closed in the working of the God of Providence and of Redemption?

For ourselves we are not pleased that this same question of For what? is so rarely asked, or in relation to the Forms of Prayer alone, and answered so commonly by ascribing some mere negative utility. And therefore it is, that we now call every branch of Rituals before us, and ask concerning them all in a body, for what they have been given their place in the public worship of God under the Gospel dispensation? We shall undertake to give the answer. And if we could succeed rather according to our wishes than our expectations, we should hope to make it appear, that the different elements of Rituals are all and each agencies, acting distinctly yet in mutual co-operation, towards a positive end; and that such end is neither merely indifferent to the ultimate end towards which the Gospel aims, nor to be confounded with it; but that while it may be attained by itself, it was meant to be, ought to be, and of itself is fitted to be, not only consistent with personal religion, but also a means whereby that divine principle may exhibit itself with greater beauty and with a more pervading presence. In other words, there is a great work going on for man and within him, arising out of his relation to the Highest Being, who made him and the world in which he is to live a life in reference to eternal ends, in obedience to eternal laws. That work is Human Culture, in its widest sense, the culture of the individual man and of the race. The great and peculiarly divine agent of Culture is Religion, but she takes into her service all manner of subordinate agents. Without her, their work is feeble, and the result wholly inadequate to the great end proposed. Without them, she may be said to want, at least some desirable conditions for producing the beautiful result at which she aims. They were meant to go together. We have already endeavored to show the relation which the study of Art or of Works of Genius bears to such co-operating cultivation.* We would now show, that some of those subordinate agencies were designed to have a closer connexion with religion, so as even to carry on their part in the work of human culture in direct conjunction with her highest and most sacred efforts, the preaching of the Everlasting Gospel and the administration of its Sacraments. It will be our business to show further, that each of the usual elements of public worship (demonstrating the superior fitness of those which are peculiar to the Church) are

No. I. Art. VII.

such appropriate agencies. After such an investigation, we may be prepared to see the worth of Ritual studies, while we assign to them only their proper space. In this way, we shall not enter upon our proposed discussion of particular topics without fit preparation.

We are, then, to show, in the first place, that there are subordinate agents of cultivation, which were designed and fitted to co-operate with the divine principle of religion. Our readers will not refuse to join us in our first step towards illustrating this doctrine, for that step places us in Eden.* Yes, let us fancy the thorns and briers of sin, that have long covered that blessed spot, to be cleared away; let man be restored to it, sinless and perfect in all his spiritual and bodily organization, as at first; grant him to have increased and multiplied for a generation or two, at least, before encountering his decisive trial; and let us then visit his Paradise, and contemplate the life that is lived within its green walls and remoter circuit of waters. The Man of Eden was made by the Father of Spirits, by Him was inbreathed the breath of his life, and the creature rose up in the spiritual image of his Creator. He was made ultimately for Eternity. But he was made primarily for a life in Time and Space. And therefore, there was created for him "this globe of earth," to be the scene of that life. Power was given him from above; the organs of his spirit, in its relations to Eternity, were constantly sustained by supernatural supplies; his constitution, mental and bodily, in its relations to this earthly scene, was perfect in its adaptation. Between man, therefore, and the world which was made for his dwelling, wherein to prove and bring out all that was in him, there was the most complete harmony of mutual relations. Let us contemplate, on the one hand, the daily circle of occupations by which he ministered to the sustenance of himself and those joined to him in the closest bonds. Was the mere support of the body all that be received from these divinely ordained employments? Or was there not then, as now, a reaction upon the mind itself? The health nourished by the manifold activity of our earthly life, is not surely all must admit- bodily health alone. In that atmosphere, the mind, too, was designed to find itself refreshed and invigorated. See man, again, engaged in the cultivation of the younger race that

It is enough for our purpose, and a sufficient foundation for our argument, to suppose a perfect state of human nature. Our reasoning, therefore, is not at all affected by any mode of interpreting the second chapter of Genesis, although we use its language.

Shall any one say, that

has been born to him in his Paradise. nothing was meant to come of this, but a future reward in the helper thus trained up to lighten the labors of after years? Is then the present so thankless, the future so grateful only in utilitarian returns, where the work of education is concerned? Does the spirit of man receive no present refreshment, no present instruction, from daily communion with the mind of the child? But, finally, let us remember that we do not thus exhaust-that we do not thus count -the half of the agencies with which the Man of Eden was placed in contact. How many were the objects of eye and ear, that had not the slightest relation to the mere necessities of life, -objects which most men now would say, had no connexion whatever with his interests; yet there they were, formed and placed around him by the same God that made the world for his temporal preparation for eternity. There was the music of birds, of streams, of wind in the trees. There were meadows, with groves, and glimpses of wide-spread waters beyond, and mountains in the distance, and the golden hues of sunset poured out over them all, blending them into one calm, solemn, living whole. There were remote voices of thunder, and of storms, and of that echo of eternity-the roaring of the cataract, without beginning and without end. Then, there were the agencies, the motions whereof might be seen as symbols of gentler or of mightier power, — from

"The river winding at its own sweet will,"

to the mighty stream passing on in the calm consciousness of immeasurable strength, with vast regions of dark forest and high mountain behind, and vast regions of plain beyond a long and solitary journey! And, lastly, the very night brings out as many agencies as she hides, for hers are the moon and stars, under whose light the face of the earth shows itself with fresh influence as a new creation a world of stillness and of silence.

