South, and as he stood there he was a new stove, all-a-burning, with the door wide open, the draught clear, the pipes singing. Our friend came with his heart alive to every thing good, but with some ideas that the air of New England was to waft away. He was clear spoken on any topic that came up; bold, uncompromising, steadfast to conviction; and when the controversy waxed earnest and severe, how he would feel the extra heat of our endeared servant, and snatching his hat from his head, thrust his fingers into his massive raven locks, and then drum a tat-too on the crown of his beaver. The Stove was too much for him, and he would rise and sway around in the area, with a Johnsonian stride and a little of a Johnsonian imperativeness. The moral, reformatory, evangelical warmth around the Old Stove vivified many a sympathetic thought then latent in his rich nature, and what a rivalship obtained between those two round, compact, large breasted and large hearted friends of ours, to contribute to the genialities of the place! The rapid fire of wit never came from a better marksman than he; and as for a story, who could excel the power of his telling! "A man of infinite jest," jocund as the summer morning, yet as ready with kindly sympathy and sterling thought as if a Barnabas and Paul were united with Apollos the eloquent man." His freest humor never reminded you of defilement, but of high bred joviality where wit is in and wine is out; and things sacred were never profaned to add to the mirth of the moment. The Old Stove never played false, but was ever up to its promise; and so was it ever with thee, great hearted friend! eloquent champion of truth and humanity, gentle as a lover's lute where the theme requires it, and stirring as the peal of the mountain bugle, when the alarm must ring through the intricate windings of a worldly conscience.

THE work of ruin is consummated! The light above, the light and doors and walls around, are all gone; the thoroughfare is filled with rubbish, and we cannot, if we would, look in upon the deserted spot-the brave old stove removed. Well, be it so. Many a man stands yet in the place of power who may well envy thee, Old Stove, when his mission time on earth is ended, and who then must recall the consuming fact, that he has permitted the fire of soul to burn, not fo warm the kindly charities into livelier activity and to give energy to the chilled love of

liberty and right, but to shrivel up the enlarging sympathies of a humanity that was striving to give the speediest answer to the command of God,-Break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free! Take away the Old Stove!" is better to be heard while its glory is acknowledged and its beneficence is diffusive. Surely this has a significance to those whose creed tells them of a fiery furnace that will show its heat when the mortal stove is taken down. Farewell, Old Stove!

"I care not in these fading days
To raise a cry that lasts not long,

And round thee with the breeze of song"
To stir a little dust of praise."

There has been dust enough stirred arourad thee in thy time, and now thou art down, poor Stove!

THE GRAPE'S VOW.

'Twas for this they reared the vine, Fostered every leaf and shoot, Loved to see its tendrils twine,

And cherished it from branch to root; 'Twas for this that from the blast

It was screened and taught to run, That its fruit might ripen fast,

O'er the trellis to the sun.

And for this they rudely tore

Every cluster from the stem, 'Twas to crush us till we poured

Out our very blood for them. Well, though we are tortured thus, Still our essence shall endure; Vengeance they shall find with us May be slow, but will be sure. And the longer we are pent

From the air and cheering light, Greater, when they give us vent,

For our rest shall be our might; And our spirits they shall see

Can assume a thousand shapes! These are words of verity

Uttered by the dying grapes.

Many a stately form shall reel

When our power is felt within, Many a foolish tongue reveal

What the recent draught has been ; Many a thoughtless, yielding youth, With his promise all in bloom,

WHY was the character of Jesus so human and natural? Why was its development so easy, graceful and regular? Why were his actions so broad and comprehensive? How was this remarkable spiritual experience formed and perfected? Not by mechanical effort and imitation. We must not believe that the religious history of Jesus was a piece of mosaic work, formed of acts fitted together and produced, each at the proper moment, for the sake of making a perfect career in the sight of men. That career was not composed of nicely calculated deeds and postures, but was the outgush and revelation of his life; it unfolded from a law or spirit within him that lay around, and beneath, and above all his actions and vivified them. When we study his biographies we are struck with the consistency, symmetry and breadth of all the related items of his conduct, but these qualities were not the result of art, forethought and intention. Jesus was not governed by the purpose of living a symVOL. XX.

