“Under this tree I will erect a Temple to the God of
Rocks.—Was there any such? Certes, I remember none.”

“The God of Rocks is God.”

“You sport enigmas again. Let us to Diana's Walk.”

They perambulated the forest touching upon various spots
of interest to Margaret. She had given name and population
to many a solitary place, and for many years, it appeared, had
been deepening her worship and extending her supremacy, such
as it was, over the region. Tired at last, they sat down under
the trees.

“You will not relish such a walk and so many Gods, I
fear,” said she.

“I could pursue the woods forever,” was his reply.” The
trees give me more than my acquaintances.”

“They are my home. I was born in them, have been
sheltered under them, and educated by them, and do sometimes
believe myself of them. The Master rightly says I have
a fibrous disposition. I used to think I came of an acorn,
and many a one have I opened to find a baby brother or sister.
Am I not an automative vegetable, a witch-hazle in moccasins?
The Master says I am of the order Bipeds, and species
Simulacrens; distinguished by thirty-two teeth, and
having the superior extremities terminated by a hand which is
susceptible of a greater variety of motions than that of any
other animal, and is remarkably prehensile; that it inhabits
all parts of the earth; is omnivorous; and disputes for territory,
uniting together for the express purpose of destroying its
own kind; that I am of the variety Caucasiana, differing
from the Americana in this, that my feet are a little broader
just above the toes, and from the Simia in the configuration of
the thumb. For my own part, I incline to the Sylvian analogy,
only my clothes are not half so durable as this bark, nor
my hair so becoming as the leaves, and I must undress myself
at night and take to my bed, while the trees sleep standing
and unhooded. Then what a pother we make about eating,
while the tree lives on its own breathing, and, with more ease
than a duck, muddles for nourishment with its roots.”

“You will not overlook the mind, the spirit; the inner voluntary
life, the diversifier of action, the possibility of achievement,
the subordinator of matter, the master of Time, the
annotator of the Universe, the thinking, willing, loving, the
joy and sorrow, the aspiration and submission, the retrospection
and prospection, the smiling, the weeping, the speech,
the silence, sight, smell and taste, the right and wrong, art,

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poetry, music, the self-consciousness of infinite affinities,
heroism, and self-renunciation—all, all demonstrate the separateness
and superiority of man.”

“I know what you say is true, and when I hear it said, I
shall feel it to be true. Speak on”

“The tree has no sense of happiness, like you and me, nor
possesses it any capability of wretchedness. It exists for our
pleasure. He, the soul of all, the supreme Intelligence, the
Uncreated Creator, the invisible Seer, has caused it to grow
for our use. Even now I feel Him, called in our tongue God,
in the Greek Theos, in the Hebrew Jehovah, in the Indian
Manitou, by some distinguished in some way, by others in
another. His life inflames my life, his spirit inspires my spirit.
All that is now about us is his, and he in it; the beauty of the
forest is the tincture of his beneficence, the breeze is the respiration
of his mercy, the box-berries and mosses are his, the
rocks and roots, the dancing shadows, the green breaks into
the blue sky are his creation, the fair whole of color, perfume
and form, the indescribable sweet sensation that wells in our
breasts, are his gift and his presence in the gift, they are the
figures woven into the tapestry that girths the Universe, the
fragrance that fills the vinaigrette of Creation. Through all
and in all pierces his spirit, that blows through us like the
wind.”

“But what becomes of my pretty Pantheon, Apollo and
Bacchus, Diana and Egeria, before this all-deluging One?”

“That belongs to what is termed Mythology, a mixture of
imagination, religion and philosophy. Apollo, for instance,
as Tooke will tell you, denotes the sun; and of the arts ascribed
to him, prophesying, healing, shooting, music, we discover
a lively prototype in that luminary. It dispels darkness,
brings secret things to light, shoots its rays, imparts health
and preservation to all things; and being placed in the middle
of the planets makes with them a kind of harmony or music.
In Hindoo Mythology is Brahma, an uncouth image, coarsely
done in stone, which Christians affect to despise, having the
form of an infant with its toe in its mouth, floating on a flower
over a watery abyss. It represents this, that in some of the
renovations which the world is supposed to have undergone,
the wisdom and designs of God will appear as in their infant
state; Brahma, that is God the Creator, floating on a leaf,
shows the instability of things at that period; the toe sucked
in the mouth implies that Infinite wisdom subsists of itself;
and the position of the body, drawn into the form of a ring by

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this union of the extremities, is an emblem of the endless
circle of eternity. It is a mere hint at the highest ideas, and
by its very rudeness effectually anticipates the error of diverting
attention from the substance to the shadow, and if worship
be performed before it, it is none otherwise than worship
done in our Churches, which are styled, pre-eminently, houses
of God, sanctuaries or sacred places. The Northern nations,
inheriting the germs of spirituality from the East, superadded
Beauty, and elaborated the Symbol in the fairest forms of
Art. Their Statues also were an embodied Allegory, they
were an Encyclopedia of truth. Now-a-days, we have lost
the ancient idea, and so split up our systems of knowledge,
that a statue is no more than a handsomely wrought stone;
and sometimes we vituperate the attention paid to it, as Idolatry.
It furnished to the eye what a written treatise does to
the understanding; or in brief the chisel did the work of the
pen. To the Greeks, a statue was at once a Church and a
Book, it was Beauty and Inspiration, Truth and Illustration,
Philosophy and Religion. The human form is more expressive
than any other, and genius seized upon that as the most
fitting instrument for conveying ideality, and ennobled man
while it symbolized his frame.”

“So Apollo is a creation of God?”

“The original on which that is founded is a creation of
God; or I should say, Apollo, representing certain facts in
the creation of God, or certain attributes of God, his culture
was observed by different nations under different names, till at
last some artist, fusing as it were the popular idea in his own,
wrought the whole in marble, and so gave us the Belvidere.”

“What are we? What am I?”

