now to partake with me this triumph of affliction, but to the world, that they might see in my life that supreme love which turneth the very misery from our misdeeds into a cleansing fountain; that they might learn from it that affliction, rightly understood, is a spiritual blessing.'

"Thou sayest well, my son,' said the prior; for the sufferings of this world are healthful medicine to the soul; even the holy apostles tasted it. Let those who grieve, then, remember the words of Him who suffered for us "blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."'

"Monaldi continued: Of worldly happiness I have had my portion-perhaps as much as mortal could bear-but my strength fails.' Here he stopped.

"I now looked at Rosalia, but no description can give a picture of her face at that moment.

"After a few moments the husband proceeded: Rosalia' — she pressed his hand in token of her attention. Have we not known such happiness?'T is nothing to that we shall know when we meet again. You will not grieve then for the little space that parts even now,' he added, in a fainter voice; for I feel that my hour is come. Yet grieve not that it is so-'t is but the beginning of peace, which passeth all understanding. And blessed be thy name, Parent of good! for now know I that thou lovest whom thou chastenest.'

us

"He then crossed his hands upon his breast, and, raising his eyes, fixed them upward, with such an expression as I could hardly believe belonged to the human countenance.

"This is not the mere crumbling of a mortal body,' thought Iits passage to dust-but a revelation-touching our highest instinct, and giving it evidence of the invisible world; for it seemed as if I could see his soul raying through his eyes, and already pass into it; holding communion, even by those bodily organs, with the just made perfect. I was so overpowered by this holy vision (for so I might almost call it) that my eyes involuntarily fell when I raised them again he was gone." - pp. 251-253.

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Lewis's Discourse.

217

ART. X.-CRITICAL NOTICES.

1. The Believing Spirit. A Discourse delivered before the Newó Hampshire Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H., July 28th, 1841. By TAYLER LEWIS, Esq., Professor of Greek in the University of the City of New York. New York: 1841. Office of the Iris.

PP. 39.

In our annual harvest of academic discourses, now and then some plant of stronger growth shoots up above the level of the rest and out-tops the field. Such an one we hold Mr. Lewis's address to be, and gladly devote to it a notice proportioned rather to its merit than its bulk. Were it but his subject"The Believing Spirit"- even for that we deem him a public benefactor, in an age that builds its faith but upon intellect and experience; still more when he treats of it with a power and truthfulness which show how deeply it has entered into his own spirit. In this eulogium, however, we would not be misunderstood to speak in unqualified praise of its literary merits, which, either through haste, or other cause, notwithstanding many passages of great vigor, we rank much lower than its philosophy. Want of unity in the general conception of his subject, as well as occasional disarrangement of its parts, and frequent lax sentences, indicate in the author a want either of due care in its composition, or else of a mind not yet duly disciplined to the arts of authorship. But whichever it be, and we rather think both causes have concurred, it is, after all, but a trifle against its unusual merits, and one that obviously touches not the real powers of the author. We hazard nothing, we think, in the prediction that Mr. Lewis's is a rising name, as well as a ripening mind, of more than ordinary force, and that, through the sound principles of philosophy on which he has entered, the path is open before him to honorable fame, and what, we doubt not, he values far higher, honorable and extended usefulness. The subject of the discourse is, as already hinted at, not single, it is in truth twofold —“ The nature and importance of the believing spirit," and "An analysis of the leading principles of Plato." For unity of effect these evidently should have been fused into one, and the argument which now precedes, been converted into an argument deduced. We more than doubt, too, the soundness of the distinction with which he opens his discourse, namely, that existing between "the believing spirit" and "the saving faith of the scriptures." These obviously stand to each other

in a different relation from that here indicated; it is not as things contrasted, but rather contradistinguished as "the good ground,' from 66 the good seed," both needful for the harvest. On one single point, too, we hold him not to do justice to what he so eloquently eulogizes the spiritual philosophy of Plato. "In some passages," says he," he seems to recognise the necessity of a divine influence. These, however, may be regarded as hyperboles." - p. 34. We think not, and in proof would but refer to one passage among many, evidently incapable of being thus degraded into figure; we allude to that in his second Alcibiades, wherein Socrates discourses almost prophetically of the coming teacher: "One deputed from heaven" (Loyov Oεov Tivos) to teach men their duty to God and each other." Whereupon Alcibiades, in what we may well term "the believing spirit," is made to cry out: "Oh! when will this time come, Ŏ Socrates? and who shall be this instructor? Methinks it will be most delightful to see this teacher, and what kind of person he shall be."- Alcibiades, ii., p. 150. Such was the lofty language of this "Athenian Moses," as Justin Martyr well termed him; one whom Cicero, that most believing spirit" of the Romans, feared not to name "DEUS ille noster Plato." But as reviewers we must turn to our author. We greet, then, with the right hand of fellowship, Professor Lewis, as a brother laborer in the great and common cause of all educated Americans -the awakening of our countrymen to a deeper and truer philosophy than what has heretofore satisfied a philosophy whose roots are within the heart and conscience of man, and its fruits in his life - a philosophy which sets its mark on all wherein the man shows forth himself, whether it be in the mart or the forum, whether by word or deed, whether in reasoning or acts, whether as a member of the state, or as a member of the church.

them

On this latter point of the church, Professor Lewis speaks (we know not his religious profession) as becomes the catholic Christian. After quoting from the "Republic" of Plato an eloquent burst of sorrow over the human, and of longing for the coming of the heavenly "noliteia," our author adds:

"We will not say that this was a prophecy of the Christian Church. It may have been only uttered to cheer his desponding hopes; yet this will we boldly assert, that only in the true idea of a church can it find its accomplishment. When the Church, with its true doctrines, (not as a civil organization for the security of property and order, but as a divine, yet visible institution,) shall be acknowledged as a higher order than the state; when politicians learn the great lesson of viewing all things from a theological position; when they can purify their hearts, and invigorate their mental powers, by breathing the higher atmosphere of religious philosophy; when no man is deemed worthy of office who does not reluctantly descend from this purer region to engage in the duties of political life, then, and not till then, will the glorious vision be realized." — p. 38.

