sincerity the great character­ istic of it, . . . looking into nature with open eye and soul: most earnest, honest!childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way. . . . Such recognition of Nature one finds to be the chief element of Paganism : rec­ ognition of man, and his moral Duty, comes to be the chief element only in purer forms of religion ; . . here indeed is a great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the religious development of Mankind. Man �208 “ Jesus Christ an Inferior Man.” first puts himself in relation with Nature and her Powers; not till a later epoch does he discern that all Power is Moral, that the grand point is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, of Thou shalt and Thou shalt not.” “ Pagan Religion is indeed an Allegory, a symbol of what men felt and knew about the Universe; and all relig­ ions are symbols of that, altering always as that alters.” “ Christianism; faith in an Invisible, not as real only, but as the only reality; Time, through every moment of it, resting on Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displayed by a nobler supremacy, that of Holiness.” “ The germ of Christianity, . . is hero-worship, heartfelt prostrate admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest, godlike Form of Man, . . for the great man, with his free force direct out of God’s own hand, as the indis­ pensable saviour of his epoch . . Christianity is the highest instance of Hero-Worship.” Article III. — “Jesus Christ an Inferior Man.” — Inde­ pendent. The Independent of November 24 devoted its leading editorial to the topic, Jesus Christ an Inferior Man. It placarded this sentiment where it met the eyes of we know not how many scores of thousands of persons. It rung the changes upon it until it had repeated the epithet of contempt twenty-one times, through a column and a half of feeble rhetoric or feebler snuffle. Appealing to pi pus fiction, to sacred myth, to goody incident, and goodish anecdote, and to various historical characters, reputable and disreputable, it frantically cried shame on the shame­ less Examiner for calling Jesus “an inferior man.” The old pagan, Constantine, and “another emperor, immortal for infamy,” with that modern master of selfishness, whose imperial line reached the finale of its infamy at Sedan the other day, it grouped effectively round Dr. Kane, while the latter planted a toy cross on “ the northernmost iceberg of �‘‘ Jesus Christ gin Inferior Man.” 209 the frozen sea,” a “ beautiful, dreary, and perilous cere­ mony,” which we, forsooth, could not look on with even “ a faint pulse of sympathy,” because of our “little criti­ cism ” about the “ inferior man 1 ” This representation of what we were said to have said about the popular man-image of God has gone the rounds of the religious press, in editorials and paragraphs, and probably reached an audience a hundred times as large as we could reach, or even a thousand times as large, and with an effect towards breaking down faith in the Christian idol very much greater than The Examiner, by any circulation whatever, could have produced. The Independent conspicu­ ously posted the intelligence that Jesus Christ had been thrust ignominiously out of Christianity, had been tumbled like a heathen idol out of the temple of religion, by a man who professes Christian faith ! It was very stupid if it supposed that such an announcement could fail to have a most disastrous effect upon common faith in Jesus as a supposed express image of God. For it is not calm argu­ ment, nor labored appeal, which have most effect on the average mind, but sharp, strong assertion, pithy catchwords, keen epithets,—-just like this which the Independent has placarded, Jesus Christ an inferior man. Bold to rudeness or profanity though it be, it is all the more a blow the force of which cannot be parried. In passing it round, the reli­ gious weeklies offer themselves to their enemy as the ass’s colt offered his back to the Lord Christ. It is particularly interesting to an iconoclast to see his work done for him, when the echo of his own word is the only clear, strong point of the utterance. What do we care for Kane on an iceberg, or Napoleon arrogantly pre­ tending that he knew men, or Constantine guessing or feigning he saw a cross in the sky, or t’other heathen, con­ fessedly “ immortal for infamy,” who, perhaps, did finally tremble before the “ Galilean,” as many a. wretch certainly has? Theology is not the science of accidental confessions of great scamps. Napoleon “knew men,” did he? Knew �210 “Jesus Christ an Inferior Man.” the divine side of man, did he? Was just the man to say, “ I know men, and Jesus Christ was not a man?” Why not consult the present Napoleon, and get his certificate that Jesus was not a man ? These “ immortal-for-infamy ” fellows have such an eye for deity, and can give such sure, testimony to the godhead of a young Jew of eighteen centuries since 1 It is really touching, isn’t it, to find how handsomely they make out their useful certificates that Jesus was not a man at alf and of course was not“ an inferior man.” But here we must say that the words placarded by the Independent, in the article to which we have alluded, were never used by The Examiner, nor any words like them. The expression was copied by the Independent from a con­ temptuous sentence of D. A. Wasson, whom we had asked tor evidence of the “ imperial” greatness of Jesus, and who eked out the meagreness and feebleness of his reply by sar­ casm and sneers, intended to confute us by bringing us into contempt. He professed to find in what we had said, the theory that ‘‘Jesus was an inferior man, whom Providence selected for the express purpose of showing what might be made of an inferior man,” although in fact we said that u the child of Joseph and Mary fairly obtained, and must always hold among men on earth, one of the greatest prov­ idential places of human history.” If we also said that his life was “ simple and humble,” and that he was “ without any particular greatness of intellect or character,” we said this in the course of a protest against Mr. Abbot’s attempt to stand outside a definite relation to him ” as “ the stand­ ard bearer of a great movement of mankind.” The words which Mr. Wasson used were worse than contemptuous, therefore; they told one of those half truths which are worse than downright falsehoods. We had not intended to say this, and should not have done so had not the Indepen­ dent given so wide a circulation to Mr. Wasson’s gibe. To the Independent we beg to say, Beware of second-hand learn­ ing, for, from the day that there began to be stories afloat �Mr. Wasson’s “Medicines.” 211 about the young rabbi of Nazareth, to this present time, second-hand knowledge has made the current Christianity a fabric more of fiction than of fact. For instance, Jesus was not the original author of anything contained in the Sermon on the Mount. As a distinguished Hebraist of our time has said, that discourse was perfectly familiar in the streets of Jerusalem before it was delivered by Jesus; and both the truths of it and its spirit may be referred to the truly great Hillel much more justly than to the young master who was but a pupil and a child, when a rash ambi­ tion cost him his life. Article IV.—Mr. Wasson’s “ Medicines” or IIow to “ See Jesus.” In one of the shorter articles of our first issue, we said that “ it would give us great pleasure to seethe evidence on which Mr. Wasson pronounces Jesus ‘ an imperial soul,’ and the historical ground for his assumption that the young Nazarene enthusiast expected ‘ a reign of morals pure and simple,’ not the reign of an individual, nor of a nation. ” Mr. Wasson has made a reply to this demand, in the Liberal Christian. In this reply he first alleges, That we are in the condition of De Quincey, when he pronounced Socrates and Plato a pair of charlatans, “ betraying the extent to which his judgments might be dictated by his humors,” and presenting a case of “ disease, to be contro­ verted with medicines; not with logic and testimony. ” But what medicines will suffice to prove that Jesus is “ an imperial soul ?” Is it by calomel or ipecac, by vomit or by purge, that we may arrive at Mr. Wasson’s view? It is truly very unkind in our friend to refer us to promiscuous drugs. We might retire on a dose of blue pill for example, and wake up Calvinist, as fierce as Fulton, who glories in having “preached hell in Boston ” to so much purpose ; or’ having distressed our stomach with an emetic, we might bring ourselves to a condition requiring the small beer and �212 Mr. Wasson’s “ Medicines ’’ water-gruel Christology of brother Tilton. To proof num­ ber one, therefore, alleged by Mr. Wasson, we beg to ask the particular medicines he would recommend. In the second place, Mr. Wasson, in reply to our demand for proof of the “ imperial ” greatness of Jesus, alleges this: “I see in Jesus an amazing elevation of soul; Mr. Towne looks on the same picture, and beholds only a daub, or, at best, a work of little merit. The question, accord­ ingly, what Jesus was in character and quality of spirit, is one which I cannot discuss with him.” Which is, in other words, “I am right, evidence or no evidence.” Mr. Was­ son says, we “ do not entertain the question, which of us two sees more truly.” But that is exactly the question we do entertain, and the settlement of which we hoped to reach, by hearing Mr. Wasson’s evidence, and by contro­ verting it with other and weightier proof. We asserted our belief that Mr. Wasson depended more on imagination than on historical proof, and here we convict him of it. lie avows that Jesus is an amazing picture to him, and that we do not see it as he does, simply because we have not the eye for it. Very well, but Mr. Wasson’s eye is not histori­ cal evidence. He glorified the first disciples, as “ large popular imaginations,” expressly ascribing their recognition of Jesus to the largeness and the popular quality of their imagination. And now he confesses that it is all in his eye. Medicines and imagination, then, are, so far, what Mr. Wasson recommends to us, if we would “ see Jesus.” But Mr. Wasson goes a step further. He names Nicolas and Colani. He avows that he makes certain “ discrimina­ tions,” and we look with care to see what they are. He rejects the Fourth Gospel. So far, good. The Fourth Gospel is a theological story, and a poor one at that, though some of the finest things are preserved in it. Again, he rejects “ the most extended and explicit of the Messianic passages in the Synoptical Gospels,” “ upon the showing of M. Colani.” If he means that he clears Jesus of the charge of Messianic pretension in a Jewish sense, merely on the �Or “ How io See Jesus.” ' 213 showing of Colani, he rests, as we feared he did, on the very narrow basis of insufficient investigation. Not a tithe of the weight of modern scholarship is on that side. The one fact most surely proven in regard to Jesus is, that he under­ took to be the king of the Jews, and lost his life in conse­ quence. To cite. Colani as evidence of the contrary, is to cite the opinion of a worthy preacher—not the indorsement of a real scholar; much like quoting Dr. J. F. Clarke. Mr. Wasson disposes of this point in five lines. He merely states that Colani has satisfied him. But this is the key of the controversy, the question whether Jesus entertained a false Messianic ambition. If Colani has satisfied Mr. Was­ son that he did not, either potent drugs or a “ large popular imagination’'’ must have assisted the effect of Colani’s superficial and unsatisfactory handling of the subject. In/the third place, Mr. Wasson feels sure that oral tradi­ tion, assuming that the Christ must have put forth claims, ascribed to him pretension of which he was not guilty. In fact, however, the evidence still existing, that Jesus put forth these claims, cannot be set aside by this or any other imagination of what may or must have been ; while, if Jesus did undertake and failed, every motive to drop out of sight the evidence of the abortive undertaking, must have worked during the years through which the tradition was oral, thus making it almost certain, that whatever evidence of this has survived, is to be regarded as peculiarly significant and weighty. So far, therefore, from throwing out the evidence that Jesus was a pretender to Messiahship, we ought to regard it as more strictly historical than anything else in the record. It is by imagination here, also, not by sound scholarship, that Mr. Wasson reaches his conclusion. And, finally, Mr. Wasson thinks it certain, that Jesus was greater than his immediate followers knew him to be, and that we must assume, on the one hand, that the best things reported were not lent him by the disciples, who had nothing to give, and that other things not so good, were due to their failure to comprehend. But the fact is, that �214 Mr. Wasson's “ Medicines.” the story of Jesus was worked over by oral report, after a supposed resurrection was thought to have proved him to have been the Messiah. “Large popular imaginations” had charge of it, and made what they chose of it. And the good things of the story (the ethical and spiritual truths') were current, just as much before. Jesus and apart from him, as they could be after him. Or if he brought them together, he did not originate them. Hillel was as much greater than Jesus as Channing than Chadwick, or Theodore Parker than Mr. Morse. We intend to speak exactly. And Hillel’s spirit was, as that of Jesus was not, fully and invariably that of the best things in the Sermon on the Mount. He gave to Christianity the Golden RuleHis school of teaching and influence was as much more important than that of Jesus, as his years, and learning, and character surpassed those of the young enthusiast whose dreams interrupted the course of human progress, from Judaism onward, with eighteen centuries of worship of a man, and untold inhumanities wrought in the propaga­ tion of his pretension. On the one hand then, the belief that Jesus had been proved the Messiah, moved his disciples to make the best story they could, and, on the other hand, they could copy fine truths from current teaching, just as easily as to repeat them from Jesus, who had but copied them at the best, so that we are bound to assume, not that Jesus lost in the story of him, but that he gained in it immensely, so much so as to be more the creature of it) than a fact of history. Thus, briefly, do we dispose of Mr. Wasson’s “ discriminations,” on the basis of which he says he has made up a critical judgment. We find every one of these, except the first, unscholarly to a lamentable degree. But if we had not done this, it would be easy to show the vice of Mr. Wasson’s conclusion. Por he says that he proceeds “ to make up a critical judgment,” by “ endeavor­ ing first to catch the tune of his mind, his action and char­ acter, by meditating upon those sayings of his, and those incidents of his life which are of such a quality as to carry �John Brown on the Scaffold. 215 their own credentials.” Imagination, again ! Sayings and incidents which carry their own credentials ! The Qolden Rule, for example, or other fine truths, proof of the charac­ ter of Jesus, because they are so fine, when, to a certainty Jesus did not originate either the terms or the tone of the purest Christian teaching, and did originate the baleful pretension of his own claim to divine position ! Mr. Was­ son must try again. He has not given us a scrap of evi­ dence that Jesus was eminently great, either in thought or in principle. We do not wonder that he began with recom­ mending drugs, and then offered the use of his eye, for cer­ tainly his “ discriminations” are of no weight whatever, nor is his “ critical judgment ” entitled to any authority. It is very well to have read Nicolas, and what there is of Colani may be looked at with profit, especially if one looks and passes on, but neither Mr. Wasson nor any other advo­ cate of an exploded superstition can afford to be contemptu­ ous in a matter of scholarship, on so meagre a support. We ask Mr. Wasson again for evidence, and hope he will give us more on the main point than he does when he says, “I am satisfied on the showing of M. Colani.” Article V.—John Brown on the Scaffold and Jesus on the Cross. Before secession, civil war, and emancipation, had shown the leader of the Harper’s Ferry enterprise to have been the providential herald of the greatest overturning of modern times, there were few persons who would not have been shocked at the mere suggestion of comparing John Brown with the most remarkable prophet-judges and prophet­ chieftains of familiar Hebrew story. The most plausible view at first was that he was a crack-brained fanatic, who might even escape the penalty of his mad crime under the plea of insanity. It soon became evident, however, that this madness had more method and character than the sanity of ordinary men] Two bitterly prejudiced witnesses said of the hero of Harper’s Ferry : �216 ; ; , I I I , John Brown on the Scaffold “It is vain to underrate either the man or the conspiracy. Captain John Brown is as brave and resolute a man as ever headed an insurrection, and, in a good cause, and with a sufficient force, would have been a consummate partisan commander. He has coolness, daring, persistency, the stoic faith and patience, and a firmness of will and purpose unconquerable. He is the farthest possible remove from the ordinary ruffian, fanatic, or madman. Certainly it was one of the best planned and best executed conspiracies that ever * failed. “ They are themselves mistaken who take him to be a madman. He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw, cut, and thrust, and bleeding, and in bonds. He is a man of clear head, of courage, fortitude, and simple ingenuousness. He is cool, collected, and indomitable. . . . lie inspired me with great trust in his integrity, as a man of truth. . . . Colonel Washington says that he was the cool­ est and firmest man he ever saw in defying danger and death. With one son dead by his side, and another shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand and held his rifle with the other, and commanded his men with the utmost composure, encouraging them to be firm, and to sell their lives as dearly as they could.”f The opinion of the martyr himself upon the proposal to put in the plea of insanity on his behalf was unequivocal and indignant. In addressing the court before his trial he said : “I look upon it (the plea in question) as a miserable artifice and pretext of those who ought to take a different course in regard to me, if they took any at all, and I view it with contempt more than otherwise. ... I am perfectly unconscious of insanity, and I reject, as far as I am capable, any attempts to interfere on my behalf on that score.” To this we may add the convincing allusion of one of his latest letters : “I may be very insane, and I am so if insane at all. But, if that be so, insanity is like a pleasant dream to me. * C. L. Vallandigliam. f Henry A. Wise. �And Jesus on the Cross. 217 I am not in the least degree conscious of my ravings, of my fears, or of any terrible visions whatever; but fancy my­ self entirely composed ; and that my sleep, in particular, is as sweet as that of a healthy, joyous little infant. I pray G od that he will grant me a continuance of the same calm but de­ lightful dream, until I come to know of those realities which eyes have not seen, and ears have not heard.” Mary Brown, who had always been the sharer of her husband’s plans, said emphatically : “I couldn’t say, if I were called upon, that my husband was insane—even to save his life; because he wasn’t.] She declared that if her husband were . insane he had been consistent in his insanity from the first moment she knew him. But more than all else the perfectly grand manifestation of character, made to the whole world during John Brown’s forty-two days before the gallows, settled the question of his mental condition. The conversations, speeches in court and letters from prison, of John Brown, convict him of any­ thing but mental weakness. Beginning with the precious • fragment of autobiography written for the young son of Mr. George L. Stearns, the recorded utterances of this uncul­ tured man of the people have a fine literary quality which indicates remarkable purity of intellectual tone. Their style alone speaks a man of clear head and pure taste. And x their moral elevation is so complete, the sentiments which they report are so good and so great, that we are forced to confess ourselves in presence of a miracle of character. There seems to us no doubt that John Brown, shepherd, tanner, wool merchant,farmer, Kansas chieftain, provisional constitution maker, and Harper’s Ferry commander, must be classed with the greatest characters of history, because of his remarkable union of clear vision, pure conscience, and perfect courage,—the insight of a prophet, the most un­ compromising love of right, and absolute intrepidity in action. In amount of quality he stands with the very few supreme men of the race, the founders for mankind of civil­ ity and religion. And for combination of the grand types VOL. I.—NO. 3. 2 �218 John Brown on the Scaffold of character, is it too much to say that, as we see him in his transfiguration before the scaffold, his figure is nobler than that of any earlier hero of our race — the wisest, purest, bravest of mankind ? Standing on this latest stage of time, instructed, chastened and inspired by a situation quite beyond any hitherto arranged in history, it was in the order of Providence that the mount of this martyr should plant the standard of our march above Calvary, as Calvary planted it above Sinai. Not that we compare, in respect to nature, the now deified Christ of Galilee and the’ just now despised fanatic of Harper’s Ferry. They were equally common men. We compare only the Jewish figure with the American figure, the man on the cross with the man on the scaffold, and say confidently that in John Brown on his scaffold, Eternal God has lifted the standard of human advancement higher than it was lifted in the Christ of Cal­ vary. Or to put it in other words, and words justified by that which Jesus himself said, the true Christ-Son of God, Heaven-anointed soul, which was manifested in Jesus, and was to be manifested in his humblest disciple, the least of these his brethren, is manifested to-day in the American martyr as it was not, and could not be manifested in the Messiah. The eindmce is close at hand. At this moment let it suf­ fice to present one point of this, the point which is most important and most conclusive. The world knows the story of the trial of Jesus—not the trial before Pilate, but the trial in his own soul. Theological ingenuity has been exhausted in the attempt to explain this without damage to the orthodox theory that Jesus was a person of the deity; but in vain. Give Jesus no more benefit of ingenious hypothesis and pious prepossession than we give Socrates, Paul, Giordano Bruno, and John Brown, and we are com­ pelled to say that either one had a courage which Jesus did not possess. Estimate fairly the mental anguish of Savon­ arola and of Edward Irving, who died unvisited by the super­ natural intervention they had with absolute faith looked �And Jesus on the Cross. 