The apparent outbreak of passion in the expulsion of the profane

traffickers from the temple is the only instance on the record of his

history which might be quoted against his freedom from the faults of

humanity. But the very effect which it produced, shows that, far from

being the outburst of passion, the expulsion was a judicial act of a

religious reformer, vindicating in just and holy zeal the honor of the

Lord of the temple. It was an exhibition, not of weakness, but of

dignity and majesty, which at once silenced the offenders, though

superior in number and physical strength, and made them submit to their

well-deserved punishment without a murmur, and in awe of the presence of

a superhuman power. The cursing of the unfruitful fig tree can still

less be urged, as it evidently was a significant symbolical act,

foreshadowing the fearful doom of the impenitent Jews in the destruction

of Jerusalem.

The perfect innocence of Jesus, however, is based not only, negatively,

on the absence of any recorded word or act to the contrary and his

absolute exemption from every trace of selfishness and worldliness, but,

positively, also on the unanimous testimony of John the Baptist and the

apostles, who bowed before the majesty of his character in unbounded

veneration, and declare him 'just,' 'holy,' and 'without sin.' It is

admitted, moreover, by his enemies: the heathen judge Pilate, and his

wife, representing, as it were, the Roman law and justice, when they

shuddered with apprehension and washed their hands to be clear of

innocent blood; by the rude Roman centurion, confessing under the cross,

in the name of the disinterested spectators, 'Truly, this was the Son of

God;' and by Judas himself, the immediate witness of his whole public

and private life, exclaiming in despair: 'I sinned in betraying innocent

blood.' Even dumb nature responded in mysterious sympathy, and the

beclouded heavens above and the shaking earth beneath united in paying

their unconscious tribute to the divine purity of their dying Lord.

The objection that the evangelists were either not fully informed

concerning the facts, or mistaken in their estimate of the character of

Christ, is of no avail. For, in addition to their testimony, we have his

own personal conviction of entire freedom from sin and unworthiness,

which leaves us only the choice between absolute moral purity, and

absolute hypocrisy; such hypocrisy would, indeed, be both the greatest

miracle and the greatest moral monstrosity on record.

The very fact that Christ came for the express purpose of saving

sinners, implies his own consciousness of personal freedom from guilt

and from all need of salvation. And this is the unmistakable impression

made upon us by his whole public life and conduct. He nowhere shows the

least concern for his own salvation, but knows himself in undisturbed

harmony with his Heavenly Father. While calling most earnestly upon all

others to repent, he stood in no need of conversion and regeneration,

but simply of the regular harmonious unfolding of his moral powers.

While directing all his followers, in the fourth petition of his model

prayer, to ask daily for the forgiveness of their sins as well as their

daily bread, he himself never asked God for pardon and forgiveness,

except in behalf of others. While freely conversing with sinners, he

always does so with the love and interest of a Saviour of sinners. This

is an undeniable historical fact, no matter how you may explain it. And

to remove every doubt, we have his open and fearless challenge to his

bitter enemies: 'Which of you convinceth me of sin?' In this question he

clearly exempts himself from the common fault and guilt of the race. In

the mouth of any other man, this question would at once betray either

the height of hypocrisy, or a degree of self-deception bordering on

madness itself, and would overthrow the very foundation of all human

goodness; while from the mouth of Jesus we instinctively receive it as

the triumphant self-vindication of one who stood far above the

possibility of successful impeachment or founded suspicion.

The assumption that Christ was a sinner, and knew himself such, although

he professed the contrary and made upon friends and enemies the

impression of spotless innocency, is the most monstrous deception that

can well be imagined. 'If Jesus was a sinner, he was conscious of sin,

as all sinners are, and therefore was a hypocrite in the whole fabric of

his character; realizing so much of divine beauty in it, maintaining the

show of such unfaltering harmony and celestial grace, and doing all this

with a mind confused and fouled by the affectations acted for true

virtues! Such an example of successful hypocrisy would be itself the

greatest miracle ever heard of in the world.'

It is an indisputable fact, then, both from his mission and uniform

conduct and his express declaration, that Christ knew himself free from

sin and guilt. The only rational explanation of this fact is, that

Christ _was_ no sinner. And this is readily conceded by the greatest

divines--even those who are by no means regarded as orthodox. The

admission of this fact implies the further admission that Christ

differed from all other men, not in degree only, but in _kind_. For

although we must utterly repudiate the pantheistic notion of the

necessity of sin, and must maintain that human nature, in itself

considered, is capable of sinlessness, that it was sinless, in fact,

before the fall, and that it will ultimately become sinless again by the

redemption of Christ; yet it is equally certain that human nature, in

its _present_ condition, is not sinless, and never has been since the

fall, except in the single case of Christ, and that for this very reason

Christ's sinlessness can only be explained on the ground of such an

extraordinary indwelling of God in him as never took place in any other

human being, before or after. The entire Christian world, Greek, Latin,

and Protestant, agree in the scriptural doctrine of the universal

depravity of human nature since the apostasy of the first Adam. Even the

modern and unscriptural dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, of the

freedom of the Virgin Mary from hereditary as well as actual sin, can

hardly be quoted as an exception; for her sinlessness is explained in

the papal decision of 1854 by the assumption of a miraculous

interposition of divine favor, and the reflex influence of the merits of

her Son. There is not a single mortal who must not charge himself with

some defect or folly, and man's consciousness of sin and unworthiness

deepens just in proportion to his self-knowledge and progress in virtue

and goodness. There is not a single saint who has not experienced a new

birth from above, and an actual conversion from sin to holiness, and who

does not feel daily the need of repentance and divine forgiveness. The

very greatest and best of them, as St. Paul and St. Augustine, have

passed through a violent struggle and a radical revolution, and their

whole theological system and religious experience rested on the felt

antithesis of sin and grace.

But in Christ we have the one solitary and absolute exception to this

universal rule, an individual thinking like a man, feeling like a man,

speaking, acting, suffering, and dying like a man, surrounded by sinners

in every direction, with the keenest sense of sin and the deepest

sympathy with sinners, commencing his public ministry with the call:

'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;' yet never touched in the

least by the contamination of the world, never putting himself in the

attitude of a sinner before God, never shedding a tear of repentance,

never regretting a single thought, word, or deed, never needing or

asking divine pardon, never concerned about the salvation of his own

soul, and boldly facing all his present and future enemies in the

absolute certainty of his spotless purity before God and man!

HIS ABSOLUTE HOLINESS.

A sinless Saviour surrounded by a sinful world, is an astounding fact

indeed, a sublime moral miracle in history. But this freedom from the

common sin and guilt of the race is, after all, only the negative side

of his character, which rises in magnitude as we contemplate the

positive side, namely, absolute moral and religious perfection. It is

universally admitted, even by deists and rationalists, that Christ

taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, which throws all the

moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the

shade. The Sermon on the Mount alone is worth infinitely more than all

that Confucius, Socrates, and Seneca ever said or wrote on duty and

virtue. But the difference is still greater if we come to the more

difficult task of practice. While the wisest and best of men never live

up even to their own imperfect standard of excellency, Christ fully

carried out his perfect doctrine in his life and conduct. He both _was_

and _did_ that which he _taught_; he preached his own life, and lived

his own doctrine. He is the living incarnation of the ideal standard of

virtue and holiness, and is universally acknowledged to be the highest

model for all that is pure and good and noble in the sight of God and

man.

We find Christ moving in all ordinary and essential relations of life,

as a son, a brother, a friend, a citizen, a teacher, at home and in

public. We find him among all classes of society, with sinners and

saints, with the poor and the wealthy, with the sick and the healthy,

with little children, grown men and women, with plain fishermen and

learned scribes, with despised publicans and honored members of the

sanhedrim, with friends and foes, with admiring disciples and bitter

persecutors; now with an individual, as Nicodemus or the woman of

Samaria, now in the familiar circle of the twelve, now in the crowds of

the people. We find him in all situations, in the synagogue and the

temple, at home and on journeys, in villages and the city of Jerusalem,

in the desert and on the mountain, along the banks of Jordan and the

shores of the Galilean Sea, at the wedding feast and the grave, in

Gethsemane, in the judgment hall, and on Calvary. In all these various

relations, conditions, and situations, as they are crowded within the

few years of his public ministry, he sustains the same consistent

character throughout, without ever exposing himself to censure. He

fulfils every duty to God, to man, and to himself, without a single

violation of duty, and exhibits an entire conformity to the law, in the

spirit as well as the letter. His life is one unbroken service of God,

in active and passive obedience to His holy will--one grand act of

absolute love to God and love to man, of personal self-consecration to

the glory of his Heavenly Father and the salvation of a fallen race. In

the language of the people who were 'beyond measure astonished at his

works,' we must say, the more we study his life: 'He did all things

well.' In a solemn appeal to his Heavenly Father in the parting hour, he

could proclaim to the world that he had glorified him in the earth, and

finished the work he gave him to do.

UNITY OF VIRTUE AND PIETY.

The first feature in this singular perfection of Christ's character

which strikes our attention, is the perfect harmony of virtue and piety,

of morality and religion, or of love to God and love to man. He is more

than moral, and more than pious; he is holy in the strict and full sense

of the word. There is a divine beauty and perfection in his character,

the mere contemplation of which brings purity, brightness, peace, and

bliss to the soul.

Piety was the soul of his morality, and lifted it far above the sphere

of legality or conformity to law. Every moral action in him proceeded

from supreme love to God, and looked to the temporal and eternal

welfare of man. The groundwork of his character was the most intimate

and uninterrupted union and communion with his Heavenly Father, from

whom he derived, to whom he referred, everything. Already in his twelfth

year he found his life element and delight in the things of his Father.

It was his daily food to do the will of Him that sent him, and to finish

his work. To Him he looked in prayer before every important act, and

taught his disciples that model prayer which, for simplicity, brevity,

comprehensiveness, and suitableness, can never be surpassed. He often

retired to a mountain or solitary place for prayer, and spent days and

nights in this blessed privilege. But so constant and uniform was his

habit of communion with the great Jehovah, that he kept it up amid the

multitude, and converted the crowded city into a religious retreat. His

self-consciousness was at every moment conditioned, animated, and

impregnated by the consciousness of God. Even when he exclaimed, in

indescribable anguish of body and soul, and in vicarious sympathy with

the misery of the whole race: 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken

me!' the bond of union was not broken, or even loosened, but simply

obscured for a moment, as the sun by a passing cloud, and the enjoyment,

not the possession of it, was withdrawn from his feelings; for

immediately afterward he commended his soul into the hands of his

Father, and triumphantly exclaimed: 'It is finished!' So strong and

complete was this moral union of Christ with God at every moment of his

life, that he fully realized for the first time the idea of religion,

whose object is to bring about such a union, and that he is the personal

representative and living embodiment of Christianity as the true and

absolute religion.

With all this, the piety of Christ was no inactive contemplation, or

retiring mysticism and selfish enjoyment; but thoroughly practical, ever

active in works of charity, and tending to regenerate and transform the

world into the kingdom of God. 'He went about doing good.' His life is

an unbroken series of good works and virtues in active exercise, all

proceeding from the same union with God, animated by the same love, and

tending to the same end, the glory of God and the happiness of man.

COMPLETENESS AND UNIVERSALITY OF HIS CHARACTER.

The next feature we would notice, is the completeness or pleromatic

fulness of the moral and religious character of Christ. While all other

men represent at best but broken fragments of the idea of goodness and

holiness, he exhausts the list of virtues and graces which may be named.

His soul is a moral paradise full of charming flowers, shining in every

variety of color, under the blue dome of the skies, drinking in the

refreshing dews of heaven and the warming beams of the sun, sending its

sweet fragrance around, and filling the beholder with rapturous delight.

History exhibits to us many men of commanding and comprehensive genius,

who stand at the head of their age and nation, and furnish material for

the intellectual activity of whole generations and periods, until they

are succeeded by other heroes at a new epoch of development. As rivers

generally spring from high mountains, so knowledge and moral power rises

and is ever nourished from the heights of humanity. Abraham, the father

of the faithful; Moses, the lawgiver of the Jewish theocracy; Elijah,

among the prophets; Peter, Paul, and John among the apostles; Athanasius

and Chrysostom among the Greek, Augustine and Jerome among the Latin

fathers; Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus among the schoolmen; Leo I. and

Gregory VII. among the popes; Luther and Calvin in the line of

Protestant reformers and divines; Socrates, the patriarch of the

ancient schools of philosophy; Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton,

Göthe and Schiller in the history of poetry, among the various nations

to which they belong; Raphael among painters; Charlemagne, the first and

greatest in the long succession of German emperors; Napoleon, towering

high above all the generals of his training; Washington, the wisest and

best as well as the first of American presidents, and the purest and

noblest type of the American character, may be mentioned as examples of

those representative heroes in history who anticipate and concentrate

the powers of whole generations. But they never represent universal, but

only sectional humanity; they are identified with a particular people or

age, and partake of its errors, superstitions, and failings, almost in

the same proportion in which they exhibit its virtues. Moses, though

revered by the followers of three religions, was a Jew in views,

feelings, habits, and position, as well as by parentage; Socrates never

rose above the Greek type of character; Luther was a German in all his

virtues and faults, and can only be properly understood as a German;

Calvin, though an exile from his native land, remained a Frenchman; and

Washington can be to no nation on earth what he is to the American.

