But what does the principle of progress affirm? This: that the purpose and method of spiritual existence are the development of all our faculties by uniform, or at least unremitted, constant expansion, from germination up to perfection.

The Religious faculty is no exception to this rule there is no reason why it should be. And therefore it becomes both subject and entitled to all the conditions which govern the other faculties; the chief of which conditions is that all that each needs, in order to ensure this steady development and final perfection, shall be supplied.

But how, in what order, shall God supply our wants? Precisely, it will be agreed, as they are urgent; in regular order, and in right measure. He cannot do more, for only on these conditions can we accept. For example: we must have health of body before we can have vigor of mind: we must have mental refinement before we can enter upon delicate spiritual apprehensions. We must have experience before we can have emotions. We must have capacity before we can contain.

These are scarcely more than truisms but they lead to this conclusion, viz. that the receptivity which is the condition of the Divine presence with a human spirit, corresponds precisely with the measure and outline of its own expansion. Just as it is expanded, can the soul give the spirit of God room to come in.

Since then no two men are alike in the relative adjustment of their faculties, it follows that God, although impartially, will never be present among them in exact parity of degree. In other words, Inspiration will be variable in its manifestations: and so we have David and Shimei, Aurelius and Nero, Washington and Davis, Judas and John, all equally the offspring of God, and the objects of His love.

Another fact illustrates this truth. The instances named are of good men against bad; but among those of good qualities there will yet be found diversity in this special respect. We see every day persons of the highest moral character, but whose religious perceptions are weak some of the best work in the world is done by such people. On the other hand, we see those whose religious sensibilities are strong and lively, yet whose moral sense is weak. This is the phenomenon of plantation piety. And both things are at different times true of all of us. At times how strong are our religious feelings at other times how weak! To-day we sorrow, to-morrow we sin again.

Now the misinterpretation of these diversities is what has given to ordinary thought a wrong idea of Inspiration. It has not carefully considered what we have remarked, that such an operation of the Di

vine Spirit, being related to such a composite and variable nature as man's, must be (in outward respect) alike variable. The term, therefore, has come to describe not this general relation of God to man, but only its more exalted manifestations. The greater glory has quenched the less. Precisely the same thing has occurred in relation to the outward dealings of God with man in what we call the operations of Providence. The constant agency of Providence in all our concerns is so uniform that it loses its power to impress us. Men stare if you assure them that you believe (with Jesus), that every incident, however insignificant-seeming - be it the color of a hair or the death of a sparrow is ordered with conscious purpose by the Divine Will. Yet a hurricane or sudden accident each dependent on causes and laws far more intelligible, they interpret at once as by the volition and agency of God.

So this still small voice of Inspiration, which whispers in every ear, is discredited, except in its more notable manifestations. Not Richard and Henry, but Isaiah and Paul are inspired; yet between the former and the latter is a regularly ascending series of souls, each fuller of religious emotion and of clearer insight than the last; can you draw a line? Most surely not. You must go deeper, then, for the real fact. You find it when you see that the Paternal God visits all His children alike.

But I wish to discriminate a little more carefully still. The truth of Inspiration is often left here, where we have now arrived. To myself, however, this is not quite enough. Perhaps we can discover the

reason.

As I have thus far presented the question, the religious exaltation which I have, I suppose, implied, seems to stand on a plane with that of the other faculties. The saint is inspired, precisely as the poet and the painter. That is true, so far as it goes; but there is still an essential distinction, which makes the cases widely different.

To proceed, then. If the operation be carefully analyzed upon the principles determined, there are found two elements in Inspiration. I. Divine Influence. II. Exaltation of human faculties. Now I as much believe that God, who has a purpose in us all, sent Raphael or Beethoven into the world on a special errand, as Paul or Isaiah. And God's willing that the soul of the one should be alive with graphic, and of the other with musical sensibilities, conferred on them a mission as certain as that of the Apostles.

And yet in these cases the process of Inspiration in its proper sense, is, or may be, incomplete. Consider it for a moment. These men had souls capable of apprehending, of being warmed into eager

pulsation by the elements of beauty in form and color, or melody and rhythm. In these respects they were in a state of constitutional exaltation. Then the second of the elements of Inspiration was supplied. But was the first? Not necessarily; there have been artists, men of liveliest sensibility to beauty in its various forms, living in a whitehot love for it - yet almost wholly destitute of the Religious Idea; cramped in their religious nature, their love to God formal, cold and feeble. Now what is the state of mind of such a one? First, what is beauty? What is that in Painting or Music on which men's souls fasten? Beauty is (like Truth also,) an attribute of God. And the mind may lay hold of the attributes of God, and yet but distantly approach His Personality. Even if the attribute be Truth, this may be the fact: it is seen in cases like those alluded to, of highly moral persons deficient in piety. Now my point is this that the essence of the idea of Inspiration is not this influence of the attributes of God, but the real approach of His Personality.

