man hands, but his surgical instruments on those nerves of ours that never learn not to suffer, as the flesh bleeds and quivers again and again under the knife, and that exude like the oyster or turtle no shell for protection, but must be pinched with anguish over and over, till we are driven to his judgment alone. The worst injury I summon for God's witness! In the trials, you my friends go to, discover his proofs. Ungenerous blame is a sharper than the long since vanished Roman cross to hang on, till you be ready with Jesus to say, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." Jesus was indebted to Judas for his glory. He could not have been Jesus else.

It is a reason more to accept the inspiring present God, that all principle must unfold from within, and can only be illustrated from without. Verbal authority has been how pernicious to every good cause, temperance, freedom, peace! If one could quote a text of Hebrew slavery, or a commission to slaughter the Canaanites, or a turning of water into wine, what millions held it right to drink, and kill, and bind their fellow men! What laborious ingenuity has been lately before legislative committees expended on the miracle at Cana, to settle in Massachusetts the question of license or prohibition! But, if God be present, every measure must be tried on its merits at his bar in the human mind, the only bar for us he has. As that singular English genius, of whom the world was not worthy, William Blake, says:

"Nor is possible for thought,
A greater than itself to know."

It is a reason to own the present God, that all we love, though unseen, are present with him too; and so only can they be retained by us. As his invisibleness reveals him clearer than any portient, so they are not hid, but disclosed, by distance or death. You would never have beheld your beloved but that they were taken away, to come to you with God! You had not appreciated them, nor could tell what they were. You never talked of them so intelligently before. You protest not indeed your affection any longer. Protested affection is like protested paper. But you never loved them as now.

For these reasons I esteem religion not an imported fruit, but a native product, and exhort you, my friends, to find the staple of your preaching in the sense of a present Deity. The greatest beauty of the human countenance is the expression of listening to God; and from that the greatest eloquence of the human voice. When a dull, or ill-tempered speaker has the floor, how we wish he would sit down and somebody else get up! Let not anger or vanity, but conscience

in you ever speak! Let the speaker of the inner house clear it of all lawless riot and uproar! Criticism or denial will stead you but little. If you have nothing positive and of good cheer to say, why open your mouth as a raven to croak? Something we must discard or deny. But use only negation enough to discriminate what you affirm. Hark, and God will speak! I sat under the trees in the wind, among happy passers-by, on the greenly bordered stream of the neighboring Charles, and asked: Does anything address instantly my soul? Have I any assurance from the Power that made me? What was that reply, in the beating of my heart, whose yes of adoption no loud oracle could match, if not from the spirit of God?

But his inspiration is for all we do, as well as think or say. What a pinched notion, that inspiration is limited to a few tongues, or closed up in a learned record! Paul was inspired to plant churches, and sail over the Mediterranean, as well as to write epistles. Jesus was inspired to pluck the ears of corn, and journey through the villages, as much as to pronounce the beatitudes. This nation was inspired to fight for justice, as well as write its old constitution. Duty no less than doctrine is an inspiration. The primary idea of the spirit is not language, but impulse, a wind that animates and bears us on. It bloweth where it listeth. Above Jesus look for its credentials. That is in you, which is greater than he, though you be so much less. Ecce Homo; Ecce Deus; Deus Homo: What do such titles, and the many recent attempts to handle him hint, but the passing of his individual supremacy, and the arrival of the time predicted by his apostle: "Then shall the Son also be subjected unto him, that God may be all in all." When mediation is perfect it ceases to exist. At a late clerical trial the test was Christ's infallibility. How unchristian, when Christ pronounces himself limitary in knowledge as in goodness and strength, and God omniscient, almighty and perfect alone! Spite of ecclesiastical discipline, of fanaticism aboveboard, and policy with its card obsequious to popular opinion, hiding its hand underneath, as the poor queen said in the play, like the Austrian, "strong upon the stronger side," this spiritual view shall prevail, like a bit of blue sky over a whole firmament of cloud.

