temptible in speech? No, it was none of these things. They had somewhat more convincing than authority; wiser than learning; more persuasive than eloquence. Men felt the doctrine was true and divine. They saw its truth and divinity mirrored in the life of these rough men; they heard the voice of God in their own hearts say, it is true. They tried it by the standard God has placed in the heart, and it stood the test. They saw the effect it had on Christians themselves, and said, "Here at least is something divine, for men do not gather grapes of thorns." When men came out from hearing Peter or Paul set forth the Christian doctrine and apply it to life, they did not say, “what a moving speaker; how beautifully he divides the word;' how he mixes the light of the sun, and the roar of torrents, and the sublimity of the stars, as it were, in his speech; what a melting voice; what graceful gestures; what beautiful similes gathered from all the arts, sciences, poetry, and nature herself." It was not with such reflections they entertained their journey home. They said, "what shall we do to be saved?”

6

Primitive Christianity was a wonderful element, as it came into the world. Like a two-edged sword, it cut down through all the follies and falseness of four thousand years. It acknowledged what was good and true in all systems, and sought to show its own agreement with goodness and truth, wherever found. It told men what they were. It bade them hope, look upon the light, and aspire after the most noble end- to be complete men, to be reconciled to the will of God, and so become one with him. It gave the world assurance of a man, by showing one whose life was beautiful as his doctrine, and his doctrine combined all the excellence of all former teachers, and went before the world, thousands of years. It told men there was one God who had made of one blood all the nations of the earth, and was a father to each man. It showed that all men are brothers. Believing in these doctrines, seeing the greatness of man's nature in the very ruins sin had wrought; filled with the beauty of a good life, the comforting thought, that God is always near, and ready to help, no wonder men felt moved in their heart. The life of the apostles and early Christians, the self-denial they practised, their readiness to endure persecution, their love one for the other, beautifully enforced the words of truth and love.

One of the early champions of the faith appeals in triumph to the excellence of Christians, which even Julian of a later day was forced to confess. You know the Chris

tians soon as you see them, he says; they are not found in taverns, nor places of infamous resort; they neither game, nor lie, nor steal, attend the baths, or the theatres; they are not selfish but loving. The multitude looked on, at first to see "whereunto the thing would grow." They saw, and said, see how these Christians love one another; how the new religion takes down the selfishness of the proud, makes avarice charitable, and the voluptuary selfdenying.

This new spirit of piety, of love to man, and love to God, the active application of the great Christian maxims to life, led to a manly religion; not to that pale-faced pietism which hangs its head on Sundays, and does nothing but whine out its sentimental cant on week-days, in hopes to make this drivelling pass current for real manly excellence. No; it led to a noble, upright frame of mind, heart, and soul, and in this way it conquered the world. The first apostles of Christianity were persuasive, through the power of truth. They told what they had felt. They had been under the Law, and knew its thraldom; they had escaped from the iron furnace, and could teach others the way. No doubt the wisest of them was in darkness on many points. Their general ignorance, in the eyes of the scholar, must have stood in strange contrast with their clear view of religious truth. It seems, as Paul says, that God had chosen the foolish and the weak to confound the mighty and the wise. Now we have accomplished scholars, skilled in all the lore of the world, accomplished orators; but who does the work of Paul, and Timothy? Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings praise was perfected; out of the mouth of clerks and orators what do we get? Well said Jeremiah, "The prophets shall become wind, and the word not be in them."

If we come from the days of the apostles to their successors, and still later, we find the errors of the first teachers have become magnified; the truth of Christianity is dim; men had wandered farther from that great light God sent into the world. The errors of the Pagans, the Jews, the errors of obstinate men, who loved to rule God's heritage

