CONTENTS, No. VIII. I. Principles. John Weiss. II. Concerning the Nation's Soul. Editor. III. IV. Revolutions. From Matthew Arnold's Published Poems. V. The Policy. Wendell Phillips. VI. Jesus the Sublime Radical. H. W. Beecher. From The Inde pendent.. VII. The Patriot. A. Bronson Alcott. 273 281 290 291 295 297 303 303 304 304 311 V. Ministering Angels to the Imprisoned Soul. (Poetry) D.A.W. 330 328 Essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity. The Pos- TERMS: Single Subscriptions, Two Dollars per annum. SINGLE COPIES, 25 CTS. SPECIAL NOTICE. Subscriptions and Communications relating to business should be addressed to "The Radical," Boston, Mass. Communications for the Editor should be addressed Editor of "The Radical," Boston, Mass. Subscribers desiring the back numbers, must so state in their letters of subscription. We are out of the December number at present, but will furnish it to subscribers as soon as we can obtain a reprint. The postage on the "The Radical" is 12 cents a year, paid at the office where it is received. W. F. Brown & Co., Steam Fob Printers, No. 15 Cornhill, Bofton. THE RADICAL. JUNE, 1866. T THE CHARACTERISTICS OF TRUTH. BY R. T. HALLOCK. RUTH is a word variously defined. Sometimes it represents a moral quality-as when we say, a man of truth." Or, it may be applied to a statement, or to history, &c. Its deepest popular signification appears to be our perception of things. But things themselves are truths, and would be, all the same, though we did not perceive them. The common uses of the word do not exhaust its meaning. The perception of truth is knowledge. Its appreciation is wisdom. There may be true knowledge and true wisdom, but truth is beyond, and independent of, our mental states. It is a noun, and gathers no strength from adjectives. Nouns and verbs-truths in actionmake up the universe. Other parts of speech conveniently express our notions and feelings concerning it. We go to market to buy substantives, not adverbs and adjectives; these latter terms are only commentaries on the translation. That ancient Sage who said, “buy the truth," had some eternal nouns in his mind, I take it. For the purpose of this discourse I use the word in that sense. I use it as standing for all that is real—all that is, whether spiritual or physical. As a noun in the singular number, it signifies all uses in one complex. To traffic in its items, therefore, is to "buy" realities. Truth has many characteristics as well as various forms. The commercial expression just mentioned suggests several. To be told to buy the truth, strikes one, at first thought, as at least unnecessary, because there is a man in every pulpit ready to give you all the eternal truth your soul can need throughout eternity, if you will but believe him; and besides, the universe within and without is all truth. In this vast store-house of living pearls there is nothing false, all is real, all is true, save and except only our imperfect estimate of their significance. It might be thought, therefore, that now and then at pearl might be had as a gift. But it seems not; some of them were deemed "of great price" years ago. We read of a man who sold all he had to buy one. This then, is a characteristic of truth, namely, that it cannot be had except by purchase. You can get no more than you pay for. The entire lot is for sale to any man able to pay the cash, but upon each item there is a label which reads—no gift, no trust. Our modern theologians seem never to have seen that label; owing doubtless, to their never having examined the matter in a good light. But with what currency, what is the nature of the cash we are to pay? The question of currency leads us to another characteristic, to wit: that truth can only be bought with truth; that is to say, yourself must be as true as is the truth you would buy, else there can be no transfer of goods. Truth can only impart itself to truth. Between the real and the sham-real there can be no commerce; so it allows itself to be possessed only by the true. Neither will it exchange itself for gold. It dictates its own medium, and that is, the loving aspiration of the soul. Nothing less precious can buy a truth. Nor can it be given, however willing might be the giver, because he who has no disposition to buy it, is void of the capacity to receive it gratuitously. The universe, as I have said, is an exhaustless store-house of truth, and a man may have as much of it to-day, as Jesus had; only he must bid as high and in the same circulating medium. Judas did not get what he wanted for his thirty pieces of silver, and it appears that the Jews made as little by the speculation as did Judas. This goes to show that, while on the one hand, truth cannot be bought for gold, so neither can it be sold for silver with any profit to either party in contract. It must be a fallacy, therefore, that truth, which holy men of old purchased with their heart's love, can be bought at "The Biblehouse" for dollars and cents, and its benefits secured to us by any such bargaining. A narrative of truth may be bought with money, or may be transfered from age to age, but truth itself is not a subject of transfer. It cannot be bequeathed. Were this possible, the wise parent would leave his children wise. Could we obtain the truths of Jesus by a purchase of "the four gospels," the church to-day would be like him. It would be clothed with his wisdom and his power. As a nation, we have been surfeited with the phrase "The truth handed down to us by the Fathers." They "handed down" no truth to us. They left the statement on paper, of what