[Evadne rises.]

Hadst thou been thus, thus excellently good, Before that devil-king tempted thy frailty, Sure thou hadst made a star. Give me thy hand: From this time I will know thee; and as far As honor gives me leave, be thy Amintor. When we meet next, I will salute thee fairly, And pray the gods to give thee happy days: My charity shall go along with thee, Though my embraces must be far from thee. I should have killed thee, but this sweet repentance Locks up my vengeance: for which thus I kiss thee—

[Kisses her.]

The last kiss we must take; and would to Heaven The holy priest that gave our hands together Had given us equal virtues! Go, Evadne; The gods thus part our bodies. Have a care My honor falls no farther: I am well, then.

Evadne—All the dear joys here, and above hereafter, Crown thy fair soul! Thus I take leave, my lord; And never shall you see the foul Evadne, Till she have tried all honored means, that may Set her in rest and wash her stains away.

FROM 'BONDUCA'

THE DEATH OF THE BOY HENGO

[Scene: A field between the British and the Roman camps.]

Caratach—How does my boy?

Hengo—I would do well; my heart's well; I do not fear.

Caratach—My good boy!

Hengo—I know, uncle, We must all die: my little brother died; I saw him die, and he died smiling; sure, There's no great pain in't, uncle. But pray tell me, Whither must we go when we are dead?

Caratach [aside]—Strange questions! Why, the blessed'st place, boy! ever sweetness And happiness dwell there.

Hengo—Will you come to me?

Caratach—Yes, my sweet boy.

Hengo—Mine aunt too, and my cousins?

Caratach—All, my good child.

Hengo—No Romans, uncle?

Caratach—No, boy.

Hengo—I should be loath to meet them there.

Caratach—No ill men, That live by violence and strong oppression, Come thither: 'tis for those the gods love, good men.

Hengo—Why, then, I care not when I go, for surely I am persuaded they love me: I never Blasphemed 'em, uncle, nor transgressed my parents; I always said my prayers.

Caratach—Thou shalt go, then; Indeed thou shalt.

Hengo—When they please.

Caratach—That's my good boy! Art thou not weary, Hengo?

Hengo—Weary, uncle! I have heard you say you have marched all day in armor.

Caratach—I have, boy.

Hengo—Am not I your kinsman?

Caratach—Yes.

Hengo—And am not I as fully allied unto you In those brave things as blood?

Caratach—Thou art too tender.

Hengo—To go upon my legs? they were made to bear me. I can play twenty miles a day; I see no reason But, to preserve my country and myself, I should march forty.

Caratach—What wouldst thou be, living To wear a man's strength!

Hengo—Why, a Caratach, A Roman-hater, a scourge sent from Heaven To whip these proud thieves from our kingdom. Hark!

[Drum within.]

* * * * *

[They are on a rock in the rear of a wood.]

Caratach—Courage, my boy! I have found meat: look, Hengo, Look where some blessed Briton, to preserve thee, Has hung a little food and drink: cheer up, boy; Do not forsake me now.

Hengo—O uncle, uncle, I feel I cannot stay long! yet I'll fetch it, To keep your noble life. Uncle, I am heart-whole, And would live.

Caratach—Thou shalt, long, I hope.

Hengo—But my head, uncle! Methinks the rock goes round.

[Enter Macer and Judas, and remain at the side of the stage.]

Macer—Mark 'em well, Judas.

Judas—Peace, as you love your life.

Hengo—Do not you hear The noise of bells?

Caratach—Of bells, boy! 'tis thy fancy; Alas, thy body's full of wind!

Hengo—Methinks, sir, They ring a strange sad knell, a preparation To some near funeral of state: nay, weep not, Mine own sweet uncle; you will kill me sooner.

Caratach—O my poor chicken!

Hengo—Fie, faint-hearted uncle! Come, tie me in your belt and let me down.

Caratach—I'll go myself, boy.

Hengo—No, as you love me, uncle: I will not eat it, if I do not fetch it; The danger only I desire: pray, tie me.

Caratach—I will, and all my care hang o'er thee! Come, child, My valiant child!

Hengo—Let me down apace, uncle, And you shall see how like a daw I'll whip it From all their policies; for 'tis most certain A Roman train: and you must hold me sure, too; You'll spoil all else. When I have brought it, uncle, We'll be as merry—

Caratach—Go, i' the name of Heaven, boy!

[Lets Hengo down by his belt.]

Hengo—Quick, quick, uncle! I have it. [Judas shoots Hengo with an arrow.] Oh!

Caratach—What ail'st thou?

Hengo—Oh, my best uncle, I am slain!

Caratach [to Judas]—I see you, And Heaven direct my hand! destruction Go with thy coward soul!

[Kills Judas with a stone, and then draws up Hengo. Exit Macer.]

How dost thou, boy?— O villain, pocky villain!

Hengo—Oh, uncle, uncle, Oh, how it pricks me!—am I preserved for this?— Extremely pricks me!

Caratach—Coward, rascal coward! Dogs eat thy flesh!

Hengo—Oh, I bleed hard! I faint too; out upon't, How sick I am!—The lean rogue, uncle!

Caratach—Look, boy; I have laid him sure enough.

Hengo—Have you knocked his brains out?

Caratach—I warrant thee, for stirring more: cheer up, child.

Hengo—Hold my sides hard; stop, stop; oh, wretched fortune, Must we part thus? Still I grow sicker, uncle.

Caratach—Heaven look upon this noble child!

Hengo—I once hoped I should have lived to have met these bloody Romans At my sword's point, to have revenged my father, To have beaten 'em,—oh, hold me hard!—but, uncle—

Caratach—Thou shalt live still, I hope, boy. Shall I draw it?

Hengo—You draw away my soul, then. I would live A little longer—spare me, Heavens!—but only To thank you for your tender love: good uncle, Good noble uncle, weep not.

Caratach—O my chicken, My dear boy, what shall I lose?

Hengo—Why, a child, That must have died however; had this 'scaped me, Fever or famine—I was born to die, sir.

Caratach—But thus unblown, my boy?

Hengo—I go the straighter My journey to the gods. Sure, I shall know you When you come, uncle.

Caratach—Yes, boy.

Hengo—And I hope We shall enjoy together that great blessedness You told me of.

Caratach—Most certain, child.

Hengo—I grow cold; Mine eyes are going.

Caratach—Lift 'em up.

Hengo—Pray for me; And, noble uncle, when my bones are ashes, Think of your little nephew!—Mercy!

Caratach—Mercy! You blessed angels, take him!

Hengo—Kiss me: so. Farewell, farewell! [Dies.]

Caratach—Farewell, the hopes of Britain! Thou royal graft, farewell for ever!—Time and Death, Ye have done your worst. Fortune, now see, now proudly Pluck off thy veil and view thy triumph; look, Look what thou hast brought this land to!—O fair flower, How lovely yet thy ruins show, how sweetly Even death embraces thee! the peace of Heaven, The fellowship of all great souls, be with thee!

FROM 'THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN'

BY SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER

Roses, their sharp spines being gone, Not royal in their smells alone, But in their hue; Maiden-pinks, of odor faint, Daisies smell-less yet most quaint, And sweet thyme true;

Primrose, first-born child of Ver, Merry spring-time's harbinger, With her bells dim; Oxlips in their cradles growing, Marigolds on death-beds blowing, Larks'-heels trim.

All, dear Nature's children sweet, Lie 'fore bride and bridegroom's feet, Blessing their sense! Not an angel of the air, Bird melodious or bird fair, Be absent hence!

The crow, the slanderous cuckoo, nor The boding raven, nor chough hoar, Nor chattering pie, May on our bride-house perch or sing, Or with them any discord bring, But from it fly!



WILLIAM BECKFORD

(1759-1844)

The translation from a defective Arabic manuscript of the 'Book of the Thousand Nights and A Night,' first into the French by Galland, about 1705, and presently into various English versions, exerted an immediate influence on French, German, and English romance. The pseudo-Oriental or semi-Oriental tale of home-manufacture sprang into existence right and left with the publishers of London and Paris, and in German centres of letters. Hope's 'Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek,' Lewis's 'The Monk,' the German Hauff's admirable 'Stories of the Caravan, the Inn, and the Palace,' Rueckert's 'Tales of the Genii,' and William Beckford's 'History of the Caliph Vathek,' are among the finest performances of the sort: productions more or less Eastern in sentiment and in their details of local color, but independent of direct originals in the Persian or Arabic, so far as is conclusively known.



William Beckford, born at London in 1759 (of a strong line which included a governor of Jamaica), dying in 1844, is a figure of distinction merely as an Englishman of his time, aside from his one claim to literary remembrance. His father's death left him the richest untitled citizen of England. He was not sent to a university, but immense care was given to his education, in which Lord Chatham personally interested himself; and he traveled widely. The result of this, on a very receptive mind with varied natural gifts, was to make Beckford an ideal dilettante. His tastes in literature, painting, music (in which Mozart was his tutor), sculpture, architecture, and what not, were refined to the highest nicety. He was able to gratify each of them as such a man can rarely have the means to do. He built palaces and towers of splendor instead of merely a beautiful country seat. He tried to reproduce Vathek's halls in stone and stucco, employing relays of workmen by day and night, on two several occasions and estates, for many months. Where other men got together moderate collections of bibelots, Beckford amassed whole museums. If a builder's neglect or a fire destroyed his rarities and damaged his estates to the extent of forty or fifty thousand pounds, Beckford merely rebuilt and re-collected. These tastes and lavish expenditures gradually set themselves in a current toward things Eastern. His magnificent retreat at Cintra in Portugal, his vast Fonthill Abbey and Lansdowne Hill estates in England, were only appanages of his sumptuous state. England and Europe talked of him and of his properties. He was a typical egotist: but an agreeable and gracious man, esteemed by a circle of friends not called upon to be his sycophants; and he kept in close touch with the intellectual life of all Europe.

