O Thou! who poured the patriotic tide

That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart;
Who dared to, nobly, stem tyrannic pride,

Or nobly die, the second glorious part,–
The patriot's God, peculiarly thou art,
His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward—
O never, never, Scotia's realm desert;

But still the patriot, and the patriot bard,

In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!

In these days, when we think less of a national and more of a universal God, it may strike us as limiting and dividing a great idea to speak of a patriot's God. And, when we consider well, there is a great disadvantage in thinking of a God whose peculiar care is England, or France, or Germany; indeed, if we do so, in war for example, our idea of God must become wholly confused. One or other side must be wrong in claiming God as specially theirs. God is the God of mankind; His equal love belongs to and falls on all, on the meanest as fully as on the most cultured races. That is the large conception which will free us from the national selfishness into which patriotism degenerates, and increase that international kindness and communion which are beginning to be a mark of our time; nay more, bring us slowly up to the thought which a century hence will, I hope, dominate politics-national self-sacrifice. The Christian thought of personal life is to surrender our personal life and its interests for those among whom we live. The Christian thought of social life is to surrender our personal interest for the sake of the well-being of society, not only of our own country's society, but of human society. The Christian thought of national life, which has been prominently put forward by the Comtists, is that each nation, when the

interests of the whole race are concerned in such sacrifice, should give up its national interests for those of all mankind. Till we attain that, and it will necessitate a general confederation of nations, we cannot be called Christian nations, for we are not regulating our national conduct by the Christian rule of life.

Keeping, however, this thought of God clear as the foundation of our life, we are then able-without ill or unreason following from it-to love God as the God of our country also, as the source of a noble patriotism. For we no longer think of God as the God of England in rivalry or contest with other nations, and claim Him as specially ours to the exclusion of others. We say to ourselves, on the contrary" Our country has a special work to do in the progress of the whole race; work which is fitted to our national character, and which our special gifts enable us to do better than any other nation. It is God who in his education of the whole of mankind has given us that work. Within its sphere, then, and with this object before us, which is first universal, and afterwards national, God is the source of our patriotism." We love our country then in God, when we love it for a higher reason than its own glory-for the reason that it is the instrument of God to do a special work for Man. We support and cherish the peculiar characteristics of England, because these are needful for the growth of mankind. We love and cherish its scenery because that is one of the most formative elements of our national character, and that character is needed for the growth of Man. We are patriots because we are men who believe that the decay or death of England would damage the interests of the

whole race, and delay its progress to the great goal whither God is driving it.

And nothing is lost in that idea of the old power and dearness of patriotism. The old conception is taken up into the new, only all the evil of national selfishness is taken out of it. We love our country none the less because we love man more.

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LECTURE XV.

In my last lecture I spoke of the poetry of Man as found in Burns, and I dwelt especially on the way in which he in accordance with the new spirit which was stealing into the world-devoted his work to the interests of the poor among whom he lived, not of set purpose like a philanthropist, but because he could not help it like an artist.

It is his natural poetry of which I shall speak to-day, and we can connect it with the previous lecture by the thought that among the joys that God has given to the life of the poor one of the deepest is the beauty of Nature, and the heart to love it; such a heart as Burns himself possessed, who

"In his glory and his joy

"Followed the plough along the mountain side."

Things without money or without price, beauty not hid in galleries, but spread abroad a feast of delight on every mountain-side and stream-fed meadow-this was God's gift to the poor. And strange to say, Burns seems to think, and he should know something about it, that the poor were better able than the rich and cultured to enjoy the

loveliness of the world. That certainly would not be true of England now; for there are few things we have so attentively cultivated as the love of Nature. But it may have been true in his days that

The Laverock shuns the palace gay,
And o'er the cottage sings;

For Nature smiles as sweet, I ween,
To shepherds as to Kings.

Wordsworth, too, takes up the same thought; he himself is formed by Nature, step by step; it never seems to occur to him that his companions-dalesmen, shepherds, pedlers, even the little children-can be otherwise than lovers of Nature, and able to enjoy its beauty; and we must take his witness as true, for he lived among them all his life. But this is certainly not the case further south, and the lower one goes in England, the less one finds of it, except in the upper classes, among whom it has now become almost instinctive.

We have, then, this curious problem at the very outset of our lecture-that the poor of the north-western part of England on the border, and of the west border of Scotland, are lovers of Nature, while the poor of midland and southern England are not. I do not say that I can solve that problem; I cannot-but I can make a few conjectures about it, and it will lead me to speak of the Nature poetry of Scotland, a poetry so distinct from that of England that it is necessary to say something about it before we touch on it in Burns.

The higher appreciation of Nature among the men of the west border may partly be owing to the grandeur or wildness of the scenery they live amongst. The imagina