Concord Days

Our forms are of the past, not American. Times modify forms. The world of thought moves fast; what is good for one time may ill suit another. The culture of past ages is stealing into our present thought, deepening, widening it. Sects are provincial, geographical; the coming church is to speak to every need, every power of humanity. A revelation is not a full revelation which fails to touch the whole man, quicken all his powers into beauty and strength of exercise.

First, of the architecture. Let this represent the essential needs of the soul. Our dwelling-houses best typify the tender domesticities of life; let the church edifice embody more of this familiar love. In the ordering of the congregation, let age have precedence; give the front seats to the eldest members; let families sit together, so that the element of family affection be incorporated in the worship. An arrangement of the pews in semicircles will bring all more nearly at equal gradation of distance from the speaker, whose position is best slightly elevated above the congregation. Pictures and statues, representing to the senses the grand events of the religious history of the past, may be an essential part of the church furniture; the statues embodying the great leaders of religious thought of all races. These are not many; the world owes its progress to a few persons. The divine order gives one typical soul to a race. Let us respect all races and creeds, as well as our own; read and expound their sacred books like our Scriptures. Constituting a body of comparative divinity, each is a contribution to the revelation made to mankind from time to time. Could any one well remain exclusive or local in his thought from such studies and teachings? Christianity, as the religion of the most advanced nations, is fast absorbing the beauty, the thought, the truth of other religions, and this fact should find expression also.

Let there be frequent interchange of preachers and teachers, since few can speak freshly to the same congregation for every Sunday in the year; only the freshest thought, the purest sentiments, were their due. Let the services be left to the speaker's selection. Let the music be set to the best lyrical poetry of all ages, poems sometimes read or recited as part of the services. As for prayer, it may be spoken from an overflowing heart, may be silent, or omitted at the option of the minister.

Let the children have a larger share in the religious services than hitherto; one half of the day be appropriated to them. Who can speak to children can address angels; true worship is childlike. "All nations," said Luther, "the Jews especially, school their children more faithfully than Christians. And this is one reason why religion is so fallen. For till its hopes of strength and potency are ever committed to the generation that is coming on to the stage. And if this is neglected in its youth, it fares with Christianity as with a garden that is neglected in the spring-time. There is no greater obstacle in the way of piety than neglect in the training of the young. If we would reinstate religion in its former glory, we must improve and elevate the children, as it was done in days of old."24

COLLYER

Our young divines may study Beecher and Collyer, if they will learn the types of preaching which the people most enjoy and flock to hear. Collyer, without pretension to eloquence, is most eloquent in his plain, homely, human way. He meets his audience as the iron he once smote, and his words have the ring of true steel. He speaks from crown to toe, and with a delightful humor that gives his rhetoric almost a classic charm, his Yorkshire accent adding to the humane quality of his thought. There is as little of scholarly pretence as of priestly assumption in his address, and he makes his way by his placid strength, clear intelligence, breadth of sympathy, putting the rhetoric of the schools to the blush.

BEECHER

I once entered Beecher's church with a friend who was not often seen in such sanctuaries. Aisles, body, galleries, every slip, every chair, all were occupied, many left standing. The praise, the prayer, the christening, – there were a dozen babes presented for baptism, – all were devout, touching, even to tears at times. I know I wept, while my friend was restive, fancying himself, as he declared, in some Pagan fane. The services all seemed becoming, however. Here was no realm of Drowsy Head. The preaching was the more effective for its playfulness, point, strength, pertinency. Coming from the heart, the doctrine found the hearts of its hearers. The preacher showed his good sense, too, in omitting the trite phrases and traditions, speaking straight to his points in plain, homely speech, that carried the moral home to its mark. It was refreshing to get a touch of human nature, the preaching so often failing in this respect. The speaker took his audience along with him by his impetuosity, force of momentum, his wit playing about his argument, gathering power of persuasion, force of statement as he passed. His strong sense, broad humanity, abounding animal spirits, humor, anecdote, perhaps explain the secret of his power and popularity.

IDEALSSunday, 19.