Their influence may and does extend far beyond their respective national

horizons, yet they can never furnish a universal model for imitation. We

regard them as extraordinary but fallible and imperfect men, whom it

would be very unsafe to follow in every view and line of conduct. Very

frequently the failings and vices of great men are in proportion to

their virtues and powers, as the tallest bodies cast the longest

shadows. Even the three leading apostles are models of piety and virtue

only as far as they reflect the image of their Heavenly Master, and it

is only with this limitation that Paul exhorts his spiritual children:

'Be ye followers of me even as I am also of Christ.'

What these representative men are to particular ages or nations, or

sects or particular schools of science and art, Christ was to the human

family at large in its relation to God. He and he alone is the universal

type for universal imitation. Hence he could, without the least

impropriety, or suspicion of vanity, call upon all men to forsake all

things and to follow him. He stands above the limitations of age,

school, sect, nation, and race. Although a Jew according to the flesh,

there is nothing Jewish about him which is not at the same time of

general significance. The particular and national in him is always duly

subordinated to the general and human. Still less was he ever identified

with a party or sect. He was equally removed from the stiff formalism of

the Pharisees, the loose liberalism of the Sadducees, and the inactive

mysticism of the Essenes. He rose above all the prejudices, bigotries,

and superstitions of his age and people, which exert their power even

upon the strongest and otherwise most liberal minds.

Witness his freedom in the observance of the Sabbath, by which he

offended the scrupulous literalists, while he fulfilled, as the Lord of

the Sabbath, the true spirit of the law in its universal and abiding

significance; his reply to the disciples, when they traced the

misfortune of the blind man to a particular sin of the subject or his

parents; his liberal conduct toward the Samaritans, as contrasted with

the inveterate hatred and prejudices of the Jews, including his own

disciples at the time; and his charitable judgment of the slaughtered

Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, and the

eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them. 'Think ye,'

he addressed the children of superstition, 'that these men were sinners

above all the Galileans, and above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem,

because they suffered such things? I tell you, nay: but except ye

repent, ye shall all likewise perish.'

All the words and all the actions of Christ, while they were fully

adapted to the occasions which called them forth, retain their force and

applicability undiminished to all ages and nations. He is the same

unsurpassed and unsurpassable model of every virtue to the Christians of

every generation, every clime, every sect, every nation, and every race.

HARMONY OF ALL GRACES AND VIRTUES.

It must not be supposed that a complete catalogue of virtues would do

justice to the character under consideration. It is not only the

completeness, but still more the even proportion and perfect harmony of

virtues and graces apparently opposite and contradictory, which

distinguishes him specifically from all other men. This feature has

struck with singular force all the more eminent writers on the subject.

It gives the finish to that beauty of holiness which is the sublimest

picture presented to our contemplation.

He was free from all one-sidedness, which constitutes the weakness as

well as the strength of the most eminent men. He was not a man of one

idea, nor of one virtue, towering above all the rest. The moral forces

were so well tempered and moderated by each other, that none was unduly

prominent, none carried to excess, none alloyed by the kindred failing.

Each was checked and completed by the opposite grace. His character

never lost its even balance and happy equilibrium, never needed

modification or re-adjustment. It was thoroughly sound, and uniformly

consistent from the beginning to the end.

We cannot properly attribute to him any one temperament. He was neither

sanguine, like Peter, nor choleric, like Paul, nor melancholy, like

John, nor phlegmatic, as James is sometimes, though incorrectly,

represented to have been; but he combined the vivacity without the

levity of the sanguine, the vigor without the violence of the choleric,

the seriousness without the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness

without the apathy of the phlegmatic temperament.

He was equally far removed from the excesses of the legalist, the

pietist, the ascetic, and the enthusiast. With the strictest obedience

to the law, he moved in the element of freedom; with all the fervor of

the enthusiast, he was always calm, sober, and self-possessed;

notwithstanding his complete and uniform elevation above the affairs of

this world, he freely mingled with society, male and female, dined with

publicans and sinners, sat at the wedding feast, shed tears at the

sepulchre, delighted in God's nature, admired the beauties of the

lilies, and used the occupations of the husbandman for the illustration

of the sublimest truths of the kingdom of heaven. His virtue was

healthy, manly, vigorous, yet genial, social, and truly human, never

austere and repulsive, always in full sympathy with innocent joy and

pleasure. He, the purest and holiest of men, provided wine for the

wedding feast, introduced the fatted calf and music and dancing into the

picture of welcome of the prodigal son to his father's house, and even

provoked the sneer of his adversaries that he 'came eating and

drinking,' and was a 'glutton' and a 'winebibber.'

His zeal never degenerated into passion or rashness, his constancy into

obstinacy, his benevolence into weakness, nor his tenderness into

sentimentality. His unworldliness was free from indifference and

unsociability, his dignity from pride and presumption, his affability

from undue familiarity, his self-denial from moroseness, his temperance

from austerity. He combined child-like innocence with manly strength,

all-absorbing devotion to God with untiring interest in the welfare of

man, tender love to the sinner with uncompromising severity against

sin, commanding dignity with winning humility, fearless courage with

wise caution, unyielding firmness with sweet gentleness.

He is justly compared with the lion in strength and with the lamb in

meekness. He equally possessed the wisdom of the serpent and the

simplicity of the dove. He brought both the sword against every form of

wickedness, and the peace which the world cannot give. He was the most

effective, and yet the least noisy, the most radical, and yet the most

conservative, calm, and patient of all reformers. He came to fulfil

every letter of the law, and yet he made all things new. The same hand

which drove the profane traffickers from the temple, blessed little

children, healed the lepers, and rescued the sinking disciple; the same

ear which heard the voice of approbation from heaven was open to the

cries of the woman in travail; the same mouth which pronounced the

terrible woe on hypocrites and condemned the impure desire and unkind

feeling as well as the open crime, blessed the poor in spirit, announced

pardon to the adulteress, and prayed for his murderers; the same eye

which beheld the mysteries of God and penetrated the heart of man shed

tears of compassion over ungrateful Jerusalem, and tears of friendship

at the grave of Lazarus.

These are indeed opposite, yet not contradictory traits of character, as

little as the different manifestations of God's power and goodness in

the tempest and the sunshine, in the towering alps and the lily of the

valley, in the boundless ocean and the dewdrop of the morning. They are

separated in imperfect men, indeed, but united in Christ, the universal

model for all.

CHRIST'S PASSION.

Finally, as all active virtues meet in him, so he unites the active or

heroic virtues with the passive and gentle. He is equally the highest

standard of all true martyrdom.

No character can become complete without trial and suffering, and a

noble death is the crowning act of a noble life. Edmund Burke said to

Fox, in the English Parliament: 'Obloquy is a necessary ingredient of

all true glory. Calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph.' The

ancient Greeks and Romans admired a good man struggling with misfortune

as a sight worthy of the gods. Plato describes the righteous man as one

who, without doing any injustice, yet has the appearance of the greatest

injustice, and proves his own justice by perseverance against all

calumny unto death; yea, he predicts that if such a righteous man should

ever appear, he would be 'scourged, tortured, bound, deprived of his

sight, and, after having suffered all possible injury, nailed on a

post.' No wonder that the ancient fathers saw in this remarkable passage

an unconscious prophecy of Christ. But how far is this ideal of the

great philosopher from the actual reality, as it appeared three hundred

years afterward! The great men of this world, who rise even above

themselves on inspiring occasions, and boldly face a superior army, are

often thrown off their equilibrium in ordinary life, and grow impatient

at trifling obstacles. Only think of Napoleon at the head of his

conquering legions and at the helm of an empire, and the same Napoleon

after the defeat at Waterloo and on the island of St. Helena. The

highest form of passive virtue attained by ancient heathenism or modern

secular heroism is that stoicism which meets and overcomes the trials

and misfortunes of life in the spirit of haughty contempt and unfeeling

indifference, which destroys the sensibilities, and is but another

exhibition of selfishness and pride.

Christ has set up a far higher standard by his teaching, and example,

never known before or since, except in imperfect imitation of him. He

has revolutionized moral philosophy, and convinced the world that

forgiving love to the enemy, holiness and humility, gentle patience in

suffering, and cheerful submission to the holy will of God is the

crowning excellency of moral greatness. 'If thy brother,' he says,

'trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day

turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.' 'Love

your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,

and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.' This is

a sublime maxim, truly, but still more sublime is its actual exhibition

in his life.

Christ's passive virtue is not confined to the closing scenes of his

ministry. As human life is beset at every step by trials, vexations, and

hindrances, which should serve the educational purpose of developing its

resources and proving its strength, so was Christ's. During the whole

state of his humiliation he was 'a man of sorrows and acquainted with

grief,' and had to endure 'the contradiction of sinners.' He was poor,

and suffered hunger and fatigue. He was tempted by the devil. His path

was obstructed with apparently insurmountable difficulties from the

outset. His words and miracles called forth the bitter hatred of the

world, which resulted at last in the bloody counsel of death. The

Pharisees and Sadducees forgot their jealousies and quarrels in opposing

him. They rejected and perverted his testimony; they laid snares for him

by insidious questions; they called him a glutton and a winebibber for

eating and drinking like other men, a friend of publicans and sinners

for his condescending love and mercy, a sabbath breaker for doing good

on the sabbath day; they charged him with madness and blasphemy for

asserting his unity with the Father, and derived his miracles from

Beelzebub, the prince of devils. The common people, though astonished at

his wisdom and mighty works, pointed sneeringly at his origin; his own

country and native town refused him the honor of a prophet. Even his

brothers, we are told, did not believe in him, and in their impatient

zeal for a temporal kingdom, they found fault with his unostentatious

proceeding. His apostles and disciples, with all their profound

reverence for his character and faith in his divine origin and mission

as the Messiah, of God, yet by their ignorance, their carnal Jewish

notions, and their almost habitual misunderstanding of his spiritual

discourses, must have constituted a severe trial of patience to a

teacher of far less superiority to his pupils.

To all this must be added the constant sufferings from sympathy with

human misery as it met him in ten thousand forms at every step. What a

trial for him, the purest, gentlest, most tender hearted, to breath more

than thirty years the foul atmosphere of this fallen world, to see the

constant outbursts of sinful passions, to hear the great wail of

humanity borne to his ear upon the four winds of heaven, to be brought

into personal contact with the blind, the lame, the deaf, the paralytic,

the lunatic, the possessed, the dead, and to be assaulted, as it were,

by the concentrated force of sickness, sorrow, grief, and agony!

But how shall we describe his passion, more properly so called, with

which no other suffering can be compared for a moment! There is a lonely

grandeur in it, foreshadowed in the word of the prophet; 'I have trodden

the winepress alone, and of the people there was none with me.' If great

men occupy a solitary position, far above the ordinary level, on the

sublime heights of thought or action, how much more then Jesus in his

sufferings; he, the purest and holiest of beings! The nearer a man

approaches to moral perfection, the deeper are his sensibilities, the

keener his sense of sin and evil and sorrow in this wicked world. Never

did any man suffer more innocently, more unjustly, more intensely, than

Jesus of Nazareth. Within the narrow limits of a few hours we have here

a tragedy of universal significance, exhibiting every form of human

weakness and infernal wickedness, of ingratitude, desertion, injury, and

insult, of bodily and mental pain and anguish, culminating in the most

ignominious death then known among the Jews and Gentiles, the death of a

malefactor and a slave. The government and the people combined against

him who came to save them. His own disciples forsook him; Peter denied

him; Judas, under the inspiration of the devil, betrayed him. The rulers

of the nation condemned him, rude soldiers mocked him, the furious mob

cried: 'Crucify him!' He was seized in the night, hurried from tribunal

to tribunal, arrayed in a crown of thorns, insulted, smitten, scourged,

spit upon, and hung like a criminal and a slave between two robbers and

murderers!

How did Christ bear all these little and great trials of life, and the

death on the cross?

Let us remember first, that, unlike the icy stoics in their unnatural

and repulsive pseudo-virtue, he had the keenest sensibilities and the

deepest sympathies with all human grief, that made him even shed tears

at the grave of a friend and in the agony of the garden, and provide a

refuge for his mother in the last dying hour. But with this truly human

tenderness and delicacy of feeling, he ever combined an unutterable

dignity and majesty, a sublime self-control and imperturbable calmness

of mind. There is a solitary grandeur and majesty in his deepest

sufferings, which forbids a feeling of pity and compassion on our side

as incompatible with the admiration and reverence for his character. We

feel the force of his words to the women of Jerusalem, when they

bewailed him on the way to Cavalry: 'Weep not for me, but weep for

yourselves and your children.' We never hear him break out in angry

passion and violence, although he was at war with the whole ungodly

world. He clearly and fully foresaw and repeatedly foretold his

sufferings to his disciples.

