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THE DIAL:
MAGAZINE
FOR
LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION.
VOLUME 1.
BOSTON:
WEEKS, JORDAN, AND COMPANY,
121 WASHINGTON STREET.
LONDON:
WILEY AND PUTNAM, 67 PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCC XLI.


CAMBRIDGE PRESS:
METCALF, TORRY. AND BALLOU.


ERBNO
ANDOVER - HARVARD
THEOLOGICAL LITARY
CAMBRIDGE MASS.
Tend. 526,1
7./
1840-1841
CONTENTS
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He List farewell
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No. I.
The Editors to the Reader . . .
A Short Essay on Critics . .
To the Aurora Borealis
Notes from the Journal of a Scholar
The Religion of Beauty
Brownson's Writings . .
The Last Farewell .
Ernest the Seeker (Chapter First) ..
The Divine Presence in Nature and in the Soul
Sympathy · · · · ·
Lines . . . . . .
Allston Exhibition
Song - To * * *
Orphic Sayings .
Stanzas
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy
Aulus Persius Flaccus . .
The Shield . . . .
The Problem .
Come Morir? . . . .
The Concerts of the past Winter
A Dialogue . .
Richter — The Morning Breeze
Dante — Sketches . . . .
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No. II.
Thoughts on Modern Literature
Silence . . . . .
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4.7.6. First Crossing the Alleghanies . . . . . .
159
A Sign from the West
161
Angelica Sleeps . . .
172
Nature and Art, or the Three Landscapes
173
The Art of Life, — The Scholar's Calling
175
Letter to a Theological Student
183
“ The Poor Rich Man".
187
Musings of a Recluse . .
188
Ellen
The Wood-Fire . .
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The Day Breaks . .
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The Poet · · ·
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Life . . ..
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Evening
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A Lesson for the Day
196
Wayfarers . .
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From Goethe .
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Pæan . . . . . . . . . .
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Lyric . . . . . . . .
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Truth against the World
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Waves . . .
New Poetry . .
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Art and Artist .
222
Ernest the Seeker (Chapter Second)
233
Woodnotes . . . . . . . . .
Life and Death . . . . . . . . . 245
RECORD OF THE MONTHS.
The Works of William E. Channing, D. D. Four Volumes.
Third Edition. Glasgow. 1840 . . . .
246
Two Sermons on the Kind Treatment and on the Emancipation
of Slaves. Preached at Mobile. With a Prefatory Statement.
By George F. SIMMONS . . . . . . . 248
A Letter to those who think. By EDWARD PALMER . : 251
Professor Walker's Vindication of Philosophy . . . 256
The Atheneum Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture . . 260
Select List of Recent Publications . . . . . 264
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Man in the Ages
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No. III.
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Questionings . . .
Endymion . . .
7.6. Hymn and Prayer. .
Klopstock and Meta .
The True in Dreams .
The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain
Love and Insight . . . .
Sunset . . . . . .
Give us an Interpreter .
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. I.
To Nydia
The Violet . . .
Stanzas . . . . .
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German Literature. .
The Snow Storm . .
Menzel's View of Goethe
Suum Cuique . . .
The Sphinx . . .
Orphic Sayings
· Woman . . . . . . . . .
Sonnet . . . . . . . . .
Thoughts on Art . .
Glimmerings . . . . . . . .
Letters from Italy on the Representatives of Italy.
Eller To the Ideal . . . . . . . .
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RECORD OF THE MONTHS.
Michael Angelo considered as a Philosophic Poet, with Transla-
tions. By John EDWARD TAYLOR . . . . .
Select List of Recent Publications
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402
No. IV.
The Unitarian Movement in New England
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7. 6. Dream
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Listen to the Wind
The Wind again
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1094.6. Poems on Art .
Hermitage
The Angel and the Artist
Shelley .
A Dialogue . .
Thoughts on Labor
Elen
The Out-Bid
Theme for a World-Drama
Man the Reformer .
Music of the Winter ..
Ellen. Farewell . .
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THE DIAL.
Vol. I.
JULY, 1840.
No. I.
THE EDITORS TO THE READER.
We invite the attention of our countrymen to a new
design. Probably not quite unexpected or unannounced
will our Journal appear, though small pains have been
taken to secure its welcome. Those, who have immediately
acted in editing the present Number, cannot accuse them.
selves of any unbecoming forwardness in their undertak-
ing, but rather of a backwardness, when they remember
how often in many private circles the work was projected,
how eagerly desired, and only postponed because no indi.
vidual volunteered to combine and concentrate the free-
will offerings of many coöperators. With some reluctance
the present conductors of this work have yielded them-
selves to the wishes of their friends, finding something
sacred and not to be withstood in the importunity which
urged the production of a Journal in a new spirit.
As they have not proposed themselves to the work,
neither can they lay any the least claim to an option or
determination of the spirit in which it is conceived, or to
what is peculiar in the design. In that respect, they have
obeyed, though with great joy, the strong current of
thought and feeling, which, for a few years past, has led
many sincere persons in New England to make new de-
mands on literature, and to reprobate that rigor of our
conventions of religion and education which is turning us
to stone, which renounces hope, which looks only back-
ward, which asks only such a future as the past, which
VOL. I. NO. I.
1


The Editors to the Reader.
[July,
suspects improvement, and holds nothing so much in horror
as new views and the dreams of youth.
With these terrors the conductors of the present Jour-
nal have nothing to do, - not even so much as a word
of reproach to waste. They know that there is a
portion of the youth and of the adult population of this
country, who have not shared them ; who have in secret
or in public paid their vows to truth and freedom ; who
love reality too well to care for names, and who live by a
Faith too earnest and profound to suffer them to doubt the
eternity of its object, or to shake themselves free from its
authority. Under the fictions and customs which occupied
others, these have explored the Necessary, the Plain, the
True, the Human, — and so gained a vantage ground,
which commands the history of the past and the present.
No one can converse much with different classes of so-
ciety in New England, without remarking the progress of
a revolution. Those who share in it have no external
organization, no badge, no creed, no name. They do not
vote, or print, or even meet together. They do not know
each other's faces or names. They are united only in a
common love of truth, and love of its work. They are of
all conditions and constitutions. Of these acolytes, if some
are happily born and well bred, many are no doubt ill
dressed, ill placed, ill made — with as many scars of here-
ditary vice as other men. Without pomp, without trum-
pet, in lonely and obscure places, in solitude, in servitude,
in compunctions and privations, trudging beside the team
in the dusty road, or drudging a hireling in other men's
cornfields, schoolmasters, who teach a few children rudi-
ments for a pittance, ministers of small parishes of the
obscurer sects, lone women in dependent condition, ma-
trons and young maidens, rich and poor, beautiful and
hard-favored, without concert or proclamation of any kind,
they have silently given in their several adherence to a new
hope, and in all companies do signify a greater trust in the
nature and resources of man, than the laws or the popular
opinions will well allow.
This spirit of the time is felt by every individual with
some difference, — to each one casting its light upon the
objects nearest to his temper and habits of thought ; – to
one, coming in the shape of special reforms in the state ;


1840.]
3
The Editors to the Reader.
to another, in modifications of the various callings of men,
and the customs of business ; to a third, opening a new
scope for literature and art; to a fourth, in philosophical
insight; to a fifth, in the vast solitudes of prayer. It is
in every form a protest against usage, and a search for
principles. In all its movements, it is peaceable, and in
the very lowest marked with a triumphant success. Of
course, it rouses the opposition of all which it judges and
condemns, but it is too confident in its tone to comprehend
an objection, and so builds no outworks for possible de-
fence against contingent enemies. It has the step of Fate,
and goes on existing like an oak or a river, because it
must..
In literature, this influence appears not yet in new books
so much as in the higher tone of criticism. The antidote
to all narrowness is the comparison of the record with
nature, which at once shames the record and stimulates to
new attempts. Whilst we look at this, we wonder how any
book has been thought worthy to be preserved. There is
somewhat in all life untranslatable into language. He who
keeps his eye on that will write better than others, and
think less of his writing, and of all writing. Every thought
has a certain imprisoning as well as uplifting quality, and,
in proportion to its energy on the will, refuses to become
an object of intellectual contemplation. Thus what is
great usually slips through our fingers, and it seems won-
derful how a lifelike word ever comes to be written. If
our Journal share the impulses of the time, it cannot now
prescribe its own course. It cannot foretell in orderly
propositions what it shall attempt. All criticism should be
poetic ; unpredictable ; superseding, as every new thought
does, all foregone thoughts, and making a new light on the
whole world. Its brow is not wrinkled with circumspec-
tion, but serene, cheerful, adoring. It has all things to
say, and no less than all the world for its final audience.
Our plan embraces much more than criticism ; were it
not so, our criticism would be naught. Everything noble
is directed on life, and this is. We do not wish to say
pretty or curious things, or to reiterate a few propositions
in varied forms, but, if we can, to give expression to that
spirit which lifts men to a higher platform, restores to them
the religious sentiment, brings them worthy aims and pure


Tne Editors to the Reader.
(July,
away its melanchising man to the less life less desultory.
pleasures, purges the inward eye, makes life less desultory,
and, through raising man to the level of nature, takes
away its melancholy from the landscape, and reconciles the
practical with the speculative powers.
But perhaps we are telling our little story too gravely.
There are always great arguments at hand for a true action,
even for the writing of a few pages. There is nothing but
seems near it and prompts it, -the sphere in the ecliptic,
the sap in the apple tree, - every fact, every appearance
seem to persuade to it.
Our means correspond with the ends we have indicated.
As we wish not to multiply books, but to report life, our
resources are therefore not so much the pens of practised
writers, as the discourse of the living, and the portfolios
which friendship has opened to us. From the beautiful
recesses of private thought; from the experience and hope
of spirits which are withdrawing from all old forms, and
seeking in all that is new somewhat to meet their inap-
peasable longings; from the secret confession of genius
afraid to trust itself to aught but sympathy; from the
conversation of fervid and mystical pietists; from tear-
stained diaries of sorrow and passion ; from the manu-
scripts of young poets; and from the records of youthful
taste commenting on old works of art; we hope to draw
thoughts and feelings, which being alive can impart life.
And so with diligent hands and good intent we set
down our Dial on the earth. We wish it may resemble
that instrument in its celebrated happiness, that of measur-
ing no hours but those of sunshine. Let it be one cheerful
rational voice amidst the din of mourners and polemics.
Or to abide by our chosen image, let it be such a Dial, not
as the dead face of a clock, hardly even such as the
Gnomon in a garden, but rather such a Dial as is the Gar-
den itself, in whose leaves and flowers and fruits the sud-
denly awakened sleeper is instantly apprised not what part
of dead time, but what state of life and growth is now
arrived and arriving.


1840.]
Essay on Critics.
A SHORT ESSAY ON CRITICS.
An essay on Criticism were a serious matter ; for, though
this age be emphatically critical, the writer would still
find it necessary to investigate the laws of criticism as a
science, to settle its conditions as an art. Essays entitled
critical are epistles addressed to the public through which the
mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions. Of
these the only law is,“ Speak the best word that is in thee.”
Or they are regular articles, got up to order by the literary
hack writer, for the literary mart, and the only law is to
make them plausible. There is not yet deliberate recog-
nition of a standard of criticism, though we hope the
always strengthening league of the republic of letters
must ere long settle laws on which its Amphictyonic coun-
cil may act. Meanwhile let us not venture to write on
criticism, but by classifying the critics imply our hopes,
and thereby our thoughts.
First, there are the subjective class, (to make use of a
convenient-term, introduced by our German benefactors.)
These are persons to whom writing is no sacred, no reve-
rend employment. They are not driven to consider, not
forced upon investigation by the fact, that they are delibe-
rately giving their thoughts an independent existence, and
that it may live to others when dead to them. They know
no agonies of conscientious research, no timidities of self-
respect. They see no Ideal beyond the present hour,
which makes its mood an uncertain tenure. How things
affect them now they know ; let the future, let the whole
take care of itself. They state their impressions as they
rise, of other men's spoken, written, or acted thoughts.
They never dream of going out of themselves to seek the
motive, to trace the law of another nature. They never
dream that there are statures which cannot be measured
from their point of view. They love, they like, or they
hate; the book is detestable, immoral, absurd, or admira-
ble, noble, of a most approved scope ; - these statements
they make with authority, as those who bear the evangel
of pure taste and accurate judgment, and need be tried
before no human synod. To them it seems that their pres-
ent position commands the universe.


Essay on Critics.
(July,
Thus the essays on the works of others, which are called
criticisms, are often, in fact, mere records of impressions.
To judge of their value you must know where the man
was brought up, under what influences , — his nation, his
church, his family even. He himself has never attempted
to estimate the value of these circumstances, and find a
law or raise a standard above all circumstances, permanent
against all influence. He is content to be the creature of
his place, and to represent it by his spoken and written
word. He takes the same ground with the savage, who
does not hesitate to say of the product of a civilization on
which he could not stand, “ It is bad,” or “ It is good.”
The value of such comments is merely reflex. They
eharacterize the critic. They give an idea of certain in-
fluences on a certain act of men in a certain time or
place. Their absolute, essential value is nothing. The
long review, the eloquent article by the man of the nine-
teenth century are of no value by themselves considered,
but only as samples of their kind. The writers were con-
tent to tell what they felt, to praise or to denounce without
needing to convince us or themselves. They sought not
the divine truths of philosophy, and she proffers them not,
if unsought.
Then there are the apprehensive. These can go out
of themselves and enter fully into a foreign existence.
They breathe its life; they live in its law; they tell
what it meant, and why it so expressed its meaning.
They reproduce the work of which they speak, and make
it better known to us in so far as two statements are
better than one. There are beautiful specimens in this
kind. They are pleasing to us as bearing witness of the
genial sympathies of nature. They have the ready grace
of love with somewhat of the dignity of disinterested
friendship. They sometimes give more pleasure than the
original production of which they treat, as melodies will
sometimes ring sweetlier in the echo. Besides there is a
peculiar pleasure in a true response ; it is the assurance of
equipoise in the universe. These, if not true critics, come
nearer the standard than the subjective class, and the value
of their work is ideal as well as historical.
Then there are the comprehensive, who must also be ap-
prehensive. They enter into the nature of another being


1840.)
Essay on Critics.
and judge his work by its own law. But having done so,
having ascertained his design and the degree of his success
in fulfilling it, thus measuring his judgment, his energy, and
skill, they do also know how to put that aim in its place, and
how to estimate its relations. And this the critic can only do
who perceives the analogies of the universe, and how they are
regulated by an absolute, invariable principle. He can see
how far that work expresses this principle as well as how
far it is excellent in its details. Sustained by a principle,
such as can be girt within no rule, no formula, he can walk
around the work, he can stand above it, he can uplift it,
and try its weight. Finally he is worthy to judge it.
Critics are poets cut down, says some one by way of
jeer ; but, in truth, they are men with the poetical tempera-
ment to apprehend, with the philosophical tendency to in-
vestigate. The maker is divine ; the critic sees this divine,
but brings it down to humanity by the analytic process.
The critic is the historian who records the order of crea-
tion. In vain for the maker, who knows without learning
it, but not in vain for the mind of his race.
The critic is beneath the maker, but is his needed friend.
What tongue could speak but to an intelligent ear, and
every noble work demands its critic. The richer the work,
the more severe would be its critic; the larger its scope,
the more comprehensive must be his power of scrutiny.
The critic is not a base caviller, but the younger brother
of genius. Next to invention is the power of interpreting
invention ; next to beauty the power of appreciating beauty.
And of making others appreciate it; for the universe is a
scale of infinite gradation, and below the very highest,
every step is explanation down to the lowest. Religion, in
the two modulations of poetry and music, descends through
an infinity of waves to the lowest abysses of human nature.
Nature is the literature and art of the divine mind; hu-
man literature and art the criticism on that; and they, too,
find their criticism within their own sphere.
The critic, then, should be not merely a poet, not mere-
ly a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of
all three. If he criticize the poem, he must want nothing
of what constitutes the poet, except the power of creating
forms and speaking in music. He must have as good an
eye and as fine a sense; but if he had as fine an organ for


Essay on Critics.
[July,
expression also, he would make the poem instead of judg-
ing it. He must be inspired by the philosopher's spirit of
inquiry and need of generalization, but he must not be
constrained by the hard cemented masonry of method to
which philosophers are prone. And he must have the or-
ganic acuteness of the observer, with a love of ideal per-
fection, which forbids him to be content with mere beauty
of details in the work or the comment upon the work.
There are persons who maintain, that there is no legiti-
mate criticism, except the reproductive; that we have only
to say what the work is or is to us, never what it is not.
But the moment we look for a principle, we feel the need
of a criterion, of a standard ; and then we say what the work
is not, as well as what it is; and this is as healthy though
not as grateful and gracious an operation of the mind as
the other. We do not seek to degrade but to classify an
object by stating what it is not. We detach the part from
the whole, lest it stand between us and the whole. When
we have ascertained in what degree it manifests the whole,
we may safely restore it to its place, and love or admire it
there ever after.
The use of criticism in periodical writing is to sift, not
to stamp a work. Yet should they not be “sieves and
drainers for the use of luxurious readers,” but for the use
of earnest inquirers, giving voice and being to their objec-
tions, as well as stimulus to their sympathies. But the
critic must not be an infallible adviser to his reader. He
must not tell him what books are not worth reading, or
what must be thought of them when read, but what he
read in them. Wo to that coterie where some critic sits
despotic, intrenched behind the infallible “ We.” Wo to
that oracle who has infused such soft sleepiness, such a
gentle dulness into his atmosphere, that when he opes his
lips no dog will bark. It is this attempt at dictatorship in
the reviewers, and the indolent acquiescence of their read-
ers, that has brought them into disrepute. With such fair-
ness did they make out their statements, with such dignity
did they utter their verdicts, that the poor reader grew all
too submissive. He learned his lesson with such docility,
that the greater part of what will be said at any public
or private meeting can be foretold by any one who has read
the leading periodical works for twenty years back. Schol-


1840.]
Essay on Critics.
ars sneer at and would fain dispense with them altogether;
and the public, grown lazy and helpless by this constant
use of props and stays, can now scarce brace itself even to
get through a magazine article, but reads in the daily paper
laid beside the breakfast plate a short notice of the last
number of the long established and popular review, and
thereupon passes its judgment and is content.
Then the partisan spirit of many of these journals has
made it unsafe to rely upon them as guide-books and ex-
purgatory indexes. They could not be content merely to
stimulate and suggest thought, they have at last become
powerless to supersede it.
From these causes and causes like these, the journals
have lost much of their influence. There is a languid
feeling about them, an inclination to suspect the justice of
their verdicts, the value of their criticisms. But their golden
age cannot be quite past. They afford too convenient a
vehicle for the transmission of knowledge; they are too
natural a feature of our time to have done all their work
yet. Surely they may be redeemed from their abuses,
they may be turned to their true uses. But how ?
It were easy to say what they should not do. They
should not have an object to carry or a cause to advocate,
which obliges them either to reject all writings which wear
the distinctive traits of individual life, or to file away what
does not suit them, till the essay, made true to their
design, is made false to the mind of the writer. An ex-
ternal consistency is thus produced, at the expense of all
salient thought, all genuine emotion of life, in short, and
living influences. Their purpose may be of value, but by
such means was no valuable purpose ever furthered long.
There are those, who have with the best intention pursued
this system of trimming and adaptation, and thought it
well and best to
“ Deceive their country for their country's good.”
But their country cannot long be so governed. It misses
the pure, the full tone of truth; it perceives that the voice
is modulated to coax, to persuade, and it turns from the
judicious man of the world, calculating the effect to be
produced by each of his smooth sentences to some earnest
voice which is uttering thoughts, crude, rash, ill-arranged
VOL. I. — NO. 1.


10
(July,
Essay on Critics.
it may be, but true to one human breast, and uttered in
full faith, that the God of Truth will guide them aright.
And here, it seems to me, has been the greatest mis-
take in the conduct of these journals. A smooth monotony
has been attained, an uniformity of tone, so that from
the title of a journal you can infer the tenor of all its
chapters. But nature is ever various, ever new, and so
should be her daughters, art and literature. We do not
want merely a polite response to what we thought before,
but by the freshness of thought in other minds to have
new thought awakened in our own. We do not want
stores of information only, but to be roused to digest these
into knowledge. Able and experienced men write for us,
and we would know what they think, as they think it not
for us but for themselves. We would live with them,
rather than be taught by them how to live; we would
catch the contagion of their mental activity, rather than
have them direct us how to regulate our own. In books,
in reviews, in the senate, in the pulpit, we wish to meet
thinking men, not schoolmasters or pleaders. We wish
that they should do full justice to their own view, but also
that they should be frank with us, and, if now our supe-
riors, treat us as as if we might some time rise to be their
equals. It is this true manliness, this firmness in his own
position, and this power of appreciating the position of
others, that alone can make the critic our companion and
friend. We would converse with him, secure that he will
tell us all his thought, and speak as man to man. But if
he adapts his work to us, if he stifles what is distinctively
his, if he shows himself either arrogant or mean, or, above
all, if he wants faith in the healthy action of free thought,
and the safety of pure motive, we will not talk with him,
for we cannot confide in him. We will go to the critic
who trusts Genius and trusts us, who knows that all good
writing must be spontaneous, and who will write out the
bill of fare for the public as he read it for himself, -
“ Forgetting vulgar rules, with spirit free
To judge each author by his own intent,
Nor think one standard for all minds is meant.”
Such an one will not disturb us with personalities, with
sectarian prejudices, or an undue vehemence in favor of


1840.)
To the Aurora Borealis.
petty plans or temporary objects. Neither will he disgust
us by smooth obsequious flatteries and an inexpressive, life-
less gentleness. He will be free and make free from the
mechanical and distorting influences we hear complained
of on every side. He will teach us to love wisely what
we before loved well, for he knows the difference between
censoriousness and discernment, infatuation and reverence;
and, while delighting in the genial melodies of Pan, can
perceive, should Apollo bring his lyre into audience, that
there may be strains more divine than those of his native
groves.
TO THE AURORA BOREALIS.
Arctic fount of holiest light
Springing through the winter night,
Spreading far beyond yon hill
When the earth is dark and still,
Rippling o'er the stars, as streams
Ripple o'er their pebble-gleams -
Oh, for names, thou vision fair,
To express thy splendors rare !
Blush upon the cheek of night,
Posthumous, unearthly light,
Dream of the deep-sunken sun,
Beautiful, sleep-walking one,
Sister of the moonlight pale,
Star-obscuring, meteor-veil,
Spread by heaven's watching vestals,
Sender of the gleamy crystals,
Darting on their arrowy course
From their glittering, polar source,
Upward where the air doth freeze,
Round the sister Pleiades -
Beautiful and rare Aurora,
In the heavens thou art their Flora,
Night-blowing Cereus of the sky,
Rose of amaranthine dye,
Hyacinth of purple light,
Or their Lily clad in white!
Who can name thy wondrous essence,
Thou electric Phosphorescence ?


