principle of true spiritual freedom, and the source of a pure morality; a morality that takes a man's being, and a country's being out of self into disinterestedness; a morality not of mint, anise, and cummin, but of noble deeds springing from noble hearts; the spontaneous offering of forgiven children to a forgiving parent; not to buy forgiveness, but as its fruit; not to be forgiven, but because forgiven. As to the essence of freedom, Mr. Burke once said, with singular energy as well as truth," he that fears God, fears nothing else;" but the fear of God, which takes away every other fear, comes only out of Faith; and perfect freedom is possible on no other conditions but those which make God our Father and us His children. We cannot believe that that principle, which binds together the whole family in earth and heaven, which shall be the constituting element of principalities and powers that are to endure when creation shall have passed away, can be of no importance in our national existence upon earth. In truth, we are but as the grub, the low chrysalis, in our present state, in comparison with that transfiguration, which is to take place through the pervading power of this principle in our social, political, and literary existence. This is that cup of immortality, which, whatsoever nation drinks it, shall pass into a permanence of glory, no more to be eclipsed, shadowed, or dissolved, till the final conflagration. This principle was Luther's Articulus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiæ. It is just as much so in politics and literature as in religion. We have had on this earth a long trial without it, without the preserving elements of a national existence. This world has been the theatre of a mighty experiment; whether nations could be prosperous and permanent in pride and sin. The result has been overwhelming. Empire after empire has fallen to the ground. I have passed over the ruins of dead and buried kingdoms, have seen the shades of departed monarchies, and conversed with them, haunting the spots of their former glory; and the hollow voice, as if the wind were moaning from earth's central sepulchres, has spoken in the words of Scripture, deep unto deep, in my hearing, THE NATION AND KINGDOM THAT WILL NOT SERVE THEE SHALL PERISH; YEA, THOSE NATIONS SHALL BE It is a solemn thing to stand in the Colosseum at Rome, beneath the shadow of the Parthenon at Athens, within the crumbling shrine of the temple of Karnak in Egypt, and to listen to the echo of those awful words. These historical materials and monuments, are so many intelligent chords, which men's iniquities have wrought for that great Harp of the Past, across which God's Spirit sweeps with its majestic, awful utterance! God grant that the history of our nation may not add another tone of wailing to the melancholy voices of dead empires. UTTERLY WASTED. The principle of Faith is yet to make a new Literature for nations and the world. The materials are among us, but the eye of genius has been heavy with slumber. The film and frost of custom conceal a thousand open truths. Almost the whole secret of discovery in science is the perception and questioning of what is customary in a new light. There are now floating in our atmosphere of knowledge many common facts and observations, with connexions hidden by the veil of custom, and concealed like the future itself, but which are only waiting for a single question from some awakened mind, in some blessed mood of genius, in which this frosty veil is lifted, a single question like that addressed by Newton to the fall of an apple, which may well nigh open another universe of wonders. Now I apply this to the literature which is yet to be created out of the materials of Divine Truth and the workings of our spiritual being. And I am reminded of Mr. Coleridge's beautiful definition of genius: "To carry the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with appearances, which every day for, perhaps, forty years has rendered familiar, With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, And man and woman, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks, which distinguish genius from talents." If we apply this to religious things, we cannot but see that a state of mind is requisite in every man analogous to the experience of genius with common truth in its freshness, in regard to the perception of divine truth; and that this spiritual sense of the power and beauty of divine truth is essential to the perfection of a nation's literature. There is therefore a cause of illimitable power in the awakening and discipline of the mind of nations, as yet very little developed, but which is becoming every day more powerful. It is indi vidual regeneration by the Spirit of God, which is to the perception, relish, and influence of divine truth what genius is to the wonderful influence of nature. This is yet to do more in disciplining the mind of nations, and in creating and energizing the world's literature, than all other causes. The operation of this cause is absolutely essential to the perfection of literature. All the forms of literature hitherto known have been deformed and lifeless, in comparison with the beauty and glory of those it shall assume beneath the baptism of the Spirit of God, when its material becomes divine truth, or earthly truth transfigured with celestial glory. It is not to be supposed for a moment that the presence or the absence of a religious atmosphere of thought and feeling would not create an entire difference in the productions of human genius. You might as well suppose that the vegetation at the bottom of the sea can be no way different from that, which, beneath the bright sun, or the dewy stars, invests the earth's surface with its fragrant, flowering verdure. As great a difference will there be between the literature of a world embalmed with the Spirit of Him who died to redeem it, and that which is the growth of ages that have gloomily rolled on in the rejection of that Spirit, as between the sweet bloom of creation in the open light of heaven, and the rough, dark recesses of submarine forests of sponges and corals. Such as is indicated in this last image has much of the world's literature proved hitherto; and in it sea-monsters have whelped and stabled. Now are we to behold a literature so full of all qualities of loveliness and purity, such new regions of high thought and feeling before unimagined opened up in it to the mind, that to the dwellers in past days it should have seemed rather the production of angels than of men. Nor is this an imaginary view. The world and its literature, in its life without the Spirit of God, might powerfully remind the thoughtful observer of Plato's cave, and of the thoughts of its darkened inhabitants; and when, from a higher elevation, the spirit gets a glimpse of reality, then, looking over the works and businesses of this great ant-hill of humanity, our globe, we seem to see bands of chained men, even as Plato describes them, counting the shadows of subterranean fires, and making idols of popularity, out of the subtle intellects that most clearly distinguish and describe those shadows. These things must have an end; and when men learn, beautifully and truly remarks one of our great native poets,* the outward by the inward to discern, the inward by the Spirit, they shall win Their way deep down into the soul. The light Shed in by God shall open to the sight Vast powers of being; regions long untrod Shall stretch before them filled with life and God. All things shall breathe an air from upper climes. Then men listening, with the inward ear, The ocean of eternity shall hear Along its coming waves; and thou shalt see Mr. Dana. |