and forever solved. That which thus strives against our will, and which cannot be crushed into nothingness, is imperfect life; which even because it is life struggles for continued existence, but must cease to be as soon as its place is occupied by a higher and nobler life. "Those desires which I must sacrifice," thinks the religious man, "are not my desires, but they are desires which are directed against me and my higher existence; they are my foes, which cannot be destroyed too soon. The pain which they cause is not my pain, but the pain of a nature which has conspired against me; it is not the agonies of death, but the pangs of a new birth, which will be glorious beyond all my expectations."

R

ELEVATING POWER OF RELIGION

From The Characteristics of the Present Age'

ELIGION elevates him who is devoted to her service above time as such, above the transient and the perishable, and puts him in immediate possession of eternity. On the one original Divine life his eye reposes; there his love is rooted; whatever meets his view and seems to be beyond this one original life, is not beyond it but within it, and is merely a temporary form of its development according to an absolute law which likewise lies within itself; he sees all things only in and through this one original life, and in this life he sees the whole infinite universe of being. His view is thus always the view of the eternal, and what he sees, he sees as eternal and in the eternal: nothing can truly be which is not, even on that very account, eternal. Every fear of perishing in death, and every effort to discover an artificial proof of the immortality of the soul, lies far beneath him. In every moment of his existence he has immediate possession of the eternal life with all its blessedness; and he needs no argument or inference to prove the truth of that which he possesses in ever-present feeling and consciousness. There is no more striking proof that the knowledge of the true religion has hitherto been very rare among men, and that in particular it is a stranger in the prevailing systems, than this: that they universally place eternal blessedness beyond the grave, and never for a moment imagine that whoever will, may here and at once be blessed.

Hˆ

SPIRITUAL LIGHT AND TRUTH

From The Characteristics of the Present Age›

As the light of religion arisen within us? Then it not only dispels the previous darkness, but it has also had a true and essential existence within us, even while it could not dispel this darkness; now it spreads itself forth until it embraces our whole world, and thus becomes the source of new life. In the beginning of these lectures we have traced everything great and noble in man to this, that he lose sight of his own personal existence in the life of the race; devote his own life to the purposes of the race; labor, endure, suffer, and if need be die, as a sacrifice to the race. In this view it was always deeds, always that which could manifest itself in outward and visible appearance, to which we looked. In this way it was necessary for us to open our communication with the age. Now, ennobled by our progress from this point of view, as I foretold, we use this language no longer. The one thing truly noble in man, the highest form of the one idea which reveals itself within him, is religion: but religion is nothing external, and never clothes itself in any outward manifestation, but it completes the inward life of man; it is spiritual light and truth. The true course of action is now discovered of itself, for truth cannot act otherwise than according to truth; but this true course of action is no longer a sacrifice, no longer demands suffering and endurance, but is itself the manifestation and effluence of the highest inward blessedness. He who, although with reluctance and in conflict with internal darkness, yet acts according to truth, let him be admired, and let his heroism be extolled: he upon whom this inward light has arisen has outgrown our admiration and our praise; there is no longer any doubt, hesitation, or obstruction in his being, but all is the one clear, ever-flowing fountain of truth.

Formerly we expressed ourselves in the following language:— "As when the breath of spring enlivens the air, the strong and fixed ice which but a few moments before imprisoned each atom within its own limits, and shut up each neighboring atom in similar isolation, now no longer holds nature in its rigid bondage, but flows forth in one free, animated, and glowing flood,— so does the spirit world ever flow at the breath of love, and is and abides in eternal communion with the mighty whole." Let us

now add: "This atmosphere of the spirit world, this creating and combining element, is light-this originally; warmth, if it do not again exhale, but bear within itself an element of duration, is but the first manifestation of this light. In the darkness of mere earthly vision, all things stand divided from each other; each individual thing isolated by means of the cold and unillumined matter in which it is embraced. But in this darkness there is no unity. The light of religion arises!—and all things burst forth and rush towards each other in reciprocal order and dependence, and float on together as a united whole in the one eternal and all-embracing flood of light.

