with which she penetrates beneath
them. With high heroic courage, she should measure the
strength of suffering before it comes, that she may not meet
it unprepared. Her life-plan should be stern, but not un-
yielding. Her hours, precious treasures lent to her, care-
fully to be protected from vulgar intrusion, but which
women are constantly scattering around them, like small
coin, to be picked up by every needy wayfarer. Thought
should be her atmosphere; books her food; friends her oc-
casional solace. Prosperity will not dazzle her, for her own
spirit is always brighter than its sunshine, and if the deepest
sorrow visits her, it will only come to lift her to a higher
region, where, with all of life far beneath her, she may sit
regally apart till the end.
Is this the ideal of a perfect woman, and if so, how does
it differ from a perfect man?
W. N.
SONNET.
Huyo Nighby
TO A VOICE HEARD IN MOUNT AUBURN, JOLY, 1839.
Like the low warblings of a leaf-hid bird,
Thy voice came to me through the screening trees,
Singing the siniplest, long-known melodies;
I had no glinpse of thee, and yet I heard
And blessed thee for each clearly-carolled word;
I longed to thank thee, and my heart would frame
Mary or Ruth, some sisterly sweet name
For thee, yet couid I not my lips have stirred ;
I knew that thou wert lovely, that thine eyes
Were blue and downcast, and methonght large tears,
Unknown to thee, up to their lids must rise,
With half-sad memories of other years,
As to thyself alone thou sangest o'er
Words that to childhood seemed to say, “ No more!”
M. LO.


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Thoughts on Art.
THOUGHTS ON ART.
Every department of life at the present day, - Trade,
Politics, Letters, Science, Religion, — seem to feel, and to
labor to express the identity of their law. They are rays
of one sun; they translate each into a new language the
sense of the other. They are sublime when seen as eman-
ations of a Necessity contradistinguished from the vulgar
Fate, by being instant and alive, and dissolving man as
well as his works, in its flowing beneficence. This influence
is conspicuously visible in the principles and history of Art.
On one side, in primary communication with absolute
truth, through thought and instinct, the human mind tends
by an equal necessity, on the other side, to the publication
and embodiment of its thought, - modified and dwarfed
by the impurity and untruth which, in all our experience,
injures the wonderful medium through which it passes. The
child not only suffers, but cries; not only hungers, but eats.
The man not only thinks, but speaks and acts. Every
thought that arises in the mind, in its rising, aims to pass
out of the mind into act; just as every plant, in the moment
of germination, struggles up to light. Thought is the seed
of action ; but action is as much its second form as thought
is its first. It rises in thought to the end, that it may be
uttered and acted. The more profound the thought, the
more burdensome. Always in proportion to the depth of
its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the
soul, to be spoken, to be done. What is in, will out. It
struggles to the birth. Speech is a great pleasure, and ac-
tion a great pleasure ; they cannot be forborne.
The utterance of thought and emotion in speech and
action may be conscious or unconscious. The sucking
child is an unconscious actor. A man in an extasy of fear
or anger is an unconscious actor. A large part of our
habitual actions are unconsciously done, and most of our
necessary words are unconsciously said.
The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action,
to any end, is Art. From the first imitative babble of a
child to the despotism of eloquence; from his first pile of
toys or chip bridge, to the masonry of Eddystone light-
house or the Erie canal; from the tattooing of the Owhy-


368
[Jan.
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hces to the Vatican Gallery ; from the simplest expedient
of private prudence to the American Constitution ; from its
first to its last works, Art is the spirit's voluntary use and
combination of things to serve its end. The Will distin-
guishes it as spiritual action. Relatively to themselves, the bee,
the bird, the beaver, have no art, for what they do, they do in-
stinctively ; but relatively to the Supreme Being, they have.
And the same is true of all unconscious action ; relatively
to the doer, it is instinct; relatively to the First Cause, it
is Art. In this sense, recognising the Spirit which informs
Nature, Plato rightly said, “Those things which are said to
be done by Nature, are indeed done by Divine Art.” Art,
universally, is the spirit creative. It was defined by Aris-
totle, “ The reason of the thing, without the matter," as he
defined the art of ship-building to be, “ All of the ship but
the wood.”
If we follow the popular distinction of works according
to their aim, we should say, the Spirit, in its creation, aims
at use or at beauty, and hence Art divides itself into the
Useful and the Fine Arts.
The useful arts comprehend not only those that lie next
to instinct, as agriculture, building, weaving, &c., but also
navigation, practical chemistry, and the construction of all
the grand and delicate tools and instruments by which man
serves himself; as language; the watch; the ship; the dec-
imal cipher; and also the sciences, so far as they are made
serviceable to political economy,
The moment we begin to reflect on the pleasure we re-
ceive from a ship, a railroad, a dry dock; or from a picture,
a dramatic representation, a statue, a poem, we find that
they have not a quite simple, but a blended origin. We
find that the question, — What is Art ? leads us directly to
another, — Who is the artist? and the solution of this is
the key to the history of Art.
I hasten to state the principle which prescribes, through
different means, its firm law to the useful and the beau-
tiful arts. The law is this. The universal soul is the
alone creator of the useful and the beautiful; therefore to
make anything useful or beautiful, the individual must be
submitted to the universal mind.
In the first place, let us consider this in reference to the
useful arts. Here the omnipotent agent is Nature; all
The igation, pracoriculture, bond not only


1841.]
369
Thoughts on Art.
human acts are satellites to her orb. Nature is the repre-
sentative of the universal mind, and the law becomes this, —
that Art must be a complement to nature, strictly subsidiary.
It was said, in allusion to the great structures of the ancient
Romans, the aqueducts and bridges, — that their “ Art was
a Nature working to municipal ends.” That is a true ac-
count of all just works of useful art. Smeaton built Eddy-
stone lighthouse on the model of an oak tree, as being the
form in nature best designed to resist a constant assailing
force. Dollond formed his achromatic telescope on the
model of the human eye. Duhamel built a bridge, by let-
ting in a piece of stronger timber for the middle of the
under surface, getting his hint, from the structure of the
shin-bone.
The first and last lesson of the useful arts is, that nature
tyrannizes over our works. They must be conformed to
her law, or they will be ground to powder by her omni-
present activity. Nothing droll, nothing whimsical will
endure. Nature is ever interfering with Art. You cannot
build your house or pagoda as you will, but as you must.
There is a quick bound set to our caprice. The leaning
tower can only lean so far. The verandah or pagoda roof
can curve upward only to a certain point. The slope of
your roof is determined by the weight of snow. It is
only within narrow limits that the discretion of the archi-
tect may range. Gravity, wind, sun, rain, the size of
men and animals, and such like, have more to say than he.
It is the law of fluids that prescribes the shape of the boat,
keel, rudder, and bows, — and, in the finer fluid above, the
form and tackle of the sails. Man seems to have no option
about his tools, but merely the necessity to learn from
Nature what will fit best, as if he were fitting a screw or a
door. Beneath a necessity thus almighty, what is artificial
in man's life seems insignificant. He seems to take his
task so minutely from intimations of Nature, that his works
become as it were hers, and he is no longer free.
But if we work within this limit, she yields us all her
strength. All powerful action is performed, by bringing
the forces of nature to bear upon our objects. We do not
grind corn or lift the loom by our own strength, but we
build a mill in such a position as to set the north wind to
play upon our instrument, or the elastic force of steam, or
VOL. I. — NO. III. 47
at-


370
(Jan.
Thoughts on Art.
the ebb and flow of the sea. So in our handiwork, we do
few things by muscular force, but we place ourselves in
such attitudes as to bring the force of gravity, that is, the
weight of the planet, to bear upon the spade or the axe
we wield. What is it that gives force to the blow of the
· axe or crowbar? Is it the muscles of the laborer's arm, or
is it the attraction of the whole globe below it, on the axe
or bar? In short, in all our operations we seek not to use
our own, but to bring a quite infinite force to bear.
Let us now consider this law as it affects the works that
have beauty for their end, that is, the productions of the
Fine Arts.
· Here again the prominent fact is subordination of man.
His art is the least part of his work of art. A great deduc-
tion is to be made before we can know his proper contri-
bution to it.
Music, eloquence, poetry, painting, sculpture, architec-
ture. This is a rough enumeration of the Fine Arts. I
omit rhetoric, which only respects the form of eloquence
and poetry. Architecture and eloquence are mixed arts,
whose end is sometimes beauty and sometimes use.
It will be seen that in each of these arts there is much
which is not spiritual. Each has a material basis, and in
each the creating intellect is crippled in some degree by the
stuff on which it works. The basis of poetry is language,
which is material only on one side. It is a demi-god. But
being applied primarily to the common necessities of man,
it is not new created by the poet for his own ends.
The basis of music is the qualities of the air and
the vibrations of sonorous bodies. The pulsation of a
stretched string or wire, gives the ear the pleasure of sweet
sound, before yet the musician has enhanced this pleasure
by concords and combinations.
Eloquence, as far as it is a fine art, is modified how
much by the material organization of the orator, the tone
of the voice, the physical strength, the play of the eye and
countenance! All this is so much deduction from the purely
spiritual pleasure. All this is so much deduction from the
merit of Art, and is the attribute of Nature.
In painting, bright colors stimulate the eye, before yet
they are harmonized into a landscape. In sculpture and in
architecture, the material, as marble or granite; and in


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Thoughts on Art.
architecture, the mass, — are sources of great pleasure,
quite independent of the artificial arrangement. The art
resides in the model, in the plan, for it is on that the genius
of the artist is expended, not on the statue, or the temple.
Just as much better as is the polished statue of dazzling
marble than the clay model ; or as much more impressive as
is the granite cathedral or pyramid than the ground-plan or
profile of them on paper, so much more beauty owe they
to Nature than to Art.
There is a still larger deduction to be made from the
genius of the artist in favor of Nature than I have yet speci-
fied.
A jumble of musical sounds on a viol or a flute, in which
the rhythm of the tune is played without one of the notes
being right, gives pleasure to the unskilful ear. A very
coarse imitation of the human form on canvass, or in wax-
work, - a very coarse sketch in colors of a landscape, in
which imitation is all that is attempted, — these things give
to unpractised eyes, to the uncultured, who do not ask a
fine spiritual delight, almost as much pleasure as a statue of
Canova or a picture of Titian.
And in the statue of Canova, or the picture of Titian,
these give the great part of the pleasure ; they are the basis
on which the fine spirit rears a higher delight, but to which
these are indispensable.
Another deduction from the genius of the artist is what
is conventional in his art, of which there is much in every
work of art. Thus how much is there that is not original
in every particular building, in every statue, in every tune,
in every painting, in every poem, in every harangue. What-
ever is national or usual; as the usage of building all Roman
churches in the form of a cross, the prescribed distribution of
parts of a theatre, the custom of draping a statue in classical
costume. Yet who will deny that the merely conventional
part of the performance contributes much to its effect?
One consideration more exhausts, I believe, all the deduc-
tions from the genius of the artist in any given work.
This is the adventitious. Thus the pleasure that a noble
temple gives us, is only in part owing to the temple. It is
exalted by the beauty of sunlight, by the play of the clouds,
by the landscape around it, by its grouping with the houses,
and trees, and towers, in its vicinity. The pleasure of


372
[Jan.
Thoughts on Art.
eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of
the occasion which produces it; to the magic of sympathy,
which exalts the feeling of each, by radiating on him the
feeling of all.
The effect of music belongs how much to the place, as
the church, or the moonlight walk, or to the company, or,
if on the stage, to what went before in the play, or to the
expectation of what shall come after.
In poetry, “ It is tradition more than invention helps the
poet to a good fable." The adventitious beauty of poetry
may be felt in the greater delight which a verse gives in
happy quotation than in the poem.
It is a curious proof of our conviction that the artist does
not feel himself to be the parent of his work and is as much
surprised at the effect as we, that we are so unwilling to im-
pute our best sense of any work of art to the author.
The very highest praise we can attribute to any writer,
painter, sculptor, builder, is, that he actually possessed the
thought or feeling with which he has inspired us. We hesi-
tate at doing Spenser so great an honor as to think that he
intended by his allegory the sense we affix to it. We grudge
to Homer the wise human circumspection his commentators
ascribe to him. Even Shakspeare, of whom we can believe
everything, we think indebted to Goethe and to Coleridge
for the wisdom they detect in his Hamlet and Anthony.
Especially have we this infirmity of faith in contemporary
genius. We fear that Allston and Greenough did not fore-
see and design all the effect they produce on us.
Our arts are happy hits. We are like the musician on
the lake, whose melody is sweeter than he knows, or like a
traveller, surprised by a mountain echo, whose trivial word
returns to him in romantic thunders.
In view of these facts, I say that the power of Nature
predominates over the human will in all works of even the
fine arts, in all that respects their material and external
circumstances. Nature paints the best part of the picture ;
carves the best part of the statue ; builds the best part of
the house; and speaks the best part of the oration. For
all the advantages to which I have adverted are such as
the artist did not consciously produce. He relied on their
aid, he put himself in the way to receive aid from some of
them, but he saw that his planting and his watering waited
for the sunlight of Nature, or was vain.


1841.)
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Thoughts on Art.
as the common ar we conceive a prophe to speak his own
Let us proceed to the consideration of the great law
stated in the beginning of this essay, as it affects the
purely spiritual part of a work of art.
As in useful art, so far as it is useful, the work must be
strictly subordinated to the laws of Nature, so as to become
a sort of continuation, and in no wise a contradiction of
Nature ; so in art that aims at beauty as an end, must the
parts be subordinated to Ideal Nature, and everything in-
dividual abstracted, so that it shall be the production of the
universal soul.
The artist, who is to produce a work which is to be ad-
mired not by his friends or his townspeople, or his contem-
poraries, but by all men ; and which is to be more beautiful
to the eye in proportion to its culture, must disindividualize
himself, and be a man of no party, and no manner, and no
age, but one through whom the soul of all men circulates,
as the common air through his lungs. He must work in
the spirit in which we conceive a prophet to speak, or an
angel of the Lord to act, that is, he is not to speak his own
words, or do his own works, or think his own thoughts, but
he is to be an organ through which the universal mind
acts.
In speaking of the useful arts, I pointed to the fact, that
we do not dig, or grind, or hew, by our muscular strength,
but by bringing the weight of the planet to bear on the
spade, axe, or bar. Precisely analogous to this, in the fine
arts, is the manner of our intellectual work. We aim to
hinder our individuality from acting. So much as we can
shove aside our egotism, our prejudice, and will, and
bring the omniscience of reason upon the subject before
us, so perfect is the work. The wonders of Shakspeare
are things which he saw whilst he stood aside, and then
returned to record them. The poet aims at getting obser-
vations without aim; to subject to thought things seen
without (voluntary) thought.
In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are,' when the
orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes
himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and
says what cannot but be said. Hence the French phrase
l'abandon, to describe the self-surrender of the orator. Not
his will, but the principle on which he is horsed, the great
connexion and crisis of events thunder in the ear of the
crowd.


374
(Jan.
Thoughts on Art.
In poetry, where every word is free, every word is neces-
sary. Good poetry could not have been otherwise written
than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as
if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind,
than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet. The feeling of
all great poets has accorded with this. They found the
verse, not made it. The muse brought it to them.
In sculpture, did ever any body call the Apollo a fancy
piece? Or say of the Laocoön how it might be made differ-
ent? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in
the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.
The whole language of men, especially of artists, in refer-
ence to this subject, points at the belief, that every work of
art, in proportion to its excellence, partakes of the precision
of fate ; no room was there for choice; no play for fancy ;
for the moment, or in the successive moments, when that
form was seen, the iron lids of Reason were unclosed,
which ordinarily are heavy with slumber: that the indi-
vidual mind became for the moment the vent of the mind
of humanity.
There is but one Reason. The mind that made the
world is not one mind, but the mind. Every man is an
inlet to the same, and to all of the same. And every work
of art is a more or less pure manifestation of the same.
Therefore we arrive at this conclusion, which I offer as a
confirmation of the whole view : That the delight, which
a work of art affords, seems to arise from our recognising
in it the mind that formed Nature again in active operation.
It differs from the works of Nature in this, that they are
organically reproductive. This is not: but spiritually it is
prolific by its powerful action on the intellects of men.
In confirmation of this view, let me refer to the fact, that
a study of admirable works of art always sharpens the
perceptions of the beauty of Nature; that a certain analogy
reigns throughout the wonders of both ; that the contem-
plation of a work of great art draws us into a state of mind
which may be called religious. It conspires with all ex-
alted sentiments.
Proceeding from absolute mind, whose nature is good-
ness as much as truth, they are always attuned to moral
nature. If the earth and sea conspire with virtue more
than vice, - so do the masterpieces of art. The galleries


1841.]
375
Thoughts on Art.
of ancient sculpture in Naples and Rome strike no deeper
conviction into the mind than the contrast of the purity, the
severity, expressed in these fine old heads, with the frivolity
and grossness of the mob that exhibits, and the mob that
gazes at them. These are the countenances of the first-
born, the face of man in the morning of the world. No
mark is on these lofty features of sloth, or luxury, or mean-
ness, and they surprise you with a moral admonition, as
they speak of nothing around you, but remind you of the
fragrant thoughts and the purest resolutions of your
youth.
Herein is the explanation of the analogies which exist in
all the arts. They are the reappearance of one mind,
working in many materials to many temporary ends. Ra.
phael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it,
Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it,
Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.
Painting was called “ silent poetry ;” and poetry " speaking
painting." The laws of each art are convertible into the
laws of every other.
Herein we have an explanation of the necessity that
reigns in all the kingdom of art.
Arising out of eternal reason, one and perfect, whatever
is beautiful rests on the foundation of the necessary. Noth-
ing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends
forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of
the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for
its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is
so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it has
been taken for it. The most perfect form to answer an
end, is so far beautiful. In the mind of the artist, could
we enter there, we should see the sufficient reason for the
last flourish and tendril of his work, just as every tint and
spine in the sea-shell preēxists in the secreting organs of
the fish. We feel, in seeing a noble building, which rhymes
well, as we do in hearing a perfect song, that it is spiritu-
ally organic, that is, had a necessity in nature, for being,
was one of the possible forms in the Divine mind, and is
now only discovered and executed by the artist, not arbi-
trarily composed by him.
And so every genuine work of art has as much reason
for being as the earth and the sun. The gayest charm of


376
[Jan.
Thoughts on Art.
beauty has a root in the constitution of things. The Iliad
of Homer, the songs of David, the odes of Pindar, the
tragedies of Æschylus, the Doric temples, the Gothic cath-
edrals, the plays of Shakspeare, were all made not for sport,
but in grave earnest, in tears, and smiles of suffering and
loving men.
Viewed from this point, the history of Art becomes in-
telligible, and, moreover, one of the most agreeable studies
in the world. We see how each work of art sprang irre-
sistibly from necessity, and, moreover, took its form froin
the broad hint of Nature. Beautiful in this wise is the
obvious origin of all the known orders of architecture,
namely, that they were the idealizing of the primitive abodes
of each people. Thus the Doric temple still presents the
semblance of the wooden cabin, in which the Dorians
dwelt. The Chinese pagoda is plainly a Tartar tent. The
Indian and Egyptian temples still betray the mounds and
subterranean houses of their forefathers. The Gothic church
plainly originated in a rude adaptation of forest trees, with
their boughs on, to a festal or solemn edifice, as the bands
around the cleft pillars still indicate the green withs that
tied them. No one can walk in a pine barren, in one of
the paths which the woodcutters make for their teams,
without being struck with the architectural appearance of
the grove, especially in winter, when the bareness of all
other trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. In the woods,
in a winter afternoon, one will see as readily the origin of
the stained glass window with which the Gothic cathedrals
are adorned, in the colors of the western sky, seen through
the bare and crossing branches of the forest. Nor, I think,
can any lover of nature enter the old piles of Oxford and
the English cathedrals, without feeling that the forest over-
powered the mind of the builder, with its ferns, its spikes
of flowers, its locust, its oak, its pine, its fir, its spruce.
The cathedral is a blossoming in stone, subdued by the
insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of
granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness
and delicate finish, as well as aerial proportions and per-
spective of vegetable beauty.
There was no wilfulness in the savages in this perpetu-
ating of their first rude abodes. The first form in which
they built a house would be the first form of their public


1841.)
377
Thoughts on Art.
and religious edifice also. This form becomes immediately
sacred in the eyes of their children, and the more so, as
more traditions cluster round it, and is, therefore, imitated
with more splendor in each succeeding generation.'
In like manner, it has been remarked by Goethe, that
the granite breaks into parallelopipeds, which, broken in
two, one part would be an obelisk; that in Upper Egypt
the inhabitants would naturally mark a memorable spot by
setting up so conspicuous a stone. Again, he suggested
we may see in any stone wall, on a fragment of rock, the
projecting veins of harder stone, which have resisted the
action of frost and water, which has decomposed the rest.
This appearance certainly gave the hint of the hieroglyphics
inscribed on their obelisk. The amphitheatre of the old
Romans, - any one may see its origin, who looks at the
crowd running together to see any fight, sickness, or odd
appearance in the street. The first comers gather round
in a circle; those behind stand on tiptoe; and further back
they climb on fences or window sills, and so make a cup of
which the object of attention occupies the hollow area.
The architect put benches in this order, and enclosed the
cup with a wall, and behold a coliseum.
It would be easy to show of very many fine things in the
world, in the customs of nations, the etiquette of courts,
the constitution of governments, the origin in very simple
local necessities. Heraldry, for example, and the ceremo-
nies of a coronation, are a splendid burlesque of the occur-
rences that might befal a dragoon and his footboy. The
College of Cardinals were originally the parish priests of
Rome. The leaning towers originated from the civil dis-
cords which induced every lord to build a tower. Then it
became a point of family pride, — and for pride a leaning
tower was built.
This strict dependence of art upon material and ideal
nature, this adamantine necessity, which it underlies, has
made all its past, and may foreshow its future history. It
never was in the power of any man, or any community,
to call the arts into being. They come to serve his actual
wants, never to please his fancy. These arts have their
origin always in some enthusiasm, as love, patriotism, or
religion. Who carved marble ? The believing man, who
wished to symbolize their gods to the waiting Greeks.
VOL. I. — NO. III.
48


