every point, in every power, the Creator must surpass in this too. He must will to save, and, willing, He must have power to do what is highest. There is, therefore, a life to repair and complete these broken lives, and a God who is Power and Law, but also Love for ever helpful. Surely it must be so. Man is indeed of little power, soon spent; and yet it is not what a man does or can that tests him, but what he "would do." And greatest of all he "would do" is the act of saving another, even through sacrifice and suffering. So it must be with God.

"Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou, so wilt Thou!
So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown—
And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
One spot for Thy creature to stand in !

"As Thy Love is discovered Almighty, Almighty be proved Thy Power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved!

He who did most shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the

most weak.

'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for; my flesh that I seek
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it, oh, Saul; it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me
Thou shalt love and be loved by for ever; a Hand like this hand
Shalt throw open the gates of new life to thee, See the Christ Stand."

As the poet-prophet made his way home in the night, his soul full of this highest truth, in which all the pain and sin of human life might be healed, the intensity of his emotion, his ecstasy of hope, gave all nature and the whole of life a new meaning. The universe seemed aware, seemed in sympathy. His hope had become an open secret." All the hosts of life seemed to press about him, and the stars beat

with emotion, until the tumult and the rapture were quenched in quiet and rest.

earth, in the

With the dawn, the trouble and sorrow and wrong seemed to have withered from the opening light of a final era of hope. The birth of day and the grey of the hills had a new tenderness, a new promise. The breath of the morning air seemed a thrill of fresh joy, and all the creatures knew the truth.

And what, you ask, is the general value of such a poem? (1) It is a study of "a mind diseased," and the means by which it may be restored-by music and song and human sympathy, and by the influence of a generous and healthy nature. (2) It is a study of character in one of those crises that call forth all its resources. David, face to face with the mad king, gloomy as the blackness of the mid-tent itself, is a striking picture of courage and tenderness. He tries one means, and then another, and, unsatisfied with partial success, he rises by sheer magnanimity of nature to that hope and faith in which a full success is assured. Two kingly natures, Saul and David; but David the greater, the richer, more spiritual. (3) It is, too, a study of the inmost spirit of the Psalms -of the relation of the faith of that sweet singer and heroic king to the man himself: "Like as a father pitieth his child, even so the Eternal pitieth;" "The mercy of the Eternal is from everlasting to everlasting." (4) It is a subtle and powerful exposition of the central problem of Christianity, and the great faith by

which that problem is solved. The relation of this faith to the moral necessities of life, and to what is best and deepest in the heart, is forcibly and greatly shown. It is the sorrow and sin of the world that raise its deepest problem, and force us on to the highest question; and whenever a strong nature is face to face with such facts as this of Saul's deterioration and madness, these questions are raised. The question is raised by love and care for the individual “soul” even more than by thought. The idea of self-sacrificing love as the only one adequate to the facts of life, and as essential to the ideal of divine excellence, was never so finely expressed or so vitally "argued." The revelation of the Supreme Humanity of Deity, and the commanding power and grace of this conception of God, are most forcibly presented. The splendour and tenderness of the Christian faith, and what may be called the moral argument for it, are here at their best. (5) And this new and fuller thought of God seems to shed light not only on human life, but on the whole life of the world. All things have part in it. It gives the secret of the life of all; it is the mystery of that "pent knowledge' and hidden law which waited to be "revealed."

But obviously there are two objections to such a роет. It is not historic. David could not have reached these ideas, and certainly not in the form they have here. This train of thought is modern and Christian. That is true. The dramatic-lyric, as Browning used it, allows that, or at least uses that

freedom, and you gain by it, since the ideas are amplified by the imagination and passion of the poet, while they keep a real fitness in regard to the speaker and his circumstances. The large and tender heart of the royal psalmist would have responded to such sentiments, though he could never have anticipated them, except in so far as the Messianic strain in his psalms gives a basis for it.

And in the judgment of some the matter is not poetic. It is theological in these closing sections, and they would have liked "Saul" better without them. The poem, in point of form and passion, and in flow of verse, is one of the most poetic, and that seems to argue that the matter has been transmuted. And so it is. And the ideas are presented as part of the passion and insight of the singer. It is the very soul of the singer become faith and song. And the tone of the poem is not even didactic. It is dramatic narrative, in which the ideas are seen as they grow up out of the circumstances and spirit of the speaker.

"Christmas Eve" (vol. v. 117) is a study of the central theme of "Saul" from a different standpoint, through a very different persona, and in a different atmosphere. It is a vision of Christ; of the great figure and idea of Christianity as seen by a modern mind amid the division and debate and the doubt of the present century. And the question has become, on the eve of the day consecrated to the memory of the Christ, what is to be thought of and believed about Him and His religion. The Christian religion has

become so various and contradictory in its sects, and the history of Christ has become so uncertain, that the question now is whether any of these sects express the true idea-whether the divine idea found historic expression in Christ, or whether the idea has fashioned the character and the legend. To the speaker's inner thought the great faith clearly remains—the figure and spirit of Christ remain the highest authority and law; but that inner faith has much difficulty to keep any relation to "the Churches of Christ," and even to hold its own clearly against modern criticism.

The poem is a kind of dramatic romance—an imaginary narrative, presenting the sections of the debate in scenes of a kind of dream. The speaker, who is clearly not the poet, relates what passed through his mind one Christmas Eve as if it had happened externally. He is in a chapel on the edge of a common- —a poor place, with wretched service and vulgar worshippers. Driven in by the night's storm, he would worship and listen for an hour with the others to that gospel of the Christ who came as Saviour centuries ago. But what he sees and hears is very trying, and soon drives him well within his own thoughts and fancies, raising within his mind, by the quaint worship and gospel of these people, the question whether indeed any form of Christianity be credible any more. He fancies himself, in disgust of this particular form, quickly out of the little chapel again into the stormy night, with nature alone for temple and teacher, and the contrast between the