poet doing this work for it, some of his words will link themselves to its questioning as though expressing its perplexity and yearning, and others of them will seem to announce its spiritual discoveries, and to carry, too, the joy those discoveries brought. We think that Tennyson did this service to his generation in his "In Memoriam." This is of all his poems that which has most deeply impressed the English and American mind. Competent observers of contemporaneous intellectual life believe that it did more than any of them to make him famous. Mr. Gladstone said in the "Quarterly Review" in 1859: "By the time 'In Memoriam' had sunk into the public mind, Mr. Tennyson had taken his rank as our then first living poet." Another writer said in the same Review in 1884: "There is no question that Lord Tennyson first earned his great fame by his 'In Memoriam.'"

It cannot be justly said that the poet's subsequent works have added nothing to his fame, for they have illustrated other phases of his genius and so enlarged the public conception of it. But it is certain that none of them, not even the "Idylls of the King," has been as warmly received as was "In Memoriam." Nor has any penetrated the mind of our time so deeply. A sufficient proof of this may be found in the comparative number of extracts from it in any good dictionary of quotations, and especially in the character of these extracts. They greatly outnumber those from any other poem, and have a still greater superiority in weight. The thoughts which the poet has put into the mind of his time are chiefly found here.

These quotations remind us that it was by its thought that "In Memoriam" won the poet's renown. His gifts had been fully revealed in his earlier works. "Dora," " 'Locksley Hall," "The Dream of Fair Women," "The Death of King Arthur," "The Princess," are worthy of him. The melody of his verse, his power to see and show the beauty and suggestiveness of nature, his lyric emotion, his historic imagination, are all adequately represented in them. One would not be very rash in saying that some of these poems are more perfect art and more likely to be read in the next century than "In Memoriam." Evidently the greater fame of the latter is due to the greater interest its content had for the mind of the time. We find it explained in these words, which Frederick Robertson (a critic rarely competent to say what literature touched the better thought of his day) wrote about it soon after it appeared: "It is the most precious work published this century—written in memory of his friend Arthur Hallam, and exhibiting the manifold phases through which the spirit passes, of rebellion, darkness, doubt, through the awful questions about personal identity hereafter, reunion, and the uncertainty whether Love be indeed the law of the universe, on to placid trust, even cheerfulness, and the deep conviction- - all is well. . . . To me it has been the richest treasure I have ever had." Plainly it was the meaning of the poem which gave it its surpassing VOL. XII. - NO. 69.

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power. Men read it and loved it, because it met a deep spiritual want. To see how it did this we must see the underlying truth which the poem expresses. Its teachings blend in the declaration that the heart of man finds a revelation of God in its deepest experiences. The poet's great sorrow is lifted out of egotism by being set forth in its larger aspects. His intellectual force and artistic skill unite in making all those experiences of pain and doubt and conflict which he presents seem to be not so much revelations of what came to him, as, to use Robertson's words, "phases through which the spirit passes." It is the very voice of human sorrow which says,

"That loss is common would not make

My own less bitter, rather more :

Too common ! Never morning wore

To evening, but some heart did break.”

Trust struggling with the doubt which sorrow brings finds expression in the familiar words,

“I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff, and call

To what I feel is Lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope."

Faith purified and strengthened by sorrow finds expression in the

prayer,

"O living will that shall endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock,

Rise in the spiritual rock,

Flow through our deeds and make them pure,

"That we may lift from out the dust

A voice as unto him that hears,

A cry above the conquered years
To one that with us works, and trust,

"With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,

And all we flow from, soul in soul."

A prominent feature of the experience thus delineated is the consciousness it awakes in the soul of its own dignity, and a yearning for assurance that life is ordered to match that consciousness. Love is a mockery, if it be a thing of to-day. It promises immortality every moment of its life, and if immortality be a dream its life is one long lie. A world so made as to vindicate the right of love in its nobler forms to be and to rule is a world shaped by goodness for ends whose worthiness a future life will reveal. So when love is broken, the soul must ask what life is and whether there be a God. If its question be such as an unselfish affection begets, a love that found and chiefly cared for goodness in

that which is lost, it will find God answering it. Sooner or later the conviction will come that the soul's conscious greatness was God's declaration that it was made for immortality. The deep sorrow which caused it to ask after God will appear to have been the earthquake and the storm, preceding and predicting God's own voice in the soul. This deeper phase of the experience which bereavement begets has its due place in the representation given in the "In Memoriam." We are made to feel always that the great grief endured is teaching the soul to find itself and God. At the beginning of the sorrow comes the question, "Who shall so forecast the years

Or find in loss a gain to match?

