overlooked, like a printer's revise. I see that deformity or beauty in my ground depends on a certain disposition of earth and rock, and wood and road; and my men and oxen go to work. So over the breaking up of old, rough forms and ragged creeds, dawns the new faith. The ecclesiastic trinity is disintegrated past recall; the magic exposed of washing the world with a few gills of blood, when it takes the vital current in all men and atoning power of God, the beams of his face to bleach our blackness, his strength to straighten the crooked stick and braid the refuse strand, his grace to convert iniquity, and his blessing to extract sorrow from joy; and there is no burning throne to consume sinners, only sin. So the shadow falling into the house from a great affliction becomes more precious than any ray of earthly fame; and there is no gloom from a gravestone which the shining of angelic countenances does not chase away. I have noticed that the time of my disappointment, rebuff, self-reproach is my fruitful season, as the treachery of David's acquaintance wrung melody from his harp.

On my own seeing I must rely. Why should Jesus or Paul see for me? I must look, as I eat, for myself. If I am blind, or see men as trees walking, let some Doctor of Divinity couch my eyes; then let me use them! With another's coming out to lock the door, and tell me what is inside, I am not content. Peter's keys are rusty and will no longer fit the wards. Books, called sacred or profane, shall help me when I am weary; but in my lucid intervals I put them all aside, and find my illuminated missal without gilding, or binding, or print. Why should a volume, however rich and

ready, rob my patrimony? I will read Tennyson or Browning while they clear and compose, not when they disguise my conviction, and darken or disturb my state. Sometimes Isaiah is not worth a farthing, I have such inward wealth; and, if a thought come over me, I lay Dante or Shakspeare down. For frankly, I prefer my own inspiration to Job's or John's. Those curious lamps dug up at Pompeii, no doubt once shed a soft lustre through the festal chambers that were turned to sudden graves; but the flame went out, the oil failed; and I leave them as ornaments on my mantel, and fill other vessels or light modern jets. So the candle of the Lord in my own, and no prophet's breast, is my guide through dismal passages and midnight hours. Is this dangerous trust? Need I mistake mean impulse for the spirit? My stomach inclines to some tempting morsel, but its conscience protests; and there is a discriminator in the soul. I am grateful to evangelist; but he is relieved and superseded when the order comes within. Then parable of lost sheep or prodigal son is but like a gold dollar to him who has struck the virgin mine; and the ointment in the alabaster box as a drop to the Pennsylvania wells. What service is the Lord's Prayer when I know what I want? Nothing satisfies but the immense and unexpressed. No man's words do justice to my mind; once spoken, I tie not myself to my own; but wear eternal inconsistency with my past graven on my shield. All the water-marks on crag and beach are sunk and the lines of sea-weed swept by the coast-tide; and by divine influx every custom is submerged. Meteorology teaches that one hot or wet. day generates another and that a third; and if it goes

to the ninth, the tenth, like its predecessors, is almost sure to come; so, last season it rains, and this it shines almost all summer long. What a parody and satire on human habit! A man loses half his worth, said the ancient, when he becomes a slave; and the slave-owner loses more. But the worst slavery is to one's self, bondage to former speech or act. Some fine ladies can abide us only as worshippers. Bend not the knee even 'to yourself! Only fresh vision is emancipation from the coil we wind, a new turn and twist every year. Whatever we do, let us see clearer and further day by day. See you again, is the beautiful French and German parting salutation. Jesus greeted his disciples So. See you ever, was my leave-taking, and never part. Not patients in any blind asylum of a world, but seers of God and each other shall we not all be at last?

III.

THE SECRET POWER.

FREE speech has limits other than those of human

law. We may be true in not telling, and false in having told what we thought. Ole Bull, with an artist's knowledge of his sensitive class, said we must see and not speak; and the voluble people, who profess so loudly their virtue of being plain and blunt, might learn from the taciturnity of nature and God. Our phrase, the secret of power, is dictated by our experience and instinct how, from a certain concealment and darkness, all achievement comes forth, as a seed cannot show what is in it till it is buried in the ground. Goethe nursed his literary conceptions out of sight; and a great preacher said he never told his text but the devil stole it. The Jesuits' doctrine of reserve, however falsely held, had a color in the counsel of Jesus not to cast pearls before swine; and when Hamlet complains of being "too much in the sun," he hints what a wholesome emblem of privacy night is for the mind. The conscious salutariness of retirement made Fenelon say, I desire to be unknown; and John Howard wanted no monument. In proportion as we deal with reality we heed not the shadow of reputation, and are

deaf to the trumpet of fame; and to be blazed with fashion, a woman of society, a man of the world, a thorough-paced politician, or, as a Fayal Romanist, who saw through his own canonicals, said he was, a priest by trade, comes of that publicity where springs no fount of inspiration and falls no dew of grace. In the very search for pleasure and a fine figure on the earth the charm of life has gone. We have pulled the world to pieces as a child does its toy; there is no more attraction; the cup that was foam is dregs. Therefore a great affliction, driving us from the surface, is not only always a blessing, as the minister declares, but becomes a delight. When I condoled with Amos Lawrence on the death of a dear daughter, he remarked that such a bereavement added a great zest to life. Existence cannot lose its interest to one who has had and lost offspring, because such a passage forces reflection, wakens the sense of mystery, which custom closes; stirs inquiry, faces us with the great Power, reveals, however dimly, some angel of hope, and exercises in the closet or heart's recess faculties genuine and unostentatious, instead of those that flash and fade in the pressing and brilliant crowd; and when, perhaps, some changeling of a human bird lights on the bough that has not ceased to tremble where the first flew off, how amazed with a joy you almost feel a guilty denial of the claims of mourning, as the Former of our bodies and Father of our spirits ceases to be a phrase on the page!

The unspoken and unspeakable is more than all our talk. "Half his strength he put not forth;" no effort is delightful or impressive that exhausts. Be