Secret Rose Garden

PART I

The perfect face of the Beloved

THE EYE AND THE LIP
What is the nature of the eye and the lip?
Let us consider.

Coquettish and intoxicating glances shine from His eye.
The essence of existence issues from His ruby lip.
Hearts burn with desire because of His eye,
And are healed again by the smile of His lip.

Because of His eye hearts are aching and drunken.
His ruby lip gives soul-garments to men.
His eye does not perceive this visible world,
Yet often His lip quivers with compassion.

Sometimes He charms us with a touch of humanity,
And gives help to the despairing.
It is His smile that gives life to man's water and clay;
It is His breath that opens heaven's gate for us.
A corn-baited snare is each glance of that eye,
And a wine-shop lurks in each corner.

When He frowns the wide world is laid waste,
But is restored every moment by His kiss.
Our blood is at fever point because of His eye,
Our souls demented because of His lip.

How He has despoiled our hearts by a frown!
How He has uplifted our souls by a smile!
If you ask of Him an embrace,
His eye will say "Yea," His lip "Nay."
He finished the creation of the world by a frown,
Now and then the soul is revived by a kiss.
We would give up our lives with despair at His frown,
But would rise from the dead at his kiss.

. . . When the world meditates on His eye and His lip,
It yields itself to the intoxication of wine.

THE MOLE
The single point of the mole in His cheek
Is a centre from which circles
A circumference.
The two worlds circle round that centre.
The heart and soul of Adam evolved from there.

. . . Hearts bleed because they are a reflection
Of the point of that black mole,
And both are stagnant; for there is no escape
Of the reflection from the reflect.

Unity will not embrace Plurality,
For the point of Unity has one root only.

. . . I wonder if His mole is the reflection of my heart,
Or my heart the reflection of His mole.
Was my heart created from His mole's reflection?
Or may it be seen shining in His mole?
I wonder if my heart is in His face,
Or if His mole abides in my heart.
But this is a deep secret hidden, alas! from me.

. . . If my heart is a reflection,
Why is it ever so changing?

Sometimes tired like His brilliant eye,
Sometimes waving to and fro as His curl waves,
Sometimes a shining moonbeam like His face,
Sometimes a dark shadow like His mole,
Sometimes it is a mosque, sometimes a synagogue,
Sometimes a hell, sometimes a heaven,
Sometimes soaring above the seventh heaven,
Sometimes buried far below this earth.

. . . After a spell the devotee and ascetic
Turns again to wine, lamp, and beauty.

THE CURL
IF you ask of me the long story
Of the Beloved's curl,
I cannot answer, for it contains a mystery
Which only true lovers understand,
And they, maddened by its beauty,
Are held captive as by a golden chain.
I spoke too openly of that graceful form,
But the end of the curl told me to hide its glory,
So that the path to it should be twisted
And crooked and difficult.

That curl enchains lovers' hearts,
And bears their souls to and fro
In the sea of desire. A hundred thousand hearts
Are tightly bound, not one escapes, alas!

No single infidel would remain in the world
If he could see the shaking aside
Of those black curls,
And on the earth there would not remain a faithful soul
If they were always in their place.
Suppose they were shorn. . . . No matter,
Day would increase and the night disappear.

As a spider spreads its nets to ensnare,
So does the Beloved in wantonness
Shake His locks from off His face.

Behold His hands plundering Reason's caravan
And with knots binding it tight.

Never at rest is that curl,
Ever moving to and fro
Making now night, making now morning,
Playing with the seasons in wonder.

Adam was created when the perfume of that
amber-scented curl
Was blown by the wind on his clay.

And I too possess an ensample;
I cannot wait for a moment,
But breathlessly start working anew
To tear my heart out of my breast.
. . . Sore troubled am I by that curl
Which veils my longing soul from His face.

THE CHEEK AND THE DOWN
The theatre of Divine beauty is the cheek,
And the down is the entrance to His holy presence.
Beauty is erased by His cheek, who says,
"Without my presence you are non-existent."
In the unseen world the down is as green meadows
Leading to the mansion of Eternal Life.
The blackness of His curl turns day into night,
The down of His cheek holds the secret of life.
If only you can glimpse His face and its down,
You will understand the meaning of plurality and unity.
His curl will teach you the knowledge of this world,
His down will reveal hidden paths.

Imagine seven verses in which each letter
Contains oceans of mysteries;
Such is His cheek.
And imagine, hidden beneath each hair of His cheek,
Thousands of oceans of mysteries;
Such is His down.

As the heart is God's throne in the water,
So is the down the ornament of the soul.


PART II

Beauty

THE MARRIAGE OF THE SOUL

Descending to the earth,
That strange intoxicating beauty of the unseen world
Lurks in the elements of Nature.

And the soul of man,
Who has attained the rightful balance,
Becoming aware of this hidden joy,
Straightway is enamoured and bewitched.

And from this mystic marriage are born
The poets' songs, inner knowledge,
The language of the heart, virtuous living,
And the fair child Beauty.

And the Great Soul gives to man as dowry
The hidden glory of the world.

THE CHARM OF BEAUTY
FROM the unseen world descends
Heavenly beauty,
And plants its flag in the city
Of earthly fairness,
Throwing the world's array into confusion;
Now riding the steed of comeliness,
Now flourishing the sword of eloquence,
And all alike bow down,
Saints and kings, dervishes and prophets,
Swayed by the charm of Beauty's fascination.

EARTHLY BEAUTY
Whence the charm of a fair face?
Not earthly beauty only
Can so allure us with its loveliness.
Perchance we see in this, as in a cloudy mirror,
The far faint reflect of the Perfect Face.
And these deep feelings of delight and wonder
Can only issue from the One True Beauty,
For in Divine Perfection there is no other partner.
Nor is it all desire and lust that tempts men's hearts with longing.
. . . Evil appears but as the other side of Truth.


PART III

The Sea and its Pearls

A DROP OF SEA-WATER
Behold how this drop of sea-water
Has taken so many forms and names;
It has existed as mist, cloud, rain, dew, and mud,
Then plant, animal, and perfect man;
And yet it was a drop of water
From which these things appeared.
Even so this universe of reason, soul, heavens, and bodies,
Was but a drop of water in its beginning and ending.

. . . When a wave strikes it, the world vanishes;
And when the appointed time comes to heaven and stars,
Their being is lost in not being.

THE SEA OF BEING
IN Being's silver sea
Lustrous pearls of knowledge are washed up
On the shore of speech,
And dainty shells bring poems in their curving forms
To strew the beach with beauty.

Each wave that breaks in foaming arcs
Casts up a thousand royal pearls
That hold strange murmuring voices,
Gems of devotion, joy, and love.

Yet though a thousand waves
At every moment rise and fall,
Scattering pearls and shells,
Yet are there ever more and more to come,
Nor is that sea of Being less by one sheer drop.

PEARLS OF KNOWLEDGE
IN the sea of ’Uman, the pearl oysters
Rise to the surface from the lowest depths,
And wait with opened mouths.
Then arises from the sea a mist,

Which falls again in raindrops
Into the mouths of the shells
(At the command of the Truth).
Straightway is each closed as by a hundred bonds,
And the shells sink back again
Into the ocean's depths,
Bearing in their hearts the pearl drops
Which the divers seek and find.

The sea is Being, the shore the body;
The mist, grace, and the rain, knowledge of the Name;
Human Wisdom is the diver
Who holds enwrapped in his garment
A hundred pearls;
The soul in a swift lightning's flash
Bears to the listening ear voices and messages
From the shells of knowledge;
Then when the husks are opened,
Behold the royal shimmering pearls!


PART IV

The Journey

THE FORSAKING

SEE, your companions have gone;
Will you not too make a start?
If you desire to take wing as a bird,
Then leave to the vultures this carrion world.

Forsake your relations,
For your real Friend must be sought.
He who is drowning in the sea of Not-being
Must cast aside all relationships.
What are father and mother,
Sister and brother?
Your very son may be your enemy,
Yet may a stranger be your kinsman;
Even your fellow-travellers on the mystic path
Must be renounced.

All relations are a bond, a spell,
A fairy dream,
An absolute illusion.

Omit not the duties
Of the law to them,
But have regard to yourself.
. . . Abandon gold and women,
For they are a source of anxiety.

THE TRAVELLER
THE traveller on the path,
’Tis he who knows from whence he cometh;
Then doth he journey hastily,
Becoming as pure from self as fire from smoke.
Unfolded to him are a series of revelations
From the beginning. Till he is led away
From darkness and sin.
He now retraces stage by stage his steps
Till he reaches his goal the Perfect.
Thus is the perfect man evolved
From the time he first exists
As inorganic matter,

Next a breath of spirit, and he is living
And from God draws his motive powers.
Next the Truth makes him lord of his will,
As in childhood his discernment of the world unfolds.
And now the world's temptations assail him.

. . . Anger appears and desires of the flesh,
And then avarice, pride, and gluttony;
His nature becomes evil,
Worse than an animal or demon;
Now is he at the lowest point of all,
The point opposite to Unity.

. . . Should he remain fettered in this snare,
He goes further astray than the beasts;
But if there shines a light from the spirit world,
Divinely attractive,
Or if he can find a reflection of proof,
Then will his heart respond in a feeling of kinship
To this Light of the Truth,
And he will turn back and retrace his steps
From whence he came.
To faith assured he has found his way
Through certain proof, or the wonder
And attraction of the Divine,

. . . He throws away his selfhood utterly
And ascends in the steps of the most Pure.

EXHORTATION
THOUGH the world is yours, you remain dejected,
Who so pitiable as you?

You, who are a man, arise and pass on,
Wait not day or night at the halting-stages,
Tarry not behind your fellow-travellers and the caravans.

THE TWO STEPS OF THE JOURNEY
THE journey of the pilgrims is two steps and no more:
One is the passing out of selfhood,
And one towards mystical Union with the Friend.

FEAR
As the Arab racer needs not the whip,
So you will not need to fear
When on your journey you have started.

When purified are your soul and body,
You will not fear the fires of hell.
Throw pure gold into the fire;
If it contains no alloy, what is there to burn?

LOGIC
IF God guides you not into the road,
It will not be disclosed by logic.

Logic is a bondage of forms;
A road that is long and hard.
Leave it for a season. Like Moses
Cast away that staff
And enter for awhile "The Valley of Peace."

THE INFANT AND THE YOUTH
THE young infant in the cradle
Stays at his mother's side,
But when he is grown manly
He goes forth with his father.

So you remain with your mother,
The fleshly elements,
Until you join your Father up on high.

THE ALMOND-TREE
As the kernel of an almond is spoilt utterly
If it is plucked from its husk while unripe,
So error in the path of the pilgrim
Spoils the kernel of his soul.
When the knower is divinely illumined,
The kernel ripens, bursts the husk,
And departs, returning no more.
But another retains the husk,
Though shining as a. bright sun,
And makes another circuit.
From water and earth springs up into a tree,
Whose high branches are lifted up to heaven;
Then from the seed of this tree
A hundredfold are brought forth.
Like the growth of a seed into the line of a tree,
From point comes a line, then a circle;
When the circuit of this circle is complete,
Then the last is joined to the first.

INTERMINGLING
You are plurality transformed into Unity,
And Unity passing into plurality;
This mystery is understood when man
Leaves the part and merges in the Whole.


PART V

Time and this Dream-World

TIME

THE past has flown away,
The coming month and year do not exist;
Ours only is the present's tiny point.

Time is but a fancied dot ever moving on
Which you have called a flowing river-stream.

I am alone in a wide desert,
Listening to the echo of strange noises.

THE DREAM OF LIFE
You have heard much of this world,
Yet what have you seen of this world?
What is its form and substance?

What is Simurgh, and what is Mount Kaf?
What is Hades and what is Heaven and Hell?
What is that unseen world
A day of which equals a year of this?

Come and hear the meaning.

You are asleep, and your vision is a dream,
All you are seeing is a mirage.
When you wake up on the morn of the last day
You will know all this to be Fancy's illusion;
When you have ceased to see double,
Earth and Heaven will become transformed;
When the real sun unveils his face to you,
The moon, the stars, and Venus will disappear;
If a ray shines on the hard rock
Like wool of many colours, it drops to pieces.

THE PHENOMENAL WORLD
THE world is an imaginary figure,
A diffused shadow of the Infinite;
One breath created the worlds of command
And all living things.

As they appear to come forth, so they appear to go.
Though there is no real coming and going.
For what is going but coming?

. . . All are one, both the visible and the invisible.
God most high, the Eternal One,
Creates and destroys both worlds.

. . . The varied forms you see are but phantoms of your fancy,
And by revolving quickly in a circle
Appear as one.

