truths neither ask nor admit exact demonstration.

It is the

Esthetic of morals, made up of Art and of Nature, founded upon the evolutions of the Law; but reaching also to that impenetrable secret of individual action and delight which transcends all the rules of the understanding and the reasons of experience. It is thus obligation and freedom, inherence in the body corporate, and transcendence in the soul individual. It is at once the largest and the loftiest efficiency of that sympathy, in virtue of which the advance and the rear-guard of the human army march to one music, and acknowledge one discipline. The most eminent natures only discern its reasons; but the most ordinary ones acknowledge its justification.

Of

The condition from which human society starts is one of universal antagonism, implied or overt. If human beings can be supposed to exist together at a period previous to the development of moral consciousness, they must exist either as declared foes and rivals in all personal objects, or in those forms of suppressed enmity which give us the relations of master and slave, in all their modifications and varieties. course, the existence of such a state of things in its entireness is a merely suppositious fact, unestablished, so far as we know, by historical observation. But the elements of this primitive barbarism are so held in solution in the constitution of the race, that their presence, under circumstances unfavorable to civilization, is easily recognized. New societies exhibit these traits on a large scale: ill-trained individuals show the same phenomena in their singleness. American civilization with all its wealth and luxury, with all its study and ambition-has in its phenomena much of this barbarism. The universal "every one for himself;" the defective perception of family and social obligation; the surly or humorous protest under which service is rendered, these are conditions which antedate a true and thorough civilization. Carry this state of things a little further, and the child becomes the enemy of the mother; the sick and infirm, of the robust and healthful. All who need help are the enemies of

those able to afford it. The want of a standard betrays people into the most disgusting arrogance and disheartening stupidity. Society will be nothing better than a mob, continually bound over to keep the peace on grounds of personal convenience.

To this state of things the Church presents the true antithesis and antidote. It begins by acknowledging a standard before which all men are imperfect, and by adopting an object to whose attainment all men are singly inadequate. It marks the perception of a common good far higher and more stable than any individual advantage can claim to be. The imperfection of each now becomes an element of good and of pleasure. An aesthetic commerce of gifts now rises up. The interchange of thought, the refutation of error, occupy the restless energy of the human mind. A way is found in which all can work together. This co-operation is built upon the sense of a transcendent unity in which the differences of thought converge, and of an efficient unity in which the dif ferences of interest are reconciled. In this point of view, the Church must come before the State, since the Church alone makes the State possible. Self-government is a moral before it becomes a political feature. Unless the individual can check the absoluteness of his personal desires by some standard of duty and self-restraint, his power to control the administration of public affairs will be of little avail, either for the State or for himself. He who will not govern himself by reason will be governed by another through the medium of his own passions. And to teach this intimate and initial form of self-government, upon which all others rest, is the business of the Church.

The means by which the Church proceeds to effect this are twofold. A part consists in defining and applying the moral law, in its critical aspect towards the passions of men. This does one-half of the work. Another instrumentality is a continual appeal to the highest æsthetic sense of man, which points to the conservation of nature, and holds the stormy forces of individuality bound and united in the silken leash of

a high and ever-ascending delight. The application of the moral measure alone brings discouragement or self-glorification, according to the character of the person. Administered alone, it will be apt to run into a routine of observances and abstinences, at once mechanical and arbitrary. The world has seen this more than once. The religious dogmatism of the Pharisees, of the Romanists, and of the Puritans, were all alike formal and unspiritual. It is the addition of the element of pleasure, in its purest form, that gives the human soul its truly devout aspect. To receive so large a joy in proportion to so small a merit, and to enter upon an ever-increasing joy with an ever-easier performance, this is so great a boon as to leave the soul dumb with gratitude before its unknown Benefactor. Its first attitude is one of passive recipiency; its second, one of energetic impartment. For this joy can only be maintained by unceasing activity. And the medium of this activity is sympathy.

