opposite and irreconcilable nature. When an existing relation, or any practice, or craft, which affects society, is arraigned for judgment, the question by the people is not, what is its intrinsic nature, but what does the "Book" say about it? Then the opposite side commence piling up their texts of scripture; and he, who is most successful in the accumulation of this sort of authority, secures the victory,— in his own estimation at least.

Behold the various sects throughout Christendom, each of them vehemently quoting text after text to prove that it is right, that all others are wrong; and that one which can furnish the greatest array claims judgment in its favor, on just such principles as we have seen applied in the case of Common Law.

Few there are who dare appeal to the God within their bosoms, and decide all questions according to their own understanding and conscience. Even in the case of Slavery, that most flagrant of all wrongs, seldom do we see one who ventures to rest the cause of human freedom on the axiom that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are the common birthright of the human race; most men pore over the "Book," to see if that will not sustain a truth which is as self-evident as their own existence. Here the oppressor meets them on their own ground; and with no small degree of success, he, too, quotes from Moses, and Jesus, and Paul, to show that this most monstrous outrage upon God and man is in strict accordance with the precepts of this Common Law of morality.

Thus men involve themselves in inextricable mazes of confusion; and stumble, even at noonday, over the sayings of dead men, and in questions which concern the welfare of the soul they bind themselves to the letter of books written by men, who, to say the least, were as fallible and as ignorant as themselves.

The Common Law contains much truth, and probably had its foundation in strict justice, viz. the unwritten law of human nature. But it has become so cumbrous and unwieldy, and withal so mystified and corrupted, by the fraud or ignorance of its expounders, that it is now little better than an engine of tyranny; and answers scarcely any other purpose than to aid in the support of a class of men, who live by means of the practical belief kept up in the minds of the people, that their services are absolutely necessary to save them from being defrauded of possessions and rights.

The above remarks will apply, in a greater or less degree, to the various parts of the Bible. The books, which have been written from age to age to explain and enforce its precepts, were they all piled up together, would not only "o'ertop old Pelion," but would almost literally verify the declaration of John, with reference to the unwritten words of Jesus, "that the world would

not be able to contain them." These all aid somewhat in the maintenance of the spiritual lawyer or doctor, who is retained to explain truths, which are said to be so plain that the wayfaring man though a fool need not err in relation to them.

The Bible contains many great and sublime truths; perhaps more than any other book extant. These truths are valuable, not because they are there, but for their influence upon the welfare of man. Nevertheless, the idolatry which is inculcated and practised with reference to the letter of that book is highly mischievous, and of incalculable injury to the world. It degrades the present, denies the eternity of God, and the integrity of the soul. It makes men slaves to the past, and the walking shadows of buried ages. It impugns the judgment, throttles reason, and hoodwinks the mind. In fine, it denies the presence of God in the soul—the ability of man to know anything It declares that all the truth which he can have, all he can know of God, or his own immortality, is to be found within the lids of this book, and was proclaimed by some Moses, or Isaiah, or Jesus, or Paul, centuries ago. Nothing can be more fatal to human advancement than this idea, which is the prevailing one of Christendom.

now.

The Bible also contains much which in its letter is false, evil and only evil. There are no crimes committed among men, that are not attempted to be, ay, and that may not be justified by an appeal to some parts of the Bible. Slavery, War, Intemperance, licentiousness, and fraud of all kinds are sustained by an appeal to its pages. Now, so long as men declare this book to be beyond the reach of criticism, not to be touched by the understanding, or the conscience, such things will be, and great evils must flow therefrom.

But, when we adopt the principle that the Bible, like every other book, is to be judged by the light of the present hour, and be received or rejected in accordance with the intuition and experience of the soul, there is hope of the final triumph of truth over all error. The Bible, then, is to be valued, like other books, for what it contains, to enlighten, quicken, and renovate the soul, and redeem the race. It is not to be received for what it has been, or what it has done, but for what it is now. What is it doing for man to-day? that is the question. Is it doing more good than evil? Its claims should be canvassed fearlessly and impartially. Whatever of good it does, or inculcates, embrace-of evil, cast away.

But above all things maintain the right of the living soulof every individual man, to judge, unhesitatingly and unqualifiedly, everything in the past and all of the present; remembering always that the Soul is its own authority, is bound by its own laws, does not live in the past, but is now. It is greater

than all books-is antecedent to them all. It is the maker of them; and cannot be made subject to them, until the Creator can be placed in bondage to his own workmanship. When this great truth shall fill the human heart, and be shadowed forth in human life, then the morning of the Universal Resurrection will dawn, then man shall arise from his grovelling position, among the coffins, the bones, and ashes of a buried Past, and live, and grow, and expand, in the bright sunlight of that Eternity in which he dwells.

THE TWO DOLONS.

FROM THE MS. SYMPHONY OF DOLON.

THE FIRST DOLON.