219 for, the one hung up in chains in the flames after forty-two days of torture, the other wasted by distressing disease through days and months of unanswered agonizing prayer, and it cannot be denied that their trial was far heavier than that of Jesus. It is idle to ascribe to the Jewish martyr a superhuman sensibility to evil; for if superhuman at all, he was superhuman in courage and endurance not less than in sensibility. If he were not equal to perfect endurance, as he plainly was not, we but make his weakness the greater the more we lift him above humanity. The anguish of his prayer and the wail of the cross, on the lips of a mere child of Galilee, wrung from the heart of a peasant-Messiah, when he had really looked for intervention by miracle which did not come, can be readily explained, without denying the spiritual elevation of Jesus. We say, then, that in forecast­ ing events, and in meeting the turns of fate, he fell short of the perfection possible to human nature. We recognize that it was not his mission to do all the things which man in his most heroic mood can perform, that he represents a stage in the elevation of our race, by no means our final attainment. And we confidently compare facts to show that the American martyr was, in respect to courage under the heavy blows of fate, superior to the man of Nazareth. In the garden of Gethsemane we see Jesus “ in distress and anguish,”—as Mark puts it, “ in great consternation and anguish,”—and hear him say to his disciples, “ I am in ex­ ceeding distress, ready to die.” The bare existence of this fact is significant; the communication of it, especially to disciples who could not help himkif they would, marks a mind utterly shaken out of self-possession. And how con­ clusive to the same effect is the prayer, thrice repeated, of Jesus: He fell upon his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. But net as I will, but as thou wilt.” A second time he prayed, sav­ ing, “My Father, if this cup cannot pass from me, but I must drink it, thy will be done.” Still again he prayed a third time, saying the same words. r �220 John Brown on the Scaffold, Etc. Setting aside the theory that Jesus was not what he seemed to be, we have here a man engaged in an almost desperate effort to meet his fate. The effort of submission is sincere and grand; it lifts Jesus into the position of a leader of mankind; considering especially his Jewish limi­ tations, how naturally he had looked for supernatural inter­ vention, how purely and nobly too he had desired this as the true coming of God to man, and how really to his eyes the power of healing the body, with inspiration which enabled him to instruct and control the mind, had seemed to him the beginning of miracle, we may'justly see in this effort, so distinctly conceived and so resolutely attempted, a manifestation of the very divinity of human nature; but it is vain to deny that effort is a stage behind attainment. Not only does the consternation of an experience like that of Jesus argue a failure to foresee possible duty, but still more the agonizing effort to accept the situation shows a decided deficiency of heroic equipment. This deficiency, we repeat, admits of an explanation, in the case of Jesus, whose em­ inence was of purity more than of force, which does not pluck him from his lofty position of anointed master of the Christian ages. By the usage of his people Jesus had barely come of age; he was contemplative rather than executive in his temperament, more spiritual than practical, and al­ most without other education than that of meditation and prayer. He was in fact an inspired child of Nazareth; more than that, he had the heart of a pure girl in the breast of a Galilean peasant. Thus he naturally enough failed to meet his fate with the serenity of prepared courage, but the ex­ planation of the failure does not explain it away. He failed conspicuously, and as conspicuously John Brown, bringing back the great example of Socrates, did not fail. �Theodore Parker’s Antagonism, Etc. 221 Article VI. — Theodore Parker’s Character and Ideas. ■ Chap. III.—His Antagonism with the Religious World. We come now to the question of Theodore Parker’s “ antagonism with the religious world.” The reviewer, whose judgment our discussion starts from, regrets that Mr. Parker was not “ thrown into intimate relations with Evan­ gelical scholars,” and says “ it is singular how rarely he met such, and how kindly he spoke of them, as of Professors Stuart, Porter and Woolsey.” That Theodore Parker found but three or four evangeli­ cal scholars who gave him occasion to speak kindly of them, is doubtless a singular fact, considering the fundamental principles of Christian religion. Perhaps it is not so sin­ gular a fact that Theodore Parker spoke kindly, very kindly, of these exceptions to the rule. I wish the reviewer had given a list of the evangelical scholars with whom Mr. Parker might have had relations of intimate Christian broth­ erhood. He mentions Stuart, Woolsey, and Porter, neither of whom ever pretended to consider Parker a Christian man and brother. The little intercourse which took place between Theodore Parker and Stuart, Woolsey, Porter,and the chief of the New Haven school of theology, Dr. Taylor, was marked by a manly effort of good will on their part, and by generous appreciation on his part; but it would be a great mistake to suppose that these men, the best of their class, ever felt at liberty to do justice to Theodore Parker. Their honest principles forbade it. They could suppress, in his presence, the unbrotherly severity of their judgment upon him, but they could not offer him Christian brother­ hood. And it was not merely that they assumed that he did not want fellowship. If he had wanted it ever so much,— and no man has borne the cross of lonely service with a deeper sense of the value of brotherly fellowship,—they must in conscience have dropped the mask of generous courtesy, and shown him all the resolute hardness of their hearts. Prof. Porter discussed Mr. Parker’s opinions with �222 Theodore Parker’s Antagonism charity, and reviewed him with kindness. But even he, so exceptionally gentle and just, must have resisted, to the last degree of bitterness even, any attempt to remove the limits of communion, and make Christian fellowship broad enough to include the great heretic. President Woolsey could not fail to act the Christian gentleman in any intercourse with such a man as Theodore Parker, for by nature and by cul­ ture, he is very noble, but even he can feel and show con­ tempt for unorthodox struggles in a sincere soul. As to Dr. N. W. Taylor, who was at once the ablest divine and the noblest gentleman of all that New Haven circle, I have heard him tell of his interview with Parker, and how they crossed broad-swords, and whose head came off. It was in the spirit of Prof. Park, in the great Boston Council, wnen he said, “ A man who has studied theology three years, and has read the Bible in the original languages, and is not a Calvinist, is not a respectable man.” I know-what the orthodox spirit in the best men is capa­ ble of attempting. I know how the conscience of a solitary thinker, without help in men or books, may be set upon and tormented by evangelical surroundings. I have had said to me, “as a heathen man and a publican”—a hard word for which there is supposed to be pretty good evangelical authority. No doubt the souls in whom there is great out­ break of new faith and radical thought do sometimes sin grievously against the pure fitness of things in their demon­ strations, but that is not all of their hard case; they not only become obnoxious in that way, by their own fault, but they almost invariably become criminals and outlaws, in the view of the evangelical world, from the hardness and bitterness of the evangelical spirit. Not only are they dealt with very harshly for errors which are treated tenderly where no heresy exists, but they are terribly punished for that innocent and pure faith which is in them the profound necessity of a sincere conscience. It is plain to me that Theodore Parker’s critic does not consider how infinite is the bitterness of the cup which �With the Religious World. K 223 evangelicalism, in all its common forms^ presses to the lips of one who has stripped himself of precious dogmatic beliefs to undertake a more daring, more heroic exercise of faith in God and labor of love than the current Christianity per­ mits. Therefore I beg to assure him, upon abundant expe­ rience, that a man confessing heresy heartily, must have a face of brass to presume on “ intimate relations with evan­ gelical scholars,” except as a relic of very close youthful friendship. And if he had the shining qualities of an arch­ angel on earth, and withal bore his cross honestly in the world, doing with his might the work given him to do, he could not but seem, to evangelical scholars of strict convic­ tion, of “ no form nor comeliness—no beauty that they should desire him.” No worse men than President Wool­ sey have thought the dungeon and the fagot needful in the discipline of demonstrative departure from orthodoxy. The spirit of the age has, indeed, reduced marvelously the tem­ per of orthodox defence of the faith, but the time has hardly come, certainly had not come in the day of Mr. Parker’s encounter with the religious world, when liberality could be consistently practiced by evangelical scholars. It is, I trust, one result of the appearance of Mr. Parker, to disclose to some of the wiser defenders of correct tradi­ tional faith, the necessity of adjusting their position once more, to conform more closely to the demand of the Chris­ tian spirit. Possibly the day is not far off when the scholars our critic wishes Mr. Parker might have met, will be able to accept, within evangelical limits, absolute liberality. That is to say, holding firmly to the evangelical doctrine of redemption, its necessity, plan, and operation, they will relax the severity of their dogmatic convictions upon minor points, so far as to make character the ground of human fellowship, and to leave to God alone, the searcher of hearts, all judgment as to the amount and style of creed necessary to start either a soul on the road to heaven, or a teacher of Truth on the way of the knowledge of God. It is easy for me to think of liberality thus carried to perfection, within �224 Theodore Parker's Antagonism evangelical limits. Let our vain decisions as to the times and seasons of God’s grace and power, be wholly set aside. Say, if we must, that God hath appointed this way and no other, the literal gospel of Christ, but leave the administra­ tion of this way to Him with whom a thousand years are as one day. There is no Biblical evidence to compel acceptance of the dogma of limited probation. Insist on the possibility of the worst with the evil and the disobedient, but with the honest, earnest and faithful seeker for Truth and lover of God, insist as strongly on the certainty of the best. Go down to deep below deep, in the experience of true men, until you find for them a saving tie to God’s administration of true redemption, rather than suffer our human judgment to pronounce that there is little or no hope for an honest soul misguided by an erring intellect. The possibility of final loss may be, indeed, urged, and the whole terror of absolute peril brought to bear, to persuade to deeper hon­ esty, more serious inquiry, and more humble crying unto the spirit of Truth, b,ut let it be in love, in hope, in firm faith, so that the Christian spirit may bind all in one, and the Holy Spirit, if it may possibly be, bind all to that mercy­ seat before which we are all one in absolute need. It is possible for this to be. It only requires to believe, as humanity and divinity, even within the strictest evangeli­ cal limits, require, that for those who seek there is no closing of the chances, no limit of opportunity, no inadequacy of eternal divine providence. Grant that the path is beset with perils; grant that the abyss of final loss may receive us at the next step; but say this of all, because of sins and unworthiness of a moral sort; never say it with a lim­ itation to the case of “ that publican,” who is such only by reason of intellectual error. I heard the New Haven Dr. Taylor say, very near the close of his life, that he knew he might fail of heaven. Let this be the form in wlfich we doubt as to human chances of acceptance with God. Let this humility penetrate and bind in one all who feel the �'With the Religious World. 225 burden of moral evil. Then it will be easy to feel that the grace which is extended to sinners, will not need to be fur­ ther extended to embrace all who try to come unto the God and Saviour of squIs, whatever may be the fault, or, as our critic says, the “vice” of their conception and confession of the things of God. It would be a noble enterprise if eminent evangelical scholars would unite in, we will say, an Academy of Chris­ tian Studies, the aim and use of which should be to vindi­ cate the principle of liberality, to throw the shield of Chris­ tian charity and Christian encouragement over all honest and capable pursuits of divine Truth. In two ways espe­ cially would this improve exceedingly the position of the evangelical school. It would provide Christian discipline for radicalism; and it would show to the world that evan­ gelical faith is not afraid of inquiry. Radicalism is forced to exaggerate the individualism of its method, because the hand of every man is against it. Give it a place, its due place, in the school of Christian studies, and at once its temper must become more moderate, and its demonstra­ tions less dangerous to the order of the religious world. Had Mr. Parker been treated in this way from the begin­ ning, there is every reason to believe that his mind would have acted, upon questions of dogma, with none of that vol­ canic energy which made him seem to the evangelical world a tremendous engine of destruction! And instead of becoming the leader and hero, not only of elect believers in whom the spirit and the life had wrought profound convic­ tion, but of the throng of deniers in whom serious convic­ tion was less developed, he would have stood forth the exponent of the modern tendency of the Christian faith. I anticipate the reply to this, that at his best Mr. Parker would have been an enemy. But I think the assumption of this reply a mistake. Grant that the best of Mr? Parker’s belief was erroneous. I go back of his dogmatic convic­ tions, then, to his moral and spiritual tendencies, and un­ hesitatingly affirm the necessity of accepting these as suffi­ �226 Theodore Parker’s Antagonism, Etc. cient, under the ample providence of the power and grace of God, for cordial Christian fellowship. Let Professor Park and President Woolsey have said to Mr. Parker, “ Brother, we differ with you entirely in doctrinal method and convictions, but in allegiance to the law of love and to the spirit of Truth and of Holiness we agree; the soul, and the soul’s union with God in moral loyalty and spiritual yearning and devotion, are the foundation,—the Christian foundation ; in that we meet, alike putting on the new man; now let us reason together, and labor in one spirit of love to God and love to man, with good hope in the eternal providence of God with us, until we all come in the unity of the faith unto a perfect man,”—let this have been said, and realized in the attitude of the evangelical school, and the modern world would have lost its great heresiarch, the Christian world, so-called, would have gained a great apos­ tle of natural religion. Mr. Parker’s great work in Boston, and in America, had never been undertaken if even his own sect, the Unitarian, had had the liberality it ought to have had. In his letter to his first parish, upon leaving them for Boston, to which he was called solely to vindicate freedom of religious teaching, Mr. Parker said: “ If my brethren of the Christian ministry had stood by me, nay, if they had not themselves refused the usual min­ isterial fellowship with me, then I should have been spared this painful separation, and my life might have flowed on in the channel we have both wished for it.”—Life, vol. I, p. 26L In a letter to Rev. Mr. Niles, written the year before his removal to Boston, Mr. Parker states what no one can rea­ sonably doubt, that he had no choice but to accept individ­ ualism or abdicate his own manhood. He says: “I must of course have committed errors in reasoning and in conclusion. I hoped once that philosophical men would point out both; then I would confess my mistake and start anew. But they have only raised a storm about my head; and in a general way a man wraps his cloak �A Letter of Theodore Parker. 227 about him in a storm and holds on the tighter.”—Life, vol. Z, p. JfhO. Now I ask, is it not evident that a divine design, work­ ing through the robust nature of this Socratic Samson of truth and righteousness, wrought deliberately and wisely the rough antagonism of Theodore Parker to the popular churches, in order to convict them, one and all, of want of the Christian spirit, and to utter, in tones that should ring round the world, the demand of that spirit, in this new time, for a liberality in religion adequate to sustain, with all honest believers and teachers, a true Christian fellow­ ship ? Theodore Parker, nailing the new theses of human­ ity on the doors of recognized Christian communion, though he made the very walls of the temple tremble to their foundation, was no lawless destructive, no mad troubler of communion, but the providential sign of a new reforma­ tion in Christendom, the Luther of emancipated faith, the angel of a new resurrection of that holy spirit which was the truth in .Tesus, and has been the truth in the Christian ages, and shall be, in redeemed humanity, sole author and authority of pure and undefiled religion. Article VII.—A Letter of Theodore Parker. Rev. John T. Sargent, who was intimately associated with Theodore Parker, writes to us as follows : I welcome your articles just opening in The Examiner on Theodore Parker. It may interest you to know that I have large files of letters from him, which have a value so far as they might illustrate your main topics, bis “ charac­ ter and ideas.” Most of them, it is true, are of that pri­ vate and social character not intended for the public, 'and were occasioned by that peculiar relation into which I was thrown in consequence of my exchange of pulpits with him, when such an expression of fellowship was looked upon with distrust, even by the so called “ Liberal” Unitarians. But there are others so expressive of his well known sympa- �228 A Leiter of Theodore Parker. thics for all the great interests of humanity, that portions of them at least ought to be seen. Take, for instance, the following extracts which I copy from one under date of September 18th, 1859, when he was abroad in Montreux, Canton de Vaud, Switzerland : “It is Sunday, to-day, and my thoughts turn homeward with even a stronger flight than on any other days of the week, so I shall write a little to one of my dear old friends — ‘ a friend indeed,’ also a brother in the same ministry. It is the day when the services at the Music Hall are to begin again I believe, but where I shall no more stand; for I sent in my letter of resignation some days ago, as duty and necessity compelled. But my affection will always go with the dear old friends who gather there, and on Sundays, when the Music Hall is open, I always come as a silent minister to look at the congregation, and have ‘ sweet com­ munion together,’ though we no longer ‘walk to the house of God in company.’ It is a tender bond which gets thus knit by years of spiritual communion :—I think not to be broken in this life. But here, as you know, Sunday is quite different from what it is in New England; devoted more to gaiety and to social festivity of a harmless character. But to-day is the Annual Fast all over Switzerland, and the land is as still as with us in the most quiet town in New England. I like these Swiss people. They are industrious, thrifty and economical to an extraordinary degree,—intelli­ gent, and happy. I sometimes think them the happiest people in Europe, perhaps happier than even we in Massa­ chusetts, for they are not so devoured by either pecuniary or political ambition. * * * What a condition the Unitarians are in just now I They put Huntington in the place of Dr. Henry Ware, and he turns out to be orthodox,— and, as I understand, won’t go into the Unitarian pulpit of Brooklyn, N. Y., but officiates in the great orthodox Plymouth church hard by. Then brother Bellows comes out with his ‘ Broad (T) church,’ and, while talking of the ‘ Suspense of Faith,’ represents the little sect in no very �A Letter of Theodore Parker. 