to outlast centuries of winter storm. Even the ocean-tide comes up gently: stealing on, wave after wave, almost imperceptibly: as if its mighty strength was doing a thing of case, and refused to exert itself unnecessarily. Gentleness and violence,—there is, truly, no comparing their strength: so immeasurably stronger is gentleness, even as music is more potent than mere noise. Get beyond the hubbub of a fair,—the melody, which could not be heard in the midst of uproar, will be clear when distance has completely silenced the stunning noise of gong and drum and many-voiced clamour. In the same way, it is not the loudest speaker, but the most musical, who is heard farthest. Have not 'the songs of Grecian years' come down to us full of melody, fresh as if from yesterday, while all the bray of sonorous battle-trumpet, all the din of loud-throated Roman war, is silent as the grave? One gentle song of Sappho shall outlast the fame of a Napoleon. Who would doubt that the poet is stronger than the warrior? Why, the poet can make warriors. Yes! and unmake them, too,-superseding the occasion for them. Certainly gentleness is not weakness. Recollect the old story of Hercules and Omphale! how the Victorious Labourer lays down his club at a woman's feet, content to be her slave. Or that, old Æsop's noble parable, of the contention of the sun and wind: how the fierce blusterer cannot tear away the traveler's tight-gathered cloak, from every gust still more closely drawn, more obstinately maintained; how the baulked wind fails, moaning defeatedly; while the warm sun, with one gentle smile, draws off the long-held cloak, with easy victory. Charity in its true meaning, as loving-kindness—is but another word for gentleness. Though I give my body to be burned,' though I have the courage of a martyr, if I have not charity, if it is not out of a loving disposition, if not of gentle birth, it amounts to nothing. Gentleness suffereth long, and is kind'; gentleness 'envieth not'; gentleness 'vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly' (for gentleness is careful not to offend and courtliest politeness can not be more gracious), 'seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth,' outlasteth all things.' Gentleness' never faileth.' Gentleness and valour,-they are as the sunshine and the storm: the one is Queen of Growth; the other is the Air-clearer, the masterer and overthrower of the hinderances in the way of Growth. The perfect character must command both. There is weakness in the valour which dares not be gentle; but gentleness,-true love, and care of lovingness and beauty,-can not be otherwise than strong. For the weakness, indolence or obtuseness, which will not offend, is not gentleness. Gentleness,which giveth no needless pain, whose step seemed to pity the grass it pressed,' -will endure to the death for all gentle things, as a mother fights for her young; will rise up into active valour, rather than see one of those little ones offended. To look at one extremest instance. It was not an ungentle spirit that animated Brutus when he drove out the churl Tarquin, but a noble chivalrous horror of the ungentle abuse of Lucretia. The stern justice of him who slew his own sons for Roman liberty had its origin in the same innate gentleness, from which, under happier circumstances, outgrew the delightful beauty of Raffaelle. Let there be no mistake in this matter. The true hero, fighting against injustice, fights not for mere fighting' sake; but because, a true lover and worshiper of Truth, the Beautiful, he may never allow the ungentleness of Wrong. He fights, indeed, for peace' sake. It is the only worthy fight. And so he of gentlest heart, the most devout adorer of Peace, becomes the greatest hero : his valour, born of gentleness, seeking to redeem the world, because of his great love. Think of Milton, with his fierce sword-like words, half-battles' (as Carlyle says of Luther), stalwart champion against tyranny,—what loving, what womanliest feelings dwelt in him. Two centuries have passed away; and his countrymen have yet to lay to heart the lessons of his love, have yet to learn how heaven-wide was the gentle spirit of that sublimest and most valorous of our English worthies, that giant-hearted hero whose peer Time scarce bath seen. Gentleness is not to be confounded with that ease and complacency of manner which show the fashionable, the courtier. Neither is there any gentleness in the lukewarmness and indifference of that apathetic selfishness which is never moved to any display of feeling. The cold-blooded formalist and well-trained hypocrite are not gentle. Real gentleness is rather the excess of love, the crowning grace of the throbbing heart, the impetuous, vehement soul, which can not be otherwise than true; and which, meeting with the Beautiful, is naturally gentle toward it, as a lover with his mistress: which even toward the Unlovely is not ungentle, its very hate of unloveliness being sorrow, and the sorrowing pity of a physician, rather than anger. To conclude,―gentleness is love and the manner of love, its expressive speech. No courts can teach it. As different is the real manner of love from the pretence, as the delicate flower of the field is different from the artificial bloom of the milliner's show-room. The false jasmine on her grace's brow, amid the whirl of the dancers, under the palace chandeliers, may not be easily distinguishable from the true. Yet it lacks the flexibility, the delicacy, the fragrance of nature. It is not a thing of growth. Vernal showers are gently falling; Gentle flowerets pierce the sod: Human growth through tears to God. Gentle heart, not smooth'd behaviour,— Gentle as the smile of heaven : Heaven's calm so arch my brow, Make me gentle, Love! as thou. J. Watson, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Pateraoster-Row, London.