although but in broken fragments scattered abroad "like unto the limbs of Orpheus," no small portion of moral, political, and even of religious truth; thus inheriting at once and vindicating the ancient opinion that the gentile world had not been left wholly without inspiration, that it was visited by streams, running long under ground, but derived from sacred sources, -that some beams of a better light were refracted, before sunrise, into its murkier air.

Hardly, indeed, could it have been otherwise. If that Fall which depraved the Will, and subverted the order of man's moral being, had left behind it no mens divinior, dimmed, not obliterated, there would have remained no faculty by which the better light, when vouchsafed, could have been recognised, and no hand by which the priceless gift could have been received. That mens divinior is the great inspirer of poetry. True poetry has ever a substratum of Religion in it, either pointing towards a Faith not yet revealed, or surviving it and flourishing with wild luxuriance on the soil in which that Faith has been interred. Poetry is the vital religion of Nature, and as such, though it may walk in devious ways, its eyes, at least, must often be raised to something above Nature. Nature itself was the first revelation made to man, and was necessarily made congruous with that higher revelation destined from the first not to supersede, but to redeem, to harmonise, and to complete it. Where, as in Greece, there existed most of that insight which fathoms Nature's meanings, and of that creative mind which

An

interprets hints, man caught most frequent glimpses of that higher scheme of thought and life, proportioned to Nature as the building is proportioned to the foundation. Such as the heart of man was, such were the songs that lifted it up; and it is as such that they retain a moral significance for all time. adequate estimate of the Natural must ever raise our conception of that Supernatural which consummates and crowns it. We should not indeed "divide the crown " between Cecilia and old Timotheus; yet we may reflect that the instrument which in later times shook the Christian temples with awe, or thrilled with the secret of a hushed and subdued pathos the sanctuary itself, bore yet in its glorious aspect and manifold organisation no small analogy to the simple reed-pipe of the Arcadian divinity as well as of the shepherd watching his flock by night.

The analogy between the Greek mythology and the true religion which in interpreting it abolished it, as Judaism was abolished by its own fulfilment, seems implied in a legend, which may be new to some readers, though perhaps not less authentic than many traditions which belong apparently to the same age: "That voice which, crying aloud unto Thammus, the Greek pilot (when on the night of our Lord's most bitter passion, He voyaged past the island of Paxo), bewailed that 'the great God Pan is dead,' did not more plainly declare the dissolution of Paynim darkness than did the vision of Parmenio, priest of Lycian Apollo, when Polycarp sat yet at Smyrna.

For Parmenio, after his conversion, did confess that as, after sacrifice, he slumbered in the temple (which was a wonder of the world), the pillar against which his head leaned waxed ever taller, and also slenderer as it rose. And, he gazing around, the other pillars waxed in height likewise, and in thinness became as reeds; and many of them stood together for support. And the wall also ascended, as the cloud that riseth past the cliff; and the roof was lifted up; and the stone that stretcheth from pillar to pillar, and the stone that compasseth the building, raised themselves up in arches, like unto the hands of the priest when he lifteth them in prayer, and did sustain the roof. Moreover, the heads of the pillars, adorned with Asian phantasies, did sprout, like the rod of Aaron, and ran along the roof in traceries as a vine. The temple also grew longer than an Egyptian colonnade; and in the walls thereof there opened out great grots and caves, wherein stood in trance, kings, and prophets, and virgins, and martyrs incarnadine with the blood. of their passion, and holding, every one, lily or palm. And from the altar went forth thunderings and lightnings which burned to ashes the chaplets and the offerings, and the statue of Oracular Apollo. And by four gates there entered into that temple, from the four corners of the earth, an innumerable company; and with their psalm which they sang the temple was shaken as it would ascend into heaven. And Parmenio heard a loud cry of Spirits, which wept in the words of the sad poet, Virgilius Maro (that

descended to the Shades), and said, 'We truly did build, but not for ourselves:' and another voice answered to them again, and said, 'Since God hath destroyed your work.'"-For the word "destroyed," in the last sentence, might not the word "assumed " be substituted, without injury to faith or morals?

XII

THE SUBJECTIVE DIFFICULTIES IN

RELIGION :

DOES UNBELIEF COME FROM

SOMETHING IN RELIGION OR IN THE UNBELIEVER? 1

IN these later days we hear much about the difficulties connected with Christianity, and even with Theism itself, of which Christianity is daily more and more found to be the sole effectual shield. Those who dwell upon them, whether with a morbid satisfaction or a needless alarm, would do well to reflect on a remark of Cardinal Newman's, to this effect-viz. that a hundred difficulties need not produce a single doubt. Nature is full of difficulties, and most men, except those who would stumble at a straw, know how to pursue their way notwithstanding. We have heard of "an apology for the Bible"; but Nature makes no apology. She says, "Learn of me, and you

1 The following remarks, as they reply to but popular objections, do not profess scientific exactitude of expression.