And yet never murmured, never uttered discontent, displeasure, or

resentment. He was never disheartened, discouraged, ruffled, or fretted,

but full of unbounded confidence that all was well ordered in the

providence of his Heavenly Father. His calmness in the tempest on the

lake, when his disciples were trembling on the brink of destruction and

despair, is an illustration of his heavenly frame of mind. All his works

were performed with a quiet dignity and ease that contrasts most

strikingly with the surrounding commotion and excitement. He never asked

the favor, or heard the applause, or feared the threat of the world. He

moved serenely like the sun above the clouds of human passions and

trials and commotions, as they sailed under him. He was ever surrounded

by the element of peace, even in his parting hour in that dark and

solemn night, when he said to his disturbed disciples: 'Peace I leave

with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto

you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.' He was

never what we call unhappy, but full of inward joy, which he bequeathed

to his disciples in that sublimest of all prayers, 'that they might have

his joy fulfilled in themselves.' With all his severe rebuke to the

Pharisees, he never indulged in personalities. He ever returned good for

evil. He forgave Peter for his denial, and would have forgiven Judas, if

in the exercise of sincere repentance he had sought his pardon. Even

while hanging on the cross, he had only the language of pity for the

wretches who were driving the nails into his hands and feet, and prayed

in their behalf: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'

He did not seek or hasten his martyrdom, like many of the early martyrs

of the Ignatian type, in their morbid enthusiasm and ambitious humility,

but quietly and patiently waited for the hour appointed by the will of

his Heavenly Father.

But when the hour came, with what self-possession and calmness, with

what strength and meekness, with what majesty and gentleness did he pass

through its dark and trying scenes! A prisoner before Pilate, who

represented the power of the Roman empire, he professes himself a king

of truth, and makes the governor tremble before him. Charged with crime

at the tribunal of the high priest, he speaks to him with the majesty

and dignity of the judge of the world. And in the agony of death on the

cross he dispenses a place in paradise to the penitent robber. In the

history of the passion, every word and act are unutterably significant,

from the agony in Gethsemane, when, overwhelmed with the sympathetic

sense of the entire guilt of mankind, and in full view of the terrible

scenes before him--the only guiltless being in the world--he prayed that

the cup might pass from him, but immediately added, 'Not my but thy will

be done,' to the triumphant exclamation on the cross, 'It is finished!'

Even his dignified silence before the tribunal of his enemies and the

furious mob, when 'as a lamb dumb before his shearers he opened not his

mouth,' is more eloquent than any apology. Who will venture to bring a

parallel from the annals of ancient or modern sages, when even a

Rousseau confessed: 'If Socrates suffered and died like a philosopher,

Christ suffered and died like a God!' The passion and crucifixion of

Jesus, like his whole character, stands without a parallel, solitary and

alone in its glory, and will ever continue to be what it has been for

these eighteen hundred years, the most sacred theme of meditation, the

highest exemplar of suffering virtue, the strongest weapon against sin

and Satan, the deepest source of comfort to the noblest and best of men.

SUMMARY--CHRIST'S CHARACTER THE GREATEST MORAL MIRACLE IN HISTORY.

Such was Jesus of Nazareth--a true man in body, soul, and spirit, yet

differing from all men, a character absolutely unique and original, from

tender childhood to ripe manhood moving in unbroken union with God,

overflowing with the purest love to man, free from every sin and error,

innocent and holy, teaching and practising all virtues in perfect

harmony, devoted solely and uniformly to the noblest ends, sealing the

purest life with the sublimest death, and ever acknowledged since as the

one and only perfect model of goodness and holiness! All human greatness

loses on closer inspection; but Christ's character grows more and more

pure, sacred, and lovely, the better we know him.

No biographer, moralist, or artist can be satisfied with any attempt of

his to set it forth. It is felt to be infinitely greater than any

conception or representation of it by the mind, the tongue, and the

pencil of man or angel. We might as well attempt to empty the waters of

the boundless sea into a narrow well, or to portray the splendor of the

risen sun and the starry heavens with ink. No picture of the Saviour,

though drawn by the master hand of a Raphael or Dürer or Rubens--no

epic, though conceived by the genius of a Dante or Milton or Klopstock,

can improve on the artless narrative of the gospel, whose only but

all-powerful charm is truth. In this case certainly truth is stranger

and stronger than fiction, and speaks best itself without comment,

explanation, and eulogy. Here and here alone the highest perfection of

art falls short of the historical fact, and fancy finds no room for

idealizing the real. For here we have the absolute ideal itself in

living reality. It seems to me that this consideration alone should

satisfy the reflecting mind that Christ's character, though truly

natural and human, must be at the same time truly supernatural and

divine.

Even Göthe, the most universal and finished, but at the same time the

most intensely worldly of all modern poets, calls Christ 'the Divine

Man,' the 'Holy One,' and represents him as the pattern and model of

humanity. Thomas Carlyle, the great hero-worshipper, found no equal in

all the range of ancient and modern heroism; he calls his life a

'perfect ideal poem,' and his person 'the greatest of all heroes,' whom

he does not name, leaving 'sacred silence to meditate that sacred

matter.' And Ernest Renan, the celebrated French orientalist and critic,

who views Jesus from the standpoint of a pantheistic naturalism, and

expels all miracles from the gospel history, calls him 'the incomparable

man, to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of _Son of

God_, and that with justice, since he caused religion to take a step in

advance incomparably greater than any other in the past, and probably

than _any yet to come_;' and he closes his 'Life of Jesus' with the

remarkable concession: 'Whatever may be the surprises of the future,

_Jesus will never be surpassed_. His worship will grow young without

ceasing; his legend will call forth tears without end; his sufferings

will melt the noblest hearts; all ages will proclaim that among the sons

of men there is none born greater than Jesus.'

The whole range of history and fiction furnishes no parallel to such a

character. There never was anything even approaching to it before or

since, except in faint imitation of his example. It cannot be explained

on purely human principles, nor derived from any intellectual and moral

forces of the age in which he lived. On the contrary, it stands in

marked contrast to the whole surrounding world of Judaism and

heathenism, which present to us the dreary picture of internal decay,

and which actually crumbled into ruin before the new moral creation of

the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. He is the one absolute and

unaccountable exception to the universal experience of mankind. He is

the great central miracle of the whole gospel history, and all his

miracles are but the natural and necessary manifestations of his

miraculous person, performed with the same ease with which we perform

our ordinary daily works.

In vain has infidelity, in ever-changing shapes and forms, assailed the

everlasting foundation of this greatest and sublimest character that

ever blessed or will bless the earth. He arises brighter and stronger

from every fiery ordeal of criticism, and stands out to every beholder

as the greatest benefactor of the race and the only Saviour from sin and

ruin.

Yes! he still lives, the Divine Man and incarnate God, on the ever fresh

and self-authenticating record of the Gospels, in the unbroken history

of eighteen centuries, and in the hearts and lives of the wisest and

best of our race. Jesus Christ is the most certain, the most sacred, and

the most glorious of all facts, arrayed in a beauty and majesty which

throws the 'starry heavens above us and the moral law within us' into

obscurity, and fills us truly with ever-growing reverence and awe. He

shines forth with the self-evidencing light of the noonday sun. He is

too great, too pure, too perfect to have been invented by any sinful and

erring man. His character and claims are confirmed by the sublimest

doctrine, the purest ethics, the mightiest miracles, the grandest

spiritual kingdom, and are daily and hourly exhibited in the virtues and

graces of all who yield to the regenerating and sanctifying power of his

spirit and example. The historical Christ meets and satisfies our

deepest intellectual and moral wants. Our souls, if left to their

noblest impulses and aspirations, instinctively turn to him as the

needle to the magnet, as the flower to the sun, as the panting hart to

the fresh fountain. We are made for him, and 'our heart is without rest

until it rests in him.' He commands our assent, he wins our admiration,

he overwhelms us to humble adoration and worship. We cannot look upon

him without spiritual benefit. We cannot think of him without being

elevated above all that is low and mean, and encouraged to all that is

good and noble. The very hem of his garment is healing to the touch; one

hour spent in his communion outweighs all the pleasures of sin. He is

the most precious and indispensable gift of a merciful God to a fallen

world. In him are the treasures of true wisdom, in him the fountain of

pardon and peace, in him the only substantial hope and comfort of this

world and that which is to come. Mankind could better afford to lose the

whole literature of Greece and Rome, of Germany and France, of England

and America, than the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Without him, history

is a dreary waste, an inextricable enigma, a chaos of facts without

meaning, connection, and aim; with him it is a beautiful, harmonious

revelation, the slow but sure unfolding of a plan of infinite wisdom and

love: all ancient history converging to his coming, all modern history

receiving from him his higher life and impulse. He is the glory of the

past, the life of the present, the hope of the future. We cannot even

understand ourselves without him. According to an old Jewish proverb:

'The secret of man is the secret of the Messiah.' He is the great

central light of history as a whole, and at the same time the light of

every soul; he alone can solve the mystery of our being, and fulfil our

intellectual desires after truth, all our moral aspirations after

goodness and holiness, and the longing of our feelings after peace and

happiness.

Not for all the wealth and wisdom of this world would I weaken the faith

of the humblest Christian in his Divine Lord and Saviour; but if, by the

grace of God, I could convert a single sceptic to a child-like faith in

him, who lived and died for me and for all, I would feel that I had not

lived in vain.

APHORISMS.--NO. XV.

'Men,' saith my Lord Bacon, 'think to govern words by their own reason:

but it also happens that words throw back their force upon the

understanding;' and thus, we may justly add, often distort our thoughts,

and lead us to very erroneous conclusions.

This is apparently the case with the word _motive_, in speaking of human

volitions. A motive power in mechanics is one that produces motion; and

hence the application of the word to the occasion or reason of any

particular act of choice, with the all but inevitable fallacy of

confounding the idea of a mechanical force with that of an influence

upon the mind. That there is some analogy must be admitted; but that

there is such similarity as is often assumed, we are obliged to deny.

The almost total difference between a mechanical power and a thought or

desire--between a material and spiritual subject of operation--is too

apt to be left out of the account.

SKETCHES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND SCENERY.

VI.--TO SARANAC AND BACK.

Few indeed are the pleasures that can be compared with the keen

enjoyment of travel in a new and beautiful country, where every sense is

stimulated by the purest and most aromatic of atmospheres, and where

rocks, trees, rivers, lakes, and skies offer every possibility of

combination imaginable under the structural conditions of the region.

The life of the scout and the pioneer is a constant succession of

pleasant surprises and unanticipated adventure; every hilltop promises a

new picture, every dawn and sunset an additional novelty for that

gallery, longer than the Louvre, and fuller than the Vatican, of which

memory holds the key and is sole warden. Hardship and even danger are

enclosed in surroundings so beautiful, so fresh and invigorating, that

they seem only to add zest to the pursuit, to give dignity and

significance to an occupation which might perhaps otherwise be

stigmatized as mere selfish vagabondage. Oh, the freedom of the wild

woods! the rest to the soul of the shadowy forest and flower-strewn

turf! The wind may toss the locks, the sun brown the skin, and the

brambles tear the garments, but there are none to cavil, none to count

the gray hairs or the freckles, or see that said garments are of last

year's fashioning. If the eyes look kindly, the peering squirrels will

be content, and if the voice be gentle, the birds will ask no more,

except, perhaps, a crumb or two from the slender stock of woodsman's

fare. The deer and the trout will not question our philosophy, knowing

instinctively, as we do, that there is a great God who made us all, and

who ever encompasseth us with a love surpassing every created

conception. They will only ask of our good will, and that our absolute

need be the limit of our tax upon their lives. With the sky for roof,

and the beech and the pine for friends and teachers, the body has time

to strengthen, and the conscience and inner self to grow steadily

upright, that they may overtop trifles, rise to the height of heavenly

inspirations, and hence win power to withstand the surging floods of

bewildering human passion. When men meet such souls, they are amazed at

their calmness and simplicity, and dimly guess that the All-Powerful,

through His created universe, has been whispering to them secrets of

strength, perseverance, patience, and charity.

But this subject is boundless as its origin, and we must now to the

particulars of a personal experience, which, if limited, may yet be of

service to others desirous of journeying in the same region.

Having made a thorough acquaintance with the environs of Elizabethtown,

Elsie and I could no longer resist the blandishment of the blue

mountains ever beckoning us westward through the rocky portal of the

Keene Pass. July 13th, at six A.M., we started in the weekly stage for

Saranac, thirty-six miles distant. The morning was bright; a few low

clouds hung about the tops of the higher hills, and the wind blew from

the east, a direction which here, contrary to our experience near the

seaboard, by no means implies rain. So great is the distance of the

Adirondac plateau from the sea, so numerous its ranges, and so great the

elevation of the ridges lying between it and the ocean, that we found

our ordinary weather calculations all come to nought, east winds blowing

for days without a drop of rain, and western breezes bringing clouds

and moisture.

The road to Keene winds along a branch of the Boquet River, on which are

one or two quite pretty falls, with consequent mills; it ascends

continually until it reaches the foot of the steep rocks forming the

Keene Pass. The views back over the Boquet Valley and toward the Green

Mountains of Vermont are very lovely, and those obtained in descending

the western slope of this, the Boquet range, are magnificent. Soon left

behind are the high cliffs and the steep slide, where a gathering

avalanche of rocks and earth swept through a forest, carrying off a

great belt of timber, wherewith to strew the little valley, and block

the road and stream below. The rugged mountains on either hand have been

burnt over, and send up into the blue ether bare, white, foot-enticing

peaks. At the base of the western declivity lies the valley of the East

Branch of the Au Sable, and beyond, the great Adirondac range,

overtopped by Whiteface and Mount Tahawus. We greeted these giants with

due reverence, hoping for a nearer acquaintance, for only their extreme

summits are visible from that point, Whiteface bold and peaked, Tahawus

round and indistinct. The great ridge, hiding all but their heads, is

here jagged or flowing, steep, and dark with spruce and pine. It rises

like an impassable wall; of a clear morning, a frowning barrier of

granite and forest; of a hazy afternoon, the shining, glowing rampart of

some celestial city.

The village of Keene is a straggling collection of dwellings, with an

inn, a post office, and a store or two. It lies in the intervale

bordering the East Branch of the Au Sable, and is twelve miles from

Elizabethtown.

Thus far, our only fellow traveller had been a school girl, going home

for the summer vacation. At Keene our number was increased by the

addition of another damsel, with accompaniment of two hounds, Spart and

Prince, bound for Saranac. When first fastened behind the open wagon

(our stage), they began a vigorous quarrel, which struck us very much as

a matrimonial squabble, both tied, and neither having a fair chance for

a free fight. Our driver, an excellent specimen of the upright and

intelligent man of Northern New York, cracked his whip, increased the

existing merriment by calling out, 'Wal, dogs, hev ye done fightin'?'

and started up the long declivity leading over the Adirondac range,

through Pitch-off Mountain (another pass), to the plains of North Elba.

The hill is a long one, the cliffs of the mountain pass exceedingly

picturesque, and the black tarn under the beetling crags suggestive of

Poe's 'House of Usher.' Long, however, ere we reached this point, Spart

had gnawed through his rope, and was trotting beside the wagon. Our

driver vainly endeavored to refasten him. Although mild of visage, and

apparently good-natured, he showed so formidable a set of teeth, that it

was thought prudent to desist, and trust to his following his companion,

who still trotted along, coughing and choking, and almost stifled by our

own dust, blown after us by the east wind. After this attempt, Spart

evidently played shy of our whole party, and, having raced ahead during

a few miles, finally disappeared in the woods, probably attracted by the

scent of game.

We reached North Elba (twelve miles from Keene) about noon, and there

stopped to dine at Scott's, a place widely and favorably known to

travellers in that section of country. Round the plain of North Elba

tower the very highest peaks of the Adirondacs; Tahawus (Marcy), Golden,

McIntire, and the beautiful gateway of the Indian Pass to the south, and

to the north the scarred sides of Whiteface and the bold forms of the

mountains bordering the Wilmington notch. Descending the plain into the

village, we came to the West Branch of the Au Sable, which rises in the

Indian Pass, and flows past the former dwelling of John Brown. The

little wooden tenement is in full view from the road, and stands in the

midst of the clearing made by old John himself, with the aid of his

sons. His grave is in the garden near the house, beside a huge rock. The

place is of his own selection, and is now visited by many who, while

reprehending the means taken by the gray-haired enthusiast for the

accomplishment of his designs, cannot but rejoice that the final freedom

of every human being within the limits of our country seems so probable

a result of the present struggle. The neighbors--even those of opposing

political creeds--give John Brown an excellent character for integrity

and charitable deeds. His family have all left the region, and are, I

believe, scattered through the great West.

Crossing the Au Sable, we soon came to the tamarac forests and

whortleberry plains, so characteristic of the tract between that river

and the Saranac lakes. We had left the arbor vitæ and the juniper with

the Boquet range, the beech and maple with the valleys and the lower

portions of the Adirondac, and now found ourselves chiefly amid birches,

yellow and white, spruce firs, and interminable stretches of fantastic

tamarac. The hills lower as we reach the lake region proper, and, while

still picturesque, the Saranacs can boast no near mountains such as

skirt Lake Placid and the two 'Ponds of the Au Bable.' Tahawus and

Whiteface are indeed visible from the Saranac waters, but far away, and

shorn of much of their grandeur. The lakes themselves are elevated some

twelve hundred feet, perhaps, above the level of the sea, and the

climate is correspondingly bracing and delightful. There are at Saranac

two inns, at either of which the traveller can make himself very

comfortable. At six o'clock P. M., we found ourselves at the house

immediately upon the lake, and, after an excellent supper, were ready

for a row upon the clear, shining water. The evening was delightful, the

sun just setting, the low, wooded shores (rising beyond into higher

hills) flooded with golden light, the temperature elysian, our oarsman

broad browed, broad shouldered, and athletic, our boat one of the fairy

craft, sharp at both ends, and light as possible, borne by guides over

portages from lake to lake, and the whole scene as placidly beautiful

and reposeful as the most vivid imagination could desire. War,

contention, suffering, even the law, trade, politics, or any acute state

of feeling, seemed incomprehensible excrescences upon the normal state

of man's being, which there, indeed, appeared to be an endless floating

over placid waters, with the tinkling of oars and the even song of birds

for all needful sounds, and those long, low, slanting rays of golden

light forever stealing through half-closed lids, and steeping the nerves

and brain and tired senses in long dreams of peace and quietude--dreams

without the wearisomeness of monotony or the shock of awaking.

Night, however, came at last, and with it forgetfulness; morning, too,

came in due season, and with it, the daily call for active thought and

exertion.

From Saranac, by means of boats, guides, and camping out, delightful

excursions can be made through the lakes, the two Saranacs, Round, Long,

and Racket Lakes, and the Racket River. This region has been much

travelled and often described.

Our faces, however, must be turned eastward, and the following day found

us again in our wagon, _en route_ for Placid Lake. To reach this, we

left the return stage about two miles west of North Elba, and walked

northward two miles through open country and some beautiful woodland,

until we came out upon Bennet's Pond, on whose shore stands the pleasant

farmhouse where we intended to pass the night. The owner and his family

were absent, but we found a smiling little handmaiden, who brought us a

cooling draught, and an antique whaler, who offered to show us the way

to Lake Placid and give us a row.

Placid Lake is a beautiful, clear sheet of water, about five miles long

and two or three wide. It is divided down the centre by three islands,

charmingly wooded. The surrounding mountains are high, and at the

north-easterly end rises Whiteface, nearly, if not quite, 5,000 feet in

height, the lower portion clad in deciduous trees, the middle in spruce,

and the upper rising bare and white, with a great slide of many hundred

feet extending from the top toward the lake, and marking out the steep

pathway by which the ascent must be made. Bennet's Pond is about a mile

and a half long, and half a mile broad. Bennet is a contraction of

Benedict--Benedictus--Blessèd--and never, surely, did blue expanse of

limpid crystal better merit the appellation--Lake of the Blessèd. Its

shores are gently sloping, and beyond the nearer hills rise the giant

summits of the highest peaks. These two sheets of water are within a

quarter of a mile of each other, but have no communication, and are

divided by a ridge of land, chiefly cleared, from whose top the view is

as beautiful as any view from the same elevation to be obtained in

America. To the north lies Lake Placid, with its shining waves, its

islands, and the stately Whiteface; and to the south, the

heaven-reflecting Lake of the Blessèd, crowned by the noble dome of

Tahawus, and his splendid retinue, Colden, McMartin, McIntire, Wallface,

Dial Mountain, Nipple Top, and Moriah. To the east and west are wooded

hills, completing the panorama, and enclosing a scene as enchanting as

any single one the writer ever looked upon.

The following day our host, who had meantime returned, drove us down

through the Wilmington Pass to Upper Jay, and thence through Keene to

the Keene Flats, a distance in all of between twenty and twenty-five

miles.

The Wilmington Pass, though not so rough and rugged as its far-famed

rival, the Indian Pass, is far more beautiful, and quite as majestic.

The great cliffs overhanging the road, and the swift Au Sable, the fine

rapids, and the fall of over a hundred feet, the noble views of

Whiteface and the dark, steep peaks rising round it, all combine to

render this one of the most impressive mountain chasms we have ever

visited. After passing through the defile, we left the West Branch of

the Au Sable, and crossed a low ridge to Upper Jay, where we again came

upon the East Branch, and ploughed our way through heavy sands to Keene,

where we dined, and whence the road up the valley to the Keene Flats

becomes firmer and less tedious. The way was bordered by rich fields of

grass and grain, potatoes in abundance, flax in pale azure flower, and

acres blue with the beautiful campanula or harebell. At the inn in Keene

we met our rebellious friend Spart, who, having tired of his chase, had

returned to his former headquarters.

Toward the 'Flats,' five miles above Keene, the intervale grows

narrower, and the bordering mountains become loftier, wilder, and

correspondingly more grand. Dix's Peak towers above the southern

extremity of the valley.

We passed the night at a comfortable farmhouse, there being no inn at

the 'Flats,' and the following morning were driven back to

Elizabethtown, with the increased store of information, health, and

admiration for the Adirondac country we had amassed during our three and

a half days' scouting excursion.

MOUNT TAHAWUS.

The beginning of August found us once more housed under the neat roof of

our farmer host at the Keene Flats, and not only Elsie and myself, but

also sundry friends, drawn thither by our praise of the beauty of the

land and the fineness of the air. There were the brilliant M. W. C.,

learned in all philosophical lore, and with feeling and imagination

sufficient to furnish out half a dozen poets; the staid but energetic M.

T., whose portrait in our gallery occupies, a conspicuous place in the

small niche devoted to model women; the gay and witty A. I., whose blue

eyes imperil so many hearts, but whose frank, keen speech quickly puts

to rout all popinjays and useless danglers; also E. B. C. (our

Diogenes), a faithful knight from Caissa's thoughtful train, a rapid

walker and sharp thinker; and last, a merry little four-year-old, whose

quaint sayings are heeded and treasured as if emanations from Delphos or

Dodona. Our Orpheus had gone to Saranac.

Our purpose was to visit the Au Sable Ponds, with the waterfalls in

their neighborhood, and to ascend Mount Tahawus; but alas! for weather!

The haze settled down so thickly that the nearest hills were

undistinguishable. A violent thunder storm came, but brought no relief.

Desperate, we thought we might at least see the ponds and the falls, and

early one hazy morning started off with strong wagon, stout horses, and

careful driver. The distance to the Lower Pond is seven miles--three

excellent, and four so execrable that nearly all our party preferred

walking to the jolting over rocks and stumps and ploughing through rich,

deep forest mould, dignified by the name of driving. This is a new road,

just opened, and the intention is, we believe, to work it into better

shape as rapidly as possible. The intervale ceases at the end of the

first three miles, where the road leaves the Au Sable and winds up a

hill to the last clearing, whence the view to the blasted, riven sides

of Mount Moriah, towering opposite, is wonderfully grand. Thousands of

acres of bare rock, scarred and lined, and apparently nearly

perpendicular, form the western slope of that gaunt giant. The road soon

after passes the cabin of one of the oldest pioneers of the region,

crosses Gill Brook, on which are some charming cascades, and, through a

noble forest of beech, basswood, maple, birch, and some evergreens,

finds its way to the lofty shores of the Lower Pond. Arrived there, the

haze was thicker than ever, giving to view only the sparkling waters at

our feet, and the nearest mountains, whose craggy sides overhang the

lake. To cap the climax, a fishing party had carried off both boats, so

that a nearer acquaintance with the Lower Pond was impossible, and the

Upper could not be seen at all--these ponds forming no exception to the

general Adirondac rule, that any sheet of water navigable for boats

requires no road upon its bank. And indeed, a road round this Lower Pond

would be a considerable undertaking, the shores are so steep and high,

the rocks often rising perpendicularly from the water. Crossing the

great dam at the outlet, our guide led us through tangled patches of

magnificent wild raspberries, 'through brake and through briar,' to the

opening of a narrow gorge through which poured a small stream. Climbing

up over the rocks and bowlders, we soon reached the end of the chasm,

where we were enchanted by the spectacle of the most fairy-like and

peculiar waterfall we had ever beheld. The Cascade Brook here falls over

a precipice of about 150 feet. The little stream at this point makes a

right-angled turn, and thus is built up an opposing wall of equal

height. The chasm is so deep and narrow, that the water, descending in a

silvery veil, seems flowing from the clouds. A heavy fringe of trees

bordering the top, adds to the mystery and the apparent elevation. The

campanula, as is usual with this delicate blossom, hangs out its blue

bella and slender foliage from every jutting cornice and earth-filled

cranny. Below, the water has worn away a series of steep, narrow steps,

and comes leaping and foaming down, as if a magic wand had touched the

rocks, and at each touch a springing fountain had gushed forth.