He wrote much, for an amateur, and in view of the tale which does him most honor, he wrote with success. At twenty he invited publicity with a satiric jeu d'esprit, 'Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters'; and his 'Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal,' and 'Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaba and Baltalha,' were well received. But these books could not be expected to survive even three generations; whereas 'Vathek,' the brilliant, the unique, the inimitable 'Vathek,' took at once a place in literature which we may now almost dare to call permanent. This story, not a long one,—indeed, no more than a novelette in size,—was originally written in French, and still lives in that language; in which an edition, hardly the best, has lately been issued under the editorship of M. Mallarme. But its history is complicated by one of the most notable acts of literary treachery and theft on record. During the author's slow and finicky composition of it at Lausanne, he was sending it piecemeal to his friend Robert Henley in England for Henley to make an English version, of course to be revised by himself. As soon as Henley had all the parts, he published a hasty and slipshod translation, before Beckford had seen it or was even ready to publish the French original; and not only did so, but published it as a tale translated by himself from a genuine Arabic original. This double violation of good faith of course enraged Beckford, and practically separated the two men for the rest of their lives; indeed, the wonder is that Beckford would ever recognize Henley's existence again. The piracy was exposed and set aside, and Beckford in self-defense issued the story himself in French as soon as he could; indeed, he issued it in two versions with curious and interesting differences, one published at Lausanne and the other at Paris. The Lausanne edition is preferable.

'Vathek' abides to-day accredited to Beckford in both French and English; a thing to keep his memory green as nothing else of his work or personality will. The familiar legend that in its present form it was composed at a single sitting, with such ardor as to entail a severe illness, and "without the author's taking off his clothes," cannot be reconciled with the known facts. But the intensely vivid movement of it certainly suggests swift production; and it could easily be thought that any author had sketched such a story in the heat of some undisturbed sitting, and filled, finished, and polished it at leisure. It is an extraordinary performance; even in Henley's unsatisfactory version it is irresistible. We know that Beckford expected to add liberally to it by inserting sundry subordinate tales, put into the mouths of some of the personages appearing in the last scene. It is quite as well that he did not. Its distinctive Orientalism, perhaps less remarkable than the unfettered imagination of its episodes, the vividness of its characters, the easy brilliancy of its literary manner—these things, with French diction and French wit, alternate with startling descriptive impressiveness. It is a French combination of Cervantes and Dante, in an Oriental and bizarre narrative. It is not always delicate, but it is never vulgar, and the sprightly pages are as admirable as the weird ones. Its pictures, taken out of their connection, seem irrelevant, and are certainly unlike enough; but they are a succession of surprises and fascinations. Such are the famous description of the chase of Vathek's court after the Giaour; the moonlit departure of the Caliph for the Terrace of Istakhar; the episodes of his stay under the roof of the Emir Fakreddin; the pursuit by Carathis on "her great camel Alboufaki," attended by "the hideous Nerkes and the unrelenting Cafour"; Nouronihar drawn to the magic flame in the dell at night; the warning of the good Jinn; and the tremendous final tableau of the Hall of Eblis.

The man curious in letters regards with affection the evidences of vitality in a brief production little more than a century old; unique in English and French literature, and occupying to-day a high rank among the small group of quasi-Oriental narratives that represent the direct workings of Galland on the Occidental literary temperament. Today 'Vathek' surprises and delights persons whose mental constitution puts them in touch with it, just as potently as ever it did. And simply as a wild story, one fancies that it will appeal quite as effectually, no matter how many editions may be its future, to a public perhaps unsympathetic toward its elliptical satire, its caustic wit, its fantastic course of narrative, and its incongruous wavering between the flippant, the grotesque, and the terrific.

THE INCANTATION AND THE SACRIFICE

From 'The History of the Caliph Vathek'

By secret stairs, known only to herself and her son, she [Carathis] first repaired to the mysterious recesses in which were deposited the mummies that had been brought from the catacombs of the ancient Pharaohs. Of these she ordered several to be taken. From thence she resorted to a gallery, where, under the guard of fifty female negroes, mute, and blind of the right eye, were preserved the oil of the most venomous serpents, rhinoceros horns, and woods of a subtle and penetrating odor, procured from the interior of the Indies, together with a thousand other horrible rarities. This collection had been formed for a purpose like the present by Carathis herself, from a presentiment that she might one day enjoy some intercourse with the infernal powers, to whom she had ever been passionately attached, and to whose taste she was no stranger.

To familiarize herself the better with the horrors in view the Princess remained in the company of her negresses, who squinted in the most amiable manner from the only eye they had, and leered with exquisite delight at the skulls and skeletons which Carathis had drawn forth from her cabinets....

Whilst she was thus occupied, the Caliph, who, instead of the visions he expected, had acquired in these insubstantial regions a voracious appetite, was greatly provoked at the negresses: for, having totally forgotten their deafness, he had impatiently asked them for food; and seeing them regardless of his demand, he began to cuff, pinch, and push them, till Carathis arrived to terminate a scene so indecent....

"Son! what means all this?" said she, panting for breath. "I thought I heard as I came up, the shriek of a thousand bats, tearing from their crannies in the recesses of a cavern.... You but ill deserve the admirable provision I have brought you."

"Give it me instantly!" exclaimed the Caliph: "I am perishing for hunger!"

"As to that," answered she, "you must have an excellent stomach if it can digest what I have been preparing."

"Be quick," replied the Caliph. "But oh, heavens! what horrors! What do you intend?"

"Come, come," returned Carathis, "be not so squeamish, but help me to arrange everything properly, and you shall see that what you reject with such symptoms of disgust will soon complete your felicity. Let us get ready the pile for the sacrifice of to-night, and think not of eating till that is performed. Know you not that all solemn rites are preceded by a rigorous abstinence?"

The Caliph, not daring to object, abandoned himself to grief, and the wind that ravaged his entrails, whilst his mother went forward with the requisite operations. Phials of serpents' oil, mummies, and bones were soon set in order on the balustrade of the tower. The pile began to rise; and in three hours was as many cubits high. At length darkness approached, and Carathis, having stripped herself to her inmost garment, clapped her hands in an impulse of ecstasy, and struck light with all her force. The mutes followed her example: but Vathek, extenuated with hunger and impatience, was unable to support himself, and fell down in a swoon. The sparks had already kindled the dry wood; the venomous oil burst into a thousand blue flames; the mummies, dissolving, emitted a thick dun vapor; and the rhinoceros' horns beginning to consume, all together diffused such a stench, that the Caliph, recovering, started from his trance and gazed wildly on the scene in full blaze around him. The oil gushed forth in a plenitude of streams; and the negresses, who supplied it without intermission, united their cries to those of the Princess. At last the fire became so violent, and the flames reflected from the polished marble so dazzling, that the Caliph, unable to withstand the heat and the blaze, effected his escape, and clambered up the imperial standard.

In the mean time, the inhabitants of Samarah, scared at the light which shone over the city, arose in haste, ascended their roofs, beheld the tower on fire, and hurried half-naked to the square. Their love to their sovereign immediately awoke; and apprehending him in danger of perishing in his tower, their whole thoughts were occupied with the means of his safety. Morakanabad flew from his retirement, wiped away his tears, and cried out for water like the rest. Bababalouk, whose olfactory nerves were more familiarized to magical odors, readily conjecturing that Carathis was engaged in her favorite amusements, strenuously exhorted them not to be alarmed. Him, however, they treated as an old poltroon; and forbore not to style him a rascally traitor. The camels and dromedaries were advancing with water, but no one knew by which way to enter the tower. Whilst the populace was obstinate in forcing the doors, a violent east wind drove such a volume of flame against them, as at first forced them off, but afterwards rekindled their zeal. At the same time, the stench of the horns and mummies increasing, most of the crowd fell backward in a state of suffocation. Those that kept their feet mutually wondered at the cause of the smell, and admonished each other to retire. Morakanabad, more sick than the rest, remained in a piteous condition. Holding his nose with one hand, he persisted in his efforts with the other to burst open the doors, and obtain admission. A hundred and forty of the strongest and most resolute at length accomplished their purpose....

Carathis, alarmed at the signs of her mutes, advanced to the staircase, went down a few steps, and heard several voices calling out from below:—

"You shall in a moment have water!"

Being rather alert, considering her age, she presently regained the top of the tower, and bade her son suspend the sacrifice for some minutes, adding:—

"We shall soon be enabled to render it more grateful. Certain dolts of your subjects, imagining, no doubt, that we were on fire, have been rash enough to break through those doors, which had hitherto remained inviolate, for the sake of bringing up water. They are very kind, you must allow, so soon to forget the wrongs you have done them: but that is of little moment. Let us offer them to the Giaour. Let them come up: our mutes, who neither want strength nor experience, will soon dispatch them, exhausted as they are with fatigue."

"Be it so," answered the Caliph, "provided we finish, and I dine."

