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deed relish "the smell of the earth, and the breath of cattle,' but they also care for something besides, and so contrive to dignify and elevate them; while the German, with all his love and pathos, is often too redolent of bread and butter.

Mr. Emerson says, moreover, that when the Englishman "is intellectual, and a poet or a philosopher, he carries the same hard truth and the same keen machinery into the mental sphere. His mind must stand on a fact. He will not be baffled or catch at clouds, but the mind must have a symbol palpable and resisting." Again, "The Saxon materialism and narrowness, exalted into the sphere of intellect, makes the very genius of Shakespeare and Milton. When it reaches the pure element, it treads the clouds as securely as the adamant. Even in its elevations, materialistic, its poetry is common sense inspired; or iron raised to white heat." Mr. Emerson is quite at fault in this apparently plausible criticism. The quality which he calls materialistic is not narrow nor hard, but is the prime essential of imaginative genius. It is what Coleridge calls so felicitously "sensuousness," or the power of painting vividly to the mind's eye, without which there can be nothing that is properly imaginative. It is not peculiarly English. It lends the incomparable charm which is conspicuous on the pictured page of Homer, each of whose epithets is an outline drawing, and so many of whose paragraphs are finished paintings. It gives to Goethe the power which holds us to his pages, fascinates us with his exquisite language, more than half reconciles us to his uncertain speculations, and his worse than dubious morality. In Emerson himself, it lends a borrowed clearness to the vaguest and most intangible of speculations, and gives to gross and glaring absurdities the semblance and charm of a pithy common sense.

But we do not care to follow Mr. Emerson English literature is open to just criticism on certain points. any farther. It lacks finish and elegance, ease and grace. It is not in the abstract and highest sense of the word, philosophical; but it is fraught with speculative truth in unphilosophical phrase and unwrought forms, as well as with stores of practical wisdom. It yields to the German in reach and reliableness of knowledge, and in bold and patient thinking, in a certain etherealness and elevation of feeling, and perhaps in impassioned fire of expres sion: but the fact is significant, that the Germans of the present day admire the English writers with a more complete satisfaction than the English admire the Germans. When the Englishman reads the German poet or novelist, he is excited to reach after and expect what he does not find. When the German

reads the English book, he finds what he seeks for, and is satisfied with what he finds. We have never been more proud of the English genius, and justified in our pride, than as we have seen its manifest power and sway over the Germans, slow as some among the Germans are to confess this deference, and slow as some of us are to perceive it.

We have dwelled too long, perhaps, on this work of Mr. Emerson, and may perhaps have seemed to be unjust to its truth and its beauty. We have not designed to be. But while we admire its genius and are delighted by its humor, we cannot forget that this kind of graphic power is not of the highest order, excellent as it may be in its kind. Mr. Emerson draws his pictures in the "monochromatic style." We like the fine gradations of light and shade in a just and finished drawing, better than here a spot of light and there of darkness, however effectively or humorously grouped and arranged. He seems to us to be not quite enough in earnest, except in his negations -not quite clear, except in his rejections. We would that, in some not unimportant respects, he were more of an Englishman-that he would be no less speculative than he aims to be in his philosophy, but somewhat more clear in its applications, not a whit less religious or believing than he gives himself out to be, but not so sublimely and superciliously contemptuous of the sincerity and intelligence of those who hold a more positive faith. We commend to him the saying of the old Hebrew bard, "Blessed is the man who sitteth not in the seat of the scornful."

ART. VIII-GOD ON THE SIDE OF THE OPPRESSED.

GOD is actually at work in the unfoldings of history, and has an eye especially upon the weak and the oppressed. By his interposition, in manifold cases, the oppressed have been delivered, and the rod of the oppressor has been broken. No small part of the world's history is made up of the facts and developments wrought into the world's experience by oppression. From that ominous scene enacted on the borders of Paradise, when human blood was first shed by human wrath, until now, the spirit of oppression has contributed to fill this world with woe. In its thousand degrees of harshness, from the envious and domineering cruelty of Sarah, revenging herself upon her handmaid, to the cool-blooded, mercenary atrocity of the tropical slave-dealer, this spirit of oppression has cursed our race. And surely that must be a more than human discernment, which can see, either in nature or in revelation, a warrant for the existence and reign of such a spirit, among men. He who will coolly come to the task of proving from nature, or from the Bible, that oppression is God's choice and preference, and stands approved by Him as a good and not an evil in the social economy, whether he be politician or theologian, betrays an utter misapprehension of the first principles of Christianity, and a great want of the nobler instincts and qualities of humanity.

