This was the train of thought into which I fell, when I heard that the body I have the honor of addressing, was to have a May meeting; and what convinced me that May meetings were a law of nature, and produced of itself the theory I have set forth, was the fact that we were about to hold such a meeting without any external provocatives. For ours unfortunately is a harvest home without a harvest; the produce of the year omitted from the drama of the seasons. Able-bodied persons we have; also the sickles are here, the drays are here; the whole world of nature and spirit is for our farm, and any the prettiest nook of it for our homestead; and gloriously good and true seed a hundred years old; but not to my knowledge has the seed been sown or tended, or reaped, by this Association during the past spiritual year. It is clear, therefore, that May meetings must be a primordial necessity, or we should not have one now. I do not deny that people have been fed with our fine grain: I, myself, have been eating it morning, noon, and night; and so have you: but the point is, it has not been made reproductive: there is less and not more of it to-day, than there was in Swedenborg's mind, one century ago. If we go on at this rate, we shall soon have none left; and therefore I say, that we have no right to eat it without we grow it. The truth, the good seed, requires to pass out of books into Mankind, and from thence into life and understanding, which is the soil where God meets it, and increases it ten-fold, twenty-fold, or an hundred-fold.

Yet as we have met friendly together, and have no stacks to point to; no particular congratulations to detain us with each other, I propose that we visit the produce of our neighbor's fields, and criticise their husbandry, and its results. I do not like the course, I had rather expose my own wares than other people's weaknesses, but what else are we to do? Your President has set me the example on other occasions, by adducing and reviewing current literature; and therefore I will now proceed to make some very brief remarks on a work that has lately come out; I mean Morell's "Philosophy of Religion." The Book is valuable to us, because it shows the old orthodoxy under one of its newest tendencies, whereby it seems likeliest to work itself out.

According to Mr. Morell, the Constitution of the human mind determines the religion of the race, and hence he begins his work with an analysis of the faculties of the mind. These are intuition, understanding, and the senses, all permeated by the will. Intuition sees truth, goodness and beauty, as substances; the understanding sees laws; the senses, material objects. To intuition belongs all that is positive in Religion, pure from that logic system which belong to the understanding; and devoid of that sort of reality that is possessed by the objects of the senses. Here, then, at the outset we have the spiritual excluded from all created order, and stripped of all representative garments, and yet the subject of intuition, or in English, of view. When we want to know what it is, or what it is like,-reasonable wants with regard to whatever views and is viewed-we are put down as gross sensationalists. It is a crime with the Philosophers to call nothing by its own name; and so they name it the concrete reality of intuition. But do we then deny intuition? Far from it; only we assert that the very highest faculties are always clothed with the best attributes of the lowest ; and that the most intuitive minds have the firmest root in their own and other people's ordinary senses. There are no truths out of the senses, because the whole world of truth lies within the senses; but never so within as not to be itself clad in a surface of sense. The existence of the human body is absolute proof of this, except to those who are not all there. We know full well that there are no souls out of bodies, and no thoughts ut of brains; but the philosophers tell us that the best part of their and our minds is out of our brains, disconnected from matter gense and organization; which really only means that they have not brains to receive the views they are talking about. Thus we may indeed believe them, but it is at their own peril and ex

pense. If one tells me that he has a pure intuition of beauty, I understand him to affirm that on that series of objects his view has next to nothing in it; and I readily credit his affidarit for that time; knowing however that a thousand times every day he is fuller than his theory It is then certain that all the pure truths pretended to, are seen without brains; for the least film of cerebrum would destroy their purity. It was by his.singular absence from this substance that the great Kant caught the intuitions of pure reason; and by the same privilege of vacancy he wrote his Critic on that non-sensual subject The division between the intuitional and logical faculties is perfectly true, and every body apprehends it. We see things by sight and in sight; we reason about their properties and relations. But to cast the ratiocinative processes generally into the term logic, is cramping a large subject. Every truth gained is not only a principle but a method for acquiring new truths. For instance, as soon as we know that every existence runs through all spheres in other words that each thing has its familiar correspondence in all the regions of creation; that every mineral has its own ground floor of vegetable, and its own drawing-room of animal, and this of human, and this of social, and this of spiritual life built upon it; then this truth becomes a rule for our looks; we put our eye up to it, and see along it, everywhere; and a hieroglyphical consciousness far more important than logic, comes at once into being. The only problem then is, to track any given thing that is under investigation, into that sphere where it is intelligible, (every thing is at home and familiar somewhere) and thus to seek self-evidence in all things, by regarding them in their universal proportions. But as for logic, it is all buried with words, which unless they are filled this and every moment with hieroglyphic fire, are the coffins of things, and not the incarnations.