In fact, these good people, out of breath from ascending eleven thousand stairs in such haste, and chagrined at having spilt, by the way, the water they had taken, were no sooner arrived at the top than the blaze of the flames and the fumes of the mummies at once overpowered their senses. It was a pity! for they beheld not the agreeable smile with which the mutes and the negresses adjusted the cord to their necks: these amiable personages rejoiced, however, no less at the scene. Never before had the ceremony of strangling been performed with so much facility. They all fell without the least resistance or struggle; so that Vathek, in the space of a few moments, found himself surrounded by the dead bodies of his most faithful subjects, all of which were thrown on the top of the pile.

VATHEK AND NOURONIHAR IN THE HALLS OF EBLIS

From 'The History of the Caliph Vathek'

The Caliph and Nouronihar beheld each other with amazement, at finding themselves in a place which, though roofed with a vaulted ceiling, was so spacious and lofty that at first they took it for an immeasurable plain. But their eyes at length growing familiar with the grandeur of the objects at hand, they extended their view to those at a distance, and discovered rows of columns and arcades, which gradually diminished till they terminated in a point, radiant as the sun when he darts his last beams athwart the ocean; the pavement, strewed over with gold dust and saffron, exhaled so subtle an odor as almost overpowered them; they however went on, and observed an infinity of censers, in which ambergris and the wood of aloes were continually burning; between the several columns were placed tables, each spread with a profusion of viands, and wines of every species sparkling in vases of crystal. A throng of genii and other fantastic spirits of each sex danced lasciviously in troops, at the sound of music which issued from beneath.

In the midst of this immense hall a vast multitude was incessantly passing, who severally kept their right hands on their hearts, without once regarding anything around them; they had all the livid paleness of death; their eyes, deep sunk in their sockets, resembled those phosphoric meteors that glimmer by night in places of interment. Some stalked slowly on, absorbed in profound reverie; some, shrieking with agony, ran furiously about, like tigers wounded with poisoned arrows; whilst others, grinding their teeth in rage, foamed along, more frantic than the wildest maniac. They all avoided each other, and though surrounded by a multitude that no one could number, each wandered at random, unheedful of the rest, as if alone on a desert which no foot had trodden.

Vathek and Nouronihar, frozen with terror at a sight so baleful, demanded of the Giaour what these appearances might seem, and why these ambulating spectres never withdrew their hands from their hearts.

"Perplex not yourselves," replied he bluntly, "with so much at once; you will soon be acquainted with all: let us haste and present you to Eblis."

They continued their way through the multitude; but notwithstanding their confidence at first, they were not sufficiently composed to examine with attention the various perspectives of halls and of galleries that opened on the right hand and left, which were all illuminated by torches and braziers, whose flames rose in pyramids to the centre of the vault. At length they came to a place where long curtains, brocaded with crimson and gold, fell from all parts in striking confusion; here the choirs and dances were heard no longer, the light which glimmered came from afar.

After some time Vathck and Nouronihar perceived a gleam brightening through the drapery, and entered a vast tabernacle carpeted with the skins of leopards; an infinity of elders with streaming beards, and Afrits in complete armor, had prostrated themselves before the ascent of a lofty eminence, on the top of which, upon a globe of fire, sat the formidable Eblis. His person was that of a young man, whose noble and regular features seemed to have been tarnished by malignant vapors; in his large eyes appeared both pride and despair; his flowing hair retained some resemblance to that of an angel of light; in his hand, which thunder had blasted, he swayed the iron sceptre that causes the monster Ouranabad, the Afrits, and all the powers of the abyss to tremble; at his presence the heart of the Caliph sunk within him, and for the first time he fell prostrate on his face. Nouronihar, however, though greatly dismayed, could not help admiring the person of Eblis; for she expected to have seen some stupendous giant. Eblis, with a voice more mild than might be imagined, but such as transfused through the soul the deepest melancholy, said:—

"Creatures of clay, I receive you into mine empire; ye are numbered amongst my adorers. Enjoy whatever this palace affords: the treasures of the pre-Adamite Sultans, their bickering sabres, and those talismans that compel the Dives to open the subterranean expanses of the mountain of Kaf, which communicate with these. There, insatiable as your curiosity may be, shall you find sufficient to gratify it; you shall possess the exclusive privilege of entering the fortress of Aherman, and the halls of Argenk, where are portrayed all creatures endowed with intelligence, and the various animals that inhabited the earth prior to the creation of that contemptible being whom ye denominate the Father of Mankind."

Vathek and Nouronihar, feeling themselves revived and encouraged by this harangue, eagerly said to the Giaour:—

"Bring us instantly to the place which contains these precious talismans."

"Come!" answered this wicked Dive, with his malignant grin, "come! and possess all that my Sovereign hath promised, and more."

He then conducted them into a long aisle adjoining the tabernacle, preceding them with hasty steps, and followed by his disciples with the utmost alacrity. They reached at length a hall of great extent, and covered with a lofty dome, around which appeared fifty portals of bronze, secured with as many fastenings of iron. A funereal gloom prevailed over the whole scene. Here, upon two beds of incorruptible cedar, lay recumbent the fleshless forms of the pre-Adamite kings, who had been monarchs of the whole earth. They still possessed enough of life to be conscious of their deplorable condition; their eyes retained a melancholy motion; they regarded each other with looks of the deepest dejection, each holding his right hand motionless on his heart. At their feet were inscribed the events of their several reigns, their power, their pride, and their crimes. Soliman Raad, Soliman Daki, and Soliman Di Gian Ben Gian, who, after having chained up the Dives in the dark caverns of Kaf, became so presumptuous as to doubt of the Supreme Power,—all these maintained great state, though not to be compared with the eminence of Soliman Ben Daoud [Solomon the son of David].

This king, so renowned for his wisdom, was on the loftiest elevation, and placed immediately under the dome; he appeared to possess more animation than the rest, though from time to time he labored with profound sighs, and like his companions, kept his right hand on his heart; yet his countenance was more composed, and he seemed to be listening to the sullen roar of a vast cataract, visible in part through the grated portals; this was the only sound that intruded on the silence of these doleful mansions. A range of brazen vases surrounded the elevation.

"Remove the covers from these cabalistic depositaries," said the Giaour to Vathek, "and avail thyself of the talismans, which will break asunder all these gates of bronze, and not only render thee master of the treasures contained within them, but also of the spirits by which they are guarded."

The Caliph, whom this ominous preliminary had entirely disconcerted, approached the vases with faltering footsteps, and was ready to sink with terror when he heard the groans of Soliman. As he proceeded, a voice from the livid lips of the Prophet articulated these words:—

"In my lifetime I filled a magnificent throne, having on my right hand twelve thousand seats of gold, where the patriarchs and the prophets heard my doctrines; on my left the sages and doctors, upon as many thrones of silver, were present at all my decisions. Whilst I thus administered justice to innumerable multitudes, the birds of the air librating over me served as a canopy from the rays of the sun; my people flourished, and my palace rose to the clouds; I erected a temple to the Most High which was the wonder of the universe. But I basely suffered myself to be seduced by the love of women, and a curiosity that could not be restrained by sublunary things; I listened to the counsels of Aherman and the daughter of Pharaoh, and adored fire and the hosts of heaven; I forsook the holy city, and commanded the Genii to rear the stupendous palace of Istakhar, and the terrace of the watch-towers, each of which was consecrated to a star. There for a while I enjoyed myself in the zenith of glory and pleasure; not only men, but supernatural existences were subject also to my will. I began to think, as these unhappy monarchs around had already thought, that the vengeance of Heaven was asleep, when at once the thunder burst my structures asunder and precipitated me hither; where however I do not remain, like the other inhabitants, totally destitute of hope, for an angel of light hath revealed that, in consideration of the piety of my early youth, my woes shall come to an end when this cataract shall for ever cease to flow. Till then I am in torments, ineffable torments! an unrelenting fire preys on my heart."

Having uttered this exclamation, Soliman raised his hands towards Heaven in token of supplication, and the Caliph discerned through his bosom, which was transparent as crystal, his heart enveloped in flames. At a sight so full of horror, Nouronihar fell back like one petrified into the arms of Vathek, who cried out with a convulsive sob:—

"O Giaour! whither hast thou brought us? Allow us to depart, and I will relinquish all thou hast promised. O Mahomet! remains there no more mercy?"

"None! none!" replied the malicious Dive, "Know, miserable prince! thou art now in the abode of vengeance and despair; thy heart also will be kindled, like those of the other votaries of Eblis. A few days are allotted thee previous to this fatal period. Employ them as thou wilt: recline on these heaps of gold; command the Infernal Potentates; range at thy pleasure through these immense subterranean domains; no barrier shall be shut against thee. As for me, I have fulfilled my mission; I now leave thee to thyself." At these words he vanished.

The Caliph and Nouronihar remained in the most abject affliction; their tears unable to flow, scarcely could they support themselves. At length, taking each other despondingly by the hand, they went faltering from this fatal hall, indifferent which way they turned their steps. Every portal opened at their approach; the Dives fell prostrate before them; every reservoir of riches was disclosed to their view: but they no longer felt the incentives of curiosity, pride, or avarice. With like apathy they heard the chorus of Genii, and saw the stately banquets prepared to regale them. They went wandering on from chamber to chamber, hall to hall, and gallery to gallery, all without bounds or limit, all distinguishable by the same lowering gloom, all adorned with the same awful grandeur, all traversed by persons in search of repose and consolation, but who sought them in vain; for every one carried within him a heart tormented in flames. Shunned by these various sufferers, who seemed by their looks to be upbraiding the partners of their guilt, they withdrew from them, to wait in direful suspense the moment which should render them to each other the like objects of terror.

"What!" exclaimed Nouronihar; "will the time come when I shall snatch my hand from thine?"

