judges, without farther consultation, conducted him in triumph to his house. If it be true that the second Edipus was written at so late an age, as from its mature serenity and total freedom from the impetuosity and violence of youth we have good reason to conclude that it actually was, it affords us at once a pleasing picture of the delight and reverence which attended his concluding years. Although the various accounts of his death appear fabulous, they all coincide in this, that he departed without a struggle, while employed in his art, or something connected with it, and that like an old swan of Apollo, he breathed out his life in song. I consider also the story of the Lacedemonian general who had fortified the burying-ground of his fathers, and who, twice exhorted by Bacchus in a vision to allow Sophocles to be there interred, despatched a herald to the Athenians on the subject, with a number of other circumstances, as the strongest possible proof of the established reverence in which his name was held. In calling him virtuous and pious, I spoke in the true sense of the words; for although his works breathe the real character of ancient grandeur, sweetness and simplicity, of all the Grecian poets he is also the individual whose feelings bear the strongest affinity to the spirit of our religion.

One gift alone was refused to him by nature: a voice attuned to song. He could only call forth and direct the harmonious effusions of other voices; he was therefore compelled to depart from the established practice of the poet acting a part in his own pieces, and only once (a very characteristic trait) made his appearance in the character of the blind singer Thamyris playing on the cithera.

As Eschylus, who raised tragic poetry from its rude beginnings to the dignity of the cothurnus, was his predecessor; the historical relations in which he stood to Sophocles enabled the latter to avail himself of the inventions of his original master, so that Eschylus appears as the rough designer, and Sophocles as the finished successor. The more artful construction of the dramas of the latter is easily perceived: the limitation of the chorus with respect to the dialogue, the polish of the rhythmus, and the pure Attic diction, the introduction of a greater number of characters, the increase of contrivance in the fable, the multiplication of incidents, a greater

degree of development, the more tranquil continuance of all the moments of the action, and the greater degree of theatrical effect given to incidents of a decisive nature, the more perfect rounding of the whole, even considered in a mere external point of view. But he excelled Eschylus in somewhat still more essential, and proved himself deserving of the good fortune of having such a preceptor, and of entering into competition with him in the same subjects: I mean the harmonious perfection of his mind, by which he fulfilled from inclination every duty prescribed by the laws of beauty, and of which the impulse was in him accompanied by the most clear consciousness. It was impossible to exceed Eschylus in boldness of conception; I am inclined however to believe that Sophocles appears only less bold from his wisdom and moderation, as he always goes to work with the greatest energy, and perhaps with even a more determined severity, like a man who knows the extent of his powers, and is determined, when he does not exceed them, to stand up with the greater confidence for his rights. As Eschylus delights in transporting us to the convulsions of the primary world of the Titans, Sophocles on the other hand never avails himself of the gods but when their appearance is necessary; he formed men, according to the general confession of antiquity, better, that is, not more moral, or exempt from error, but more beautiful and noble than they appeared in real life; and while he took everything in the most human signification, he was at the same time aware of their superior destination. According to all appearance he was also more moderate than Eschylus in his scenic ornaments; he displayed perhaps more taste and selection in his objects, but did not attempt the same colossal pomp.

To characterize the native sweetness and affection so eminent in this poet, the ancients gave him the appellation of the Attic bee. Whoever is thoroughly imbued with the feeling of this property may flatter himself that a sense for ancient art has arisen within him; for the affected sentimentality of the present day, far from coinciding with him in this opinion, would both in the representation of bodily sufferings, and in the language and economy of the tragedies of Sophocles, find much of an unsupportable austerity.

THE respected divine who bore this name, distinguished alike by his intellectual pre-eminence and his beautiful piety, somewhat resembles Fenelon in his relation to his time, and the kind of influence which went forth from him. With nothing of the mysticism of the French saint, he possessed the same practical depth of spirit and the same devout earnestness; strongly contrasted in this respect with the rationalistic theologians of his day. As a German and a theologian, he was learned, of course; but he was far more than that; he was also a profound philosopher, and, in philosophy, a Platonist. No modern has entered more fully into the meaning and spirit of the immortal Greek, whose works he translated in part. The great aim of his life was to reconcile philosophy with Christianity, and to revive the religious sentiment in an age when the atheistic philosophy of France had brought a temporary blight upon all the nobler products of the soul. The "Discourses on Religion," from which the following extract is taken, is a contribution to this end. His last and his most important work is the Christliche Glaubenslehre (Doctrine of Christianity).