378
(Jan.
Thoughts on Art.
The Gothic cathedrals were built, when the builder and
the priest and the people were overpowered by their faith.
Love and fear laid every stone. The Madonnas of Raphael
and Titian were made to be worshipped. Tragedy was
instituted for the like purpose, and the miracles of music ;-
all sprang out of some genuine enthusiasm, and never out of
dilettantism and holidays. But now they languish, because
their purpose is merely exhibition. Who cares, who knows
what works of art our government have ordered to be made
for the capitol ? They are a mere flourish to please the eye
of persons who have associations with books and galleries.
But in Greece, the Demos of Athens divided into political
factions upon the merits of Phidias.
In this country, at this time, other interests than religion
and patriotism are predominant, and the arts, the daugh-
ters of enthusiasm, do not flourish. The genuine off-
spring of our ruling passions we behold. Popular institu-
tions, the school, the reading room, the post office, the
exchange, the insurance company, and an immense harvest
of economical inventions, are the fruit of the equality and
the boundless liberty of lucrative callings. These are super-
ficial wants; and their fruits are these superficial institu-
tions. But as far as they accelerate the end of political
freedom and national education, they are preparing the soil
of man for fairer flowers and fruits in another age. For
beauty, truth, and goodness are not obsolete ; they spring
eternal in the breast of man ; they are as indigenous in
Massachusetts as in Tuscany, or the Isles of Greece. And
that Eternal Spirit, whose triple face they are, moulds from
them forever, for his mortal child, images to remind him of
the Infinite and Fair.
Emerton


1841.)
379
Glimmerings.
GLIMMERINGS.
What is there in the full moon, that it should disturb
the soul with these thousand old dim recollections? Why
should her long shadows point ever to the past? Why
should they waken melancholy ? Childhood and youth,
romance and love, sad and merry hours, — ye are all out
there in the moonlight! Ye have gone out from my soul,
and hang all around me in this silvered darkness. Myste-
rious power of association! How strangely Nature mirrors
the soul! How her phases reflect back, and give us again
our long-lost dreams! He who has never hung with fond
sadness on the wondrous moon, has never loved.
All human knowledge is but approximation. Man can
never compass the Infinite, any more than he can inhale
the whole atmosphere. Yet what he does know, mirrors
the Infinite. Every drop of night-dew reflects the whole
star-firmament; every pure night-thought hath a glimmer
of the All-True within its bosom. All is prophesied in
each. Every part is an evangel inspired by the whole.
Each opening flower is a Messiah of the uncontained dis-
pensation of Beauty ; each visitation of high thought a her-
ald, who proclaims the coming of the kingdom of Truth ; —
and each virtuous deed a voice crying in the wilderness,
“ Make straight the pathway of our God.”
What should we be but for the gentle teachings of this
green summer time? I feel that I am at God's school, when
I sit on the grass, under these elms, and look about me, and
think upon Nature's impersonality. Man has not broken
into the charmed circle in any way. Least of all does
Nature imitate the obtrusiveness of our moral codes. She
reads her mysterious fables, but we are not pestered by the
word “ application” at the bottom of the picture. What
lesson, before another, shall she point us to, who is thus
infinitely wealthy ? Generously she lets the soul feed its
own instincts, grazing where it will in her green pastures, —
knowing that if we love her wisely, we cannot be poisoned
or starved in her company. Thus she feeds us as she does
the bee and butterfly, with many flowers and odors, trust-


380
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GlimmeringsNimmerino
.
ing that like theirs, our appropriative instincts will be un-
folded harmoniously, and that we shall come evermore to
her law by coming to ourselves.
And here come the bee and the butterfly themselves to
tell us about it. But, as I said, they obtrude not their pre-
cepts upon us. Nay, they seem rather shy than not. And
yet these two insects have been, unconsciously to them-
selves and to man, preachers and parable-bringers since
Thought began.
So come here, thou little citizen of this green republic,
and tell us more than the dull books, which prate as if they
knew all about thee. We may fing aside Kirby and
Spence, now thou art here. Come, leave that clover-
blossom awhile, where thou art rolling thyself about and
packing away thy nectar; — cease that monotonous talking
to thyself, - that hurried merchant-like air :— leave dun-
ning the poor, drooping, insolvent field-flowers, for they will
pay thee one day: - come out of the sunshine, thou hot,
petulant, systematic little worker, and tell us why thou hast
ever been a stirrer of deep thoughts and resolves to the
earnest soul! And thou, my lady butterfly, — gay dancer
in the breeze, living air-flower, — silent ever, but not from
thought, — making thy demure morning calls on the very
flowers at whose doors the disappointed bee has been grumb-
ling; — who made thee a proverb and a perpetual homily
in the courts of kings, — or saw thee flitting along in thy
relations of the street or the ball-room ? Did some poet in-
vent these correspondences, or stand they not as they have
ever stood, written in the double-leaved book of the Most
High ?
For indeed God writes all his decrees dually. They are
simultaneously proclaimed at the two open gates of His
city, to the inhabitants of the suburbs, — which open gates
are nature and the soul. They who hear one proclamation
rejoice, but feebly. But they who hear both, mingle faith
and wisdom with their joy. The gliding river tells me of
this fleeting time; the sunrise, of the appearing of God's
truth; the fragrance of the fields, going forever silently up
to heaven, teaches me how to pray without ceasing; the
young green spring says more to me of the New Birth than
libraries of sermons; - and so all the world over, and from
the beginning of time, has nature been a scroll, whose letters


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Glimmerings.
and pages are nought, till the soul's language, in which it
is written, be mastered.
I am no Swedenborgian, nor must the following lines be
bound down to a dogmatic meaning ; yet I will confess
that they were written after rising from an hour or two
spent over the attractive writings of the great Seer of
Sweden.
CORRESPONDENCES.
All things in Nature are beautiful types to the soul that will read them;
Nothing exists upon earth, but for unspeakable ends.
Every object that speaks to the senses was meant for the spirit:
Nature is but a scroll, — God's hand-writing thereon.
Ages ago, when man was pure, ere the flood overwhelmed him,
While in the image of God every soul yet lived,
Everything stood as a letter or word of a language familiar,
Telling of truths which now only the angels can read.
Lost to man was the key of those sacred hieroglyphics,
Stolen away by sin, -till with Jesus restored.
Now with infinite pains we here and there spell out a letter;
Now and then will the sense feebly shine through the dark.
When we perceive the light which breaks through the visible symbol,
What exultation is ours! we the discovery have made!
Yet is the meaning the same as when Adam lived sinless in Eden,
Only long-hidden it slept and now again is restored.
Man unconsciously uses figures of speech every moment,
Little dreaming the cause why to such terms he is prone,
Little dreaming that everything has its own correspondence
Folded within it of old, as in the body the soul.
Gleams of the mystery fall on us still, though much is forgotten,
And through our commonest speech illumines the path of our thoughts.
Thus does the lordly sun shine out a type of the Godhead;
Wisdom and Love the beams that stream on a darkened world.
Thus do the sparkling waters flow, giving joy to the desert,
And the great Fountain of Life opens itself to the thirst.
Thus does the word of God distil like the rain and the dew-drops,
Thus does the warm wind breathe like to the Spirit of God,
And the green grass and the flowers are signs of the regeneration.
O thou Spirit of Truth! visit our minds once more!
Give us to read, in letters of light, the language celestial,
Written all over the earth, — written all over the sky:
Thus may we bring our hearts at length to know our Creator,
Seeing in all things around types of the Infinite Mind.
COLOR AND LIGHT.
The word unto the nations came
And shone o'er many a darkened spot;
The pure white lustre of its flame
The darkness comprehended not;


382
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Glimmerings.
Till broken into colored light,
Within the prism of the mind,
It traced upon the murky night
A rainbow arch with hues defined.
And where the narrowed sunbeains turned
To colors all distinct, yet blended,
The soul of man within him burned, -
The darkness dimly comprehended.
When shall the pure ethereal fire
Glow with a white interior heat ?
When shall the Truth of God inspire
The shaping mind with light complete ?
Never, — until a second youth
Renews the earth; then may we see
The primal Light, — the uncolored Truth,
And gather life eternally.
MY THOUGHTS.
Many are the thoughts that come to me
In my lonely musing ;
And they drift so strange and swift,
There's no time for choosing
Which to follow, for to leave
Any, seems a losing.
When they come, they come in flocks,
As on glancing feather,
Startled birds rise one by one
In autumnal weather,
Waking one another up
From the sheltering heather.
Some so merry that I laugh,
Some are grave and serious,
Some so trite, their least approach
Is enough to weary us:-
Others flit like midnight ghosts,
Shrouded and mysterious.
There are thoughts that o'er me steal,
Like the day when dawning;
Great thoughts winged with melody
Common utterance scorning,
Moving in an inward tune,
And an inward morning.
Some have dark and drooping wings,
Children all of sorrow;
Some are as gay, as if to-day
Could see no cloudy morrow, -
And yet like light and shade they each
Must from the other horrow,


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Glimmerings.
One by one they come to me
On their destined mission;
One by one I see them fade
With no hopeless vision;
For they 've led me on a step
To their home Elysian.
THE RIDDLE.
“ Ye bards, ye prophets, ye sages,
Read to me if ye can,
That which hath been the riddle of ages,
Read me the riddle of Man!”
Then came the bard with his lyre
And the sage with his pen and scroll,
And the prophet with his eye of fire,
To unriddle a human soul.
And the soul stood up in its might,
Its stature they could not scan,
And it rayed out a dazzling mystic light,
And shamed their wisest plan.
Yet sweetly the bard did sing,
And learnedly talked the sage,
And the seer flashed by with his lightning wing,
Soaring beyond his age.
Of life-fire snatched from Jove;
Of a forfeited age of gold;
Of providence and deathless love
The chanting minstrel told.
The sage of wisdom spoke,
Of doctrines, books, and schools,
And how when they broke from learning's yoke,
All men were turned to fools.
And the prophet told of heaven,
And the golden age to come, -
“Ye must follow the sun through the gates of even,
And he will lead you home.”
Many a dream they saw,
And many a creed did build;
Each in its turn was truth and law,
While they who sought were filled.
But the soul stood up, still freed
From the prison of each plan, -
He was a riddle they could not read,
This simple-seeming man.
He stood in his mystery still,
Of ever changing light;


384
[Jan.
Glimmerings.
Many, yet one, he baffled their skill,
And put their dreams to flight.
His feet on the earth were planted,
His head o'er the stars rose dim,
And ever unto himself he chanted
A half articulate hymn.
In words confused and broken,
He chanted his mystic dream,
And but half of the half his lips had spoken,
Floated on Time's dull stream.
They, who heard of the song which he
Sang on from time to time,
Gave it the name Philosophy,
And echoed the olden rhyme.
But their systems all are vain,
And the overflowing soul
Sweeps lyre and song to the dark inane,
And blots the old sage's scroll.
And man, the great riddle, is still
Unread to the dreamer's eye, -
We are ever afloat, as we ply our skill,
On the sea of mystery.
THE OCEAN.
In a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Thal brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." -
WORDSWORTH.
Tell me, brother, what are we?
Spirits bathing in the sea
Of Deity!
Half afloat, and half on land,
Wishing much to leave the strand,
Standing, gazing with devotion,
Yet afraid to trust the ocean,-
Such are we.
Wanting love and holiness,
To enjoy the wave's caress;
Wanting faith and heavenly hope,
Bouyantly to bear us up;
Yet impatient in our dwelling,
When we hear the ocean swelling,
And in every wave that rolls


1841.)
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Glimmerings.
We behold the happy souls
Peacefully, triumphantly
Swimming on the smiling sea,
Then we linger round the shore,
Lovers of the earth no more.
Once, - 't was in our infancy,
We were drifted by this sea
To the coast of human birth,
To this body and this earth:
Gentle were the hands that bore
Our young spirits to the shore;
Gentle lips that bade us look
Outward from our cradle-nook
To the spirit-bearing ocean
With such wonder and devotion,
As, each stilly sabbath day,
We were led a little way,
Where we saw the waters swell
Far away from inland dell,
And received with grave delight
Symbols of the Infinite :-
Then our home was near the sea ;
“ Heaven was round our infancy;" -
Night and day we heard the waves
Murmuring by us to their caves ; -
Floated in unconscious life
With no later doubts at strife,
Trustful of the Upholding Power,
Who sustained us hour by hour.
Now we've wandered from the shore,
Dwellers by the sea no more;
Yet at times there comes a tone
Telling of the visions flown,
Sounding from the distant sea
Where we left our purity :
Distant glimpses of the surge
Lure us down to ocean's verge;
There we stand with vague distress,
Yearning for the measureless,
By half-wakened instincts driven,
Half loving earth, half loving heaven,
Fearing to put off and swim,
Yet impelled to turn to Him,
In whose life we live and move,
And whose very name is Love.
Grant me, courage, Holy One,
To become indeed thy son,
And in thee, thou Parent-Sea,
Live and love eternally.
C."
VOL. I. -
NO. III.
49
branea


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Letters from
Italy.
LETTERS FROM ITALY ON THE REPRESENTATIVES
OF ITALY.
I HAVE promised to write to you from Italy of the Italians.
Not of those of to-day, late and imperfectly ripened fruits
of the great tree, beneath which the nations once feasted in
the shade, but of the great ones who represent the June
day in the garden of the world.
When we were most devoted to the literature of Italy, and
found no repose from the bustle and noise of every-day life, so
sweet and profound as in the solitudes of Vaucluse, or the
garden of Boccaccio, you would say, after declaiming some
favorite passage with a superabundant emphasis, which
would, perhaps, have called a smile to the lip even of the
Italian most addicted to the issimos. “But, after all, we do
not entirely feel the beauty of this. No work of literature
or art can be felt as it ought, except in those relations of
climate and scenery, in which it was produced. This, true
of all countries, is peculiarly so of Italy; for the Italian is
educated by his climate, and lives in the open air. The
Italian sun paints this description, the Italian breeze breathes
in these cadences, the happy constitution of the people gives
a smoothness and subtle delicacy to this witticism, which
we cannot appreciate beside a coal fire, and with the
keen wind of our hills blowing the snow drifts before our
eyes.”
I often laughed at this theory; yet here upon the spot I
find it true. The Italian sonnet is another thing to me,
since I heard the language day by day; and the wine and
honey of the Italian prose never, I find, were tasted in
their true flavor till my eye became acquainted with the
sky beneath which it grew up.
Of none is this truer than of our friend Boccaccio. And
I will begin the promised correspondence by noting down
a few thoughts suggested by my new acquaintance with the
Decameron. They are not many, for I do not read or
think much; in this climate mere living is employment
enough.
Giovanni Boccaccio; it is a famous name ; and yet how
few seem to appreciate or even know anything about him,
except that he is one of three whose names we are in the habit


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of jingling together, — Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.
Neither is there much chance of his being better known,
for the world grows more and more delicate as it grows
older, and Boccace is nature itself, and the most unclad
nature withal. And here, once for all, let me say what
occurs to me on this subject. When we see a picture or
statue, on what is our judgment of it founded ? We look to
see if the sentiment is true to nature, if the drawing is cor-
rect, if the nature is beautiful and true, if the spirit in
which it is conceived be refined, and if we find these we
are satisfied. But do we ask ourselves, when we see a
drunken and sensual faun carved in Parian stone, whether
the subject is moral, whether it is decent? Thank Heaven !
I believe not, naturally, — such an inquiry is always sug-
gested to the mind by the habit of using a conventional
standard. When a Michael Angelo carves a Bacchus, (and
his was no ideal Bacchus, but the deity of drunkenness)
do we ask such a question ? Never. The art is its own
reason. We recognise the presence of a wider law than
that of our conventions, and, self-forgetful, are lost in the
power of design. We recognise in the artist, not a law-
giver to man, but a seer of the law of God. I saw, not long
since, an engraving of an ancient marble, which represented
a sea-monster, half-fish, half-man, carrying away a woman
over the ocean, who seems to struggle and look back in
vain, and rarely have I received from any design more pure
delight. For the whole was full of Grecian grace; you
could fancy the gentle waves, curling about the group, the
blue sky above, all the earth young and loving about them.
The genius of the artist so carried you at once to his ideal
world, that it required an effort of thought to remember the
actual subject, or figure to yourself that some Philistine,
with no idea of any world beyond the one present at this
moment, might say, “ What a disgusting subject !” And
so, Giovanni Boccaccio, do I think of thee! In thy noble
mind this world was no decrepid debauchee, shunning the
light, and hiding his unseemly person ; but young, as if fresh
from creation, not ashamed to utter all the thoughts that
came into its head, sad or gay, tragic or fantastic. And
this leads me to speak of a characteristic of Boccaccio; it
is this perpetual youth. If he would describe a delicious
scene, it is always with the dewy freshness of sunrise on


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every leaf, - his descriptions of morning are unrivalled.
His persons are always " giovani, e costumati, e piacevoli
assai ;” young and fair to look upon, gentle, and of good
manners, but frank and free; so that, if you were now to
see such an one, fresh and full of fun and feeling, you
would say, “ There is one of Boccaccio's young men." His
characters have not those minute and delicate traits, mark-
ing man from man as an individual, wbich Shakspeare, and,
in a less degree, so many moderns have taught us to look
for. Rather are they all drawn after one noble pattern ;
not like the work of a mannerist, but as if the author had
lived in an early stage of society, when the lines are rather
between class and class than between man and man. But
I am afraid of making my distinction too marked, without
making plain enough what it consists in. You will un-
derstand me, if I recall to your mind some of the painters
whose figures have no mannerism, and yet seem all of one
homogeneous race.
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, - I repeated to myself;
and then asked what is it that entitles the author of the
Decameron to such companionship? For I need not tell
you in what estimation I hold the two first, and how they
seem to me, with Shakspeare, to make the great Three in
modern literature. Now, I will own Baccaccio as a not
unworthy fourth. For I should say that it belongs to them
more than any other modern writers, to have sprung from
the earth, — original, sitanic, the first of their race. We
like to trace back the filiations of genius, to see how cir-
cumstances, or the contact with other minds, have influ-
enced its growth; to trace an idea growing toward perfec-
tion through many minds, till at last it comes to flower in
one, but we look in vain for the progenitors of these. Most
men are the sons of time, — these are its “ prophetic lords."
Many a poet has expressed what his century taught
him. These wrote as if they stood at the beginning of
time, and had the centuries to teach. To sympathize with
me here, you must look through the costume, the manners
of their times, their systems of religion and morals, to the
elemental forms they cover. In Boccaccio, what delights
me is his constant freedom. He saw through the spirit of
his time. He understood its littleness and bigotry. He
despised its prejudices. What is mean, or low, or vicious,


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he attacks, sometimes with bitter and unsparing reproof, (as
in his denunciation of the Florentines, for their treatment
of Dante,) with grave irony, or, more often, and this suits
better his cheerful nature, with overpowering wholesale
ridicule. At what is deformed or vicious he will rather
laugh than weep, but what is true or beautiful finds no more
sincere lover and interpreter than he.
At a time when the church was preëminent; when all
Europe was filled with monks and monasteries ; he feared
not their power nor their enmity ; but gaily and gravely,
decorously and indecorously, attacked their saintly and re-
spected hypocrisy in the most vulnerable parts. Dante's
bitter, though often veiled denunciation, had opened the
minds of the few; the gay and fearless assaults of Boccac-
cio dragged the cowl from the satyr, and exposed him to
the ridicule of the mob. He had no compassion for a
class, or for a sanctity that was cut off by its very nature
from the common sympathies of humanity; and yet true
religion never encountered an enemy in him. As a proof -
of this, I translate the opening of the first novel, which
seems to me admirable and most truly christian in its spirit,
at once devout and liberal.
" It is meet, O dearest ladies ! that whatsoever work a man
enters upon, should be prefaced with the wondrous and holy
name of him who was the Creator of all. Wherefore, since I am
to begin our story-telling, I mean to make a beginning with one
of his wonderful truths, so that by hearing it our faith in Him, as
in something not to be changed, may become stronger, and we
may always give praises to his name. It is manifest, that as all
things temporal are transitory and mortal, so both within and
without they are full of annoy, and anguish, and labor, and sub-
ject to infinite dangers, so as to be beyond the endurance and
the powers of us who are mixed up with, and are a part of them,
if the special grace of God did not afford us strength and light, —
the which, let us not suppose, descends upon us for any merit of
ours ; but moved by its own goodness, and vouchsafed to the
prayers of those who were once mortal as we are, and doing his
will while they were in this life, are now become eternal and
happy in his presence. To whom we address our prayers for
those things we desire, as if to solicitors, acquainted by experi-
ence with our frailty, and as if fearful to bring our prayers before
the face of so great a judge. And still more does his compassion
and goodness towards us become manifest, when we consider
that since the brightness of mortal eye cannot pierce the secrets


