Chapter VII: Part I: Ethics and Character (4)

But at length, as he became accustomed to the glory and the warmth, and nothing more was left for the fire to bestow, or her light to reveal, then he began to weary and to dream again of the morning, and to long for the sun-beams; and it was to him as if the fire stood between him and the sun's light, and he reproached her therefore, and he became moody and ungrateful; and the fire was no longer the same, but unquiet and changeful, sometimes flickering unsteadily, sometimes throwing out a lurid glare. And when the youth, forgetful of his ministry, left the flame unfed and unsustained, so that ofttimes she drooped and waned, and crept in dying gleams along the damp ground, his heart would fail him with a sudden remorse, and he would cast on the fuel with such a rough and lavish hand that the indignant fire hissed thereat, and burst forth in a smoky sullen gleam,--then died away again. Then the youth, half sorrowful, half impatient, would remember how bright, how glowing, how dazzling was the flame in those former happy days, when it played over his chilled and wearied limbs, and shed its warmth upon his brow, and he desired eagerly to recall that once inspiring glow. And he stirred up the embers violently till they burned him, and then he grew angry, and then again he wearied of all the watching and the care which the subtle, celestial, tameless element required at his hand: and at length, one day in a sullen mood, he snatched up a pitcher of water from the fountain and poured it hastily on the yet living flame.----

For one moment it arose blazing towards heaven, shed a last gleam upon the pale brow of the youth, and then sank down in darkness extinguished for ever!

PAULINA.

FROM AN UNFINISHED TALE, 1823.

And think'st thou that the fond o'erflowing love
I bear thee in my heart could ever be
Repaid by careless smiles that round thee rove,
And beam on others as they beam on me?

Oh, could I speak to thee! could I but tell
The nameless thoughts that in my bosom swell,
And struggle for expression! or set free
From the o'er mastering spirit's proud control
The pain that throbs in silence at my soul,
Perhaps--yet no--I will not sue, nor bend,
To win a heartless pity--Let it end!

I have been near thee still at morn, at eve;
Have mark'd thee in thy joy, have seen thee grieve;
Have seen thee gay with triumph, sick with fears,
Radiant in beauty, desolate in tears:
And communed with thy heart, till I made mine
The echo and the mirror unto thine.
And I have sat and looked into thine eyes
As men on earth look to the starry skies,
That seek to read in Heaven their human destinies!

Too quickly I read mine,--I knew it well,--
I judg'd not of thy heart by all it gave,
But all that it withheld; and I could tell
The very sea-mark where affection's wave
Would cease to flow, or flow to ebb again,
And knew my lavish love was pour'd in vain,
As fruitless streams o'er sandy deserts melt,
Unrecompensed, unvalued, and unfelt!

LINES.--1840.

Take me, my mother Earth, to thy cold breast,
And fold me there in everlasting rest,
The long day is o'er!
I'm weary, I would sleep--
But deep, deep,
Never to waken more!

I have had joy and sorrow; I have proved
What life could give; have lov'd, have been belov'd;
I am sick, and heart sore,
And weary,--let me sleep!
But deep, deep,
Never to waken more!

To thy dark chambers, mother Earth, I come,
Prepare my dreamless bed in my last home;
Shut down the marble door,
And leave me,--let me sleep!
But deep, deep,
Never to waken more!

Now I lie down,--I close my aching eyes,
If on this night another morn must rise,
Wake me not, I implore!
I only ask to sleep,
And deep, deep,
Never to waken more!

Theological Fragments.

1.

THE HERMIT AND THE MINSTREL.

(A PARABLE, FROM ST. JEROME.)

A certain holy anchorite had passed a long life in a cave of the Thebaid, remote from all communion with men; and eschewing, as he would the gates of Hell, even the very presence of a woman; and he fasted and prayed, and performed many and severe penances; and his whole thought was how he should make himself of account in the sight of God, that he might enter into his paradise.

And having lived this life for three score and ten years he was puffed up with the notion of his own great virtue and sanctity, and, like to St. Anthony, he besought the Lord to show him what saint he should emulate as greater than himself, thinking perhaps, in his heart, that the Lord would answer that none was greater or holier. And the same night the angel of God appeared to him, and said, "If thou wouldst excel all others in virtue and sanctity, thou must strive to be like a certain minstrel who goes begging and singing from door to door."

And the holy man was in great astonishment, and he arose and took his staff and ran forth in search of this minstrel; and when he had found him he questioned him earnestly, saying, "Tell me, I pray thee, my brother, what good works thou hast performed in thy lifetime, and by what prayers and penances thou hast made thyself acceptable to God?"

And the man, greatly wondering and ashamed to be so questioned, hung down his head as he replied, "I beseech thee, holy father, mock me not! I have performed no good works, and as to praying, alas! sinner that I am, I am not worthy to pray. I do nothing but go about from door to door amusing the people with my viol and my flute."

