self upon
which we have already quoted from Lowell.

it as revealed in nature in a tone not unlike that

"And I shall behold Thee, face to face,

O God, and in Thy light retrace

How in all I loved here, still wast Thou!

Whom pressing to, then as I fain would now,
I shall find as able to satiate

The love, Thy gift, as my spirit's wonder
Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,

With this sky of Thine, that I now walk under,
And glory in Thee for, as I gaze

Thus, thus! oh, let men keep their ways
Of seeking Thee in a narrow shrine-
Be this my way! And this is mine!"

On a sudden there opens to him in the heavens a partial vision of the Christ whom Lowell never names. His first emotion was of joyful surprise, then of terror; lest perhaps this Christ had been in the chapel and among the two or three friends, according to his promise,-whom the poet had disdainfully left, and for this act of contempt the Christ might now leave him. This terror is at once assuaged by a look from the Master which he interprets in words which Mr. Lowell would scarce expect to hear from any orthodox representatives of Calvin or Servetus, as "over their claret they settle Comte unread," but which we believe to be Christian and true.

"So He said, and so it befalls.
God who registers the cup

Of mere cold water, for His sake

To a disciple rendered up,

Disdains not his own thirst to slake

At the poorest love was ever offered:
And because it was my heart I proffered,
With true love trembling at the brim,
He suffers me to follow Him
Forever my own way-dispensed
From seeking to be influenced
By all the less immediate ways
That earth, in worships manifold,
Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise,

The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold !'"

On a sudden he is caught up within the robe to the hem of which he had been steadfastly clinging, and is borne through the air, he knows not how, to Rome and to St. Peter's; where

is going on the splendid ceremonial appropriate to the most sacred evening of the Christian year. The Master enters to receive such love and homage as he may find in its superstitious pomp. The disciple does not deign to follow.

"Until, afresh its light suffusing me,

My heart cried-what has been abusing me
That I should wait here lonely and coldly,
Instead of rising, entering boldly,

Baring truth's face, and letting drift
Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?
Do these men praise Him? I will raise
My voice up to their point of praise!
I see the error; but above

The scope of error, see the love."

From Rome he is borne to a German University, where a Rationalist lecturer is solemnizing Christmas Eve after a philosophic fashion, by expounding the mythical theory concerning Christ and Christianity. The Master goes in even here. The disciple follows.

"Cautious this time how I suffer to slip

The chance of joining in fellowship

With any that call themselves His friends,

As these folks do, I have a notion."

The professor proceeds, and after some premising, shows that the natural residuum of reason that is left, after straining out the myth, is that Christ was

"A Man !-a right true man, however,

Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor,
Work that gave warrant almost sufficient
To his disciples, for rather believing
He was just omnipotent and omniscient,

As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving

His word, their tradition-which, though it meant

Something entirely different

From all that those who only heard it,

In their simplicity thought and averred it,
Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:
For, among other doctrines delectable,
Was he not surely the first to insist on
The natural sovereignty of our race?"

Perhaps this is an example of what Mr. Lowell means, when

he says:

"Faith were Science now, Would she but lay her bow and arrows by, And arm her with the weapons of the time."

On hearing this discourse, which is certainly quite after the manner of the Radical Club that meets weekly in Boston, the indignant disciple breaks forth in sundry pertinent comments, among which the following are especially noticeable:

"What is the point where Himself lays stress!

Does the precept run, 'Believe in Good,

In Justice, Truth, now understood
For the first time?'-or, 'Believe in ME,
Who lived and died, yet essentially
Am Lord of life?'"

He then asks:

"Can it be that He stays inside?

Is the vesture left me to commune with?
Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with
Even at this lecture, if she tried?

O let me at lowest sympathize

With the lurking drop of blood that lies
In the desiccated brain's white roots
Without a throb for Christ's attributes,
As the Lecturer makes his special boast!
If love's dead there, it has left a ghost."

He answers his own question by being reconciled to the Professor, as he hears him tell his audience:

"Go home and venerate the Myth
I thus have experimented with-
This Man, continue to adore him
Rather than all who went before him,

And all who ever followed after!'

Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!"

He even ventures to say:

"I do not tell a lie so arrant

As say my passion's wings are furled up,
And, without the plainest Heavenly warrant,
I were ready and glad to give this world up-
But still, when you rub the brow meticulous,
And ponder the profit of turning holy,
If not for God's, for your own sake solely,
-God forbid I should find you ridiculous!
Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,
Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,
'Christians,'-abhor the Deist's pravity,-
Go on, you shall no more move my gravity,
Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse
I find it in my heart to embarrass them
By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,

And they really carry what they say carries them."

After this lesson of tolerance he is suddenly thrown out vio lently upon the college-steps, and is in terror lest he has lost his hold of the Master's robe by showing a too loving tolerance for those who make so lightly of his person and history. Under a sense of this possible loss he reflects upon the folly of wasting his energies in watching his

"foolish heart expand

In the lazy glow of benevolence,

O'er the various modes of man's belief."
"-Needs must there be one way, our chief,

Best way of worship: let me strive

To find it, and when found, contrive

My fellows also take their share!

This constitutes my earthly care."

He passes in thought to the moment of death, when the great question for him to answer will be:

"Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held

By the hem of the vesture!"

Rubbing his eyes, he scarcely believes that he has been out of it at all; but whether it has been a dream or a reality, he has come to his senses again, and has learned a lesson which reconciles him even to the worship and preaching of the dissenting chapel. This lesson he thus expresses:

"I, then, in ignorance and weakness,
Taking God's help, have attained to think
My heart does best to receive in meekness
That mode of worship, as most to his mind,
Where earthly aids being cast behind,
His All in All appears serene

With the thinnest human veil between,
Letting the mystic Lamps, the Seven,

The many motions of His spirit,
Pass, as they list, to earth from Heaven.

For the preacher's merit or demerit,

It were to be wished the flaws were fewer

In the earthen vessel, holding treasure,

Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;

But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?

Heaven soon sets right all other matters!"
"And let us hope

That no worse blessing befall the Pope."
"Nor may the Professor forego its peace

At Göttingen, presently, when, in the dusk
Of his life."

"When, thicker and thicker, the darkness fills
The world through his misty spectacles,

And he gropes for something more substantial
Than a fable, myth, or personification,-
May Christ do for him, what no mere man shall,
And stand confessed as the God of salvation!
Meantime, in the still recurring fear

Lest myself, at unawares, be found,

While attacking the choice of my neighbor's round,
Without my own made-I choose here!
The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;
I have done! And if any blames me,
Thinking that merely to touch in brevity
The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,-
Or, worse, that I trench, with undue levity,
On the bounds of the holy and the awful,-
I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,
And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,
Who head and heart alike discernest."

"I put up pencil and join chorus

To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,
The last five verses of the third section

Of the seventeenth hymn in Whitfield's Collection,
To conclude with the doxology."

It will be seen that the theme of the two poems is substantially the same. Both writers are oppressed with the scepticism of modern thought and feeling. In the one case it takes the form of the antagonism of a refined taste to doctrines crudely conceived, and to the homely worship of uncultured souls. In the other, it finds weariness in all forms and acts of worship as necessarily inadequate and unsatisfactory, and a necessary contradiction between science and any revealed doctrine or supernatural history. Both poets take refuge at first in God as revealed in nature. The one rests there, but not content with the personal satisfaction which he himself receives, he puts on the airs of a fastidions dilettante who knows God by a faith more enlightened and earnest than that of those who see Him revealed in Christ and the "common place of miracle." The