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the Germans very well to return the hate which the Danes cherish against us, the aversion which animates the Russians, or the hauteur with which the French and English look upon us. Should we, however, not be quite unnatural if we did not undertake to repay like with like? "The good old Goethe dreamed in his old age of a universal literature," runs, long since, the criticism of the critic upon him. He did not merely dream-we did not understand him-he saw it in advance! In Humboldt this universal literature, of German extraction, became more definitely accomplished. The little book of which we are now speaking offers a new proof of how little he confined his thoughts to this side of the political boundaries of Germany.

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The young man, whom the situation of affairs in Prussia did not please, formed the determination to sail over to North America. Humboldt did not desire to discourage him from his purpose. The open letter, in French, which he gave him to take as a letter of recommendation, addressed to "all Americans," is a wonderful proof of the power of which he was himself conscious. As a prince writes, We, by the grace of God, make known and proclaim to all to whom these presents shall come," &c., so Humboldt commences, "All those who, in the United States, and in the other countries of America, have shown an appreciative cognizance of my name, and of my works concerning America, are hereby entreated to receive with kindness, Dr.

-, personne distingué par ses talents et la noblesse de son charactère," &c. What prince was ever in a position to issue such a pass, valid the whole world over? I take it that any one, who of himself alone, without a single human being pointing out the way to him, has taken to himself the minds of the whole world, as it were by force, may well be allowed somewhat the air of grand Seigneur, in his intercourse with the persons and things which form his surroundings, and with a light joke remark, at the same time, that King Ernst August, of Hanover, would certainly willingly hang him, if he had it in his power.

"All letters addressed to me are opened," he writes to the young man, as an opportune warning, quite in the same tone as though he said, "Take care, out there, how you ascend the stairs; there are two steps, the wood of which is rotten, and which you will be likely to break through, if you tread upon them." In the like ironical manner he alluded to the watchful care which the Berlin police thought fit to bestow upon him. Humboldt was quite conscious of being an inhabitant of a planet whose nature he understood better than any one else, which he had examined critically both internally and externally, and when he reflected on the thousands of years during which the changes of the earth had taken place, upon the millions of miles by which the distances are here measured, he felt the whole world his fatherland, and looked with a placid smile upon an inconvenient but transient despotism, without once thinking that the same was to be combated. He waited patiently, knowing from experience what the end would be; and

instead of lamenting, with old people, the transientness of things, he treated his own age and approaching death with levity, and strengthened the growing youth to hold fast to the imperishable, and to watch the transient and perishable, as the great master, and to behave as he himself was accustomed to. The imperishable, however, is the intellectual labor.

May a favoring fortune decree, that where Alexander Von Humboldt stood another may tread, who, like him, from the highest position, may know how to defend the dignity of art and knowledge, to support the right and the useful, and to prevent that which is unfruitful and sterile: who, like him, kind and courteous, in untiring service, to a'l endeavors striving to help both with advice and action, and when darkening times come, to scorn them, like him, as passing clouds, but, moreover, to be able to interpret even these in the service of progress. If then, of ten well deserving ones, one, or even two, to whom his unmerited intercession was permitted, slipped through, then must the wonderful service of such a man be seen in just so striking a light as to day the gap which his most irreparable loss has created is already seen.

T

THE

PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS.

HE non-believer in constant progression you may always know to be one who has not cast his eyes about him much, or surely not widely, as regards either space or time. Looking simply at one point-the march of mens' religious faiths toward perfection-would we, as a whole, contrast the past with the present, surely we could see progression enough here to almost base the law. I might omit the word "almost," did I believe, as many do, that the cultivation of the religious element in man is the initial step toward a general advancement in the development of the whole mind. And here allow me, parenthetically, to observe, lies the radical fault in the system of missionarying or proselyting among "the benighted" of foreign lands. The chambers of the religious faculty are "crammed," and the intellect, allowed, as it is, to wander free as it will, and you reverse nature's obvious law of development; for, if there ever was a truism, it is, that intellect, reason, trained and cultured as much as may be, let us hope, must lead.