229 pleasant light. Meantime, The Examiner—(certainly the ablest journal in America,) reports to the denomination the most revolutionary theologic opinions, and this, too, with manifest approbation thereof. Witness the half-dozen articles within so many years, by Frothingham, Jr., some of Alger’s, that of Scherb’s on the Devil, and the three on India, China, and Asiatic Religions, by an orthodox mis­ sionary, now living in Middletown, Conn.; a noble fellow too. What is to become of us ? To me it is pretty clear the Progressive party will continue to go ahead in a circu­ itous course, for Progress is never in a straight line. No progressive party will go back describing a line with analo­ gous curves. “ It is beautiful to see the gradual development of religion in the world, especially among su h a people as our own, where the government puts no yoke on men’s shoulders. Little by little they shake off the old traditionary fetters, get rid of their false ideas of man and God, and come to clear, beautiful views and forms of religion. No where in the world is this progress so rapid as in America, because, in our Northern States, the whole mass of the people is educated and capable of appreciating the best thoughts of the highest minds. Of course, foolish things will be done, and foolish words spoken, but on the whole the good work goes on, not slowly and yet surely. I am glad the Catho­ lics have the same rights as the Protestants;—if they had not I should contend for the Catholics as I now do for the negroes. But I think that, after Slavery, Catholicism is the worst and most dangerous institution in America; and I deplore the growth of its churches. I know the power of an embodied class of men with unity of sentiment, unity of idea, and unity of aim, and when the aim, the idea, and the sentiment are what we see and know, and the men are governed by such rules, I think there is danger. Still, it is to be met, not by Bigotry and Persecution, but by Wisdom and Philanthropy. I don’t believe Catholicism thrives very well even in a Republic, but it loves the soil a despot sticks �230 ' A Letter of Theodore Parlier. his bayonet into. Since Louis Napoleon has been on the throne of France, the worst class of Catholic priests have come more and more into power ; that miserable order, the Capauchins, has been revived and spreads rapidly. More than 300 new Convents have been established since the ‘ Coup d’ Etat,’ and are filled with more than 30,000 devo­ tees already. But in liberally governed Switzerland, Cathol­ icism does not increase, but falls back little by little. No Jesuits are allowed to actin the land. In a few generations we shall overcome the ignorance, stupidity, and superstition of the Irish Catholics in America, at least in the North, but before that is done, we shall have a deal of trouble. Soon Boston will be a Catholic city if the custom continues of business men living in the country; and we know what use a few demagogues can make of the Catholic voters. It only requires that another capitalist offer the Bishop $1,500 or so if he will tell his subjects to vote against a special person or a special measure. All the Catholics may be expected to be on the side of Slavery, Fillibustering, and Intemperance. I mean, all in a body; this Romanism will lead them to support Slavery;—the Irishmen to encourage Fillibustering and Drunkenness. But good comes out of evil. I think the Irish Catholics with their descendants, could not so soon be emancipated in any country as in our own dear blessed land. So, we need not complain, but only fall to and do our duty,—clean, educate and emancipate the ‘gintieman from Corrk.’ “ How goes it with the ‘ Poor ?’ and with the ‘ Boston Provident Association,’ with which you are officially con­ nected ? All well, I hope. I am not quite sorry the ‘ Reform School’ at Westboro is burnt down. The immediate loss to the State is, to be sure, a great one, but the ultimate loss would have been far more, for it was a school for crime, and must graduate villains. I wonder men don’t see that they can never safely depart from the natural order which God has appointed. Boys are born in families ; they grow up in families, a few in each household, mixed with girls �The Index on Christianity Again. 231 and with their elders. How unnatural to put 500 or 600 boys into a great barn and keep them there till they are one and twenty years of age, and then expect them to turn out well and become natural men, after such unnatural treat­ ment ! At the beginning, Dr. Howe, really one of the most enlightened philanthropists I ever met in America or Europe, proposed a ‘ Central Bureau,’ with a house of tem­ porary deposit for boys, and that an agent should place them in families throughout the country. A quarter of the money thus spent, would have done a deal of good. I wonder if you have ever been up to the ‘ Industrial School for Girls,’ at Lancaster. To me this is one of the most interesting institutions in the good old State. If I were Governor of Massachusetts, I think I shouldn’t often dine with the 1 Lancers,’ or the 1 Tigers,’ or even the ‘Ancients and Honorables,’ but I should know exactly the condition of every jail, and ‘ House of Correction,’ in the State, and of all the institutions for preventing crime and ignorance. If Horace Mann had been Governor, I think he would have done so. Here in Europe my life is dull, and would be intolerable were it not introductory to renewed work on earth or another existence in Heaven. I am necessarily idle here, or busy only with trifles which seem only a stren­ uous idleness. Such is the state of my voice that I aril constrained to silence, and so fail to profit by the admirable opportunity of intercourse with French, German, and Rus­ sian people who now fill up the house. I do not complain of this, but think myself fortunate to be free from pain.” Article VIII.—'The Index on Christianity Again. In the Index of January 7th, Mr. Abbot prints a “ synop­ sis of Free Religion,” which commences with a criticism of “ Christianity as a System,” some of the points of which surprise us more than anything Mr. Abbot has previously said. What, for example, is he thinking about when he says, “ Regarded as to its universal element, Christianity is �232 The Index on Christianity Again. a beautiful but imperfect presentation of natural morality ?” His own opinion may separate morality from faith in God, and make the former only the universal element of religion, • but no Christianity that ever was, has separated these two universal elements, or thought of presenting religion, in its general aspect, as other than the two-fold passion of the soul of man, towards man and duty on the one hand, and towards God and heaven on the other. But this is not the worst of what we deem our friend’s misrepresentation of “ Christianity as a System.” Having, as we have seen, made Christianity to consist, as to its uni­ versal element, in a “ presentation of natural morality,” he then states that, “ Regarded as to its special element, Chris­ tianity is a great completed system of faith and life,” and that “ the chief features of this system are the doctrines of the Fall of Adam, the Total Depravity of the human race, the Everlasting Punishment of the wicked, and Salvation by Christ alone,” and that “ it is the worst enemy of liberty, science, and civilization, because it is organized Despair of Man.” He then goes on to define “Free Religion as a System,” and finds it to be “ organized Faith in Man.” Between the two there exists, he asserts, “ an absolute con­ flict of principles, aims, and methods.” He declares that “ the one ruled the world in the Dark Ages of the past,” and that “ the other will rule the world in the Light Ages of the future,” while “ their battle-ground is the Twilight Age of the present.” To us this is scandalously unfair. It is no more true that Christianity is despair of man than it is that free religion is faith in man. But granting Mr. Abbot his definition of free religion,—which to us, and to the majority at least of free religionists, leaves out the religion of Free Religion,— it is an amazing disregard of the simplest and plainest facts which permits the statement just quoted, of the sum and substance of Christianity. Christianity is not organized despair, but the contrary. One of the means generally adopted by Christian propagandists to rouse men to “ come �The Index on Christianity Again. 233 to Christ,” is the preaching of despair, but our friend knows perfectly well that this is a means only, employed by teachers of a religion whose chief word is hope, and that this means is not employed except to induce mankind to accept the “ hope” which Christianity teaches as her great lesson. Christianity has never been preached as simple despair of man, and Mr. Abbot owes it to his honorable devotion to truth to withdraw the conspicuous assertion that it consists in so dark and dreadful a thing. “ The worst enemy of liberty, science, and civilization !” It connot be said with a particle of justice. Of 79sei«7o-Christianity, the darker human side of historical Christianity, Mr. Abbot can speak as harshly as he chooses, without provoking our chal­ lenge, but of “ the great completed system of faith and life,” which, in his own words, Christianity is, he ought never, it seems to us, to speak as he now speaks in his “Synopsis of Free Religion.” We beg him to tell us why he omits from his view of Christianity as a “ great completed system of faith and life” everything which constitutes it, in the general opinion of mankind, except the four dogmas named by him as its “ chief features.” And in particular, why does he remove from their universally admitted place, as features of Chris­ tianity chief above all others, the two supreme Christian tenets that God is and that he is Our Father, and that man is the offspring of God and all men members one of another in human brotherhood? Even the false side of historical Christianity contains other chief features than the four doctrines named by Mr. Abbot, such, for example, as the doctrines of a special revelation of redemption made through the Bible, and of the Godhead of Jesus as the agent of this redemption, and of the administration of this re­ demption' by special divine influences, and these doctrines, however false they may be, cannot be summed up in despair of man, but intend rather great hope for man; and in all fair judgment they stand above the darker dogmas of Fall, Depravity, Punishment, and Limitation of redemption, and vol. i.—no. 3. 3 �234 The Index on Christianity Again. are more entitled than these to give distinctive character to Christianity, as Mr. Emerson recognizes when he sums up Christianity in “ faith in the infinitude of man.” The deplorable fact is that Mr. Abbot, in this instance, defines Christianity by the darker half of its darker side, not only leaving out of sight its great and glorious prin­ ciples of God’s Fatherhood and man’s brotherhood, its two supreme rules of love to God and love to man, which make its bright side, but also leaving out entirely .the more humane and hopeful of its false dogmas. There would be nothing at all of Free Religion if it were defined thus by the worst aspects of its worse side. Nothing that ever was on earth can bear judgment so grossly unjust. The con­ trasts drawn by Mr. Abbot are not legitimate. The past has not been given up to “ the worst enemy of liberty, science, and civilization,” nor will the future be ruled by “the best friend of progress of every kind.” There has been a vast deal of human freedom in religion before now, and there will be a vast deal of bondage to authority in the religion of the future. Not all men have been deceived in the past, and not all escape delusion now. We heartily approve vigorous, positive assertion of convictions, but we must regard some of our friend Abbot’s dogmatizing as not one whit more respectful towards human freedom than the least warranted assertions of the popular creeds, inasmuch as it is not based in evident truth, but in very serious neglect and disregard of true facts, and does not stop a moment to consider that its assumptions are generally denied, but lays down the law of individual opinion precisely as if it were the law of divine authority. We trust we speak with mod­ eration, and with due respect for our friend’s eminence as a religious teacher, but really we know of nothing in the movements of religion at the present time more to be regretted, than Mr. Abbot’s attempt to prove that Christi­ anity is all blank despair, and Free Religion all pure faith. Neither one nor the other is true. �Why does Mr. Abbot Object, Etc. 235 Article X.— Why Does Mr. Abbot Object to Mr. Sen’s Faith in God? We could hardly name two more genuine religious believ­ ers and teachers than Keshub Chunder Sen, the Indian reformer and prophet, and our friend Abbot, at Toledo, the editor of The Index. The latter has as deep, as pure, as earnest faith in God as can be anywhere found. Such sentences as the following are gems of spiritual truth: “ My whole religion centres in the fact of this perennial, this unutterable revelation of Eternal Being in the soul of man;”—“Life is lifted into heaven, in proportion as we repose in this embrace of the All-Encompassing Soul;”— “ It is the conception of Nature as the living self-manifes­ tation of God, that keeps trie fires of faith still burning in the inward temple of the soul;” “Pure Religion is itself the presence of the Infinite Spirit, making itself felt in the soul of man;”—“The great task of Free Religion is to prove the ability of each soul to draw its nutriment from its native soil, dispensing with mediation, and coming into primary relations with the All-Permeating Deity;’-—“ That which calls out all high and pure affection is the divine element, the God in man ;”—“ The lofty and tender senti­ ment, the divine sympathy in eternal things, which marks the completest unity of allied natures, is rooted in the con­ sciousness of God;”—“That consciousness of the One Divine which makes possible to us our loftiest intercourse with congenial minds, lies also at the root of the sentiment of the universal brotherhood of man ;”—“ The same repose in the universal life of God which enables two friends to enjoy the pure delight of spiritual fellowship, enables, nay, compels them, to recognize the fundamental unity of their race, and to cherish that inner consciousness of it which is the true love of man ;”—“ In the love of God we become friends to each other, and, in a large sense, friends of man­ kind as well; and in this broadening out of the private into the public, of the individual into the universal, friendship �236 Why does Mr. Abbot Object to achieves its highest perfection, and crowns, itself with wor­ ship of the Divine.” To every word of this Mr. Sen would say a hearty amen, and it would seem as if the two men, being so agreed, i could walk together in the closest brotherhood. The dis­ position of the pious and eloquent leader of the Brahmo Somaj, of India, was expressed quite recently in a letter to the Free Religious Association, printed in The Index of November 24. In that letter Mr. Sen said, “I am sure that in the fulness of time all the great nations in the East and in the West will unite and form a vast Theistic Brother­ hood, and I am sure that America will occupy a prominent place in that grand confederation. Let us then no longer keep aloof from each other, but co-work with unity of heart, that we may supply each other’s deficiencies, strengthen each other’s hands, and with mutual aid build up the house of God. Please take this subject into consideration, and let me know if you have any suggestions to make whereby a closer union may be brought about between the Brahmo Somaj and the Free Religious Association,—between India and America,—and a definite system of mutual intercourse and co-operation may be established between our brethren here and those in the New World. Such union is desirable, and daily we feel the need of it more and more. Let us sincerely pray and earnestly labor in order that it may be realized under God’s blessing in due time.” To this brotherly word of one who “ crowns friendship with worship of the Divine,” Mr. Abbot called attention in the following editorial, printed in the same number of The Index, under the head, “ A Vital Difference.” “ An interresting letter, addressed to Mr. Potter by Keshub Chunder Sen, of India, will be found in the ‘ Department of the Free Religious Association ? This native reformer, whose late visit to England attracted so much attention, is desirous of ‘mutual intercourse and co-operation ’ between the Association and the Brahmo Somaj. While most cordially reciprocating his brotherly �Mr. Sen's Faith in G-od? 237 sentiments, we feel constrained to point out an important difference in their bases of organization. The Brahmo Somaj, as its name implies, has a Theistic creed as its bond of union ; the F. R. A. has its bond of union in the simple principle of Freedom, in Fellowship. Theism, as a creed, is, in our judgment, little, better than Tritheism. . . . The friendliest and most brotherly relations should subsist between the F. R. A. and the Brahmo Somaj; but we must keep clearly before the public the all-important distinction between creeded and creedless organization, and forbear, out of sentiment or sentimentality, to swamp Free Religion in a ‘ mush of concessions.’ ” Imagine Mr. Sen receiving the Index, with his letter printed in the department officially occupied by the Free Religious Association, and finding that the same number contained an editorial, warning the public against equal recognition of him, as a swamping of Free Religion in a mush of concessions I And that simply because he and his companions have earnest faith in God! It is mere words when Mr. Abbot objects to a creed. No man living has more distinctly laid down, insisted on, and fought for a creed, than Mr. Abbot. He made a creed in fifty articles a year ago, and he has just made another in thirty-two articles, which he calls a “ Synopsis of Free Religion.” As long as he believes anything, which he can state in articles, he will have a creed. As long as * he devises systems of assertions, and lays them down nakedly and without qualification, he will have a creed of the most positive character. We do not object to our friend’s annual experiment of a downright creed, a set of positive articles, bold and bald assertions, putting forward * Creed.—“A definite summary of what is believed; a brief exposition of important points, as in religion, science, politics, etc.; especially a summary of Christian belief; a religious symbol.” “ Symbol.—(Theol.) An abstract or compendium of faith or doctrine; the creed, or a summary of the articles of religion.”—Webster. Where does Mr. Abbot get the word “creeded?” �238 Why does Mr. Abbot Object to his individual opinion as absolute truth. It is one very proper way of working on the human mind. But for a man, who has made two creeds within thirteen months, to object to Mr. Sen’s equal standing, because the former believes in God, will not answer. It happens that Mr. Abbot thinks religion possible with­ out faith in God, while Mr. Sen finds the deepest truth of religion in filial trust in God, and that the latter thinks quite well of Christianity while the former does not think well of it at all. But Mr. Abbot’s opinions here are just as much part of a creed as Mr. Sen’s. Indeed the former holds his notions on the subject far more rigidly, and asserts them far more dogmatically than the latter holds and asserts his views. We do not blame or bewail our friend’s dogma­ tism ; let him drive ahead with all his might; but it is absurd for him to accuse Mr. Sen of having a creed in regard to God. We could not name a position recently taken in the religious world which more emphatically merits what­ ever stigma should attach to the most positive of creeds, than our good friend’s position about God and Christianity as neither of them essential to religion. And this position not merely has the form and tone of a creed, or articles of a creed, but it has the tenor, to us, of a very bad creed. It is a sad enough thing to “ stand squarely outside of Christianity,” because it involves so general a refusal of good fellowship, but of thinking of religion with express exclusion of faith in God, and trying to organize the law and gospel, the rule and consolation of faith, with­ out including the sentiment of the “ Our Father,” is to us the most terrible of mistakes, not because we have any aversion to honest atheism, or any wish to put a brand upon candid infidelity (so called), but for the simple reason that, in general, faith in God Our Father is the central and fruit­ ful principle of blessed religion, and he who dissuades men, or deters them, or debars them, as Mr. Abbot is doing, from the exercise of unquestioning filial trust in the Divine Pater­ �Mr. Sen’s Faith in God ? 239 nity, is doing the average soul more harm than all other religious teaching can do him good. We have given our friend’s new creed, in the Index of January 7, a respectful study, and see how he arrives at “ E PLURIBUS UNUM ” as “ the great watchword of the ages/’ but to us, and we think to mankind generally, “E PluHus Unum” will not displace “ Our Father,fl nor any sense of what we are, in onrselves, and to one another, take the place of the Con­ sciousness of God, and the consolation derived from remem­ bering HIM in whom we live, Mdflmove, and have our being. To keep a lively sense of the being, and goodness, and perfect power of the alone supreme and blessed God, is not to swamp religion in a mush of concessions. Mr. Sen’s wish for a Theistic Brottflrhood of all the great nations, merited sympathy and respect from Mr. Abbot, and these only. It was no more legitimate to object to it than it would be to require the mass of childifln to limit their interest in home pleasuBs to such as orphan asylums can offer. And in the name of all that is sacred and consol­ ing to the heart of man, we beg MiflAbbot to abate the rigor with which he insists upomkccommodatwg religion to atheism and to materialism. We will deal respectfully and fraternally with these honest restrictions of human hope and faith, but we cannot see wl®any man who has faith in God and the blessed world of spirit should think it neces­ sary to hide that faith, and to base a creed upon suspense of natural happy trust. In general the atheists, materialists, and professed “infidels,” are exceedingly positive in their views, as well as frank and outspokenly Let them be so. But on the other hand, let those who have firm faith in a Living Soul of all things, and in Eternal blessed Life, stand as frankly and firmly for their trust and their thought. If Mr. Abbot does not care toflhus stand for his best thought and faith, let him at least cease to insist upon suspense of faith in our brotherly Bllowship, since the demand is wholly �240 The Old and the New Christianity. unreasonable and extremely hurtful. A “ Theistic Brother­ hood” does not imply the exclusion of anybody, and not to show what faith we have in God is to do great hurt to our fel­ lows, as well as to be unfaithful to our own vision. Article XI.