Chapter III (3)

But the last year of Shelley's life had involved a very considerable progress in the formation of his intellectual character. The "Prometheus Unbound," perhaps at once the most characteristic and the most perfect of all his works, is identical in spirit and tendency even with the earliest, "Queen Mab"; but a re-perusal of it in comparison with the other writings, even the "Revolt of Islam," will show a more distinct presentment of the original ideas, coupled with a much more measured suggestion for acting on them, and a far less bitter allusion to the obstacles; while the charity and love are more all-embracing and apparent than ever. Imperfect as it is for dramatic representation, shortcoming even in the power to trace the working of emotions and ideas in utterly diverse characters, the "Cenci" does indicate a stronger aptitude for sympathy with other creatures on their own terms than any other of the poet's writings. He had, therefore, sobered in judgment, without declining in his inborn genius; but, on the contrary, with a clearer sense of the limits placed upon individual action, he had gained strength; and I feel certain that a corresponding change had taken place in his perception of the true import and value of characters unlike his own. The last few months of his life at Lerici had very materially contributed to this change. Although I cannot recall any distinct statement to that effect by Mary Shelley, her conversation had left that impression on me; it is also suggested by the way in which he himself spoke of it, and is fully confirmed by the tone of the letters addressed to her from Pisa.

All who have attempted to portray Shelley, either intellectually or physically, have done so from some appreciable, almost personal point of view. When many eyes see one object, it presents itself in as many different aspects, and the description given by each bears often a slight resemblance to that of others. So it has been with Shelley. The artistic portraits of him have happened to be particularly imperfect. I remember seeing a miniature by an amateur friend which actually suggested a form broad and square. The ordinarily received miniature is like almost all of its tribe, and resembles Shelley about as much as a lady in a book of fashions resembles real women; and it constitutes evidence all the more detrimental and misleading, since it appears to give as well as to receive a color of verisimilitude from the usual written description, which represents Shelley as "feminine," "almost girlish," "ideal," "angelic," and so forth. The accounts of him by firmer hands are still cramped by the individuality of the authorship.

His school-friend, Hogg, is a gentleman of independent property; Shelley detected the sensitiveness of his nature; and I know that the man has been capable of truly generous conduct. How is it, then, that he has written such utterly unintelligible stuff, and has descended to such evasions as to insert initials, lest people should detect amongst Shelley's correspondents a most admirable friend, who happened, it is supposed, to be of plebeian origin? Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, I surmise, was conscious, somewhat early in life, that his better qualities were not fully appreciated; and his love of ease, his wit, his perception of the ludicrous, made him take refuge in cynicism until he learned almost to forget the origin of the real meaning of the things he talked about. His account of Shelley is like a figure seen through fantastically distorting panes of glass.

Thomas Love Peacock, again, is a man to whose extraordinary powers Shelley did full justice. He has worked through a long official career without losing his very peculiar dry wit; but a dry wit was not the man exactly to discern the form of Shelley's mind, or to portray it with accuracy and distinctness.

Few men knew the poet better than my father; but a mind checked by "over-refinement," excessive conscientiousness, and an irresistible tendency to find out niceties of difference,--a mind, in short, like that of Hamlet, cultivated rather than corrected by the trials of life, was scarcely suited to comprehend the strong instincts, indomitable will, and complete unity of idea which distinguished Shelley. Accordingly we have from my father a very doubtful portrait, seldom advancing beyond details, which are at once exaggerated and explained away by qualifications.

Byron, I suspect, through the natural strength of his perceptive power, was likely to have formed a better design; but the two were separated soon after he had begun to learn that such a man as Shelley might be found on the same earth with himself.

One or two others that have written have been mere tourists or acquaintances. Unquestionably the companion who knew him best of all was Mary; and although she lacked the power of distinct, positive, and absolute portraiture, her writings will be found to contain, together with his own, the best materials for forming an estimate of his natural character.

The real man was reconcilable with all these descriptions. His traits suggested everything that has been said of him; but his aspect, conformation, and personal qualities contained more than any one has ascribed to him, and more indeed than all put together. A few plain matters-of-fact will make this intelligible. Shelley was a tall man,--nearly, if not quite, five feet ten in height. He was peculiarly slender, and, as I have said already, his chest had palpably enlarged after the usual growing period. He retained the same kind of straitness in the perpendicular outline on each side of him; his shoulders were the reverse of broad, but yet they were not sloping, and a certain squareness in them was naturally incompatible with anything feminine in his appearance. To his last days he still suffered his chest to collapse; but it was less a stoop than a peculiar mode of holding the head and shoulders,--the face thrown a little forward, and the shoulders slightly elevated; though the whole attitude below the shoulders, when standing, was unusually upright, and had the appearance of litheness and activity. I have mentioned that bodily vigor which he could display; and from his action when I last saw him, as well as from Mary's account, it is evident that he had not abandoned his exercises, but the reverse. He had an oval face and delicate features, not unlike those given to him in the well-known miniature. His forehead was high. His fine, dark brown hair, when not cut close, disposed itself in playful and very beautiful curls over his brows and round the back of his neck. He had brown eyes, with a color in his cheek "like a girl's"; but as he grew older, his complexion bronzed. So far the reality agrees with the current descriptions; nevertheless they omit material facts. The outline of the features and face possessed a firmness and _hardness_ entirely inconsistent with a feminine character. The outline was sharp and firm; the markings distinct, and indicating an energetic _physique_. The outline of the bone was distinctly perceptible at the temples, on the bridge of the nose, at the back portion of the cheeks, and in the jaw, and the artist could trace the principal muscles of the face. The beard also, although the reverse of strong, was clearly marked, especially about the chin. Thus, although the general aspect was peculiarly slight, youthful, and delicate, yet, when you looked to "the points" of the animal, you saw well enough the indications of a masculine vigor, in many respects far above the average. And what I say of the physical aspect of course bears upon the countenance. That changed with every feeling. It usually looked earnest,--when joyful, was singularly bright and animated, like that of a gay young girl,--when saddened, had an aspect of sorrow peculiarly touching, and sometimes it fell into a listless weariness still more mournful; but for the most part there was a look of active movement, promptitude, vigor, and decision, which bespoke a manly, and even a commanding character.