And the holy man insisted and said, "Nay, but peradventure in the midst of this thy evil life thou hast done some good works?" And the minstrel replied, "I know of nothing good that I have done." And the hermit, wondering more and more, said, "How hast thou become a beggar: hast thou spent thy substance in riotous living, like most others of thy calling?" and the man answering, said, "Nay; but there was a poor woman whom I found running hither and thither in distraction, for her husband and her children had been sold into slavery to pay a debt. And the woman being very fair, certain sons of Belial pursued after her; so I took her home to my hut and protected her from them, and I gave her all I possessed to redeem her family, and conducted her in safety to the city, where she was reunited to her husband and children. But what of that, my father; is there a man who would not have done the same?"

And the hermit, hearing the minstrel speak these words, wept bitterly, saying, "For my part, I have not done so much good in all my life; and yet they call me a man of God, and thou art only a poor minstrel!"

At Vienna, some years ago, I saw a picture by Von Schwind, which was conceived in the spirit of this old apologue. It exhibited the lives of two twin brothers diverging from the cradle. One of them, by profound study, becomes a most learned and skilful physician, and ministers to the sick; attaining to great riches and honours through his labours and his philanthropy. The other brother, who has no turn for study, becomes a poor fiddler, and spends his life in consoling, by his music, sufferings beyond the reach of the healing art. In the end, the two brothers meet at the close of life. He who had been fiddling through the world is sick and worn out: his brother prescribes for him, and is seen culling simples for his restoration, while the fiddler touches his instrument for the solace of his kind physician.

It is in such representations that painting did once speak, and might again speak to the hearts of the people.

Another version of the same thought, we find in De Berenger's pretty ballad, "_Les deux Soeurs de Charité_."

2.

When I was a child, and read Milton for the first time, his Pandemonium seemed to me a magnificent place. It struck me more than his Paradise, for _that_ was beautiful, but Pandemonium was terrible and beautiful too. The wondrous fabric that "from the earth rose like an exhalation to the sound of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,"--the splendid piles of architecture sweeping line beyond line, "Cornice and frieze with bossy sculptures graven,"--realised a certain picture of Palmyra I had once seen, and which had taken possession of my imagination: then the throne, outshining the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind,--the flood of light streaming from "starry lamps and blazing cressets" quite threw the flames of perdition into the shade. As it was said of Erskine, that he always spoke of Satan with respect, as of a great statesman out of place, a sort of leader of the Opposition; so to me the grand arch-fiend was a hero, like my _then_ favourite Greeks and Romans, a Cymon, a Curtius, a Decius, devoting himself for the good of his country;--such was the moral confusion created in my mind. Pandemonium inspired no horror; on the contrary, my fancy revelled in the artistic beauty of the creation. I felt that I should like to go and see it; so that, in fact, if Milton meant to inspire abhorrence, he has failed, even to the height of his sublimity. Dante has succeeded better. Those who dwell with complacency on the doctrine of eternal punishments must delight in the ferocity and the ingenuity of his grim inventions, worthy of a vengeful theology. Wicked latitudinarians may shudder and shiver at the images called up--grotesque, abominable, hideous--but then Dante himself would sternly rebuke them for making their human sympathies a measure for the judgments of God, and compassion only a veil for treason and rebellion:--

"Chi è piu scellerato di colui
Ch' al giudicio divin passion porta?"

"Who can show greater wickedness than he
Whose passion by the will of God is moved?"

However, it must be said in favour of Dante's Inferno, that no one ever wished to go there.

These be the Christian poets! but they must yield in depth of imagined horrors to the Christian Fathers. Tertullian (writing in the second century) not only sends the wicked into that dolorous region of despair, but makes the endless measureless torture of the doomed a part of the joys of the redeemed. The spectacle is to give them the same sort of delight as the heathen took in their games, and Pandemonium is to be as a vast amphitheatre for the amusement of the New Jerusalem. "How magnificent," exclaims this pious doctor of the Church, "will be the scale of that game! With what admiration, what laughter, what glee, what triumph, shall I behold so many mighty monarchs, who had been given out as received into the skies, moaning in unfathomable gloom! Persecutors of the Christians liquefying amid shooting spires of flame! Philosophers blushing before their disciples amid those ruddy fires! Then," he goes on, still alluding to the amphitheatre, "then is the time to hear the tragedians doubly pathetic, now that they bewail their own agonies! To observe actors released by the fierceness of their torments from all restraints on their gestures! Then may we admire the charioteer glowing all over in his car of torture, and watch the wrestlers struggling, not in the gymnasium but with flames!" And he asks exultingly, "What prætor, or consul, or questor, or priest, can purchase you by his munificence a game of triumph like this?"

And even more terrible are the imaginations of good Bishop Taylor, who distils the essence from all sins, all miseries, all sorrows, all terrors, all plagues, and mingles them in one chalice of wrath and vengeance to be held to the lips and forced down the unwilling throats of the doomed "with violence of devils and accursed spirits!" Are these mere words? Did any one ever fancy or try to realise what they express?

3.

I was surprised to find this passage in one of Southey's letters:--

"A Catholic Establishment would be the best, perhaps the only means of civilising Ireland. Jesuits and Benedictines, though they would not enlighten the savages, would humanise them and bring the country into cultivation. A petition that asked for this, saying plainly, 'We are Papists, and will be so, and this is the best thing that can be done for us and you too,'--such a petition I would support, considering what the present condition of Ireland is, how wretchedly it has always been governed, and how hopeless the prospect." (1805.)