— The Old and the New Christianity (Concluded). Translated from the French of N. Vacherot. * After the first ecumenical councils, dogma having received its constitution almost complete, it would seem that its history must be finished, and it only remained to pursue that of organization and church discipline. How­ ever, the history of dogma still continues, if not for estab­ lishing, at least for the teaching of doctrines. The great theologians whose discussions prepared the way for the council of Nicoea, had, with all their subtle distinctions, preserved, with their Platonic learning, the consciousness of the highest religious verities. It was rather the teaching of John which inspired them than that of Paul: but it was still the vivifying breath of Christian thought. When that thought fell upon the barbarism of the middle ages, it found no method of exposition or instruction other than the philosophy of Aristotle. We know what this became in the hands of his interpreters of the Sorbonne and of the universities of the middle ages. The name Schoolman tells the whole story of distinctions, divisions and ver­ bal discussions. If doctors, such as St. Anselm and St. Thomas, were able to maintain Christian thought in its high import, it was because both had a spirit sufficiently high and sufficiently deep to comprehend whatever in the genius of Plato and Aristotle is most like that thought. Yet we may question if the extremely Aristotelian philosophy of St. Thomas would have been to the liking of Paul, of John, and of the fathers of the church. We will not speak of * In the last line of Art. VI. (p. 181), of last number, strike out the word “not,” and read “ could easily accommodate itself.” �The Old and the New Christianity. 241 Christ himself, who never let slip an occasion to show his antipathy to every kind of scholasticism. If he would not have driven from his church the respectable doctors of the Sorbonne, as he did the traffickers of the temple, we may believe that the author of the Sermon on the Mount would not have set foot in schools of this sort, where the spirit of his teaching was scarcely better kept than the letter. There is surely a great difference between the teaching of the gospels and epistles and scholastic theology ; but per­ haps a still greater between the primitive church and the Catholic church governed by the court of Rome. While reading the historians of Christianity, and particularly M. Renan, we naturally picture to ourselves those happy and charming little Christian societies, with such free manners, such active faith, such simple practice, in comparisonOth the strong and minute discipline, the mute and passive obe­ dience, which characterize the government of our great Catholic societies of the middle ages. The truth is that the rising Christianity had no more an organized church than it had a fixed set of doctrines. It is subject to the same law as all things which are of this world, or exist in it: it was obliged to be formed before developing, and to be developed before organizing. The blessed anarchy of the first Chris­ tian societies may be envied by liberal believers as the ideal of religious societies in the largest acceptation of the word; but at that time this religious condition was rather the effect of a provisional historic necessity, than of a welldetermined theory upon the free action of the religious conscience. As soon as Christian society had attained some little degree of development and multiplied the number of its churches, it experienced the need of a more exact disci­ pline and of some kind of central government. When Christianity became under Constantine the religion of the empire, the bishops were already exercising an actual authority over the consciences of the faithful. It is to be observed that the councils, save that at Jerusalem, which was little more than a name, began to assemble from this �242 The Old and the New Christianity. time, under the more or less imperious patronage of the Ceesars of Byzantium—a circumstance very perilous to thb independence of the church. Religious monarchy was a necessity of the times. If it had not had as a head a pope at Rome, it would have had one in the emperors at Con­ stantinople. We see this clearly later in the examples of the Eastern and of the Russian church, the one being sub­ ject to the Caesars of the Lower Empire, the other to the czars of Moscow and St. Petersburg. All the emperors of Constantinople, from Constantine down, set about dogma­ tising. He allows himself to condemn Arius, although later he embraced his doctrines ; and in what terms does he condemn him? “ Constantine, the conqueror, the great, the august, to the bishops and people of Judea: Arius must be branded with infamy.” There is nothing more curious than his letter to the two great opponents in the Council of Nicoea. “ I know what your dispute is. You, patriarch, question your priests in regard to what each thinks about some test of the law or other trifling question. You, priest, proclaim what you never ought to have thoughtjor rather what you should have been silent upon. The inquiry and response are equally useless: All that is well enough to pass the time or exercise the ingenuity, but should never reach the ears of the common people. Pardon each other then the impru­ dence of the question and the unsuitableness of the reply.” Does not this suggest a Romish priest shutting the mouth of two complaining parties ? His son, Constantins, speaks even more freely : “ What part of the universe are you,” writes he to Liberius,. bishop of Rome, “ you who alone take the part of an unprincipled wretch (Atha­ nasius), and break the peace of the world and of the empire ?” The establishment of the discipline and organization of the church were the work of the councils presided over by the popes, while the government of Christendom was the peculiar function of papacy. The adversaries of that insti­ �The Old and the New Christianity. 243 tution have seen in it only the advent of a monarchial gov­ ernment succeeding a sort of democratic and republican organization of the primitive church. They have not suffi­ ciently comprehended that it was also a necessary and urgent guarantee of the independence of the Christian church, which, to triumph more easily and quickly over paganism, had placed itself under the hand of imperial despotism. If religious liberty of conscience was to suffer later from the autocracy of the court of Rome, inspired more by traditional policy and diplomacy than by the thoughts and feelings of the true religion of Christ, the lib­ erty of the church was then and always that of an establish­ ment which, in raising the bishop of Rome above all the others and giving to him for a see the ancient capital of the known world, freed the management of spiritual affairs from the yoke of political powers, whatever they might be, mon­ archical, aristocratic or democratic. However, the trans­ formation of the Christian church was complete. If any one wishes to judge what ground has been gone over from primitive Christianity down to present Catholicism, let him compare the council of Jerusalem with the council of 1869, where, they say, is at length to be proclaimed the dogma of the personal infallibility of the sovereign pontiff in the per­ son of Pius IX, and consequently the principle of absolute monarchy applied to the government of a spiritual society is to be fully realized: an admirable completion to the edi­ fice, of which the founder could hardly have dreamed, nor indeed his first apostles ! Such, in substance, is the history of Christianity from its advent down to the middle ages. It is very difficult to see only the word, the hand and the spirit of God in the devel­ opment of an institution where error, darkness, superstition, and persecution have too large a part to prevent traces of human infirmity being manifest even in dogma. But, in whatever manner one explains this history, whether he only considers human causes according to the philosophic method, or brings in supernatural causes according to the �244 The, Old and the New Christianity. theological method, it is a constant fact that Christianity has obeyed, in its development on the theatre of time and space, the law of all human institutions, that it has passed, in doctrine and government, through all the phases of things which spring up, grow, become organized and defi­ nitely established. After having followed it in the move­ ment of expansion which takes it continually farther from its origin, it remains for us to follow it in the movement of return, which is constantly bringing it back under the influence of modern times. HI. We are about the middle of the fifteenth century, after the taking of Constantinople. The Roman church no longer finds in its peculiar world either heresy or resistance. Doc­ trine has been for a long time fixed. The teaching of doctrine is regulated in its least details in accordance with the scholastic method. Discipline itself is organized and regulated in its most minute prescriptions. The Catholic communion resembles an immense army .which moves or stops, fights or rests, on the orders of its commanders. Woe to him who speaks, thinks or prays other than as the formulary directs. Silence even is suspected among those of whom the church expects a complete confession or a pro­ fession of faith. Nothing is more imposing than this silent, absolute, infallible, government of consciences, where the word of command as soon as uttered by the mouth of one man is reechoed in the most remote parts of the Christian world, without a single voice being able to protest. And as if that discipline were not sufficient, the court of Rome has its indefatigable police of the inquisition, to seek out and denounce the crimes of heresy and sorcery to pitiless judges, who condemned to the stake thousands of victims. Suddenly the star of the renaissance rises upon this world, and driving away the last traces of the darkness of the mid­ dle ages, floods with light the dawn of modern societies. Before the arts and sciences of antiquity, Gothic art and �The Old and the New Christianity. 245 scholastic science fall into disrepute. And it 19 not the learned and lettered world alone which receives, admires, yea, gazes with unbounded delight upon these marvelous works of classic accuracy, of material grace, of strong thought, of exquisite taste, of incomparable language, whose secret the human mind seemed to have lost; it is also the religious world, it is especially the court of Rome and its foremost Italian dignitaries. We cannot positively say that the renaissance caused the reform. Protestantism, we must not forgetlwas born of a simple administrative question, the granting of indulgences : confining itself to a change of discipline, it kept the doc­ trines almost without alteration. The great reform which it accomplished was, to free the religious conscience from the tutelage which weighed so heavily upon it, and which left it no initiative, either of thought or of sentiment, before the word of God interpreted and formally uttered by the authority of the church. Now every thing was there, at least in principle. What matter that the new religion did not touch the credo, if all doctrine was henceforth wholly subject to a free interpretation of the Scriptures by the reason and conscience of believers ? Doubtless, as there is no church without authority, the reformed church had, also on its part, a council and creed in the Augsburg con­ fession; but the principle of individual initiative had been so affirmed before the contrary principle of official author­ ity, that no effort of Protestant orthodoxy, if this expression may be applied to the reformation, could arrest its course, even in the lifetime of the great reformers. The door was open to liberty in matters of faith. The future was to show that no necessity of discipline could close it: but for the moment, if we only consider its doctrinal bearing, the reform was confined to a very slight simplification of dogma. The worship of saints, worship of the Virgin, adoration of relics, in fine, the most serious of all, the eucharist, were the principal objects of reform in what con­ cerned dogma, purely so called. Luther was not only a fer­ �246 I The Old and the New Christianity. vent Christian, he was a consummate theologian, who would not hear to any one’s touching the holy ark of doc­ trine. He was more convinced than Leo X. and the gay wits of his court of the justice of eternal punishment, of the efficacy of grace, of the predestination of the elect and the damned, of the existence and puissance of the devil, of the wily power of sorcerers, of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the host. The boldest thing the reform did in the way of doctrine, was the substitution of consubstantiation for transubstantiation in the sacrament of the eucharist, attempting thus to reconcile the preservation of the mate­ rial substance with the presence of the divine person. The court of Rome did not take fire, as Calvin did, on the ques­ tion of heresies, and if it still allowed heretics, like Bruno and Vanini, to be burned by the tribunals of the inexora­ ble inquisition, we cannot think it was done with as much zeal as Calvin manifested in the trial of Michse’. Servetus. In religious matters, it no longer showed much wrath or en­ thusiasm; its passion was elsewhere. The leading thought of the reform was quite other than that ofencroaching upon dogma. The spirit which gave rise to it was too Christian to touch any thing but the organization of the church. The religious faith of the people whom the voice of Luther had won over, demanded nothing more. The natural sciences were not yet born, and philosophy was still given over to scholastic disputes, or engaged in the subtle commentaries of the: learned upon the books of antiquity. Christian dogma, such as the Old and New Testament had made it,—Alexandrian theology and scholastic theology,—had not yet been positively contra­ dicted, either by the revelations of the natural and the his­ toric sciences, or by the interior revelations of the modern conscience. Beside, in emancipating the conscience, the reformation reanimated and strengthened Christian thought, stifled by scholasticism or enervated by the renaissance. The faith of the new believers went back to the doctrines of Paul, which the wholly practical sense of the Roman church �The Old and the New Christianity. 247 had modified, and even to the Old Testament theology. Luther and Calvin took up again with a vigor and a harsh­ ness which the Catholic church seemed to have forgotten, the doctrines of necessity, of omnipotent grace, of the stern justice of a powerful God, mild toward the just, terrible to his enemies. But when light had begun to be thrown upon philosophy by the progress of the material sciences, upon conscience by the progress of moral science, the spirit of reform in the Christian world was obliged to attack dogma itself, and it cut off from it as useless every thing which hindered it from accommodating itself to modern science and con­ science. How could they indeed preserve that barbarous theology of the Old Testament, which confounds in its'' cruel justice, the Bible says in its vengeance, children with fathers, the innocent with the guilty ? How keep that psy­ chology and those moral principles of Paul which make of sin a question of species and not of individuals, and which take away from man all the merit of his works by attribut­ ing it to God ? How take literally the miracles and other facts of Biblical history before the scientific revelation of the immutable laws of nature? And was it not becoming very difficult to preserve that mysterious theology of the Nicsean creed when already all high metaphysical specula­ tion was falling into discredit ? Was it possible to this heavy ship of scholastic Christianity to sail in the new waters of a sea as strong as the modern world, if a way was not found of lightening its weight and simplifying its means of locomotion ? The new Christianity was then obliged to abandon all the cosmogony and a considerable part of the theology of the old Bible, the fundamental dog­ mas of Paul s teaching, and, at last, the great mysteries of the divine nature, which it found, if not in opposition, at least useless to a healthy religious life. Let us render jus­ tice to the clear and resolute spirit of the eighteenth cen­ tury. It attempted little subtilizing or equivocating with texts : it loyally made the sacrifice of every part of Chris- �248 The Old and the New Christianity. tian dogma which was found in contradiction with experi­ ence, history, reason, conscience, preserving scarcely any­ thing of it except that which constitutes its truth and worth. When Kant, Lessing, and later, Schleiermacher, and all that great school of German theology speak of Christianity, it is almost always in that sense. Their Christianity is that which sustains, fortifies, purifies and consoles the soul, much rather than that which engages the intellect in the mysterious depths of its metaphysics, or fetters the will in the bonds of its discipline. In that, this school has largely opened the way to the Christianity which later was to push forward the reform movement to the entire suppression of dogma, by preserving only morality, and morality, too, reduced to the ideal of the life and the teaching of Christ. Such seems also to have been the spirit, if not the explicit teaching of the generous part of the French clergy who embraced the principles and hopes of the revolution. It was by attaching themselves to the moral and purely evangelical side of doctrine, that priests like Faucher and Gregory wished to reconcile Christianity with the principle^ of reason, of liberty, of justice, of fra­ ternity, which that revolution had inscribed upon its pro­ gramme. In this sense, it is just to say that the eighteenth century remained Christian while ceasing to be Catholic, and that over that part of society which was won by philoso­ phy, religion still preserved a certain sway. This work of simplification which was already bringing back dogma to its source, was arrested, at the opening of the nineteenth century, by a wholly opposite movement, whose aim, on the contrary, was the complete reinstatement of Christian thought in modern science and philosophy. The eclecticism of that epoch exerted itself everywhere, in England, and in France, as well as in Germany, to show, by an ingenious method of interpretations and explanations, that all science and all philosophy were at least in germ in Christianity; all was, to rightly interpret the texts. So Genesis was harmonized with the geology of certain Eng- �The Old and the New Christianity. 249 lish savang, the Kicene creed had a place in the metaphysics of Schelling and Hegel, and the hard doctrines of Saint Paul themselves, found their explanation and fortification in the mystic philosophy of certain contemporary schools. The learned world was quite astonished to learn that there was a Christian astronomy, geology and history, just as there was a theology and a morality with this name. Indeed all the sciences took a peculiar aspect from the new point of view in which the eclectics of those times placed themselves. This method had at first great success, thanks to the genius of the men and the disposition of the times; but this suc­ cess could be only ephemeral, because such a manner of procedure was contrary to the true spirit of the nineteenth century, a critical spirit, if any ever were so. Besides, the method was not new: it has a well known name in the philosophic and religious history of the human mind. Neoplatism had attempted it for paganism with an ardor, a per­ severance, a brilliancy, a positive failure, which we need not recall. For a century like ours, so severe in its methods, so well informed in natural and historical facts, this kind of speculation was not science, it was something which savored now of mystic dreaming, now of political compromise, or again of Alexandrian exegesis. This eclecticism was a pure accident, in spite of all the appearances of reality ! The law which governs the mod­ ern history of Christianity, soon resumed its sway I the progress of purification and simplification grew more and more pronounced; criticism breathed upon these scaffoldings so laboriously and sometimes so artistically constructed. Sober science would no longer lendlitself to that which it must regard as a play of wits, if not the illusion of a liberal faith desiring to be of its century at the same time as of its church. The spirit of reform which fashions the ChrisWn societies of to-day no longer loses its time and its genius in reconciling contradictions or confounding differences. With a firm and bold hand, the doctors which itlnspires separate, in Christianity, morality from dogma; that is, in their VOL. I.—NO. 3. 4 �250 ' The Old and the New Christianity. understanding, the true from the actual, the essential from the accidental, the eternal and immutable from the tempo­ rary and variable. To the history of the past, they refer all the details of dogma properly so called, from Paulinian and Alexandrian theology to scholastic theology, keeping only what in their eyes constitutes the basis, the essence, the very spirit of Christianity, the mild and lofty teaching of Jesus. And yet, as it is difficult not to find in that teach­ ing, so pure and perfect, some indications which recall the narrow genius of the people to whom the Christ belongs, the doctors of liberal Christianity refer their religion to the ideal rather than to the evangelical reality, and, without denying the latter, preserve of the legend only the figure of a Christ truly divine, in that he has no longer anything in common with the sufferings of humanity. Suppose that Christ really was the man of whom the gospels tell us, the school, or, if you please, the church of which we speak, does not make of this an essential point of its religion. The ideal suffices for it, and, not finding a richer and higher one in the modern conscience, it proposes it to the faith of the present, to the faith of the future, as the ideal itself of the human conscience. Jfo one has better defined this Christianity than Mr. F. Pecaut, one of its most noble and most serious doctors. “ It is not,” he says, “ that we attach to this name of Chris­ tians a superstitious value or a sort of magic virtue ; but, whether we will it or not, our moral and religious ideal is in its essential features the same as the ideal of Jesus, and we are his posterity. . . . The ineffaceable glory of the gospel, its immortal attraction, is always its being the good news, the news of grace, of the spirit of life which assures us of the love of God, and frees us from the servitude of remorse and evil. That is a revelation appealed to by the human soul, and consequently written on its inmost tablets: the seers attempt to read it in themselves, and from age to age they are learning among various peoples to decipher the name of the Father, until Jesus, by pronouncing it loudly, �The Old and the New Christianity. 