-No. 39, Sept. 23. FAITH. 'The talisman is Faith. What is Truth asked Pilate. What is Faith? asks the worldling, and the unbeliever. What is God? what is Love? what Life? what Poetry? what Motion? what Time? If it is not easier to define any one of these, how shall it be easy to give an exact definition of Faith? Faith is the exercise of the imagination, as Valour is the exercise of strength. Faith is dependence on those impulses and emotions of the soul which are beyond the reach of reason, which are our insights to that universe whereof we are yet unconvinced, revelations, purer and loftier in some than in others, according to the divineness of the nature. Reason will not supply the place of this imaginative faculty. The province of reason being only to test the accuracy of faith. Rather to test its inaccuracies, for faith sees beyond reason. Reason is analytical, critical, weighs and examines part by part: the imagination is synthetic, sees the whole at a glance. Who has but the one faculty is only half-natured. If imagination is too exclusively predominant, it will run wild, will cease to be the good genius informing life, and will drive life before it blindly into many errors. On the other hand the mere reasoner can but crawl through the world, painfully arriving at partial truths by slowest gradations, sometimes, too, halting or turning aside at those reasonable errors-truths' upon partial premises. Do you doubt the special occupation and faculty of faith, attempt to give the reasons for your attachment to the Beloved, for the high esteem (beyond liking) in which you hold Her above all other women. You will find that though reason may sometimes accuse your love, or even excuse it, it can not justify. The justifier is Faith. All life is but the progress of Love. Love of woman is but one chapter, one manifestation of the universal worship of Good: or God. Reason is the arithmetician, the experimenter. Faith is the poet, the see-er, the prophet, the forecaster. Faith seems therefore rather a faculty than a virtue. So is honesty, or integrity: so valour, or strength; so gentleness, or the graceful calmness of health (which grows without violence). These also are faculties and their exercise is virtue. Virtue is the fulfilment of all that may become a man, the exercise of all the faculties. man. Faith is the quickening spirit of man's life; the revelation of the Infinite to Faith is the soul of Love, the spur of endeavour, the prompter and promoter of all true work and worth. To believe is the first phase of heroic life; the life and life's sap of heroism; faith being the very Spirit of God resident in man. Without it is no real greatness nor lasting work of power. Faith is the one thing needful. And faith in what? Nay, that is an after question. We speak here of the abstract quality. Believe! That is the first step. So that it is a belief, it is a proof that the man lives, that he has a soul within him, that he is no mere cunningly framed machine set and kept in motion by steam or clock-work. Believe! though it be only in some other man's word,-in some Koran, or Book of the Mormons; though it be only in some shallow Atomic Theory of the Universe. Anything rather than unbelief. Get thee a living soul, a purpose for thy life, an idea by which to build and fashion thy tale of days. Believe! and thou art in the right way for true belief. Askest thou what faith? Moses' answer is not quite extinct. Mahomet has his word still sonorous, a manymillion-voiced echo, audible enough even in this nineteenth century of Christianity. Will Moses or will Mahomet content thee? A Leo X, a Luther, a Calvin, a Fox, a Wesley, an Irving, a Swedenborg: each of these has some solution ready; can tell thee what form of faith. But now our argument is of the essential spirit, of faith itself, the faculty which depends not on change of time or creed or circumstance. Thou mayest be Christian, or Jew, or Hindoo, or Mahometan. But thou art man. Believe therefore in God, in Good, in the presence of God within thee, in the progression of Humanity toward God, in the immortality of Truth and Valour and Love and Joy. Believe in this and so mount on angel wings toward the Throne. Believe also, even if thou canst see nothing greater than Mumbo-jumbo, nothing more worshipful than the golden image in thy breeches' pocket. Faith in Gold is yet a worship. If a man believes in it with all his heart and all his strength, he is in a fair way to realize a fortune. Without faith, and the energy which follows the determined purpose of faith, it