coming as a God unto himself, he at the same time indulges a state of mind unfitting him, by the selfish passions it involves, for the benevolent and blessed delights and enjoyments of heaven hereafter; so that in the end he shall find, to his aggravated sorrow, that in all the splendour of his acquisitions, he has but been walking in a vain show, perverting the price put in his hands to gain wisdom, and has taken the talents bestowed for his spiritual and eternal wellbeing, and ungratefully and wickedly covered them as in a napkin, and hidden them in the bowels of the earth. His attainments have been all earthly; leading him in all their variety and greatness to neglect duty to God, and in his devotion to things temporal, utterly to neglect things eternal; and let heaven and glory go, as subjects unworthy of his serious attention. Surely, this must add bitter ingredients to his cup of wo hereafter, and increase his sorrow. There are few more melancholy sights to a true Christian, than a mortal man, blessed with superior talents, and adorned with various literary and scientific acquisitions, living and dying, without ever acknowledging his responsibility to God, or performing his duties in relation to eternity. What a contrast is presented between the powers of his mind and the comparative littleness of the objects to which they have been devoted, and the contractedness of the sphere in respect to which they have been exerted! world, and is at this moment written in letters of blood and mourning. In the records of nations knowledge unsanctified by moral influence is eminently exhibited as an instrument of destruction in the hands of a madman. Ambition, using it as a means to accomplish its ends, has perverted it amid scenes of intrigue and slaughter; or vice, using it to gratify its unhallowed propensities, has ruined its power in indulging raging lusts; and merged the intellectual in the animal, until men have become as beasts, and spilled each other's blood, and left ruin and devastation behind, wherever they have turned their footsteps. Thus Babylon, and Sparta, and Athens, and Rome have successively passed away. Intellect could not save them: it was perverted by wicked hearts, until it became the very instrument of its own destruction. As the scorpion, surrounded by flames, is said to thrust its sting into its own vitals; so mind, in the fire of unregulated passions, has ever destroyed itself. In France, a moral lesson almost losing its power to affect us, because so often contemplated, — in France, where the goddess of reason was personified and exalted in the temple of God, and men trusted to knowledge alone to guide and bless, what sorrow ensued! It has been well said of her revolution, that it was like the destroying angel passing through the dwellings of the Egyptians, leaving not a house in which there was not one dead! Let it then be repeated, intellect alone can neither bless nor save nations; but, unless regulated by moral principle, overcome by wicked passions, will eventually destroy them. This sentiment ought to be written on the heart of every American, never to be obscured or erased. Unless the mighty waves of human and party passion, at this moment rising, and every year increasing throughout the land, shall be duly restrained, repressed, and guided by the power of religious principle, binding them as the power of gravitation holds the surges of the mighty deep, they will rise higher, and wax mightier, until, bending intellect itself to their purpose, they shall drive it onward in their own course, and eventually break over, and dash into pieces as a potter's vessel, The illustration of this truth in reference to communities is still more striking than that presented in individuals. The sorrow connected with individual acquisitions is seen, principally, in the future effects it is to produce in another world; that associated with nations may be traced at the present time, in the present state of existence. Individuals die: there is a sense in which nations never die, until the world is dissolved. Before a whole people is taken away, another generation treads closely on the footsteps of the departing fathers, and the national character is preserved as a kind of permanent thing, untouched and unchanged by time and by death. Thus the sorrow following the attainment of merely intellectual knowledge by nations, may be seen in the history of their own existence in the present the noblest of our political institutions! WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. Born 1780. Died 1842. ON THE MINISTRY OF THE POOR. THE true cultivation of a human being consists in the development of great moral ideas; that is, the ideas of God, of Duty, of Right, of Justice, of Self-sacrifice, of Moral Perfection as manifested in Christ, of Happiness, of Immortality, of Heaven. The elements or germs of these ideas belong to every soul, constitute its essence, and are intended for endless expansion. These are the chief distinctions of our nature; they constitute our humanity. To unfold these, is the great work of our being. The Light in which these ideas rise on the mind, the Love which they awaken, and the Force of Will, with which they are brought, to sway the outward and inward life, here, and here only, are the measures of human cultivation. These views shew us, that the highest culture is within the reach of the poor. It is knowledge poured on us from abroad, but the development of the elementary principles of the soul itself, which constitutes the true growth of a human being. Undoubtedly, knowledge from abroad is essential to the awakening of these principles. But that which conduces most to this end, is offered alike to rich and poor. The great ideas, of which I have spoken, may be, and often are, unfolded more in the poor man, than among the learned and renowned. For example, take the idea of Justice. Suppose a man, eminent for acquisitions of knowledge, but in whom this idea is but faintly developed. By justice he understands little more than respect for the rights of property. That it means respect for all the rights, and especially for the moral claims of every human being, of the lowest as well as most exalted, has perhaps never entered his mind, much less been expanded and invigorated into a broad, living conviction. Take now the case of the poor, to whom, under Christ's teaching, the idea of the Just has become real, clear, bright, and strong; who recognises, to its full extent, the right of property, though it operates against himself; but who does not stop here; who comprehends the higher rights of men as rational and moral