251 makes the old earth, weary of long efforts, leap with exceed, ing j°y« Hence, as from a generous spring, escape in rivu­ lets of living water the best sentiments which are henceforth to render fruitful Christian civilization, humility, confi­ dence, unwavering hope, innate dignity, devotion towards even the wicked. Does any one to-day conceive of a relig­ ious idea superior to that ? Who would wish to repudiate it? who would dare to deprive his brothers of it, and to deprive himself of it ? It is the very depth of ourselves so humane, so natural, but so deep and so uncomfortable for the profane eye to read, that men in their exuberant delight have believed it supernatural and superhuman.” This is why the liberal Christian takes his place in the school of Jesus: not of Jesus the Messiah, the eternal Word, the second person of the Trinity, but of Jesus, the Son of man, the gentle and humble-hearted master who gives repose to the soul, the master whom love of the Father and tenderness for the least of his brothers raised to such a moral height that he felt himself the beloved son of whom the heavenly Father had no secrets in pure, good and holy things. Such is the true, the eternal Jesus, he who founded religion upon conscience and opened to humanity the gates of the celestial city. Is it the spirit of God which speaks by that mouth, or the spirit of Satan, as the Roman Church has it? If Christian sentiment is not there, where then is it ? If this is not the language of the true children of God, where shall we find it ? As to us, whom people accuse, it is true, of having a somewhat large measure in this sort of things, we believe that there are many ways of being Christian. One may be so according to the spirit or according to the letter. He may be so with Jesus, with Paul, with John, with the Alexandrian theo­ logians, with the doctors in the Sorbonne, with all tradition, as the Catholic Ghurch directs. Does it not seem that to be Christian with Christ alone, receiving inspiration only from his spirit and his example, is to be it in the best, the most Christian manner? If any one says that it is only chosen �252 The Old and the New Christianity. souls essentially religious for whom such an inspiration can suffice for living in Christianity, and that, as 1o the rest, all the formality of dogma and traditional discipline is neces­ sary, we do not deny it. Upon this ground, many ways of looking at the matter may be reconciled. What appears to us harsh and almost odious, is the intolerance of the friends of the letter towards the friends of the spirit, so that it is pos­ sible to say that in drawing near the hearth of every relig­ ious faith, the soul of Christ, in order to receive more and more warmth, life and purification, we get farther away from the religion of Christ. Like doctrine, like church: absolute liberty under the law, or rather under the spirit of Christ. Where there is no longer dogma, to speak strictly, there can no longer be discipline and government. Every believer is his own priest, as his true Bible is his own conscience enlightened by the light of the gospel ideal. In fact, it is not a church, but a society of the believers who instruct, guide and help each other; it is indeed the communion of brothers of the free spirit in the most modern acceptation of the phrase. From whatever source the spirit breathes, it is always wel­ come; they receive it and become penetrated with it with­ out demanding of those inspired any other title to the confi­ dence of all than the excellence of their nature or the supe­ riority of their wisdom. As to the Scriptures, for this new church, every grand or fine book is a bible; it is sufficient if it answers to what is most pure and holy in the conscience of each one. It is indeed always the soul of Christ which makes the religious life of the new Christians; but between it and them there is no intermediate agent, no traditional teaching, no authority which imposes its decisions. It is not enough to say, no more pope; no more councils, they say, no more synods, no more creeds, even if agreed upon by all. It is the reign of that divine anarchy of which the primitive church had been only a very feeble image, and wThich is the ideal itse f of every truly spiritual communion. �The Old and the New Christianity. 253 IV. We see what Christianity becomes by simplification after simplification, from the reformation down to our time, just as we saw what it become by complication after complica­ tion, from its advent to the reformation. This double spec­ tacle gives rise to quite difibrent reflexions, according as one contemplates it as an orthodox Christian, a liberal Chris­ tian, or a historian. Where the orthodox Christian finds only subject for admiration in the ancient period of the his­ tory of that religion, and for regret in the second period, where the liberal Christian, on the contrary, has only regrets for the one and hopes for the other, the philosophical histo­ rian undertakes to comprehend and explain whatever is necessary in the double movement, in a sense contrary to religious thought. With the orthodox Christian, he accepts the entire dogma, no longer as one single and same revela­ tion of which all the parts are equally in conformity to the ideal itself of Christianity, but as a succession of doctrines corresponding each to a historical fatality of its existence. Leaving to the liberal believer the ideal point of view, and himself, in his quality of historian, holding to the point of view of actual fact, he finds that Christianity, in respect to the condition of the society it was to conquer, could do it only by accommodating itself to the instincts, needs, habits and necessities of human nature, at any particular moment of its history. Thus he comprehends how, to become a relig­ ion in the positive sense of the word, it was necessary that Christianity pass from the morality of Jesus to the theology of Paul; how, to become the religion of the most metaphys­ ical and most mystical part of ancient society, it was neces­ sary for it to pass from the teaching of Paul to the high the­ ology of the gospel of John and of the Nicene Creed. So, at length, he comprehends that, to become the religion of the middle ages, it has been obliged to descend from these speculative heights to the practical necessities of a disci­ pline as minute as rigorous. Like all the institutions whose development history shows, Christianity did not have the �254 The Old and the New Christianity. choice of means in extending, establishing and preserving itself. Whatever were its origin and its peculiar genius, it had no more freedom of conduct than any other human institution. It could not escape the law which regulates the development of everything in time and space; the ideal is realized only on conditions which do not always permit it to maintain the purity of its principle or of its origin. Thus the philosophic historian finds himself in harmony with the orthodox Christian upon the legitimacy of the dogmas and institutions with which primitive Christianity enriched itself or complicated itself, as one may choose to call it. But he is in harmony with the liberal Christian in quite a different way. Here it is no more historical necessity that he has in view, it is the light itself of the idea which makes him know where he is in the quite opposite religious move­ ment which has been in progress since the end of the middle ages down to our time. The necessity, if this word may be employed, of the progress which is elevating the religion of Christ, fallen in the darkness and barbarity of the middle ages, is no longer an exterior and material law of reality ; it is an interior and wholly spiritual law of the idea, which, finding a nature better and better prepared, whether in individuals or in societies of modern times, develops itself more and more freely, realizes itself more and more completely, in proportion as-it feels itself better sustained by the state of civilization which corresponds to its expansion. Consequently, without sharing the regrets of the liberal Christian in all that concerns the past, the philosophic historian comprehends and judges as a continual progress, in the literal sense of the word, the work of puri­ fication and simplification which is going on in Christian souls and churches since the renaissance, which restores liberty to religious faith by the reformation of Luther, and which is freeing the teaching of Christ from either the subtilties of the Alexandrian creed, or the severity of Paulinian dogma, to show it to the modern world in all the purity of its light and in all the power of its worth. If he cannot be �The Old and the New Christianity. 255 hostile or even indifferent to the history of dogmas and institutions which have served in the establishment of Christianity, how much more will he be in sympathy with the history of the struggles maintained aud efforts attempted in order to free it from the fett'ers that weigh upon it to-day, and to bring it back to this high ideal of every truly Chris­ tian conscience, which, in certain quarters, is confounded with the ideal itself of the modern conscience ! What will be the future of liberal Christianity in the pres­ ent societies ? If the question were only concerning some particular reform, attempted by certain men, at some given time, in view of creating a certain church, all foresight would be rash. What have become of all the reforms so ardently preached by the reverend Catholics of our country who wished to shake off the yoke of Roman discipline or of scholastic theology ? We know the fruitless efforts attempted with this intent by Lamennais, Buchez, BordasDumoulin, and Huet. What will become of the movement of which the apostles of liberal Protestantism have consti­ tuted themselves the promoters ? It seems as if everything concurs for the success of such an enterprise, the devotion of the men, the favor of circumstances, the essentially popu­ lar simplicity of the teaching. Is not this the religion of those simple in heart and spirit, as Jesus taught it to the people of Galilee ? In it, appeal is not made to theology, to metaphysics, to erudition, or to criticism ; it is made only to conscience, which alone must respond. In perceiving and loving, all the new Christianity lies; feeling the inner truths, the heart truths, that is, the beautiful, the just and the good, and loving them in the person of Christ. We are not of those whom the passion for pure philos­ ophy would render indifferent to such a progress of the religious life. It is a beautiful idea to make the name of Christ-the symbol of human conscience, and to surround the popular teaching of morality with the aureole of such a tradition. We shall not make so soon a philosophic human­ ity. If we could produce such a religious humanity, does �TC- 256 The Old and the New Christianity. it not seem as if philosophy might patiently await the day of its complete triumph, if it is ever to come? What a dream is that of the liberal Christians ! Christianity appears to them like the tree which was to cover the world and can yet do so. This tree, planted at Golgotha for the punish­ ment of Jesus, watered with his blood, enveloped with the divine benediction as with a vivifying atmosphere, left to natural growth and grace from above, would have first touched the heavens, and soon embraced the .world in the universal expansion of its branches. The strong and learned culture of a Paul, a John, of the Alexandrian fathers and the scholastic doctors, makes of it the sturdy tree which history gives us for contemplation, with roots taking deep hold of the soil, a short and massive trunk, boughs clasped and interlacing, a rough bark, an-d foliage so thick as to intercept the rays of light. And as, with such a constitu­ tion, the sap could not rise, it was obliged to betake itself to the ends'of the branches, instead of concentrating itself at the heart of the tree, to force it to its highest development. And then, after the brilliant Alexandrian vegetation, after the solid scholastic organization, either from lack of cir­ culation or from a wrong direction of the sap, the tree grows weak and bends under the weight of the branches which pull it earthward; it covers the world of the middle ages with a thick shadow under which everything grows benumbed or sleeps. What did the reformation have to do towards righting the tree and making it resume its growth towards heaven ? To recall the sap to the trunk by lop­ ping the dead branches and those too low. It is this work begun by the first reformers, which liberal Christianity con­ tinues, by disengaging the tree more and more from every­ thing which prevents it from shooting heavenward. Thus will it become the tree of life under which the religious faith of humanity will find again the air, light and fragrance which strengthen without intoxicating, which calm without stupifying. Will the dream become a reality? Only God and his �The Old and the New Christianity. 257 prophets know; but there is one thing which three centu­ ries of progress teach us with certainty; it is that the relig­ ious world is on the way to the ideal dreamed of by its freest children. Because some see it still in large majority attached to dogma and its most minute details, they con­ clude that it has not changed and will'not change, that the orthodoxy of Rome, of Augsburg or of Geneva, holds it con­ strained by its narrow formulas. It is an error. To any one who looks into the matter closelySt is manifest that the spirit is gaining light more and more in the Christian con­ sciences of our times through the letter which so long pressed it down. If any one wishes to judge of the im­ portance of the religious movement which is going on in the midst of modern societies, he must not form his opinion from the bold enterprises which suddeily burst forth and come to nothing; he must follow the slow and sure evolu­ tion taking place in the souls in appearance the most in bondage to the letter. Everything has kept its position, everything appears equally firm in Christian dogma as authority imposes it on its believers; but there is only one place, even in the Catholiq world, where one does not see that it has its dead and its living partsk that these latter alone constitute its worth and can assure its future. Alas for him, especially in these times, who forgets that the let­ ter kills and the spirit gives life! It seems that the true genius of the new times equally escapes the conservatives who cling to the past and the men who would revolution­ ize the future, to see the illusion of the former and the dis­ couragements in store for the latter. Our age has, at the same time, a liking for tradition and for progress. It remains faithful to the one by'keeping the letter; it serves the other by being inspired with the spirit. It is plain that it is more and more out of conceit with and mistrusts theat­ rical strokes and the sudden changes of scene called revolu­ tions in the history of human societies. Evolution is what it would appear is to be the preferred form of modern pro­ gress. We do not know what the future reserves for the �258 The Old and the New Christianity. religious world. We see indeed liberal Christianity redouble its efforts and extend its conquests ; we see it in America, with Channing, Parker and their disciples, draw crowds and found new churches; we see it in Europe radi­ ate in all the great centres of religious life, at Paris, at Strasburg, at Geneva, the city of Calvin, at London, at Berlin, at Florence. We should not be surprised, neverthe­ less, if this movement did not descend from the high and free society of the sons of the spirit into the depths of the religious world, and if the immense majority of Catholic or Protestant Christians kept the formulas of orthodoxy, while gaining light from science and becoming penetrated by the sentiments of modern conscience. It would be rash in us to pry into the Catholic and Christian consciences of our times, and pretend to see into them more clearly than the believers themselves; but it seems to us that their faith is no longer all of one kind as in the past. The faith of our fathers in the middle ages, and even in the first centuries of modern times, embraced all its articles of dogma in one single affirmation, invincible and absolute; nothing in it then either wounded the con­ science or revolted against reason. To-day there is taking place, asfit were without its knowledge, a distinction, if not a separation, in the depth of the religious conscience. Everything is accepted which the authority of the church imposes; but people make really two parts of the subject­ matter of tradition, one comprehending everything which no longer answers to the reason, science, or conscience of ourBime; the other, one whose eternal and universal truth will never be behind the progress of modern civilization. Surely no one can call himself Catholic if he does not sin­ cerely profess a belief in eternal punishment, in the resur­ rection of the body, in original sin, in the mystery of a God three in one, and even in many other dogmas of less importance; but how many believers attach to these things true faith, the faith of the feeling? They believe in them because it is the law of the church; but the heart of the �The Old aud the New Christianity. 259 Christian is elsewhere, it is in those ideas of purity, of justice, of fraternity, of love, which the evangelical teaching breathes, and which the believer finds in the newest inspi­ rations of the modern conscience. This is, if not the only faith., at least the living one of the religious souls of our time; the other is only a traditional faith which people affirm, and will perhaps always affirm, but which they do not feel alive in their hearts. Such are those revolutions, which are no more understood at Rome to-diy than they were in the time of Luther, which indeed cannot be understood there, because Rome is the seat of Romanism, rather than of Christianity. The saying is from the duke of Orleans, and has a yet wider applica­ tion than he who let it escape in a moment of discourage­ ment intended. “ Ta regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.” The verse of the poet is still true. Christian Rome has always left theology to the doctors of the universities and of the religious orders, keeping for herself the science of canonical law and the art of governing. Unfortunately for her, neither that deep science nor that consummate art are suffi­ cient to direct the Christian world in present circumstances. It is with the religious democracy as with political democ­ racy; in order to live they both want more and more freedom and light, less and less discipline and government. At the very moment when civilized society aspires to govern itself, the Romish church reaches the most absolute formula of personal government. One need not be a pro­ phet to predict that such a regime will no more be the law of the religious than of the political societies of the future. The spiri-t of liberal Christianity will prevail over the wholly political genius of Roman Catholicism, not by a schism, which is not created in a time of so little zeal for questions of dogma, but by a slow and continued trans­ formation of the religious conscience, tending more and more to conformity with the moral conscience of modern society. When Protestants like M. de Pressense, when �I i ■I J I 260 I The Old and the New Christianity. Catholics like MM. Dupanloup and Gratry, come to take for their own church the name even of liberal Chris­ tianity, which -is the symbol of the boldest reforms of the day, we feel that the court of Rome cannot stop the course of religious thought. In freedom and by freedom was the great battle of Christianity fought and won in its heroic age, even in spite of oppression and persecution from with­ out. I know no other means of reconquering the world to-day.” (De Pressense, Hist, des Trois Siecles de l’Eg. Ch.) Rome is not of this opinion. There are indeed many degrees in liberal Christianity; the liberty of the Catholics cannot have such a career as that of Protestants; but Rome, which understands discipline, comprehends them all in that universal malady called the spirit of the age, not perceiving that the true danger which threatens its church to-day, is the lethargic sleep of a passive and servile faith. It is said that it is not the freethinkers that cause it the most discom­ fort at this time; we readily believe it, and so much the more as it has never had a taste either for the mystic the­ ology or for the scholastic science of these barbarians of the AVest, for the Germans or the Gauls of any times, which seem to it to continually wish to go up to the assault of the Capitol. When Italian finesse does not smile at it, it is uneasy about it, knowing by a long experience how much the erudition of the former and the eloqence of the latter interfere with or trouble her in the manceuvers of her skill­ ful diplomacy. They are as children to that great mistress in the art of governing, but terrible children whose too violent love for the church of Christ has more than once agitated and shaken the church of Rome. Such is its mistrust ot discussion, that, from the advent of modern times, it has not felt the need of rallying around it the highest lights and the best forces it found in its own bosom, and that, for its great combat against the modern spirit, it has counted on the Inquisition, on the Jesuits, on the favor of princes, on the adroitness and patience of its diplomacy, on everything, in short, except the councils. Trusting only to her own �The Story of a Damned Soul. 261 wisdom, for more than three centuries Rome has governed and administered her empire without their co-operation, and now that she has just assembled one, it is to have a dogma proclaimed which henceforth strikes the institution with impotence. Then, hearing no longer those disagree­ able contradictions which are to have their last echo in the present assembly, she will be able to live or to sleep in peace, like the bird which hides its head under its wing at the approach of the enemy. The fact is, Rome does not like noisy outbursts, even from the writers and orators which defend its cause. What it likes, is neither the great heart of a Lamennais, nor the generous soul of a Lacordaire, nor the noble and liberal spirit of a Montalembert, nor the broad and high preaching of a Father Hyacinthe, nor the fiery polemics of a Gratry, nor the calm dialectics of a Maret, nor the beautiful and strong eloquence of a Dupanloup, nor, above all, the somewhat worldly wisdom of a Darboy, nor even the acrimonious temper and satirical spirit of a Veuillot; it is mute obedience among all its subjects, without any distinction of character or talent. But, if the great satisfaction of being mistress of her own house costs her the dominion of the Catholic world, Rome will have met the fate of all powers which do not comprehend that henceforth in liberty alone is the security of all authority. E. Vacherot. Article XI.