blamed Hesiod for distinguishing the day from the night, since both, he said, were one, who taught that to mount and to descend are the same thing, and that the straight line and the curve are also one and the same thing. As an old writer says, "Where the gate stands open, these men, in that respect alone like juveniles, are ever seeking a stile; and where their learning ought to climb they creep through." If the father of confusion had led them, they could not seem to be more puzzled. Graduates at the bower simply can't understand what these protestors are pleased to affirm. What would you have them do? They don't know their language; it may be all very fine, but they feel that they are not made to use it. "Divine providence orders," says an old writer, "that a fog never did, nor can meet together in nature. How sad, then," he adds, "is the condition of many sectaries in our age, which in the same instant have a fog of ignorance in their judgment, and a tempest of violence in their affections, being too blind to go right, and yet too active to remain still." and a tempest And, after all, to pass over the eloquence, and the gravity and the obscurity of this opposition, and to come to the end for which it is all professedly exercised, what on earth could induce a little innocent humble playmate of the bower, of his own accord, to join it? There is something in the innocence of the young, we might suggest, that serves like a magnifying power to enable them to discern the difference between the works of Divine and those of human construction. As we owe the beauty of the latter in material things to optical illusions, which are dispelled by a lens; so whatever men construct out of their own heads, in the spiritual and moral order, seems the work of unskilful savages, when viewed without the medium of passion and prejudice. In our Polytechnic, a lecturer exhibits a cambric handkerchief of the finest quality magnified 60,000 times. It resembles an uncouth hurdle, or a rude fence of twisted briers. He then shows the leaf of a tree; and the beauty and symmetry of its pores, veins, fibres, and ramifications only appear, in consequence of our increased power of vision, more perfect and wonderful. Such, we might say, is the difference between Divine and human art in regard to religion. Tried by a test of this kind, we see in what is man made all the defects of a national, sectarian, or individual religion; we behold in what is from God all the beauty and wisdom of a world-wide, universal faith, adapted to all, open to all, comprehensible as far as it concerns us to all; with its law like that given to man by God in Eden; with its freedom which secures with peace and harmony and order, the individualism and freedom that are essential to the dignity and happiness of mankind; for let the latter be ever so much prized, still man, as a great author says, "is the missionary of order; he is the servant not of the devil and chaos, but of God and the universe *!" . Youth, therefore, possessing, as we have said, such a test, may be able to address a leader of the religious opposition in Cicero's words, and say, "Quæ tandem ea est disciplina, ad quam me deducas si ab hac abstraxeris +?" Grave men will profess to take from us what never existed but in their own imaginations, and to leave what is sufficient for themselves; ; but we require something more than a nation for authority, a human law for guidance, our own mind with a written book for our instruction, nature for our discipline, and a common hall or the air for our worship. Where shall we adore God? It was for them at one time sufficient to have the open sky. It is still sufficient for the disciples of some famous philosophers and poets. Shall we adore God above the winds? "The birds then," as St. Augustin says, "would have the advantage of us." To such adorers of the vague, we can apply the words of Madame de Sevigné, "Epaississez-moi un peu la religion, qui s'évapore toute à force d'être subtilisée." The Children's Bower sends forth no transcendental worshippers, who can unite with men of contradiction within any four walls offered them by a government, but a band of brothers who seek God in his own temple, and before his holy altar. They too may like gravity in season, but it will be not that presented by an old acquaintance with a new face, but that which accompanies constancy and wisdom. "Quæremus gravitatis, constantiæ, firmitatis, sapientiæ judicium §." They too may like * Carlyle. In Ps. cxxxvii. + Acad. ii. logic, but not a power of reasoning justly that will resign its functions whenever interest, or passion, or caprice, or some unaccountable sadness might thus be opposed in a man to conclusions that he can foresee to be inevitable. "Can you guess, they will say to each other, What the reason should be, that we never mention 66 "I suspect that there is in some men's brains," says a recent traveller, a valve that can be closed at pleasure, as an engineer shuts off steam. The most sensible and well-informed men in some countries possess the power of thinking just so far as certain national laws have ordained in religious matters. They talk on other subjects with courage and logic, and show you magnificent results; but the same men who have brought free trade or geology to their present standing, look grave and lofty, and shut down their valve as soon as the conversation approaches that subject. From that moment you talk with a box-turtle." After such observations by shrewd, impartial, and even generally admiring contemporaries, can