Southey was thinking of what the religious orders had done for Paraguay; whether he would have penned the same sentiments twenty or even ten years later, is more than doubtful.

4.

The old monks and penitents--dirty, ugly, emaciated old fellows they were!--spent their days in speaking and preaching of their own and others' sinfulness, yet seem to have had ever present before them a standard of beauty, brightness, beneficence, aspirations which nothing earthly could satisfy, which made their ideas of sinfulness and misery _comparative_, and their scale was graduated from themselves _upwards_. We philosophers reverse this. We teach and preach the spiritual dignity, the lofty capabilities of humanity. Yet, by some mistake, we seem to be always speculating on the amount of evil which may or can be endured, and on the amount of wickedness which may or must be tolerated; and our scale is graduated from ourselves _downwards_.

5.

"So long as the ancient mythology had any separate establishment in the empire, the spiritual worship which our religion demands, and so essentially implies as only fitting for it, was preserved in its purity by means of the salutary contrast; but no sooner had the Church become completely triumphant and exclusive, and the parallel of Pagan idolatry totally removed, than the old constitutional appetite revived in all its original force, and after a short but famous struggle with the Iconoclasts, an image worship was established, and consecrated by bulls and canons, which, in whatever light it is regarded, differed in no respect but the names of its objects from that which had existed for so many ages as the chief characteristic of the religious faith of the Gentiles."--_H. Nelson Coleridge._

I think, with submission, that it differed in sentiment; for in the mythology of the Pagans the worship was to _beauty_, _immortality_, and _power_, and in the Christian mythology--if I may call it so--of the Middle Ages, the worship was to _purity_, _self-denial_, and _charity_.

6.

"A narrow half-enlightened reason may easily make sport of all those forms in which religious faith has been clothed by human imagination, and ask why they are retained, and why one should be preferred to another? It is sufficient to reply, that some forms there must be if Religion is to endure as a social influence, and that the forms already in existence are the best, if they are in unison with human sympathies, and express, with the breadth and vagueness which every popular utterance must from its nature possess, the interior convictions of the general mind. What would become of the most sacred truth if all the forms which have harboured it were destroyed at once by an unrelenting reason, and it were driven naked and shivering about the earth till some clever logician had devised a suitable abode for its reception? It is on these outward forms of religion that the spirit of artistic beauty descends and moulds them into fitting expressions of the invisible grace and majesty of spiritual truth."--_Prospective Review_, Feb. 24. 1845.

7.

"Have not Dying Christs taught fortitude to the virtuous sufferer? Have not Holy Families cherished and ennobled domestic affections? The tender genius of the Christian morality, even in its most degenerate state, has made the Mother and her Child the highest objects of affectionate superstition. How much has that beautiful superstition by the pencils of great artists contributed to humanise mankind?"--_Sir James Mackintosh_, writing in 1802.

8.

I remember once at Merton College Chapel (May, 1844), while Archdeacon Manning was preaching an eloquent sermon on the eternity of reward and punishment in the future life, I was looking at the row of windows opposite, and I saw that there were seven, all different in pattern and construction, yet all harmonising with each other and with the building of which they formed a part;--a symbol they might have been of differences in the Church of Christ. From the varied windows opposite I looked down to the faces of the congregation, all upturned to the preacher, with expression how different! Faith, hope, fear, in the open mouths and expanded eyelids of some; a sort of silent protest in the compressed lips and knitted brows of others; a speculative inquiry and interest, or merely admiring acquiescence in others; as the high or low, the wide or contracted head prevailed; and all this diversity in organisation, in habits of thought, in expression, harmonised for the time by one predominant object, one feeling! the hungry sheep looking up to be fed! When I sigh over apparent disagreement, let me think of those windows in Merton College Chapel, and the same light from heaven streaming through them all!--and of that assemblage of human faces, uplifted with the same aspiration one and all!

9.

I have just read the article (by Sterling, I believe), in the "Edinburgh Review" for July; and as it chanced, this same evening, Dr. Channing's "Discourse on the Church," and Captain Maconochie's "Report on Secondary Punishments" from Sydney, came before me.

And as I laid them down, one after another, _this_ thought struck me:--that about the same time, in three different and far divided regions of the globe, three men, one military, the other an ecclesiastic, the third a lawyer, and belonging apparently to different religious denominations, all gave utterance to nearly the same sentiments in regard to a Christian Church. Channing says, "A church destined to endure through all ages, to act on all, to blend itself with new forms of society, and with the highest improvements of the race, cannot be expected to ordain an immutable mode of administration, but must leave its modes of worship and communion to conform themselves silently and gradually to the wants and progress of humanity. The rites and arrangements which suit one period lose their significance or efficiency in another; the forms which minister to the mind _now_ may fetter it hereafter, and must give place to its free unfolding," &c., and more to the same purpose.