THE REAL AND THE UNREAL
THE imagination produces phenomenal objects
Which have no real existence,
So this world has no substantial reality,
But exists as a shadowy pageant or a play.

All is pervaded by Absolute Being
In its utter perfection.

There are many numbers, but only One is counted.

THIS WORLD A MIRAGE
THE house is left empty, save for the Truth,
For in a moment the world has passed away;
Then you, rid of self, fly upwards
And are united to the Beloved.

Union is yours when this dream-world
Fades and dies away.


PART VI

Reflections

SUN-REFLECTIONS

SUN-REFLECTIONS from the unseen world
Are all the objects of this mortal sphere,
As curl, down, mole, and brow on a fair face.
For Beauty absolute reigns over all.

. . . When the ears first hear these words
They seem to denote sensual objects.
But as there is no language for the Infinite,
How can we express its mysteries
In finite words?
Or how can the visions of the ecstatic
Be described in earthly formula?
So mystics veil their meanings
In these shadows of the unseen,
The objects of the senses.

. . . As a nurse to an infant,
So is the Infinite to the finite.

. . . Once these words were used in their proper sense,
But now are concealed lest the vulgar should profane.

Annihilation, intoxication, the fever of love
Are the three states of the mystic,
And those who abide in these states
At once comprehend the meanings
Veiled in the words.
But if you know them not,
Pretend not you understand like an ignorant infidel,
For all cannot be mystics or grasp the mysteries.
No mere illusions are the mystic's dreams,
And a man of truth does not vainly talk.
To comprehend requires revelations or great faith.

Briefly have I explained these words and their meanings
So that you may apply them in their right intent,
Remembering the attributes of each.
Compare them in a right manner,
And refrain from the wrong comparisons.

Now that these rules are understood
I will show you more of their application.

THE MIRROR
YOUR eye has not strength enough
To gaze at the burning sun,
But you can see its brilliant light
By watching its reflection
Mirrored in the water.

So the reflection of Absolute Being
Can be viewed in this mirror of Not-Being,
For non-existence, being opposite Reality,
Instantly catches its reflection.

Know the world from end to end is a mirror;
In each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water,
From it will flow a hundred clear oceans;
If you look intently at each speck of dust,
In it you will see a thousand beings,
A gnat in its limbs is like an elephant;
In name a drop of water resembles the Nile,
In the heart of a barley-corn is stored an hundred harvests,
Within a millet-seed a world exists,
In an insect's wing is an ocean of life,

A heaven is concealed in the pupil of an eye,
The core in the centre of the heart is small,
Yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there.

EVIL
BLACKEN the back of a mirror
And it will reflect your face,
So the dust of the earth reflects
The rays of the sun in the seventh heaven.

THE REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR
HOLD up a mirror before you
And gaze on that other person.

. . . Again look and consider;
Your proper self is here, not there.
What, then, can be this reflection,
This shadow of your face?

In the same way as light and dark are not connected,
Being is not joined to Not-Being.


PART VII

Divine Inebriation

TAVERN-HAUNTERS

THE tavern is the abode of lovers,
The place where the bird of the soul nests,
The rest-house that has no existence
In a world that has no form.
The tavern-haunter is desolate in a lonely desert,
Where he sees the world as a mirage.
The desert is limitless and endless,
For no man has seen its beginning or ending.
Though you feverishly wander for a hundred years
You will be always alone.
For the dwellers there are headless and footless,
Neither the faithful nor infidels,
They have renounced both good and evil,
And have cast away name and fame,
From drinking the cup of selflessness;

Without lips or mouth,
And are beyond traditions, visions, and states,
Beyond dreaming of secret rooms, of lights and miracles.

They are lying drunken through the smell of the wine-dregs,
And have given as ransom
Pilgrim's staff and cruse,
Dentifrice and rosary.

Sometimes rising to the world of bliss,
With necks exalted as racers,
Or with blackened faces turned to the wall,
Sometimes with reddened faces tied to the stake.

Now in the mystic dance of joy in the Beloved,
Losing head and foot like the revolving heavens.
In every strain which they hear from the minstrel
Comes to them rapture from the unseen world.

For within the mere words and sounds
Of the mystic song
Lies a precious mystery.

From drinking one cup of the pure wine,
From sweeping the dust of dung-hills from their souls,
From grasping the skirts of drunkards,
They have become Sūfīs.

THE WINE OF RAPTURE
THE wine, lit by a ray from his face,
Reveals the bubbles of form,
Such as the material world and the soul-world,
Which appear as veils to the saints.
Universal Reason seeing this is astounded,
Universal Soul is reduced to servitude.

Drink wine! for the bowl is the face of the Friend.
Drink wine! for the cup is his eye, drunken and flown with wine.
Drink wine! and be free from heart-coldness,
For a drunkard is better than the self-satisfied.

The whole world is his tavern,
His wine-cup the heart of each atom,
Reason is drunken, angels drunken, soul drunken,
Air drunken, earth drunken, heaven drunken.

The sky, dizzy from the wine-fumes' aroma,
Is staggering to and fro;
The angels, sipping pure wine from goblets,
Pour down the dregs on the world;
From the scent of these dregs man rises to heaven.
Inebriated from the draught, the elements
Fall into water and fire.
Catching the reflection, the frail body becomes a soul,
And the frozen soul by its heat
Thaws and becomes living.
The creature world remains giddy,
For ever straying from house and home.

One from the dregs' odour becomes a philosopher,
One viewing the wine's colour becomes a relater,
One from half a draught becomes religious,
One from a bowlful becomes a lover,
Another swallows at one draught
Goblet, tavern, cup-bearer, and drunkards;
He swallows all, but still his mouth stays open.

WINE, TORCH, AND BEAUTY
TRUTH'S manifestations
Are wine, torch, and beauty;
Wine and torch are the light and shining of the "knower,"
Beauty is concealed from none.
Wine is the lamp-shade,
And torch the lamp;
Beauty is the Spirit-light,
So bright, it kindles sparks
In the heart.
Wine and torch are the essence of that blinding light,
Beauty is the sign of the Divine.

Drink this wine and, dying to self,
You will be freed from the spell of self.
Then will your being, as a drop,
Fall into the ocean of the Eternal.

INTOXICATION
WHAT is pure wine?
It is self-purification.
What sweetness! what intoxication! what blissful ecstasy!

Oh! happy moment when ourselves we quit,
When fallen in the dust, drunken and amazed,
In utter poverty we shall be rich and free.
Of what use then will be paradise and houris?
For no alien can find entrance to that mystic room.

I know not what will happen after
I have seen this vision and imbibed this cup,
But after all intoxication comes headache,
Anguish drowns my soul remembering this!


PART VIII

Reason and Free-Will

REASON

LET reason go. For his light
Burns reason up from head to foot.
If you wish to see that Face,
Seek another eye. The philosopher
With his two eyes sees double,
So is unable to see the unity of the Truth.
As his light burns up the angels,
Even so doth it consume reason.
As the light of our eyes to the sun,
So is the light of reason to the Light of Lights.

KNOWLEDGE
LEARNING is only the outer wrapping
Of the letter;
The dry husk that covers the nut,
Not the kernel concealed within;

Yet must the husk exist
To ripen the kernel.
So from learning comes the sweet knowledge of Faith.

Oh! soul of my brother, hearken,
Strive to gain knowledge of faith,
For the "knower" in both worlds
Has a high place.
Knowledge loves not this world of form
Which is void of Reality.

Begin to till your field
For next year's harvest.
Knowledge is your heritage,
Be adorned with the principle of all virtues.

THE BLINDNESS OF REASON
As the man blind from his birth
Believes not nor understands
Your description of colours,
Even if you show him proofs for a century,
So blind reason cannot see the future state.

But beyond reason man has a certain knowledge
Which God has placed in his soul and body
Whereby he perceives hidden mysteries.
And like the fire in flint and steel
When these are struck together,
The two worlds for him are lit up in a flash.

FREE-WILL
You say, "I myself have Free-will,
For my body is the horse and my soul the rider,
The reins of the body are in the hands of the soul,
The entire direction is given to me."

Oh! foolish one, these are falsehoods and delusions
That come from an illusory existence.

As your essence is nothingness,
How can you have Free-will?
Seeing that your being is one with not-being,
Whence comes this Free-will of yours?

Imagination distributes actions
As in a play or a farce,

For when your actions were planned,
Before your existence,
You were created for a certain purpose,
By the desire of the Truth.
Therefore is man predestined, before his existence,
To certain appointed work.
. . . (Oh, wondrous ways of Thine, without how or why!)

The honour of man consists of slavery,
In having no share of Free-will.

Of himself man has nothing,
Yet of good and evil God asks him,
Man has no choice, he is under control.
Oh! poor soul, he seems free, yet is a slave.

Give yourself up to the Truth,
For you are helpless in his grasp;
Freedom from self you will find in the All,
And, O Dervish! in the Truth you will find riches.


PART IX

Man: His Capabilities and his Destiny

TO THE SŪFĪS

You are bound by a chord
To the soul of the creatures before you,
Therefore they are subject to your dominion,
And the soul of each is hidden in you.
In the midst of the world you are the kernel,
The centre of the world.
. . . The world of reason and mind is your fortune,
Earth and heavens your garments.
. . Your natural powers are ten thousand
Transcending limits and reckonings.

"I" AND "YOU"
"I" AND "you" are but the lattices,
In the niches of a lamp,
Through which the One Light shines.

"I" and "you" are the veil
Between heaven and earth;
Lift this veil and you will see
No longer the bond of sects and creeds.
When "I" and "you" do not exist,
What is mosque, what is synagogue?
What is the Temple of Fire?

REFLECTED FORMS OF HABIT
REPEAT an action several times
And you master it;
Habit makes dispositions
As fruits become ripe by time.
By practice man learns a trade,
By habit he collects his thoughts.

Remember at the last day
All your habits and actions
Will be clearly seen,
For the garment of the body
Will be stripped. And the form left
Will reflect your vices and virtues,
As objects are reflected in pure water.

Again, your dispositions will be embodied,
Made manifest as lights and fires;
For all phenomenal limitations will be removed.
You who are pure from earthly form,
Illumined by the Truth,
Will appear all heart,
From your stainless love.
Then will you be possessed by intoxication,
Scattering in confusion the two worlds.

THE LOWEST NECESSARY
IF there were no sweepers in the world
The world would be buried in dust.

A FAITHFUL SERVANT
To become a faithful servant,
Cultivate faith and sincerity,
Renew your belief every instant
While unbelief dwells in your heart.

Abandon the wish to be seen of men,
Cast off the blue-patched robe
Of the dervish
And bind on the Magian girdle.

Be a believer, be a believer, be a believer!

"FAR" AND "NEAR"
IF He sheds His Light on you,
You become near to Him
And far from your own existence.
For by nearness to Him
You become far from yourself.

What profit is there to you
In your non-existent existence?

THE SAGE
VIRTUE and equity,
Courage and temperance,
Are the four qualities of the sage.

He is not over-cunning or a fool,
His appetites are under control,
From cringing and boasting he is free,
And from foolhardiness and cowardice.

All virtues lie between
Excess and defect,
A narrow path betwixt
Hell's bottomless abyss,
Fine and sharp as a sword blade,
Which permits no lingering
Or turning round.

Equipoise is the summit of perfection,
Becoming like a simple essence.

As the rays of the sun
Shine upon the earth,
So the Light from the Spirit World
Shines brightly on him
Who has attained this equilibrium.

THE PROPHET AND THE SAINT
THE prophet, resplendent in his perfection,
Is as the sun's bright light,
And the saint, concealing his saintship,
Is as the subdued light of the moon.
By fellowship, the saint
Is intimate with the prophet,
And finding entrance to that secret chamber,
He loves and is beloved by the Truth.

THE FIRST AND THE LAST
THE two worlds produced the soul of Adam,
Which, though first in thought, was created last.

In man's self is disclosed the final cause,
For there is none beyond him.

O first, who are also the substance of the last!
O hidden, who are also the essence of the manifest!
You, who day and night are wondering about yourself,
Think of self no more,
For the end of such thought is confusion.

ANNIHILATION OF PHENOMENA
THE heavens and the stars
At the appointed time will disappear.
A wave will strike the earth,
And lo! it vanishes.

Only the Truth will remain Unchangeable.

And you at that moment,
Passing from this dream-life,
With self discarded,
Will be one with the Beloved.

Oh! Master, ponder on your coming and your going,
And the thousand existences that lie before you!

THE WRITTEN FAITH
READ the writing on your heart,
And you will understand whatever you desire,
For on the day he kneaded the clay,
He wrote on your heart, by grace, the faith.