To the Aurora Borealis.
[July,
Lonely apparition fire!
Seeker of the starry quire!
Restless roamer of the sky,
Who hath' won thy mystery?
Mortal science hath not ran
With thee through the Empyrean,
Where the constellations cluster
Flower-like on thy branchy lustre!
After all the glare and toil,
And the daylight's fretful coil,
Thou dost come so mild and still,
Hearts with love and peace to fill;
As when after revelry
With a talking company,
Where the blaze of many lights
Fell on fools and parasites,
One by one the guests have gone,
And we find ourselves alone,
Only one sweet maiden near,
With a sweet voice low and clear
Murmuring music in our ear -
So thou talkest to the earth,
After daylight's weary mirth.
Is not human fantasy,
Wild Aurora, likest thee,
Blossoming in nightly dreams
Like thy shifting meteor-gleams?
But a better type thou art
Of the strivings of the heart,
Reaching upwards from the earth
To the Soul that gave it birth.
When the noiseless beck of night
Summons out the inner light,
That hath hid its purer ray
Through the lapses of the day-
Then like thee, thou northern Morn,
Instincts which we deemed unborn,
Gushing from their hidden source,
Mount upon their heavenward course,
And the spirit seeks to be
Filled with God's Eternity.


1840.]
Notes from the Journal of a Scholar.
NOTES FROM THE JOURNAL OF A SCHOLAR.
Nunc non e manibus illis,
Nunc non e tumulo, fortunataque favilla
Nascuntur viola?
PERSIUS,
HOMER.
Homer I read with continually new pleasure. Criticism
of Homer is like criticism upon natural scenery. You may
say what is, and what is wanting, but you do not pretend to
find fault. The Iliad is before us as a pile of mountains,
- so blue and distant, so simple and real,- even so much
an image of majesty and power.
He is as prolific as the earth, and produces his changing
scenery with the ease and the finish and the inexhaustible
variety of nature. Homer never mistakes. You might
as well say, there was untruth in the song of the wind.
I notice Homer's mention of an interview with a great
man.
It is with him always among the memorabilia to have
seen a great man. An embassy of Ulysses, a breakfast
with Tydeus, any meeting with any heroic person, which
barely gave time to note him, is text for memory and com-
parison.
Homer is pious.
Homer, says Goethe, describes that which exists, not its
effect on the beholder. He paints agreeable things, not
their agreeableness.
Homer writes from no theory as a point of vision. He
tells us what he sees, not what he thinks.
Homer is an achromatic glass. He is even less humor-
some than Shakspeare.
Two or three disinterested witnesses have been in the
world, who have stated the facts as they are, and whose
testimony stands unimpeached from age to age. Such
was Homer, Socrates, Chaucer, Shakspeare ; perhaps
Goethe.
A larger class state things as they believe them to be ;
Plato, Epicurus, Cicero, Luther, Montaigne, George Fox.
A still larger class take a side, and defend it the best
they can ; Aristotle, Lucretius, Milton, Burke.


Notes from the Journal of a Scholar.
(July,
SHAKSPEARE.
O my friend ! shall thou and I always be two persons ?
Any strong emotion makes the surrounding parts of life
fall away as if struck with death. One sometimes ques-
tions his own reality, - it so blenches and shrivels in the
flame of a thought, a relation, that swallows him up. If
that lives, he lives. “There either he must live or have
no life.”
This afternoon we read Shakspeare. The verse so sunk
into me, that as I toiled my way home under the cloud of
night, with the gusty music of the storm around and over-
head, I doubted that it was all a remembered scene; that
Humanity was indeed one, a spirit continually reproduced,
accomplishing a vast orbit, whilst individual men are but
the points through which it passes.
We each of us furnish to the angel who stands in the
sun a single observation. The reason, why Homer is to
me like dewy morning, is because I too lived while Troy
was, and sailed in the hollow ships of the Grecians to sack
the devoted town. The rosy-fingered dawn as it crimsoned
the top of Ida, the broad sea shore dotted with tents, the
Trojan hosts in their painted armor, and the rushing
chariots of Diomed and Idomeneus, — all these I too saw;
my ghost animated the frame of some nameless Argive.
And Shakspeare in King John does but recal to me my-
self in the dress of another age, the sport of new acci-
dents. I, who am Charles, was sometime Romeo. In
Hamlet, I pondered and doubted. We forget what we
have been, drugged with the sleepy bowl of the Present.
But when a lively chord in the soul is struck, when the
windows for a moment are unbarred, the long and varied
past is recovered. We recognise it all. We are no
more brief, ignoble creatures; we seize our immortality,
and bind together the related parts of our secular being.
Shakspeare was a proper Pagan. He understood the
height and depth of humanity in all its tossings on the sea
of circumstance, - now breasting the waves, mounting
even to heaven on their steep sides, and now drifting be-
fore the wrath of the tempest. In himself he embraced
this whole sphere, the whole of man struggling with the


1840.]
15
Notes from the Journal of a Scholar.
whole of fortune. But of religion, as it appears in the
new dispensation of Christianity, as an element in the soul
controlling all the rest, and exhibiting new phenomena of
action and passion, he had no experience; almost I had
said, he had no conception. The beauty of holiness, the
magnanimity of faith, he never saw. Probably he was an
unbeliever in the creed of his time, and looked on the
New Testament as a code that hampered the freedom
of the mind which was a law unto itself, and as intruding
on the sublime mystery of our fate. Hence, he delighted
to get out of the way of Christianity, and not to need to
calculate any of its influences.
“What's brave, what's noble,
Let's do it after the high Roman fashion."
This was as he felt, and in Cleopatra it is just senti-
ment; but his men and women in the English plays often
talk in the same ante-Christian style as Cæsar or Corio-
lanus. Now, our sign boards tell of Titian; and society
everywhere attests in one mode or other the effects of
Christianity. Certain fundamental truths sink and sow
themselves in every soil, and the most irreligious man un-
consciously supposes them in all his life and conversation.
Shakspeare had in its perfection the poetic inspiration ;
applied himself without effort to the whole world, — the
sensible, the intelligent. Into all beauty, into all suffering,
into all action, into all affection, he threw himself, - and
yet not himself, for he seems never committed in his
plays ;- but his genius. His genius was thus omnific and
all-sympathizing. He seems to have sat above this hun-
dred-handed play of his imagination, pensive and con-
scious. He read the world off into sweetest verse as one
reads a book. He in no way mixed himself the individu-
al with the scenes he drew, and so his poetry was the very
coinage of nature and life. The pregnant cloud disbur-
dened itself and meaning became expression. In propor-
tion as the prophet sees things from a personal point of
view, and speaks under the influence of any temperament,
interest, or prepossession, his eye is not clear, his voice is
husky, — the oracle philippizes. The perfect inspiration
is that which utters the beauty and truth, seen pure and
unconfused as they lie in the lap of the Divine Order.


16
[July,
.
Notes from the Journal of a Scholar.
Shakspeare was the inspired tongue of humanity. He
was priest at the altar not of the Celestials, but of Mor-
tals. His kingdom was of this world, and the message he
was sent to do he delivered unembarrassed, unimplicated.
He gave voice to the finest, curiousest, boldest philosoph-
ical speculations; he chanted the eternal laws of morals;
but it was as they were facts in the consciousness, and so
a part of humanity. He gives no pledge, breathes no
prayer, — and religion is mirrored no otherwise than de-
bauchery. In his sonnets we behold him appropriating his
gifts to his own use, but never in the plays. Hamlet and
Othello, — as he counted them not his creatures, but self-
subsistent, too highborn to be propertied, - so he tam-
pers not with their individuality, nor obtrudes himself on
us as their prompter. If they lived, he lived.
BURKE.
It is not true what Goldsmith says of Burke ; he did
not give up to party any more than Shakspeare gave up
to conspiracy, madness, or lust. His was not the nature
of the partisan, but of the poet, who is quite other than
the partisan. With the faculty proper to genius, he threw
himself into the cause he espoused; and the Reflections
on the French Revolution and the Impeachment of War-
ren Hastings were his Othello and Julius Cæsar, wherein
himself was lost and the truth of things only observed.
The poet, it is said, has in him all the arts and letters
of his time. The Iliad is a panorama of Greek civili-
zation in the Homeric age. So Burke in his speeches
comprises his era. Hence he could no more be a Radical
than a Courtier. The spirit by which he was wedded to
what was venerable was one with the spirit in which he
welcomed the new births of reformation and liberty. He
was consistent with himself. He had no sympathy with
those who, like George Fox, would clothe themselves in
a suit of leather, and nakedly renounce the riches to-
gether with the restraints of social life. He did not chafe
under the splendid harness of old institutions. Herein
appeared not the servility but the greatness of the man ;
and his homage to the English Constitution was like the
chivalrous courtesy which man pays to woman, as beau-
tiful in him to yield, as in her to accept.


1840.]
17
The Religion of Beauty.
THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY.
The devout mind is a lover of nature. Where there
is beauty it feels at home. It has not then to shut the
windows of the senses, and take refuge from the world
within its own thoughts, to find eternal life. Beauty never
limits us, never degrades us. We are free spirits when with
nature. The outward scenery of our life, when we feel
it to be beautiful, is always commensurate with the gran-
deur of our inward ideal aspiration ; it reflects encourag-
ingly the heart's highest, brightest dreams ; it does not
contradict the soul's convictions of a higher life; it tells us
that we are safe in believing the thought, which to us seems
noblest. If we have no sense of beauty, the world is
nothing more than a place to keep us in. But when the
skies and woods reveal their loveliness, then nature seems
a glorious picture, of which our own inmost soul is the
painter, and our own loves and longings the subject. It is
the apt accompaniment to the silent song of the beholder's
heart.
The greatest blessing, which could be bestowed on the
weary multitude, would be to give them the sense of beauty;
to open their eyes for them, and let them see how richly we
are here surrounded, what a glorious temple we inbabit,
how every part of it is eloquent of God. The love of
nature grows with the growth of the soul. Religion makes
man sensible to beauty; and beauty in its turn disposes to
religion. Beauty is the revelation of the soul to the senses.
In all this outward beauty, — these soft swells and curves
of the landscape, which seem to be the earth's smile; -
this inexhaustible variety of form and colors and motion,
not promiscuous, but woven together in as natural a har-
mony as the thoughts in a poem; this mysterious hiero-
glyphic of the flowers ; this running alphabet of tangled
vine and bending grass studded with golden paints ; this
all-embracing perspective of distance rounding altogeth-
er into one rainbow-colored sphere, so perfect that the
senses and the soul roam abroad over it unsated, feeling
the presence and perfection of the whole in each part;
this perfect accord of sights, sounds, motions, and fra-
VOL. 1. — NO. I.


18
[July,
The Religion of Beauty.
grance, all tuned to one harmony, out of which run melo-
dies inexhaustible of every mood and measure;- in all
this, man first feels that God is without him, as well as
within him, that nature too is holy; and can he bear to
find himself the sole exception ?
Does not the season, then, does not nature, does not the
spontaneous impulse of an open heart, which has held
such sublime worship through its senses, more than justify
an attempt to show how the religious sentiments may be
nourished by a cultivation of the sense of duty ?
This should be a part of our religious education. The
heart pines and sickens, or grows hard and contracted and
unbelieving, when it cannot have beauty. The love of
nature ends in the love of God. It is impossible to feel
beauty, and not feel that there is a spirit there. The sen-
sualist, the materialist, the worshipper of chance, is cheated
of his doubts, the moment this mystery overtakes him in
his walks. This surrounding presence of beautiful nature
keeps the soul buoyed up forever into its element of
freedom, where its action is cheerful, healthful, and un-
wearied; where duty becomes lovely, and the call to
worship, either by prayer or by self-sacrifice, is music to it.
He, in whom this sense is open, is put, as it were, in a
magnetic communication with a life like his own, which
flows in around him, go where he may. In nature we for.
get our loneliness. In nature we feel the same Spirit, who
made it and pervades it, holding us up also. Through the
open sense of beauty, all we see preaches and prophesies
to us. Without it, when no such sensibility exists, how
hard a task is faith! how hard to feel that God is here !
how unlovely looks religion! As without the air, the body
could not breathe ; so without beauty, the heart and re-
ligious nature seem to want an element to live in. Beauty
is the moral atmosphere. The close, unseemly school-
house, in which our infancy was cramped, - of how much
natural faith did it not rob us! In how unlovely a garb
did we first see Knowledge and Virtue! How uninteresting
seemed Truth, how unfriendly looked Instruction ; with
what mean associations were the names of God and Wis-
dom connected in our memory! What a violation of
nature's peace seemed Duty! what an intrusion upon the
mind's rights! What rebellion has been nurtured within


1840.] - The Religion of Beauty.
19
us by the ugly confinements to which artificial life and
education have accustomed us! How insensible and cold
it has made us to the expressive features of God's works,
always around us, always inviting us to high refreshing
converse!
I hold, then, that without a cultivation of the sense of
beauty, chiefly to be drunken from the open fountains of
nature, there can be no healthy and sound moral develop-
ment. The man so educated lacks something most essen-
tial. He is one-sided, not of a piece with nature ; and
however correct, however much master of himself, he will
be uninteresting, unencouraging, and uninviting. To the
student of ancient history, the warm-hearted, graceful
Greek, all alive to nature, who made beauty almost his
religion, is a more refreshing object, than the cold, formal
Jew. And here around us, resist it as we may, our hearts
are always drawn towards the open, graceful children of
impulse, in preference to the stiff, insensible patterns of
virtue. The latter may be very unexceptionable, but at
the same time very unreal. The former, though purpose-
less and careless they play through life, yet have trusted
themselves to nature, and been ravished by her beauty,
and nature will not let them become very bad.
Consider a few of the practical effects upon the whole
character of a growing love of beauty in the young mind.
It disposes to order. It gives birth in the mind to an instinct
of propriety. It suggests imperceptibly, it inclines gently, but
irresistibly, to the fit action, to the word in season. The beau-
ty which we see and feel plants its seeds in us. Gazing with
delight on nature, our will imperceptibly becomes attuned
to the same harmony. The sense of beauty is attended
with a certain reverence; we dare not mar what looks so
perfect. This sense, too, has a something like conscience
contained in it; we feel bound to do and be ourselves
something worthy of the beauty we are permitted to ad-
mire. This feeling, while it makes alive and quickens, yet
is eminently conservative, in the best sense. He, who has
it, is always interested on the side of order, and of all dear
and hallowed associations. He, who wants it, is as destruc-
tive as a Goth. The presence of beauty, like that of na-
ture, as soon as we feel it at all, overcomes us with respect,
and a certain sensitive dread of all violence, mischief, or


20
(July,
The Religion of Beauty.
gives thet of loose beauty there him the es not see can see
discord. The beautiful ideal piece of architecture bears
no mark of wanton pen-knife. The handsome school-room
makes the children neat. The instinct of obedience, of
conciliation, of decorum, reverence, and harmony, flows
into the soul with beauty. The calm spirit of the land-
scape takes possession of the humble, yet soul-exalted ad-
mirer. Its harmony compels the jangling chords within
himself into smoother undulations. Therefore “ walk out,"
like Isaac, “at even-tide to meditate," and let nature, with
her divine stillness, take possession of thee. She shall
give thee back to thyself better, more spiritual, more sen-
sible of thy relationship with all things, and that in wrong-
ing any, thou but woundest thyself.
Another grace of character, which the sense of beauty
gives the mind, is freedom - the freedom of fond obedi-
ence, not of loose desire. The man, whose eyes and soul
are open to the beauty there is around him, sees every-
where encouragement. To him the touch of nature's
hand is warm and genial. The air does not seem to pinch
him, as it does most narrow-minded ones, who can see no
good in anything but gain; to whose utilitarian vision most
that is natural looks hostile. He is not contracted into
himself by cautious fear and suspicion, afraid to let his
words flow freely, or his face relax in confidence, or his
limbs move gracefully, or his actions come out whole and
hearty. He trusts nature; for he has kissed her loveliness;
he knows that she smiles encouragement to him. Now
think what it is that makes virtue so much shunned. Part-
ly, our depravity, if you please. But partly, also, her
numerous ungraceful specimens. For it is the instinctive
expectation of all minds, that what is excellent shall also
be beautiful, lovely, natural, and free. Most of the piety,
we see about us, is more or less the product of restraint
and fear. It stands there in spectral contrast with nature.
Approve it we may; but we cannot love it. It does not
bear the divine stamp; it chills, not converts. The love
of nature makes in us an ideal of moral beauty, of an
elevation of character which shall look free and lovely,
something that shall take its place naturally and as matter
of course in the centre of nature, as the life of Jesus
did.
Again, the love of beauty awakens higher aspirations


1840.]
21
The Religion of Beauty.
in us. He, who has felt the beauty of a summer like this,
has drunk in an infinite restlessness, a yearning to be per-
fect, and by obedience free. He can never more rest con-
tented with what he is. And here is the place, to attempt
some account of the true significance of beauty, and of
what is its office to the soul.
Beauty always suggests the thought of the perfect.
The smallest beautiful object is as infinite as the whole
world of stars above us. So we feel it. Everything beau-
tiful is emblematic of something spiritual. Itself limited,
its meanings and suggestions are infinite. In it we seem
to see all in one. Each beautiful thing, each dew-drop,
each leaf, each true work of painter's, poet's, or musician's
art, seems an epitome of the creation. Is it not God revealed
through the senses ? Is not every beautiful thing a divine
hint thrown out to us? Does not the soul begin to dream
of its own boundless capacities, when it has felt beauty ?
Does not immortality then, for the first time, cease to be a
name, a doctrine, and become a present experience ?
When the leaves fall in autumn, they turn golden as they
drop. The cold winds tell us of coming winter and death;
but they tell it in music. All is significant of decay ; but
the deep, still, harmonious beauty surpasses all felt in sum-
mer or spring before. We look on it, and feel that it
cannot die. The Eternal speaks to us from the midst of
decay. We feel a melancholy; but it is a sweet, religious
melancholy, lifting us in imagination above death — since
above the grave of the summer so much real beauty lin-
gers.
The beautiful, then, is the spiritual aspect of nature.
By cherishing a delicate sensibility to it, we make nature
preach us a constant lesson of faith ; we find all around
an illustration of the life of the spirit. We surround our-
selves with a constant cheerful exhortation to duty. We
render duty lovely and inviting. We find the soul's deep
inexpressible thoughts written around us in the skies, the
far blue hills, and swelling waters.
But then to this desirable result one stern condition must
be observed. If the sense of beauty disposes to purity of
heart ; so equally purity of heart is all that can keep the
sense of beauty open. All influences work mutually.
"One hand must wash the other," said the poet. The


22
The Religion of Beauty. [July,
world is loveliest to him, who looks out on it through pure
eyes.
Sweet is the pleasure,
Itself cannot spoil !
Is not true leisure
One with true toil ?
Thou that wouldst taste it,
Still do thy best;
Use it, not waste it,
Else 't is no rest.
Wouldst behold beauty
Near thee? all round?
Only hath duty
Such a sight found.
Rest is not quitting
The busy career;
Rest is the fitting
Of self to its sphere.
'T is the brook's motion,
Clear without strife,
Fleeing to ocean
After its life.
Deeper devotion
Nowhere hath knelt;
Fuller emotion
Heart never felt.
'Tis loving and serving
The Highest and Best !
"T is ONWARDS! unswerving,
And that is true rest.
BROWNSON'S WRITINGS.*
This work is the production of a writer, whose native
force of mind, combined with rare philosophical attain-
ments, has elevated him to a prominent rank among the
* Charles Elwood; or the Infidel Converted. By O. A. BROWNSON.
Boston : Charles C. Little and James Brown. 1840.


1840.)
23
Brownson's Writings.
living authors of this country. His history, so far as it
is known to us, presents a cheering example of the influ-
ence of our institutions to bring forward the man rather
than the scholar, to do justice to the sincere expression of
a human voice, while the foppery of learning meets with
nothing but contempt. Mr. Brownson, we understand, is
under no obligations to the culture of the schools ; his
early life was passed in scenes foreign to the pursuits of
literature ; he was not led to authorship by the desire of
professional reputation; but the various writings, which he
has given to the public, are the fruit of a mind filled with
earnest convictions that must needs be spoken out.
The great mass of scholars are impelled by no passion
for truth; they are content to clothe the current thoughts
of the day in elegant forms; they value ideas, as the
materials for composition, rather than as the springs of the
most real life; their lonely vigils are for the acquisition of
knowledge, or the establishment of fame ; while the intense
desire to pierce into the mysteries of the universe, to com-
prehend the purposes of God and the destiny of man, is a
stranger to their souls. They will never “ outwatch the
Bear to unsphere the spirit of Plato;" nor wrestle till day-
break to obtain a benediction from the angel of truth.
Hence their productions, though polished and classical, do
not satisfy the common mind; the true secret of vitality is
wanting; and though they may gratify our taste, they do
not aid our aspirations.
There is a small class of scholars whose aims and pursuits
are of a different character. They value literature not as
an end, but as an instrument to help the solution of prob-
lems, that haunt and agitate the soul. They wish to look
into the truth of things., The Universe, in its mysterious
and terrible grandeur, has acted on them. Life is not re-
garded by them as a pageant or a dream; it passes before
their eye in dread and solemn beauty; thought is stirred
up from its lowest depths; they become students of God
unconsciously; and secret communion with the divine
presence is their preparation for a knowledge of books,
and the expression of their own convictions. Their writ-
ings, accordingly, whenever they appear, will be alive.
They will probably offend or grieve many, who make the
state of their own minds the criterion of truth; but, at
lowers and someone or a roben."


24
[July,
Brownson's Writings.
the same time, they will be welcomed by others, who find
in them the word which they were waiting to hear spoken.
The author of this volume belongs to the latter class. It
is evident from all that we have read of his writings, that
he is impelled to the work of composition, by the pressure
of an inward necessity. He has studied, as is apparent
from the rich and varied knowledge which he brings to the
illustration of the subjects he treats of, more extensively and
profoundly than most persons; but there are no traces of
study, for the sake of study; no marks of a cumbersome eru-
dition; he seems to have read what other men have written
on questions which had exercised his mind, and to have
appropriated to himself whatever was congenial; and
hence, though we may observe the influence of eminent
foreign writers on his cast of thought and expression, every-
thing has the freshness and fervor of originality.
Mr. Brownson, we believe, was first introduced to the
notice of our community by his contributions to the “ Chris-
tian Examiner,” the leading organ of the Unitarians in this
city. These form a connected series of very striking arti-
cles; distinguished for the fearless energy with which they
grasp some of the most difficult problems; for the anima-
tion and beauty of their style ; for the rare power of
philosophical analysis which they display; for their fervid
love of humanity; and for the precision and clearness with
which the systems of other thinkers are interpreted to the
comprehension of the general reader. The subjects with
which they are concerned are all connected with the higher
sphere of thought. They are pervaded by the presence
of a common aim. We find in them the elements and
germs of most of the productions which the author has
since given to the public.
The purposes, in this stage of his progress, which Mr.
Brownson has in view, are the vindication of the reality of
the religious principle in the nature of man; the existence
of an order of sentiments higher than the calculations of
the understanding and the deductions of logic; the founda-
tion of morals on the absolute idea of right in opposition
to the popular doctrine of expediency; the exposition of
a spiritual philosophy; and the connexion of Christianity
with the progress of society. These topics are handled
with masterly skill; their discussion in the “Examiner”


1840.]
25
Brownson's Writings.
formed a new era in the history of that able Journal; and
has exerted a strong influence in producing and cherishing
the interest which is now so widely felt in the higher
questions of philosophy.
Mr. Brownson's next work, entitled “ New Views of
Christianity, Society, and the Church," is one of the most
remarkable that has issued from the American press, al-
though it attracted less attention at the time of its publi-
cation than it has since received. We are gratified to
learn that many readers have been led to its perusal by
their interest in the subsequent writings of its author. It
is not difficult to account for the small impression which
this book at first made upon the public, compared with its
genuine merits. The questions which it considers have
been more warmly agitated in Europe than in this country.
The ideas which it combats have no general prevalence
among us; and their refutation could accordingly call forth
no very general attention. It is, in fact, an answer to the
objections which have been brought against the Christian
religion by Henry Heine, and some of the disciples of the
St. Simonian school, on account of its being, as they sup-
pose, a system of exclusive and extravagant spiritualism.
Christianity, they say, neglects all temporal interests; its
kingdom is not of this world; it aims at the supremacy of
the spirit, and the crucifixion of the flesh; it is, therefore,
not adapted to the interests of man; in the progress of
modern civilization it has become obsolete, and must pass
away. Mr. Brownson undertakes to meet these views, by
pointing out the true character of Christianity, as it existed
in the idea of Jesus; the corruptions which it has expe.
rienced in the course of ages; and the symptoms of the
return of the Church to the conception of its founder.
The Christianity of the Church, according to this book,
is a different thing from the Christianity of Christ. The
idea of Jesus was the type of the most perfect religious
institution to which the human race will probably ever at-
tain. This idea announces, in opposition to the contending
Spiritualism and Materialism, which at that time had their
exclusive representatives, that there is no original and
essential antithesis between God and man; that neither
spirit nor matter is unholy in its nature; that all things,
spirit and matter, God and man, soul and body, heaven and
VOL. I. - NO. I.


Brownson's Writings."
[July,
earth, time and eternity, with all their duties and interests,
are in themselves holy. It writes holiness to the Lord upon
everything, and sums up its sublime teaching in that grand
synthesis, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and mind and soul and strength, and thy neighbor as
thyself.”
But the Church failed to embody this idea ; it misappre-
hended the conditions on which it was to be realized. In-
stead of understanding Jesus to assert the holiness of both
spirit and matter, it understood him to admit that matter
was rightfully cursed, and to predicate holiness of spirit
alone. It took its stand with spiritualism, and condemned
itself to the evils of being exclusive. This fact explains
the doctrines, the ceremonies, and the assumptions, ex-
hibited by the Church, in opposition to Christ. It abused and
degraded matter, but could not annihilate it. It existed in
spite of the Church. It increased in power, and at length
rose against spiritualism and demanded the restoration of its
rights. This rebellion is Protestantism. But, properly speak-
ing, Protestantism finished its work, and expired in the
French Revolution at the close of the last century. Since
then there has been a reaction in favor of Spiritualism.
This reaction was favored by the disastrous catastrophe
of the movement in France. In consequence of this, men
again despaired of the earth ; and when they despair of
the earth, they always take refuge in heaven. They had
trusted materialism too far; they would now not trust it at
all. They turned back and sighed for the serene past, the
quiet and order of old times, for the mystic land of India,
where the soul may dissolve in ecstasy and dream of no
change. When the sigh had just escaped, that mystic
land reappeared. The old literature and philosophy of
India were brought to light. The influence of the ancient
Braminical or spiritual word is visible everywhere. It is
remarkable in our poets. It moulds the form in Byron,
penetrates to the ground in Wordsworth, and entirely pre-
dominates in the Schlegels. It acts with equal power on
philosophy, religion, society.
What, then, is the mission of the present? The East
has reappeared, and spiritualism revives; will it again be-
come supreme? This, according to our author, is out of
the question. We of the present century must either dis-


1840.]
27
Brownson's Writings.
x
pense with all religious instructions, reproduce spiritualism
or materialism, or we must build a new church, organize a
new institution, free from the imperfections of those which
have been. The first is impossible. Men cannot live in
perpetual anarchy. They must and will embody their ideas
of the true, the beautiful, the good, the holy, in some
institution. Neither can an exclusive spiritualism or ma-
terialism be reproduced. This were an anomaly in the
history of humanity; for humanity does not traverse an
eternal circle; it advances, in one endless career of progress
towards the Infinite, the Perfect. But spiritualism and
materialism both have their foundation in our nature, and
both will exist and exert their influence. Shall they exist
as antagonist principles ? Is the bosom of Humanity to
be eternally torn by these two contending factions ? This
cannot be. The war must end. Peace must made.
Here then is the mission of the present. We are to
reconcile spirit and matter; that is, we must realize the
atonement. Nothing else remains for us to do. Stand
still we cannot. To go back is equally impossible. We
must go forward; but we can take not a step forward, but
on the condition of uniting these two hitherto hostile prin-
ciples. Progress is our law, and our first step is union.
The union of spirit and matter was the result contem-
plated by the mision of Jesus. The Church attempted it,
but only partially succeeded, and has therefore died. The
time had not come for the complete union. Jesus saw
this. He knew that the age in which he lived would not
be able to realize his conception. Hence he spoke of his
second coming. This will take place, when the idea
which he represents shall be fully realized. That idea will
be realized by a combination of the two terms, which have
received thus far from the Church only a separate develop-
ment. The doctrine which shall realize the idea of the
atonement is, that all things are essentially holy, that
everything is cleansed, and that we must call nothing
common or unclean. Neither spiritualism nor materialism
was aware of this truth. Spiritualism saw good only in
pure spirit. God was pure spirit, and therefore good. Our
good consisted in resemblance to God, that is, in being as
Jike pure spirit as possible. Our duty was to get rid of
matter. All the interests of the material order were sinful.


28
[July,
Brownson's Writings.
Materialism, on the other hand, had no recognition oi
spirit. It considered all time and thought and labor bestow-
ed on that which transcends this world as worse than
thrown way. It had no conception of inward communion
with God. It counted fears of punishment or hopes of
reward in a world to come mere idle fancies, fit only to
amuse or control the vulgar. It laughed at spiritual joys
and griefs, and treated as serious affairs only the pleasures
and pains of sense.
The doctrine of the Atonement reconciles these two
warring systems. This doctrine teaches us that spirit is
real and holy, that matter is real and holy, that God is
holy, and that man is holy, that spiritual joys and griefs,
and the pleasures and pains of sense, are alike real joys
and griefs, real pleasures and pains, and in their places are
alike sacred. Spirit and matter, then, are sacred. The
influence of this doctrine cannot fail to be very great. It
will correct our estimate of man, of the world, of religion,
and of God, and remodel all our institutions. It must, in
fact, create a new civilization as much in advance of ours,
as ours is in advance of that which obtained in the Roman
Empire in the time of Jesus. We shall cease to regard
man as the antithesis of good. The slave will become a
son. Human nature will be clothed with a high and com-
manding worth. It will be seen to be a lofty and death-
less nature. It will be felt to be divine, and infinite will
be found traced in living characters on all its faculties.
Man will reverence man. Slavery will cease. Wars will
fail. Education will destroy the empire of ignorance.
Civil freedom will become universal. It will be everywhere
felt that one man has no right over another, which that
other has not over him. All will be seen to be brothers
and equals in the sight of their common Father. Religion
will not stop with the command to obey the laws, but it
will bid us make just laws, such laws as befit a being di-
vinely endowed like man. Industry will be holy. The
cultivation of the earth will be the worship of God.
Working men will be priests, and as priests they will
be reverenced, and as priests they will reverence them-
selves, and feel that they must maintain themselves un-
defiled. The earth itself and the animals which inhabit
it will be counted sacred. We shall study in them the


1840.]
29
Brownson's Writings.
manifestation of God's wisdom, goodness, and power,
and be careful that we make of them none but a holy use.
Man's body will be deemed holy. It will be called the
temple of the Living God. As a temple, it must not be
desecrated. Men will beware of defiling it by sin, by any
excessive or improper indulgence, as they would of defil-
ing the temple or the altar consecrated to the service of
God. Every duty, every act necessary to be done, every
implement of industry, or thing contributing to human
use or convenience, will be treated as holy. Religious
worship will not be the mere service of the sanctuary.
The universe will be God's temple, and its service will be
the doing of good to mankind, relieving suffering, and
promoting joy, virtue, and well-being. When all this
takes place, the glory of the Lord will be manifested unto
the ends of the earth, and all flesh will see it and rejoice
together. The time is yet distant before this will be
fully realized. But we assert the doctrine as an idea ; and
ideas, if true, are omnipotent. As soon as humanity fully
possesses this idea, it will lose no time in reducing it to
practice. Men will conform their practice to it. They
will become personally holy. Holiness will be written on
all their thoughts, emotions, and actions, on their whole
lives. And then will Christ really be formed within, the
hope of glory. He will be truly incarnated in universal
humanity, and God and man will be one.
The tones of a sincere voice are heard in the conclusion
of the volume, a part of which we copy.
6 Here I must close. I have. uttered the words UNION and PRO-
GRESS as the authentic creed of the New Church, as designating the
whole duty of man. Would they had been spoken in a clearer, a
louder, and a sweeter voice, that a response might be heard from the
universal heart of Humanity. But I have spoken as I could, and from
a motive which I shall not blush to own either to myself or to Him to
whom all must render an account of all their thoughts, words, and
deeds. I once had no faith in Him, and I was to myself a child
without a sire. I was alone in the world, my heart found no com-
panionship, and my affections withered and died. But I have found
Him, and he is my Father, and mankind are my brothers, and I can
love and reverence.
“Mankind are my brothers, — they are brothers to one another. I
would see them no longer mutually estranged. I labor to bring them
together, and to make them feel and own that they are all made of
one blood. Let them feel and own this, and they will love one ano-
ther; they will be kindly affectioned one to another, and the groans
of this nether world will cease;' the spectacle of wrongs and outrages


30
[July,
Brownson's Writings.
oppress our sight no more ; tears be wiped from all eyes, and Human-
ity pass from death to life, to life immortal, to the life of God, for God
is love.
“And this result, for which the wise and the good everywhere
yearn and labor, will be obtained. I do not misread the age. I have
not looked upon the world only out from the window of my closet; I
have mingled in its busy scenes; I have rejoiced and wept with it;
I have hoped and feared, and believed and doubted with it, and I am
but what it has made me. I cannot misread it. It craves union. The
heart of man is crying out for the heart of man. One and the same
spirit is abroad, uttering the same voice in all languages. From all
parts of the world voice answers to voice, and man responds to man.
There is a universal language already in use. Men are beginning
to understand one another, and their mutual understanding will beget
mutual sympathy, and mutual sympathy will bind them together and
to God.” — pp. 113-115.
Such is a very slight sketch of a work which we have
called one of the most remarkable that has appeared in
the literature of this country. It labors under the defect,
however, of an excessive brevity; some of its most impor-
tant statements are hints rather than details; and the con-
densed, aphoristic style of its composition may blind many
readers to the fulness of thought which it presents, and the
true logical sequence in which it is arranged. In spite of
this obstacle to popular success, this work cannot fail to
act with great power on all minds of true insight. Its
profound significance will be apprehended by many, who
find here the expression of their own convictions, the re-
sult of their own strivings, which they have never before
seen embodied in words. And it has already formed a
conspicuous era in the mental history of more than one,
who is seeking for the truth of things, in the midst of
painted, conventional forms.
Since the publication of this work, Mr. Brownson has
gained a more numerous audience and a wider reputation
by the establishment of the “ Boston Quarterly Review."
This Journal stands alone in the history of periodical
works. It was undertaken by a single individual, without
the coöperation of friends, with no external patronage,
supported by no sectarian interests, and called for by no
motive but the inward promptings of the author's own
soul. A large proportion of its pages, — and it has now
reached the middle of its third year, - is from the pen of
Mr. Brownson himself. The variety of subjects which it
discusses is no less striking, than the vigor and boldness


1840.]
31
Brownson's Writings.
with which they are treated. The best indication of the
culture of philosophy in this country, and the application
of its speculative results to the theory of religion, the criti-
cism of literary productions, and the institutions of so-
ciety, we presume no one will dispute, is to be found in
the discussions of this Journal. Nor is it to be regarded
as a work of merely ephemeral interest. It is conspicuous
among the significant products which are now everywhere
called forth by the struggle between the old and the new,
between prescription and principle, between the assertions
of authority and the suggestions of reason. The vigorous
tone of argument which it sustains, its freedom from con-
ventional usage, its fearless vindication of the rights of hu-
manity, the singular charms and force with which it exhibits
the results of philosophical research, and the depth and fer-
vor of its religious spirit, are adapted to give it a permanent
influence, even among those who dissent widely from many
of its conclusions, and to redeem it from the oblivion to
which so large a part of our current literature is destined.
The work, which we have made the occasion of the
present notice, “ Charles Elwood; or the Infidel Convert-
ed,” is, we think, on the whole, in point of literary finish,
superior to any of Mr. Brownson's former writings. It is
suited to be more generally popular. It presents the most
profound ideas in a simple and attractive form. The dis-
cussion of first principles, which in their primitive abstrac-
tion are so repulsive to most minds, is carried on through
the medium of a slight fiction, with considerable dramatic
effect. We become interested in the final opinions of the
subjects of the tale, as we do in the catastrophe of a ro-
mance. A slender thread of narrative is made to sustain
the most weighty arguments on the philosophy of religion ;
but the conduct both of the story and of the discussion is
managed with so much skill, that they serve to relieve and
forward each other.
Charles Elwood, who tells his own story, is introduced
to us as a young man who has attained the reputation of an
infidel in his native village. This subjected him to the
usual fate of those who call in question received opinions.
His good name suffered on account of his dissent from the
prevailing belief; his company was shunned; and though
his character was spotless, his sympathies with his kind


32
(July,
Brownson's Writings.
deep and sensitive, and his love of truth sincere, he became
the object of general aversion and terror.
He is surprised one morning by a visit from Mr. Smith,
a young and zealous clergyman, fresh from the theological
school, and burning with all the ardor to make proselytes
that could be inspired by a creed, which denied the possi-
bility of salvation to any who doubted it. He had heard
that Elwood was an atheist; he had stepped in to convert
him to Christianity. As he had never measured himself
with an intelligent unbeliever, he counted on a speedy
victory; but his confidence was greater than his discretion.
« I have called on you, Mr. Elwood,' said Mr. Smith, after a few
common-place remarks, with a message from God.'
“. Indeed !' said I: And when, sir, did you receive it?'
6 • Last night. When you left the meeting without taking your
place on the anxious seats, God told me to come and deliver you a
message.'
“ • Are you certain it was God?'.
“ I am.'
666 And how will you make me certain?'
"Do you think I would tell you a falsehood ?'
6. Perhaps not, intentionally; but what evidence have I that you
are not yourself deceived ? '
64 • I feel certain, and do I not know what I feel ? '
6. Doubtless, what you feel; but how do you know that your feel-
ing is worthy of trust?'.
** Could not God give me, when he spoke to me, sufficient evidence
that it was really He who spoke to me?
“Of that you are probably the best judge. But admit that he
could give it, and has actually given it; still you alone have it, not I.
If then you come to me with the authority of God to vouch for the
trustworthiness of your feeling, you must be aware that I have not
that authority ; I have only your word, the word of a man, who, for aught
I know, is as fallible as myself. You come to me as an ambassador from
God; produce your credentials, and I will listen to your despatches.'
“My credentials are the Bible,
“ But, pray, sir, how can a book written niany ages ago, by nobody
knows whom, be a proof to me that God told you last night to come
and deliver me a message this morning?'
“ I bring you just such a message as the Bible dictates.'
6. And what then?'.
“ • The Bible is the Word of God.'” — pp. 12, 13.
But Elwood was not quite so ready to admit this on the
authority of the minister. He brings certain objections to
the supposition, pursues his spiritual adviser with incon-
venient questions, and at last compels him to take refuge
in the evidence of miracles. This gives rise to an interest-
ing discussion.


1840.)
Brownson's Writings.
" " But you forget,' replied Mr. Smith, after a short pause, 'that the
communications received by the sacred writers bore the impress of
God's seal. God gave them all needed assurance that it was he him-
self who spoke to them. If then they were honest men, we ought to
believe them. That they were honest men, worthy of all credit as
speaking by Divine authority, I infer from the fact that they could
work miracles.
** All that is easily said. Whether God keeps a seal or not is more
than I know; but supposing he does, are mortals well enough ac-
quainted with it to recognise it the moment it is presented ? How do
they know its impress? Has God lodged with them a fac-simile of it?'
"God told then that it was his seal.'
6 " But how did they know it was God who said so ? Had they had
any previous acquaintance with him? Who introduced him to them,
assured them it was verily the Almighty? But this leads us back to
where we were a moment ago. I suppose you hold a supernatural
revelation from God to be necessary ?'
"Certainly.'
And without a supernatural revelation we can know nothing of
God?!
“ Nothing.'
* * Deprive us of the Bible and we should be in total ignorance of
God?'
" • Assuredly.'
4 • It is necessary to prove that the revelation said to be from God is
actually from him?'
“ * Undoubtedly.
6. The revelation is proved to be from God by the miracles per-
formed by the men who professed to speak by Divine authority ?
5. Yes.'
* * Miracles prove this, because they are performed by the power
of God, and because God will not confer the power of working mira-
cles on wicked men, or men who will tell lies?!
" So I believe.
6. It requires some knowledge of God to be able to say of any given
act that it is performed by God. We say of what you term a miracle,
that it is wrought by the Almighty, because we seem to ourselves to
detect his presence in it. Now if we were totally unacquainted with
his presence, should we be able to detect it? It therefore requires
some knowledge of God to be able to assert that what is termed a
miracle is actually effected by Divine power. Also it requires some
knowledge of God to be able to affirm that he will give the power of
working miracles to good men only. You start at the idea that he
would give this power to wicked men, because to do so would be in-
consistent with the character you believe him to possess. In saying
that he will not do it, you assume to be acquainted with his character;
and from your assumed acquaintance with his character, you infer
what he will or will not do. In both of these instances, no inconsider-
able knowledge of God is presupposed. Whence do we obtain this
knowledge??
** Every body knows enough of God to know when a miracle is
performed that it is God who performs it, and to know that God will
not give the power of working miracles to bad men.'
VOL. I. —NO. I.