There can be no more vicious method than looking at Religion from the faculties of the mind. The contrary way is the true one; to judge and interpret the faculties by the Christian Religion. "We only know God according to our own state," say the philosophers. Very good; and as this is a fact, so let us leave it. Let us not erect our state into a conservative organ which shall keep us from alteration, and from knowing more. We walk abroad into the fields in this young, luxuriant summer, and we know that their ornament is from an infinite fountain of beauty, and all their gifts from supernal wisdom alone: our sense of these things is indeed most limited, and according not to the things, but to ourselves. What then, if we should criticise our eyes, in order to find out the utmost of what we can see; instead of using them with a faith in the infinite properties and quantities that are to be seen? Why then we should fall asleep, and see nothing; because the sight that is not going forwards is going backwards. So it is with those who make a criticism of the religious faculties precede their knowledge of Religion. It is the very method of Impossibility: the same by which one distinguished philosopher proved that no steamboat could cross the Atlantic; the same by which many similar persons made up the dark ages; the same by which many still make the communication between this world and the next impossible; the same by which the God of the Soul, Jehovah is, divorced from the God of the senses, even Christ Jesus. By this perversity it is, of trying to know what must be, before studying what is, that all light is prevented.

We have to record then, that the indefinite landscape is the proof of what can be seen, and not the poor finite eye; for the landscape is God's prophecy of a co-extensive human eye; and in like manner Christianity and Revelation, and not the existing feebleness of our poor minds, are the unmeasured scope of our own Religious insight. If we were animals, and not men, a criticism on our faculties, when they had once been well used, and so far ascertained, would be a good preparation for subsequent life, supposing instinct were abolished: by finding what we had not thought and done, we should perhaps find out what

our limits were; yet even in the case of animals it would be futile and debasing in the long run, since the animal world, though not moveable in itself, yet may be raised or depressed in every way by its correspondency with the risings or fallings of mankind; but such self-contemplations would make the breed even of cattle unimprovable.

For The Spirit of the Age. THE ABSURDITIES OF ERROR.

THE effect of an unconditional reception of error is to blind and stultify the reason. This lamp of the soul, that sheds its refulgent beams through all the interior chambers of the mind, must be continually replenished by the oil of truth alone; supplied with a compound of one-half truth and one-half error, it beams very dimly indeed; but when, to keep burning this holy light, the water of error is alone supplied, it flickers in its socket, expires, and the soul is shrouded in darkness. Then in this darkness walk all the phantoms of a disordered imagination. The gross conceptions of a buried age are revived, and rejoicing to escape from their grave of centuries, they revel in undisturbed freedom. But to be pledged unconditionally to continue in this state, to be always supplying this glorious lamp with the water of error instead of the oil of truth, is indeed a most unfortunate condition. And it is truly unfortunate to us, that our best people, those whom we can love most, whose intentions and desires are of the purest and most lovely character, should be involved in such a pledge, and should be continually expending their strength and treasure for-water instead of oil. But, thanks to what light there is in the world!-many there are who do not hesitate to disregard this pledge, when, by looking into the minds of others, they are made conscious of the darkness of their own, and see how lamentably they have been deceived.

Mr. Morell has a chapter on the peculiar essence of Religion, which he analyses, very ably let it be admitted, into the feeling of absolute dependence. We need not traverse his process, but let us come to his result; and we have to remark that to regard dependence the essence of Religion, is to confound the general with the universal, the skin with the brain, the lowest with the highest. This is the usual method of Philosophy. Now dependence is quite an exceptional part of the religious sentiment; the cuticle of the state, where one of its elements begins to die out. Our Religious state is, I presume, the relation of our soul's loves toward God, who represents Himself in his Word as the father of the Faithful, in Christ as the friend of man, also as the Husband of the Universal Church, and in the city of God, as the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. These are intelligible humanitary relations; four essences of Religion; and every human relation, when Christianly fulfilled, is an essence of Religion. But the sense of absolute dependence where in common sense does such a feeling abide? There is no slave so low, if he does a day's work, but proves a better soul's love than this: I should rather say, but rises away from it into a manlier state. The sense of absolute dependence exists only where a man is conscious that he does nothing for himself or others, and has every thing done for him. Under these unhappy circumstances, this most servile sense comes upon him; and fortunate that it does, for it is so painful, that whoso proves it, is likely to be goaded on to something better. It is the vilest state of man in relation to his fellows; how can it be the essen-Paul had not yet received light enough to see that all men are tial state in his relation to God? The notion is one of the oldest rags of Judaism, worn upon the back of a modern Philosopher. We conclude then, that Christian love, in its whole scope, is the essence of Religion, and that this comes to us from all our good daily works, I ought to say, from God through them, and the sense of Independence is its form, whereby we constantly recognize with feeling hearts our own responsibility; which the sense of absolute dependence would destroy.