The general tendency that all who approached Shelley displayed to yield to his dictate is a practical testimony to these qualities; for his earnestness was apt to take a tone of command so generous, so free, so simple, as to be utterly devoid of offence, and yet to constitute him a sort of tyrant over all who came within his reach.

The weakness ascribed to Shelley's voice was equally taken from exceptional instances, and the account of it usually suggests the idea that he spoke in a falsetto which might almost be mistaken for the "shriek" of a harsh-toned woman. Nothing could be more unlike the reality. The voice was indeed quite peculiar, and I do not know where any parallel to it is likely to be found unless in Lancashire. Shelley had no ear for music,--the words that he wrote for existing airs being, strangely enough, inappropriate in rhythm and even in cadence; and though he had a manifest relish for music and often talked of it, I do not remember that I ever heard him sing even the briefest snatch. I cannot tell, therefore, what was the "register" of his singing voice; but his speaking voice unquestionably was then of a high natural counter-tenor. I should say that he usually spoke at a pitch somewhere about the D natural above the base line; but it was in no respect a falsetto. It was a natural chest-voice, not powerful, but telling, musical, and expressive. In reading aloud, the strain was peculiarly clear, and had a sustained, song-like quality, which came out more strongly when, as he often did, he recited verse. When he called out in pain,--a very rare occurrence,--or sometimes in comic playfulness, you might hear the "shrillness" of which people talk; but it was only because the organ was forced beyond the ordinary effort. His usual speech was clear, and yet with a breath in it, with an especially distinct articulation, a soft, vibrating tone, emphatic, pleasant, and persuasive.

It seems to me that these physical characteristics forcibly illustrate the moral and intellectual genius of the man. The impulsiveness which has been ascribed to him is a wrong expression, for it is usually interpreted to mean the action of sudden motives waywardly, capriciously, or at least intermittingly working; whereas the character which Shelley so constantly displayed was an overbearing strength of conviction and feeling, a species of audacious, but chivalrous readiness to act upon conviction as promptly as possible, and, above all, a zealous disposition to say out all that was in his mind. It is better expressed by the word which some satirist put into the mouth of Coleridge, speaking of himself, and, instead of impulsiveness, it should have been called an "utterancy," coupled with decision and promptitude of action. The physical development of the man with the progress of time may be traced in the advancement of his writings. The physical qualities which are equally to be found in his poetry and prose were quite as manifest in his aspect, and not less so in his conduct of affairs. It must be remembered that his life terminated long before he had arrived half-way, "_nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita_," when more than one other great intellect has been but commencing its true work. I believe, that, if Shelley had lived, he would himself have been the most potent and useful commentator on his own writings, in the production of other and more complete works. But meanwhile the true measure of his genius is to be found in the influence which he has had, not only over those who have proclaimed their debt to him, but over numbers who have mistrusted and even denounced him.

THE TEST.

"Farewell awhile, my bonnie darling!
One long, close kiss, and I depart:
I hear the angry trumpet snarling,
The drum-beat tingles at my heart."

Behind him, softest flutes were breathing
Across the vale their sweet recall;
Before him burst the battle, seething
In flame beneath its thunder-pall.

All sights and sounds to stay invited;
The meadows tossed their foam of flowers;
The lingering Day beheld, delighted,
The dances of his amorous Hours.

He paused: again the fond temptation
Assailed his heart, so firm before,
And tender dreams, of Love's creation,
Persuaded from the peaceful shore.

"But no!" he sternly cried; "I follow
The trumpet, not the shepherd's reed:
Let idlers pipe in pastoral hollow,--
Be mine the sword, and mine the deed!

"Farewell to Love!" he murmured, sighing:
"Perchance I lose what most is dear;
But better there, struck down and dying,
Than be a man and wanton here!"

He went where battle's voice was loudest;
He pressed where danger nearest came;
His hand advanced, among the proudest,
Their banner through the lines of flame.

And there, when wearied Carnage faltered,
He, foremost of the fallen, lay,
While Night looked down with brow unaltered,
And breathed the battle's dust away.

