of Jesus; not certainly in Calvinistic dogmas, for which he has not lost his old contempt. He would rather believe in the absolute perfection of a pope, than in the total depravity of all mankind; having ceased long ago to believe in any Omnipotence that can grant aught but spiritual gifts in answer to a prayer, he feels that he can bend the knee to any saint in all the glorious company of the Apostles as reverently as to a God; if he is to believe any miracles he will believe them all, and honor St. Elizabeth changing bread into roses no less than Christ changing water into wine; scorning the vicarious sacrifice of the Evangelical and ridiculing the universal salvation of the Unitarian, it is not hard for him to accept purgatory as a golden mean between the two; his old faith in the dignity of human nature makes it easy for him to give the priest power to forgive sins; shocked at the Protestant system of divorce, and heart-sick at the trivial way a rising generation regards the responsibilities of marriage, he hears suddenly of a religion where it is held a holy sacrament; two years from the day they mutually left the church, we are not to be surprised if we find the devout Rădical on Sunday afternoon at the confessional, and the phlegmatic Radical in his own parlor calmly smoking a cigar.

One inconsistency of Trinitarianism, which we find least easy to understand and most difficult to forgive, is that the love for Christ which it bends every effort to excite, it chills at its first opening. You may not believe it essential to salvation to join in the communion of the Lord's Supper, and yet it may be to you a beautiful pleasure to commemorate so simply a noble life and death. "Surely," you think, "those who are so anxious I should seek him will be first to welcome me to his table." But no: they hold up a warning finger. "Are you a member of the church? do you hold certain theories of the nature of Christ, which you have promised before the world to hold from this day forward? or is this feeling of yours nothing but meaningless love for him? Do you think you are worthy to come to our Lord's table?"

It is as if, when the the day came to cover in proud and

loving recollection our soldiers' graves with flowers, you had come forward with the rest and said, as others offered costly lilies and azalias, "Here's rosemary, that's for remembrance," and the sentinel had thrust forth his bayonet: "Stop a minute; Robert G. Shaw and the Putnam's and the Lowell's were very noble men do you think you are worthy to lay a flower on their graves?"

Let us not be misunderstood. We are aware that in certain churches, even the Swedenborgian, permission is privately given to individuals to come forward unbaptized into the faith. But the church prizes her existence as an organization, and must be willing to be judged by her own utterance from the pulpit, not by the drawing-room conversation of her clergy. It is urged that only those should be allowed to remain of whose earnestness the minister has convinced himself. Forgive me if, unwilling to believe in the infallibility of any pope, I refuse to submit my earnestness of purpose to the judgment of any minister, even though his verdict be in my favor.

"You will come back," prophesied a friend, when we left a church where we had been singularly happy. "Will you promise to tell me six months hence where you stand?" We promised; but six months have only confirmed our conviction that all who stand have to take heed lest they fall; and we hope to keep walking on and on, pitching our tent each six months nearer heaven, never dissatisfied but always unsatfied, until at last we wake in His likeness.

Not that I am capricious because doubt or atheism sometimes dims the clearness of my faith. My belief in God, in truth and immortality, is changeless as a fixed star; but my theories about them change with the circling hours. A tree whose every leaf trembles at every wind of doctrine may yet be firmly rooted in the ground; the kaleidoscope, not one of whose exquisite combinations you can ever hope to create a second time, yet never drops from its charmed circle a single sparkling gem. The same primary hues, God, Truth, Immortality, Faith, Hope, Charity and Love, ray themselves into the rainbow that spans your life and mine with brightness;

but yours is the prismatic rainbow, clear and changeless, reflected coldly from some crystal of a creed, which you found one day in a fissure of the Rock of Ages, cleft for you; mine is the quivering glory reflected from each living drop of water, that transfigures the air for an instant as a restless, eager life throws itself upon that Rock in ever-changing spray. I could not catch it if I would and prison it in a creed. I am neither Unitarian nor Trinitarian, Romanist nor Radical, Materialist nor dreamer: I believe in God and my fellow-men! Did the great Master, from whose table you exclude me, ask more of us than to love the Lord our God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourself?

But though we are not asked to stay, let it be in no ungentle spirit that we turn aside. Let us not go forth bitterly denying that Christ can be found in such a church; we know he is still there, sorrowing that they will not let the children come to him; but, thank God! not there only. Yonder in the hospitals and North Streets, where his work lies still unfinished, he calls us, too; not to fall down and worship, but to follow him; not to throw ourselves on the easy cushions of personal salvation through his sacrifice, but to take his yoke upon us, and find therein the peace that passeth understanding and which the church cannot give or take away. Where he went we will go; his people shall be our people, his God our God. Arise, let us go hence!

And yet, O Mother Church, breathe once more your gentle benediction upon the child you found upon your doorstep. Forgive her, that the seed of the love for Christ you planted in her heart has grown so beautiful and strong, that now it has no longer room to grow under the highest arches of your highest temples. Forgive her, that your lesson she learned so thoroughly that now she loves Christ better than yourself.

For although we believe with the sternest Radical in the supremacy of ideas and principles, yet we cling with loyal devotion to every intense and earnest personality. The Unitarian may justly warn the Trinitarian that worship of a person easily degenerates into superstition; but the Trinitarian may quite as justly remind the Unitarian that worship of the

abstract easily develops into mere ethics. Many a Rousseau has held himself guiltless because, in spite of a most abandoned life, he has ever cherished in his brain a most lofty ideal and worshiped profoundly the abstract Beautiful and Good. Alas! whatever our faith, we have all reason to rejoice that the God we serve is one long-suffering and kind.

We can think of no greater inconsistency than that of the Radical, professing to believe in the supremacy of ideas, careless what may be thought of this or that individual, but who, figuratively speaking, crosses himself and shudders with apprehensive dread of so intense a personality whenever the name of Christ is mentioned, though it be only as that of an elder brother or friend. Believing truly in the supremacy of ideas, I fear no strongest test you can bring to bear on it: personality cannot smother truth; it may be a most valuable aid to it. We wish to fill our pupils with abstract love of literature and science; but we welcome every rose left upon our desk as a tribute to our own attractions; nor have we as yet found that they learn to care for the turn of our head or the expression of our lips to the detriment of the lovely lines from Schiller or the beautiful experiment in philosophy.

Surely the dear God had some tender meaning in it all when he wound so subtly in together these loyal lives of ours, till we feel "two human loves make one divine." I dot ask you to accept my Master for your own; Jesus, Socrates, Savanarola, Paul, you may keep your theories of each; I simply ask that

"Whene'er a noble deed is wrought,

Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
Your heart in glad surprise

To higher levels rise;"

That when a beautiful life has been lived on the shores of the Galilean lake, no tidal wave of centuries or space shall prevent you stretching 'out your hand if haply you may touch the hem of the garment without seam; and, on the other hand, no beautiful life blossom into beauty on your own breast, no cross of suffering be nobly borne at your very side,

unseen by you, because your eyes are strained to catch a glimpse of that far-off Cross on Calvary, and your fastidious taste cares only for the lilies of Judea.

And yet I ask no blind devotion to a master. "Where I find worth, I follow him who has it till they part, and then I follow-it." So shall we all serve loyally our leaders in the spirit which the Apostle Paul invoked: "Be ye, therefore, followers of me even as I am a follower of Christ; for the head of man is Christ and the head of the woman is man and head of Christ is God; that the Son may be under the Father and God may be all in all."

STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF MODSPIRITUALISM.

ERN

WHAT are some of the sources of the strength and weakness of this faith which is "everywhere spoken against"? It may be said, in the first place, that one of its chief defects is the nature of the methods by which the movement is sought to be propagated. This is a weakness in some measure inherent in the infancy of all great religious movements. No faiths are royally born; no prophets are clothed in purple. The religions which have swayed the destinies of men have first been nourished in the bosoms of the common people; have been first spread abroad by the homely instruments of ignorant superstition and unlettered zeal. The few imperfect glimpses we can get of the early church of Christ reveal it to be not the unspotted company of saints which modern enthusiasm is tempted to regard it, but a religious society blessed with the most self-sacrificing zeal, and also degraded by the most undignified absurdities, and even the vilest sins. Of course every form of religion that comes to the light among people who are mentally and morally uncultivated and undeveloped, no matter how lofty the truths it contains, must be tinged by their ignorance and undevelopment,