“In the words of the biblical Job, whom I fear you know
less about than you do about the Widow Luce's Job, `There
is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty hath
given them understanding.' God himself breathes into us
the breath of spiritual life. This divine afflatus animates the
embryon existence. The spirit assumes a material frame-work
which it must quit at last. Our souls coming from God return
to him. We are ever-living as the Divinity himself. The
bosom of the Infinite while it nourishes us here is our ultimate
home. God creates us in his own image, and we like him
go on to create. He weaves, and we are his warp and filling.”

“Who winds the spools?”

“You are more at home in the detail, Miss Hart, than I
am, and I leave you to answer that question yourself.—But,

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we, the woof, are also weavers. God weaves and we weave;
`He dwells in us and we in him,' St. John says. `He clothes
the grass of the field,' Christ says. `He works in us,' St.
Paul says.”

“Did God work in the artist that made the Apollo?”

“Yes; all beautiful works of man are an inspiration of
the Almighty. We read in the Old Testament that `God put
wisdom and understanding into men's hearts to know how to
work all manner of work,' for a fabric the Jews were building.
It is the energy of that action wherewith he endows
man.”

“Then I may keep my Apollo, and all my Divinities.”

“I would not deprive you of anything that shall make you
beautiful and strong, happy and chaste, devout and simple,
that shall give companionship to your solitude, ministry to
your susceptibilities, exercise to your imagination.”

“You are taking the pegs out of the bars, but I will not
run wild — I am impatient to know about Christ; what will
you say of him? I have read some in the New Testament
you gave me. It is the strangest book I ever saw. It transported
me with an unspeakable delight; and then I was over-whelmed
by a painful complexity of sensations. I came to
where he died, and I laid down the book and wept with a
suffocating anguish. Then there were those sanctiloquent
words!”

“That which I gave you is a version made two hundred
years since, when our language was imperfect, scholarship deficient,
biblical knowledge limited, and the popular belief
replete with errors; and moreover done by men of a particular
sect under the dictation of a King. Of course the translation
suffers somewhat; but the general truth of the Gospels
can no more be hindered by this circumstance, than the effect
of day by an accumulation of clouds. But of the subject
itself, Christ, what can I say? It is almost too great for our
comprehension, as it certainly rises above all petty disputes.
How can I describe what I know not? How can I embrace a
nature that so exceeds my own? How can I tell of a love I
never felt, or recount attainments I never reached? Can I give
out what I have not, and I sometimes fear I am not completely
possessed of Christ. Can I, the Imperfect, appreciate the Perfect
one; can I, the sinful, reveal the sinless soul? I have not
Christ's spirit, his truth, his joy, so integrally and plenarily,
that I can set him forth in due proportion and entireness. His
experience and character, his spiritual strength and moral

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greatness are so transcendent, I truly hesitate at the task you
impose upon me. That we may portray the Poet or the Artist,
or any high excellence, we must square with it; who, alas! is
equal to Christ!”

“Yet,” said Margaret, “all that is lies secretly coiled within
our own breasts! All Beauty, I am persuaded, is within
us; whatever comes to me I feel to have had a pre-existence.
I sometimes indeed doubt whether I give or receive. A flower
takes color from the sun and gives off color. Air makes the
fire burn, and the fire makes the air blow; and the colder the
weather the brisker the fire. A watermelon seed can say,
`In me are ten watermelons, rind, pulp and seeds, so many
yards of vine, so many pounds of leaves.' In myself seems
sometimes to reside an infant Universe. My soul is certainly
pistillate, and the pollen of all things is borne to me. The
spider builds his house from his own bowels. I have sometimes
seen a wood-spider let off a thread which the winds drew
out for him and raised above the trees, and when it was sufficiently
high and strong, he would climb up it, and sail off in
the clear atmosphere. I think if you only begin, it will all
come to you. As you drain off it will flow in. The sinful
may give out the sinless. I long to hear what you have to
say.”

“What you observe is too true, and I thank you for making
me recollect myself. Even the Almighty creates us, and then
suffers himself to be revealed in us. We, motes, carry an immensity
of susceptible, responsive existence. But for this we
should never love or know Christ. In his boyhood, we are
told, Christ waxed strong in spirit, was filled with wisdom,
and the grace of God was upon him. His earliest developments
must have been of a peculiarly beautiful and striking
kind. When he was twelve years old, being in company of
some learned people, his questions and replies were of such a
nature as to excite astonishment in all present, at the extent of
his understanding. We have no authentic account of him from
this until his thirtieth year; excepting that he resided with his
father and pursued the family avocation, that of a carpenter.”

“What, do you know nothing about him when he was as
old as I am, or as you are, when he was fifteen, or twenty, or
twenty-five? In the dream I remember he said I must be like
him, I must grow up with him. Had he no youth? Had he
no inward sorrowful feelings as I have had?”

“There is one of the books of the New Testament of a
peculiar character, and it contains some intimations respecting

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Christ, not found in the others. I will read a passage. `In
the days of his flesh he offered up or poured forth prayers and
supplications, with strong crying and tears, to him that was
able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared,'
or as it stands in the original for his piety. This, as I believe,
points to a period of his life not recorded in the other
histories, and should be assigned to that which you have mentioned,
his youth.”

“I have no doubt of it,” said Margaret. “It describes
exactly what I have been through. Did he suffer all we do?”

“Yes, his life and sufferings were archetypal of those of all
his followers. `He suffered for us,' says St. Peter, `leaving us
an example that we should follow in his steps.' `Rejoice,' he
says, `inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings.”'

“How near this brings Christ to me! It seems as if I had
him now in my heart. He too suffered! How much there
is in that word! and in this earnest, soul-deep way! I understand
his sad tender look. Apollo killed Hyacinth by accident,
and was very sorry. But there was no deep capable soul in
Apollo, was there? I shall not think so much of him,—I interrupt
you, Sir, go on.

