cies are strong they are mere popinjays, that have risen by their lighter specific gravity! So many assume the airs of great men that are not men at all, but the merest shams and semblances of men, people begin to distrust the reality of any greatness existing. The King who was once a great man, clothed with authority, wondered at and feared, is now viewed as quite a small man; not a whit superior to scores of his subjects. His sceptre a piece of mere gilt wood; his crown a bit of pasteboard decked with gold. Men see in him no delegated power or quality of the Deity; but only a man like themselves, tinselled and bespangled, yet by no means to be wondered at and revered. Formerly it was not so. The King was the great man; quite god-like-a being before whom men reverently bowed. But alas! the age has become insincere, superficial. Men see nothing beyond the outward vesture of things. The "Open Secret" as it has been well written, is hid from their eyes.

'The same irreverence possesses the heart in view of the works of nature. God is not seen in them. We attribute to senseless names what the sincere convictions of the heart formerly ascribed to God. To the earnest Arab soul, the twinkling star, which looked down upon his desert path, was the eye of God. He felt that God saw him; and in the star he worshiped the Eternal. Now, a star is all that is seen! For the French in the last century no God existed; not so much as the symbol of a God. King, priest, the throne, the altar, the heavens above, the earth around, contained nothing of wonder or admiration. An infidel, selfconscious Voltaire, and a pretty black eyed female of unmentionable character, were the highest objects of the nation's worship! The same Godless soul was prevalent, though in a less degree, throughout Europe. While some were asserting that there was no God, others, doubtless, with the best intentions, yet with the superficial logic of the understanding, were attempting to prove there was;-just as if it were a questionable point whether there really was or was not a God! Mistaken souls! is the God you worship a probable God only? Have you no etherial reason to see a God every where within and around you? Will you thus apply your debating faculty-use only your parliamentary logic with which you discuss bills for taxing and feeding or starving men, to find for yourselves and them a God; and

thus witlessly grant that, after all, there is a perhaps about his very existence? Bethink yourselves-how will you pray with such a perhaps in your head and heart? If you have no inner eye to see a God, hold your tongue! Cease logically to babble about it, and thereby perplex simple minds. The ignorant savage, without your logical forms of promise and inference, knows, as he knows his own existence, that there verily is a God. Take lessons from him, then, or cease thy debating! Yes, go to the men you call heathen, and learn sense from the Norwegian, the Mohammedan, the Burmese, who know what is still a matter of doubt in your own mind! The torpedo quality of your philosophy and logic has benumbed your soul, put out the clear light of rea son, and destroyed all spiritual life within you. It has done to your soul what a certain chemical process sometimes does to the dead man-it has changed it to stone. The childlike awe and wonder which possessed the bosoms of the primitive races and which was somewhat prevalent in the days of chivalry, is wanting. The fertilizing river, which awakened admiration and praise in the heart of the Egyptian and Bengalese, as a benevolent Deity, is now viewed by this infidel age only as a highway for merchandise; the beautiful, widespreading plain is measured to ascertain its fitness for an iron road; the majestic mountain, so far from elevating the mind and inspiring the heart, is looked upon only with a covetous eye for the mineral treasure of its bosom. The whole earth is now simply a huge cornfield, and valued at the net product of its grains!

'The same heartless superficiality pervades every department of literature, and runs through the whole of our moral science. Our poetry for the most part is mechanical certainly a product of the head rather than the heart. Rules are laid down for making poetry with the same precision as for working out a problem in mathematics. We even have rhyme-books published, so that the manufacturer of poetry shall have no more to do in his business than the joiner has in his-the chief thing being happily to dovetail! No Godinspired Miltons, Shakespeares, Dantes, Homers, speak to us in musical tones; giving utterance to burning souls. True a Goethe has just spoken thus to us; but he is read by few except the truly pious of his own nation. There is indeed the dawning of a fairer day, for the snarling, impious Byron

is giving place to the cheerful sacred music of Coleridge and Wordsworth. But this day yet stands tip-toe upon the tops of highest mountains;-let us praise God that all have not bowed the knee to Baal!

'And what shall one say of an age that receives as authentic, for its system of Moral Sciences, the gospel according to Jeremy Bentham? O the times! depraved, corrupt to the core! Tremble, oh earth! Hear and avenge, oh heavens! Sinful man, in the gospel according to Bentham, has no duties to do in this God's Universe, where he is placed to work out an immortality of holiness, but such as the "greatest happiness principle" shall dictate! Sweet, sweeter than the honey-comb, to him who rolls sin as a sweet morsel under his tongue, will be such a system of morals! Give us a cast iron Bishop from Birmingham; put a metal tongue into his sounding head, and let it peal through the universe, that pleasure and duty are synonymous terms! Sinner, speedily take your arithmetic and make your estimate (only be cautious in your calculations)-Will you be happier to be indolent than to be active? to remain in ignorance than to seek for knowledge? to indulge, rather than to curb, your pas sions? Then is duty plain! Do you love to eat and drink to the full? Look well to your digestive apparatus, and if this will endure, take thine ease-eat, drink! It is the easiest thing in the world to test, by this standard, the virtuous or the vicious quality of an action: do it as you would test the utility of a threshing machine;-are you benefitted by it? For are not virtue and utility, that is the greatest personal happiness, the same? And has, let me ask, the infinite nature of duty dwindled to this? Is it so that man hears no voice speaking within him except the net result of pains and pleasures? Did the God-man Jesus reason thus? Was Paul balancing pains and pleasures when he determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified? Is it possible for the image of the Eternal to become so deaf to His voice? Can man, by nature so noble, and endowed at least with some glimpse of the Infinite reason, believe himself a mere iron balance upon which to weigh hay and thistles?"