Schleiermacher was born at Breslau, and educated as a Moravian at the Seminary of the United Brethren at Niesky. At the age of twenty he left the society of the Moravians, and studied theology at Halle. Having been ordained as a preacher, he was minister for six years at the hospital, Charitè, in Berlin. During this time, he published his Monologues and the Discourses on Religion, and translated Blair's and Fawcett's sermons. In 1802, he was ap

pointed professor "extraordinary" of theology at Halle, and preached to the University. During the troublous period of the French invasion in 1807, when Halle was taken from the Prussians, he returned to Berlin, and lectured and preached with patriotic boldness on the state of the times, unawed by Davoust, who then occupied the city. In 1809, he was appointed preacher to the Trinity church in Berlin, and was married the same year. In 1810, at the establishment of the University at Berlin, he was made Professor of theology in that institution. This post he retained until his death. In 1833, he visited England, and opened the German church at the Savoy.

In person, Schleiermacher was diminutive and deformed. As a preacher, he was unboundedly popular, although his discourses had none of those qualities which stir the blood, but consisted, for the most part, in plain practical appeals to the understanding and the conscience. He preached extempore, and, it is said, with no other preparation than that which he allowed himself on Sunday morning,-an hour before service. His conduct during his last hours, as related by his wife, was characteristic, and illustrated the Christian faith and piety which distinguished him through life. His last act, a few minutes before death, was to administer the service of the Eucharist to himself and his family. "In these words of the Holy Scriptures," he said, "I place my trust; they are the corner-stone of my faith:" then turning to his wife and children, "In this love and communion of souls, then, we are and shall be one and undivided." He died February 12, 1834.

spiritual atmosphere, to ward off the violence of the paroxysms; and if not to entirely conquer the exciting cause of the disease, to attenuate it to such a degree that it shall be almost innocuous. But in the latter case, we must despair of every other means of cure, except that which may proceed from some internal beneficent operation of Nature. For the evil is attended with more alarming symptoms, and is more fatal in its effects, when the too great proximity of other infected persons feeds and aggravates it in every individual; the whole mass of vital air is then quickly poisoned by a few; the most vigorous frames are smitten with the contagion; all the channels in which the functions of life should go on are destroyed; all the juices of the system are decomposed; and, seized with a similar feverous delirium, the sound spiritual life and productions of whole ages and nations are involved in irremediable ruin. Hence your antipathy to the church, to every institution which is intended for the communication of religion, is always more prominent than that which you feel to religion itself: hence, also, priests, as the pillars and the most efficient members of such institutions, are, of all men, the objects of your greatest abomination.

Even those among you who hold a little more indulgent opinion with regard to religion, and deem it rather a singularity than a disorder of the mind, an insignificant rather than a dangerous phenomenon, cherish quite as unfavourable impressions of all social organization for its promotion. A slavish immolation of all that is free and peculiar, a system of lifeless mechanism and barren ceremonies,-these, they imagine, are the inseparable consequences of every such institution; and these, the ingenious and elaborate work of men, who, with almost incredible success, have made a great merit of things which are either nothing in themselves, or which any other person was quite as capable of accomplishing as they. I should pour out my heart but very imperfectly before you, on a subject to which I attach the utmost importance, if I did not undertake to give you the correct point of view with regard to it. I need not here repeat how many of the perverted endeavors and melancholy fortunes of humanity you charge upon religious associations; this is clear as light, in a thousand indications of your predominant individuals; nor will I stop to refute these accusations, one by one, in order to fix the evil upon other causes. Let us rather submit the whole conception of the church to a new examination, and from its central point, throughout its whole extent, erect it again upon a new basis, without regard to what it has actually been hitherto, or to what experience may suggest concerning it.

If religion exists at all, it must needs possess a social character; this is founded not only in the nature of man, but still more in the nature of religion. You will acknowledge that it indicates a state of disease, a signal perversion of

nature, when an individual wishes to shut up within himself anything which he has produced and elaborated by his own efforts. It is the disposition of man to reveal and to communicate whatever is in him, in the indispensable relations and mutual dependence not only of practical life, but also of his spiritual being, by which he is connected with all others of his race; and the more powerfully he is wrought upon by any. thing, the more deeply it penetrates his inward nature, so much the stronger is this social impulse, even if we regard it only from the point of view of the universal endeavor to behold the emotions which we feel ourselves, as they are exhibited by others, so that we may obtain a proof from their example that our own experience is not beyond the sphere of humanity.