This light is mild, silent, refreshing, and wholesome to the eye. In the twilight of mere earthly vision the dim shapes which crowd in confusion around us are feared, and therefore hated. In the light of religion all things are pleasing, and shed around them calmness and peace. In it all unlovely shapes disappear, and all things float in the glowing ether of love. Not that man devotes himself to the high will of fate, which is unchangeable and unavoidable; in religion there is no fate, but only wisdom and goodness, to which man is not compelled to resign himself, but which embrace him with infinite love. In these contemplations in which we have been engaged, this joyful and friendly view ought to have spread itself over our own age, and over the whole earthly life of our race. The more closely this mild influence has embraced us, the deeper it has penetrated all our thoughts and aspirations,-in a word, the more we have attained to peace with the whole world, and joyful sympathy with every form of existence, the more sure may we be and the more confidently may we affirm, that our previous contemplations have belonged not to vacant but to true time.

EUGENE FIELD

(1850-1895)

UGENE FIELD was born in St. Louis, Missouri, September 2d or 3d, 1850. He was of New England ancestry, and spent his early years in Massachusetts. "While he gloried in the West," wrote one of his biographers, "and remained loyal to the section which gave him birth and in which he chose to cast his lot, he was not less proud of his New England blood, and not the less conscious of his New England training." He studied at Williams and Knox Colleges, and at the University of Michigan, and after his graduation in 1871 he traveled in Europe.

Returning to St. Louis he became engaged in journalism, and was connected with various newspapers in St. Louis, St. Joseph, Kansas City, and Denver, until he finally settled in Chicago. Through his tales and poems he acquired popularity, and in addition to his labors as a journalist and poet he became a favorite lecturer. Of his love of curios his brother says:

$

EUGENE FIELD

"For years he had been an indefatigable collector, and he took a boyish pleasure not only in his souvenirs of long journeys and distinguished men and women, but in the queer toys and trinkets of children, which seemed to give him inspiration for much that was effective in childhood verse. To the careless observer the immense array of weird dolls and absurd toys in his working-room meant little more than an idiosyncratic passion for the anomalous, but those who were near to him knew what a connecting link they were between him and little children, of whom he wrote, and how each trumpet and drum, each 'spinster doll,' each little toy dog, each little tin soldier, played its part in the poems he sent out into the world."

He was extremely fond of children, and some of his best poetry was written on themes that interest childhood. His numerous lullabies have been set to music by several American composers. He was a devoted student of Horace, from whom he made many translations. Some of these are included in 'Echoes from a Sabine Farm,'

which he wrote with his brother, Martin Roswell Field, and which was published soon after his death, which took place in Chicago, November 4th, 1895. His last books were 'My House' and 'The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac,' a series of essays on literary subjects, interspersed with short poems. His other publications include: 'A Little Book of Western Verse'; 'A Little Book of Profitable Tales'; 'Love Songs of Childhood'; 'A Second Book of Verse'; and The Holy Cross and Other Tales,' the initial story of which has for its theme the death of the Wandering Jew upon the mountain of the Holy Cross. A complete edition of Field's works (10 vols., New York, 1896) is enriched with critical and personal estimates of the man and the writer by Joel Chandler Harris, Julian Hawthorne, E. E. Hale, Francis Wilson, and Edmund Clarence Stedman. Mr. Stedman says:

"Of all moderns, then, here or in the old world, Eugene Field seems to be most like the survival or revival of the ideal jester of knightly times; as if Yorick himself were incarnated, or as if a superior bearer of the bauble at the court of Italy, or France, or of the English King Hal, had come to life again, as much out of time as Twain's Yankee at the court of King Arthur; but not out of place, for he fitted himself as aptly to his folk and region as Puck to the fays and mortals of a wood near Athens. To come to

the jesters of history,- which is so much less real than fiction,- what laurels are greener than those of Triboulet, and Will Somers, and John Heywood, dramatist and master of the King's merry interludes? Their shafts were feathered with mirth and song but pointed with wisdom; and well might old John Trussell say: 'It often happens that wise counsel is more sweetly followed when it is tempered with folly, and earnest is the less offensive if it be delivered in jest.' Yes, Field 'caught on to his time,- a complex American, with the obstreperous bizarrerie of the frontier and the artistic delicacy of our oldest culture always at odds with him; but he was above all a child of nature, a frolic incarnate, and just as he would have been in any time or country. Fortune had given him that unforgettable mummer's face, that clean-cut, mobile visage, that animated natural mask. No one else had so deep and rich a voice for the reading of the music and pathos of a poet's lines; and no actor ever managed both face and voice better than he in delivering his own verses, merry or sad.”