some of the qualities which made his "Peasant Tales" SO famous, they are nevertheless somewhat livelier in tone, and more cheerful in coloring. But if Auerbach's genius slumbered a little for a time, it revived again in all its vigor and freshness and exquisite charm in the romance which he published this last year, entitled Auf der Höhe. We count it as next to the Dorfgeschichten, his leading work; and, moreover, as one of the few good novels that have, as yet, been written in Germany. The right of translation is advertised as reserved to Dr. Max Schlesinger in London, and to Bayard Taylor in America; and we hope that either the one or the other will see to it, that it is soon put into an English dress. The plot of it is simple, yet the interest of the reader, although not kept at a feverish heat as in the popular fiction of the day, never flags; for there is less of what an English reviewer calls "that fatal skill of Auerbach's in throwing a charm around separate incidents, to the detriment of the unity of the subject." In its general conception, it aims to illustrate the wrestlings of a noble mind with sin, from a pantheistic point of view; the passing out of the purified soul from the limitations of its turbid individuality into the grandeur of the universal life. Irma, the heroine - and moreover the chorus, as it were, of the drama, revealing its significance - is a highspirited, gifted daughter of the nobility, maid of honor to the queen, and beloved of the king. She repents of her fault, and withdraws to the solitude of a peasant's hut to work out her repentance; and, at last, when she has ascended up out of the discords of earth, to die at one with the peace of nature and the laws of her moral being. In contrast with these higher scenes are pictures of a lowlier life, in which Walpurga, the shrewd, guileless, faithful peasant-woman, who has been brought to court as a wet-nurse, is the chief character. The realism with which she is depicted is sometimes coarse, and often tedious; but, on the whole, she is one of Auerbach's best creations, wonderful for its originality and veracity, and all the more true to the reality of things in that the sphere in which she moves is represented as subordinate to a higher one. Upon the other characters - the lackey Baum, and the lonely Eberhard, and the wise, thoughtful Gunther, to say nothing of Zenza, and the black Esther, and the brutish Thomas, and the pitiable Bruno, and the rest - we need not dwell. Irma's diary, as she wrote it out in the agony of her self-imposed expiation, marked as it is by great delicacy of thought, may be said to be the burden of Auerbach's philosophy of life. The restless reader, of course, will skip it; but one who seeks in art the profoundest revelation of life will linger over it as the mournfullest exhibition of a human soul struggling to right itself by its own unaided powers that has ever been presented to him. This Magdalene, without a religion; this contrite heart, with only the vast spaces of nature to take note of its repentant throbbing; these weary eyes, red with weeping, and no face to look upon but the great sweep of nature's processes; this haunting consciousness of evil, and no bosom to lay the burden of it in but the swelling sea of the universe, - what a picture is that of philosophy striving to allay this burning fever of sin!

With his early political tendencies, Auerbach could not fail to sympathize with the Revolution of 1848; but he had been recently married, and the illness of his wife, soon followed by her death, prevented him from taking part in it other than in opposing the Polish agitators at Breslau, who claimed all Silesia as far as watered by the Oder for their future republic. In the autumn of that year, however, he made a journey into Austria, and was a witness of the Revolution in Vienna, of which he wrote an account that was translated into English. He married again afterwards, and lived for a good while at Dresden, which, with Munich, has become one of the brilliant centres of the German imagination; the home of Ludwig Richter, so popular even in this country for his humorous illustrations; and, for a good while, of the sculptor Rietschel, now dead. He lives now in Berlin, and is described as "a person of fine appearance and singular sweetness of disposition, with uncommon social and conversational powers."

The Revolution, however, of 1848 suggested to him a tragedy, the political violence of which he lived to outgrow. The character of the Tyrolese chief, Andree Hofer, celebrated

for the short-lived part he played in the resistance of the Tyrol to the French in 1809, has been the subject of a good deal of discussion: on the one hand, he has been represented as vacillating and of feeble ability; and, on the other, as the incarnation of heroism. When Zimmermann published his tragedy of Hofer in 1828, the Tyrolese veterans who had aided him could not recognize the features of his naïve and hardy character in the transformation he had undergone into a Judas Maccabæus; and perhaps, in the midst of Auerbach's violent declamation against the sovereigns of Germany, they could recognize him as little in the latter's representation of him, as the victim of the cowardice and treachery of the Emperor of Austria.