“He suffered all that any being can suffer; he was alone,
unbefriended, unsympathized with, unaided; books gave him
no satisfaction, teachers afforded him no light. The current,
swift and broad, of popular error and prejudice, he had to
stem and turn, single-handed. He grew in knowledge, we
read; the problems of Man, God and the Universe were given
him to resolve. But he was heard for his piety, for his goodness.
He became perfect through suffering. Supernatural,
divine assistance was afforded him, and he conquered at last.
At the age of thirty, when he entered what is called his public
ministry, which is the chief subject of history, he encountered
a severe temptation, such as all are liable to, and was enabled
to vanquish it; he was tempted as we are. He was ever
without sin, neither was guile found in his mouth, he was holy,
harmless, undefiled. At times he was made indignant at the
conduct of men, he was grieved at the hardness of their
hearts, he groaned in sympathy with human distress, he wept
over the follies of the race; he was persecuted by the great,
and despised by his own kindred; his nearest friends deserted
him, and one of his chosen disciples betrayed him; the greato
ness of his views met only with bigotry, and the generosity of
his heart was repelled by meanness; he carried the heavy wood
on which he was crucified, and when brought as a malefactor

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to the place of execution, he was scourged and spit upon;
once prostrated by the weight of his anguish, and from very
heat of internal agony, he entreated that the bitter cup might
be removed; and to add to all, in the extreme stage of dissolving
life, for a moment his spiritual vision seemed to be dimmed,
and he cried out, `O my God! why hast thou forsaken me?'
Such is a brief notice of his sufferings. Let me turn to other
points—”

“Oh, Mr. Evelyn!” exclaimed Margaret, “how can you
go on so! How cold you are! I cannot hear any more;”
and from the posture she had maintained with her eyes fixed
on the ground, she fell with her face into her hands, and followed
the act with an audible profusion of tears.

“Do forgive me, Miss Hart,” said Mr. Evelyn. “I have
been so long familiar with this most affecting history, that I
know it does not move me as it should.”

“I only know,” said Margaret, looking up with a forgiving
smile gleaming through her tears, “that I feel it all through
me, my heart swells like a gourd, and I ache in a strange
way. My memory and my sensations seem to be alike agitated.”

“That must be sympathy!” replied Mr. Evelyn.

“What is that sympathy?” asked Margaret. “I never
heard, methinks, the word before.”

“It is of Greek origin, and means feeling or suffering with
another. It denotes mutual sensation, fellow-feeling; it implies
also compassion, commiseration. It is defined a conformity
in feeling, suffering or passion with another; also a participation
in the condition or state of another; and also, if you
are not tired of superenumeration, the quality or susceptibility
of being affected by the affection of another, with feelings correspondent
in kind.”

“Sympathy, sympathy!” said Margaret. “That is it.
You understand me now!”

“Yes, you sympathize with Christ. I can but deplore my
own insensibility.”

“I will remember that word; I like to get a good word; it
is like a tin cover put over a dish of potatoes, it keeps them so
nice and warm. While you were speaking, I felt myself drawn
out by some strange affinities to what you said, and when you
came to the extreme sufferings of Christ, my sensations were
something such as I had when you spoke about him the other
day, and when I read that part of the Book, only so many
things being brought together, I felt more. All the sadness I
ever felt was revived, and burst within me anew.”

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“I was going to tell you,” continued Mr. Evelyn, “that in
addition to, and despite all, Christ was very happy, and that
in manner and matter beyond what most men can conceive of,
which is another secret in his character. On the last day of
his life, with the horrors of crucifixion impending, he said to
his sorrowing friends, `Peace I leave with you, my peace I
give unto you.' He desired, he says, that `his joy might remain
with them;' he prays that `his joy may be fulfilled in
themselves!' This I think will please you.”

“I believe I understand something of that too,” said Margaret.

“There are still other points,” pursued Mr. Evelyn. “I
must speak of the object of Christ's coming into the world, or
what is known as the plan of Redemption by him. Man had
fallen, if you know what that means.”

“I remember something the Primer says, and what Pa says
when he is so intoxicated he can't stand. `In Adam's fall,
we sinned all.”'

“I do not refer to that. Eve, of whom you will read in the
Old Testament, ate an apple from an interdicted tree, which is
commonly known as the Fall of Man. There is no authority
for such a belief. Men fall, each man for himself, when they
sin, that is, do wrong. At the time Christ appeared, St. Paul
tells us, unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness,
lasciviousness, envyings, backbitings, murders, wrath,
strife, seditions prevailed; men were inventors of evil things,
disobedient to parents, without natural affection, without understanding,
unholy, and so forth—”

“I shall laugh now,” said Margaret, “to hear all that sanctiloquence.
I must have hit upon some of those words which
nearly disgusted me with the book. I have heard Deacon
Hadlock called a very holy man, and Pa laughed, and the Master
blew his nose.”

“Those are words,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “in common and
proper use when the translation was made to which I referred.
Having disappeared from the popular tongue, and being retained
only in ecclesiastical terminology, it is not surprising
they sound strange to you. Rendered in modern English,
holiness and righteousness, mean goodness, virtue, rectitude,
or any high moral and religious excellence. As respects the
other vices mentioned, we have now-a-days, as you well know,
war, intemperance, slavery, unkindness; and then what go by
the name of bigotry, intolerance, irreligion, pious frauds, persecution,
simony, villany, burglary, violence, peculation,

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treason, perjury, kidnapping, piracy, scandal, ingratitude, intrigue,
bribery, meanness, social inequality, governmental misrule,
spirit of caste, oppression of labor, superciliousness, are abundant.
These and similar things are what the Gospel denominates
the works of the flesh, and renders unto tribulation and
anguish, as evil doing. These are that whereby men break
the Divine Law, and separate themselves from God. But the
primary idea in this matter, the fundamental law of sin, the
very essence of the Fall, consists in this, that men ceased to
love. Love is the fulfilling of the law, it is the first and great
command; it unites man with God and with himself. In the
subsidency and departure of love, the moral system is revolutionized
and completely disordered. The instinct of self-preservation
is tortured into selfishness, the desire of excellence
is inflamed into ambition, the sense of right becomes
the author of innumerable wrong. The whole head is sick,
the whole heart faint. Nature commences a burdensome contention
with abuse, misdirection, absurdity, folly. It is ever
Nature versus the Unnatural. The institutions and organizations
of men, founded upon the new basis, partake of the general
corruption, and only foster evils it is their design to prevent.
Love casts out fear; in the absence of love, fear supercedes;
hence aggression and violence, superstition and the doctrine
of devils.”