There lying, sore from wounds untended,
A vision crossed the starry gleam:
The girl he loved beside him bended,
And kissed him in his fever-dream.

"Oh, love!" she cried, "you fled, to find me;
I left with you the daisied vale;
I turned from flutes that wailed behind me,
To hear your trumpet's distant hail.

"Your tender vows, your peaceful kisses,
They scarce outlived the moment's breath;
But now we clasp immortal blisses
Of passion proved on brinks of Death!

"No fate henceforward shall estrange her
Who finds a heart more brave than fond;
For Love, forsook this side of danger,
Waits for the man who goes beyond!"

THE PREACHER'S TRIAL.

Sitting in my New-England study, as do so many of my tribe, to peruse the "Atlantic," I wonder whether, like its namesake, hospitable to many persons and things, it will for once let me write as well as read, and launch from my own calling a theme on its bosom. Our cloth has been worn so long in the world, I doubt how far it may suit with new fashions in fine company-parlors; but, seeing room is so cordially made for some of my brethren, as the Reverend Mr. Wilbur and "The Country Parson," to keep up the dignity of the profession, I am emboldened to come for a day with what the editorial piety may accept, "rejected article" as it might be elsewhere.

The pulpit has lost something of its old sacredness in the general mind. There is little popular superstition to endure its former dictation. No exclusive incarnate theocracy in any particular persons is left, Leviticus and the Hebrew priesthood are gone. Church, ministry, and Sabbath are the regular targets taken out by our moral riflemen and archers, though so seldom to hit fair in the centre, that we may find ourselves, like spectators at the match, respecting the old targets more than we do the shots. Yet homilies and exporters are thought fair game. I have even heard splendid lecturers whose wit ran so low or who were so pushed for matter as to talk of what divinity-students wear round their necks, which seems a superficial consideration. The anciently venerated desk has two sharp enemies, the radical and the conservative, aiming their artillery from opposite sides, putting it somewhat in the position of the poor fish who is in danger from diverse classes of its fellow-creatures, one in the air and one in the water, and knows not whether to dive or rise to the surface, till it can conclude which is the more pleasant exit from life, to be hawked at or swallowed outright.

While, however, critics and reformers fail to furnish a fit substitute for the sermon, and the finest essays show not only Bacon's "dry light," but a very cold one too, and the wit and humor of the lyceum fall short of any mark in the conscience of mankind, and philanthropy uses stabbing often instead of surgery, a clerical institution, on whose basis direct admonition can be administered by individuals without egotism or impertinence, maintains an indefeasible claim. Indeed, as was fancied of the innocent in the ordeal by fire, or like the children from the furnace, it comes out the other side of all censure, with some odor of sanctity yet on its unsinged robes and new power in higher quarters in its hands. Defective, indeed, it is. If some of its organs could speak a little more in their natural voice, and could, moreover, wash off the deformity of this Indian war-paint of high-wrought rhetoric,--if they could use a little more of the colloquial earnestness of the street and table in their style, instead of those freaks of eloquence which, among all our associations, there ought to be a society to put down,--they would more honor their vocation, and effect its purpose of saving human souls. Let us not be so loudmouthed, or bluster as we do. Our declamation will have to hush its barbarian noise some time. Nothing but conversation will be left in heaven; and it were well, could we have on earth sober and thoughtful assemblies, at blood-warmth instead of fever-heat, rather than those over-crowded halls from which _hundreds go away unable to obtain admission_.

