CALIBAN represents the religious man. We believe that critics are well-nigh agreed that Paul, standing on Mars' Hill, reproved the Athenians for being "too religious," not "too superstitious;" the entire force of which charge rests on the fact that, as the word indicates (Lat., re and ligere), religion is a binding back of the spiritual nature. The essential idea of religion is a bond; it is an exaction, a chain, a yoke. It is not too much to say that in this, its real significance, Religion had been carried to its utmost extent by the nations before the coming of Christ; our model of strictness (Lat., stringere, to bind) being an ancient Stoic or Pharisee. The old commandments are prohibitory, beginning "Thou shalt not:" they are given as if to a being whose hands, being adapted only to be "pickers and stealers," were also excellently shaped for manacles. It is not recognized that Duty could be to any a joy. Paul complained that the Athenians were too religious, because, when life and reality had ebbed away from their altar, on which they could inscribe only their ignorance, they were still bound back by it; they were not free to follow the new form.

Let us not disparage Religion as such even as a bond and an exaction it is to be valued. If men prepare a feast for the senses, and invite not Piety as a heavenly guest thereto, she must come to suspend over them the hair-hung sword, ready to fall on any excess. We can not trust man to the fiery steeds of Passion, unless he have in his chariot either Divine Love as charioteer, or Divine Law as one to whisper Memento mori! So long as it is the form which the spiritual sentiment really takes in any mind, it is full to its purpose; the mole burrowing the ground is sustaining the harmonious bass to the tenor of the highest angel; Caliban need not abase himself before Ariel. Yet the winged sprite must be taken to represent the spiritual man, in whose mind Thou shalt is changed to Thou mayest, who has passed from Mount Sinai to the Mount of the Beatitudes. Where the religious man heard, "I the Lord, your God, am a jealous God," the spiritual man hears, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God."

Is it not just at this point that Christianity may be most sharply contrasted with all antecedent religions-to wit.: that it is not a Religion, but a Gospel?

Along with the allegory from Shakspere may be read that quoted from Hebrew mythology by the writer to the Galatians: "Thou art no more a servant, but a son. For it is written that

Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid, the other by a free-woman. But he who was of the bond-woman was born after the flesh; but he of the free-woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai, which gendereth unto bondage, which is Agar; for this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. Now, we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bond-woman and her son; for the son of the bond-woman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman!"

All around us are the Calibans; all around us are the children of the bond-woman, with hands uplifted against the children of the free. How many are adhering to religious beliefs and services which they do not, can not LOVE! How many are sustaining doctrines from a sense of duty, in which they do not rejoice, and which, if their minds were unbound, they would never believe? Is it anything but religion, the soul-ligature, which causes a man to hold to a creed which represents his children and friends as corrupt to their hearts' core, the earth as resting under an angry curse, or which binds on the heart a terrible belief in a hell where immortal beings are consigned to unending torture? Is not this Caliban-service?

We are making no arbitrary statements. The intelligent believer in such a creed will admit, as it is his only title to respect to admit, that he accepts these things by moral obligation: no sane mind or sound heart can rejoice in them; they stifle the heart's outery with, Who art thou that repliest against God? Jonathan Edwards had to wrestle with the angel through many weary years, ere, lame and faint, he could bring his eloquent tongue to say, "God will hold them [non-elect infants] over hell in the tongs of his wrath until they turn and spit venom in his face;" but it went out to his congregation with writhing, and was responded to by a shriek from every mother present. John Calvin honestly added to his conclusion, Decretum quidem horribile fateor.-(Ins., b. iii., ch. 23.) It has been maintained that Coleridge, who was at one time a Unitarian, abandoned that faith

for the Trinitarian simply by mental attraction. Those who have studied closely Coleridge's development will recognize that underneath the external change to Trinitarianism he was entering a more philosophical faith than the Unitarianism of his day allowed. The Platonic Trinitarianism which has furnished a refuge for such thinkers as Tholuck, Coleridge, Bushnell, and others, is really an arrow's-flight beyond Parkerism: it is disguised transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson has given us an account of his interview with Coleridge; during which Coleridge said, “If you and I were taken to the same stake for heresy, my side of it would be the hottest!" I do not deny that the creeds which bind have found some monks in deserts and caves who have had ecstacies; but it is no credit to their joyfulness that men who have crushed the healthy life out of them, animated mummies, should rejoice in them. Only as eyes upon which a dreadful amaurosis is coming see beautiful flashes and circles of light, can human hearts take pleasure in God's wrath or sing hallelujahs over human damnation. Coleridge's opium-eating, which began not long before his Trinitarianism, doubtless had much to do with the unhealthy form in which his essentially higher faith was born. But the great representatives of the popular creed have admitted themselves children of the bond-woman; have acknowledged that the human heart, sense and reason are prone to abandon their rules of life and thought. Orthodoxy is a war to take Human Nature captive; and its principle is expressed in the strong language of a modern Father, who said, "The very heart and marrow of this wretched human-nature is saturated with heresy."

