"Lord, how far shall I go, and then be let off?" In the mind of our great Master, he who had come upon the unutterable secret of life, how paltry and unworthy a book-keeping morality appeared! How often forgive my brother! He who dates his being in God, as I do, for whom the Heavenly Father ordained the same mystery of being, that is in me! How often forgive him, child of that God whose forgiveness we must all seek for broken lives and wounded will, for sins against the light and in the light! How swift am I with self-pity, excusings, self-justifyings before my fallen ideals and accusing life angels and do I ask how many times am I to be merciful to others? A quality of soul, not a quantity of acts, is mercy, whose measure is eternal, whose centre is in no human outlook of mine and thine, but in the Infinite bosom of the Divine Mercy. In thought we put ourselves in God's place, and in action do as God would do in our place. This was Jesus' meaning in "seventy times seven." And what a transcendant morality is indicated! Is it possible to human nature? Can mortal man treat his brother as does God? Jesus himself is the answer. His life gives us the way. It is a method transfiguring the whole moral law. That method indeed is the culmination of the wonderful prophetic spirit, which hung such lamps in the temple of truth as, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, and strength," and, "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with thy God?" But in Jesus Christ's experience the transition seemed ac complished in which morality ceased to come in the form of requirement, of external law, and became a nature, a luxury, an all controlling happiness and burden of a desire. Let us look into this more closely. What conditions of the life of man are the beginning or cause of the moral idea? Not his physical relations, his place in a world of matter, but chiefly his social relations, his place in a world of men and in the universe of souls. Right and wrong are not abstractions; they are chiefly concerns of man with man. In order to speak the truth, there must be another than ourselves to whom we speak. To be just, or unjust, means rights of other men, implicated in what we may do or refrain from doing. Now there are moral systems which are buildings, set stone on stone, plank over plank, according to laws and by-laws, codes and casuistries. "What ought I to do"? With such a system I must be an elaborate student, and have at my elbow a moral lawyer, a confessor. It is a life of "Thou shalt nots," and "Thou shalts,” a life asking, at every turn, Peter's question, "How many times, or what measure?" Morality of this constructed kind means inevitably a code and a priesthood and, for the individual, ever the questions: "How far shall I go, and then be let off?" "How interpret this or that law, to my own interest?"as the homely proverb has it, "How save my cake and eat my cake?" It is a perpetual conflict between selfishness and legalism. If selfishness overtops, then we have a conscience slipping over the edge of each law with casuistries. If legalism, we have a conscience oppressed, loaded with fears and accusings at every turn. The Pharisee is one type of such a moralist, the worldling is another, the ascetic, fleeing from all society, is another. When Jesus said, "Come unto me, ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest," he addressed souls groaning under legalisms, men and women who wanted to be and do right, but had almost to carry a moral receipt book and priest into their very kitchens and dressing rooms to know how. What despairs, what chills and fevers in their path! All true men feel the failure of such systems and long for liberty. The false men keep the letter of the law and gloze the Commandment with their own interpretation: "Thou shalt have one God only; who Will serve to keep the world thy friend. Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat, Have you ever thought how cheap the ten commandments are? Do not start. They were not cheap to a Hebrew tribe -a semi-barbaric people. They are still adequate for Modocs and Zulus; and for too many of their white brethren in so called Christian lands. But I call them cheap, by the authority of Christ! They are cheap because a man may keep them all and be unlovely, unhuman, stationary. They are cheap, because negative; cheapest of all, because they may positively obstruct character. One may keep them from his youth up, and may ask, "Am I not clear of God, have I not earned eternal life? and am I not even with my fellows?" The Hebrew of the 7th century before Christ had outgrown them; writing in Deuteronomy, "Hear O Israel, Thou shalt love Jehovah;" and reaching out to neighbor and slave a higher justice and mercy, saying, "your Sabbaths are an abomination, righten the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." How much farther were they outgrown by him who made himself of no reputation,"emptied himself" is the true rendering of the words-emptied himself for the sake of the sorrowing, faltering brotherhood of man! Need we state in what manner Jesus used the moral law for inspiration; or how far with him it became a living thing, a thing growing its own branches, putting out its own flowers, scattering its own fruit and seeds; or how he put his "seventy times seven" thought into the old words "right and wrong," and into the old law, "Thou shalt not steal, covet, or kill ?" What does he mean by justice, by truth, by purity? How does he answer the question, "Who is my neighbor?" and the sneer, "This man if he were a prophet would know what manner of woman this is!" Jesus transmuted every relation in which man can stand to man, by including it and them in the household, the family of God! He would fill us, you and me, by virtue of our humanity with the passion of our race. By every joy we know, and every solemn exultation, he would entrance us with a vision of other minds in poverty of that joy, other hearts bereft of a happiness which yet they are capable of and dumbly yearn for. When that spirit characterizes my relation to my fellow man, how out of place is any arithmetic, and how inadequate the question, "what shall I do and then be let off!" Tell me, fond mother, will you ask such a