beings, their right to exercise and unfold all their powers, their right to the means of improvement, their right to search for truth and to utter their honest convictions, their right to consult first the monitor in their own breasts and to follow wherever it leads, their right to be esteemed and honored according to their moral efforts, their right, when injured, to sympathy and succor against every oppressor. Suppose, I say, the poor man to rise to the comprehension of this enlarged justice, to revere it, to enthrone it over his actions, to render to every human being, friend or foe, near or far off, whatever is his due, to abstain conscientiously, not only from injurious deeds, but from injurious thoughts, judgments, feelings, and words. Is he not a more cultivated and has he not a deeper foundation and surer promise of truth, than the student, who, with much outward knowledge, does not comprehend men's highest rights, whose scientific labors are perhaps degraded by injustice towards his rivals, who, had he power, would fetter every intellect, which threatens to outstrip his own? man, The great idea, on which human cultivation especially depends, is that of God. This is the concentration of all that is beautiful, glorious, holy, blessed. It transcends immeasurably in worth and dignity all the science treasured up in Cyclopædias or libraries; and this may be unfolded in the poor, as truly as in the rich. It is not an idea to be elaborated by studies, which can be pursued only in leisure or by opulence. Its elements belong to every soul, and are especially to be found in our moral nature, in the idea of duty, in the feeling of reverence, in the approving sentence which we pass on virtue, in our disinterested affections, and in the wants and aspirations which carry us towards the Infinite. There is but one way of unfolding these germs of the idea of God, and that is, faithfulness to the best convictions of duty and to the Divine Will, which we have hitherto gained. God is to be known by obedience, by likeness, by sympathy, that is, by moral means, which are open alike to rich and poor. Many a man of science has not known him. The pride of science, like a thick cloud, has hidden from the philosopher the Spiritual Sun, the only true light, and for want of this quickening ray, he has fallen in culture far, very far, below the poor. are a revelation and pledge of Heaven. All these are nothing, do not lift you to the rank of cultivated men, because the mysteries of the telescope and microscope, of the air-pump and crucible, are not revealed to you! I would they were revealed to you. I believe the time is coming when Christian benevolence will delight in spreading all truth, and all refinements, through all ranks of society. But meanwhile be not discouraged. One ray of moral and religious truth is worth all the wisdom of the schools. One lesson from Christ will carry you higher, than years of study under those, who are too enlightened to follow the celestial guide. My hearers, do not contemn the poor man for his ignorance. Has he seen the Right? Has he felt the binding force of the Everlasting Moral Law? Has the beauty of virtue, in any of its forms, been revealed to him? Then he has entered the highest school of wisdom. Then a light has dawned within him, worth all the physical knowledge of all worlds. It almost moves me to indignation, when I hear the student exalting his science, which at every step meets impenetrable darkness, above the idea of Duty, and above veneration for goodness and God. It is true, and ought to be understood, that outward nature, however tortured, probed, dissected, never reveals truths so sublime or precious, as are wrapt up in the conciousness of the meanest individual, and laid open to every eye in the word of Christ. These remarks have been drawn from me by the proneness of our times to place human culture in physical knowledge, and especially in degrees of it denied to the mass of the people. To this knowledge I would on no account deny great value. In its place, it is an important means of human improvement. I look with admiration on the intellectual force, which combines and masters scattered facts, and by analysis and comparison ascends to the general laws of the material universe. But the philosopher, who does not see in the force within him something nobler than the outward nature which he analyzes, who, in tracing mechanical and chemical agencies, is unconscious of a higher action in his own soul, who is not led by all finite powers to the Omnipotent, and who does not catch, in the order and beauty of the universe, some glimpses of Spiritual Perfection, stops at the very threshold of the temple of truth. Miserably narrow is the culture, which confines the soul to Matter, which turns it to the Outward, as to something nobler than itself. I fear, the spirit of science, at the present day, is too often a degradation, rather than the true culture of the soul. It is the bowing down of the heavenborn spirit before unthinking mechanism. It seeks knowledge, rather for animal, transitory purposes, than for the nutriment of the imperishable inward life; and yet the worshippers of science pity or contemn the poor, because denied this means of cultivation. Unhappy poor! shut out from libraries, laboratories, and learned institutes! In view of this world's wisdom, it avails you nothing, that your own nature, manifested in your own and other souls, that God's word and works, that the ocean, earth, and sky are laid open to you; that you may acquaint yourselves with the Divine Perfections, with the character of Christ, with the duties of life, with the virtues, the generous sacrifices, and the beautiful and holy emotions, which ward spiritual freedom?" The common and I trust it will not be inferred from what I have said of the superiority of moral and religious culture to physical science, that the former requires or induces a neglect or disparagement of the latter. No, it is the friend of all truth, the enemy of none. It is propitious to intellect, and incites to the investigation of the laws and order of the universe. SPIRITUAL FREEDOM. FROM A DISCOURSE PREACHED AT THE ANNUAL I MAY be asked what I mean by,,in I call that mind free, which escapes the bondage of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison-wall, passes beyond it to its Author, and finds, in the radiant signatures which it everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit, helps to its own spiritual enlargement. I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven, which, while consulting others, inquires still more of the oracle within itself, and