University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
CHRISTIANITY.

Another day Mr. Evelyn came to the Pond. Margaret
watched his approach with composure, and returned his
greeting without confusion. “You have been on the Head,”
said she, “and I must take you to other places to-day.
First the Maples.”

“This is a fine mineralogical region,” said he, as they
entered the spot. “I wish I had a hammer.”

“I will get one,” said she.

“Let me go for it.”

“You are not in health, you told me, and you do not look
very strong. I must go, by all means. I will be back in
a trice. You will have quite as much walking as you can
master before the day is through.”

“I fear I shall be more tired wondering than in going.”

“See this,” said he, exposing a hollow stone filled with
rare crystals, which he found and broke during her absence.

“I thank you, I thank you,” she replied. “The Master has
given me an inkling of geology, but I never imagined such
beauty was hidden here.”

“With definite forms and brilliant texture these gems
vegetate in the centre of this rough, rusty stone.”

“Incomparable mystery! New Anagogics! I begin to
be in love with what I understand not.”

“Humanity is like that.”

“What is Humanity?”

“It is only another name for the World that you asked
me about.”

“I am perplexed by the duplicity of words. He is humane
who helps the needy.”

“That is one form of Humanity. I use the term as expressing
all men collectively viewed in their better light.
Much depends upon this light, phase, or aspect, what subjectively
to us is by the Germans called stand-point. Indian's
Head, in one position, resembles a human face, in
another quite as much a fish's tail. Man, like this stone, is
geodic—such stones, you know, are called geodes—”

“Have you the skill to discover them?”

“It is more difficult to break than find them. Yet if I
could crack any man as I do this stone, I should open to
crystals.”

“Any man?”

“All men.”

“Passing wonderful! I would run a thousand miles for
the hammer! I have been straining after the stars, how
much there is in the stones! Most divine Earth, henceforth
I will worship thee! Geodic Androids! What will
the Master say?”

“I see traces of more gems in these large rocks. Let
me rap here, and lo! a beryl; there is agate, yonder is a
growth of garnets.”

“Let me cease to be astonished, and only learn to love.”

“An important lesson, and one not too well learned.”

“Under this tree I will erect a Temple to the God of
Rocks. Was there any such? Certes, I remember none.”

“The God of Rocks is God.”

“You sport enigmas. Let us to Diana's Walk.”

They perambulated the forest touching upon various spots
of interest to Margaret. She had given name and population

to many a solitary place, and for a long while had been
deepening her worship and extending her supremacy, such
as it was, over the region. Tired at last, they sat down
under the trees.

“You will not relish such a walk and so many gods, I
fear,” said she.

“I could pursue the woods forever,” was his reply. “The
trees give me more than my acquaintances.”

“They are my home,” remarked Margaret, “I was born
in them, have been sheltered under them, and educated by
them, and do sometimes believe myself of them. The
Master rightly says I have a fibrous disposition. I used to
think I came of an acorn, and many a one have I opened
to find a baby brother or sister. Am I not an automative
vegetable, a witch-hazle in moccasons? The Master says
I am of the order Bipeds, and species Simulacrens;
distinguished by thirty-two teeth, and having the superior
extremities terminated by a hand which is susceptible of a
greater variety of motions than that of any other animal,
and is remarkably prehensile; that it inhabits all parts of
the earth; is omnivorous; and disputes for territory,
uniting together for the express purpose of destroying its
own kind; that I am of the variety Caucasiana, differing
from the Americana in this, that my feet are a little broader
just above the toes, and from the Simia in the configuration
of the thumb. For my own part, I incline to the Sylvian
analogy, only my clothes are not half so durable as this
bark, nor my hair so becoming as the leaves, and I must
undress myself at night and take to my bed, while the trees
sleep standing and unhooded. Then what a pother we
make about eating, while the tree lives on its own breath,
and easier than a duck, muddles for nourishment with its
roots.”

“You will not overlook the mind, the spirit, the fabled
Psyche; the inner voluntary life, the diversifier of action,
the possibility of achievement, the gubernator of matter,
the annotator of the Universe, the thinking, willing, loving,
aspiration and submission, retrospection and prospection,
smiling and weeping, speech and silence, right and wrong,
art, poetry, music, heroism and self-renunciation, the self-consciousness
of infinite affinities—all, all demonstrate the
separateness and superiority of man.”

“I know what you say is true, and when I hear it said,
I shall feel it to be so. Talk some more.”

“The tree has no sense of happiness, like you and me,
nor does it possess the capability of wretchedness. It exists
for our pleasure. He, the Soul of all, the supreme Intelligence,
the uncreated Creator, the invisible Seer, has
caused it to grow for our use. Even now I feel Him,
called in our tongue God, in the Greek Theos, in the
Hebrew Jehovah, in the Indian Manitou. His life inflames
my life, his spirit inspires my spirit. All that is now about
us is his, and he in it; the beauty of the forest is the
tincture of his beneficence, the breeze is the fanning of his
mercy, the box-berries and mosses are his, the rocks and
roots, the dancing shadows, the green breaks into the blue
sky are his creation, the fair whole of color, perfume and
form, the indescribable sweet sensation that swells in our
breasts, are his gift and his presence in the gift; they are
the figures woven into the tapestry that robes the Universe,
the fragrance that fills the vinaigrette of Creation. Through
all and in all pierces his Spirit, that blows upon us like the
wind.”

“But what becomes of my pretty Pantheon, Apollo
and Bacchus, Diana and Egeria, before this all-deluging
One?”

“That belongs to what is termed Mythology, a mixture
of imagination, religion and philosophy. Apollo, for
instance, as Tooke will tell you, denotes the sun; and of
the arts ascribed to him, prophesying, healing, shooting,
music, we discover a lively prototype in that luminary. In
Hindoo Mythology is Brahma, an uncouth image, coarsely
done in stone, which Christians affect to despise, having
the form of an infant with its toe in its mouth, floating on a
flower over a watery abyss. It signifies that in some of
the renovations which the world is supposed to have undergone,
the wisdom and designs of God will appear as in their
infant state; Brahma, that is God the Creator, floating on
a leaf, shows the instability of things at that period; the
toe sucked in the mouth implies that Infinite wisdom subsists
of itself; and the position of the body, bent into the form
of a ring, is an emblem of the circle of eternity. It is a
mere hint at the highest ideas, and by its very rudeness
effectually anticipates the error of diverting attention from
the substance to the shadow, and if worship be performed
before it, it is none otherwise than what is done in our
Churches, which are styled, preëminently, houses of God,
sanctuaries or sacred places. The Northern nations,
inheriting the germs of spirituality from the East, superadded
Beauty, and elaborated the Symbol in the fairest forms of
Art. Their Statues also were an embodied Allegory, a
sort of Encyclopædia of truth. Now-a-days we have lost
the ancient idea, and so split up our systems of knowledge,
that a statue is no more than a handsomely wrought stone;
and sometimes we vituperate the attention paid to it, as
Idolatry. It furnished to the eye what a written treatise
does to the understanding; or in brief the chisel did the
work of the pen. To the Greeks, a statue was at once a
Church and a Book, it was Beauty and Inspiration, Truth

and Illustration, Philosophy and Religion. The human
form is more expressive than any other, and genius seized
upon that as the most fitting instrument for conveying
ideality, and ennobled man while it symbolized his frame.”

“So Apollo is a creation of God?”

“The original on which that is founded is a creation of
God; or I should say, Apollo, representing certain facts in
the creation of God, or certain attributes of God, his culture
was observed by different nations under different names,
till at last some artist, fusing as it were the popular idea in
his own, wrought the whole in marble, and so gave us the
Belvidere.”

“What are we? What am I?”

“In the words of the biblical Job, whom I fear you know
less about than you do about the Widow Luce's Job,
`There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the
Almighty hath given them understanding.' God himself
breathes into us the breath of spiritual life. This divine
affiatus animates the embryon existence. The spirit
assumes a material framework which it must quit at last.
Our souls coming from God return to him. We are everliving
as the Divinity himself. The bosom of the Infinite,
while it nourishes us here, is our ultimate home. God
creates us in his own image, and we like him go on to
create. He weaves, and we are his warp and filling.”

“Who winds the spools?”

“You are more at home in the detail, Miss Hart, than I
am, and I leave you to answer that question yourself.—
But, we the woof, are also weavers. God weaves and we
weave; `He dwells in us and we in him,' St. John says.
`He clothes the grass of the field,' Christ says. `He works
in us,' St. Paul says.”

“Did God work in the artist that made the Apollo?”

“Yes; all beautiful works of man are an inspiration of
the Almighty. We read in the Old Testament that God
put wisdom and understanding into men's hearts to know
how to work all manner of work, for a fabric the Jews
were building. It is the energy of that action wherewith
he endows man.”

“Then I may keep my Apollo, and all my Divinities.”

“I would not deprive you of any thing that shall make
you beautiful and strong, happy and chaste, devout and
simple, that shall give companionship to your solitude,
ministry to your susceptibilities, exercise to your imagination.”

“You are taking the pegs out of the bars, but I will not
run wild—I am impatient to know about Christ; what will
you say of him? I have read some in the New Testament
you gave me. It is the strangest book I ever saw. It
transported me with an unspeakable delight; and then I
was overwhelmed by a painful complexity of sensations.
I came to where he died, and I laid down the book and
wept with a suffocating anguish. Then there were those
sanctiloquent words!”

“That which I gave you is a version made two hundred
years since, when our language was imperfect, scholarship
deficient, biblical knowledge limited, and the popular belief
replete with errors; and moreover done by men of a
particular sect under the dictation of a King. Of course
the translation suffers somewhat; but the general truth of
the Gospels can no more be hindered by this circumstance,
than the effect of day by an accumulation of clouds. But
of the subject itself, Christ, what can I say? It is almost
too great for our comprehension, as it certainly rises
above all petty disputes. How can I describe what I know
not? How can I embrace a nature that so exceeds my

own? How can I tell of a love I never felt, or recount
attainments I never reached? Can I give out what I have
not, and I sometimes fear I am not completely possessed of
Christ. Can I, the Imperfect, appreciate the Perfect one;
can I, the sinful, reveal the sinless soul? I have not Christ's
spirit, his truth, his joy, so integrally and plenarily, that I
can set him forth in due proportion and entireness. His
experience and character, his spiritual strength and moral
greatness are so transcendent, I truly hesitate at the task
you impose upon me. That we may portray the Poet or
the Artist, or any high excellence, we must square with it;
who, alas! is equal to Christ?”

“Yet,” said Margaret, “all that is lies secretly coiled
within our own breasts! All Beauty, I am persuaded, is
within us; whatever comes to me I feel has had a preexistence.
I sometimes indeed doubt whether I give or
receive. A flower takes color from the sun and gives off
color. Air makes the fire burn, and the fire makes the air
blow; and the colder the weather the brisker the fire. A
watermelon seed can say, `In me are ten watermelons,
rind, pulp and seeds, so many yards of vine, so many
pounds of leaves.' In myself seems sometimes to reside an
infant Universe. My soul is certainly pistillate, and the
pollen of all things is borne to me. The spider builds his
house from his own bowels. I have sometimes seen a
wood-spider let off a thread which the winds drew out for
him and raised above the trees, and when it was sufficiently
high and strong, he would climb up it, and sail off in the
clear atmosphere. I think if you only begin, it will all
come to you. As you drain off it will flow in. The sinful
may give out the sinless. I long to hear what you have
to say.”

“What you observe is too true, and I thank you for

making me recollect myself. Even the Almighty creates
us, and then suffers himself to be revealed in us. We,
motes, carry an immensity of susceptible, responsive existence.
But for this we should never love or know
Christ. In his boyhood, we are told, Christ waxed strong
in spirit, was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was
upon him. His earliest developments must have been of
a peculiarly beautiful and striking kind. When he was
twelve years old, being in company of some learned people,
his questions and replies were of such a nature as to excite
astonishment at the extent of his understanding. We have
no authentic account of him from this until his thirtieth
year; excepting that he resided with his father and pursued
the family avocation, that of a carpenter.”

“What, do you know nothing about him when he was as
old as I am, or as you are, when he was fifteen, or twenty,
or twenty-five? In the dream I remember he said I must
be like him, I must grow up with him. Had he no youth?
Had he no inward sorrowful feelings as I have had?”

