nifestations of its
own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the
emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the
Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before
the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct apprehension of
this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight. A thrill
passes through all men at the reception of new truth, or at the
performance of a great action, which comes out of the heart of nature.
In these communications the power to see is not separated from the
will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedience, and the obedience
proceeds from a joyful perception. Every moment when the individual
feels himself invaded by it is memorable. By the necessity of our
constitution a certain enthusiasm attends the individual's consciousness
of that divine presence. The character and duration of this enthusiasm
varies with the state of the individual, from an ecstasy and trance and
prophetic inspiration,--which is its rarer appearance,--to the faintest
glow of virtuous emotion, in which form it warms, like our household
fires, all the families and associations of men, and makes society
possible. A certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening
of the religious sense in men, as if they had been "blasted with excess
of light." The trances of Socrates, the "union" of Plotinus, the
vision of Porphyry, the conversion of Paul, the aurora of Behmen,
the convulsions of George Fox and his Quakers, the illumination of
Swedenborg, are of this kind. What was in the case of these remarkable
persons a ravishment, has, in innumerable instances in common life, been
exhibited in less striking manner. Everywhere the history of religion
betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of the Moravian and
Quietist; the opening of the internal sense of the Word, in the language
of the New Jerusalem Church; the revival of the Calvinistic churches;
the experiences of the Methodists, are varying forms of that shudder of
awe and delight with which the individual soul always mingles with the
universal soul.

The nature of these revelations is the same; they are perceptions of the
absolute law. They are solutions of the soul's own questions. They do
not answer the questions which the understanding asks. The soul answers
never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after.

Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular not