Among the countless errors of faith which have misled mankind, there is none more dangerous, or more common, than that of confounding the forms of religion with religion itself. Too often, alike to believer and unbeliever, this has proved the one fatal mistake. Many an honest and earnest soul, feeling the deep needs of a spiritual life, but unable to separate those things which the heart would accept from those against which the reason revolts, has rejected all together, and turned away sorrowful, if not scoffing. On the other hand, the state of that man, who, because his mind has settled down upon certain externals of religion, deems that he has secured its essentials also, is worse than that of the skeptic. The freezing traveller, who is driven by the rocks (of hard doctrine) and the thorns (of doubt) to keep his limbs in motion, stands a far better chance of finding his way out of the wilderness than he who lies down on the softest bed of snow, flatters himself that all is well, and dreams of home, whilst the deadly torpor creeps over him.
If help and guidance and good cheer for all such be not found in this little volume, it is certainly no fault of the writer's intention. She brings to her task the power of profound conviction, inspiring a devout wish to lead others into the way of truth. Beneath the multiform systems of theology she finds generally the same firm foundations of faith,—"faith in the existence of a righteous God, faith in the eternal Law of Morality, faith in an Immortal Life." None enjoys a monopoly of truth, although all are based upon it. Each is a lighthouse, more or less lofty, and more or less illumined by the glory that burns within; yet their purest rays are only "broken lights." The glory itself is infinite: it is only through human narrowness and imperfection that it appears narrow and imperfect. The lighthouse is good in its place: it beckons home, with its "wheeling arms of dark and bright," many a benighted voyager; but we must remember that it is a structure made with hands, and not confound the stone and iron of human contrivance with the great Source and Fountain of Light.
The writer does not grope with uncertain purpose among these imperfect rays, and she is never confused by them. To each she freely gives credit for what it is or has been; but all fade at last before the unspeakable brightness of the rising sun. She discerns the dawn of that day when all our little candles may be safely extinguished: for it is not in any church, nor in any creed, nor yet in any book, that all of God's law is contained; but the light of His countenance shines primarily on the souls of men, out of which all religions have proceeded, and into which we must look for the ever new and ever vital faith, which is to the unclouded conscience what the sunshine is to sight.
Such is the conclusion the author arrives at through an array of arguments of which we shall not attempt a summary. It is not necessary to admit what these are designed to prove, in order to derive refreshment and benefit from the pure tone of morality, the fervent piety, and the noble views of practical religion which animate her pages. It is not a book to be afraid of. No violent hand is here laid upon the temple; but only the scaffoldings, which, as she perceives, obscure the beauty of the temple, are taken away. Not only those who have rejected religion because they could not receive its dogmas, but all who have struggled with their doubts and mastered them, or thought they mastered them, nay, any sincere seeker for the truth, will find Miss Cobbe's unpretending treatise exceedingly valuable and suggestive; while to any one interested in modern theological discussions we would recommend it as containing the latest, and perhaps the clearest and most condensed, statement of the questions at issue which these discussions have called out.
The spirit of the book is admirable. Both the skeptic who sneers and the bigot who denounces might learn a beautiful lesson from its calm, yet earnest pages. It is free from the brilliant shallowness of Renan, and the bitterness which sometimes marred the teachings of Parker. It is a generous, tender, noble book,—enjoying, indeed, over most works of its class a peculiar advantage; for, while its logic has everywhere a masculine strength and clearness, there glows through all an element too long wanting to our hard systems of theology,—an element which only woman's heart can supply.