One who reads the history of the world with a discerning eye, sees clearly that against no other single manifestation of the devil has the restraining force of him who rules on high been more constantly employed than against this spirit of oppression. The supernatural developments which signalized the release of Israel from their hard bondage in Egypt, indicate to us the current of Divine sympathy in respect to oppression wherever it bears sway. And though no other Divine interposition has been so marked and miraculous as that which sent the marshaled tribes of Jacob in triumph and joy before the doomed cohorts of Pharaoh, yet by his unseen forces, silently working out his will, God has many times as really rebuked this spirit of oppression, and as effectually delivered the oppressed. Whether by turning the cruel counsels of Haman against himself; or by constraining a Cyrus to become a willing agent; or by uniting the fleets of Europe, and pouring their

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iron hail upon the Turk; or in whatever way He has at different times effected the deliverance of the oppressed, his mark of disapprobation has been set against that unchristian and inhuman spirit which robs one man of his rights for the pleasure or the profit of another. To suppose that by any possible interpretation the providence of God can be fairly construed into an approval or a justification of oppression, is to reverse the entire code of Christian ethics, and cut adrift from the only safe anchorage in the sea of human opinion.

In

When we say, therefore, that God is not in favor of oppression between man and man, we cannot doubt that the unprejudiced judgment of every reader is with us. God, in history, is really and manifestly against this perversion of the social order first established by himself; and God in revelation speaks with unmistakable directness in condemnation of every species of this sin. In history we deem it not the less a Divine intervention-not the less a rebuke of God for the perversion of his ordinance when he works by silent forces, than when he works by startling revolutions, in breaking the oppressor's rod. Nor is it the less true, that God arises for the sighing of the oppressed, because he hangs before himself the veil of human instrumentality. He works by means in the natural world; and it is only a shallow and heartless skepticism that doubts the reality and ceaseless activity of the Divine power in nature, because in her operations God is not visible to the eye of sense. In the moral world, too, God works by means. all the social and political changes which occur in our land, and in every land, he works; and his working is as real, when by a happy confluence of moral or social influences he brings deliverance, without bloodshed, to the oppressed, as when by insurrections and carnage he deals out anguish and death to the oppressor. It is the same God, in the use of the same almighty power, who with his noiseless frost and dews slowly disintegrates the mountain, or with his pent up fire makes that mountain quiver in convulsions. In history, as in nature, his forces are diverse in their operations. His footsteps may be as clearly discerned in those milder and more silent changes that have passed upon the tribes and nations of men, as in the insurrections, carnage and bloody strifes that blacken the records of the past. He is by no means confined or limited to insurrections and civil wars with their attendant horrors, as the means by which to effect the deliverance of the oppressed.

A more palpable Divine interposition for the oppressed is not on record, than that by which the Lord stirred the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, that he made proclamation of good will

to all the captive Israelites in his realm who were disposed to take their liberty as a free gift, and return to the land of their fathers. Nor was it less obviously God, working in this interesting event of history, who brought it to pass, that when "the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin" began to make ready for their return to the city of their pride, then, "all they that were about them helped them with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods and with beasts, and with precious things." Here was no carnage, no hostile attitude between the oppressor and the oppressed, no hot and angry words to pierce like arrows, and lie festering in the wounds they made. And yet this peaceful and bloodless deliverance of a captive people from their thraldom to a monarch whose boast was that all the kingdoms of the earth were subject to him, is the event referred to, as some believe, when the Lord by the lips of his messenger said: "For the oppression of the poor-for the sighing of the needy now will I arise." Whether this language had special reference to the event in question or not, we see in the event itself an instance of God's interposition for the oppressed. By many such instances, to be found in the records of the past, and in the written revelation of His will, God has evinced a sympathy with the oppressed, and a purpose to break ultimately the rod of every oppressor. We fully believe, and recognize it as an important item in every Christian creed, that what was thus accomplished for the oppressed Israelities will sooner or later be accomplished for the oppressed of every land who sigh for Divine interposition.

Passing events seem to indicate that an interposition is now in progress by which God will ultimately cause oppression in this land to cease. We claim no superhuman insight into the future of this or any other people. The gift of prophecy has ceased. Excited passion may lead the controversialist and the partisan to speak with an air of assurance, where modesty, to say nothing of Christian humility, would dictate other language. When we say that passing events indicate a Divine interposition for the oppressed in this nation, we have reference only to what is before us, as matter of fact, in the aspect of public affairs. Our confidence as to the final result, rests in God, and is sustained by his clearly revealed purposes. Whether this result will come now, or a generation hence, or in after time, we say not with assurance. Whether, when it comes, it will come like the dew of a summer morning, wrought into a visible form of beauty, by those silent forces in which God works; or like the prostrate oak, riven and blasted for all time by the flash of God's eye of wrath, it is not for us to say.

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