LITMIR.BIZ

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in a solid product; graceful Art is content with simple expression; but Religion is degraded when it is reduced to either character. It is not a labor of utility; and he who looks to it as a means of safety, to ingratiate himself with an awful God, and bespeak an interest in a hidden Future, is an utter stranger to its essence; his habits and words may be cast in its mould, but the spark of its life is not kindled in his heart. When fed by the fuel of prudence, the fire is all spent in fusing it into form; and the finished product is a cold and metal mimicry, that neither moves nor glows. Nor is Religion a simple gesture of passion; and to class it with mere natural language, to treat it as the rhythmical delirium of the soul working off an irrepressible enthusiasm, is to empty it of its real meaning and contents, and sink it from a divine attraction to a human excitement. The postures and movements and tones which simply manifest the impassioned mind are content to go off into space, and pass away; they direct themselves nowhither; they have no more object than a convulsion; they ask only leave to be the last shape of a feeling that must have way; and be the inspiration what it may, they close and consummate its history. But he who prays is at the beginning of aspiration, not at the evaporating end of impulse; he is drawn, not driven; he is not painting himself upon vacancy, but is surrendering himself to a Presence real and everlasting. If he flings out his arms, it is not in blind paroxysm, but that he may embrace and be embraced; if he cries aloud, it is that he may be heard; if he makes melody of the silent heart, it is no soliloquy flung into emptiness, but the low-breathing love of spirit to Spirit. Devotion is not the play even of the highest faculties, but their deep earnest. It is no doubt the culminating point of reverence; but reverence is impossible without an object, and could never culminate at all, or pass into the Infinite, unless its object did so too. In every case we find that the faculties and susceptibilities of a being tell true, and are the exact measure of the outer life it has to live; and just as many and as large proportions as it has, to just so many and so great objects does it stand related; so that from the axis of its nature you may always draw the curve of its existence. Human worship, therefore, turning to the living God as the infant's eye to light, is itself a witness to Him whom it feels after and adores; it is "the image and shadow of heavenly things," the parallel chamber in our nature with that Holy of Holies whither its incense ever ascends.

      In a similar strain is this argument to show that

      DEVOTION IS NOT A MISTAKE.

      Be assured, all visible greatness of mind grows in looking at an invisible that is greater. And since it is inconceivable that what is most sublime in humanity should spring from vision of a thing that is not, that what is most real and commanding with us should come of stretching the soul into the unreal and empty, that historic durability should be the gift of spectral fancies, we must hold these devout natures to be at one with everlasting Fact—to feel truly that the august forms of Justice and Holiness are at home in heaven, the object there of clearer insight and more perfect veneration. There are those who please themselves with the idea that the world will outgrow its habits of worship; that the newspaper will supersede the preacher and prophet; that the apprehension of scientific laws will replace the fervor of moral inspirations; that this sphere of being will then be perfectly administered when no reference to another distracts attention. But, for my own part, I am persuaded, that life would soon become intolerable on earth, were it copied from nothing in the heavens; that its deeper affections would pine away and its lights of purest thought grow pale, if it lay shrouded in no Holy Spirit, but only in the wilderness of space. The most sagacious secular voice leaves, after all, a chord untouched in the human heart: listening too long to its didactic monotone, we begin to sigh for the rich music of hope and faith. The dry glare of noonday knowledge hurts the eye by plying it for use and denying it beauty; and we long to be screened behind a cloud or two of moisture and of mystery, that shall mellow the glory and cool the air. Never can the world be less to us, than when we make it all in all.

      Our author makes a striking reply to the common assertion that

      "THEOLOGY IS NOT A PROGRESSIVE SCIENCE."

      It may, however, be retrogressive; and it is sure to repay flippant neglect by lending its empty space to mean delusions. To its great problems some answer will always be attempted; and there is much to choose between the solutions, however imperfect, found by reverential wisdom, and the degrading falsehoods tendered in reply by the indifferent and superficial. Even in their failures, there is a vast difference between the explorings of the seeing and the blind. We deny, however, that Christian theology can assume any aspect of failure, except to those who use a false measure of success. It is not in the nature of religion, of poetry, of art, to exhibit the kind of progress that belongs to physical science. They differ from it in seeking, not the phenomena of the universe, but its essence—not its laws of change, but its eternal meanings—not outward nature, in short, except as expressive of the inner thought of God; and being thus intent upon the enduring spirit and very ground of things, they cannot grow by numerical accretion of facts and exacter registration of successions. They are the product, not of the patient sense and comparing intelligence which are always at hand, but of a deeper and finer insight, changing with the atmosphere of the affections and will. Instead of looking, therefore, for perpetual advance of discovery in theology, we should naturally expect an ebb and flow of light, answering to the moral condition of men's minds; and may be content if the divine truth, lost in the dulness of a material age, clears itself into fresh forms with the returning breath of a better time.

      Most readers will find suggestions of great freshness in the passage next cited:—

      THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY.

      To lose sight of this principle in estimating Christianity, and to insist on judging it, not by its matured character in Christendom, not by the unconscious spirit of its founders, but by their personal views and purposes, is to overlook the divine in it in order to fasten on the human; to seek the winged creature of the air in the throbbing chrysalis; and is like judging the place of the Hebrews in history by the court and the proverbs of Solomon, or the value of Puritanism by the sermon of a hill-preacher before the civil war. The primitive Christianity was certainly different from that of other ages; but there is no reason for believing that it was better. The representation often made of the early Church, as having only truth, and feeling only love, and living in simple sanctity, is contradicted by every page of the Christian records. The Epistles are entirely occupied in driving back guilt and passion, or in correcting errors of belief; nor is it always possible to approve of the temper in which they perform the one task, or to assent to the methods by which they attempt the other. Principles and affections were indeed secreted in the heart of the first disciples, which were to have a great future, and to become the highest truth of the world. But it was precisely of these that they rarely thought at all. The Apostles themselves speak slightingly of them, as baby's food; and the great faith in God, the need of repentant purity of heart, with the trust in immortality—the very doctrines which we should name as the permanent essence of Christian faith—are expressly declared by them to be the childish rudiments of belief, on which the attention of the grown Christian will disdain to dwell. And what did they prefer to these sublime truths, as the nutriment of their life and the pride of their wisdom? Allegories about Isaac and Ishmael, parallels between Christ and Melchisedec, new readings of history and prophecy to suit the events in Palestine, and a constant outlook for the end of all things. These were the grand topics on which their minds eagerly worked, and on which they labored to construct a consistent theory. These give the form to their doctrine, the matter to their spirit. These are what you will get, if you go indiscriminately to their writings for a creed: and these are no more Christianity than the pretensions of Hildebrand or the visions of Swedenborg. The true religion lies elsewhere, just in the things that were ever present with them, but never esteemed. Just as your friend may spend his anxiety on his station, his usefulness, his appearance and repute, and fear lest he should show nothing deserving your regard, while all the time you love him for the pure graces, the native wild-flowers, of his heart; so do the choicest servants of God ever think one thing of themselves, while they are dear to him and revered by us for quite another. "The weak things" in the Church not less than in "the world hath he chosen to confound the mighty; the simple, to strike dumb the

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