—The Story of'a Damned Soul. The Examiner and Chronicle, the leading Baptist journal of the country, calls us to account for the interpretation put by us upon a passage of Bickersteth’s “Yesterday, To-day, and Forever,” which we took to refer to Theodore Parker. Our critic is quite right. The “ Theodore ” of Mr. Bickersteth’s epic is a Roman youth, the son of a Christian mother, who, for the love of a pagan girl, goes over to his father’s paganism, and is soon after killed in battle, and as particularly and painfully damned, as if the �262 The Story of a Damned Soul. existence of God Almighty depended on it. We confess to having misinterpreted Mr. Bickersteth, and now propose to make amends by giving him, and our critic above named, the benefit, first, of our explanation and apology, and second, of a reproduction of the story of Theodore’s eternal dam­ nation. The intense anxiety of orthodoxy to get Theodore Parker fast and sure in hell, was so great, even before Mr. Parker’s death, as to break out in a prayer-meeting devoted to the purpose of stirring up Jehovah to give instant attention to the business. The recollection of this, suggested to us that Mr. Bickersteth, whose whole work shows him entirely capable of such a thing, had taken occasion to give assurance that orthodox desires had been attended to. We had read his horrible poem all the way from the account of creation to the end, and could neither recall, nor discover upon examination, any clue to the meaning of the “ Theodore ” passage. We had missed the story of Theodore by not reading one of the preliminary books, in which it comes in as an episode, where Oriel tells how his first experience of escorting a soul to hell was in the case of a youth by the name of “ Theodore,” a youth of “ noble birth,” and “ high and generous bearing,” whom he had “ fondly loved,” and whom, nevertheless, he “ bore to his own place in yonder realms of wrath.” We retract, therefore, the charge that Mr. Bickersteth particularly and personally damned a mighty enemy of orthodoxy. It was a generous youth, son of a pagan father, and drawn, by fond human love of a pagan girl, to depart from the faith his mother had educated him in, whom the magnanimous singer of hell and damna­ tion singled out for particular horrible mention. We guessed wrong. Mr. Bickersteth did not strike at a great heresiarch, to warn daring heretics; he struck at the unconverted son of a pious mother, to warn a Mrs. Stowe, and whoever thinks God may be pitiful to Christian mothers, that inexorable hell cannot be so escaped, in any instance whatever. We particularly beg pardon of the Examiner �The Story of a Damned Soul. 263 and Chronicle for robbing its client of a portion of his elab­ orately fiendish devotion to orthodoxy. It occurred to us, when we found the poet saying, “Thus passed the centu­ ries,” and then mentioning a name as having startled him, because it was “ so familiar,” that he must refer to one of his contemporaries, and we had no doubt that the intense anxiety of the orthodox world to make sure of Theodore Parker’s defeat on earth and damnation in hell, had found convenient, disguised expression in Mr. Bickersteth’s vision. Our secondary inference, that the mother was damned with the son, is fully justified by the context of the passage. “ Theodore is represented as stealing a hurried glance “ upon a form us,” with the thought, “ could it be his mother ?” The Examiner and Chronicle says of our mistake about the passage, “ All this comes of mistaking below us (below Oriel and the poet-seer) for below him.” But in fact the poem had described the damnation of the rebel angels e o as going on below Oriel and the seer, so that “ As their cry of piercing misery “ From out that yawning gulf went up to heaven, Standing upon its rugged edge, we gazed, Intently and long, down after them;” and immediately upon this, the lost of earth had been sum­ moned to take their turn, whereupon Oriel, says the poet, “ Spake, “ With tears, of that which passed beneath, our feet” The very next local allusion is the “ below us,” which tells where Theodore saw his mother; and if “below us” is not equivalent to “ beneath our feet,” which referred, two pages before, to the damned, we do not understand plain language. However, going back some seven thousand lines, to the actual story of Theodore, it becomes plain that the poet intended to show us how the son was damned to everlasting hell, but the mother to everlasting heaven, and “ no breath of useless prayer escaped his lips,” or her’s either. Will �264 The Story of a Damned, Sold. the Examiner and Chronicle face the honest fact here, and permit its readers to see that its poet’s lesson, in the dam­ nation of Theodore, is blacker, a thousand fold, than the one we mistakenly pointed out? Meanwhile we invite our readers, who can stomach as blasphemous heathenism as superstition ever fathered, to trace with us, in Mr. Bicker­ steth’s sulphurous pages, the story of a pious mother’s son particularly damned, for a sign to maternal love that for the impenitent dead there is possible no other doom than “ Gehenna’s burning, sulphurous waves.” The angel attendant of the seer who tells the vast story of Mr. Bickersteth’s poem, is called Oriel. He points out to the seer the road to hell, and is asked whether he has ever been there. “ Oriel replied, with calm, unfaltering lip, And with his words his countenance benign Grew more and more severely beautiful; The. beauty of triumphant holiness, The calm, severity of burning love.” Is not this exquisitely satanic in conception ? Oriel had been to hell “ thrice,” and the recollection brings to his countenance the calm severity of love, “burning to. the lowest hell,” as the full phrase is. The occasion which particularly comes to his mind was this : “ The first Of disembodied human souls I bore To his own place in yonder realms of wrath, Was one I fondly loved, of noble birth, Of high and generous bearing.” He was “ born of Christian mother,” the wife of a Roman consul, who himself kept the old faith of his pagan fathers. 5 “ An aged priest baptized him Theodore, God's <71/% his mother whispered. And thenceforth She poured upon him, him her only child, The priceless treasures of a mother’s heart.” �The Story of a Damned Soul. 1 265 Oriel was his guardian angel, and relates that the boy’s home, 9 “ Unlike The moated fortress of a faithful house, Was ever open to the spirits malign.” That is to say, the father not being a saint, devils had con­ stant access to the young Theodore! Nevertheless, if the “ severely beautiful ” Oriel tells the truth, “ not an arrow reached him.” Innate depravity alone was his ruin, says the explicitely theological angel. And yet he seems to ascribe to the father a malign influence;— 11 The mother teaching prayers the father mocked! And yet her spell was earliest on her child, And strongest. And the fearless Theodore Was called by other men, and called himself, A Christian. Love, emotion, gratitude, All that was tenderest in a tender heart, All most heroic in a hero’s soul, Pleaded on Christ’s behalf.” Theodore was trained to arms, and joined the army of Constantine, in the struggle against Maxentius, “ When it chanced, In sack of a beleagured city, he saved A Grecian maiden and her sire from death; Her name Irene, his Iconocles; Among the princes he a prince, of all Fair women she the fairest of her race, Not only for her symmetry of form, But for the music and the love which breathed In every motion and in every word.” Theodore loved her, but his suit was met with the answer, from Irene’s father, “ Never shall my child be his Who kneels before a malefactor’s cross,” vol. i.—no. 3. 5 �266 The Story of a Damned Soul. A determination approved by Irene, who was pagan enough to abhor the idea of worshipping an undoubted man. The­ odore struggled hard,“ now cleaving to his mother’s faith,’’ and “now driven from his anchorage.” “God’s Spirit strove with him,” and unsuccessfully, says the accurately Calvanistic Oriel, although he—Oriel —was good enough to “ ward the powers of darkness off,” while “ the awful fight was foughten, ’ and give God a fair chance with the young man. The poet is determined to clearly reveal the inability of the Heavenly Father (and the human mother) to save this fine youth, even when Oriel vigilantly and successfully warded off hellish fraud and violence.” The bad heart of the youth brought him to this decision: “ 11 cannot leave that spirit Angelic in a human form enshrined. She must be mine forever. Life were death Without her.’ And straight entering, where she leaned Upon her father, as white jasmine leans On a dark pine, slowly, resolutely, As measuring every word with fate, he said, ‘ Irene, if the choice be endless woe, For thy sake I renounce my mother’s faith: I cannot, will not leave thee. I am thine.’ ” That night the three escaped to the army of Maxentius; a “soldier’s spousal” was celebrated; and the morning brought the fatal battle. Mr. Oriel relates, with calm severity of damning love, that Theodore rose, a desperate, maddened, hell-inspired blasphemer, “in his eye a wild, disastrous fire,” and “ the tempest raging in his heart, and went Impetuously into the thickest fight, And prodigies of valor wrought that day, Felling beneath his fratricidal blade Whole ranks, his comrades and his brethren, late Brethren in faith and arms.” We suspect Mr. Oriel here of being an arrant liar, and �The Story of a Damned Soul. 267 wonder that the poet-seer did not bid him go “ squat like a toad ” at the ear of Rev. J. D. Fulton, with this part of his tale. But we will hear from him Theodore’s end: £< An unknown arrow, not unfledged with prayer, Transpierced his eye and brain. Sudden he fell; One short, sharp cry; one strong, convulsive throe, And in a moment his unhappy spirit Was from its quivering tabernacle loosed.” The first cry of the disembodied soul, says Oriel, was,— “ Mother, where art thou, mother ? where am I ?” a cry which Oriel answered by seizing his “ fondly loved ” charge, with a stern announcement of orders from Almighty Power to convey him to hell. Theodore was “ submissive,” without “ lamentations,” and without “ proud reluctances and vain despite,” as Oriel led him hellward. But as they advanced on the dreadfully darkening way, and “the hope­ less captive gazed a long, last gaze” upon sun and stars, “ A groan brake from him, and he sobbed aloud— 4 My mother, oh 1 my mother, from thy love I learned to love those silent orbs of light, God’s watchers thou didst call them, as they peered, Evening by evening, on my infant sleep, And mingled with my every boyish dream: Are they now shining on thy misery ? Who, now that I am gone, will wipe thine eyes ? Who, mother, bind thy bruised and broken heart ?’ ” Oriel now states to Theodors that his mother, will think he was slain a Christian and has gone to heaven, whereat the doomed young man expresses feelings of which Oriel says, 44 Never will this heart forget The impress of the look he cast on me. He had not wept before; but now a tear Hung on his trembling lids, through which he looked �268 The Story of a Damned Soul. Such gratitude as utter hopelessness May render, .... a look which said ‘ I thank thee as the damned alone can thank; Lost as I am, hell will not be such hell, The while my mother thinks of me in heaven.’ ” At last “ the iron gates of hell ” are reached, after a march of interminable horror, through a desolate ravine, in the palpable darkness of which the radiance of Oriel’s form, as we can readily believe, was but “ a faint and feeble torch.” The “ adamantine doors ” receive their victim and his escort; Oriel conducts Theodore to a barren mountain, and “ God looked upon him,” with his “ dreadful eye,”— not with its full hell power, but “ half eclipsed,” yet with such severely loving effect that to the doomed man, “ The very air he breathed Seemed to his sense one universal flame Of wrath, . . . H . . and a low wail Ere long brake from those miserable lips— ‘ 0 God, and is this hell ? and must this last Forever ? would I never had been born I Why was I born ! I did not choose my birth. 0 Thou, who did’st create me, uncreate, I pray Thee. By Thine own omnipotence Quench Thou this feeble spark of life in me. 0 God destroy me. Grant this latest boon Thy wretched, ruined child will ever ask, And suffer me to be no more at all.’ ” To this “ aimless, bootless prayer,” the quite contented Oriel replies, “ Thou cravest what Omnipotence can do,” but wont do, because “ Omniscient Love decrees ” damna­ tion, “ And therefore vainly dost thou now invoke Almighty Power to thwart All-Seeing Love.” �✓ The Story of a Damned Soul. 269 Even the “free service” of God, “justice interdicts,” that being “heaven’s perennial joy.” “ Hades knows no other law ” than “ passive submission ” to damnation, “And here there is no sentinel but Glod; His Eye alone is jailer; and His Hand The only executioner of wrath.” With this pungent doctrine of Moloch, Oriel proposes to leave Theodore, while he catches a glimpse, “permitted him by God,” of Paradise, and is moved thereby to indulge “ idle phantasies of hope,” which Oriel, mindful of Calvinistic problems, turns back to extinguish, “ in mere pity.” Convinced thus that there is no hope for himself, Theodore cries out, , ' “ But is there not a hope For one I briefly, passionately loved ? ******* Tell her, in mercy tell her where I am, What suffering—what must suffer evermore : It may be she will turn and live. And if, Whene’er my mother’s pilgrimage is passed, And she, entering the gates of bliss, shall search Through every field of yonder Paradise, To find her only son, and search in vain, If then thou wilt but try and comfort her—■ What way I know not, but thou know’st—and should Her restless eye intuitively glance Towards this valley, instantly divert Its gaze else wither, thou wilt have done all I ask for, and far more than I deserve.” To which the insensate, pitiless, damnation-contriving Oriel replies, “Thy prayers to thine own bosom must return.” ******* “ I leave thee in thy just Creator’s hands.” Fifteen centuries now passed, and Oriel received orders �The Story of a Damned Soul. 270 from the Almighty to join an embassy sent forth to “ traverse hell in all its length and breadth,” and announce the near approach of the judgment day. Of this Oriel says, “First to that mountain valley, where I left Lost Theodore, I bent my course. 0 God ! The solemn change which fifteen centuries In hell had written on his fearful brow.” The further description, and the elaborate speeches ex­ changed, represent Theodore as entirely converted to high Calvinism, and quite convinced that hell-fire,—the “ veilless blaze” of the “Dreadful Eye,” which is to come after the judgment, will be after all the greatest possible boon, “repressing with flame the fertility ” of “ the ineradicable germs of sin,” though never able to extinguish them. And to this extraordinary exposition of the divine imbecility, or indisposition, to eradicate sin, the judicious angel gave Theodore no opportunity to reply, but sped on his way to advise the hellions of the speedy Second Advent of the Messiah, making expository remarks, as he went, vindicative of hell in general, and of particular hell for the generous youth to whom he had been guardian angel. To follow the story we must turn now to the ninth book of the poem, which is called “ The Bridal of the Lamb.” Here we hear Messiah say, “ Now is the day of vengeance in my heart, And now the year of my redeemed is come; ” and we behold “ Messiah seated on a snow-white horse Of fiery brightness, as the Lord of hosts, Apparelled in a vesture dipped in blood.” In due time the Last Judgment is at. hand, and the hosts of darkness gather in one final conspiracy, �The Story of a Damned Soul. 271 “ When from the frowning heavens again that sound, Which shook the first fell council of the damned, More terrible than thunder, vibrated Through every heart Jehovaffls awful laugh / ” And now “ Messiah spake again, His voice Resounding from the jasper walls of heaven To hell’s profoundest caves. * * * * * * * and' Death and Hell, With dreadful throes and agonizing groans, Disgorged their dead, the lost of every age, In myriads, small and great confusedly.” These are all brought back to earth to resume their bodies, which were to be “ made fit to endure the terrors of the wrath to come.” Then the book of life is read, and the redeemed deceived to the right hand of the Judge. The rebel angels are damned in order, ending with the Arch-fiend, whose head Messiah crushes with “ his burning heel.” “ And for a space no sound was heard. But then It seemed the crystal anpyr^m clave Beneath them, and the horrid vacuum sucked The devil and his armies down . . . To bottomless perdition.” After this the lost of mankind are summoned, and among them is specially observed Theodore. Then “ The Judge arising from his throne, Bent on the countless multitudes convict His vision of eternaBwrath, and spake In tones which more than thousand thunders shook The crumbling citadel of every heart,— ‘ Depart from Me, ye cursed, into fire, For the devil and his hosts prepared, Fire everlasting, fire unquenchable; Myself have said it: let it be : Amen.’ * * * * Again the floor �272 The Story of a Damned Soul. Of solid crystal where the damned stood Opened its mouth, immeasurable leagues; And with a cry whose piercing echoes yet Beat through the void of shoreless space, the lost Helplessly, hopelessly, resistlessly, Adown the inevitable fissure sank, As sank before the ruined hosts of hell, Still down, still ever down, from deep to deep, Into the outer darkness, till at last The fiery gulf received them, and they plunged Beneath Gehenna’s burning sulphurous waves In the abyss of ever-during woe. " “ All shook except the Throne of Judgment. * * The Hand that held the scales of destiny Swerved not a hair’s breadth: and the Voice which spake Those utterances quailed not, faltered not. But when the fiery gulf was shut, and all Looked with one instinct on the judgment-seat, To read his countenance who sate thereon, He was in tears—the Judge was weeping—tears Of grief and pity inexpressible. And in full sympathy of grief the springs Gushed forth within us; and the angels wept: Till stooping from the throne with His own hand He wiped the tears from every eye, and said, 1 My Father’s will be done: His will is mine; And mine is yours: but mercy is his delight, And judgment is his strange and dreadful work. Now it is done forever. Come with me Ye blessed children of my Father, come; And in the many mansions of His love Enjoy the beams of His unclouded smil<£f So saying, as once from Olivet, he rose Majestically toward the heaven of heavens In the serenity of perfect peace: And we arose^with him. But what of those Who from the place of final judgment hurled, Had each his portion in the lake of fire ? �The Story of a Damned Soul. 273 No Lethe rolled its dark oblivious waves, As some have feigned, betwixt that world of woe And ours of bliss. But rather, as of old Foreshadowed in the prescient oracles, The smoke of their great torment rose to heaven In presence of the holy seraphim, And in the presence of the Lamb of God, For ever and for ever. At the first Nothing was heard ascending from the deep Save wailings and unutterable groans, Wrung from them by o’ermastering agony; But as His Eye, who is consuming fire, Unintermittingly abode on them,— Silence assumed her adamantine throne.” The One-Eyed Dread having thus attended to his ene­ mies, snivelled a pretence of grief to accommodate a passage in the New Testament, and got his red-hot look so fixed on the damned that they burned horribly without useless wail or groan, there roll away “ages of a measureless eternity,” and at last the voice of “ hell’s dethroned monarch ” breaks the silence with an elaborate confession of the dogmas and arguments of Calvinism, ending with “ Lost, lost: our doom is irreversible: Power, justice, mercy, love have sealed us here; Glory to God who sitteth on the throne, And to the Lamb for ever and for ever.” < The voice was hushed a moment; then a deep Low murmur, like a hoarse resounding surge, Rose from the universal lake of fire: No tongue was mute, no damned spirit but swelled That multitudinous tide of awful praise, ‘ Glory to God who sitteth on the throne, And to the Lamb, for ever and for ever.’ ” H The reader who has not made himself familiar with the severities of damning love may imagine that the One-Eyed �274 z The Story of a Damned Soul. Horror called a Lamb took off now his eye of consuming fire, and'permitted the hellions to cool a trifle. Not he, if he knew the catechism. On the contrary, he held on the hotter, as the only sure thing for his glory, and the devil is made to say pensively and submissively, at the Lamb’s hellhot look, “ I see far off the glory of thy kingdom Basking in peace, uninterrupted peace: But were I free, and were my comrades free, Sin mightier than myself and them would drag Our armies to perplex those fields with war. Only thus fettered can we safely gaze; Thus only to the prisoners of despair Can Mercy, which is infinite, vouchsafe Far glimpses of the beauty of holiness. Woe, woe, immedicable woe for those Whose hopeless ruin is their only hope, And hell their solitary resting-place,”— / which makes it plain that if the Fount of Hell, the Lamb’s Dreadful Eye, should cool ever so little, to all eternity, it would be very bad for the damned, whose only hope is in sizzling patierroly under the merciful vengeance of the Moloch Eye. There is bug one more point to be made, that of the advantage to the saints of having the damned always in view, the happiness a redeemed mother, for example, will feel from gazing occasionally on her Theodore—her God’s gift—smoking in the frying-pan of the Lamb’s “ infinite mercy,” and kept from unconverted pranks of human love by the “ immedicable woe ” of “ hopeless ruin.” In his closing pages Mr. Bickersteth labors to make this evident. He seems to be of opinion that the saints would be too happy in heaven, or on the redeemed and restored earth, but for interesting reminiscences of damnation and occa­ sional contemplation of the woes of the lost. �275 The Story of a Damned Soul. “ Haply such perfectness of earthly bliss, And such far vistas of celestial light, Had overcharged their hearts. But not in vain The awful chronicles of time. And oft When dazzled with the glory and the glow That streamed from Zion’s everlasting hills, Messiah or his ministers would tell Rapt auditors how Satan fell from bliss, The story of a ruined Paradise, The foughten fight, the victory achieved, But only with the endless banishment Of damned spirits innumerable and men From heaven and heavenly favor, which is life. Nor seldom he, who strengthened human sight, As with angelic telescope, to read The wonders of the highest firmament, Would bid them gaze into the awful Deep Couching beneath; and there they saw the lost - ... For ever bound under his dreadful Eye, Who is eternal and consuming fire, There in the outer darkness. * * * That which men witnessed of the damned in hell, By unction of the Spirit at God’s command, Was in our gaze at will, whene’er the smoke In mighty volumes rising from the Deep, Blown devious by God’s breath athwart the void, Dispersed. Nor turned we always from the sight; ( Should not the children share their Father’s thoughts ? Should not the Wife her husband’s counsels learn? * * * * * * And in the cloudless joys of heaven and earth Haply this sight and knowledge were, to us The needful undertones of sympathy With Him.” So ends the tale. The mother of our Roman youth is with the redeemed; her husband and only child in hell. To keep her from a surfeit of happiness the Lamb gossips with her about the fall and damnation of spirits and men; �276 Prospects and Purposes. strengthens her vision so that she can distinctly see what is going on in hell; and so brings her into sympathy with the effects of his red-hot Dreadful Eye. Who says Amen to this heathenism ? The Examiner and Chronicle. Mr. Beecher's Christian Union. The Chicago Advance. The Independent. The Congregationalist and Recorder. The Watchman and deflector, etc., etc. Article XI.