“I never feared,” said Margaret; “was that because I
loved?”

“Fortitude,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “springs as much from
superiority to our enmities, as from superiority to our enemies.
And this reminds me, that the first voluntary wrong act any
man ever did was done through the absence of love. But here
arises a new element. We were never created to do or to suffer
voluntary wrong, and there is generated in consequence of
such acts, the sense of injury. Hence come all retaliations.
A most mournful fact in this matter is that dissonance and disdisorder
are themselves sympathetic and reciprocal. Aversion
reproduces aversion, and selfishness is answered by selfishness.”

“I have felt that towards Solomon Smith sometimes,” said
Margaret. “I know he dislikes me, and I have been moved
to dislike him, and I suppose I should if I did not feel what a
ridiculous piece of business it is for one most anagogical puppet
to be mad with another. And since you would also convince
me he is geodic, what can I do, but abide, like the ants,
whose hills through trodden upon are patiently renewed every
morning.”

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“When man ceases to love, he is not only estranged from
God, but the image of God within him is lost, the heavenly
purity of his character is sullied, and the divine harmonies of
his nature are discomposed.—But what is worst of all, we are
educated to regard every man with suspicion and enmity. We
are taught in our earliest years that men are by nature totally
depraved, and since total depravity covers every form of sin and
vice, we are in effect instructed to believe every man a villain,
a thief, a murderer, at heart; as mean, selfish, and malicious,
in his secret conscious purpose. This is the cardinal doctrine
of what passes under the name of Christianity. It is annually
enforced by hundreds of thousands of discourses from Bishops
and Clergy in every part of Christendom. This consummates
the Fall! Every youth under the operation of that sympathetic
and reciprocal law, to which I adverted, enters life in
the spirit of hostility. To receive injury he expects, to do
an injury on the injurious, he thinks no harm. The evil which
he is made to believe all others saturated with is reflected in
his own bosom, and so, in spite of himself, he becomes depraved.
There is something denominated love in the religious
circles; I should call it Ecclesiastical love, because it is a figment
of the Church, to distinguish it from Christian love, which
has its origin in Christ, or Evangelical love founded on the
Gospels. After making you believe all men totally depraved,
our teachers endeavor to create in the breasts of the elect so
termed, a pity for this depravity, and to inspire them with a
desire to remove it, and this they call love, which is no love at
all, since an important element in love is that it thinketh no
evil, judges not. In what I have now said, you see not only
the Fall of man generally, but also that second greater catastrophe,
the Fall of the Church.”

“Here I must beg of you some more explanations; what do
you mean by the Church?”

“I mean that great body of men, in all countries, of all denominations
and sects, who profess Christianity, in their associate
capacity, with their clergy, or leaders, and creeds, or articles
of establishment.”

“Have the Church-members in the Village and those who
groaned so at the Camp Meeting fallen?”

“Yes, all. The effect of a corrupt Christianity, or as I
should say of a fallen religion, is to perpetuate and augment itself;
and now, with very few exceptions, all share in the common
calamity. In the progress of decline, it became a matter
of course, that the Church should change its standards of faith,

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or as we say in politics, adopt a new constitution. The
Gospels or Evangelicons, by which are intended the personal
biographies of Jesus, a book of Acts, and certain documents
known as Epistles, are indeed accredited by all. But there
arose certain things which have practically superseded the
Gospels. These are known as Articles of the Council of Trent,
of the Church of England, of the Episcopal Church, of the
Methodist Church; or as Creeds in our various Churches.
And now a man may believe the Gospels, and aim to conform
to Christ, but he is not reckoned a Christian by the Catholics
unless he assent to their Articles, or by the Protestants unless
he subscribe their several Creeds. And they have carried this
matter so far, as to condemn a man to everlasting perdition if
he depart from these Gospel-substitutes. You may examine
them and canvass their qualities, you will find no more Christianity
in any one of them, than apple-juice in that stone.—But
we must bear in mind that the world had fallen, before the
Church fell; and it was to repair the effects of this first Fall,
that Christ appeared on the Earth; let us return to him. He
came to renew love, and reinstate men in a pure and happy
condition.”

“But how could men love if they were as you describe
them?”

“Man never wholly loses his capacity for loving. The
natural susceptibility to goodness and truth can never be extinguished.
Our powers are perverted, not destroyed. In
fact, there have been holy, loving people in the world, true
Christians, in all times, all countries, all Churches, among all
religions, and all nations. Such have sometimes been kings,
and occupied thrones, they have been outcasts from society,
and buried in dungeons. Among princes and peasants, the
affluent and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, aristocrats
and plebeians, have appeared from time to time sincere and earnest
lovers of God and man. Some sympathy with Christ exists
in all minds, either latent or active.—

Christ came on his high embassage with credentials of an
authoritative and remarkable character. He was the brightness
of the glory of God, and the express image of his person. Indeed,
He and the Father were one. He received, he tells us,
all power from God. He was baptized of the Holy Spirit.
He was proclaimed the beloved and well-pleasing Son of God.
He had gone through the experience of life, he had studied the
human mind in its every phase, he understood the condition of
men, and was prepared for the exigences of his lot. The

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thirty years of his life had not been spent in idleness. The
effect of his address was electrical. Cities poured forth their
population to him, and the country was deserted of its inhabitants
gone in pursuit of him. The multitudes that thronged
him were so great no house could contain them, and he was
obliged to resort to the open air and spoke sometimes from a
hill-side, sometimes from a boat moored by the shore. But,
as I have intimated, his course was not without trial and obstacle.
His success it was in part that contributed to his unhappiness,
and precipitated his death. The common people
heard him gladly; and this aroused the jealousies of the higher
orders, who became his unrelenting antagonists. With covert
insinuation and open assault they pursued him, and by their
intrigues at last brought him to the cross. —

