fter of the human race in this present life. Dr. Brownson has
himself given a statement of the views which he held and inculcated
between 1834 and 1843--which includes the period we are at present
considering--and it is so brief and to the point that we cannot do
better than to quote it:

"I found in me," he writes (_The Convert,_p. 111), "certain religious
sentiments that I could not efface; certain religious beliefs or
tendencies, of which I could not divest myself. I regarded them as a
law of my nature, as natural to man, as the noblest part of our
nature, and as such I cherished them; _but as the expression in me of
an objective world, I seldom pondered them._ I found them universal,
manifesting themselves, in some form, wherever man is found; but I
received them, _or supposed I received them,_ on the authority of
humanity or human nature, and professed to hold no religion except
that of humanity. I had become a believer in humanity, and put
humanity in the place of God. The only God I recognized was the
divine in man, the divinity of humanity, one alike with God and with
man, which I supposed to be the real meaning of the Christian
doctrine of the Incarnation, the mystery of Emmanuel, or God with
us--God manifest in the flesh. There may be an unmanifested God, and
certainly is; but the only God who exists for us is the God in man,
the active and living principle of human nature.

"I regarded Jesus Christ as divine in the sense in which all men are
divine, and human in the sense in which all men are human. I took him
as my model man, and regarded him as a moral and social reformer, who
sought, by teaching the truth under a religious envelope, and
practising the highest and purest morality, to meliorate the earthly
condition of mankind; but I saw nothing miraculous in his conception
or birth, nothing supernatural in his person or character, in his
life or doctrine. He came to redeem the world, as does every great
and good man, and deserved to be held in universal honor and esteem
as one who remained firm to the truth amid every trial, and finally
died on the cross, a martyr to his love of mankind. As a social
reformer, as one devoted to the progress and well-being of man in
this world, I thought I might liken myself to him and call myself by
his name. I called myself a Christian, not because I took him for my
master, not because I believed all he believed or taught, but
because, like him, I was laboring to introduc