It has been said, and as a trumpet-blast of boastful logic, that as fast as a people have advanced into the light of religious truths, so fast have they progressed in philosophical and æsthetic sciences, natural, and chiefly human improvements an obvious result, which blind zeal has made causative.

That there is a decided religious element in the whole human race — a seeking out and up for the great mystic unknown-that this element will

have its expression, and that the reasonableness of that expression will be in exact proportion to the intellectual elevation of that people,—are then facts so well understood and known that they scarcely need additional assertion here. This rude expression (for rude, perforce, it must be yet) of man's religious tendency is what the world calls religion, and, for the purpose of naming and being understood, I so use it. The internal motor, though, is all we can properly call pure religion; at least until it find a fit expression, which in some may be the case comparative, but would not include many who consider themselves well in the advance with liberal culture. The case continues less and less, to be sure, as he approaches it, and so will until reason assumes her just and high prerogative-the dominion of all the faculties of the mind, when the expression of this sentiment will no more run wild in the uncultivated fields after its idols, amused with its hideous sacrifices, looking no higher than symbols, and feeding upon the weeds of bigotry and superstition.

The question might be asked by some to-day: What may be considered progress in religious faith? Difficult it may be, too, for them to see that what was obviously progress and advance in the religious views of the past, is indeed, when reduced to general terms, the same progress of to-day. For it is easy for one to see the folly of the thing one has pursued, but now given up, but hard to perceive the inconsistency of that he is at the present moment living out. Perhaps as general, maybe indistinct, definition of the progress of the past as one could give, would be: the advance from narrowness to broadness of view the tenet being widened in its application. Symbolism has assuredly been the central idea around which have clustered the religions of the past; man not yet having progressed so far as to learn that the human soul needs no symbol whereby to know its God-no mediator to repeat its yearnings (prayers) to the Infinite Father. So we might define it to be the advancing wideness of view it has displayed in the selection of a higher and higher thing or being for its symbol or mediator. The definitive idea, though, which we may say applies to the past or present day the same, is one which can not so easily be given in few words. It may be measured by man's advance in materialistic sciences, in social and self-culture, the discovery and practical application of nature's hidden forces and laws, her powers and beauties; his knowledge of the To kaλov of the nineteenth century. In so far as reason has advanced in her control of the man, it may be seen in the reasonableness of his religious rites, creeds and ceremonies; and in so far as they do not conform to strict and pure reason, only in so far have they yet stepped upon the summit of their sublimity; for, pass him by in pity and silence who yet contends that you may not subject even the most sacred faiths and beliefs of the soul to the crucible and cleansing fire of pure reason. It may be beard, too, in the appeals of eloquence to the higher powers of the mind, morality, goodness and love; instead of fear, passion, etc. By some, though, it will be asked: Where are we of to-day to find this never-failing oracle which always speaks truth? You may take the highest expression or example at large which your age has given you; or,

etc.,

what is better, take as much as may be your own unclouded thought as arbiter, and submit to its unprejudiced decisions. As reason with us should and must henceforth lead, it follows that it must always be in advance of the lower faculties of the mind; and hence to make its decision final, is to do the best we can; the remaining duty being to educate this faculty up into purity and clearness. The former action being itself the greatest educator of all, reason thus rising through her mistakes and errors to a knowledge of the truth.

But constant (if slow) advance made the world cry out for a higher type of medicine; and, though as yet she were ill prepared for it, yet Christianity was given her. She spat upon it at first; then took it to heart, and loved it. Eighteen centuries passed, in which a great—much the greatestpart, with blind adoration, conjoint with priestly skill, warped and defiled Christianity into a foul mass of form, ceremony and superstition-her soul long since fled from her; while a limited and little few still upheld it in purity, making it a child of God, working and growing the fruit of truth in His vineyard. And so the nineteenth century has it. But early in its beginning the best minds, like stars among the ritted clouds, began to lift their voices up for a higher revelation. The best that yet was, had not in its folds the pearl of satisfaction to the progressive mind.