The reviewer says, "We believe that in the judgment of an enlightened charity, many Christian societies who are accustomed to denounce each others' errors, will at length come to be regarded as members in common of one great and comprehensive Church, in which diversity of forms are harmonised by an all-pervading unity of spirit." And more to the same purpose. The soldier and reformer says, "I believe there may be error because there must be imperfection in the religious faith of the best among us; but that the degree of this error is not vital in any Christian denomination seems demonstrable by the best fruits of faith--good works--being evidenced by all."

It is pleasant to see benign spirits divided in opinion, but harmonised by faith, thus standing hand in hand upon a shore of peace, and looking out together in serene hope for the dawning of a better day, instead of rushing forth, each with his own farthing candle, under pretence of illuminating the world--every one even more intent on putting out his neighbour's light than on guarding his own.

(Nov. 15. 1841.)

While the idea of possible harmony in the universal Church of Christ (by which I mean all who accept His teaching and are glad to bear His name) is gaining ground theoretically, _practically_ it seems more and more distant; since 1841 (when the above was written) the divergence is greater than ever; and, as in politics, moderate opinions appear (since 1848) to merge on either side into the extremes of ultra conservatism and ultra radicalism, as fear of the past or hope of the future predominate, so it is in the Church. The sort of dualism which prevails in politics and religion might give some colour to Lord Lindsay's theory of "progress through antagonism."

10.

I Incline to agree with those who think it a great mistake to consider the present conditions or conception of Christianity as complete and final: like the human soul to which it was fitted by Divine love and wisdom, it has an immeasurable capacity of development, and "The Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of his Holy Word."

11.

The nations of the present age want not _less_ religion, but _more_. They do not wish for less community with the Apostolic times, but for more; but above all, they want their wounds healed by a Christianity showing a life-renewing vitality allied to reason and conscience, and ready and able to reform the social relations of life, beginning with the domestic and culminating with the political. They want no negations, but positive reconstruction--no conventionality, but an honest _bonâ fide_ foundation, deep as the human mind, and a structure free and organic as nature. In the meantime let no national form be urged as identical with divine truth, let no dogmatic formula oppress conscience and reason, and let no corporation of priests, no set of dogmatists, sow discord and hatred in the sacred communities of domestic and national life. This view cannot be obtained without national efforts, Christian education, free institutions, and social reforms. Then no zeal will be called Christian which is not hallowed by charity,--no faith Christian which is not sanctioned by reason."--_Hippolitus._

"Any author who in our time treats theological and ecclesiastical subjects frankly, and therefore with reference to the problems of the age, must expect to be ignored, and if that cannot be done, abused and reviled."

The same is true of moral subjects on which strong prejudices (or shall I say strong _convictions_?) exist in minds not very strong.

It is not perhaps of so much consequence what we believe, as it is important that we believe; that we do not affect to believe, and so belie our own souls. Belief is _not_ always in our power, but truth is.

12.

It seems an arbitrary limitation of the design of Christianity to assume, as Priestley does, that "it consists solely in the revelation of a future life confirmed by the bodily resurrection of Christ." This is truly a very material view of Christianity. If I were to be sure of annihilation I should not be less certain of the truth of Christianity as a system of morals exquisitely adapted for the improvement and happiness of man as an individual; and equally adapted to conduce to the amelioration and progressive happiness of mankind as a species.

NOTES FROM VARIOUS SERMONS,

MADE ON THE SPOT;

SHOWING SOME THINGS IN WHICH ALL GOOD MEN ARE AGREED.

I.

_From a Roman Catholic Sermon._

When travelling in Ireland, I stayed over one Sunday in a certain town in the north, and rambled out early in the morning. It was cold and wet, the streets empty and quiet, but the sound of voices drew me in one direction, down a court where was a Roman Catholic chapel. It was so crowded that many of the congregation stood round the door. I remarked among them a number of soldiers and most miserable-looking women. All made way for me with true national courtesy, and I entered at the moment the priest was finishing mass, and about to begin his sermon. There was no pulpit, and he stood on the step of the altar; a fine-looking man, with a bright face, a sonorous voice, and a _very_ strong Irish accent. His text was from Matt. v. 43, 44.

He began by explaining what Christ really meant by the words "Love thy neighbour." Then drew a picture in contrast of hatred and dissension, commencing with dissension in families, between kindred, and between husband and wife. Then made a most touching appeal in behalf of children brought up in an atmosphere of contention where no love is. "God help them! God pity them! small chance for them of being either good or happy! for their young hearts are saddened and soured with strife, and they eat their bread in bitterness!"