390
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of the divine mind, it may happen that we, deceived in our esti-
mation, have chosen as our intercessor before his face, one who
is driven thence into eternal banishment; and still, He from
whom nothing is hidden, regarding the purity of him that prays,
and not his ignorance, or the absence of his intercessor, hears the
prayers, as if he through whom it is addressed were among the
happy in his presence. The which will appear plainly in the
novel I mean to relate, — plainly, I mean to the judgment of
man — not to that of God.”
One must know the narrow and unsparing dogmatism of
the church in those times, to appreciate the liberality of
this, — and how far he was in advance of his time. And
is not the doctrine of the intercession of saints beautiful in
this simple statement? The same liberality may be seen in
his treatment of the Jews. It seems as if prejudice against
them were inborn in the nations. Scott has a Rebecca to
be sure, and Shakspeare a Jessica ; and among a thousand
heroines in modern fictions, we now and then see an amia-
ble Jewess; but here liberality stops, - and we remember
with how little tenderness Shylock and Isaac are pictured
by their creators. Not so Boccaccio, whose Jews are noble
figures, and the only novels in which, so far as I remember,
he has introduced them, he has chosen to set forth lessons
that we too have not come so late into the world that we
can derive no profit from them. The first of these relates
to a Jew, by name Abraham, who lived in Paris, and who,
as the story goes, was in all things an upright and honora-
ble man. Now he had a Christian friend, — Giannotto da
Civigni, a great merchant and excellent man, who was
much attached to him, and who, seeing the life he led,
sought by every means in his power to turn him from his
belief, and make him a Christian. The Jew, after a while,
began to take a pleasure in hearing him, but was not to be
shaken in his faith. At last he announced his intention of
going to Rome, to see and judge for himself how far their
faith rendered the pastors of the church more excellent than
other men. Now was Giannotto at his wit's end; for,
thinks he, if Abraham goes to Rome and sees what the
heads of the church really are, alas ! it is all over with mak-
ing him to a Christian. However, the Jew was not be moved
from his purpose, and accordingly goes to Rome; when he
finds the vices and depravity of the clergy beyond belief, -
finds them sensual, avaricious, and given without remorse


1841.)
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to more sins than he can number. When he has satisfied
himself, he returns home and tells Giannotto what he has
seen, and how all seem to be striving to destroy the faith
from its foundation. “And yet,” he says, “I do not see
that they succeed, but day by day your religion grows,
and becomes more clear, so that I plainly perceive that, by
its truth and holiness, it has a deeper foundation and sup-
port in the divine spirit than any other. So that I, who
before so stiffly opposed your arguments, and woutd not
become a Christian, would now by all means become so.”
The power of the Roman Church has passed away.
The clergy, among ourselves, are not possessed of wealth
and power. We cannot accuse them of avarice, or luxury,
or pride ; we are, beside, too little rather than too much
given to cherishing things sacred. Still, when we recollect
that a class, set apart from the rest to satisfy one want of
humanity, must always be in danger of one-sidedness and
narrowness, and when we know that, in being thus divided
from the rest, they are not necessarily made better than the
rest, not certainly made sacred in being separated, we feel
the force of Abraham's words, and say with him, Let us
cherish the priest, but believe the religion.
The other story is the well known one of the “ Three
Rings."
The true commentary on the writings of an author is his
life, if we can but get at it as a whole. That of Boccaccio,
in the mere outline I have before me, speaks plainly
enough. His father was a Tuscan of the little town of
Certaldo, his mother born in Paris. Their condition was
neither high nor low, but of that middle class, in which the
heart's blood of society flows with strongest pulse. He
received a tolerable education, and was then by his father
introduced to trade, and remained a merchant till his eight-
and-twentieth year. During this time he led a life of trav-
elling, which, in those days, must have been one of contin-
ual adventure ; above all, to the romantic, bold, fun-loving
and woman-loving Boccaccio. This is the life best suited
to bring a man closely in contact with the realities as well
as the romance of his time. The history goes on to say
that, by his father's command, he established himself at
Naples, and that, walking one day alone, he came to the
place where lie the ashes of Virgil. There he fell to medi-


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tating on the glory acquired by this great poet, and thereat
took so great a despite to traffic, that, returning home, he
gave himself entirely to the study of poetry.
This seems an extravagance, till we feel who it was that
took this sudden determination, one of no weak or doubting
mind. For to one of his “altezza d'animo," to know his
course false to himself, and to forsake it, is but one act.
And his stories contain many examples of characters of the
same large and simple mould ; there is, for instance, the
story of a miser, who, reproved by a single word of a wise
and witty man, saw so clearly the baseness of his avarice
and discourtesy, that, from that day forward, he abandoned
them. The story of Abraham, which I have given above,
is of the same sort ; and this largeness and singleness of soul,
which he who so felt could so well paint, gives a charm to
the story of Ghismonda, which makes it a sublime tragedy.
The life goes on to say, that he gave his time to the study
of the ancients, and became one of the most learned men of
his time. He wrote, in Latin, a genealogy of the gods, and
a list of ancient names of rivers and mountains; these are
tasks, which seem even pedantic, and yet so free and inca-
pable of fetters was his spirit, that his Decameron is, per-
haps, the first book of modern times which is completely
modern, showing no trace of the study of the classics, un-
less in the amenity and uniformity of its design.
I do not know that I can better confirm my thought, than
by giving you here a translation of the Preface to the
Fourth Day.
“ Dearest ladies ; from all that I had heard of the words of the
wise, and all that I myself had seen or read, I had judged that
the impetuous and fiery blast of envy should attack only the
highest towers and most lofty tree-tops. But alas ! how wofully
had my judgment gone astray, since I, wbo have always bent my
forces to avoid the fierce enmity of this rabid spirit; as you may
plainly see, if you will consider these novels of mine, how I have
written them not only in the vulgar Florentine, and in prose, and
without a name, but also in the most humble and unambitious
style I could, yet for all this could not escape being fiercely sha-
ken, and torn almost up by the roots by this tempest, and all
scarred by the teeth of envy. From whence, most plainly do I
see how true is what the wise say, that misery alone in this
world escapes envy. For there are some, O discreet ladies!
who, in reading these stories, say that I delight too much in you,


1841.)
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Letters from
Italy.
and that it is a shame for me to take so much pains to please and
console; and some even say, commend you as I do, and others,
who would fain seem to speak more sapiently say, that it be-
comes not my time of life to be following after such things ;
namely, to reason about women, or to entertain them; and ma-
ny, who show themselves most tender of my fame, say that I
should do more wisely to stay with the Muses on Mount Parnas-
sus, than to employ myself among you about these trifles; and
some, speaking more spitefully than wisely, say, that I should act
with more discretion, if I looked about to get my daily bread,
than in feeding the wind behind the bushes. And there are
some, besides, who trouble themselves to show, that the things
which I relate happened differently from the way in which I tell
them, and this in spite of all the pains I have taken. In
fine, you see, most esteemed dames, with what cruel and sharp
teeth they attack me, and wrong and bite even to the quick, while
I am thus enlisted in your service ; to all which things, God
knows, I listen with undisturbed spirit ; and, although in this
matter, my defence belongs properly to you, yet do I not mean
to spare my own strength, but, without so fully answering them
as I might, with some light reply, take myself out of their hearing.
For if already, when I have not accomplished the third of my
task, they are so many and so presuming, it seems to me that if
they do not receive some check, before I reach the end, they may
be so multiplied, that without much trouble they could complete-
ly overset me ; nor in such case could your powers, great as
they are, prevail. But before I begin my reply to any, I wish in
my own defence to tell a story, — not a whole one, lest it may
seem that I wish to mix up my stories with those of the gentle
company that I have told you of, - but a part of one only, so
that its very deficiency may show that it is not one of those.
And so, my assailants ! here is my story.
“It happened, a long time ago, in our city, that there was a
citizen, named Philip Balducci, a man of not the highest rank,
but rich and well nurtured, and a master of all things belonging
to one of his standing. And he had a wife, whom he loved the
best of all things, and she loved him in like manner, and they
lived a quiet and even life together, having their thoughts on
nothing so intent, as how to please each other. Now it happen-
ed, as it does to all, that this good lady died, leaving to Philip no
other memorial of herself than one child of his begetting, then
some two years old. Never was man more inconsolable at the
loss of that he loved, than was Philip Balducci ; and seeing him-
self thus solitary, deprived of her he loved, he determined that
he would no longer remain in the world, but would give himself
to the service of God, and do the like with his little son. So
having given away all he had for the love of God, he went with.
VOL. I. —NO. 111.
50


394
(Jan.
Lettters from
Italy.
out delay up to Mount Asinajo, to live there in a little cell, along
with his son, and there with him he passed his time in fasting and
prayer, subsisting upon alms; and took the greatest care when
the boy was by never to speak of any temporal affair, nor to let
any such be seen, lest they might seduce him from the service of
the Lord, but ever discoursed of the glory of life eternal, and
of God and the saints, and taught him nothing but holy orisons.
“ The worthy man was in the habit of coming sometimes to
Florence, and then as fortune favored, being succored by the
piously disposed, returned again to his cell. Now it happened
that the youth, having reached his nineteenth year, and his father
having grown old, he asked him one day whither he was going.
Philip told him ; at which the youth said ; My father, you are
now getting in years, and can ill endure fatigue; why not take
me with you once to Florence, and point out to me the devout
and the friends of God, and yours, and I, who am young and can
bear fatigue better than you, shall afterwards be able to go to
Florence and provide for our wants whenever you please, whilst
you can stay at home?' The good man, considering that his son
was already grown up, and so trained to the service of God, that
the things of the world could hardly draw him aside, said to him.
self, the boy is right ;' and so next time he went took him with
him. There the youth, seeing the palaces, the houses, the
churches, and all the other things, of which the city is full, and
having no recollection of ever having seen them before, was
struck with admiration, and asked his father about a thousand
things, what they were, and how they were called. His father
told him all; and he, one question satisfied, had soon another to
ask. And thus they went along, the son inquiring and the father
replying, until they chanced to meet a band of ladies, all fair and
nicely drest, who were come from a wedding, and whom the
youth no sooner saw, than he asked his father what manner of
things they were. His father answered, 'cast down thine eyes,
my son, on the ground, and look not at them, for they are an evil
thing.' But what do they call them ? ' said the son. The father,
fearing to arouse some mischievous demon in his son's ready im.
agination, would not name them by their proper name as women,
but said, they call them' pápere.' Wonderful to tell, this boy,
who had never seen a woman, forgetting palaces and oxen, and
horses and asses, and all the other things that he had seen, said
at once ; 'O! father mine! do manage to get one of these
pápere for me.' 'Alas! my son,' replied the father, “be silent,
I pray you ; they are an evil thing.' What,' asked the son,
look evil things so?' 'No otherwise,' said his father. Then,'
said he, you know better than I ; but I do not see why they are
an evil thing. As for me, I never saw anything so beautiful nor
so agreeable before. They are more lovely than the painted an-


1841.)
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Letters from
Italy.
gels you have so often shown me. 0! if you love me now,
do let us take one of these pápere up home with us, and I will
take care and feed it.' The father said, I would rather you
should not know how to feed them ;' and felt at once that nature
was stronger than his teachings, and repented of having ever
brought him to Florence. But so much is enough to tell of this
story, and now I will return to those, for whose benefit I have
related it.
“ Some of these fault-finders take me to task, O, youth-
ful dames, because I take so much pains to do you a pleasure,
and because I take so much delight in you. These are things
which I openly confess, namely, that I delight in you, and would
fain please you. And I ask of them if this is to be wondered at,
when they consider (we will not speak of the loving kisses, the
passionate embraces, and the many delights they owe you, sweet.
est ladies) how they live in your presence, and see continually
your gracious manners, your gentle beauty, your bewitching
grace, and, above all, your womanly dignity. When they
see how this youth, brought up on a savage and solitary moun.
tain, within the bounds of a narrow cell, with no other company
than his father, the moment he saw you, you were his sole desire,
for you alone he asked, — and you he followed with affection. Let
them, then, reprove, and persecute, and tear me without mercy for
this, that I delight in you, and strive to delight you, I, whom heaven
made with a frame all alive to your love, and who from boyhood
have devoted my soul to you, feeling the virtue there is in the light
of your eyes, and the sweetness of your honey-flowing words, and
the flame lighted by your pitying sighs, - above all, when I re-
collect how you first fixed the eyes of this little hermit, this rude
child, or rather wild animal. For surely who loves you not, nor
desires to be loved by you, he repels me like one who cannot
feel or understand the pleasures nor the virtue of natural affec-
tion, and little care I for him. As to them that reprove me in
respect of my age, they show that they do not understand. But
leaving jesting aside, to these I answer, that as long as I live I
shall never count it to my shame to strive to please those whom
Guido Cavalcanti, and Dante Alighieri, in their old age, and Mes-
ser Cino da Pistoja, to the extreme of life, held in honor, and to
please whom was so dear to such as these. And were it not out
of the usual course of argument, I would bring forward the his.
tories, and show you how full they are of examples of brave men
in old times, who placed their highest aim in that which should
be for the service and honor of woman. And if my antagonists
are ignorant of these, let them go and learn.
"That I should remain with the Muses on Parnassus I allow is
good counsel, and not amiss. But we may not dwell ever with
the Muses, nor they with us. And when it happens that a man


396
[Jan.
Letters from
Italy.
must leave their company, that he should delight himself with
that which is nearest to their likeness, is this blame-worthy? The
Muses are women, and though women be not their peers, yet do
they bear in their aspect a likeness to them, so that if they pleased
me for nought else, here were a reason. Moreover, in past times
women have been the cause of my making thousands of verses, but
the Muses never of one. They have assisted me, indeed, and
shown me how to compose those thousands; and perhaps also in
the writing of these things, humble as they are, they have come
sometimes to stand beside me, and lend their aid perchance in honor
of the likeness between themselves and the subject of my stories.
For while I weave them I leave neither Parnassus nor the Muses
so far behind as many perhaps may think.
“ But what shall we say to those who have so much compassion
on my hunger, that they advise me rather to look out for my
bread ? Alas, I know not, unless I consider what would be their
answer to me, if I, in time of need, should come to ask bread of
them. They might, like enough, say, Go look for it among your
novels. And, indeed, the poets have oftener found it among their
fables than many a rich man among his treasures. And many
poets, from beneath their fables, have made green their age.
While, on the other hand, many, seeking more bread than they
needed, have perished premature. What else? It is time for
them to repulse me when I ask something of them, for now,
thank God, I have no need; and when need does come, I know,
in the words of the Apostle, “To abound and to suffer want.'
And as to that, my affairs are so important to no one as to
myself.
For those who say that the facts I relate happened not as I
relate them, I should be much their debtor if they would procure
me the originals, and if they differ from that I write, I will con-
fess their reprehension just and strive to mend. But till they bring
me something better than words, I shall leave them in their belief,
and follow mine own, - and report of them that which they re.
port of me. And as I would now fain bring my answer to an
end, I say that, armed with the assistance of God, and yours, Oh
gentle ladies, in which I hope, and with the aid of patience, I
will go on with my undertaking, -and turning my back to the
tempest, let it blow as it will. I see not but it must needs be
with me as it happens to the fine dust, which, when the wbirl.
wind comes, perhaps rests quiet on the ground, or if the blast
raises it, it is borne aloft and left often on the heads of men,-
on the crowns of kings and emperors, and sometimes on the tops
of high palaces and lofiy towers, — whence if it fall, it falls no
farther than its place from which it rose. And if I have ever
bent all my powers to your service, now more than ever am I
disposed so to do, - for I know that all that can with reason be


1841.]
397
Letters from Italy.
said of me, and all who love you, is that we act after nature ; to
oppose whose laws too great strength is needed, and if it is
applied, it is often in vain, — and with great loss to him that
attempts it. The which strength, I confess, I have not, -nor
for such purposes do I desire it, and if I had it, would be more
glad to furnish it to others, than to use it myself. Wherefore
give me peace, ill-willers, — and remaining in your own delights,
or rather corrupt appetites, let me rest in peace in this short life
that is allotted us.”
A delicacy, a gentle irony, which seems to throw dust in
the eyes of his bat-like adversaries, rather than take the
trouble to confute them, charms me throughout this passage,
and it seems to veil in its light grace an abounding wisdom.
Thus, where he answers those who say that he should have
remained with the Muses on Parnassus, rather than be look-
ing to women for inspiration, his reply seems to say that
we must leave the outworn traditions of the past, and seek
our inspiration in the living world about us. I see running
through the whole a defence of nature, a trust in natural
impulses, a contempt for artificial distinctions and limita-
tions. I am never tired of repeating to myself the image,
so full of high wisdom, which occurs near the close, in
which he likens himself and his labors to the impalpable dust,
which the breeze may pass over and leave quiet on the
ground, or which, borne aloft, may be left on the high pal-
ace tops, or the crowns of kings, but can fall no lower than
its native home.
There is no truth which Boccaccio more delights in bring-
ing forward than that there is no human condition so low,
but that virtue may be found there ; no outward disadvan-
tage that mind, and heart, and soul, may not make null
and void.
As in this noble passage, which I will rather transcribe
than injure by translation, so rough and careless as mine is
wont to be.
"E certo io maledicerei la natura parimente a la Fortuna, se
is non conoscessi la natura esser discretissima, e la fortuna aver
mille occhi, comechè gli sciocchi lei cieca figurino. Le quali
io avviso, che siccome molto avvelute, fanno quello che i mor-
tali, spesse volte, fanno: li quali incerti de' futuri casi, per le loro
opportunità, le loro piu care cose, ne più vilé luoghi delle lor
case, siccome meno sospetti, seppelliscono, e quindi ne' maggiori
bisogni le traggono, avendo le il vil luogho piu securamente ser-


*398
[Jan.
Letters from
Italy.
vate, che la bella camera non avrebbe. E cosi le due ministre
del mondo, spesso le lor cose più care nascondono sotto l'ombra
dell arti riputati vili, acciochè di quelle alle necessità traendole,
pià chiaro appaja il loro splendore.”
And in this connexion I cannot refrain from transcribing
the following story, not only as it illustrates what I was
saying, but because it has all the air of being an authentic
record of a man in whom we all take peculiar interest,
Giotto.
“Pamfili now began. It often happens, most dear ladies, that,
as fortune hides the greatest treasures of virtue under mean occu.
pations, so nature sometimes makes the basest forms the habita-
tions of wonderful talents, - a plain demonstration of this truth
you shall find in the case of two of our citizens, who are the sub-
ject of my short story. One of these two was Messer Forese da
Rabatta, a little man, deformed, and with a face as ugly as pos.
sible, but yet of so great legal learning, that he was esteemed by
the most sagacious to be an armory of the civil law. The other,
by name Giotto, was possessed of so excellent a genius, that there
was no work of nature, the mother of all things, whose labors are
as unceasing as the revolutions of the heavens, that he did not
imitate with pen and pencil, so that it seemed not so much like
as the same. So that many times we find the sense of men de.
ceived by his works, taking that for true which is only painied.
He it was that restored to the light that art, which had been many
ages buried beneath the errors of those who painted to please the
eyes of the ignorant, and not the intellect of the wise. Where-
fore he may be worthily reckoned one of the stars of the glory
of Florence, and the more, when we consider with what humility,
though the head of all those of his calling, he refused the title of
Maestro. Which refusal shone so much the more to his honor,
when the title was usurped by those who knew less than he or
his disciples. But if his art was great, not so was his person, nor
was his aspect by any means more comely than that of Messer
Forese. To come to my story. Both Messer Forese and Giotto
had possessions in Mugello, and the former, having been out to
visit his in the season when they hold the festivals at the farms,
and returning home on a broken-down carriage-horse, fell in
with the aforesaid Giotto, on the way to Florence, having in like
manner been to visit his lands. Now Giotto was in no wise better
off than he in horse or harness, or anything else. Both being old
men, and going at a gentle pace, they joined company, when it
happened, as it often does in summer, they were overtaken by a
sudden shower. They took shelter, as soon as they could, in the
house of a peasant, who was acquainted with them both. But


1841.)
399
Letters from
Italy.
after a while, as there were no signs of fair weather, and they
wished to be in Florence before night, they borrowed of the
countryman two old cloaks, and two hoods, all ragged with age,
but the best that were to be had, and set out. As they went
along they soon found themselves soaked with water and covered
with mud, by the splashing of their horses' feet, circumstances
which do not add much to the respectability of one's appearance.
For a while they rode in silence, but as the weather cleared up
a little, entered into conversation. And Messer Forese, riding
along and listening to Giotto, who had a remarkable talent for
conversation, began to consider him, his body, and head, and all
over, and seeing everything so unshapely and out of order, with
out thinking of himself, began to laugh, and said, “ Giotto ! sup-
pose a stranger should come to meet us, who had never seen you,
how long would it be before he would suspect you of being the
greatest painter in the world, as you are?' To which Giotto
presently replied: "As soon, Messere, as he would suppose,
from looking at you, that you knew your a, b, c. At which
Messer Forese perceived his error, and found himself paid in his
own coin."
Since writing the above some days have passed, and I have
nearly read through the Decameron. Naturally the subject
has grown upon me, and I feel that it would be a work of
time to give a complete account of my view of it. So take
these imperfect notes in good part for the present.
Boccaccio did not act upon me with immediate attrac-
tion; to me he was not what we call “ magnetic.” My
respect and liking for him grow each time I renew the ac-
quaintance. Manliness, tenderness, nobleness, simplicity,
nature, I find and admire in him. He is a true painter of
man, the creature of passion and circumstance. “The
plant man," he knows ; but on the nobler side of this subject
is unsatisfactory. With delicacy, refinement, morbidezza,
he has little to do, and it is because we are aware of his
almost entire deficiency in these attributes, that the broad
jokes and broad nature of Boccaccio do not disgust us.
Here is both his wealth and bis poverty. But for us mod-
erns, who, inheriting the civilization of all past time, have
run the gauntlet of sentiment and refinement, so busy in
adjusting the drapery of feeling, that the bone and sinew
it should cover are well nigh forgotten, it is well to come
back to Boccaccio, and his healthy morning freshness.
One feeling, of which I am often aware, yet am not sure,


400
(Jan.
To the Ideal.
is this, that he is in a sense a mechanical artist. His figures
seem too much made, too little conceived from within out-
wards. This effect may be attributable to the advanced age at
which he embraced literature as a profession. What say you?
TO THE IDEAL.
Ah! what avails it thus to dream of thee,
Thou life above me, and aspire to be
| A dweller in thy air serene and pure;
I wake, and must this lower life endure.
Look no more on me with sun-radiant eyes,
Mine droop so dimmed, in vain my weak sense tries
To find the color of this world of clay, -
Its hue has faded, its light died away.
In charity with life, how can I live?
What most I want, does it refuse to give.
Thou, who hast laid this spell upon my soul,
Must be to me henceforth a hope and goal.
Away, thou vision! Now must there be wrought
Armor from life in which may yet be fought
A way to thee, — thy memory shall inspire,
Although thy presence is consuming fire.
As one who may not linger in the halls,
And fair domains of his ancestral home,
Goes forth to labor, yet resolves those walls,
Redeemed, shall see his old age cease to roam.
So exile I myself, thou dream of youth,
Thou castle where my wild thoughts wandered free,
Yet bear a heart, which, through its love and truth,
Shall earn a right to throb its last with thee.
To work! with heart resigned and spirit strong,
Subdue by patient toil Time's heavy wrong;
Through nature's dullest, as her brightest ways
We will march onward, singing to thy praise.
Yet when our souls are in new forms arrayed,
Like thine, immortal, by immortal aid,
And with forgiving blessing stand beside
The clay in which they toiled and long were tried.
When comes that solemn “undetermined” hour,
Light of the soul's light! present be thy power;
And welcome be thou, as a friend who waits
With joy, a soul unsphered at heaven's gates.