"Ah," said Vathek; "and shall my eyes ever cease to drink from thine long draughts of enjoyment! Shall the moments of our reciprocal ecstasies be reflected on with horror! It was not thou that broughtest me hither: the principles by which Carathis perverted my youth have been the sole cause of my perdition!" Having given vent to these painful expressions, he called to an Afrit, who was stirring up one of the braziers, and bade him fetch the Princess Carathis from the palace of Samarah.

After issuing these orders, the Caliph and Nouronihar continued walking amidst the silent crowd, till they heard voices at the end of the gallery. Presuming them to proceed from some unhappy beings who, like themselves, were awaiting their final doom, they followed the sound, and found it to come from a small square chamber, where they discovered sitting on sofas five young men of goodly figure, and a lovely female, who were all holding a melancholy conversation by the glimmering of a lonely lamp; each had a gloomy and forlorn air, and two of them were embracing each other with great tenderness. On seeing the Caliph and the daughter of Fakreddin enter, they arose, saluted and gave them place; then he who appeared the most considerable of the group addressed himself thus to Vathek:

"Strangers!—who doubtless are in the same state of suspense with ourselves, as you do not yet bear your hand on your heart,—if you are come hither to pass the interval allotted previous to the infliction of our common punishment, condescend to relate the adventures that have brought you to this fatal place, and we in return will acquaint you with ours, which deserve but too well to be heard. We will trace back our crimes to their source, though we are not permitted to repent; this is the only employment suited to wretches like us!"

The Caliph and Nouronihar assented to the proposal, and Vathek began, not without tears and lamentations, a sincere recital of every circumstance that had passed. When the afflicting narrative was closed, the young man entered on his own. Each person proceeded in order, and when the fourth prince had reached the midst of his adventures, a sudden noise interrupted him, which caused the vault to tremble and to open.

Immediately a cloud descended, which, gradually dissipating, discovered Carathis on the back of an Afrit, who grievously complained of his burden. She, instantly springing to the ground, advanced towards her son and said:—

"What dost thou here in this little square chamber? As the Dives are become subject to thy beck, I expected to have found thee on the throne of the pre-Adamite Kings."

"Execrable woman!" answered the Caliph; "cursed be the day thou gavest me birth! Go, follow this Afrit, let him conduct thee to the hall of the Prophet Soliman; there thou wilt learn to what these palaces are destined, and how much I ought to abhor the impious knowledge thou hast taught me."

"The height of power to which thou art arrived has certainly turned thy brain," answered Carathis; "but I ask no more than permission to show my respect for the Prophet. It is however proper thou shouldest know that (as the Afrit has informed me neither of us shall return to Samarah) I requested his permission to arrange my affairs, and he politely consented: availing myself therefore of the few moments allowed me, I set fire to the tower, and consumed in it the mutes, negresses, and serpents which have rendered me so much good service; nor should I have been less kind to Morakanabad, had he not prevented me by deserting at last to my brother. As for Bababalouk, who had the folly to return to Samarah, and all the good brotherhood to provide husbands for thy wives, I undoubtedly would have put them to the torture, could I but have allowed them the time; being however in a hurry, I only hung him after having caught him in a snare with thy wives, whilst them I buried alive by the help of my negresses, who thus spent their last moments greatly to their satisfaction. With respect to Dilara, who ever stood high in my favor, she hath evinced the greatness of her mind by fixing herself near in the service of one of the Magi, and I think will soon be our own."

Vathek, too much cast down to express the indignation excited by such a discourse, ordered the Afrit to remove Carathis from his presence, and continued immersed in thought, which his companion durst not disturb.

Carathis, however, eagerly entered the dome of Soliman, and without regarding in the least the groans of the Prophet, undauntedly removed the covers of the vases, and violently seized on the talismans. Then, with a voice more loud than had hitherto been heard within these mansions, she compelled the Dives to disclose to her the most secret treasures, the most profound stores, which the Afrit himself had not seen; she passed by rapid descents known only to Eblis and his most favored potentates, and thus penetrated the very entrails of the earth, where breathes the Sansar, or icy wind of death. Nothing appalled her dauntless soul; she perceived however in all the inmates, who bore their hands on their hearts, a little singularity, not much to her taste. As she was emerging from one of the abysses, Eblis stood forth to her view; but notwithstanding he displayed the full effulgence of his infernal majesty, she preserved her countenance unaltered, and even paid her compliments with considerable firmness.

This superb Monarch thus answered:—"Princess, whose knowledge and whose crimes have merited a conspicuous rank in my empire, thou dost well to employ the leisure that remains; for the flames and torments which are ready to seize on thy heart will not fail to provide thee with full employment." He said this, and was lost in the curtains of his tabernacle.

Carathis paused for a moment with surprise; but, resolved to follow the advice of Eblis, she assembled all the choirs of Genii, and all the Dives, to pay her homage; thus marched she in triumph through a vapor of perfumes, amidst the acclamations of all the malignant spirits, with most of whom she had formed a previous acquaintance. She even attempted to dethrone one of the Solimans for the purpose of usurping his place, when a voice proceeding from the abyss of Death proclaimed, "All is accomplished!" Instantaneously the haughty forehead of the intrepid princess was corrugated with agony; she uttered a tremendous yell, and fixed, no more to be withdrawn, her right hand upon her heart, which was become a receptacle of eternal fire.

In this delirium, forgetting all ambitious projects and her thirst for that knowledge which should ever be hidden from mortals, she overturned the offerings of the Genii, and having execrated the hour she was begotten and the womb that had borne her, glanced off in a whirl that rendered her invisible, and continued to revolve without intermission.

At almost the same instant the same voice announced to the Caliph, Nouronihar, the five princes, and the princess, the awful and irrevocable decree. Their hearts immediately took fire, and they at once lost the most precious of the gifts of Heaven—Hope. These unhappy beings recoiled with looks of the most furious distraction; Vathek beheld in the eyes of Nouronihar nothing but rage and vengeance, nor could she discern aught in his but aversion and despair. The two princes who were friends, and till that moment had preserved their attachment, shrunk back, gnashing their teeth with mutual and unchangeable hatred. Kalilah and his sister made reciprocal gestures of imprecation, whilst the two other princes testified their horror for each other by the most ghastly convulsions, and screams that could not be smothered. All severally plunged themselves into the accursed multitude, there to wander in an eternity of unabating anguish.



HENRY WARD BEECHER

(1813-1887)

BY LYMAN ABBOTT

The life of Henry Ward Beecher may be either compressed into a sentence or expanded into a volume. He was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 24th day of June, 1813, the child of the well-known Lyman Beecher; graduated at Amherst College in 1834, and subsequently studied at Lane Theological Seminary (Cincinnati), of which his father was the president; began his ministerial life as pastor of a Home Missionary (Presbyterian) church at the little village of Lawrenceburg, twenty miles south of Cincinnati on the Ohio River; was both sexton and pastor, swept the church, built the fires, lighted the lamps, rang the bell, and preached the sermons; was called to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, where he remained for eight years, 1839 to 1847, and where his preaching soon won for him a reputation throughout the State, and his occasional writing a reputation beyond its boundaries; thence was called in 1847 to be the first pastor of the newly organized Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, where he remained with an ever increasing reputation as preacher, lecturer, orator, and writer, until the day of his death, March 8th, 1887.

Such is the outline of a life, the complete story of which would be the history of the United States during the most critical half-century of the nation's existence. Living in an epoch when the one overshadowing political issue was pre-eminently a moral issue, and when no man could be a faithful preacher of righteousness and not a political preacher; concerned in whatever concerned humanity; believing that love is the essence of all true religion, and that love to God is impossible without love to man; moral reformer not less than gospel preacher, and statesman even more than theologian: throwing himself into the anti-slavery conflict with all the courage of a heroic nature and all the ardor of an intensely impulsive one,—he stands among the first half-score of writers, orators, reformers, statesmen, and soldiers, who combined to make the half-century from 1835 to 1885 as brilliant and as heroic as any in human history.

The greatness of Henry Ward Beecher consisted not so much in a predominance of any one quality as in a remarkable combination of many. His physique justified the well-known characterization of Mr. Fowler, the phrenologist, "Splendid animal." He was always an eager student, though his methods were desultory. He was familiar with the latest thought in philosophy, had studied Herbert Spencer before his works were republished in the United States, yet was a child among children, and in his old age retained the characteristic faults and virtues of childhood, and its innocent impulsiveness.

His imagination might have made him a poet, his human sympathies a dramatic poet, had not his strong common-sense kept him always in touch with the actualities of life, and a masterful conscience compelled him to use his aesthetic faculties in sterner service than in the entertainment of mankind. The intensity of his moral nature enhanced rather than subdued his exuberant humor, which love prevented from becoming satire, and seriousness preserved from degenerating into wit. His native faculty of mimicry led men to call him an actor, yet he wholly lacked the essential quality of a good actor,—power to take on another's character,—and used the mimic art only to interpret the truth which at the moment possessed him.

Such power of passion as was his is not often seen mated to such self-control; for while he spoke with utter abandon, he rarely if ever did so until he had carefully deliberated the cause he was espousing. He thought himself deficient in memory, and in fact rarely borrowed illustrations from his reading either of history or of literature; but his keenness of observation photographed living scenes upon an unfading memory which years after he could and did produce at will. All these contrary elements of his strangely composite though not incongruous character entered into his style,—or, to speak more accurately, his styles,—and make any analysis of them within reasonable limits difficult, if not impossible.