THE PERFECT MAN
IN spite of his inheritance,
The perfect man is a slave
And does the work of a slave.
The law is his outer garment,
Though his inner is the mystic path.
He is famed for knowledge and devotion,
But he is far from all these,
For he is absorbed in the contemplation of the One.
. . . When his pilgrimage is over
He receives the crown of Khalifate.


PART X

The One

THE NAME

EACH creature has its being
From the One Name,
From which it comes forth,
And to which it returns,
With praises unending.

THE BELOVED GUEST
CAST away your existence entirely,
For it is nought but weeds and refuse,
Go, clear out your heart's chamber,
Arrange it as the abiding-place of the Beloved.
When you go forth, He will come in,
And to you, with self discarded,
He will unveil His beauty.

THE SHADOWLESS
ON the narrow path of Truth,
On the Meridian line, He stands upright,
Throwing no shadow before or behind Him,
To the right hand or the left.

East and west is His Kibla cast,
Drowned in a blaze of radiant light.

Hail, O Light of God, O Shadowless Divinity!

THE UNKNOWABLE
PONDER on God's mercies,
But not on His essence.
For His works come forth from His essence,
Not His essence from His works.
His light shines on the whole universe,
Yet He Himself is hidden from the universe.

THE BOOK OF GOD
THE universe is God's book,
And he to whom the vision of the Divine

Has been vouchsafed
Reads therein and understands.
Substance is its consonants and accidents its vowels,
And different creatures are its signs and pauses.
The first verse is "Universal Reason,"
The second "Universal Soul," the "verse of light,"
And this is as a brightly shining lamp.
The third is the "Highest heavens,
The fourth "The Throne."
After there are seven transcendent spheres,
The "chapter of the seven limbs,"
And forms of the four elements,
Then Nature's three kingdoms
Whose verses none can count.
And last of all came down the soul of man.

THE UNCHANGING LIGHT
You fancy this world is permanent of itself
And endures because of its own nature,
But really it is a ray of light from the Truth
And within it the Truth is concealed.

And this light alters not nor varies
And is void of change or degree.
If the sun tarried always in one spot,
And ever shone in the same degree,
None would know that the light comes from him.

FUTURE REWARD
PONDER here and now on His qualities,
That you may behold Him Himself to-morrow.


PART XI

The Self

THE GAMBLE OF THE SELF

REAL prayer can only be yours
When you have staked and gambled yourself away
And your essence is pure.
Then "a joy of the eyes" are your prayers
And no separation remains,
For knower and known are one and the same.

TRANSCEND SELF
RISE above time and space,
Pass by the world, and be to yourself your own world.

SELFLESSNESS
IN the empty heart, void of self
Can be heard the echoing cry,
"I am the Truth."
Thus is man one with the Eternal,
Travelling, travel and traveller have become one.


PART XII

Idols, Girdles and Christianity

ARE you still turning to great and small?
Pondering on religion and piety,
Teachership and discipleship?
Which mean hypocrisy and bondage.
Then idols and girdles
And Christianity are still yours.

IDOLS
THE idol's real being is not vain
Because God created it,
And all things from Him are good.
Being is pure good, if it contains evil
That comes from "other."
Truth is idol-worship,
If the Mussulman only knew;

But he sees in idols
Only the visible creature,
Not the Truth hidden in the idol.
Idol-worship is unification,
Since all things are the symbols of Being.

By counting beads, repeating prayers,
And reading the Koran,
The heathen becomes not a Mussulman.
The man to whom true infidelity becomes revealed
With pretended faith becomes disgusted.

Within every body a soul is hidden,
And true faith conceals infidelity.

Who adorned the face of the idol
With such beauty?
And who becomes an idol-worshipper
Unless God wills it?

In all things
See but One, say One, know One,

THE GIRDLE
THE mark of service
Is the knotted girdle.
So gird your loins, like a valiant man
With manliness.
Cast aside vain tales,
And mystic states and visions;
Dream not of lights,
Of marvels, of miracles,
For your miracles are contained
In worshipping the Truth;
All else is pride, conceit,
And illusion of existence.

CHRISTIANITY
I SEE the desire of Christianity
Is purification from self,
And liberty from bondage.

There is a sanctuary of the soul,
The blessed portal of unity,
The nest of the Eternal.
God's Spirit (Jesus),
Who proceeds from the blessed Spirit,
Taught this doctrine.

In you is placed a soul,
Which is a sample of this blessed Spirit.
Find release from humanity's carnal desire
And you will enter the Divine Life.
And he who is pure as the angels are
Will be carried up to the fourth heaven.

THE MOSQUE AND THE CLOISTER
IF "other" and "others" are before your eyes,
Then a mosque is no better
Than a Christian cloister;
But when the garment of "other" is cast off by you,
The cloister becomes a mosque.


PART XIII

Thoughts

CIRCLES

BEHOLD the world mingled together,
Angels with demons, Satan with the archangel.
All mingled like seed and fruit,
Infidel with faithful, and faithful with infidel.
At the point of the present are gathered
All cycles and seasons, day, month, and year.
World at beginning is world without end. 1

. . . From every point in this circle
A thousand forms are drawn;
Every point as it revolves in a circle
Is now a circle, now a circling circumference.

DEATH
DEATH occurs to man in three ways:
First he dies every moment by his earthly nature;
Then, when his will perishes, he dies again;
And lastly at the separation of soul and body.

THE HEAVENS
LET not the prison of nature detain you,
But come forth and view the art of the Divine,
Contemplate the appearance of the heavens,
So that praise and wonder for the Truth will be thine.

The arch of the high heavens enclosing both worlds
Is called "The Throne of the Merciful,"
And like the heart of man is ever moving,
Never resting for a moment.
Perchance man's heart is the central point
And heaven the circumference.

Within a day and a night
Heaven outspans your circuits, O dervish!

The other heavenly spheres are circling too,
Remember they all move in one direction,
From east to west like a water wheel,
Rushing on without food or sleep.

When the astrologer is an unbeliever,
He sees not that these circulating lights of heaven
Are dominated and controlled by The Truth.

NO COMPLETE HAPPINESS HERE
WHOM have you seen in the whole world
Who ever once acquired pleasure without pain?
Who, in attaining all his desires,
Has remained at his height of perfection?

THE ATOMS
TAKE one atom away from its place
And the whole world will fall to pieces;
The world is whirling dizzily, yet no one part
Moves from the limit of its place.
Each atom, held in bondage,
Despairs at its separation from the whole;
So though imprisoned, yet moves,

Though unclothed, yet is clothed again,
Though at rest, yet is always wandering,
Never beginning and never ending;
Each possessing self-knowledge, and so
Hurrying towards the throne on high.

Each atom hides beneath its veil
The soul-amazing beauty of the Beloved's Face.

THE PRAISE OF THE ATOMS
CONTINUALLY dwelling in all mystic lore,
Continually singing the song of praise
The atoms of the world will seem to you
Drunken and heavy with wine.

. . . When you have carded self
Like the wool-carder, you will raise a cry.
Oh! take the cotton of illusion from your ears,
And hearken to the call of the One, the Almighty.

. . . Why tarry till the last day
When now, in the valley of peace,
The very bush will say to you, "I am Allah"?

THINKING
THINKING is passing from the false to the true
And seeing the Absolute Whole in the part.
When the idea enters the mind,
It is a reminiscence of a former state,
And passes on to interpretation.

. . . He who sees by illumination
Discerns God first in everything,
But he who sees by logic only,
And seeks to prove the necessary,
Is bewildered and sometimes travels
Backward in a circle, or is imprisoned
In a chain of proofs.
Fool! he seeks the dazzling sun
By the dim light of a candle in the desert.

THOUGHTS ON CREATION
THE heavens revolve day and night
Like a potter's wheel,
And every moment the Master's wisdom
Creates a new vessel. For all that exists
Comes from one hand, one workshop.

Why do the stars set?
Going from perfection to defection?
Why do they change position,
Place, circuit, colour, and form?
Or why is heaven fretted by fire
Always whirling through desire?
Why are the planets revolving,
Above or beneath the earth?
The elements which are below the heavens
Serve in their appointed place
Ever united together.
From them is born the threefold
Kingdom of Nature;
Minerals, then plants and animals,
Waiting in their places as He wills.
Minerals, low in the dust, plants standing upright,
Animals, by their natural passions,
Preserving, continuing their races and species.

All, bowing to their Master's commands,
Fulfil His will day and night.


PART XIV

The Light Manifest

THE LIGHT

THE Light which is manifest
Leads all hearts captive,
Now as the minstrel, now as the cupbearer.

What a singer is He who, by one strain of sweet melody,
Burns the harvests of a hundred devotees!
What a cupbearer is He who, by a single goblet,
Inebriates two hundred threescore and ten!

Entering the Mosque at dawn,
He leaves there no wakeful man;
Entering the cloister at night,
He makes a fable of Sūfīs' tales;
Entering the college veiled as a drunkard,
The professor becomes hopelessly drunken.

Devotees go mad for love of Him
And become outcasts from house and home,
He makes one faithful, another an infidel,
Disturbing the world.
Taverns have been glorified by His lips,
Mosques have become shining by His cheek.

All I desire I have found in Him,
Gaining deliverance from self,
My heart was ignorant of itself,
Veiled from Him by a hundred veils
Of vanity, conceit, and illusion.

THE VISIT
ONE day at the dawn
The fair idol entered my door
And woke me from my sleep
Of slothful ignorance.
The secret chamber of my soul
Was illumined by His face,
And my being was revealed to me
In its true light.
I heaved a sigh of wonder
When I saw that fair face.
He spoke to me, saying,

"All thy life thou has sought
Name and fame;
This self-seeking of thine
Is an illusion, keeping thee back from Me.
To glance at My face for an instant
Is worth a thousand years of devotion."

Yes, the face of that world-adorner
Was shown unveiled before mine eyes;
My soul was darkened with shame
To remember my lost life,
My wasted days.

THE GIFT
THEN that moon
Whose face shone like the sun,
Seeing I had cast hope away,
Filled a goblet of Divine Knowledge
And, passing to me, bade me drink,
Saying, "With this wine,
Tasteless and odourless,
Wash away the writing
On thy being's tablet."

THE EFFECT OF THE DRAUGHT
INTOXICATED from the pure draught
Which I had drained to the dregs,
In the bare dust I fell.
Since then I know not if I exist or not,
But I am not sober, neither am I ill or drunken.
Sometimes, like His eye, I am full of joy,
Or, like His curl, I am waving;
Sometimes, alas! from habit or nature,
I am lying on a dust heap.
Sometimes, at a glance from Him,
I am back in the Rose Garden.

The Secret Rose Garden - Introduction

The light of light is His beauty heart-ravishing,
And His bewitching state the union of unions.
As He goes by, so all souls follow
Grasping the hem of His garment.

LIFE OF SHABISTARĪ

"It is inward glow that makes the Sūfī, not the religious habit."

SA’D UD DIN MAHMŪD SHABISTARĪ was born at Shabistar, near Tabriz, about A.D. 1250.
He wrote the Gulshan i Rāz, or Secret Rose Garden, as a reply to questions put forth by a Sūfī doctor of Herat named Dmir Syad Hosaini.

Very little is known of Mahmūd Shabistarī's life. He wrote beside the Gulshan i Rāz two treatises on Sūfiism called Hakk ul Yakin and Risala i Shadīd.

We learn he had a very favourite disciple called Shaikh Ibrahim.

The Gulshan i Rāz was introduced into Europe by two travellers in 1700. Later, copies of the poem were found in several European libraries.

In 1821 Dr. Tholuck, of Berlin, published extracts, and in 1825 a German translation of part of the poem appeared in another of his books. Afterwards a verse translation and the Persian text was published by Von Hammer Purgstall in Berlin and Vienna.

The Gulshan i Rāz was translated into English and published, with the Persian text and extracts from Hammer's edition and Lajihi's notes, by Mr. Whinfield in 1880.

SŪFĪ POETRY
Readers of Sūfī poetry for the first time are liable to be amazed, perhaps even repelled, by the extravagant language, by the familiarity with the Deity, by the apparent disregard of all human and Divine laws. But on further examination the wonder of the Sūfīs' love for their Beloved shines out with a clear intensity, a beautiful luminous brightness.

They are in love with The One, and their love takes the form of exquisite songs of praise and wonder:

"I heard entranced; my spirit rushed to meet
Love's welcome order, for the voice was sweet."

Vaughan says:

"Oriental mysticism has become famous by its poets, and into poetry it has thrown all its force and fire."


"The Sūfīs . . . have one sole and simple task, to make
Their hearts a stainless mirror for their God."

Love is the Sūfīs' theme, Divine, Eternal Love, and into this sea of Love they cast themselves headlong.

Rūmī sings:

"Moths, burnt by the torch of the Beloved's face,
Are the lovers who linger in the sanctuary."

"If we are called madmen or drunkards,
’Tis because of the Cupbearer and the Cup."

