element in man. It observes, determines, and judges; but its judgments are generally partial, negative, and selfish; never does it elevate the soul, nor fill it with a divine enthusiasm; it creates no heroes, nor has it ever accomplished any great thing for humanity! It is the soul which acts, which makes men brave to face danger, and strong to endure fatigue; and the soul's language is not verbal, but symbolic and ritual. Not a man lives but feels, at times, that language, in its happiest combinations, is all too weak to express those burning thoughts which oft stir up his soul into a very tempest of emotion. Hence religion, which concerns the soul intimately, is always in its truest state associated with a ritual, the more imposing, sublime, and beautiful, the better.

"I observe," says an earnest and eloquent writer, "that, in modern times, men are swayed chiefly by force and interest, whereas the ancients acted and were moved more by persuasion, and by the affections of the soul, because they did not neglect the language of signs."-" Before force was established, the gods were the magistrates of the human race"as, indeed, they ought to be now-" before them all men made their covenants and pronounced their promises; and the face of the earth was the Book where their records were preserved. Rocks, trees, piles of stones, consecrated by their acts, and ren

*J. J. Rousseau.

dered respectable to those rude men, were the leaves of that book, open for ever to the inspection of all. The faith of men was more certainly secured by these dumb witnesses-these gross yet august monuments of the sanctity of contracts, than it is to-day, by all the vain rigor of the laws."

It seems to us that this thought is founded in a true philosophy, and is the result of a wide and profound study of the nature of man. It cannot be doubted that the chief reason why the church of Rome has continued to maintain so powerful an empire over the consciences of men is, that she has been true to the wants of human nature in preserving a worship, sublime, symbolical, and poetical, which always must and will command the reverence of sensible and imaginative beings. There never was a government more efficient, more wisely and justly administered, than that of Rome in the happier days of the Republic. With the Romans all was ceremony, representation, and show. Garments were varied according to age or condition; heroes were crowned with diadems of gold, or wreaths of flowers or of leaves; and all this made a deep impression on the heart of every citizen. On the other hand, a government must be weak which lays aside all official decorations and public ceremonies, because in doing thus, it refuses to address all the faculties of the human soul, and does not respond to all the desires of the heart.

Neither could any religious sect extend itself very widely, unless in some way or other it provided for this want. Nor could the benevolent Order of Freemasonry, grand and beautiful as is its central idea, and excellent as are confessedly its objects, make any considerable progress, or maintain its influence and efficiency, divested of its rites, symbols, and mysteries.

The truest and most expressive and useful of teachings has far less of words than of action. Moral ideas, expressed by signs, have infinitely more power than when uttered by words. When Alexander the Great applied his seal to the lips of his favorite minister, he enjoined on him secrecy and silence far more effectually than he could have done in a long discourse. The priest of Rome making the sign of the cross on the brow of the new-born child, says infinitely more than does the Protestant clergyman in his dedicatory formulary, let it consist of ever so many words! Signs, being the indices of absolute truth, often have an influence which, if we consider it well, will be found to be quite magical. We walk, for example, at midnight along the streets of one of our large country towns. Before us stands a store-house, filled with valuable merchandise its windows are unguarded, and a light tap with the end of a staff will be sufficient to break a pane of the glass, making an entrance through which a man may pass with ease. The doors, it is

true, are closed and locked. Now, why is it that the thief, in his predatory excursions, does not enter there and despoil the slumbering merchant of his money and goods? There is no physical force sufficient to prevent it. A blow of the fist will open a passage through the window, and a few welldirected strokes of the arm, with the proper instrument, would shiver the bolt into fragments. Yet year in and year out, it stands there safe. Why is this? It is because there is upon that door a sign-a sign of power! Yet that lock, as so much steel or iron, as a mere physical force, can give no real security; for, as we have said, a few blows of the arm would destroy it. It is the moral idea there enshrined, and which, day and night, stands sentinel in its iron watch-tower, and says to each passer-by, "Thou shalt not steal!"

From these facts, and what we observe of life, we infer that all the arrangements of our Orderour symbols, signs, mysteries—are in harmony with nature, and have a relation with what is divinest and best in the human soul. Life, we have remarked before, is, at the present time, too prosaic ; we are too material-too skeptical! We foolishly think that what does not add to the store of our material wealth-what does not literally clothe us, feed us, or warm us-has no useful end. We have too little faith in spiritual influences; whereas, nothing can be more certain than that this prodigal

ity of decoration we discover in the universe is most intimately associated with the very highest interests of the soul. It is through the symbolic language of the universe that the Grand Master of all speaks to his children, and whence come those spiritual influences which disengage the soul from the trammels of matter, and exalt it to a oneness with God. Were the beauty which shines in the universebeauty which has no perceivable connection with our physical utility or temporal interest-extinguished, the medium of communication between God and the soul would be closed up, the soul would perish, and man would fall to the level of the brutes. But, thanks to the wise Creator, he has not only made the world, and richly replenished it with what is necessary for our temporal convenience, he has also created it beautiful, and thus provided for the soul's wants.

Probably all of one half of our moral growthone half certainly of whatever perfection we possess, may be attributed to that wonderful influencescarcely recognized, because so uniform and quiet— which Nature, through her beauty, exercises upon all men. No man can give himself up to a communion with the beautiful, without feeling himself wonderfully moved by a mysterious attraction, and hurried away, as it were, from the visible and material universe, toward some invisible centre-some diviner sphere. His heart beats in sympathy with