In speaking of the representative function of the Church, we touched a theme whose roots lie deep in nature. So much in human life is representative, and the thing represented is often found in such wide separation of time and place from the symbol that stands for it, that all institutions, and even the common usages of society, often present us with an immediate falsehood, while still standing for a remote truth. The sceptics of institutions are those who, penetrating the mask of usage, and finding the unsanctioned features of the face beneath, do not look further, — persuaded that the truth is somewhere, and more zealous to encounter her than to unmask her counterfeit. To those who have a steadfast perception of the values of life, these deceptions mark only the poverty of the human resources already realized in the view of objects of transcendent scope and virtue. This poverty is rather a pathetic than an outrageous circumstance, and draws more largely on the compassion of the wise than on their vindictiveness. To fill up the measure of this lesser desert by greater sincerity and earnestness is the true task which the unavoidable shams of life impose. If the poor human heart

knows that there is a substantial good somewhere, do not upbraid it too severely for not knowing where it is. Many an abode of luxury has not the true wealth of solvency; many a brilliant reputation is empty of true desert. Skill is mistaken for art, tact for genius, facility for inspiration, intolerance for virtue, superstition for piety. But the homage which the human heart renders is to the truth of these things, whose existence it does not doubt, although it may misplace them.

As the different parts, so the sum of what is venerable in human character and effort is recognized to exist by the unanimous sense of the race. And, with our usage to a local habitation and a name, it is very natural that we should place it here or there, according to the differences of our tastes or circumstances. So with the Church, we should be glad to define its limits with a creed, and to shut up its power within an institution. This creed, this institution, represents for us an abiding fact, and our steadfast faith in it. But we forget that we bring the Church within the church walls when we come in, and take it out when we go out. And, wherever we go, we carry so much of the Church about with us. And so the Church exists only formally in its representation, but substantially in the conscience and consciousness of mankind.

Great Mother of souls; great unity which we try to include in our little lives, but which includes us in its grand eternity! Rome, Geneva, England, and New England have tried to represent thee, and have honored themselves in nothing so much as in this endeavor. Thou art, in this they are not mistaken; but thou art not within the limits in which they have striven to place thee, any more than the true Athens lies within the scene-painter's presentment of streets and houses. Thou art otherwise. They contain not thee, but thou containest them. All sincere faith lays hold upon thee: all true effort expresses thee. But that faith and that effort are happiest which admit the largest communion, the widest co-operation. For in thy love and wisdom, in thy provision and in thine ordinance, nothing less than the whole human race is included.

ART. VI. - HEDGE'S REASON IN RELIGION.

"Keine ver

Reason in Religion. By FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE. trautere Gabe vermag der Mensch dem Menschen anzubieten als was er im Innersten des Gemüthes zu sich selbst geredet hat." Schleiermacher. Boston: Walker, Fuller, & Co.

THE armor in which religion has been clad, the war-footing on which, for four years past, we have been forced to put our Christianity, seems to have revived the image of the Church militant in those aggressions upon superstition and sin which are made without carnal weapons. The cry now is for organization and drill. From our ecclesiastical generals comes the word of command to march in a body against the hosts of error. We are told we have ammunition of truth enough; and the only business now is to apply it to the wide regions. of ignorance, and through all the moral wastes of battle. The recent convention has this import, that it is a roll-call or reveille to muster the troops, and so momentous in this light as to be held by some almost as the sacred image that fell down from Jupiter, which it is profanity for any criticism to touch. It is even suggested, that the common belief, the average opinions in which clergy and laity can agree by a sort of compromise or verbal conformity, will suffice for all our operations.

This spirit of union for philanthropic ends we hail and bless, and by all means in our power propose, not to hinder, but help. We would only suggest the vital part in its success which the Christian teacher as well as the executive officer must play. A just word in a fresh statement carries further than any gun. That is a false antagonism by which doers and thinkers are set against one another. Who is it that does? "He prays who labors," says the Latin proverb. But who labors? He that travels round, is conspicuous at public meetings, his voice heard in every stir of the public mind, his name printed in every issue of the press? Yes, if