Our instincts are idealists. Contradicting impressions of the senses, they prompt us forth to the noblest aims and endeavors. Aspirants for the best, they prick us forward to its attainment, the more successfully as our theories of life lift us above the planes of precedent and routine, whereon the senses confine us, to the mount of vision and of renovating ideas. Nor are these too lofty or too beautiful to be unattainable. 'Tis when practice strays wide and falls below that they appear visionary and fall into disrepute. Only those who mount the summits command the valleys at their base.

"When we ourselves from our own selves do quit,And each thing else, then an all-spreading loveTo the vast universe our soul doth fit,Makes us half equal to all-seeing Jove;Our mighty wings, high-stretched, then clapping light,We brush the stars, and make them seem more bright."

Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high endeavor; without which incentive one is not sure of his equality to the humblest undertaking even. And he attempts little worth living for if he expects completing his task in an ordinary life-time. His translation is for the continuance of his work here begun, but for whose completion time and opportunity were all too narrow and brief. Himself is the success or failure. Step by step one climbs the pinnacles of excellence; life itself is but the stretch for that mountain of holiness. Opening here with humanity, 'tis the aiming at divinity in ever-ascending circles of aspiration and endeavor. Who ceases to aspire, dies. Our pursuits are our prayers; our ideals our gods. And the more persistent our endeavors to realize these, the less distant they seem. They were not gods could we approach them at once. We were the atheists of our senses without them. All of beauty and of beatitude we conceive and strive for, ourselves are to be sometime. Man becomes godlike as he strives for divinity, and divinity ever stoops to put on humanity and deify mankind. Character is mythical. The excellent are unapproachable save by like excellence. A person every way intelligible falls short of our conception of greatness; he ceases to be great in our eyes. God is not God in virtue of attributes, but of the mystery surrounding these. Could we see through the cloud that envelopes our apprehensions, he were here, and ourselves apparent in his likeness. "God," says Plato, "is ineffable, hard to be defined, and having been discovered, to make fully known."

"He is above the sphere of our esteem,And is best known in not defining him."

Any attempted definition would include whatsoever is embraced within our notion of Personality, – would exhaust our knowledge of nature and of ourselves. Only as we become One Personally with Him do we know Him and partake of his attributes.

"In the soul of man," says Berkeley, "prior and superior to intellect, there is a somewhat of a higher nature, by virtue of which we are one, and by means of which we are most clearly joined to the Deity. And as by our intellect we touch the divine intellect, even so by our oneness, 'the very flower of our essence,' as Proclus expresses it, we touch the First One. Existence and One are the same. And consequently, our minds participate so far of existence as they do of unity. But it should seem the personality is the indivisible centre of the soul, or mind, which is a monad, so far forth as she is a person. Therefore Person is really that which exists, inasmuch as it partakes of the divine unity. Number is no object of sense, but an act of the mind. The same thing in a different conception is one or many. Comprehending God and the creatures in one general notion, we may say that all things together make one universe. But if we should say that all things make one God, this would indeed be an erroneous notion of God, but would not amount to atheism, so long as mind, or intellect, was admitted to be the governing part. It is, nevertheless, more respectful, and consequently the truer notion of God, to suppose Him neither made up of parts, nor himself to be a part of any whole whatsoever."