For the writer is known by his style as the wearer by his clothes. Even if it be no native product of the author's mind, but a conscious imitation of carefully studied models,—what I may call a tailor-made style, fashioned in a vain endeavor to impart sublimity to commonplace thinking,—the poverty of the author is thereby revealed, much as the boor is most clearly disclosed when wearing ill-at-ease, unaccustomed broadcloth. Mr. Beecher's style was not artificial; its faults as well as its excellences were those of extreme naturalness. He always wrote with fury; rarely did he correct with phlegm. His sermons were published as they fell from his lips,—correct and revise he would not. The too few editorials which he wrote, on the eve of the Civil War, were written while the press was impatiently waiting for them, were often taken page by page from his hand, and were habitually left unread by him to be corrected in proof by others.



His lighter contributions to the New York Ledger were thrown off in the same way, generally while the messenger waited to take them to the editorial sanctum. It was his habit, whether unconscious or deliberate I do not know, to speak to a great congregation with the freedom of personal conversation, and to write for the press with as little reserve as to an intimate friend. This habit of taking the public into his confidence was one secret of his power, but it was also the cause of those violations of conventionality in public address which were a great charm to some and a grave defect to others. There are few writers or orators who have addressed such audiences with such effect, whose style has been so true and unmodified a reflection of their inner life. The title of one of his most popular volumes might be appropriately made the title of them all—'Life Thoughts.'

But while his style was wholly unartificial, it was no product of mere careless genius; carelessness never gives a product worth possessing. The excellences of Mr. Beecher's style were due to a careful study of the great English writers; its defects to a temperament too eager to endure the dull work of correction. In his early manhood he studied the old English divines, not for their thoughts, which never took hold of him, but for their style, of which he was enamored. The best characterization of South and Barrow I ever heard he gave me once in a casual conversation. The great English novelists he knew; Walter Scott's novels, of which he had several editions in his library, were great favorites with him, but he read them rather for the beauty of their descriptive passages than for their romantic and dramatic interest. Ruskin's 'Modern Painters' he both used himself and recommended to others as a text-book in the observation of nature, and certain passages in them he read and re-read.

But in his reading he followed the bent of his own mind rather than any prescribed system. Neither in his public utterances nor in his private conversation did he indicate much indebtedness to Shakespeare among the earlier writers, nor to Emerson or Carlyle among the moderns. Though not unfamiliar with the greatest English poets, and the great Greek poets in translations, he was less a reader of poetry than of poetical prose. He had, it is true, not only read but carefully compared Dante's 'Inferno' with Milton's 'Paradise Lost'; still it was not the 'Paradise Lost,' it was the 'Areopagitica' which he frequently read on Saturday nights, for the sublimity of its style and the inspiration it afforded to the imagination. He was singularly deficient in verbal memory, a deficiency which is usually accompanied by a relatively slight appreciation of the mere rhythmic beauty of literary form. It is my impression that for amorous poems, such as Moore's songs, or even Shakespeare's sonnets, and for purely descriptive poetry, such as the best of 'Childe Harold' and certain poems of Wordsworth, he cared comparatively little.

But he delighted in religious poetry, whether the religion was that of the pagan Greek Tragedies, the mediaeval Dante, or the Puritan Milton. He was a great lover of the best hymns, and with a catholicity of affection which included the Calvinist Toplady, the Arminian Wesley, the Roman Catholic Faber, and the Unitarian Holmes. Generally, however, he cared more for poetry of strength than for that of fancy or sentiment. It was the terrific strength in Watts's famous hymn beginning

"My thoughts on awful subjects dwell, Damnation and the dead,"

which caused him to include it in the 'Plymouth Collection,' abhorrent as was the theology of that hymn alike to his heart and to his conscience.

In any estimate of Mr. Beecher's style, it must be remembered that he was both by temperament and training a preacher. He was brought up not in a literary, but in a didactic atmosphere. If it were as true as it is false that art exists only for art's sake, Mr. Beecher would not have been an artist. His art always had a purpose; generally a distinct moral purpose. An overwhelming proportion of his contributions to literature consists of sermons or extracts from sermons, or addresses not less distinctively didactic. His one novel was written avowedly to rectify some common misapprehensions as to New England life and character. Even his lighter papers, products of the mere exuberance of a nature too full of every phase of life to be quiescent, indicated the intensity of a purposeful soul, much as the sparks in a blacksmith's shop come from the very vigor with which the artisan is shaping on the anvil the nail or the shoe.

But Mr. Beecher was what Mr. Spurgeon has called him, "the most myriad-minded man since Shakespeare"; and such a mind must both deal with many topics, and if it be true to itself, exhibit many styles. If one were to apply to Mr. Beecher's writings the methods which have sometimes been applied by certain Higher Critics to the Bible, he would conclude that the man who wrote the Sermons on Evolution and Theology could not possibly have also written the humorous description of a house with all the modern improvements. Sometimes grave, sometimes gay, sometimes serious, sometimes sportive, concentrating his whole power on whatever he was doing, working with all his might but also playing with all his might, when he is on a literary frolic the reader would hardly suspect that he was ever dominated by a strenuous moral purpose. Yet there were certain common elements in Mr. Beecher's character which appeared in his various styles, though mixed in very different proportions and producing very different combinations. Within the limits of such a study as this, it must suffice to indicate in very general terms some of these elements of character which appear in and really produce his literary method.

Predominant among them was a capacity to discriminate between the essentials and the accidentals of any subject, a philosophical perspective which enabled him to see the controlling connection and to discard quickly such minor details as tended to obscure and to perplex. Thus a habit was formed which led him not infrequently to ignore necessary limitations and qualifications, and to make him scientifically inaccurate, though vitally and ethically true. It was this quality which led critics to say of him that he was no theologian, though it is doubtful whether any preacher in America since Jonathan Edwards has exerted a greater influence on its theology. But this quality imparted clearness to his style. He always knew what he wanted to say and said it clearly. He sometimes produced false impressions by the very strenuousness of his aim and the vehemence of his passion; but he was never foggy, obscure, or ambiguous.

This clearness of style was facilitated by the singleness of his purpose. He never considered what was safe, prudent, or expedient to say, never reflected upon the effect which his speech might have on his reputation or his influence, considered only how he could make his hearers apprehend the truth as he saw it. He therefore never played with words, never used them with a double meaning, or employed them to conceal his thoughts. He was indeed utterly incapable of making a speech unless he had a purpose to accomplish; when he tried he invariably failed; no orator ever had less ability to roll off airy nothings for the entertainment of an audience.

Coupled with this clearness of vision and singleness of purpose was a sympathy with men singularly broad and alert. He knew the way to men's minds, and adapted his method to the minds he wished to reach. This quality put him at once en rapport with his auditors, and with men of widely different mental constitution. Probably no preacher has ever habitually addressed so heterogeneous a congregation as that which he attracted to Plymouth Church. In his famous speech at the Herbert Spencer dinner he was listened to with equally rapt attention by the great philosopher and by the French waiters, who stopped in their service, arrested and held by his mingled humor, philosophy, and restrained emotion. This human sympathy gave a peculiar dramatic quality to his imagination. He not only recalled and reproduced material images from the past with great vividness, he re-created in his own mind the experiences of men whose mold was entirely different from his own. As an illustration of this, a comparison of two sermons on Jacob before Pharaoh, one by Dr. Talmage, the other by Mr. Beecher, is interesting and instructive. Dr. Talmage devotes his imagination wholly to reproducing the outward circumstances,—the court in its splendor and the patriarch with his wagons, his household, and his stuff; this scene Mr. Beecher etches vividly but carelessly in a few outlines, then proceeds to delineate with care the imagined feelings of the king, awed despite his imperial splendor by the spiritual majesty of the peasant herdsman. Yet Mr. Beecher could paint the outer circumstances with care when he chose to do so. Some of his flower pictures in 'Fruits, Flowers, and Farming' will always remain classic models of descriptive literature, the more amazing that some of them are portraits of flowers he had never seen when he wrote the description.

While his imagination illuminated nearly all he said or wrote, it was habitually the instrument of some moral purpose; he rarely ornamented for ornament's sake. His pictures gave beauty, but they were employed not to give beauty but clearness. He was thus saved from mixed metaphors, the common fault of imaginative writings which are directed to no end, and thus are liable to become first lawless, then false, finally self-contradictory and absurd. The massive Norman pillars of Durham Cathedral are marred by the attempt which some architect has made to give them grace and beauty by adding ornamentation. Rarely if ever did Mr. Beecher fall into the error of thus mixing in an incongruous structure two architectural styles. He knew when to use the Norman strength and solidity, and when the Gothic lightness and grace.

Probably his keen sense of humor would have preserved him from this not uncommon error. It is said that the secret of humor is the quick perception of incongruous relations. This would seem to have been the secret of Mr. Beecher's humor, for he had in an eminent degree what the phrenologists call the faculty of comparison. This was seen in his arguments, which were more often analogical than logical; seen not less in that his humor was not employed with deliberate intent to relieve a too serious discourse, but was itself the very product of his seriousness. He was humorous, but rarely witty, as, for the same reason, he was imaginative but not fanciful. For both his imagination and his humor were the servants of his moral purpose; and as he did not employ the one merely as a pleasing ornament, so he never went out of his way to introduce a joke or a funny story to make a laugh.

