been fed with dust out of the same catechism, our
unity will disgust and weary us rather than invigorate. Dr. Johnson said
he would compel men to believe as he and the Church of England did,
"because," he reasoned, "if another differs from me, he weakens my
confidence in my own scheme of faith, and so injures me." Now this
speech is good just so far as it asserts social dependence in belief; it
is bad, it is idiotic or insane, so far as it advocates the substitution
of a factitious and artificial unity for one of spiritual depth and
reality. The fruits of the tree of life are not to be successfully
thieved. In dishonest hands they become ashes and bitterness. He who has
more faith in an Act of Parliament than in God and the universe may be a
good conventional believer; but, in truth, the choice he makes is the
essence of all denial and even of all atheism and blasphemy.

Let each, then, bring up out of his own soul its purest, broadest,
simplest faith; and when any ten or ten thousand find that the same
faith has come to birth in their several souls, each one of them all
will be exalted to a divine confidence, and will make new requisitions
upon the soul which he has so been taught to trust. Thus, though we tell
each nothing new, though we merely demonstrate our unity of
consciousness, yet is the force of each many times multiplied,--dimless
certitude and dauntless courage being bred in hearts where before,
perhaps, were timorous hesitation and wavering.

The third service of words may be compared to the help which the smith
renders to the fire on his forge. True it is that no blowing can
enkindle dead coals, and make a flame where was no spark. True it is
that both spark and bellows will be vain, if the fuel is stone or clay.
And so no blowing will enkindle a nature which does not bring in itself
the fire to be fanned and the substance that may support it. But in our
being, as at the forge, the flame that languishes may be taught to leap,
and the spark that was hidden may be wrought into blaze.

Simple attraction and encouragement,--there is somewhat of the
marvellous in their effects. Physiologists tell us, that, if two liquids
in the body are separated by a moist membrane, and if one of these
fluids be in motion and the other at rest, that which rests will of its
own accord force its way through the membrane and join the one which
flows. So it is in history. Any man who represents a spiritual streaming
will comman