of that fractional and primordial aspect of God which the law represented. When, therefore, the Spirit assumed the lower dramatic personality, he called them his people; but, when he assumed the higher capacity, he denied the Word which he had previously uttered. Both Words are correct. One refers to the beginning; the other to the end. Every perishable thing that God hath created, every institution he has ordained, may be both praised and condemned—praised as a means, but condemned as an ultimate. Therefore, at one time the Spirit in mercy calls Israel his people, and himself their God; at another time he denies the Word as positively as he affirmed it. Both are true; for Israel is good as the root, but bad as the efflorescence. Charity believes all things in their own believable sense; and such a sense every thing possesses that has an existence. But the Jews did not, nor do they yet, know this mode of believing, and they did not understand their own Word. It was a mystery to them because of its apparent contradictions, though these contradictions are as essential to its divinity as the opposite extremes of elemental nature, from which all the energies of mineral, animal and vegetable being are derived.

It was a false unity, therefore, which the Jews were taught. Had it been the true, they would have been the final people. Instead of being the first only, they would have been the first and the last, not merely the down on the cheek, but the

full-grown beard. In all the books of Moses there is nothing to justify the supposition that he and his people had any idea of the omnipresent unity of God. The God of Israel is usually represented as a finite being. He walks like a man, and comes down like an angel. He visits the patriarch Abraham as a man, and eats at his table. He appeared in person "to Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the Elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hands; also they saw God, and did eat and drink." The prophets also saw like representations; and from such similitudes, or spirit manifestations, no doubt the faith of the people of Israel, respecting the divine unity, was formed as the sole and the absolute chief of a hierarchy of angels, who took delight, like a heathen god, in the blood of beasts and the smell of burnt offerings, and was propitiated thereby-the lowest and fundamental idea of religion, corresponding in analogy to the barren rock, but essential to the fulness of the great superstructure.* The fulness of unity grows up out of

Sacrifice is the true type of progress. We sacrifice a lower life to cultivate and enjoy a higher. All improvement is a sacrifice in this sense. But, in growing up from the root, it begins at the bare and barren rock that affords no nourishment to the soul. The blood

the seed of that finite and modified species of unity which was planted in Israel, but is so much in advance of that feeble idea of the Divine character, that it will be tantamount to a new revelation of God to the world-God as a universal instead of an individual Being.

SCENE THIRD.

LEGITIMATE AGENTS AND TEACHERS OF IMPERFECTION.

Amongst all the questions which have puzzled divines and philosophers, and, indeed, the whole human race (for it seems to be regarded as an insoluble problem still by all), is that very simple, intelligible, beautiful and sublime paradox, which may be denominated, for want of a better name, Divine imperfection, but is merely a degree in the

of the beast is this lowest idea. In Christianity it rises a step higher to the humanity of Christ's nature; for it is by sacrificing the lower grades that we ascend to the higher; and we are exhorted to offer up our bodies a living sacrifice, and mortify the flesh, with its affections and lusts We shall see, in due time, this rising by inference up to doleful asceticism, and autos da fe, or burnt offerings of human victims. The highest of all sacrifices are the everlasting sacrifices of righteousness, the sacrifices of selfish and inferior feelings and passions; for these are the true beasts, best represented by clean or domestic animals, as they belong to ourselves, and are transubstantiated into ourselves by being used as food. And therefore it is for ever a sacrifice of beasts; only the lower is translated into the higher meaning, as the rock is translated into alluvial and nourishing soil.

graduated scale of perfection. Nature is full of imperfection. Every animal, every plant, every climate, every harvest, every organ of man's body, every attribute of his soul, is imperfect. We talk of the wisdom and perfection of God's works in generals or universals; but whenever we descend into the sphere of particulars, we hesitate not to find fault. Man is a wonderful, a perfect work of God: it is impossible for a human mind to conceive an improvement in the general structure of a human body but when we select any individual man or woman, we say, "this man's shoulders are too narrow, his head is too small, his feet are too large, his legs are too thick; that woman has too large a head, her eyes are too small, her nose is too long, her hand is too broad and her fingers too short; if she were six inches taller she would be much improved." We criticise every particular lion, tiger, bull or cow, horse or dog, after a similar fashion; and the botanist finds it a difficult endeavour to procure a very satisfactory specimen of any particular plant. In other words, though the works of God are perfect in universals, they are not so in particulars. Now, this is a beautiful, a glorious truth, of such importance that it ought to be indelibly engraved on every human heart. It contains the very seed of wisdom. The unconsciousness of this truth, the want of a sufficient appreciation of its value, or forgetfulness of it in treating of subjects to the solution of which it is the appropriate key, has

inade many a talented man seem feeble in attempting to solve a very simple problem. The superficial opinion of all the world, apparently for want of thought, on this question, is, that every individual or particular divine production must be perfect in the common sense of the word; and what is not perfect they ascribe equivocally to Nature, or any other cause but God—a habit of mind which, logically developed, leads a man to its natural ultimate, practical and theoretical atheism; for, seeing nothing around him that is absolutely perfect or free from defect, he seeks for the cause in an imperfect agent, and goes no farther when he has found it.

Were God's particular works all and alike perfect, there would be neither learning nor progress, no improvement, no amendment, no desire to improve or amend, and, therefore, no industry, no activity, no motive whatever even for action. God's works are a graduated scale of better and worse, like a musical gamut, with greater and lesser concords and innumerable discords. Perfection belongs to the whole collectively, never to any of the parts. It is not any particular note that makes the music; it is the accords and varieties of notes in union and succession. One sound may be more pleasing than another, but each is disagreeable in continuous utterance without combination with its opposites and counterparts. Yet God made all these various sounds, with all their grating as well as pleasing combinations. Supposing a man of the school above