“There is one of the books of the New Testament of a
peculiar character, and it contains some intimations respecting
Christ, not found in the others. I will read a passage.
`In the days of his flesh he offered up or poured forth
prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, to
him that was able to save him from death, and was heard
in that he feared,' or, as it stands in the original, for his
piety. This, as I believe, points to a period of his life not
recorded in the other histories, and should be assigned to
that which you have mentioned, his youth.”

“I have no doubt of it,” said Margaret. “It describes
exactly what I have been through. Did he suffer all we
do?”

“Yes, his life and sufferings were archetypal of those of

all his followers. `He suffered for us,' says St. Peter,
`leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps.'
`Rejoice,' he says, `inasmuch as ye are partakers of
Christ's sufferings.'”

“How near this brings Christ to me! It seems as if I
had him now in my heart. He too suffered! How much
there is in that word! and in this earnest, soul-deep-way!
I understand his sad tender look. Apollo killed Hyacinth
by accident, and was very sorry. But there was no deep
capable soul in Apollo, was there? I shall not think so
much of him,—I interrupt you, Sir, go on.”

“He suffered all that any being can suffer; he was alone,
unbefriended, unsympathized with, unaided; books gave
him no satisfaction, teachers afforded him no light. The
current, swift and broad, of popular error and prejudice, he
had to stem and turn, single-handed. He grew in knowledge,
we read; the problems of Man, God and the
Universe were given him to resolve. But he was heard
for his piety, for his goodness. He became perfect through
suffering. Supernatural, divine assistance was afforded
him, and he conquered at last.

“At the age of thirty, when he entered what is called his
public ministry, which is the chief subject of history, he
encountered a severe temptation, such as all are liable to,
and was enabled to vanquish it; he was tempted as we are.
He was ever without sin, neither was guile found in his
mouth; he was holy, harmless, undefiled. At times he was
made indignant at the conduct of men, he was grieved at
the hardness of their hearts, he groaned in sympathy with
human distress and wept over the follies of the race; he
was persecuted by the great, and despised by his own
kindred; his nearest friends deserted him, and one of his
chosen disciples betrayed him; the greatness of his views

met only with bigotry, and the generosity of his heart was
repelled by meanness; he carried the heavy wood on
which he was crucified, and when brought as a malefactor
to the place of execution, he was scourged and spit upon;
once prostrated by weight of anguish, even from very heat
of internal agony, he entreated that the bitter cup might be
removed; and add to all, in the extreme stage of dissolving
life, for a moment his spiritual vision seemed to be dimmed,
and he cried out, `O my God! why hast thou forsaken
me?' Such is a brief notice of his sufferings. Let me
turn to other points—”

“O, Mr. Evelyn!” exclaimed Margaret, “how can you
go on so! How cold you are! I cannot hear any more;”
and from the posture she had maintained with her eyes
fixed on the ground, she fell with her face into her hands,
and followed the act with an audible profusion of tears.

“Do forgive me, Miss Hart,” said Mr. Evelyn. “I
have been so long familiar with this most affecting history,
that I know it does not move me as it should.”

“I only know,” said Margaret, looking up with a tender
smile in her tears, “that I feel it all through me, my heart
swells like a gourd, and I ache in a strange way. My
memory and my sensatons seem to be alike agitated.”

“That must be sympathy!” replied Mr. Evelyn.

“What is that sympathy? asked Margaret. “I never
heard, methinks, the word before.”

“It is of Greek origin, and means feeling or suffering
with another. It denotes mutual sensation, fellow feeling;
it implies also compassion, commiseration. It is defined a
conformity in feeling, suffering or passion with another;
also a participation in the condition or state of another;
and also, if you are not tired of superenumeration, the

quality or susceptibility of being effected by the affection
of another, with feelings correspondent in kind.”

“Sympathy, sympathy!” said Margaret, “That is it.
You understand me now!”

“Yes you sympathize with Christ. I can but deplore
my own insensibility.”

“I will remember that word; I like to get a good word;
it is a brooding hen over my ideas, it keeps them warm, and
ready to hatch. While you were speaking, I felt myself
drawn out by some strange affinities to what you said, and
when you came to the extreme sufferings of Christ, my
sensations were something such as I had when you spoke
about him the other day, and when I read that part of the
Book, only so many things being brought together, I felt
more. All the sadness I ever had was revived, and burst
within me anew.”

“I was going to tell you,” continued Mr. Evelyn, “that
in addition to, and despite all, Christ was very happy, and
that in manner and matter beyond what most men can conceive
of, which is another secret in his character. On the
last day of his life, with the horrors of crucifixion impending,
he said to his sorrowing friends, `Peace I leave with
you, my peace I give unto you.' He desired, he says, that
`joy might remain with them.” He prays that `his joy
may be fulfilled in themselves!' This I think will please
you.”

“I believe I understand something of that too,” said
Margaret.

“There are still other points,” pursued Mr. Evelyn,
“I must speak of the object of Christ's coming into the
world, or what is known as the plan of Redemption by
him. Man had fallen, if you know what that means.”

“I know what Pa says when he is so intoxicated he
can't stand. `In Adam's fall, we sinned all.'”

“I do not refer to that. Eve, of whom you will read in
the Old Testament, ate an apple from an interdicted tree,
which is commonly known as the Fall of Man. There is
no authority for such a belief. Men fall, each man for
himself, when they sin, that is, do wrong. At the time
Christ appeared, St. Paul tells us, unrighteousness, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness, lasciviousness, envyings,
backbitings, murders, wrath, strife, seditions prevailed;
men were inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
without natural affection, without understanding, unholy,
and so forth—”

“I shall laugh now,” said Margaret, “to hear all that
sanctiloquence. I must have hit upon some of those words,
which nearly disgusted me with the book. I have heard
Deacon Hadlock called a very holy man, and Pa laughed,
and the Master blew his nose.”