But I have been anticipating the next chapter which is on the Essence of Christianity; for with our author the Essence of Religion is one thing, and the Essence of Christianity is another; and moreover, the latter of these comes after the former. Here we see the same vicious method of looking at the fact of religion, which is Christianity, from an assumed notional ground. But this procedure reigns with the philosophers. They look first at their own eyes to see what can be seen; they try to look at natural religion as at something which is the organ whereby they may view Christianity. They forget that this natural religion was taught them by their mothers first under the sacred Christian name, and that their abstraction of it is nothing more than the thin remainder of the precious instructions of their Childhood.

Be it noted then, that for us the Essence of Christianity is also the peculiar essence of Religion; and that our relations to Christ in the world, duly fulfilled, are that Essence. On the Divine side, however, Christ Himself is obviously the Essence of Christianity.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

While in this pledged state of mental obscurity, the absurdities of the forms and phantoms of error are lost sight of; and should attention be called to them, their infatuated recipient cries out that you are blaspheming his gods. In this unreasonable manner, even the great, the noble, the spiritually-minded PAUL replies, in one of his writings, to a very natural objection

brothers, and that a Universal Father regards his children with equal love and compassion, when, to sustain a foregone conclusion, he writes, "Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." But to this he anticipates an objection. "Thou wilt say then unto me, why doth he yet find fault; for who hath resisted his will?" Paul could see that this objection could not be easily answered; that it was impossible to resist the will of a sovereign God, who "works in us to will and to do," and of whose omnipotent will the will of man is but an infinitessimal part. He therefore answers thus, "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus?" He then continues to illustrate by inferring that because a potter has power to make of the same clay one vessel to honor and another to dishonor, that therefore God will consign one portion of his children to endless misery and another to endless happiness; a sophism worthy of not a few of those Greek philosophers whose systems he had studied But it is evident that Paul would not have resorted to a mode of reasoning so superficial, had he not been driven to it to sustain a dogma which he had received, not by the approval of his reason, but by the dicta of scriptural authority. Thus the strongest minds fail sometimes to see the absurdity of an error, on account of the pledge which they have taken to sustain it.

And truly, the error into which Paul is here led, that of a child of God being a "vessel of wrath, fitted" or made "for destruction," is sufficiently absurd. It is so from whatever point of view we look at it. If we consider the character of God as revealed to us in his works, we see that God is love, infinite

ARAB PROVERBS.-If your friend is made of honey do not eat Love and infinite Wisdom; that one of the attributes of his love him all up.

is unbounded compassion, and that one of the attributes of his wisdom is universal justice; and God being omnipotent, we see in these attributes the guaranty for the endless happiness of all his creatures. Moreover, "wrath " is a passion belonging natuNature is ever changing, ever new; why be uneasy, it is the rally enough to many a heathen god, but not to the Father whom Jesus preached. Nor can there be an endless misery consistent

When you are the anvil have patience, when you are the hammer strike straight and well.

law?

ly with the existence of unbounded compassion, and "vessels of wrath" (that is, sentient souls) fitted for destruction by universal justice!

said to be less than that of the Almighty One, who rules in the armies of heaven and among the children of men; but if the above statement of the number saved and lost be correct, we see that among the children of men his power is far greater than that of the Omnipotent. This second god of the old mythology and of the modern theology, has also another attribute of deity, which is omnipresence. All the evil thoughts which arise in men's minds in all parts of the world, are said to be suggested by him; thus proving him to be a mighty spirit everywhere present. But we must not too hastily infer from this that human nature is naturally pure, and mankind innocent of these evil thoughts, proceeding as they do from a foreign source, for we are positively assured that the natural heart is totally depraved, and responsible for all evil thoughts, come they from what source they may. Thus are absurdities heaped together to obstruct the paths which lead to truth, but they give to reason, that detects them, no danger of stumbling.

We may also see the absurdity of this error by a glance at the conditions upon which this pretended separation of the great human family is based. Those who believe certain propositions concerning a great mystery which it is impossible for them to comprehend, are classed in one division, and those who do not believe in the other. But if we consider that it is impossible for any one to believe that which he does not understand, namely, a mystery, it is plain that in the end it will be found that no one has really believed it; and therefore the unity of the race will be preserved, (a gratifying thought,) and comprehended in what would have been the latter division; which, according to the error, will be consigned to endless misery-a most lame, impotent, and absurd conclusion. For all the creations of an infinitely wise God display evidences of the most admirable design, but where is the design or use that would be shown in creating worlds and universes for the production of the inestimable human spirit, and then subjecting that spirit to never-ending tor-move, and have their being. Angels and men alike are subject ments? It is simply absurd.