any one be offended if he hears cited the words of St. Augustin, saying, "These men may have different sentiments, and seem to contend frequently with each other; but they all agree in this point, that they have vain and earthly thoughts. They may have different opinions, but they have the same vanity *." Alluding to some such characters, an old author says, "their opinion is ever ready and ever idle." One thing about them is very apparent, they are strongly attached to the present order of things. "They are under the Jewish law," says a recent observer, "and they read with sonorous emphasis that their days shall be long in the land. They shall have sons and daughters, flocks and herds, wine and oil. The doctrine of the Old Testament is their religion. The first leaf of the New Testament they do not open." That affinity with the doctrines of universal union existing in the young, which we noticed in the last chapter, will certainly unfit men whom it has at all influenced, for entering into the *In Ps. lxxx. views of those who, in order to find some standing ground among their vague conceptions, are willing to approve of religion as a national institution, as being, for reasons that they cannot consistently explain, a part and instrument of their own country's glory. These last are for religion and politics. "There's a couple of topics for you," as Valentine says, more like one another than oil and vinegar; and yet those two beaten together by a state cook, make sauce for the whole nation." "" no "Those who separate themselves from the saints," says St. Augustin, "will have a king over them, but not Jesus Christ. Every nation that places its joy in a human royalty, and which does not wish God to reign over it, is rejected far from the saints. The Jews would have only Cæsar. One does not deny that Cæsar was king. He was a man who ruled over other men in regard to human things; but there is another King, who rules in that which regards Divine things. The Jews did not sin in saying that Cæsar was their king, but in not wishing to have Jesus Christ for their king; and so now amongst Christians it is the same offence, and the same persons who afflict us *." To men of this kind St. Augustin addressed this question, which might have been read with profit by some panegyrists of the sixteenth century: "You have said to an apostate emperor, that justice only had access to him. Does the apostasy of Julian seem to you to be a part of the Gospel †?” Cecilius the pagan, in the dialogue of Minutius Felix, admits the ancient religion, because it seems to him necessary for the preservation of society, moral order, and the glory of his country; but his vague scepticism for all that is no less profound. This is the point of view taken still by many persons advanced in years, who cling to some few of the forms of the past after having lost its faith. When a man of good breeding, he is swayed, as an acute observer says, by national pride in his religion. So far is he from attaching any meaning to the words of his formula, that he believes himself to have done almost the generous thing, and that it is very condescending in him to pray to God. Upon the whole, there seems to be nothing popular within these regions of thought, and therefore the young shun them. From the first, it was the nobles in Germany, France, and England who claimed and protected them. In Scotland it was men of good family who in general first extended them as preachers of the Reform. To the present day these thoughts are, in most countries, the hereditary domain of the rich. As far as being concerned with any thing like positive religion, they appear, in most countries, to belong to them alone. They arose at a time when a great author tells us to read in the very architecture of the period, the pride of state, the pride of knowledge, and the pride of system. Indeed, with art, in every form but that of the ignoble grotesque or caricature, though it is almost a digression to notice it, they were at open war. With that whole world they quarrelled. A celebrated author, passionately attached to them, tells us with regret and astonishment, that he has never yet met with one of them whose heart was thoroughly set upon the world to come, and, so far as human judgment (by which, in this instance, he seems to mean his own) could pronounce, perfect and right before God, who cared about art at all-that where he found a love for it, there was always traceable some entanglement of the thoughts with the matters of this world, causing them to fall into strange distresses and doubts, and often leading them into what they themselves would confess to be errors in understanding, or even failures in duty*. That Reform quarrelled with all dignity and symbolism in regard to the Divine worship, referring it to "the stage properties of superstition, which have been from the beginning of the world, and must be to the end of it +." It quarrelled with all ancient historical associations, as those who are conversant with them are aware; and it quarrelled with the doctrines and monuments of the old popular Christianity, which it considered so many barbaric elements. In every instance, however prevalent became a short insanity, the instinct, the intuitions, the conscience, and the religion of youth were outraged. All seemed to be adjusted to suit the pride of state, as well as the pride of knowledge. It was for the gentry, not for the common people. As a foreign writer and close observer says, "The operatives do *The Stones of Venice. † Ib. |