THE

VOL. VIII.

EASTER LILIES.

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (xii. 27) speaks of "the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are created," in contrast with "those things which cannot be shaken," but which will remain. He undoubtedly refers to the Jewish dispensation, which is partial and temporary, in distinction from the Christian, which is universal and final, and cannot pass away. I wish to use this in a broader sense. There are some things in the universe that "perish with the using," while there are others that contain the seeds of immortal life and can never die. Among the latter is:

1. The religious sentiment itself.

This can never be shaken or removed, but must abide forever. On the contrary, it has sometimes been said that religion is not a permanent possession of the human mind. It may pass away. Science, philosophy, progress in knowledge, refinement, education, endanger its existence. So it may possibly be "shaken," and we cannot rely upon it as a stable possession. I once knew a man of commanding ability, intelligent,

No. 4.

endowed with good common sense and strong logical powers, and undoubting faith, who expressed his fear that Tyndall's famous Belfast address, given eighteen years ago, in which he predicated everything upon "matter as the promise and potency of every form and quality of life," would tend eventually to do away with religion, efface it from man's soul, and leave him a being simply of intellect and bodily powers. And Comte, too, propounded the theory that religion would finally become extinct when men should so progress in knowledge as to make it no longer necessary, and science itself would take its place. But such persons mistake man's native powers. Historically, religion has played a most conspicuous part in the affairs of the world. More than any other sentiment has it ruled in the conflict of ages, and it still holds sway.

The religious sentiment is a part of man's nature, and can never die. It springs up within the soul, and can never be plucked out. It is grounded in the intuitions of human nature. It cannot be destroyed, any more than reason, imagination, justice, love, and mercy can be destroyed. Sweeping it out of existence would involve the destruction of all the other powers belonging to the soul.

Religion is veneration for some high, invisible Power; hope, which looks forward to brighter scenes; conscience, which gives us an idea of right and wrong; spirituality, which allies us to the supernatural world; and benevolence, which leads us to do good to our fellow-men. All will admit that these are sentiments of our common nature, born with us and constituting parts of us; and hence they cannot be destroyed unless involved in the destruction of man himself. Man in all ages and conditions of life has communed with a higher Power. He has ever worshipped some Being above himself.

No man is entirely destitute of it. Every soul has an intuitive sense of the difference between right and wrong, truth and falsehood. Every one has some love, however faint, for his friends, and is disposed to do them good. We cannot entirely efface from our souls the image of God which was originally stamped upon them, and which binds us to him. We cannot break away permanently from the arms of our heavenly Father, even if we would. "All souls are mine"

saith the Lord; and we cannot repudiate his ownership. We must respond to the claims which the Almighty has upon us as his children. To use Whittier's words,

2. The Christian religion, as the noblest and highest expression of the religious sentiment, will continue to live, as it has lived through all the changes of the world's history for eighteen centuries. In its essential elements, of God, the eternal Father, Jesus, the universal and all-conquering Saviour, man, the child of God, made in his image, and endowed with an immortal soul, the brotherhood of the human race, bound together by ties of natural affection which sin can never snap asunder, constituting "one family in heaven and earth," the destruction of all evil through the mission of Jesus into the world, and the final ingathering of all souls into his kingdom, it appeals to the noblest aspirations of the heart, and offers the strongest incentive to the purest life.

It is adapted to man's nature as a moral and spiritual being, and supplies his every need. More than any other system, it appeals to man's religious instincts. It lays hold of his heart. It whets his spiritual appetite. It is the bread of God, of which, if a man eat, he will never hunger. It is the well of salvation, of which, if a man drink, he will never thirst. The penitent sinner

vain. The sorrow-stricken and bereaved

will seek consolation, and find it through the gospel that will "comfort all that mourn." Those longing for redemption will hail with rapture the prophetic announcement that the whole creation "shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption. into the glorious liberty of the children of

God." The sentiment of the universal brotherhood will be recognized, even if it is not fully realized and fulfilled in our deal

ings with our fellow-men. Those in want and suffering will put their trust in Him who has promised to relieve them. The moral sense will lead us to respect, if we do not faithfully carry into daily practice, the requirements of the divine law. Communities and sects will continue to build churches in which to worship God, with spires pointing toward the blessed land where they hope some time to rest from their labors.

The elements of the Christian religion are in harmony with the healthiest aspirations and noblest instincts of the human soul. They ally us to God, and bind us to our fellow-men. They are indestructible. They will endure as long as God and man endure. "Heaven and earth," says the ever-living Redeemer, "shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”

3. Jesus Christ, "the author and finisher of our faith," shall not pass away. He is the great personality around whom gather all the elements of the gospel faith. "Him hath God highly exalted, and given him a name which is above every [other] name" (Phil. ii. 9; Eph. i. 21). He is our Saviour and the Saviour of the world, around whom cluster all the virtues that dignify and adorn our common nature, and all the glorious perfections which ally him to God, the Father. The world has not outgrown him, and never will, however far it may progress. Science, "falsely so called," has assailed him, but in vain. Philosophy has offered various substitutes for his teachings, but all of these have failed to satisfy man's needs. It has attempted to hurl him as King of the spiritual realm from his throne; but he sits there still, "Head over all, blessed forever." He is the central sun, whence beams forth celestial light. He is still "the light of the world," before which all other lights pale. "Jesus

Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever."

