W B H. 138 Social Reform, WHC. 75 Labor and Capital, M. 405 JW Redfield, 60 Mathew, Father, 276 215, 231, 337, 407 150 39 235 WH Hutchins, 145 W Chase, 260 Social Keformation, T. 101 54 Talks on the Times, WHC. 58, 100 Man and Property, WHC. 169 WH C. 249 Money-Making, FG Shaw, 7 277, 293 Mutualism, The Coming Fra of P. J Proudhon, Mr. Cobden on Austrian Affairs, N. 405 U. WHC. 121 167 Union, The V. Vanity Fair, or Becky Sharp, H J. 49 War of Principles &c. 107 Welcome and Warning, Name, Our True Nation's Fast, The WHC. 88 Jeanne Deroine, 27, 59 204 Woman, 0. Word-The Word is the Art, 133 John White, 267 Working Classes, John Stewart Mill, 85, 193 Working Classes--Might and Right, 82 POETRY. Y. Thought and Expression, Longfellow, 33 Ann Page, 65 Mrs James Gray, 1 145 Pauer, 157 JR Lowell, 177 JG Whittier, 193 The Age of Irreverence, Alfred Tennyson, 225 The Bride, Soaring, Milnes, 321 331 CHA Bulkley, 369 572265 THEY flit, they come, they go, The visions of the day; They change, they fade, they glow, They rise, they die away. And all within the scope Can never be at rest. They press, they throng, they fill In circles still they swim, When will the lute be stricken The painter's pencil came In colored light and shade; Before his cherished dream. How lovelier far his thought. But he can feel alone How feeble is its tone To the music of his mind. So strife on earth must be Between man's power and will; We want a symbol still. Joy when the fleshy veil From the spirit shall be cast, Then an ungarbled tale That can not stop or fail Shall genius tell at last! NO 1. FOWLERS & WELLS, PUBLISHERS. For The Spirit of the Age. AN ADDRESS ON A LATE WORK ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, Read before the Swedenborg Association, of London, May 24th, 1849. BYJ. J. G. WILKINSON. THE circumstance that this Association, like so many of its elders, appoints an anniversary in this especial month, leads me to ask whether May Meetings are not a part of the laws of nature; and I think the question once put, must be answered in the affirmative. There are natural seasons, and there are spiritual seasons. By a happy system of complement these do not coincide, but tend to the reverse effect. Thus the beginning of Winter, is our social spring; Christmas and December, with their blaze of friendships and family joys are our social midsummer; and outward merry May is the social autumn, when warm affections begin to fade and die down, and town scatters itself into the country. By June our hearts are positively chilly, and in sweltering July we are so cold that happily it is difficult to collect half a dozen people together in a room for any mutual purpose; and lectures and concerts are impossible. Man and nature are in fact Antipodes. This is a very beautiful ordinance; that here also we should behold this law of contrast ed degrees; this house of many mansions; that one floor of seasons should be piled upon another; that the greatest heat of the world should relieve the coolest dews of the soul; that frost and barrenness should be as the glittering wall that sends us back in color the heart's most cheerful fires. Here we discern the equilibrium of nature, and observe when it is translated into human thought, that it is no other than temperance, or that happy mixture of thing with thing, and of time with time, by which all existences serve universal objects, and have only to unlock their bosoms well enough, and deeply enough, to bring forth any treasures however particular. Now, as May is the inward autumn, it is of course the month of Social Harvest, of which May meetings may be reckoned as the end. Now abounds, where the cultivators are rich, the good cheer of capital speeches; intellectual dances all the better if not too polished; fraternizing of farmer and laborer, of prelates and poor converts; and the unctuous shine of a very large complacency. The good that has been done, the success that has grown up, in the last campaign; the hearts that have been kindled, the proselytes that have been led and won, are safely stacked and thatched, and most of them in sight of the Merry May meeting. They will serve to support man and horse, heart and understanding during the terribly dreary months of June, July, and August, when Missions, Atheneums, Philosophical Institutions, and great Exeter Hall itself, are no better than a recollection. |