This, then, is not the service of peace and love and joy in the spirit it is as far from these as Caliban's claw from Ariel's wing. We do not forget that claw answers to hand and to wing; we place no impassable barriers. Caliban dreams high dreams amid his hard labors-one day, doubtless, to be realized.

"The isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,

That, if I had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds, methought, would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again."

We know that Duration tells the whole difference between lampblack and diamond, gun-flint and opal. The tower which would rise high must begin deep down. Our question is only one of classification, and asks, Which is higher, which lower?

Ishmael is not so easy to answer as he seems to be. He claims that there is some merit in believing where belief is hard, none where it is easy. Jesus said, "If ye love them that love you, what reward have ye?" If you accept only the doctrines which suit you, if you adopt the burthens which are easy to the shoulders, do not even the publicans the same? So Ishmael labels his own belief, Credo quia impossibile, and Isaac's, Salvation made easy.*

Now, when we come to examine this satire of the religion which binds upon that which makes free, we find in it a radical error. We do not question that religion is a good thing; we do not doubt that, humanly speaking, it is a more meritorious thing to fulfil a disagreeable duty than an agreeable one, there being no heroism where there is no difficulty. But, thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me. To bear a burthen, feeling it to be a burthen, is noble; but to bear à burthen as real, and utterly forget yourself and your suffering under it, is nobler. To be wise and strong is much, but they are not the spirit's glory this is reserved for that Love which finds in its service such joy that the yoke is easy and the burthen light. As for that sarcasm, "Salvation made easy," it sounds almost like the curse of Caliban, which Ariel might answer with a tear welling up from the memory of his frightful servitude and imprisonment, ere Prospero led him forth to the freedom of the air. Ere a man can find his delight in the Law of the Lord, ere he can cry, "Oh, how I love thy Law," how many a hard battle must he have fought! So strong is selflove, so overbearing the will, that Christian must surmount the Hill Difficulty before he can climb the Hills of Delight. It need not be feared that the human spirit will not have encounters enough; there is no royal road to renunciation; he will know well the drill of the Law: but when the time has come for religion to blossom

*These words were written on a bundle of Unitarian Tracts in Coleridge's study: "Salvation made easy; or, Every man his own Redeemer."

into love, to bind the green sheath over the bud, is to be, in Paul's phrase, too religious. Religion is not Christianity it is the chrysolid of Christianity. Ah! what if the beautiful wings instead of coming forth to pass freely from flower to flower, should fold, and the fly say, 'No, this shell in which I was born I will not break nor leave,"-lo, it is not even a caterpillar, it is a sepulchred butterfly! Even so it is when the soul clings to that which yields no thrill of ineffable bliss at every point of contact. That is but a thorny sheath of good which must look outside of itself for its joy, which must comfort sacrifice with hope, which must mitigate sufferance with contrast of a fearful alternative, and eke out a present barrenness with promise of future blessedness. Madam Guion rose higher when she wished that she had a fountain to quench Hell, and a furnace to burn up Paradise, that God might be loved in and for Himself without fear or hope.

The fatal defect of Religion, which must make it forever only the scaffolding around the forming shrine within where God shall be met, is that it excludes the idea of Love. It is an old saying, "Whoso loveth, knoweth God;" but the very nature of Religion implies obligations, bonds, demands, which Love most of all hates. Love has no tie but its own attractions; and can not be purchased at any price. The old legends say that Satan makes contracts with the Soul; but Love must be a free-gift. The heart is that Cordelia whose filial love can not come forth by threats or rewards, but, knowing its sacred laws, responds, as she to Lear,

"I can not heave

My heart into my mouth."

A Court may order that a man and wife shall live together as wedded, but it can not make them love each other; or it may give the parent a right to the service of a child, but it can not create, by any enactment, the filial heart. And thus, though the human spirit may go on, bearing its cross, doing its duty, from a sense of duty, and be thus religious, yet can it never be really satisfied thereby it will yearn for the Love which changes the cross to a prop, and touches the thorns in its crown to roses of joy. Swedenborg saw that the angels held in their hands twigs, and that whenever any one of them announced a truth, the twig which he held blossomed; if the angel uttered an error, the twig did not blossom. The test is perfect. Each truth must be one under which the heart blossoms: the spirit cowers at the foot of Sinai,