of the day speaks not at all; not that private judgment is rebellious, but that the church's judgment is withheld.

I do really believe that, with more of primitive simplicity and of rational freedom, and far more of Gospel truth than in Romanism, there would be found in the rule of private judgment, as I have described it, as much certainty as the doctrine of infallibility can give; for ample provision would be made both for the comfort of the individual and for the peace and unity of the body, which are the two objects for which Romanism professes to consult. The claim of infallibility is but an expedient for impressing strongly upon the mind the necessity of hearing and of obeying the church. When scrutinized carefully it will be found to contribute nothing whatever toward satisfying the reason, as was observed in another connection; since it is as difficult to prove and bring home to the mind that the church is infallible, as that the doctrines it teaches are true. Nothing, then, is gained in the way of conviction, only of impression—and, again, of expedition, it being less trouble to accept one doctrine on which all the others are to depend than a number. Now, this impressiveness and practical perspicuity in teaching, as far as these objects are lawful and salutary, may, I say, be gained without this claim; they may be gained in God's way, without unwarranted additions to the means of influence which He has ordained, without a tenet, fictitious in itself and, as falsehood ever will be, deplorable in many ways in its results.

PART OF LECTURE ON "EMERSON"

BY MATTHEW ARNOLD

I have given up to envious time as much of Emerson as time can fairly expect ever to obtain. We have not in Emerson a great poet, a great writer, a great philosophy maker. His relation to us is not that of one of those personages; yet it is a relation of, I think, even superior importance. His relation to us is more like that of the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius is not a great writer, a great philosophy maker; he is the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit. Emerson is the same. He is the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit. All the points in thinking which are necessary for this purpose he takes; but he does not combine them into. a system, or present them as a regular philosophy. Combined in a system by a man with the requisite talent for this kind of thing, they would be less useful than as Emerson gives them to us; and the man with the talent so to systematize them would be less impressive than Emerson. They do very well as they now stand-like "boulders," as he says in "paragraphs incompressible, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle." In such sentences his main points recur again and again, and become fixed in the memory.

We all know them. First and foremost, character. Character is everything. "That which all things tend to educe -which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver-is character." Character and selfreliance. "Trust thyself! every heart vibrates to that iron.

string." And yet we have our being in a not ourselves. "There is a power above and behind us, and we are the channels of its communications." But our lives must be pitched higher. "Life must be lived on a higher plane; we must go up to a higher platform, to which we are always invited to ascend; there the whole scene changes." The good we need is forever close to us, tho we attain it not. "On the brink of the waters of life and truth, we are miserably dying." This good is close to us, moreover, in our daily life, and in the familiar, homely places. "The unremitting retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure duties that is the maxim for us. Let us be poised and wise, and our own to-day. Let us treat the men and women well-treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are. Men live in their fancy, like drunkards whose hands are too soft and tremulous for successful labor. I settle myself ever firmer in the creed, that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with; accepting our actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we and if we will tarry a little we may come to learn that here is best. See to it only that thyself is here." thermore, the good is close to us all. "I resist the skepticism of our education and of our educated men. I do not believe that the differences of opinion and character in men are organic. I do not recognize, besides the class of the good and the wise, a permanent class of skeptics, or a class of conservatives, or of malignants, or of materialists. I do

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not believe in the classes. Every man has a call of the power to do something unique." Exclusiveness is deadly. "The exclusive in social life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself in striving to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart you shall lose your own. The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit." A sound nature will be inclined to refuse ease and self-indulgence. "To live with some rigor of temperance, or some extreme of generosity, seems to be an asceticism which common good nature would appoint to those who are at ease and in plenty, in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the great multitude of suffering men." Compensation, finally, is the great law of life; it is everywhere, it is sure, and there is no escape from it. This is that "law alive and beautiful, which works over our heads and under our feet. Pitiless, it avails itself of our success when we obey it, and of our ruin when we contravene it. We are all secret believers in it. It rewards action after their nature. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. The thief steals from himself, the swindler swindles himself. You must pay at last your own debt."

This is tonic indeed! And let no one object that it is too general; that more practical, positive direction is what we want; that Emerson's optimism, self-reliance, and indifference to favorable conditions for our life and growth have in them something of danger. "Trust thyself"; "What attracts my attention shall have it"; "Tho thou shouldst walk the world over thou shalt not be able to find

a condition inopportune or ignoble"; "What we call vulgar society is that society whose poetry is not yet written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any." With maxims like these, we surely, it may be said, run some risk of being made too well satisfied with our own actual self and state, however crude and imperfect they may be. "Trust thyself?" It may be said that the common American or Englishman is more than enough disposed already to trust himself. I often reply, when our sectarians are praised for following conscience: Our people are very good in following their conscience; where they are not so good is in ascertaining whether their conscience tells them right. "What attracts my attention shall have it?" Well, that is our people's plea when they run after the Salvation Army, and desire Messrs. Moody and Sankey. "Thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble?" But think of the turn of the good people of our race for producing a life of hideousness and immense ennui; think of that specimen of your own New England life which Mr. Howells gives us in one of his charming stories which I was reading lately; think of the life of that rugged New England farm in "The Lady of the Aroostook"; think of Deacon Blood, and Aunt Maria, and the straight-backed chairs with black horsehair seats, and Ezra Perkins with perfect self-reliance depositing his travelers in the snow! I can truly say that in the little which I have seen of the life of New England, I am more struck with what has been achieved than with the crudeness and failure. But no doubt there is still a great deal of crudeness also. Your own novelists say there is, and I suppose they say true. In the new England, as in the old, our people have to learn, I suppose, not that their modes of