1841.)
401
Record of the Months.
RECORD OF THE MONTHS.
Michael Angelo, considered as a Philosophic Poet, with Trans-
lations. By JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR. London: Saunders &
Otley, Conduit Street. 1840.
We welcome this little book with joy, and a hope that it may
be republished in Boston. It would find, probably, but a small
circle of readers, but that circle would be more ready to receive
and prize it than the English public, for whom it was intended,
if we may judge by the way in which Mr. Taylor, all through
his prefatory essay, has considered it necessary to apologize for,
or, at least, explain views very commonly received among our-
selves.
'The essay is interesting from the degree of acquaintance it
exhibits with some of those great ones, who have held up the
bighest aims to the soul, and from the degree of insight which
reverence and delicacy of mind have given to the author. From
every line comes the soft breath of green pastures where “ walk
the good shepherds."
Of the sonnets, we doubt the possibility of making good trans-
lations into English. No gift of the Muse is more injured by
change of form than the Italian sonnet. As those of Petrarch
will not bear it, from their infinite grace, those of Dante from
their mystic and subtle majesty ; so these of Angelo, from the
rugged naiveté with which they are struck off from the mind, as
huge splinters of stone might be from some vast block, can never
be“ done into English,” as the old translators, with an intelli-
gent modesty, were wont to write of their work. The grand
thought is not quite evaporated in the process, but the image of
the stern and stately writer is lost. We do not know again such
words as “ concetto,” “superna" in their English represen.
tatives.
But since a knowledge of the Italian language is not so com-
mon an attainment as could be wished, we ought to be grateful
for this attempt to extend the benefit of these noble expressions
of the faith which inspired one of the most full and noble lives
that has ever redeemed and encouraged man.
Fidelity must be the highest merit of these translations ; for not
even an Angelo could translate his peer. This, so far as we
have looked at them, they seem to possess. And even in the
VOL. 1. —NO. III.
51


402
[Jan.
Record of the Months.
English dress, we think none, to whom they are new, can read
the sonnets, -
“ Veggio nel volto tuo col pensier mie."
“S’un casto amor, s'una pietà superna.”
“ La vita del mio amor non è cuor mio."
and others of the same pure religion, without a delight which
shall
“ Cast a light upon the day,
A light which will not go away,
A sweet forewarning.”
We hope they may have the opportunity. It is a very little
book with a great deal in it, and five hundred copies will sell in
two years.
We add Mr. Taylor's little preface, which happily expresses
his design.
“The remarks on the poetry and philosophy of Michael Angelo,
which are prefixed to these translations, have been collected and are now
published, in the hope that they may invite the student of literature to
trace the relation which unites the efforts of the pure intelligence and the
desires of the heart to their highest earthly accomplishment under the
complete forms of Art. For the example of so eminent a mind, watched
and judged not only by its finished works, but, as it were, in its growth
and from its inner source of Love and Knowledge, cannot but enlarge the
range of our sympathy for the best powers and productions of man.
And if these pages should meet with any readers inclined, like their
writer, to seek and to admire the veiled truth and solemn beauty of the
elder time, they will add their humble testimony to the fact, that what-
ever be the purpose and tendencies of the time we live in, we are not
all unmindful of the better part of our inheritance in this world."
Select List of RECENT PUBLICATIONS.
The Worship of the Soul. A Discourse preached to the Third
Congregational Society in Chelsea, at the Dedication of their
Chapel, on Sunday Morning, September 13, 1840. By Samuel
D. Robbins. Chelsea and Boston: B. H. Greene. 1840. 8vo.
pp. 16.
This Discourse is pervaded by a deeper vein of thought than
we are wont to look for, or to find in the occasional services of
the pulpit. We should rejoice to know that there is any consid-
erable number of persons among the congregations that assemble
in the churches for Sabbath worship, who take delight in such
simple, fervent, and practical expositions of religious truth as are
here set forth. This Discourse, however, indicates more than it
unfolds ; it is not a complete and harmonious whole ; and it will


1841.]
403
Record of the Months.
be read with greater profit by those who watch for every gleam
of sun-light, than by those whose eyes are open only to the broad-
est glare of noon.
The following passage expresses the feelings of many who are
accustomed to distinguish between religion, as it existed in the
divine idea of Jesus, and the religion which ventures to assume
his name, as an exclusive badge at the present day.
“ The occasion which assembles us is one of thrilling interest. At a
day when the whole aspect of the church and the world seems to pre-
sent strong tendencies toward revolution; while on all sides men seem
to be outgrowing the tyranny of forms, and overleaping all former bar-
riers which have been raised between themselves and perfect freedom,
we come to consecrate this temple to the worship of the Father of our
Spirits, and thus bear our humble testimony that we can find in Chris-
tian usages, and the Christian's faith, all that we need for our mental
and spiritual advancement in the path to heaven. We feel, however
others may consider the subject, that in the Bible and in the Saviour,
are revealed to us Infinite Truths, which man can never outgrow,
which as yet the world have scarcely imagined. And although we do
not believe that the Christianity of Society, or the Christianity of the
Church, as they appear in the present age, are by any means perfect,
we do feel that the Christianity of Jesus is perfect, perpetual, and eter-
nal: that the age will never arrive when man cannot draw from the
fountain of God's truth, the waters of life and salvation.” — pp. 3, 4.
The characteristics of Christianity, as described by Mr. Rob-
bins, and the offices of the church, are worthy of attention. In
reading this statement, we cannot but be struck with the incon-
gruity between the ideal church of the preacher, and the actual
church of modern society.
“I have said that Christianity is emphatically the science of the
soul; and I regard this view of the religion of Jesus as infinitely im-
portant. We have our Universities and our Schools which are institu-
ted for the purpose of teaching and explaining the natural sciences and
the philosophy of the intellect. But the Church is consecrated only to
the higher purposes of instruction in the knowledge of the human
heart and conscience; in the mysteries of the soul, its laws and duties
and destiny. We gather ourselves into this holy place to learn those
mighty truths which relate to God and man. We come up hither from
the world and its trials and dangers to listen to the wisdom of Jesus,
and learn those deep lessons of faith and obedience and love, by which
we are to become ripened daily into the image of Infinite Holiness.
“There is a higher life than that which most spirits live. A higher
love than most spirits know. There is an infinity in the human soul
which few have yet believed, and after which few have aspired. There
is a lofty power of moral principle in the depths of our nature, which
is nearly allied to omnipotence; compared with which the whole force
of outward nature is more feeble than an infant's grasp. There is a
might within the soul which sets at nought all outward things; and
there is a joy unspeakable and full of glory, dwelling in the recesses
of the good man's heart too vast for utterance. There is a spiritual


404
[Jan.
Record of the Months.
insight to which the pure soul reaches, more clear and prophetic, more
wide and vast than all telescopic vision can typify. There is a faith
in God and a clear perception of his will and designs and Providence
and Glory, which gives to its possessor a confidence and patience and
sweet composure, under every varied and troublous aspect of events,
such as no man can realize, who has not felt its influences in his own
heart. There is a communion with God in which the soul feels the
presence of the unseen One, in the profound depths of its being, with
à vivid distinctness, and a holy reverence, such as no word can de-
scribe. There is a state of union of spirit with God, I do not say often
reached, yet it has been attained in this world, in which all the past
and present, and future seem reconciled, and Eternity is won and en-
joyed; and God and man, earth and heaven with all their mysteries are
apprehended in truth, as they lie in the mind of the Infinite. But the
struggle with most beings is to spiritualize the actual, to make those
things which are immediately around them subserve the higher inter-
ests of their immortal nature; and finding that it is almost impossible
to do this, they faint in the way, and postpone to a future life that high-
er being which their thought apprehends, and their hearts long for, but
cannot reach. Hence it is that the advanced powers of the soul of
which I have been speaking are not believed to exist for us, in this
world at least; and therefore the few who will strive for them, because
they dare not compromise their highest thought and life and love, are
looked upon as spiritual star-gazers, as visionaries dwelling amid the
beautiful creations of their own ardent hearts. Hence it is that in our
age the Church and its highest influences is needed, to declare to the
wide world those precious promises which are destined to carry com-
fort and peace to the deepest emotions of the struggling soul; to speak
to all men everywhere in the name of Jesus, teaching them that the
highest and loveliest visions which the human mind in its most rapt
hour of aspiration, has enjoyed of Truth and Life, of Holiness and
Love of duty and denial of growth and glory of Faith and God, are
only the faintest sketches of that reality which Christianity has brought
to light." — pp. 9-11.
The Envoy from Free Hearts to the Free. Pawtucket, R. I.
1840. 12mo. pp. 112.
A Voice from the Prison, being Articles addressed to the Edi-
tor of the New Bedford Mercury; and a Letter to G. B. Weston,
Esq., and other Directors of the Duxbury Bank. To which are
added Leaves from a Journal. By B. Rodman. New Bedford :
Benjamin Lindsey. 1840. pp. 62. 8vo.
Here is a new chapter in the literature of prisons. Since the
secrets of St. Pelagie and Clichy have been brought to light, by
the powerful pen of M. Barthelemy Maurice, we need not ask of
what materials this literature must consist. It is a record of
human nature, under strange and fearful circumstances, a lucid
commentary on the depravation of man and the boasted wisdom
of society ; and should be faithfully studied by every friend of the
happiness and improvement of his race. The present work has
the advantage of being autobiographical. It is a record of per-


1841.]
405
Record of the Months.
sonal experience. It unveils the interior of the debtor's prison
in Massachusetts, as it appears to one who has enjoyed a seat in
her councils, and been a prince among her merchants. The
author is a gentleman of liberal education and refined habits ;
once the possessor of an ample fortune, and distinguished for the
extent as well as the rectitude of his transactions in business; a
shrewd observer of men and things; and with a quick perception
of facts, and with as quick a sympathy with suffering, well quali-
fied to become the tenant of a prison for the benefit of the public.
Those who have known him in what might be deemed better
days, will regard him with still more honor, as they read his
almost picturesque descriptions of life in prison; and the testimony;
he has here left on record against some of the most crying
evils of the day, cannot fail to produce a deep impression, both
on account of the facts with which it is sustained, and the source
from which it proceeds.
Emancipation. By William E. Channing. Boston: E. P.
Peabody. 1840. pp. 111. 12mo.
History of the United States from the Discovery of the Ameri.
can Continent. By George Bancroft. Vol. III. Boston: Charles
C. Little and James Brown. 1840. 8vo. pp. 468.
Grandfather's Chair: A History for Youth. By Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Author of Twice Told Tales. Boston: E. P. Pea-
body. New York : Wiley and Putnam. 1840.
We are glad to see this gifted author employing his pen to
raise the tone of children's literature ; for if children read at all,
it is desirable that it should be the productions of minds able to
raise themselves to the height of childhood's innocence, and to
the airy home of their free fancy. No one of all our imaginative
writers has indicated a genius at once so fine and rich, and espe-
cially with a power so peculiar in making present the past scenes
of our own history. There is nothing in this volume quite equal
to the sketch of " Endicott and his Men,” in one of the Tokens.
But the ease with which he changes his tone from the delicate
satire that characterizes his writings for the old, to the simpler
and more venerable tone appropriate to his earnest little audi.
tors, is an earnest of the perfect success which will attend this
new direction of his powers. We are glad to learn that he is
engaged in other writings for the little friends, whom he has made
in such multitudes by Grandfather's Chair. Yet we must de-
mand from him to write again to the older and sadder, and steep
them in the deep well of his sweet, humorsome musings.
The Little Dove. By Krummacher. Boston: Weeks, Jordan,
and Co. 1840.
Here also is another book for the young from the pen of genius.
The religious simplicity of this little story is invaluable in an age
of formulas. There is nothing fanciful in the fiction, and yet it


406
(Jan.
Record of the Months.
is free from everything vulgar and mean; and the humanity
which might redeem the world is called forth towards the animal
creation, unmingled with any mawkish sensibility.
Knight's Miscellanies. London: C. Knight and Co. 1840.
This is a series of curious works, of which are published, -
I. Davis's Chinese ; or General Description of China and its
inhabitants ; in which is given an account of the English inter-
course from earliest times to the present, a geographical de-
scription of China, a summary of its history ; the principle and
actual administration of its government; its legislation ; institu-
tions, manners, and customs. This work is also illustrated with
sixty illustrations, which materially help the descriptions.
II. The English Causes Celebres. The actual trials of Count
Konigsmark in 1682; the Turners, 1664; Robert Hawkins,
1669; the great Huntingdonshire case of Day vs. Day, 1797 ;
Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, 1678 ; the Perrys,
1661; Arthur Norkott, 1628; Philip Handsfred, 1688 ; all for
capital crimes. These trials not only present a rich fund for the
knowledge of human nature, but are admirable illustrations of the
manners and customs of the times.
III. The Pastor Letters. These are private letters from vari-
ous persons of consequence, on all familiar subjects, during the
reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III. A very curi.
ous book.
Architecture of the Heavens. By Professor Nichol. Edin-
burgh. 1839.
This work gives the result of the last observations of the
Herschels, and a general view of the universe, as at present ap.
preciated by astronomical science. It is full of facts, new to the
public, and in its general effect magnificent as a poem. It is a
series of letters to a lady, written in a very agreeable style,
perhaps sometimes a little too fine, and yet the mood into which the
reader is put by it, explains the inevitable exaltation of the author,
in his solitude among the stars.
The Solar System. By the same author.
The Structure of the Earth. Also by the same author.
We wonder that some of our publishers do not republish these
remarkable works. It is most desirable that they should also be
illustrated like the Edinburgh editions; and could not these same
illustrations be imported for the American editions ?
Poetry, Romance, and Rhetoric, being the articles under these
heads, contained in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Seventh Edi-
tion. Edinburgh : 1839.
The two first of these treatises are by George Moir, the Professor
of Rhetoric in Edinburgh University, and the "Delta" of Black-
wood's Magazine ; and the last was written by William Spalding,
esq.


1841.)
407
Record of the Months.
The History of English Poetry. By Thomas Warton. Three
Volumes. London: 1840.
This is a new edition, republished from Dr. Price's edition of
1824, and enriched by new notes and editorial matter.
A Letter to the Human Race. By A Brother. London : 1840.
Religion and Crime; or the Distress of the People and the
Remedies. Third Edition. By John M. Morgan. London:
1840.
Religion and Education in America ; with Notices of the State
and Prospects of American Unitarianism, Popery, and African
Colonization. By John D. Lang. London : 1840.
Ecclesiastical Chronology; or Annals of the Christian Church
from its Foundation to the present Time ; to which are added Lists
of Councils, and of Popes, Patriarchs, and Archbishops of Canter.
bury. By the Rev. J. C. Riddle, M. A. London: Longman,
Orme, and Co. 1840. 8vo.
The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, Esq. Collected and
Edited by himself, with New Notes, &c. To be completed in
Ten Monthly Volumes. London: 8vo.
Human Physiology, Part the Third, comprising the Generation,
Growth, Decay, and Varieties of Mankind. With an Appendix
on Mesmerism. Last Part. By John Elliotson, M. D. London.
The Natural History of Society in the Barbarous and Civilized
State ; an Essay towards discovering the Origin and Course of
Human Improvement. By W. Cooke Taylor, Esq., LL. D.,
M. R. A. S. London: Two Volumes. 8vo.
Lectures on Natural Philosophy. By the Rev. James William
McGauley, Professor of Natural Philosophy to the National Board
of Education. London.
Organic Chemistry, in its Applications to Agriculture and Phy-
siology. By Dr. Justus Liebig, F. R. S., Professor of Chemistry
in the University of Giessen. Edited from the Manuscript of the
Author, by Lyon Playfair, Ph. D. 8vo. London: Taylor and
Walton.
“This work is written with a rare degree of sagacity, and is
full of immediate practical applications of incalculable impor-
tance. From its appearance we may date a new era in agricul-
ture, and the imagination cannot conceive the amount of improve-
ment which may be expected from the application of the
principles here developed.” – Dr. W. Gregory, British Asso-
ciation, Glasgow.
Elements of Chemistry; including the Recent Discoveries
and Doctrine of the Science. By the late Edward Turner, M. D.
Seventh edition. Edited by Justus Liebig, M. D., and William
Gregory, M, D., of King's College, Aberdeen. 8vo.
Organic Chemistry. By Professor Liebig. Edited by Wilton
G. Turner, Ph. D., and Professor Gregory, M. D. Forming the


408
Record of the Months. (Jan. 1841.
third and concluding part of the sixth edition of Turner's Chem-
istry. Part Third.
The Autobiography of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Esq., with
Additions and Illustratious by W. Hamilton Drummond, D. D.
8vo. London.
The Life and Times of Saint Cyprian. By the Rev. George
Ayliffe Poole, M. A. 8vo. London.
Die Lehre vom christlichen Kultus, nach den Grundsätzen der
evangelischen Kirche in wissenschaftlichen Zusammenhange
dargestellt von Karl Wilhelm Vetter. Berlin. 8vo.
Wilhelm Heinse's sämmtliche Schriften. Herausgegeben
von Heinrich Laube. Zehn Bände. Leipzig.
Grundsätze des Kirchenrechts der Katholischen und evangelis-
chen Religionsparthei in Deutschland von Karl Freidrich Eich-
horn.
Daub's philosophische und theologische Vorlesungen, heraus-
gegeben von Ph. Marheineke und Th. W. Dittenberger. Vierter
Baud. System der theologischen Moral. Erster Theil.
The reputation of Daub, unlike that of most German theolo-
gians, appears to be increasing since his death. He was a
scholar of almost universal accomplishments, a deep and subtle
thinker, especially on subjects connected with the philosophy of
religion, and a singularly just and candid inquirer on problems of
speculative science ; but his style is so shaded with the obscurity
which few of Hegel's followers have escaped, that his works can
hardly command a general interest, even in his own country.
They form a curious sludy, however, and one not altogether with-
out attractions to the theologian.
Die Kirchenverfassung nach Lehre und Recht der Protestant-
ten. Von Dr. Freid. Tul. Stahl.
Lebensnachrichten über G. B. Niebühr aus Briefen desselben
und aus Errinnerungen einiger seiner nächsten Freunde. Drei
Bäude. Hamburg : Perthes.
This is a complete and very satisfactory biography of the cel.
ebrated historian. Its interest is much enhanced by the addition
of a copious selection from his correspondence.
Franz Passow's Leben und Briefe. Eingeleitet von Dr. Lud.
wig Wachler. Breslaw.
Passow is worthy to be mentioned in company with Voss and
Jacobs, as one of the most distinguished classical scholars of
whom German literature can boast. His labors in Greek lexi-
cography give him a conspicuous place in the history of philology.
His personal character presents great attractions for the contem-
plation of the literary man; and we rejoice that he has found a
biographer to do justice to his memory, with so much truth and
beauty as characterize the present work.


