likely to use a few years later, when his ideas, or at least his forms of expressing them, had come to be more or less influenced by Hindoo theosophy.

The opening passages are calm and quiet, as though they had been inspired by that summer Sabbath day whose sun had just set. After speaking of the perception of beauty and perfection awakened in us by the observation of the laws of the physical universe, he passes to the consideration of the higher laws of moral beauty.

THE SENTIMENT OF VIRTUE.

"A more sweet and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart opens to the sentiment of Virtue. Then he is instructed in what is above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that to the good, the perfect, he is born-low as he now lies in evil and weakness. That which he venerates is still his own, though he has not realized it yet. He ought-he knows the sense of that grand word, though his analysis fails to render account of it. When, in innocency, or when by intellectual perception, he attains to say, 'I love the Right; Truth is beautiful within and without for evermore. Virtue, I am thine; save me; use me; thee will I serve day and night, in great, in small, that I may not be virtuous, but Virtue '-then is the end of the Creator answered, and God is well pleased.

"The sentiment of Virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish. These laws

refuse to be adequately stated. They will not be written out on paper or spoken by the tongue. They elude our persevering thought; yet we read them hourly in each other's faces, in each other's actions, in our own remorse. This sentiment is the essence of all religion. If a

man is at heart just, then, in so far, is he God. The safety of God, the majesty of God, do enter into that mind with justice. . . . See, again, the perfection of the law, as it applies itself to the affections, and becomes the law of society. As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, seek the vile. Thus, of their own volition, souls proceed into heaven, into hell.”

This passage is most likely one of those which the estimable Dean of the Divinity School judged to be "folly." Knowing the quality of brain with which some men are endowed, and how apt it is to get dried up in the process of the manufacture of its possessor into a doctor of divinity, we can comprehend how the Dean should thus judge utterances like these, so different from those which he was wont to propound to his pupils.

"Atheist "" is a very convenient term of reproach to be hurled at any one whose finite conceptions of the nature and attributes of the Infinite Being differ from our own finite ones. To the Athenians, Socrates was an atheist because he could not conceive of Zeus as they did. In one or two of his poems, and here and there in his later writings, Emerson speaks with apparent approval of the Hindoo theosophy, which represents Bráhma,

"the Adorable," as a being to whom all things are indifferent; who is himself all and in all; to whom past and present, shadow and sunlight, shame and fame, the better and the worse, are all alike. This theosophy he styles "the best gymnastics of the mind." We are not fully assured as to how far Emerson really holds to any such view. In this address there is no trace of any such thing. There is certainly nothing that looks like atheism; but much to the direct contrary— as in this passage, which follows immediately the one last cited:

THE ONE SUPREME BEING.

"These facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one Will, of one Mind; and that one Mind is everywhere active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool; and whatever opposes that Will is everywhere balked and baffled, because things are as they are and not otherwise. Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute; it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life has he. For all things proceed out of this same Spirit, which is differently named Love, Justice, Temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes. All things proceed out of the same Spirit, and all things conspire with it."

It is hard to conceive how this teaching differs essentially from the most orthodox conception of

a universal Providence which has directed the creation of all things, and presides over and controls all things-those which to a finite mind seem the smallest, as well as those which seem the great-. est; and that Providence is only one name for the actual manifestation of the will of the one Mind, the one Infinite Being. People, if they choose, may designate Emerson's mode of presentation as Pantheism. He has been styled a Pantheist, and has never taken special pains to disown the appellation. We can understand how Trinitarians could consistently set aside any claim made by or for Emerson to be recognized as a Christian. In their view, the belief that Christ, the Son, is God 'very God of very God"-is a fundamental article of the Christian creed; and whosoever did not hold to that could not properly be called a Christian, whatever else he might be. But we fail to see how such could be the case with any member of the Middlesex Unitarian Association. Emerson speaks of Jesus, from their own avowed standpoint, not merely as a man sent from God, as John the Baptist and many another was, but emphatically as the man sent of God. As thus:

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THE MAN JESUS.

"Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its serene harmony, ravished by its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone of all humanity, he estimated the greatness of man. He saw

...

that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goeth forth to take possession of his world. He said, in the jubilee of this sublime emotion, ‘I am divine. Through me God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me, or see thee when thou thinkest as I now think.' He felt respect for the prophets; but no unfit tenderness to postponing their initial revelations to the hour and the man that now is: to the eternal revelation in the heart. Thus was he a true man. Having seen that the Law in us is commanding, he would not suffer it to be commanded. Boldly, with hand and heart and life, he declared it was God. Thus is he, as I think, the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of a man."

Mr. Emerson has some sharp things to say against the prevailing idea of the Christian world in regard to the character of Jesus. This was to have been expected from him when speaking to a company of prospective preachers, who by their denominational affiliations were pledged to a very different view. He then proceeds to those passages which, we suppose, were the ones which Theodore Parker pronounced to be so terribly sublime, setting forth the faults of the Church in its present condition; closing with what was the ultimate theme of the address, that for which mainly it was meditated. This is preaching, and the office of the preacher, in the present age.

THE OFFICE OF THE PREACHER.

"This office is coeval with the world. But observe the conditions, the spiritual limitations, of the office. The