Editor's Table.

Westward—EVER WESTWARD has been the marching symbol of mankind from the earliest periods to the present. The striking fact is suggested in the well known line of Bishop Berkeley—

Westward the course of empire takes its way.

"The progress of the race," says the German psychologist Rauch, "has ever been against the rotation of the earth, and toward the setting sun;" as though it were in obedience to some natural law common to all planets that revolve upon their axes. We may reject this as fanciful; and yet there are some reasons why the primitive roaming tendency, or spirit of discovery, should have taken one direction rather than another—reasons grounded, not on any direct physiological magnetism, but upon the effect of certain outward phenomena on the course of human thought. Especially may we believe in some such influence as existing in that young and impressible period, when an unchanging direction may be rationally supposed to have been derived from the first faintest impressions, either upon the sense or the intelligence. To the early musing, meditative mind, the setting, rather than the ascending or meridian sun, would most naturally connect itself with the ideas of the vast and the undiscovered—the remote, legendary land, where the light goes down so strangely behind the mountains, or on the other side of the seemingly boundless plain, or beyond the deserts' solitary waste, or away on the ocean wave, as it grows dim in the misty horizon, or presents in its vanishing outline the far-off, shadowy isle. The darkness, too, that follows, would nourish the same feeling of mysterious interest, and thus aid in giving rise to that impulse, which, when once originated, maintains itself afterward by its own onward self-determining energy.

But whatever we may think, either of the poetry or the philosophy, there can be no denying the historical fact. Westward, ever westward, has been the course of emigration, of civilization, of learning, and of religion. It was so in the days of the Patriarchs, and the process is still going on in the middle of the nineteenth century. The first express mention of such a tendency we find in one of the earliest notices of Holy Writ. "And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, they came to the land of Shinar, and they settled there"—Gen. xi. 2. The language would imply that the process had been going on for some time before. The east there mentioned was the country beyond the great river Euphrates, whence, as those learned in the sacred language would inform us, came the name Hebrews, the Trans-Euphratean colonists, or those who had come over the great bounding stream that separated the "old countries," or the "cradle of the race," from the then new and unexplored western world. The next migration of which we have a particular account is that of Abraham who journeyed from Ur of the Chaldees to the promised land. Previous to this, however, the most extensive movements had taken place. Egypt was already settled by the stream, which, taking a southwest deflection, was destined to fill the vast continent of Africa. It was after the dispersion at Babel that the main current of humanity moved rapidly and steadily onward in the direction of the original impulse. There was indeed a tendency toward the east, but it never had the same impetus from the start; and its movement resembled more the flow of a sluggish backwater, than the natural progress. It sooner came to a stand, such as we find it represented in the civilization of India, Thibet, and China, dead and stagnant as it has been for centuries. But the western flood was ever onward, onward—a stream of living water, carrying with it the best life of humanity, and the ultimate destinies of the race. A bare glance at the map of the world will show what were the original courses of emigration. Asia must have poured into Europe through three principal channels—through Asia Minor and the isles of Greece, across the Hellespont by the way of Thrace and the lower part of Central Europe, or between the Black and Caspian seas, through the regions afterward occupied by Gog and Magog, and Meshek, or the Scythian, the Gothic, and the Muscovite hordes. But light and civilization ever went mainly by the way of the sea. The intercourse from coast to coast, and from isle to isle, was more favorable to cultivation of manners, and elevation of thought, than the laborious passages through the dark forests of the north, or the torrid deserts of the south; and hence the early superiority of the sons of Javan, and Kittim, and Tarshish, or in short, of all whose advance was ever along that great high way of civilization, the Mediterranean Sea. "By these," to use the language of Scripture, "were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands." The most crowded march, however, must have been that taken up by the sons of Tiras, and Gomer, and Ashkenaz, by way of Thrace, and the mid regions of Europe. We have one proof of this in the name given to the famous crossing-place between Europe and Asia. It was called by an oriental word denoting the passage of flocks and herds, and hence, to the thousands and tens of thousands who constantly gathered on its banks, it was the Bosphorus (bo-os, poros), the Ox-ford or ox-ferry—a most notable spot in the world's early emigration, the name of which the Greeks afterward translated into their own tongue, and then, according to their usual custom, invented, or accommodated, for its explanation, the mythus of the wandering Io.