Were all these objects placed around man to be without influence upon him; or were they not rather agencies — active powers designed to work upon his spiritual organization? Far be from us the absurd supposition, that God surrounded man with all this bright host of powers, in his own world, and all for nothing! No, they were meant, not less than the occupations of life and the parental duties, to be important means in the work of culture. For, grant them to be agencies at all, and they can be agencies only for good. It cannot for a moment be supposed, that God could be dealing so lovingly with

his yet unfallen creatures, through one set of means, and at the same time working for their hurt through another. Or will it be said that the work of temptation began with the first seating man in Nature; and that the same Satan, who afterwards spoke through a reptile, was likely, in attempting to exert his poisonous influences, to make

"His dwelling in the light of setting suns."

It may be said, however — and, alas! for the barren creed of "these our unimaginative days," with no slight appearance of reason, that such objects as these could be instruments of cultivation only for poets; and that, for as much as Paradise was the seat of the actual rather than the ideal, it is apprehended there was little room there for poetry. No poetry in Paradise! No poets amongst man, whose mental organization is held up to be perfect! Say rather for such is the true interpretation of such a contradiction in terms—there was no Paradise. Or let us at least be thankful that "the fragrance and blossom of all our knowledge" was brought to us upon heavenly breezes to sweeten the bitterness of our outcast lot. But, seriously, we should think it much more consistent with the supposition of a perfectly constituted man, to say that the denizens of Eden were and must have been all poets: - all must have been alive to the beauty that was poured out around them and for them; the mind, thus gently touched, must have reacted upon the objects that moved it; it must have formed them into exponents in part of its own state of thought and feeling; and what is that but a putting forth of poetic power-the exertion of the high functions of the Imagination? Wordsworth has been said to live his own poetry. And again it has been charged upon him, as a fault, that, as the geese of Phoebus are all swans, so the "estatesmen" of Wordsworth are all Wordsworths. But if Wordsworth contemplates poetry as a life—a life attainable, in some form or degree, by every properly cultivated man — such treatment of his characters would be far at least from an oversight. At all events, if Wordsworth would make poetry a life, even for the best specimens alone of humanity now, it cannot be doubted that he would agree with us in making it a universal life in a perfect state of man.*

One of many important points of likeness between Wordsworth and Goethe (a likeness which has been treated as slight and at the same time inexplicable) is their agreement (with difference of course) in this very matter of considering Poetry as a Life. (See Carlyle's Miscellanies, Art. GOETHE.) We are not sorry to have two such backers.

We are thus brought to perceive the last kind of cultivating agency, that we looked for in our Eden the action of mind upon mind. We are particularly anxious, that this most important of all the instruments of culture, and that with which our ultimate purpose has the most concern, should not be overlooked in our examination of the perfect state of man. It must be admitted, then, that if each man in Eden was really a poet (in the manner just now described) and if the mind in this as in its other modes of activity, reacts with good effect upon itself, the cultivating action of mind upon mind would not be wanting even if man were alone. What he did within his own breast as an Artist would influence his own culture as a Man. Suppose, too, that the poetry within should find no voice, though the poet were surrounded by his fellows, still as each person would be a poet unto himself, the state of such society as a whole would have felt the influence derived from the workings of Art. But we need not avail ourselves of either supposition, The man who is endued with the gift of speech, and who has been moved into a genial mood by objects of Nature, and has again thrown the coloring of that mood over them, why should he not body forth these new forms in words, and so bring them under the eyes and carry them into the hearts of others? Again, every well constituted mind has in itself a sense of melody; and as men now are, we find some, so peculiarly organized, that certain states of their own feelings find a full and adequate expression only in musical and rhythinical sounds. Were every man perfect in his intellectual frame it would be so with every man. What was to hinder, then, that the various melodious sounds of Paradise should awaken those peculiar moods in each mind, and that they in turn should arouse the hitherto dormant gift of music, acting purely by itself, or wedded to the words, which embodied those poetic creations? There might be occasions, even in such a state, for developing the other forms of poetic power. The shapely altar or temple even, might not have been wanting, nor the productions of the pencil and the chisel. But let this be as it may, let the various modes in which the rich

* We trust we cannot be understood as holding the silly notion (which has been pretty current) that the first men picked up their music by imitating birds, &c. A grave and learned orator, we remember, built his hopes- or rather his assurance that America was about to produce something new and peculiar in music, upon the fact, that our forests furnish several species of sounds not heard (we suppose) by the old race of musicians, from Jubal to Rosini. But is this recipe for making American Beethovens a whit worse than the talk about the poets' imitating nature ?