On our way back to the 'Flats,' we went a mile off the main road, to

visit another fall on Roaring Brook. The precipice here is some 250 feet

in height. A great slide has bared the rock for many yards on either

side of the fall, which has worn deep grooves for its passage, and

clings to the face of the mountain, as if it feared to lose itself amid

the savagery of the surrounding desolation. Here, as in all the

neighboring region, are plainly visible the terrible effects of the

great freshet of October 1st, 1856. We were told that, in the vicinity

of this fall, neither the heavy rain nor the rushing waters could for a

time be heard, only the rattling and battering of stones, as if the

Titans had again taken to pelting the poor earth with whatever of rock

and bowlder they could lay their hands upon. The State dam at the outlet

of the lower Au Sable broke down, and the freed lake rushed out through

the valley, over the meadows, carrying away bridges, dams, mills,

houses, and whole fields of earth, with their crops. The Au Sable River

rose three feet in fifteen minutes, and many persons perished before aid

could reach them. Bowlders, rocks, trees, stumps, and timber were

whirled along by the boiling flood. Bowlders of six feet in diameter

were afterward found lying twenty feet above the bed of a brook where

trout had been caught before the freshet. They had been brought down

stream some forty rods, and piled one above another. The effects of the

rise were felt all the way to the mouth of the river, the high stone

bridge at Keeseville being the only one on the whole course left

standing, and that, to this day, bearing a stone inscription marking the

almost incredible height to which the water rose on that eventful first

of October. The inhabitants of the region sued the State for damages;

but as the dam had been constructed in consequence of a petition of

sundry of those inhabitants, for the purpose of running logs down the

river at all seasons, the court decided that the State was not

responsible for the consequences. John's Brook, which flows into the Au

Sable near the farmhouse at which we stayed, bears wild marks of this

desolating freshet; indeed, one can scarcely credit the fact that the

pretty little stream and smoothly purling river could ever have met in

such desperate conflict as is evidenced by the scars and rifts still

existing near their confluence.

This John's Brook, by the way, is the shortest route up Mount Tahawus,

the entire distance from the 'Flats' being only ten miles. As the

greater number of visitors, however, desire to see the Au Sable Ponds

_en passant_, no path has been 'bushed out,' and that mode of ascent is

practicable only for hunters or woodsmen familiar with the region.

At length a 'wind blew out of the north, chilling and killing' that

terrible haze, and rendering the prospect of a distant view at least

possible. Tahawus loomed up before the mind's eye clear and majestic.

Such an invitation being irresistible, the little party were soon ready

for their journey, said party consisting of Elsie, E. B. C., and Lucy

D., with three guides--an old pioneer, short, slight, weather-beaten,

and sun-browned, a younger aspirant for scouting honors, tall, handsome,

and athletic, and a novice, making his first ascent of the kingly

mountain, but offering a pair of broad shoulders that promised to do

good service in the bearing of the necessary packs. Each guide carried

his own axe, blanket, and provisions, and, in addition, his share of our

united baggage, which consisted of a thick Mexican blanket, four shawls,

two heavy and two lighter, a woollen cap, a water-proof cloak with hood,

one overcoat, two loaves of bread, a small piece of salt pork, a little

can of butter, two or three pounds of maple sugar, a little bag of

cornmeal, two pounds of crackers, the same quantity of chocolate, some

tea, a small tin pail, a frying pan, three tin saucers, three knives,

forks, and spoons. A pint of brandy and the same of whiskey were carried

in flasks to meet emergencies of cold or weariness, and a canteen for

water was also taken to serve as a pitcher, and to bear that refreshing

element to heights where no springs could be hoped for. It will be seen

that we had reduced our appliances to the smallest quantity compatible

with proper warmth and nourishment, and the possibility of being

detained out several days, perhaps, by stress of weather. We had at

first thought india-rubber blankets indispensable, but having been

advised against their use as conducive to rheumatism, and, besides,

finding them difficult to procure, we started without, and certainly

never missed them. The garments worn on such an excursion should, as far

as practicable, all be woollen, and the shoes moderately thick, but not

too heavy. A light umbrella will be found a useful addition in case of

sudden rain or very hot sun. Each person will carry such toilet

arrangements as he or she may deem necessary, only let them be as light

as possible, every ounce on such a tramp soon becoming a matter of

serious consequence.

We left the farmhouse at half past six in the morning, and drove in the

wagon as far as the road was good, three miles, namely, to the last

cabin on the way to the Au Sable Ponds. There our guides shouldered

their packs, and our party was increased by the addition of 'Uncle

David,' another ancient pioneer, who was to row us up the Lower Pond in

a large Albany-built boat kept by him for that purpose. He talks of

building a moderate-sized tenement at the lower end of the lake, for the

accommodation of travellers. I doubt not it would be well patronized.

Now, our Diogenes does not use the lantern of his wit so much to seek

out a thoroughly honest man, as to discover the honesty and good will

pertaining to each individual specimen of the _genus homo_. The

consequence is a series of pleasant results, people usually showing him

whatever of good may be in them, and esteeming him proportionately. As

Uncle David was discussing the amount of furniture required for his

intended caravansary, he paused to ask if feather beds would be thought

a necessity. Diogenes replied that 'every goose needing feathers could

bring them on his own back,' which shaft _took_ immensely, as proved by

the loud guffaws and low chuckles that echoed through the beautiful

forest whose branches shaded us from the August sun. _His_ reputation as

a wit of the first water was firmly established, and every pun and jest

thereafter succeeding was crowned by the halo of this first success.

The four miles to the Pond were speedily and gayly accomplished, and

there we took boat to cross the lake, Uncle David rowing _us_, and the

good-humored, broad-shouldered 'novice,' the scow to be used for our

return, in case we were not back at the time then supposed probable.

'Bill's' rowing was the source of much merriment, the strokes proving

powerful, but the course amusingly devious. So little does it take to

entertain people in the woods, who have laid aside grim behavior and

questioning philosophies, and have for the nonce become veritable

children of nature, knowing that this earth is beautiful and that God is

good, and caring for little else.

The Lower Au Sable Pond is from one to two miles long, its banks are

craggy, steep, and high, the general impression grand and somewhat

desolate. The dam, by raising the water, has destroyed many of the trees

along the shore, and filled the upper portion with driftwood, which

blocks the channel and is altogether unsightly. There is a winter road,

a mile in length, cut through the forest from the Lower to the Upper

Pond. This road is so overgrown that in summer it is a mere pathway. The

Upper Pond reached, we again embarked in a light boat, our young athlete

rowing. Uncle David had quitted us at the upper lake. This row was not

necessary, the path to Tahawus, or Mount _Mercy_, as our guides called

it, turning off at a right angle from the lower end of the upper lake,

but was taken to show us the inexpressibly lovely Upper Pond, and

transport us to certain bark shanties presumed to offer excellent

facilities for dining purposes. The lake is about two miles long, and

one broad. Its shores are gently sloping, and wooded with splendid trees

of the primeval forest, beech, birch, maple, and spruce. The soil is

excellent, and the wild flowers and mosses are luxuriant and abundant.

The steep rocks circling the Lower Pond are visible through a cleft, the

singular, jagged ridge known as the Gothic Mountains is in full view,

the sharp peak of the Haystack lifts its bare top far into the skies,

the North River Mountain crowns the south, and graceful waving lines of

wooded hill complete the circle; the clear water gives back the most

wonderful reflections, and those 'ladies of the forest,' the white

birches, could ask no more transparent mirror. There is nothing to mar

the effect of the whole, no driftwood, no burnt patches, no

ragged-looking clearing--all is harmonious and entirely satisfactory.

Our dinner was a light one. Indeed, our experience was, that while we

required a substantial breakfast and supper, but little was needed in

the middle of the day, and that little better cold than warm.

Returning in the boat to the end of the lake, we struck into the pathway

to Tahawus, a track of hunters, marked by sable traps; and here began

work in earnest. The pioneer took the lead, sweating and grumbling under

his load, for the day was warm, and the sun but little over an hour past

the meridian. Fortunately, he was not a very rapid walker, making only

from two to two and a half miles per hour, so there was no danger of

fatigue to any of the party, except to our Diogenes, who measures

weariness by time and not by miles, walking more easily eight miles in

two hours than in four.

On and up we went, ascending a gentle declivity until we came to a brook

said to be two miles from the boat landing. There we cooled, rested, and

drank of the fresh, clear water, before commencing the steep ascent of

the Bartlett Mountain, a spur of the Haystack, needful to be crossed

before reaching the actual foot of Tahawus. The ascent is some three

quarters of a mile, and the descent on the other side about as far, but

not nearly so steep or considerable. Thus, three and a half miles of

walking, through a dense forest, with no view out except an occasional

glimpse of the Haystack, the Skylight, or the side of Tahawus, brought

us from the lake to the basin of the 'Mount Marcy stream.' The sun was

still high in the heavens, and the bark shanties in the 'basin' having

fallen in, rendering the construction of new ones imperatively

necessary, we concluded to push on and build our camp somewhat nearer

the top.

Descending the Bartlett Mountain, we made our first acquaintance with

the renowned 'black fly' of the Adirondacs. We had heard so much of this

pest, and seen so little of him, that we began to think his existence

somewhat mythical, in short, a traveller's tale, invented by men to keep

women from venturing beyond the well-beaten track of ordinary

journeying. At this, our second halt, however, he assaulted us so

vigorously that we were glad to take refuge in the smoke of a _smudge_

our guides had lost no time in making. For the benefit of the

uninitiated, we may here explain that a smudge is a fire of leaves or

sticks slightly dampened to make a denser smoke, and intended as a

safeguard against the attacks of black flies, midges, and mosquitoes,

the two latter nuisances appearing in the evening, when the flies have

finished their day's work. We saw the creatures, and found them somewhat

troublesome (especially when, later in the day, they insisted upon

spreading in with bread and butter), but suffered no pain or even

inconvenience from their bite. This may have been owing to the lateness

of the season, or to the non-inflammatory condition of our blood. Pests

they are said to be, and doubtless are; but we think their general

prevalence has been exaggerated, and they will be found chiefly beside

watercourses, near lakes, and on damp, marshy ground. Fishermen are

especially annoyed by them. If we intended to camp out for the mere

pleasure of that kind of life, we would choose the season when the flies

are supposed to have disappeared; but if we had any special object in

view, such as the ascent of some particular mountain, or the sight of

any remarkable natural feature of the land, we would not suffer

ourselves, at any season, to be deterred by fear of the flies. Certain

districts and certain conditions of atmosphere are doubtless especially

favorable to their development, but the refuge, a thick smudge, is

always at hand, or, if that be objected to, the traveller can try the

recipe of an old hunter at the Adirondac Iron Works (where the creatures

are said to be particularly rampant), namely, a coating of grease mixed

with essence of penny-royal. We fear we would prefer the results of a

vigorous attack to the use of this latter safeguard; but no one knows

what he may do until he is well tried.

A short distance above the 'basin' we came to a final halt, in a

splendid spruce forest, and near a little stream, that necessary

accompaniment of a camping ground. It was feared lest the season was so

far advanced that the spruce bark would no longer peel; but our tall

young aspirant speedily tested the question by a few vigorous,

well-directed strokes of his axe, and soon a great circle of bark, six

feet high and nine feet in breadth, stood ready for use. Five other

pieces, rather less in size, were found sufficient to furnish the sides

and roof of our hut, which was made by cutting down two stout young

saplings to supply the crotched stakes for the triangular front, and a

third, to serve as ridge pole, extending back into the gently sloping

bank of dry turf covered with dead spruce leaves. We were a mile and a

half from the top of Tahawus, and had entered the great belt of spruce

forest encircling the middle regions of the mountain; deciduous trees,

with the exception of a few birches, had already been left behind. Round

these stakes were arranged the great layers of bark, making a perfectly

water-tight cabin, with open doorway, and large enough to give

comfortable shelter to as many as four persons. The enclosed space was

then covered with soft moss, and a thick layer of spruce twigs laid

wrong side up. Over this spicy flooring we spread our gayly-striped

blanket, and then sat down within our substantial wigwam to enjoy the

blaze and crackle of the bright fire of great logs that had been kindled

a few feet from the entrance.

