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THE FINITE AND THE INFINITE.

ROBERT C. WINTHROP

LET men lift their vast reflectors or refractors to the skies, and detect new planets in their hiding-places. Let them waylay the fugitive comets in their flight, and compel them to disclose the precise period of their orbits, and to give bonds for their punctual return. Let them drag out reluctant satellites from "their habitual concealments." Let them resolve the unresolvable nebula of Orion or Andromeda. They need not fear. The sky will not fall, nor a single star be shaken from its sphere.

Let them perfect and elaborate their marvellous processes for making the light and the lightning their ministers, for putting "a pencil of rays" into the hand of art, and providing tongues of fire for the communication of intelligence. Let them foretell the path of the whirlwind, and calculate the orbit of the storm. Let them hang out their gigantic pendulums, and make the earth do the work of describing and measuring her own motions. Let them annihilate human pain, and literally "charm ache with air, and agony with ether." The blessing of God will attend all their toils, and the gratitude of man will await all their triumphs.

Let them dig down into the bowels of the earth. Let them rive asunder the massive rocks, and unfold the history of creation as it lies written on the pages of their piled-up strata. Let them gather up the fossil fragments of a lost Fauna, reproducing the ancient forms which inhabited the land or the seas, bringing them together, bone to his bone, till Leviathan and Behemoth stand before us in bodily presence and in their full proportions, and we almost tremble lest these dry bones should live again! Let them put nature to the rack, and torture her, in all her forms, to the betrayal of her inmost secrets and confidences. They need not forbear. The foundations of the round world have been laid so strong that they cannot be moved.

But let them not think by searching to find out God. Let them not dream of understanding the Almighty to perfection. Let them not dare to apply their tests and solvents, their modes of analysis or their terms of definition, to the secrets of the spiritual kingdom. Let them spare the foundations of faith. Let them be satisfied with what is revealed of the mysteries of the Divine Nature. Let them not break through the bounds to gaze after the Invisible,-lest the day come when they shall be ready to cry to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us!

From "Address before the Alumni of Harvard," 1852

FLORENCE AND ITS TREASURES.

EDWARD EVERETT.

THERE is much, in every way, in the city of Florence to excite the curiosity, to kindle the imagination, and to gratify the taste. Sheltered on the north by the vine-clad hills of Fiesole, whose Cyclopean walls carry back the antiquary to ages before the Roman, before the Etruscan power, the flowery city (Fiorenza) covers the sunny banks of the Arno with its stately palaces. Dark and frowning piles of mediæval structures, a majestic dome the prototype of St. Peter's, basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some of the mightiest of the dead, the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the campanile, the house of Michael Angelo still occupied by a descendant of his lineage and name; his hammer, his chisel, his dividers, his manuscript poems, all as if he had left them but yesterday; airy bridges which seem not so much to rest on the earth as to hover over the waters they span; the loveliest creations of ancient art, rescued from the grave of ages again to "enchant the world;" the breathing marbles of Michael Angelo, the glowing canvas of Raphael and Titian; museums filled with medals and coins of every age from Cyrus the Younger, and gems and amulets and vases from the sepulchres of Egyptian Pharaohs coeval with Joseph, and Etruscan Lucumons that swayed Italy before the Romans; libraries stored with the choicest texts of ancient literature; gardens of rose and orange and pomegranate and myrtle; the very air you breathe languid with music and perfume-such is Florence.

But among all its fascinations addressed to the sense, the memory, and the heart, there was none to which I more frequently gave a meditative hour during a year's residence, than to the spot where Galileo Galilei sleeps beneath the marble floor of Santa Croce; no building on which I gazed with greater reverence, than I did upon the modest mansion at Arcetri, villa at once and prison, in which that venerable sage, by command of the Inquisition, passed the sad closing years of his life.

From "Discourse at Albany," 1856.

TOLERANT CHRISTIANITY THE LAW OF THE LAND.

DANIEL WEBSTER,

GENERAL principles and public policy are sometimes established by constitutional provisions, sometimes by legislative enactments, sometimes by judicial decisions, and sometimes by general consent. But how, or when it may be established, there is nothing that we look for with more certainty than this general principle, that Christianity is part of the law of the land. This was the case among the Puritans of

England, the Episcopalians of the Southern States, the Pennsylvania Quakers, the Baptists, the mass of the followers of Whitfield and Wesley, and the Presbyterians—all—all brought and all adopted this great truth-and all have sustained it. And where there is any religious sentiment amongst men at all, this sentiment incorporates itself with the law. Everything declares it! The massive Cathedral of th Catholic; the Episcopalian Church, with its lofty spire pointing heavenward; the plain temple of the Quaker; the log church of the hardy pioneer of the wilderness; the mementos and memorials around and about us-the graveyards-their tombstones and epitaphs-their silent vaults their mouldering contents-all attest it. The dead prove it as well as the living! The generation that is gone before speak to it, and pronounce it from the tomb! We feel it! All, all, proclaim that Christianity-general, tolerant Christianity-Christianity independent of sects and parties-that Christianity to which the sword and the faggot are unknown-general, tolerant Christianity, is the law of the land!

