intelligible to the world at large, and will require nothing but common sense to determine their weight and strength. In works of this kind authors neglect, perhaps rather too much, to speak the language of their readers. It is necessary to be a scholar with a scholar, and a poet with a poet. The Almighty does not forbid us to tread the flowery path, if it serves to lead the wanderer once more to him; nor is it always by the steep and rugged mountain that the lost sheep finds its way back to the fold.

We think that this mode of considering Christianity displays associations of ideas which are but imperfectly known. Sublime in the antiquity of its recollections, which go back to the creation of the world, ineffable in its mysteries, adorable in its sacraments, interesting in its history, celestial in its morality, rich and attractive in its ceremonial, it is fraught with every species of beauty. Would you follow it in poetry? Tasso, Milton, Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, will depict to you its miraculous effects. In the belles-lettres, in eloquence, history, and philosophy, what have not Bossuet, Fénélon, Massillon, Bourdaloue, Bacon, Pascal, Euler, Newton, Leibnitz, produced by its divine inspiration! In the arts, what master-pieces! If you examine it in its worship, what ideas are suggested by its antique Gothic churches, its admirable prayers, its impressive ceremonies! Among its clergy, behold all those scholars who have handed down to you the languages and the works of Greece and Rome; all those anchorets of Thebais; all those asylums for the unfortunate; all those missionaries to China, to Canada, to Paraguay; not forgetting the military orders whence chivalry derived its origin. Every thing has been engaged in our cause-the manners of our ancestors, the pictures of days of yore, poetry, even romances themselves. We have called smiles from the cradle, and tears from the tomb. Sometimes, with the Maronite monk, we dwell on the summits of Carmel and Lebanon; at others we watch with the Daughter of Charity at the bedside of the sick. Here two American lovers summon us into the recesses of their deserts; there we listen to the sighs of the virgin in the solitude

The author alludes to the very beautiful and pathetic tale of Atala, or The Love and Constancy of Two Savages in the Desert, which was at first introduced into the present work, but was afterward detached from it. T.

of the cloister. Homer takes his place by Milton, and Virgil beside Tasso; the ruins of Athens and of Memphis form contrasts with the ruins of Christian monuments, and the tombs of Ossian with our rural churchyards. At St. Dennis we visit the ashes of kings; and when our subject requires us to treat of the existence of God, we seek our proofs in the wonders of Nature alone. In short, we endeavor to strike the heart of the infidel in every possible way; but we dare not flatter ourselves that we possess the miraculous rod of religion which caused living streams to burst from the flinty rock.

Four parts, each divided into six books, compose the whole of our work. The first treats of dogma and doctrine. The second and third comprehend the poetic of Christianity, or its connection with poetry, literature, and the arts. The fourth embraces its worship,—that is to say, whatever relates to the ceremonies of the Church, and to the clergy, both secular and regular. We have frequently compared the precepts, doctrines, and worship of other religions with those of Christianity; and, to gratify all classes of readers, we have also occasionally touched upon the historical and mystical part of the subject. Having thus stated the general plan of the work, we shall now enter upon that portion of it which treats of Dogma and Doctrine, and, as a preliminary step to the consideration of the Christian mysteries, we shall institute an inquiry into the nature of mysterious things in general

CHAPTER II.

OF THE NATURE OF MYSTERIES.

THERE is nothing beautiful, pleasing, or grand in life, but that which is more or less mysterious. The most wonderful sentiments are those which produce impressions difficult to be explained. Modesty, chaste love, virtuous friendship, are full of secrets. It would seem that half a word is sufficient for the mutual understanding of hearts that love, and that they are, as were, disclosed to each other's view. Is not innocence, also,

it

which is nothing but a holy ignorance, the most ineffable of mysteries? If infancy is so happy, it is owing to the absence of knowledge; and if old age is so wretched, it is because it knows every thing; but, fortunately for the latter, when the mysteries of life are at an end, those of death commence.

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What we say here of the sentiments may be said also of the virtues the most angelic are those which, emanating immediately from God, such as charity, studiously conceal themselves, like their source, from mortal view.