34
(July,
Brownson's Writings.
"Perhaps so. You at least may know enough to know this. But
suppose you were deprived of all the light of revelation, would you
know enough of God to know this? Did I not understand you to
say that were it not for revelation we should be totally ignorant of
God?'
66. I said so, and say so still.'
“I presume, sir, that there is a point here which has in part es-
caped your attention. I have observed that you religious people, in
defending miracles, assume to be in possession of all the knowledge of
God communicated by the supernatural revelation miracles are brought
forward to authenticate. You assume the truth of the revelation, and
by that verify your miracles ; and then adduce your miracles to authen-
ticate the revelation. But I need not say to you that before you have
authenticated your revelation you have no right to use it; and before
you can authenticate it, on your own showing, you must verify your
miracles - a thing you cannot do without that knowledge of God
which you say is to be obtained from the revelation only.'
"I do no such thing.'
"Not intentionally, consciously, I admit. You have not a doubt
of the truth of revelation. Your whole intellectual being is penetrated
in all directions with its teachings, and you never make in your own
mind an abstraction of what you have received from the Bible, and
thus ascertain what would be your precise condition were you left to
the light of nature. You fall therefore unconsciously into the practice
of reasoning in support of your faith from premises which that faith
itself supplies, and which would be of no validity if that faith were
proved to be false ; and are of no validity when reasoning with one
who questions it. But, sir, this whole matter of miracles may be cut
short. What is a miracle ? You must know as much of God and the
universe to be able to define a miracle, as a miracle on any supposition
can teach you. Therefore miracles are at best useless. Then the evi-
dence of the extraordinary feats you term miracles is not altogether
satisfactory. All ancient history, profane as well as sacred, is full of
marvellous stories, which no sound mind can for one moment entertain.
They serve to discredit history. The ancient historian who should
fill his history with marvels would by no means be held in so high
respect, even by yourself, as one who confined his faith to the simple,
the ordinary, the natural. His faith in marvels, omens, oracles, prodi-
gies, you would regard as an impeachment of his judgment. Why
not do the same in regard to the Bible historians ? You allege mira-
cles as a proof of revelation, when in fact nothing about your revela-
tion, or in it, is more in need of proof than your miracles themselves.
Then again, miracles can prove nothing but our ignorance. No event
that can be traced to a known cause is ever termed a miracle. A mira-
cle is merely an event which can be traced to no known law of nature.
To say an event is miraculous is merely saying that it is an anomaly in
our experience, and not provided for in our systems of science. The
miraculous events recorded in the Bible may have occurred, for aught
I know, but they are of no value as evidences of Christianity.'
666 Why not?
“I supposed I had already shown why not. You cannot know
enough of God and the universe to know, in the first place, that what
you term miracles are actually wrought by God. For aught you know


1840.]
35
Brownson's Writings.
to the contrary, there may be thousands of beings superior to man ca-
pable of performing them. And in the second place, you can never
infer from the fact, that a man opens the eyes of the blind, or restores
a deadbody to life, that he cannot tell a lie. The fact, that the miracle
is performed, does not necessarily involve the truth of the doctrine
taught, nor the veracity of the miracle-worker. So far as you or I
know, a man may perform what is termed a miracle, and yet be a
teacher of false doctrines.'
** But if you should see a man raise a dead body to life, in attes-
tation of his Divine commission, would you not believe him?'
**If your history be correct, there were men who actually saw Jesus
raise Lazarus from the dead, and yet neither recognised his claims as
the Son of God, nor as a teacher of truth, but went away and took
counsel how they might put him to death. Before the raising of a
man from the dead could be a sufficient warrant for me to receive any
doctrine, I must know positively that no being, not commissioned by
God, can raise a dead body to life, or that no being, capable of raising
a dead body to life, can possibly tell a falsehood. Now this knowledge
I have not, and cannot have.'
“Mr Smith made no reply. He remarked that he had overstaid his
time, that an imperious engagement required him to leave me ; but he
would call upon me again, and continue the discussion — a promise,
by-the-by, which he forgot to keep, or which circumstances prevented
him from fulfilling.” — pp. 20-26.
We must not omit the comment of the author on this
conversation.
“Many years have elapsed since this conversation took place. I
have reviewed it often in various and diverse moods of mind, but I
have not been able to detect any fallacy in my reasoning. It is true
that reasoning, if admitted, goes to show that a revelation from God
to man is imposible. If the premises from which both Mr. Smith and
I started be correct, all supernatural revelation must be given up.
“ They who deny to man all inherent capacity to know God, all immedi-
ale perception of spiritual truth, place man out of the condition of ever
knowing anything of God. Man can know only what he has a capaci-
ty to know. God, may speak to him, and utter truths which he could
not himself have found out, but unless there be in him something
which recognises the voice of God, and bears witness for God, it is all
in vain. If there be not this something in man, then can man receive
no revelation from God. There must be a God within to recognise
and vouch for the God who speaks to us from without.
“Now this inherent capacity to recognise God, this power to detect
his presence wherever he is, and of course everywhere, I did not ad-
mit, and not admitting this my conclusions followed legitimately from
my premises.
""Mr. Smith admitted it no more than I did, and therefore could
not refute me. Denying this capacity, he admitted nothing by which a
supernatural revelation could be authenticated, for it required this
capacity to detect the presence of God in the miracles, not less than
to detect it in the revelation itself. Not having this capacity, man
could have no standard by which to try the revelation alleged to be


36
(July,
Brownson's Writings.
from God. This was what I labored to make Mr. Smith comprehend;
I demanded of him this standard, the criterion of spiritual truth, the
fac-simile of God's seal with which to compare the impress on the
despatches sent us in his name; but he could not answer my de-
mand.
“ Many able apologists of Christianity fail to perceive the point they
must establish in the very outset of this controversy with unbelievers.
This point is, that man is endowed with an intelligence that knows
God immediately, by intuition. They who deny this may be religi-
ous, but only at the expense of their logic. We can rationally and
scientifically sustain religion only by recognising the mystic element
of human nature, an element, which, though in man, is yet in relation
with God, and serves as the mediator between God and man. If we
cannot establish the reality of this element, which is sometimes termed
the Divine in man, and which though in nature is supernatural, it is in
vain to seek for any scientific basis for theology, and unbelief in God
is the only conclusion to which we can legitimately coine." — pp. 26,
27.
The force of argument, it seems, was not the only power
that was brought to bear on the convictions of young El-
wood. He is led to talk of his religious views with a
beautiful devotee to whom he was engaged to be married
in a few weeks. She, of course, is shocked at his unbe-
lief, but is utterly unable to comprehend its character, or
to penetrate to its cause. Meantime, she is told by Smith,
the clerical fanatic, that her duty to God calls for the sacri-
fice of her lover.
“ The agony which Elizabeth suffered during this whole conversa-
tion may be more easily imagined than described. She had lavished
upon me all the wealth of her heart. She had loved me with a sincer-
ity and depth of affection, enhanced by the apparently unfriendliness
of my condition. Like a true woman she had clung to me the closer
for the reason that all else seemed to have abandoned me. It is not
woman that leaves us when most we need her presence. I have had
my share of adversity, I have suffered from the world more than I care
to tell; but I have ever found in woman a kind and succoring spirit.
Her love has ever shed a hallowed light along my pathway, cheered
me in my darkest hours, and given me ever the courage and the
strength to battle with my enemies, and regain the mastery of myself.
There are those who speak lightly of woman; I have learned to
reverence her as the brightest earthly manifestation of the Divinity.
“ Elizabeth had loved me, and in all her visions of the future I of
course held a prominent place, and it were a foolish affectation to
doubt that I constituted their principal charm. To banish me now,
to strike my image from her heart, to break with me the faith she had
plighted, — the thought of it was not to be endured. And yet what a
mysterious nature is this of ours! The very intensity of her love
for me alarmed her conscience. She had been but recently converted,
and was still laboring under strong excitement. She had just dedi-


1840.]
.
Brownson's Writings.
37
cated herself to God. She must be his and his only. Did she not
owe everything to God ? Should she not love him with her whole
heart, and ought she not to sacrifice everything to him? Was not
religion, in its very nature, a sacrifice? Would she not be violating
its most solemn injunctions, if she retained anything which she loved
more than God? Did she not in fact love me more than him ? I was
dearer to her than all the world besides; but then would not the sacri-
fice of me to God be so much the more meritorious ? If she retained
me would it not be a proof, that she counted one treasure too precious
to be surrendered ? Was she not commanded to forsake father, mother,
sister, brother, for God, to give up everything for God, which should
come between her and him, though it should be like plucking out a
right eye or cutting off a right hand ? Must she not now choose be-
tween God and man, between religion and love? She must.
“I mean not to say that this was sound reasoning; but I apprehend
that it requires no deep insight into human nature, to be made aware
that, in many individuals, religion is a much stronger passion than
love, and that in certain states of mind, and if the religious affection
takes that turn, the more costly the sacrifice, the more resolute are we
to make it. In her calm and rational moments, I do not believe Eliza-
beth would have come to the conclusion she did ; but as she was
wrought up to a state of pious exaltation, the idea of being able to
achieve so great a victory over herself, as that of sacrificing her love
on the altar of religion, operated as a powerful spell on her whole na-
ture, and blinded her to everything else. It almost instantly became
as it were a fixed idea, to which everything must henceforth be sub-
ordinated. Religion therefore triumphed, and with a martyr-like
spirit, she resolved to give me up. Blame her not. If she had not
possessed a noble nature, such a sacrifice she had never resolved to
make.” — pp. 67 - 70.
The timid girl yields to the command of her priestly
adviser, though in discarding Elwood, it is plain, that her
own heart is broken. His state of mind, subsequent to
this passage, is best described by himself.
“I pass over several months in which nothing, I can bring myself
to relate, of much importance occurred. Elizabeth and I met a few
times after the interview I have mentioned. She was ever the same
pure-minded, affectionate girl; but the view which she had taken of
her duty to God, and the struggle which thence ensued between re-
ligion and love, surrounded as she was by pious friends, whose zea]
for the soul hereafter far outran their knowledge of what would con-
stitute its real well-being here, preyed upon her health, and threatened
the worst results. From those results I raise not the veil.
“One tie alone was left me, one alone bound me to my race, and to
virtue. My mother, bowed with years and afflictions, still lived,
though in a distant part of the country. A letter from a distant rela-
tive with whom she resided, informed me that she was very ill, and
demanded my presence, as she could not survive many days. I need
not say this letter afflicted me. I had not seen my mother for several
years; not because I wanted filial affection, but I had rarely been able


Brownson's Writings.
(July,
to do as I would. Poverty is a stern master, and when combined with
talent and ambition, often compels us to seem wanting in most of the
better and more amiable affections of our nature. I had always loved
and reverenced my mother ; but her image rose before me now as it
never had before. It looked mournfully upon me, and in the elo-
quence of mute sorrow seemed to upbraid me with neglect, and to tell
me that I had failed to prove myself a good son.
“I lost no time in complying with my mother's request. I found
her still living, but evidently near her last. She recognised me,
brightened up a moment, thanked me for coming to see her, thanked
her God that he had permitted her to look ouce more upon the face
of her son, her only child, and to God, the God in whom she believed,
who had protected her through life, and in whom she had found solace
and support under all her trials and sorrows, she commended me, with
all the fervor of undoubting piety, and the warmth of maternal love,
for time and eternity. The effort exhausted her; she sunk into a sort
of lethargy, which in a few hours proved to be the sleep of death.
“I watched by the lifeless body; I followed it to its resting place
in the earth; went at twilight and stood by the grave which had
closed over it. Do you ask what were my thoughts and feelings?
"I was a disbeliever, but I was a man, and had a heart; and not
the less a heart because few shared its affections. But the feelings
with which professed believers and unbelievers meet death, either for
themselves or for others, are very nearly similar. When death comes
into the circle of our friends and sunders the cords of affection, it is
backward we look, not forward, and we are with the departed as he
lives in our memories, not as he may be in our hopes. The hopes nur-
tured by religion are very consoling when grief exists only in anticipa-
tion, or after time has hallowed it; but they have little power in the mo-
ment when it actually breaks in upon the soul, and pierces the heart.
Besides, there are few people who know how to use their immortality.
Death to the great mass of believers as well as of unbelievers comes
as the king of terrors, in the shape of a Total Extinction of being.
The immortality of the soul is assented to rather than believed,- be-
lieved rather than lived. And withal it is something so far in the
distant future, that till long after the spirit has left the body, we think
and speak of the loved ones as no more. Rarely does the believer
find that relief in the doctrine of immortality, which he insists on with
so much eloquence in his controversy with unbelivers. He might
find it, he ought to find it, and one day will; but not till he learns
that man is immortal, and not merely is to be immortal.
“I lingered several weeks around the grave of my mother, and in
the neighborhood where she had lived. It was the place where I had
passed my own childhood and youth. It was the scene of those early
associations which become the dearer to us as we leave them the
farther behind. I stood where I had sported in the freedom of early
childhood ; but I stood alone, for no one was there with whom I could
speak of its frolics. One feels singularly desolate when he sees only
strange faces, and hears only strange voices in what was the home of
his early life.
“I returned to the village where I resided when I first introduced
myself to my readers. But what was that spot to me now? Nature
had done much for it, but nature herself is very much what we make


1840.]
39
Brownson's Writings.
her. There must be beauty in our souls, or we shall see no loveli-
ness in her face; and beauty had died out of my soul. She who
might have recalled it to life, and thrown its hues over all the world
was - but of that I will not speak.
- It was now that I really needed the hope of immortality. The
world was to me one vast desert, and life was without end or aim.
The hope of immortality is not needed to enable us to bear grief, to
meet great calamities. These can be, as they have been, met by the
atheist with a serene brow and a tranquil pulse. We need not the
hope of immortality in order to meet death with composure. The
manner in which we meet death depends altogether more on the state
of our nerves than the nature of our hopes. But we want it when
earth has lost its gloss of novelty, when our hopes have been blasted,
our affections withered, and the shortness of life and the vanity of all
human pursuits have come home to us, and made us exclaim, Vanity
of vanities, all is vanity ;' we want then the hope of immortality to
give to life an end, an aim.
"We all of us at times feel this want. The infidel feels it early in
life. He learns all too soon, what to him is a withering fact, that man
does not complete his destiny on earth. Man never completes any-
thing here. What then shall he do if there be no hereafter? With
what courage can I betake myself to my task? I may begin - but
the grave lies between me and the completion. Death will come to
interrupt my work, and compel me to leave it unfinished. This is
more terrible to me than the thought of ceasing to be. I could almost,
- at least, I think I could — consent to be no more, after I have fin-
ished my work, achieved my destiny; but to die before my work is
completed, while that destiny is but begun, - this is the death which
comes to me indeed as a 'King of Terrors.
“The hope of another life, to be the complement of this, steps in to
save us from this death, to give us the courage and the hope to begin.
The rough sketch shall hereafter become the finished picture, the
artist shall give it the last touch at his ease; the science we had just
begun shall be completed, and the incipient destiny shall be achiev-
ed. Fear not to begin, thou hast eternity before thee in which to
end.
“I wanted, at the time of which I speak, this hope. I had no fu-
ture. I was shut up in this narrow life as in a cage. All for whom
I could have lived, labored, and died, were gone, or worse than gone.
I had no end, no aim. My affections were driven back to stagnate
and becoine putrid in my own breast. I had no one to care for. The
world was to me as if it were not; and yet a strange restlessness
came over me. I could be still nowhere. I roved listlessly from
object to object, my body was carried from place to place, I knew not
why, and asked not myself wherefore. And, yet change of object,
change of scene, wrought no change within me. I existed, but did
not live. He who has no future, has no life." — pp. 88-93.
Elwood, at length, began to find composure of mind;
time shed its soothing influences over his wounded spirit;
and the first symptom of a better life was a vivid perception
of the imperfections of the present social state. He brooded


40
(July,
Brownson's Writings.
over these, however, till his philanthropy became sour. In
this state he made the acquaintance of a true man, whose
influence gave a new direction to his whole character.
This person was Mr. Howard, an elderly gentleman, of a
wide and varied experience, a warm heart, a clear and dis-
criminating mind, familiar with the general literature of
the day, and cherishing elevated and comprehensive views
of religion. The conversations of Elwood with this origi-
nal and independent thinker are described with graphic
clearness; they contain a system of theology ; but any
attempt to abridge them would do injustice to the momen-
tous subjects of which they treat. Mr. Howard introduces
Elwood to his minister, from whom he derives those views
of religion, which finally serve as a foundation of faith.
The portrait of Mr. Morton, for that was his name, is thus
given.
“The day following the conversation I have just related, was Sun-
day, and Mr. Howard for the first time invited me to accompany him
to his meeting. He remarked that his minister, though pretty ortho-
dox in the main, was a little peculiar, and perhaps I should find my-
self interested, if not edified. Years had elapsed since I had entered
a place of religious worship, and though I felt no great desire on my
part to hear a sermon, yet as I thought I might please Mr. Howard
by going, I accepted his invitation.
"The place of meeting was a public hall capable of holding some
eight or nine hundred persons, and I found it well filled with a plain,
sensible-looking congregation, whose earnest countenances indicated
that they were there not because it was a place of fashionable resort,
but because they were serious worshippers and honest inquirers after
truth. A single glance told you that they were bold, earnest minds,
who could look truth steadily in the face, let her assume what shape
she might.
“ The preacher, a Mr. Morton, was a tall, well-proportioned man,
with something a little rustic in his appearance, indicating that his
life had not been spent in the circles of the gay and the fashionable.
Though far from being handsome, his features were striking and im-
pressed themselves indelibly upon the memory. His dark complexion,
and small, restless black eye bespoke an active and also an irritable
disposition, and assured you that he might say some bitter things.
His head was large, and his brow elevated and expanded. His face
bore the marks of past struggle, whether with passion, the world, or
sorrow, it was not easy to say. He was apparently under forty years
of age, but you felt that he was a man who could speak from experi-
ence, that he was in fact no ordinary man, but one who had a biogra-
phy, if you could only get at it. There was something almost
repulsive about him, and yet you were drawn insensibly towards
him.
"On commencing his discourse he seemed not exactly at his ease,


1840.]
41
Brownson's Writings.
and his address was hurried, and ungraceful. His voice, too, though
deep-toned, grated harshly on the ear, and produced a most unfavorable
impression. But there was an air of earnestness about him, an evi-
dence of intellectual vigor, and of moral honesty, which arrested your
attention; while the novelty of his views and the boldness of his lan-
guage served to enchain it till he closed. His discourse was to me a
most singular production. I had never heard such a sermon before;
and, I confess, I listened to it with the deepest interest.” — pp. 146 – 148.
The philosophical basis of religion, which, in the main,
coincides with the theory of M. Cousin, is exhibited in
several conversations between Elwood and this ancient
minister. We have room only for the following statement
on the doctrine of creation.
“You will bear in mind, that we have found God as a cause, not
a potential cause, occasionally a cause, accidentally a cause, but abso-
lute cause, cause in itself, always a cause, and everywhere a cause.
Now a cause that causes nothing is no cause at all. If then God be
a cause, he must cause something, that is, create. Creation then is
necessary.
"Do you mean to say that God lies under a necessity of creat-
ing?'
God lies under nothing, for he is over all, and independent of all.
The necessity of which I speak is not a foreign necessity, but a neces-
sity of his own nature. What I mean is, he cannot be what he is
without creating. It would be a contradiction in terms to call him a
cause, and to say that he causes nothing.'
*. But out of what does God create the world ? Out of nothing, as
our old catechisms have it ?'
4. Not out of nothing certainly, but out of himself, out of his own
fulness. You may form an idea of creation by noting what passes in
the bosom of your own consciousness. I will to raise my arm. My
arm may be palsied, or a stronger than mine may hold it down, so that
I cannot raise it. Nevertheless I have created something; to wit,
the will or intention to raise it. In like manner as I by an effort of
my will, or an act of my causality, create a will or intention, does
God create the world. The world is God's will or intention, existing
in the bosom of his consciousness, as my will or intention exists in the
bosom of mine.
6. Now, independent of me, my will or intention has no existence.
It exists, is a reality no further than I enter into it; and it ceases to
exist, vanishes into nothing, the moment I relax the causative effort
which gave it birth. So of the world. Independent of God it has no
existence. All the life and reality it has are of God. It exists no
further than he enters into it, and it ceases to exist, becomes a nonen-
tity, the moment he withdraws or relaxes the creative effort which calls
it into being.
“This, if I mistake not, strikingly illustrates the dependence of
the universe, of all worlds and beings on God. They exist but by his
will. He willed, and they were ; commanded, and they stood fast. He
has but to will, and they are not; to command, and the heavens roll to-
VOL. I. — NO. 1.


