Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 5, November 1850

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XXXVII. November, 1850. No. 5.
Table of Contents
Fiction, Literature and Articles
Poetry, Music, and Fashion
THE ANGEL’S WHISPER.
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XXXVII. PHILADELPHIA, November, 1850. No. 5.
The mythologies, in which the faiths, philosophies and fancies of the world have taken form, have such truth and use in them that they endure, under corresponding changes, through the reformations of creeds and modifications of ceremony which mark the history of natural religion throughout all ages and countries. The essential unity of the race, its kindred constitution of mind and affections, its likeness of instincts, passions and aspirations, naturally account for the under-lying agreement in principles, and central similarity of beliefs, which are traceable clean through, from the earliest to the most modern, and from the most polished and elaborate eastern to the rudest northern opinions; and the nice transitions of doctrine from the infancy to the maturity of faith and philosophy, are marked by an answering variance in their significant ceremonials. But, however mingled and marred, the inevitable truth is imbedded in all the forms of fable, and, under an invariable law of mind, the inspirations of fancy correspond in essentials to the oracles of revelation, just because human nature is one, and its relations to all truth are fixed and universal.
Creeds and formulæ, like the geological crusts of the earth, at once retain and record the revolutions, disintegrations, intrusions and submersions from which they result. In the long succession of epochs whole continents have risen from the deep, and the vestiges of the most ancient ocean are found upon the modern mountain tops; promontories have been slowly washed away by the ceaseless waves, and new islands have shot up from the ever-heaving sea. Through the more recent crusts the primitive formations frequently crop out upon the surface of the present, and the comparatively modern, in turn, is often found fossilized beneath the most ancient; dislocated fragments are encountered at every step, and icebergs, from the severer latitudes, are found floating far into the tropical seas. Nevertheless, through all changes of system, revolution has been ever in the same round of celestial influences and relations, and the alterations of form and structure have been only so many different mixtures of unchanging elements, from the simple primitives to the rich composite moulds, into which the waters, winds and sun-light have, in the lapse of ages, modified them. The constancy of essential principles, through all mutations of systematic dogmas, is strikingly analagous. The law of adaptation links the material globe and the rational race which occupies it in intimate relations, and the universal unity in the great scheme of being establishes such correspondences of organisms and processes with ideas and ends, that the symbolisms of poetry and mythology are really well based in the truth of nature, and the essential harmonies of all things are with equal truth, under various forms, embraced by fiction and fact, fable and faith, superstition and enlightened reason.