If we pass to the qualities of the mind, we shall find that the pleasures of the understanding are in like manner secrets. Mystery is of a nature so divine, that the early inhabitants of Asia conversed only by symbols. What science do we continually apply, if not that which always leaves something to be conjectured, and which sets before our eyes an unbounded prospect? If we wander in the desert, a kind of instinct impels us to avoid the plains, where we can embrace every object at a single glance; we repair to those forests, the cradle of religion,—those forests whose shades, whose sounds, and whose silence, are full of wonders, those solitudes, where the first fathers of the Church were fed by the raven and the bee, and where those holy men tasted such inexpressible delights, as to exclaim, "Enough, O Lord! I will be overpowered if thou dost not moderate thy divine communications." We do not pause at the foot of a modern monument; but if, in a desert island, in the midst of the wide ocean, we come all at once to a statue of bronze, whose extended arm points to the regions of the setting sun, and whose base, covered with hieroglyphics, attests the united ravages of the billows and of time, what a fertile source of meditation is here opened to the traveller! There is nothing in the universe but what is hidden, but what is unknown. Is not man himself an inexplicable mystery? Whence proceeds that flash of lightning which we call existence, and in what night is it about to be extinguished? The Almighty has stationed Birth and Death, under the form of veiled phantoms, at the two extremities of our career; the one produces the incomprehensible moment of life, which the other uses every exertion to destroy.

Considering, then, the natural propensity of man to the mysterious, it cannot appear surprising that the religions of all na

tions should have had their impenetrable secrets. The Selli studied the miraculous words of the doves of Dodona ;1 India, Persia, Ethiopia, Scythia, the Gauls, the Scandinavians, had their caverns, their holy mountains, their sacred oaks, where the Brahmins, the Magi, the Gymnosophists, or the Druids, proclaimed the inexplicable oracle of the gods.

Heaven forbid that we should have any intention to compare these mysteries with those of the true religion, or the inscrutable decrees of the Sovereign of the Universe with the changing ambiguities of gods, "the work of human hands." We merely wished to remark that there is no religion without mysteries; these, with sacrifices, constitute the essential part of worship. God himself is the great secret of Nature. The Divinity was represented veiled in Egypt, and the sphinx was seated upon the threshold of the temples."

CHAPTER III.

OF THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES.

The Trinity.

WE perceive at the first glance, that, in regard to mysteries, the Christian religion has a great advantage over the religions of antiquity. The mysteries of the latter bore no relation to man, and afforded, at the utmost, but a subject of reflection to the philosopher or of song to the poet. Our mysteries, on the con

1 They were an ancient people of Epirus, and lived near Dodona. At that place there was a celebrated temple of Jupiter. The oracles were said to be delivered from it by doves endowed with a human voice. Herodotus relates that a priestess was brought hither from Egypt by the Phoenicians; so the story of the doves might arise from the ambiguity of the Greek term Пɛλɛca, which signifies a dove, in the general language, but in the dialect of Epirus it means an aged woman. K.

2 Wisdom, ch. xiii. v. 10.

The Sphinx, a monstrous creature of Egyptian invention, was the just emblem of mystery, as, according to the Grecian mythology, she not only infested Boeotia with her depredations, but perplexed its inhabitants, not famed for their acuteness, with her enigmas. K.

trary, speak directly to the heart; they comprehend the secrets. of our existence. The question here is not about a futile arrangement of numbers, but concerning the salvation and felicity of the human race. Is it possible for man, whom daily experience so fully convinces of his ignorance and frailty, to reject the mysteries of Jesus Christ? They are the mysteries of the unfortunate!

The Trinity, which is the first mystery presented by the Christian faith, opens an immense field for philosophic study, whether we consider it in the attributes of God, or examine the vestiges of this dogma, which was formerly diffused throughout the East. It is a pitiful mode of reasoning to reject whatever we cannot comprehend. It would be easy to prove, beginning even with the most simple things in life, that we know absolutely nothing; shall we, then, pretend to penetrate into the depths of divine Wisdom?

The Trinity was probably known to the Egyptians. The Greek inscription on the great obelisk in the Circus Major, at Rome, was to this effect:

Μέγας θεός, The Mighty God; Θεογένητος, the Begotten of God; Ilaugerris, the All-Resplendent, (Apollo, the Spirit.) Heraclides of Pontus, and Porphyry, record a celebrated oracle of Serapis :

Πρῶτα Θεός, μετέπειτα λόγος και πνεῦμα σὺν αὐτοῖς.

Σύμφυτα δὴ τρία πάντα, καὶ εἰς ἑν ιόντα.

"In the beginning was God, then the Word and the Spirit; all three produced together, and uniting in one."

The Magi had a sort of Trinity, in their Metris, Oromasis, and Araminis; or Mitra, Oramases, and Arimane.

Plato seems to allude to this incomprehensible dogma in several of his works. "Not only is it alleged," says Dacier, "that he had a knowledge of the Word, the eternal Son of God, but it is also asserted that he was acquainted with the Holy Ghost, and thus had some idea of the Most Holy Trinity; for he writes as follows to the younger Dionysius:—

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"I must give Archedemus an explanation respecting what is infinitely more important and more divine, and what you are extremely anxious to know, since you have sent him to me for the express purpose; for, from what he has told me, you are of opi