goodness, are taunted with weakly exalting the Divine love at the expense of the Divine justice. It is doubtless upon the assurance of a love which is absolutely infinite that their personal faith really rests; but if required to put into intellectual form their reason for the hope that is in them, it is quite possible to construct an impregnable argument without putting the love of God even as one of its postulates. Leave love out of the question; say simply, "God is a being of perfect holiness, who therefore desires the holiness of every man ; a being of infinite power, who can therefore accomplish all that He desires," and you have the conclusion irresistibly forced upon you. We are indeed told that God has given to man an absolute freedom of will, a power to turn his back upon heaven and to choose hell; and moreover, that with this freedom He will never interfere; but it seems to me that such objectors are either using an argument whose. scope they do not appreciate, or they are proclaiming an utterly incredible horror. The first alternative is the more probable. The real relation of the Divine to the human will is not really understood. It is indeed true that God compels no man to leave sin and come to Him, either by forcing him against his will or by making his will powerless; but He does present Himself to the soul with such fulness of revelation that the will is surprised into sweet consent. The man says, “My God, I come to Thee. Had I known Thee as Thou art, I should have come long ago, but mine eyes were blinded through

the deceitfulness of sin. Thou hast opened them, and I thank Thee for the light in which I see. I thank Thee that in my soul Thy promise is fulfilled, and that I am made willing in the day of Thy power." This is God's method now; and, because He changes not, neither is weary, it must needs be His method to all eternity. Every motive that can sway a man, God will use; every affection through which he can be influenced, God will touch; and at last the prodigal, finding that the feast in the Father's house is indeed better than the husks in the wilderness, turns his face homeward and enters in to go no more out for ever. Dare we say that this sweet Divine persuasion is brought to an end or made powerless by the mere physical change which separates the body from the soul; that only over the man who is in the flesh can the Spirit of holiness have power; that the thing which we call death takes the soul into a region where the redemptive activity of the God of the living must be for ever impotent? Not so: the Spirit of God within us shrinks back, outraged, from a materialism so degrading and so horrible. We will rather accept the sure word of prophecy, that the uplifted Christ will draw all men unto Him; that as He preaches now from Calvary to spirits imprisoned in veils of flesh which hide them from them; so, when those veils are removed, He will preach on to ears empty of earth's voices; will show His five wounds to eyes undistracted by earth's pageantries; and that when they, knowing Him whom they have pierced,

are reconciled at last, He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied.

It was to utterances like these that the members of Our Ecclesia listened Sunday after Sunday. Now and then Pelican gave us a chapter from some book dealing with the inner life; and two or three of us became acquainted for the first time with T. C. Upham, Madame Guyon, and mystical writers of an earlier date. Sometimes we had a discourse from Dr. Newman, or from James Martineau's "Endeavours after the Christian Life;" a book which Pelican always recognised as the realization of his ideal of preaching-the perfect combination and harmony of the intellectual and spiritual elements. When George MacDonald's "Unspoken Sermons" were published, we had them, one by one, on twelve successive Sundays; and the infrequency of the glances which the reader cast upon the printed page showed that in very love he had made not only thoughts but words his own. There were some few books which he could hardly be said to read; he drank them in, and they fired his veins like potent wine. I first noticed this when he became acquainted with some of Mrs. Browning's Poems,-" Confessions;" "The Rhyme of the Duchess May;" "The Lay of the Brown Rosary;" "Portuguese Sonnets." Then "Modern Painters," particularly the fifth volume, cast a similar spell upon him; and he also revelled in the Christianization of Political Economy, which he considered had been accomp

lished by the great art critic in the much vilified essays which he entitled "Unto this Last." But by no book was he more powerfully and permanently influenced than by this little volume of "Unspoken Sermons," which enabled him-as I believe it has enabled many others-to see his own inarticulate devout yearnings and shapeless spiritual conceptions presented with definite outlines, at once soft and clear, like those of some fair sculptured image, tinged by the rays of the sunset with a life-giving flush of rose. "I have learned," he used to say, "many things from many men and women,-from Emerson, George Eliot, Goethe, James Martineau, F. D. Maurice; but the very best things I have learned—the things I could least easily part with, because they have entered into my very life—have been taught me by John Ruskin and George MacDonald."

The poetical aids to meditation and devotion which Pelican contributed to Our Ecclesia, were neither so numerous nor so varied as his prose addresses. The predominance of the mystical element was more marked, as it was likely to be; for it is one of those elements in a man's nature which his speech may hide, but which his song must reveal, if it is not to lose all lyrical freedom. I have only room here for one of these poems. Whatever may be its failings, it has the one merit of being curiously characteristic of its author, at least of that side of him which was turned towards two or three friends, and away from the world.

THE CHRISTIAN'S SONG OF LIFE.

"For me to live is Christ."

So wrote the old Apostle ; knowing well
The world's joys he had priced,
And then had chosen fetters and a cell.

The ruler of this world

Offered his gifts; he would not be enticed ;
But in one sentence hurled

Them all away-"For me to live is Christ.”

Once there had been a time

When in the Crucified he saw no grace,—
Moved not by the sublime
Rapt ecstasy on dying Stephen's face.

But on that lonely road
Which led to far Damascus, he was stayed

By One who sadly showed

To him the five wounds which his sin had made.

1:

“Saul, Saul,” a sad voice said :

"Who art Thou, Lord;" the stricken Saul replied;

Then fell to earth as dead,

Knowing at last the Lord he had defied.

He died in that great hour ;

The world's breath, which had been the life of Saul,

Lost all its ancient power,

And was but death : Christ was his life, his all.

Yes; and there was a day

When I too thought the world had me sufficed;
Mine eyes were turned away,

Nor saw the loving, yearning face of Christ.