inmost mind and heart, in the character | either in its own nature, or in the likeliand spirit of the people; and that, of all hood of its organic incorporation into these causes, the religious convictions and modern civilization, can for one moment systems of a people, resting as they do be regarded as equally adequate, or at all upon one of the most deep-seated senti- approaching to the solution of the proments of human nature, are the most blem of so permeating and sanctifying the powerful. Equally undeniable and un- elements of high physical civilization, as to denied is the fact that Christianity, consi- secure the permanent welfare and true dered as a special constitution of religion, perfection of the social state. not only has had an historical existence for near two thousand years, but in nearly all that time has been one of the most significant facts in the history of the world. At the present moment, it is the religious constitution prevailing throughout nearly the whole of the civilized portion of the earth. It is wrought more or less into the civil and social life, into the convictions and habits of our own nation, and of the nations of Europe, into the course of whose history the rest of the world is destined to be drawn; and no sane man can for a moment believe that it is to be superseded in the ages to come by any other special religious constitution. If there is to be any religion in the coming age, it is to be the Christian religion. Now, what we have to say is, that if Christianity is to exist to any good purpose in the new and grand career of development on which the world is entering, it must exist not as a mere formula, not as a mere outward institute, but as a true moral power, an organic life power in the historical life of the world. It must exist as a counteracting power to the naturally destructive tendencies resulting from any prodigious, unchecked overgrowth of the mere intellectual and physical elements in the life of the people. Grandeur and wealth, luxury and corruption, dissolution and ruin, this is the brief but accurate summary of the history of the extinct, but once most powerful, empires of the ancient world; and he has read history to but little purpose, and has but little competency to read it to any good purpose, who does not know that without some adequate conservative moral power, our national history will sooner or later be summed up in the same words. And we may safely challenge any man to deny that Christianity, in the proper working of its spirit and principles, is that adequate conservative power. We may safely challenge any man to imagine any other power which, We say Christianity, in the proper working of its spirit and principles; for as a spiritual, a moral power, it can work only as it is let work; it may be thwarted, resisted, perverted. Hence it is, that the history of Christianity enters into that which constitutes the deepest theme, the inmost sense of the world's whole history-the struggle between good and evil. This we must bear in mind, or we cannot form a right historical appreciation of it. For eighteen hundred years it has been struggling with the powers of darkness and evil. And if it has not yet brought humanity to a state of social perfection, if it has not accomplished the social perfectionment of any nation where it has obtained a footing, one thing is undeniable; it has carried Christendom to a higher point of social and moral development than any nation of Pagan antiquity ever attained. To its power is due all that distinguishes modern civilization, all that makes it superior to the civilization of the Old World. This has been accomplished in spite of the resistance which pride and self-will, and selfishness, and passion, oppose to its proper influence. And during this time we have had a memorable demonstration, in a true historical way, of the futility of all schemes for the perfection of the social state proceeding in a hostile repudiation of Christianity. In the eighteenth century human reason, (as it called itself,) having plundered from sacred tradition every point and particle of truth and wisdom, which made it wiser than human reason in the pagan ages of the world, saw fit to set up for itself, to proclaim its independence of divine instruction. At this stage it did not announce itself in atheistic or immoral hostility to Christianity. It only talked of separating philosophy from theology, of vindicating for the former its proper province and rightful independence. But it did not stop here. It began before long to deny and belie the very source of all the light it had, and to arrogate its stolen treasures as its own discoveries and possessions. And it went on philosophizing and philosophizing, until, in the end, it philosophized itself into the absolute denial of all spiritual truth; till it announced, as the last and highest discoveries of human wisdom, that there was no God, no difference of right and wrong; that man was a machine, and death an eternal sleep. Then it set about the regeneration of humanity, the perfecting of the social state, the bringing in the "age of reason." The French Revolution was the practical result, and the fitting exposition of its labors. It demolished all the past; and on the basis of its grand negations-no God; no right and wrong; no spirit in man; no life beyond the grave-it began re-constructing anew the social fabric, in which nothing was to be seen but