better than to be ensamples unto the flock, had worked their way. The same freedom did not prevail as before. The word of God had become a letter; men looked back, not forward. Superstition came into the church. The rites of Christianity its accidents, not its substanceheld an undue place; ascetism was esteemed more than hitherto. The body began to be reckoned unholy; Christ regarded as a God, not a man living as God commands. Then the Priest was separated from the people, and a flood of evils came upon the church, and accomplished what persecution with her headsmen, and her armies never could effect. Christianity was grossly corrupted long before it ascended the throne of the world. But for this corruption it would have found no place in the court of Rome or Byzantium. Still in the writings of early Christians, of Tertullian and Cyprian, for example, we find a real living spirit, spite of the superstition, bigotry, and falseness too obvious in the men. They spake because they had somewhat to say, and were earnest in their speech. You come down from the writings of Seneca to Cyprian, you miss the elegant speech, the wonderful mastery over language, and the stores of beautiful imagery, with which that hard, bombastic Roman sets off his thought. But in the Christian - you find an earnestness and a love of man, which the Roman had not, and a fervent piety to which he made no pretension. But alas, for the superstition of the Bishop, his austerity and unchristian doctrines! It remains doubtful whether an enlightened man, who had attained a considerable growth in religious excellence, would not justly have preferred the Religion of Seneca to that of Cyprian; but there is no doubt such an one would have accepted with joyful faith the religion of Jesus the primitive Christianity undefiled by men. To come down from the Christianity of Christ, to the Religion popularly taught in the churches of New England, and we ask can it be this for which men suffered martyrdom-this, which changed the face of the world? Is this matter, for which sect contends with sect, to save the Heathen world? Christianity was a simple thing in Paul's time; in Christ's it was simpler still. But what is it now? A modern writer somewhat quaintly says, the early writers of the Christian church knew what Christianity was, they were the fathers; the scholastics and philosphers of the

dark ages knew what Reason was; they were the doctors; the religionists of modern times know neither what is Christianity, nor what Reason; they are the scrutators.

P.

BETTINE BRENTANO AND HER FRIEND GÜNDERODE.

BETTINE BRENTANO's letters to Goethe, published under the title of Goethe's correspondence with a Child, are already well known among us and met with a more cordial reception from readers in general than could have been expected. Even those who are accustomed to measure the free movements of art by the conventions that hedge the path of daily life, who, in great original creations, seek only intimations of the moral character borne by the author in his private circle, and who, had they been the contemporaries of Shakspeare, would have been shy of visiting the person who took pleasure in the delineation of a Falstaff;-even those whom Byron sneers at as "the garrison people," suffered themselves to be surprised in their intrenchments, by the exuberance and wild, youthful play of Bettine's genius, and gave themselves up to receive her thoughts and feelings in the spirit which led her to express them. They felt that here was one whose only impulse was to live, to unfold and realize her nature, and they forgot to measure what she did by her position in society.

There have been a few exceptions of persons who judged the work unworthily, who showed entire insensibility to its fulness of original thought and inspired fidelity to nature, and vulgarized by their impure looks the innocent vagaries of youthful idolatry. But these have been so few that, this time, the vulgar is not the same with the mob, but the reverse.

If such was its reception from those long fettered by custom, and crusted over by artificial tastes, with what joy was it greeted by those of free intellect and youthful eager heart. So very few printed books are in any wise a faithful transcript of life, that the possession of one really sincere made an era in many minds, unlocking tongues that

had long been silent as to what was dearest and most delicate in their experiences, or most desired for the future, and making the common day and common light rise again to their true value, since it was seen how fruitful they had been to this one person. The meteor playing in our sky diffused there an electricity and a light, which revealed unknown attractions in seemingly sluggish substances, and lured many secrets from the dim recesses in which they had been cowering for years, unproductive, cold, and silent.

Yet, while we enjoyed this picture of a mind tuned to its highest pitch by the desire of daily ministering to an idolized object; while we were enriched by the results of the Child's devotion to him, hooted at by the Philistines as the "Old Heathen," but to her poetic apprehension 'Jupiter, Apollo, all in one," we must feel that the relation in which she stands to Goethe is not a beautiful one. Idolatries are natural to youthful hearts noble enough for a passion beyond the desire for sympathy or the instinct of dependence, and almost all aspiring natures can recall a period when some noble figure, whether in life or literature, stood for them at the gate of heaven, and represented all the possible glories of nature and art. This worship is in most instances, a secret worship; the still, small voice constantly rising in the soul to bid them harmonize the discords of the world, and distill beauty from imperfection, for another of kindred nature has done so. This figure whose achievements they admire is their St. Peter, holding for them the keys of Paradise, their model, their excitement to fulness and purity of life, their external conscience. When this devotion is silent, or only spoken out through our private acts, it is most likely to make the stair to heaven, and lead men on till suddenly they find the golden gate will open at their own touch, and they need neither mediator nor idol more. The same course is observable in the religion of nations, where the worship of Persons rises at last into free thought in the minds of Philosophers.

But when this worship is expressed, there must be singular purity and strength of character on the part both of Idol and Idolater, to prevent its degenerating into a mutual excitement of vanity or mere infatuation.

"Thou art the only one worthy to inspire me;" cries

one.