“Those are words,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “in common
and proper use when the translation was made to which I
referred. Having disappeared from the popular tongue,
and being retained only in ecclesiastical terminology, it is
not surprising that they sound strange to you. Rendered
in modern English, holiness and righteousness mean goodness,
virtue, rectitude, or any high moral and religious
excellence. As respects the other vices mentioned, we
have now-a-days, as you well know, war, intemperance,
slavery, unkindness; and then what go by the name
of bigotry, irreligion, pious frauds, persecution, simony,
burglary, peculation, treason, perjury, kidnapping, piracy,
scandal, ingratitude, intrigue, bribery, meanness, social
inequality, governmental misrule, spirit of caste, oppression
of labor, superciliousness, are abundant. These and

similar things are what the Gospel denominates the works
of the flesh, and renders unto tribulation and anguish, as
evil doing. These are that whereby men break the Divine
Law, and separate themselves from God. But the primary
idea in this matter, the fundamental law of sin, the very
essence of the Fall, consists in this, that men ceased to
love. Love is the fulfilling of the law, it is the first and
great command; it unites man with God and with himself.
In the subsidency and departure of love, the moral system
is revolutionized and human nature disordered. The
instinct of self-preservation is tortured into selfishness, the
desire of excellence flames into ambition, the sense of right
becomes the author of innumerable wrong. The whole
head is sick, the whole heart faint. Nature commences a
burdensome contention with abuse, misdirection, absurdity,
folly. It is ever Nature versus the Unnatural. The
institutions and organizations of men, founded upon the
new basis, partake of the general corruption, and only
foster evils it is their design to prevent. Love casts out
fear; in the absence of love, fear supersedes; hence
aggression and violence, superstition and the doctrine of
devils.”

“I never feared,” said Margaret; “was that because I
loved?”

“Fortitude,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “springs as much
from superiority to our enmities, as from superiority to our
enemies. And this reminds me, that the first voluntary
wrong act any man ever did was done through the absence
of love. But here arises a new element. We were never
created to do or to suffer voluntary wrong, and there is
generated in consequence of such acts the sense of injury.
Hence come all retaliations. A most mournful fact in this
matter is that dissonance and disorder are themselves sympathetic

and reciprocal. Aversion reproduces aversion, and
selfishness is answered by selfishness.”

“I have felt that towards Solomon Smith sometimes,”
said Margaret. “I know he dislikes me, and I have been
moved to dislike him, and I suppose I should if I did not
feel what a ridiculous piece of business it is for one most
anagogical puppet to be mad with another. And since
you would also convince me he is geodic, what can I do,
but abide, like the ants, whose hills though trodden upon
are patiently renewed every morning.”

“When man ceases to love, he is not only enstranged
from God, but the image of God within him is lost, the
heavenly purity of his character is sullied, and the divine
harmonies of his nature discomposed. But what is worst of
all, we are educated to regard every man with suspicion
and enmity. We are taught in our earliest years that men
are by nature totally depraved, and since total depravity
covers every form of sin and vice, we are in effect instructed
to believe every man a villain, a thief, a murderer,
at heart; as mean, selfish, and malicious, in his secret
conscious purpose. This is the cardinal doctrine of what
passes under the name of Christianity. It is annually
enforced by hundreds of thousands of discourses from
Bishops and Clergy in every part of Christendom. This
consummates the Fall! Every youth under the operation
of that sympathetic and reciprocal law, to which I adverted,
enters life in the spirit of hostility. To receive injury he
expects, and accounts it not harmful to do an injury to the
injurious. The evil which he is made to believe all others
saturated with is reflected in his own bosom, and so, in spite
of himself, he becomes depraved. There is something
denominated love in the religious circles; I should call it
Ecclesiastical love, because it is a figment of the Church,

to distinguish it from Christian love, which has its origin
in Christ, or Evangelical love founded on the Gospels.
After making you believe all men totally depraved, our
teachers endeavor to create in the breasts of the elect so
termed, a pity for this depravity, and to inspire them with
a desire to remove it, and this they call love, which is no
love at all, since an important element in love is that it
thinketh no evil, judges not. In what I have now said,
you see not only the Fall of man generally, but also that
second greater catastrophe, the Fall of the Church.”

“Here I must beg of you some more explanations; what
do you mean by the Church?”

“I mean that great body of men, in all countries, of all
denominations and sects, who profess Christianity, in their
associate capacity, with their clergy, or leaders, and creeds,
or articles of establishment.”

“Have the Church members in the Village and those
who groaned so at the Camp Meeting fallen?”

“Yes, all. The effect of a corrupt Christianity, or as I
should say of a fallen religion, is to perpetuate and augment
itself; and now, with very few exceptions, all share in the
common calamity. In the progress of decline, it became a
matter of course, that the Church should change its
standards of faith, or as we say in politics, adopt a new
constitution. The Gospels or Evangelicons, by which are
intended the personal biographies of Jesus, a book of Acts,
and certain documents known as Epistles, are indeed
accredited by all. But there arose certain things which
have practically superseded the Gospels. These are known
as Articles of the Council of Trent, of the Church of
England, of the Episcopal Church, of the Methodist
Church; or as Creeds in our various Churches. And
now a man may believe the Gospels, and aim to conform to

Christ, but he is not reckoned a Christian by the Romanists
unless he assent to their Articles, or by the Protestants
unless he subscribe to their several Creeds. And they have
carried this matter so far, as to condemn a man to everlasting
perdition if he depart from these Gospel substitutes.
You may examine these devices and canvass their qualities,
you will find no more Christianity in any one of them than
apple-juice in that stone. But we must bear in mind that
the world had fallen before the Church fell; and it was to
repair the effects of this first Fall, that Christ appeared on
the Earth; let us return to him. He came to renew love,
and reinstate men in a pure and happy condition.”

“But how could men love if they were as you describe
them?”

“Man never wholly loses his capacity for loving. The
natural susceptibility to goodness and truth can never be
extinguished. Our powers are perverted, not destroyed.
In fact, there have been holy, loving people in the world,
true Christians, in all times, all countries, all Churches,
among all religions and in every nation. Such have sometimes
been kings, and occupied thrones, they have been
outcasts from society, and buried in dungeons. Among
princes and peasants, the affluent and the poor, the learned
and the ignorant, aristocrats and plebeians, have appeared
from time to time sincere and earnest lovers of God and
man. Some sympathy with Christ exists in all minds,
either latent or active.

