diverted from the work which I have now undertaken, I would practically teach you, that, with a mind unconcerned about the things of this life, we should never be unfurnished with devout and proper thoughts in the mind of God in all our trials." He goes on to give what he calls the "Cartesian account " of thunder, and then his own; which is, "that with the Vegetable Matter protruded by the Subterraneous Fire, and exhaled also by the Force of the Sun in the Vapor that makes our Shower, a Mineral Matter of Nitre and Sulphur does also extend into the Atmosphere, and there it goes off with fierce explosions." (These three would be the proper ingredients for gunpowder.) Then, at last, he passes to God, whose voice the thunder is, and so to the law of God; then to the future coming of God; then to the fear of God; then to self-examination; then to those sins which thunder punishes; then to the word of God; and, lastly, to thankfulness.

"Such a serious thankfulness manifested in an answerable fruitfulness will be a better shelter to us from the mischiefs of the thunder than the crowns of laurels, or the tents of seal leather, whereby some old emperors counted themselves protected; or than all the amulets of superstition."

So the sermon ends. It is crowded full with scraps of Latin, and occupied perhaps an hour and a half in its delivery. Its science is antiquated. But that is no fault of Mather's. All science grows old in time. But it is remarkable because it shows the spirit, almost of effrontery, certainly of patronage and condescending authority, with which Mather and other preachers of his time looked upon their people.

In other things the same spirit appeared. Thus, if a poor girl were charged with witchcraft, Cotton Mather led the hue and cry against her.

If a poor pirate were to be hanged, Cotton Mather, or the minister called upon to teach him, made it an occasion to promote his own honor before the people.

In a matter about the College, he tells coolly that his father appointed all the Governor's Council of the time. And so many misfortunes, sicknesses, and sudden deaths does he relate, as judgments inflicted by God, that he seems the chronicler of all evil in his day.

But such assumption of dignity and authority could not last, in a time when men could read. It was only possible in a state like Massachusetts, which had owed every thing to its religion, and much, therefore, to its clergy. It was a stage of society which existed only to give place to a better. The pictures of the time show how New England, between its eager devotional settlement and our active days, passed through a period of set, dry, formal, heartless display of religion. The Protestant countries of Europe had a like experience, which they did not pass through so safely. From such fanaticism there comes next irreligion, carelessness, and contempt for sacred things. But with us, just as that result came on, the American Revolution broke out. It started thought and compelled it. It gave freedom everywhere else, and it was impossible it should not have given it in religion. On the clear field, then, which the dry formalism of the first half of the century had left, a field which the ardent flame of Whitefield had once burned over, every man in New England

was able to plough, to plant, and to reap for himself. Every man of thought and of faith did so. And there sprung up that multitude of sects, that eagerness of religious opinion, that willingness to inquire,— which makes the religious aspect of the New England of today. New England will never again leave its religion or its thinking to its clergy only. It has gone through that lesson, and will not need to learn it in the future.

THE men of the nineteenth century have wasted much time and power in abusing the eighteenth.

Yet we cannot help adding a word more, to say, that, dead as the religion of New England was through the beginning of that century, that of Europe was even more cold, formal, and heartless.

The Wesleys and Whitefield in England made a gallant effort to rouse the people of England to feel that they had living souls, and that religion was not wholly satisfied with the paying of tithes, or receiving them.

Occasionally a philanthropic man started up, and showed the cruelties and inhumanities of jails, of debtor laws, or of the marching Highland villagers into exile. In such a case he became a person to be studied, as an interesting specimen, by the philosophers of the century. If he was of good manners and agreeable con

versation, and could tell pleasant stories, as Howard could, about the Empress of Russia or the Electors of Germany, he would have a chance of being fashionable. The world was interested in him, as in the last elephant exhibited. For it moved along as if it were looking at a great museum. It analyzed every thing. It asked very curious questions, and learned a great many facts. It found out what air was made of, and how far the earth was from the sun. And when it had found the fact, it kept it as a child on the sea-shore keeps a shell. While it was new, it was precious. But, tired with the weight, as the world went on, it was always eager for new facts, and would let the old go without doing any thing with them; and then treat the new like the old, in their turn.

Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish philosopher, was one of the few men who lifted himself, or got lifted, above this baby-play of his time. He began, as the students of his time all did, in pulling things to pieces, -in analyzing, as their phrase is. The men of that day devoted themselves to analysis. They began with pulling to pieces flowers and crystals. They ended, in the French Revolution and the philosophy which led to it, in pulling to pieces kingdoms, and systems of thought, and philosophy, and religions. Swedenborg began by studying natural philosophy. He was a great miner and engineer. He helped Charles the Twelfth, a mad soldier of his time, in his sieges and wars. research which he was afraid of. And so

anatomical research, with great success.

There was no

he went on, in

He could tell

of fibres of muscle which no one had dissected out be

fore. And at last he aimed at the most daring of discoveries, the finding by his anatomy and observation what Life was made of. He had "expected," says Sir J. G. Wilkinson, "that the kingdom of God would come upon him in the shape of clear principles deduced from all human knowledge. His expectations were fulfilled, not simply, but marvellously.”

It was in the course of this investigation that the light came to him, that life is something above machinery. This is a revelation which most people can get from the Bible, if they do not have it in their own hearts. But to Swedenborg it came as a supernatural revelation, which he supposed came from God himself.

"I was in London," he says, in describing its first demonstration to him, "and dined late at my usual quarters, where I had engaged a room in which at pleasure to prosecute my studies in natural philosophy. I was hungry, and ate with great appetite. Towards the end of the meal, I remarked that a kind of mist spread before my eyes, and I saw the floor of my room covered with hideous reptiles, such as serpents, toads, and the like. I was astonished, having all my wits about me, and being perfectly conscious. The darkness attained its height, and then passed away. I now saw a man sitting in a corner of the chamber. As I had thought myself entirely alone, I was greatly frightened when he said to me, 'Eat not so much!' My sight again became dim, but when I recovered it I found myself alone in my room. The unexpected alarm hastened my return home. I did not suffer my landlord to perceive that any thing had happened; but thought it over