Speaking broadly, Mr. Beecher's style as an orator passed through three epochs. In the first, best illustrated by his 'Sermons to Young Men,' preached in Indianapolis, his imagination is the predominant faculty. Those sermons will remain in the history of homiletical literature as remarkable of their kind, but not as a pulpit classic for all times; for the critic will truly say that the imagination is too exuberant, the dramatic element sometimes becoming melodramatic, and the style lacking in simplicity. In the second epoch, best illustrated by the Harper and Brothers edition of his selected sermons, preached in the earlier and middle portion of his Brooklyn ministry, the imagination is still pervasive, but no longer predominant. The dramatic fire still burns, but with a steadier heat. Imagination, dramatic instinct, personal sympathy, evangelical passion, and a growing philosophic thought-structure, combine to make the sermons of this epoch the best illustration of his power as a popular preacher. In each sermon he holds up a truth like his favorite opal, turning it from side to side and flashing its opalescent light upon his congregation, but so as always to show the secret fire at the heart of it. In the third epoch, best illustrated by his sermons on Evolution and Theology, the philosophic quality of his mind predominates; his imagination is subservient to and the instrument of clear statement, his dramatic quality shows itself chiefly in his realization of mental conditions foreign to his own, and his style, though still rich in color and warm with feeling, is mastered, trained, and directed by his intellectual purpose. In the first epoch he is the painter, in the second the preacher, in the third the teacher.

Judgments will differ: in mine the last epoch is the best, and its utterances will long live a classic in pulpit literature. The pictures of the first epoch are already fading; the fervid oratory of the second epoch depends so much on the personality of the preacher, that as the one grows dim in the distance the other must grow dim also; but the third, more enduring though less fascinating, will remain so long as the heart of man hungers for the truth and the life of God,—that is, for a rational religion, a philosophy of life which shall combine reverence and love, and a reverence and love which shall not call for the abdication of the reason.



BOOK-STORES AND BOOKS

From 'Star Papers'

Nothing marks the increasing wealth of our times, and the growth of the public mind toward refinement, more than the demand for books. Within ten years the sale of common books has increased probably two hundred per cent., and it is daily increasing. But the sale of expensive works, and of library editions of standard authors in costly bindings, is yet more noticeable. Ten years ago such a display of magnificent works as is to be found at the Appletons' would have been a precursor of bankruptcy. There was no demand for them. A few dozen, in one little show-case, was the prudent whole. Now, one whole side of an immense store is not only filled with admirably bound library books, but from some inexhaustible source the void continually made in the shelves is at once refilled. A reserve of heroic books supply the places of those that fall. Alas! where is human nature so weak as in a book-store! Speak of the appetite for drink; or of a bon vivant's relish for a dinner! What are these mere animal throes and ragings compared with those fantasies of taste, those yearnings of the imagination, those insatiable appetites of intellect, which bewilder a student in a great bookseller's temptation-hall?

How easily one may distinguish a genuine lover of books from a worldly man! With what subdued and yet glowing enthusiasm does he gaze upon the costly front of a thousand embattled volumes! How gently he draws them down, as if they were little children; how tenderly he handles them! He peers at the title-page, at the text, or the notes, with the nicety of a bird examining a flower. He studies the binding: the leather,—russia, English calf, morocco; the lettering, the gilding, the edging, the hinge of the cover! He opens it and shuts it, he holds it off and brings it nigh. It suffuses his whole body with book magnetism. He walks up and down in a maze at the mysterious allotments of Providence, that gives so much money to men who spend it upon their appetites, and so little to men who would spend it in benevolence or upon their refined tastes! It is astonishing, too, how one's necessities multiply in the presence of the supply. One never knows how many things it is impossible to do without till he goes to Windle's or Smith's house-furnishing stores. One is surprised to perceive, at some bazaar or fancy and variety store, how many conveniences he needs. He is satisfied that his life must have been utterly inconvenient aforetime. And thus too one is inwardly convicted, at Appletons', of having lived for years without books which he is now satisfied that one cannot live without!

Then, too, the subtle process by which the man convinces himself that he can afford to buy. No subtle manager or broker ever saw through a maze of financial embarrassments half so quick as a poor book-buyer sees his way clear to pay for what he must have. He promises himself marvels of retrenchment; he will eat less, or less costly viands, that he may buy more food for the mind. He will take an extra patch, and go on with his raiment another year, and buy books instead of coats. Yea, he will write books, that he may buy books! The appetite is insatiable. Feeding does not satisfy it. It rages by the fuel which is put upon it. As a hungry man eats first and pays afterward, so the book-buyer purchases and then works at the debt afterward. This paying is rather medicinal. It cures for a time. But a relapse takes place. The same longing, the same promises of self-denial. He promises himself to put spurs on both heels of his industry; and then, besides all this, he will somehow get along when the time for payment comes! Ah! this SOMEHOW! That word is as big as a whole world, and is stuffed with all the vagaries and fantasies that Fancy ever bred upon Hope. And yet, is there not some comfort in buying books, to be paid for? We have heard of a sot who wished his neck as long as the worm of a still, that he might so much the longer enjoy the flavor of the draught! Thus, it is a prolonged excitement of purchase, if you feel for six months in a slight doubt whether the book is honestly your own or not. Had you paid down, that would have been the end of it. There would have been no affectionate and beseeching look of your books at you, every time you saw them, saying, as plain as a book's eyes can say, "Do not let me be taken from you."

Moreover, buying books before you can pay for them promotes caution. You do not feel quite at liberty to take them home. You are married. Your wife keeps an account-book. She knows to a penny what you can and what you cannot afford. She has no "speculation" in her eyes. Plain figures make desperate work with airy "somehows." It is a matter of no small skill and experience to get your books home, and into their proper places, undiscovered. Perhaps the blundering express brings them to the door just at evening. "What is it, my dear?" she says to you. "Oh! nothing—a few books that I cannot do without." That smile! A true housewife that loves her husband can smile a whole arithmetic at him at one look! Of course she insists, in the kindest way, in sympathizing with you in your literary acquisition. She cuts the strings of the bundle (and of your heart), and out comes the whole story. You have bought a complete set of costly English books, full bound in calf, extra gilt! You are caught, and feel very much as if bound in calf yourself, and admirably lettered.

Now, this must not happen frequently. The books must be smuggled home. Let them be sent to some near place. Then, when your wife has a headache, or is out making a call, or has lain down, run the books across the frontier and threshold, hastily undo them, stop only for one loving glance as you put them away in the closet, or behind other books on the shelf, or on the topmost shelf. Clear away the twine and wrapping-paper, and every suspicious circumstance. Be very careful not to be too kind. That often brings on detection. Only the other day we heard it said, somewhere, "Why, how good you have been lately. I am really afraid that you have been carrying on mischief secretly." Our heart smote us. It was a fact. That very day we had bought a few books which "we could not do without." After a while you can bring out one volume, accidentally, and leave it on the table. "Why, my dear, what a beautiful book! Where did you borrow it?" You glance over the newspaper, with the quietest tone you can command: "That! oh! that is mine. Have you not seen it before? It has been in the house these two months." and you rush on with anecdote and incident, and point out the binding, and that peculiar trick of gilding, and everything else you can think of; but it all will not do; you cannot rub out that roguish, arithmetical smile. People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men. Of course you repent, and in time form a habit of repenting.

Another method which will be found peculiarly effective is to make a present of some fine work to your wife. Of course, whether she or you have the name of buying it, it will go into your collection, and be yours to all intents and purposes. But it stops remark in the presentation. A wife could not reprove you for so kindly thinking of her. No matter what she suspects, she will say nothing. And then if there are three or four more works which have come home with the gift-book—they will pass through the favor of the other.

These are pleasures denied to wealth and old bachelors. Indeed, one cannot imagine the peculiar pleasure of buying books if one is rich and stupid. There must be some pleasure, or so many would not do it. But the full flavor, the whole relish of delight only comes to those who are so poor that they must engineer for every book. They sit down before them, and besiege them. They are captured. Each book has a secret history of ways and means. It reminds you of subtle devices by which you insured and made it yours, in spite of poverty!

Copyrighted by Fords, Howard and Hulbert, New York.

SELECTED PARAGRAPHS

From 'Selections from the Published Works of Henry Ward Beecher', compiled by Eleanor Kirk.

An intelligent conscience is one of the greatest of luxuries. It can hardly be called a necessity, or how would the world have got along as well as it has to this day?—SERMON: 'Conscience.'

A man undertakes to jump across a chasm that is ten feet wide, and jumps eight feet; and a kind sympathizer says, "What is going to be done with the eight feet that he did jump?" Well, what is going to be done with it? It is one of those things which must be accomplished in whole, or it is not accomplished at all.—SERMON: 'The True Value of Morality.'

It is hard for a strong-willed man to bow down to a weak-willed man. It is hard for an elephant to say his prayers to an ant.—SERMON: 'The Reward of Loving.'

When Peter heard the cock crow, it was not the tail-feathers that crew. The crowing came from the inside of the cock. Religion is something more than the outward observances of the church.—SERMON: 'The Battle of Benevolence.'

I have heard men, in family prayer, confess their wickedness, and pray that God would forgive them the sins that they got from Adam; but I do not know that I ever heard a father in family prayer confess that he had a bad temper. I never heard a mother confess in family prayer that she was irritable and snappish. I never heard persons bewail those sins which are the engineers and artificers of the moral condition of the family. The angels would not know what to do with a prayer that began, "Lord, thou knowest that I am a scold."—SERMON: 'Peaceableness.'