is impossible even to make money. But leaving the idolators, let us consider how faith is needful for all divine purposes, all great actions, all enduring results, Think how absolutely necessary it is for any thing like creation. An artsit,how shall he work without the inspiration and the upholding of faith,-he who builds from a mere idea, a brain-phantom, of which reason has no key? How shall an apostle preach unless he has full faith in the prophecy to which he points? What poor dead doctrine else! Your poet, richly natured and capable, wanting faith sinks into a Don-Juan. Your imperial Napoleon travels faithlessly to SaintHelena. Genius and Power: what were they without faith? But with faith Ye Gods! with what indomitable energy the faithful stand endowed. How smilingly a Socrates quaffs the hemlock-dregs! How a Columbus overstrides the unmeasured Atlantic! A John Davis, in a black night, in a gale of wind, steers back through the straits of Magellan by a chart which he had made with his eye in passing up. His anchors were lost or broken, the cables parted; he could not bring up the ship; there was nothing left for it but to run, and he carried her safe through a channel often not three miles broad, sixty miles from end to end, and twisting like the reaches of a river. What might did Luther draw from faith, he a poor lone monk burning the Pope's bull in the marketplace, boldly confronting princes, firm, self-possessed unabashed; and as many devils as roof-tiles could not have stayed or turned him aside. And Mahomet, for all his wordy Koran, whose companions named him Al Amin, the Faithful: a poor unlettered man of fifty setting out to reform the world, driven out and hunted for his life; and yet,-nay, therefore, his fire-words kindled the hearts of millions till they flung down their lives at his feet to be the slaves of his will. Ay, faithful; as the early Christians for the sake of One Crucified; as the patriot Greeks leaping from Suli's rock, rather than return to thraldom; as the noble Swiss gathering a sheaf of lances in his heart, to make a lane for freedom; as our own noblest Eliot putting his life in bonds for the common-wealth of England. Faith is the soul's evidence of things unseen. In this faith is above knowledge, as imagination transcends reason. Faith is indeed the diviner knowledge which, poet-like, foresees and prophesies of the Future: understanding not merely the manifestations of Power, but looking through the very germs that lie at the heart of Power. It is faith which gives aim and purpose to a man's life. Why should he be honest if belief is folly? Faith in the unproved worth of Truth alone can keep him honest. There is sometimes a monotonous habit of consistency in the lives of men without belief: but we will not call it honesty. Why should a man be valiant but for faith? He must fight for a purpose. What purpose? A false poor one, perhaps : but he fights not according to the poorness or falsity, but according to the strength, of his faith. You would call it conviction. Not so. We are convinced only when we have weighed for and against, whether argument or evidence. Faith sees beyond all evidence, knows better than any witnesses. I am told that Good is eternal, stronger than Evil and destined to triumph over it. Where is your evidence? Mere logical demonstration may not convince me. Nevertheless I know. What evidence indeed, when whole nations and generations of men are trampled under successful Villainy, when, generation after generation, man stoops willingly to dig his own grave in the shadow of Wrong, when to be honest is to be accursed,-will you point then to the convincing evidence of the certain triumph of Good? I am not convinced. But I know it: through faith. I believe it, ay, because it is impossible. 'Tis but Reason says so; with certain 'facts' and persons to attest the conviction: but Faith, bandaged and bound, points to God, points past the cloudy bound of possibility, and, piercing through all cloud and bondage, beholds Good throned at the right hand of Power, blessing the Eternal Future. Faith is the link that attaches us to the future. The point of leverage wherewith we lift the 'impossible' weight that seals the tomb of Good. Faith harmonizes the individual, the personal, with the Infinite of God. Faith is the divine fire which, it was fabled, Prometheus brought down from heaven, to make men better than the beasts that perish. In virtue of this fire we live. It may be under the feet of Good, if our faith be weak, the flame but glimmering; but let it strongly aspire, and we may reach to gaze upon the face of God. But without faith it is impossible to please him. Our honesty without faith is but the integrity of the brute, the exactness of a machine. Our valour without faith is the valour of a tool, the heroism of a hammer not knowing why it strikes, or like the valour of a dog-an effect of blood. Our gentleness without faith,nay, there is none : quietness of temperament, ease of manner, but no gentleness. For without faith how shall love bloom in such a hard-trodden world as this? Faith is the first flame of life. So no man is altogether without it. But how to raise and purify the flame, |