"Because my mouth has eaten of His sweetmeats
In a clear vision I can see Him face to face."


SŪFĪ SYMBOLISM
In reading the enraptured poetry of the Sūfīs, it should be borne in mind that, though the symbols of earthly love and beauty are freely used, yet the real meaning is concealed. No doubt this was originally done to keep secret their mystic love, lest the profane should scoff. But as time went on certain words began to have a recognized meaning amongst themselves. For instance:

EMBRACES and KISSES are raptures of love.

SLEEP is contemplation, PERFUME the wish for Divine favour.

IDOLATERS mean men of the pure faith, not infidels.

WINE, which was forbidden by Mahomet to his followers, was used as a word-symbol by the Sūfīs to denote spiritual knowledge, and the WINE-SELLER means the spiritual guide.

A TAVERN is a place where the wine of Divine love inebriates the pilgrim.

INTOXICATION means religious ecstasy, MIRTH the joy in the love of the Deity.

BEAUTY means the glory of the Beloved.

CURLS and TRESSES mean plurality veiling the face of Unity from its lovers.

The CHEEK means Divine essence of names and qualities.

The DOWN is the world of pure spirits which is nearest to Divinity.

The MOLE on the cheek is the point of indivisible Unity.

The TORCH is the light kindled in the heart by the Beloved.

We thus see that to the Sūfī the love between man and woman is a shadowed picture of the love between the soul and God, and just as a lover will dream of his beloved, singing her praises, and thirsting for a sight of her face, so do the Sūfīs eternally dream of their God, ever contemplating His attributes, and consumed with a burning desire for His presence.

The history of mysticism contains many impassioned love songs to the Absolute, but in Sūfī poetry there is a peculiar richness, a depth, a colour which fascinates and charms so many of us.

Sūfī poetry abounds in allegories and love romances, the stories of Laylā and Majnūm, Yūsuf and Zulaikā, Salāmān and Absāl, in which it is easy to read the hidden meaning of passion for the Absolute. Various are the love themes of the Sūfīs; we hear songs of: the nightingale in love with the rose, the moth fluttering round the light of the candle, the moaning dove who has lost her mate, the snow melting in the desert and mounting as vapour to the sky, of a dark night in the desert through which a frenzied
camel madly plunges, of a reed torn from its bed and made into a flute whose plaintive music fills the eyes with tears. 1

THE BELOVED
The Sūfīs' conception of the Beloved is essentially personal, though there is nothing to show that they worshipped Him as a person, or assigned to Him a form.

Being pantheists, they probably believed that He was the One Light shining in myriad forms through the whole universe, One essence remaining the same.

"Every moment the robber Beauty rises in a different shape, ravishes the soul and disappears.
Every instant the Loved One assumes a new garment, now of old, now of youth.
Now He plunged into the heart of the substance of the potter's clay--the Spirit plunged like a diver.
Anon He rose from the depths of mud that is moulded and baked,
Then he appeared in the world."

And Jāmī declares:

"In neighbour, friend, companion, Him we see,
In beggar's rags or robes of royalty,
In Union's cell or in distraction haunts,
There's none but He, by God, there's none but He."

The Sūfīs realized that it is impossible in spatial terms to describe that which is even beyond pure spirit.

Plotinus has told us in a beautiful passage that a

"We must not be surprised that that which excites the keenest of longings is without any form, even spiritual form, since the soul itself, when inflamed with love for it, puts off all the form which it had, even that which belongs to the spiritual world."

The inability to describe to the uninitiated the secret love of the mystic for the Unknowable is made the subject of an exquisite poem by the Indian poet Tagore:

"I boasted among men that I had known you. They see your picture in all works of mine. They come and ask me who is he? I know not how to answer them. I say, 'Indeed, I cannot tell.' They blame me and they go away in scorn. And you sit there smiling. I put my tales of you into lasting songs. The secret gushes out from my heart. They come and ask me, 'Tell me all your meaning.' I know not how to answer them. I say, 'Ah, who knows what they mean.' They smile and go away in utter scorn. And you sit there smiling."


FROM THE UNREAL TO THE REAL
The Sūfīs believed that the phenomenal world is the Unreal, that the reason men are blind to the existence of the Real world, which is the Spiritual, is because there are veils and mists separating the soul from God.

This world appears Real to the man who cannot use his spiritual eye and view the Beyond. Having no discernment of the Unseen, he does not believe in its existence.

But whosoever becomes aware of the Divine Light shining in the heart, and who realises the love of God in the soul, is able to pass from the Unreal to the Real; he will see:


"Gold wherever we go, and pearls
Wherever we turn, and silver in the waste."

So exquisite is the vision of the All-Beautiful that whoever has had this vision instantly becomes enamoured, and leaves the world of shadows and change to contemplate the One.

He will not rest until he has purified his life, cast aside everything that may be a hindrance in his path, and he will spend his whole life in communion with God, at the same time pouring out in love-songs and praise all the worship and adoration of his soul.


"By God, sun never rose or set but Thou wert
My heart's desire and my dream.
And I never sat conversing with any people
But Thou wert the subject of my conversation
In the midst of my comrades.
And I never mentioned Thee in joy or sorrow
But love for Thee was mingled with my breath.
And I never resolved to drink water, when I was athirst,
But I saw an image of Thee in the cup.
And were I able to come I would have visited Thee,
Crawling on my face or walking on my head."

When the Sūfī has passed to the Real World he is able to see earthly existence in its true light:

"I am lost to myself and unconscious,
And my attributes are annihilated.
To-day I am lost to all things:
Naught remains but a forced expression."

Passing through a world of shadows he fixes his eye on Eternity; the happenings of the universe appear to him unworthy of exultation, grief, or sorrow.

Earthly love seems worthless, insipid, and dull, compared to his flaming devotion for the Unchangeable.

He has one desire, one aim, one goal--to reach the bliss which he has briefly touched in rare moments of ecstasy and rapture.

To find the far-off mystic city which

"Mystery shrouds . . . now from mortal eyes,
Save when upon some lone lost wanderer's sight
Its diamond turrets like a day-dream rise."

THE ART OF SHABISTARĪ
I have already said that little is known of Shabistarī's life, but of his learning and knowledge of Sūfiism there is ample evidence in this book; and though he does not charm with the subtle fascination of Hafiz, though he has not the originality of Rūmī or in style cannot compare with the elegance of Jāmī, yet in plainness and directness of speech, and in earnestness of purpose, he perhaps outweighs them all. He gives us a clear, bright vision in brilliant sunshine of Virtue and Vice, Reality and Illusion, Wisdom and Ignorance.

We do not find ourselves in the twilight of a faintly-coloured land where we sometimes wander, drawn hither by the sweet voices of the Sūfīs, where, midst the delicate perfumes of an Oriental garden, the lover is singing entrancing love-songs, whether of earthly passion or of Divine intoxication remains a matter of heated controversy to this day.

Neither are we given such daring advice as Jāmī gives when he sings:

"Drink deep of earthly love, that so thy lip
May learn the wine of holier love to sip."

Mahmūd's vision of Reality was direct and distinct, not the oblique view which is the vision of some mystics, and from this Reality he is able to distinguish sharply between the conflicting forces of Good and Evil.

He makes a passionate appeal to humanity to seek for the Truth, to desire the substance and not the mirage, to ignore the allurement and illusion of earthly love, and instead to centre on the Beloved all the heart's adoration.

THE SECRET ROSE GARDEN
It is nearly seven hundred years since Mahmūd planted his garden with roses of Love and Adoration, of Reason and of spiritual Illumination. Since then many have wandered there, lingering in the secret paths and plucking the scented blossoms to carry back into the world of shadows and unreality. What is the fadeless colour of these Roses? What is their lasting grace of form, and what perfumed attar from them lingers on through the ages?

The poem opens with the statement of the sole existence of the One Real Being, and of the illusion of this world's mirage. How is man to reach knowledge of God? By thought, for--

"Thought is passing from the false to the true."

But reason and sense cannot throw off the apparent reality of the phenomenal world. Reason looking at the Light of Lights is blinded like a bat by the sun. It is then a consciousness arises in the soul of its own nothingness. At this point (annihilation of the self) it is possible for man to discern the light of the Spirit. In this world are mirrored the various attributes of Being, and each atom of Not-Being reflects some one Divine attribute:

"Each atom hides beneath its veil
The soul-amazing beauty of the Beloved's face."

And these atoms are ever longing to rejoin their source.

The journey to the Beloved has only two stages: dying to self and uniting with the Truth.

When man's lower self is dead, the real self remains and is above the dominion of the law.

These two stages--the "journey to God" and the "journey down to God"--are a circuit. He who has revolved round this circuit is a perfect man.

On being born into this world man is possessed by evil passions, and if he gives way to them his soul is lost. But in each soul there is an instinct for God and a longing for holiness. If man will foster this instinct and develop this longing, a Divine light will shine on him, and he, repenting, turns and journeys towards God; casting away self, he will meet and be united with the Truth in spirit.

This is the holy state of the saints and prophets.

But the man must not rest in this Divine union. He must return to this world of unreality, and in the downward journey must keep the ordinary laws and creeds of men.

This phenomenal existence, i.e. Not-being, is an illusion which is typified by considering the unreality of echoes and reflections and by pondering on past and future time, and on passing events, which seem at the moment of their existence to be real, but fading into the past become vague and shadowy.

The dispositions acquired by man in this life will in the next world be manifested in spiritual bodies; each form will be appropriate to its past life. The material idea of Paradise and houris will then be known to be an idle tale. No quality or distinction will remain for the perfect will. Then drink of the cup of union with God.

Such is the hope of the Sūfīs, but in this world the intoxication of the cup of union is followed by the headache of separation.

THE CENTRAL TREE OF BEAUTY
All round his garden Mahmūd has planted these roses of Reason, Belief, Knowledge, and Faith; they are blooming everywhere, beautiful in their vivid colouring of Truth and Purity. But it is in the centre that we find a Rose-tree of glory unequalled, glowing with the blossoms of love's devotion; this is the tree which Mahmūd planted with all his heart's adoration--the description of the perfect face of the Beloved.

It is at this spot we wait entranced, and through the mystic stillness we seem to hear the voice of him who, long ago for love's sake, planted this Rose-tree, echoing his sublime utterance:

"See but One, say but One, know but One."

by FLORENCE LEDERER

Demonology

THE name Demonology covers dreams, omens, coincidences, luck, sortilege, magic and other experiences which shun rather than court inquiry, and deserve notice chiefly because every man has usually in a lifetime two or three hints in this kind which are specially impressive to him. They also shed light on our structure.

The witchcraft of sleep divides with truth the empire of our lives. This soft enchantress visits two children lying locked in each other's arms, and carries them asunder by wide spaces of land and sea, and wide intervals of time:

"There lies a sleeping city, God of dreams!
What an unreal and fantastic world Is going on below!
Within the sweep of yon encircling wall
How many a large creation of the night, Wide wilderness and mountain, rock and sea, Peopled with busy, transitory groups,
Finds room to rise, and never feels the crowd."

'T is superfluous to think of the dreams of multitudes, the astonishment remains that one should dream; that we should resign so quietly this deifying Reason, and become the theatre of delirious shows, wherein time, space, persons, cities, animals, should dance before us in merry and mad confusion; a delicate creation outdoing the prime and flower of actual Nature, antic comedy alternating with horrid pictures. Sometimes the forgotten companions of childhood reappear:

"They come, in dim procession led,
The cold, the faithless, and the dead,
As warm each hand, each brow as gay,
As if they parted yesterday:"

or we seem busied for hours and days in peregrinations over seas and lands, in earnest dialogues, strenuous actions for nothings and absurdities, cheated by spectral jokes and waking suddenly with ghastly laughter, to be rebuked by the cold, lonely, silent midnight, and to rake with confusion in memory among the gibbering nonsense to find the motive of this contemptible cachinnation. Dreams are jealous of being remembered; they dissipate instantly and angrily if you try to hold them. When newly awaked from lively dreams, we are so near them, still agitated by them, still in their sphere,-give us one syllable, one feature, one hint, and we should repossess the whole; hours of this strange entertainment would come trooping back to us; but we cannot get our hand on the first link or fibre, and the whole is lost. There is a strange wilfulness in the speed with which it disperses and baffles our grasp.

A dislocation seems to be the foremost trait of dreams. A painful imperfection almost always attends them. The fairest forms, the most noble and excellent persons, are deformed by some pitiful and insane circumstance. The very landscape and scenery in a dream seem not to fit us, but like a coat or cloak of some other person to overlap and encumber the wearer; so is the ground, the road, the house, in dreams, too long or too short, and if it served no other purpose would show us how accurately Nature fits man awake.

