every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave. To such a system it can bring no addition of dignity or of strength, that is part and parcel of the common law. It is not now for the first time left to rely on the force of its own evidences and the attractions of its own beauty. Its sublime theology confounded the Grecian schools in the fair conflict of reason with reason. The bravest and wisest of the Cæsars found their arms and their policy unavailing when opposed to the weapons that were not carnal, and the kingdom that was not of this world. The victory which Porphyry and Diocletian failed to gain, is not, to all appearance, reserved for any of those who have in this age directed their attacks against the last restraint of the powerful, and the last hope of the wretched. The whole history of the Christian religion shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power, than of being crushed by its opposition. Those who thrust temporal sovereignty upon her, treat her as their prototypes did her author. They bow the knee and spit upon her; they cry, Hail! and smite her on the check; they put a sceptre into her hand, but it is a fragile reed; they crown her, but it is with thorns; they cover with purple the wounds which their own hands have inflicted on her; and inscribe magnificent titles over the cross on which they have fixed her to perish in ignominy and pain.

ART. 6.-INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ON CIVILIZATION.

From the Posthumous Works of Goethe, Vol. 13, p. 81.

The great reverence which the Bible has received from many nations and races of the world, it owes to its inward worth. It is not merely a national work, but the book of the nations. For it makes the fate of one people the symbol for all others, knits their history with that of the earth's creation, and proceeds through a gradation of earthly and spiritual developements, of necessary and accidental events, on to the extreme regions of remotest eternity.

Whoever is acquainted with the human heart, and the mode by which individual minds are formed, will not deny the possibility of a strong minded man's getting a good education

with the help of no other book besides the Swiss Chronicle of Ischudi or the Bavarian history of Aventius. How much more then, will the Bible be sufficient for such a purpose, since it was the model for those others, and since the nation whose chronicles it contains has exercised, and yet exercises so great an influence on the world's history.

We are unable in this place to go into detail. Yet it must strike every one at first sight, how in both divisions of this important work, the historical and didactic style is so closely interwoven, that the one helps on and follows up the other, in a manner wholly unexampled. And as to the contents, very little need be added to make it a complete library, even for the present age. If to the Old Testament an extract from Josephus was annexed, in order to bring the Jewish History down to the destruction of Jerusalem; if, after the Acts of the Apostles, we should insert a compressed account of the spread of Christianity and the dispersion of the Jews through the world; and if, before the Revelation of St. John, was arranged the pure Christian doctrine in the New Testament spirit, in order to clear up and disentangle the confused and unmethodical style of teaching in the Epistles, then would the Bible deserve to take immediately its old rank, not merely as the general fountain of religion, but also the common library of the nations. And certainly, the further a century is advanced in civilization, the more would it be used, partly as the basis and partly as the instrument of education. Not to be sure by the half-wise and the self-conceited, but certainly by the truly wise.

We do not consider sufficiently that the Bible in itself has had, in the times of antiquity, scarcely any influence. The books of the Old Testament were only just collected, when the nation from which they arose were completely dispersed; it was only the letter around which the scattered people collected and still collect. Hardly had the books of the New Testament been united when Christianity fell asunder into infinitely various opinions. And then we find people occupied, not so much with the book as upon the book, and differing as to the modes of interpretation which they apply to the text. And here we find occasion to refer to those two extraordinary men whom we have before alluded to. It were presumptuous to attempt to determine their merits here, or even to describe them--therefore no more now than concerns most immediately our present purpose.

PLATO stands connected with the world as a blessed spirit, whose pleasure it was to dwell therein for a season. His mis

sion is not so much to become acquainted with it, for he knows it already by a previous intuition; but kindly to impart what he brings, and what it so much needs. He forces his way into its secret depths, less to search out what is there, than to fill them full of his own essence. He struggles upward with a longing once more to partake of that element from which he sprung. Every thing which he expresses stands related to an everlasting Whole, an eternal Good, an unchanging Truth, an infinite Beauty, whose influence he seeks to quicken in every heart. The particulars of earthly knowledge which he attains, melt down into his method, and as smoke vanishes away in the air, are lost sight of in the power of his style.

But ARISTOTLE, on the other hand, stands upon the earth like a man who is to build a home there. Here he is, and here he must work and act. He examines the soil, but no deeper than to a solid foundation. What lies beneath that, down to the centre, is to him indifferent. He measures out a ground plan of vast extent; from all quarters he brings together materials-joins them regularly together-and thus his building rises, in the form of a pyramid, on high; while Plato seeks the heavens like an obelisk, or rather like a pointed flame.