But the present design is a plea for justice, not a fresh charge. The pulpit is to teach religion in application to life. But when we reflect what life is, how deep in the soul, how wide in the world, how complicated and delicate in its affairs and ties,--and when, we consider what religion is, the whole truth of heaven respecting all the operations of earth,--a kindly judgment is required for unavoidable short-comings and ministerial mistakes. With different ages, sexes, experiences, states of mind, degrees of intelligence and impressibleness in a congregation, it is a rare felicity for a sermon to reach all its members with equal impressiveness or acceptance. Who ever heard a uniform estimate of any discourse? There seems almost a curse upon the preacher's office from its very greatness, so that it is never finished, and no portion of it can be done perfectly well and secure against all objection. If he try to unfold the deep things of the Spirit, and bring his best thoughts, which he would not throw away, before his audience, though in language clearer than many a chapter of Paul's Epistles, _some_ will call the topic obscure, and complain that their children cannot understand it, quoting, perhaps, the old sentence, that all truth necessary to salvation is so plain that he who runs may read, and the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot err therein, and commending superficial homilies on other tongues to censure whatever is profound from his. But should the poor occupant of the desk venture to emulate this eulogized sonorous exhortation, exerting himself to come down to the ignorant and the young, there will be _some_ to stigmatize that, too, as a sort of trifling and disrespect to mature minds. He has by a senior now and then been blamed for excessive attention to the lambs of his flock, and annoyed with the menace to stay away, if they were especially to be noticed. If a visitation of special grace or an exaltation of physical strength make the mortal incumbent happy in his exposition, so that he is listened to with edification and delight, it is, by some, not passed over to his credit at the ebb-tide of his power. Half the time the house is not half full, as though the institution which all order to be conducted nobody but he is bound to shoulder. If the preacher labor to express the mysterious relationship between God and Christ, the divine and human nature, he will be considered by _some_ a sectarian, controversialist, or heretic. If he unfold what is above all denominational disputes, he will be fortunate to escape accusations of transcendentalism, pantheism, spiritualism. If, lucky man, he go scot-free of such indictment, a last stunning stroke, in the gantlet he runs, will be sure to fetch him up, in the vague and unanswerable imputation of being _very peculiar in his views_. If he insist on the miracles as literal facts, he will be laughed at as old-fashioned in one pew; if he slight them, he will be mourned over as unsound in the next. Men grumble at taxes and tolls; alas! nobody is stopped at so many gates and questioned in so many ways as he. If he take in hand the tender matter of consoling stricken hearts, the ecstasy of his visions will not save his topic from being regarded by some as painful, and by others as a mere shining of the moon. He will receive special requests not to harrow up the feelings he only meant to bind up in balm. He may be informed of an aversion, more or less extensive, to naming the _grave_ or _coffin_ and what it contains, though he only puts one foot by pall or bier to plant the other in paradise. If he turn the everlasting verities he is intrusted with to events transpiring on the public stage, though he never sided with any party in his life, and has no more committed himself to men than did his Master, _some_ will be grieved at his _preaching politics_. His head has throbbed, his heart ached, his eyes were hot and wet once before he uttered himself; but he must suffer and weep worse afterwards, because he went too far for one man and not far enough for another. He is told, one day, that he is too severe on seceders, and the next, ironically, that, with such merciful sentiments towards them, he ought always to wear a cravat completely white. One man is amused at his sermon, and another thinks the same is sad. He will be asked if he cannot give a little less of one thing or more of another, as though he were a dealer in wares or an exhibiter of curious documents for a price, and could take an article from this or that shelf, or a paper from any one of a hundred pigeon-holes, when, if he be a servant of the Lord and organ of the Holy Ghost, he has no choice and is shut up to his errand,--necessity is laid upon him, woe is unto him if he deliver it not, but, like another Jonah, flee to Tarshish when the Lord tells him to go to Nineveh and cry against its wickedness; and he feels through every nerve that truth is not a thing to be carried round as merchandise or peddled out at all to suit particular tastes, to retain old friends or win new ones, hard as it may go, to the anguish of his soul, to lose the good-will of those he loves, and whose distrust is a chronic pang, though they come to love him again all the more for what he has suffered and said. But if, passing by discussions of general interest, and exposing himself to the hint of being behind the times, he grapple with the sins immediately about him, board the false customs of society and trade, and strike with the sword of the Lord at private vices and family faults, he will be blamed as very _personal_, and be apprised of his insults to those of whom in his delivery he never thought, as he may never preach _at_ anybody, or even _to_ anybody, in his most direct thrusting, more than to himself, reaching others only through his own wounded heart. Meantime, some of his ecclesiastical constituents will suspect him, in his local ethics, of leniency to wide-spread corruption; and professed philanthropists will brand him as a trimmer and coward, recreant, fawning, and dumb,--the term _spaniel_ having been flung at one of the best men and most conscientious ministers that ever lived, simply because he could not vituperate as harshly as some of his neighbors. Some would have him remember only those in bonds; others say they cannot endure from him even the word _slavery_. Blessed, if, from all these troubles, he can, for solace, and with a sense of its significance, bethink himself of Christ's saying to his disciples, "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!" Thrice blessed, if he have an assurance and in that inward certificate possess the peace which passeth understanding!

I intend not, by my simple story, which has in it no fiction, to add to the lamentations of the old prophet, nor will allow Jeremiah to represent all my mood. It is perfectly fit the laity should criticize the clergy. The minister,--who is he but one of the people, set apart to particular functions, open to a judgment on the manner of their discharge, from which no sacred mission or supposed apostolic succession can exempt, the Apostles having been subject to it themselves? Under their robes and ordinances, in high-raised desks, priest and bishop are but men, after all. Ministers should be grateful for all the folk's frankness. Only let the criticism be considerate and fair; and in order to its becoming so, let us ascertain the perfect model of their calling. Did not their Master give it, when he said, "The field is the world"? If so, then to everything in the world must the pulpit apply the moral law. What department of it shall be excused? _Politics_,--because it embraces rival schools in the same worshipping body, and no disinterested justice in alluding to its principles can be expected from a preacher, or because whoever disagrees with his opinions must be silent, there being on Sunday and in the sanctuary no decency allowed of debate or reply, and therefore whatever concerns the civil welfare and salvation of the community is out of the watchman's beat now, though God so expressly bade him warn the city of old? _Commerce_,--because a minister understands nothing of the elements and necessities of business, and must blunder in pointing to banks and shops or any transactions of the street, though an old preacher, called Solomon, in his Proverbs refers so sharply to the buyer and the seller? _Pleasure_,--because the servant of the Lord cannot be supposed to sympathize with, but only to denounce, amusement which poor tired humanity employs for its recreation, though Miriam's smiting of her timbrel, which still rings from the borders of the raging Red Sea, and David's dancing in a linen ephod with all his might before the Lord, when the ark on a new cart came into the city, were a sort of refreshment of triumphant sport? _The social circle_,--because of course he cannot go to parties or comprehend the play of feeling in which the natural affections run to and fro, and should rather be at home reading his Bible, turning over his Concordance, and writing his sermon, letting senate and dance, market and exchange, opera and theatre, fights and negotiations go to the winds, so he only comes duly with his _exegesis_ Sunday morning to his place? In short, is the minister's concern and call of God only, with certain imposing formalities and prearranged dogmas, to greet in their Sunday-clothes his friends who have laid aside their pursuits and delights with the gay garments or working-dress of the week, never reminding them of what, during the six days, they have heard or where they have been? "No!" let him say; "if this is to be a minister, no minister can I be!" For what is left of the field the Lord sends the minister into? It is cut up and fenced off into countless divisions, to every one of which some earthly-agent or interest brings a title-deed. The minister finds the land of the world, like some vast tract of uncivilized territory, seized by wild squatters, owned and settled by other parties, and, as a famous political-economist said in another connection, there is no cover at Nature's table for him. As with the soldier in the play, whose wars were over, _his_ "occupation's gone."

What is the minister, then? A ghost, or a figure like some in the shop-window, all made up of dead cloth and color into an appearance of life? Verily, he comes almost to that. But no such shape, no spectre from extinct animation of thousands of years ago, like the geologist's skeletons reconstructed from lifeless strata of the earth, can answer the vital purposes of the revelation from God. Of no pompous or abstract ritual administration did the Son of God set an example. He had a parable for the steward living when _He_ did; He called King Herod, then reigning, _a fox_, and the Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites; He declared the prerogatives of His Father beyond Cæsar's; He maintained a responsibility of human beings coextensive with the stage and inseparable from the smallest trifle of their existence. He did not limit His marvellous tongue to antiquities and traditions. He used the mustard-seed in the field and the leaven in the lump for His everlasting designs. His finger was stretched out to the cruel stones of self-righteousness flying through the air, and phylacteries of dissimulation worn on the walk. He was so _political_, He would have saved Jerusalem and Judea from Roman ruin, and wept because He could not, with almost the only tears mentioned of His. Those who teach in His name should copy after His pattern.

"_Confine yourselves to the old first Gospel, preach Christianity, early Christianity_," we ministers are often told. But what is Christianity, early or late, and what does the Gospel mean, but a rule of holy living in every circumstance now? Grief and offence may come, as Jesus says they must; misapplications and complaints, which are almost always misapprehensions, may be made; but are not these better than indifference and death? No doubt there is a prudence, and still more an impartial candor and equity, in treating every matter, but no beauty in timid flight from any matter there is to treat. The clergyman, like every man, speaks at his peril, and is as accountable as any one for what he says. He ought justly and tenderly to remember the diverse tenets represented among his auditors, to side with no sect as such, to give no individual by his indorsement a mean advantage over any other, nor any one a handle of private persecution by his open anathema. Moreover, he should abstain from that particularity in secular themes which so easily wanders from all sight of spiritual law amid regions of uncertainty and speculative conjecture. He should shun explorations less fit for prophets than for experts. He should lay his finger on no details in which questions of right and wrong are not plainly involved. He must be public-spirited; he cannot be more concerned for his country and his race, that righteousness and liberty and love may prevail, than divine seers have ever been, as their books of record show; but, if he becomes a mere diplomatist, financier, secretary-of-state, or military general, in his counsels or his tone, he evacuates his own position, flees as a craven from his post, and assumes that of other men. Yet it is an extreme still worse for him to resort to lifeless generalities of doctrine and duty, producing as little effect as comes from electric batteries or telegraphic wires when no magnetic current is established and no object reached. What section, of the world should evade or defy the law of God?

O preachers, beware of your sentimental descant on the worth of goodness, the goodness of being good, and the sinfulness of sin, without specifying either! It is a blank cartridge, or one of treacherous sand instead of powder, or a spiked gun, only whose priming explodes without noise or execution. Let nobody dodge the sure direction of that better than lead or iron shot with which from you the conscience is pierced and iniquity slain. Suffer not the statesman to withdraw his policy, nor the broker his funds, nor the captain the cause he fights for, from the sentence of divine truth on the good or evil in all the acts of men.

The preacher, however, as he pronounces or reports that sentence, must never forget the bond he is under in his own temper to the spirit of impartial love. Whatever is vindictive vitiates his announcement all the more that he cannot be rebuked for it, as he ought to be, on the spot. Only let not the hearers mistake earnestness for vindictiveness. If kindly and with intense serenity he communicates what he has struggled long and hard to attain, then for their own sake, if not for his, they should beware of visiting him either with silent distrust or open reproach. He, just like them, must stand or fall according to his fidelity to the oracles of God. Only, once more, let him and let the Church comprehend that those oracles are not summed up in any laborious expounding of verbal texts. "The letter killeth," unless itself enlivened through the immediate Providence.