"Thus our literature and our ethics partake largely of the superficial, calculating spirit of the age. Few think deeply; fewer feel deeply. We boast of the "march of intellect;" of the "progress of the species." Apparently in many

respects it is so. But man's spiritual nature suffers. There is no faith but in things which can be seen, and handled, and enjoyed. It is a sickly growth. There is activity, but it is a self-conscious, a frenzied activity, and not a healthy activity. There is a mania to be popular in literature and religion, as well as in politics. Take a single fact:-your pretty story-telling Walter Scott, who threw off his volumes like leaves in Autumn, is greedily read, and is called great; for a long time the greatest. It required no thought to read him; the intellect was not taxed in the least. Scott did not speak to the inner soul of man; he did not interrogate the depths of being, and bring forth responses from the Eternal oracle. Not he! He knew the age, and he wanted a wand ;-he wrote, for he knew he should receive wages and applause.'

So much upon the lamentations of Carlyle. It would be difficult to say less and yet give a clue to his way of thought upon some of those subjects, in writing upon which, the religious aspect of the man comes in sight.

Let us now, in the same manner, see how Carlyle views Men-men who have been distinguished. His classification of men is peculiar; whether of individuals or of nations. Their religion, or their "no-religion," is his chief mark of distinction. But by religion he means vastly more than is usually meant to be conveyed by this term; but he plainly tells us what he means. With him, that is a truly religious man, who has a soul to see and to feel the true, the beautiful, the good, the poetical, in every thing. Isaiah, Paul, Mahomet, Luther, Knox, Bunyan, Fox, Goethe, Burns, are perfect models of spirituality; of true heavenly piety. What are commonly called sins-for example, the sins of such a man as Burns, go for little with Carlyle; over them he drops a tear and utters notes of pity; but he excuses. For such men had heavenly spirits; they were sincere; they saw the deep things of God in every emblem of God; and they had fire within them to burn out some of the sins of the world.

'Burns soul was musical-in perfect harmony with nature, a true Æolian harp, which, as touched with the breezes of heaven, gave forth the sweetest sounds. He was poor; he had to guage beer-barrels for his daily bread; he loved liquor and good cheer; he felt degraded by his employment; he was tempted, he fell! We will weep over him, for we love him; and denounce the irreligious age that so received

one of the choicest gifts of heaven. His sun shone as through a tropical tornado, and the pale shadow of death eclipsed it at noon. Tears lay in him and consuming fire, as lightning lurks in the drops of the summer cloud.'

'Mahomet, though he had faults, (as who has not?) and though in some respects he had wrong notions, and did wrong acts, was a true heaven-sent prophet. He possessed the mild Arab heart; ardent, clear-seeing. He saw the world given to the worship of mere forms and dead images. He saw the Catholic Church corrupt and idolatrous. He saw also that there was reality in man and in nature; and he mourned over the sensual, hollow worship around him. He had deep thoughts and feelings; his imagination was enkindled; he burned with holy desire to impart his feelings to others. He told his wife-she assented; he felt encouraged -became intensely absorbed; felt impressed by a higher Power to do something to enlighten and bless his benighted race. When he felt clear upon any thing that had agitated his mind, he considered it as a revelation from heaven. And thus for twelve hundred years he has been the spiritual guide of millions. And knowing that men then and there were the same as ourselves, we cannot suppose they would have believed, lived by and died by, what was wholly so essentially a lie. Grant that his religion was faulty; but it supplanted one more faulty. Did he take the sword? Let the sect that has been without fault in this respect, cast the first stone at the Arab Prophet!"

Luther saw errors and shams similar to those which Mahomet saw. He was a sincere, strong-souled man, ready to do battle for truth against kings and popes, and all earthly powers. He lived at too late a period of the world to be deemed a prophet, much less a god. The day is past when the Great Man will be esteemed, either by his own or succeeding generations, a Deity, or even as one directly sent of God. As a Priest, he was found faithful in declaring God's will to the people. No dumb dog this! Like all great heroic souls, he would have been content, peacably and in silence, to feed his flock with the sincere milk of the Word. He did not covet-he dreaded public warfare with the world around him. But tell my people a lie? Never! by God's help, never!'