uses instruction from abroad, not to supersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. true answer is, that it is freedom from sin. | penetrates beneath the body and recognises I apprehend, however, that to many, if not to its own reality and greatness, which passes most, these words are too vague to convey life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, a full and deep sense of the greatness of but in hungering, thirsting, and seeking after the blessing. Let me then offer a brief ex- righteousness. planation; and the most important remark in illustrating this freedom is, that it is not a negative state, not the mere absence of sin; for such a freedom may be ascribed to inferior animals, or to children before becoming moral agents. Spiritual freedom is the attribute of a mind in which reason and conscience have begun to act, and which is free through its own energy, through fidelity to the truth, through resistance of temptation. I cannot therefore better give my views of spiritual freedom than by saying, that it is moral energy, or force of holy purpose, put forth against the senses, against the passions, against the world, and thus liberating the intellect, conscience, and will, so that they may act with strength and unfold themselves for ever. The essence of spiritual freedom is power. A man liberated from sensual lusts by palsy, would not therefore be inwardly free. He only is free who, through self-conflict and moral resolution, sustained by trust in God, subdues the passions which have debased him, and, escaping the thraldom of low objects, binds himself to pure and lofty ones. That mind alone is free, which, looking to God as the inspirer and rewarder of virtue, adopts his law, written on the heart and in his word, as its supreme rule, and which, in obedience to this, governs itself, reveres itself, exerts faithfully its best powers, and unfolds itself by well doing in whatever sphere God's providence assigns. It has pleased the all-wise Disposer to encompass us from our birth with difficulty and allurement, to place us in a world where wrong doing is often gainful, and duty rough and perilous, where many voices oppose the dictates of the inward monitor, where the body presses as a weight on the mind, and matter, by its perpetual agency on the senses, becomes a barrier between us and the spiritual world. We are in the midst of influences which menace the intellect and heart, and to be free is to withstand and conquer these. I call that mind free, which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison with its own energy, which I call that mind free, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself or in a sect, which recognises in all human beings the image of God and the rights of his children, which delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering wherever they are seen, which conquers pride, anger, and sloth, and offers itself up a willing victim to the cause of mankind. I call that mind free, which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrents of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused. I call that mind free, which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, which respects a higher law than fashion, which respects itself too much to be the slave or tool of the many or the few. I call that mind free, which, through confidence in God, and in the power of virtue, has cast off all fear but that of wrong doing, which no menace or peril can enthral, which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself, though all else be lost. I call that mind free, which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechani cally repeat itself and copy the past, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions. I call that mind free, which is jealous of its own freedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world. In fine, I call that mind free, which, conscious of its affinity with God, and con fiding in his promises by Jesus Christ, devotes itself faithfully to the unfolding of all its powers, which passes the bounds of time and death, which hopes to advance for ever, and which finds inexhaustible power, both for action and suffering, in the prospect of immortality. Such is the spiritual freedom which Christ came to give. It consists in moral force, in selfcontrol, in the enlargement of thought and affection, and in the unrestrained action of our best powers. This is the great good of Christianity; nor can we conceive a greater within the gift of God. B. HISTORIANS. WASHINGTON IRVING. FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. THE time when Columbus first sought his fortunes in Spain coincided with one of the most brilliant periods of the Spanish monarchy. The union of the kingdoms of Arragon and Castile, by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, had consolidated the Christian power in the Peninsula, and put an end to those internal feuds, which had so long distracted the country, and ensured the domination of the Moslems. The whole force of united Spain was now exerted in the chivalrous enterprise of the Moorish conquest. The Moors, who had once spread over the whole country like an inundation, were now bent up within the mountain boundaries of the kingdom of Granada. The victorious armies of Ferdinand and Isabella were continually advancing, and pressing this fierce people within narrower limits. Under these sovereigns, the various petty kingdoms of Spain began to feel and act as one nation, and to rise to eminence in arts as well as arms. Ferdinand and Isabella, it has been remarked, lived together not like man and wife, whose estates are common, under the orders of the husband, but like two monarchs strictly allied. They had separate claims to sovereignty, in virtue of their respective kingdoms; they had separate councils, and were often distant from each other in different parts of their empire, each exercising the royal authority. Yet they were so happily united by common views, common interests, and a great deference for each other, that this double administration never prevented a unity of purpose and of action. All acts of sovereignty were executed in both their names; all public writings were subscribed with both their signatures; their likenesses were stamped together on the public coin; and the royal seal displayed the united arms of Castile and Arragon. Ferdinand was of the middle stature, well proportioned, and hardy and active from athletic exercise. His carriage was free, erect, and majestic. He had a clear serene forehead, which appeared more lofty from his head being partly bald. His eye |