Right among us—indeed, in most every household, were it but knownrevolution is taking place, or germinating in mind, I mean, and in silence too. From some unknown and unrecognized source there has gravitated to a mind some stray and growing thought, which the angel of progression in his soul has planted in the goodly soil there, and made a germinating point for the growth of mind, until by its growth and added love it has become a transforming power to the whole soul. In externals the same, pursuing the same even tenor of worldly way; but internals must become externals at some time, and power will not always remain latent and inactive. So silent and quick has this been, and so little as we have thought of the change in those near us, how much less have we dreamed of the mighty revolution and changes which the whole world knows in the realm of religious ideas. Everywhere 'Liberality" is the watchword of all religious advance. In how very

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few years (criticise it as you may) has sprung into life that peculiar faith of spiritualism, which numbers its believers everywhere, and by the million. How quickly has universalism become popular in belief and numbers; universalism, the stepping-stone to the broader faith of unitarianism, which seems to have become a power wondrous quick, and almost the leader in religious liberality. But there is a church, broad, unnamed and unrecognized, in advance of, and distinct from, all the popular churches and beliefs of the day. It is the wide-spread community of Free Thinkers, who, each outside the pale of all organization, stand out and up as our only representatives of scientific and philosophical religious thought. Greater germinal hopes, I think, lie centered here, because here is better represented that distinct and individual awakening of religious growth than that where the

individual is lost in the mass. Unless pure, division from organization has a tendency to retrograde, or at least divide singleness and purity of purpose; friends and associations will draw the heart back again, or partially, unless that heart be strong in its faith and knowledge of truth. In this class, as was said, can be more perfectly seen this distinctive religious advance which seems to be the nature of all awakening in our century. More rapid and purer has been its march, because minds, already to a great extent unprejudiced, and not vitally affected by church creeds and mythic superstitions, could be so much more easily entered by the spirit of liberalism, and broadened in all its beliefs, sympathies, hopes and faiths.

Chew, oh Catholicism! your savory cuds of hope, and recalculate your highpressure calculations, — that ere the twentieth century dawns upon us, your power, in numbers, will be so great that from your ipse dixit there will be no appeal; and that the transfer of the seat of Pope and power from her beseiged home of the past will be to our own beloved America. We might hearken to the frowning prophecy, but heed it we could not. law, in its action, progressive.

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God is law:

This much of America, the home and birth-place of free and practical liberalism. Of the old world-the home, in past time, of all the opposition which spiritual advance has had to encounter of her it would take a prophet's eye to pierce the future, so distant is it, when war between bigotry and liberality would, if at all, take place. I would not attempt it, but surely such sanguine hopes as one might have as to the peace of our own land would find a poor resting-place when applied to the past home of spiritual ignorance. Here bigotry sits behind her breast-works, unstormed, but not untried—in mind, self-satisfied-thinking that she is safe from the world's intervention so long as she kept the sun of truth from lighting the thoughtclouds of her moral universe. But God will not sleep forever, nor indeed has he; for even through the long length of dark years, mind, preparation and advance have been going on, not indeed superficial, but internal and unseen. Whether near or far in the distance the beginning of the struggle may be, none may tell; at present it would seem that the idea of commotion, upheaval — yea, war!— is so general, so recognized, and preparations for it so active, though silent, that it were not far off you may attribute causes, as some do, to political jealousies and revenge, yet see how thoroughly is mixed with it the church - theology in some form; and looking thus deeply, we may, I think, see that primal causes lie here. The end, though, cannot but be afar off. With us of the new world, it must be, that the dawn approacheth. But it is true, that as yet, with a majority, this is but a neuter developmentneither pure liberalism, nor is it the narrow conservatism of the past. It would seem that many of our people were stopping at the half-way house, between the dogmatism and illiberality of the past and the advancement and religious illumination of the opening future. But it may be plainly seen, and by the least observant, that liberalism, or, as the church pleases to call it,

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