A similar edifice, somewhat less imposing as to size and detail, was

then constructed for the use of the guides. These operations employed

our three men with their axes the greater part of two hours. Supper was

the next matter under consideration, and was deftly prepared by 'Sid,'

the aspirant, who proved himself an excellent cook. Our bill of fare

consisted of hasty pudding (corn mush), eaten with butter and maple

sugar (a dish for a king, and therefore well suited to sundry of the

sovereign people, only Elsie and I, having no vote, cannot in any sense

be called sovereign), bread and butter, crackers, and toast. Our guides,

in addition, ate a slice of raw pork. Diogenes tried it, but pronounced

it rather too much like candles to be very palatable south of Labrador

or Kamtschatka.

Supper over, the sun had set, and the only work that remained for the

twilight was the gathering of the fuel to feed the fires during the

coming night.

Daylight faded away, the moon rose, and the gay chat by the fireside

being exhausted, a silence, profound, and unbroken save by the crackling

flames, fell upon the quiet, gray old forest. By and by the fire died

down, and not a single sound could be heard, not the rustle of a bough,

the tinkling of the stream, or the stirring of any forest creature. The

moon sailed over the treetops, and a ghostly dreaminess lulled every

sense, not to sleep, but to languid repose. Fatigue, thus far, there had

been none, but physical and mental excitement plenty, and hence the

writer's sleep during her first night of camping out lasted about one

half hour. She watched the careful guides, how each one rose once during

the short night to feed the fires, the elder one alert, the two younger

drowsy and but half awake; her mind wandered with Humboldt and Bonpland

to South America, with Dr. Kane to the Arctic zone, with Winthrop over

the Rocky Mountains, with Dr. Livingstone to Central Africa, and with

Father Huc to Tartary and Thibet. The busy, confined life of a city

seemed an absurdity, the woods the only rational place for human beings

to dwell in, and spruce boughs the only bed suitable to the dignity of

mankind.

Morning broke, and with the dawn the guides were up preparing

breakfast. Bill of fare: Salt pork, first parboiled to extract the

brine, then drained off and fried crisp, bread and butter, toast,

crackers, and tea, with maple sugar, but without milk. Our little tin

pail served alike to draw water, boil hasty pudding, and make tea. But

although the day had dawned and the sun risen, the light was feeble, and

the elder guide shook his head ominously.

'Indeed,' said he, 'it won't be much use to go on up, for the Haystack

looks so blue that _durn'd_ haze must have come back again, and you'll

have no view from _Mercy_ to-day.'

'Well, it can't be helped, but we'll try it anyhow!' was the unanimous

response.

We were a mile and a half from the top of Tahawus, having already

entered the great belt of spruce encircling the middle regions of the

mountain, and having left behind all deciduous trees except a few

birches. The forest here is especially grand, the original wood still

remaining, tall, wide of girth, dark, and sturdy. The girdled trees

standing near our camp looked at us reproachfully in the morning light;

ten giants doomed to death to furnish a night's covering to six pigmies!

Our fires, too, were they safe, or might they not run along the

inflammable turf and perhaps destroy acres of beautiful, precious

timber?

But time pressed, 'the dishes were washed,' and we must away. All the

heavy articles were left in the camp, and nothing taken up with us

except a light lunch, a canteen of water, and the shawls needed to

protect against the winds on the top. The little stream crossed, the

ascent began quite steeply. A half mile of walking brought us out of the

wood, and to the foot of the great slide, a bare, sloping rock, some

thousand feet in height. Up this slide, either on the rock, or beside

it, through the bushes and the spruce trees, which soon become low and

shrubby, leads the pathway, not difficult, but somewhat fatiguing, from

its steepness. Indeed, the whole way up is so excellent one wonders so

high a mountain can be ascended with so little exertion or actual

climbing. In places, the moss is some, six inches thick, and the feet,

worn with stony ways, sink into it as if there to find lasting repose;

but _Excelsior_ is the cry, and the top of the slide the next goal to be

won.

Meantime the haze had been turning into mist, and great clouds were

gathering on the bare, rocky head of the mountain. The slide passed, the

path winds through dense, low spruce growth, and, the last steep cliffs

gradually overcome, the extreme limit of tree vegetation (four thousand

eight hundred feet) is passed, and the remaining rocky slope offers no

growth except a few hardy plants, such as sandwort, grasses, and several

varieties of moss and lichen.

The summit is broad, and, although in part composed of broken rocks, is

quite compact in structure. Its general form is rounded and dome-like.

But the view?

Here we were among the clouds, the wind blowing freshly, and the mists

sweeping past, obscuring every object below. In this wind lay our hope,

and scarcely less in the mists, for they might be the means of

dispersing the haze. There went a rift, a patch of blue sky--and there a

bit of green mountain! Then again all was leaden, damp, and cold. We

seemed to have reached the Ultima Thule, to be the sole living creatures

in some far-away corner of an earth gone back to chaos and mysterious

twilight. Again a break, and again appeared a stretch of dark

fir-covered mountain tops, an avalanche-riven peak, a bright, green

field, or a corner of some far-away blue water. This hide-and-go-seek

between landscape and mist lasted some half hour, when the clouds all

rolled away, and left us with bright sunlight and the most glorious view

our eyes had ever rested upon. The extreme distance was still hazy, but

the nearer wilderness of forest and mountain was wild and grand enough

to have satisfied the most fastidious. The elder guide, who had stood

some dozen times on the summit, missed the bits of Lake Champlain and

some dim outlines of hills and waters that ought to have been visible,

but we were quite content with the sharp ridge of the Haystack and its

deep chasm, the bold and beautiful lines of the Gothic Mountains, the

stern, scarred face of Moriah, the distant, still cloud-capped Dix's

Peak, the pleasant valley of the Au Sable, the Camel's Hump, the Schroon

Mountains, the Boreas Waters, Mud and Clear Ponds, the hills about Lake

George, Mounts Seward and Sandanona, Lake Sanford, Mounts McIntire,

McMartin, Golden, Whiteface, Bennet's Pond, the plains of North Elba,

the Skylight, with its singular rock whence is derived its name, and an

infinity of peaks of every possible form, all gathered about us as doing

homage to the stately monarch, the comely and benignant giant, Tahawus.

The sun was warm, and, sheltered by a rock to screen us from the west

wind, we found a single shawl all-sufficient covering. Diogenes produced

from his capacious pocket sundry lemons, which, added to some maple

sugar, a block of chocolate, and a few crackers, furnished a delightful

repast. We had reached the top of the mountain about nine o'clock. By

eleven the clouds again began to thicken, and grew so dark upon their

under edges that we feared rain. McIntire had collected a murky company

that threatened with the rumble of heavenly artillery. Wishing to

descend the slide before a coming rain should render it slippery, we

took a last look, and hastened away down the rocky slope, through the

shrubby spruces, to the top of the slide, where great stones, flung down

the bare, sloping rock, bounded and rebounded until they plashed into

the marshy pool, one thousand feet below.

Stopping only long enough at our camp to gather up our 'traps,' and to

inscribe its name, 'Tahawus,' with a tiny sketch from Elsie, and a chess

problem from E. B. C., upon the 'barked' side of a spruce, we hurried

down to the 'Mount Marcy stream,' over the Bartlett Mountain, on to the

Upper Pond. The thunder rumbled all around us, and we had several light

showers. Just as we reached the lake, the storm burst in all its fury.

By the aid of our shawls and umbrellas we managed to keep dry until a

lull came and we could row to the bark shanties, where we purposed

passing the night. It was only half past three, and we might have

returned to the 'Flats' that evening, but we did not care to walk

through the wet woods in the rain, and, besides, desired a still further

acquaintance with the beautiful Upper Pond.

The three bark huts on the shore of the lake had been recently erected

and used by a hunting and fishing party. They proved perfectly water

tight, and a bright fire of green logs soon dried all dampness out of

our garments. Our supper that night was quite elaborate, both pork and

hasty pudding entering into its composition. The rain continued to

descend, and pattered softly as we disposed ourselves to rest.

That repose was sweet and unbroken, save by a characteristic 'Te-he-he,'

and 'Good morning, good morning!' uttered in the high but feeble voice

of the elder guide as he came to mend the decaying fire. A reference to

our watches showed the hour to be but one past midnight. It must have

been a profound yearning for human sympathy that had induced our

courteous and considerate guide thus to awaken us. Sleep, however, soon

again took up her broken threads, and so firmly reknit their ravelled

edges, that the web needed the morning dew and the approaching glories

of a brilliant sunrise once more to break and give freedom to the

prisoned senses.

Our pioneer, who loved every peak and pond in the neighborhood with the

affection of a discoverer, took advantage of the charming morning to row

us all round the lake, to show us the pretty inlet with its beaver dam,

and help us gather the singular leaves of the pitcher plant, and the

beautiful, fragrant white water lilies riding at anchor in the lucent

stream.

We soon after took up our line of march for the Lower Pond, where we

found 'Uncle David,' with his sturdy wife and pretty, chubby children,

awaiting our arrival. Rowing rapidly down the lake, we took our last

Mount Marcy lunch beside the outlet, and, early in the afternoon,

returned to the Flats. The time devoted to the excursion was thus a

little over two and a half days. Going and returning we had driven six

miles, rowed four miles (exclusive of our visits to the Upper Pond), and

walked somewhat over twenty-one. There had been no fatigue and no

difficult climbing. Indeed, it would be no very serious matter to go one

day and return the next. And hence we advise all travellers in that

region with sound lungs, moderate strength, and any love for forest life

and magnificent scenery, to make the ascent. They will assuredly bring

home with them a host of pleasant memories, and many new and enchanting

pictures for that precious gallery already mentioned.

TIDINGS OF VICTORY.

When David's winning son rebelled,

They smote the traitor low,

And thought the monarch would rejoice

At riddance of his foe.

But in his chamber all alone

That kingly head was bowed,

And for the erring Absalom

His father wept aloud.

The ministers astonished stood

At such a burst of grief!

The traitor's death alone could bring

Their sovereign sure relief.

Back to their tents in sullen gloom

The faithful warriors flee;

While still he cried, 'My son! my son!

Would I had died for thee!'

My country's wilful erring sons,

Disloyal men, but brave,

Such tears of anguish now she sheds

Above the traitor's grave!

Amid the pealing notes of joy

For glorious victory won,

Is heard Columbia's piercing cry,

'O Absalom, my son!'

Ye faithful men whose crimson blood

In her defence is shed,

Upbraid her not if thus she weep

Above the guilty dead!

Her noble heart is true to you,

But generous as brave,

She mourns in royal grief apart

For those she could not save.

THE ESTHETICS OF THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.

It behooves every man, toiling along this dusty roadway of life, to

seize upon something which he may study and elaborate, that at the end

of his journey he may look back and content himself it has not been

utterly in vain to himself and his fellow pilgrims. A man with a mania,

or, as the Greeks have it, a man with a _madness_, is the true

world-advancer. This madness, when cultured, ripens into talent; if

original and inborn, we call it genius, and the subtile anatomists of

the French schools prove it by telling us that the brains of geniuses

are diseased. The healthy oyster ministers only to the palate. It is the

diseased oyster that secretes the pearl for Miss Shoddy's necklace. It

is the diseased brain that shines through the ages, lights men on to new

epochs in knowledge, and advances the race to the millennial perfection.

Immortal Jean Paul, picturing himself in Schoppe, knew this. For what is

all of Schoppe's eloquent and matchless buffoonery, compared with his

wise oracles, in the mad conflicts with his other 'I,' whom he saw in

the mirror of his diseased brain?

Therefore, let every man have his madness, to which he may give his

leisure and his thoughtful hours. Let it grow upon him, until it becomes

a strong, controlling, natural element, as Mozart grew into music and

Haydon into painting, and is ingrained into his very habit and method of

life; for it is only thus and then he becomes a master, fitted to lead

the van in the world's march. Only, let it be a praise-worthy madness,

and one the development of which wilt secure for himself some new fund

of knowledge, and add to the store of his fellow men.

It was somewhat in this vein I looked upon a dingy skilling species,

with its rudely crossed hammers--a rough coin, bold, sturdy, and rigid

as the old Norse character itself which formed the initial of my

cabinet--a cabinet which has given to me new ideas of the low-browed

Roman and elegant Greek; has admitted me to the arcana of their

fascinating mythology; has whispered strange tales of a mummy's perfumed

sleep in the shadow of the awful, eternal Sphynx; has taken me to the

fall of Grenada, and, bridging over the dark lapse of the ages, has

emerged with the resurrection of art into the bloody days of early

English history--the grim Puritanic times, when good old John Hull, the

mintmaster, regulated the finances of the colonies, and filled his own

pockets with pine-tree shillings and sixpences; the horrors of Danton

and Marat; marking faithfully each historic change from orient to

Occident, and culminating in that latest triumph of the engraver's

cunning skill--the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair medal, commemorating for

our children and children's children the magnificent benefactions of the

people and the self-devotion of the Commissions--Christian and

Sanitary--the angels of mercy and charity, scattering blessings in the

furrows of war.