Then he preached patience to the wives, indulgence to the husbands, and denounced scolds and quarrelsome women in a manner that seemed to glance at recent events: "When ye are found in the streets vilifying and slandering one another, ay, and fighting and tearing each other's hair, do ye think ye're women? no, ye're not! ye're devils incarnate, and ye'll go where the devils will be fit companions for ye!" &c. (Here some women near me, with long black hair streaming down, fell upon their knees, sobbing with contrition.) He then went on, in the same strain of homely eloquence, to the evils of political and religious hatred, and quoted the text, "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." "I'm a Catholic," he went on, "and I believe in the truth of my own religion above all others. I'm convinced, by long study and observation, it's the best that is; but what then? Do ye think I hate my neighbour because he thinks differently? Do ye think I _mane_ to force my religion down other people's throats? If I were to preach such uncharity to ye, my people, you wouldn't listen to me, ye oughtn't to listen to me. Did Jesus Christ force His religion down other people's throats? Not He! He endured all, He was kind to all, even to the wicked Jews that afterwards crucified Him." "If you say you can't love your neighbour because he's your enemy, and has injured you, what does that mane? '_ye can't! ye can't!_' as if that excuse will serve God? hav'n't ye done more and worse against Him? and didn't He send His only Son into the world to redeem ye? My good people, you're all sprung from one stock, all sons of Adam, all related to one another. When God created Eve, mightn't He have made her out of any thing, a stock or a stone, or out of nothing at all, at all? but He took one of Adam's ribs and moulded her out of that, and gave her to him, just to show that we're all from one original, all related together, men and women, Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Turks and Christians; all bone of one bone, and flesh of one flesh!" He then insisted and demonstrated that all the miseries of life, all the sorrows and mistakes of men, women, and children; and, in particular, all the disasters of Ireland, the bankrupt landlords, the religious dissensions, the fights domestic and political, the rich without thought for the poor, and the poor without food or work, all arose from nothing but the want of love. "Down on your knees," he exclaimed, "and ask God's mercy and pardon; and as ye hope to find it, ask pardon one of another for every angry word ye have spoken, for every uncharitable thought that has come into your minds; and if any man or woman have aught against his neighbour, no matter what, let it be plucked out of his heart before he laves this place, let it be forgotten at the door of this chapel. Let me, your pastor, have no more rason to be ashamed of you; as if I were set over wild bastes, instead of Christian men and women!"

After more in this fervid strain, which I cannot recollect, he gave his blessing in the same earnest heartfelt manner. I never saw a congregation more attentive, more reverent, and apparently more touched and edified. (1848.)

II.

_From another Roman Catholic Sermon, delivered in the private chapel of a Nobleman._

This Discourse was preached on the festival of St. John the Baptist, and was a summary of his doctrine, life, and character. The text was taken from St. Luke, iii. 9. to 14.; in which St. John answers the question of the people, "what shall we do then?" by a brief exposition of their several duties.

"What is most remarkable in all this," said the priest, "is truly that there is nothing very remarkable in it. The Baptist required from his hearers very simple and very familiar duties,--such as he was not the first to preach, such as had been recognised as duties by all religions; and do you think that those who were neither Jews nor Christians were therefore left without any religion? No! never did God leave any of his creatures without religion; they could not utter the words _right_, _wrong_,--_beautiful_, _hateful_, without recognising a religion written by God on their hearts from the beginning--a religion which existed before the preaching of John, before the coming of Christ, and of which the appearance of John and the doctrine and sacrifice of Christ, were but the fulfilment. For Christ came to _fulfil_ the law, not to destroy it. Do you ask what law? Not the law of Moses, but the universal law of God's moral truth written in our hearts. It is, my friends, a folly to talk of _natural_ religion as of something different from _revealed_ religion.

"The great proof of the truth of John's mission lies in its comprehensiveness: men and women, artisans and soldiers, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, gathered to him in the wilderness; and he included all in his teaching, for he was sent to all; and the best proof of the truth of his teaching lies in its harmony with that law already written in the heart and the conscience of men. When Christ came afterwards, he preached a doctrine more sublime, with a more authoritative voice; but here, also, the best proof we have of the truth of that divine teaching lies in this--that he had prepared from the beginning the heart and the conscience of man to harmonise with it."

This was a very curious sermon; quiet, elegant, and learned, with a good deal of sacred and profane history introduced in illustration, which I am sorry I cannot remember in detail. It made, however, no appeal to feeling or to practice; and after listening to it, we all went in to luncheon and discussed our newspapers.

III.

_Fragments of a Sermon (Anglican Church)._

Text, Luke iv., from the 14th to the 18th, but more especially the 18th verse. This sermon was extempore.

The preacher began by observing, that our Lord's sermon at Nazareth established the second of two principles. By his sermon from the Mount, in which he had addressed the multitude in the open air, under the vault of the blue heaven alone, he has left to us the principle that all places are fitted for the service of God, and that all places may be sanctified by the preaching of his truth. While, by his sermon in the Synagogue (that which is recorded by St. Luke in this passage), he has established the principle, that it is right to set apart a place to assemble together in worship and to listen to instruction; and it is observable that on this occasion our Saviour taught in the synagogue, where there was no sacrifice, no ministry of the priests, as in the Temple; but where a portion of the law and the prophets might be read by any man; and any man, even a stranger (as he was himself), might be called upon to expound.

Then reading impressively the whole of the narrative down to the 32nd verse, the preacher closed the sacred volume, and went on to this effect:--

"There are two orders of evil in the world--Sin and Crime. Of the second, the world takes strict cognisance; of the first, it takes comparatively little; yet _that_ is worse in the eyes of God. There are two orders of temptation: the temptation which assails our lower nature--our appetites; the temptation which assails our higher nature--our intellect. The _first_, leading to sin in the body, is punished in the body,--the consequence being pain, disease, death. The _second_, leading to sins of the soul, as pride chiefly, uncharitableness, selfish sacrifice of others to our own interests or purposes,--is punished in the soul--in the Hell of the Spirit."

