their leisure hours together, read the same books, and kindled at the
same sentiments. In their charmed circle they unbent; indulged,
perchance, in ironical sallies on the follies they alike despised. They
freed their minds, as Cicero did to Atticus; they said things to each
other which they might have hesitated to say in public, or among fools
and dunces. I can conceive that those austere people were sometimes even
merry and jocose. The ignorant would not have understood their learned
allusions; the narrow-minded might have been shocked at the treatment of
their shibboleths; the vulgar would have repelled them by coarseness;
the sensual would have disgusted them by their lower tastes.

There can be no true harmony among friends when their sensibilities are
shocked, or their views are discrepant. How could Jerome or Paula have
discoursed with enthusiasm of the fascinations of Eastern travel to
those who had no desire to see the sacred places; or of the charms of
Grecian literature to those who could talk only in Latin; or of the
corrupting music of the poets to people of perverted taste; or of the
sublimity of the Hebrew prophets to those who despised the Jews; or of
the luxury of charity to those who had no superfluities; or of the
beatitudes of the passive virtues to soldiers; or of the mysteries of
faith to speculating rationalists; or of the greatness of the infinite
to those who lived in passing events? A Jewish prophet must have seemed
a rhapsodist to Athenian critics, and a Grecian philosopher a conceited
cynic to a converted fisherman of Galilee,--even as a boastful Darwinite
would be repulsive to a believer in the active interference of the moral
Governor of the universe. Even Luther might not have admired Michael
Angelo, any more than the great artist did the courtiers of Julius II.;
and John Knox might have denounced Lord Bacon as a Gallio for advocating
moderate measures of reform. The courtly Bossuet would not probably have
sympathized with Baxter, even when both discoursed on the eternal gulf