There is one memory of waking and another of sleep. In our dreams the same scenes and fancies are many times associated, and that too, it would seem, for years. In sleep one shall travel certain roads in stage-coaches or gigs, which he recognizes as familiar, and has dreamed that ride a dozen times; or shall walk alone in familiar fields and meadows, which road or which meadow in waking hours he never looked upon. This feature of dreams deserves the more attention from its singular resemblance to that obscure yet startling experience which almost every person confesses in daylight, that particular passages of conversation and action have occurred to him in the same order before, whether dreaming or waking; a suspicion that they have been with precisely these persons in precisely this room, and heard precisely this dialogue, at some former hour, they know not when.

Animals have been called "the dreams of Nature." Perhaps for a conception of their consciousness we may go to our own dreams. In a dream we have the instinctive obedience, the same torpidity of the highest power, the same unsurprised assent to the monstrous as these metamorphosed men exhibit. Our thoughts in a stable or in a menagerie, on the other hand, may well remind us of our dreams. What compassion do these imprisoning forms awaken! You may catch the glance of a dog sometimes which lays a kind of claim to sympathy and brotherhood. What! somewhat of me down there? Does he know it? Can he too, as I, go --- of himself, see himself, perceive relations? We fear lest the poor brute should gain one dreadful glimpse of his condition, should learn in some moment the tough limitations of this fettering organization. It was in this glance that Ovid got the hint of his metamorphosis; Calidasa of his transmigration of souls. For these fables are our own thoughts carried out. What keeps those wild tales in circulation for thousands of years? What but the wild fact to which they suggest some approximation of theory? Nor is the fact quite solitary, for in varieties of our own species where organization seems to predominate over the genius of man, in Kalmuk or Malay or Flathead Indian, we are sometimes pained by the same feeling; and sometimes too the sharpwitted prosperous white man awakens it. In a mixed assembly we have chanced to see not only a glance of Abdiel, so grand and keen, but also in other faces the features of the mink, of the bull, of the rat and the barn-door fowl. You think, could the man overlook his own condition, he could not be restrained from suicide.

Dreams have a poetic integrity and truth. This limbo and dust-hole of thought is presided over by a certain reason, too. Their extravagance from nature is yet within a higher nature. They seem to us to suggest an abundance and fluency of thought not familiar to the waking experience. They pique us by independence of us, yet we know ourselves in this mad crowd, and owe to dreams a kind of divination and wisdom. My dreams are not me; they are not Nature, or the Not-me: they are both. They have a double consciousness, at once sub- and objective. We call the phantoms that rise, the creation of our fancy, but they act like mutineers, and fire on their commander; showing that every act, every thought, every cause, is bipolar, and in the act is contained the counteraction. If I strike, I am struck; if I chase, I am pursued.

Wise and sometimes terrible hints shall in them be thrown to the man out of a quite unknown intelligence. He shall be startled two or three times in his life by the justice as well as the significance of this phantasmagoria. Once or twice the conscious fetters shall seem to be unlocked, and a freer utterance attained. A prophetic character in all ages has haunted them. They are the maturation often of opinions not consciously carried out to statements, but whereof we already possessed the elements. Thus, when awake, I know the character of Rupert, but do not think what he may do. In dreams I see him engaged in certain actions which seem preposterous,---- of all fitness. He is hostile, he is cruel, be is frightful, he is a poltroon. It turns --- prophecy a year later. But it was already in my mind as character, and the sibyl dreams merely embodied it in fact. Why then should not symptoms, auguries, forebodings be, and, as one said, the moanings of the spirit?

We are let by this experience into the high region of Cause, and acquainted with the identity of very unlike-seeming effects. We learn that actions whose turpitude is very differently reputed proceed from one and the same affection. Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed. A skilful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does be play in them,--a cheerful, manly part, or a poor drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth. The same remark may be extended to the omens and coincidences which may have astonished us. Of all it is true that the reason of them is always latent in the individual. Goethe said: "These whimsical pictures, inasmuch as they originate from us, may well have an analogy with our whole life and fate.

The soul contains in itself the event that shall presently befall it, for the event is only the actualizing of its thoughts. It is no wonder that particular dreams and presentiments should fall out and be prophetic. The fallacy consists in selecting a few insignificant hints when all are inspired with the same sense. As if one should exhaust his astonishment at the economy of his thumb-nail, and overlook the central causal miracle of his being a man. Every man goes through the world attended with innumerable facts prefiguring (yes, distinctly announcing) his fate, if only eyes of sufficient heed and illumination were fastened on the sign. The sign is always there, if only the eye were also; just as under every tree in the speckled sunshine and shade no man notices that every spot of light is a perfect image of the sun, until in some hour the moon eclipses the luminary; and then first we notice that the spots of light have become crescents, or annular, and correspond to the changed figure of the sun. Things are significant enough, Heaven knows; but the seer of the sign, -where is he? We doubt not a man's fortune may be read in the lines of his hand, by palmistry; in the lines of his face, by physiognomy; in the outlines of the skull, by craniology: the lines are all there, but the reader waits. The long waves indicate to the instructed mariner that there is no near land in the direction from which they come. Belzoni describes the three marks which led him to dig for a door to the pyramid of Ghizeh. What thousands had beheld the same spot for so many ages, and seen no three marks.

Secret analogies tie together the remotest parts of Nature, as the atmosphere of a summer morning is filled with innumerable gossamer threads running in every direction, revealed by the beams of the rising sun! All life, all creation, is tell-tale and betraying. A man reveals himself in every glance and step and movement and rest:--

"Head with foot bath private amity,
And both with moons and tides."

Not a mathematical axiom but is a moral rule. The jest and byword to an intelligent ear extends its meaning to the soul and to all time. Indeed, all productions of man are so anthropomorphous that not possibly can he invent any fable that shall not have a deep moral and be true in senses and to an extent never intended by the inventor. Thus all the bravest tales of Homer and the poets, modern philosophers can explain with profound judgment of law and state and ethics. Lucian has an idle tale that Pancrates, journeying from Memphis to Coppus, and wanting a servant, took a door-bar and pronounced over it magical words, and it stood up and brought him water, and turned a spit, and carried bundles, doing all the work of a slave. What is this but a prophecy of the progress of art? For Pancrates write Watt or Fulton, and for "magical words" write "steam;" and do they not make an iron bar and half a dozen wheels do the work, not of one, but of a thousand skilful mechanics?

"Nature," said Swedenborg, "makes almost as much demand on our faith as miracles do." And I find nothing in fables more astonishing than my experience in every hour. One moment of a man's life is a fact so stupendous as to take the lustre out of all fiction. The lovers of marvels, of what we call the occult and unproved sciences, of mesmerism, of astrology, of coincidences, of intercourse, by writing or by rapping or by painting, with departed spirits, need not reproach us with incredulity because we are slow . to accept their statement. It is not the incredibility of the fact, but a certain want of harmony between the action and the agents. We are used to vaster wonders than these that are alleged. In the hands of poets, of devout and simple minds, nothing in the line of their character and genius would surprise us. But we should look for the style of the great artist in it, look for completeness and harmony. Nature never works like a conjuror, to surprise, rarely by shocks, but by infinite graduation; so that we live embosomed in sounds we do not hear, scents we do not smell, spectacles we see not, and by innumerable impressions so softly laid on that though important we do not discover them until our attention is called to them.

For Spiritism, it shows that no man, almost, is fit to give evidence. Then I say to the amiable and sincere among them, these matters are quite too important than that I can rest them on any legends. If I have no facts, as you allege, I can very well wait for them. I am content and occupied with such miracles as I know, such as my eyes and ears daily show me, such as humanity and astronomy. If any others are important to me they will certainly be shown to me.

In times most credulous of these fancies the sense was always met and the superstition rebuked by the grave spirit of reason and humanity. When Hector is told that the omens are unpropitious, he replies,

"One omen is the best, to fight for one's country."

Euripides said, "He is not the best prophet who guesses well, and he is not the wisest man whose guess turns out well in the event, but he who, whatever the event be, takes reason and probability for his guide." "Swans, horses, dogs and dragons," says Plutarch, "we distinguish as sacred, and vehicles of the divine foresight, and yet we cannot believe that men are sacred and favorites of Heaven." The poor shipmaster discovered a sound theology, when in the storm at sea he made his prayer to Neptune, "0 God, thou mayest save me if thou wilt, and if thou wilt thou mayest destroy me; but, however, I will hold my rudder true." Let me add one more example of the same good sense, in a story quoted out of Hecateus of Abdera:--

"As I was once travelling by the Red Sea, there was one among the horsemen that attended us named Masollam, a brave and strong man, and according to the testimony of all the Greeks and barbarians, a very skilful archer. Now while the whole multitude was on the way, an augur called out to them to stand still, and this man inquired the reason of their halting. The augur showed him a bird, and told him, 'If that bird remained where he was, it would be better for them all to remain; if he flew on, they might proceed; but it he flew back, they must return.' The Jew said nothing, but bent his bow and shot the bird to the ground. This act offended the augur and some others, and they began to utter imprecations against the Jew. But he replied, 'Wherefore? Why are you so foolish as to take care of this unfortunate bird? How could this fowl give us any wise directions respecting our journey, when he could not save his own life? Had he known anything of futurity, he would not have come here to be killed by the arrow of Masollam the Jew.' "

It is not the tendency of our times to ascribe importance to whimsical pictures of sleep, or to omens. But the faith in peculiar and alien power takes another form in the modern mind, much more resembling the ancient doctrine of the guardian genius. The belief that particular individuals are attended by a good fortune which makes them desirable associates in any enterprise of uncertain success, exists not only among those who take part in political and military projects, but influences all joint action of commerce and affairs, and a corresponding assurance in the individuals so distinguished meets and justifies the expectation of others by a boundless self-trust. "I have a lucky hand, sir," said Napoleon to his hesitating Chancellor; "those on whom I lay it are fit for anything." This faith is familiar in one form,-that often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success; that children and young persons come off safe from casualties that would have proved dangerous to wiser people. We do not think the young will be forsaken ; but he is fast approaching the age when the sub-miraculous external protection and leading are withdrawn and he is committed to his own care. The young man takes a leap in the dark and alights safe. As he comes into manhood he remembers passages and persons that seem, as he looks at them now, to have been supernaturally deprived of injurious influence on him. His eyes were holden that he could not see. But he learns that such risks he may no longer run. He observes, with pain, not that he incurs mishaps here and there, but that his genius, whose invisible benevolence was tower and shield to him, is no longer present and active.

In the popular belief, ghosts are a selecting tribe, avoiding millions, speaking to one. In our traditions, fairies, angels and saints show the like favoritism; so do the agents and the means of magic, as sorcerers and amulets. This faith in a doting power, so easily sliding into the current belief everywhere, and, in the particular lucky days and fortunate persons, as frequent in America to day as the faith in incantations and philters was in old Rome, or the whole some potency of the sign of the cross in modern Rome,-this supposed power

runs athwart the recognized agencies, natural. and moral, which science and religion explore. Heeded though it be in many actions and partnerships, it is not the power to which we build churches, or make liturgies and prayers, or which we regard in passing laws, or found college professorships to expound. Goethe has said in his Autobiography what is much to the purpose:--

"I believe that I discovered in nature, animate and inanimate, intelligent and brute, somewhat which manifested itself only in contradiction, and therefore could not be grasped by a conception, much less. by a word. It was not god-like, since it seemed unreasonable; not human, since it had no understanding; not devilish, since it was beneficent; not angelic, since it is often a marplot. It resembled chance, since it showed no sequel. It resembled Providence, since it pointed at connection. All which limits us seemed permeable to that. It seemed to deal at pleasure with the necessary elements of our constitution; it shortened time and extended space. Only in the impossible it seemed to delight, and the possible to repel with contempt. This, which seemed to insert itself between all other things, to sever them, to bind them, I named the Demoniacal, after the example of the ancients, and of those who had observed the like.

"Although every demoniacal property can manifest itself in the corporeal and incorporeal, yes, in beasts too in a remarkable manner, yet it stands specially in wonderful relations with men, and forms in the moral world, though not an antagonist, yet a transverse element, so that the former may be called the warp, the latter the woof. For the phenomena which hence originate there are countless names, since all philosophies and religions have attempted in prose or in poetry to solve this riddle, and to settle the thing once for all, as indeed they may be allowed to do.