You perceive that I am not speaking here of the endeavor to make others similar to ourselves, nor of the conviction that what is exhibited in one is essential to all; it is merely my aim to ascertain the true relation between our indivi dual life and the common nature of man, and clearly to set it forth. But the peculiar object of this desire for communication is unquestionably that in which man feels that he is originally passive, namely, his perceptions and emotions. He is here impelled by the eager wish to know whether the power which has produced them in him be not something foreign and unworthy. Hence we see man employed, from his very childhood, with making revelations, which, for the most part, are of this character; the conceptions of his understanding, concerning whose origin there can be no doubt, he allows to rest in his own mind, and still more easily he determines to refrain from the expression of his judg ments; but whatever acts upon his senses, whatever awakens his feelings, of that he desires to obtain witnesses, with regard to that he longs for those who will sympathise with him. How should he keep to himself those very operations of the world upon his soul which are the most universal and comprehensive, which appear to him as of the most stupendous and resistless magnitude? How should he be willing to lock up within his own bosom those very emotions which impel him with the greatest power beyond himself, and in the indulgence of which, he becomes conscious that he can never understand his own nature from himself alone? It will rather be his first endeavor, whenever a religious view gains clearness in his eye, or a pious feeling penetrates his soul, to direct the attention of others to the same object, and, as far as possible, to communicate to their hearts the elevated impulses of his own.

If, then, the religious man is urged by his nature to speak, it is the same nature which secures to him the certainty of hearers. There is no element of his being with which, at the same time, there is implanted in man such a lively feeling of his total inability to exhaust it by himself alone, as with that of religion. A sense of religion has no sooner dawned upon him, than

he feels the infinity of its nature and the limitation of his own; he is conscious of embracing but a small portion of it; and that which he cannot immediately reach, he wishes to perceive, as far as he can, from the representations of others who have experienced it themselves, and to enjoy it with them. Hence, he is anxious to observe every manifestation of it; and, seeking to supply his own deficiencies, he watches for every tone which he recognizes as proceeding from it. In this manner, mutual communications are instituted; in this manner, every one feels equally the need both of speaking and hearing.

But the imparting of religion is not to be sought in books, like that of intellectual conceptions and scientific knowledge. The pure impression of the original product is too far destroyed in this medium, which, in the same way that dark-colored objects absorb a great proportion of the rays of light, swallows up everything belonging to the pious emotions of the heart, which cannot be embraced in the insufficient symbols from which it is intended again to proceed. Nay, in the written communications of religious feeling, everything needs a double and triple representation; for that which originally represented, must be represented in its turn; and yet the effect on the whole man, in its complete unity, can only be imperfectly set forth by continued and varied reflections. It is only when religion is driven out from the society of the living, that it must conceal its manifold life under the dead letter.

Neither can this intercourse of heart with heart, on the deepest feelings of humanity, be carried on in common conversation. Many persons, who are filled with zeal for the interests of religion, have brought it as a reproach against the manners of our age, that while all other important subjects are so freely discussed in the intercourse of society, so little should be said concerning God and divine things. I would defend ourselves against this charge by maintaining that this circumstance, at least, does not indicate contempt or indifference towards religion, but a happy and very correct instinct. In the presence of joy and merriment, where earnestness itself must yield to raillery and wit, there can be no place for that which should be always surrounded with holy veneration and awe. Religious views, pious emotions, and serious considerations with regard to them,-these we cannot throw out to each other in such small crumbs as the topics of a light conversation; and when the discourse turns upon sacred subjects, it would rather be a crime than a virtue to have an answer ready for every question, and a rejoinder for every remark. Hence, the religious sentiment retires from such circles as are too wide for it, to the more confidential intercourse of friendship, and to the mutual communications of love, where the eye and the countenance are more expressive than words, and where even a holy silence is understood.

But it is impossible for divine things to be treated in the usual manner of society, where the conversation consists in striking flashes of thought, gaily and rapidly alternating with each other; a more elevated style is demanded for the communication of religion, and a different kind of society, which is devoted to this purpose, must hence be formed. It is becoming indeed to apply the whole richness and magnificence of human discourse to the loftiest subject which language can reach,—not as if there were any adornment, with which religion could not dispense, but because it would show a frivolous and unholy disposition in its heralds, if they did not bring together the most copious resources within their power, and consecrate them all to religion: so that they might thus perhaps exhibit it in its appropriate greatness and dignity. Hence, it is impossible without the aid of poetry, to give utterance to the religious sentiment, in any other than an oratorical manner, with all the skill and energy of language, and freely using, in addition, the service of all the arts, which can contribute to flowing and impassioned discourse. He, therefore, whose heart is overflowing with religion, can open his mouth only before an auditory, where that which is presented, with such a wealth of preparation, can produce the most extended and manifold effects.