THE SEARCH AFTER GOD.25"I sought Thee round about, O thou my God!In thine abode,I said unto the earth, 'Speak, art thou He?'She answered me,'I am not.' I inquired of creatures allIn generalContained therein; they with one voice proclaimThat none amongst them challenged such a name."I asked the seas and all the deeps below,My God to know;I asked the reptiles and whatever isIn the abyss;Even from the shrimp to the leviathanInquiry ran, —But in those deserts which no line can sound,The God I sought for was not to be found."I asked the air if that were He? but, lo,It told me, No.I from the towering eagle to the wrenDemanded thenIf any feathered fowl 'mongst them were such?But they all, muchOffended with my question, in full choirAnswered, 'To find thy God thou must look higher.'"I asked the heavens, sun, moon and stars; but theySaid, 'We obeyThe God thou seek'st.' I asked what eye or earCould see or hear;What in the world I might descry or knowAbove, below?With an unanimous voice, all these things said,'We are not God, but we by Him were made.'"I asked the world's great universal massIf that God was?Which with a mighty and strong voice repliedAs stupefied,'I am not He, O man! for know that IBy Him on highWas fashioned first of nothing, thus inflated,And swayed by Him by whom I was created.'"I sought the court, but smooth-tongued flattery thereDeceived each ear:In the thronged city there was selling, buying,Swearing and lying, —In the country, craft in simpleness arrayed;And then I said,'Vain is my search, although my pains be great,Where my God is there can be no deceit.'"A scrutiny within myself I thenEven thus began:'O man, what art thou?' What more could I say,Than dust and clay?Frail mortal, fading, a mere puff, a blastThat cannot last, —Enthroned to-day, to-morrow in an urn,Formed from that earth to which I must return."I asked myself, what this great God might beThat fashioned me?I answered, the all-potent, solely immense,Surpassing sense,Unspeakable, inscrutable, eternal,Lord over all;The only terrible, strong, just and true,Who hath no end, and no beginning knew."He is the well of life, for He doth giveTo all that liveBoth breath and being; he is the CreatorBoth of the water,Earth, air and fire; of all things that subsist,He hath the list;Of all the heavenly host, or what earth claims,He keeps the scroll, and calls them by their names."And now, my God, by thine illumining grace,Thy glorious face(So far forth as it may discovered be)Methinks I see;And though invisible and infiniteTo human sight,Thou in thy mercy, justice, truth, appearest,In which to our weak senses thou com'st nearest."O, make us apt to seek and quick to findThou God most kind!Give us love, hope, and faith in thee to trust,Thou God most just!Remit all our offences, we entreat,Most Good, most Great!Grant that our willing, though unworthy quest,May through thy grace admit us 'mongst the blest."

1

Johnson, in his "Wonder Working Providence Concerning New England," describes the company of settlers on their way from Cambridge, under the lead of the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, the principal founder of Concord.

2

Verstegan, in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, in Antiquities concerning the most Noble and Renowned English Nation, 1634, treating of the origin of names, says: —

"For a general rule, the reader may please to note, that our surnames of families, be they of one or more syllables, that have either a k or a w, are all of them of the ancient English race, so that neither the k or w are used in Latin, nor in any of the three languages thereon depending, which sometimes causes confusion in the writing our names (originally coming from the Teutonic) in Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish languages. Neither the k nor w being in the Latin nor in the French, they could not be with the Normans in use, whose language was French, as also their surnames. As for the surnames in our Norman catalogue which have in them the letters k and w, which the French do not use, these are not to be thought to have been Norman, but of those gentlemen of Flanders which Baldwin, the Earl of that country and father-in-law unto the Conquerer, did send to aid him. Besides these, sundry other surnames do appear to have been in the Netherlands and not in Normandy; albeit they are without doubt set in the list of the Normans. And whereas in searching for such as may remain in England of the race of the Danes, they are not such as, according to the vulgar opinion, have their surnames ending in son. In the Netherlands, it is often found that very many surnames end in son, as Johnson, Williamson, Phillipson, and the like; i. e. sons of that name of John, etc.

"Then some have their surnames according to the color of hair or complexion, as white, black, brown, gray, and reddish; and those in whom these names from such causes begin, do thereby lose their former denomination. Some again for their surnames have the names of beasts; and it should seem for one thing or another wherein they represented some property of theirs; as lion, wolf, fox, bull, buck, hare, hart, lamb, and the like. Others of birds; as cock, peacock, swan, crane, heron, partridge, dove, sparrow, and the like. Others of fish; as salmon, herring, rock, pilchard, and the like. And albeit the ancestors of the bearers of these had in other times other surnames, yet because almost all these and other like names do belong to our English tongue, I do think him to be of the ancient English, and if not all, yet the most part. And here by occasion of these names, I must note, and that as it were for a general rule, that what family soever has their first and chief coat of arms correspondent unto their surname, it is evident sign that it had that surname before it had those arms."

