CRITICAL NOTICES—Continued
Founder is held in reverence; it is as a power that Christianity is denied...
"The lightest leaf will show the way the wind is setting, and I know not where we are met by n plainer expression of this tacit, and in some degree respectful, dental than in the popular literature of our day. Here we see a systematic ignoring of Christianity, combined with a rather inconsistent exaltation of the benevolent aspect peculiarly belonging to it. We find in such writings many flowers to please us, but see that as in a chill's garden they are stuck into the ground by their stalks only, and have not grown where we now see them. We know chat even the lily floating on the waters, the orchid hanging in the air, keeps a tenacious yet unseen hold upon something beyond itself, without which its nourishment and life would fail; and all this bloom and verdure is suggestive of a root, possessing, it may be, no beauty for which we should desire it, yet detached from which the leaf of humanity will wither and its flower fade. . . . .
"If the doctrines of Revelation are mysterious, are the facts of life less so? Are 'the things of a man' and the things of God fitted, so to speak, by the mere cutting off of all that transcends reason—itself but a part of man? Reason has its outposts from which it is continually driven back defeated; it rules, but under a perpetual check: it cannot take account of its own wealth, or fill the region it presides over. It is at a noble vassal, one that knoweth not what his lord doeth." Man reverences his reason, and trusts it, as far as it will lead him; but that is not his whole length, for he feels that he, the reasonable man, is something greater than it is. Sometimes his dreams are truer than its oracles, al this he knows. Therefore one deep calleth to another, and the answer to this call is faith. Faith addresses itself to man's whole being—it sounds every depth; it touches every spring; it calls back the soul from its weary search within itself, full of doubt and contradiction; it presents it with an object, implicit, absolute, greater than itself—One that knoweth all things. It provides for every affection, every want and aspiration. . .
Jerusalem is tilt as a city that is at unity with itself; that which moulds itself from within is free. Who that knows anything of what unity really is, how deep its root, how kindly and unconstrained its expansion, can he very solicitous for uniformity, the outward union of cold, and neutral, and inwardly divided minds the rigid, corpse-like symmetry of that which cannot of itself either live or go, but must be ever kept up by that by which it can be alone produced, the strong pressure of the compelling land. Human spirits are only to be drawn together and held together by the living bond of having found something in which they really do agree. And though we may yet be far from the dawning of that day, known unto the Lord, when opinion and truth will be no more at variance, the one lay, when there shall be me Lord and His Name One, we are, perhaps, not so far removed front a time when devout men, although they be of every nation under between, may hear each other speak of the wonderful works of God in their own tongue-the tongue in which they were born-a speech after which many among us have begun to yearn too fervently to be any longer occupied in framing shibboleths to prove our brethren . . . .
"When we feel—as what Christian at times does not-an impatience with the slowness of our own growth, let us look from ourselves into the universal Church of Christ, and ask this self-answering question of our hearts, How shall the growth of the part be rapid when that of the whole has been so slow? Let us consider the nature of the earlier dispensation, and recollect under how many costly and cumbrous folds of rite and ceremony the treasure of the world lay hid. let us remember that this is still a hid treasure; that to the outwardly Christian, no less than to the heathen world, the great mystery of redeeming love remains that world's open secret, declared yet uncommunicated, plain to the ear, yet dark to the sense. . . .
"There is something sorrowful, even perplexing, in every life which is guided by a standard which those around us do not recognise to be living by the dial when all around us go by the clock, brings a contradiction into the life of which the lives of those who are in league with circumstance, the slaves and the masters of every day, know nothing.
There is a sadness in all idealism: it lifts the soul into a region where It cannot now dwell; it must return to earth, and it is hard for it not to do so at the shock of a keen revulsion, the dashing of the foot against a stone. But in no life does the secret of all tragedy, the conflict between the will and circumstance, so unfold itself as in that of the Christian; he, of all men, feels and mourns over that sharp, ever-recurring contrast of our existence—the glorious capabilities, the limited attainments, of man's nature and destiny below. For his possibilities are at once more glorious and more assured than those of other men; yet, as regards actualities, he among all men must be content to have the feast to show. And this, if we examine deeply, will be found at the root of all sincere fanaticism. It is the agony of the spirit, its strict convulsive embrace of some glorious truth, the soul's first love, for the sake of which it refuses to perceive the limitations to which all things here have been made subject. Having lasted of the fruit of the tree of life good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise," it forgets that old unrepealed statute, that man, in the Seconst Adam, as in the First, must till the ground from whence he was taken. Until he returns to the earth he must turn to it, nourishing and being nourished by it; if he would stretch forth his hand and live by what he can reach of absolute truth, he will quickly come across the flaming sword turning every way to keep the way of the Tree of Life." . . . . .
A WORK of singular philosophic power, as well as poetic beauty.—Family Treasury.
In neat Foolscap Octavo,
A PRESENT HEAVEN.
Second Edition. In Preparation.
EDINBURGH: ALEXANDER STRAHAN & CO.
HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO., LONDON.