42
(July,
Brownson's Writings.
gether as a scroll, or disappear as the morning mist before the rising
sun. This is easily seen to be true, because he is their life, their be-
ing; - in him, says an apostle, “ we live and move and have our
being."
6. The question is sometimes asked, where is the universe? Where
is your resolution, intention? In the bosom of your consciousness.
So the universe, being God's will or intention, exists in the concious-
ness of the Deity. The bosom of the infinite Consciousness is its
place, its residence, its home. God then is all round and within it, as
you are all round and within your intention. Here is the omnipres-
ence of the Deity. You cannot go where God is not, unless you cease
to exist. Not because God fills all space, as we sometimes say, thus
giving him as it were extension, but because he embosoins all space,
as we embosom our thoughts in our own consciousness.
"This view of creation, also, shows us the value of the universe,
and teaches us to respect it. It is God's will, God's intention, and
is divine, so far forth as it really exists, and therefore is holy, and
should be reverenced. Get at a man's intentions, and you get at his
real character. A man's intentions are the revelations of himself; they
show you what the man is. The universe is the revelation of the
Deity. So far as we read and understand it, do we read and under-
stand God. When I am penetrating the heavens and tracing the
revolutions of the stars, I am learning the will of God; when I pene-
trate the earth and explore its strata, study the minuter particles of
matter and their various combinations, I am mastering the science of
theology; when I listen to the music of the morning songsters, I am
listening to the voice of God; and it is his beauty I see when my eye
runs over the varied landscape or “the flower-enamelled mead."
6. You see here the sacred character which attaches to all science,
shadowed forth through all antiquity, by the right to cultivate it being
claimed for the priests alone. But every man should be a priest; and
the man of science, who does not perceive that he is also a priest, but
half understands his calling. In ascertaining these laws of nature, as
you call them, you are learning the ways of God. Put off your shoes
then when you enter the temple of science, for you enter the sanctua-
ry of the Most High.
""But man is a still fuller manifestation of the Deity. He is superi-
or to all outward nature. Sun and stars pale before a human soul.
The powers of nature, whirlwinds, tornados, cataracts, lightnings,
earthquakes, are weak before the power of thought, and lose all their
terrific grandeur in presence of the struggles of passion. Man with
a silken thread turns aside the lightning and chains up the harmless
bolt. Into man enters more of the fulness of the Divinity, for in his
own likeness God made inan. The study of man then is still more
the study of the Divinity, and the science of man becomes a still
nearer approach to the science of God.
6. This is not all. Viewed in this light what new worth and sacred-
ness attaches to this creature man, on whom kings, priests and no-
bles have for so many ages trampled with sacrilegious feet. Whoso
wrongs a man defaces the image of God, desecrates a temple of the
living God, and is guilty not merely of a crime but of a sin. Indeed,
all crimes become sins, all offences against man, offences against
God. Hear this, ye wrong-doers, and know that it is not from your


1840.]
Brownson's Writings.
feeble brother only, that ye have to look for vengeance. Hear this,
ye wronged and down-trodden; and know that God is wronged in
that ye are wronged, and his omnipotent arm shall redress you, and
punish your oppressors. Man is precious in the sight of God, and God
will vindicate him.
* * All this is very fine, but it strikes me that you identify the Deity
with his works. You indeed call him a cause, but he causes or creates,
if I understand you, only by putting himself forth. Independent of
him, his works have no reality. He is their life, being, substance.
Is not this Pantheism ?'
Not at all. God is indeed the life, being, substance of all his
works, yet is he independent of his works. I am in my intention, and
my intention is nothing any further than I enter into it; but neverthe-
less my intention is not me; I have the complete control over it. It
does not exhaust me. It leaves me with all my creative energy, free
to create anew as I please. So of God. Creation does not exhaust
him. His works are not necessary to his being, they make up no part
of his life. He retains all his creative energy, and may put it forth
anew as seems to him good. Grant he stands in the closest
relation to his works; he stands to them in the relation of a
cause to an effect, not in the relation of identity, as pantheism sup-
poses.
“ . But waiving the charge of pantheism, it would seem from what
you have said that creation must be as old as the Creator. What then
will you do with the Mosaic cosmogony, which supposes creation took
place about six thousand years ago ??
“I leave the Mosaic cosmogony where I find it. As to the in-
ference that creation must be as old as the Creator, I would remark,
that a being cannot be a creator till he creates, and as God was always
a creator, always then must there have been a creation ; but it does
not follow from this that creation must have always assumed its pre-
sent form, much less that this globe in its present state must have ex-
isted from all eternity. It may have been, for aught we know, sub-
jected to a thousand revolutions and transformations, and the date of
its habitation by man may indeed have been no longer ago than He-
brew chronology asserts.
“ “But much of this difficulty about the date of creation arises from
supposing that creation must have taken place in time. But the crea-
tions of God are not in time but in eternity. Time begins with crea-
tion, and belongs to created nature. With God there is no time, as
there is no space. He transcends time and space. He inhabiteth
eternity, and is both time and space. When we speak of beginning
in relation to the origin of the universe, we should refer to the source
whence it comes, not to the time when it came. Its beginning is not
in time but in God, and is now as much as it ever was.
** You should think of the universe as something which is, not as
something which was. God did not, strictly speaking, make the world,
finish it, and then leave it. He makes it, he constitutes it now. Re-
gard him therefore not, if I may borrow the language of Spinoza, as
its “temporary and transient cause, but as its permanent and in-dwell-
ing cause;" that is, not as a cause which effects, and then passes off from
his works, to remain henceforth in idleness, or to create new worlds ;
but as a cause which remains in his works, ever producing them, and


44
(July,
Brownson's Writings.
constituting them by being present in them, their life, being, and sub-
stance. Take this view, and you will never trouble yourself with the
question whether the world was created, six thousand, or six million of
years ago.'”— pp. 198 - 204.
The result of Elwood's inquiries is expressed in the
conclusion of the volume, and with it we will close the
copious extracts which we have been unable to avoid.
« In looking back upon the long struggle I have had, I must thank
God for it. I have been reproached by my Christian brethren; they
have tried to make me believe that I was very wicked in being an un-
believer ; but I have never reproached myself for having been one,
nor have I ever regretted it. I would consent to go through the whole
again, rather than not have the spiritual experience I have thus ac-
quired. I have sinned, but never in having doubted. I have much to
answer for, but not for having been an unbeliever. I have no apolo-
gies to make to the Christian world. I have no forgiveness to ask
of it. I have done it no disservice, and it will one day see that I have
not been an unprofitable servant. It has never fairly owned me, but
I care not for that. Even to this day it calls me an infidel, but that is
nothing. It will one day be astonished at its own blindness; and
when freed from the flesh, in that world where I shall not be disturbed
by the darkness of this, I shall see it doing even more than justice to
my memory. I have not lived in vain, nor in vain have I doubted,
inquired, and finally been convinced. When the scales fell from my
eyes, and I beheld the true light, I followed it; and I have done what
was in my power to direct others to it. My task is now well nigh
done, and I am ready to give in my last account. I say not this in a
spirit of vain boasting, but in humble confidence. I say it to express
my strong faith in God, and in his care for all who attempt to do his
will.
“I doubt not that many good Christians may be shocked at first sight
at what I have here recorded. They will see no coincidence between
the views here set forth and their own cherished convictions ; but I
will assure them, that as they read on, and fairly comprehend them,
they will find the coincidence all but perfect. The christianity here
set forth is the christianity of the universal church, though presented
perhaps in an uncommon light. I cannot persuade myself that a new
christianity is here presented, but the old christianity which all the
world has believed, under a new aspect, perhaps, and an aspect more
peculiarly adapted to the wants of the present age. It cannot have
escaped general observation, that religion, for some time, has failed to
exert that influence over the mind and heart that it should. There
is not much open skepticism, not much avowed infidelity, but there is
a vast amount of concealed doubt, and untold difficulty. Few, very
few among us but ask for more certain evidence of the Christian faith
than they possess. Many, many are the confessions to this effect,
which I have received from men and women, whose religious charac-
ter stands fair in the eyes of the church. I have been told by men
of unquestionable piety, that the only means they have to maintain
their belief even in God, is never to suffer themselves to inquire into


1840.)
45
Brownson's Writings.
the grounds of that belief. The moment they ask for proofs, they say,
they begin to doubt.
"Our churches are but partially filled, and the majority of those
who attend them complain that they are not fed. Our clergy are in-
dustrious, and in most cases do all that men can do, and yet not many
mighty works do they, because of the people's unbelief. Everywhere
we hear complaint. Even amongst the clergy themselves doubt finds
its way. Learned professors proclaim publicly and emphatically,
even while denouncing infidelity, that we can have no certainty, that
our evidence of christianity is at best but a high degree of probability.
Surely, then, it is time to turn christianity over and see if it have not
a side which we have not hitherto observed. Perhaps when we
come to see it on another side, in a new light, it will appear unto
us more beautiful and have greater power to attract our love and
reverence,
“ The views here presented have won the love and reverence of one
man who was once as obstinate an unbeliever as can be found. I
know not why they should not have the same effect on others.” — pp.
259-262.
We have a few words only to add with regard to the
manner in which Mr. Brownson deals with the objections
of the skeptic. This we consider a leading merit of the
work before us. The author speaks from personal expe-
rience, for he too has been through the conflict between
received opinions and the light of truth ; he has seen the
impressions of childhood fade from the mind ; with an
earnest and susceptible religious nature, he has felt the
difficulties of speculation; but he has never shrunk from
the freest thought; he has trod the wine press for himself;
and established the instinctive decisions of the heart on
the basis of the universal reason. An experience similar
to this is requisite in all, who would fairly meet the mind
of the sincere skeptic. The want of such experience is
the reason why so many of our standard writers on the
foundation of faith are more ingenious than satisfactory,
and usually fail to remove the difficulty that was deeply
felt. They have no sympathy with doubt; their minds
are of a different stamp from those that love to examine
first principles; they are well satisfied with the traditions
of ages; of the stern agony of thought, by which a rational
faith is produced in a state of society that questions every-
thing, they have no suspicion; they may become powerful
advocates of the opinions which the multitude cling to;
but they know not how to touch the spot where doubt rests
in the heart which other causes than any vice or lie have


46
[July,
Brownson's Writings.
led to distrust its ancient faith ; when they enter that
sphere, let them hush.
The author of this work admits the full force of skep-
tical arguments, whenever they are founded in truth. He
seems so sure of his cause, that he does not wish to rely
on aught which does not bear the severest test. Accord-
ingly, he betrays no alarm when certain statements that
have long been relied on are shown to be defective ; he
clearly makes use of no reasons, adapted to the presumed
weakness of his opponent, which are without force to his
own mind; he will not “ bring to the God of truth the
unclean sacrifice of a lie;" and, in this manner, he gives a
peculiar weight and authority to the conclusions which he
adopts; so that their force is most speedily felt by the
strongest minds.
Neither does he ever seek to evade the precise point on
which the subject turns. More distinctly than most writers
on theological questions does he perceive the true issue ;
and when he once states what it is, he does not leave it,
without doing his best to despatch it entirely. It is small
praise to say, that he refrains from regarding as a crime
the unbelief which he would remove. On this account,
the present work will be favorably listened to by many,
whom no persuasion can induce to enter the walls of a
church, and who look with suspicion on the teachings of
most of the professed advocates of religion. And they
who are not converted by the reasonings here exhibited,
with Elwood, will at least meet with much to stimulate
them to further inquiry; they may find an aspect of re-
ligion, which they had not considered before ; and new
thought may at length give birth to new faith.
R.


1840.
The Last Farewell.
THE LAST FAREWELL.
Lines written while sailing out of Boston Harbor for the West Indies.
FAREWELL, ye lofty spires,
That cheered the holy light!
Farewell domestic fires
That broke the gloom of night!
Too soon those spires are lost, .
Too fast we leave the bay,
Too soon by ocean tost
From hearth and home away,
Far away, far away.
Farewell the busy town,
The wealthy and the wise,
Kind smile and honest frown
From bright familiar eyes.
All these are fading now;
Our brig hastes on her way;
Her unremembering prow
Is leaping o'er the sea,
Far away, far away.
Farewell, my mother fond,
Too kind, too good to me,
Nor pearl nor diamond
Would pay my debt to thee;
But even thy kiss denies
Upon my cheek to stay,
The winged vessel flies,
And billows round her play,
Far away, far away.
Farewell, my brothers true,
My betters yet my peers,
How desert without you
My few and evil years!
But though aye one in heart,
Together sad or gay,
Rude ocean doth us part,
We separate to-day,
Far away, far away.
Farewell I breathe again
To dim New England's shore;
My heart shall beat not when
I pant for thee no more.
In yon green palmy isle
Beneath the tropic ray,
I murmur never while
For thee and thine I pray;
Far away, far away.
Edward Bliss
Emerson
1832


48
(July,
Ernest the Seeker.
ERNEST THE SEEKER.
CHAPTER FIRST.
1 Truth's lovely form, that once was a perfect shape most glorious to
look upon, was hewed into a thousand pieces, and scattered to the four
winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of truth, such as
durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled
body of Osiris, went up and down, gathering limb by limb still as they
could find them.” - MILTON.
“ Constant's journal from Rome, mother,” said Ernest,
as he broke the seals of a package, “now shall you know
this friend of mine,
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate,
His tears pure messengers sent from his heart,
His heart as far from fraud, as heaven from earth.""
" Ah! Ernest! This mania of tolerance and many-
sidedness, as you call it, will keep your mind in such a
chaos, I fear, that the Spirit of God will never move on
the face of the waters, and say, “Let there be light.'
What can interest you so much in this young priest ? He
always seemed to me to have his mother's enthusiasm, and
gentle as she was, I certainly thought her crazed, as she
glided about in her dark robes, like a devotee or sister of
charity."
“ Constant made me his friend by a well timed rebuke,
mother," said Ernest, as he took a letter from his desk,
and read as follows:-
“MY DEAR SIR,
6. The heart knoweth its own bitterness,' and may
heaven preserve you from ever feeling the pain, which an
expression of yours to-day occasioned me. I complain of
no purposed unkindness, for probably you are ignorant
that I am a Catholic ; but I pray you, never say again that
our priests are knaves or fools,' till you have proved the
justice of your charge. It is my dearest hope to be ad-
mitted to the holy office. I vowed to consecrate my life
to it, as I knelt by my mother's death-bed. I was bred up
in the Episcopal church, of which both my parents were
members, till I was fourteen years of age. At this time
cirin .;.


1840.]
Ernest the Seeker.
49
my poor father became so ill, that he was advised to win-
ter in Palermo. My mother of course accompanied him.
I need not dwell upon the sad history. He rapidly de-
clined; and it was in these dark hours, that my mother's
mind was called, as she saw him on whom she had rested
passing in weakness away, to turn for support to the friend
who never withdraws, and to hope for reunion in heavenly
homes with the beloved one whom affection could not re-
tain on earth. She sought relief in the services of the
nearest church. The touching symbols of these holy rites
deeply affected her; and in her loneliness she appealed to
the sympathy of the Confessor. He visited them; and
before the last change came, my mother had the divine
joy of receiving together with my father the sacrament of
the Eucharist; of seeing the extreme unction administered
to him in his agony; and after his spirit had departed, of
having the body buried in consecrated ground, and of join-
ing in sublime and consoling masses for his eternal peace.
You will believe me when I say she returned home sancti-
fied by her sorrows. I was her only child, and we became
inseparable companions. She directed my studies, she
guided my prayers, she made me her helper in her works
of benevolence; and heaven forgive me! if as I looked
up in her sweet face, becoming ever more spiritual as it
day by day grew thinner and paler, and into those eyes so
calmly bright, as if the light of another life beamed through
them, and listened to her tones so musical and mild, that
my heart melted, — heaven forgive me! if I worshipped
her. My mother must ever be to me a saint. She, as her
dying legacy, prayed that I might become an honored
minister of God. In a few years, heaven willing, I shall
be a Priest; alas ! how unworthy a one, in contrast with
the blessed thousands who through centuries have offered
the perfect sacrifice.
Constant Seymour.”
“ There speaks at least a good son. You will hear the
journal now, will you not? The words of one so fervent,
even if deluded,
*Enforce attention like sweet harmony.'”
VOL. I. - NO. I.


50
Ernest the Seeker.
(July,
“ Rome, Dec. 10.
“ Laus Deo! Arrived this morning, and am now quietly
established at the college. The huge building, with its
massive stones, projecting cornices, and heavy carved win-
dows, looked gloomy as I entered ; and as our footsteps
echoed through the silent court and long passages, the
thought saddened me, that so many years were to be pass-
ed beneath these solemn shades. But the paternal wel-
come of Father B., and the courteous demeanor of my
fellow students, quite cheered my spirits; and now that I
have once joined in worship in our beautiful little chapel,
and have arranged my apartment, I feel at home. I like
this high ceiling, this deep window, with its diamond
shaped panes, and these oaken pannels dark with age.
In the sacred recess I have placed my Corregio's Agony
in the Garden; Fenelon's placid face smiles over my table;
my mother's copy of a Kempis is lying by my side; and
more than all, dearest mother, thy gentle look blesses me
from this miniature. Well may I feel happy, in striving to
fulfil your dying wish! Ad te levavi oculos meos.
come of Faithese solemhat so ma
“ After Vespers walked with a friend to the Pincian.
The sun was setting, as we climbed the long ascent of
steps; and we reached the summit just in time to see the
golden rim disappear behind the ridge on the west of the
city, where umbrella pines stood strongly marked against
the sky. A haze of glory, such as Claude so often dipped
his brush in, hung for a moment like a brilliant veil over
the wilderness of roofs beneath us; but as the shadows
spread, the scene grew clearer, and I took my first survey
of the Holy City. In front, at the distance of a mile,
swelled sublime the dark dome of St. Peter's, flanked by the
far stretching wings of the Vatican. Nearer rose the round
tower of St. Angelo, and, winding at its foot, the Tiber
was revealed by its reflection of the still bright heaven;
while to the left stood the columns of Trajan and of Anto-
nine with the bronze apostle on its top, and the eye rested
on the low arched roof of the Pantheon. It was no dream!
I, a child from a far land, was really taken home to the
bosom of the mighty mother, who has fed the world with
her holiness, and learning, and art. Beneath that soaring
dome, so gracefully light, yet so firm, were at this moment


1840.]
51
Ernest the Seeker.
burning the golden lamps around the tomb of St. Peter.
Within those very walls had been held for centuries the
sacred conclaves, whose councils the Holy Spirit conde-
scends to guide. Under these very roofs, which I now
looked upon, had been trained the hosts of martyr mission-
aries, who have carried the cross over burning deserts, and
polar snows, and the farthest ocean. Around me on every
side was a vast multitude, who had forsaken the world and
its vanities for the purity and charities of a religious life.
Lights on a thousand altars, clouds of incense from swing-
ing censers, chaunts of countless choristers, and murmured
prayers of crowds of priests sanctified the very air. I was
in Rome! not imperial Rome, – that blood-stained desert,
- but Christian Rome, blossoming with truth. The Eagle
has fallen before the cross; the palaces of voluptuous
nobles have crumbled; the dust of centuries has buried
the pavements over which rolled the triumphal cars of cruel
armies; nature's kind ministries have carpeted the deep-
dyed sands of the arenas; from the ruins of barbarous
pomp have sprung these graceful temples, and halls of
science, and galleries filled with images of beauty, which a
divine faith inspired; and in place of chained captives,
driven to the shambles to gratify the bloody thirst of a
populace, come joyful troops seeking the light of peace
and love to carry with self-sacrificing toil to the whole
world. Domini est Terra.
“Dec. 13.
“ Walking to-day through a narrow street, with high
walls enclosing gardens on each side, I came to a niche,
where pious hands keep ever burning a light before an
image of the Virgin ; and there witnessed a sight, which,
in all its picturesque simplicity, is peculiar to Catholic
lands. Two peasant boys were kneeling before it, one
playing on a pipe, the other, who held by a string a pet
goat, repeating an Ave Maria. The father stood behind
wrapped in his dark brown cloak, his conical hat with its
slouched brim in his hand. I waited till their offering was
over, that I might give them alms. They formed, indeed,
a singular yet graceful group. The boys, in place of
cloak, had dressed sheep skins hanging on their shoulders ;
their leggins were blue; and the sandals were laced with


52
(July,
Ernest the Seeker.
pink and orange ribbons crossing the leg to the knee. In
their hats they each wore a short feather, and their black
bead-like eyes looked brightly out over cheeks, where ruddy
health blushed through a brown, tanned skin. Long clus-
tering locks fell over their shoulders. The father was dark
and stern enough; and it required no great imagination to
see him, with a carbine on his shoulder, watching behind a
rock on the hill side for the traveller winding up the road.
Rough and wild creatures truly! Yet the Catholic church
has a hold even on them. How admirably wise has she
been in adapting herself to all classes of minds and char-
acters. What would these semi-barbarians care for a
homily or a tract? But the picture of the Holy Mother
can soften their rude hearts.
“I have just withdrawn from my window, to which I
was attracted by the sound of tramping feet and the glare
of moving lights upon the wall. It was a procession of
Carmelites. Each held in his hand a torch, whose flicker-
ing blaze made the darkness in the street seem almost
tangible, and falling down on their white sweeping robes,
transfigured them with a bright glory. Silently with even
step and two by two they passed down the deserted street,
probably to a funeral. How can Protestants speak with
such rude suspicions of these holy brotherhoods, devoted as
they are to all-sacrificing charity? What other system
provides, as our venerable Church does, for the wants of
the needy? Not a poor beggar dies in this city, whose
pains are not solaced by the gentle cares of some sister of
charity, and whose remains are not followed to the grave
by solemn and respectful attendants. May I but imbibe
this spirit of devoted benevolence of which I see such
manifestations every hour !
“ Dec. 15.
« Attended mass to-day at the church of the Jesuits.
How can I speak adequately of the music? It came from
a gallery raised near to the arching roof, and the sound
there echoed and softened seemed to fall from heaven. It
realized, oh yes, far more than realized, my highest con-
ception of devotional sentiment. Language cannot utter
our swelling emotions. Precise terms confine their flow.