they deemed a truth self-evident; but Garrison, Phillips, Parker, Smith and other noble men and women strove for more than a quarter of a century, to make that truth of the Fathers a practical reality in the nation, and without success. Its most sacred institutions — its churches, colleges, academies and schools, made common cause with its theatres, its grog-shops and its "democracy" against it, and for more than eighty years of our national life prevented all political movement of that statement from the paper upon which it was originally written. The paper simply contained the name of a great truth, as do our sacred books. But around the truth itself, "the Fathers promise, and all but smothered it in its cradle. They hoped to hand even wrapped the mantle of the comit down, but their own acts created an insuperable difficulty, whilst a want of moral and political intelligence in the nation made it impossible. No, that truth of the fathers was not handed down. The nation bought it only within the last four years with its own blood upon the battle-field; and now that it has been purchased at this cost of bloody sweat, we simply see that the Fathers had it too, and that Garrison had it, for the truth is one and eternal, and all eyes see it alike that see it as it is. It is the besetting blunder of theology, as it has been of our politics, that it mistakes the statement of truths for the truths stated. It is as though we were to confound a man with his name. I repeat then, it is a characteristic of truth, that it can only be had by purchase, and that the only currency which procures it is the love of it; and further, that the only economy that secures it is fidelity. Love of a truth is the key that unlocks its secrets. But it may be answered, the nation did not love the truth it paid for There is no other. -that it saw no moral, only a "military necessity" for the act. True, while in the heat of the bargain; but even then the nation did love, the military necessity was born of it. It loved patriotism, nationality. It loved to the extent of sacrificing all else to save that. It loved better than it knew. - its And this reveals another trait in this family of brotherly helpfulness. Proofs of this lie scattered in all the paths of many virtues human research, but let it suffice to assert here, that the purchase of a single truth will secure the co-operation of the whole family to which it naturally belongs. Truth is clannish. There is an honest family pride about it that will not let one of its members suffer a man who invokes the aid of the least of its little ones go unaided. - will not let The nation was patriotic. Its love in this respect was natural and true; so the other truth came to its rescue. But did Garrison and his friends accomplish nothing by their thirty years of effort? Yea, good, beyond all present power of estimate. Not directly the good they set out to achieve, because truth must not offend justice which is a member of the family, and justice required that they who had nursed the lie in their bosoms for three generations, should, by their own arts, impel the cutting of it out; but there was a necessity also, that when the time came for the inevitable surgery, there should be enough of moral strength in the nation to ensure it convalescence. Their efforts mainly supplied it. They have created a back ground of principle here in the North, against which the surges of cupidity and political policy will beat in vain. And they too are an illustration of the helpfulness of truth. When they began the work for the southern slave, they were themselves, mostly, the slaves of a theological oligarchy. Their souls were bound in every limb by a creed more cruel than the lash of the planter, and more strangely absurd than the untutored faith of the Negro whom they sought to secure from its infliction. So the lifting up of their voices for physical freedom rallied to their aid the hosts of free truth; and the effort to strike the chains from the shoulders of the southern chattel, loosed the fetters on their own spirits. The love of things is the "philosopher's stone" which turns them into uses. It is the talisman which crowns research with success. All things do so aspire to be in sympathy with man that, if he can but return their love, they will reveal to him all they know of themselves or that he can understand. This is apparent on the lowest plane. To get wealth one has only to love gold supremely It will reveal all the good bargains, it will disclose all the deep mysteries of trade. You know what the mechanic is who loves his profession, as compared with one who only follows it for his daily bread. I meet Clergymen and other professors of what is vaunted as “the only saving faith," who say, "I would give all I possess for the assurance which you seem to have of another life." Now, this is their selfdeception. Why have they not assurance to their heart's content? If the church of the first century founded its faith upon facts of its own observation, and lived upon a present inspiration, why should the church of the present day starve upon history? Is God asleep, or has his love become cold? The reason is not there, it is here — the love of the church has become cold. Read the churchman's love in his life, and it will be seen that he loves his prejudices, loves tradition, loves his creed, loves his church ceremonial, loves his good name with the world, if not its loaves and fishes, better than any proof of immortality that immortality itself can give him. With these shams uppermost in his affection, no truth of the future can come |