universal brotherhood, equality and social bliss. The golden age was to be no longer a fable and poetic dream; the bright ideal of a perfect social state was to be realized. Humanity, disenthralled from the yoke of priestcraft and superstition, (to which all social evils had before been owing,) was to come forth regenerated and ennobled in the pure light and free air of reason. Man was to realize a godlike and divine life, by the very act of scouting and denying everything godlike and divine. We know with what success the preposterous experiment was wrought out. We know what loathsome abortions this French philosophy, after driving God, (as it thought,) out of the world, brought forth. With the cant words of "liberty," "equality," "fraternization," " age of reason," "human regeneration," universal brotherhood," on its lips, it made man a terror to himself, made society worse than a cage of wild beasts, capable of inflicting a thousand fold greater curses on itself than all the evils superstition ever wrought. Now, we ask, if herein it was not the purpose of Divine Providence to teach mankind a lesson never to be forgotten? Has not that atheistic immoral philosophy, with its insane, blasphemous babblings, made itself known by its fruits? Has it not shown, on a grand scale, how much it could do for the regeneration of the world? And has it not become a hissing and a by-word, a stench in the nostrils of all coming time? Did not God thus lead humanity some steps onward in that wild and terrible night of anarchy and storms? He did. He did. Never again, we may believe, will such a scene be enacted on this world's theatre? Never such a regeneration of humanity again. Never again such a destruction of the old spiritual and eternal foundations of social order, and such a re-construction of the social fabric on the basis of atheistic negations. The whole thing the whole self-conceited, arrogant, jeering, profane, blasphemous thing-was first exposed in its infinite loathsome nakedness, and then exploded into infinite ineptitude and nothingness. But it has taught a great lesson. It has given an absolute demonstration of its futility and foolishness-an historical demonstration on the widest national stage, with the whole world for spectators looking on; to the end that mankind may henceforward forever point its finger and hiss at the stupid project of building up a perfect social state, by denying God, and reducing man to the level of the brutes. And that this lesson has been measurably learned, the new French Revolution of the last year has given proof-in the fact not only that it proceeded upon no formal repudiation of Christian ideas, but that all the political movements, socially destructive in their nature, and having their root in a spirit really hostile to Christianity, have been beaten and put down, and their authors and abettors shown to stand in a minority altogether insignificant and powerless. Doubtless there has been little enough of the true religious spirit, in that series of rapid and startling political changes; doubtless, more than enough of pride, self-will, selfish passion and the exaggerated sense of rights, without the sense of the duties they rest upon, imply and impose; but still the national spirit has displayed itself in no hostility to Christian ideas, in no insane attempt to build up the new civil and social order upon the destruction of Christian institutions. This is one of the most striking differences between this new French Revolution and the first one. And it is a lesson which the present age has learned from the past. But it is not enough for the coming age that this lesson be learned only in its negative side. Not enough that atheistic | and immoral negations be no longer a fashionable creed. Not enough that Christianity be acknowledged as a formula, and exist as a visible institute, deferentially recognized while practically disregarded or resisted. Yet here precisely lies the danger to be apprehended. The spirit of the age is a spirit of hard worldliness and self-willed pride-not announcing itself in any theoretic rejection of the ideas of God and the divine constitution of religion, but in a disposition to resist and overbear the practical force of those ideas. The natural tendency of the prodigious multiplication of material interests, of the prodigious extension of man's sphere of activity, and of the prodigious intensity of the outward life that is everywhere going on, is to increase this spirit more and more. It may be quite willing to allow the ideas of God and his Church, provided it may shape and bend them after its own way. It may be quite willing even to let them stand as they announce themselves in Christianity, provided a respectful acknowledgment of them will answer in place of practical submission to them. But if they become troublesome-they must stand aside. Now, to this spirit Christianity must, of necessity, oppose itself; and in the collision it must conquer-if it is to save itself and to save the world. It must pervade and sanctify, master and control, the spirit of our nation, and of the nations drawn into its course in the career of boundless wealth and power, on which we have entered; or it cannot in any adequate way act as a countervailing, conservative power against the destructive tendencies of such a prodigious development of the mere material elements of civilization. It must gain the mastery, or be itself thrown off