Let me speak of what he did, of the spirit of his action and
the secret of his effect. Fresh and glowing he came from the
bosom of Heaven. His heart yearned for man as for a brother.
His sympathies were ardent, profuse and forth-putting. His
hopes were high and bright. He spared himself neither privations,
self-denials, inconveniences, disrepute or toil. He gave
himself for our ransom, his whole self, body and mind, his
thought, his sagacity, his activity, his health, his time, his
knowledge, his popularity, his example, in fact all he had or
was, even to life itself; he consented that by his stripes we
should be healed, by his death we should live, and shed his
blood to wash away our sins. He was gentle and tender, the
bruised reed he would not break, or the smoking flax quench.
Wherever arose one feeblest aspiration to God he was prepared
to foment and cherish it. He made an open door of his compassionate
feelings, and invited to himself all who labored and
were heavy laden with sin and evil. He did not join in the
common execrations of men, or approve their punitive severities;
he saw something excellent in the vilest, he would
win by love the most ruffianish, and the profligate he bade `Go,
and sin no more.' When he was reviled he reviled not again,
and when he suffered, he threatened not. If he received an
injury he did not retaliate, but committed himself, Peter says,
`to him that judgeth righteously,' that is, to God.

And here we see the high moral perfection of Christ; he
had so disciplined his spirit, he was so preoccupied with love,
he was so magnanimously considerate, that enmity and aversion,
which in most breasts give rise to corresponding qualities,
in his excited only kindness and favor. Here also discovers
itself his sublime Heroism, that he stood unshaken before all

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moral assaults, and faced undaunted every moral danger. Yet
he was one of the strongest sensibilities; he wept like a child
in pure sympathy with the distresses of his friends. He `took
upon himself our infirmities,' and if sensitiveness be an infirmity,
he possessed it equally with the rest of us. The insane,
those who were chained, imprisoned and under keepers, and
who in their paroxysms were ungovernable and dangerous, he
approached freely, became very familiar with in love, and
expelled the delusion that possessed them. The miraculous
power with which he was endowed he employed in ways most
instructive and beneficial. He gave sight to the blind, hearing
to the deaf, strength to the weak, and health to the sick. He
did not consult what was expedient, but pursued what was
right, and broke the popular Sabbath, an exceedingly bold act,
and one that nearly cost him his life. Yet he was not harsh
and sweeping in his movement; he was sparing of those feelings
which are deep because they belong to our childhood, of
convictions that are honest because they are all we possess,
and of forms of public life to which a long antiquity imparts
an air of reverence; and he would not see the Temple of the
Jews mercenarily profaned. The spirit of the Goth and Vandal
was most remote from Jesus. God he called his Heavenly
Father, and sought to create a near and filial relation with the
Divinity. Man he called his brother, and in all he would
find fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. Little children, what
is unparalleled in all religions, he took in his arms and blessed.
National, local, and geographical antipathies he sought
to correct, and strove to unite all men on a common footing of
brotherhood; and the Samaritans, who were regarded by his
own people the Jews as the offscouring of all things, he demonstrated
both by precept and example to be deserving a common
friendship and love.”

“That is what Mr. Lovers said about the Freemasons,”
interposed Margaret, “and Isabel and I were so smitten we
determined to join them right off, and went to the Master, but
he said they did not admit women.”

“Freemasonry,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “is a partial good. It
recognizes every man as a brother who is a Mason, but Christ
recognized every one as a brother who was a man. Woman
shared equally in his sympathies, and was embraced by his love.
The motto of Masonry, Faith, Hope and Charity, is a fragment
borrowed from the Gospels. Freemasonry in some of our States
excludes the black; Jew and Gentile, Barbarian and Scythian,
male and female, bond and free, are one in Christ.—He was

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invidiously styled the Friend of Sinners, because he maintained
a kindly intercourse with those whom the world despised;
he dined with Pharisees, the chief men of the nation, that
he might understand their position, and be better able to meet
their wants. Certain leaders of the people were the only
ones whom he seems ever to have addressed with severity, and
that not from any hostility, but because they appeared to him
wholly dissolute and abandoned; yet his language, in the
original, savors more of a lament than a proscription. I cannot
tell you all he did. In the expressive words of one of his disciples
`he went about doing good.”'

“I thank you for what you have told me,” said Margaret.
“Christ certainly seems to me the most wonderful being of
whom I have ever heard. I have read about Plato, Anaxagoras,
Socrates, Epaminondas, Diogenes, Seneca, Cicero, Cato,
Numa, Confucius, Budha, Manco Capac, and others, who interested
me a great deal, but nothing seemed like this.”

“I have not told you half,” replied Mr. Evelyn. “I have
only spoken of what he did. How can I describe the greatest,
most excelling part of him, what he was! — It is a small thing
to say that he was affable, generous, honorable, brave, warm-hearted,
truthful, discreet, wise, talented, disinterested, self-denying,
patient, exemplary, temperate, consistent, charitable,
industrious, frugal, hospitable, compassionate, and such like.
He was meek and lowly in heart, and that with more incentives
to arrogance and pride than ever fell to the lot of one individual;
he was forbearing when a precept of his religion
demanded an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; his affection
was universal, while the sentiment and practice of his people
condemned intercourse with other nations; he was self-relying
in a community ruled by tradition and resting on prescription;
he was pacific where war was sanctioned and encouraged; he
was free in a world of bondage, he was spiritual in a world of
forms, he was great in a world of littleness, he was a God in a
world of men. His intrinsic nobility rose above meanness and
subterfuge, and if he ever withheld all he thought, it was because
he would not cast his pearls before swine. He was
frank without bluntness, courteous without guile, familiar without
vulgarity, liberal without licentiousness. He combined
tenderness of feeling with rigor of principle, harmlessness with
wisdom, simplicity with greatness, faith with works. He fellowshipped
man without countenancing sin, he mingled in all
classes of society without losing his singleness of character.
In him were harmonized the opposite extremes of trust and