To make the world magnetic with God's presence, man a figure on the stage of his creation, and Christ a character co-incident but not co-extensive with his being, whose horizon includes all:- what but this is theology and preaching? When the President comes, we make way. Let the spirit, over whatever and whoever else, preside in church. Before its living statute and tread in the mental realm,

how all our verbal conclusions are dwarfed! I charge you, speak from it. Be its mouth-piece, and never appear in aught less than its name. In the proportion of faith everything else is but illustration. Abjure fixed opinions, for its growing life. Watch for the heavenly vision; for tenets have insights; report at head-quarters of no sect; from Providence take your text, and articulate the breath of God. Be ashamed to offer any message but his. Leaving fealty to the One in and through and over all, you slip on the sliding scale which runs into tritheism, worship of the Virgin and her mother, messiahs and angels and saints. Two mothers in the annals of our race immaculate and adorable? In the name of all our mothers, I declare the implication a libel on womankind! But, O my brothers, God is the First who has no Second. He is no mute, or absentee. You will present him to whom ever you utter his truth and love; and you can only utter what you are. How just the Jewish indictment of Jesus, that, being a man he made himself God! So he confessed he did. God he was so far as he made God known. Earth and sky impersonate deity less than the soul that is his herald. But this how the soul does in more than one mortal shape, to contradict the superstition that a single prophet is his only incarnation, by showing him, the highest and humblest of beings in the universe he unfolds, in all flesh that moves by his will! His access, accessibility, is alike absolute religion and the very Christianity of Christ. You shall lean not on parent, partner, friend or child, but on him; and so by your discourse, because by your temper, carry the divine nature to mankind. So at your voice may doubt and fear and sin and death pass. So through your hearing of God, heaven and earth be atoned.

VITUPERATION is so transparent the hidden motive lies in full view. Given a few principal facts in a man's life, no art nor skill can persuade the world from a dependence on them. They are the key of his character, and whatever anecdote falls into harmony with them, is current and good, whether well authenticated, or otherwise. Every detraction lies under suspicion. The true man is thus saved from his foes. They can spend their whole force and not be able to harm a hair of his head. if they put him in the shade of their slander, it is their and the world's loss, and not his. So absolute is Reality, it has the privilege of eternity in which to outlive and live down all detraction.

DENIAL.

HE two best gifts in all the perfect world

TH

Lie in two close-shut hands;

The hands rest even on the outstretched knees
Like those stone forms the wildered traveller sees
In dreamy eastern lands.

I reach to grasp: but lo! that hand withdraws, —
The other forward glides;

The silent gesture says:

"This is for thee,

Take now and wait not ever, listlessly,

For changing times and tides."

THE GOD OF ISRAEL, AT FIRST THE SUN-GOD.

THEO

HEOLOGICALLY considered, Shem, Ham, and Japheth stand for the three great types of historic Religion; which, in their highest development, are: Deism, Pantheism, and Theism. The first is the worship of a remote individual sovereign, and is characteristic of the Syro-Arabians. The second is the worship of the allpervading life of nature, and is characteristic of the ancient Egyptians. The third is the worship of the ethereal, and is characteristic of the Indo-Europeans.

The first grew out of Sabaism, the adoration of the heavenly host, especially the sun, moon, and planets. Those distant orbs were viewed as rulers, and suggested sovereignty as the highest ideal. Whether we look into the Pantheons of Chaldea, Babylonia, and Assyria, or into the sacred shrines and books of the Hebrews and Arabs, the royalty and remoteness of the Deity is most striking. The children of Shem, from north to south, and from east to west, have venerated lordship and power, and bowed to an individual God, standing over and apart from his subjects. They have been, and still are, Deistical.

The second grew out of the mystery of generation. It implies a people given to peaceful pursuits, and to reflection. Though the two have often been mingled, the first and second types stand in marked contrast. The first is outward, simple, concrete, and the second is intangible, and abstract. Egypt is the home of the world's trinities. The generative principle finds expression only by means of three terms father, mother, offspring. All the trinities of the Nile have for their type, the Theban: Amun, Maut, Khem, in which the name of the second person is but an antique form of our own word mother. Third person of the Christian Trinity is properly the son; and the Holy Spirit is strictly maternal, since the son proceeds from both the Father and the Spirit. It is only because the deity of the Son was established anterior to the definition of the spirit as a separate person, that the son chances to occupy the second place, instead of the third. Ancient religions, likewise, appropriating the trinal form, were scarcely able to assimilate it. The Babylonians are said to have had a triad consisting of the moon, the sun, and Jupiter. They did better in their earlier one of the rising, the meridian, and the setting sun, for these three are one. The Hindus, more metaphysical, had for their trinity the Supreme in the three characters of Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. Yet both Babylonian and Hindu trinities