there are diversities of gifts, and each one of them is commissioned to do mankind some service. But the moral law is above them all, the pollen into which our nature blossoms to fertilize them. The best gift of our intelligence is sterile until our sense of what is right and proper broods over it. And wherever you discover the existence of that sense, you have found a nerve that extends into the personality of God. No matter where you find it. In a clear pool of water that some sea-cavern shelters, you can perceive the little soft mass of the anemone touch it, and you shrink back startled at the throb of its vitality, which immediately connects it with the purpose of God to make living beings. On the trunks of old trees, and the weatherbeaten sides of rocks, mark the symmetry of the moss, which gathers like the curious embossing by a master's hand, and grows, by divine rule, like a whole forest of the noblest trees. A law is in it that makes its place in creation as high as a Mariposa cedar. And the souls of men range in stature, from the idiot to the genius; you cannot add a cubit nor subtract one. But the love of right things is the equalizer of all, and it is the province of religion to describe and cherish that love. Suppose we try, with all the resources of our intelligence, to penetrate the mystery of our being; to arrive, if possible, at the ground of it. We pass through the attractions of our taste and sentiment; we leave on either side our inborn or acquired superiorities; no pride in any one peculiarity can stop our search. Something tells our conceit that we have not yet reached the real manliness that makes us fit to live. In moments of enthusiasm for truth we find it. When our heart kindles to see all the heart flush to another being's face, when our cheek burns as if struck by the blow of wrong, when we all muster at the call of some principle, and the blood of all our veins seems poured into one artery to give it a beat that shall be felt through the country, till the country is a pulse to shatter some crime against humanity, and the crime it catches from us a vibration that tears it all to pieces, then we confess that we have found the thing for which we were made; to right what is wrong, to succor what is weak, to shelter the violets of purity, to excite the dull and half-spoiled natures to resume their natural dignity, to strike the fetters from God's hand in each of them, and grasp it, and claim its fellowship. And when we subside from these ecstacies of rectitude, and think that we will solace ourselves with beauty, it is like waking up to find a day without the sun. All the features of the landscape are there, its space, its atmosphere, its usual proportions. But the bloom of the light has been rubbed from it. The moral law lies in the lap of the world like the glory of morning; and when we walk by it our

feet brush its dewy freshness, and our lungs breathe the tonic that keeps up the heart of the Infinite Himself. For His ways were regular before they were beautiful, and chaos received order before it became invested with a single charm.

Many times in the life of every human being, this vindication has been made. We have said No, to our cost, and never regretted it. We have said Yea, to our great delight. We have renounced, or we have claimed, in the name of morality. We have put our heart on the anvil, and the hammer has struck fire from it to light our steps. Nothing that we ever enjoyed or appreciated has had the like superiority.

We are religious when we mind this natural tendency, and prefer it to all observances of society, and to all the forms that claim to be venerable. We build a temple when we go quarrying for this precious material, and strike its vein in men. A meeting-house ought to be the mouth of a shaft that is pushed up through the crust of clouds into this perpetual sunshine of God's personal truthfulness, which is His love because it is so true. Straight up, divine service ought to carry this well that draws life, with the united pull of all a people's eagerness to know the laws of things; straight up, through voluptuous and charming clouds, into the colorless clearness of reality, leaving sentiment and superfine worshipping all adrift below, with fogs of liturgies and rites. And the bulk of all the praying should consist of this upward mining of the conscience and the intellect, to detach God Himself and furnish Him to men, not as men wish him, or as they imagine Him, or as they have hitherto misapprehended Him, but as He is, in all the facts of man and nature, separated from the slag of superstition: His uniform morality, His disregard of all our ignorance and our caprice.

JOHN WEISS.

WHERE honor or where conscience does not bind,

No other law shall shackle me ;

Slave to myself I will not be,

Nor shall my future action be confined

By my own present mind.

Who by resolves and vows engaged does stand

For days that yet belong to fate,

Does, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate,

Before it falls into his hand. - Cowley.

* This poem, published ten years ago this month in the Atlantic Monthly, we desire should have a place in the Radical. — Ed.

Of values which the purse

But this divine !

I own the mine

Whose grains outweigh a p

I have a stake in every sta

In every beam that fills All hearts of men my coffe My ores arterial tides co The fields, the skie

The sweet replies

Of thought to thought are The oaks, the broo And speaking looks

Of lovers' faith and friends!

Life's youngest tides joy-bri For him who lives above Who all-immortal makes the And is not ta'en in Time His life's a hymn

The seraphim

Might hark to hear or help And to his soul

The boundless who

Its bounty all doth daily br

"All mine is thine," the sk "The wealth I am, must Richer and richer, breath b Immortal gain, immortal And since all his Mine also is,

Life's gift outruns my fanci

And drowns the dr

In larger stream,

As morning drinks the mor

THE TWO RELIGIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

THE

III.

HE subject in hand has thus far been treated in its biographical aspects purely. The first article described Jesus and the Christ as individuals living amid the incidents and exposed to the contingencies of life, each having his own solitary lot and experience. Here it came out that the lot and experience of Jesus were those of a man; that the lot and experience of the Christ were not those of a man, but of a superior being. The second article described Jesus and the Christ as persons, living in social relations. Here it appeared that Jesus sustained to men relations of a simply human character, - natural relations, direct, friendly, genial, unassuming, — the relations of a companion, teacher and helper; that the Christ, on the other hand, sustained towards men relations of a superhuman and unhuman character, unnatural, unfriendly, ungenial, and assuming, in the very highest degree. It is time now to show the relations in which the two characters stand to the larger world of thoughts and people. I have tried to clear up the path as I went on, so that no mist of misconception should make irresolute the line of thought. But as no care in this regard is excessive, a word of preliminary remark may be timely. Objections to the course of this argument may come from two sides, the Orthodox and the Liberal. The Liberal will say, has said in fact, that the attempt to distinguish between Jesus and the Christ is forced; that the discussion in its whole import and purport is cheap; that the play is not worth the candle; that Jesus and the Christ are one and the same person; so held in the consciousness of Christendom; so delineated in the gospels largely interpreted; and that it is a poor refinement of criticism to separate them.

The Orthodox will say the argument is superfluous. The distinction is one that has been not recognized merely, not conceded, but brought out, contended for by the foremost doctors of the church, and made the corner-stone of Salvation. Jesus and the Christ were two beings, and yet one being. The Redeemer was both God and Man, -real Man and real God. The Radical's discussion accrues to the benefit of his adversaries. He is an unwilling servant of the Faith. Let it be understood now that both these attitudes towards this argument are fairly appreciated by the writer, and that he would be happy to notice an equally fair appreciation of his own position..