(All this part of his discourse very beautiful, earnest, eloquent; but I regretted that he did not follow out the distinction he began with between _sin_ and _crime_, and the views and deductions, religious and moral, which that distinction leads to.)

He continued to this effect: "Christ said that it was a part of his mission to heal the broken-hearted. What is meant by the phrase 'a broken heart?'" He illustrated it by the story of Eli, and by the wife of Phineas, both of whom died broken in heart; "and our Saviour himself died on the cross heart-broken by sorrow rather than by physical torture."--

(I lost something here because I was questioning and doubting within myself, for I have always had the thought that Christ must have been _glad_ to die.)

He went on:--"To heal the broken-hearted is to say to those who are beset by the remembrance and the misery of sin, 'My brother, the past is past--think not of it to thy perdition; arise and sin no more.'" (All this, and more to the same purpose, wonderfully beautiful! and I became all soul--subdued to listen.) "There are two ways of meeting the pressure of misery and heart-break: first, by trusting to time" (then followed a quotation from Schiller's "Wallenstein," in reference to grief, which sounded strange, and yet beautiful, from the pulpit, "Was verschmerzte nicht der Mensch?"--what cannot man grieve down?); "secondly, by defiance and resistance, setting oneself resolutely to endure. But Christ taught a different way from either--by _submission_--by the complete surrender of our whole being to the will of God.

"The next part of Christ's mission was to preach deliverance to the captives." (Then followed a most eloquent and beautiful exposition of Christian freedom--of who were free; and who were not free, but properly spiritual captives.) "To be content within limitations is freedom; to desire beyond those limitations is bondage. The bird which is content within her cage is free; the bird which can fly from tree to tree, yet desires to soar like the eagle,--the eagle which can ascend to the mountain peak yet desires to reach the height of that sun on which his eye is fixed,--these are in bondage. The man who is not content within his sphere of duties and powers, but feels his faculties, his position, his profession; a perpetual trammel,--_he_ is spiritually in bondage. The only freedom is the freedom of the soul, content within its external limitations, and yet elevated spiritually far above them by the inward powers and impulses which lift it up to God."

IV.

_Recollections of another Church of England Sermon preached extempore._

The text was taken from Matt. xii. 42.: "The Queen of the South shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it," &c.

The preacher began by drawing that distinction between knowledge and wisdom which so many comprehend and allow, and so few apply. He then described the two parties in the great question of popular education. Those who would base all human progress on secular instruction, on knowledge in contradistinction to ignorance, as on light opposed to darkness;--and the mistake of those who, taking the contrary extreme, denounce all secular instruction imparted to the poor as dangerous, or contemn it as useless. The error of those who sneer at the triumph of intellect he termed a species of idiocy; and the error of those who do not see the insufficiency of knowledge, blind presumption. Then he contrasted worldly wisdom and spiritual; with a flow of gorgeous eloquence he enlarged on the picture of worldly wisdom as exhibited in the character of Solomon, and of intellect, and admiration for intellect, in the character of the Queen of Sheba. "In what consisted the wisdom of Solomon? He made, as the sacred history assures us, three thousand proverbs, mostly prudential maxims relating to conduct in life; the use and abuse of riches; prosperity and adversity. His acquirements in natural philosophy seem to have been confined to the appearances of material and visible things; the herbs and trees, the beasts and birds, the creeping things and fishes. His political wisdom consisted in increasing his wealth, his dominions, and the number of his subjects and cities. On his temple he lavished all that art had then accomplished, and on his own house a world of riches in gold, and silver, and precious things: but all was done for his own glory--nothing for the improvement or the happiness of his people, who were ground down by taxes, suffered in the midst of all his magnificence, and remained ignorant in spite of all his knowledge. Witness the wars, tyrannies, miseries, delusions, and idolatries which followed after his death."

"But the Queen of Sheba came not from the uttermost parts of the earth to view the magnificence and wonder at the greatness of the King, she came to hear his wisdom. She came not to ask anything from him, but to prove him with hard questions. No idea of worldly gain, or selfish ambition was in her thoughts; she paid even for the pleasure of hearing his wise sayings by rare and costly gifts."

"Knowledge is power; but he who worships knowledge not for its own sake, but for the power it brings, worships power. Knowledge is riches; but he who worships knowledge for the sake of all it bestows, worships riches. The Queen of Sheba worshipped knowledge solely for its own sake; and the truths which she sought from the lips of Solomon she sought for truth's sake. She gave, all she could give, in return, the spicy products of her own land, treasures of pure gold, and blessings warm from her heart. The man who makes a voyage to the antipodes only to behold the constellation of the Southern Cross, the man who sails to the North to see how the magnet trembles and varies, these love knowledge for its own sake, and are impelled by the same enthusiasm as the Queen of Sheba." He went on to analyse the character of Solomon, and did not treat him, I thought, with much reverence either as sage or prophet. He remarked that, "of the thousand songs of Solomon one only survives, and that both in this song and in his proverbs his meaning has often been mistaken; it is supposed to be spiritual, and is interpreted symbolically, when in fact the plain, obvious, material significance is the true one."