But still, through all these channels, it was ever westward, ever from the rising and toward the setting sun. It may be a matter of curious interest to note how the word itself seems to have moved onward with the march of mankind. The far-off, unknown land, for the time being, was ever the West—departing farther and farther from the terminus which each succeeding age had placed, and continually receding from the emigrant, like Hesperia (the West of the Æneid) ever flying before the wearied Trojans—

Oras Hesperiæ semper fugientis.

In the very earliest notices of sacred history, Canaan was the West. When Abraham arrived there from Ur of the Chaldees, he found the pioneers had gone before him. "The Canaanites," it is said, "were already in the land," although soon to give way to a more heaven-favored race. Next the coast of the Philistines becomes the West. Then the Great Sea, or the Mediterranean, with its stronghold of Tyre, as it is called, Joshua xix. 29. Tyre, the ancient Gibraltar, "the entry of the waters" (Ezek. xxvii. 1), and which was to be "the merchant of the people for many isles." In this way the language derived its fixed name for this quarter of the horizon. As the north is called by a word meaning the dark or hidden place, so the sea ever denotes the west. Hence the Psalmist's method of expressing the immensity of the Divine presence; "Should I take the wings of the morning (or the east) and dwell in the parts beyond the sea," or the uttermost west, "even then shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand still shall hold me." In the next period, the west is removed to the land of Chittim (Gen. x. 4), or the modern isle of Cyprus, of which there is a city yet remaining with the radicals of the ancient name. Among other places it is mentioned, Isaiah xxiii. 1. "News from the land of Chittim," or, "From the land of Chittim is it revealed unto them," says the prophet in his account of the wide-spread commerce of Tyre. It would almost seem like a modern bulletin from San Francisco and California. Soon, however, the ever retiring terminus is to be found in the country of Caphtor (Jeremiah xlvii. 4), or the island of Crete, first settled by the roving Cretites, or Cherethites, from a more ancient city of the same name on the coast of Philistia (Deut. ii. 23), and not in a reverse direction, as some would suppose. Again it recedes rapidly among the "Isles of the Sea," so often mentioned in the Scriptures, and which becomes a general name for the remote—the countries beyond the waters, and, in fact, for all Europe. Proceeding from what was imperfectly known as Cyprus and the Ægean Archipelago, the early Orientals would seem to have regarded all this quarter of the world as one vast collection of islands, in distinction from the main earth, main land, or Continent of Asia. Hence the contrast, Ps. xcvii. 1:

The Lord is King—Let the earth rejoice Let the many isles be glad.

Leaving behind us the Jews, and taking Homer for our guide, we next find the west in Greece as opposed to the Eoïan realm of Troy, or the land toward the morning dawn. In the interval between the Iliad and the Odyssey, another transition has taken place. The latter poem is separate from the former in space as well as in time. The Odyssey is west of the Iliad. It is the "setting sun" in a sense different from that intended by the critic Longinus, but no less true and significant. Epirus, Phaëcia, and the Ionian isles (as they have been called), are now the West. Sicily is just heard of as the ultima regio of the known world. It is the mythical land of the cannibal Cyclops, and beyond it dwells the King of the Winds. To the Trojan followers of Æneas, Italy is the West—the land of promise to the exiles fleeing from the wars of the older eastern world. The imagination pictured it as lying under the far distant Hesper, or evening star, and hence it was called Hesperia:

Graïo cognomine dicta.

But we must travel more rapidly onward. In the noon of the Roman empire, Spain and Gaul were the West, the terra occidentalis. Soon Britain and Ireland take the place and name. It was to the same quarters, too, on the breaking up of this immense Roman mass, that the main element of its strength moved onward, although the mere shadow of empire remained in the slow decaying East. And now for centuries the march seemed impeded by the great ocean barrier, until the same original impulse, gathering strength by long delay, at length achieved the discovery of what, more emphatically than all other lands, has been called The Western World. Every one knows how rapid has been the same movement since. Scarcely had the eastern shores been visited, when hardy adventurers brought news of a western coast, and of a Western Ocean, still beyond. This remoter sea becomes the mythical terminus in the grants and charters of the first English settlements, as though in anticipation of the future greatness of the empire of which they were to form the constituent parts. Since then how swift has been the same march across the new discovered continent! Rapid as must be our sketch, it is hardly more so than the reality it represents. Even within the memory of persons not yet past the meridian of life, a portion of our own State was called the West. The name was given to the land of the Mohawks and the Six Nations; but like Hesperia of old, it was always flying in the van of advancing cultivation. Soon Ohio becomes the West, along with Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. Then Michigan is the West. In a few years Wisconsin assumes the appellation; then Iowa; then Minnesota; while, in another quarter, Missouri and Arkansas successively carry on the steady march toward the setting sun. It is true, there seemed to be a pause in sight of the obstacles presented by the barren plains of Texas and New Mexico, but it was only to burst over them with a more powerful impetus. And California is now the West—the land of gold and golden hope. It is now, to the present age, what Canaan was to the Hebrews (we mean, of course, geographically), or as the isles of the sea to the sons of Javan and Tarshish, or as Italy to the Trojan exiles. But is the movement there to find its termination? The next step mingles it with the remains of the old Eastern civilization. China and India must yet feel its revivifying power, and then the rotation will have been complete. Ophir has been already reached, and soon the long journeying of restless humanity will come round again to the plain of Shinar, or the region in which commenced the original dispersion of the race.

Some most serious reflections crowd upon the mind in connection with such a thought. What, during all this period, has been the real progress of humanity? In certain aspects of the question the answer is most prompt and easy. In the supply of physical wants, and in facilities for physical communication, the advance gained has been immense. But are men—the mass of men—really wiser in respect to their truest good? Or are they yet infatuated with that old folly of building a tower, whose top should reach unto heaven? In other words, are they still seeking to get above the earth by earthly means, and fancying that through science, or philosophy, or "liberal institutions," or any other magic name, they may obtain a self-elevating power, which shall lift them above physical and moral evil. Will the long and toilsome march be followed by that true gnothi seauton, that real self-knowledge, which is cheaply obtained even at such a price, or will it be only succeeded by another varied exhibition of the selfish principle, the more malignant in proportion as it is more refined, another Babel of opinions, another confusion of speech, another proof of the feebleness and everlasting unrest of humanity while vainly seeking to be independent of Heaven?

Marriage has ever been closely allied to religion. It has had its altar, its offering, its rites, its invocation, its shrine, its mysteries, its mystical significance. "It is honorable," says the Apostle. "Precious," some commentators tell us, the epithet should be rendered—of great value, of highest price. In either sense, it would well denote what may be called, by way of eminence, the conservative institution of human society, the channel for the transmission of its purest life, and for this very reason, the object ever of the first and fiercest attacks of every scheme of disorganizing radical philosophy. In harmony with this idea there was a deep significance in some of the Greek marriage ceremonies; and among these none possessed a profounder import than the custom of carrying a torch, or torches, in the bridal procession. Especially was this the mother's delightful office. It was hers, in a peculiar manner, to bear aloft the blazing symbol before the daughter, or the daughter-in-law, and there was no act of her life to which the heart of a Grecian mother looked forward with a more lively interest. It was, on the other hand, a ground of the most passionate grief, when an early death, or some still sadder calamity, cut off the fond anticipation. Thus Medea—

I go an exile to a foreign land, Ere blest in you, or having seen you blessed. That rapturous office never shall be mine, To adorn the bride, and with a mother's hand, Lift high the nuptial torch.

Like many other classical expressions, it has passed into common use, and become a mere conventional phraseology. This is the case with much of our poetical and rhetorical dialect. Metaphors, which, in their early usage, presented the most vivid conceptions, and were connected with the profoundest significance, have passed away into dead formulas. They keep the flow of the rhythm, they produce a graceful effect in rounding a period, they have about them a faint odor of classicality, but the life has long since departed. As far as any impressive meaning is concerned, a blank space would have answered almost as well. The "altar of Hymen," the "nuptial torch," suggest either nothing at all, or a cold civil engagement, with no higher sanctions than a justice's register, or the business-like dispatch of what, in many cases, is a most unpoetical, as well as a most secular transaction.

The nuptial torch was significant of marriage, as the divinely appointed means through which the lamp of life is sent down from generation to generation. It was the symbol of the true vitality of the race, as preserved in the single streams of the "isolated household," instead of being utterly lost in the universal conflagration of unregulated passion. It was the kindling of a new fire from the ever-burning hearth of Vesta. It was the institution of a new domestic altar. The torch was carried by the mother in procession before the daughter, or the daughter-in-law, and then given to the latter to perform the same office, with the same charge, to children, and children's children, down through all succeeding generations. Such a custom, and such a symbol, never could have originated where polygamy prevailed, nor have been ever preserved in sympathy with such a perversion of the primitive idea. Neither could it maintain itself where marriage is mainly regarded as a civil contract, having no other sanction for its commencement, and, of course, no other for its dissolution, than the consent of the parties. Have we not reason to suppose that some such conception is already gaining ground among us. It would seem to come from that wretched individualism, the source of so many social errors, which would regard marriage as a transaction for the convenience of the parties, and subject to their spontaneity, rather than in reference to society or the race. The feeling which lends its aid to such a sophism, is promoted by the prevailing philosophy in respect to what are called "woman's rights." We allude not now to its more extravagant forms, but to that less offensive, and more plausible influence, which, in the name of humanity and of protection to the defenseless, is in danger of sapping the foundation of a most vital institution. We can not be too zealous in guarding the person or property of the wife against the intemperate or improvident husband; but it should be done, and it can be done, without marring that sacred oneness which is the vitality of the domestic commonwealth. In applying the sharp knife of reform in this direction, it should be seen to, that we do not cut into the very life of the idea—to use a favorite phrase of the modern reformer. No evil against which legislation attempts to guard, can be compared with the damage which might come from such a wound. No hurt might be more incurable than one that would result from families of children growing up every where with the familiar thought of divided legal interests in the joint source whence they derived their birth. There must be something holy in that which the apostle selected as the most fitting comparison of the relation between Christ and his Church; and there have been far worse superstitions (if it be a superstition) than the belief which would regard marriage as a sacrament. Be this, however, as it may, it is the other error of which we have now the most reason to be afraid. There is a process going forward on the pages of the statute book, in judicial proceedings respecting divorce, and in the general tendency of certain opinions, which is insensibly undermining an idea, the most soundly conservative in the best sense of the term, the most sacred in its religious associations, as well as the most important in its bearings upon the highest earthly good of the human race.

The opposing philosophy sometimes comes in the most plausible and insidious shape. It, too, has its religionism. It talks loftily of the "holy marriage of hearts," and of the sacredness of the affection; but in all this would only depreciate the sacredness of the outward relation. It affects to be conservative, moreover. It would preserve and exalt the essence in distinction from the form. It has much to say of "legalized adulteries." The affection, it affirms, is holier than any outward bond. But let it be remembered that the first is human and changeable, the second is divine and permanent. It is the high consideration, too, of the one that, more than any earthly means, would tend to preserve the purity of the other. The relation is the regulator of the affection, the mould through which it endures, the constraining form in which alone it acquires the unity, and steadiness, and consistency of the idea, in distinction from the capricious spontaneity of the individual passion. Let no proud claim, then, of inward freedom, assuming to be holier than the outward bond, pretend to sever what God has joined together. At no time, perhaps, in the history of the world, and of the church, has there been more need of caution against such a sophism than in this age so boastful of its lawless subjectivity, or in other words, its higher rule of action, transcending the outward and positive ordinance.

Charity is love—Liberality is often only another name for indifference. The bare presentation of the terms in their true relation, is enough to show the immense opposition between them. Charity is tenderness. "It suffereth long and is kind." But the same authority tells us, likewise, that "it rejoiceth in the truth." Except as connected with a fervent interest in principles we hold most dear, the word loses all significance, and the idea all vitality. Even when it assumes the phase of intolerance, it is a nobler and more precious thing than the liberality which often usurps its name. In this aspect, however, it is ever the sign of an unsettled and a doubting faith. He who is well established in his own religious convictions can best afford to be charitable. He has no fear and no hatred of the heretic lest he should take from him his own insecure foundation. His feet upon a rock, he can have no other than feelings of tenderness for the perishing ones whom he regards as struggling in the wild waters below him. How can he be uncharitable, or unkind, to those of his companions in the perilous voyage, who, in their blindness, or their weakness, or it may be in the perverse madness of their depravity, can not, or will not lay hold of the plank which he offers for their escape because it is the one on which he fondly hopes he himself has rode out the storm. They may call his warm zeal bigotry and uncharitableness; but then, what name shall be given to that greater madness, that fiercer intolerance, which would not only reject the offered aid, but exercise vindictive feelings toward the hand that would draw them out of the overwhelming billows?

One of the richest illustrations of the view here presented is to be found in the writings of that durus pater, Saint Augustine. We find nothing upon our editorial table more precious—nothing that we would send forth on the wings of our widely circulated Magazine, with a more fervent desire that it might, not only meet the eye, but penetrate the heart of every reader "How can I be angry with you," says this noble father, in his controversy with the Manichæans, "how can I be angry with you when I remember my own experience? Let him be angry with you who knows not with what difficulty error is shunned and truth is gained. Let him be angry with you, who knows not with what pain the spiritual light finds admission into the dark and diseased eye. Let him be angry with you, who knows not with what tears and groans the true knowledge of God and divine things is received into the bewildered human soul."