Holy, which may be called discourse without words, the most distinct and expressive utterance of the inward man.  The Muse of Harmony, whose intimate relation with religion, although it has been for a long time spoken of and described, is yet recognized only by few, has always presented upon her altars the most perfect and magnificent productions of her selectest scholars in honor of religion.  It is in sacred hymns and choirs, with which the words of the poet are connected only by slight and airy bands, that those feelings are breathed forth which precise language is unable to 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