that either should, as positive institution, arbitrarily interfere with the other, it points both to their higher identity in a common allegiance to these democratic laws. The true political radical who denounces the theological radical, is like a picket who does not know his own password when he hears it from another's lips, and so shoots his own comrade in the dark. The one insists that the Human Form, in highest and lowest, is sign of Human Nature, neither more nor less, and holds the State to that. The other holds the Church to the same rule; and forbids its denial of an essential identity of nature in all who have ever worn that Form. What is Anti-slavery in Politics is Antisupernaturalism in Psychology. I do not mean that individuals can be kept to consistency in these matters. I am speaking of essential meanings. An official Christ is as anti-democratic as a privileged race.

Naturalism applies Love and Justice to society as Sovereign Law. It is content with nothing short of the devoutness of consecration which this demands. In the name of this it meets policies, expediencies, compromises, denominational and political, with the reproof that truth cannot submit to their evil handling, nor the public needs allow their shuffling delays. It assails every form of Slavery as infraction of Natural Right. It demands the complete Emancipation of Labor in the name of a legislation divinely recorded in the Organization of Man. Material interest and military necessity have not satisfied it. The plea for liberty rises into the moral and spiritual sphere, because it is in the name of Nature. It will not be cheated of its right to rest on immutable principles; and such are forever divine. And the facts of the time approve this religious radicalism as the best exponent of its master currents. Read there the Fate which

urges us; no downward track, but the sublime justification of God in Man. Was not the Immediate Emancipationist the truest prophet among us he whose moral abhorrence of Slavery refused the slow paths of policy and concession, and called for its swiftest possible overthrow? We lay long miles of political pipe-clay to drain off by easy grade the sin that lies around our doors; scrupulous of everything but the Moral Law it offends. But behold, that alone represented the living fact; that alone was master of the situation; and the earth under our feet flames with the swift retributions which alone can save. If you have built your State on Natural Right, dare to trust this utterly. Nature is holding you to a better than the best you can see. You shrink from her grand consistencies and equalities that you do see, only to find that this moment was authoritative with larger ones that you knew not; nay, that you could not know, till through your own virtue or by her compulsions, you had done fairly by the

first. Her purpose is always ahead of even your boldest plan, nor will it wait your convenience. If you defer negro suffrage, you turn white suffrage into calamity, and it shall rend you; for you have doomed it to be a beast, when Nature would have given it a soul. She is holding you to a better than negro suffrage, even Universal Justice; and if you will not let it come but by madness, the madness shall haste to do its own perfect work.

And the Civil War, sternest necessity of our political Naturalism, was recreative and constructive. Its moral vindications brought us not Nationality only, but Faith, which is the Soul of Nationality. What a comment are its issues on the cry we have been so used to hear, that a pestilent Radicalism, prying at the foundations of Church and State, was sweeping off Religion to perish in seas of blood! Yes, a 'religion' was indeed perishing; one that had known palmy days, when Church and State seemed anchored fast in the divine authority of Slavery; when to shelter the friendless against its wrath was treason; when conscience, pleading a Higher Law against it, was 'monomania;' when the Bible was a slave code, and the Market a slave speculator, and the Constitution a title-deed to property in Man! But what was that which shone in on the Conscience of the People, when criticism had given place to sterner resources of the Moral Laws, and the seas of blood did their work, and it was proved that such a Religion had no proper hold in this Universe and must go down, though all parties upheld it, and its death should cost the lives of a generation? Did any people ever hear before now, all things considered, such a Revelation of the Sovereignty of Justice as that was? I know how far we are from the righteousness that becometh a Nation; but can I believe that there was ever so much Positive Religion in this land as there must be to-day? Let us make no vain pretences; let us confess that the lesson is not yet read, nor the duty done. But let us recognize what germs must have had birth, of noblest faith and will, that shall find work to do before long; what wondrous Presence of Eternal Right, overshadowing, overruling, compelling and preserving, has pressed close on every soul that could think or feel, and made it confess that we and all our works are in Its Hands.

And what faith in the Nation's Future these Sovereignties of Natural Law have nursed! I know not what else could have sustained it through the long darkness, and made the night to be such light about us. They were the thread of the stern labyrinth, which he who held not fell into bewilderment and despair. How they turned everything into helpfulness of motive or of warning; interpreting all dis

couragements in the interest of courage and fidelity; the vicissitudes of war, the conspiracies of parricides, the secret foes in the household, the slowness and blindness of the popular conscience, the bitter blunders of the popular favor! And they still admonish us in the perils that are now imminent, and for the struggles yet to come, that the cut of God's plough runs deeper than the devices of politicians, or the failure and treachery of trusted guides.