3

To the list of ancient authors, as Cato, Columella, Varro, Palladius, Virgil, Theocritus, Tibullus, selections might be added from Cowley, Marlowe, Browne, Spenser, Tusser, Dyer, Phillips, Shenstone, Cowper, Thomson, and others less known. Evelyn's works are of great value, his Kalendarium Hortense particularly. And for showing the state of agriculture and of the language in his time, Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Husbandry is full of information, while his quaint humor adds to his rugged rhymes a primitive charm. Then of the old herbals, Gerard's is best known. He was the father of English herbalists, and had a garden attached to his house in Holbern. Coles published his Adam in Eden, the Paradise of Plants, in 1659; Austin his Treatise on Fruit Trees ten years earlier. Dr. Holland's translation of the School of Salerne, or the Regiment of Health, appeared in 1649. Thos. Tryon wrote on the virtues of plants, and on health, about the same time, and his works are very suggestive and valuable. Miller, gardener to the Chelsea Gardens, gave the first edition of his Gardener's Dictionary to the press in 1731. Sir William Temple also wrote sensibly on herbs. Cowley's Six Books of Plants was published in English in 1708. Phillips' History of Cultivated Plants, etc., published in 1822, is a book of great merit. So is Culpepper's Herbal.

4

"Dialectics treat of pure thought and of the method of arriving at it. A current misapprehension on the subject of dialectics here presents itself. Most people understand it to mean argument, and they believe that truths may be arrived at and held by such argument placed in due logical form. They demand the proof of an assertion, and imply something of weakness in the reasoning power in those who fail to give this. It is well to understand what proof means. Kant has shown us in his Critique of Pure Reason, that the course of all such ratiocination is a movement in a circle. One assumes in his premises what he wishes to prove, and then unfolds it as the result. The assumptions are in all cases mere sides of antinomies or opposite theses, each of which has validity and may be demonstrated against the other. Thus the debater moves round and round and presupposes one-sided premises which must be annulled before he can be in a state to perceive the truth. Argument of this kind the accomplished dialectician never engages in; it is simply egotism when reduced to its lowest terms. The question assumed premises that were utterly inadmissible

"The process of true proof does not proceed in the manner of argumentation; it does not assume its whole result in its premises, which are propositions of reflection, and then draw them out syllogistically. Speculative truth is never contained analytically in any one or in all of such propositions of reflection. It is rather the negative of them, and hence is transcendent in its entire procedure. It rises step by step, synthetically, through the negation of the principle assumed at the beginning, until, finally, the presupposition of all is reached. It is essentially a going from the part to the whole. Whatever is seized by the dialectic is turned on its varied sides, and careful note is made of its defects, i. e. what it lacks within itself to make it possible. That which it implies is added to it, as belonging to its totality, and thus onward progress is made until the entire comprehension of its various phases is attained. The ordinary analytic proof is seen to be shallow after more or less experience in it. The man of insight sees that it is a 'child's play, – a mere placing of the inevitable dogmatism a step or two back – that is all. Real speculation proceeds synthetically beyond what it finds inadequate, until it reaches the adequate.'"

Wm. T. Harris.

5

"Infants," says Olympiodorus, "are not seen to laugh for some time after birth, but pass the greater part of their time in sleep; however, in their sleep they appear both to smile and cry. But can this any otherwise happen than through the soul agitating the circulations of their animal nature in conformity with the passions it has experienced before birth into the body? Besides, our looking into ourselves when we seek to discover any truth, shows that we inwardly contain truth, though concealed in the darkness of oblivion." Does atom animate and revive thought, or thought animate and illuminate atom? And which the elder?

6

This improvisation is preserved in its words. Josiah, it may be named, was under seven years of age, and the other children were chiefly between the ages of six and twelve years.