To be true to God, the preacher must be true to his time, as the Prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles were to theirs. The pulpit dies of its dignity, when it creeps into the exhausted receiver of foregone conclusions, and has nothing to say but of Adam and Pharaoh, Jew and Gentile, Palestine and Tyre so far away. Its decorum of being inoffensive to others is suicidal for itself. It is the sleep of death for all. As the inductive philosopher took all knowledge for his province, it must take all life. We have, indeed, a glorious and venerable charter of inestimable worth in our map of the religious history of mankind through centuries that are gone. We must study the true meaning of the Bible, _the book_ and chief collection of the records of faith, precious above all for the immortal image and photograph, in so many a shifting light and various expression, of the transcendent form of divinity through manhood in Him to be ever reverently and lovingly named, Jesus Christ. But there is a spirit in man. "The word of God," says an Apostle, "is not bound"; nor can it be wholly bound up. The Holy Spirit of God that first descended never died, and never ceased to act on the human soul. The day of miracles is not past,--or, if none precisely like those of Jesus are still wrought, miracles of grace, the principal workings of the supernatural, of which external prodigies are the lowest species, are performed abundantly in the living breast. Jesus Himself, after all the sufficient and summary grandeur of His instructions, assures His followers of the Spirit that would come to lead them, beyond whatsoever He had said, into all truth. In that dispensation of the Spirit we live. Its sphere endures through all change, impregnable. It is "builded far from accident." No progress of earthly science can threat or hurt its eternal proportions. It is the supreme knowledge, and to whoever enters it a whisper comes whose only response is the confession of our noble hymn,--

"True science is to read Thy name."

Much is said of a contradictory relation of science to faith. But the statement is a misnomer. True faith is the lushest science, even the knowledge of God. Putting fishes or birds, shells or flowers, stones or stars, in a circle or a row is a lower science than the sublime intercommunication of the soul by prayer and love with its Father. Mere physical, without spiritual science, has no bottom to hold anything, and no foundation of peace. The king of science is not the naturalist as such, but the saint conversing with Divinity,--not so much Humboldt or La Place as Fénelon or Luther. So far as the progress of outward science saps accredited writings, they must give way, or rather any false conceptions of Nature they imply must yield, leaving whatever spirituality there is in them untouched. But this is from no essential contradiction between science and religious faith. What faith or religion is there in believing the world was made in six days? Less than in calculating, with Agassiz, by the coral reefs of Florida, that to make one bit of it took more than sixty thousand years. Religious faith, what is it? It is the trembling transport with which the soul hearkens and gives itself up to God, in sympathy with all likewise entranced souls. But from such consecrated listening to the voice of Deity, fresh in our bosom or echoed from without by those He has inspired, we verify the rule already affirmed, and fetch advice and command for all the affairs of life. It is emphatically the minister's duty thus to join the vision to the fact, that they may strike through and through one another. Certainly, so the true minister's speech should run. Let him stand up and boldly say, or always imply, "I so construe it; and if the _Church_ interpret it otherwise, the Church is no place for me. If the _world_ will accept no such method, the world is no place for me. I see not why I was born, or what with Church or world I have to do. From Church and world I should beg leave to retire, trusting that God's Universe, somewhere beyond this dingy spot, is true to the persuasion of His mind. I must apply religion universally to life, or not at all. If, when my country is in peril, I cannot bring her to the altar and ask that she may be lifted up in the arms of a common supplication,--if, in the terrible game of honesty with political corruption, when '_Check_' is said to the adverse power, I cannot wish and pray that '_Checkmate_' may follow,--when some huge evil, sorely wounded, in its fierce throes spreads destruction about, as the dying monster in Northern seas casts up boat-loads of dying men who fall bruised and bleeding among the fragments into the waves with the threshing of its angry tail, if then I cannot hope that the struggle may be short, and the ship of the Republic gather back her crew from prevailing in the conflict to sail prosperous with all her rich cargo of truth and freedom on the voyage over the sea of Time,--if no sound of the news-boy's cry must mix with the echoes of solemn courts, and no reflection of wasting fires in which life and treasure melt can flash through their windows, and no deeds of manly heroism or womanly patriotism are to have applause before God and Christ in the temple,--if nothing but some preexisting scheme of salvation, distinct from all living activity, must absorb the mind,--then I totally misunderstand and am quite out of my place. Then let me go. It is high time I were away. I have stayed too long already." Such should be the speech of the minister, knowing he is not tempted to be a partisan, and is possessed with but an over-kind sensibility to dread any ruffling of others' feelings or discord with those that are dear.

In the first year of a young minister's service, Dr. Channing besought him to let no possible independence of parochial support relax his industry: a needless caution to one not constituted to feel seductions of sloth, in whom active energy is no merit, and who can have no motive but the people's good. What else is there for him to seek? There is no by-end open, and no virtue in a devotedness there is no lure to forego. There is no position he can covet, as politicians are said to bid for the Presidency. But one thing is indispensable: he must tell what he thinks; he is strong only in his convictions; the sacrifice of them he cannot make; it were but his debility, if he did; and the treasury of all the fortunes of the richest parish were no more than a cipher to purchase it from any one who, quick as he may be to human kindness, may have a more tremulous rapture for the approbation of God.

