After you went away, I read more carefully the splendid article on the "Ethics of Christendom;" [FN: From the "Westminster Review," vol. lvii. p. 182, or, in the American edition, p. 98.] and I confess that my whole moral being shrinks from the position [230] of the writer (which brings down the majesty of the Gospel almost to the level of Millerism), that Jesus supposed the end of the world to be at hand, and that he should come in the clouds of heaven, and be seated with his disciples on airy thrones, to judge the nations. No; the false double ethics of the pulpit, which I have labored, though less successfully, all my life to expose, has its origin, I believe, in later superstition, and not in the teachings of Christ.
The passages referred to by the writer, I conceive to be more imaginative, and less formalistic and logical, than he supposes.
To the Same.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28, 1852.
MY DEAR BELLOWS,—I will wish you all a happy New York, (ahem! you see how naturally and affectionately my pen turns out the old beloved name)—a happy New Year. After all, it isn't so bad; a happy New Year and a happy New York must be very near neighbors with you. I sometimes wish they could have continued to be so with me, for those I have learnt to live with most easily and happily are generally in New York. Our beloved artists, the goodly Club, were a host to me by themselves. I wish I could be a host to them sometimes.
Well, heigho! (pretty ejaculation to come into a New Year's greeting—but they come everywhere!) Heigho! I say submissively —things meet and match us, perhaps, better than we mean. I am not a clergyman—perhaps was never meant for one. I question our position more and more. We are not fairly thrown into the field of life. We do not fairly take the free and [231] unobstructed pressure of all surrounding society. We are hedged around with artificial barriers, built up by superstitious reverence and false respect. We are cased in peculiarity. We meet and mingle with trouble and sorrow,—enough of them, too much,—but our treatment of them gets hackneyed, worn, weary, and reluctant. They grapple with the world's strife and trial, but it is an armor. Our excision from the world's pleasure and intercourse, I doubt, is not good for us. We are a sort of moral eunuchs.
To his Daughter Mary.
WASHINGTON, June 19, 1853.
THOUGH it is very hot,
Though bladed corn faint in the noontide ray, And thermometers stand at ninety-three, And fingers feel like sticks of sealing-wax, Yet I will write thee.