Religion being subjective, according to Schleiermacher, there can be interminable varieties of it. As we look at the universe in numerous lights, and thereby derive different impressions, so do we acquire a diversity of conceptions of religion. Hence it has had many forms among the nations of the earth. There is in each breast a religion derived from the object of intellectual or spiritual vision. Christianity is the great sum resulting from the antagonism of the finite and the infinite, the human and divine. The fall and redemption, separation and reunion, are the great elements from which we behold Christianity arise. Of all kinds of religion this alone can claim universal adaptation and rightful supremacy. Christ was the revelator of a system more advanced than Polytheism or Judaism. Only by viewing his religion in the simple light in which he places it can the mind find safety in its attempts to seek for a basis of faith. But, important as Christianity is, it will avail but little unless it become the heart-property of the theoretical believer. The _Discourses_ produced a deep impression. They inspired the class to whom they had been directed with what it needed most of all, _a sense of dependence_. One could not read them and close the volume without wondering how reason could be deified and the feeling of the heart ignored. There were multitudes of the educated and cultivated throughout the land who, having become unfriendly to Christianity through the persistence of the Rationalists, were equally indisposed to be satisfied with a mere destructive theology. Something positive was what they wanted; hence the great service of Schleiermacher in directing them to Christianity as the great sun in the heavens, and then to the heart as the organ able to behold the light. His labor was inestimably valuable. His utterances were full of the enthusiasm of youth, and, years later, he became so dissatisfied with the work, that he said it had grown strange even to himself. As if over-careful of his reputation, to a subsequent edition he appended large explanatory notes in order to harmonize his recent with his former views. It would have been more becoming the mature man to leave those earnest appeals to reap their own reward. The times had changed; and the necessity which had first called forth his appeal to the idolaters of doubt was sufficient apology. Schleiermacher wrote other works, of which he and his disciples were much prouder; but we doubt if he ever issued one more befitting the class addressed, or followed with more beneficial results. Since his pen has been stopped by death, those very discourses have led many a skeptic in from the cold storm which beat about him, and given him a place at the warm, cheerful fireside of Christian faith. Severe censure has been cast upon them because of their traces of Spinoza. It is enough to reply that their author, in the fourth edition, repudiated every word savoring of Pantheism.