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independence, forethought and impulse, plain common sense
and the highest spirituality, theory and practice, intuition and
reflection, cheerfulness and piety, toil and refinement, candor
and enthusiasm; he was lord of lords and king of kings, and
the companion of peasants and confidant of the obscure. He
was eloquent and persuasive, yet his voice was not heard in the
streets, he had no boisterous tones, no demagogical manner;
he discoursed of the highest truths, yet his language was so
simple, the people were astonished at the gracious words that
proceeded out of his mouth; God-possessed as he was, all-engrossing
as was the object he had in view, and preoccupied as
we must suppose his attention to have been, he was ever alive
and fresh to the beauty and suggestiveness of nature, and the
falling rain, a flying sparrow, the bursting wheat, the luxuriant
mustard, the blooming vine, the evening twilight, the clouds of
heaven, wells of water in the deserts of the East, oxen and
sheep, a hen brooding over her chickens, all things about him
left their impression in his heart, and became the illustrators
of his doctrine. Considering the fervid Oriental imagination,
the perspicuous chasteness and emphatic directness of his
style, adapted to all climates and people, is not a little remarkable.
Made in all things like his brethren, he was still one
whom the offer of empire did not flatter, or a houseless night
dishearten. His miraculous power he used unostentatiously
and sparingly; and with no other intent than the good of man
and the glory of God. You have asked if he was not Beautiful;
he was superlatively so. In the translation it reads the
Good Shepherd; but here and elsewhere in the original Gospels
a term is employed by which the Greeks denoted the
highest description of Beauty, and if the public mind were
not debased, we should understand what is meant when it is
said, he is the Beautiful Shepherd. Yet it is not mere beauty
of color or features, but something from within that expresses
itself in the face.”

“I remember,” said Margaret, “that look; his eyes were
fair, his hair and countenance; but there was something behind,
deeper, like music in the night, like the shining of a fish in
the water, like a nasturtion flowering under its green leaves.”

“Something like that; it glowed in his look and illuminated
his manner. The hidden source of his Beauty was Love;
and once, as his Love increased, as he became more and more
perfect through his sufferings, when his spirit had completely
passed through the veil of his flesh, this inward Beauty shone
out in a most wonderful way; and in connection with the

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splendor of God which answered to it at the moment, constitutes
a striking scene known as the Transfiguration, which
you will read. That same look melted one wicked man to
tears, and felled to the ground some brutal soldiers.”

“Do explain to me one thing; in one of my dreams were
three girls, whom I knew to be Faith, Hope and Charity, because
I had seen pictures of them. They created a fourth
whom I called Beauty, because it could be nothing else but
that. Yet you say Beauty comes from Love.”

“That Charity,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “is none other than
Love. It is an evangelical term, and there again our translators
committed a blunder when they rendered it Charity, who
is none other than an alms-giver. But Love, as Christ would
have it, is something entirely different, greater than Faith or
Hope, the greatest of all things, and from it comes true
Beauty. As David desired to behold the Beauty of the Lord,
so that of Christ was not without its effect in the rapid spread
of his doctrine; he was altogether lovely. The grace of your
Venus, the symmetry of your Apollo, the colors of flowers,
the brilliancy of gems, pass with me as nothing compared
with the Moral Beauty of Christ. Apollo is a perfect material
form; Christ a perfect moral soul. What Apollo is in the
galleries of Art, Christ is in the galleries of Spirit. The
Apollo comprises all the bodily excellences of men, Christ all
their moral excellences. There is some worth, some virtue
in every human being; in Christ these all united and made a
harmonious whole. The Apollo, as I told you, represented
the higher operations of Nature; Christ represented the
higher operations of God; or as I might say, the Apollo represented
the natural attributes of God, Christ his moral attributes.
By as much as the statue of Apollo differs from the
image of Brahma, by so much does Christ differ from Plato.”

“I have thought sometimes,” said Margaret, “of Regulus
going back to the Carthaginians,—wasn't that an unexampled
act? of Codrus and Eubule sacrificing themselves for their country,
of Epaminondas's magnanimity, Arrius's integrity, Evephenus's
truthfulness; and Oh! how I have wished to get away
from Christians, sit down on a stump in the groves of the Academy
and hear Plato preach, or squat with Diogenes in his tub and
listen to his railings. When the Master laughs about people,
and I ask him who is good, he says, `The Seven Wise Men
of Greece.' I am sure there was some virtue in those days—
yet—I know not what to say.”

“If you intend a comparison,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “it

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were easy to prove, if you put me upon that, that Christ differs
from those to whom you have referred, toto cœlo, by the greatest
possible distance. True, they possessed many virtues, but
what you would glean from a whole antiquity seems to me aggregated
in Christ. There may be some analogy between
Christ and them, but no similitude. How this matter stands
you will see when I have said all I shall say about him. Besides,
regarding Regulus for instance, there seems to be no
basis of comparison, they do not stand upon any common footing.
Among fallen men there exist certain notions of rectitude,
which go by the name of honor. It is a familiar saying,
there is honor among thieves. The Romans and Carthaginians
were fallen men, they made war upon each other, they
were mutual pillagers, incendiaries, liars, assassins. Yet they
retained this sentiment of honor. Regulus indeed, true to
his word, went back, even when he knew it would cost him his
life, a noble act; yet he was put to death by those whom he
had just before been trying to kill, and possibly by the friends
of those whom his own sword had pierced. Then, in retaliation,
the Carthaginians in Rome were by the public authority
barbarously tortured.”

“I see, I see,” rejoined Margaret. “I did not think of comparison.
Only those noble deeds detached from everything
else, have lain in my mind, as things very beautiful. And
while you were speaking they rose up vividly.”

