saying sternly, "Get thee behind me ! The Devil might listen to some preaching I have heard, without getting his appetite spoiled. There is a great deal of time and money expended to make men believe that this one or that one will be damned, and to scare or wheedle them into good Calvinists or Episcopalians; but very little pains is taken to make them good Christians. You use plain words. JOHN. PHILIP. Plain words are best. Truth wants no veil; the chastity and beauty of her countenance are defence enough against all lewd eyes. Falsehood, only, needs to hide her face; for, that unseen, she has learned so well to mimic the gait and feign the voice of Truth, as to counterfeit her with ease and safety. Our tongue has become so courtly and polite, as well-nigh to have forgotten that it has also words befitting indignation and reproof. Some thoughts demand the utmost swell and voluptuousness of language; they should float like Aphrodite upborne on a summer ocean. For others, the words should be jagged and immitigable and abrupt, as the rocks upon the shore. Let the feeling of the moment choose. If melody be needed, the chance shell of the tortoise shall become a lyre which Apollo might sigh for. JOHN. It has never been a safe thing to breathe a whisper against the church, least of all in this country, where it has no prop from the state, but is founded only on the love, or, if you will have it so, the prejudices of the people. Religion has come to be esteemed synonymous with the church; there are few minds clear enough to separate it from the building erected for its convenience and its shelter. It is this which has made our Christianity external, a task-ceremony to be gone through with, and not a principle of life itself. The church has been looked on too much in the light of a machine, which only needs a little oil, now and then, on its joints and axles, to make it run glibly and perform all its functions without grating or creaking. Nothing that we can say will be of much service. The reformers must come from her own bosom; and there are many devout souls among her priests now, who would lay down their lives to purify her. The names of infidel and heretic are the San benitos in which we dress offenders in the nineteenth century, and a bigoted public opinion furnishes the fagots and applies the match! The very cross itself, to which the sacred right of private judgment fled for sanctuary, has been turned into a whippingpost. Doubtless, there are no nations on the earth so wicked as those which profess Christianity; and the blame may be laid in great measure at the door of the church, which has always sought temporal power, and has chosen rather to lean upon the arm of flesh than upon that of God. The church has corrupted Christianity. She has decked her person and embroidered her garments with the spoils of pagan altars, and has built her temples of blocks which paganism had squared ready to her hand. We are still Huns and Vandals, and Saxons and Celts, at heart. We have carved a cross upon our altars, but the smoke of our sacrifice goes up to Thor and Odin still. Lately I read in the newspapers a toast given at a military festival, by one of those who claim to be the earthly representatives of the Prince of Peace. England and France send out the cannon and the bayonet, upon missionary enterprises, to India and Africa, and our modern Eliots and Brainerds among the red men are of the same persuasive metal. PHILIP. Well, well, let us hope for change. There are signs of it; there has been a growling of thunder round the horizon for many days. We are like the people in countries subject to earthquakes, who crowd into the churches for safety, but find that their sacred walls are as fragile as other works of human hands. Nay, the very massiveness of their architecture makes their destruction more sudden, and their fall more dangerous. You and I have become convinced of this. Both of us, having cer tain reforms at heart, and believing them to be of vital interest to mankind, turned first to the church as the nearest helper under God. We have been disappointed. Let us not waste our time in throwing stones at its insensible doors. As you have said, the reformers must come from within. The prejudice of position is so strong, that all her servants will unite against an exoteric assailant, melting up, if need be, the holy vessels for bullets, and using the leaves of the holy book itself for wadding. But I will never enter a church from which a prayer goes up for the prosperous only, or for the unfortunate among the oppressors, and not for the oppressed and fallen; as if God had ordained our pride of caste and our distinctions of color, and as if Christ had forgotten those that are in bonds. We are bid to imitate God; let us in this also follow his example, whose only revenge upon error is the giving success to truth, and but strive more cheerfully for the triumph of what we believe to be right. Let us, above all things, imitate him in ascribing what we see of wrong-doing to blindness and error, rather than to wilful sin. The Devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers, and dreads nothing so much as their charity and patience. The scourge is better upon our backs than in our hands. JOHN. When the air grows thick and heavy, and the clouds gather in the moral atmosphere, the tall steeples of the church are apt to attract the light- | ning first. Its pride and love of high places are the most fatal of conductors. That small upper room, in which the disciples were first gathered, would always be safe enough. PHILIP. We have wandered too far among these thorns and briers; let us come back to smoother ground. There are one or two passages in the "Legend of Good Women," which I will read to you. My translations are very bald, but I adhere as closely as I can to the very words of my author. The number of accented syllables and terminations in Chaucer's time renders any translation from his poems necessarily less compact and precise than the original. I must often, too, lose much of the harmony of the verse; but I shall not try to conciliate your ear at the expense of faithfulness. Here is a fragment from his story of Thisbe. Pyramus has found her bloody wimple. "He smote him to the heart; The blood out of the wound as broad did start |