faculties or impulses, and constitutes him master of his condition and himself. We understand this doctrine very well, but have now neither time nor space to enter into its full examination. It will suffice for our present purpose to consider it under its more popular aspects, and to indicate some of the points which are hostile to our holy religion. 1. The fundamental assumption with regard to the free and happy order which may be realized on this earth is false and unchristian. At the bottom of all Schiller's speculations lies the assumption, that there is, as it were, a heaven which we may realize in this world and from this world; that it is possible to introduce and maintain a political and social order in which all our natural wants shall be satisfied, in which we shall be free from all constraint, exempt from all troubles, disappointments, and vexations, in which there shall be no disturbing forces, no anxiety, no sorrow, no wrath, no bitterness, but all shall be peace, plenty, love, and joy. But this, Christianity teaches us, is neither possible nor desirable, and therefore is never to be proposed as an object of pursuit. In assuming it, and proposing it as an end, Schiller is, then, at war with Christianity, as are all classes of socialists of the present day. The Christian looks upon this life as intended by Providence to be a penance, a probation, a trial, a discipline, and places his hopes of happiness exclusively in the world to come. It is idle to deny this. Christianity was not given to remove the evils and misery of this life, but to teach us patience and resignation under them; and to enable us to convert them into the richest blessings, by humbly submitting to them for God's sake. It sanctions none of the maxims of the socialists, but reverses them all. God's ways are not man's ways. When he comes to redeem us, he comes not in the greatness, majesty, and glory of the Godhead, but with his divinity veiled under a human form, not with the lofty step of the conquering hero, or the pomp and state of the earthly monarch, but as a servant in lowly life, the son of a poor virgin, living in poverty and want, and followed only by fishermen and publicans, and at last dying on the cross. Even now, when he comes upon our altars or communicates himself to the faithful, to gladden the heart, strengthen the soul, and give us a foretaste of heaven, he conceals not only his divinity, but also his humanity, and appears under the ignoble forms of bread and wine, teaching us that our greatness is in our littleness, our strength in our weakness, our glory in our humility. He comes not thus, as mad dreamers allege, because his mission is specially to the poor, because he comes merely, as we hear it blasphemously taught, as a modern socialist, radical, leveller, or democratic revolutionist, but to sanctify poverty, to abash the pride of the world, and to show us that our good is not in that which the nations seek after, but in that which they despise; for the poor man, that is not also poor in spirit, is no dearer to him than the rich man "faring sumptuously every day." It is through much tribulation and suffering that we must enter into the kingdom of heaven. Therefore it is that the saints always turn their backs on the world, trample its riches and luxuries beneath their feet, and make themselves poor and afflicted, that they may have true riches and joy with Christ in heaven. All this may be foolishness to our socialists and conceited reformers, but the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Salvation comes from the humility of the cross. What the Christian looks for in this world is not earthly felicity, is not that he may be full with the goods of this world, and have his "eyes stand out with fatness," but that he may sacrifice the sacrifices of justice, and hope in God for his reward hereafter. He believes that blessed are the poor, those that suffer, and those that weep; for the afflictions of this life are designed by our merciful Father to prepare us for the beatitude of the life to come. He thus seeks the cross, and embraces it with the most ardent affection; and, in so doing, receives the highest good he is capable of receiving. The error of our socialists on this point is one of no small magnitude. They all—and in this respect we do not see that Schiller differs essentially from them regard our true good as realizable on earth, and in some way or other dependent on our external condition. In this they show clearly their hostility to Christianity. Our real good is not realizable in this life, save by promise; for we do not and cannot accomplish our destiny here. We live here by hope, not by fruition. Then, again, what is really for our good here is in no case and in no sense whatever dependent on our external condition. It is, in all cases, independent of circumstances. We need no change in our external condition and circumstances, in order to receive the highest good of which we are capable. God may be found by the humblest and most abject slave, as well as by the proudest potentate of the earth; and the soul that finds God, or to whom God reveals himself, has all good, even the supreme good itself. While we are seeking to better ourselves by bettering our condition, to prepare ourselves for virtue and happiness by struggling to create a new political, social, or industrial order, we overlook this fact, draw our minds off from God, fix our affections on things of the earth, and lose for ever our true good. Labor not for the meat that perisheth, but for the meat that endureth unto everlasting life. If you would be truly wise, seek first the kingdom of God. and his justice, and fear nothing for the rest. If you believe not this, have at least the manliness to avow that you believe not Christianity. - 2. But we cannot accept Schiller's account of the rude or primitive state of man. Man is not primitively a thing, but essentially a person. There is no such necessity of nature as is alleged, from which he needs to be emancipated. Man, we admit, is enslaved, is a slave to his condition, and to his appetites, propensities, and passions; but if there be any truth in Christianity, this slavery is voluntary, not necessary, the effect, not of his want of freedom, but of his abuse of his freedom. So far as this is not the case, he is never, and can never, be emancipated. As long as he lives, he must be affected in both his intellect and his sensibility