m.
Judging from his own serene, unclouded, and practical vision of the
truth, one is driven to the conclusion that he is proclaiming and
formulating the ultimate gospel of mankind.

Some may sneer and scoff at his "deadly notions" and "perverted
thoughts," but in his demand for personal life, development of
conscience, and attainment in righteousness, his ministry is potent; its
inspiration is constant. He believes and preaches only those truths
which are possible to rational belief. With that exquisite instinct
which characterizes all his thinking, he places, as if he were in
apostolic succession, man's greatest need in coming to himself and in
making religion inseparable from personal thought and character. Mr.
Savage holds this forth as man's paramount task, to refuse which is
alone to be faithless and hopeless and unforgiven. His idea of religion
consists in nothing external or formal; nothing can avail with him but
the culture of the soul and the quiet discharge of duty. It is his
superlative merit that he enables one to feel his own capacity of
thought as a positive and independent efficacy, and to rest upon the
authority of his own conscience as the hope of glory and as a
cooerdinating power with Holy Writ. He makes a broad survey of human
nature, and commands men to traverse the whole range of their being and
to call themselves to rigid account until the germs of moral debility
are cast out of the heart. Man is not to waste his energies in grasping
the immense and misty proportions of the beliefs of this or that
traditionist or minute systems to which souls are often bent in
unwilling conformity. The object of his ministry is to summon men to
reckon with themselves every day, and to regenerate themselves by right
thinking and by deeds of piety. In his opinion each person is a
spiritual agency, a marvellous display of divine power and goodness, not
only in the majesty of the truth which he apprehends, but in the dignity
of the life which he may live. Temptation may open its alluring paths,
evil may solicit us, sin may lead us astray, sorrow may drag us down;
yet they need not. His public ministry is devoted to the infusion of
this better sentiment,--that man is not the mere victim of
circumstances, the necessary prey of temptation, or the helpless subject
of wrong; that he need not contemplate life in indolent despair, but may
check the dominion of sin and impurity, rise above not only intemperate
indulgence, bu