America means Naturalism; the Religion of Democracy is the essential union of God with Humanity. The boundless faith of her Moral Reformers means simply that if your ideals are all credited to Nature, you shall know its capabilities, and with absolute conviction put in the largest practical claim for every person. Naturalism is absolute confidence in Thought, in Liberty, in Progress, as Human Functions and Forces. Its watchword is: let each be true to his own soul; let the whole guard the rights that are shrined in each. It is not infidelity nor apostasy. It is not expulsion from an Eden of Faith into storm and night. It is a magnificent Exodus out of the bondage of unbelieving traditions into the Promised Land of Truth and Love. It is the assurance that there can be no antagonism between perfect freedom to seek truth, and will to worship the Spirit of Truth. Science is no Atheist. It is divine because it is humane; faithful to God's leading because true to Man's needs. The age is alive with its achievements and presentiments, and to bring all things within the folds of Eternal Law is the joy of existence. God has made it so, not that He may be less trusted and loved, but that He may be better understood. The glad tidings of this Gospel make us bold to bring all secret miseries and sins to the remedial light, and command that the coward's crooked paths delay us no longer. The forward look knows no doubt. The wise men are pointing on from the hill-tops, and the old theological camps are breaking up: we are crossing over into our natural heritage.

We are set to prove that the fullest Liberty of Inquiry is one with the Piety that bears fruit in the love of all uses; that it is the path not of barren skepticism, but of trust in the best aspirations, in the set of all experiences towards ultimate good. Naturalism must find a blessed life in its Humanities, which Supernaturalism could not find in its Miracles. It is to justify its war against error and wrong by drawing its strength from spiritual deeps. It comes to bind the wounded spirit, not to break the bruised reed. Nor would it pull away from under men the poor prop of one failing error, without offering in its stead an upholding truth.

BY A. BRONSON ALCOTT.

O'ER earth and seas,
In sunshine, shade,
Blest Beauty crossed,
Nor stopt nor staid,
Nor temples took,
Nor idols hewed,
Apart she dwelt
In solitude.

In solitude, Heart said:
"Where find the maid?
My bride's a fugitive,
From sight doth live,

And hearts are hunters of the game,

Pursuers of the same

Through every passing form,

The Beauty that all eyes do seek,

All eyes do but deform;

The love our faithless lips would speak

Dies on the listless air,

Nature befriends us not,

Nor hearthside doth prepare

In all her ample plot;
Life's but illusion,

Cunning confusion;

Flings shadows pale about our path,

She shadow is, and nothing hath;

Eyes are divorced from seeing,

Hearts cloven clean from being;

My bride I cannot find,

My love I cannot bind;

The thousand fair ones of our sphere,

Fond, false ones all, nor mine, nor dear;
The Paradise

I would surprise,

From all my following flies,

And I'm a thousand infidelities;

There's none for me

In all I see;

Surely the Fair One bides not here,

Where dwells she, where, in any sphere?"

In any sphere

Love whispered: "Where, where if not here?"
Here in thy breast the maiden find,

Ideas sole imparadise the mind;

Here heart's hymeneals begin,

Here's ours and only ours from ours within ;
Through parting gates of human kind
Enter thou blest the Unseen Mind.

M

ILLUSION.

BY EDWARD FINLEY.

AN the sport of numberless deceptions, seems to possess a constitutional relish for being deceived. Those are esteemed

the most fortunate, who are clothed in the thickest and softest mantels of illusion; and life is a game wherein most of the competitors are striving to surpass their fellows in the accomplishment of being cheated. Society is a mansion of specious forms and flowing materials, where each breath of air and ray of light from the solid world of reality, must be tempered and toned to accord with the whims or the necessities of the inmates. It is a castle of clouds that may influence like sweet enchantment, or like stifling vapor. And a very considerable part of the world's pageantry is produced by a mob of spectors marching to annihilation.

Society, custom, and opinion, though they embody so much that is real, and genuine, and beautiful, are still a grand apotheosis of illusion. The world is quite extensively worn to rags; and the vast party of conservation are flaunting the shreds and patches in the sun and breeze, as if they were banners to proclaim the advent of the Millenium. But only a few can see clearly, that it would be the best wisdom and prudence, to submit this social rag-bag of wont and custom, to the potent chemistry of truth, and progress, and sincerity, to be made into clean white paper, whereon to write anew the gospel and poem of humanity.

In spiritual affairs illusion has the largest supremacy. The popular religion is like a perpetual coronation ceremony of the king of