But Auerbach has grown wiser as he has grown older: he has given over political for moral revolution; for, individual and interior reforms once made, legitimate revolutions follow of themselves. His motto, as has been well suggested, might have been borrowed from Angelus Silesius, Le bien ne fait pas de bruit: le bruit ne fait pas de bien. The patience which he recommends is the patience of the man who will reform himself: the courage which he illustrates is the courage of the man who can see his illusions melt away, and yet not become indifferent. "In the midst of his rustic stories, he inserts a discourse," says a French writer, "grave, solemn, evangelical, a sort of sermon on the mount; and this sermon is the glorification of human activity. There is a pulpit, who knows where it is? There is a congregation, who can tell its name? In this pulpit, before this congregation, a preacher without office or title might say, I have come to speak to you of the majestic crown of man, - and the name of it is TOIL."

This idea of individual regeneration appears in his long and unsuccessful romance entitled Neues Leben. It was under this title that Dante related the mystic ecstacies of his youth; but Auerbach applies it to the present situation of Germany, to the doubts which have obtained possession of many minds, to the disenchantments which have afflicted many hearts. His doctrine is, "You believe in God, and do not lose your confidence, though his every way may seem dark and mysterious. I believe in humanity, and believe that it is destined to attain absolute sanctity and absolute beauty." Yet this new life, is it the religion of Strauss? or the humanism of Bruno Bauer? or the atheism of Feuerbach?

ART. III. WHAT IS THE VITAL TRUTH UNDERLYING

THE TRINITY?

It has come to be a recognized principle among the most advanced students of theology, that every great and widespread belief, every doctrine which has been clung to and lived in through a long series of years, no matter how false its form may be, must have its core in some precious and substantial elements of truth. The human mind was never made, even in its lowest and grossest state, to be satisfied with error alone. A lie - which is a lie and nothing more, the same as a body which is all disease, or a soul which has sinned till it is utterly without goodness - must die inevitably of its own nature. It is the truth inside of falsehood which gives it life and beauty, which makes it loved and clung to, which enables it, like a fortress full of men, as compared with one which is only dead matter, to resist attacks and repair the ravages, which from time to time are made in its walls. The pertinacity with which the world clings to many things which we regard as superstition and poison, is evidence not of its love for error, but of that craving for what is true which will take it even in its worse forms, rather than not have it at all. There is no false system of doctrine which has not had a providential mission, either as a poison neutralizing some other poison, or a bitter shell holding within it the germ of a precious fruit. God is to be found in the history of error, not less clearly than in the progress of truth and the course of events. It is better for our moral,

the same as for our physical health, to have all the elements of food, even though mixed up with some things which are inert or hurtful, rather than to have none at all, or to have one separated entirely from the others. And when we find a doctrinal statement, which we feel sure is wrong, resisting all our attacks, and held not only in the minds of scholars but by the great common heart, it is absolute proof that the world needs it, is better off with it, errors and all, than with our pure half truth, and that it is something we need conquer to possess, not to destroy.

Recognizing this principle, it is an interesting and most important question, what is the vital truth which underlies the Church doctrine of the Trinity? We have no doubt, that every statement of this doctrine, which was ever made, and which ever can be made, is false. It is contradictory in itself. It is opposed by the most explicit terms of Scripture. There is no analogy for it in nature. Again and again its defences have been battered down, and the doctrine itself logically demolished. Yet somehow it has survived all its destructions. It is one of the oldest doctrines of the Church. Nine-tenths of the strongest and best Christians that have ever lived have believed it. It is connected with all the great revivals of religion; is as prominent in all light of modern science, as in the darkest night of the middle ages; and is held to-day, by the whole Christian world, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, except a mere handful of liberals, as a most vital part of its religious faith. What is the secret of its strength? How are we to reconcile our position as Unitarians with these undeniable facts of Trinitarianism?

Rev. J. F. Clarke, in his recent most valuable book, "The Truths and Errors of Orthodoxy," has stated, in its best form, one of the ways by which a reconciliation has been attempted. He supposes the essential truth, which underlies the doctrine of the Trinity, to be, that "the Deity has made, and is evermore making, three distinct and independent revelations of himself; each revelation giving a different view of the Divine Being, each revelation showing God to man under a different aspect." "The Father would seem to be

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