The _utile_ and the _dulce_ of the study of numismatics are shown in

many ways. Caraccio, Aretine, and Raphael studied the figures on the old

oboli and drachmas. So did Le Brun. Rubens was the most conscientious

coin and medal gatherer of his time, and applied them sedulously to the

furtherance of his divine gifts. Petrarch found time between his sonnets

to Laura to make the first classified collection on record, which he

presented to the emperor of Germany, with his well-known and remarkable

letter. Alphonso, king of Naples, visited all parts of Europe gathering

coins in an ivory casket. The splendid Cosmo de' Medici commenced a

cabinet which formed the nucleus of the Florentine collection. Matthias

Corvinus, king of Hungary, made a cabinet, and Francis I. of France laid

the foundation of the Paris collection--the finest in the world. All

artists recognize the value of coins, medals, and medallions. From them

they get the model faces and heads of the Greek and Roman, the copies of

lost statues, the folds of the chlamys and the graceful sweep of the

toga, the eagles and ensigns, rams and trophies, the altars, idols, and

sacrifices, the Olympian games, and the instruments of music,

mathematics, and mechanics. They reveal the secrets of a thousand

antiquated names and ceremonies, which but for the engraver's chronicle

must have been utterly lost.

Coins throw additional light upon history. They illuminate the dark

passages, clear away the obscurities, and bridge over the gaps. Hugo, in

'Les Miserables,' says men solidified their ideas in architecture before

the printed page came from the brain of Faust. He might have added, they

wrote their histories upon these bits of gold, silver, iron, brass, and

bronze. Vaillant wrote the chronicles of the kings of Syria from a jar

of medals, as Cuvier would build up the mastodon and give you the

monster's habits from a tooth or a tibia. The Roman denarii give the

best idea of Cæsar's well in the forum. The Epidaurian coins with the

snake of Æsculapius tell in brief characters how the Roman senate sent

an embassy to the great father of medicine to come and heal them of the

plague. The migration of the Phocian colony to Asia Minor is succinctly

told in the [Greek: phôchê], or seal, which followed the early Mayflower

stamped upon one of the earliest of the Grecian coins. The late coins of

the Grecian series, with the portraits of Alexander, Ptolemy, Seleucus,

Lysimachus, and others, have lent to the historian a fresh and life-like

picture of those stern days, and have been silent but incontrovertible

witnesses of the truth of the records which have come down to us.

Cymbeline, of Shakspeare, dates back to the Cunobelin of an ancient

Saxon coin, struck before Boadicea's time. Who would have known of the

Grecian domination in Bactria, long after Alexander's time, but for a

casual traveller who found the fact, together with a lost language, upon

a series of coins unearthed in that part of Asia? The coins of Alexander

fix the capture of Egypt; those of Vespasian, the capture of Judea; and

those of Trajan, the capture of Parthia. They were the 'brief

chroniclers of the time'--Stantonian bulletins, announcing each fresh

conquest.

The coins of the ancient day--for our modern productions can hardly

claim the credit--blend artistic grace and beauty. Upon them art made

its first and some of its best essays. A cabinet of Grecian and Roman

coins is a compact history of art from its inception to its meridian in

the culmination of Grecian splendor--and since that time, if we may

believe Ruskin, we only approximate, or what is worse, degrade. The

gradual decline of art and the decay of the empire are traceable on the

Roman series. You may follow the downward steps, until it becomes nearly

extinct, to revive, after a period of stagnation, in a new feeling in

the quaint but strong and rugged Gothic, the beautiful development of

which may be seen in the coinage of modern Europe from the fifth to the

fifteenth century. The Farnesian Hercules, the Venus de' Medici, the

Apollo Belvidere, and the famous equestrian Marcus Aurelius make their

appearance upon the ancient medals. Undoubtedly many of the magnificent

designs of Grecian medals in particular are but the types of Protogenes

and Apelles, as Houdin's model cast of Washington has been photographed,

as it were, upon the Wright medal. The grand Byzantine school of art is

nowhere better brought out than on the coins of that period. The

details of Constantine's coins are found in the ivory dyptics and those

splendidly illuminated Gospel vellums which art-despising monks kneeled

upon from the seventh to the tenth century, and which art-loving monks,

even in the middle of the nineteenth century, used in the decoration of

their monastery halls at Mount Athos.

I come to a phase in the study of numismatics which to many will seem

paradoxical--the romance of coins--and pick out here and there a few

incidents, which I shall string together, not heeding closely

chronological sequence.

One of the saddest pictures in all history is the first mention that is

made of money. Sarah was dead, and Abraham was sojourning among

strangers in a strange land. He mourned for his wife, and stood up

before the sons of Heth, and begged of them to intercede with Ephron,

the Hittite, for the cave of Machpelah, as a burial place. Ephron

liberally offered him the cave and the field, but the patriarch insisted

upon payment; whereupon the Hittite answered: 'My lord, hearken unto me;

the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver; what is that betwixt

me and thee? Bury, therefore, thy dead.' Abraham weighed the 'four

hundred shekels of silver current (money) with the merchant,' and the

field and the trees and the caves were Abraham's, and Sarah was buried.

The first use of money is the last, and the cave of Machpelah, typical

of the last resting place of all men, is the most important because the

most imperative use of money. He that hoards and he that squanders,

Croesus and Lazarus, at the end of life, provided they have money

enough to purchase their caves of Machpelah, have fortune enough, and

more than enough, for they may not carry gold and silver with them

through the valley of the Shadow. We buy and sell, we loan and

speculate, we hoard our shining wealth as Croesus hoarded the golden

sands of Pactolus in the treasury of Delhi, but when we come to the cave

of Machpelah, we leave it at the entrance, and go into the darkness

unencumbered.

The earliest and standard specimen of Roman coinage was the _as_,

subdivided almost indefinitely, and originally weighing a pound. This

ponderous coin subserved a purpose which our penny does to-day. It had

upon the obverse the double-headed Janus, and upon the reverse the keel

of a ship, rudely done, but answering the requirements of the light,

juvenile gambling known as pitching coppers. _Capita aut navem_, 'Heads

or the ship,' the Roman boys cried, as Young America cries now, 'Heads

or tails.' It is an eminently conservative custom, and Master Freddy, as

he tosses his new bronze cent, may summarily answer paternal reproof by

showing that Master Tullius, two thousand years ago, pitched the _as_

his father coined, and, for aught we know, grew to be a wise emperor and

a great man.

Judea is represented upon several coins of the time of Titus and

Vespasian by the figure of a woman with flowing hair and bared breasts,

seated upon the ground in a posture of sorrow and captivity, above her

the wide-spreading branches of the palm, and behind her a stalwart Roman

soldier in mail, leaning upon his spear. Thus exactly did the Roman

engraver follow out upon these coins the language of the Scriptures. The

Psalmist describes this posture in the lamentations of the Jews over

their captivity. 'By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept.' Still

more remarkable is it that the prophet, in a passage foretelling this

identical captivity, likens Judea to a woman sitting upon the ground

wrapped in sorrow.

It is not often that coins have been used as vehicles of wit or for

plays upon words, but there are examples upon record. Some of the German

coins represent in the legends the years in which they were minted. A

coin of Gustavus Adolphus also is an excellent illustration of this

practice. The legend is: 'ChrIstVs DVX ergo trIVMphVs.' Take the

capitalized letters or numerals from the words, and arrange them in

their proper order, and you have 1627, the year in which the coin was

struck. Upon a coin of Trio Lucretius, a member of the _Lucretia gens_,

who would have remained unknown to this day but for his coin, a case of

punning by means of types occurs. The obverse has the head of Apollo;

the reverse, the crescent moon and seven stars, or rather _triones_--the

constellation of the Ursa Major. The sun and moon refer to the family

name, while the _triones_ are an allusion to the surname. Pope Urban

VIII., with execrable taste and questionable wit, upon repairing certain

roads, struck a medal with the legend: _Beati qui custodiunt meas vias_,

'Blessed are they who keep my ways.' The 'speaking types' of the ancient

Grecian coins are very curious. The coinage of Rhodes has a rose for a

type, which flower bears the same name as the island. The coins of Side

have a pomegranate, in Greek, _side_ ([Greek: sidê]); Melos, the apple,

in Greek, _melon_ ([Greek: mêlon]); Ancona, in Italy, the elbow, in

Greek, _ancon_ ([Greek: agkon]); Cardia, the heart, in Greek, _cardia_

[Greek: kardia].

The coins of Constantine the Great, 306 A.D., will always remain of

peculiar interest, as connected with the early history of Christianity.

Constantine, after forcing his brother-in-law, Licinius, from his

Eastern dominions, built Constantinople, and made Christianity the state

religion. The principal emblem upon his coins is the Labarum, or sacred

banner, bearing the monogram of Christ--the letters [Greek: Ch] and

[Greek: R]--being the initials of [Greek: CHRISTOU], the angles of which

are occupied by the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha

and Omega, in allusion to Christ's declaration in Revelation. A rarer

type of Constantine's coins has the monogram, and the legend, _In hoc

signo vinces_. The _signum_ was the vision of a beautiful cross in the

heavens, which was presented to the view of Constantine, near Milan,

during his march against Maxentius. To this cross he attributed both his

victory and conversion. These Christian emblems remained upon the coins

of his successors until the reign of Julian the Apostate, who removed

them and substituted pagan emblems. Nor do they again appear until the

accession of Michael Rhangabe (811-813), when the bust and sometimes the

full length of Christ is on the obverse, with the _nimbus_, and the

legend, _Jesus Christus nica(tor) rex regnantium_. Upon the reverse, the

emperor, with a singular degree of boldness, is seated by the side of

the Virgin, the two holding aloft the banner of the cross.

We come to more modern coins. England and Ireland were in continual

trouble about the standard of coinage. On the accession of Mary, she

declared the intention of restoring the old standard of silver coinage,

viz., 11 oz. 2 dwt. fine, to 18 dwt. alloy; but, instead of that, the

new coinage was a pennyweight lower than that of Edward. Nor did it mend

matters that her handsome face and Philip's were on the obverse. The

wits of the day had many a joke over it; and Butler's sarcastic pen

could not omit the opportunity of writing:

'Still amorous, fond, and billing,

Like Philip and Mary upon a shilling.'

The first manifestation of displeasure between the mother country and

the colonies was with Massachusetts, of course. The old Bay State was as

impatient toward masters then as later in the Revolution against George,

and still later with the slaveholders. Charles II. was displeased with

the colonists for coining money, which he considered his royal

prerogative, and intimated to Sir Thomas Temple that they must be

punished, and the business stopped. Sir Thomas was considerable of a

wag, and showed the king one of honest John Hull's shillings, on the

reverse of which was the pine tree. The king asked him what sort of a

tree that was. Upon which Sir Thomas replied that, of course, it was the

royal oak, which had saved his majesty's life. The king smiled at the

courtier's wit; but it is not reported that he allowed Hull to continue

the coinage.

The proverbial misfortunes of Ireland have attended even her coinage,

and her troubles in that direction commenced as early as the reign of

Henry VII. He coined sixpences for Ireland worth only fourpence in

England. Mary issued base shillings and groats for Ireland, and

Elizabeth issued still baser ones, while she purified the coinage of

England. James I. struck copper farthings of two sizes, that if they

failed in England, they might be used in Ireland for pence and

halfpence. Charles I. established a mint in Dublin, but, in the

confusion attendant upon his death, the Irish lost it. Cromwell gave

them tokens in place of coins of the realm; and James II. base silver

money, made principally from brass cannon, and even this alloyed stuff

was gradually diminished in size. White metal followed, then lead, and

finally tin. George I. granted a patent to William Wood in 1737 for

coining pence and halfpence for Ireland, but he coined them of smaller

size than was stipulated in the patent. Dean Swift, with his merciless

satire, drove them out of Ireland, and his majesty, having no use for

them in England, sent them to his American colonies. Circulating media

were scarce here at that time, and anything in the shape of coins was

welcome. George II. did better for Ireland, and gave her honest coins.

In 1760 the famous _voce populi_ halfpenny appeared, a company of

gentlemen in Dublin having obtained permission to issue them. There was

a bit of quiet revenge in this halfpenny. The head of the sovereign,

though apparently done in the usual manner of the king's portrait, was

in reality a portrait of the Pretender. The coins attained a

considerable circulation before the trick was discovered, and then they

were suppressed.