We are pleased, too, to see- or rather under his principles it could not be otherwise - Professor Lewis stand forth the advocate

1842.]

Emerson's Oration.

219

of the Church as an authoritative responsible teacher. "Oh! when shall that truly believing age fully come, when we shall have again a teaching, and not merely a reasoning church; a church not vainly wasting its efforts in loud assertions of its traditionary right to teach, and never advancing a step beyond this inane position, but actually teaching without distrust, and with the conscious authority of an institution of heaven." Such surely was the apostles' course.

They argued not, but preached, and conscience did the rest."

In the result of such teaching, as compared with more popular forms, on the youthful mind, we are also fully at accord with him; the reasoning lecturer but inspires doubt "into that faith which never wavered under the catechetical instruction of the Church."-p. 26. As from a common root all his views of education are of this same spiritual stamp; the moral is to be the ground-work of the intellectual; the heart to be first set right, that it may guide the head. With Plato the education of the will is to precede that of the intellect.

"The tastes and affections, he taught, were to be first cultivated. It was the duty of legislators (and of a church, too, he would have said, had a church existed) first of all to give a right direction to these; so that, to use his own expression,' when reason comes' it might find a house furnished for its reception, and be recognised not so much by speculative argument, as by its congeniality to the inward state of the soul."-p. 32.

But we must not enlarge - our limits forbid. We part from our author as one with whom, though we know him not, yet as recognising in him a congenial spirit, we acknowledge the ties of brotherhood, and feel convinced that, with his powers of usefulness, (as reviewers, at least,) it will not be long ere we welcome him again, as we shall do with pleasure, to our critical columns.

2. The Method of Nature. An Oration, delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11th, 1841. By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Boston: 1841. Simpkins. pp. 30.

We would that we could convey to the heart of the highly-gifted writer of this oration, the mingled feelings of admiration and regret with which its perusal has filled us. We know few things of the kind more beautiful in American literature; we know as few more false and dangerous. It is painful thus to speak of any thing so exceedingly beautiful, and still more painful to believe it. It is like gazing at some lovely flower with the conviction that its scent is death, or beholding the colors of the rainbow in the "miasma"

that is bringing pestilence. Our admiration is checked by aversion; we are repelled doubly by its very attractiveness. But neither does this comparison come up to our feelings. The tear dropped over prostituted beauty approaches nearer to the sensation, when all that is beautiful and lovely in taste and talent is made, as it here is made, the pander to the infidel heart of man, the destroyer of man's fairest hopes of happiness here and hereafter. This may sound to the reader, as well as the author, harsh censure; we think it not undeserved; we know it to be most unwillingly bestowed, and in admiration and love would yet hope that a mind thus nobly gifted will not remain permanently divorced from that saving faith which alone can preserve it untainted, and which has evidently been, even to him who rejects it, the true fountain of his noblest inspiration. But to turn to the oration.

In it Mr. Emerson appears alike the deep spiritual philosopher and the ardent lover of nature; true in both, and beautiful in the exhibition of a mind formed in the mould both of the philosopher and the poet, so that, casting out some half dozen sentences from it, there is nothing in the whole oration to which we do not most cheerfully accord both sympathy and admiration, and which we would not ourselves feel most proud to have written. But these half dozen sentences, as giving the aim of the whole, poison the whole; they taint its beauty, they degrade its logic, they falsify its truth, by exhibiting all as but the vesture and habiliments of spiritual falsehood. What that "first lie" (nowтov yɛudos) is, we will endeavour to make clear to our readers.

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The new Christianity (for they seem as yet unwilling to abandon the term) of which Messrs. Brownson, Parker and Emerson, of Boston, may be held to be the new world apostles (and of them Mr. Emerson by far, as it seems to us, the most eloquent and persuasive) this Christianity consists in such a transcendental view of revelation as to lose sight of all its facts, all its doctrines, all its institutions, and all its prescribed duties; abandoning itself, as it were, to ecstatic love and admiration of God and his works, and, above all, of the spiritual mind of man, which last becomes, in the long run, the object, and the sole object, of religious worship, the DEITY at whose footstool the admiring worshipper is called to fall down and adore. Now this appears to us, after some familiarity with their writings, to be the sum and substance of their pretended faith-not atheism, but sentimental pantheism and spiritual selfworship. That it is the scope of the oration before us, will, we think, be evident to any attentive reader. Nor does Mr. Emerson leave it to be deduced; in so many words he thus states it, that to man the mind of man is the GOD!!! After eulogizing the piety of a past generation, he thus proceeds:

"And what is to replace to us the piety of that race? We cannot have theirs; > it glides away from us day by day, but we also can bask in the great morning