Shakspeare; still less will any man again be worshipped as a
personal god. Let the newcomer be never so great, there is now a
greatness in public thought to dwarf his proportions. He antedated all
discoveries who first uttered the sacred name. That ray on darkness
tells. Now we have nations of philosophers, thought flies like
thistle-down, and the sublime speculations of the fore-world are
cradle-songs and first spelling-lessons to excite the guesses of every
barefooted boy. In early ages men met face to face with Nature, and
spent their strength directly in questioning her. Now the work of God is
overlaid. Every blunder is a rock in our field, and at last the field is
a stone-heap of blunders, and our giants have work enough to reach any
ground in the unsophisticated facts of life. We set no limit to the
revolutionary power of truth; in happy hour it may sweep away doctrine
and usage, supplant systems by songs, and governments by Love. Yet the
first men were able to cleave the world to its centre, and predict the
last results. We only enlarge their openings. Schools follow schools,
Eclecticism comes with its band into the field to gather every ear; but
Plato stands smiling behind, and holds in his hands that simple divided
line, the image of all we know.

Who can wonder at the authority of the ancients, unbowed by an antiquity
behind? Freedom from authority gave their directness, their simplicity,
their superiority to misgiving and second thought, their confident "Thus
saith the Lord."

We boast our enlightenment, but now the best minds are in question
whether we have not lost as much by the ancients as we have gained.
Plainly, they have not yet done their own work, have not given us to
ourselves and to God. They should have been less or greater; they did
not quite liberate, but became oppressors of the mind. To this
misfortune we begin to find a single exception. Jesus, with his primal
doctrine of a divine humanity, will now at last avail to be understood,
will deliver us from every teacher to a Father in the heavens, and put
us in direct communication with Him through the moral sense. After so
many blind centuries, his truth breaks out, draws us to him from the
misunderstanding of his followers, and refers from himself to the
sources of his incomparable life.

Two men of our time are the primitive Christians,--not known for such,
because their springs open, with those of the Master, not in any
character, but in t