After all, to his profession and parish the preacher is in debt. Exquisite rewards his work yields. If controversy arise on some point with his friends, there may, after a while, be no remnant of hard feeling,--as there are heavy cannonades, and no bit of wadding picked up. Those who have striven with or defamed may come to cherish him all the more for their alienation. Those who could not hear him, or, when they heard, thought him too long, or what they heard did not like, may own with him, out of their discontent, closer and sweeter bonds. His business is expansive in its nature. The seasons of human life in broad representation are always before him. How many moral springs and summers, autumns and winters he sees, till he can hardly tell whether his musing on this curious existence be memory or hope, retrospect of earth or prospect of heaven! and he begins to think the spiritual world abolishes distinctions of spheres and times, as parents, that were his lambs, bring their babes to his arms, and, even in the flesh, his mortal passing into eternal vision, he beholds, as in vivid dreaming, other parents leading their children on other shores, unseen, though hard by. Where, after a score or two of years, is his church? He has several congregations,--one within the dedicated walls, one of emigrants whom his fancy instead of the bell assembles, and a third of elders and little ones gone back through the shadow of mystery whence they came. In what abides of the flock nothing remains as it was. Wondrous transformations snow maturity or decline in the very forms that, to his also changing eye and hand, once wore soft cheeks and silken locks. In his experience, miracle is less than creation and lower than truth. He cannot credit Memory's ever losing her seat, he has such things to remember. The best thereof can never be written down, published, uttered by orators, or blown from the trumpet of Fame, whose "brave instrument" must put up with a meaner message and inferior breath. Out of his affections are born his beliefs; earth is the cradle of his expectancy and persuasion of heaven; and not otherwise than through the glass of his experience could he have sight of a sphere of ineffable glory for better growth than Nature here affords in all her gardens and fields.

So let the preacher stand by his order. But let him be just, also, to the constituency from which it springs. Hearty and cheerful, though obscure worker, let him be. Let him fling his weaver's shuttle still, daily while he lives, through the crossing party-colored threads of human life, till, in his factory too, beauty flows from confusion, contradiction ends in harmony, and the blows with which each one has been stricken form the perfect pattern from all. There is a unity which all faithful labor, through whatever jars, consults and creates. Of all criticisms the resultant is truth; be the conflicts what they may, the issue shall be peace; and one music of affection is yet angelically to flow from the many divided notes of human life. Who is the _minister_, then? No ordained functionary alone, but every man or woman that has lived and served, loved and lamented, and now, for such ends, suffers and hopes.

THE GHOST OF LITTLE JACQUES.

How quiet the saloon was, that morning, as I groped my way through the little white tables, the light chairs, and the dimness of early dawn to the windows. It was my business to open the windows every morning, finding my way down as best I could; for it was not permitted to light the gas at that hour, and no candles were allowed, lest they should soil the furniture. This morning the glass dome which brightened the ceiling, and helped to lighten the saloon, was of very little effect, so cloudy and dusk was the sky. The high houses which shut in the strip of garden on all sides reflected not a ray of light. A chill struck through me, as I passed along the marble pavement; a saloon-dampness, empty, vault-like, hung about the fireless, sunless place; and the plashing of the fountain which dripped into the marble basin beyond--dropping, dropping, incessantly--struck upon my ear like water trickling down the side of a cave.

It had never occurred to me to think the place lonely or dreary before, or to demur at this morning operation of opening it for the day; a tawdry, gilded, showy hall, it had seemed to me quite a grand affair, compared with those in which I had hitherto found employment. Now I shuddered and shivered, and felt the task, always regarded as a compliment to my honesty, to be indeed hard and heavy enough.

It might have been--yet I was not a coward--that the little coffin in that little room at the end of the saloon had something to do with this uneasiness. On each side of that narrow room (which opened upon a long hall leading to the front of the building) were the small windows looking out upon the garden, which I always unbolted first. I say I do not know that this presence of death had anything to do with my trepidation. The death of a child was no very solemn or very uncommon thing in my master's family. He had many children, and, when death thinned their ranks, took the loss like a philosopher,--as he was,--a French philosopher. He philosophized that his utmost exertions could not do much more for the child than bequeath to him just such a life as he led, and a share in just such a saloon as he owned; and therefore, if a priest and a coffin insured the little innocent admission into heaven without any extra charge, he would not betray such lack of wisdom as to demur at the proposition. Therefore, very quietly, since I had been in his employ, (about a twelvemonth,) three of his children, one by one, had been brought down to that little room at the end of the saloon, and thence through the long hall, through the crowded street out to some unheard-of burying-ground, where a pot of flowers and a painted cross supplied the place of a head-stone. The shop was not shut up on these occasions: that would have been an unnecessary interference with the comfort of customers, and loss of time and money. The necessity of providing for his little living family had quite disenthralled Monsieur C---- from any weakly sentimentality in regard to his little dead family.