DOLON, wont to be much in the air, in the fields and woods, beneath the sky, the clouds, the branches and leaves, and in the mists, those clouds of earth, almost lived in nature, like a sea-fairy in the ocean, everywhere in which it is at home, and has a place where it may be as if it sought it by roaming;-the gurgle-reserved silent meadows of high green waving grass, the atmosphere and air-like water, the rocks over which the waves oscillated reflected sunniness, like shadows on the country landscape of clouds passing overhead, the rocks ivied over with seaweed and vines and grass, like ruins of the sea-ages, the woods and caves of tree-coral, as if petrified forests of an ancient race of human fishes, and the coral edifice-like places with interwoven open intricate roofs, like the pinewoods, and near the surface, which was like the high heaven of the sea-earth, where seemed to be sky and clouds, which were outwardly only reflected to the sight of men, though to men it seems as if the light in the ocean must be air-like, or grave moon-light, for even the sunlit noon surface is like a bright day moonlight. Dolon had always been in Nature, unspecially and really as if in his proper place. Nature is not. primarily a sentiment to children; sentiment may be a feeling in it, but it is place and not

sentiment which leads them to it. A child will act from the fulness of its affections and feelings as if from consciousness, but these are the spirit which thus affect him, and he acts from them as facts which buoy him up and float him; not as sentiment which is need of the fact, and makes him a seeker, as men, who away from their home, or outwardly related to their sphere, feel that which develops in them sentiment and aspiration, but does not put them in the natural position of the sentiment, and the sentiment thus acts, out of its place, from depths which the surface in its hurried action, is as if dissevered from. Children do all in the fact, as a mermaid may joy and frolic in the water which it is alway in, and as one who is out in the night may see shooting stars; the direct act is as if extra, while the regular course goes on, an exuberance of the real from the real. A child's whole person, as well as nature, (of which Dolon was an ideal-like though most natural exemplification, for the most natural is the most ideal and common,) shows that its proper sphere is Nature; out of Nature it is more of an individuality, like a king in un-state relations, than of an individual thing in life which individualizes by giving all things a place in it, and leaving them to their life in their own places like passengers in a vessel; a flower in the house is a flower in form, but in nature the form is the flower, the flower in life, and the flower is by its life rather than by that which is a form called self which Life has taken, as a boat is not a boat till it is launched. Life is the unpersonalizer of persons, the unifier of individuals, as playing is of a stagecompany; the relation of things to things, and a rotatory circle like the earth, which, by moving on its axis, faces all parts of the infinite space around it. Dolon, restrained in the house, would seek nature like a caged bird the air. Those deep, heaven-like eyes required the broad and high beautiful realities of nature, if only for freedom, and space, and color, which is somewhat of a good substitute for nature in houses, especially if of forms, as in carpets. The individual things of nature are related to man, as well as man is to man; and man must be with stars, and trees, and grasses, as he must with man, to be at ease. Life lives in her forms, and is evolved from them, like rays of light from the sun, and we truly live only in her atmosphere; 15

VOL. III.

NO. I.

individualities are thus universalized, as if in the whole they neutralized each, and kept each other in active relation to her, like spans of horses; for, left to itself, the vital becomes a centred isolation in the individual, like water in anything whose pores are closed; as if individuality was only a form which Life, like Genius, had taken, and which has no life in itself, but by being in life; and out of it, it ceases to be, like rays of light separated from the All things in nature are centred to face each other, and the relation, represented to men by influence, is sure, however they may be as persons; the sea and the sky face, and the mutual relation goes on, though the sea tosses about, and the sky is covered with clouds; men receive influence from Nature, though they never look at her or think of her, and are busy in some mechanical labor, if only they be in her. There is as it were a quiet inward depth and gentle positiveness-like reserve, in men who live in the air; they have not the prominence and selfness of those who live in the house, and Nature is around them mighty and absolute as a Monarch, and gentle, quiet, and familiar-like, like a great family dog lying by the doorsteps in the yard, where the children are playing and the men are working. Children are troublesome or noisy, and often restless, within the house and in their present mode of life; for they are shut out from their life-place; the life which would be developed as unobviously and quietly as fruit grows, gives them an excitement or uneasiness of which activity is the effect. Nature is their play-ground and place, and their activity is modified from its original spirit of gentleness and unity, by its being without the Nature which acts on them, as the moon on the tides, and in which they are Beings in Life, and not, as in the house, beings who, the only Being, (like Noblemen from the cityCourt alone in the country places,) are not only free, but at needs to be Persons, for they are living things, and life is not around them to meet life, and they create a life for themselves out of their own life, like sailors at sea forming their cabin into a homelike room out of such materials as they have, or like parrots who encaged and taken from their native clime and woods, talk with the men instead of singing with their mates. Children in the house are as if obtrusive, and men interfere with men; that which in the air and great natural house would be harmony, is a noise