question concerning the babe lying unconscious in your arms? You gave it life; do you now question, with numbers and scales, your moral duties? No! you let the love God gave you for that helpless being move on and flow out, with, no constitution or by-laws. It is a growing thing, that love of yours, and counts sacrifices, pleasures, for your child's sake! Jesus somehow, explain it as you will, felt that way towards every living soul. This affection was its own law and by-law. He discerned and reverenced that within each man, which is made in God's image, and which blindly seeks to live. The proud and wayward, the oppressed and despairing, each in turn he would bless out of a prodigal hope, an incredible faith in the jewel of their humanity. Until seventy times seven! Not cold duty, but inexpressible yearning for their self recognition as God's children, led him to lead the life and speak the words he did. He knew the depth of sin and wrong, their inevitable degradation and ruin, and he knew the worth, the priceless treasure of a life hid in God's. To give himself and all he was, in order to bring others out of that degradation, and into his own blessedness, was the natural outflow of Jesus' love. This was its own law, not "what shall I do and then be let off," but "My meat is to do my Father's will, and finish his work," "Pray ye for more laborers in his harvest!" My Friends, such a spirit-such an all transforming passion of service and self-emptying is the one "unspeakable gift" that Jesus Christ's brief ministry planted, like a heavenly contagion on earth. The course of Christian history, alas, has flowed vagrant enough,the old selfishness and the old legalism turn its sweet current aside, and mar the fields of humanity with their swamps and pools; but, thank God, the heavenly succession has not failed, and what a concourse, beyond imagination, have taken of that living water, received the very likeness of Jesus in their hearts and felt its divine outflow - happy liberty, the luxury of service for love's sake! "He that loseth his life shall find it." O! immeasurable mystery and secret until experienced! That it has been experienced by thousands of thousands, the saints, the martyrs and heroes of our race, is evidence enough of its reality and attainableness, and proof enough that the experience is native to the nature of man. Catholic and Protestant, rich and poor, low and high, oppressed and free, have come into the blessed "law of the Spirit of Life which is in Christ Jesus," and have been truly freed from the law of sin and death. The transcendant gift of Jesus to the world was his estimate of the value and range of the human soul, and his conviction that every son of man is by virtue of nature and election a son of God. His method was to make the immortal experiment and become the "first born among many brethren." His Church Universal is in every heart that catches the divine enthusiasm of Jesus' own faith, saying: "Great Master and greater Brother, let me look with your eyes into God's face, and into my fellow man's." May we see what Christ sees that ought to be done, here and now, and have Christ's faith that it can be done, and share with him the infinite Sympathy and Power of the Ever Present God, in a consecration, and a service, like his own, aspiring from a mortal's measure to the measure of the Angel in us-not seven times but seventy times seven! AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT. The Concord School of Philosophy devoted its one-day session of this year to the memory of its founder, Amos Bronson Alcott. A biographical address was given by Alcott's intimate friend, Mr. Frank B. Sanborn; and an account of his philosophical system was read by Prof. W. T. Harris. Brief addresses were made by Dr. Bartol, Mrs. E. D. Cheney, Rev. Grindall Reynolds, W. L. Garrison, John Albee, and others. The Hillside Chapel was filled, and the gathing was in every way a worthy tribute to a unique character. It did something, perhaps much, towards giving the public a right understanding of this remarkable man and the work he accomplished. In a letter read from Dr. Hedge, Alcott was called our best representative of the spiritual hero. Emerson, with a twinkle in his eye, once said of Alcott, that he set the Darwinian theory on its head. These remarks of his friends indicated how thoroughly Alcott was an idealist, for he was born with a remarkable insight into spiritual facts. He had no eye for the material world; it was the ideal universe alone in which he lived. Alcott occupies a remarkable place in the history of philosophy, not because of the originality or the greatness of his thought; but because he revived a manner of thinking wholly alien to our practical ideas and methods. In a fragmentary way he developed his theory of the universe in the little book called "Table-Talk." The basis of his thought is to be found in Plotinus, Jamblicus, and the neo-Platonists. Some phases of it he caught from Boehme, who was called by him the greatest writer on genesis since Moses. He was also indebted to the English poets and essayists of the seventeenth century, who cultivated the neo-Platonic form of idealism. This method of thinking came to him with a perfect adaptability to the qualities and tendencies of his own mind. He found it out in a fragmen- for improvisation. Alcott deserves to be remembered be- His work as an educator deserves to be mentioned, not because of its direct results, but as a part of the effort of the time to gain a more natural and individual method of instructing the young. In Miss Elizabeth Peabody's "Record of Mr. Alcott's School" is to be found an account of one of the most remarkable of educational experiments. The experiment he made deserves to be ranked with those of Froebel and Pestalozzi, though it was not in any such degree successful. Its aim was in much the same direction, and its methods were not unlike; but Alcott had not the practical talent necessary to establish his school on a working basis. When Alcott set about the task, on the failure of his school, of teaching adults by the means of conversation, he met with much greater success. He was in this way a great talker, and an inspiring leader of conversations. He was not an orator, but