Getting up early is venerable. Since there has been a literature or a history, the habit of early rising has been recommended for health, for pleasure, and for business. The ancients are held up to us for examples. But they lived so far to the east, and so near the sun, that it was much easier for them than for us. People in Europe always get up several hours before we do; people in Asia several hours before Europeans do; and we suppose, as men go toward the sun, it gets easier and easier, until, somewhere in the Orient, probably they step out of bed involuntarily, or, like a flower blossoming, they find their bed-clothes gently opening and turning back, by the mere attraction of light.—'EYES AND EARS.'

There are some men who never wake up enough to swear a good oath. The man who sees the point of a joke the day after it is uttered,—because he never is known to act hastily, is he to take credit for that?—SERMON: 'Conscience.'

If you will only make your ideal mean enough, you can every one of you feel that you are heroic.—SERMON: 'The Use of Ideals.'

There is nothing more common than for men to hang one motive outside where it can be seen, and keep the others in the background to turn the machinery.—SERMON: 'Paul and Demetrius.'

Suppose I should go to God and say, "Lord, be pleased to give me salad," he would point to the garden and say, "There is the place to get salad; and if you are too lazy to work for it, you may go without."—LECTURE-ROOM TALKS: 'Answers to Prayer.'

God did not call you to be canary-birds in a little cage, and to hop up and down on three sticks, within a space no larger than the size of the cage. God calls you to be eagles, and to fly from sun to sun, over continents.—SERMON: 'The Perfect Manhood.'

Do not be a spy on yourself. A man who goes down the street thinking of himself all the time, with critical analysis, whether he is doing this, that, or any other thing,—turning himself over as if he were a goose on a spit before a fire, and basting himself with good resolutions,—is simply belittling himself.—'LECTURES ON PREACHING.'

Many persons boil themselves down to a kind of molasses goodness. How many there are that, like flies caught in some sweet liquid, have got out at last upon the side of the cup, and crawl along slowly, buzzing a little to clear their wings! Just such Christians I have seen, creeping up the side of churches, soul-poor, imperfect, and drabbled.—'ALL-SIDEDNESS IN CHRISTIAN LIFE.'

No man, then, need hunt among hair-shirts; no man need seek for blankets too short at the bottom and too short at the top; no man need resort to iron seats or cushionless chairs; no man need shut himself up in grim cells; no man need stand on the tops of towers or columns,—in order to deny himself.—SERMON-'Problem of Joy and Suffering in Life.'

Copyrighted by Fords, Howard and Hulbert, New York, 1887.

SERMON

POVERTY AND THE GOSPEL

TEXTS: Luke iv. 17-21, Matt. xi. 2-6

Here was Christ's profession of his faith; here is the history also of his examination, to see whether he were fit to preach or not. It is remarkable that in both these instances the most significant indication that he had, both of his descent from God and of his being worthy of the Messiahship, consisted in this simple exposition of the line of his preaching,—that he took sides with the poor, neglected, and lost. He emphasized this, that his gospel was a gospel of mercy to the poor; and that word "poor," in its most comprehensive sense, looked at historically, includes in it everything that belongs to human misery, whether it be by reason of sin or depravity, or by oppression, or by any other cause. This, then, is the disclosure by Christ himself of the genius of Christianity. It is his declaration of what the gospel meant.

It is still further interpreted when you follow the life of Christ, and see how exactly in his conduct he interpreted, or rather fortified, the words of the declaration. His earliest life was that of labor and poverty, and it was labor and poverty in the poorest districts of Palestine. The dignified, educated, and aristocratic part of the nation dwelt in Judea, and the Athens of Palestine was Jerusalem. There Christ spent the least part of his life, and that in perpetual discussions. But in Galilee the most of his miracles, certainly the earlier, were performed, and the most of his discourses that are contained bodily in the gospels were uttered. He himself carried out the declaration that the gospel was for the poor. The very miracles that Christ performed were not philosophical enigmas, as we look at them. They were all of them miracles of mercy. They were miracles to those who were suffering helplessly where natural law and artificial means could not reach them. In every case the miracles of Christ were mercies, though we look at them in a spirit totally different from that in which he performed them.

In doing thus, Christ represented the best spirit of the Old Testament. The Jewish Scriptures teach mercy, the very genius of Jewish institutions was that of mercy, and especially to the poor, the weak, the helpless. The crimes against which the prophets thundered their severest denunciations were crimes upon the helpless. It was the avarice of the rich, it was the unbounded lust and cruelty of the strong, that were denounced by them. They did not preach against human nature in general. They did not preach against total depravity and the original condition of mankind. They singled out violations of the law in the magistrate, in the king, in rich men, everywhere, and especially all those wrongs committed by power either unconsciously or with purpose, cruelty upon the helpless, the defenseless, the poor and the needy. When Christ declared that this was his ministry, he took his text from the Old Testament; he spoke in its spirit. It was to preach the gospel to the poor that he was sent. He had come into the world to change the condition of mankind. Beginning at the top? No; beginning at the bottom and working up to the top from the bottom.

When this view of the gospel enters into our understanding and is fully comprehended by us, how exactly it fits in with the order of nature, and with the order of the unfolding of human life and human society! It takes sides with the poor; and so the universal tendency of Providence and of history, slowly unfolded, is on the whole going from low to high, from worse to better, and from good toward the perfect. When we consider, we see that man begins as a helpless thing, a baby zero without a figure before it; and every step in life adds a figure to it and gives it more and more worth. On the whole, the law of unfolding throughout the world is from lower to higher; and though when applied to the population of the globe it is almost inconceivable, still, with many back-sets and reactions, the tendency of the universe is thus from lower to higher. Why? Let any man consider whether there is not of necessity a benevolent intelligence somewhere that is drawing up from the crude toward the ripe, from the rough toward the smooth, from bad to good, and from good through better toward best. The tendency upward runs like a golden thread through the history of the whole world, both in the unfolding of human life and in the unfolding of the race itself. Thus the tendency of nature is in accordance with the tendency of the gospel as declared by Jesus Christ, namely, that it is a ministry of mercy to the needy.

The vast majority of mankind have been and yet are poor. There are ten thousand men poor where there is one man even comfortably provided for, body and soul, and hundreds of thousands where there is one rich, taking the whole world together. The causes of poverty are worthy a moment's consideration. Climate and soil have much to do with it. Men whose winter lasts nine or ten months in the year, and who have a summer of but one or two months, as in the extreme north,—how could they amass property, how could they enlarge their conditions of peace and of comfort? There are many parts of the earth where men live on the borders of deserts, or in mountain fastnesses, or in arctic rigors, where anything but poverty is impossible, and where it requires the whole thought, genius, industry, and foresight of men, the year round, just to feed themselves and to live. Bad government, where men are insecure in their property, has always been a very fertile source of poverty. The great valley of Esdraelon in Northern Palestine is one of the most fertile in the world, and yet famine perpetually stalks on the heels of the population; for if you sow and the harvest waves, forth come hordes of Bedouins to reap your harvest for you, and leave you, after all your labor, to poverty and starvation. When a man has lost his harvest in that way two or three times, and is deprived of the reward of his labors, he never emerges from poverty, but sinks into indolence; and that, by and by, breeds apathetic misery. So where the government over-taxes its subjects, as is the case in the Orient with perhaps nearly all of the populations there to-day, it cuts the sinews and destroys all the motives of industry; and without industry there can be neither virtue, morality, nor religion in any long period. Wars breaking out, from whatever cause, tend to absorb property, or to destroy property, or to prevent the development of property. Yet, strange as it may seem, the men who suffer from war are those whose passions generally lead it on. The king may apply the spark, but the combustion is with the common people. They furnish the army, they themselves become destroyers; and the ravages of war, in the history of the human family, have destroyed more property than it is possible to enter into the thoughts of men to conceive.

But besides these external reasons of poverty, there are certain great primary and fundamental reasons. Ignorance breeds poverty. What is property? It is the product of intelligence, of skill, of thought applied to material substances. All property is raw material that has been shaped to uses by intelligent skill. Where intelligence is low, the power of producing property is low. It is the husbandman who thinks, foresees, plans, and calls on all natural laws to serve him, whose farm brings forth forty, fifty, and a hundred fold. The ignorant peasant grubs and groans, and reaps but one handful where he has sown two. It is knowledge that is the gold mine; for although every knowing man may not be able to be a rich man, yet out of ignorance riches do not spring anywhere. Ignorant men may be made the factors of wealth when they are guided and governed by superior intelligence. Slave labor produced gigantic plantations and estates. The slave was always poor, but his master was rich, because the master had the intelligence and the knowledge, and the slave gave the work. All through human society, men who represent simple ignorance will be tools, and the men who represent intelligence will be the master mechanics, the capitalists. All society to-day is agitated with this question of justice as between the laborer and the thinker. Now, it is no use to kick against the pricks. A man who can only work and not think is not the equal in any regard of the man who can think, who can plan, who can combine, and who can live not for to-day alone, but for to-morrow, for next month, for the next year, for ten years. This is the man whose volume will just as surely weigh down that of the unthinking man as a ton will weigh down a pound in the scale. Avoirdupois is moral, industrial, as well as material, in this respect; and the primary, most usual cause of unprosperity in industrial callings therefore lies in the want of intelligence,—either in the slender endowment of the man, or more likely the want of education in his ordinary and average endowment. Any class of men who live for to-day, and do not care whether they know anything more than they did yesterday or last year—those men may have a temporary and transient prosperity, but they are the children of poverty just as surely as the decrees of God stand. Ignorance enslaves men among men; knowledge is the creator of liberty and wealth.

