They dwelt with men on earth, and then were not;

But in some temple splendid,

Their statues stand, a pale majestic throng,

By white-robed priests attended.

And so, I thought, our friendships fast and firm,
No chance nor change could sever,

Suddenly vanish from our longing eyes,
And disappear forever.

It may be they are walking with the gods,
O'er meadows ever vernal,

Or set as constellations in the skies,
Light up the heavens eternal.

But we, left desolate, can only carve

From tender recollections,

A calm, white statue in our heart of hearts,
Incensed with sweet affections.

There priestly thoughts pace reverent, to and fro,
Before the altar holy,

While from the shrine the fragrant, dusky clouds,
Rise solemnly and slowly.

And when the toil of busy day is o'er,
And Memory opes her portals,

We glide within the silent temple's door,

And dwell with the Immortals.

L. F.

THE

HE one doctrine most prom

religious literature of our da the soul from sin. Nor is the no ligion, but seems to take on more civilization, or look back into anti has always laved the altars of the

This theory of purification is s the New Testament, and one is o tion that the blood of Christ, shed of his guilt.

Now what is the truth that is a is the true religious significance of repulsive form, has been made to has known?

There is a story of an Oriental the view I propose to develop. dent attachment for one of his su tion with royalty, setting connubia ran away with her lover. The fa authority, soon procured the arrest ing his power, they deemed of co they must expiate their hardihood state of mind they awaited in cha before the king. Summoned at and hopeless, they presented the cold, relentless judge, pale with w beyond the bounds of human sy up in his face, so shamed they we prised by his gentle tone of addre Still greater surprise came over t and benignity was in his counter ger, he sat composed and dignific that they had thought to see whi blood coursed freely and showed betrayed the consciousness that, under the same circumstances, ha hope sprang up in the hearts of th that flushed with sympathy the fa

his feet, and found strength to implore his pardon, which was freely granted. Thus by his blood, we may say, they were cleansed of their sin, for first, by sight of it, they were emboldened to ask forgiveness, and then, by virtue of his having it, he was able to absolve them.

Now, upon reflection, we find this is the way it is always. Forgiveness springs out of the sensuous nature, from the human flesh and blood. A full habit is the usual accompaniment of good nature. Corpulency commonly involves charity, that is, love, good feeling, and so covers a multitude of sin. Magnanimity means, practically, a large body, almost as certainly as a large mind. At all events, it seldom subsists without the veins and arteries being well filled. You look for generosity where the blood flows full and free; and for meanness where there is a lack of this vital current. If you were soliciting aid for a needy person, and should come upon a promiscuous assemblage of strangers, you would not be likely first to approach some little, sickly man of lean and wizened and colorless visage; you would be instinctively drawn to persons of fair and open face, of large and liberal form to flesh and blood for sympathy. You might not always find it there, but the indications all point that way. On the contrary, if a thin, cold face does after all prove to have a warm heart beneath, you may be sure it has sometime been fed with a plentiful flow of the life current, and that that face has not always been the shadow that it is.

The sensuous element is the generous, forgiving element. It is blood, not blood spilt, coagulated, cold and dead, but warm and gushing in human veins, that softens this otherwise hard, unfeeling nature, and makes it yield to circumstances, and generously overlook injuries. It relieves the penitent of his sins by meeting him half-way with abundant tenderness and sympathy. It somehow seems to act from a sense of obligation in this matter; to ease the burden of sin, knowing that it is itself the cause of sin; that it is a fire in the blood that leads people into the wrong course; that "it is the carnal mind that is at enmity against God;" that "flesh and blood cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." And well we know that without this same blood, so ready to repair its own ravages, there is no remission of sins, no way the soul can enter heaven. Is the fair, human blood that is in my brother's veins, the generous life-current that is ever renewing itself from an exhaustless store, from the food that nature dispenses to her child, and from the vast atmosphere in which she has wrapped the earth it is this that enables him to look kindly on me, even when I have done him wrong, and freely to forgive me when I manifest a desire to be forgiven.

