Preface
the influences which, during the last half century,have modified the rigor of the prevailing creed of christendom have not been few nor fleeting. Theology has relaxed its grim features. and tacitly abandoned or put out of sight, one by one tenets at variance with the advanced intelligence and religious sentiment of the age. The Poets have, with some exceptions, been in advance of the theologians in giving us ideas of providence and a future life, consistent with the wants and analogies of our nature, and not a variance with the teachings of revelation. Poetry, from the time of Job, has been the mother tongue of devotion and prophecy; and the poets, in their highest moods, have generally been true to those inmost assurances of the soul, which represent a God and an after-life in keeping with our best ideas of omnipotent benignity and love. It will require but a casual glance to see that this is no sectarian book. It will have fulfilled its mission if it help to indicate that the highest human conceptions of the Beautiful and the True are in accordance with the faith which, in the spirit of Christ's teaching, can sincerely and consistently address the Omnipotent as "our Father," And which can look through death in the serene assurance that He " doeth all things well," and that justice will, in this and every future stage of being, be ever tempered with mercy.