and crushed beneath the wheels of the mighty movement by which the world rushes on to destruction. For, let merely worldly-wise statesmen and psuedo-philosophers dream as they may, no paper constitutions, no bills of rights, no universal suffrage ballot-boxes, no progress of science, no diffusion of useful knowledge, no schemes of social or ganization substituting checks and counterchecks of selfishness for the law of love, can work the regeneration of the social state, and make individual men live together as brethren; and no political contrivances, no balance-of-power systems, no commercial relations, can effect the fraternization of the nations of the earth, and bring humanity up to a state of true social perfectionment, independently of those more purely moral influences which, if they come not from Christianity, cannot be looked for from any other source. We may get on after a sort; we may get on for a long time to come; but we cannot get well on in the best sense, and in the long run, unless Christianity becomes a true, living power, incorporated into the social organization, and permeating the historical life of the world. Unless this, not only shall we never reach the true perfection of the social state, but we shall not continue to get on in the future as well as we are getting on now. We shall fall, shattered, from the heights up which we are urging our tremendous way. Our thoughts have carried us on to far conclusions; but they are such as spring naturally from a consideration of the true historical significance of our new acquisitions on the Pacific-the immense consequences for our country and the world those acquisitions involve. And if our thoughts are at all just, the circumstances under which those territories are destined to be filled rapidly up, makes the problem of our future fortunes as a nation infinitely momentous. The foundations of new states, of a new social order, are being laid there. What a hell upon earth, if the boundless lust of gold be unrestrained, unsanctified by better influences! Pandemonium was built of molten gold. By the immense significance, the world-embracing issues that depend on the settlement of that land; by every pulse that beats for our country's true glory and the world's true welfare, should we endeavor to pour the highest and purest moral influences into the newforming life that is to spring up on those shores. CARLYLE'S HEROES. BETWEEN the date of Sartor Resartus, and that of the six lectures "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History" a period of about ten years-it is manifest that a considerable progress had been made by the author of these works, both in respect to worldly experience and spiritual culture. Whatever change there is in the style of expression, indeed, might naturally be supposed to have arisen, in some measure, from the peculiarity of his position as a lecturer, conscious of the presence of real, human auditors, to whom he must make himself clearly and readily understood, on the spot, or else fail entirely of his purpose. The influence of this single circumstance is so plainly discernible, and so salutary, that we almost wish all his writings to have been subjected to the same conditions, and composed under the same consciousness of what is evidently required of every man who assumes to stand as an interpreter between ideas and the living world. To most writers, probably, such a restraint would be anything but advantageous, and so far from compelling his thoughts to take a proper outward shape, would be likely to check their genial flow, and give their expression an air of confusion. In this instance, the effect is to lop off extravagances, to restrain an unbecoming violence of feeling and lawlessness of imagination, and to curb an egotistical defiance of the tastes and opinions of his contemporaries, which the actual presence of an audience would render, in point of fact, as in some of his works it is in substance, a breach of propriety and true politeness. Still more noticeable is the change in respects more inward and vital. From restlessness and universal discontent, the elements about him seem to have settled, in his mind, into a kind of composure. From unbounded aspirations and expectations for himself and for humanity, he has come to recognize human impotence, and to moderate his views accordingly-however much, even now, they may transcend the ordinary boundaries. "One knows," he now says, "that in reducing ideals to practice, great latitude of tolerance is needful; very great." Instead of sweeping and indiscriminate denunciation, he has learned to look for good closely intermingled and easily confounded with evil; and his inclination to adopt continually a tone of impatient fault-finding, is so modified, that his predominant propensity seems to be to discover "the soul of goodness in things evil.” ness in things evil." His aims are more definite. He has a clearer perception of the necessity of meeting men where they now are on the plane of their present actual attainment-in order to lead them onward to a better condition, or to arouse their nobler energies-the divine impulses slumbering within them-to any good purpose. Form and shape have gradually come upon thoughts and passions that were before vague, aimless and ungoverned. None the less conscious of his strength, none the less haunted, perhaps, with the notion of a decided superiority over his fellows, and of an important "mission" to perform, he has either overcome, in a good degree, or else learned to dissemble, his contempt for those whose thoughts are less energetic and less ready, whose purposes are less disinterested and simple, than his own. But with all his changes, the man remains the same in all the characteristic elements of his nature. His identity is uninvaded, his individuality is indestructible. We are, in fact, able to get more nearly acquainted with the real features of his mind, now that what is only accidental has been in a measure removed, and what is essential and fundamental has become more mature, and shown itself in a more distinct and definite manner. These lectures are understood to have been delivered, with careful premeditation, of course, but without previous composition. Reported as they were pronounced, they subsequently passed under the eye of the author, receiving his supervision, emendation, and sanction. His auditors, | eminent degree, in the underlying, inwe are told, were very select, including forming Power, which pervades all nature, six bishops, many clergymen, fashionable and which he seems to recognize as an ladies, and the elite of the literature of unconscious, impersonal, and the only true London." That the lecturer esteemed this Divinity, is a hero. "The Great Man.. a "fit audience"-the very class of listeners is a Force of Nature; whatsoever is truly he would have preferred-is hardly to be great in him springs up from the inarticusupposed; but, though embarrassed at late deeps." As all greatness is the same the outset, (as we learn from one of his in itself, though diversely exhibited in outauditors,) he speedily soared above the ward acts; so also he insists most strenudisturbing attractions of custom and au- ously that the mind of man is a unit, thority so strongly arrayed before him, exerting itself in various directions, yet. and became unconscious of their influ- without division of faculties or distinction ence. His eye could probably penetrate of capabilities. He cannot tolerate the further, and discern more clearly, than common belief that a man may abound in any in his presence, whatever elements intellect, and yet be deficient in heart; that may have been wanting to complete the he may be excessively great, without beoutline of his genius, or to put his powers ing at the same time excessively good. under healthy control, and consecrate them "Without hands a man might have feet, to noble and enduring effort. In spite of and could still walk; but, consider it; his own theory, he had become possessed without morality, intellect were impossible with a consciousness of this superiority; for him, he could not know anything at and in defiance of a self-satisfied and in- all." By this we understand our lecturer dolent conservatism, that fancied to itself to mean that, while the body has limbs no other work than to rest and decay in and members, each appropriated to its its present position, he gave an unhesita- own peculiar office, the mind is one and ting utterance to the sober conclusions of indivisible, acting entire when it acts at his solitary meditation; never suspecting all; having no capabilities to lie dormant, but that they were oracles of truth, nor to be miseducated, or to be ultimately even, in most cases, intimating a doubt of suppressed; each individual mind, accordtheir genuineness and authority. What ing to its capacity, having an equal fitness we before observed, in speaking of Sartor for all things: by which chain of opinions Resartus, respecting this oracular tone- we return directly to that other favorite dictatorial, like the language of one who belief, the sameness of all true greatness believes his inspiration infallible-is equally the identity of all superior endowments. apparent in this work, and in all that he has written; and though not entirely peculiar to Mr. Carlyle it is a characteristic element of his writing that can never be lost sight of. In the present instance, however, and for reasons already indicated, this imperious manner is occasionally relieved by a perhaps, or it would seem, but rarely when speaking of the highest and most vital matters, which he assumes to make the favorite topics of his discourse. A hero, according to the nomenclature of Mr. Carlyle, is "a Great Soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life," "the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in." All real greatness is, at bottom, in his view, one and the same thing. The man who, according to a favorite notion of his, moves and has his being, in a pre If the author's language respecting the unity of the mind has not the meaning we have given it, it is inappropriate to the connection in which he employs it, and irrelevant to his apparent purpose. It is, nevertheless, true, that neither Mr. Carlyle, (as these lectures demonstrate, on every page,) nor any one else, who will attempt to talk intelligibly for any length of time, can avoid the use of language completely overthrowing this simple theory, and demolishing all the doctrines predicated thereon. We deem it safe to presume that no sane man ever judged of the mind as a collection of distinct entities, having no relation to each other but that of juxtaposition, and each appropriated to a separate class of mental operations; and with equal confidence do we take it for granted that no man, who thinks soberly, will deny that a given individual may have |