THE DIAL. .
Vol. I.
A PRIL, 1841.
No. IV.
THE UNITARIAN MOVEMENT IN NEW ENGLAND.
The Unitarian movement in New England has a deeper
signification for the philosopher and historian, than is brought
out in the controversial works of those engaged in it. It is
quite likely, too, that there is a deeper one than those in
the midst of the dust, and smoke, and tumult of the con-
test, whether friends or foes, can discover for themselves, or
even see when it is pointed out by others. It will be well
for us, therefore, to retire, if we can, for a while from the
scene of contention and turmoil, to some eminence from
which we may view the field, unbiassed by personal feelings
and interests, not only to see how goes the day, but also to
see more clearly what the nature and object of the contest
really are. This we now propose to do. We call the move-
ment in the church, the Unitarian movement, because it is
now known by that name, and because a better does not
readily occur to us, rather than because we like it.
As it is probable that the results, to which we shall arrive,
will not be satisfactory to the Unitarians in every particular,
we wish to bespeak their good will, by showing that we
fully appreciate their labors and motives, and the necessity
there was that something should have been done. We
are not, however, satisfied with the solution of the Unita-
rian movement that is now common; namely, that certain
noble and manly souls, feeling the oppression and tyranny
of the prevalent form of church-government and discipline,
and gifted with a keener insight and a more sensitive con-
VOL. 1. — NO. iv. 52


410
(April,
The Unitarian Movement
science than their contemporaries, seeing absurdity in
their doctrines, deadness in their faith, and hollowness in
their worship, and whatever other ill effects there might
be of the prevalent theology and church-discipline, did,
like brave men and true Christians, take their stand for
liberty of conscience and freedom of inquiry ; that, there-
fore, their preaching was necessarily controversial, occu-
pied with tearing down Calvinism, rather than with build-
ing up any new system ; that now, when this kind of preach-
ing has done its work, and ceases to be interesting, there
must, of course, be a temporary still-stand, in appearance
at least, while this sect, having done its work as a reform-
ing, is becoming a conservative one ; and that in a fitting
time, even now at hand, they will put forth and systematize
the positive part of their faith, and be recognised in Christ-
endom as a communion, whose position and views are well
defined and generally known and respected. This solution
of the phenomenon is plausible, and as true and philosophi-
cal perhaps, as any popular one that can be given. But
there are some among us who desire something more than a
popular solution. For such it is that we write, and with
what degree of success, we humbly submit it to their judg-
ment to decide.
We, however, agree with this popular solution in the
main, so far as it goes. It describes only the surface.
We would look into the nature of the deadness, corrup-
tion, and abuses of the church from which the Unitarians
dissented. We would also look into the nature of the
change they would bring us. The freedom for inquiring
minds, and the liberty for the conscience, for which they so
manfully and successfully contended, -are jewels beyond all
price, — are the condition of all progress, — are the very at-
mosphere in which souls do grow; and while they labored
for an end, which was felt by every living soul to be indis-
pensable to its life, they had a strong hold on the heart of
the community, and might calculate upon almost any degree
of success. But these, indispensable as they are, are but
the means to an ulterior end. They are the air we breatbe,
and therefore necessary; but they are not the food that we
can live upon, nor the work to occupy our hearts and hands.
When the Unitarians have secured these preparatory con-
ditions, they must furnish the bread of life, or the souls that


1841.)
411
in New England.
have stood by them in their contest will famish off. While,
then, we acknowledge what they have done, and look to
them for a revival of Christianity, and a more full develop-
ment of the Christian idea than can be effected by any other
existing sect, which does not come upon the Unitarian
platform of freedom for every inquiring mind, and liberty
to conscience to decide for itself, in all cases, upon truth
and duty, principles and measures ; let us also be faithful
to them, and point out their imperfections, the obstacles
that oppose their progress, and the rocks and shoals that
endanger their course.
Every system of theology grows out of and is shaped
by the philosophical system of those by whom it is first
digested and scientifically taught. For our present pur-
pose, we shall divide all systems of philosophy into two
classes, those that recognise innate ideas, and those that do
not; and shall endeavor to show, in the course of our arti-
cle, that there are but three distinct systems of theology
founded upon the idea of one God, namely, Pantheism,
Trinitarianism, and Unitarianism ; the first two growing
out of the philosophy that recognises innate ideas, and the
last out of that which does not. Leaving Pantheism for
the present out of view, the great question upon which the
other two systems split, the point upon which individuals
and sects turn in deciding upon the views they will
adopt, is native depravity; and, therefore, we will in this
article, for convenience' sake, call all those systems that
hold to depravity, by the general name Trinitarian, and
those that do not hold to depravity, and the dogmas gen-
erally and logically connected with it, Unitarian. On the
side of the Trinitarians, there is greater logical consist-
ency and completeness of system than there is on the other.
The only thing that essentially modifies the Trinitarian
systems, and furnishes a good ground for a subdivision, is
the view they take of the freedom of the will, -or the answer
they would give to the question, whether man, in his unre-
generate state, is able of himself to will or desire to be born
of the Spirit and become holy. Edwards and Hopkins, for
instance, answer the question in the negative. The Meth-
odists and Lutherans, we believe, answer it in the affirma-
tive. The doctrine of infant damnation, and a few others
that might be named, we do not consider as either included
in or excluded by the Trinitarian theory.


412
[April,
The Unitarian Movement
We would remark here, that by Trinitarianism in this
article we mean exclusively the Trinitarian theology, with-
out any reference to the form of church-government with
which it may happen to be connected, or the degree of
liberty which the different churches may allow their mem-
bers, or the charity they may have for those who do not
belong to them. Hence we include Episcopalians, Presby-
terians, Orthodox Congregationalists, and Roman Catholics.
So too, by Unitarianism we mean the Unitarian theology
exclusively ; for we can see no necessary or logical con-
nexion between this theology, and that liberty of con-
science, that freedom of inquiry, and that liberality of
the construction put upon Christianity, which have charac-
terized the Unitarians in our age, and which have done
more, in our estimation, than the peculiarities of their the-
ology, to give them that degree of success with which their
efforts have been attended. We must request the reader to
bear especially in mind that we speak of the different sys-
tems in the abstract, rather than as they have appeared in
any of their particular manifestations. We by no means
intend that the Orthodox of our New England in this
nineteenth century, shall pocket all the good things that we
shall say of Trinitarianism; much less would we have the
Unitarians suppose that we think that all the hard things
we are compelled in truth to say of their system, are appli-
cable to them. They are better than their system, and,
therefore, we have a hope of them ; while the Orthodox
are worse than theirs, and this, if anything, would lead us
to despair of them.
Unitarianism has made its appearance frequently in the
Church - in Paul of Samosata, Arius, Pelagius, the Wal-
denses, Socinus, and the Polish Unitarians: and in Eng.
land some of her brightest ornaments and best scholars
are now acknowledged to have been Unitarians. Under
Constantine it well nigh gained the ascendency, and in
the succeeding reigns it was for several years the predom-
inant faith. But the general, and perhaps we may say
the uniform, voice of the Church has been against it. Of
course we would not so far beg the question as to include
the Apostolic Age in our assertion. So far, then, as the
Church of Christ is our authority in interpreting the re-
ligion of Christ, that authority is against Unitarianism.


1841.)
413
in New England.
This fact, and we are anxious not to overstate it, is so im-
portant, that we will pause a moment to give it a little more
consideration. Should we regard Christ merely as a teach-
er, — the lowest view that can be taken of him, — and sup-
pose that his spirit has no influence upon his followers, ex-
cept through his doctrines, as that of Plato and Zeno also had;
still the uniform testimony of the body of his followers, who
had professedly made his doctrines their study, and who
had disciplined their lives upon his principles, that such or
such a doctrine was the Christian, and the true one, would
be a very great authority to prove that it is so. This prin-
ciple we recognise, and make use of in our inquiries into
the system of any other founder of a religious sect, or school
in philosophy, and then we regard it as sound and legitimate.
Why is it not as sound and safe in our inquiries into Chris-
tianity, as in our inquiries into Platonism? But if we
take a more spiritual view of Christ, as of a being that
came to communicate himself to his followers ; and consider
how many promises he made to his disciples that he would
be with them always, even unto the end of the world ;
that when two or three were gathered together in his
name, he would be there in the midst of them; how
he promised the Comforter, which is the Spirit of Truth,
which should lead them into all truth ; how the Church is
spoken of by Paul as the body of which Christ is the life,
the soul, — we shall see that there is a reason for regarding
the authority of the Church, when opposed to an individual,
or a comparatively small body of dissenters, which there is
not in the case of Plato and other teachers. This, we are
aware, is going very near to the basis of Episcopacy; but
we ought not to be scared from the truth, by its proximity
to what we in many respects very much dislike. Carry
this view to the extreme point to which it tends, and it will
make no difference to the disciple, whether a doctrine were
uttered by the lips of Jesus Christ in person, or by Christ
living in Paul or John; or finally, by Christ as the life and
soul of the Church. To one who holds this view, the tes-
timony of the Church would be decisive against Unitarian-
ism. But we design to make no use of this argument
any farther than merely to state it.
During the whole of this controversy, it has been main-
tained that the dogmas of the Trinitarian theology were


414
(April,
The Unitarian Movement
corruptions of Christianity, introduced into the popular faith
by the Platonic fathers, in the early ages of the Church.
This position was maintained by an array of arguments,
sufficient to convince any one that could be convinced by
such arguments. It contained the shell of the truth, but
not its substance. It is true that the Trinitarian view of
Christianity was first reduced to dogmatic formulas by these
fathers. It was many years, and required the labors of
many and great geniuses, before the Trinitarian scheme re-
ceived its full development, and an adequate scientific
statement. Theophilus of Antioch, we believe, first intro-
duced the word Trinity, as applied to the Godhead. Clem-
ent of Alexandria uses it once, and then in reference to
Paul's triad, Faith, Hope, and Charity. But at the time of
the Council of Nice the doctrine of the Trinity had received
a pretty definite statement. This scheme is of such a
nature that one needs but to receive one of its points, to be
in the way to embrace the rest; for it is a unity, and each of
its parts implies all the rest. It is a little remarkable that
every writer upon dogmatics, whose name has come down
to us, associated with recollections of any permanent
influence exerted upon or important service done to the
Church, helped, in one way or other, to develope the Trin-
itarian scheme, until it may be said to have received its
completion by the hand of Augustine.
The arguments adduced by the Unitarians prove nothing
more, and from the nature of the case they could prove
no more, than that the Trinitarian scheme received its de-
velopment, systematic arrangement, and scientific state-
ment, from these Platonic Fathers. This, we suppose, every
intelligent Trinitarian will admit. The Unitarians further
maintain, that these Fathers received the substance of
their system from the Platonic Philosophy, while the Trini-
tarians maintain that they derived it from Christianity.
There can be but little if any doubt in the minds of those
acquainted with the writings of Plato, that the Trinitarian
scheme can be made out from them, or at least from prin-
ciples contained in them. Thus far the presumption is in
favor of the Unitarians. But the question then arises,
whether it cannot equally well be made out from the
Christian Scriptures. This the Trinitarians affirm, but
the Unitarians deny it. We waive the question for the
present.


1841.]
415
in New England.
*
But all agree that the Trinitarian scheme received its
development, and was introduced into the Church, by the
friends of the Platonic Philosophy; and this is all that we
had in view in alluding to its origin as a system. Now
Platonism is a spiritual philosophy. It is transcendental,
- it is dynamical. Unitarianism, on the other hand, has
very rarely, so far as we know, been taught or held by any
man of eminence in the church who was a Platonist.
Many adherents, indeed, of the sensuous philosophy have
received the Trinitarian scheme. Indeed this was gene-
rally the case at the commencement of the Unitarian
movement, and this it was, we think, which gave rise to
that movement. Men with a sensuous philosophy, and ma-
terial conceptions of spirit and spiritual things, made but
sorry work in teaching dogmas that were developed, and
could be understood, only by means of a spiritual philoso-
phy. These dogmas, thus taught, became absurdities, and
all persons who had boldness to think for themselves, and
the sagacity to discern these absurdities, were dissatisfied
with what was called Christianity. Out of this dissatis-
faction grew the Unitarian movement. We think we
do not err when we say that the Unitarian theology owes
its reception, more to the fact of its having brought
relief from a theology that was felt to be absurd and
enslaving to the soul, than to any convictions, which it
produced in the minds of men, of its own intrinsic worth.
When the Trinitarian scheme, from a living spirit warm
from the heart, became congealed into dogmas, its in-
congruity with the quickening truths of the gospel, and
with the best instincts of humanity, were strongly felt.
This made it unwelcome to the hearts of men. The
Church, bent on self-preservation, and confident, even be-
yond a doubt, that she was right, resorted to every means
she could, to enforce the reception of her doctrines. She
threatened all the unconverted with eternal torments in the
world to come. She represented every calamity that be-
fel men in this world, as an indication of the displeasure of
God at the stiff-necked generation who would not receive
his statutes. And in proportion to the absurdity and shal-
lowness and self-contradictions of her theology, as her min-
isters taught it, was the necessity for her to watch over the
action of the minds and consciences of her members, lest


416
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error and heresy should creep in. Hence too all free
inquiry must be checked that heresy, might be forestalled.
Hence spiritual despotism.
The authors of the Unitarian movement, dissatisfied with
this state of things, took their stand boldly for freedom and
truth. They probably were too much permeated with the
philosophy of their age, to have much sympathy with the
Platonic Philosophy, through which alone they could come
to such an understanding of Trinitarianism, as to make it
seem intelligible and rational. They therefore associated
with the liberty of conscience and freedom of inquiry, for
which they so manfully contended, the Unitarian theology.
This association, it seems to us, was wholly accidental;
since there is nothing in Unitarianism itself that is more
congenial to free inquiry and liberty of conscience, than
there is in Trinitarianism. While its reformers opposed
the popular theology, which so many disliked, and held
out such promises of freedom and encouragement in all
inquiries after the truth, and of toleration for the opinions
of honest minds, they met with great success. But they
were thus living upon the crumbs that fell from another's
table. They did not live and grow from a principle of
life within themselves. The talk about freedom soon
got to be an old story. The Unitarians had, however, from
the first, insisted upon morality and good works, much more
than was common in any other of the denominations of their
day. This gave them some life of their own, underived from
and independent of any other denomination. But they need,
in order to their success, a quickening and lifegiving the-
ology. Have they got it? This is the question we propose
to discuss.
We have before alluded to the fact, that Unitarianism
had frequently made its appearance in one form or anoth-
er, and had as frequently been repudiated by the general
and constant voice of the Church. This would seem to
indicate that it is inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity.
We have before said that all systems of philosophy may
be divided into two classes, — those which recognise innate
ideas, and those which do not. There can be no other
class. For those who do not believe in innate ideas, there
is but one system of theology logically possible, and that
is Unitarianism. For those who adopt the spiritual philos-


1841.]
417
in New England.
ophy, and hold to innate ideas, there are two systems logi-
cally possible. If one take ideas as his starting point, he
comes to Pantheism. If he start from the fact of sin, he
comes to Trinitarianism. Hence there are and can be but
three systems of theology radically and specifically different
from each other, based upon the idea of one God, — Uni-
tarianism, Pantheism, and Trinitarianism.
If one deny innate ideas, he adopts a system of philoso-
phy that is sensuous, for it traces the origin of all ideas to
the senses; - it is empirical, for it teaches that we can
know nothing except by experience; — and it is mechanical,
for it ascribes to nature a causality different from that of
God. If he have logical consistency in all his opinions
and feelings, he is a Unitarian in his theology, a Whig in
his politics, (if he be a citizen of our own country,) and a
conservative in everything.
When we speak of one's adopting one or another sys-
tem of philosophy, we do not mean to have it understood
that we suppose that one in a hundred of those of whom
we thus speak, has ever studied the different systems of
philosophy, and deliberately chosen between them. Sys-
tems of philosophy are not made as we get up a constitu-
tion for a state or society ; but they are foreordained in the
constitutions of the men who receive them, and in the
state of things in which they appear. One will belong to
the school of philosophy that is most congenial to his
temperament. Hence he may be said to belong to that
school, even if he have never read a book or heard a lec-
ture upon philosophy in his life. But suppose he begins to
study philosophy. He examines the various systems, and
it is certain that he will deliberately adopt that which he
had before unconsciously acquiesced in. He will find it
more true to the facts and experience of his own mind
than any other. He will find that it harmonizes better with
all his thoughts, feelings, and opinions, than any other, and
therefore he will finally adopt it. Although it is very rare
to find one logically consistent in all his opinions, still
there is always a tendency that way, and one advances
with a rapidity proportioned to the free, unbiassed, and
unconstrained activity of his mind. The soul is such a
unity in itself, that it tends with strength and speed pro-
portioned to its vigor and spontaneity, to a unity in all
VOL. 1. — NO. IV.
53


418
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The Unitarian Movement
its opinions. This tendency to unity is an invariable law
of our minds, and of all mind. Its influence is great, —
far greater than the unreflecting suppose. It acts upon our
thoughts and feelings both before they come into conscious-
ness, and when they first come under the influence of the
will, and does much to mould them during the process of
their formation into opinions.
From this consideration of the law of unity, we are often
led to speak of men as holding opinions, which in point of
fact they do not hold, and to classify them with those from
whom they thus apparently disagree. We classify them,
not by the opinions they have adopted from interest, poli-
cy, or authority ; but by those they have adopted from the
free, unbiassed activity of their own minds, and which are
therefore congenial to them. It requires but little sagacity
to discriminate between the two.
The sensuous philosophy recognises no source of ideas
but the senses. These connect the mind with the out-
ward material world, and consequently, since they have no
originating power of their own, they can furnish us with
the ideas of nothing except what is out of them. Now
since there is nothing but material things out there, we can
have no conception of spirit; and since all matter is
limited, we can have no idea of the Infinite, the Eternal;
and finally since there is no source of ideas but the senses,
all our knowledge is empirical, and experience can give us
no idea of the Absolute and the Necessary. Hence it follows
that the Author and Cause of Nature cannot be called In-
finite and Eternal, but only Indefinitely Powerful, Wise,
Good. As we can know no absolute truth, all truths that
we can know are conditional; and the condition upon
which they all depend in the last analysis, is the will of the
First Cause. Hence we can know nothing of our duty and
destiny except by a revelation of His will, made through
some chosen messenger; and this messenger can authenti-
cate his claim to be received in his official capacity, only by
doing what the First Cause alone can do, namely, work mir-
acles. We can then know nothing more of the message,
than that it is the will and the opinion of the Creator.
Hence duty is nothing but the will of God, and truth
is nothing but the opinion of God. Some of the conclu-
sions, that we have now drawn from this sensuous premiss,


1841.]
419
in New England.
will be acknowledged by the disciples of this school, and
some will not; yet all of them will be assumed and implied
in their discourse and writings.
We have thus a God that is not Infinite, but only
Indefinite; whose will is duty and whose opinion is truth,
and for no other assignable reason than because they are
His will and opinion. We get at Him through the material
outlying world, with which our senses acquaint us, and at
abstract truth and duty only through Him. Now as the
senses can bring in ideas of only what is in the material
world, they can bring in nothing but ideas and conceptions
of material things; and as, according to this theory, the
mind in its action upon these ideas and conceptions can add
no new element, our idea of spirit must be material, or,
strictly speaking, we can have no idea of spirit. We only
christen matter in some exceedingly subtle and attenuated
form with that name. Hence spirit, or what this school call
so, is treated in all their thoughts and speculations, as sub-
ject to material formulas and categories. It is treated as
having impenetrability. Hence its relation to number, as
one or more, its relation to time, past, present, and future;
to space, as here or elsewhere, and as being in but one place
at a time. Hence God, who is the living spirit, is only
man purified from sin, and indefinitely enlarged. He yet
sustains, like man, relation to quantity, number, time, and
place. He is therefore called a person, — in a sense in-
volving these relations. Now to say that three persons, one
of whom is like what is above described, are one person in
the same sense of the word that they are three persons, is
an absurdity, - a contradiction in terms. Thus the sensu-
ous philosophy denies the possibility of a Trinity; and,
as men will never find in Revelation what their philosophy,
or their reason, as they usually call it, tells them to be
impossible, one who adopts this philosophy will feel obliged,
especially if he be opposed to mysteries, to interpret every
passage of Scripture which others regard as proving the
Trinity, as proving no such doctrine.
This philosophy, by making the soul a mere tabula rasa,
a mere capacity, denies the possibility of innate depravity
or original sin. It denies all spontaneity of soul. It de-
nies that there is a tendency of any kind, and maintains
that we sin through the influence of bad education, exam-


420
[April,
The Unitarian Movement
my perfect mine this bar
ple, and so forth. Giving, as it does, all the properties of mat-
ter to spirit, such as extension, impenetrability, it denies the
possibility of a common soul. I am one man, one individ-
ual unit. Adam is another, and we can be one in no oth-
er sense than I and my pen are one. The corruption of
his nature can no more affect mine, than it can that of my
pen. My soul is inclosed within this body of mine. It
never saw Adam, had no opportunity to assent to or dissent
from his transgression, and it must therefore be the height
of injustice to punish or disable me in any way for it. I
cannot be answerable for his act, and no more can I
have been created with a tendency or proclivity to sin,
in consequence of his sin. Thus we see that this philoso-
phy denies innate depravity, and consequently we need no
Saviour. Born free and pure, we can, if we will, keep
a righteous law, and all that we need is a teacher of that
law; it will indeed be of great service to us, if he will
set us an example of obedience to it. It is unjust to re-
quire of any individual what he cannot do ; so that even if
one cannot keep a perfect law, he cannot justly be pun-
ished for it. He is justified if he do all that he can.
So too there can be no regeneration. Such a change can
mean nothing more than improvement, the becoming more
pure, more prudent, more industrious, more benevolent,
more honest. It is not a new birth, into a world of new
thoughts, new hopes and feelings, new lights and new life.
It is an improvement in the life, effected by breaking off
bad habits and practices, and cultivating those that are
good and reputable; it is not a thorough purging of the
fountain of life. As there is nothing in the soul except
what has been brought in from some outward, foreign
source, there can be no need of a change more radical
than that effected in what flows from, and is reflected
back into, the outward world by the soul. Now as the
moral character was formed by the influence of education,
example, what is outward to the soul, and to the free
will of the individual, — so it can be changed, — regenera-
tion can be effected, — by the proper change in the exter-
nal influences that environ the individual, and by his resolu-
tions to that purpose. As there is no power or tenden-
cy to evil intrinsic to the soul, behind and controlling the
will, there is no need of any foreign influence. Man can
effect his own regeneration.