by the objective world; for he does not and cannot make the world in which he lives; and so long as he remains here, concupiscence remains, against which he must struggle. We deny, on the one hand, that man is subject to such a necessity of nature as Schiller assumes; and, on the other, the possibility of such a liberty as he contends for. 3. So far as man is voluntarily enslaved, he needs to be emancipated; but we deny that the emancipation implied is effected or can be effected by the cognition of beauty, or even of truth and goodness. The simple cognition is never sufficient to liberate the soul, and place man, in his interior nature, above himself and his condition. If there be any thing certain, it is, that Christianity teaches that this liberation is possible only by divine grace infused into the heart, elevating and strengthening the will, and inclining it to God. So far as the evolution of Schiller's play-impulse designates a state of freedom not purely imaginary, but possible and desirable, it is to be effected, not by æsthetic culture, but by the infusion of divine grace and by Christian culture, or ascetic discipline. These three considerations are sufficient to justify our objec tions to Schiller's theory on the ground of its repugnance to Christianity. But Mr. Weiss thinks that it is, nevertheless, the ally and harbinger of Christianity. His view, if we rightly seize it, is, that the evolution of the freedom Schiller intends to express by the word play-impulse is the necessary preparation for Christianity, or preliminary condition of its operation and influence. It is, therefore, necessary to Christianity, the "prime condition of the embodiment of Christianity in the life of men." If Schiller's account of the rude or primitive man were to be received, some preparation for Christianity would undoubtedly be necessary, for Christianity can do nothing for man before he exists. Man must be, before he can be the subject of Christian influences. But if this account be rejected, and man assumed to be in all states what Christianity represents him to be, no such preliminary work is necessary or admissible. No preparation for grace is admissible, because grace must go before all efforts at our emancipation, or else those efforts will be unavailing. It can go before, for we know it can begin to operate from the first moment of our existence, since the holy prophet Jeremias and St. John the Baptist were each sanctified from his mother's womb, and since infants from the moment of birth are regenerated in holy baptism. But it seems that we were wrong, according to Mr. Weiss, in identifying Schiller's play-impulse with love, and also in ranking Schiller among modern idolaters. Possibly we were; but it may be well to bear in mind that the complaints of misrepresentation, which theorists and their friends make whenever their theories are represented in an unfavorable light, are, as a general rule, to be received with some hesitation. For ourselves, we are much inclined to believe that whoever will set forth any modern theory, German theory especially, in its true light, will be accused by its friends of ignorance, of misapprehension, and misrepresentation. The modern mind, the modern German mind in particular, is remarkable for its subjectivity, and the universe it explains by its theories is never the universe existing objectively in re, nor even in the conceptions of the general reason, but the universe which exists in the individual reason, imagination, fancy, or idiosyncrasies of the theorist himself. The theorist constructs his theory, not from data furnished him by the objective world, the world which exists alike for all men, but from data which are furnished by the world which exists for him alone, or the few who may be able to content themselves to see all with his eyes. This is especially true of nearly all our modern German theorists. Though boasting of their universality and "manysidedness," they are remarkable for their narrowness, "onesidedness," and egoism. Their eyes are always fixed on their own individual Ich, or me, and rarely in their speculations do they ever get out of its sphere. It is this fact which makes it so extremely difficult for them to explain themselves to scholars of other schools, and which makes them fancy, whenever their theories are translated by scholars of broader and more comprehensive views, that they are misrepresented. The fact is, that, when their theories are exhibited to the general intelligence of mankind, they do not recognize them, because they are then necessarily divested of what they had received from the idiosyncrasies of their framers. This æsthetic theory of Schiller, for instance, is deduced from another theory entertained by its author, and this other theory, not from man and nature as they really are, or as they are in the general intelligence, but as they are in Schiller's own Ich or me. But in explaining it, we must not explain it from Schiller's point of view, for that he himself has done, and our explanation would be no explanation at all; but we must explain it from the point of view of the universal reason, or of objective truth. In doing this, we necessarily and very properly eliminate all that is idiosyncratic, all that depends on Schiller's own peculiar mode of seeing reality, and retain only what may be made intelligible to all men, and without Schiller as well as with him. But we cannot do this without making the theory appear very different, and apparently another theory, from what it appears to him and to his friends. Yet we do not thus misrepresent it, but truly represent it. In the brief exposition we gave of the theory in question, we aimed simply to present its leading features in the light of general philosophy, or its essential principles in such a light as to be truly apprehended by the general intelligence. We sought, in a word, simply to translate the theory out of Schiller's private reason into the reason of the race; and we have seen, as yet, no ground to think that we did not render him truly and faithfully. That Schiller used the term play-impulse to designate the freedom or state which he assumed to result from the cognition of beauty or æsthetic culture, we were not ignorant ; but we identified it with love, for the very reason that he gave it as the effect of the cognition of beauty. If Schiller relied on this effect as the condition of virtue, he relied on sentiment, |