But even if we accept the statement of the parties who advocate this error, in regard to the relative numbers of the pretended divisions of the rended race, its absurdity is no less striking. According to their own accounts, then, "thirty-nine fortieths of the human race possess unregenerate hearts."* By unregenerate hearts, we are to understand minds incapable of believing in the mystery above referred to. Well, the human race on this globe is supposed to consist of about one thousand millions of souls, which would make the divisions stand thus: twenty-five millions saved, nine hundred and seventy-five millions lost. Now who is there who does not feel in the innermost recesses of his heart, the absurdity of this statement? Nine hundred and seventy-five millions of our present living brothers and sisters condemned to spend a never-ending eternity in torments for what?-for not believing a mystery, which they not only can not understand, but of the existence of which the greater part never heard! But this has reference only to those now living. If we bring into the account all who have lived since the birth of Christ, without considering those who lived antecedent to that event, we have, it is said, "nearly sixty generations of men-numbering forty thousand millions;" and giving the full ratio of a fortieth of each generation to the number of those whose destiny it is to enjoy ineffable bliss for unceasing ages, (though this ratio is much too great for the early ages of the church,) there is left thirty-nine thousand millions of souls, who have been created in vain, since the beginning of the christian dispensation! Who is there who does not perceive that this, too, is simply absurd?

And who is there who does not see that all the tendencies and teachings of the life and discourse of Jesus of Nazareth, are opposed to an error so monstrous? What, then, could have been the origin of those few passages in the gospels, which attribute to him the utterance of such a doctrine? Could it be that the propagandists of a new faith found so much opposition to its progress in a community hostile to its reception, as to find it necessary to add threatenings to expostulation? Such has been the policy of the early apostles of almost every religion, where their zeal transcended their wisdom. However this may be, it is plain that an error so palpable as this could not have proceeded from the lips of Jesus. His was a mind too full of the spirit of wisdom ever to have originated so evident an absurdity.

Connected with this error, as an almost indispensable accessary is the old legend concerning the existence of an Evil Spirit. This has been incorporated into the christian system by our zealous priests, who have found his satanic majesty an excellent auxiliary in driving men to believe. His power is *See Univercœlum, Vol. 1, p. 389.

Now, there is no power existing that is not derived from God. In him the creatures of this, as well as all other spheres, live,

to his will, and are the out-flowing expression of his thoughts. If, then, there be an evil spirit, he must not only derive all his power from God, but his very existence, life, aim and ends, must be owing to the original design of the Deity. In the great first Cause originated all that exists, and as Infinite Design is perfect, and the Divine Will omnipotent, it is impossible that there should be anything but temporal or apparent evils. It is therefore plain enough to our enlightened reason that all existences compose a unity, and that there are no real (or enduring) antagonisms in all the immensity of the "united revolving heavens." There is one only true God.

The common-sence of the christian would, however, have disposed of the fabled devil. Men generally speak of his existence in terms of unlimited ridicule, and it is with evident reluctance that those who occupy the pulpit ever allude to him. It would not be proper, of course for these latter ever to admit the least doubt as to the reality of his existence, simply because they have pledged themselves to maintain this assumption; he therefore still lives and reigns (by fear) over a few week minds; having this large and influential class to sustain him.

But it would be an endless, and certainly unpleasant task to contemplate all the absurdities of error. The birds of the day are ever of a more brilliant plumage than those of the night, and ever greet the ear with a more pleasing strain. Harmony is the mind's attraction, discord its aversion. And truth and harmony are one, and harmony is heaven. All men seek truth but all do not attain to it, because they do not see the absurdities that obstruct their progress. But error is transient and temporal, while truth is permanent and eternal; and all will yet arrive at truth, and thus enjoy harmony and heaven.

H.

"He

CABET AND HIS COMPANY.-We see by our exchanges that the company of the French communists known as the Icarians, headed by Mons. Cabet, and which, through some untoward circumstances recently failed in an attempt to establish themselves in Texas, have determined to settle at Nauvoo. It is said that Cabet has paid $3,000 and the citizens $1,000 for the walls of the Mormon Temple and the arsenal, together with about eleven acres of land, the title being vested solely in Mons. Cabet. has commenced rebuilding the Temple, and employs about three hundred men upon the work. Much of the interest that has hitherto been attached to this edifice will now be dissipated, for it will no longer wear the proud name of Temple, but in future will be known as the Monster Boarding House! The basement story is to be laid out into kitchens, the first floor will be converted into a dining room capable of accommodating a thousand persons, and the remainder of the building will be fitted up for school rooms, offices and sleeping apartments for five hundred people."