As with undeveloped intelligence, so the appetites of men and their passions are causes of poverty. Men who live from the basilar faculties will invariably live in inferior stations. The men who represent animalism are as a general fact at the bottom. They may say it is government, climate, soil, want of capital, they may say what they please, but it is the devil of laziness that is in them, or of passion, that comes out in eating, in gluttony, in drinking and drunkenness, in wastefulness on every side. I do not say that the laboring classes in modern society are poor because they are self-indulgent, but I say that it unquestionably would be wise for all men who feel irritated that they are so unprosperous, if they would take heed to the moral condition in which they are living, to self-denial in their passions and appetites, and to increasing the amount of their knowledge and fidelity. Although moral conditions are not the sole causes, they are principal causes, of the poverty of the working classes throughout the world. It is their misfortune as well as their fault; but it is the reason why they do not rise. Weakness does not rise; strength does.

All these causes indicate that the poor need moral and intellectual culture. "I was sent to preach the gospel to the poor:" not to distribute provisions, not to relieve their wants; that will be included, but that was not Christ's primary idea. It was not to bring in a golden period of fruitfulness when men would not be required to work. It was not that men should lie down on their backs under the trees, and that the boughs should bend over and drop the ripe fruit into their mouths. No such conception of equality and abundance entered into the mind of the Creator or of Him who represented the Creator. To preach the gospel to the poor was to awaken the mind of the poor. It was to teach the poor—"Take up your cross, deny yourselves, and follow me. Restrain all those sinful appetites and passions, and hold them back by the power of knowledge and by the power of conscience; grow, because you are the sons of God, into the likeness of your Father." So he preached to the poor. That was preaching prosperity to them. That was teaching them how to develop their outward condition by developing their inward forces. To develop that in men which should make them wiser, purer, and stronger, is the aim of the gospel. Men have supposed that the whole end of the gospel was reconciliation between God and men who had fallen—though they were born sinners in their fathers and grandfathers and ancestors; to reconcile them with God—as if an abstract disagreement had been the cause of all this world's trouble! But the plain facts of history are simply that men, if they have not come from animals, have yet dwelt in animalism, and that that which should raise them out of it was some such moral influence as should give them the power of ascension into intelligence, into virtue, and into true godliness. That is what the gospel was sent for; good news, a new power that is kindled under men, that will lift them from their low ignorances and degradations and passions, and lift them into a higher realm; a power that will take away all the poverty that needs to be taken away. Men may be doctrinally depraved; they are much more depraved practically. Men may need to be brought into the knowledge of God speculatively; but what they do need is to be brought into the knowledge of themselves practically. I do not say that the gospel has nothing in it of this kind of spiritual knowledge; it is full of it, but its aim and the reason why it should be preached is to wake up in men the capacity for good things, industries, frugalities, purities, moralities, kindnesses one toward another: and when men are brought into that state they are reconciled. When men are reconciled with the law of creation and the law of their being, they are reconciled with God. Whenever a man is reconciled with the law of knowledge, he is reconciled with the God of knowledge, so far. Whenever a man is reconciled with the law of purity he is so far reconciled with a God of purity. When men have lifted themselves to that point that they recognize that they are the children of God, the kingdom of God has begun within them.

Although the spirit and practice of the gospel will develop charities, will develop physical comfort, will feed men, will heal men, will provide for their physical needs, yet the primary and fundamental result of the gospel is to develop man himself, not merely to relieve his want on an occasion. It does that as a matter of course, but that is scarcely the first letter of the alphabet. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things [food and raiment] shall be added unto you." The way to relieve a man is to develop him so that he will need no relief, or to raise higher and higher the character of the help that he demands.

In testing Christianity, then, I remark first that it is to be tested not by creeds, but by conduct. The evidence of the gospel, the reality of the gospel that is preached in schools or churches, is to be found in the spirit that is developed by it, not in the technical creeds that men have constructed out of it. The biography of men who have died might be hung up in their sepulchres; but you could not tell what kind of a man this one had been, just by reading his life there—while he lay dead in dust before you. There are thousands of churches that have a creed of Christianity hung up in them, but the church itself is a sepulchre full of dead men's bones; and indeed, many churches in modern times are gnawing the bones of their ancestors, and doing almost nothing else.

The gospel, changed from a spirit of humanity into a philosophical system of doctrine, is perverted. It is not the gospel. The great heresy in the world of religion is a cold heart, not a luminous head. It is not that intelligence is of no use in religion. By no means. Neither would we wage a crusade against philosophical systems of moral truth. But where the active sympathy and humanity of loving hearts for living men, and for men in the ratio in which they are low, is laid aside or diminished to a minimum, and in its place is a well-elaborated philosophical system of moral truths, hewn and jointed,—the gospel is gone. If you go along the sea-shores, you will often find the shells of fish—the fish dead and gone, the shells left. And if you go along the shores of ecclesiastical organization, you will find multitudes of shells of the gospel, out of which the living substance has gone long ago. Organized Christianity—that is, the institutions of Christianity have been in the first instance its power, and in the second instance its damnation. The moment you substitute the machinery of education for education itself, the moment you build schools and do not educate, build colleges that do not increase knowledge in the pupils, you have sacrificed the aim for the instrument by which you were to gain that aim. In churches, the moment it is more important to maintain buildings, rituals, ministers, chanters, and all the paraphernalia of moral education than the spirit of personal sympathy, the moment these are more sacred to men than is the welfare of the population round about which they were set to take care of, that very moment Christ is dead in that place; that very moment religion in the midst of all its institutions has perished. I am bound to say that in the history of the world, while religious institutions have been valuable and have done a great deal of good, they have perhaps done as much harm as good. There is scarcely one single perversion of civil government, there is scarcely one single persecution of men, there is scarcely a single one of the great wars that have depopulated the globe, there is scarcely one great heresy developed out of the tyranny of the church, that has not been the fruit of institutional religion; while that spirit of humanity which was to give the institution its motive power has to a certain extent died out of it.

Secondly, churches organized upon elective affinities of men are contrary to the spirit of the gospel. We may associate with men who are of like taste with ours. We have that privilege. If men are knowledgeable and intellectual, there is no sin in their choosing for intimate companions and associates men of like pursuits and like intellectual qualities. That is right. If men are rich, there is no reason why men who hold like property should not confer with each other, and form interests and friendships together. If men are refined, if they have become aesthetic, there is no reason why they should not associate in the realm of beauty, artists with artists, nor why the great enjoyers of beauty should not be in sympathy. Exit all these are not to be allowed to do it at the price of abandoning common humanity; you have no right to make your nest in the boughs of knowledge, and let all the rest of the world go as it will. You have no right to make your home among those who are polished and exquisite and fastidious in their tastes, whose garments are beauty, whose house is a temple of art, and all whose associations are of like kind, and neglect common humanity. You have no right to shut yourself up in a limited company of those who are like you in these directions, and let all the rest of men go without sympathy and without care. It is a right thing for a man to salute his neighbor who salutes him; but if you salute those who salute you, says Christ, what thank have ye—do not even the publicans so? It is no sin that a man, being intellectual in his nature, should like intellectual people, and gratify that which is divine and God-like in him; but if, because he likes intellectual people, he loses all interest in ignorant people, it convicts him of depravity and of moral perversion. When this is carried out to such an extent that churches are organized upon sharp classification, upon elective affinities, they not only cease to be Christian churches, but they are heretical; not perhaps in doctrine, but worse than that, heretical in heart.

The fact is that a church needs poor men and wicked men as much as it does pure men and virtuous men and pious men. What man needs is familiarity with universal human nature. He needs never to separate himself from men in daily life. It is not necessary that in our houses we should bring pestilential diseases or pestilential examples, but somehow we must hold on to men if they are wicked; somehow the circulation between the top and the bottom must be carried on; somehow there must be an atoning power in the heart of every true believer of the Lord Jesus Christ who shall say, looking out and seeing that the world is lost, and is living in sin and misery, "I belong to it, and it belongs to me." When you take the loaf of society and cut off the upper crust, slicing it horizontally, you get an elect church. Yes, it is the peculiarly elect church of selfishness. But you should cut the loaf of society from the top down to the bottom, and take in something of everything. True, every church would be very much edified and advantaged if it had in it scholarly men, knowledgeable men; but the church is strong in proportion as it has in it something of everything, from the very top to the very bottom.

Now, I do not disown creeds—provided they are my own! Well, you smile; but that is the way it has been since the world began. No denomination believes in any creed except its own. I do not say that men's knowledge on moral subjects may not be formulated. I criticize the formulation of beliefs from time to time, in this: that they are very partial; that they are formed upon the knowledge of a past age, and that that knowledge perishes while higher and nobler knowledge comes in; that there ought to be higher and better forms; and that while their power is relatively small, the power of the spirit of humanity is relatively great. When I examine a church, I do not so much care whether its worship is to the one God or to the triune God. I do not chiefly care for the catechism, nor for the confession of faith, although they are both interesting. I do not even look to see whether it is a synagogue or a Christian church—I do not care whether it has a cross over the top of it or is Quaker plain. I do not care whether it is Protestant, Catholic, or anything else. Let me read the living—- the living book! What is the spirit of the people? How do they feel among each other? How do they feel toward the community? What is their life and conduct in regard to the great prime moral duty of man, "Love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thyself," whether he be obscure or whether he be smiling in the very plenitude of wealth and refinement? Have you a heart for humanity? Have you a soul that goes out for men? Are you Christ-like? Will you spend yourself for the sake of elevating men who need to be lifted up? That is orthodox. I do not care what the creed is. If a church has a good creed, that is all the more felicitous; and if it has a bad creed, a good life cures the bad creed.