“Christ came on his high embassage with credentials of
an authoritative and remarkable character. He was the
brightness of the glory of God, and the express image of
his person. Indeed, He and the Father were one. He
received, he tells us, all power from God. He was baptized
of the Holy Spirit. He was proclaimed the beloved and

well-pleasing Son of God. He had gone through the experience
of life, he had studied the human mind in its every
phase, he understood the condition of men and was prepared
for the exigencies of his lot. The thirty years of his life
had not been spent in idleness. The effect of his address
was electrical. Cities poured forth their population to him
and the country was deserted of its inhabitants gone in
pursuit of him. The multitudes that thronged to hear him,
were so great no house could contain them, and he was
obliged to resort to the open air and spoke sometimes from
a hillside, sometimes from a boat moored by the shore.
But, as I have intimated, his course was not without trial
and obstacle. His success it was in part that contributed
to his unhappiness, and precipitated his death. The common
people heard him gladly, a circumstance that aroused
the jealousies of the higher orders, who became his unrelenting
antagonists. With covert insinuation and open
assault they pursued him, and by intrigue at last brought
him to the cross.

“Let me speak of what he did, of the spirit of his action
and the secret of his effect. Fresh and glowing he came
from the bosom of Heaven. His heart yearned for man as
for a brother. His sympathies were ardent, profuse and
forth-putting. His hopes were high and bright. He
spared himself neither privations, self-denials, inconveniences,
disrepute or toil. He gave himself for our ransom,
his whole self, body and mind, his thought, his sagacity, his
activity, his health, his time, his knowledge, his popularity,
his example, in fact all he had or was, even to life itself;
he consented that by his stripes we should be healed, by
his death we should live, and shed his blood to wash away
our sins. He was gentle and tender, the bruised reed he
would not break, or the smoking flax quench. Wherever

arose one feeblest aspiration to God he was prepared to
foment and cherish it. He made an open door of his compassionate
feelings, and invited to himself all who labored
and were heavy laden with sin and evil. He did not join
in the common execrations of men, or approve their
punitive severities; he saw something excellent in the
vilest, he would win by love the most ruffianish, and the
profligate he bade `Go, and sin no more.' When he was
reviled he reviled not again, and when he suffered, he
threatened not. If he received an injury he did not retaliate,
but committed himself, Peter says, `to him that
judgeth righteously,' that is, to God.

“And here we see the high moral perfection of Christ;
he had so disciplined his spirit, he was so preoccupied with
love, and so magnanimously considerate, that enmity and
aversion, which in most breasts give rise to corresponding
qualities, in his excited only kindness and favor. Here
also discovers itself his sublime Heroism, that he stood
unshaken before all moral assaults, and faced undaunted
every moral danger. Yet he was one of the strongest
sensibilities; he wept like a child in pure sympathy with
the distresses of his friends. He `took upon himself our
infirmities,' and if sensitiveness be an infirmity, he possessed
it equally with the rest of us. The insane, those
who were chained, imprisoned and under keepers, and who
in their paroxysms were ungovernable and dangerous, he
approached freely, became very familiar with in love, and
expelled the delusion that possessed them. The miraculous
power with which he was endowed he employed in
ways most instructive and beneficial. He gave sight to the
blind, hearing to the deaf, strength to the weak, and health
to the sick. He did not consult what was expedient, but
pursued what was right, and broke the popular Sabbath, an

exceedingly bold act, and one that nearly cost him his life.
Yet he was not harsh and sweeping in his movement; he
was sparing of those feelings which are deep because they
belong to our childhood, of convictions that are honest
because they are all we possess, and of forms of public life to
which along antiquity imparts an air of reverence; and he
would not see the Temple of the Jews mercenarily profaned.
The spirit of the Goth and Vandal was most remote from
Jesus. God he called his Heavenly Father, and sought to
create a near and filial relation with the Divinity. Man he
called his brother, and in all he would find fathers, mothers,
brothers, sisters. Little children, what is unparalleled
in all religions, he took in his arms and blessed. National,
local, and geographical antipathies he sought to correct,
and strove to unite all men on a common footing of
brotherhood; and the Samaritans, who were regarded by
his own people, the Jews, as the offscouring of all things, he
demonstrated both by precept and example to be deserving
a common friendship and love.”

“That is what Mr. Lovers said about the Freemasons,”
interposed Margaret, “and Isabel and I were so smitten
we determined to join them right off, and went to the
Master, but he said they did not admit women.”

“Freemasonary,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “is a partial good.
It recognizes every man as a brother who is a Mason, but
Christ recognized every one as a brother who was a man.
Women shared equally in his sympathies, and was embraced
by his love. The motto of Masonry, Faith, Hope and
Charity, is a fragment borrowed from the Gospels. Freemasonry
in some of our States excludes the black; Jew
and Gentile, Barbarian and Scythian, male and female,
bond and free, are one in Christ. He was invidiously
styled the Friend of Sinners, because he maintained a

kindly intercourse with those whom the world despised;
he dined with Pharisees, the chief men of the nation, that
he might understand their position, and be better able to
meet their wants. Certain leaders of the people were the
only ones whom he seems ever to have addressed with
severity, and that not from any hostility, but because they
appeared to him wholly dissolute and abandoned; yet his
language, in the original, savors more of a lament than a
proscription. I cannot tell you all he did. In the
expressive words of one of his disciples `he went about
doing good.'”

“I thank you for what you have told me,” said Margaret.
“Christ certainly seems to me the most wonderful being of
whom I have ever heard. I have read about Plato,
Anaxagoras, Socrates, Epaminondas, Diogenes, Seneca,
Cicero, Cato, Numa, Confucius, Budha, Manco Capac, and
others, who interested me a great deal, but nothing seemed
like this.”