1840.]
Ernest the Seeker.
53
But music, — where each note suggests without naming a
thought, and where the blending sounds are a symbol of a
thousand interwoven feelings, - music is indeed the vehicle
of devout expression. First came a deep distant swell of
the solemn bass of the organ, like a flood lifting up its
voice, like the breaking of many waters, fuller and fuller,
louder and louder in peal, new chords ever mingling as the
stream of harmony rolled on, till the whole soul seemed
borne aloft upon the waves of sound; — and then gently,
softly it sank into a calm, the higher notes prevailing, till
there broke forth the flute-toned voices of young choristers,
like the greeting of cherubs from happier worlds. I was
deeply moved myself, and could not but notice the effect of
the services upon a young man kneeling at my side. By his
long, light brown hair, fair complexion, and blue eye, I
knew him to be a German, probably from his dress an
artist. Repeatedly he kissed his crucifix, while tears gath-
ered and rolled down, till seemingly overcome, he bowed
his head even to the marble floor and sobbed audibly.
How many recollections of distant dear ones and home,
how many hopes of success, how many thronging images
of beauty were mingling at that moment with this gushing
tide of devotion. Oh! barren indeed are other forms of
worship in comparison with these, appealing to the soul as
they do through our most heavenly faculty, — the imagina-
tion. On this young artist's mind, who can estimate the
effect of the grand architecture, and the pictured forms of
the richly apparelled priests, and the white-robed acolyte,
of the graceful curling incense, the tinkling bell, the solemn
pause, the burst of song? Poor reason, men clip your
sky-cleaving pinions, and then chide you for lagging in the
dust of this work-day earth.
“I was much struck by seeing a lady in splendid figured
silk kneeling near to a peasant, who by his soiled dress had
probably but just come in from the muddy roads of the
country. In rising, he accidentally planted his iron studded
and miry shoe on the rich skirt, which spread itself over
the marble. Not a sign showed that such a trifle could
distract the wearer's mind from the sublime exercises in
which she was engaging, or give even momentary offence.
Where in Protestant lands can you see this true spirit of
Christian equality, - levelling in the temple of the King of


54
(July,
Ernest the Seeker.
kings all the poor barriers of caste, reared by men's self-
ishness in the social world ? No pews encumber the floors
of these cathedrals, no poor divisions wall off the privileged
few from brethren who come to worship a common Father.
“Dec. 17.
“ Went to the English college to hear a lecture from the
learned and eloquent Dr. W. on the sacred use of classic
learning. The rooms were crowded with the chief digni-
taries of the church, the leading literary men of the city,
artists, distinguished foreigners, and ladies. The lecture
was nearly two hours in length, and took a wide range.
It was filled with the nicest criticisms, with descriptions of
authors, as marked and accurate as are the heads on an-
cient seals, with exquisite selections from the old historians
and poets, and illustrated with large engravings of the
finest specimens of art. And yet the Church is said to
discourage learning, and to base itself upon popular igno-
rance. Oh! sad, sad is this spirit of schism! Can it come
from any one but the father of lies ? Look at these mile-long
libraries, stored with the choicest literature of all ages, and
thrown liberally open for the world of scholars to consult;
look at these colleges, where multitudes under ablest pro-
fessors are trained up in the best scientific, philosophic,
historical, and literary knowledge of every time! How
little do Protestants know the rock on which the Church
is built! Preserver of light in a world of gloom, restorer
of ancient truth, nurse of
thoughtful monks, intent their God to please
For Christ's dear sake, by human sympathies
Poured from the bosom of the Church, -
how have ungrateful children, ignorant of thy wide inter-
ests and liberal wisdom, defamed thee, Mother Church!
• Visited in my walk the Pantheon. How wise to con-
secrate the beautiful works of ancient art, thus signifying,
that as God has made this outward creation, with its count-
less glories, to minister in unceasing worship,
In that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,
Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;
Its choir the winds and waves, — its organ thunder,
Its dome the sky,'


1840.)
55
Ernest the Seeker.
so man should use his highest conception of grandeur and
loveliness for his Maker's praise. How sublime too the
change which this graceful dome, these noble columns,
these marble pavements have witnessed. The gods of
ancient times were indeed the loftiest ideal of mere natural
manhood; but these pictures on the altars beam with a
light of heavenly, redeemed, glorified humanity.
“As I stood examining an altar piece, I was much inter-
ested in observing the various worshippers who knelt before
it. One was an old man with streaming white locks and
beard, who leaning heavily on his staff, as he bent his
stiffened form, might have answered as a study for a Saint
Jerome. Next was a mother, with a rosy-faced, chubby
boy of six years, who, sportive and full of life, seemed
restless in kneeling so long on the cold, hard stones, while
the sallow face, deep marks about the mouth, and sunken
eye told a tale of suffering in her whose arm embraced
him. Not far from them was a contadina, with her snowy
starched cap standing out from her head, her large gilded
earrings, gay ribbons, green boddice, and scarlet skirt; and
last a young girl, of perhaps thirteen, her coal-black hair,
in long braided plaits, hanging down her shoulders, and a
covered basket on her arm. Graciously do our church
doors stand open at all hours for those whose homes afford
no privacy. The passing emotion of devoutness is not
deadened as where religious service is confined to the
Sabbath; sorrow may pour out its tears, — penitence may
confess its burdened heart, — tempted nature may purify
itself, — and the perplexed find peace at any hour.
“ Returning this evening about dusk, I was struck with
a manifestation of the care, with which the Church goes
out to seek its scattered sheep. Turning suddenly a cor-
ner, I found myself in the midst of a singular company.
A cook, with his glowing brazier, was dealing out frittered
messes to those who had a baioccho to pay for them.
Women with their matted locks and bare necks, and men
in scanty cloaks and slouched hats, moved to and fro,
vociferating and gesticulating, their features strongly
marked by the ruddy light of the fiery coals; while just
opposite, a Franciscan, — his brown robe girt round him


56
[July,
Ernest the Seeker.
by a rope, his cowl thrown back, his arm bare and raised
on high, holding a crucifix, was pouring forth to a knot of
listeners an impassioned appeal. Thus, in the midst of
noisy crowds, where hasty words bring rash deeds, and the
bantering jest is followed by the gleaming knife, the sud-
den stroke, and the laugh is choked in blood, — there in
the very haunts of levity and crime do the ministers of the
word of life appear.
half ople are two listening fixed attentione a
66 Dec. 19.
“ To-day at the Vatican! Will Protestants explain, why
their faith does not nurture such giant minds, as have
written the history of their thoughts in prodigal richness
all over the walls of this palace? When will Protestantism
produce its Buonarotti, its Leonardo, its Dante? Out of
the crowd of sublime images, which have this day enlarged
my conception of power and beauty, two alone rise promi-
nent, so eloquent are they of the deep reverence and the
imprisoned strength of Michael Angelo. They are the
Sibilla Persica and the Prophet Joel. One may well be
diffident in thinking to interpret these magnificent visions ;
but I fancied I saw a purposed contrast between the dark-
ened Sybil and the enlightened Seer. The withered dame,
with painfully contorted frame, is poring intently over the
half open volume on which only a partial light falls; and
behind are two young boys, cloaked to the neck, and
mute, still, as if listening through long ages for the voice
which should loose their fixed attention. In the compart-
ments below are sleeping figures; one a mother pressing
her infant to her bosom, as if overcome in the midst of her
vigil she was still haunted by the foreboding of ills; the
other, a vigorous and muscular man, utterly spent with
fatigue, and lost in profoundest rest. The perfect aban-
donment to heavy sleep is wonderfully given by the body
bent forward till the chest leans upon the limbs, and by
the arm hanging lifelessly down. All speaks the midnight
of ignorance as to human destiny. A silence as of the
secret chamber of a pyramid broods oppressively over it.
What intense action, on the contrary, in the Joel! The
mother is wakened, the child looks brightly out as upon
the sunny morning; and the prophet, — his grand forehead
and curling hair full in the light, the two inspirited boys


1840.]
57
Ernest the Seeker.
with lively gestures looking over him as he reads, — seems
to be chanting with a triumphant hope that thrills every
muscle, “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men
shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.'
The devoutness of such a man as Michael Angelo, the all-
absorbing trust that knows not a doubt, and which in the
midst of evil times rises indomitable, where can it be
seen beyond the pale of that One Holy Church, founded
on the martyred bodies of apostles, built up by the con-
senting traditions of eighteen centuries, and cemented by
the prayers and tears of countless saints ? The Unity of
the Faith, this was the sublime inspiration, which gave
such full vigor to believers' minds, in times before the so
called Reformation made a chaos.
“But it was not merely with the awe, which the genius of
Michael Angelo awakened, that I regarded the Capella
Sistina. Here were the very seats, here was the very altar,
where week by week the Holy Father and the Cardinals
unite in worship. What! do Protestants dare to think,
that the good old man, who humble and lowly bends here
in prayer, is the opposer of that Master, whose keys he
bears? And these venerable, long experienced counsellors,
whose days are spent in laborious correspondences, and
earnest consultation for the good of the Faithful, the world
over; — can any one, who sees them exchanging that
beautiful sign of the kiss of peace at the close of their
religious rites, suppose them earthly minded and ambitious ?
Protestants must surely be ignorant of the poverty, the
disinterestedness, the severe industry -".
- There ! my dear Ernest — that will do for me;" said
Mrs. Hope, rising -- " Constant is as wild as his mother ;
infatuated, perfectly infatuated! And yet he has sweet
sensibilities, I grant. But that he should have been so long
in that city of moral death, surrounded by sights of poverty,
wretchedness, vice, and idleness in the people, and of luxury,
ostentation, and proud affluence in the priesthood, witness-
ing parade and mummery in place of true worship, without
having his eyes opened, shows that he is a thorough enthu-
siast. If he had been bred up in such customs, one could
more easily pardon him! Do not, I beseech you, let his
taste and pretty words mislead you. He but whitens a
VOL. 1. — NO. 1.


58.
[July,
The Divine Presence in Nature
sepulchre. I do fear for you, my son," seeing a smile
struggling with respect on Ernest's face; "and I fear the
more, because I see that this tolerant sympathy looks gen-
erous; and thus you may mistake vacillating indecision for
a large wisdom. Will you forever be run away with by each
new notion and caprice of other minds?”
“Dear mother," answered Ernest, playfully, “you must
plead guilty for some part of my vagaries. You bade me
be a Seeker. Dread not the spirit that rose at your bid-
ding. You have not forgotten the lines you early taught
me,
• Yet some seeke knowledge merely to be knowne,
And idle curiosity that is;
Some but to sell, not freely to bestow;
These gaine and spend both time and wealth amisse,
Embasing arts, by basely deeming so;
Some to build others, which is charitie,
But these to build themselves, who wise men be.""
klantenser
THE DIVINE PRESENCE IN NATURE AND IN THE
SOUL.
The doctrine of divine inspiration is one of no small
importance; for as it is received in one form or another, it
will bless a man or curse him ; will make him a slave to
the letter which killeth, or a freeman made free by
the “ Law of the spirit of life.” The doctrine of Inspi-
ration is admitted by the Christian Church. It is com-
monly believed there have been inspired men, though
“open vision” is no longer continued. The Bible, oftener
than any other book perhaps, speaks of men inspired by
God. Most of its truths, to take its own statement, came
directly from Him. Since Christians believe the Bible,
they must believe in the power and fact of inspiration,
however they may limit its extent.
Inspiration is the direct and immediate action of God
upon man. But to understand this the better,.we may
consider his analogous action upon matter, since in both
cases the action is direct and immediate, though in obedi-


1840.]
59
and in the Soul.
ence to fixed and determinate laws. The kind of action •
on God's part is perhaps the same in both cases ; and the
effect differs with the powers and nature of the recipient.
God is everywhere present, and at all times. Let us take
the fact of his Omnipresence as the point of departure.
What results follow from this perpetual and universal pres-
ence ? He is not idly present in any place, or at any time.
The divine energy never slumbers nor sleeps: it flows forth
an eternal stream, endless and without beginning, which
doth encompass and embrace the all of things. From
itself proceeds, and to itself returns this “River of God.”
The material world is perpetual growth, renewal which
never ceases, because God, who flows into it, is the same
yesterday, to-day, and forever.
He fills the world of outward nature with his presence.
The fulness of the divine energy flows inexhaustibly into
the crystal of the rock, the juices of the plant, the splen-
dor of the stars, the life of the Bee and Behemoth. Here
it is not idle, but has an active influence on the world of
matter, plants, and animals. The material, vegetable, and
animal world, therefore, receive this influence according to
their several capacities, and from it derive their life and
growth; their order and beauty, — the very laws of their
being, and their being itself. Since He is everywhere, no
part of nature is devoid of his influence. All depends
on him for existence. Hence Nature ever grows, and
changes, and becomes something new, as God's all pervad-
ing energy flows into it without ceasing. Hence in nature
there is constant change, but no ultimate death. The
quantity of life is never diminished. The leaves fall, but
they furnish food for new leaves yet to appear, whose
swelling germs crowd off the old foliage. The Dog and the
Oyster having done their work cease to be seen by our
eyes ; but there seems no reason for fancying the spark of
life once kindled in them is extinguished, or vanished into
soft air. Since God is essentially and vitally present in
each atom of space, there can be no such thing as sheer
and absolute extinction of being. Well says the poet,
“When will the river be weary of flowing
Under my eye?
When will the winds be aweary of blowing
Over the sky?


The Divine Presence in Nature
(July,
.
be said of pricious chan
When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of beating?
Never, oh never, nothing will die!"
Since God is unalterably the same, and yet with ever
active energy possesses the Heavens and the Earth, the law
on which they rest must needs be fixed beyond a change,
while the face of nature each day assumes new forms.
Thus the law of nature is the same at the Pole and the
Line, on the day of Adam and at this day; and yet there
is unending variety on the surface of things, where the
divine spirit never repeats itself.
Now the obedience, which all the inanimate objects in
nature pay to this law, is perfect. There is never any
violation of it; not even the smallest. The stones and
the trees, the sun and the waves, yield perfect obedience
thereunto. No provision is made in nature against a vio-
lation of this law. Thus, for example, we never see the
water and the air change place with each other, nor could
the earth exist under such capricious changes.
The same may be said of the animal world, with the
single exception of man, who is related to it by the body's
side. Here also the obedience is perfect. Caprice has no
place, as a principle or a motive. All the works of the
elephant or the ape were forecast in its structure and in-
stincts. If this were not so — if this obedience of the
elements and animals were not thus perfect, there could be
no safety for the human race; no continued existence even
to the universe; for its existence continues only on the sup-
position that its laws are obeyed; and no provision has
been made for the evil that would ensue, if any part of the
Creation, save man alone, should violate the fundamental
law of its nature and act against the will of God.
The imposition of a law, then, perfect in itself, and
perfectly though blindly obeyed, is the entire extent of
God's influence upon the outward world of nature. In
these bodies it would seem there is no individual will ; they
seem not integers but only fractions of a whole. If they
have any individual will it is subordinate to irresistible
instinct. Now since there is no partial will, there is no
power to oppose the universal will and influence of God,
even in the slightest degree. Therefore all the action of
the unconscious world is mechanical, or at the highest in-
side. ciception


1840.]
and in the Soul.
61
stinctive and in perfect harmony with God's will. It is an
important fact that all parts of nature are in perfect har-
mony with God's will, and therefore reveal all of God that
can be made manifest to the eye, the ear, and other senses
of man. In the universe of matter, nothing ever rebels,
or revolts from God's authority. All is order, and all beau-
tiful. His laws seem to conflict, but they never clash;
growth and decay perpetually intersect, but do not disturb
each other ; so the rays of light, as reflected from the flow-
ers of a meadow to a thousand eyes, cross and recross, but
one never jostles the other. From this obedience it comes
that nothing in nature is really deformed when seen from
its true point of view. “He hath made nothing imper-
fect" considered in its two-fold relation of use and mean-
ing.
In this manner the world is filled by God's energy and
substance. He is equally present in all parts of the ma-
terial world; equally active in the formation of a dew-drop
and an ocean. Now men of all ages, the rudest and the
most refined, have noticed this striking fact; their slumber-
ing spirit has been awakened, and they have gained hints
from it. Religious men see an higher proof of God's
presence and influence in outward nature, than in the mass
of their fellow men. If we would be possessed with devout
and sublime emotions, we go to the mountain “ visited all
night by troops of stars," and not to the crowd of men,
that on a public day flow in full tide through the glittering
streets of a great city. We say “the Heavens declare the
glory of God ; " not that the assembly of men bears the
same testimony to his goodness or loveliness. Hence
do we conclude that the undisturbed presence and unob-
structed influence of God, amid the hills and flower-enam-
elled meadows of the country, are more congenial to the
growth of morality and religion, than the close contact of
self-conscious men in crowded towns. The reason is plain;
the divine energy acts without resistance in Nature, and
therefore perfectly realizes its idea; while in man's will it
encounters a resisting medium, and does not, in all cases,
display itself so clear and so perſect.
But yet God is present in man as well as out of him.
The divine energy and substance possess the human soul,
no less than they constitute the law and life of outward


62
[July,
The Divine Presence in Nature
dobily hailed from possib
nature. God is present in man as well as in matter,
and not idly present in him. The presence of God in the
soul is what we call Inspiration; it is a breathing in of
God. His action on the outer world is an influence; on
self-conscious souls it is an inspiration. By this he imparts
Truth directly and immediately, without the intervention
of second causes. It has sometimes been denied that such
inspiration was possible; or that man ever received Truth
at first hand from God. But the great mass of the human
family has always believed the fact; only a few have
doubted it. It was the faith of the ancient Greek, and of
the Jew still older. Both had their prophets and sages,
men who professed to enjoy a closer intimacy with the Most
High, to see higher visions from him, and receive truths
not commonly imparted to mankind. These men were held
sacred. In times of trouble they ruled the nation by their
council; for the people fled unto them, when clouds deep-
fraught with ruin hung threatening round the horizon of
their time. There was always some seer or man of God,
in every primitive nation ; some Orpheus or Moses; some
Minos or Samuel; some Amos or Tiresias, to offer advice
and reveal the will of God made known to him. The
Christian church believes the inspiration of certain men
that have appeared in history: — that God “of old oracu-
lously spoke" by Moses, the Hebrew Psalmists, and Proph-
ets; that Paul and his fellow-apostles were likewise
inspired; that Jesus of Nazareth possessed a sublime
degree of inspiration, never before nor since imparted unto
mortal man. This doctrine represents a truth; for these
sublime persons were doubtless inspired; they ran as they
were sent; they spake as the spirit gave them utterance.
But were these few men the only recipients of God's
Spirit? Has the Soul of all souls seen fit to shed his light
only on some score of men ? Has he, who fills all time
and all space, and possesses eternity and immensity, spoken
only in the earlier ages of the world, to but a single race,
and merely in the Hebrew tongue? This is consistent
neither with logic nor history. In all ages, from the dawn
of time to this moment; in all families of inan, the spirit
of God, his energy, and substance have flowed into the soul,
as the rain falls in all lands. As day by day, year out, year
in, the dew descends, so the divine spirit enters each soul of


1840.]
and in the Soul.
63
man ; over the head alike of the beggar and the king the
unmeasured Heavens are spread; for all eyes the waters
on a stilly night are beautiful and fair ;” for all the moon
walks in loveliness, the stars shine, the sun from his
golden urn pours down the day, and so for all the great
Fountain of Life and Truth sends forth the streams of his
inspiration. Since every atom of matter is penetrated and
saturated with God, it cannot be that a few Hebrew sages,
prophets, or apostles —though never so noble — have alone
received visitations from the Soul of all souls, and wholly
absorbed the energy and substance of God, so that all
others must wander forlorn, or catch some faint echo of
Inspiration reflected in a Hebrew word.
The bards and sages of our own fathers, in centuries
long since forgot; the wise men of other lands, the Socrates,
Confucius, Zoroaster, whose influence is writ all the world
over; the saints and the sages of every clime; the poor
peasant, needy and ignorant, who with faithful breast put
up a holy prayer to God — by whatever name invoked;
every true and lonely heart has felt the same inspiration;
not similar inspiration alone, but the same inspiration, as
all bodies fall by the same gravity and all violets blos-
som in the same sun. The spirit descended like a dove,
not only on Jesus of Nazareth ; not on the banks of the
Jordan alone; but on every shore of the wide world, and
on each pure and faithful soul; for so far as a man sees with
his own soul religious or moral truth, for example, and feels
them with his own heart, so far is he inspired and possessed
of the energy and spirit of God.
Now to men there can be but one kind of Inspiration ;
it is the intuition, or direct and immediate perception of
Truth, in some important mode, for example, religious or
moral truth. There can be but one mode of Inspiration ;
it is the felt and acknowledged presence of the Highest in
the soul imparting this Truth, the conscious presence
of Him as truth, charity, justice, holiness or love, infu-
sing himself into the soul and giving it new life. There
can be but one test or criterion of Inspiration, the truth of
the thought, feeling, or doctrine. There may be various
signs of Inspiration — more or less imperfect though but
a single proof. A man may have a deep conviction
that he is inspired; he may accurately foretell future events