“Christ's was no dependent, distorted, or relative excellence,”
continued Mr. Evelyn; “he was not conspicuous because
he stood a head taller than his countrymen. He was
excellent from the sole of his foot upwards. He was absolutely
and rudimentally great, and would have appeared so
equally alone, or with a million. He was un-fallen; he did
not stand upon a platform of depravity, and exhibit how much
excellence was compatible therewith. He stood upon a platform
of pure goodness, and shows how beautiful it is. Regulus
aided in carrying on the wicked purposes of the world,
Christ contemplated regenerating the whole world. Epaminondas
was made great by the vices of his countrymen, Christ
from his own inherent Life. Plato maintained that fire is a
pyramid tied to the earth by numbers; Christ is guilty of no
philosophical absurdity, and what is not a little noticeable is
this, that while he pursued the track of high, transcendent
truth, he does not exhibit the slightest tinge of those metaphysical
speculations that prevailed in his time. Plato travelled
into Egypt in pursuit of knowledge, Christ into the region of

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himself. Plato borrows from the Brahmins. What absence
of that anagogical, all-prevalent, all-winsome Brahminism in
Christ! Socrates, the wise, beneficent and pious, lifted a
bloody arm against his fellow men. Thales thanked God he
was born a man, not a woman; a Greek, not a Barbarian.
Solon ordered robbery to be punished with death. Anaxagoras,
when he was old and poor, wrapped himself in his cloak,
and resolved to die of hunger. These were all stars in the
night time, worthy of admiration, and pleasant to go to sleep
under. Christ seems to me a Morning Sun.”

“Keep to Christ, I can afford to forget all others, a while
at least.”

“It is after all by approximations we know Christ, not by
any comprehension. We must rest content to paddle about
in the inlets of this great ocean. Consider his intellectual
character—`he knew what was in man,' his biographer declares.
He had not books or teachers; he worked at his
father's bench; he had never, as I believe, travelled farther
than from Nazareth to Jerusalem, and his doctrine savors as
little of Jewish hagiography as it does of the lore of the Rabbins;
and well was it asked, `How knoweth this man letters,
having never learned?' He studied his own mysterious nature,
his own manifold necessities, his own disposition; and
by thus first knowing himself, he knew all men. Through
himself he read the race. That love, which is the secret sap
of the soul, by which our being enlarges itself, the faculties
grow apace like the arms of an oak, the knots of thought are
loosened, and a clear shining intellectual vision is attained, he
possessed in unbounded measure. He did God's will, and
therefore knew of the doctrine. He grew in wisdom, and
love added to his insight and fortified his reason. He was
pure in heart, and thus saw God. Christ is perfectly adapted
to man, as a well-adjusted piece of carpentry, as light to the
eye, as air to the lungs, as musical notes to a musical ear. He,
the prototypal Diapason of the race, studying himself, and
man in himself, so strikes a chord that vibrates to every heart.
Christ was a genius, one without compeer or parallel, a spiritual
genius; not of the Homeric, Phydian, or Praxitelean
order, but of his own most singular, most exalted kind. A
sculptor, from the several beauties found in a collection of
human bodies, gives you a beautiful material statue; Christ
gives you a beautiful spirit. A sculptor from his own Ideal
produces a beautiful Form; Christ from his Ideal produces
beautiful Men. A sculptor sometimes succeeds in throwing

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passion, action, a soul into marble; Christ threw a soul into
man. Art explains nature to man; Christ explained God to
man. His power was strictly creative, as it was rare and benign.
A spiritual landscape painted he, that no Claude could
equal. Indeed such an impression had his disciples of his
productive energy, that by him they say `the worlds were
made.' A new Heaven and a new Earth created he. Christ
was, if we are willing to apply to him modern terms, both Art
and an Artist. He was in himself the fairest, self-wrought,
divine creation. Then patiently, studiously, lovingly, he went
on to form new creations. In Love lies all Artistic energy;
from the highest love proceeds the highest work. Praxiteles,
in the composition of his Venus, is said to have been inspired
by the presence of a beautiful female. Christ needed no
other inspiration than what his own beautiful heart could furnish.
But I must delay on this till I have said some other things.

“Having all too meagrely spoken of him in himself, I will
speak of him in his relation to God. The Soul of the Universe
entered into his soul, and was cherished there. The
Spirit of God, as a dove, descended and rested upon him. In
him dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily. He is called
the only begotten Son of God. With a nature harmonious in
all things with God, God himself sympathised, and he dwelt
in God, and God in him. The Word became flesh. He
was the Bread of God, he was a Vine of the Father's planting;
he was Emmanuel, God with us. But of what chiefly
interests us, his relation to man, I will tell you. In this
respect we learn much of Christ from his immediate successors,
called Apostles, in whom is seen the Ideal of Christ as it
were projected, and who manifest in effect what he held in
purpose. `As he was, so are we in this world,' they declare.
This expresses the gist of the matter. Whatever he himself
was he designed man to become. God sent him into the world,
through him to restore his own fallen image. He was made
perfect, that through his perfection we might become perfect.
He would restore us by the infusion of himself, by re-uniting
man with his spirit, his holiness, his love. His wish and
prayer were that we together with him might become one with
God. He announced himself the Way, the Truth, the Life.
He did not teach, he was the Resurrection and the Life, and
those who were dead in trespasses and sins heard his voice,
came forth from their graves and lived. `Take up your Cross
and follow me,' were his words; `eat me,' `live on me.' As
he laid down his life for us, so are we directed to lay down