There is no trouble in seeing how a man may be sympathetic and forgiving. It is hard to see how he can help it. His nature requires him to relent and be kind. We say he is no man if he does not; that he has, no heart in him. This being of flesh and blood is bound to feel, and to be governed by his feeling much more than by his judgment. His material nature may make him a sinner, but by it only does he become divine, by it only does he learn how sweet and blessed it is to be merciful where he might be only just, tender and kind where he might be hard and oppressive.

Now one of the mischiefs of the conception that God is a spirit, and only a spirit, is to strip him of this very quality so lovely in man. Directly we take this view we unavoidably fashion God wholly after our mental powers. This Being who is pure spirit, we say, can have no heart no feeling; he is simply the perfection of thought and will. There is no warmth, no tenderness, no blood in him. Though Hell swell to the dimensions of half the universe, he looks indifferently upon all its agony. Though the whole earth perish, he cares not. Everything is fixed by the stern mandate of inflexible law. There is no care, no considerateness, no mercy, no letting up, anywhere. Everything is cut in straight lines, and nothing yields or bends a hair.

It is clear enough that this "wooden view of things," as a lady happily characterizes it, excludes all notion of pardon. Where Judge and Executive have no heart, pleading and prayer are idle vaporings. The cry of anguish rising from all the hells, the agony of prayer going up from the whole earth, fall without effect upon the ear of this impalpable Being, etherealized to the point of spiritual tenuity, and existing only as an Idea, a Law, a Force.

But why posit such a God? Why take as the type of his being a disembodied soul, a soul cut loose from substance, shorn of heart and feeling, and all the generous qualities of this sensuous nature? If man is a type of God at all, why not be his entirely? Why single out this mental part and say, in that alone the human images the divine? A man goes from his own personality to God's rationally enough; he says, 'I am conscious; God must have consciousness. I think and will; God thinks and wills.' But why stop here? why not go on to say, I feel, and God must feel? or, rather, why does he not begin by saying this?

If man has anything that is like God, it must be that which is noblest and best in him. And if we would step from this highest being we know to the Supreme, we should start from the point that is highest in him. And what is that? What quality by common consent is called the divine in man? Is it the power to think? Do we call

Aristotle divine, because he could thread so well the intricate paths of philosophy? or Newton, because he could follow the stars in their courses? Not at all. These men were only great. Do we call Napoleon I. divine, or Andrew Johnson, because with equally indomitable spirits, though somewhat unequal abilities, one moulded a nation and almost a continent by the tremendous force of his character, and the other doggedly obstructs with his own will the will of the most unmanageable people in the world? Not by any means. We do not so abuse language. Nobody has ever thought of confounding strong-mindedness with heavenly mindedness. Great power of thought, great power of will — these do not make a man godlike. The cranium is not the home of the divinities. To be headstrong is, indeed, not at all in the direction of being divine. The divine thing in man is the heart feeling, sympathy, love. The language of moderns is all in evidence of this. The man of heart, of sensibility, of pure and generous impulses, is the man of God the world over, without any reference to the amount of knowledge or force of character he may have. Look now at the strange confusion of ideas in that view of God which not only does not begin by predicating of him what is divinest in man, but leaves it out altogether. Man is godlike when he has a heart to feel for the woes of others; God himself has no heart and feels for nothing! Man is divine when he forgives injuries, and has compassion on his enemies; the Divine Being never pities or forgives! The godly man is gentle, kind, easily entreated; God himself is hard, exacting, and implacable as fate!

This confusion arises from expressing an anti-Christian sentiment in language strongly modified by Christian ideas. The time was when humane feelings, it seems, did not suggest a divine character. The heroes of antiquity who were deified do not appear to owe their elevation to any qualities of heart which we regard as virtues. Strength and beauty were the divine attributes in those days. That warm sensibilities and a forgiving disposition are godlike, is an idea which, if it did not originate with, has certainly been signally emphasized by Christianity. Indeed, this may be said to be, on the human side, its essential idea.

How has this idea been so deeply impressed upon the Christian. world?

Jesus seems to have been thoroughly imbued with the conception of a tender, compassionate God whom he always called his Father. But it is probable that not even his clearness of expression, and his example of faith, would have sufficed to impress his view upon any considerable part of the world, had it not been for a doctrine which early