From "An Argument in favor of Religious Instruction,” 1844.

THE OBSTACLES TO CHRISTIANITY.

STEPHEN COLWELL.

WE believe that the outward manifestations of Christianity do not keep up with the circumstances of the age in which we live, nor with its intelligence; and, above all, they do not correspond to the opportunities and privileges of the land in which we live. In every age since the Christian era, and in every country, there have been circumstances, external or internal, in the condition of the people, which have prevented the free expansion and proper growth of Christianity. Sometimes it has been a defective ecclesiastical system, sometimes the repressive character of the temporal governments and the superstition or improper education of the people; but now at this day and in this country, the Christian-whether statesman, man of science, or philosopher-may look in what direction and pursue what line of inquiry, religious or social, he pleases, when he is considering how he can most promote the interests of Christianity and the temporal well-being of his fellow-men.

From "The Position of Christianity in the United States"

CHRISTIAN COURAGE.

WILLIAM C. RIVES.

COURAGE, gentlemen, exerted in a good cause and sustained by right principles, is one of the noblest attributes of humanity. The adversaries of Christianity, from Celsus down to Hume, have sought to assail it by imputing to it a want of courage as a necessary consequence of its doctrines of humility and forbearance. Strange that one of its champions, and in other respects one of its ablest champions, should sanction the unjust reproach by exhibiting the same misconceived view of the holy cause he defends! Humility before God is the highest boldness towards man. Christ himself, while inculcating the fear of God, solemnly warns his disciples, whom again he calls friends, to discard all fear of man: “I say unto you, my friends, be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; but I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear Him which, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, fear him." A religion which teaches its followers to regard all temporal possessions, even the most cherished, as of but little worth compared with the great interests of eternity-to "count life itself as not dear, so that they may finish their course with joy"-which holds out its high rewards in another and never-ending life-which enjoins everything to be done and suffered for conscience' sake: such a religion must needs be the parent and nurse of the loftiest courage in whatever cause is sanctified by a sense of duty.

From "Discourse before the Young Men's Christian Association at Richmond," 1855.

THE DEMON OF SPECULATION.

DR. BOARDMAN.

THE demon of speculation has seized not upon the mercantile, but the railroad interest of the country; and found or made willing instruments for the achievement of his purposes. When the probe came to be applied, one corporation after another was discovered to be a stupendous engine of fraud. Moving

"In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood

Of flutes and soft recorders,"

they had carried on a scheme of swindling which astonished by its vastness, as much as it shocked by its atrocity. Individuals were swindled. Banks were swindled. Municipal corporations were swindled. Lies were spoken with the same complacency as though they had been truth. Spurious certificates of stock; fictitious vouchers;

made-up schedules of liabilities and assets; statements which, however true in one sense, were false in the sense in which it was known they would be understood; oaths emasculated by mental reservations; the whole machinery of which these things form a part, was put in requisition, and plied with consummate tact and vigor. And when at length the bubbles burst, and the gulfs were laid open into which deluded capitalists and helpless widows had been casting their money, all confidence was at an end. Credit, the most sensitive of all creations in the realm of commerce, locked up its coffers and double-bolted them. The funds which you, gentlemen, should have had for your legitimate traffic, had been usurped by others for reckless speculation or were now placed beyond your reach for safe-keeping. And the whole force of this Titanic villany came down with a terrific crash upon your ranks, who had had so little agency in nurturing it. What wonder if some should have been swept away by the avalanche! The only marvel is, that its ravages have been so restricted.

From "Address before the Merchants' Fund," 1855.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CLASSICS.

66

JOSEPH STORY.

A LANGUAGE may be built up without the aid of any foreign materials, and be at once flexible for speech and graceful for composition; the literature of a nation may be splendid and instructive, full of interest and beauty in thought and in diction, which has no kindred with classical learning; in the vast stream of time, it may run its own current unstained by the admixture of surrounding languages; it may realize the ancient fable, “ Doris amara suam non intermisceat undam ;” it may retain its own flavor, and its own bitter saltness, too. But I do deny that such a national literature does in fact exist, in modern Europe, in that community of nations of which we form a part, and to whose fortunes and pursuits in literature and arts we are bound by all our habits, and feelings, and interests. There is not a single nation from the north to the south of Europe, from the bleak shores of the Baltic to the bright plains of immortal Italy, whose literature is not imbedded in the very elements of classical learning. The literature of England is, in an emphatic sense, the production of her scholars,—of men who have cultivated letters in her universities, and colleges, and grammarschools, of men who thought any life too short, chiefly because it left some relic of antiquity unmastered, and any other fame humble, because it faded in the presence of Roman and Grecian genius. He who studies English literature without the lights of classical learning, loses half the charms of its sentiments and style, of its force and feel

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