1841.)
421
in New England.
Such is the sensuous philosophy, and the theology which
it gives, when applied to the interpretation of divine things.
We do not describe these views as being those held by the
Unitarians in our neighborhood, nor, indeed, as those that
have ever been held by any considerable number of Chris-
tians. Yet such we believe to be the logical deductions
from their premises, and, consequently, the goal towards
which they tend. Such would be the views held by any
who should adopt this system of philosophy in all its logical
consequences and scientific proportions. But this system
is counteracted more or less, probably, in every mind by
the influence of its better nature.
Another simultaneous movement in Christianity is the
Rationalistic, which is Pantheistic, according to our clas-
sification. This movement grew out of the Unitarian
movement. It did not, however, grow out of the Unita-
rian theology ; it is not a carrying out of Unitarianism, for
the two systems have different starting points, and tend in
different directions. Unitarianism and Rationalism are,
however, associated in the present case ; but the association
is, philosophically speaking, purely accidental. We have
before remarked, that the liberty allowed to the individual
conscience, and the encouragement given to free inquiry,
have no necessary connexion with Unitarian theology any
more than with the Trinitarian. Perhaps they have generally
been associated wherever Unitarianism has appeared, under
some of its various names, in the Church. But this is not
attributable to their theology, but rather to the fact, that the
Unitarians have always been, as a sect, inferior both in
point of numbers and general influence, to the other sects
with whom they are compared in these respects. Small, per-
secuted sects are always more tolerant than large and pre-
dominant ones are, except in cases where the small sect
is under the influence of fanaticism. There is, perhaps,
another reason why Unitarians have generally been more
tolerant and liberal than other sects, and that is to be found
in the fact, that, as a general thing, they attach much less
importance to theological opinions than to a moral and
religious life. The connexion between the Unitarian and
the Pantheist in the present case, however, is to be found
in the encouragement which the former gave to freedom of v
inquiry. Had the popular theology, at the commencement


422
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The Unitarian Movement
of the nineteenth century, been Unitarian, instead of being,
as it was, an ossification of Trinitarianism, then the move-
ment which was really made in favor of liberty of conscience
and freedom of inquiry, would have been connected with
the Trinitarian theology, and Trinitarianism would have
sustained the same relation to Pantheism that Unitarianism
now does.
The introduction of Pantheism and Rationalism into our
country was thus. The sensuous philosophy, which had
just before received its best statement, by one of England's
best men and brightest ornaments, John Locke, and which
then almost exclusively prevailed in the schools and in the
reading of the common people, as well as in that of the
learned classes, had laid its iron hand upon nearly or quite
all men. It took from the books that stimulating and nour-
ishing influence which they should have exerted upon the
minds of their readers. It did not quicken men to suffi-
cient mental activity and keenness of insight to make them
perceive its imperfections. Hence the multitude received
it with never a question of its truth. But the more enthu-
siastic and expansive minds felt the pressure severely.
Perhaps they were not able to say what caused their mis-
ery. They were ignorant of the definite object they were
to seek, and the Church forbade any general research, except
on condition that the adventurer should return at last to
rest in her own bosom. Moved by an instinct which she
probably did not understand herself, she greatly preferred to
have none wander in quest of truth and rest, to the strong-
est pledges they could give of their return. The Unitarian
movement disenthralled the minds of men, and bade them
wander wheresoever they might list in search of truth, and
to rest in whatsoever views their own consciences might
approve.
The attention of our students was then called to the lit-
erature of foreign countries. They wished to see how
went the battle against sin and error there. They soon
found a different philosophy in vogue, and one which seemed
to explain the facts of their own experience and observa-
tion more to their satisfaction, than the one they had been
accustomed to meet with in their books. In most cases
the pleasure of the discovery was greatly heightened by the
fact, that these men, in their previous inquiries, had come to


1841.]
423
in New England.
the same or similar conclusions. In some cases they had
been too diffident to express them, while in others the ex-
pression of them had called forth manifest indications of
disapprobation, if not open persecution.
The first fact that fixed the attention of these inquirers
was the recognition of innate ideas, - a source of truth and
spiritual influence hidden in the depths of soul. A fact so
expansive in its nature, and so important in its consequences,
filled the whole of their field of vision. They thus found
that the whole of one side of the soul of man lay open
to the Spiritual and the Ideal. This was the source of
those ideas that are not of earth, earthy, — not of matter,
material, but which transcend the outward world, and are
beyond its power to give, — the ideas of the Infinite, the
Eternal, the Absolute, the Necessary. They thus became
acquainted with entities that have no relation to time, and
place, and condition. They saw that God must be of this
nature, or else they had found a greater than He. They
saw, too, that there were essences that sustain no relation
to quantity and number. Quantity, number, time, place,
all belong to matter, but have no application to the eternal
verities of God. Taking these for their point of depar-
ture, they come to a One, — the Essence of all things, -
eternal, immutable, indivisible, excluding all idea of duality
and plurality, of infinite attributes, and perfect in each,
existing in its wholeness and entirety in each and every
point of space, at any and every moment of time.
Pantheism in philosophy and religion in general is Ra-
tionalism in Christianity. This system is the result arrived
at by all who take eternal and necessary ideas for their
point of departure. By holding to a unity of essence, under-
lying as the basis all the diversities of things existent in
nature, it rejects the doctrine of the Trinity, not like Uni-
tarianism, by denying it, but by making an omni-unity,—not
a three-in-one, but an all-in-one. Christ differs from other
men only in degree, and the miracles he wrought differ
from other men's acts, only as he differs from them. He is
to other religious teachers, to Moses, Zoroaster, Socrates,
Confucius, — what Shakspeare is to other poets, Phidias
to sculptors, or Cuvier to naturalists; his relative superi-
ority indeed being far greater than theirs.
Holding as they do to but one essence of all things,


424
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which essence is God, Pantheists must deny the existence
of essential evil. All evil is negative, - it is imperfection,
non-growth. It is not essential but modal. Of course
there can be no such thing as hereditary sin, - a tendency
positively sinful in the soul. Sin is not a wilful transgres-
sion of a righteous law, but the difficulty and obstruction
which the Infinite meets with in entering into the finite.
Regeneration is nothing but an ingress of God into the soul,
before which sin disappears as darkness before the rising
sun. Pantheists hold also to the atonement, or at-one-ment
between the soul and God. This is strictly a unity or
oneness of essence, to be brought about by the incarnation
of the spirit of God, which is going on in us as we grow in
holiness. As we grow wise, just, and pure, — in a word,
holy, — we grow to be one with Him in mode, as we al-
ways were in essence. This atonement is effected by Christ,
only in as far as he taught the manner in which it was to
be accomplished more fully than any other, and gave us a
better illustration of the method and result in his own per-
son than any one else that has ever lived.
Such is the theology which those who believe in innate
ideas arrive at, if they take those ideas as their point of
departure. This system, as well as the Unitarian, and, in-
deed, almost all systems, appears naked and lifeless in a sci-
entific statement. As systems, they have but little, if any,
power.
The introduction of a spiritual philosophy into our com-
munity was, however, an incalculable good. The move-
ment of Unitarians in favor of freedom and toleration had
prepared a field for it. Their theology was a comparatively
unimportant affair, and we think is destined to give place
to another gradually, and perhaps imperceptibly to all ex-
cept the closest observers. This will take place so soon as
the object upon which their attention was at first mainly
fixed, namely, freedom and toleration, shall have been
made so secure as to allow their best minds to direct the
full activity of their energies to this matter. We predict that
the Unitarians of New England will be known in church his-
tory, not so much as reformers in theology, as in the char-
acter of champions for the rights of the soul, and advo-
cates of investigation and progress. They prepared the
way for the introduction of a better philosophy; which in


1841.]
425
in New England.
its turn will, if we mistake not, introduce a better theolo-
gy. So soon as familiarity with the spiritual philosophy
will allow all of its parts to assume their just proportions in
their minds, the theologians will take sin, which seems to
be one of the most prominent and obvious facts in the
universe, as their point of departure ; and then, relying upon
the law of unity, which rules all minds to some extent, we
predict Trinitarianism as the result.
The one object and aim, in which all theological systems
and all religious culture centre, is the extermination of
evil, — the great fact that everywhere stares us in the face,
when we look abroad upon the world. It is natural, there-
fore, to ask in the outset, what is evil ? To this question
each of the three theological systems gives an answer,
so different from those of the other two, as to mod-
ify every other part of its system, and the measures and
efforts to which it tends. We have already said that
the peculiarity of the Trinitarian system is, that it takes
the spiritual philosophy as its guide and interpreter, and
the fact of evil or sin as its point of departure. To get
rid of evil is the problem ; it is therefore necessary to a
right solution, that one should have a definite notion of
what evil is, — and one that is correct too; at least it must be
correct so far as the purposes of this problem are con-
cerned. The development of the Trinitarian theory should
therefore be preceded by a disquisition upon the nature of
evil. This theory assumes it to be something positive. A
question might be raised between the Trinitarian and the
Pantheist, in which the Unitarian can have no part or in-
terest, whether evil be essential or modal. But the answer
has no bearing upon our present purpose. The Pantheist,
by acknowledging but one essence of all things, must
necessarily make that one essence homogeneous and good;
and by ascribing, as he necessarily does, all causality to
that one essence, which is God, he must deny not only
that evil is essential, and this the Trinitarian may concede,
but he must also deny that it is positive, which it must be
to be causal. This the Trinitarian must maintain, and
here join issue with the Pantheist. We do not propose to
argue this question here. With the Pantheist evil is nega-
tive, like cold and dark ; being negative, — nothing, it
can do nothing, it can make no resistance to good, and it
VOL. I. — NO. IV. 54


426
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The Unitarian Movement
cannot influence the will and lead man to sin. Good can act
upon the will. Love, Justice, Truth influence the will,
and move us to do good. There is the day and the warm
summer of life. When they cease to act there is sin, the
winter of life, in which nothing can grow, the night with-
out aurora or stars, in which no beauty can be seen. The
Trinitarian says that evil is as causal as good. When
good is absent the mind is not left vacant; the will is not left
uninfluenced, but evil is present with us. Hate, for in-
stance, is as influential upon the will to lead us to sin, as
love is to lead us to good. You may say, if you please,
that hate and love are essentially one and the same, differ-
ent only in form. This is quite possible and even proba-
ble. The position has much, which if not decisive, is very
weighty, in its favor. Thus it is impossible for one to hate
that which under other circumstances he could not love;
and the bitterness of one's hate is measured by the ardor
with which he would love that same object or person under
other circumstances. These considerations go far to show
that hate and love are only different forms of the same es-
sential feeling. Hate is only inverted love. Still, if it be
so, the Trinitarian will maintain, this inversion takes place
in the feeling before it comes into the consciousness, and
consequently before it comes under the influence of the
will; so that in relation to our actions, — our outward moral
character, it is the same as though hate were in its essence
different from love. Self-love, hate, lust, arise from those
unexplored depths where the light of consciousness never
shone, and where the influence of the will never extended.
They come up behind the will, like an enemy from the
dark, and force it into their service. You may explain the
nature of these enemies as you please, their extensive con-
trol over the will is as certain as any fact of psychology.
These three views of evil can now be seen at a glance.
The Unitarian denies that there is any such region from
which influences, good or bad, may come up behind con-
sciousness and the will. All actions, good and bad, issue
from the will, and originate in the consciousness. One
wills to love, and thereupon he loves. One wishes to weep,
or repent and love God; he sets himself about it, and
grief, repentance, and love to God ensue. Hence men are
born free from sin, and the will is unbiassed and uncon-


1841.)
427
in New England.
strained in its choice of good or evil. The other two sys-
tems maintain that freewill is not the only source of in-
fluence, nor the only agent in forining the character. Its
warp is spun and laid by God himself, and the woof only
is the work of freewill. They agree in acknowledging a
backdoor to the soul, through which messengers may
come and go unperceived. The Pantheist says that through
this door God sends his angels on messages of holy influ-
ence. Thereby enter love, hope, faith, truth. But the
Trinitarian says that the Devil has discovered this private
entrance, and comes in also with his foul and pestilential
breath, bringing with bin the servants of hell, — death, fear,
envy, hate, lust, self-love, and all the train of ills that des-
olate the earth. In short, the Unitarian says that every
act originates in freedom and from the will. The other
two systems acknowledge the agency and influence of the
will, but hold also to an influence exerted upon it, which
originates behind consciousness, and biasses, and in some
cases entirely controls the will. The Pantheist holds that
these influences are good, and good only, while the Trini-
tarian holds that they are both good and evil. With the
Unitarian, holiness consists in choosing the good ; with the
Pantheist it consists in submitting the will wholly and en-
tirely to these divine influences. But the Trinitarian holds
with the Unitarian, that holiness consists in choosing the
good; and with the Pantheist, that it requires submission of
the will wholly to the good influences, both of which man can
do of himself; - and still further he holds, that it implies not
only a resistance to the evil influences, but it also implies a
freedom from them. This frecdom man cannot of himself
effect. This is the work of Christ. The Holy Spirit may
enter to lead us unto Christ, for no one can so much as call
Jesus Lord, but by the Iloly Spirit; and none can come to
the Father but through the Son. “If,” says the Trinitarian,
“ we can always choose the good, — which is all that the
Unitarian scheme requires, and if we can always sub-
mit ourselves to the Holy Spirit, - which is all that Pan-
theism requires, - still the work is not done. We inay
have obeyed the law, and we may not have resisted the
Holy Spirit ; but we are not beyond temptation ; we are
not beyond the possibility of sinning. Though we may so
choose, and so control our words and actions, that we never


428
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The Unitarian Movement
do or say anything that is not kind and benevolent, still we
find it quite beyond our power to keep ourselves wholly
from feelings, which, unresisted, would lead us to be un-
kind and selfish. There will still be a fountain of evil
within us; and, although we may possibly dam the current
that flows from it, so that nothing wrong shall appear in our
conduct, we can never remove the fountain itself. But
this must be done; else our wills must run counter to the
will of God, and we cannot be at one with Him."
Such is the Trinitarian view of evil. It is not our ob-
ject here to prove it either true or false. We only
seek to know what it is, that so we may have the point
from which they take their departure, — the stand-point
from which their system may be fairly seen and rightly un-
derstood. The fact,, that there is this current setting to-
wards evil in the human heart, — that every one is born into
the world with a fountain of sin and corruption welling up
in his soul, and to all appearance forming a part of it, is
all that is necessary to the Trinitarian scheme. Other
questions arise, and will be differently answered by differ-
ent persons. But the discussion of these questions belongs
to another place. The spiritual philosophy, by removing
the enclosures that sunder soul from soul, and make a com-
mon humanity impossible, removes the difficulty lying in the
way of the doctrine, that this common humanity, which is
the basis and substratum of all individual souls, might bave
been not only represented by, but actually and substantial-
ly, embodied in Adam; and that as our bodies were formed
from his and partook of the diseases that were in it, so
also our souls are formed of the essence of his. On this
supposition, the corruption he introduced into his soul
by transgression was introduced into all humanity, and in
so far as each of us partakes of humanity we partake of
this corruption. Divisions and enclosures which make many
of one belong to matter. Spirit knows them not. Hence
there is no presumption against the Adamic theory of the
origin of sin. But the universal prevalence of sinful prac-
tices among the children of men seems to indicate a
cause coextensive with the effect. A cause that resides
in all men must reside in that which is common to them
all. This is what we call humanity or human nature. It
cannot reside in the freewill, for in that case its manifes-


1841.)
429
in New
England.
tation would be contingent. For if all men are unbiassed and
free to do or not to do a thing, we cannot suppose that all,
without a single exception, would do it. If then all men
commit sin, the inference is, that there is a tendency spon-
taneously active in every soul, - a tendency behind the
will and prior to its activity. If it be not in the soul at the
soul's birth, then it is born in the soul afterwards, and
in either case we are entitled to call it innate depravity. It
is not necessarily total, nor is it equal in all individuals. Its
extent is to be ascertained by an examination of each in-
dividual case.
Now as this sinful nature is situated in the soul, behind
the will, and must pass through, be augmented, restrained,
or modified by the will on its way into activity, it is
beyond the power of man to remove it. There must be
some supernatural aid. This aid is found in Christ. Christ
therefore cannot be a mere man. What then is he? He
that made human nature can change it, and he only. This
change is as much an act of supernatural agency as crea- ,
tion. Christ appeared in the world exercising the same
power over material nature that was exercised over it
at its creation. To call a dead man back into life is an
act akin in its nature to the calling of the soul into a
new body. So Christ's influence upon the soul is like to
that of its creation. Was Christ then divine, one with
God? We will not ask if he be equal with God, for that
would imply a diversity of essence. But was he one with
God, the same in essence and in power ?
We have seen that the spiritual philosophy, by denying
a human personality to God, removes all antecedent
objection to this doctrine. To deny the personality of
God, is to deny that He, being a spirit, sustains any rela-
tion to quantity, number, time, or space. It is not to deny.
that God is a free, self-determining, intelligent, self-con-
scious agent. God is one and not many. He is a unity,
which is in its very nature indivisible. He is spirit. Now
spirit, even in the chemical sense of the word, from which
it is not unlikely that the other sense is derived, is not
spoken of as subject to the relations of number. We
speak of two bodies of water, two quantities of oxygen;
but never of two waters or two oxygens. The names of
fluids admit of no plural in grammar. There may be


430
[April,
The Unitarian Movement
many quantities or bodies, but not two fluids of the same
kind. Now take away from a fluid, water, for instance,
its extension, which is purely a property of matter, and
you will destroy its relation to quantity, more and less.
It then escapes our power of conception, but does not
therefore become nothing. We have an idea of it still.
By the same process it loses its relation to place. We can
predicate things of it which we could not before. Thus I
say of my blood, which sustains no relation to number,
that it is in my hand, in my foot, and in my head, at one
and the same time. Take away its extension, out of which
grow its relations to quantity and place, and I should mean
by it, as I cannot now, all of it, because in that case it
would be indivisible, and I should never have an idea of a
part in contradistinction from the whole. I should say
that it, in its perfect unbroken wholeness and entirety, was
in my hand, in my foot, and in my head, at one and the
same time. Now it is said of Christ, that the fulness of
the Godhead dwelt in him bodily, and if he had nothing
in his nature heterogeneous to the divine nature, — nothing
but sin is so, - then we may say of him that he is God.
But unity is indivisible. While God is in his fulness and
perfectness in Christ, he is not therefore absent from any
other part or point of the universe. But, as in Christ there
was no sin nor imperfection, but pure, free, unobstructed
divinity, and as the divine unity is incapable of division or
plurality, so he was very God. As it is one thing to create
us, and another to guide us and lead us to Christ, through
whom we have salvation and “justification from all that
from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses,"
or any other law, so a third agent is found necessary to
guide us and lead us to Christ. This is called the Holy
Spirit. Hence a Trinity. The influence of the Holy
Spirit is general, anterior to, and in a sense independent
of, the will. It leads us to Christ. The influence of Christ
is special, and contingent upon the election of the individ-
ual will subject to the influence.
The necessity for regeneration grows out of the fact of
a sinful nature, as the common ground and cause of sinful
actions. The sin that men commit indicates a sinful na-
ture, as clearly as the poetry they write indicates a poetic
nature. The only way to make men secure against com-