Or reach a hand through time to catch

The far-off interest of tears."

When the first numbness of grief has passed, the craving for immortality and permanence of love awakens.

"C 'My own dim life should teach me this,

That life shall live forevermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,

And dust and ashes all that is.

"What then were God to such as I?

'T were hardly worth my while to choose

Of things all mortal, or to use

A little patience ere I die.”

The distressing doubt of a future life speaks in the passionate words:

"No more? A monster then, a dream,

A discord. Dragons of the prime,

That tare each other in their slime,

Were mellow music matched with him."

The moral strength which belief in the friend's immortality of friendship gives,

"I count it crime

To mourn for any over much;

I the divided half of such

A friendship as had mastered Time;

"Which masters Time indeed, and is

Eternal, separate from fears."

At last the deep sense of God's presence in the heart, forever banish

Then was I as a child that cries,

But, crying, knows his father near."

And growing out of this new faith in God the peaceful trust that love rules all.

I

"hear at times a sentinel

Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,

In the deep night, that all is well."

So the poet shows us the soul awakened by sorrow to hear God's voice in its heart, and to know itself immortal. The burden of the poem is that the heart of man receives a personal disclosure of the divine life. Its especial power over the mind of the time is due to the inherent attractiveness of this truth. Men have found the conviction into which life was leading them expressed in it, with noble beauty. So they have pondered it, until the music of its verse became the music of their faith. They have given its author a better tribute than praise—the gratitude and reverence due to one both poet and prophet.

THE EPISCOPAL HYMNAL REVISED.

THE hymns of the churches in England and America are the strongest bond of Christian union. This could not have been said fifty years ago, when metrical versions of the Psalms and a few stilted hymns constituted the staple of material for singing in public worship. Now half the hymns which are favorites in any denomination are familiar in all the great communions, and there is general agreement in the adoption of new hymns for devotional uses. The appearance of every new hymnal is interesting, because it indicates some of the lines of this most important development. The appearance of a hymnal for use in the Episcopal Church is especially interesting, because worship occupies so prominent a place in its public services, and because that Church is conservative in respect to all proposed changes. The General Convention of 1886 appointed a committee to report what changes are to be desired in the Hymnal. This committee has presented a preliminary report in the shape of a pamphlet containing 688 hymns, which they have agreed to present for consideration. It is not unlikely, as they themselves intimate, that, in the light of discussion, the final report to the Convention will exclude some of these hymns and restore others which have been omitted; but such modifications will probably be slight. It is not our purpose to make a critical examination of this collection, but only to consider it as an indication of the development of hymnology which is going on in all the churches.

A very significant fact is the omission of 320 of the 532 hymns in the collection adopted only fifteen years ago. Either the judgment of the committee and convention of 1874 was greatly at fault, or a rapid change

has been going on in this respect. And nearly all of these omitted hymns are now universally disused. A few are favorites, and will doubtless be retained in the final report; such as,

And yet it is not likely that there will be any desire to retain more than 75 of the 320 hymns which have been omitted. That is to say, by general consent, nearly if not quite half of the hymnal of 1874 has become useless. It may be that some of the hymns which are now unhesitatingly rejected were retained only doubtfully in 1874, and were passing out of use even then, but this cannot have been true of the great majority of them. Examples of rejections about which there will be no disagreement are: —

"Ah, not like erring man is God."
"As o'er the past my memory strays."
"Be still my heart, these anxious cares.'
"Great God, this sacred day of thine."
"Hasten sinner to be wise."

The most numerous omissions are paraphrases of psalms and hymns of Isaac Watts. What may be called theological hymns are felt to be unsuitable to public worship, and have been omitted. A single example may suffice:

"Ah, not like erring man is God

That men to answer him should dare ;

Condemned, and into silence awed,

They helpless stand before his bar.

"There must a Mediator plead,

Who, God and man, may both embrace ;