64
The Divine Presence in Nature (July,
or do wonderful works; all these are perhaps signs, but not
a proof, test, or criterion of inspiration.
Now in respect to the kind, mode, and test of inspiration
all men stand on the same level. But there is a great dif-
ference in respect to the degree of inspiration. This de-
pends on the quantity of being, so to say, and the amount of
fidelity in each recipient of inspiration. All men by nature
are not capable of the same degree of inspiration, and by
character and culture they are still less capable of receiv-
ing the same measure thereof. A man of deep, noble intel-
lect and heart can receive more than one of smaller gifts.
Still farther, the degree of inspiration depends no less upon
faithful compliance with the conditions on which inspiration
can alone be obtained. A man may perfectly observe these
conditions, and he will then receive all the inspiration
his nature can contain at that stage of its growth, or he
may observe them imperfectly, and will receive less. There-
fore it depends in some measure on a man's self, whether
or not, and to what extent, he will be inspired. He may
keep his birthright, or may lose it by his folly and sin.
We see in all ages men of humbler gifts obtaining an higher
degree of inspiration than others of endowments that
were superior by nature. In the end they who are thus
faithful become superior in quantity of being, as it were;
for obeying God's law, they continually tend to improve-
ment; thus a snail in the right may well beat a racer in
the wrong. The truth of this statement appears in the
history of some of the prophets in the old Testament, and
in that of Christ's disciples, who were evidently men of
small powers at the first, but through their faithful obedi-
ence became Jameses and Johns at the end. It was so with
Bunyan and George Fox, not to mention many others.
Now Jesus Christ was beyond all doubt the noblest soul
ever born into the world of time. He realized the idea of
human holiness. He did likewise, the most perfectly of
all men, obey the conditions and laws of his being. He
therefore possessed the highest degree and greatest measure
of Inspiration ever possessed by man. Hence he is called
an incarnation of God. If his obedience was perfect, then
his reason — certain and infallible as the promptings of
instinct or the law of gravitation — was the power of God
acting through him without let or hindrance. His reve-


1840.]
65
and in the Soul.
lation, therefore was the highest and deepest ever made to
man. Because he had in him so much that is common to
all, and so little that was personal and peculiar, his doc-
trines go round the world, and possess the noblest hearts.
He will continue to hold his present place in the scale of
the human race, until God shall create a soul yet larger
and nobler than Jesus, which shall observe the law of the
spirit of life” with the same faithfulness. Then, but not till
then, can a more perfect religion be proclaimed to men.
Whether this will ever be done — whether there are future
Christs, in the infinite distance, but nobler than he, now
on their way to the earth, is known only to him who
possesses the riddle of destiny, and humble disciples of the
Truth can answer neither aye nor no. Yet may this be
said ; his Revelation is perfect so far as it goes, and this
can be said of no other sage or seer.
It was said above, that in nature we see God perfectly
realizing his idea, and everywhere realizing it, in the form-
ation of a worm or a world, for there is no opposition to
God's will, but perfect obedience and infinite harmony.
Therefore the outer world is all of God which can be
revealed or manifested to the senses. Now in Jesus we
see the same obedience; his will was perfectly in harmony
with God's will, and at all times in harmony therewith.
His inspiration therefore was perfect. He was one with
God, the Father in him and he in the Father, and his
whole life a manifestation of the Father. All the fulness
of the Godhead dwelt in him, and relatively to us he
was God, so far as his power extended; that is he was all
of Divine Holiness which can be revealed in the human
form.
Here then is the difference between the inspiration of
Jesus and that of Moses, Zoroaster, Socrates, or other
sages; not a difference in kind, in mode, or in the test by
which it approves itself to mankind, but a difference in
degree ; a difference which resulted from his superior nat-
ural endowments, and his more perfect conformity to God's
will. He — so fully possessed by the divine — has more in
common with other men than they have with one another,
and less that is peculiar and limited to himself. In him
the race after four thousand years of painful effort has
reached its highest perfection. All former sages and saints,
VOL. I. — NO. I.
9


66
[July,
The Divine Presence in Nature
what were they to him? So the aloe tree, while it puts forth
leaves each summer day, and bears in its bosom a precious
though unseen germ, doth spread into a flower and ma-
ture into a fruit, but once in a hundred years.
Inspiration cannot be infallible and absolute, except the
man's intellect, conscience, affection, and religion are
perfectly developed. Infallible and creative inspiration
is the result of the whole character, not of its partial
action; and is not therefore to be expected of mortals; for
inspiration does not constrain a man and take away his free-
dom. It is moulded by his own character, and produces
various results. In one it appears in the iron hardness of
reasoning, which in another is subdued and molten by the
flame of affection, and becomes a stream of persuasion that
sparkles as it runs. The prophet has power over the spirit
that is given him; he may obey it partially, or entirely,
or repel it entirely. Thus disobedient Jonah fled from
the Lord; Simon Peter dissembled and told an untruth;
and Paul the chiefest apostle cursed Alexander the copper-
smith. These facts show plainly that their inspiration was
not infallible, and that they were free. God's influence
constrains nature, so that it can do no otherwise than as it
does ; but his inspiration leaves human will fetterless and
free. This necessity of nature and this freedom of man
are the ground of different manifestations of God in the
fields and the city. His presence revealed in all that is
magnificently great, or elegantly little, renders the world of
nature solemn and beautiful. The shapely trees, the
leaves which shroud them in loveliness ; the corn and the
cattle; the clear deep sky that folds the world in its soft
embrace; the light which rides on swift pinions, enchanting
all it touches, and reposing harmless on an infant's eye-lid,
after its long journey from the other side of the universe;
all these are noble and beautiful. They admonish while
they delight us, those silent counsellors, and sovereign
allies. But yet the spirit of God as displayed in a good
man is nobler and more beautiful. It is not the mere pas-
sive elegance of unconscious things, which we see resulting
from man's voluntary obedience. That might well charm
us in nature. But here the beauty is intellectual; the beau-
ty of thought, which comprehends the world and under-
stands its laws. It is moral, the beauty of virtue; which
does : This nece of different presence ile, rend


1840.]
and in the Soul.
overcomes the world and lives by its own laws. It is relig-
ious; the beauty of holiness, which rises above the world,
and lives by the law of the spirit of life. Here the Divine
takes a form still more divine. What is a tree, or the
whole green wood, when matched against a man that is
lovely and true? What is the loveliness of this wide world,
with its sunny glens, or “long dun wolds all ribbed with
snow ;” its rivers chiming as they run ; its canopy of stars,
shining like a city of God, the New Jerusalem in the
heavens; what are all these, compared with a man who is
faithful to the infinite Spirit, whose open heart receives
him as the violets the sun; who loves man as himself and
God above all? It is as nothing; for these outward things
are transient and fleeting; they know not of their exceed-
ing loveliness. But immortal man knows himself; moves
at his own will, and is not in bondage to the elements.
Measure the whole sum of lifeless things by the spotless
soul of Jesus, and they vanish, and are not seen. “For
the world,” says a great writer, “ I count it ... but as
an hospital and place to die in. The world that I regard
is myself. It is the microcosm of mine own frame that I
cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it, but like my
globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. Men
that look on my outside, perusing only my condition and
fortunes, do err in my altitude, for I am above Atlas his
shoulders. The earth is not only a point in respect to the
heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestial part
within us. That mass of flesh which circumscribes me, limits
not my mind. That surface that tells the heavens they have
an end, cannot persuade me I have any. I take my circle
to be above three hundred and sixty. Though the number
of the arc do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my
mind. Whilst I study to find out how I am a little world,
I find myself something more than the great. There is
surely a piece of divinity to us, something that was before
the elements, and owing no homage unto the sun. He that
understands not this much, hath not his introduction or
first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man."
Now all men are capable of this inspiration, though in
different degrees. It is not God's gift to the learned alone,
or to the great ; but to all mankind. The clear sky is
over each man, little or great ; let him uncover his head,


68
(July,
The Divine Presence in Nature
and there is nothing between him and infinite space. So
doth the infinity of God encompass all men. Uncover the
soul of its sensuality, selfishness, and sin, and there is noth-
ing between it and God, who, then, will fill the soul.
Each then may obtain his measure of this inspiration by
complying with its proper conditions. « The pure in heart
shall see God.” He, who obeys conscience is, simple in
character, true to his mind and affections, open-hearted
and loving before God, receives divine inspiration as cer-
tainly as he that opens his eyes by day receives the light.
He that is simple, tranquil, faithful, and obedient to the law
of his being, is certain of divine aid. This inspiration
must not be confounded with the man's own soul, on the
one hand ; nor, on the other, must man be merged in the
Divinity. The eye is not light; nor the ear sound; nor
conscience duty; nor the affections friendship; nor the soul
God; these come from without upon the man.
This doctrine, that all men may be inspired on condition
of purity and faithfulness, is the doctrine of the Bible.
“ The spirit of man is — the candle of the Lord.” “ If
we love one another, God dwelleth in us.” “If a man
love me he will keep my words, and my Father will love
him, and we [both Son and Father] will come unto him
and make our abode with him.” This is equally the doc-
trine of common sense and daily experience. No man
thinks the truth of Conscience, the axioms of Reason, or
Religion are his. He claims no property in them. They
have been shot down into us without our asking, and now
stand unmanageable in our minds; irrefragable facts, which
we may neglect, but cannot alter or annul. We all of us
border close upon God. He shines through, into each pure
soul, as the sun through the circumambient air. All the
wisest of men have declared the word they spoke was not
their own. They were the self-conscious and voluntary
organ of the Infinite, as the lily of the valley is the uncon-
scious and involuntary organ thereof. “My doctrine is
not mine," said the highest teacher, who claimed no per-
sonal authority. Men in distress turn instinctively to this
source for aid, and all the religions of the world profess to
come from this fountain. Moses and Mahomet could only
speak what they found given them to utter, for no man
ever devised a religion, as human reason cannot create in


1840.]
69
and in the Soul.
this department; it can only examine and conclude, per-
ceive, embrace, and repeat what it learns. “Where there
is no vision (revelation] the people perish.” It is through
this that we gain knowledge of God, whom no man can
find out by searching, but who is revealed without search
to babes and sucklings.
Every man who has ever prayed with the mind, prayed
with the heart, knows by experience the truth of this doc-
trine. There are hours, and they come to all men, when
the hand of destiny seems heavy upon us; when the
thought of time misspent; the pang of affection misplaced
and ill-requited; the experience of man's worse nature, and
the sense of degradation come upon us; the soul faints,
and is ready to perish. Then in the deep silence of the
heart, when the man turns inwards to God, light, comfort,
and peace dawn on him, like the day-spring from on high
He feels the Divinity. In that high hour of visitation,
thought is entranced in feeling. We forget ourselves,
yielding passive to the tide of soul that flows into us. Then
man's troubles are but a dew-drop on his sandals ; his en-
mities or jealousies, his wealth or his poverty, his honors,
disgraces, the sad mishaps of life are all lost to the view,
diminished, and then hid in the misty deeps of the valley
we have left. It is no vulgar superstition to say man is in-
spired in such moments. They are the seed-time of life.
Then we live whole years, though in a few moments, and
afterward as we journey on through life, cold and dusty and
travel-worn and faint, we look back to that moment as the
source of light, and like Elisha, go long days in the
strength thereof: the remembrance of the truth and love
which then dawned on us, goes like a great wakening light,
a pillar of fire in the heavens, to guide us in our lonely
pilgrimage. The same thing happens to mankind. Light
of old time sprang up as the nations sat weeping and in
darkness. Now all may turn to the truths which then
burst through the night of sin and wo, and which are still
preserved in Holy Books as lights are shut in lanterns,
though once kindled at heaven's own fire.
These hours of inspiration are the opening of the
flower; the celestial bloom of man; the result of the past;
the prophecy of the future. They are not numerous to
any man; happy is he who can number one hundred such


70 The Divine Presence in Nature, &c. [July,
in the year, or even in a life. To many men who have
once in their lives felt this, it seems shadowy, dream-like,
and unreal, when they look back upon it. Hence they
count it a dream of their inexperience; a vision of a sick-
ly fancy, and cease to believe in inspiration. They will
say that long ago there were inspired men, but there are
none now; that we must bow our faces to the dust, not
turn our eyes to the broad free heaven; that we cannot
walk by the great central light " which lighteneth every
man that cometh into the world," but only by the hand-
lamp of tradition. Can this be true? Has the Infinite laid
aside his omnipresence and retreated to some little corner
of space ? Does he now stretch forth no aid, but leave
his erring child, wandering in the “ palpable obscure,"
fatherless, without a guide, “ feeling after God, if haply
he may find him," who is now only a God afar off? ;
This cannot be ; for the grass grows green as ever; the
birds chirp as gaily; the sun shines as warm ; the moon
and the stars are pure as before ; morning and evening
have lost none of their former loveliness. God still is
there, ever present in nature. Can it be that yet present
in nature, he has forsaken man; retreated from the Shekinah
in the Holy of Holies, to the court of the Gentiles ? No
more can this be true. Conscience is still God with us.
A prayer is deep as ever of old, and faith remains “the
substance of things hoped for ; the evidence of things not
seen.” Love is still mighty to cast out fear. The soul yet
searches the deeps of God, and the pure in heart see him,
or else religion were but a mockery ; morality a hollow
form, and love an hideous lie. The substance of God is not
yet exhausted; nor the well of life run dry. Now, as in
the day of Moses, or Jesus, he who is faithful to Reason,
and Conscience, Affection and Faith, will, through these,
receive an inspiration to guide him all his journey through.
P.


1840.)
21
Sympathy.
SYMPATHY.
LATELY alas I knew a gentle boy,
Whose features all were cast in Virtue's mould,
As one she had designed for Beauty's toy,
But after manned him for her own stronghold.
On every side he open was as day,
That you might sce no lack of strength within,
For walls and posts do only serve alway
For a pretence to feebleness and sin.
Say not that Cæsar was victorious,
With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame;
In other sense this youth was glorious,
Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came.
No strength went out to get him victory,
When all was income of its own accord;
For where he went none other was to see,
But all were parcel of their noble lord.
He forayed like the subtle breeze of summer,
That stilly shows fresh landscapes to the eyes,
And revolutions worked without a murmur,
Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies.
So was I taken unawares by this,
I quite forgot my homage to confess;
Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is,
I might have loved him, had I loved him less.
Each moment, as we nearer drew to each,
A stern respect withheld us farther yet,
So that we seemed beyond each other's reach,
And less acquainted than when first we met.
We two were one while we did sympathize,
So could we not the simplest bargain drive;
And what avails it now that we are wise,
If absence doth this doubleness contrive ?
Eternity may not the chance repeat,
But I must tread my single way alone,
In sad remembrance that we once did meet,
And know that bliss irrevocably gone.
The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing,
For elegy has other subject none;
Each strain of music in my ears shall ring
Knell of departure from that other one.


72
(July,
Lines.
Make haste and celebrate my tragedy;
With fitting strain resound ye woods and fields;
Sorrow is dearer in such case to me
Than all the joys other occasion yields.
Is 't then too late the damage to repair ?
Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft
The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,
But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.
If I but love that virtue which he is,
Though it be scented in the morning air,
Still shall we be dearest acquaintances,
Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare.
T.
LINES.
Love scatters oil
On Life's dark sea,
Sweetens its toil, –
Our helmsman he.
Around him hover
Odorous clouds,
Under this cover
His arrows he shrouds.
The cloud was around me,
I knew not why
Such sweetness crowned me,
While Time shot by.
No pain was within,
But calm delight,
Like a world without sin,
Or a day without night.
The shafts of the god
Were tipped with down,
For they drew no blood,
And they knit no frown.
I knew of them not
Until Cupid laughed loud,
And saying “you're caught,"
Flew off in the cloud.
O then I awoke
And I lived but to sigh,
Till a clear voice spoke, -
And my tears are dry.


1840.)
Allston Exhibition.
A RECORD OF IMPRESSIONS
PRODUCED BY THE EXHIBITION OF MR. ALLSTON'S PICTURES IN
THE SUMMER OF 1839.
This is a record of impressions. It does not aspire to
the dignity of criticism. The writer is conscious of an eye
and taste, not sufficiently exercised by study of the best
works of art, to take the measure of one who has a claim
to be surveyed from the same platform. But, surprised
at finding that an exhibition, intended to promote thought
and form the tastes of our public, has called forth no ex-
pression * of what it was to so many, who almost daily
visited it; and believing that comparison and discussion of
the impressions of individuals is the best means to ascer-
tain the sum of the whole, and raise the standard of taste,
I venture to offer what, if not true in itself, is at least true
to the mind of one observer, and may lead others to reveal
more valuable experiences.
Whether the arts can ever be at home among us; whe-
ther the desire now manifested to cultivate them be not
merely one of our modes of imitating older nations ; or
whether it springs from a need of balancing the bustle and
care of daily life by the unfolding of our calmer and higher
nature, it is at present difficult to decide. If the latter, it
is not by unthinking repetition of the technics of foreign
connoisseurs, or by a servile reliance on the judgment of
those, who assume to have been formed by a few hasty
visits to the galleries of Europe, that we shall effect an
object so desirable, but by a faithful recognition of the
feelings naturally excited by works of art, not indeed
flippant, as if our raw, uncultivated nature was at once
competent to appreciate those finer manifestations of na-
ture, which slow growths of ages and peculiar aspects of
society have occasionally brought out, to testify to us what
we may and should be. We know it is not so; we know
that if such works are to be assimilated at all by those
who are not under the influences that produced them, it
must be by gradually educating us to their own level.
* Since the above was written, we see an article on the Exhibition in
the North American Review for April, 1840.
VOL. 1. —NO. I.
10


74
(July,
Allston Exchibition.
But it is not blind faith that will educate us, that will open
the depths and clear the eye of the mind, but an examina-
tion which cannot be too close, if made in the spirit of
reverence and love.
It was as an essay in this kind that the following pages
were written. They are pages of a journal, and their form
has not been altered, lest any attempt at a more fair and
full statement should destroy that freshness and truth of
feeling, which is the chief merit of such.
July, 1839.
On the closing of the Allston exhibition, where I have
spent so many hours, I find myself less a gainer than I
had expected, and feel that it is time to look into the
matter a little, with such a torch or penny rush candle as I
can command.
I have seen most of these pictures often before ; the
Beatrice and Valentine when only sixteen. The effect
they produced upon me was so great, that I suppose it
was not possible for me to avoid expecting too large a
benefit from the artist.
The calm and meditative cast of these pictures, the ideal
beauty that shone through rather than in them, and the
harmony of coloring were as unlike anything else I saw, as
the Vicar of Wakefield to Cooper's novels. I seemed to
recognise in painting that self-possessed elegance, that
transparent depth, which I most admired in literature ; I
thought with delight that such a man as this had been able
to grow up in our bustling, reasonable community, that he
had kept his foot upon the ground, yet never lost sight of
the rose-clouds of beauty floating above him. I saw, too,
that he had not been troubled, but possessed his own soul
with the blandest patience; and I hoped, I scarce know
what, probably the mot d'enigme for which we are all
looking. How the poetical mind can live and work in
peace and good faith! how it may unfold to its due per-
fection in an unpoetical society !
From time to time I have seen other of these pictures,
and they have always been to me sweet silvery music,
rising by its clear tone to be heard above the din of life ;
long forest glades glimmering with golden light, longingly
eyed from the window of some crowded drawing room.


1840.]
75
Allston Exhibition.
But now, seeing so many of them together, I can no
longer be content merely to feel, but must judge these
works. I must try to find the centre, to measure the cir-
cumference; and I fare somewhat as I have done, when I
have seen in periodicals detached thoughts by some writer,
which seemed so full of meaning and suggestion, that I
would treasure them up in my memory, and think about
them, till I had made a picture of the author's mind, which
his works when I found them collected would not justify.
Yet the great writer would go beyond my hope and abash
my fancy; should not the great painter do the same ?
Yet, probably, I am too little aware of the difficulties
the artist encounters, before he can produce anything ex-
cellent, fully to appreciate the greatness he has shown.
Here, as elsewhere, I suppose the first question should be,
What ought we to expect under the circumstances ?
There is no poetical ground-work ready for the artist in
our country and time. Good deeds appeal to the under-
standing. Our religion is that of the understanding. We
have no old established faith, no hereditary romance, no
such stuff as Catholicism, Chivalry afforded. What is
most dignified in the Puritanic modes of thought is not
favorable to beauty. The habits of an industrial commu-
nity are not propitious to delicacy of sentiment.
He, who would paint human nature, must content him-
self with selecting fine situations here and there ; and he
must address himself, not to a public which is not educated
to prize him, but to the small circle within the circle of
men of taste.
If, like Wilkie or Newton, he paints direct from nature,
only selecting and condensing, or choosing lights and dra-
peries, I suppose he is as well situated now as he could
ever have been; but if, like Mr. Allston, he aims at the
Ideal, it is by no means the same. He is in danger of
being sentimental and picturesque, rather than spiritual
and noble. Mr. Allston has not fallen into these faults ;
and if we can complain, it is never of blemish or falsity,
but of inadequacy. Always he has a high purpose in what
he does, never swerves from his aim, but sometimes fails to
reach it.
The Bible, familiar to the artist's youth, has naturally
furnished subjects for his most earnest efforts. I will speak


76
(July,
Allston Exhibition.
of four pictures on biblical subjects, which were in this
exhibition.
Restoring the dead man by the touch of the Prophet's
Bones. I should say there was a want of artist's judgment
in the very choice of the subject.
In all the miracles where Christ and the Apostles act a
part, and which have been favorite subjects with the great
painters, poetical beauty is at once given to the scene by
the moral dignity, the sublime exertion of faith on divine
power in the person of the main actor. He is the natural
centre of the picture, and the emotions of all present
grade from and cluster round him. So in a martyrdom,
however revolting or oppressive the circumstances, there is
room in the person of the sufferer for a similar expression,
a central light which shall illuminate and dignify all round
it.
But a miracle effected by means of a relique, or dry
bones, has the disagreeable effect of mummery. In this
picture the foreground is occupied by the body of the
patient in that state of deadly rigidity and pallor so offen-
sive to the sensual eye. The mind must reason the eye
out of an instinctive aversion, and force it to its work, –
always an undesirable circumstance.
In such a picture as that of the Massacre of the Inno-
cents, painful as the subject is, the beauty of forms in
childhood, and the sentiment of maternal love, so beautiful
even in anguish, charm so much as to counterpoise the
painful emotions. But here, not only is the main figure
offensive to the sensual eye, thus violating one principal
condition of art; it is incapable of any expression at such
a time beyond that of physical anguish during the struggle
of life suddenly found to re-demand its dominion. Neither
can the assistants exhibit any emotions higher than those
of surprise, terror, or, as in the case of the wife, an over-
whelming anxiety of suspense.
The grouping and coloring of this picture are very good,
and the individual figures managed with grace and dis-
crimination, though without much force.
The subjects of the other three pictures are among the
finest possible, grand no less than beautiful, and of the
highest poetical interest. They present no impediment to
the manifestation of genius. Let us look first at Jeremiah
in prison dictating to Baruch.


