obtain, naturally, all needed material things, so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold on God, and supply spiritual wants; through them we obtain all needed spiritual things.-Discourses of Religion, p. 202. We have always felt that, though undoubtedly the truth of spiritual communion is clearly deducible from this analogue, it was chargeable with making such communion too simple, in the sense of too easy. It seems to put the pearls on the surface of the waves, instead of in the caverns of the deep, to be reached only by the skilled and fearless diver. The soul's rapture is not so much a theme as a symphony: a child may sing the theme, but ages of culture and experience must go to such a development of that theme into all its possibilities as makes the symphony. At any rate, it is clear to us that Parker had evolved this divine symphony, though he may have misjudged that it could be as familiar to all as the lullaby. As the last of these echoes awakened by the knell which tells of a great man's departure, dies, we pause once more to consider our loss. Every word quoted has an indication that we are in the midst of a Revolution of thought. It is not given to any one mind to revolutionize any system; for each such epoch there must be the scholastic Erasmus, the genial Melancthon, the persistent Zwingle, as well as the courageous monk of Erfurth. And when the smoke has cleared from the battle-field of the American theology, it will not be hard to find, along with its scholars and poets, who was its eloquent and lion-hearted Luther. Meanwhile, we rejoice to witness signs that the Liberal Church has learned a lesson from the sad history of its relations with Theodore Parker, which will prevent such wretched self-stultification in the future. Thus by his stripes shall some wounded hearts be healed, and in his grave shall be buried many unholy weapons, unworthy of the spirit of the age. Therefore, the Church of the Future, when she makes up her jewels, will hang, as the charm about her neck, the memory of him by the interpretation of whose life her other children were recognized. He, says Ruskin, who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent there are the wild love or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart. or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust. But the lesson which men receive as individuals, they do not learn as nations. Again and again they have seen their noblest descend into the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the tombstone, when they had not crowned the brow, and to pay the honor to the ashes which they had denied to the spirit. Let it not displease them, that they are bidden, amidst the tumult and the dazzle of their busy life, to listen for the few voices and watch for the few lamps which God has toned and lighted to guide them, that they may not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor their light by their decay. AB URBE. FAREWELL to Traffic's ceaseless stir, To crowded throngs and hurrying feet; I hold with Pan communion sweet. Farewell to smirking fraud and trick, Farewell to social feuds and hate, Farewell to Love's bewitching spells, Farewell to quack and demagogue,— In the free air, cures all my ills. The elm-tree, maple, birch and pine The newer, better continent. ᎠᎡ EINBOHRER AND HIS PUPILS. CHAPTER VII.-OF FORM. WHEN Dr. E. came out this morning, he excited the curiosity of his pupils to the last pitch by setting on the table, just under his nose, the oddest little figure. Van Stammer, who had been reading Plato until two the night before, and whose sore eyes were snapping out gleams of the Absolute and Self-subsistent, of which he had been meditating ever since, turned pale and ventured to Peter House next him the theory that this was the Dæmon of our Teutonic Socrates; whereupon Peter rose, bowed low, and exclaimed, "Good morning, Pigmy Devil, Esq.; how do you do?" His levity, however, did not even obtain the notice of the venerable Jecovas, who for a minute regarded silently and even fondly this queer little figure of a man, who had singularly prominent features and a very long row of teeth, reaching, as it were, far down into his throat. Now was it that I rejoiced that I had undertaken to make notes of, what the Doctor stated in his lectures; for, in order to do this, I had obtained a seat very near his desk. It was this that enabled me to hear distinctly a significant apostrophe addressed by him to the mannikin before he began his lecture (the other pupils only saw his lips move): "Poor little make-believe of a man!" said he; "soulless thou art, infirm a man of wax; yet to me thou art the theme of the ages; in thee the scores of the symphony of life— whose four movements are the four kingdoms of Nature !" -- Setting aside for a time the little figure, the Doctor proceeded to address us as follows on FORM: "Philosophers have always been more speculative than clear on the subject of form. Indeed, Morphology, up to the time of Swedenborg, was a science that was only sung. Swedenborg entered a little into this realm, and its magnificent verities and beauties, we are sorry