He continued to this effect,--but with a power of language and illustration which I cannot render. "We see in Solomon's own description of his dominion, his glory, his wealth, his fame, what his boasted wisdom achieved; what it could, and what it could not do for him. What was the end of all his magnificence? of his worship of the beautiful? of his intellectual triumphs? of his political subtlety? of his ships, and his commerce, and his chariots, and his horses, and his fame which reached to the ends of the earth? All--as it is related--ended in feebleness, in scepticism, in disbelief of happiness, in sensualism, idolatry, and dotage! The whole 'Book of Ecclesiastes,' fine as it is, presents a picture of selfishness and epicurism. This was the King of the Jews! the King of those that know! (_Il maestro di color chi sanno._) Solomon is a type of worldly wisdom, of desire of knowledge for the sake of all that knowledge can give. We imitate him when we would base the happiness of a people on knowledge. When we have commanded the sun to be our painter, and the lightning to run on our errands, what reward have we? Not the increase of happiness, nor the increase of goodness; nor--what is next to both--our faith in both."

"It would seem profane to contrast Solomon and Christ had not our Saviour himself placed that contrast distinctly before us. He consecrated the comparison by applying it--'Behold a greater than Solomon is here.' In quoting these words we do not presume to bring into comparison the two _natures_, but the two intellects--the two aspects of truth. Solomon described the external world; Christ taught the moral law. Solomon illustrated the aspects of nature; Christ helped the aspirations of the spirit. Solomon left as a legacy the saying that 'in much wisdom there is much grief;' and Christ preached to us the lowly wisdom which can consecrate grief; making it lead to the elevation of our whole being and to ultimate happiness. The two majesties--the two kings--how different! Not till we are old, and have suffered, and have laid our experience to heart, do we feel the immeasurable distance between the teaching of Christ and the teaching of Solomon!"

Then returning to the Queen of Sheba, he treated the character as the type of the intellectual woman. He contrasted her rather favourably with Solomon. He described with picturesque felicity, her long and toilsome journey to see, to admire, the man whose wisdom had made him renowned;--the mixture of enthusiasm and humility which prompted her desire to learn, to prove the truth of what rumour had conveyed to her, to commune with him of all that was in her heart. And she returned to her own country rich in wise sayings. But did the final result of all this glory and knowledge reach her there? and did it shake her faith in him she had bowed to as the wisest of kings and men?

He then contrasted the character of the Queen of Sheba with that of Mary, the mother of our Lord, that feminine type of holiness, of tenderness, of long-suffering; of sinless purity in womanhood, wifehood, and motherhood: and rising to more than usual eloquence and power, he prophesied the regeneration of all human communities through the social elevation, the intellect, the purity, and the devotion of Woman.

V.

_From a Sermon (apparently extempore) by a Dissenting Minister._

The ascetics of the old times seem to have had a belief that all sin was in the body; that the spirit belonged to God, and the body to his adversary the devil; and that to contemn, ill-treat, and degrade by every means this frame of ours, so wonderfully, so fearfully, so exquisitely made, was to please the Being who made it; and who, for gracious ends, no doubt, rendered it capable of such admirable development of strength and beauty. Miserable mistake!

To some, this body is as a prison from which we are to rejoice to escape by any permitted means: to others, it is as a palace to be luxuriously kept up and decorated within and without. But what says Paul (Cor. vi. 19.),--"Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God, and which is not your own?"

Surely not less than a temple is that form which the Divine Redeemer took upon him, and deigned, for a season, to inhabit; which he consecrated by his life, sanctified by his death, glorified by his transfiguration, hallowed and beautified by his resurrection!

It is because they do not recognise _this_ body as a temple, built up by God's intelligence, as a fitting sanctuary for the immortal Spirit, and _this_ life equally with any other form of life as dedicate to Him, that men fall into such opposite extremes of sin:--the spiritual sin which contemns the body, and the sensual sin which misuses it.

VI.

When I was at Boston I made the acquaintance of Father Taylor, the founder of the Sailors' Home in that city. He was considered as the apostle of the seamen, and I was full of veneration for him as the enthusiastic teacher and philanthropist. But it is not of his virtues or his labours that I wish to speak. He struck me in another way, _as a poet_; he was a born poet. Until he was five-and-twenty he had never learned to read, and his reading afterwards was confined to such books as aided him in his ministry. He remained an illiterate man to the last, but his mind was teeming with spontaneous imagery, allusion, metaphor. One might almost say of him,

"He could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a trope!"

These images and allusions had a freshness, an originality, and sometimes an oddity that was quite startling, and they were generally, but not always, borrowed from his former profession--that of a sailor.