Would that I could present before you an image of the rich and luxurious life in this city of God, when its inhabitants come together each in the fulness of his own inspiration, which is ready to stream forth without constraint, but at the same time, each filled with a holy desire to receive and to appropriate to himself everything which others wish to bring before him. If one comes forward before the rest, it is not because he is entitled to this distinction, in virtue of an office or of a previous agreement, nor because pride and conceitedness have given him presumption: it is rather a free impulse of the spirit, a sense of the most heart-felt unity of each with all, a consciousness of entire equality, a mutual renunciation of all First and Last, of all the arrangements of earthly order. He comes forward, in order to communicate to others, as an object of sympathizing contemplation, the deepest feelings of his soul while under the influence of God; to introduce them within the sphere of religion, in which he breathes his native air; and to infect them with the contagion of his own holy emotions. He speaks forth the Divine which stirs his bosom, and in holy silence the assembly follows the inspiration of his words. Whether he unveils a secret mystery, or with prophetic confidence connects the future with the present; whether he strengthens old impressions by new examples, or is led by the lofty visions of his burning imagination into other regions of the world and into another order of things; the practised sense of his au dience everywhere accompanies his own; and when he returns into himself from his wander

ings through the kingdom of God, his own heart and that of each of his hearers are the common dwelling-place of the same emotion.

If now the agreement of his sentiments with that which they feel be announced to him, whether loudly or low, then are holy mysteries -not merely significant emblems, but, justly regarded, natural indications of a peculiar consciousness, and peculiar feelings-invented and celebrated, a higher choir, as it were, which in its own lofty language answers to the appealing voice. But not only, as it were; for as such a discourse is music without tune or measure, so there is also a music among the Holy, which may be called discourse without words, the most distinct and expressive utterance of the inward man. The Muse of Harmony, whose intimate relation with religion, although it has been for a long time spoken of and described, is yet recognized only by few, has always presented upon her altars the most perfect and magnificent productions of her selectest scholars, in honor of religion. It is in sacred hymns and choirs, with which the words of the poet are connected only by slight and airy bands, that those feelings are breathed forth which precise language is unable to contain; and thus the tones of thought and emotion alternate with each other in mutual support, until all is satisfied and filled with the Holy and the Infinite. Of this character is the influence of religious men upon one another; such is their natural and eternal union. Do not take it ill of them, that this heavenly bond, the most consummate product of the social nature of man, but to which it does not attain until it becomes conscious of its own high and peculiar significance, that this should be deemed of more value in their sight, than the political union, which you esteem so far above everything else, but which will nowhere ripen to manly beauty, and which compared with the former, appears far more constrained than free, far more transitory than eternal.

But where now, in the description which I have given of the community of the pious, is that distinction between priests and laymen, which you are accustomed to designate as the source of so many evils? A false appearance has deceived you. This is not a distinction between persons, but only one of condition and employment. Every man is a priest, so far as he draws around him others, in the sphere which he has appropriated to himself, and in which he professes to be a master. Every one is a layman, so far as he is guided by the counsel and experience of another, within the sphere of religion, where he is comparatively a stranger. There is not here the tyrannic aristocracy, which you describe with such hatred; but this society is a priestly people, a perfect republic, where every one is alternately ruler and citizen, where every one follows the same power in another which he feels also in himself, and with which he too governs others.

How then could the spirit of discord and di

vision, which you regard as the inevitable consequence of all religious combinations,-find a congenial home within this sphere? I see nothing but that All is One, and that all the dif ferences which actually exist in religion, by means of this very union of the pious, are gently blended with each other. I have directed your attention to the different degrees of religiousness, I have pointed out to you the different modes of insight, and the different directions in which the soul seeks for itself the supreme ob ject of its pursuit. Do you imagine that this must needs give birth to sects, and thus destroy all free and reciprocal intercourse in religion? It is true indeed in contemplation, that everything which is separated into various parts, and embraced in different divisions, must be opposed and contradictory to itself; but consider, I pray you, how Life is manifested in a great variety of forms, how the most hostile elements seek out each other here, and for this very reason, what we separate in contemplation, all flows together in life. They, to be sure, who on one of these points bear the greatest resemblance to each other, will present the strongest mutual attraction: but they cannot, on that account, compose an independent whole; for the degrees of this affinity imperceptibly diminish and increase, and in the midst of so many transitions there is no absolute repulsion, no total separation, even between the most discordant elements. Take which you will of these masses, which have assumed an organic form according to their own inherent energy; if you do not forcibly divide them by a mechanical operation, no one will exhibit an absolutely distinct and homogeneous character, but the extreme points of each will be connected at the same time with those which display different properties and properly belong to another

mass.

If the pious individuals, who stand on the same degree of a lower order, formed a closer union with each other, there are yet some always included in the combination who have a presentiment of higher things. These are better understood by all who belong to a higher social union, than they understand themselves; and there is a point of sympathy between the two which is concealed only from the latter. If those combine together, in whom one of the modes of insight, which I have described, is predominant, there will always be some among them who understand at least both of the modes, and since they in some degree belong to both, they form a connecting link between two spheres which would otherwise be separated. Thus the individual who is more inclined to cherish a religious connection between himself and na ture, is yet by no means opposed, in the essentials of religion, to him who prefers to trace the footsteps of the Godhead in history: and there will never be wanting those who can pursue both paths with equal facility. Thus in whatever manner you divide the vast province of