to know, crazed him. He would not stop until he had given God himself shape and definition. No doubt God has shape and definition, but that Swedenborg would have to become a little His superior in order to report them, is still more doubtless. But we may remark, here, a very ingenious conclu sion of this Great Seer, given without proof or probability, but interesting as indicating the extent to which an idea would ride him. Swedenborg intimates that the specific taste or smell of an object is dependent upon the shape of its atoms; that is, if the particles of salt and sugar were of similar form, there would be no difference in their taste. The mode of the action is this: the palate is a bundle of nerves in these nerves are all the various flavors of the earth. The special and peculiar shape of the atoms of sugar are alone able to pierce into the sugar-nerves; peppermint would leave the sugar-nerves untouched and excite the peppermint nerves; and so of salt, vanilla and what not. Of course, no process can ever destroy the atomic shapes of these substances. Now this may all be true, but if so, the theorem must hold with the other senses, and our science must give us the mathematical form of a violet ray, must measure the dimensions of a musk fragrance. must carve a statuette of a nightingale's song! I will not say that these are impossible—they do not seem to contradict any ideal that Nature is training in us. "An old English poet has given us a line that will bear some scrutiny : 'Soul is Form and doth the body make.' the power, that is If soul is Form, it follows that it is not any special form; each form must be one string of its limitless lyre. But there is no form except for the expression of some form of soul; therefore it was well said that ere the brooding spirit moved on the face of the fluid world it was without form.' Every animal form is a crystalization about the passionwhich it represents. Your wader will have long legs, your swimmer will be web-footed; the lion must have a thick, shaggy neck, sufficient to hold up a slain ox. As the æons roll forward, we find these scattered letters of form put together and spelt out in some glorious ferocity, as Napoleon, or transcendent fox, as Richelieu. We find, then, that the Eternal Soul made the old forms as a pictured alphabet to spell out the inevitable modes of its existence, and that fox, dog, wolf, lamb, lion, are sagacity, fidelity, liberty, gentleness, superiority, — all attributes of the soul." The good Einbohrer now took hold of the little mannikin, very much to the satisfaction of the class, whose curiosity, raised to its highest pitch, had not, I fear, helped their attentiveness to the abstruse truths which had been announced. As he handled it, we saw that it was soft to his touch, and could be moulded to any shape he desired. He began by stretching it out to its full dimensions, so that instead of its being a man, it was like a Zuglodon. He made a very good imitation of several animals. But very curious indeed was the ease with which he flattened the forehead, swelled the lips, and made a grinning ape, with slight variation, a low Irishman, and then a negro. It was very curious and signalized by an explosion of laughter, when the mannikin, having traveled through a myriad of ages in twenty minutes all the way from the plutonic rocks-regained his composure and sat before us grinning over his Protean adventures as before. The master then proceeded : Gentlemen, we are very much deluded by the seeming. Forms seem to us very different, because we think we have seen them when we have not; or, rather, we think that an object is to be seen with our eyes. Seen with the eyes, the moon is largest of the heavenly bodies three feet apart · - and stars millions of miles apart are but and the earth is flat. Scarcely any of the senses, or faculties, and none of the experience can be left out in the simple act of seeing an object. With two strokes only of his brush Titian changed the picture of a cat into a laughing maiden. See, 'tis but by depressing these mouth-muscles that I change this plastic friend of ours who seems bursting with laughter, into a desolate mourner. "Pray, now, look at the variations of animal form through which our inanimate teacher has gone, with eye and reason too, with a remembrance that things are not what they seem. Oken, in a great moment, when the Earth with its fossils became transparent to him, said, 'There is but one animal.' "Have you not seen that throughout the World of Form it is Man, whether flying, swimming, creeping or walking? "But man himself is of variable form; for it is not the general body that constitutes the aim of creation. It is the Brain, allinformed, that Nature has all along been constructing. The limbs and trunk are but a frame-work for supporting and defending this elegant piece of work, which Nature supported so, lest some injury should come to it. It is the BRAIN which has been passing from furnace to furnace, from anvil to anvil, and which bears to the latest all the temper it has gained from the preceding degrees. Go to,' said the SPIRIT; I will make Man - that is, a catholic |