4. Love, as an essential element of the Christian religion, "shall not be shaken." It is an attribute common to God and man. "God is love." It is the kingly attribute of his nature. God so loved the world that he sent his Son to save it" (John iii. 16). More than anything else, Jesus represents the Father's love. He is "the propitiation," the hilasmos, the good pleasure, the kindly disposition of God toward his children. For this is the meaning of the original word as used in 1 John ii. 2. The great plan of "the atonement" is one of love, not of hate, as was once held. Upon this is predicated our duty to love God. The apostle says, "We love him because he first loved us." Love is reciprocal. It changes not. It is ever the same in both worlds, enduring forever. "Neither life nor death, nor principalities nor powers, nor angels, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. viii. 38, 39). No wonder, when a lady heard this passage repeated, she exclaimed, "Why! that is all!" It is all, for it compasses all in this world and in the future. "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee," is the promise of the Father to his waiting child. And this love must be reciprocated. True love, to be satisfactory, must be mutual. God loves the sinner. The object of the divine love must "love Him who first loved us" before the latter can be satisfied. Jesus, too, the herald of the Father's love, will never "see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied" (Isa. liii. 11), until every child returns the love first bestowed upon him.

As with the divine, so with human affection. "It never faileth." It will endure. It is not limited to our earthly life. Do we ever think that those ties which bind kindred spirits together here will be forever snapped asunder when the spirit leaves the body? Can we conceive that all this rich wealth of the heart will be swept away on our passage across the Jordan of death? Ah, no! the poet uttered a great truth, to which all hearts respond, when he sang,—

"They sin who tell us love can die; With life all other passions fly:

All others are but vanity;
But love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven return-
eth."

Thus we instinctively feel. We must believe that this sentiment which our Creator has given us for our highest enjoyment here on earth will be transferred into the future world, and remain forever. This must be taken out of the catalogue of "things shaken." It cannot be weakened or destroyed by the mutations of time, or in our transition to that region "where sorrow and sighing shall flee away."

5. Finally, truth is among "those things that cannot be shaken." This, too, is an attribute of God. It pervades his whole being. United with love, it controls all his acts. God rules. Truth is on the throne. "Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of his throne" (Ps. xcvii. 2). "The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance."

Men have tried to overthrow truth. They have contrived and plotted, entered into conspiracies and formed intrigues, but all for naught. In an unexpected moment they find all their selfish and ambitious schemes frustrated simply because God rules, and the higher elements of man's nature have been aroused and have asserted themselves. Thus all history teaches this solemn lesson.

For some inscrutable purpose the Supreme Ruler may permit these bad men to succeed for a season,-scheming politicians, selfish rulers, men who deal out misery and damnation over the land and live upon the tears of worse than widowed matrons, the sufferings of orphan children, the degradation of thousands of their fellows who go staggering along the streets or lie helpless in the gutter; but their days are few. Their wicked schemes are overthrown. Thus the way is prepared for the signal triumph of truth.

As an eloquent writer has well said :

"Who that has read the history of the race can have failed to observe this? The record of men's actions only registers the workings of a directing Providence. He who reads not history with this idea reads it to no purpose. Through every age, by the exertions of every people, by the rise

and fall of nations, does the Deity perfect his work. A conqueror arises and desolates kingdoms by his ambition; and after the tumult has ceased, and the cloud moved by, we see that he was the unconscious instrument of introducing a new form of civilization. A tyrant ruler strives to bring a whole people to the condition of menials, and we see that his oppression was the last irritation required to goad on that people to assert their freedom. A religious bigot kindles the fires of persecution; and then the reformer lights his torch, and the fabric of superstition is consumed." Wicked politicians devise schemes to thwart the will of the people as expressed by the ballot-box; but the better sentiments of the citizens belonging to all parties assume, sway, and hurl these bad men from the height of power and consign them to oblivion. The stern law of retribution reigns throughout the universe, overturning the unhallowed plots of the wicked, and showing favor to the good. Thus falsehood is brushed away, and truth takes its place.

In the providence of God all things work together for good. "The wrath of man shall praise him." "The true always gains by the efforts of the false. The blows of its enemies are so directed that they demolish their own strongholds; and, looking through the long perspective of history, we see how every evil man and evil deed are bent from their purpose and made to minister to the good result." Truly does Paul say to the Corinthians, who were sometimes guilty of compromising truth and error, "We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth." So the Psalmist: "This truth endureth to all generations." "Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth through all generations" (Ps. cxlv. 10).

"Thrones which thousands cherish

Pass, like clouds which sweep the sky;
Creeds and dogmas all may perish,
Truth herself can never die.

"God himself will e'er defend her
From the fury of her foe,
Till she, in her native splendor,

Sits enthroned o'er all below."