—Prospects and Purposes. We believe we may now say, with confidence, that the permanence of The Examiner is fully assured. We have had to make a month’s delay, to consider difficulties and provide resources, and for this reason, date our third issue February, instead of January. Our enterprise is a difficult one, but we lack neither faith nor courage, and we find willing and strong friends. The Examiner will not die. It is gaining noble support, and much ampler than we expected. Our position in a field already occupied by The Rad­ ical and The Index, has a two-fold explanation. We undertook to interpret religion and kindred themes, under the Christian name, which The Index rejects, and with the purpose of earnestly and definitely controverting the pseudo­ Christianity of existing sects, much more than The Radical has chosen to do this. Our views of the error and mischief of Jesuism, either as orthodox theology or as liberal heroworship, are much more distinct and decisive than those of contemporary liberalism. Neither The Radical nor The Index seem to us to have illustrated full emancipation from the current sentimentalism and unscholarly prepossession, which have made Jesus more than a common man, and better, for help and comfort, than the natural dependence of �Prospects and Purposes. 277 man, the God and Father of all souls. We propose to have the exact truth of history told about this young Jew­ ish aspirant to earthly Messiahship, and the plain truth of theology taught in regard to the absolute insignificance of him, or any other man, where the question is of the eternal life, the destiny and the blessedness, of the creatures of GOD. It is time to cry Great Pan is dead, and perempto­ rily to remand Jesus, the God-man, Lord and Saviour, mas­ ter and hero, to his proper humble place, as in himself a quite common and erring man, and in his providential posi­ tion a standard-bearer for similar quite common and erring men, of faith in God’s presence, without mediator or mes­ senger, with every soul of man. On the other hand we desire to resist, with all the force of what we deem just thought and sound learning, the theory of The Index that Christianity is to be separated from, and that the new movement of faith is to disavow the pre­ vious steps of our common humanity. Not only is there vast power to be kept in the just weight of what has been best in Christianity, but the connection is one absolutely essential to the consolation, by religious teaching, of the suffering millions. We had rather a thousand fold silence our private opinions, and study and practice the simpler, more universal, and always most heavenly truths of practi­ cal Christianity, as a lay member, a novice or penitent, in the Catholic church, than to join our friend Abbot in his stupendous misrepresentation of Christianity. Not that we shrink from any surgery of truth, lor would hesitate a moment to give Mr. Abbot a place with us in The Exam­ iner, for fair consideration of his views, and full defence of them, but simply because, when all has been said, his con­ clusion is, to us, the most unwarranted and lamentable which an honest thinker and earnest scholar ever arrived at. We profoundly honor our friend, whose position we thus criticise; he has on every ground as much right to his opin­ ion as we to ours; we cherish no aversion towards him as a religious teacher, and will gladly stand anywhere with �278 Prospects and Purposes. him, but of what 13 to us the utterly unfit expedient of seething the kid in his mother’s blood we will unmistaka­ bly speak our mind to the end of the chapter. And we have abundant evidence that in so doing we can render important service to the emancipation of the public miud from superstition, and the healthy development of free reli­ gion. In general, with many exceptions of course, the purification of faith results in a free and large comprehen­ sion of Christianity, not in rejection of the connection or the name. With Mr. Abbot’s organ (much more than with Mr. Abbot himself), it results in a singular stringency ot speculative doubt and reserve, which flatly forbids us to be Christian, and hardly permits us to cherish a comfortable thought of God. Our special hope and desire, on the contrary, is to cultivate a very great, and fervent, and fruitful thought of God, and to make clear that this, as it is emphasized in “Our Father,” is the ever-enduring truth of Christiani ty. The lament, or the complaint, of some of our critics, that The Examiner is the organ of one man, bespeaks a mi-understanding of our editorial plans. To such as take a friendly interest in our effort to conduct a monthly review such as The Examiner is, we need say but a word in explanation of our purpose, which is to editorially bring together the ample testimonies of literature, and make the greatest and best minds of this and other times help to fill our pages. To us literature is the true scripture, and it is a neglected scripture. Lessons far richer and greater than the current divinity knows, are scattered through the better writings of mankind, from the time of Socrates to the present day. To edit and publish these lessons of neglected inspiration, to gather and set forth to the public of common readers these contributions of unrecognized prophets, marking their force and fairly interpreting their significance, is a legitimate work. And in this work we can also have the aid of many of the best living writers, the leaders of thought and faith and I I f 1 I ; I : I l I I 1 | | I { I | | I | I I | | �Prospects and Purposes. 279 science in all parts of the world, whose best selected words we can properly and acceptably reproduce in our pages. Two distinguished French writers have already instructed our readers, and Emerson, Parker, Max Miiller, Mr. Abbot, and others have been heard in the numbers already issued. We shall make this feature of our plan more distinct as we go on, and have no doubt that our readers will be satisfied of the wisdom of our aim. And in addition to this, we * shall secure, as our plans develop, the very best aid which contemporary thought and learning, at home or abroad, can furnish, in the form of original contributions prepared expressly for The Examiner, English, French, German, and other voices, as well as American, speaking through a publication in the heart of our new world, to the audience of earnest inquirers which we are gathering. It is not too much, we trust, to ask our friends to work earnestly for us now, with the full expectation of permanent and complete success. To give more time for this, and to enable us to put our regular publication-day back to the middle of the month, we shall bring out our next number for April, and have it ready March 15. This will make ©ur first year of the publication (12 numbers) end with the current year. * There is variety enough, and richness enough, in the current expres­ sion of the human race to give us more than we can possibly use. Our work will be, as near as possible, to gather out of this unrolling scrip­ ture of mankind the fact, thought, principle, life, which are the voice of man and the voice of God in the world to-day; sometimes citing exact words of contemporary utterances, as in our translated article, and the numerous extracts scattered through other articles; sometimes reporting the substance of a new or fresh page of revelation; and sometimes entering upon a critical examination of the book, the man, the life which merits attention. �280 Wanted, a Moralist for Dr. Clarke’s Statesman. Article XIII.— Wanted, a Moralist for Dr. J. F. Clarke’s Statesman. The title under which Dr. J. F. Clarke discoursed of political matters, in a recent number of Old and New— “Wanted, a Statesman,”—assumed enough in itself to warrant us in looking for superior wisdom in the essay, whether it dealt only with the failure of our politics, or also went on to lay down a policy of its own. To our great surprisel we found, under this title, some remarks as ill-considered as'the worst parts of Dr. Clarke’s theological treatises, not the sound wisdom of a cautious thinker, nor even the correct views of a careful observer; but crude observations of a deplorably careless sentimentalist, such as we so commonly find in second-rate sermons. Take, for example, Dr. Clarke’s solution of the Alabama question, gravely proposed by him in an exposition of what he con­ siders the statesmanship wanted by us :— “ Great Britain either did right or did wrong. Leave it to herself to decide which. Let Gen. Grant request our minister to request the British Government to decide that question, and inform it beforehand that we are ready to accept its conclusion. If Great Britain, through her govern­ ment, says that she did right, we will accept that solution, and drop the subject; only in that case, we shall, of course, have the right to do the same. Whenever she has a rebel­ lion in her empire, or is engaged in a foreign war, we shall have a right to do to Great Britain exactly what she did to us. We shall take just as much pains as she did, and no more, to keep pirates from going out of our ports, to prey upon her commerce. If she likes this programme, let her say so.” This may be astute statesmanship, to leave to Great Britain to say whether those who lost by the rebel cruisers fitted out in British ports have any just claim upon her, and also to leave to her prejudiced decision to settle the future law of the matter, but at least we may deny the morality, in case Great Britain refuses what we are sure is justice, of �'Wanted, a Moralist for Dr. Clarke’s Statesman. 281 determining to imitate such refusal of justice the first chance we have. As a sentimentalist, Dr. Clarke might have said, “ If Great Britain thinks she did right, let us sayno more about it, and when our chance comes, we will shame her neglect and treachery by scrupulous justice and fidelity.” He would then lie open only to the charge of unjustly sacrificing the claims of our citizens, and of yield­ ing needlessly a grave point of law, merely for a burst of sentiment. But when he advises that we yield now, and make it up in hard hits by and by, he proposes the policy of the cowardly savage, a statesmanship which would soon carry the world back to the settlement of all questions by stealthy blows of the strong hand and the wily craft of aboriginal passion. We introduced in our last issue, on p. 184, a barbarism, anti Christum, etc^intending to indicate by a note that we used it as a barbarism. Our meaning was, that if the Uni­ tarians were to forget their culture and take a position in the spirit of the expression in question, it would be better than to dawdle disreputably about Zion waiting for the Lord to come and claim the contents of the Unitarian napkin. VOL. I.—NO. 3. 6 �BOOKS'. Plutarch's Morals—A Bible of Greek “ Grace and Truth.’'* —What mean these five goodly octavos, with their more than twenty-five hundred pages of the writings of a pagan of the last half of the first Christian century? They are published under auspices the very best which America could afford. No house in the country, or indeed anywhere, would be less likely than Little, Brown & Co., Boston, whose imprint these volumes bear, to make either a com­ mercial or a literary mistake, in a matter so serious as this evidently is. So, also, the name of Prof. Goodwin argues not less certainly that so large and difficult a task was not attempted except for most weighty reasons. And when we learn that the revision carried through by him has been beset at every step with unusual perplexities, yet has been accomplished with the utmost pains, and is evidently a signal success, we conclude, unhesitatingly, that Plutarch’s Morals must have merits rarely found in the productions of any age. To confirm this conclusion, if confirmation were needed, what witness more competent than Mr. Emerson ? lie is the acknowledged master of the best school of American literature, and the man of all men now living to pass judgment on, and to authenticate to the thoughtful and working world of to-day, any studies, ancient or modern, in the important field of ethical science and prac­ tical wisdom. If, therefore, he gives unstinted praise, we need not wait to turn over these twenty-five hundred pages to be convinced that something rich and rare is set before us. * Translated from the Greek, by several hands. Corrected and revised by William W. Goodwin, Ph.D., Professor of Greek Literature in Harvard University. With an Introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 5 vols., 8vo., $15. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. �Plutarch’s Morals. 2E3 As a matter of fact, however, we had known for some years that a certain old translation of Plutarch’s Morals,— an extensive collection of essays by the author of the famous “Lives,”—was esteemed by Mr. Emerson, both from the Greek wit and wisdom garnered in it, and for the singular vigor, freshness, and breadth of its English style, one of the most precious bibles of mankind. We had had the use of a copy of this translation — it is a very rare book — and had made a selection of its richest texts; and from Mr. Emerson himself we had learned, some time since, of the plan for its revision and reproducEon, and of the hope which he cherished that it would introduce to the studious and earnest believers and workers of our day “some good paganism.” The labors of some forty or fifty English university men produced the version now re-presentedftnd made it, in Mr. Emerson’s judgment, “a monument of the English language at a period of singular vigor and freedom of style.” Still, the old book was “ careless and vicious in parts,” as a transla­ tion, and sadly needed the improvement which ProflGoodwin’s accomplished hand has given it. And happily,Ehe thorough revision which has made the translation faithful to the Greek original, has proved throughout a vindication of Plutarch, a restoratibn of clear and accurate statements where the old version gave something absurd and unintel­ ligible. Plutarch belonged to the generation second after that of Jesus. He was just coming to manhood when Paul ceased from apostolic labors. The essays which are called his “ Morals,” were written at the moment when Christian teaching was fairly in the world, but before it had made any appreciable impression upon paganism. If they contain lessons of rare and gracious wTisdom, these lessons show what paganism was capable of at the very hour when Christianity, as popularly interpreted, claims to have found the light of ethical and religious teaching Blean gone out. �284 Plutarch's Morals. The “ Lives” and the “ Morals” of Plutarch, taken together, form a large body of history and instruction, of chronicle, character and catechism, retold and retaught, newly narrated and freshly expounded and enforced, at just the moment when our popular Christianity pretends that the world of ancient life and faith was without form and void, and dark­ ness brooded over a chaos which waited the creating breath of Divine interference through Christ. As Mr. Emerson says, “ Plutarch occupies a unique place in literature, as an encyclopaedia of Greek and Roman antiquity.” He is a kind of bible of ancient faith and practice, an evangelist of the best, in ideas and in examples, which the old pagan world had to offer. It is worth while, therefore, to know what his gospel is, and to compareBits truths and errors with the truths and errors of the system which has so long put all other systems aside, with the claim that they all failed of grace and truth, and that it alone had the word of lifeH Mr. Emerson says of the “ Morals,” the sermons of Plutarch, “ I know not where to find a book — to borrow a phrase of Ben Jonson’s—1 so rammed with life.’ ” Plutarch in general he pronounces “ a chief example of the illumina­ tion of the intellect by the force of morals.” Other points of the explanation and vindication of the Greek essayist by the American, appear in the following sentences, which we cull from the Introduction to the edition of the “ Morals ” now before us : “ Whatever is eminent in fact, or in fiction, in opinion, in character, in institutions, in science — natural, moral, or metaphysical, or in memorable sayings, drew his attention and came to his pen with more or less fullness of record.” —(The reason of Plutarch’s vast popularity is his humanity. Nothing touches man but he feels it to be his. He has preserved for us a multitude of precious sentences, in prose or verse, of authors whose books are lost; and these embalmed fragments, through his loving selection alone, have come to be proverbs of later mankind.”—“Now and then there are hints of superior science. You may cull �Plutarch’s Morals. 285 from his record of barbarous guesses of shepherds and travelers statements that are predictions of facts established in modern science.”—“ His extreme interest in every trait of character, and his broad humanity, lead him constantly to Morals, to the study of the Beautiful and Good. Hence his love of heroes, his rule of life, and his clear convictions of the high destiny of the soul. La Harpe said ‘ that Plutarch is the genius the most naturally moral that ever exist­ ed.’ ”—“Plutarch is genial, with an endless interest in all human and divine things.” — “ Plutarch thought ‘ truth to be the greatest good that man can receive, and the good­ liest blessing that God can give.’ ”—“ His faith in the immortality of the soul is another measure of his deep humanity. He believes that the doctrine of the divine Providence, and that of the immortality of the soul, rest on one and the same basis.”—“lean easily believe that an anxious soul may find in Plutarch’s chapter called ‘Pleasure not attainable by Epicurus,’ and his ‘Letter to his Wife Tiihoxena,’ a more sweet and reassuring argument on the immortality than in the Phaedo of Plato; for Plutarch always addresses the question on the human side, and not on the metaphysical; as Walter Scott took hold of boys and young men, in England and America, and through them of their fathers. His grand perceptions of duty lead him to his stern delight in heroism; a stoic resistance to low indulgence; to a fight with fortune; a regard for truth ; his love of Sparta and of heroes like Aristides, Phocion, and Cato.”—“But this stoic, in his fight with fortune,with vices, effeminacy and indolence, is gentle as a woman when other strings are touched. He is the most amiable of men. He has a tenderness almost to tears, when he writes on ‘Friendship,’ on ‘Benefitsflon ‘The Training of Children,’ and on ‘The Love of Brothers.’ All his judgments are noble. He thought, with Epicurus, that it is more delight­ ful to do than to receive a kindness. . . . His excessive and fanciful humanity reminds one of Charles Lamb, whiist it much exceeds him. . . . His delight in magnanimity and self-sacrifice has made his books, like Homer’s Iliad, a bible for heroes.” We cannot here go at length into proof from Plutarch’s own pages, of the existence in him of a veritable revelation, worthy to be compared, in many great and noble respects, with anything ever indited for the instruction of mankind. �286 Plutarch’s Morals. In brief, we declare our unhesitating judgment that Plutarch, pagan chronicler and moralist though he be, is as well worth earnest and reverent study as that Bible which has been so long thrust upon us as the only and the infallible rule of divine truth. In our opinion, the revelation which is contained in Socrates, Plato, Philo Judaeus, Plutarch, and the other representatives or inheritors of Greek wisdom, is much richer than that which we have accepted from the Hebrews and Hebrew-Christian mind. As the words Christ and Christianity are Greek, so the best part of our truest Christianity is from Greek teaching rather than Hebrew, and far the largest, and deepest, and purest fountain of divine truth, is in the scriptures which commence with Socrates and Plato, and which have their fourth gospel in the “Morals” of Plutarch, as they have their Acts of the Apostles in his “ Lives.” ’ It may seem a rude judgment in the face of current Christian opinion, but we cannot help it. We feel no call to respect the crass ignorance and gross superstition which still make accredited Christian judgment, in the matter of divine revelation, a baseless prepossession, no more just than Hindoo, Chinese, or Mohammedan prepossession. If the world of Christendom had spent as much pains in the free study of Greek chronicle and exposition as have been given to the law and gospel derived from Jewish sources, we have no doubt that the average enlightenment and ele­ vation of mankind would be very much greater than at present. The simpler and more superstitious books have commanded attention, and the world meanwhile has lost fifteen hundred years, and only now begins to walk with the best masters of paganism. It did not surprise us when Mr. Emerson said to us, speaking of Plutarch, “ We want some good paganism.” The study of divinity will take a step as important as any ‘ revival of learning ’ that ever was, when Greek Socrates shall displace Hebrew Samuel, Plato Paul, and Plutarch John and Matthew’, aud study shall seek �Plutarch's Morals. 