So I do not know why I shuddered, being also myself somewhat of a philosopher,--of such cool philosophy as grows out inevitably from the hard and stony strata of an overworked life. The sleeper within was certainly better cared for now than he ever had been in life. Monsieur's purse afforded no holiday-dress but a shroud; three of these in requisition within so short a time quite scanted the wardrobe of the other children. Little Jacques had always been a somewhat restless and unhappy baby, longing for fresh air, and a change which he never got; it seemed likely, so far as the child's promise was concerned, that the "great change" was his only chance of variety, and the very best thing that could have happened to him.

And yet, after all, there was something about his death which individualized it, and hung a certain sadness over its occurrence that does not often belong to the death of children, or at least had not marked the departure of his two stout little brothers. Scarlet-fever and croup and measles are such every-day, red-winged, mottled angels, that no one is appalled at their presence; they take off the little sufferer in such vigorous fashion, clutch him with so hearty a grip, that one is compelled to open the door, let them out, and feel relieved when the exit is made. It is only when some dim-eyed, white-robed shape, scarcely seen, scarcely felt, steps softly in and steals away the little troublesome bundle of life with solemn eye and hushed lip, that we have time to pause, to look, to grieve.

This little Jacques, when I came to his father's house, was a rampant, noisy, cunning child, with the vivacity of French and American blood mingling in his veins, and filling him with strongest tendencies to mischief, and prompting elfish feats of activity. He was not by any means a fascinating child,--in fact, no children ever fascinated me,--but this little fellow was rather disagreeable, a wonder to his father, a horror to his mother, and a great annoyance generally; we were all rather cross with him, and he was universally put down, thrust aside, and ordered out of the way.

This was the state of affairs when I came. It was little Jacques, with a high forehead, white, tightly curling hair, and mischief-full blue eye, who made himself translator of all imaginable inquisitorial French phrases for my benefit,--who questioned, and tormented, and made faces at me,--who pulled my apron, disappeared with my carpet-bag, and placed a generous slice of molasses-candy upon the seat of my chair, when I sat down to rest myself.

Little Jacques ardently loved a sly fishing-expedition on the edge of the marble fountain-basin, and had lured one or two unthinking gold-fish to destruction with fly and a crooked pin. He would sit perched up there at an odd chance, when his father was away, and he dared venture into the saloon,--his little bare feet twinkling against the water, his plump figure curled up into the minutest size, but ready for a spring and a dart up-stairs at the shortest notice of danger. This piscatory propensity had been severely punished by both Monsieur and Madame C----, who could not afford to encourage such an expensive Izaak Walton; but there was no managing the child. He seemed to possess an impish capability of eluding detection and angry denunciations. To be sure, circumstances were against any very strict guard being kept over the youngster. Madame C---- was a very weak woman, a very weak woman indeed,--she declared that such was the case,--a nervous, dispirited woman, whom everything troubled, who could not bear the noise and tramp of life, and altogether sank under it. Destiny had had no mercy on her weakness, however, and had left her to get along with an innumerable family of children, a philosophic husband, who took all her troubles coolly, and a constant demand for her services either in the shop or at the cradle. She could not, therefore, have patience with the incessant anxiety which little Jacques excited by his pranks.

One day Madame C---- had gone out for a walk, leaving the children locked in a room above, five of them, two younger and two older than Jacques; and these together had been in a state of riotous insurrection the whole morning. Little Jacques was not of a disposition to submit to ignominious imprisonment, when human ingenuity could devise means of escape; while his brothers were running wild together, he soberly hunted up another key, screwed and scraped and got it into the key-hole; it turned, and he was out.

Half an hour afterwards, his mother, returning, caught the unfortunate fugitive contemplatively perched on the edge of the fountain-basin. In such a frenzy of anger as only unreasonable people are subject to, she caught the child, shivering with terror, and thrust him into the water. The gold-fish splashed and swirled, and the water streamed over the sides of the basin. It was only an instant's work; snatching up the forlorn fisher, she shook him unmercifully, and set him upon the floor, dripping and breathless. I saw nothing of them until night. His mother had then recovered her usual peevishness, weakness, and inefficiency; the ebullition of energy had entirely subsided. I was curious to know whether the summary punishment had had any effect upon Jacques; but he was asleep, as soundly as usual after a day's hard frolic.

My curiosity was likely to be gratified to satiety. A strange change came over the little fellow after this. To one accustomed to his apish activity, and to being annoyed by it, there was something plaintive in the fact of having got rid of that trouble. The child was silent, mopish, "good," as his mother said, congratulating herself on the effect of her summary visitation upon the offender.

When, however, a month passed without any return of the evil propensities, this continued quiescence grew to be something ghostly, and, to people who had only their own hands to depend on for a living, a subject of anxiety and alarm: it was expensive to clothe and feed a child who promised but little service in future.

"The _enfant_ will never come to anything," said Monsieur; "we could better have spared him than Jean."

To which his wife shook her head, and solemnly assented.

The '_enfant_,' however, gave no signs of taking the hint. Day after day his little ministerial head and flaxen curls were visible over the top of his old-fashioned arm-chair, and day after day his food was demanded, and his appetite was as good as ever.

Watching the child, whose blue eyes, now the mischief was out of them, grew utterly vacant of expression, I unaccountably to myself came to feel an uncomfortable interest in, a morbid sympathy with him,--an uneasy, unhappy sympathy, more physical than mental.