"But this demonic element appears most fruitful when it shows itself as the determining characteristic in an individual. In the course of my life I have been able to observe several such, some near, some farther off. They are not always superior persons, either in mind or in talent. They seldom recommend themselves through goodness of heart. But a monstrous force goes out from them, and they exert an incredible power over all creatures, and even over the elements; who shall say how far such an influence may extend? All united moral powers avail nothing against them. In vain do the clear-headed part of mankind discredit them as deceivers or deceived,-the mass is attracted. Seldom or never do they meet their match among their contemporaries; they are not to be conquered save by the universe itself, against which they have taken up arms. Out of such experiences doubtless arose the strange, monstrous proverb, 'Nobody against God but God.' "

It would be easy in the political history of every time to furnish examples of this irregular success, men having a force which without virtue, without shining talent, yet makes them prevailing. No equal appears in the field against them. A power goes out from them which draws all men and events to favor them. The crimes they commit, the exposures which follow, and which would ruin any other man, are strangely overlooked, or do more strangely turn to their account.

I set down these things as I find them, but however poetic these twilights of thought, I like daylight, and I find somewhat wilful, some play at blind-man's-buff, when men as wise as Goethe talk mysteriously of the demonological. The insinuation is that the known eternal laws of morals and matter are sometimes corrupted or evaded by this gypsy principle, which chooses favorites and works in the dark for their behoof; as if the laws of the Father of the universe were sometimes balked and eluded by a meddlesome Aunt of the universe for her pets. You will observe that this extends the popular idea of success to the very gods; that they foster a success to you which is not a success to all; that fortunate men, fortunate youths exist, whose good is not virtue or the public good, but a private good, robbed from the rest. It is a midsummer madness, corrupting all who hold the tenet. The demonologic is only a fine name for egotism; an exaggeration namely of the individual, whom it is Nature's settled purpose to postpone. "There is one world common to all who are awake, but each sleeper betakes himself to one of his own." Dreams retain the infirmities of our character. The good genius may be there or not, our evil genius is sure to stay. The Ego partial makes the dream; the Ego total the interpretation. Life is also a dream on the same terms.

The history of man is a series of conspiracies to win from Nature some advantage without paying for it. It is curious to see what grand powers we have a hint of and are mad to grasp, yet how slow Heaven is to trust us with such edge-tools. "All that frees talent without increasing self-command is noxious." Thus the fabled ring of Gyges, making the wearer invisible, which is represented in modern fable by the telescope as used by Schlemil, is simply mischievous. A new or private language, used to serve only low or political purposes; the transfusion of the blood; the steam battery, so fatal as to put an end to war by the threat of universal murder; the desired discovery of the guided balloon, are of this kind. Tramps are troublesome enough in the city and in the highways, but tramps flying through the air and descending on the lonely traveller or the lonely farmer's house or the bank-messenger in the country, can well be spared. Men are not fit to be trusted with these talismans.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well. Animal magnetism inspires the prudent and moral with a certain terror; so the divination of contingent events, and the alleged second-sight of the pseudo-spiritualists. There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant, and these are such. Shun them as you would the secrets of the undertaker and the butcher. The best are never demoniacal or magnetic; leave this limbo to the Prince of the power of the air. The lowest angel is better. It is the height of the animal; below the region of the divine. Power as such is not known to the angels.

Great men feel that they are so by sacrificing their selfishness and falling back on what is humane; in renouncing family, clan, country and each exclusive and local connection, to beat with the pulse and breathe with the lungs of nations. A Highland chief, an Indian sachem or a feudal baron may fancy that the mountains and lakes were made specially for him Donald, or him Tecumseh; that the one question for history is the pedigree of his house, and future ages will be busy with his renown; that he has a guardian angel; that he is not in the roll of common men, but obeys a high family destiny; when he acts, unheard - of success evinces the presence of rare agents; what is to befall him, omens and coincidences foreshow; when he dies, banshees will announce his fate to kinsmen in foreign parts. What more facile than to project this exuberant selfhood into the region where individuality is forever bounded by generic and cosmical laws? The deepest flattery, and that to which we can never be insensible, is the flattery of omens.

We may make great eyes if we like, and say of one on whom the sun shines, "What luck presides over him!" But we know that the law of the Universe is one for each and for all. There is as precise and as describable a reason for every fact occurring to him, as for any occurring to any man. Every fact in which the moral elements intermingle is not the less under the dominion of fatal law. Lord Bacon uncovers the magic when lie says, "Manifest virtues procure reputation; occult ones, fortune." Thus the so-called fortunate man is one who, though not gifted to speak when the people listen, or to act with grace or with understanding to great ends, yet is one who, in actions of a low or common pitch, relies on his instincts, and simply does not act where he should not, but waits his time, and without effort acts when the need is. If to this you add a fitness to the society around him, you have the elements of fortune; so that in a particular circle and knot of affairs he is not so much his own man as the hand of Nature and time. Just as his eye and hand work exactly together,-and to hit the mark with a stone he has only to fasten his eye firmly on the mark and his arm will swing true,-so the main ambition and genius being bestowed in one direction, the lesser spirit and in voluntary aids with in his sphere will follow. The fault of most men is that they are busybodies; do not wait the simple movement of the soul, but interfere and thwart the instructions of their own minds.

Coincidences, dreams, animal magnetism, omens, sacred lots. have great interest for some minds. They run into this twilight and say. ''There's more than is dreamed of in your philosophy." Certainly these facts are interesting, and deserve to be considered. But they are entitled only to a share of attention, and not a large share. Nil magnifcum, nil generosum sapit. Let their value as exclusive subjects of attention be judged of by the infallible test of the state of mind in which much notice of them leaves us. Read a page of Cudworth or of Bacon, and we are exhilarated and armed to manly duties, Read demonology or Colquhoun's Report, and we are bewildered and perhaps a little besmirched. We grope. They who love them say they are to reveal to us a world of unknown unsuspected truths. But suppose a diligent collection and study of these occult facts were made, they are merely physiological, semi-medical, related to the machinery of man, opening to our curiosity how we live, and no aid on the superior problems why we live, and what we do. While the dilettanti have been prying into the humors and muscles of the eye, simple men will have helped themselves and the world by using their eyes.

And this is not the least remarkable fact which the adepts have developed. Men who had never wondered at anything, who h a d thought it the most natural thing in the world that t h e y should exist in this orderly and replenished world. have been unable to suppress their amazement at the disclosures of the somnambulist. The peculiarity of the history of Animal Magnetism is that it drew in as inquirers and students a class of persons never on any other occasion known as students and inquirers. Of course the inquiry is pursued on low principles. Animal Magnetism peeps. It becomes in such hands a black art. The uses of the thing, the commodity, the power, at once conic to mind and direct the course of inquiry. It seems to open again that door which was open to the imagination of childhood of magicians and fairies and lamps of Aladdin, the travelling cloak, the shoes of swiftness and the sword of sharpness that were to satisfy the uttermost wish of the senses without danger or a drop of sweat, But as Nature can never be out witted, as in the Universe no man was ever known to get a cent's worth with out paying in some form or other the cent, so this prodigious promiser ends always and always will, as sorcery and alchemy have done before, in very small and smoky performance.

Mesmerism is high life below stairs: Momus playing Jove in the kitchens of Olympus. 'T is a low curiosity or lust of structure, and is separated by celestial diameters from the love of spiritual truths. It is wholly a false view to couple these things in any manner with the religious nature and sentiment, and a most dangerous superstition to raise them to the lofty place of motives and sanctions. This is to prefer halos and rainbows to the sun and moon. These adepts have mistaken flatulency for inspiration. Were this drivel which they report as the voice of spirits really such, we must find out a more decisive suicide. I say to the table rappers:

"I well believe
Thou wilt not utter what thou dust not know,
And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate."

They are ignorant of all that is healthy and useful to know, and by laws of kind, -dunces seeking dunces in the dark of what they call the spiritual world,-preferring snores and gastric noises to the voice of any muse. I think the rappings a new test, like blue litmus or other chemical absorbent, to try catechisms with. It detects organic skepticism in the very heads of the Church. 'T is a lawless world. We have left the geometry, the compensation, and the conscience of the daily world, and come into the realm or chaos of chance and pretty or ugly confusion; no guilt and no virtue, but a droll bedlam, where everybody believes only after his humor, and the actors and spectators have no conscience or reflection, no police, no foot-rule, no sanity,-nothing but whine and whim creative.

Meantime far be from me the impatience which cannot brook the supernatural, the vast; far be from me the lust of explaining away all which appeals to the imagination, and the great presentiments which haunt us. Willingly I too say, Hail! to the unknown awful powers which transcend the ken of the understanding. And the attraction which this topic has had for me and which induces me to unfold its parts before you is precisely because I think the number less forms in which this superstition has reappeared in every time and every people indicates the inextinguishableness of wonder in man; betrays his conviction that behind all your explanations is a vast and potent and living Nature, inexhaustible and sublime, which you cannot explain. He is sure no book, no man has told him all. He is sure the great Instinct, the circumambient soul which flows into him as into all, and is his life, has not been searched. He is sure the intimate relations subsist between his character and his fortunes, between him and his world; and until he can adequately tell them he will tell them wildly and fabulously. Demonology is the shadow of Theology.

The whole world is an omen and a sign. Why look so wistfully in a corner? Man is the Image of God. Why run after a ghost or a dream? The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle.

The Sovereignty of Ethics

THESE rules were writ in human heart
By Him who built the day ;
The columns of the universe
Not firmer based than they.

Thou shalt not try
To plant thy shrivelled pedantry On the shoulders of the sky.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS.

SINCE the discovery of Oersted that galvanism and electricity and magnetism are only forms of one and the same force, and convertible each into the other, we have continually suggested to us a larger generalization : that each of the great departments of Nature - chemistry, vegetation, the animal life -exhibits the same laws on a different plane; that the intellectual and moral worlds are analogous to the material. There is a kind of latent omniscience not only in every man but in every particle. That convertibility we so admire in plants and animal structures, whereby the repairs and the ulterior uses are subserved, when one part is wounded or deficient, by another this self-help and self-creation proceed from the same original power which works remotely in grandest and meanest structures by the same design, - works in a lobster or a mite-worm as a wise man would if imprisoned in that poor form. 'T is the effort of God, of the Supreme Intellect, in the extremest frontier of his universe.
1 Reprinted from the North American Review, of May, 1878.

As this unity exists in the organization of insect, beast and bird, still ascending to man, and from lower type of man to the highest yet attained, so it does not less declare itself in the spirit or intelligence of the brute. In ignorant ages it was common to vaunt the human superiority by underrating the instinct of other animals ; but a better discernment finds that the difference is only of less and more. Experiment shows that the bird and the dog reason as the hunter does, that all the animals show the same good sense in their humble walk that the man who is their enemy or friend does ; and, if it be in smaller measure, yet it is not diminished, as his often is, by freak and folly. St. Pierre says of the animals that a moral sentiment seems to have determined their physical organization.

I see the unity of thought and of morals running through all animated Nature ; there is no difference of quality, but only of more and less. The animal who is wholly kept down in Nature has no anxieties. By yielding, as he must do, to it, he is enlarged and reaches his highest point. The poor grub, in the hole of a tree, by yielding itself to Nature, goes blameless through its low part and is rewarded at last, casts its filthy hull, expands into a beautiful form with rainbow wings, and makes a part of the summer day. The Greeks called it Psyche, a manifest emblem of the soul. The man down in Nature occupies himself in guarding, in feeding, in warming and multiplying his body, and, as long as he knows no more, we justify hum ; but presently a mystic change is wrought, a new perception opens, and he is made a citizen of the world of souls : he feels what is called duty ; he is aware that he owes a higher allegiance to do and live as a good member of this universe. In the measure in which he has this sense he is a man, rises to the universal life. The high intellect is absolutely at one with moral nature. A thought is embosomed in a sentiment, and the attempt to detach and blazon the thou ht is like a show of cut flowers. The moral is the measure of health, and in the voice of Genius I hear invariably the moral tone, even when it is disowned in words ;- health, melody and a wider horizon be-long to moral sensibility. The finer the sense of justice, the better poet. The believer says to the skeptic : -

" One avenue was shaded from thine eyes
Through which I wandered to eternal truth."

Humility is the avenue. To be sure, we exaggerate when we represent these two elements as disunited ; every man shares them both : but it is true that men generally are marked by a decided predominance of one or of the other element.

In youth and in age we are moralists, and in mature life the moral element steadily rises in the regard of all reasonable men.

'T is a sort of proverbial dying speech of scholars (at least it is attributed to many) that which Anthony Wood reports of Nathaniel Carpenter, an Oxford Fellow. " It did repent him," he said, " that he had formerly so much courted the maid instead of the mistress," (meaning philosophy and mathematics to the neglect of divinity ). This, in the language of our time, would be ethics.

And when I say that the world is made up of moral forces, these arc not separate. All forces are found in Nature united with that which they move : heat is not separate, light is not massed aloof, nor electricity, nor gravity, but they are always in combination. And so moral powers ; they are thirsts for action, and the more you accumulate, the more they mould and form.