Coins have figured in sermons. Bishop Latimer, on the 8th of March,

1549, delivered the following sarcastic sermon. On a previous occasion

he had spoken jestingly of the new currency of Edward VI. For this he

was accused of sedition, which charge he answered thus:

'Thus they burdened me even with sedition. And wot ye what? I chanced in

my last sermon to speak a merry word of a new shilling, to refresh my

auditory, how I was like to put away my new shilling for an old groat. I

was therein noted to speak seditiously. ... I have now gotten one more

fellowe, a companion of sedition; and wot you who is my fellowe? Esay

(Isaiah) the prophet. I spake but of a little prettie shilling; but he

speaketh to Jerusalem after another sort, and was so bold as to meddle

with their coynes. 'Thou proud, thou haughty city of Jerusalem.

_Argentum tuum versum est in scoriam_;' thy silver is turned into what?

into testious _scoriam_, into dross,' Ah! seditious wretch! what had he

to do with the mint? Why should he not have left that matter to some

masters of policy to reprove? Thy silver is dross; it is not fine; it is

counterfeit; thy silver is turned; thou hadst no silver. What pertained

that to Esay? Marry, he replied a piece of diversity in that policy; he

threateneth God's vengeance for it.

'He went to the root of the matter, which was covetousness, which became

him to reprove; or else that it tended to the hurt of poore people; for

the naughtiness of the silver was the occasion of dearth of all things

in the realm. He imputeth it to them as a crime. He may be called a

master of sedition indeed. Was not this a seditious fellowe, to tell

them this even to their faces?'

The three-farthing piece struck in Elizabeth's reign is often mentioned

in the poets. Shakspeare has an allusion to it in King John. He

introduces the bastard Falconbridge, ridiculing the personal appearance

of his legitimate elder brother, having just before compared him to a

half-faced groat:

'Because he hath an half face, like my father,

With that half face would he have all my land.'

Farther on, he says he would not have such a person (body):

'My face so thin,

That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose,

Lest men should say, Look where three farthings goes;'

alluding to the rose which was on both the obverse and reverse of the

coin. Beaumont and Fletcher, in the 'Scornful Lady,' show the difference

between the penny and three-farthing piece, and inform us of a knavish

trick then practised, to impose upon ignorant people the lesser as the

greater coin. Lovelass, speaking of Morecraft, the usurer, says: 'He had

a bastard, his own toward issue, whipt and thin cropt, for washing out

the rose in three farthings to make them pence.'

In England, during the reign of George III., an act was passed to amend

an act of the 51st of the king, respecting the gold coin and the notes

of the Bank of England. By this act the provisions of the former statute

were extended to Ireland, and the notes of the bank there were placed

upon the same basis as those of the Bank of England. While this act was

passing the House, the following epigram appeared in the public papers:

BANK NOTES AND GUINEAS.

Bank notes, it is said, once guineas defied

To swim to a point in trade's foaming tide;

But ere they could reach the opposite brink,

Bank notes cried to gold: 'Help us, cash us, we sink!'

'That paper should sink, and guineas should swim,

May appear to some folks a ridiculous whim;

But before they condemn, let them hear this suggestion:

In pun making, gravity's out of the question.

There is a romantic incident in the early history of Massachusetts,

which has been often told. Money was scarce, and in 1652 the General

Court passed a law for the coinage of sixpences and shillings. Captain

John Hull was appointed the mintmaster, and was to have one shilling in

every twenty for his labor. All the old silver in the colony, wornout

plate, battered tankards, buckles, and spoons, and especially the

bullion seized by the buccaneers then sailing the Spanish Main (for all

was honest that came to Hull's melting pot), was brought in for coinage,

and the mintmaster rapidly grew to be the millionnaire of the colony,

and suitors came from far and wide for the hand of his daughter. Among

them was Samuel Sewall, who was the favorite of the plump and buxom

miss. Hull, the mintmaster, roughly gave his consent: "Take her," said

he, "and you will find her a heavy burden enough." The wedding day came,

and the captain, tightly buttoned up with shillings and sixpences, sat

in his grandfather's chair, till the ceremony was concluded. Then he

ordered his servants to bring in a huge pair of scales. 'Daughter,' said

the mintmaster, 'go into one side of the scales.' Mrs. Sewall obeyed,

and then the mintmaster had his strongbox brought in, an immense

ironbound oaken chest, which the servants were obliged to drag over the

floor. Then the mintmaster unlocked the chest, and ordered the servants

to fill the other side of the scales with shillings and sixpences. Plump

Mrs. Sewall bore down hard upon her side of the scales, but still the

servants shovelled in the bright, fresh pine-tree shillings, until Mrs.

Sewall began to rise. Then the mintmaster ordered them to forbear.

'There, you Sewall,' said the magnanimous old money maker, 'take these

shillings for my daughter's portion. Use her kindly, and thank Heaven

for her; for it is not every wife that is worth her weight in silver.'

And Master Sewell took Mistress Sewall and thirty thousand pounds (not

avoirdupois, but sterling).

The liberty cap was first used as an emblem by the committee of safety

organized at Philadelphia early in 1775. At a meeting on the 31st of

August of that year, it was resolved by the committee that Owen Biddle

provide a seal for the use of the board, about the size of a dollar,

with a cap of liberty, with this motto: 'This is my right, and I will

defend it.' Upon the first cent issued by the United States Mint for

circulation, in 1793, the cap appears. This cap is the Phrygian cap, and

all nations recognize it as the badge of liberty. When Spartacus rose at

the head of his fellow slaves against their Roman masters to obtain

liberty, his followers were distinguished by this cap. Though their

effort was unsuccessful, the principle of liberty still exists, to be

fought for until the last manacle is struck from the last slave. And

mankind has recognized that early struggle for freedom by adopting the

cap as one of the attributes of the goddess of freedom.

The freaks of currency are singular. The early Greeks bartered with

cattle; hence we derive _pecunia_ (money) from pecus (the flock). Cowry

shells have bought slaves on the African coast, and wampum answered for

money with the Indian, The Carthaginians, Frederick II. at the siege of

Milan, Philip I. and John the Good, kings of France, used stamped

leather, the latter inserting a silver nail in the centre. St. Louis, of

France, issued the black coin made of billon. The Anglo-Saxons used

rings, torques, and bracelets. Homer says the Greeks carried on their

traffic with bars and spikes of brass. Salt is the money of Abyssinia,

and codfish in Iceland. In Adam Smith's day, the Edinburgh workmen

bought bread with nails, and drank from foaming tankards paid for with

spikes. Marco Polo found mulberry-bark money in China, stamped with the

sovereign's seal, which it was death to counterfeit, as was the case

also with the Continental currency of our own country. The first

families of Virginia, now fighting for the ideas of aristocracy and

labor owned by capital, are the lineal and quite recent descendants of

shiploads of women exported from the crowded capitals of Europe, with

little regard to character or condition, and bought at so many pounds of

tobacco per head. The cannon used by James II. in his desperate struggle

for the throne, were melted up and coined into the famous gun money; and

the bells of Paris which tolled over the horrors of the guillotine, in

the bloody days of Robespierre, met a similar useful end. Charles I.,

with a Vandal hand, melted up the plate of the aristocracy and the

almost inestimable relics of Oxford into siege pieces. In 1641,

Massachusetts enacted that wheat should be received in payment of debts;

and during the French Revolution, the convention, upon the motion of

Jean Bon Saint André, discussed the propriety of making wheat the

standard of value.

From coins to wealth is but a step. The ancients surpassed the moderns

in splendid wealth and lavish extravagance. Seneca, writing superb

treatises in favor of poverty, was worth nearly five millions of

dollars. Lentulus, the astrologer, made his black arts yield him over

three millions. The delighted heirs of Tiberius found nearly thirty-six

millions in his coffers, and in less than a year Caligula spent the

whole of it. Milo's debts were Titanic, amounting to six millions. Cæsar

had a list of creditors whose name was legion, before he obtained any

public office; but he was soon enabled to present Curio with six hundred

thousand dollars, Lucius Paulus with four hundred thousand, and

Servilia, the mother of Brutus, with a trifle of a pearl worth over

thirty thousand. Mark Antony's house was sold to Messala for over half

a million, and Scaurus's villa was burned at a loss of over twelve

millions. Otho spent over fourteen millions in finishing the wing of a

palace commenced by Nero. One of Caligula's dinners cost a million

dollars; and one of Heliogabalus's breakfasts, twenty-seven thousand

dollars, Oesopus, the actor, swallowed a pearl worth eleven thousand

dollars, and Apicius, the gourmand, ate over seventy-seven millions

during his worthless life, and then committed suicide, because he was

reduced one day to only a hundred thousand dollars in his purse.

I hold in my hand a huge iron token which Ptolemy struck in

commemoration of his conquest of Egypt, and by its side the new two-cent

piece of the United States, fresh and sparkling from the Mint at

Philadelphia. The one antiquated, rude, corroded, and begrimed in its

long conflict with time, and the other bright and vivid, its field and

exergue unmarred, its emblems and legends clear and sharp. The coin of

Ptolemy has a history. The obverse gives us undoubtedly the head of

Jupiter, the cloud bearer, rugged, massive, stern, iron featured,

taurine neck, hair in great serpentine coils and shocks; the reverse, a

magnificent spread eagle, and the inscription in Greek, _Basileus

Ptolemaion_. Ptolemy, flushed with the victory he had won for Alexander,

issued it over two thousand years ago. After subserving the purposes of

Athenian barter, some swarthy Egyptian obtained it; but our friend the

Egyptian, in time, was gathered to his fathers. He was embalmed, and

slept in the shadow of the Pyramid, where his royal predecessors were

sleeping, and by the side of the eternal Sphynx, whose riddle he could

not read in life. Perhaps death unsealed the mystery of those stony lips

to him. The token was placed in the mummy case upon the Egyptian's lips,

perhaps as Charon's toll. But, in that event, evidently our friend the

Egyptian never crossed over the black river of Death, but is still

wandering--a miserable shade--along its banks, seeking rest, and finding

none. Token and Egyptian remained in their tomb while Thebes flourished

and decayed, Tyre and Sidon crumbled into ruins, Rome, mistress of the

world, cowered beneath the scourge of Goth and Vandal and Hun, and the

earth was eclipsed in the night of the ages. Still the Pyramids towered

toward heaven, the Sphynx gazed on with calm, earnest eyes, Memnon made

music of welcome to the sun, and our token sealed the shrivelled silent

lips of the Egyptian. The world emerged from its night. Dante and

Aquinas, Copernicus and Galileo, Luther and Melanchthon, Gutenberg and

Faust, Kant and Schlegel, Bacon, Leibnitz and Newton, Watt and Morse,

tore away the seals before our token saw the light. It came forth into a

new world by the hand of a missionary, preaching a religion founded

three hundred years after it closed the lips of the Egyptian. The

heathen god was upon its field, but the Christian religion had set aside

the old mythology of which it was a representative. I turn from this

relic of the past to the coin of the present, and upon the latter I find

the acknowledgment of that religion, and of dependence upon its

immutable Author: 'In God we trust;' and from this legend I augur

deliverance from the troubles that beset us, the vindication of outraged

laws, the Union of dissevered fragments, the return of peace to our

distracted land, the integrity of the Republic.

MIRACLES.

People refuse to believe in miracles because they esteem, them

incredible: how, then, do they believe in existence--in the being of

anything? Is it credible--to human reason, I mean--that anything should

be without a cause? Nothing, so far as we can judge, _ever comes to_ be

without an efficient cause--something that goes before, with power to

bring that which comes after.

But existence is an indisputable fact: we must believe it, whether we

can or not.

Oh yes, one may say, but there is an infinite Being from all eternity,

and He has produced all other forms of existence.

Very well; but if that be so, do not let us trouble ourselves about what

are called miracles. They come very easily after the creation of

light--the creation of sun and moon and stars; or even of nebulous

matter, so constituted that by its revolution in space it may generate

these wondrous orbs.

But there is a difficulty, it seems, about laws--natural laws: we are

not to suppose that they will ever he violated. But there is another law

above all these; all at least of the inanimate world, _i.e._, that the

forces of brute matter are subject to the will, or whatever is analogous

to will, in any living creatures. The law of gravitation is one of the

most universally operative; but every bird rising upon its wings, every

dog in its leaps, yea, the grasshopper springing from the earth, sets

this law at defiance. Almost every common law of matter is set aside by

the ingenuity of man, as put forth by that most truly spiritual faculty,

the will.

Are we then to suppose that the Almighty has so tied his power to

agencies purely material that He can never perform an act except under

their regulation? This would leave Him with no discretional power

whatever--with no such liberty even as that which He has bestowed upon

every creature that has will, or anything like it. Is this the idea of a

God infinite in power, as in wisdom and goodness? Are we to think that

the Almighty has just for once set a universe in motion, and forever

withdrawn Himself from all meddling with its affairs? He permits us to

control the electric power: but is never permitted to direct a

thunderbolt upon the guilty, or to turn one aside from any path it might

incline to pursue!