fruit. There is moreover a flippant, reckless defiance in these last forth-puttings of our late oracle, a spirit immeasurably beneath the appealing earnestness of the docile doubter. The sceptic struggling through the swelling seas of unbelief towards some shore of wished-for rest, and the sneerer plunging poisoned javelins at us, are never to be set in the same company. There is hope for the first, but little for the last. Now, however it may be with the mere sentimentalist, we are sure that no deeply thinking and feeling soul can ever be satisfied with this altogether too "universal" worship; this dream that some passing fervor of the imagination or even of the nervous system, transporting it above its ordinary tide-mark of emotion; that some sudden admiration of the marvels of creation-divine or human, — some thrill of gratification at heroic exploits or virtuous deeds, is really the loftiest homage to God of which we are capable. It must be persuaded that it does not worship as it Ican and should; that its teachers of this creed and cultus cannot lead it any nearer the Holy of Holies than it now is. Hence the terrible conflicts of this age, and the most trying in our centres of chiefest intellectual advance, between reason and faith, nature and grace; conflicts which nothing will ever rightly finish but the reconciling word of Christ.

We freely confess the fascinating charm which this devout naturalism throws over much of our current literature. Its language is a fair counterfeit of genuine devotion. Neither an outright contempt of revelation nor a total irreligiousness of life forms any barrier to the realizing, the expressing these sentiments, tender, and thoughtful, and inspiring as are the strains they breathe. We listen, and it is almost as if an angel-voice were hymning its adoration before the throne. Many an earnest, holy heart had poured out the fulness of an accepted worship in words like these, never asking whether an Isaac Watts or Thomas Moore was their author:

"O Thou who dry'st the mourner's tear,

How dark this world would be,

If pierced by sins and sorrows here,
We could not fly to Thee!

"Oh! who could bear life's stormy doom,
Did not Thy wing of love

Come brightly wafting thro' the gloom,

Our peace-branch from above."

To the child of God, these have been, as they are and will be, the expression of his trust in the love, his leaning on the arm, of a Divine Supporter. He takes them as companions of his closet-hours, and they rise in praise to his lips as by faith he enters more deeply into the securities of the everlasting covenant. We cannot spare them from our hymn-books. Hardly could our truest Christian life give itself utterance more fitly than in some of these lyrics, as passing up to the higher Pisgahs of hope and assurance, the pearly gates of the Jerusalem above gleam purely on the vision through the clear, spiritual atmosphere. So properly do such effusions belong to experimental piety, that it inflicts a pang of sadness to remember that they are the offspring of unrenewed, unsanctified affections. Not that we charge a hypocritical pretending, a mere feigning of unfelt fervors. We regard them as the birth of some mood of passing melancholy, or excited ideality, destined, it may be, — like many a transient pulse of purer feeling,- to be speedily followed by a congenial, familiar indulgence in the dissipations of folly and sin. It is a strange phenomenon, and it seems more strange the longer we think of it, that pilgrims heavenward should be chanting the words of those who are plainly bound in the contrary direction. Shall we solve the mystery by admitting the dictum, that "everybody is good sometimes"? Nay, except in a general sense of " natural goodness" which does not touch the centre of this inquiry. The imagination has its hours of intenser summer-light and warmth. The constitutional religiosity of some is excessive and easily moved. Moore could throw off stanzas fit for the praises of a white-robed choir of "the just made perfect," and finish the evening, just as spontaneously, with a bacchanal chorus reeking with sensual heats. So Byron could come down from his serious and almost prophetlike musings in Alpine solitudes to revel in the vice of Italian cities with only a yet keener zest. So the bird sings its sweetest song from out the blossoming tree-top, and the next moment is picking up its dinner of earth-worms from out the oozy mire. We are reminded of another of the modern Anacreon's "Sacred Songs":

"The bird let loose in Eastern skies,

When hastening fondly home,
Ne'er stoops to earth her wing, nor flies
Where idle warblers roam.

But high she shoots through air and light
Above all low decay,

Where nothing earthly bounds her flight,
Nor shadow dims her way.

"So grant me, God, from every care
And stain of passion free,

Aloft through Virtue's purer air
To hold my course to thee!
No sin to cloud, no lure to stay

My soul, as home she springs,
Thy sunshine on her joyful way,
Thy freedom in her wings."