a talker, though his talk was nearly always in the form of monologue. He needed the sympathy of other minds, and the stimulus of questions and sharp retorts, to draw out his powers and to awaken his gifts He had grace, beauty, power, inspiration and eloquence when he was once aroused and his mind was in full activity. Emerson on more than one occasion bore testimony to Alcott's conversational gifts, and to the penetration and depth of his thought when he was in the full movement of his inspired utterance. His thought then flowed on with a readiness and amplitude of which his books give no hint, except in a few passages. He did not always leave definite intellectual impressions as the result of his conversations; but he gave his hearers beautiful thoughts and noble impulses. He was listened to gladly by many persons year after year, and to not a few he proved a genuine help. It was not merely what Alcott said which enabled him to influence other minds. His intense idealism and his utter want of practical talent made him the constant butt of the Philistines; and to those who were in sympathy with him it was not easy to follow his otherworldly strain of lofty thought. What helped to attract people to him was his gentleness, his simplicity, his purity and his manliness. He had the manners of a prince, and the distinguished air of a peer. He was a man of the greatest purity of mind; no coarseness, no sensuality, tainted his nature. He could have uttered in any company all that passed through his mind, so thoroughly pure was he in sentiment and in thought. He had a remarkable evenness and serenity of temper. It might be said that he was wanting in temper, but that he was manly and robust in his character. The reader of Alcott's books will not find them equal to his genius, and yet they deserve to stand on the same shelf with those of Emerson, Thoreau, Burroughs and Whitman. Those now published by Roberts Brothers are the "Record of Mr. Alcott's School," "Tablets," "Table-Talk," "Concord Days," "Sonnets and Canzonets," and "New Connecticut." The volume of "Conversations on the Gospels," being reports of a series of conversations in the Temple school, is not now in print. His little volume on "Emerson: Philosopher and Seer," is to be reprinted in September by Cupples and Hurd. It is an affectionate and noble account of his friend, first printed many years ago as a birthday tribute, and enlarged after Emerson's death. It also contains his "Jon: a Monody," a beautiful poetic tribute to Emerson. This book, more than any other which Alcott published, shows his highest quality as a writer and most nearly resembles his conversational manners. Alcott had but a limited poetical range. Verse cumbered him; he could not make it a means of free movement and flight. His style was crude and his manner tame. His poetical volumes, however, have an interest other than that of the poetry they contain. His "Sonnets and Canzonets" is a series of tributes to his friends, Furness, Emerson, Harris, Sanborn, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Bartol, Phillips, and others. In these poems the verse may be crude, but the characterization is just and true. His "New Connecticut" is an account of his own boyhood and of his early experiences with the world. It was intended as the beginning of a poetical biography, but his failing health compelled its abandonment. It is a quaint and interesting book, full of the memories of a by-gone time, and showing how a moral and spiritual hero was developed in the midst of simple and homely scenes. The book was edited by Mr. Sanborn, who drew from Alcott's diaries much rich and valuable matter illustrative of his early life, and has given it to the reader in the form of a long series of interesting notes. The whole makes a volume of unique value and interest, which is deserving of a much wider reading than it has yet received. In his "Tablets," "Table-Talk," and "Concord Days," Alcott presents himself to his reader as a thinker. These volumes have an interest of their own; they are unlike anything else we have in American literature. They have something of the out-door flavor of Thoreau's books, but they have also a literary and bookish character wanting to his. They are full of quotations of a kind not to be met with elsewhere, which give value and charm to these pages. One must turn to the "Religio Medici," "The Complete Angler," or "The Anatomy of Melancholy," to find books like these. It is reasonably sure that Alcott's books will last as long as those of Burton, Browne, and Walton, and have the same kind of readers and the same enduring charm and delight. These are good books for serious and thoughtful hours, not for continuous reading, but as the means of giving direction and tone to one's own meditations. In bringing this brief paper to a close I cannot refrain from a more distinctively personal word of tribute. For a period of two or three years I met Mr. Alcott frequently, learned to admire him, and to appreciate his unworldliness, his purity and his serenity of character. His name had long been associated with those of the men I had greatly admired,― Parker, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and also with Margaret Fuller. He told me much of these persons, and with an interest in all which concerned them that was delightful. He welcomed me to his study as if I were an old friend; and he seemed ever glad to meet with younger persons who cared for ideas and who had been influenced by his great friend Emerson. If he sometimes seemed to be egotistical, I found that it was an impersonal egotism, and not any merely selfish delight in his own achievements. He talked in a charming manner of his own past, of the friends he had known so well, of his own intellectual theories, of the rare and quaint books he had about him, and of his own family and neighbors. He looked the seer that he was; and he spoke in a manner that made me feel I had been in a great presence. Dedham, Mass. GEO. W. COOKE. JUDAS MACCABÆUS. Between the closing of the Old Testament and the opening of the New, lies a space of about four hundred years. It was a long, weary time of oppressions and misfortunes, but it is lighted up by one of the noblest incidents in history, |