When the armed angel, conscience clear,
His task nigh done, leans on his spear,
And gazes on the earth he guards,
Safe one night more thro' all its wards,
Till God relieve him at his post.

That limitless plain of waters which we call the German Ocean was basking in the morning sunshine. The sun was newly up; but no breeze had risen with the dawn, and a breathless quietude pervaded the sky and the sea.

6

Over the Gutter Bank, where the big fish lie, a small fleet of fishing boats was widely scattered. The hands on board were busy with their lines, but the brown sails were lowered, and the bare spars rocked leisurely with the tide. The Gutter Bank is in mid-ocean : it is only during the calmest weather that the fisher-folk venture out so far. But for the past week the weather had been strangely still. Beyond the fishing boats-nearer Noroway'-a tidy little craft is lying at anchor. The bank, though in mid-ocean, is comparatively shallow, and there is one spot known to coastmen and smugglers where in weather like this a vessel may ride safely. It is seldom, of course, that an anchor is dropped in that vast sea-solitude; but the knowledge that it is possible to lie there for days without a soul on shore being a bit the wiser is sometimes handy.

There is nothing stirring-so far as one can judge at this distance-on board the handsome little cutter; she might be the Flying Dutchman or any other phantom craft, for that matter. But a tiny cockle-shell of a boat that is paddling about among the fleet, with a couple of youngsters at the oars, is very much on the alert.

I say, Dick,' one of the lads exclaims, I can't stand this any longer. The skipper is growing fat and lazy, and the landsharks will be upon us one of these moonlight nights. Suppose we make a run for the shore and waken up the pretty girls at Peelboro'?'

me.

'Dinna tempt me, Dander,' his companion replies, 'dinna tempt The Peelboro' lasses! Why, man, there's a lass up there, at the queer auld house o' Fontainbleau, that's worth every cutty in the town.

Oh, Nancy's hair is yellow as gold,
And her een like the lift are blue!

But her name's no Nancy, but Eppie, and she's no my sweetheart, but my sister, and the raven's wing at the Bloody Hole is not so black as her hair. But bide a wee, bide a wee, Dander; if the skipper means what he says, we'll mak Pothead the morn's nicht; and the skipper's a man o' his word—tho', to be sure, it's a day sooner than he designed.'

'That's good news, Dick; better late than never. header!'

And now for a

So the boys plunged into the cool sparkling water-dark yet

less luxury is youth! Out of what cheap elements is happiness formed when we are boys! And the ecstasy of that morning plunge in mid-sea is never forgotten, however old we may grow.

For well nigh an hour they paddle about like a pair of young seals-now diving underneath, now floating lazily on the surface. Their hair, as it dries in the sunshine, grows crisp with the sea-salt. A screaming flock of kittiwakes hover overhead; a great black-backed gull regards them curiously as he passes. The breeze begins to move upon the water; fairy specks of mist drift lightly across the heaven. Then the fisher people lift their lines and hoist their tar-stained sails. One after the other they draw away towards the land.

But the tidy craft outside shows no sign of life, and the boys still chase each other like flappers through the water.

All the world is happy this October morning-sea and sky and cloud and gull and kittiwake; and happiness, in spite of the sourer moralists, is an altogether lovely thing, almost as lovely as youth! How does it happen, then, that happiness has such a fatal tendency to undo itself, to turn into mere mischief and misery? How fresh and wholesome a world! and yet how poisonous the seed that has been sown by some sinister hand!

XXII.

THE fishing hamlet of Port Erroll is built along the ledges of the North Haven cliffs; while the fishing boats are drawn up out of reach of the breakers on the bleached sands of the cove. Seen from a distance -from a distance, remember-these whitewashed, red-tiled cottages present an appearance of most picturesque confusion. A quaint gable-end with a most preposterous little window peeps round the corner: one old-fashioned mansion has mounted bodily on the back of its neighbour: were a single wall in the lower tier to give way, the whole community would incontinently topple into the sea. Slippery steps compounded of mud and water and the remains of slaughtered fish connect the various stories of this perpendicular hamlet, and lead ultimately, after a series of successful manœuvres, to the beach on the one hand and the upper world on the other. Nets and great black pots and dried fish and the wings of sea-fowl are suspended along the walls; and ducks, and gulls who have been made captive in their youth, and a large scrath with a look of insatiate gluttony stamped on its ugly face, explore the recesses of an ample ash-pit which has not been emptied within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. An ill-favoured and ill-conditioned sow waddles greedily from one tempting abomination to another, and disputes with lean and weatherbeaten curs the savoury nuisances of the dung-heap. Amid the dirt, innumerable little bundles of rags and tatters- the progeny of the

parcels of filth the bright eye and the roguish smile, we are more than ever impressed by the unquenchable élan of boyhood. Nowadays such a community would be held to offend grievously against all the conditions on which health depends; but in the year One sanitary science was in its infancy, and these worthy people—those of them, at least, who escaped the perils of the sea-never thought of dying, except of old age.

The sun has set: lights begin to twinkle among the cottages. It is the Sabbath night, and the inmates are sitting lazily at the doors of their dwellings. Then a bell is rung, and the women rise and walk leisurely towards the chapel on the rock-a building as grey and weather-stained as the rock itself. Some of the men follow. The evening service has begun, and forthwith the music of the great seapsalm echoes across the bay.

The floods, O Lord, have lifted up,
They lifted up their voice;

The floods have lifted up their waves,
And made a mighty noise.

But yet the Lord that is on high
Is more of might by far,
Than noise of many waters is
Or great sea billows are.