3

metrical career. Perhaps he was unconscious of the finer consistencies aud most delicate harmonies which we detect in his life by a close examination and patient analysis. The greatest poets, it is thought, are not conscious of the subtile graces in their creations of character and rhythm, that are revealed by the mental microscopes which the critic applies to them. They write with a general purpose, and from the pressure of poetic inspiration, and their thought and feeling shape themselves, as it were, into the finer turns and relations which the keen sense of cultivated taste discovers and enjoys. And we should believe that the Savior was filled with the spirit or vital essence of all goodness and greatness-that he cultivated this, and suffered it to flow out through him as the shifting occasions and circumstances of his position required. This principle or essence-this "law of the spirit of life" in him-was love. In this resides the secret of the simplicity of his character, its consistency and its comprehensiveness. As the life in the bursting seed developes and unfolds till it pours itself through a hundred channels and into various forms—stem, branches, boughs, leaves, flowers and fruit, so the germ of love in the soul of Jesus developed itself and flowed without constraint into all his actions, filling them with beauty and power. Religion he defined to be the love of God and man, and if we examine any of his deeds, we shall see that it is an exhibition of that spirit according to the demands of the moment and the end to be attained.

was

Finely has it been said that in Jesus " manifested the fullness of the Godhead bodily." A new meaning radiates from that passage as we read it in the light of our subject. How manifold the manifestations of the Deity to the hunan mind! They are made to us in the vast scale, the stupendous forces, and intricate harmonies of the universe,-through the rich sunlight and the mysterious night-shadows and the oracular star-skies, and the beauty of spring days, the sweetness and loveliness of flowers, and the pomp of forests, the slopes of mountains, the skill of the human frame, and the structure and inspiration of the mind and heart of man.

And yet, inconceivably vast and various as are the elements and scale of nature, there is unity in it, there is consistency and symmetry in the impressions it makes upon us concerning God. The central quality of the Divine Spirit, is Love, and this unity reflects itself in the creation he has made. There is one

plan in it-one purpose and one end. Goodness is impressed on every thing, goodness is the spring which directs the infinite power and art, and therefore as thought ranges from the confederacy of firmaments, through all subordinate revelations of the Creator's glory, to the animalcule that sports, invisible to unassisted sight, in the solar ray, there is no jar in the impressions which nature leaves, for all are toned by the sweep of one all-vivifying and ever undulating sentiment from which the universe was bornthe Love of God. It was by his oneness with God that Jesus was filled with the spirit of Love; it was because he was so charged with it that he became "the fullness of the Godhead bodily," and in the fullness of this sentiment within him, we see the reason of the naturalness, symmetry and comprehensiveness of his character.

As a general thing we mistake very seriously in regard to the source of the Savior's spiritual greatness and perfection. Believing him to be vastly superior in nature and gifts to mortals, we almost instinctively suppose that his virtues must have been of another class than ours, and that his religious experience was beyond our comprehension and sympathy. But, however high we place him in the rank of being, the question of his essential spiritual likeness to us, is not affected. It was Dr. Channing, I believe, who first pointed out and insisted upon the unity and likeness of all souls. Between a crystal and a flower, between an insect and a lion, there is a great gulf fixed, which never can be passed. There is no bond of union between them, no possibility of communication, and never can be any nearer approximation of life. But when we come up into the sphere of moral intelligences, such rigid lines of separation fade. There may be ranks of creatures of different form than ours, in other globes; there may be orders in the hierarchy of heaven with attributes far more glorious than those possessed by man, but if they were made to study truth, and love goodness, and worship and serve the everlasting and allpresent Father, they are of the same nature with us, their excellence is kindred with ours, their joy is of the same stamp, their glory wears the same likeness, and however far they may rise above us in the attainments of the spirit, they are but our elder brothers, and we may yet, if we desire it, rise to their greatness and stand by their side. Truth is one and immutable-the same to all minds that study is; happiness and misery are the same in nature to all souls what

ever be the grade of their grandeur; virtue has the same base and the same conditions to every free being, whether savage or archangel; God is the same object of reverence and adoration to the lowest as to the highest mind which he has formed; and so the essential unity and spiritual sympathy of all intelligent spirits appear in the identity of their origin, their object, their aspirations, their bliss, and their destiny.

Here, indeed, is one of the incentives to virtue, here lies the glory of virtue that it is the best thing, the highest excellence in the universe. Whoever possesses it, comes into fellowship with all that is great and noble in the creation. Whoever obtains it, though he live in obscurity and disgrace among men, is raised above all earthly dignities, wears a crown that is more glorious than any jeweled circlet, and is seen by the Almighty to be of the same kindred with Christ and the angels.

