In

Touch with God

are mad for persons. Childhood and youth
see all the world in them. But the larger ex-
perience of man discovers the identical nature
appearing through them all. Persons them-
selves acquaint us with the impersonal. In
all conversation between two persons, tacit
reference is made as to a third party, to a
common nature. That third party or com-
mon nature is not social; it is impersonal, is
God.
The Over Soul.

HIS should be plain enough. Yet see

ΤΗ

That strong intellects dare not yet

hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for,

at any time, they can use words as good, when occasion comes. So was it with us; so will it be, if we proceed. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.

Self Reliance.

PRAYER that craves a particular com

modity any thing less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. Self Reliance.

THE

HE relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh, he should communicate not one thing, but all things; should

Prayer

Sim

plicity

Simplicity

fill the world with his voice; should scatter
forth light, nature, time, souls, from the
centre of the present thought; and new
date and new create the whole. Whenever
a mind is simple, and receives a divine
wisdom, then old things pass away-
means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives
now, and absorbs past and future into the
present hour. All things are made sacred
by relation to it one thing as much as
another. All things are dissolved to their
centre by their cause, and in the universal
miracle petty and particular miracles dis-
appear. This is and must be. If, there-
fore, a man claims to know and speak of
God, and carries you backward to the
phraseology of some old mouldered nation
in another country, in another world, believe
him not.
Is the acorn better than the oak
which is its fulness and completion? Is
the parent better than the child into whom
he has cast his ripened being? Whence
then this worship of the past? The cen-
turies are conspirators against the sanity
and majesty of the soul. Time and space

are but physiological colours which the eye maketh, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.

THE

Self Reliance.

HE lessons of the moral sentiment are once for all, an emancipation from that anxiety which takes the joy out of all life. It teaches a great peace. It comes itself from the highest place. It is that, which being in all sound natures, and strongest in the best and most gifted men, we know to be implanted by the Creator of men. It is a commandment at every moment and in every condition of life to do the duty of that moment and abstain from doing wrong. And it is so near and inward and constitutional to each that no

commandment can compare with it in authority. All wise men regard it as the voice of the Creator himself.

The Preacher.

Peace

A Common

Creed

VERY movement of religious opinion is of profound importance to political and social life, and this of to-day has the best omens as being of the most expansive humanity, since it seeks to find in every nation and creed the imperishable doctrines. I find myself always struck and stimulated by a good anecdote, any trait of heroism, of faithful service. I do not find that the age or country makes any difference; no, nor the language the actors spoke, nor the religion which they professed, whether Arab in the desert, or Frenchman in the Academy. I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion-the religion of welldoing, and daring, men of sturdy truth, men of integrity and feeling for others. My inference is that there is a statement of religion possible which makes all skepticism absurd. The Preacher.