contain; and thus the tones of thought and emotion alternate with each
other in mutual support, until all is satisfied and filled with the
Holy and the Infinite. Of this character is the influence of religious
men upon one another; such is their natural and eternal union. Do
not take it ill of them that this heavenly bond--the most consummate
product of the social nature of man, but to which it does not
attain until it becomes conscious of its own high and peculiar
significance--that this should be deemed of more value in their sight
than the political union which you esteem so far above everything
else, but which will nowhere ripen to manly beauty, and which,
compared with the former, appears far more constrained than free, far
more transitory than eternal.

But where now, in the description which I have given of the community
of the pious, is that distinction between priests and laymen, which
you are accustomed to designate as the source of so many evils? A
false appearance has deceived you. This is not a distinction between
persons, but only one of condition and performance. Every man is a
priest, so far as he draws others around him, into the sphere which he
has appropriated to himself and in which he professes to be a master.
Every one is a layman, so far as he is guided by the counsel and
experience of another, within the sphere of religion, where he is
comparatively a stranger. There is not here the tyrannic aristocracy,
which you describe with such hatred; but this society is a priestly
people, a perfect republic, where every one is alternately ruler and
citizen, where every one follows the same power in another which he
feels also in himself, and with which he, too, governs others.

How then could the spirit of discord and division--which you regard
as the inevitable consequence of all religious combinations--find a
congenial home within this sphere? I see nothing but that All is One,
and that all the differences which actually exist in religion, by
means of this very union of the pious, are gently blended with one
another. I have directed your attention to the different degrees
of religiousness, I have pointed out to you the different modes of
insight and the different directions in which the soul seeks for
itself the supreme object of its pursuit. Do you imagine that
this must needs give birth to sects, and thus destroy all free
and reciprocal intercourse in religion? It is true, indeed, in
contemplation, t