The allusion is delicate; the prayer is inimitable; if the artist hand be more visible than the burning heart.* Even more winning upon our sensibilities is the "Come, ye disconsolate," though we must doubt if the poet's disconsolateness had anything to do with that "sorrow which needeth no repentance." But the melodies which genius inspires, graceless though it be, will linger around the heart, and in nights of loneliness and sorrow, and in mornings of returning joy, will help the confidence and the thanksgiving of the faint yet pursuing follower of the Lamb. Natural taste and sensibility the most exquisite we readily concede them. In a Christian soul they become the censer of a holy offering. What we deny is, that they are this in their originating source; that they express any piety which is genuine, or can be the vehicle of any true devotion when associated with impure desires, vicious sympathies, an irreligious life. A chord is struck which gives forth, with surpassing pathos, a subdued, a melting harmony. An indescribable charm breathes through the deep, impassioned music. We turn to its creator and the illusion vanishes. No worship "in spirit and in truth" can ascend from the altars of unregenerate nature. No priesthood of Mammon or Belial or any of the

* Calvin's seal had engraven on it a hand holding a burning heart, with the motto, "I give thee all! I keep back nothing for myself."

gods of flesh and sense can consecrate an offering at the shrine of Him whose name is the Holy One of Israel.

It is a question of more than a mere curiosity, it is one of most searching vitality, — what relation these views and speculations bear to the person and work of Jesus Christ? The general drift of our paper may have indicated what the answer to this inquiry must be. But it should have a more explicit response. And this shall be given by one of the high priestesses of this Delphic oracle, Margaret Fuller Ossoli. In the second volume of her Life, between the pages 88-92, we have these confessions: "Few believe more in Christ's history than myself; and it is very dear to me. I believe in the prophets, that they foreknew not only what their nation longed for, but what the developments of universal man requires a Redeemer, an Atoner, a Lamb of God, taking away the sins of the world. I have no objection to the miracles, except where they do not happen to please one's feelings. Why should not a spirit so consecrate and intent develop new laws, and make matter plastic? I can imagine him walking the waves. He could not remain in the tomb, they say: certainly not; death is impossible to such a being. He ascended to heaven; surely, how could it be otherwise? I am grateful, here as everywhere, when spirit bears fruit in fulness; it attests the justice of aspiration, it kindles faith, it rebukes sloth, it enlightens resolve. But so does a beautiful infant. Christ's life is only one modification of the universal harmony. Ages may not produce one worthy to loose the shoes of the Prophet of Nazareth; yet there will surely be another manifestation of that Word who was in the beginning. Its very greatness demands a greater. As an Abraham called for a Moses, and a Moses for a David, so does Christ for another Ideal. We want a life more complete and various than that of Christ. We have had a Messiah to teach and reconcile; let us now have a Man to live out all the symbolical forms of human life, with the calm beauty of a Greek god, with the deep consciousness of a Moses, with the holy love and purity of Jesus. — As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,' if understood in the larger sense of every man his own Saviour, and Jesus only representative of the way we must walk to accomplish our destiny, is indeed a worthy gospel."

This hardly needs a comment. Yet if a reader of the page should be strongly arrested by its poetic fervors, should be inclined to think that there must be some pearl imbedded in these transcendental depths, a closing paragraph from the elaborate and suggestive volume on "Nature and the Supernatural," by Dr. Horace Bushnell, shall stand as the antidote to this subtle poison."There is no vestige of Christian life in the working plan of Nature: that is development. Christianity exists only to have a remedial action upon the contents and conditions of nature: this is regeneration. No one fatally departs from Christianity who rests the struggles of holy character on help supernatural from God. No one really is in it, however plausible the semblance of his approach to it, who rests in the terms of morality, or self-culture, or self-magnetizing practice." "For (as this writer has just before laid down the undeniable proposition) if there be any sufficient, infallible, and always applicable distinction that separates a Christian from one who is not, it is the faith practically held of a supernatural grace or religion."

ARTICLE VIII.

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Life of Trust: being a Narrative of the Lord's dealings with George Muller. Written by himself. Edited and condensed by Rev. H. LINCOLN WAYLAND, with an Introduction by FRANCIS WAYLAND. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

THIS book is an autobiography, written in the first person singular, and is of precisely such a character as to secure for itself popularity in the religious world of the present day. It claims to present to mankind a remarkable example of the efficacy of prayer as applied to a benevolent enterprise. While it claims to be a full biography, its main object is to show how Mr. Muller has succeeded in obtaining the means for establishing and maintaining in Bristol, England, an extensive Orphan House, solely by prayer and faith, without asking a single individual for the contribution of a penny to