It is in the stomach of plants that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'T is a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman - from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakspeare - to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, the summits of science, art and poetry. The beginnings are slow and infirm, but it is an always-accelerated march. The geologic world is chronicled by the growing ripeness of the strata from lower to higher, as it becomes the abode of more highly-organized plants and animals. The civil history of men might be traced by the successive meliorations as marked in higher moral generalizations ; - virtue meaning physical courage, then chastity and temperance, then justice and love ; -bargains of kings with peoples of certain rights to certain classes, then of rights to masses, - then at last came the day when, as the historians rightly tell, the nerves of the world were electrified by the proclamation that all men are born free and equal.

Every truth leads in another. The bud extrudes the old leaf, and every truth brings that which will supplant it. In the court of law the judge sits over the culprit, but in the court of life in the same hour he judge also stands as culprit before a true tribunal. Every judge is a culprit, every law an abuse. Montaigne kills off bigots as cowhage kills worms ; but there is a higher muse there sitting where he durst not soar, of eye so keen that it can report of a realm in which all the wit and learning of the Frenchman is no more than the cunning of a fox.

It is the same fact existing as sentiment and as will in the mind, which works in Nature as irresistible law, exerting influence over nations, intelligent beings, or down in the kingdoms of brute or of chemical atoms. Nature is a tropical swamp in sun-shine, on whose purlieus we hear the song of summer birds, and see prismatic dew-drops-but her interiors are terrific, full of hydras and crocodiles. In the pre-adamite she bred valor only; by-and-by she gets on to man, and adds tenderness, and thus raises virtue piecemeal.

When we trace from the beginning, that ferocity has uses ; only so are the conditions of the then world met, and these monsters are the scavengers, executioners, diggers, pioneers and fertilizers, destroying what is more destructive than they, and making better life possible. We see the steady aim of Benefit in view from the first. Melioration is the law. The cruelest foe is a masked benefactor. The wars which make history so dreary, have served the cause of truth and virtue. There is always an instinctive sense of right, an obscure idea which animates either party and which in long periods vindicates itself at last. Thus a sublime confidence is fed at the bottom of the heart that, in spite of appearances, in spite of malignity and blind self-interest living for the moment, an eternal, beneficent necessity is always bringing things right; and, though we should fold our arms, - which we cannot do, for our duty requires us to be the very hands of this guiding sentiment, and work in the present moment, - the evils we suffer will at last end themselves through the incessant opposition of Nature to everything hurtful.

The excellence of men consists in the completeness with which the lower system is taken up into the higher - a process of much time and delicacy, but in which no point of the lower should be left untranslated ; so that the warfare of beasts should be renewed in a finer field, for more excellent victories. Savage war gives place to that of Turenne and Wellington, which has limitations and a code. This war again gives place to the finer quarrel of property, where the victory is wealth and the defeat poverty.

The inevitabilities are always sapping every seeming prosperity built on a wrong. No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, that can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive. See how these things look the page of history. Nations come and go, cities rise and fall, all the instincts of man, good and bad, work, - and every wish, appetite, and passion, rushes into act and em-bodies itself in usages, protects itself with laws. Some of them are useful and universally acceptable, hinder none, help all, and these are honored and perpetuated. Others are noxious. Community of property is tried, as when a Tartar horde or an Indian tribe roam over a vast tract for pasturage or hunting ; but it is found at last that some establishment of property, allowing each on some distinct terms to fence and cultivate a piece of land, is best for all.

" For my part," said Napoleon, " it is not the mystery of the incarnation which 1 discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which pre-vents the rich from destroying the poor."

Shall I say then it were truer to see Necessity calm, beautiful, passionless, without a smile, covered with ensigns of woe, stretching her dark warp across the universe? These threads are Natures pernicious elements, her deluges, miasma, disease, poison ; her curdling cold, her hideous reptiles and worse men, cannibals, and the depravities of civilization ; the secrets of the prisons of tyranny, the slave and his master, the proud man's scorn, the orphan's tears, the vices of men, lust, cruelty and pitiless avarice. These make the gloomy warp of ages. Humanity sits at the dread loom and throws the shuttle and fills it with joyful rainbows, until the sable ground is flowered all over with a woof of human industry and wisdom, virtuous examples, symbols of useful and generous arts, with beauty and pure love, courage and the victories of the just and wise over malice and wrong.

Nature is not so helpless but it can rid itself at last of every crime. An Eastern poet, in describing the golden age, said that God had made justice so dear to the heart of Nature that, if any injustice lurked anywhere under the sky, the blue vault would shrivel to a snake-skin and cast it out by spasms. But the spasms of Nature are years and centuries, and it will tax the faith of man to wait
so long.

Man is always throwing his praise or blame on events, and does not see that he only is real, and the world his mirror and echo. He imputes the stroke to fortune, which in reality himself strikes. The student discovers one day that he lives in enchantment : the house, the works, the persons, the days, the weathers - all that he calls Nature, all that he calls institutions, when once his mind is active are visions merely, wonderful allegories, significant pictures of the laws of the mind ; and through this enchanted gallery he is led by unseen guides to read and learn the laws of heaven. This discovery may come early, - sometimes in the nursery, to a rare child ; later in the school, but oftener when the mind is more mature ; and to multitudes of men wanting in mental activity it never comes - any more than poetry or art. But it ought to come ; it belongs to the human intellect, and is an insight which we cannot spare.

The idea of right exists in the human mind, and lays itself out in the equilibrium of Nature, in the equalities and periods of our system, in the level of seas, in the action and reaction of forces. Nothing .is allowed to exceed or absorb the rest; if it do, it is disease, and is quickly destroyed. It was an early discovery of the mind, - this beneficent rule. Strength enters just as much as the moral element prevails. The strength of the animal to eat and to be luxurious and to usurp is rudeness and imbecility. The law is : To each shall be rendered his own. As thou sowest, thou shalt reap. Smite, and thou shalt smart. Serve, and thou shalt he served. If you love and serve men, you cannot, by any hiding or stratagem, escape the remuneration. Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the Divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles for evermore the ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote and star and sun must range with it, or be pulverized by the recoil.

It is a doctrine of unspeakable comfort. He that plants his foot here, passes at once out of the kingdom of illusions. Others may well suffer in the hideous picture of crime with which earth is filled and the life of society threatened, but the habit of respecting that great order which certainly contains and will dispose of our little system, will take all fear from the heart. It did itself create and distribute all that is created and distributed, and, trusting to its power, we cease to care for what it will certainly order well. To good men, as we call good men, this doctrine of Trust is an unsounded secret. They use the word, they have accepted the notion of a mechanical supervision of human life, by which that certain wonderful being whom they call God does take up their affairs where their intelligence leaves them, and somehow knits and co-ordinates the issues of them in all that is beyond the reach of private faculty. They do not see that He, that It, is there, next and within ; the thought of the thought ; the affair of affairs ; that he is existence, and take him from them and they would not be. They do not see that particulars are sacred to him, as well as the scope and outline ; that these passages of daily life are his work ; that in the moment when they desist from interference, these particulars take sweetness and grandeur, and become the language of mighty principles.

A man should be a guest in his own house, and a guest in his own thought. He is there to speak for truth ; but who is he? Some clod the truth has snatched from the ground, and with fire has fashioned to a momentary man. Without the truth, he is a clod again. Let him find his superiority in not wishing superiority ; find the riches of love which possesses that which it adores ; the riches of poverty ; the height of lowliness, the immensity of to-day; and, in the passing hour, the age of ages. Wondrous state of man ! never so happy as when he has lost all private interests and regards, and exists only in obedience and love of the Author.

The fiery soul said : " Let me be a blot on this fair world, the obscurest, the loneliest sufferer, with one proviso,-that I know it is His agency. I will love him, though he shed frost and darkness on every way of mine." The emphasis of that blessed doctrine lay in lowliness. The new saint gloried in infirmities. Who or what was he ? His rise and his recovery were vicarious. He has fallen in another ; he rises in another.

We perish, and perish gladly, if the law remains. I hope it is conceivable that a man may go to ruin gladly, if he see that thereby no shade falls on that he loves and adores. We need not always be stipulating for our clean shirt and roast joint per diem. We do not believe the less in astronomy and vegetation, because we are writhing and roaring in our beds with rheumatism. Cripples and invalids, we doubt not there are bounding fawns in the forest, and lilies with graceful, springing stem ; so neither do we doubt or fail to love the eternal law, of which we are such shabby practisers. Truth gathers itself spotless and unhurt after all our surrenders and concealments and partisanship-never hurt by the treachery or ruin of its best defenders, whether Luther, or William Penn, or St. Paul. We answer, when they tell us of the bad behavior of Luther or Paul : " Well, what if he did ? Who was more pained than Luther or Paul'? " Shall we attach ourselves violently to our teachers and historical personalities, and think the foundation shaken if any fault is shown in their record? But how is the truth hurt by their falling from it ? The law of gravity is not hurt by every accident, though our leg be broken. No more is the law of justice by our departure from it.

We are to know that we are never without a pi-lot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. 'When the stars and sun appear, when we have conversed with navigators who know the coast, we may begin to put out an oar and trim a sail. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder.

Have you said to yourself ever : 'I abdicate all choice, I see it is not for me to interfere. I see that I have been one of the crowd ; that I have been a pitiful person, because I have wished to be my own master, and to dress and order my whole way and system of living. I thought I managed it very well. I see that my neighbors think so. I have heard prayers, I have prayed even, but I' have never until now dreamed that this undertaking the entire management of my own affairs was not commendable. I have never seen, until now, that it dwarfed me. I have not discovered, until this blessed ray flashed just now through my soul, that there dwelt any power in Nature that would relieve we of my load. But now I see.' What is this intoxicating sentiment that allies this scrap of dust to the whole of Nature and the whole of Fate, - that makes this doll a dweller in ages, mocker at time, able to spurn all outward ad-vantages, peer and master of the elements? I am taught by it that what touches any thread in the vast web of being touches me. I am representative of the whole ; and the good of the whole, or what I call the right, makes me invulnerable.

How came this creation so magically woven that nothing can do me mischief but myself, - that an invisible fence surrounds my being which screens me from all harm that I will to resist? If I will stand upright, the creation cannot bend me. But if I violate myself, if I commit a crime, the lightning loiters by the speed of retribution, and every act is not hereafter but instantaneously rewarded according to its quality. Virtue is the adopting of this dictate of the universal mind by the individual will. Character is the habit of this obedience, and Religion is the accompanying emotion, the emotion of reverence which the presence of the universal mind ever excites in the individual.

We go to famous books for our examples of character, just as we send to England for shrubs which grow as well in our own door-yards and cow-pastures. Life is always rich, and spontaneous graces and forces elevate it in every domestic circle, which are overlooked while we are reading something less excellent in old authors. From the obscurity and casualty of those which I know, I infer the obscurity and casualty of the like balm and consolation and immortality in a thousand homes which I do not know, all round the world. And I see not why to these simple instincts, simple yet grand, all the heights and transcendencies of virtue and of enthusiasm are not open. There is power enough in them to move the world ; and it is not any sterility or defect in ethics, but our negligence of these fine monitors, of these world-embracing sentiments, that makes religion cold and life low.

While the immense energy of the sentiment of duty and the awe of the supernatural exert incomparable influence on the mind, - yet it is often perverted, and the tradition received with awe, but without correspondent action of the receiver. Then you find so many men infatuated on that topic ! Wise on all other, they lose their head the moment they talk of religion. It is the sturdiest prejudice in the public mind that religion is something by Itself ; a department distinct from all other experiences, and to which the tests and judgment men are ready enough to show on other things, do not apply. You may sometimes talk with the gravest and best citizen, and the moment the topic of religion is broached, he runs into a childish superstition. His face looks infatuated, and his conversation is. When I talked with an ardent missionary, and pointed out to him that his creed found no support in my experience, he replied, It is not so in your experience, but is so in the other world." I answer : Other world ! there is no other world. God is one and omnipresent ; here or nowhere is the whole fact. The one miracle which God works evermore is in Nature, and imparting himself to the mind. When we ask simply, " What is true in thought? what is just in action?" it is the yielding of the private heart to the Divine mind, and all personal preferences, and all requiring of wonders, are profane.

The word miracle, as it is used, only indicates the ignorance of the devotee, staring with wonder to see water turned into wine, and heedless of the stupendous fact of his own personality. Here he stands, a lonely thought harmoniously organized into correspondence with the universe of mind and matter. What narrative of wonders coming down from a thousand years ought to charm his attention like this ? Certainly it is human to value a general consent, a fraternity of believers, a crowded church ; but as the sentiment purifies and rises, it leaves crowds. It makes churches of two, churches of one. A fatal disservice does this Swedenborg or other who oilers to do my thinking for me. It seems as if, when the Spirit of God speaks so plainly to each soul, it were an impiety to be listening to one or another saint. Jesus was better than others, because he refused to listen to others and listened at home.