Presently the rough voice of the Missionary in urgent intercession with a jealous God is heard through the open door,-though the words of the prayer cannot be distinguished. But were we to enter we could guess that the congregation are preoccupied and inattentive, even the preacher becoming ultimately aware that the thoughts of his hearers are wool-gathering. So the service is brought to an abrupt conclusion, and the congregation stream out into the twilight. All eyes are turned at once and instinctively towards the sea. Yesa blue light is burning on the water, a couple of miles from the land. One or two of the men disappear from the crowd, scramble away to a ledge where a heap of brushwood has been collected; a piece of tinder is ignited with the old-fashioned flint and fleerish,' and presently the brushwood is in a blaze. These are signals-signals between the sea and the shore. If you were versed in the language of the craft, you would understand that the blue light from the 'Crookit Meg' was a note of interrogation-Is the coast clear?' and that the red blaze from North Haven was the answer-It is all safe at Hell's Lum.'

6

Then the women and children go indoors, and in parties of twos and threes the men ascend the steep footpath leading to the mainland, and turn their faces to the south.

THER

THE ATHEISTIC VIEW OF LIFE.

HERE is one great source of confusion in the reasonings which we hear about Atheism and its effect on human nature which it would be well so far as possible to remove. The facts are not altered by our belief or disbelief in God, except so far as our knowledge or ignorance of facts is itself a fact—which no doubt it is and a very important one, but nothing like so important as the mighty truth itself with which we desire our belief, so far as possible, to agree. It is no more possible for the Atheist to get rid of God, by denying Him, than it was for those who disbelieved in the atmosphere to get rid of the atmosphere by that denial of its existence. Indeed, as it took a belief in the existence of the atmosphere to render the invention of an air-pump possible, so it takes a belief in the existence of God to render the truest kind of denial of Him—namely, the conscious repudiation of His authority-possible. Properly speaking, the convinced intellectual atheist is incapable of that deliberate repulsion of the divine influence of which a theist is capable. For, as he does not believe in the existence of any such being, and would, of course, give a totally different account of any of those perturbations or scruples of his conscience which the Christian would ascribe to the divine influence, he has no power even of consciously repelling that influence, very probably no wish to repel it. He may, indeed, yield to its solicitations under some other name, and this where a true theist, recognising the source of the influence which is endeavouring to humiliate him for his evil doing, might in the pride of his heart rebel angrily against it. It is very important never to forget that, so far from annihilating a reality by ignoring it, we may even in some cases lend it, by ignoring it, an easier access to our minds and hearts. Authority in disguise, authority in an incognito, may of course be, and usually will be, a much less respected authority than authority in the full exercise of its privileges. But in exceptional cases it may be not less, but more, obeyed for its incognito. There is certainly such a phenomenon as rebelling against a visible yoke, which, if it were unseen and invisible, would be cheerfully submitted

to.

This is nothing more than saying over again that the silken rein may be more efficient than the thong of leather. But it is important to observe that whatever that authority is in human life which the theist names as God, is not eliminated from the mind which denies to it this name, but remains, in what may be, as circumstances determine, either much diminished force, or even somewhat increased force, or just where it was, in the mind of him who has satisfied himself that it ought to be resolved into a variety

I lay stress upon this because I am going to consider what human life will become, if Atheism—or the same thing under a less aggressive name, Agnosticism-could ever get complete control of men's vision of the future. I am very anxious not to forget myself, and not to let anyone else forget, that neither can the theist show what the world should be like without God, since he cannot even so conceive it, nor can the atheist show what the world should be, as distinguished from what it now is, if God were in all and through all. You can compare, to some extent, living in an atmosphere with the attempt to live in a vacuum, because you can exhaust the air and observe the effect of doing so upon yourself. But the theist cannot exhaust the world of God, nor the atheist fill what he thinks a godless world with Him, and each therefore, in reasoning with an opponent, is alike reduced to the comparatively inefficient resource of comparing the result of bringing all his thoughts and all his fellowcreatures' thoughts into harmony with his own belief, with the result of bringing all his thoughts and all his fellow-creatures' thoughts into harmony with the opposite belief, and then deciding which of the two conditions of thought would be the more difficult to reconcile with the admitted condition of life, so far at least as there is any admitted condition of life. If the atheist could be right, man has been feeding himself on dreams, and mischievous dreams, for thousands of years. If the theist is right, man is just beginning to dream that he has been dreaming, though he has really been awake and is only now wandering into dreamland. But, whoever is right, the facts to be interpreted are the same, except, indeed, as to the interpretation of them-itself a fact of no small moment. The atheist has to explain what he holds to be the dreams of ages; and the theist what he regards as the strange illusion which is besetting usalmost anew-in this comparative maturity of our race.

Now, accepting and insisting on this, as of the very essence of the case, that whichever belief be the true one, it ought to adapt itself with comparative ease to the facts which are, and always must be, far beyond our complete grasp that it ought to require less straining in order to meet those facts half way that it ought to cover them more easily ought to open out more naturally towards what we are only beginning to understand, I want to attempt an answer to a single question. If we could bring our thoughts strictly into the humble secularistic grooves, if we could think of man as intellectually and morally companionless in the universe, of the individual life as terminated in any case by death, of the life of the race as dependent absolutely on the physical conditions of the planet, and as certain to cease altogether so soon as those physical conditions become inconsistent with the well-being of our organisation, how would this affect our lot? Would it fit the facts of our actual nature with a quite new and surprising exactness, so that the inherited prejudices which would, of course, have to be shed before accepting it, would