To see this more clearly, look again at facts. Regard such a man as has been supposed; some Raphael or Beethoven,- give him artistic exaltation, or take a La Place or Napoleon and give him mathematical genius or the power to wield men, but leave him with these powers alone, and will you (in a strict sense) call him inspired? I believe not, and for the reason, simply, that God is not there. With all his powers and all their exaltation, the man remains alone. But now add to this æsthetic or intellectual power the conscious relation to God; make of La Place a Newton; of Cæsar a Marcus Aurelius; of Goethe a Milton; of Byron a Wordsworth; see visibly in his work and character the traces of actual commerce with Deity, as the brow of Moses is storied to have shone coming down from Sinai, and the fact of Inspiration it will be (thus far) complete. With all these souls He lives in a perpetual accessibleness. The man is inspired who admits Him. Not artistic, or intellectual, or executive grandeur, is Inspiration, but the Presence of God.

distinction between InThe saint not only dif but that which makes a

Observe therefore that we have an organic spiration and genius-so often confounded. fers, as to outward facts, from the genius man the one is a thing different in kind from that which makes him the other. The one is a man of faculties specially exalted — the other is one whose soul opens itself with special fullness to the visitation of the Divine Personality. Each may partake the character of the other. The saint may love the landscape, or refresh himself, like Luther at Sabbath evening, with choral harmonies. And no Lucifer was ever so far exiled from the Spiritual universe; no Borgia, no

Catiline, no Davis or Surratt, so guilt-befouled, but the Divine Lord stood knocking, with warm pulsation, at his heart's door, for admission. But forever genius remains an adjustment of the faculties of man; inspiration, the attitude, or act, of God.

There is one special reason why I desire to emphasize this distinction. The phrase "religious genius" is one which has been employed, and for a time it partially satisfied my own mind, as a description of Jesus. But it never fully met the want of my heart in reference to him; and I believe that I have now been giving the reason of its inadequacy. It is feeble, narrow, insignificant. His exaltation consisted not in that aptitude for apprehending spiritual facts and moral relations, which he doubtless had (and which doubtless varies as to the degree in which different souls possess it). I do not believe that he would stand where he historically and actually does in the consciousness of men, if this were all. It was something different, and something deeper. It was not a faculty: it was a faith. It was the confident apprehension of the presence of God in his own soula presence so intimate, so complete, that it took the character of union to his consciousness—which alone sufficiently distinguishes him from many others to have sustained his prestige and leadership. In this he was singular. Others could perhaps have spoken the Sermon on the Mount; others had told the Golden Rule and the Two Commandments. Only Jesus could say, without impressing us as mocking or fatuitous, "I and my Father are one."

Doubtless it needed great faculties to admit so august a consciousness, the Divine Spirit needs room to dwell in. The faculties Jesus had; but it is not these which have impressed the world. In fact, the world forgets and sometimes underrates them. The very analysis of them which some have essayed seems always to fail, and is never more successful than the efforts of art to reproduce his physiognomy. Either attempt belittles. Renan's Jesus, and the Christ of "Ecce Homo," are, each of them, about as satisfactory to one who deeply appreciates him, as Pope's or Cowper's translation to one who loves Homer in his own Greek.

Nor was it, as I have hinted, his ethics or his theology which secured his apotheosis. A prominent lecturer, some time since, complained that Mr. Parker gave the world no new idea. Almost as much may, I venture to say, be affirmed of Jesus. But he did more ; as our dear friend also did; as each greatly good man does. He gave the world, in his personality, a new spiritual fact. And his personality, not his thought, it is, which has conquered a quarter of the world, and made it the home of all progress, civilization, good

morals, and enlightened comfort. The spiritual fact-the secret of this magnetic personality - I have been developing. The presence of God with a human soul exalts not the faculties, merely but the man. It gives him not thoughts, but life. He no longer suggests truths: he commands souls. The Christian world has felt this exaltation, literally divine, in Jesus, and has confused the man with God. I dare not attempt to measure him, — doubtless he had still room to grow. I only dare say, with Paul, that "the fullness of the Godhead," the plenitude of present Deity, was in him visibly enshrined; that is, not that the all of Godhead was there, but that the whole capacity of that one manhood opened itself, so far as we can determine, to the incoming Spirit of the Divine. If, as parent and offspring, a common nature is in the two, the product of this total inspiration must be the Ideal Man. And also it must be the image of God.

JOSEPH MAY.

MORAL CAUSES OF MATERIAL PROSPERITY.

THE

III.

HE ancient religious systems overbuilt themselves. What untold millions buried in stone and mortar ! what toil of slaves, what art, what patience, in the grand temples, in the sublime cathedrals! Had these riches been devoted to the poor in furnishing them wherewith to "lay their heads," what wealth of comfort, shelter, enjoyment, prosperity, opportunity for cultivation! and what sources of relief in rents, and increased means and facilities to rich and poor! When we do right in the new way of life, all other things are necessarily added thereto. When we do wrong, we lose morally and materially. In violating natural laws, that is, God's laws, — we impoverish ourselves through the ruin of the people. In this we show both want of sense and charity. It is like stealing a dollar with the right hand, and giving a cent in charity with the left to soothe the conscience.

Every error contains within itself the germs of self-destruction. This is applicable to great things as well as small; to classes as well as individuals; to sects and parties as well as professions and monopolies. Everything that interferes with the natural and true course of labor and its reward- fair remuneration - interrupts production, the circulation of money and values, and the ability to buy in the market,