It makes no difference, then, so far as our present question is concerned, how high we place Jesus in the rank of spiritual beings. Because he was a spiritual being, the spirit of life in him must necessarily have been the same with that which should rule and inflame our hearts. It was, and must have been, love of God, love of spiritual excellence, love of duty, love of men. This was his greatness, this was his glory, and the fullness of this makes him the image of the Father and the Teacher and Redeemer of the world.

It may be thought by some, perhaps, that in the remarks thus made, the glory of Christ is made to depend exclusively upon his goodness, and that his office and the other gifts of his nature, are not taken into the account. Of course the office of the Savior as a Commissioned Revealer, is a subject outside the topic that is before us, and in any estimate of the qualities of the Savior's spirit as they are indicated in his biographies, we should do wrong to overlook or slight the greatness of intellect, of sensibility, and of imagination that are presented to us. But the truths that are perceived by the intellect and imagination, depend very much on the spirit of life that is separate from them and lies beneath them. The Savior might have been commissioned by the Almighty to tell us the words we find in the Bible about duty, and spiritual life, and God's nature and purposes, and the soul's immortality, but if his own breast had not been consecrated as it was, and filled with divine love, he would not have known those truths in his own consciousness, as we feel that he did

know them. His lips might have been the channel of super-earthly communications, but the truths he spoke would not have been enforced and interpreted by that certainty which his own experience of their reality now imparts to them. They would have come to us like cold

while Newton closed his great work with a rapturous hymn to the Almighty, Laplace concluded the record of his discoveries with a cool prophecy that they would serve to dispel some superstitions from the popular mind.

Let us observe, also, the difference in the es

ty, and not in the warm and genial coloring which they now possess as we see them to be the results of pure insight by a hallowed mind.

What we see by the intellect depends as much on the qualities that lie at the base of the intellect, as on its own strength. Without a sense of justice, no man, however gigantic his reason may be, can see or appreciate the gradual and steady progress of the race in the attainments of their rights and their victory over oppression. All the facts of history might lie before such a mind, but it has not the sentiment back of the intellect that can enable it to comprehend that feature of history, and though its intellectual power is immense, that department is to its eye as though it were not. So, too, let a man of the strongest reasoning powers, but entirely destitute of taste, stand before a painting, a statue, or a landscape, and he will not see the beauty which each represents. The size and colors of the picture, the outline and features of the marble, and the objects and tints in the landscape, will be seen, but not the grace, the majesty, the meaning that glow through them, and charm other and more sensitive spirits.

And what we see in nature and man that has religious significance, will be determined by the sentiments within us, and the spirit of life we possess. God's goodness and glory will not be revealed by them, unless we have the love of God and the love of goodness within us, and just in proportion to this love in us, will be the prominence of those qualities to our sight in the universe. The greatest astronomer since Newton died, was the Frenchman Laplace. His mind grappled like a Titan, with all the tough and perplexing questions which the celestial mechanics include, and he untangled many a knotted web which the most persistent geometers had found insoluble. He studied and pondered the mysteries of the same sky which Newton studied, but he had not the sentiment of reverence and dependance active in him; he was an atheist; he did not recognize the traces of God's thought in the harmonies of the stars, and though the mathematics of heaven were plain to him, his intellect was never lifted even to an acknowledgement of the unseen Geometer, and

ed of men. Washington saw the worth of human nature, saw the evil and wrong of tyranny, saw the majesty of justice, saw the right of men to be governed wisely and for their highest interests, saw the wickedness and folly of war, the glory of peace, and the foulness and worthlessness of all honors and station that were gained by usurpation and maintained by force. Napoleon regarded men differently, looked upon them as the pawns of his great chess-game, considered them as animals to be led and governed by the prospect of a prize, saw no divine right ruling over the world, but held it to be a field for the strongest to master, and for the most cunning to maintain. These two men lived and governed according to their separate theories, and why did their theories differ so widely? Why was Washington's so much loftier and pure? It was not owing to the superior greatness of his intellect and genius; most persons would say that Napoleon was superior in those qualities, but the sentiments in the breast of Washington were noble and deep; they ruled his intellect; they gave it balance, steadiness, and right direction; and in these sentiments Napoleon failed, and for that reason he could not see in men and in society, those great rights and needs to which our own great statesman pledged his sword and heart and brain.