We see, then, that there are some things that are stable, and must ever remain. Religion, man's greatest need; the gospel of Jesus, with its wealth of love; Jesus, the

light of the world, who has conquered death, and brought life and immortality to light; divine and human love; truth and righteousness, will endure as long as God endures. This should be an ever-living source of encouragement to the reformer while battling with the evils of the world. There are things "seen and temporal," while there are also things "unseen and eternal," upon which we can rely while looking forward with the eye of faith to the glorious consummation of all things.

THE LESSON OF THE LILY.

By the margin of the lake
Sat the Master long ago,
When with tender voice he spake :
"See the lilies, how they grow.
Toil they not, nor do they spin,
Yet in beauty are arrayed,
Such as Solomon the king

In his glory ne'er displayed.
"And the God who made the flowers,
Gave them colors rich and rare,
Shall he not these lives of yours

Make the objects of his care?
If you trust him, if you serve,
Living nobly day by day,
Shall he not your souls preserve
From all perils of the way?"

Thus the gracious Master said.
And the lily in his hand
Seemed to lift its lovely head,

Seemed his words to understand.
And the lily since has been
Symbol of a quenchless faith,
Of a spirit freed from sin,

Of life victor over death.

So, as Easter comes again,

With its happy, hopeful glow,
We repeat the old refrain,

"See the lilies how they grow."
And life's mystery groweth clear,
And the fear departs from death,
And the love of God comes near
For the words the Master saith.
CHARLES E. PERKINS.
Iowa City, Ia., Easter, 1893.

VOLTAIRE: A SKETCH.

II.

It is only of late years that it has ceased to be a dangerous task to apologize—though in never so modified a form-for Voltaire. To the majority of men his name, being interpreted, means simply enemy of Christianity. They forget, or have never known, what a vile and wretched parody of Christianity was the system which opposed itself

to him, how great was the moral and ecclesiastical scandals of which he was the implacable enemy. To such his keen and incisive wit, his wonderful power of mocking banter, his brilliant command of language, his achievements in every walk of literature, make him only the more to be hated and feared. No doubt the limitations of his powers and the defects of his character are visible enough upon the surface; and the war, which like an independent potentate, he maintained single-handed against all the powers of Europe, secular and sacred, did not tend to soften a character which was never tender, to deepen a nature which was always somewhat shallow. But, in spite of all this, he must be accepted as one of the most powerful champions of human liberty that ever wielded pen in a good cause. If, as seems clear, he was at heart a courtier, a scorner of the people, a man who thought that laboring men were fit only for a yoke of iron and a diet of hay, justice requires us to remember that there was another side to Voltaire's character, and that, if he could lie and cringe, he could also make Europe ring with denunciations of cruelty and hypocrisy. The Catholic Church of France left heretics to lift their voices in favor of these great elemental instincts of justice and mercy which the most weighty of dogmatic systems cannot stifle. Voltaire touched the heart of Europe by his passionate and fearless determination that justice should be done to the memory of Calas, who had died at the bidding of religious bigotry. No one ever did a better or a braver deed, with more effort, or against greater difficulties, than his triumphant defence of the memory of the judicially murdered man, and the reversal of the iniquitous sentence which had been passed upon him. A true estimate of Voltaire can never be formed unless we remember how the persecuted and oppressed brought their tales to him, with a certainty that he would be more just than priests or kings, and in the end more powerful. The principle of religious toleration might have been long postponed in France but for the man whose sarcasm and wit and reasoning overcame the priestly denunciation of its impiety. Nor is it fair to forget what he said in favor of peace at a time when kings and courtiers seemed to think that war was their

natural calling. His common sense stripped off the tinsel which hides the reality of campaigns. On that subject he sometimes said things which might be profitably considered even in these days of enlightenment. It was by his pleas for the best interests of civilization, for the rights of the free, for the dignity of justice, and the need of mercy that Voltaire won such respect as he obtained from his countrymen. It is his good as much at least as his bad qualities that have perpetuated his influence among them. Nor can we repeat too often, or emphasize too strongly, that many even of his attacks on religion would never have been made if religion had not been identified in his eyes with a priesthood hostile to intellectual research and relentlessly intolerant. He said nothing against the religion which he found during his residence in England. His praises of the English Friends (or Quakers) are among the heartiest pieces of eulogy that ever came from his pen. Indeed, one of the services which Protestantism has done to England has been to make an English Voltaire impossible.

But, unfortunately, much remains to be said on the other side. Nothing can excuse the jests which he poured upon the sanctities of life, the radical impiety of his nature, his almost ape-like levity, or the licentiousness which sometimes darkened his mockery. No great writer has less gravity or personal dignity. Although the badness of the time in which he lived, and the faults of the only Church which he really knew, may palliate some of his faults, they can never atone for his habitual irreverence. He might have been expected to see some good in the Church which had produced Fénelon, and which brought consolation to millions of his countrymen. Rousseau, although more objectionable in some ways because more deeply smitten with a moral taint, has an incomparably higher conception of the issues presented even by the most faulty forms of Christianity. It is quite true that Voltaire's wit has done more than any other individual influence to blight the religious reverence of several generations of French