“I have not told you half,” replied Mr. Evelyn. “I
have only spoken of what he did. How can I describe the
greatest, most excelling part of him, what he was! It is
a small thing to say that he was affable, honorable, brave,
warm-hearted, truthful, discreet, wise, talented, disinterested,
self-denying, patient, exemplary, temperate, charitable,
industrious, frugal, hospitable, compassionate, and such
like. He was meek and lowly in heart, and that with more
incentives to arrogance and pride than ever fell to the lot
of one individual; he was forbearing when a precept of
his religion demanded an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth; his affection was universal, while the sentiment and
practice of his people condemned intercourse with other
nations; he was self-relying in a community ruled by
tradition and resting on prescription; he was pacific where

war was sanctioned and encouraged; he was free in a world
of bondage, spiritual in a world of forms, great in a world
of littleness, a God in a world of men. His intrinsic
nobility rose above meanness and subterfuge, and if he ever
withheld all he thought, it was because he would not cast
his pearls before swine. He was frank without bluntness,
courteous without guile, familiar without vulgarity, liberal
without licentiousness. He combined tenderness of feeling
with rigor of principle, harmlessness with wisdom, simplicity
with greatness, faith with works. He fellowshipped man
without countenancing sin, he mingled in all classes of
society without losing his singleness of character. In him
were harmonized the opposite extreme of trust and independence,
forethought and impulse, plain common sense
and the highest spirituality, theory and practice, intuition
and reflection, cheerfulness and piety, toil and refinement,
candor and enthusiasm; he was Lord of lords and King of
kings, and the companion of peasants and confidant of the
obscure. He was eloquent and persuasive, yet his voice
was not heard in the streets; he had no boisterous tones,
or demagogical manner; he discoursed of the highest
truths, yet his language was so simple, the people were
astonished at the gracious words that proceeded out of his
mouth; God-possessed as he was, all-engrossing as was the
object he had in view, and preoccupied as we must suppose
his attention to have been, he was ever alive and fresh to
the beauty and suggestiveness of nature; and the falling rain,
a flying sparrow, the bursting wheat; the luxuriant mustard,
the blooming vine, the evening twilight, the clouds of
heaven, wells of water in the deserts of the East, oxen and
sheep, a hen brooding over her chickens, all things about
him left their impression in his heart and became the
illustrators of his doctrine. Considering the fervid Oriental
imagination, the perspicuous chasteness and emphatic
directness of his style, adapted to all climates and people,
is not a little remarkable. Made in all things like his
brethren, he was still one whom the offer of empire did not
flatter or a houseless night dishearten. His miraculous
power he used unostentatiously and sparingly; and with no
other intent than the good of man and the glory of God.
You have asked if he was not Beautiful; he was superlatively
so. In the translation it reads the Good Shepherd;
but here and elsewhere in the original Gospels a term is
employed by which the Greeks denoted the highest description
of Beauty, and if the public mind were not debased,
we should understand what is meant when it is said he is
the Beautiful Shepherd. Yet it is not mere beauty of color
or features, but something from within that expresses itself
in the face.”

“I remember,” said Margaret, “that look; his eyes
were fair, his hair and countenance; but there was something
behind, deeper, like music in the night, like the
shining of a fish in the water, like a nasturation flowering
under its green leaves.”

“Something like that; it glowed in his look and illuminated
his manner. The hidden source of his Beauty was
Love; and once, as his Love increased, as he became more
and more perfect through his sufferings, when his spirit
had completely passed through the veil of his flesh, this
inward Beauty shone out in a most wonderful way; and in
connection with the splendor of God which answered to it
at the moment, constitutes a striking scene known as the
Transfiguration, which you will read. That same look
melted one wicked man to tears, and felled brutal soldiers
to the earth.”

“Do explain to me one thing; in one of my dreams were

three girls, whom I knew to be Faith, Hope and Charity,
because I had seen pictures of them. They created a
fourth whom I called Beauty, because it could be nothing
else but that. Yet you say Beauty comes from Love.”

“That Charity,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “is none other
than Love. It is an evangelical term, and there again our
translators committed a blunder when they rendered it
Charity, who is none other than an alms-giver. But Love,
as Christ would have it, is something entirely different,
greater than Faith or Hope, the greatest of all things, and
from it comes true Beauty. As David desired to behold
the Beauty of the Lord, so that of Christ was not without
its effect in the rapid spread of his doctrine; he was
altogether lovely. The grace of your Venus, the symmetry
of your Apollo, the colors of flowers, the brilliancy of gems,
pass with me as nothing compared with the Moral Beauty
of Christ. Apollo is a perfect material form; Christ a
perfect moral soul. What Apollo is in the galleries of Art,
Christ is in the galleries of Spirit. The Apollo comprises
all the bodily excellences of men, Christ all their moral
excellences. There is some worth, some virtue in every
human being; in Christ these all united and made a
harmonious whole. The Apollo, as I told you, represented
the higher operations of Nature; Christ represented the
higher operations of God; or as I might say, the Apollo
represented the natural attributes of God, Christ his moral
attributes. By as much as the statue of Apollo differs
from the image of Brahma, by so much does Christ differ
from Plato.”

“I have thought sometimes,” said Margaret, “of Regulus
going back to the Carthaginians,—wasn't that an unexampled
act? of Codrus and Eubule sacrificing themselves for
their country, of Epaminonda's magnanimity, Arrius's

integrity, Evephenus's truthfulness; and O, how I have
wished to get away from Christians, sit down on a stump
in the groves of the Academy and hear Plato preach, or
squat with Diogenes in his tub and listen to his railings!
When the Master laughs about people, and I ask him who
is good, he says, `The Seven Wise Men of Greece.' I
am sure there was some virtue in those days—yet—I know
not what to say.”

“If you intend a comparison,” replied Mr. Evelyn, “it
were easy to prove, being put up to it, that Christ differs
from those to whom you have referred, toto cœlo, by the
greatest possible distance. True, they possessed many
virtues, but what you would glean from a whole antiquity
seems to me aggregated in Christ. There may be some
analogy between Christ and them, but no similitude. How
this matter stands you will see when I have said all I shall
say about him. Besides, as to Regulus for instance, there
seems to be no basis of comparison, they do not stand upon
any common footing. Among fallen men there exist certain
notions of rectitude, which go by the name of honor. It is
a familiar saying, there is honor among thieves. The
Romans and Carthaginians were fallen men, they made
war upon each other, they were mutual pillagers, incendiaries,
liars, assassins. Yet they retained this sentiment
of honor. Regulus indeed, true to his word, went back,
even when he knew it would cost him his life, a noble act;
yet he was put to death by those whom he had just before
been trying to kill, and possibly by the friends of those
whom his own sword had pierced. Then, in retaliation,
the Carthaginians in Rome were by the public authority
barbarously tortured.”

“I see, I see,” rejoined Margaret. “I did not think of
comparison. Only those noble deeds detached from every

thing else have lain in my mind, as things very beautiful.
And while you were speaking they rose up vividly.”

