ts sequence, its unity, escapes him.... In a word, the
pensee-writer deals with what is superficial and fragmentary." While
these words show the fine critical sense of the man, they do an
injustice to his own work. Fragmentary it is, but neither superficial
nor petty. One recognizes in reading his wonderfully suggestive pages
that here is a rare personality, indeed,--albeit "sicklied o'er with the
pale cast of thought."

In 1889 an admirable English translation of Amiel by Mrs. Humphry Ward,
the novelist, appeared in London. The introductory essay by Mrs. Ward is
the best study of him in our language. The appended selections are taken
from the Ward translation.

Richard Burton

EXTRACTS FROM AMIEL'S JOURNAL

October 1st, 1849.--Yesterday, Sunday, I read through and made extracts
from the Gospel of St. John. It confirmed me in my belief that about
Jesus we must believe no one but Himself, and that what we have to do is
to discover the true image of the Founder behind all the prismatic
refractions through which it comes to us, and which alter it more or
less. A ray of heavenly light traversing human life, the message of
Christ has been broken into a thousand rainbow colors, and carried in a
thousand directions. It is the historical task of Christianity to assume
with every succeeding age a fresh metamorphosis, and to be forever
spiritualizing more and more her understanding of the Christ and of
salvation.

I am astounded at the incredible amount of Judaism and formalism which
still exists nineteen centuries after the Redeemer's proclamation, "It
is the letter which killeth"--after his protest against a dead
symbolism. The new religion is so profound that it is not understood
even now, and would seem a blasphemy to the greater number of
Christians. The person of Christ is the centre of it. Redemption,
eternal life, divinity, humanity, propitiation, incarnation, judgment,
Satan, heaven and hell,--all these beliefs have been so materialized and
coarsened that with a strange irony they present to us the spectacle of
things having a profound meaning and yet carnally interpreted. Christian
boldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered; it is the Church
which is heretical, the Church whose sight is troubled and her heart
timid. Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine--there is a
relative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters into
him; or, as Angelus, I think, said, "The eye by which