7

Here I was obliged to pause, as I was altogether fatigued with keeping my pen in long and uncommonly constant requisition. I was enabled to preserve the words better than usual, because Josiah had so much of the conversation, whose enunciation is slow, and whose fine choice of language and steadiness of mind, makes him easy to follow and remember. —Recorder.

8

"Nothing is more interesting in the history of the human mind than the tendency of enlightened souls in all ages to gather in clusters, as in the material world crystallization goes on by the gathering of individual atoms about one axis of formation. Thus the schools of Greek Philosophy, the Pythagorean, the Eleatic, the Peripatetic, the Alexandrian, were human crystallizations about a central idea, and generally in a given locality, – as Samos, Athens, or the Lucanian city of Elea, where Zeno learned lessons of Parmenides, and whence they both journeyed to Athens in the youth of Socrates, and held their "Radical Club" at the house of Pythodorus in the Ceramicus. The Schoolmen and the Mystics of the middle ages clustered together in the same way about Abelard. Thomas Aquinas, Occam, Gerson, Giardano Bruno, the early Italian poets, rally in groups in the same way; so do the Elizabethan Dramatists, the Puritan Politicians, the English Platonists. Coming nearer our own time, there are the Lake Poets of England, the Weimar circle of genius, in Germany, the Transcendental Idealists in Concord and Boston, and finally, the German American Philosophers of St. Louis, concerning whom we now speak. In all these Schools and Fellowships of the human soul, a common impulse, aided by accident of locality and other circumstances, trivial only in appearance, has led to the formation of that strictest bond, the friendship of united aspirations. New England has so long been considered the special home of ideas, that it may surprise one to learn that St. Louis, on the Mississippi, has become the focus of a metaphysical renaissance; yet such it has become. A few Germans, New Englanders, and Western men gathered there, having found each other out, began to meet, expatiate, and confer about Kant and Hegel, Fichte, and Sir William Hamilton. Soon they formed a Philosophical Society, and by and by, having accumulated many manuscripts, they began to publish a Magazine of "Speculative Philosophy." At first, this publication came out semi-occasionally, but finally settled down into a regular Quarterly, with contributors on both sides of the Atlantic, and from various schools of metaphysical thought. The January number is, indeed, a remarkable production. Every article is good, and most of them profound; no such collection of striking varieties of philosophic thought has been made public for a long time as this. The Journal is edited by William T. Harris, ll.d., Superintendent of the Public Schools of St. Louis."

F. B. Sanborn,in "Springfield Republican," March, 1869.

9

His works are comprised in fifty-four books, which his disciple Porphyry divided into six Enneads, assigning, agreeably to the meaning of the word, nine books to every Ennead. Thomas Taylor translated parts of these only.

10

"It would make a most delightful and instructive essay," says Coleridge, "to draw up a critical, and, where possible, biographical account of the Latitudinarian party at Cambridge, from the reign of James I to the latter half of Charles II. The greater number were Platonists, so called, at least, and such they believed themselves to be, but more truly Plotinists. Thus Cudworth, Dr. Jackson (chaplain of Charles I and Vicar of Newcastle upon Tyne), Henry More, John Smith, and some others (Norris, Glanvil). Jeremy Taylor was a Gassendist, and, as far as I know, he is the only exception. They were alike admirers of Grotius, which, in Taylor, was consistent with the tone of all his philosophy. The whole party, however, and a more amiable never existed, were scared and disgusted into this by the catachrestic language and the skeleton half truths of the systematic divines of the synod of Dort on the one hand, and by the sickly broodings of the Pietists and Solomon's Song preachers on the other. What they all wanted was a pre-inquisition into the mind, as part organ, part constituent, of all knowledge, – an examination of the scales and weights and measures themselves abstracted from the objects to be weighed or measured by them; in short, a transcendental æsthetic, logic, and noetic. Lord Herbert was at the entrance of, nay, already some paces within, the shaft and adit of the mine; but he turned abruptly back, and the honor of establishing a complete προπαιδεία (Organon) of philosophy was reserved for Immanuel Kant, a century or more afterwards." —Lit. Remains, iii. 416.