“Christ's was no dependent, distorted, or relative excellence,”
continued Mr. Evelyn; “he was not conspicuous
because he stood a head taller than his countrymen. He
was excellent from the sole of his foot upwards. He was
absolutely and rudimentally great, and would have appeared
so equally alone or with a million. He was un-fallen; he
did not stand upon a platform of depravity, and exhibit
how much excellence was compatible therewith. He stood
upon a platform of pure goodness, and shows how beautiful
it is. Regulus aided in carrying on the wicked purposes
of the world, Christ contemplated regenerating the
whole world. Epaminondas was made great by the vices
of his countrymen, Christ from his own inherit life. Plato
maintained that fire is a pyramid tied to the earth by numbers;
Christ is guilty of no philosophical absurdity, and
what is not a little noticeable is this, that while he pursued
the track of high, transcendent truth, he does not exhibit
the slightest tinge of those metaphysical speculations that
prevailed in his time. Plato travelled into Egypt in pursuit
of knowledge, Christ into the region of himself. Plato
borrows from the Brahmins. What absence of that
anagogical, all-prevalent, all-winsome Brahminism in
Christ! Socrates, the wise, beneficent and pious, lifted a
bloody arm against his fellow men. Thales thanked God
he was born a man, not a woman; a Greek, not a barbarian.
Solon ordered robbery to be punished with death.
Anaxagoras, when he was old and poor, wrapped himself in
his cloak, and resolved to die of hunger. These were all
stars in the night time, worthy of admiration, and pleasant
to go to sleep under. Christ seems to me a Morning
Sun.”

“Keep to Christ, I can afford to forget all others, a while
at least.”

“It is after all by approximations we know Christ, not
by any comprehension. We must rest content to paddle
about in the inlets of this great ocean. Consider his intellectual
character—`he knew what was in man,' his biographer
declares. He had not books or teachers; he worked at
his father's bench; he had never, as I believe, travelled
farther than from Nazareth to Jerusalem, and his doctrine
savors as little of Jewish hagiography as it does of the
lore of the Rabbins; and well was it asked, `How knoweth
this man letters, having never learned?' He studied his
own mysterious nature, his own manifold necessities, his
own disposition; and by thus first knowing himself, he
knew all men. Through himself he read the race. That
love, which is the secret sap of the soul, by which our
being enlarges itself, the faculties grow apace like the arms
of an oak, the knots of thought are loosened, and a clear
shining intellectual vision is attained, he possessed in unbounded
measure. He did God's will, and therefore knew
of the doctrine. He grew in wisdom, and love added to
his insight and fortified his reason. He was pure in heart,
and thus saw God. Christ is perfectly adapted to man, as
a well-adjusted piece of carpentry to its several parts, as
light to the eye, as air to the lungs, as musical notes to a
musical ear. He, the prototypal Diapason of the race,
studying himself, and man in himself, so strikes a chord
that vibrates to every heart.

“Christ was a genius, one without compeer or parallel, a
spiritual genius; not of the Homeric, Phydian, or Praxitelean
order, but of his own most singular, most exalted kind.
A sculptor, from the several beauties found in a collection
of human bodies, gives you a beautiful material statute;

Christ gives you a beautiful spirit. A sculptor from his
own Ideal produces a beautiful Form; Christ from his
Ideal produces beautiful men. A sculptor sometimes succeeds
in throwing passion, action, a soul into marble;
Christ threw a soul into man. Art explains nature to man;
Christ explained God to man, and man to himself. His
power was strictly creative, as it was rare and benign. A
spiritual landscape painted he, that no Claude could equal.
Indeed, such an impression had his disciples of his productive
energy, that by him they say `the worlds were
made.' A new Heaven and a new Earth were things on
which he wrought. Christ was, if we are willing to apply
to him modern terms, both Art and an Artist. He was in
himself the fairest, self-wrought, divine creation. Then
patiently, studiously, lovingly, he went on to form new creations.
In Love lies all Artistic Energy; from the highest
love proceeds the highest work. Praxiteles, in the composition
of his Venus, is said to have been inspired by the
presence of a beautiful female. Christ needed no other
inspiration than what his own beautiful heart could furnish.
But I must delay on this till I have said some other things.

“Having all too meagrely spoken of him in himself, I
will speak of him in his relation to God. The Soul of the
Universe entered into his soul, and was cherished there.
The Spirit of God, as a dove, descended and rested upon
him. In him dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
He is called the only begotten Son of God. With a nature
harmonious in all things with God, God himself sympathized,
and he dwelt in God, and God in him. The
Word became flesh. He was the Bread of God, he was a
Vine of the Father's planting; he was Immanuel, God
with us. But of what chiefly interests us, his relation to
man, I will tell you. In this respect we learn much of

Christ from his immediate successors, called Apostles, in
whom is seen the Ideal of Christ as it were projected, and
who manifest in effect what he held in purpose. `As he
was, so are we in this world,' they declare. This expresses
the gist of the matter. Whatever he himself was he
designed man to become. God sent him into the world,
through Him to restore His own fallen image. He was
made perfect, that through his perfection we might become
perfect. He would restore us by the infusion of himself,
by reuniting man with his spirit, his holiness, his love.
His wish and prayer were that we together with him might
become one with God. He announced himself the Way,
the Truth, the Life. He did not teach, he was the Resurrection
and the Life, and those who were dead in trespasses
and sins heard his voice, came forth from their graves and
lived. `Take up your Cross and follow me,' were his
words; `eat me,' `live on me.' As he laid down his life for
us, so are we directed to lay down our lives for the brethren.
`I travail,' says one, `till Christ be formed in you.' `Christ
in us' is the Mystery of Revelation. `We die daily;' `we
live, yet not we, but Christ lives in us.' As he forgave, so
are we to forgive. The same mind that was in him is to be
in us. As he suffered without the gate, so are we to go
forth, bearing his reproach. We are crucified together
with him. As he died to sin, so do we. As he was a
sacrifice, so are we to offer our bodies living sacrifices. He
suffered, leaving us an example. If we imitate his Passion,
we shall reign with him. The glory which God gave him,
he says, he gives his disciples. Greater works than he did
he declares they shall do. So perfect was this contemplated
identity that he says, He who receives you receives
me; and it was even declared, that he who sinned against a
brother sinned against Christ. This inner, received Christ,
Paul declared, worked in him mightily. Through him,
thus received, we escape the pollutions of the world. His
blood, his doctrine, his spirit, his death, his whole self, washes
away our sins. As he is holy, so we become holy. We are
partakers of the divine nature. He is to us a Moral
Revelation of God; as there is a Natural Revelation in
the material creation. He embodies, and sets forth the
Moral attributes of God.