1841.)
431
in New England.
mitting more sin, is to purge them from this sinful nature.
Hence regeneration, to be complete and adequate to the
necessity of the case, must be a change of nature, a radi-
cal change, though not necessarily a total one. Man must
come to love God and his neighbor instead of the world
and bimself. His love which proceeds not from the will,
but from a nature behind the will, must be changed. This
must be done by a supernatural agent.
Being thus led by the Spirit of God to Christ, that we
may have righteousness and holiness through him, we cease
(gradually) to be influenced by those passions and appe-
tites which had before led us to commit sin. We cease to
live, and Christ liveth in us; so that we are saved not by
our own righteousness, but by the righteousness of Christ
living in us. We are justified by his faith. He by taking
our nature upon him, and living in us, has fulfilled for us
all righteousness, and wrought our salvation and accept-
ance with God, not out of us, but within us. Being purg-
ed from sin by him, we are brought to be one with the
Father, even as he was one with him, and the atonement
is made.
This, we believe, is a development of all the essential
points of Trinitarianism, from sin as a point of depart-
ure, and the spiritual philosophy as the interpreter. We
have entered thus into an examination of the three systems,
to find data for a calculation of what is to be. Unitarian-
ism, having often come up in the church, and been repu-
diated by it, is found to be contained in Trinitarianism.
We regard it as the result of an attempt to explain Christ-
ianity by the sensual philosophy, instigated by a desire to
get rid of mystery, and make everything clear and simple.
If this philosophy is not true to psychology, then its inter-
pretations of Christianity are wrong, and the soul is against
them, and will finally triumph. We cannot enter into a
general discussion of Unitarianism in a psychological view.
Paul speaks of a “spiritual discernment” of things, which
cannot well be a function of any one of the five senses.
What is communion with the Holy Spirit? talking to
him ? or intercourse with him ? Whence come the joy
and peace in believing? through the five senses, or any
one of them ? By what avenue is that “manifestation of
the Spirit given to every man to profit with,” made, the


432
April,
The Unitarian Movement
eye, or the ear? We might put many other like questions,
and should perhaps put them, if it would not seem to im-
ply that we supposed Unitarians among us do actually
adopt the system in all of its details. But let it be under-
stood that we speak of Unitarianism as a theory, and not
of the views that one and another man or any body of
men actually hold. This is also true of what we have
said of other systems. Probably no person holds either of
them in all of its logical connexions, and unmingled with
the others. Still the theory to which a man's leading
views belong exerts a great influence over the success of
L
his efforts, through the domineering influence of the love
eon sen hammence and
of unity. He, who says anything that does not grow out
of his theory, finds his efforts comparatively powerless.
The fates seem to be against him. His inconsistency is
felt by, and influences many, who cannot tell what has af-
fected them.
The fact, that Pantheism has so seldom appeared and
made so little figure in the church, leaves us but slight
room to expect that it will or can prevail to any extent.
It is congenial as a system only to minds that are of a rare
and peculiar cast. It has but little to recommend it, and
promote its introduction to popular favor and reception, ex-
cept its own intrinsic merits. Creative geniuses, who are
always inclined to this view of things, are very rare, and
seldom or never have any taste for systems as such. Com-
mon minds will materialize it, and then it becomes Athe-
ism. The Pantheistic views of prayer and religious duty
are too refined for the uneducated laboring classes, and too
subtle and evanescent for the matter-of-fact business men,
- the merchants, physicians, and lawyers. We speak, of
course, generally; being well aware of the many excep-
tions to what we say. We know, too, that there is much
in the system, which, when stated in glowing poetic lan-
guage is very inspiring to the reader or hearer. Still we
cannot think it possible that it should ever be the popular
faith. It does not declare itself to be essential to the sal-
vation of men's souls; and a system that does not do this
with some show of plausibility, will receive but little atten-
tion from this busy self-seeking age. It says sin is an im-
perfection or non-growth; and if it is no more than this,
men will not feel that it is a very bad thing after all. It


1841.]
433
in New England.
can never make them more unhappy than it does now ; and
if all other causes of unhappiness were removed, they
think they should be about as happy as they desire. This
reasoning, we admit, is purely selfish ; but if we mistake
not, it is such as men will adopt. There will always be a
few to whom Pantheism will be congenial, and who, while
the popular theology may be what it now is, will advocate
it. But it seems to us that it can never prevail.
The question then is between Unitarianism and Trinita-
rianism. We incline to give a verdict for the latter. But
let it be borne in mind, that by Trinitarianism we do not
understand the doctrines and practices of the Orthodox
Church, as that Church now is. The Orthodox Church, in
order to succeed, or even sustain itself, must allow greater
liberty to individual conscience, and encourage greater
freedom of inquiry than heretofore ; and finally, which is
more than all the rest, it must apply the spiritual philoso-
phy, as some of its members are beginning to do, to the
interpretation and explanation of its dogmas. Else these
are a mass of absurdity and contradiction; and the prop
upon which they have hitherto rested, — textual authority,
- is fast falling away. A few years ago it was enough to
quote a few texts from any part of the Bible indiscrimin-
ately, which had been so explained as to tell in favor of a
position, and however inconsistent or absurd that position
might be, the objector was silenced by the declaration that
it was a sin to question the word of God, — to put carnal
reason above revelation. No intelligent Orthodox man
would do so now. In a controversy, instead of wholesale
quotations from Scripture, as in the case of Stuart's reply
to Channing, he would attempt to show the reasonableness
and consistency of his doctrine. The appeal would not
be to the letter of Scripture, but to reason and common
sense. The Orthodox must prepare themselves for this
trial, both in respect to their doctrines and church-disci-
pline. Their discipline must be reasonable and Christian.
Their doctrines they must explain and interpret by a higher
philosophy than they have generally done. Will they do
this? We cannot answer for them. We hope they will.
If not, the vineyard will be taken from them and given to
other servants, who will render its fruits in due season.
It is not an easy matter to speak of the prospects of the
VOL. I. — NO. IV.
55


434
[April,
The Unitarian Movement
Unitarian body as it exists now amongst us. They have,
in several respects, incalculable advantages over Trinitari-
ans. They have taken the position of reformers; and they
have effected a glorious reform in church-government, and
in the management of ecclesiastical affairs. They have
made a great movement too in favor of freedom of inquiry,
and thoroughness and fearlessness of investigation; and
now, like the witch of Endor, they seem terrified at the
spirit they have called up. This would seem to indicate
that the movement in favor of freedom and liberality was
not the offspring of pure, disinterested love of truth and
principle. They were oppressed by the existent state of
things, and sought a better. There was nothing radical
intended in the movement. It was made from conven-
ience, rather than from a clear insight into, and a disinter-
ested love of, first principles. What was their watchword ?
What spell would most move the souls of their hearers and
readers? The Divine Unity ? The Humanity of Christ?
or any one of their theological doctrines ? No; but liberty
to the individual conscience, freedom of inquiry, and the
encouragement of sound morality and good works. Now
the encouragement of sound morality and good works is
not the exclusive property of Unitarianism. It belongs
equally to the various Trinitarian systems. Nay, it comes
with more force and effect from them than from the Unita-
rians. But of what value are liberty of conscience and
freedom for inquiring minds, as ends? Of none whatev-
er. They are privileges and conditions by which we may
do something; and as such they are invaluable. But un-
less we have something to do, and intend to do it too, they
are worth nothing. We should therefore have much more
hope of the ultimate success of those engaged in this
movement, if they had made a distinct statement of the
thing they intended to do, and in all their efforts for free-
dom and liberality, regarded them as only the means to
some ulterior end, upon which they were intent. This
would have given them greater earnestness and zeal. It
would have called a more effective class of minds to their
service. It would have awakened a greater enthusiasm in
the congregations they address. The mass of the people
felt none of those evils of which they complained, and by
which they were moved to attempt a reformation. These


1841.]
435
in New England.
evils were felt by only a comparatively small and peculiar-
ly situated class; and they only responded to the call.
Hence the fact, that may be seen in almost any country
village, where there is a Unitarian society, that the most
wealthy, the most refined, the most highly educated, ac-
cording to the standards of this world, belong, as a general
thing, to that communion.
This fact, so far from being a source of encouragement,
as it is generally considered, appears to us to be a source
of discouragement. These same persons, of whom the
boast is made, are not the class most given to religious en-
thusiasm. They are good, exemplary, well-meaning men;
they are very benevolent and liberal in their contributions
for the support of public worship, or of any other public
good. But they are not the stuff that reformers are made
of. We certainly would not accuse them of a want of
feeling; but we would say that they are cool, deliberate,
sound, practical men; nowise inclined to fanaticism. Now
any religious movement, whether in the Church or out of
it, from Moses until to-day, has owed its success mainly to
something, which, if it be not fanaticism itself, has been so
very like to it, that it has been called by that name by all
contemporaries who did not sympathize with it. Now we
say that these men, who form the body and substance of
the Unitarian denomination, honest, respectable, useful,
and worthy men as they are, are precisely the class that
have always been found least inclined to devote themselves
and all they have, so entirely and so unreservedly to the
promotion of any social or religious reform, as is necessary
to secure its success and triumph. These men then will
not do the work. Will they countenance and support
others in doing it? We hardly think they will. They
have no taste for that particular kind of zeal and earnest-
ness, that the cause requires. They will find fault, as in
some cases it has already happened, that the preacher is a:
little too orthodox, when he approaches the orthodox only
in point of zeal and earnestness.
The Unitarians, dissatisfied with the absurdities and
contradictions in the popular faith, which were dignified
and protected by the sacred name of mysteries, endeavored
to make their system simple and intelligible to all. We
cannot but think that in this they have gone a little too far.


436
[April,
The Unitarian Movement
If religion be nothing more than a statement of a man's du-
ties to God, himself, and his neighbor, then clearly there
can be no mysteries in it; and we may say with Foster,
" that where mystery begins religion ends.” Many minds
may be satisfied with such a religion, but we hardly believe
that they were intended for guides and teachers to the
people. If so, many in every congregation will know more
than their teachers. They will see things that are myste-
ries, and of which such a preacher can give no satisfactory
solution. Perhaps he cannot even see the difficulty at all.
If he deny that it is any part of religion to enlighten men
upon such points, then the inquirers will feel that there
must be a something above religion. A religion that is
perfectly plain, and clear, and intelligible, will not satisfy
such souls; and they have but little sympathy for or
interest in a sect that does not, as they are obliged to do,
bow itself in humble reverence before the inexplicable.
They have no confidence in the solutions given by those
who see no mysteries nor difficulties, until they are pointed
out to them by somebody else. They see that Unitarians
make Christianity too plain, — plainer than from the very
nature of the case it can possibly be; and they feel that
this must be done by overlooking or denying the great facts
which are either to be explained or believed as mysteries.
Now it happens that this is precisely the class of minds
that have most of the Promethean fire, and that are the most
efficient as writers and speakers. Such men, if they are
now engaged in the Unitarian movement at all, as doubt-
less many of them are, are so not from a love of their the-
ology, but because they consider it the cause of freedom
and humanity.
There is, moreover, a degree of religious experience that
Unitarianism fails to satisfy. We will not say how genuine
it may be; we only refer to the fact that it exists, and that
too to a great extent. How common is the remark made
by Trinitarians, that they hear from the Unitarians good
moral essays, splendid literary performances, but no Chris-
tianity, no religion. In other words, the preaching of
Unitarians does not satisfy their religious feelings and ex-
perience. These feelings may all be morbid and extrava-
gant; but they exist, and oppose the progress of Unitari-
anism. The most ardent and enthusiastic, so long as they


1841.
437
in
in New England.
the state in
lave no wants tches, and are
feel no particular interest in religion, except as a promoter
of good morals, and as a means of keeping the state in
order, go to the Unitarian churches, and are satisfied for a
while. They have no wants that are not satisfied, no feel-
ings that are not met. While they are in this state there
is much to attach them to this denomination. But no
sooner are their religious feelings excited, than they go to
their church hungering and thirsting for the bread of life,
and receive the cold injunction, “ go and be fed.” They
go; and some one else feeds them, and gathers them into
his fold. There is usually a reaction in favor of the Unita-
rians, after the excitement is over. But the Trinitarians
prosper when religious feeling is the highest; and the
Unitarians after the excitement is passed. In such case,
action and reaction are never equal in their final results.
Such things are, and always have been, in the church. It
does not answer the purpose to call them extravagant and
mad, or to apply to them any other opprobrious epithet.
The church should be the nursing mother to such spirits,
and, even if it does not approve of such tumultuous out-
breakings of the religious feelings, it must treat those sub-
ject to them with tenderness and respect, and show them
that within her ample folds there is room enough for every
variety and manifestation of the spirit.
To these discouragements we must add another, and we
hardly know by what name to designate it. Perhaps it
might be said that Unitarianism is too intellectual, too ar-
gumentative and explanatory; that it addresses itself too
much to the intellect. It preaches good morals, it labors
hard upon the evidences. We believe that a very great
portion of the printed sermons of that denomination con-
sists of attempts to prove what other denominations wisely
take for granted, or to explain what others believe without
an attempt to explain. Thus, while Unitarians are labor-
ing to build up the faith, they are unconsciously pandering
to the spirit of infidelity. They are explaining away what
the infidels object to; or at least trying to see if they can-
not interpret Christianity, so that the objectors will consent
to receive it. They are attempting to convince doubters
by arguments that must fall powerless upon the doubting
mind. They are trying to make Christianity intelligible to
the unregenerate, while they seem to have forgotten that


438
[April,
The Unitarian Movement
“ the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he
know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” We
cannot but think that it is a wiser and more successful
course, even when the object is to prove a doctrine to be
true, to assume it in the outset to be true, and by
treating it as true beyond a doubt, produce the feeling that
it is so in the hearts of those who listen. One will con-
vince an audience of doubters of the existence of God,
much quicker, and produce a much more permanent con-
viction, by awakening their feelings, so that they shall feel
him stirring and moving in their inmost hearts, than he can
by the most logical and best constructed argument coldly
addressed to the understanding. A preacher will much
sooner bring his hearers to an understanding of Christiani-
ty, by assuming it to be true, and then proceeding to urge
upon them the repentance and religious discipline it re-
quires, than he will by making use of the most ingenious
explanations and the most happy and striking illustrations.
The last discouraging circumstance that we will mention,
and by far the greatest, is one of those we brought against
Pantheism ; namely, that it does not declare itself to be
necessary to the salvation of man. Systems, like men,
must convince the world of their own importance, or they
will be neglected. If the Unitarian preacher tells his con-
gregation that regeneration and a religious life are neces-
sary to salvation, the system that he adopts contradicts him
while he is saying so. Sin, it says, is a mistake, tremen-
dous in its consequences, but it can be avoided by more
light and a firmer resolution. This is quite a different
thing from telling one's hearers that they have the poison
in the very essence of their souls; and that, unless it be
washed out by some supernatural aid, they are forever lost.
The Unitarian would convince us that our deeds are
wrong. But we do not believe that any one ever became
truly religious, without having felt, not only that his deeds
were wrong, but that he, in his self-most self, was wrong;
that he needed not only to do better, but to be made bet-
ter. If so, then the doctrine of depravity is one that is
found in the course of religious experience to be a most
solemn and humiliating truth. We need not call it total
depravity. Neither need it be so preached, as to discour-


1841.]
439
in New England.
age effort, or make one despair of salvation. But we do
think that it must be felt to be true, before one can be
truly a Christian. We have not the least doubt that it has
been felt to be true, by the great mass of those who are
now members of Unitarian churches. Yet if one were to
ask them if they believed in the doctrine of depravity, they
would say no; and truly; for they would have in their
minds not the true doctrine, but the exaggerated view of
it held forth by the popular Orthodox theology. If then
this doctrine has been felt to be true by the most religious
of the denomination, why should they not receive it into
their theology, and profess to the world that they believe
it ? We think they will; but at present they are, as they
have hitherto been, prevented, in a great measure, no
doubt, by certain speculative difficulties connected with it.
You may tell people, if you please, how beautiful or
pleasant a thing it is to attend public worship, and lead a
pure and religious life. But if the present pleasure of the
thing is all that you can advance in its favor, we fear you
will find people too intent upon other pleasures to give you
much attention. You must make them feel that it is
necessary; and we do not see how this can be done, with-
out convincing them that there is a depravity of soul, of
which all partake, and from which they cannot free them-
selves, but from which they must be washed, or there is no
salvation for them. This depravity needs not to be represent-
ed as a failure or thwarting of the divine purposes. Who
can tell but what God designed it and introduced it into
human nature, as a means of bringing it to a greater glory
and happiness than it could otherwise be brought to; and
provided in Christ a remedy from all eternity for this evil?
In this case, the goodness of God is left untarnished ; the
heart is none the less humbled, and the dignity of human
nature remains the same inspiring theme that it has ever
been. But without a belief in depravity, you may con-
vince people that religion is a good thing, and a pleasant
thing, but you cannot convince them that it is necessary.
Throw away this doctrine, and you throw away what gives
the weight to your blow, — the momentum to your mo-
tion.
Unitarianism is sound, sober, good sense. But the mo-
ment a preacher rises to eloquence he rises out of his sys-


440
[April,
The Unitarian Movement
tem. What topics are there that belong to this system
peculiarly, which are inspiring? Is there any one doctrine
that is peculiar to Unitarian theology, and which serves to
distinguish it from that of other denominations, which
makes a man eloquent? Or rather does not each depend
upon him for eloquence, to make it interesting and accep-
table? Now a sector party that would succeed, must
have a leading and distinguishing idea that is inspir-
ing, that gives eloquence, - a mouth and wisdom which
no adversaries can either gainsay or resist. We say now
that whatever inspiring topics the Unitarians have in their
theology, they have in common with the Trinitarian de-
nominations. The Universalists have the love of God, as
shown in the final salvation of all men ; the Orthodox have
the depravity of man, and his salvation through Christ; but
we look in vain for anything that the Unitarians have that
can give eloquence, which other denominations have not
also. Does one refer to the unity of God? Do not
Trinitarians hold to it too? Besides, it is a truth that has
but little to do with practical life, or the welfare of men.
We have spoken freely of the prospects of Unitarianism
in the church. We are aware that we have represented
these difficulties to be greater than they really are, as they
exist among us. We repeat again, for we are anxious not
to be misunderstood, that we have aimed to speak of Uni-
tarianism and Unitarians in general, rather than of the
particular Unitarians that live here in our midst, in New
England. For them we have the bighest respect; and we
think we appreciate their labors and efforts as highly as
any one can well do. Still we think their theology imper-
fect and inefficient. We think that in its principles and
logical tendency, it is allied to the most barren of all sys-
tems. But we do not well see how, under all the circum-
stances of the case, it could have been much different. If
we were situated as the pioneers in this movement were,
and left to choose the course that we would pursue, we are
not sure that we should have chosen a different one. We
should have spoken loudly for freedom, and against the
abuses and absurdities of the church, and of the popular
theology. This we esteem a fair beginning; and now,
having secured those ends, and cleared a way for our own
theology, we would propose it and introduce it. The


1841.]
441
in New England.
theological views and the style of preaching of the Unita-
rian body among us, have changed very perceptibly within
a few years. We think they will change more in as many
years to come. No denomination stands on so good ground
as it does. Free from creeds, free from church censure
for heresy, professing a toleration for any opinion honestly
held by any upright and conscientious man, and encourag-
ing freedom of thought and inquiry, there is no measure
of success too great to be hoped for its members, if they
will adopt theological views that are lifegiving and spiritu-
al, — if they will make their theology as good as, or rath-
er the expression and statement of, their religious experi-
ence. It is much easier for them to do this, than for the
Orthodox to breathe life into their dead formulas, and
adopt that liberality and freedom without which no denom-
ination can flourish in our age and country.
Perhaps what we expect is nothing more than would be
popularly represented by saying, that the Unitarians must
become more zealous and more deeply religious in their
public teaching; that they must insist more upon the re-
ligious life; that they must preach from a deeper religious
experience. This indeed would be a representation of the
outer phase of the change we look for. But we are now
seeking for the inner phase, — the change that takes place
inwardly and not its outward appearance. We say then
that they must have a deeper religious experience; or if
they now have it, as we believe they have, they must allow
it to have its legitimate influence upon their preaching and
theology. This will effect the change we expect. And
this surely will produce an approach towards the Trinita-
rianism we have described. Depravity, the Divinity of
Christ, the Influence of the Holy Spirit, Election, Justifi-
cation by Faith, will be facts of the religious life; not
dogmas to be enforced upon the belief of the hearer, but
the spontaneous and natural expressions of one's own ex-
perience.
While then we confidently expect this change in the
theology of the Unitarians, we do not expect a return to
scholastic or doctrinal preaching. The religious life, not
the moral one, and the sanctification of the soul, will be
the great topics dwelt upon. But these cannot be preach-
VOL. I. — NO. IV. 56


442
[April,
The Unitarian Movement, &c.
ed with much force without a recognition of the fact of
depravity. Exhortation, without this, will be powerless.
It is a fact of conscious experience. There may be, here
and there, one so pure by nature as not to feel himself
very depraved; but most people, we think, will recognise
the truthfulness of the doctrine of depravity, when it is
fairly stated. When this is admitted, all the rest follows,
not as doctrine and science, but as life; not as something
that the preacher is to insist upon, but as something that
he may permit the members of his flock to say.
This system can, and probably will, embrace all that is
good in the other two. It will embrace enough of Pan-
theism to recognise the presence and agency of God eve-
rywhere, - to take a lifeless nature from between God
and the soul, and lay it open to his influences. It will
also include all that is valuable in Unitarianism, properly so
called, — the divine unity unbroken, the dignity of human
nature, the example and sympathy of Jesus Christ, and a scru-
pulous attention to the outward life. Minds of all classes
will then find themselves at home in the church. They will
then find their duties explained and enforced, their hopes en-
couraged, their feelings interpreted and sympathized with,
and their feeble aspirations directed to their proper object.
Then will the divine idea of Christ be realized, and there
will be founded upon him a church that shall be indeed a
mother to the souls of men. No radical shall be so latitu-
dinarian, as not to find the church broader than his most
far-reaching thought;— no genius so aspiring, but it shall
find the church lofty enough for all the creations of his
fancy, and even towering with height on height far beyond
them;-- and no saint shall be so pious but that the church
shall be more pious still.
But it will need great souls to be pillars in such an edi.
fice; greater, we fear, than will find themselves at home
or welcome in this unpropitious age. We would not com-
plain of the age; but we must concede to those that do
so, that it is not the mother of giants. The philosophy,
the theology, the literature of an age, are the exponents
of the greatness of the soul in that age, and of its general
culture. Men may get together, calling themselves the heads
of the church, and say such and such was the theology of
the church in some palmy period, and therefore it shall be


1841.)
443
Dream.
now. But it is all in vain. Nothing real is ever thus effected
by main force. Changes in the church and society come
not of the flesh, neither by the will of man, but by the
will of God. Let some General Assembly, or Convocation
of the Clergy, resolve to remodel the church upon the
theology of some more flourishing period; they may do it
in form and in name, but not in reality. They are like
David clothed in Saul's armor. They cannot carry it to
the field, much less do battle when there. They would
do better to go with their simple sling, and the five smooth
stones, – truth, honesty, faith, hope, and charity. Any
system, however liberal and generous it may be in itself, is
contracted by its entrance into a narrow mind. It then
loses its form and comeliness; and straightway all lofty and
poetic souls become dissatisfied with it, and seek some-
thing nobler and more beautiful.
We had intended to say a word on the prospects of the-
ological discussions and controversies, but our article has
already reached such a length that we forbear.
DREAM.
"Mine eyes he closed; but open left the cell
Of fancy, my internal sight.” - Paradise Lost.
Where am I? Leaves and blossoms glittering,
Ancient shades and lofty trees
I have seen you, — when, - I know not.
How familiar is this breeze,
Bearing coolness, fragrance bearing
From that darkly wooded grot,
With the tinkling sound of water! -
O! I know thee, lovely spot!
Has my youth returned, or has it
Never left me, save in dreams?
Matters not; since, warmly glowing,
Now, my heart is in its beams.
Now another dim foreboding
Draws me toward yon old gray wall,
Climbing o'er, I see a garden -
Yes! I'll soon discover all.