And when two such men, who in a certain sense divide human nature between them, stand forward as distinct representatives of splendid qualities, not easily united together--having had the fortune fully to develope themselves, and entirely to express all that was developed within them; that too, not in short laconic aphorisms like the answers of an oracle, but in complete, thorough, and various works; and when these works have been preserved for the good of humanity, and always have been more or less studied and considered; it follows naturally that the world, so far as it can be looked upon as susceptible and thoughtful, must give itself to the one or the other, must recognize the one or the other as its master, teacher, and guide.

This necessity evinces itself most clearly in the interpretation of the sacred scriptures. These writings with the character of self-dependence, wonderful originality, variety, totality and unboundedness of their contents-yet brought no rule by which they might be measured. It must be sought from without. And so the whole body of those who went to work upon them, Jews and Christians, Heathens and Saints, Church Fathers and Heretics, Councils and Popes, Reformers and Infidels interpreting and explaining, connecting and supplying, expounding and applying-went to work consciously or unconsciously, either in the Platonic or the Aristotelian

manner. Instancing only the Jewish school, the talmudic and cabalistic mode of treating the Bible, is a proof of this.

And as in interpreting and applying scripture, so also in interpreting, carrying forward, and applying scientific knowledge, the whole band of students fell into two parties. If we look at the later sages and scholars of Africa, especially Egypt, how every thing inclines toward the Platonic mode of investigation. If we look at the Asiatics, we find a stronger tendency toward the method of Aristotle, as in later times was strikingly seen among the Arabians.

And like nations, so also are centuries divided by a reverence for Plato or Aristotle, now peaceful, now violently contentious. And it is a great advantage of our own time, that our esteem for the two is equally balanced---even as Raphael, in his celebrated picture of the school of Athens, has introduced both, and placed them opposite to each other.

ART. 7.-ON THE RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS HEREAFTER.

An objection that weighs with great force on some minds, against the probability of friends recognizing each other after death, is the following-that it would blight the happiness of Heaven. For example, were the most virtuous and pious mother that ever lived, to have a vicious son, and to recognize him hereafter, would not the spectacle of his misery drag her down from the happiness of heaven to a wretchedness, scarce less than his own? Such questions, those taught of sorrow and trial, and to be human is to know sorrow, will ask. We hear such questions from others; we ask them in the silent mournings of our own hearts. It seems to us, that the difficulty arises from a misapprehension as to the nature of heaven, and of the mutual relations of virtue and trial.

We have, perhaps, no reason to suppose that the trials of the good, will end with death. To say that they will, is to doom the good to a perfectly stationary, instead of a progressive happiness. Permanent happiness is the result of, and proportioned to the degree of expansion and action of the moral and religious faculties and affections. If a man ceases to grow better, his happiness ceases to increase. If one's affections are stationary, then the happiness, whose fountain is the love of man and God, will be stationary. Whereas, we believe, that the hap

piness of heaven, will be eternally progressive-that as grace is added to grace, so will glory be added to glory. But on what does the growth of the moral and religious nature depend? I answer-on trial-trial that demands and produces effort, and effort expands and strengthens. What is good in man, can no more grow without a system of trials, than the flowers that line your garden paths, without the alternating rain and sunshine. We are then to expect (of a different kind undoubtedly, from what they have been,) but we are to expect trials in heaven, and among others-trials of the affections. But in the case of the mother, whom we have supposed, would not the trials of the affections which she undergoes, eclipse and extinguish all happiness? I think not; and the solution of the difficulty, is in part, found in a principle of human nature, not enough observed.That principle is, that in proportion as one becomes better, he derives more benefit and suffers less pain from the same trial. A trial which will break a bad man down, heart and hope, make him nerveless and desperate-a really good man will bear with comparative cheerfulness and resignation. And not only does he suffer less, but he is also benefitted more than the bad man. I do not attempt here to account for this; it is enough to refer to it, as a known law of human nature. And I see no reason why the human soul in heaven, in its progress toward perfection in the course of ages, should not ultimately arrive at that state in which, though environed by trials, it shall derive a good without pain from them—as bees draw honey, unharmed, from the very bosom of poisonous flowers.This principle will in part, as it seems to me, explain how the mother may suffer this trial of her affections in heaven, and still enjoy the happiness of heaven. The trial will call out spiritual powers and capacities of happiness within her, that will more than counterbalance the direct pain of the trial.So the mariner at first thinks that the mountain wave that approaches and casts its shadow, like night, on his little vessel in the gulf below, will overtake it. But instead of this, such is the law of nature, he finds that his vessel ascends, swan-like, till it rides gracefully on its summit, with the broad horizon around and the bright sky above.

Still further: on earth, a good parent punishes only to reform a child, and to believe that on earth any of the trials to which Providence subjects us, are meant for any thing but our good, is but one remove from darkest Atheism. If the great principles of Providence are not changed by a man's going from one country to another, by dropping the flesh that imprisons the spirit, by dying--and if the constitution of human