“So he came into the world, as it were, suffused with the
effulgence of God, raying out with love, benignity, paternal
affection. He addressed himself to human sympathies, I
mean to that power of which we were speaking, of reciprocating
the feelings and passions of another; to that susceptibility
of truth and goodness which exists in all minds.
This was the medium whereby he would communicate
himself to man. He relied upon the Spirit of God to
second and bless his labors. He would uncurb the wellspring
of love that is found in every soul, and let its waters
flow out over the earth.

“He begins with saying, `Repent,' or in the original
Change your minds, Reflect upon yourselves. In the only
discourse of any length which remains to us, he pronounces
the Beatitudes, which I hope you will soon read. His
object is the salvation of man; he is called the Savior,
because he shall save his people from their sins. In the
revival, development, and extension of love, he would bring
men to holiness; in becoming holy, sin is expelled and
forgiven; in the expulsion of sin, Hell both as an experience
and a destiny ceases, and Heaven is secured. On the
deep, eternal foundations of Nature he would erect the
superstructure of Grace. He came mature in preparation,
flushing with hope, dexterous for attempt. He looked with
loving eyes to behold loving eyes in return, he speaking

kindness to be greeted with kindness, his warm heart would
be met by warm hearts, his lofty purposes would kindle
lofty purposes, his holy life shall stimulate a holy life, his
gentle rebuke react in penitence, and his pity invigorate
despair. As by a conjuror's touch he would awaken the
dead soul of the world. His Divine Spirit propagating
itself, the image of God would reappear in the face of man.
He, the Heavenly Sculptor, works on rocky souls, and with
his chisel fashions a form of immortal beauty. Thousands
upon thousands heard his voice and lived. The stately
Pharisee, the unknown rustic, and the despised foreigner
became his converts. To his resurrection from sin and
sense, fashion and fortune, multitudes strove to attain;
many vied in his crucifixion; by the new and living way
through the veil, that is, the flesh, the carnal and self-in-dulgent
denied themselves to enter. A living sympathetic
response to Christ arose in John and Peter, Martha and
Mary, and hosts.

“A splendid Ideal had he, which he called the Kingdom
of Heaven; the reproduction of himself among men he
spoke of as his coming again; the reappearance of Virtue
and Peace, Truth and Righteousness, he described as the
clouds of Heaven and Angels of God. Such was his Ideal
of Truth, that while he says he himself judged no one, he
expected that would judge the world, condemn sin, and
extirpate it forever; and those who possessed this truth he
speaks of as standing upon thrones. The ordinary magistracy
of man would be supplanted, and all iniquity flee
away before the brightness of his Advent. Such is the
scheme of Redemption, so called; a scheme or plan,
originating with God, executed by Christ, fostered by the
Holy Spirit, energetic through human sympathies and
affections; a method, as we are graphically told, `of redeeming
unto Christ a peculiar people, zealous of good

works,' of instituting a `Church without spot or blemish.'

“Let me now explain some of your troublesome `anagogics.'
The Atonement is the union of man with God
through Christ by the reproduction of Christ in us; the
Trinity is this trifold union, God, Christ and Man: Faith,
a Saving or Evangelical Faith, or Believing in Christ, is
taking Christ to yourself in this living and warm way,
receiving his spirit into your spirit, imbosoming his feelings
in your feelings, impressing his character on your
character, whereby his whole self becomes grafted upon
and fused into yourself. Sanctification or Holiness is the
subsidence and departure of sin in proportion as you thus
receive Christ. Justification is God's approval of you;
Adoption is becoming a member of the great Divine family.
This is Christianity!

“The regeneration of the world went on well for a while;
the spirit and power of Christ reached many nations;
Christism survived a few years after his death, when, alas!
the dog returned to his vomit, and the swine that was washed
to her wallowing in the mire. The Church began its
fall in the second century; Christians became degraded
into the ways of the world, the forms of Judaism were
revived, a false philosophy was introduced, and sacerdotal
and imperial ambition finished the work. With Constantine
in the fourth century, the union of the Cross and the
Sword was complete, and in the name of Christ, Christian
nations have gullied the earth with the blood they have
spilt, and curdled the skies in horror of their mutual
massacres.”

“I must ask you one thing,” said Margaret. “How
came the first man to fall?”

“That question belongs to a subject of the most subtle
nature, the prime origin of Evil, which I must take some
other time to discuss.”

“I know you are tired, but let me ask you how these
wicked things could be done in the name of Christ?”

“That name has been perpetuated, although so great was
its abuse that in the seventh century a new sect arose who
are now called Mohammedans. The solitary divine virtue
immanent in Christ has ever found a response in the heart
of humanity; and such was the original majestic effect of
his name, that it has served as a convenient basis for delusion,
error and sin, craft, avarice and pride, to raise their
fabrics upon. Besides, the Gospels, handed down from age
to age, have been held in nominal reverence.”

“You mentioned the name of Mary.”

“Yes, there were two Marys, one of whom was so
affected by Christ, that she washed his feet with her tears
and wiped them with the hairs of her head.

“You have said the last word; I have no more questions.
Sweet sister Mary! my name, too` is Mary. O, Tony,
Tony! Your profession is done in a way you little wotted
of. Toupee, tyetop, pomatum, powder—my hair goes for
a towel to wipe Christ's feet with. My hankerchief cannot
hold my tears, they go to do Mary's service too! I
have not understood, Sir, all you have said, but it is enough,
enough; I am filled to distention, I can bear no more.
Apollo, Diana, Orpheus, are you scared? Have you hid
under the bushes? Dear little gods and goddesses all,
don't be frightened,—Christ won't hurt us. They have
been beautiful and true to me, he will love them for that,
won't he, Mr. Evelyn? Christ shall preside over us, I will
worship him. It is late; I thank you, I bless you, Mr.
Evelyn, I must go, I would be alone. But the names must
be changed. Bacchus Hill shall be Christ's Hill, Orpheus's
Pond, his Pond. He shall be supreme; Head, Pond, and
all, shall henceforth be called Mons Christi.