1840.)
Allston Exhibition.
The strength and dignity of the Jew physique, and the
appropriateness of the dress, allowed fair play to the
painter's desire to portray inspiration manifesting itself by
a suitable organ. As far as the accessories and grouping
of the figures nothing can be better. The form of the
prophet is brought out in such noble relief, is in such fine
contrast to the pale and feminine sweetness of the scribe
at his feet, that for a time you are satisfied. But by and
by you begin to doubt, whether this picture is not rather
imposing than majestic. The dignity of the prophet's
appearance seems to lie rather in the fine lines of the form
and drapery, than in the expression of the face. It was
well observed by one who looked on him, that, if the eyes
were cast down, he would become an ordinary man. This
is true, and the expression of the bard must not depend
on a look or gesture, but beam with mild electricity from
every feature. Allston's Jeremiah is not the mournfully
indignant bard, but the robust and stately Jew, angry that
men will not mark his word and go his way. But Baruch
is admirable! His overwhelmed yet willing submission,
the docile faith which turns him pale, and trembles almost
tearful in his eye, are given with infinite force and beauty.
The coup d'ail of this picture is excellent, and it has great
merit, but not the highest.
Miriam. There is hardly a subject which, for the com-
bination of the sublime with the beautiful, could present
greater advantages than this. Yet this picture also, with
all its great merits, fails to satisfy our highest requisitions.
I could wish the picture had been larger, and that the
angry clouds and swelling sea did not need to be looked
for as they do. For the whole attention remains so long
fixed on the figure of Miriam, that you cannot for some
time realize who she is. You merely see this bounding
figure, and the accessories are so kept under, that it is
difficult to have the situation full in your mind, and feel
that you see not merely a Jewish girl dancing, but the
representative of Jewry rescued and triumphant! What a
figure this might be! The character of Jewish beauty is so
noble and profound! This maiden had been nurtured in
a fair and highly civilized country, in the midst of wrong
and scorn indeed, but beneath the shadow of sublime in-
stitutions. In a state of abject bondage, in a catacomb as


78
(July,
Allston Exhibition.
to this life, she had embalmed her soul in the memory of
those days, when God walked with her fathers, and did for
their sakes such mighty works. Amid all the pains and
penances of slavery, the memory of Joseph, the presence
of Moses, exalt her soul to the highest pitch of national
pride. The chords had of late been strung to their great-
est tension, by the series of prodigies wrought in behalf of
the nation of which her family is now the head. Of these
the last and grandest had just taken place before her eyes.
Imagine the stately and solemn beauty with which such
nurture and such a position might invest the Jewish Miriam.
Imagine her at the moment when her soul would burst at
last the shackles in which it had learned to move freely and
proudly, when her lips were unsealed, and she was permitted
before her brother, deputy of the Most High, and chief of
their assembled nation, to sing the song of deliverance.
Realize this situation, and oh, how far will this beautiful
picture fall short of your demands !
The most unimaginative observers complain of a want of
depth in the eye of Miriam. For myself, I make the same
complaint, as much as I admire the whole figure. How
truly is she upborne, what swelling joy and pride in every
line of her form! And the face, though inadequate, is not
false to the ideal. Its beauty is mournful, and only wants
the heroic depth, the cavernous flame of eye, which should
belong to such a face in such a place.
The Witch of Endor is still more unsatisfactory. What
a tragedy was that of the stately Saul, ruined by his per-
versity of will, despairing, half mad, refusing to give up
the sceptre which he feels must in a short time be wrench-
ed from his hands, degrading himself to the use of means
he himself had forbid as unlawful and devilish, seeking
the friend and teacher of his youth by means he would
most of all men disapprove. The mournful significance of
the crisis, the stately aspect of Saul as celebrated in the
history, and the supernatural events which had filled his
days, gave authority for investing him with that sort of
beauty and majesty proper to archangels ruined. What
have we here? I don't know what is generally thought
about the introduction of a ghost on canvass, but it is to
me as ludicrous as the introduction on the stage of the
ghost in Hamlet (in his nightgown) as the old play book


1840.]
79
Allston Exhibition.
Dression of detailmore I had that
len In fine, ve been satiscope mosbyis are cominion
direction was. The effect of such a representation seems
to me unattainable in a picture. There cannot be due
distance and shadowy softness.
Then what does the picture mean to say ? In the
chronicle, the witch, surprised and affrighted at the appari-
tion, reproaches the king, “ Why hast thou deceived me?
for thou art Saul.”
But here the witch (a really fine figure, fierce and
prononcé as that of a Norna should be) seems threatening
the king, who is in an attitude of theatrical as well as de-
grading dismay. To me this picture has no distinct ex-
pression, and is wholly unsatisfactory, maugre all its excel-
lences of detail.
In fine, the more I have looked at these pictures, the
more I have been satisfied that the grand historical style
did not afford the scope most proper to Mr. Allston's
genius. The Prophets and Sibyls are for the Michael
Angelos. The Beautiful is Mr. Allston's dominion. There
he rules as a Genius, but in attempts such as I have been
considering, can only show his appreciation of the stern
and sublime thoughts he wants force to reproduce.
But on his own ground we can meet the painter with
almost our first delight.
A certain bland delicacy enfolds all these creations as
an atmosphere. Here is no effort, they have floated across
the painter's heaven on the golden clouds of phantasy.
These pictures (I speak here only of figures, of the
landscapes a few words anon) are almost all in repose.
The most beautiful are Beatrice, The Lady reading a Val-
entine, The Evening Hymn, Rosalie, The Italian Shep-
herd Boy, Edwin, Lorenzo and Jessica. The excellence
of these pictures is subjective and even feminine. They
tell us the painter's ideal of character. A graceful repose,
with a fitness for moderate action. A capacity of emotion,
with a habit of reverie. Not one of these beings is in a
state of epanchement, not one is, or perhaps could be,
thrown off its equipoise. They are, even the softest, char-
acterized by entire though unconscious self-possession.
While looking at them would be always coming up in
my mind the line,
“The genius loci, feminine and fair.”
Grace, grace always.


80
[July,
Allston Exhibition.
Mr. Allston seems to have an exquisite sensibility to
color, and a great love for drapery. The last sometimes
leads him to direct our attention too much to it, and some-
times the accessories are made too prominent; we look
too much at shawls, curtains, rings, feathers, and carca-
nets.
I will specify two of these pictures, which seem to me
to indicate Mr. Allston's excellences as well as any.
The Italian Shepherd boy is seated in a wood. The
form is almost nude, and the green glimmer of the wood
gives the flesh the polished whiteness of marble. He is
very beautiful, this boy; and the beauty, as Mr. Allston
loves it best, has not yet unfolded all its leaves. The
heart of the flower is still a perfumed secret. He sits as
if he could sit there forever, gracefully lost in reverie,
steeped, if we may judge from his mellow brown eye, in
the present loveliness of nature, in the dimly anticipated
ecstasies of love.
Every part of nature has its peculiar influence. On the
hill top one is roused, in the valley soothed, beside the
waterfall absorbed. And in the wood, who has not, like
this boy, walked as far as the excitement of exercise would
carry him, and then, with “ blood listening in his frame,”
and heart brightly awake, seated himself on such a bank.
At first he notices everything, the clouds doubly soft, the
sky deeper blue, as seen shimmering through the leaves,
the fyttes of golden light seen through the long glades,
the skimming of a butterfly ready to light on some starry
wood-flower, the nimble squirrel peeping archly at him,
the flutter and wild notes of the birds, the whispers and
sighs of the trees, — gradually he ceases to mark any of
these things, and becomes lapt in the Elysian harmony they
combine to form. Who has ever felt this mood under-
stands why the observant Greek placed his departed great
ones in groves. While during this trance he hears the
harmonies of Nature, he seems to become her and she
him; it is truly the mother in the child, and the Hamadry-
ads look out with eyes of tender twilight approbation from
their beloved and loving trees. Such an hour lives for us
again in this picture.
Mr. Allston has been very fortunate in catching the
shimmer and glimmer of the woods, and tempering his
greens and browns to their peculiar light.


1840.]
81
Allston Exhibition.
Beatrice. This is spoken of as Dante's Beatrice, but I
should think can scarcely have been suggested by the Di-
vine Comedy. The painter merely having in mind how
the great Dante loved a certain lady called Beatrice, em-
bodied here his own ideal of a poet's love.
The Beatrice of Dante was, no doubt, as pure, as gentle,
as high-bred, but also possessed of much higher attributes
than this fair being.
How fair, indeed, and not unmeet for a poet's love.
But there lies in her no germ of the celestial destiny of
Dante's saint. What she is, what she can be, it needs no
Dante to discover.
She is not a lustrous, bewitching beauty, neither is she
a high and poetic one. She is not a concentrated per-
fume, nor a flower, nor a star; yet somewhat has she of
every creature's best. She has the golden mean, without
any touch of the mediocre. She can venerate the higher,
and compassionate the lower, and do to all honor due with
most grateful courtesy and nice tact. She is velvet-soft,
her mild and modest eyes have tempered all things round
her, till no rude sound invades her sphere; yet, if need
were, she could resist with as graceful composure as she
can favor or bestow.
No vehement emotion shall heave that bosom, and the
lears shall fall on those cheeks more like dew than rain.
Yet are her feelings delicate, profound, her love constant
and tender, her resentment calm but firm.
Fair as a maid, fairer as a wife, fairest as a lady mother
and ruler of a household, she were better suited to a prince
than a poet. Even if no prince could be found worthy of
her, I would not wed her to a poet, if he lived in a cot-
tage. For her best graces demand a splendid setting to
give them their due lustre, and she should rather enhance
than cause her environment.
There are three pictures in the comic kind, which
are good. It is genteel comedy, not rich, easily taken in
and left, but having the lights and shades well marked.
They show a gentlemanlike playfulness. In Catharine and
Petruchio, the Gremio is particularly good, and the tear-
distained Catharine, whose head, shoulder, knee, and foot
seem to unite to spell the word Pout, is next best.
The Sisters —a picture quite unlike those I have named
VOL. 1. NO. 1. -
11


82
(July,
Allston Exhibition.
- does not please me much, though I should suppose the
execution remarkably good. It is not in repose nor in
harmony, nor is it rich in suggestion, like the others. It
aims to speak, but says little, and is not beautiful enough
to fill the heart with its present moment. To me it makes
a break in the chain of thought the other pictures had
woven.
Scene from Gil Blas — also unlike the other in being
perfectly objective, and telling all its thought at once. It
is a fine painting.
Mother and Child. A lovely little picture. But there
is to my taste an air of got up naiveté and delicacy in it.
It seems selected, arranged by “an intellectual effort.” It
did not flow into the artist's mind like the others. But
persons of better taste than I like it better than I do!
Jews — full of character. Isaac is too dignified and
sad; gold never rusted the soul of the man that owned
that face.
The Landscapes. At these I look with such unalloyed
delight, that I have been at moments tempted to wish that
the artist had concentrated his powers on this department
of art, in so high a degree does he exhibit the attributes of
the master. A power of sympathy, which gives each land-
scape a perfectly individual character. Here the painter
is merged in his theme, and these pictures affect us as
parts of nature, so absorbed are we in contemplating them,
so difficult is it to remember them as pictures. How the
clouds float! how the trees live and breathe out their mys-
terious souls in the peculiar attitude of every leaf. Dear
companions of my life, whom yearly I know better, yet
into whose heart I can no more penetrate than see your
roots, while you live and grow. I feel what you have said
to this painter; I can in some degree appreciate the power
he has shown in repeating here the gentle oracle.
The soul of the painter is in these landscapes, but not
his character. Is not that the highest art? Nature and
the soul combined; the former freed from slight crudities
or blemishes, the latter from its merely human aspect.
These landscapes are too truly works of art, their lan-
guage is too direct, too lyrically perfect to be translated
into this of words, without doing them an injury.
To those, who confound praise with indiscriminate eulo-


1840.]
83
Allston Exhibition.
gium, and who cannot understand the mind of one, whose
highest expression of admiration is a close scrutiny, per-
haps the following lines will convey a truer impression, than
the foregoing remarks, of the feelings of the writer. They
were suggested by a picture painted by Mr. Allston for a
gentleman of Boston, which has never yet been publicly
exhibited. It is of the same class with his Rosalie and
Evening Hymn, pictures which were not particularized in
the above record, because they inspired no thought except
of their excelling beauty, which draws the heart into it-
self.
These two sonnets may be interesting, as showing how
similar trains of thought were opened in the minds of two
observers.
" To-day I have been to see Mr. Allston's new picture
of The Bride, and am more convinced than ever of the
depth and value of his genius, and of how much food for
thought his works contain. The face disappointed me at
first by its want of beauty. Then I observed the peculiar
expression of the eyes, and that of the lids, which tell such
a tale, as well as the strange complexion, all heightened by
the color of the background, till the impression became
very strong. It is the story of the lamp of love, lighted,
even burning with full force in a being that cannot yet
comprehend it. The character is domestic, far more so
than that of the ideal and suffering Rosalie, of which,
nevertheless, it reminds you.
“TO W. ALLSTON, ON SEEING HIS · BRIDE.'
“ Weary and slow and faint with heavy toil,
The fainting traveller pursues his way,
O'er dry Arabian sands the long, long day,
Where at each step floats up the dusty soil ;
And when he finds a green and gladsome isle,
And flowing water in that plain of care,
And in the midst a marble fountain fair,
To tell that others suffered too erewhile,
And then appeased their thirst, and made this fount
To them a sad remembrance, but a joy
To all who follow — his tired spirits mount
At such dim-visioned company - so I
Drink of thy marble source, and do not count
Weary the way in which thou hast gone by.”


84
[July,
Song.
:
" TO ALLSTON'S PICTURE, «THE BRIDE.'
Not long enough we gaze upon that face,
Not pure enough the life with which we live,
To be full tranced by that softest grace,
To win all pearls those lucid depths can give;
Here Phantasy has borrowed wings of Even,
And stolen Twilight's latest, sacred hues,
A Soul has visited the woman's heaven,
Where palest lights a silver sheen diffuse,
To see aright the vision which he saw,
We must ascend as high upon the stair,
Which leads the human thought to heavenly law,
And see the flower bloom in its natal air;
Thus might we read aright the lip and brow,
Where Thought and Love beam too subduing for our senses now.
SONG.
I sing of lovesick maidens,
Of men that for love were shent,
I sing, and still in unison
The wind moans like an instrument,
So that I e'en must think
The sighing wind did once love,
Perchance some graceful bending tree,
Perchance the sky above.
Perchance the wind a mayden was,
That lost her lover dear,
And the gods in pity changed her
To the breeze that searcheth everywhere,
But I doubt she found not her lover dear;
For when leaves are green, and leaves are sere,
She seeketh her lover everywhere.
TO * * * *
O fair and stately maid, whose eye
Was kindled in the upper sky
At the same torch that lighted mine;
For so I must interpret still
Thy sweet dominion o'er my will
A sympathy divine.
Ah! let me blameless gaze upon
Features that seem in heart my own,
Nor fear those watchful sentinels-
Which charm the more their glance forbids,
Chaste-glowing underneath their lids
With fire that draws while it repels.


1840.)
85
Orphic Sayings.
ORPHIC SAYINGS.
BY A. BRONSON ALCOTT.
Thou art, my heart, a soul-flower, facing ever and fol-
lowing the motions of thy sun, opening thyself to her
vivifying ray, and pleading thy affinity with the celestial
orbs. Thou dost
the livelong day
Dial on time thine own eternity.
II. ENTHUSIASM.
Believe, youth, that your heart is an oracle ; trust her
instinctive auguries, obey her divine leadings ; nor listen
too fondly to the uncertain echoes of your head. The
heart is the prophet of your soul, and ever fulfils her pro-
phecies ; reason is her historian; but for the prophecy the
history would not be. Great is the heart: cherish her;
she is big with the future, she forebodes renovations. Let
the flame of enthusiasm fire alway your bosom. Enthu-
siasm is the glory and hope of the world. It is the life of
sanctity and genius ; it has wrought all miracles since the
beginning of time.
111. HOPE.
Hope deifies man; it is the apotheosis of the soul; the
prophecy and fulfilment of her destinies. The nobler her
aspirations, the sublimer her conceptions of the Godhead.
As the man, so his God: God is his idea of excellence;
the complement of his own being.
IV. IMMORTALITY.
The grander my conception of being, the nobler my
future. There can be no sublimity of life without faith in
the soul's eternity. Let me live superior to sense and
custom, vigilant alway, and I shall experience my divinity;
my hope will be infinite, nor shall the universe contain, or
content me. But if I creep daily from the haunts of an


86
(July,
Orphic Sayings.
ignoble past, like a beast from his burrow, neither earth
nor sky, man nor God, shall appear desirable or glorious ;
my life shall be loathsome to me, my future reflect my
fears. He alone, who lives nobly, oversees his own being,
believes all things, and partakes of the eternity of God.
v. VOCATION.
Engage in nothing that cripples or degrades you. Your
first duty is self-culture, self-exaltation : you may not vio-
late this high trust. Your self is sacred, profane it not.
Forge no chains wherewith to shackle your own members.
Either subordinate your vocation to your life, or quit it for-
ever: it is not for you ; it is condemnation of your own soul.
Your influence on others is commensurate with the strength
that you have found in yourself. First cast the demons
from your own bosom, and then shall your word exorcise
them from the hearts of others.
You have on others is co
vi. SENSUALISM.
He who marvels at nothing, who feels nothing to be
mysterious, but must needs bare all things to sense, lacks
both wisdom and piety. Miracle is the mantle in which
these venerable natures wrap themselves, and he, who seeks
curiously to rend this asunder, profanes their sacred coun-
tenance to enter by stealth into the Divine presence. Sanc-
tity, like God, is ever mysterious, and all devout souls
reverence her. A wonderless age is godless : an age of
reverence, an age of piety and wisdom.
VII. SPIRITUALISM.
Piety is not scientific ; yet embosoms the facts that .
reason develops in scientific order to the understanding.
Religion, being a sentiment, is science yet in synthetic
relations; truth yet undetached from love; thought not
yet severed from action. For every fact that eludes the
analysis of reason, conscience affirms its root in the super-
natural. Every synthetic fact is supernatural and miracu-
lous. Analysis by detecting its law resolves it into science,
and renders it a fact of the understanding. Divinely seen,
natural facts are symbols of spiritual laws. Miracles are.
of the heart; not of the head : indigenous to the soul ;
not freaks of nature, not growths of history. God, man,
nature, are miracles.


1840.]
Orphic Sayings.
VIII. MYSTICISM.
Because the soul is herself mysterious, the saint is a
mystic to the worldling. He lives to the soul; he partakes
of her properties, he dwells in her atmosphere of light
and hope. But the worldling, living to sense, is identified
with the flesh; he dwells amidst the dust and vapors of
his own lusts, which dim his vision, and obscure the heav-
ens wherein the saint beholds the face of God.
IX. ASPIRATION.
The insatiableness of her desires is an augury of the
soul's eternity. Yearning for satisfaction, yet ever balked
of it from temporal things, she still prosecutes her search
for it, and her faith remains unshaken amidst constant dis-
appointments. She would breathe life, organize light; her
hope is eternal; a never-ending, still-beginning quest of
the Godhead in her own bosom; a perpetual effort to
actualize her divinity in time. Intact, aspirant, she feels
the appulses of both spiritual and material things; she
would appropriate the realm she inherits by virtue of her
incarnation : infinite appetencies direct all her members
on finite things; her vague strivings, and Cyclopean mo-
tions, confess an aim beyond the confines of transitory
natures; she is quivered with heavenly desires : her quarry
is above the stars : her arrows are snatched from the ar-
mory of heaven.
X. APOTHEOSIS.
Every soul feels at times her own possibility of becoming
a God; she cannot rest in the human, she aspires after the
Godlike. This instinctive tendency is an authentic augury
of its own fulfilment. Men shall become Gods. Every
act of admiration, prayer, praise, worship, desire, hope,
implies and predicts the future apotheosis of the soul.
XI. DISCONTENT.
All life is eternal; there is none other; and all unrest is
but the struggle of the soul to reassure herself of her in-
born immortality ; to recover her lost intuition of the same,
by reason of her descent amidst the lusts and worship of
the idols of flesh and sense. Her discomfort reveals her
lapse from innocence; her loss of the divine presence and


88
(July,
Orphic Sayings.
favor. Fidelity alone shall instaurate the Godhead in her
bosom.
XII. TEMPTATION.
Greater is he, who is above temptation, than he, who,
being tempted, overcomes. The latter but regains the state
from which