444
[April,
Dream.
Something, yet but half-remembered,
Will not let me here remain;
Onward! Onward toward those loved ones,
My impatience grows a pain.
What a dreary time I've wasted!
How could I forget their love?
From my native Eden fiying
Over Earth's cold mountains rove? –
In the twilight richly mingled
With the moonlight's purer ray,
Rise grey turrets veiled in misty
Colors both of night and day.
From the Gothic portal rush the
Blended floods of light and sound,
Up the marble steps I hasten,
Cross the terrace with a bound.
Now an ancient Hall I enter,
And at once an hundred eyes
Turn with friendly gaze of welcome,
And each voice this greeting cries,
“Long expected! Welcome! Welcome!”
But no formal salutation
Brought these graceful, lordly figures
From their earnest occupation.
Some were seated, others standing,
Grouped together, or apart;
But One Interest seemed to fasten
In its chain each mind and heart.
From an unseen harp the surges
Rushed in long unbroken swell;
Every form was bathed in radiance,
Whence it came I could not tell.
As I look, some ancient story
Rises in my memory - No!
'Tis my own past life which rises;
As the vapors backward go
I see plainly; - often, often
Have I met you, friendly Powers !
By your superhuman beauty
And your wondrous love, the hours
Of my infancy were nurtured,
And my childish mind was taught
Lessons of unearthly wisdom
From the purer regions brought.
Gracefully a girl steps forward
From behind a silver screen:
One thou hast forgotten, Brother,
Her, our sister and our Queen;
Follow quickly." Quick I follow,
Laughingly she flies before,
Passing sculptured arch and portal,
High saloon and marble floor,


1841.]
445
Dream.
Galleries filled with stately plants,
Pouring streams of perfume round,
Terraces, where noble statues
Stand amid the flowery ground.
My guide has gone. I stand alone,
Solemnly the stars sweep by;
Hush ! light footsteps strike my ear,
She has come. The faithful eye
Knows the form, the look, the motion
Stampt upon the inmost heart;
Dearest, loveliest, thus I clasp thee,
One warm kiss. But then we part,
For with timid haste she glides
Softly from my arms' embrace,
Full of love and maiden terror
Gazing upward in my face.
Those blue eyes, lid-shaded, trust me,
But the mouth is trembling still,
Blood-drops of a priceless value
The soft neck and bosom fill.
Now together we are seated,
Her small hands repose in mine,
While a million stars above us,
Blessing-showering, smile and shine.
Not by words our love is spoken,
Yet each feeling, every thought
By quick glance, and gentle pressure,
In electric chain is brought.
All things outward words may carry,
But the inmost heart is known
Only as the ringing harp-string
Wakes its slumbering brother-tone. —
Years pass by- and side by side
Still remain the lovers seated,
Years on years or but a moment.
Not by periods time is meted
To the souls which, statue-like,
Are moulded by a single thought;
Passionless to all things outward,
Time and space to them are nought.
1.8.6


446
(April,
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
IDEALS OF EVERY-DAY LIFE. No. II.
ном Е.
" And the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.” – Joan xii. 3.
Beautiful and blessed was that house, the simple home
of Mary and of Martha! more blessed in its unostenta-
tious welcome of that divine pattern of humility, who was
wont to sit and talk with them as a familiar friend, and by
the kindling of heavenly thoughts remind them that here
is Heaven, than in any thrift or splendor! More beau-
tiful because of the simple and true hearts that dwelt
together there, than it could be made by any adornments
of fortune! Sublime in history and never to be forgotten
is that obscure home, that one from among so many which
share the common oblivion of dulness! And it does
not borrow all its fame from its illustrious guest. It
is probable that Jesus entered many houses, and was
familiar with many circles of which we shall never
hear. It is the life that was lived there that makes
that home beautiful. The beautiful life of its inmates
illumined that obscure abode, and invested it with an im-
portance more lasting than any that ever-lingered about a
monarch's palace. The truest riches and comfort were
theirs; for thoughts of heaven, sublime anticipations of the
soul's destiny, and consciousness of God, were daily bread
to them. There was the true abundance, the generosity
which afforded more than economy thinks it possible to
provide. Economy murmured; but sentiment poured out
the precious ointment. Yes! Blessed was that home, in
which more was expended upon sentiment than upon
mere world's economy ; in which a hint of the heart was
listened to as readily as one of prudence or utility. There
enthusiastic veneration could afford its offering, though it
is probable that poverty had to provide. And the house
was filled with the odor of the ointment which the affec-
tionate Mary poured upon the feet of Jesus. It was but
the emblem of the more lasting odor of the heavenly
sentiment which inspired that act. We see what feelings


1841.)
447
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
found a world in that house, what love, what faith, what
veneration dwelt there and sanctified all things, and gilded
with a holy sunlight of new associations those dull walls.
The memory of that house is sweet with the fragrance of
the virtues which there grew and blossomed. In the odor
of that ointment it is embalmed forevermore. I would
that more of that odor filled our comfortable dwellings,
so that we might with more sincerity repeat the old say-
ing; “ Home is home, were it never so homely.” I would
that more of the true philosophy of indoor life were felt
and practised ; that more generous and far-seeing views of
life might control the economy of the household; and
that home might be the blessed meeting-place of happy
and enlightened spirits, each a kingdom in itself, each
made unspeakably richer in the love of the other, instead
of a mere refuge of necessity, or a dull haunt of habit, or
a whited sepulchre of show and fashion. Home should be
heaven, - a consummation not entirely to be despaired of
by any who are willing to be wise ; and which fortune has
less power to further or prevent than we are apt to think.
In attempting to show, therefore, how a higher beauty
and interest may be added to life, in all its daily forms,
home becomes an object more worthy of our study than
any other. All reform begins at home. What a man's
home is, his whole life will be, as a general rule. And the
principles, the ideas, the plans, the motives, the hopes, and
fears which govern him there, and constitute the atmo-
sphere of his dwelling, will go out with him into all his
intercourse and business. If all is well at home, we need
not watch him in the market. If he is a true man there,
he is a true man every where. If wise and prudent there,
he will not need to be made any more a “man of the
world.” If he can succeed in redeeming life's most famil-
iar scenes from dulness and unprofitableness, the world
abroad will be all fresh and full of entertainment. If he
be not a dull familiar stranger in his home, he will find
himself at home wherever he goes. If there be independ-
ence of physical comforts, and abundance of mental,
moral, and social resources in one's dwelling, there will be
no unnecessary anxiety, no feverish hurry, no narrow
drudgery in one's business abroad. One will work cheer-
fully for small profits, if he be rich in the love and society


448
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Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
of his home. If discontented there, he will be discontent-
ed everywhere. So long as the fire of love burns brightly
on the domestic altar, he will not be frozen by the selfish-
ness of the world.
Is there not room for great improvement in domestic
economy, meaning by economy the law of the house, the art
of living at home, (for that is the original and literal meaning
of the term) ? Such economy should be the beautiful harmo-
ny of all the interests of life, not the mere art of husbanding
the physical means of life. It should be the wise controlling
and moulding of circumstances to the higher and ultimate
purposes and wants of the soul, not a system of petty
shifts to provide against necessity. It should think as
much of living wisely, as of getting a living. It guards
against ignorance, dulness, drudgery, waste of time, waste
of social opportunities, no less than against waste of
money, flour, or fuel. Its object is, a happy home, – the
realizing, with such resources as we have of our concep-
tion of highest good in actual familiar life.
Thus far I have been but dimly hinting and sketching
by way of introduction a thought, which I will now en-
deavor to unfold more orderly. Our theme is Home; and
our problem, how to make the most of Home in a ration-
al, far-seeing, spiritual view of life. The subject is one of
exceeding difficulty, more so than the inviting sound of the
word would lead one to suspect. In attempting to hold
up an ideal of a home; to explore the prevailing wants
and mistakes, the overlooked or abused resources of home;
and to correct the popular economy; it becomes me to
speak with all diffidence, as wanting experience which
many of my readers have. To suggest a perfect scheme,
and guard it against all little practical difficulties, all fric-
tion, which might attend its operation, would be as idle,
as it is to hope to make any improvement in this life with-
out great effort and self-sacrifice. The most the teacher
can do in any case is to suggest thoughts, provoke aspira-
tions, and awake energy in others; he can no more think
out their life-plan for them, than he can live their life. If
for a moment he can start men out of the dull lethargy of
habit, it is something. If he can remind them of their
deepest, truest wants, it is a great deal! What one
clearly wants, he will contrive to have.


1841.) Ideals of Every Day Life. No. II. 449
The happiness and charm of Home of course depends
upon the character of its inmates. Personal improvement
is the secret of all social bliss. Without heavenly-mind-
edness there can be no heaven. That which sanctifies
the temple, must bless the house. The house must be a
temple. In proportion as the spirit of Christ has come
to dwell within us, in the same proportion there will
be light and beauty in our outward dwellings. The
world is what we make it, glorious and inspiring, or
empty and discouraging, according as motives, purposes,
and views are spiritual or selfish; and home to every
one is but the world in miniature. If you know a man's
habitual view of life, you will find his home in every point
unconsciously corresponding to it. If he believes the world
is governed more by arbitrary power than by love, you will
find him a petty tyrant among his own. If he have no
faith, if he have never roused himself and learned to tri-
umph over circumstances inwardly or outwardly, but in his
habitual moods does practically acknowledge the suprem-
acy of chance or fate, you will find his home a dull haunt
of habit, where everything is passively governed by circum-
stances, and mind and character, the nobler aspirations, the
enlightened will, have no control; you will find a house
full of uneasiness without energy to help itself, alternating
with intervals of dulness or tameness, not calmness, and hov-
ering over all with gloomy outspread wing the genii of the
place, necessity and want; for these ideas do virtually make
men poor in the midst of fortune's abundance. But if
if he have often felt the glow of Love, the strength and
safety of Duty, and the rapture of world-piercing Faith,
till he believes in a kingdom of heaven, in an infinite world
unseen, some beams from that bright home will light upon
the walls of this his earthly house, will play upon the
happy faces gathered round the daily meal, will surround
them with windows opening out upon most inviting infinite
prospects, through which Father shall seem to smile in
upon them, if he do not rather seem to sit at table with
them. Wherever they turn they will meet God, and the
mere earthly form will be transfigured, reflecting light from
his invisible presence. If Beauty be the aspect under which
he is most fond of contemplating the world ; if to see and
to make others see and to create beauty be one of his
VOL. I. —NO. IV.
57


450
(April,
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
habitual purposes, the Graces will hide themselves in his
house, will leave tokens of their love in every corner, re-
plenishing the vessels with fresh flowers, presiding silently
and skilfully over every little arrangement, prompting and
finding room for a free exercise of soul in every little
shift of necessity, suffering nothing to grow old by famil-
iarity, nothing to disturb by incongruity, lending fairy
grace to the turbulent sports of children, softening noise
into music, raising economy to the dignity of Art, and
rounding the details of each day into a poem. Some
certainly have approached near enough to this to see that
it is not absurd ; and fancy has its truth as well as worldly
wisdom. Such then, is the power of an idea, when in-
wardly cherished, to modify and temper the whole atmo-
sphere of one's life.
Let us now consider in order, beginning with the lowest,
some of the ruling ideas which possess men, and mark the
conformity of each one's home to his idea. This will
disclose to us the true secret of domestic happiness.
I. The fault in most homes is the absence of all purpose,
of any ideal conception of what life should be. Home
with many is the mere result of habit, imitated from others,
or dictated by circumstances, without the question ever
being asked whether others were all-wise, and circum-
stances all-powerful, and whether it would not be worth
the while to try to bend circumstances to our mind, and to
improve the talent which we have received. The house-
hold economy and intercourse go on from day to day, with-
out much thought or effort more than is prompted by the
wants of nature. The wants of nature are their springs
of action, which keep them from going to sleep; custom
their rule which keeps all in a sort of order. These wants
must be consulted, and the labor which they exact is in
any case a blessing. And it is well that there should be
customs, to do things for us by the force of habit, when
we have no force of study and of will ourselves. But it is
a scanty, barren life, which knows no other law, and ex-
plores no other resources. While we do everything from
habit, we know not why ; living together just so because
we find ourselves together just so; doing things to-day
because they were done yesterday; drudging without a
purpose ; sitting together with nothing to say; hurrying


1841.) Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II. 451
through the work in hope of the meal, and hurrying
through the meal in fear of the work, which is only pre-
liminary to the next meal ; toiling busily full of care to
lay up an hour of quiet, — of quiet which, what with the
weariness of past, what with the anxiety of coming care,
dwindles away to nothing; letting little economies draw
the mind wholly off from the contemplation of anything
interesting and inspiring ; neglecting the culture which
alone can ensure to the mind the habit of self-occupying
activity, to the senses their power of seeing and admiring
the glories with which God has surrounded us ; — while
we limit ourselves to the cares of this world, solacing our-
selves in view of the end with the dull creed of habit, to
which we wistfully look with a vague expectation of deliv-
erance when we shall get “ the other side of flesh," but
seeking no deliverance here, allowing ourselves no chance
to realize that the kingdom of heaven is within us ; -
while our homes are but abiding-places, which it costs all
our care to keep well warmed, well stored, well lighted,
but otherwise barren of interest, homes for the body, not
the mind, with the Bible on the shelf, regularly taken
down and perused perhaps, not read, and the glorious
earth and skies out at the window still with heavenly per-
severance inviting us to a glorious feast of beauty, from
which we turn senselessly away, and the whole spiritual
world hidden in us and in our neighbors, but not revealed,
because we dwell together familiarly, not intimately, and
do not quicken each other into life ; while this is all of it,
what is home to us but a mere whereabouts, a more or
less convenient retreat from life, instead of a retreat into
life out of a noisy bustling world ? While this is all the
account to be given of home, who can say that he has
even begun to make the most of life, or that in such a way
of living there is much to choose between poverty and
abundance, since neither can impart any clear, bracing
quality to the dull atmosphere which we carry about with
us ? Let us not forget the natural ties which do not leave
the feeblest, dullest child of want quite uninstructed in love,
and therefore in the true idea of heaven. Let us respect
the regular household economy, to which we all have
grown up debtors, and which moreover teaches patience,
prudence, industry ; and imparts to the character the dig-


452
[April,
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
nity of responsibility. But is it not the principal charm
of these natural ties, and the natural dependencies and
kind offices and grateful memories which they call forth,
that they reveal a spiritual end of life, that they animate
the mind with the prospect of a higher good, of an un-
seen world of reality, as real as this outward world, and
present with it so long as we seek to live in it? That
they suggest an end, a something to live for, beyond our
present actual attainment, and prompt us to make trial of
enlightened methods suited to higher conceptions of the
end to be reached by life instead of trusting wholly to the
habit into which we fall by accident or early training ?
Does the business of serving one another, and seeking one
another's comfort in all the little familiar ways of home,
end there and look no farther forward? Does it not sug-
gest the idea of mutual and of self-improvement, the
adding of new worth to each other's lives, as well as the
helping each other to live? The natural relations and
affections are well ; they leave no home without some
charm; but they cannot be left to habit; they will not
save and renovate a purposeless existence. And that
wholesome economy without which no home can prosper,
or even exist; — to what purpose does it train us to hab-
its of order, if it be not to cherish in us a reverence for
the heavenly order, obeying which our individual life
unites itself in conscious harmony with all nature and all
spirits and transcends its narrow limits of place and time?
To what purpose does it teach us industry if it make us
so pressingly busy, that our noblest faculties find nothing
to do? Or why does it habituate us to the feeling of re-
sponsibility, if it never tell us why we are responsible, and
what makes all these cares important ? Are we responsi-
ble for nothing but the regular performance of our daily
chores ? Is nothing more intrusted to us? The cares of
home, its laborious duties and confinements, its patient
economies, are all good and necessary, and ought to cause
no murmur. Let no one seek comfort in escape from care
and toil. These, in themselves, are not what make so
many homes unhappy. The evil is in difference, and
dulness of the mind; tame acquiesence to mere want
or habit, from a dull sense of necessity, and not from an
enlightened, hopeful spirit of resignation. One toils only


1841.)
453
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
o the attaind dignifies the create
because he must, still inwardly murmuring, or tamed to
stupid submission ; another toils, not only because he must,
but also because he has a worthy and inspiring object of
life in view, to the attainment of which he finds such labor
indispensable ; — the end dignifies the means, and he goes
cheerfully about it. And this shall create a difference
heaven-wide between two families, equal in outward
means, equally restricted to economy and toil. It is the
want of a life-plan, the want of a high purpose, the want
of the spirit of improvement, the failure to put to one's self
the first question ; 6 What do we live for ?" It is this
which lets the stream of life creep on so sluggishly and
turbidly in so many families. How many are keeping
house with no purpose in the world, but because that is
the way all the world do. It is this want of purpose,
which makes economy a tyrant, toil weariness and drudg-
ery, rest stupid, and meals unsocial. From this dulness
of mind, this purposeless way of existing, economy has
degenerated from a high and generous philosophy into a
narrow and bigoted habit, and the word received its pop-
ular false and unworthy sense. A great deal of our econo-
my, so called, defeats its own end. It saves money by
wasting time, whereas time is life, and money only one of
the means of life. In its dread of extravagance it makes
most extravagant sacrifices; it throws away the germs of
our truest happiness; it declines all aids to the culture of
our noblest powers; it saves up the means of living, and
forgets to learn the art of living; it piles up its bales and
boxes right against the windows which let in the light of
life; it professes to be preparing a place for us, while it
occupies the whole of it itself with its own bricks and
mortar, or tubs and brooms; it makes room for us by
thrusting itself in the way; it provides what is necessary
to live, but does not make it at all clear that it is necessary
to live, unless life contain higher objects than economy con-
ceives of; it is saving and bountiful in the matter of food,
but if one chance to hunger and thirst after righteousness,
knowledge, beauty, it has no time for such a thought and
lets him starve. In its art of making a little go a great
way, it only draws out the metal of life into a meagre
wiry length, it does not increase its weight, it adds no
value to its substance. It is afraid of anything which


454
[April,
Ideals of Every-Day Life. No. II.
can be called living. It grudges an hour of pleasure,
which it would waste in unedifying, fruitless formalities of
duty. It cannot afford books, schools, refinements of
many kinds; but it can afford food enough, bustle, and
fretting more than enough, and whole winter evenings full
of dulness. Thus in many people's system of life, econo-
my and education, as well as economy and true enjoy-
ment, are set against each other as natural opposites. All
th