One day we met him in the street. He told us in a melancholy voice that he had been burying a child, and alluded almost with emotion to the great number of infants he had buried lately. Then after a pause, striking his stick on the ground and looking upwards, he added, "There must be something wrong somewhere! there's a storm brewing, when the doves are all flying aloft!"

One evening in conversation with me, he compared the English and the Americans to Jacob's vine, which, planted on one side of the wall, grew over it and hung its boughs and clusters on the other side,--"but it is still the same vine, nourished from the same root!"

On one occasion when I attended his chapel, the sermon was preceded by a long prayer in behalf of an afflicted family, one of whose members had died or been lost in a whaling expedition to the South Seas. In the midst of much that was exquisitely pathetic and poetical, refined ears were startled by such a sentence as this,--"Grant, O Lord! that this rod of chastisement be sanctified, every twig of it, to the edification of their souls!"

Then immediately afterwards he prayed that the Divine Comforter might be near the bereaved father "when his aged heart went forth from his bosom to flutter round the far southern grave of his boy!" Praying for others of the same family who were on the wide ocean, he exclaimed, stretching forth his arms, "O save them! O guard them! thou angel of the deep!"

On another occasion, speaking of the insufficiency of the moral principles without religious feelings, he exclaimed, "Go heat your ovens with snowballs! What! shall I send you to heaven with such an icicle in your pocket? I might as well put a millstone round your neck to teach you to swim!"

He was preaching against violence and cruelty:--"Don't talk to me," said he, "of the savages! a ruffian in the midst of Christendom is the savage of savages. He is as a man freezing in the sun's heat, groping in the sun's light, a straggler in paradise, an alien in heaven!"

In his chapel all the principal seats in front of the pulpit and down the centre aisle were filled by the sailors. We ladies, and gentlemen, and strangers, whom curiosity had brought to hear him, were ranged on each side; he would on no account allow us to take the best places. On one occasion, as he was denouncing hypocrisy, luxury, and vanity, and other vices of more civilised life, he said emphatically, "I don't mean _you_ before me here," looking at the sailors; "I believe you are wicked enough, but honest fellows in some sort, for you profess less, not more, than you practise; but I mean to touch _starboard_ and _larboard_ there!" stretching out both hands with the forefinger extended, and looking at us on either side till we quailed.

He compared the love of God in sending Christ upon earth to that of the father of a seaman who sends his eldest and most beloved son, the hope of the family, to bring back the younger one, lost on his voyage, and missing when his ship returned to port.

Alluding to the carelessness of Christians, he used the figure of a mariner, steering into port through a narrow dangerous channel, "false lights here, rocks there, shifting sand banks on one side, breakers on the other; and who, instead of fixing his attention to keep the head of his vessel right, and to obey the instructions of the pilot as he sings out from the wheel, throws the pilot overboard, lashes down the helm, and walks the deck whistling, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket." Here, suiting the action to the word, he put on a true sailor-like look of defiant jollity;--changed in a moment to an expression of horror as he added, "See! See! she drifts to destruction!"

One Sunday he attempted to give to his sailor congregation an idea of Redemption. He began with an eloquent description of a terrific storm at sea, rising to fury through all its gradations; then, amid the waves, a vessel is seen labouring in distress and driving on a lee shore. The masts bend and break, and go overboard; the sails are rent, the helm unshipped, they spring a leak! the vessel begins to fill, the water gains on them; she sinks deeper, deeper, _deeper! deeper!_ He bent over the pulpit repeating the last words again and again; his voice became low and hollow. The faces of the sailors as they gazed up at him with their mouths wide open, and their eyes fixed, I shall never forget. Suddenly stopping, and looking to the farthest end of the chapel as into space, he exclaimed, with a piercing cry of exultation, "A life boat! a life boat!" Then looking down upon his congregation, most of whom had sprung to their feet in an ecstasy of suspense, he said in a deep impressive tone, and extending his arms, "_Christ is that life boat!_"

VII.

RELIGION AND SCIENCE.

"It is true, that science has not made Nature as expressive of God in the first instance, or to the beginner in religion, as it was in earlier times. Science reveals a rigid, immutable order; and this to common minds looks much like self-subsistence, and does not manifest intelligence, which is full of life, variety, and progressive operation. Men, in the days of their ignorance, saw an immediate Divinity accomplishing an immediate purpose, or expressing an immediate feeling, in every sudden, striking change of nature--in a storm, the flight of a bird, &c.; and Nature, thus interpreted, became the sign of a present, deeply interested Deity. Science undoubtedly brings vast aids, but it is to _prepared_ minds, to those who have begun in another school. The greatest aid it yields consists in the revelation it makes of the Infinite. It aids us not so much by showing us marks of design in this or that particular thing as by showing the _Infinite_ in the _finite_. Science does this office when it unfolds to us the unity of the universe, which thus becomes the sign, the efflux of one unbounded intelligence, when it reveals to us in every work of Nature infinite connections, the influences of all-pervading laws--when it shows us in each created thing unfathomable, unsearchable depths, to which our intelligence is altogether unequal. Thus Nature explored by science is a witness of the Infinite. It is also a witness to the same truth by its beauty; for what is so undefined, so mysterious as beauty?"--_Dr. Channing._