Yet, notwithstanding the lofty reason, the fine intuition, the philanthropy and hope, which inspire its pages, we close the book with a sense of something wanting. The author points out the danger there always is of a faith which is intellectually demonstrable becoming, with many, a faith of the intellect merely,—and frankly avows that "there is a cause why Theism, even in warmer and better natures, too often fails to draw out that fervent piety" which is characteristic of narrower and intenser beliefs. This cause she traces to the neglect of prayer, and the consequent removal afar off, to vague confines of consciousness, of the Personality and Fatherhood of God. Her observations on this important subject are worthy of serious consideration, from those rationalists especially whose cold theories do not admit anything so "unphilosophical" as prayer. Yet we find in the book itself a want. The author—like nearly all writers from her point of view—ignores the power of miracle. Because physical impossibilities, or what seem such, have been so readily accepted as facts owing their origin to divine interposition, they fall to the opposite extreme of denying the occurrence of any events out of the common course of Nature's operations. Of the positive and powerful ministration of angels in human affairs they make no account whatever, or accept it as a pleasing dream; and they forget that what we call a miracle may be as truly an offspring of immutable law as the dew and the sunshine,—failing to learn of the loadstone, which attracts to itself splinters of steel contrary to all the commonly observed laws of gravitation, the simple truth that man also may become a magnet, and, by the power of the divine currents passing through him, do many things astonishing to every-day experience. The feats of a vulgar thaumaturgy, designed to make the ignorant stare, may well be dispensed with. But the fact that "spiritualism," with all its crudities of doctrine and errors of practice, has spread over Christendom with a rapidity to which the history of religious beliefs affords no parallel, shows that the realization of supernatural influences is an absolute need of the human heart. The soul of the earlier forms of worship dies out of them, as this faith dies out, or becomes merely traditional; and no new system can look to fill their places without it.
Letters of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy from 1833 to 1847. Two Volumes. Philadelphia: F. Leypoldt.
There are many people who make very little discrimination between one musician and another,—who discern no great gulf between Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, between Rossini and Romberg, between Spohr and Spontini: not in respect of music, but of character; of character in itself, and not as it may develop itself in chaste or florid, sentimental, gay, devotional or dramatic musical forms. And as yet we have very little help in our efforts to gain insight into the inner nature of our great musical artists. Of Meyerbeer the world knows that he was vain, proud, and fond of money,—but whether he had soul or not we do not know; the profound religiousness of Handel, who spent his best years on second-rate operas, and devoted his declining energies to oratorio, we have to guess at rather than reach by direct disclosure; and till Mr. Thayer shall take away the mantle which yet covers his Beethoven, we shall know but little of the interior nature of that wonderful man. But Mendelssohn now stands before us, disclosed by the most searching of all processes, his own letters to his own friends. And how graceful, how winning, how true, tender, noble is the man! We have not dared to write a notice of these two volumes while we were fresh from their perusal, lest the fascination of that genial, Christian presence should lead us into the same frame which prompted not only the rhapsodies of "Charles Auchester," but the same passionate admiration which all England felt, while Mendelssohn lived, and which Elizabeth Sheppard shared, not led. We lay down these volumes after the third perusal, blessing God for the rich gift of such a life,—a life, sweet, gentle, calm, nowise intense nor passionate, yet swift, stirring, and laborious even to the point of morbidness. A Christian without cant; a friend, not clinging to a few and rejecting the many, nor diffusing his love over the many with no dominating affection for a few near ones, but loving his own with a tenacity almost unparalleled, yet reaching out a free, generous sympathy and kindly devotion even to the hundreds who could give him nothing but their love. It is thought that his grief over his sister Fanny was the occasion of the rupture of a blood-vessel in his head, and that it was the proximate cause of his own death; and yet he who loved with this idolatrous affection gave his hand to many whose names he hardly knew. The reader will not overlook, in the second series of letters, the plea in behalf of an old Swiss guide for remembrance in "Murray," nor that long letter to Mr. Simrock, the music-publisher, enjoining the utmost secrecy, and then urging the claims of a man whom he was most desirous to help.
The letters from Italy and Switzerland were written during the two years with which he prefaced his quarter-century of labor as composer, director, and virtuoso. They relate much to Italian painting, the music of Passion Week, Swiss scenery, his stay with Goethe, and his brilliant reception in England on his return. They disclose a youth of glorious promise.
The second series does not disappoint that promise. The man is the youth a little less exuberant, a little more mature, but no less buoyant, tender, and loving. The letters are as varied as the claims of one's family differ from those of the outside world, but are always Mendelssohnian,—free, pure, unworldly, yet deep and wise. They continue down to the very close of his life. They are edited by his brother Paul, and another near relative. Yet unauthorized publications of other letters will follow, for Mendelssohn was a prolific letter-writer; and Lampadius, a warm admirer of the composer, has recently announced such a volume. The public may rejoice in this; for Mendelssohn was not only purity, but good sense itself; he needs no critical editing; and if we may yet have more strictly musical letters from his pen, the influence of the two volumes now under notice will be largely increased.