And the greatness of the Savior's character consisted in the spirit of life that lay beneath all his special powers. It was owing to the perfect purity of the sentiments in his soul,-the love of God, the love of men, the love of goodness,-that he saw the universe so electric with God's mercy and all things peaceful with his smile, that he beheld so clearly the capacities and worth of every human spirit, and was bound to the heart even of the degraded, and the hostile, and so willingly encountered the hardest fate and the most bitter death in the work of redemption. That one pure spirit of love enriched his intellect and flowed out in those exhaustless words that tell of God's paternity and the soul's true peace; it struck down into the affections that enclosed every sinful being in their embrace; it kept his will true to the duties which the Father appointed him to discharge; it overflowed in

the miraculous mercies which his hands conveyed to the needy and the sorrowing.

Some vital practical conclusions are suggested by the thought of the unity and simplicity of the Spirit in Christ; and first, it gives new meaning to the idea that his character is an imitable one. The life of Jesus is proposed to us as an example, a model. "Follow me," are the words which through the narrative of his career, he speaks to every conscience. And unless we have true conceptions of the source of the Savior's spiritual perfection, we may be embarrassed by this command. Many are perplexed by it. How can we follow Christ? they say-how can we take his experience as our model? He was a public teacher, his first disciples were public teachers, and we cannot be. He had a peculiar office, which no other being can ever hold again. His circumstances, his relations to society, were altogether different from ours, and we cannot copy his fortunes, and endeavor to live such a life as his, without casting off the ties of society, and violating the duties which now seem most pressing and solemn.

It is true that no person can mechanically imitate the circumstances of the Savior's condition. And we are not to attempt such an imitation. It is the "spirit of life" in him that is our example. The glory of Jesus does not lie in the fact that he was born in a manger, that he was friendless among the great, that he was homeless, poor, and despised, that he was oppressed, persecuted, and murdered by his foes; it lies in the fact that notwithstanding all hardships, toils, and the hostility of the world, his love of God and men was full and constant, and that his heart was set with complete devotion upon the work which the Father appointed to him. We are not to set Christ before us as the absorbing object of meditation, upon whom our religious affections are to be wholly concentrated, and whose career is to be the mould of our experience, but to consider him in his relations to God and men, since he is the perfect representative of what those relations should be, to endeavor to make our lives harmonious with the spirit of his life. It is this spirit we are to seek and imbibe, and the character of Jesus is peculiarly imitable, because it has at its centre this principle or quality which constitutes its perfection. We are called by our conseiences to be faithful to duty; we are called by the voice of Revelation to be perfect as God is perfect; we are called as disciples to inspire the spirit and follow the life of Christ, and all the requirements

are the same.

For our highest duty is the love of God, and to be perfect as the Father is perfect, is to be filled with the loyalty of love that is the inmost attribute of the Almighty; and thus as we grow more like God by direct communion with him, we grow at the same time more like the Savior, and as we become more like Jesus, by wisely making his life the ideal of the soul, we become more like the Father, and fulfill the demands which duty imposes upon our will.

Again, this one "spirit of life" in Jesus teaches us that if we are once consecrated to God's service, and get a true love of him, all other duties will be easy, and all other virtues will flow from it, as the flowers blossom from the stem. One of the great difficulties that appals or discourages those who would lead a Christian life, is a conception of the manifold duties and graces of which it consists. If it were one obligation that was imposed by it, or any line of offices which they could see and measure, it might be easier, but the calls it makes are so various and searching, that the mind is overwhelmed, and the heart faints at the prospect presented. Yet it is only one obligation that is imposed or implied when any person attempts to live as a Christian, viz., to be guided by a filial love and fear of God. Get that, and we get every thing. That is true piety, and it is the root and the juice of all other virtues and graces, whatever they may be called. A pure and worthy love of God will lead to humility, for if we have the love of God, we have the consciousness of his presence, and that of course will make us humble. It will give us purity, for no wrong emotion can consist with a love of that which is completely holy. It will unfold into the qualities of justice, mercy, courage, patience, temperance, honor, philanthropy, for those are all but the forms it takes towards certain objects and in certain relations of life, in the same way that God's justice, mercy, and rectitude are different phases of his love. The spirit of duty and of inward life is one spirit that includes all others, as the light is simple, but includes all hues. And herein lies the simplicity of Christianity, that it lays the axe at the root of the tree of evil, within us, and calls for spiritual consecration. Its first great commandment is, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," &c., and the second is like, &c. We should strive, then, for this consecration, if we would live as Christian disciples. Instead of trying to cultivate the virtues one by one, let us rather seek to im