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our lives for the brethren. `I travail,' says one, `till Christ
be formed in you.' `Christ in us' is the Mystery of Revelation.
`We die daily;' `we live, yet not we, but Christ lives
in us.' As he forgave, so are we to forgive. The same mind
that was in him is to be in us. As he suffered without the
gate, so are we to go forth, bearing his reproach. We are
crucified together with him. As he died to sin, so do we.
As he was a sacrifice, so are we to offer our bodies living sacrifices.
He suffered, leaving us an example. If we imitate
his Passion, we shall reign with him. The Glory which God
gave him, he says, he gives his disciples. Greater works than
he did he declares they shall do. So perfect was this contemplated
identity that he says, He who receives you receives
me; and it was even declared, that he who sinned against a
brother, sinned against Christ. This inner, received Christ,
Paul declared, worked in him mightily. Through him, thus
received, we escape the pollutions of the world. His blood,
his doctrine, his spirit, his death, his whole self, washes away
our sins. As he is holy, so we become holy. We are partakers
of the divine nature. He is to us a Moral Revelation of
God; as there is a Natural Revelation in the material creation.
He embodies, and sets forth the Moral attributes of God. So
he came into the world, as it were, suffused with the effulgence
of God, raying out with love, benignity, paternal affection.
He addressed himself to human sympathies, I mean to
that power of which we were speaking, of reciprocating the
feelings and passions of another; to that susceptibility of truth
and goodness which exists in all minds. This was the medium
whereby he would communicate himself to man. He relied
upon the spirit of God to second and bless his labors. He
would uncurb the well-spring of love that is found in every
soul, and let its waters flow out over the earth. He begins
with saying, `Repent,' or in the original, Change your minds,
Reflect upon yourselves. In the only discourse of any length
which remains to us, he pronounces the Beatitudes, which I
hope you will soon read. His object is the salvation of man;
he is called the Saviour, because he shall save his people from
their sins. In the revival, development, and extension of love,
he would bring men to holiness; in becoming holy, sin is expelled
and forgiven; in the expulsion of sin, Hell both as an
experience and a destiny ceases, and Heaven is secured. On
the deep, eternal foundations of Nature he would erect the
superstructure of Grace. He came mature in preparation,
flushing with hope, dexterous for attempt. He looked with

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loving eyes to behold loving eyes in return, he spake in kindness
to be greeted with kindness, his warm heart would be
met by warm hearts, his lofty purposes would kindle lofty purposes,
his holy life shall stimulate a holy life, his gentle rebuke
shall react in penitence, his pity shall arouse from despair. As
by a conjuror's touch he shall awaken the dead soul of the world.
His Divine Spirit propagating itself, the image of God shall reappear
in the face of man. He, the Heavenly Sculptor, works
on rocky souls, and with his chisel fashions a form of immortal
beauty. Thousands upon thousands heard his voice and lived.
The stately Pharisee, the unknown rustic, and the despised foreigner
became his converts. To his resurrection from sin and
sense, fashion and fortune, multitudes strove to attain; many
vied in his crucifixion; by the new and living way through the
veil, that is, the flesh, the carnal and self-indulgent denied
themselves to enter. A living, sympathetic response to Christ
arose in John and Peter, Martha and Mary, and hosts. A
splendid Ideal had he, which he called the Kingdom of Heaven;
the reproduction of himself among men he spoke of as
his coming again; the reappearance of Virtue and Peace,
Truth and Righteousness, he described as the clouds of Heaven
and Angels of God. Such was his Ideal of Truth, that
while he says he himself judged no one, he expected that
would judge the world, condemn sin, and extirpate it forever;
and those who possessed this truth he speaks of as standing
upon thrones. The ordinary magistracy of man would be
supplanted, and all iniquity flee away before the brightness of
his Advent. Such is the scheme of Redemption, so called;
a scheme or plan, originating with God, executed by Christ,
fostered by the Holy Spirit, energetic through human sympathies
and affections; a method, as we are graphically told, `of
redeeming unto Christ a peculiar people, zealous of good
works,' of instituting a `Church without spot or blemish.'
Let me now explain some of your troublesome `anagogics.'
The Atonement is the union of man with God through Christ
by the reproduction of Christ in us; the Trinity is this tri-fold
union, God, Christ and Man; Faith, a Saving or Evangelical
Faith, or Believing in Christ, is taking Christ to yourself
in this living and warm way, receiving his spirit into your
spirit, his feelings into your feelings, his character into your
character, whereby his whole self becomes grafted upon, and
fused into yourself. Sanctification or Holiness is the subsidence
and departure of sin in proportion as you thus receive
Christ. Justification is God's approval of you; Adoption is

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becoming a member of the great Divine family. This is
Christianity! The regeneration of the world went on well
for a while; the spirit and power of Christ reached many nations;
Christism survived a few years after his death, when,
alas! the dog returned to his vomit, and the sow that was
washed to her wallowing in the mire. The Church began its
Fall in the second century; Christians became degraded into
the ways of the world, the forms of Judaism were revived, a
false philosophy was introduced, and sacerdotal and imperial
ambition finished the work. With Constantine in the fourth
century, the union of the Cross and the Sword was complete,
and in the name of Christ, Christian nations have gullied the
earth with the blood they have spilt, and rent the skies with
the yells of mutual massacre.”

“I must ask you one question,” said Margaret. “How
came the first man to fall?”

“That question belongs to a subject of the most subtle nature,
the prime origin of Evil, which I must take some other
time to discuss.”

“I know you are tired, but let me ask you how these wicked
things could be done in the name of Christ?”

“That name has been perpetuated, although so great was
its abuse that in the seventh century a new sect arose who are
now called Mohammedans. The solitary divine virtue immanent
in Christ has ever found a response in the heart of humanity;
and such was the original majestic effect of his name,
that it has served as a convenient basis for delusion, error and
sin, craft, avarice and pride, to raise their fabrics upon. Besides,
the Gospels, handed down from age to age, have been
held in nominal reverence.”

“You mentioned the name of Mary?”

“Yes, there were two Marys, one of whom was so affected
by Christ, that she washed his feet with her tears, and wiped
them with the hairs of her head.”

“You have said the last word; I have no more questions.
Sweet sister Mary! my name too is Mary. Oh Tony, Tony!
Your profession is done in a way you little wotted of. Toupee,
tyetop, pomatum, powder—my hair goes for a towel to wipe
Christ's feet with. My handkerchief cannot hold my tears,
they go to do Mary's service too! I have not understood, Sir,
all you have said, but it is enough, enough; I am filled to distention,
I can bear no more. Apollo, Diana, Orpheus, are
you scared? Have you hid under the bushes? Dear little
Gods and Goddesses all, don't be frightened,—Christ won't

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hurt us. They have been beautiful and true to me, he will
love them for that, won't he, Mr. Evelyn? Christ shall preside
over us, I will worship him. It is late, I thank you, I
bless you, Mr. Evelyn, I must go, I would be alone. But the
names must be changed. Bacchus Hill shall be Christ's Hill,
Orpheus' Pond, his Pond. He shall be supreme; Head, Pond
and all, shall henceforth be called Mons Christi.