the question. In the absence of any intimation to the contrary, we must presume that he did. And in the whole New Testament there is not a single suggestion, however faint, of any disagreement on this matter between Jesus and his contemporaries. More than this, his own words carry an assent to the popular belief. He bids his disciples "cast out devils" (Matt. x. 8)— quite a needless direction and a barren authority, if he deemed there were no devils to cast out. In a particular case which his followers had been unable to manage, he rebukes them by saying "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." (See Strauss' Life of Christ, vol. ii., p. 241-2. The whole chapter is admirable.) In one place (Matt. xii. 26–29) Christ speaks of a "kingdom" and a "household" of the Devil, in language which one talking figuratively would hardly use.

If we are reluctant to grant that Jesus shared a superstition so fanciful as this, which, after all, is held to be no superstition to this day by the majority of Christendom, we must remember that it was the general and deeply rooted persuasion of his age and country. The rabbins believed it as much as the vulgar, as pleasing to the imagination, and suggesting an obvious explanation of the facts of natural and moral evils. How should Jesus question a doctrine that was dear to the popular heart, that was countenanced by the national literature (1 Sam. xvi. 14-23), and that was expounded in the leading schools?

[To be concluded.]

RUDIMENTS.

Must realize his Cant, not cast it off.-JOHN STERLING.

THERE is a vulgar belief that our Revolution conquered for our nation its liberties, and that each generation of Americans inherits a free country. Of course, revolution can no more conquer Freedom for a people than it can conquer scholarship or regeneration for it. All the Americas can not make, of inborn serfs, freemen. It becomes us, therefore, to start from the fact that the phraseology of Freedom is as yet Cant; that the reading of the Declaration of Independence, the celebration of the birthdays of our heroic rebels, the holidays of Radicalism, glorified by Con

servatism, are Cant. By this I would say, that these, our early traditions, are like the unevoked compositions left by Beethoven, in a score beyond the power of any instruments to which they are given for rendering. Instead of giving us that great music, our orchestra mingles in it the clank of chains and the yelp of the blood-hound. When, again and again, we hold up the luminous page, and say, "This is the score we gave you to execute," the players stammer at first, then, being pressed, honestly say that their instruments can not perform those "glittering generalities," nor the dancers keep step to them.

I fear that the Reformers are hasty in charging dishonesty and hypocrisy where there is disloyality to Freedom. There is no denying that the truths which Jefferson and Henry declare to be selfevident, are not self-evident at all; they are the last refinements of civilization; not the world's seed nor stem, but it's flower-one, too, whose fragrance is to be inhaled with the flower of the mind. Our fathers had the quick heats of personal oppression and revolution to bring them to this result; but what can we expect of a generation of maggots, the sole ambition of each of which is to be a fatter maggot than the other, and all seeing nothing beyond their special old Stilton? We must begin low enough even with the best. What is the highest position which the Republican party in 1860 can bear? Only that slavery is quite proper where it exists, but very bad where it does not exist! How many of those who fancy themselves friends of Freedom, do we find laying down Wall Street and Kansas land-lots, as the corner-stones of her temple? And surely, to a real freeman, this association with liberty of the advantage of free labor or equal power of the general government, is as low as one who should mingle with vows of love inquiries as to the bulk of his lady's purse, or the extent of the betrothed larder. That brotherhood of freemen, who join hands through all lands and ages, must teach others the RUDIMENTS; looking upon professions of devotion to Freedom as Cant, yet Cant, in which line for line a real face is masked; Cant to which the people must be held fast, until the flood-tide shall come to make it real. For this end we must be content to go far down on the dry beach and foster the faintest, feeblest wave that beats in the right direction in every mind; nor despise it because it is not floating ships stranded up by the high-water marks.

-It was in the autumn of one of these late years that I received from an old classmate the following note:

W, VIRGINIA, Oct. 20. DEAR C.:- Do come over and see us! I hear that you have become a fearful Abolitionist, and my wife says she's afraid of you; but still, come! That topic shall be sunk in the river Styx. Yours, as ever,

PHILIP.

Something moved me to comply. A week after, I entered, by the familiar old stage and the same old driver, (always much " "tighter" than the reins he held,) the grass-grown streets of one of the oldest towns of Virginia. I found my friend surrounded by the luxuries of a new, neat cottage, and a happy honeymoon, which were shared by an interesting young wife.

The afternoon had passed pleasantly, and we had seated ourselves comfortably beside the glowing hearth; already deep in memories of old friendships and earlier scenes, forgetful of the chasms by which we were separated, and, as it were, grasping hands once more tightly before a parting, which promised to be for many a long, sad year, we gave ourselves up to the pleasure of the occasion. Then, suddenly, close to the door a sob was heard,— and then, in quick succession, a sob, a groan, and a low voice said, Oh, my poor Tom!"