287 for great thoughts, humane principles,, and manly examples rather than waste itself on the®uperstition that one young Jew and certain Jewish books shut up both God and God’s truth in themselves, and that the first and last labor of investigation is to vindicate this pretension. We will un­ hesitatingly compare Plutarch alone with the whole Bible, not to show that he avoids error, but to prove that he more fully and more profoundly grasps essential truth, and that on the grand points of ethical and theological teaching he is infinitely wiser than the popular Christian interpretation of so-called holy writ. We shall make it our duty to bring forward proof of this from time to time, as our space and plans will permit. In conclusion now we merely cite a few specimens taken from the first pages of Vol. I. of the “ Morals.” 0S'<3hr,a'tes, ^t^as be’perceived "anyfierceness of spifiT h *s to rise within him towards any of his friends, setting him­ self like a promontory to break the waves, would speak with A lower voice, bear a smiling PowntenancS,, and look with a more * yentie'eye $ andtehusl by bending thexother way and moving contrary to the passion, he kept himself from falling or being worst®d^S| “Observing that many have begun their change to virtue more from being pardoned than being punished, I became per­ suaded of this: that reason was fitter to govern with than anger,” JI “Good temper doth remedy some things, put an orna­ ment upon others, ^udgweete^^thermiU “ If every one would al way s rep eat th e question of Plato to himself, But am not I perhaps sum aone and turn his reason from abroad to loofei into himself, and put restraint upon his reprehension of others, he would not make so much use of his hatred of evil in reproving other men, seeing himsaH: in need fgrgat. indulgonc^^jg “ J^rnTve affl vnlwest, 1 Jimpedoelelp.as a divine thing, ‘ To fast from evil.’ ” — From Concerning the Cure of �288 The Invitation Heeded. “Atheism, which is a false persuasion that there are no blessed and incorruptible beings, . . is very lamentable and sad. For to be blind or to see amiss in matters of this con­ sequence cannot but be a fatal unhappiness to the mind, it being then deplved of the fairest and brightest of its many eyes, the knowledge of God.” “ Atheism hath no hand at all in causing superstition ; bull superstition not only gave atheism its first birth, but serves it ever since by giving it its best apology for existing, whgh, although it be neither a good nor a fair one, is yet the most specious and colorable.” “There is certainly no infirmiB belonging to us that contains such a multipllity of errors and fond"passions, or that consists of such incongruous and incoherent opinions, as this of superstition dotl3f It behooves us, therefore to * do our utmost to escape it; but withal, we must see we do it safely and prudmtly, and not rashly and inconsiderately, as people run from the incursions of robbers or from fire, and fall into bewildered and untrodden paths, full of pits and precipices. For so some, while they would avoid supersti­ tion,Rea® over the golden mean of true piety into the harsh and coarse extreme of atheism.”—From Of Superstition or Indiscreet Devotion. The Invitation Heeded—Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity.—By James Kent Stone. * The activity of the Catholic Publication Society has been for some time one of the signs of theKimes. It represents an earnest school of American Catholics, whose gifts and graceJcannot be denied. We have a shelf of the books which have come from this school within a few years, which we highly prize as one of the genuine fruits of contempo­ rary religious activity, although much which these volumes contain must be winowed out as mere chaff of tradition. In our judgment the new school of Catholicism is much more humane, sensible and religious in its literature, both books and tracts, than the Protestant orthodoxy ^represented by * The Catholic Publication Society, New York, 1870. �The Invitation Heeded. 289 the Tract Societies and Publication Houses which flood the country with cheap superstition; superstition, too, which is absurd and cruel. This school finds a new recruit, and a valuable one, in the author of The Invitation Heeded. Dr. Stone appears to great advantage in his deeply sincere, earnest and able argu­ ment and appeal, which he does not confidently urge with­ out having profoundly felt. We can lend a hearty sympa­ thy to the deep, spiritual tones of such a man’s plea, and challenge for him the respectful attention of his religious contemporaries, although the opinion within the limits of which he now attempts religion has no more practical value, weight, or interest to us than any other hallucination of misguided sentiment] Dr. Stone treats first of the Church considered in certain historical aspects, such as the attitude of the world towards it, its perpetuity, its guardianship of morals, the failure of its great foe Protestanism, its relation to civilization, and its asserted complicity with persecution. In the second part of his work he deals with the Church as a Divine Creation, under the heads of incarnation and in­ spiration, infallibility, scripture, antiquity, and the signs of the true church. The third, and concluding part, considers the Church as an organization, or the relations of the Pri­ macy to Christianity; to prophecy, to antiquity, to unity, to authority, and to infallibility. Into the merits of the argu­ ment we cannot here enter, but we can assure our readers that they can see in these pages just how pious and earnest men are obeying certain sentiments taught them by Chris­ tianity, by going over to Romanism. And we think no man engaged with religion can sympathetically follow Dr. Stone’s plea through to the end without being wiser and better for noting the aspects of experience which it discloses. Pew readers accustomed to the assumptions of faith which are dictated by sound reason will have ary difficulty in see­ ing where Dr. Stone’s illusion is, or how it is that his logic has constrained him to join himself to the largest historical �290 Mommsen’s Rome. result of the primitive Christian movement. If we did not believe in the universality of inspiration and incarnation, and had to assume that the creature can return to the Crea­ tor only through creature mediation by Christ and the church, we should make haste to follow Dr. Stone. As it is, we bid him good speed into the Roman fold, but propose, ourselves, to stay outside and take the chance of their being God enough for all creation. We have a shrewdy guess that the supply of Divine grace is not materially lessened, much less exhausted, by what the Primacy has shut up in Roman limits. Mommsen’s History of Rome, the American edition of which, published by Charles Scribner & Co., New York, is now completed by the appearance of the fourth volume, merits recognition by both critics and readers, as without exception the finest existing account of the course of events from the origin of Rome, and the earliest political life of Italy, to the time when Caesar put an end to the Roman Republic!in the year 46 B. C. The scholar finds in the fruits of Mommsen’s labors much more than learned study in this field has ever before achieved; fuller discovery of facts, more just appreciation of causes, more faithful and more complete reproduction of real features of Roman life, and a method and style of the highest and noblest art. But none the less does the mere reader, who wishes to be carried along by a trustworthy and attractive recital, find in Momm­ sen a guide whom it is a profound pleasure to follow. The secret of this two-fold success of the work is in the author’s union of learning and masterly intelligence with simplicity, earnestness and vigor. It is one of the most satisfactory peculiarities of study, as the best scholars undertake it, that it demands real facts and actual truths, and counts no cost great which adds to veri- . tableBcnMledge. We are able now to come at a great deal of historical truth, where heretofore we have had to put up with traditions W’hich were in large part misrepresentations �Froude’s England. 291 of fact, even when they were not pure inventions of igno­ rance, or fictions of imagination. We rejoice in this new fidelity of study to truth, both for its results in such resto­ ration of the picture of humanity as we have an illustration of in Mommsen’s Rome, and for what must come from the inevitable application of it to the history of religion, which has been with Christians a mass of misrepresentation in the case of all other religions than their ownland for their own a tissue of fiction and false tradition, persisted in with a bravery of unveracity fcr which the whole history of man­ kind besides affords no parallel. Dr.Mommsen tells the story of conquering Rome down to a period very near the era of Christianity. He is expected to go on with the nar­ rative through the period of the empire, and mil thus give us important aid in comprehending the world into which Christian teaching penetrated. At present, however, the work is complete. The English translation was made from the fourth German edition, and the reprint is in Scribner’s excellent library style, four handsome volumesBwith com­ plete index, and sold at the very low price of $2 a volume. Scribner’s edition is decidedly preferable to the English. Froude’s History of England has extended to twelve vol­ umes, covering the events from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, and is now brought to a close, because the author deems that he has already tres­ passed too much upon the patience of his readers, and because, although he has not reached the end of the reign of Elizabeth, where he at first proposed to stop, he has gone far enough to accomplish his main purpose, which was “to describe the transition from the Catholic England with which the century opened, the England of a dominant Church and monasteries and pilgrimages, into the England of progressive intelligence.” It is not our purpose to attempt even a brief criticism of the work which Mr. Froude thus brings to a close. Its �292 Eroude’s England. fascination as one of the grand stories of the world, told with singular eloquence, need not be celebrated here. But one remark in particular we wish to make, in justification of the unstinted praise which we deem it but right to bestow upon Mr. Froude’s work. It is not yet time to write the final history of an epoch so closely connected with our own as that in which “ the England of progressive intelli­ gence” had its birth. Dr. Mommsen can write of Rome, and Mr. Lea can write of early and mediaeval Christian pretension, with the confidence of judicial decision, because the one and the other have been sufficiently investigated to be thoroughly known, and readily comprehended and judged. The turns and problems of Roman historv are simple, as soon as they are seen in the light of actual facts, and even Christianity, as it took outward form in an organ­ ized church, only needed to be fairly seen as it was to be conclusively judged as the most woful defeat of the Chris­ tian spirit, and most heinous outrage upon human rights. If Christians generally do not admit this, it is only because their prejudice loves ignorance rather than knowledge, and deliberately excludes the light, that in complete dark­ ness it may continue a pretension which every candid scholar in Christendom knows to have no warrant whatever, nor even the shadow of an honest excuse. But no such judicial certainty is possible in the case which comes before us in Mr. Froude’s volumes. We are hearing the pleas of great advocates, and must continue so to do for a long time to come. Mr. Froude is an advocate worthy of the field into which he has entered, in thoroughness of learned study, in penetration and vigor of thought, in profound and glowing sympathies, and in earnest eloquence. The course of his great story commands our deepest interest at every step, and if we cannot feel on all points that historv utters through him her conclusive word, we nevertheless are con­ scious that no such plea in her court has been made before, touching this matter of the transition from Catholic England to the England of progressive intelligence, and that very �The Library of Wonders. 293 much which Mr. Froude so eloquently urges will appear in the final verdict of the tribunal of coming time. The story is a long one, but we can hardly wish that there were less. In fact we hope that Mr. Froude may yet carry out his original purpose, and go on to the end of Elizabeth’s reign. The twelve volumes which now complete the work are brought out in three styles by its American publishers, Charles Scribner & Co.; a large paper edition at $5 a volume, a library edition at $3 a volume, and a capital popular edition at $1.25 a volume. The Illustrated Library of Wonders, a translation of which is in course of publication by Charles Scribner & Co., was immediately successful on its first appearance in Paris, and seems hardly less popular in America. Eighteen volumes of Scribner’s edition are already out, and eleven more are to appear shortly. One of the last published volumes, however, Lighthouses and Lightships, is chiefly an English work, and the entire series has been edited by English hands. These volumes, in their proper place, as stories of science told for the entertainment and instruction of un­ learned and uncritical readers, fully deserve the welcome they have received, and one much wider still which we cannot doubt they will‘obtain. They are just the sort of books which are needed in the popular library and on the household book-shelf, attractive with their numerous illus­ trations, entertaining and readable in matter and style, and full of information, suggestion, and intellectual stimulus. The titles of the volumes already published are, Thunder and Lightning; Wonders of Optics; Wonders of Heat; Intelligence of Animals; Great Hunts; Egypt 3,300 Years Ago; Wonders of Pompeii; The Sun; The Sublime in Nature; Wonders of Glassmaking; Wonders of Italian Art; Wonders of the Human Body; Wonders of Architec­ ture; The Bottom of the Ocean; Winders of Acoustics; Lighthouses and Lightships; Wonderful Balloon Ascents; and Wonders of Bodily Strength and Skill. Price per vol., in scarlet cloth, gilt backs, and printed on very nice paper, $1.50. �264 The Geology and Physical Geography of Brazil. The Geology and Physical Geography of Brazil, by Ch. Fred. Hartt, which Fields, Osgood & Co. have just published, forms an elegant octavo of above 600 pages, enriched with 73 illustrations and a large and valuable map, and completed by an excellent index (price $5). In form, therefore, it is worthy of the place which its author and publishers propose for it, as one volume of the “ Scientific Results of a Journey in Brazil, by Louis Agassiz and his travelling companions.” It seems to us still more worthy of its ,place among the fruits of the “Thayer Expedition” to Brazil, in the scien­ tific excellence, and in the great interest, of its matter. It was at first the intention of Prof. Hartt to make the work embr|pe merely the results of his explorations as geologist of the expedition under Prof. Agassiz, together with those of a second journey made by himself, independently; but, happily for the public, the studies incidental to the prepa­ ration of the matter for the press, led to a considerable expansion of this plan, and we now have a general work which incorporates with the results of recent investigation all that is most valuable in previous works on the geology and Physi°al geography of Brazil. We note with special satisfactions also, the strong terms in which Prof. Hartt announces his indebtedness to the people of Brazil, and his “ sincerest wish in acknowledgment of so much kindness to be to some humble degree instrumental in removing false Jmpressions so current about Brazil, and to make the tesourcegof the empire better known in America.” It would be of no avail to attempt, in a brief notice, to give a just idea of the store of facts about Brazil which this rich volume contains. Prof. Hartt takes us from prov­ ince to province, over the great field of his explorations, along the extensive coasts, up rivers and through forests, over plains and mountains, until he has shown us the whole face of the land, has pointed out to us its striking features and its most remarkable objects of interest, when we feel almost as if we had ourselves probed the soils, hammered the rocks, inspected the corals, brought to light the treasures ■ �Margaret, a Tale of the Real, Etc. 295 of caves, threaded the forests, and otherwise gathered the elements of a complete sketch of that great region which Brazil is. Not only will students of science receive this volume with particular satisfaction, but whoever is practi­ cally interested in the resources of South America, and its opportunities for enterprise, will find in it a trustworthy guide to an extensive knowledge of important facts, while to all who acknc wledge the duty of acquainting themselves with the great regions of. the earth as. the seats of human life, it will render a great and grateful service. Margaret, A Tale of the Real and the Ideal, Blight and Bloom, by Sylvester Judd, is a New England classic, a true picture out of the quaint, sweet, homely life which a gentle parson such as Sylvester Judd was loved to move in and portray. Time but adds to its value. If it were not a picture which the press can multiply, it would speedily become a work of price, as one of the choicest remaining illustrations of manners and men of the genuine New England which is passing rapidly away. Happily a new edition can reproduce for a new gene ( * ration of readers every line of Judd’s masterpiece, as undoubtedly future editions will transmit the wise and beautiful tale to future gen­ erations interested to study, and able to take delight in, the by-gone New England. Mr. Judd was one of the earlier apostles of sweetness and light, a very true and pure soul emancipated by graces of charac­ ter and clearness of intelligence from the old dark creed of the Puri­ tans. He became-a saintly teacher of charity, justice, and faith, as he found these impersonated in him to whom he looked, without worship, but with reverence, as his guide, friend, and Master, and the helpful and friendly Master of all the sons® of men. One aim of hi® tale was to bring back to his readers the simple, natural humanity of the ideal Christ, which was to him the actual leader of life, and so to give to whoever could accept it a gentle,Hiving guide and Reacher in place of the half awful, half absurd Jesus of Puritan theology. In this aspect the book is twenty-fold more available now than it was when Mr. Judd first gave it to the world, twenty years ago, because the popular con^i ception of the Christ has come round very largely to the view which is so admirably illustrated in Margaret# But Mr. Judd was more an artist than a theologian, and made a capital tale of real life rathe© < * than a religions treatise. He will be increasingly honored and loved �296 Immortality. by all readers who know how precious a thing is a true, simple' impressive picture of wholesome realities, as they were seen by him, and were portrayed with photographic accuracy. The present edition is in a very neat volume from the pre'-s of Roberts Brothers, Boston. Price $1.50. We shall take a future occasion for criticising Mr. Judd’s view of the ideal, “ self-wrought,” perfection of Jesus, which we deem as far from radical truth lying before it as it is in advance of the Puritan idea which it had displaced. Meanwhile we can promise our readers a rich repast in Mr. Judd’s beautiful pages, and trust many of them will place Margaret among their choicest books. Immortality. Four Sermons preached before the University of Cam­ bridge. Being the Hulsean Lectures for 1868. By J. J. Perowne, B. D. Published by A. D. F. Randolph, New York. These lectures, which only profess to be “ a fragmentary contribution to the literature of a great subject,” may be profitably consulted as an able recent evangelical attempt to prove that life and immortality are revealed through the Christ of orthodoxy alone. The first discusses the theories of materialism, of pantheism, and of spiritism. The second treats of Egyptian, Greek, and Oriental faith, and failure of faith, in immor­ tality. In the third we are shown the hope of the Jew, which is found on a cursory examination to be “ no advance whatever upon the pagan system,” yet is finally thought to have been “ brighter and truer than that of the wisest of the heathen,” because so clearly implied in the doctrine of a near relation of the soul to God. In the concluding chapter, the hope of the Christian is set forth as resting on two facts, the resurrection of Christ, and the inner life of the Spirit. The general fairness, sincerity and thoughtfulness of the work are worthy of praise. It opens a great subject, the critical examination of which, as handled by Mr. Perowne, we shall return to at a suitable future time. If our readers are acquainted with the little books entitled Arne, and The Happy Boy, they will eagerly accept a third from the same source, a little volume of stories of Norwegian and Danish origin, with the title The Flying Mail, Old Olaf, and Railroad and Churchyard, published in very tasteful style by Sever and Francis, Boston. Arne, and The Happy Boy, which the same publishers introduced to us in an English translation, were delightful specimens of the current fiction of Norway, stories by Bjornstjerne Bjornson, a simple, pure, and touching painter of human life and passion in the land of the northmen. They were a real addition to our treasures, at once works of real art, and transcripts of pure nature, from a field in which nature, human and other, possesses an unique interest. In the little volume before us the third of the stories is by Bjornsen. The first is by Goldschmidt, a Danish writer famous in his own country, and the second by Mrs. Thoresen, a countrywoman of Bjornson. They all have the same fine flavor of simple nature, and make together a charming little book. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Examiner: a monthly review of religious and humane questions, and of literature. Vol. 1, February,1871, no. 3 Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [Winnetka, IL.] Collation: [201]-296 p. ; 25 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contents include: Unitarian leaders -- Theodore Parker's character and ideas. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1870 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5449 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Unknown] Subject The topic of the resource Periodicals Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The Examiner: a monthly review of religious and humane questions, and of literature. Vol. 1, February,1871, no. 3</span><span>), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Religion Unitarianism