You are really interested in your thought. You have meditated in silent wonder on your existence in this world. You have perceived in the first fact of your conscious life here a miracle so astounding, - a miracle comprehending all the universe of miracles to which your intelligent life gives you access,- as to exhaust wonder, and leave you no need of hunting here or there for any particular exhibitions of power. Then up comes a man with a text of 1 John v. 7, or a knotty sentence from St. Paul, which he considers as the axe at the root of your tree. You cannot bring yourself to care for it. You say: " Cut away ; my tree is Ygdrasil - the tree of life." He interrupts for the moment your peaceful trust in the Divine Providence. Let him know by your security that your conviction is clear and sufficient, and if he were Paul himself, you also are here, and with your Creator.

We all give way to superstitions. The house in which we were born is not quite mere timber and stone ; is still haunted by parents and progenitors. The creeds into which we were initiated in child hood and youth no longer hold their old place in the minds of thoughtful men, but they are not nothing to us, and we hate to have them treated with contempt. There is so much that we do not know, that we give to these suggestions the benefit of the doubt.

It is a necessity of the human mind that he who looks at one object should look away from all other objects. He may throw himself upon some sharp statement of one fact, some verbal creed, with such concentration as to hide the universe from him: but the stars roll above ; the sun warms him. With patience and fidelity to truth he may work his way through, if only by coming against somebody who believes more fables than he does and, in trying to dispel the illusions of his neighbor, he opens his own eyes.

In the Christianity of this country there is wide difference of opinion in regard to inspiration, prophecy, miracles, the future state of the soul : every variety of opinion, and rapid revolution in opinions, in the last half-century. It is simply impossible to read the old history of the first century as it was read in the ninth ; to do so you must abolish in your mind the lessons of all the centuries from the ninth to the nineteenth.

Shall I make the mistake of baptizing the day-light, and time, and space, by the name of John or Joshua, in whose tent I chance to behold daylight, and space, and time ? What anthropomorphists we are in this, that we cannot let moral distinctions be, but must mould them into human shape! "Mere morality" means, - not put into a personal master of morals. Our religion is geographical, belongs to our time and place : respects and mythologizes some one time and place and person and people. So it is occasional. It visits us only on some exceptional and ceremonial occasion, on a wedding or a baptism, on a sick-bed, or at a funeral, or perhaps on a sublime national victory or a peace. But that be sure is not the religion of the universal unsleeping providence, which lurks in trifles, in still, small voices, in the secrets of the heart and our closest thoughts, as efficiently as in our proclamations and successes.

Far be it from me to underrate the men or the churches that have fixed the hearts of men and organized their devout impulses or oracles into good institutions. The Church of Rome had its saints, and inspired the conscience of Europe - St. Augustine, and Thomas � Kempis, and Fenelon ; the piety of the English Church in Crammer, and Herbert, and Taylor ; the Reformed Church, Scougal ; the mystics, Behmen and Swedenborg ; the Quakers, Fox and James Nay ion I confess our later generation appears ungirt, frivolous, compared with the religions of the last or Calvinistic age. There was in the last century a serious habitual reference to the spiritual world, running through diaries, let-. ters and conversation - yes, and into wills and le-gal instruments also, compared with which our liberation looks a little foppish and dapper.

The religion of seventy years ago was an iron belt to the mind, giving it concentration and force. A rude people were kept respectable by the determination of thought on the eternal world. Now men fall abroad, - want polarity, - suffer in character and intellect. A sleep creeps over the great functions of man. Enthusiasm goes out. In its stead a low prudence seeks to hold society staunch, but its arms are too short, cordage and machinery never supply the place of life.

Luther would cut his hand off sooner than write theses against the pope if he suspected that he was bringing on with all his might the pale negations of Boston Unitarianism. I will not now go into the metaphysics of that reaction by which in history a period of belief is followed by an age of criticism, in which wit takes the place of faith in the leading spirits, and an excessive respect for forms out of

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF ETHICS.
which the heart has departed becomes most obvious in the least religious minds. I will not now explore the causes of the result, but the fact must be con-ceded as of frequent recurrence, and never more evident than in our American church. To a self-denying, ardent church, delighting in rites and ordinances, has succeeded a cold, intellectual race, who analyze the prayer and psalm of their forefathers, and the more intellectual reject every yoke of authority and custom with a petulance unprecedented. It is a sort of mark of probity and sincerity to declare how little you believe, while the mass of the community indolently follow the old forms with childish scrupulosity, and we have punctuality for faith, and good taste for character.

But I hope the defect of faith with us is only apparent. We shall find that freedom has its own guards, and, as soon as in the vulgar it runs to license, sets all reasonable men on exploring those guards. I do not think the summit of this age truly reached or expressed unless it attain the height which religion and philosophy reached in any former age. If I miss the inspiration of the saints of Calvinism, or of Platonism, or Buddhism, our times are not up to theirs, or, more truly, have not yet their own legitimate force.

Worship is the regard for what is above us. Men are respectable only as they respect. We delight in children because of that religious eye which belongs to them ; because of their reverence for their seniors, and for their objects of belief. The poor Irish laborer one sees with respect, because ho believes in something, in his church, and in his employers. Superstitious persons we see with respect, because their whole existence is not bounded by their hats and their shoes, but they walk attended by pictures of the imagination, to which they pay homage. You cannot impoverish man by taking away these objects above him without ruin. It is very sad to see men who think their goodness made of themselves ; it is very grateful to see those who hold an opinion the reverse of this.

All ages of belief have been great ; all of unbelief have been mean. The Orientals believe in Fate. That which shall befall them is written on the iron leaf ; they will not turn on their heel to avoid famine, plague, or the sword of the enemy. That is great, and gives a great air to the people. We in America are charged with a great deficiency in worship ; that reverence does not belong to our character ; that our institutions, our polities, and our trade, have fostered a self-reliance which is small, liliputian, full of fuss and bustle ; we look at and will bear nothing above us in the state, and do exceedingly applaud and admire ourselves, and believe in our senses and understandings, while our imagination and our moral sentiment are desolated. In religion too we want objects above ; we are fast losing or have already lost our old reverence ; new views of inspiration, of miracles, of the saints, have supplanted the old opinions, and it is vain to bring them again. Revolutions never go backward, and in all churches a certain decay of ancient piety is lamented, and all threatens to lapse into apathy and indifferentism. It becomes us to consider whether we cannot have a real faith and real objects in lieu of these false ones. The human mind, when it is trusted, is never false to itself. If there be sincerity and good meaning - if there be really in us the wish to seek for our superiors, for that which is lawfully above us, we shall not long look in vain.

Meantime there is great centrality, a centripetence equal to the centrifugence. The mystic or theist is never scared by any startling materialism. He knows the laws of gravitation and of repulsion are deaf to French talkers, be they never so witty. If theology shows that opinions are fast changing, it is not so with the convictions of men with regard to conduct. These remain. The most daring heroism, the most accomplished culture, or rapt holiness, never exhausted the claim of these lowly duties, - never penetrated to their origin, or was able to look behind their source. We cannot disenchant, we cannot impoverish ourselves, by obedience ; but by humility we rise, by obedience we command, by poverty we are rich, by dying we live.

We are thrown back on rectitude forever and ever, only rectitude, - to mend one ; that is all we can do. But that the zealot stigmatizes as a sterile chimney-corner philosophy. Now the first position I make is that natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.

How is the new generation to be edified ? How should it not? The life of those once omnipotent traditions was really not in the legend, but in the moral sentiment and the metaphysical fact which the legends enclosed - and these survive. A new Socrates, or Zeno, or Swedenborg, or Pascal, or a new crop of geniuses like those of the Elizabethan age, may be born in this age, and, with happy heart and a bias for theism, bring asceticism, duty, and magnanimity into vogue again.

It is true that Stoicism, always attractive to the intellectual and cultivated, has now no temples, no academy. no commanding Zeno or Antoninus. It accuses us that it has none : that pure ethics is not now formulated and concreted into a coitus, a fraternity with assemblings and holy-days, with song and book, with brick and stone. Why have not those who believe in it and live it left all for this, and dedicated themselves to write out its scientific scriptures to become its Vulgate for millions ? I answer for one that the inspirations we catch of this law are not continuous and technical, but joyful sparkles, and are recorded for their beauty, for the delight they give, not for their obligation ; and that is then priceless good to men, that they charm and uplift, not that they are imposed. It has not yet its first hymn. But, that every line and word may he coals of true fire, ages must roll, ere these casual wide-falling cinders can be gathered into broad and steady altar-flame.

It does not yet appear what forms the religious feeling will take. It prepares to rise out of all forms to an absolute justice and healthy perception. Here is now a new feeling of humanity infused into public action. Here is contribution of money on a more extended and systematic scale than ever before to repair public disasters at a distance, and of political support to oppressed parties. Then there are the new conventions of social science, before which the questions of the rights of women, the laws of trade, the treatment of crime, regulation of labor, come for a bearing. If these are tokens of the steady currents of thought and will in these directions, one might well anticipate a new nation.

I know how delicate this principle is, - how difficult of adaptation to practical and social arrangements. It cannot be profaned ; it cannot be forced ; to draw it out of its natural current is to lose at once all its power_ Such experiments as we recall are those in which some sect or dogma made the tie, and that was an artificial element, which chilled and checked the union. But is it quite impossible to believe that men should be drawn to each other by the simple respect which each man feels for another in whom he discovers absolute honesty ; the respect he feels for one who thinks life is quite too coarse and frivolous, and that he should like to lift it a little, should like to be the friend of some man's virtue'? for another who, underneath his compliances with artificial society, would dearly like to servo somebody, - to test his own reality by making him-self useful and indispensable?

Man does not live by bread alone, but by faith, by admiration, by sympathy. 'T is very shallow to say that cotton, or iron, or silver and gold are kings of the world ; there are rulers that will at any moment make these forgotten. Fear will. Love Character will. Men live by their credence, Governments stand by it, - by the faith that the people share, - whether it comes from the religion in which they were bred, or from an original conscience in themselves, which the popular religion echoes. if government could only stand by force, if the instinct of the people was to resist the government, it is plain the government must be two to one in order to be secure, and then it would not be safe from desperate individuals. But no ; the old commandment, " Thou shalt not kill," holds down New York, and London, and Paris, and not a police or horse-guards.

The credence of men it is that moulds them, and creates at will one or another surface. The mind as it opens transfers very fast its choice from the circumstance to the cause ; from courtesy to love, from inventions to science, from London or Washington law, or public opinion, to the self-revealing idea ; from all that talent executes to the sentiment that fills the heart and dictates the future of nations. The commanding fact which I never do not see, is the sufficiency of the moral sentiment. We but-tress it up, in shallow hours or ages, with legends, traditions and forms, each good for the one moment in which it was a happy type or symbol of the Power; but the Power sends in the next moment a new lesson, which we lose while our eyes are reverted and striving to perpetuate the old.

America shall introduce a pure religion. Ethics are thought not to satisfy affection. But all the religion we have is the ethics of one or another holy person ; as soon as character appears, be sure love will, and veneration, and anecdotes and fables about him, and delight of good men and women in him. And what deeps of grandeur and beauty are known to us in ethical truth, what divination or in-sight belongs to it ! For innocence is a wonderful electuary for purging the eyes to search the nature of those souls that pass before it. What armor it is to protect the good from outward or inward harm, and with what power it converts evil accidents into benefits ; the power of its countenance ; the power of its presence ! To it alone comes true friendship ; to it come grandeur of situation and poetic perception, enriching all it deals with.

Once men thought Spirit divine, and Matter diabolic ; one Ormuzd, the other Ahriman. Now science and philosophy recognize the parallelism, the approximation, the unity of the two : how each re. fleets the other as face answers to face in a glass: nay, how the laws of both are one, or how one is the realization. We are learning not to fear truth.

The man of this age must be matriculated in the university of sciences and tendencies flowing from all past periods. He must not be one who can be surprised and shipwrecked by every bold or subtile word which malignant and acute men may utter in his hearing, but should be taught all skepticisms and unbeliefs, and made the destroyer of all card-houses and paper walls, and the sifter of all opinions, by being put face to face from his infancy with Reality.

A man who has accustomed himself to look at all his circumstances as very mutable, to carry his possessions, his relations to persons, and even his opinions, in his hand, and in all these to pierce to the principle and moral law, and everywhere to find that, - has put himself out of the reach of all skepticism ; and it seems as if whatever is most affecting and sublime in our intercourse, in our happiness, and in our losses, tended steadily to uplift us to a life so extraordinary, and, one might say, super-human.