The young wife, pale as marble, was at the door in an instant. On opening it a young colored woman stood in view, sobbing violently. She had just heard that her husband, to whom she had been married about two months, had been sold that morning to the far South, by his master, who lived a few miles off. The poor thing was in despair, and sank upon the floor, moaning. My friend's wife knelt down by her, speechless, her arm placed kindly about the neck of the unfortunate. Then came a silence that was mournful, indeed. Presently this young woman, Philip's wife, arose and turned upon us, her face wet with tears, - strode across with the dignity of Rachel, and gave me her hand, she cried, "I am not afraid of you! You see it is all Satan's own! No, no, dear husband, don't speak to me. I hate it! hate, hate, hate Slavery! Go back and tell them all that we are in Sodom! I will go out into the kitchen and tell every servant to go, go, go-where they shall live in some peace!" And out she rushed, her husband after her. (I think I have preserved the ipsissima verba of this Pythoness.)

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Now, sir,"

For a full hour I was left alone with the fire, which burnt without and within, whilst I mused, interrupted only by quick, high voices, which occasionally reached me from another part of the house. At length my friend stepped softly in. He was sorry the scene had occurred; his wife was sorry also; was aware of the weakness she had shown before a stranger; had not been very well, lately; desired to be excused for the rest of the evening. Then followed a pause, broken first by Philip.

"Your Anti-Slavery friends would, I suppose, make much of such an incident as this."

"There are some subjects, it would seem, that the river Styx can not keep down, Philip," I said, wishing him to open and direct the conversation. "" There are, I know there are, a great many evils about the system. Many evils beset every position, however well defended, [and here I saw the vision of the young wife, with arm encircling the slave's neck, mingling her tears with hers,] which is outside the protection of the holy mother, Liberty." My friend gave an equivocal smile.

"Does that sound to you like Cant?"

"I must say it did, a little."

"And yet for this Cant I have untwined so many arms of affection, unclasped so many warm hands which held mine, that I must ask you to believe it something more, Philip!"

Forgive me," he answered, with a slight tremor in his voice, "I do not mean to distrust you. But, truly, this idea of Liberty seems to me more or less a phantom. I can feel concerned for special cases of oppression and cruelty, and admire special cases of heroic rebellion against injustice and arbitrary power; but Liberty, in itself, is vague: few persons, on earth, are free, and those by no means happiest or most furnished with the means of doing good." "I might reply to this last remark in the lines of the poet,—

He that feeds men serveth few;

He serves all who dares be true.

It is as true of an idea as of a man. But pray bear with me whilst I disclose what it is that we mean, and show you that our idea of Liberty is no speculation or enthusiasm, but a positive, historic, and mathematical necessity."

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That 'is just what I have never seen."

"Observe, then, that it has become an axiom of natural his

tory, that the higher the organization the greater the freedom. The animals of lowest structure fasten themselves to rocks, or in the river-shallows, for protection; they move about slowly and with difficulty; their lives are at the mercy of external elements, their only escape from which is in the prison of a shell. Each step in the scale of rising life differs from the first only in greater independence of external things by the growth of a stronger selfsustaining apparatus; each higher animal form, as it came forth in the ages, was simply a revolution for Freedom. Thus you see the idea of Liberty is as ancient as the most conservative could desire, and began with the primal pulses of Nature. Is it wonderful that man should inherit it; that what was in the stem should prevail in the fruit? For the naturalist shows us that man's form is the triumph of physical Freedom.

"Now, then, at this point, we enter another sphere. that of man, wherein stratum rises on stratum, with the same old music. Here we find the axiom, The higher the race, the greater the freedom. The races of men are classified with regard of their historical efforts toward Freedom, and the false assertion of the ignorant concerning the lowest races, that they are fit only to be slaves, reveals that this is the test of higher and lower. We say of the AngloSaxon, he is highest, because he has never submitted to be a slave. The Jew in Palestine is a nobler man than the Jew in Egypt.

"Then we pass into a higher formation,-into inward and spiritual life. Thought is thought by reason of Freedom. The structural bondage of the animal to the earth is an outer sign of the inner trammel to animal instincts; but an animal which should show that it could act as a free agent, from rational and conscientous motives, would be kuman, though a quadruped, and would be so recognized; and, on the other hand, if any one, apparently human, shows that he is unemancipated from the animal, he can not be treated as a freeman,—such being the case with idiots and criminals. Moral, intellectual, and personal Freedom are, then, as essential conditions of any true, upright manhood, as the preservation of the centre of gravity is essential to the upright posture of the body.

And so upward, quite through the Universe, runs the law All superiority, heroism, genius, are but greater Freedom; that is, they are the results of extreme individuality, which is Freedom. This progress of animal forms, from the imprisonment of a mol