But Tolstoy was not only a novelist; he was a preacher, a prophet in the Hebrew sense of the term; he wrote with rare power on religious, ethical, social, international questions. Yet, while concerning the genius of Tolstoy the novelist there is no dispute, of his value as a prophet and a philosopher there are quite divergent opinions. Let us consider for a moment the two sides of his genius.-Though every normal man tries to lead a moral life, the notions of various persons as to what constitutes a moral life are far from identical. A Zulu warrior has one opinion of the matter, a sister of charity another; Vronsky has his ideal and Karenin an ideal altogether different. Tolstoy understands both the ideal of Vronsky and that of Karenin, and describes both men with sympathy, not thrusting his own judgments of them upon our attention. Yet at the same time he, Leo Tolstoy, has his own ideal of a moral life, which he expresses vaguely and confusedly in the works of his youth, clearly and powerfully in those of his last thirty years. This is the ideal of a life not subject to the flesh, a life of self-sacrifice and of service to others. As he grows older, he develops this ideal more and more consistently, more and more sternly. He shows frankly that this ideal, carried to its logical conclusion, would destroy all existing forms of society and finally extinguish the human race itself. Yet he accepts these consequences without flinching. He restores the ideal of the early Christians; he becomes a fanatic preacher of brotherly love.

Here I have no time to analyze Tolstoy's ethical system; I can only say that in my own opinion it is faulty, that Tolstoy falls into grave errors. Nevertheless he expresses with incomparable sincerity and eloquence many lofty thoughts, many eternal ethical truths. On the one hand he is a sympathetic creator of the most varied types of human character; on the other he is the greatest Puritan of modern times, the sternest foe of all carnal sin and the greatest preacher of Christian meekness and humility. No man of intelligence can read Tolstoy's criticism of modern society in What Shall We Do Then? and not reflect on his own life,

not become to some degree a better man. And in this Puritan side of Tolstoy's genius, which is felt in his novels as well as in his religious works, I find one cause of his popularity and of his influence in England and in America. However diverse some doctrines of our own time may be from those of Tolstoy, the nation that produced Milton and Bunyan must accept Tolstoy as a kindred spirit. Yet a Hindu or a Chinese might speak of him in similar terms. Tolstoy the Puritan, like Tolstoy the novelist, writes for every nation.

There have been poets and dramatists who in their sense of form and in their beauty of expression, though not in their manifold understanding of human character, have shown finer literary genius than that of Tolstoy. There have been religious leaders whose influence has been and will remain far deeper and broader than that of Tolstoy. But since humanity began to express its feelings and its ideals in words, no man has ever united these two sides of literary genius, that of the artist and that of the prophet, to such a degree as Leo Tolstoy. As an artist and as a prophet he is a Russian, as an artist and as a prophet he belongs to the whole world. Of him we may say in the words of an older prophet: "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."

HARMONY

CRISTEL HASTINGS

Oh, never a song like the one the wind
Sings high where the tall ships ride,
A song of spindrift and flying spray,
Of ships and a swinging tide!

Oh, never a song like the one the hills
Sing low in the sunset's glow,

A song of russet lanes and leaves
That will not let me go.

Oh, never a song like the one you sing

At dusk when the candles flare

Gilding these rooms with golden dreams

That run up a little stair.

Never a song like the one that sings
Of home and a glowing grate,

With lights shining through the wintry dusk
On a little garden gate.

NURSING-FATHERS OF THE UNITED STATES

ROBERT SANGSTER RAIT

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW

I take as my text the words of the blessing invoked by the ancient prophet upon Israel: "Kings shall be thy nursingfathers." The prophet was looking forward to a great future for his own people; I, who am no prophet, am looking backward upon the great past of the American people, once mine own but for many generations not mine own, and I must venture to make one textual emendation, a change of tense. Kings have been thy nursing-fathers. It is a striking and significant saying, whether it is applied to its original purpose or is adapted to the humbler use to which I purpose to put it. Whatever the deficiencies of my modest sermon, they are not attributable to my text. I do not come before this illustrious academic society* with high counsel for the conduct of individuals or for the polity of nations, such as have fallen from the lips of some of my distinguished predecessors in this place. My aim is merely to draw your attention to an aspect of the earlier history of your great nation, and if my theme may seem to be a little whimsical, it still has, I believe, its importance, and at all events I am not transgressing the bounds which are the recognized limits of the modest sphere of the historian.

Kings have been the nursing-fathers of the American Republic, and I propose to offer three illustrations of royal achievements in this respect. I begin with a famous scene. The year is 1604, and the place is the most beautiful of English palaces, the noble house which the great Cardinal Wolsey had built for himself on the banks of the river

* Berkeley, California, Chapter Phi Beta Kappa.

Thames. After his fall it was seized by his ungrateful master, Henry VIII, and it became, as it still is, a royal house, although for more than a century successive British sovereigns have made residence within its walls an honor and a reward for subjects who have done good service to Church or State. In the year of which I speak, King James, the first of that name who ruled over England, was living at Hampton Court, and he summoned thither representatives of the two opposing parties into which the Reformed Church in England was divided, the Anglicans and the Puritans, that they might debate in his presence the question of introducing changes into the episcopal constitution of the Church of England as it had been established in the reign of his predecessor, Queen Elizabeth.

James was interested in ecclesiastical controversy, and a large folio volume of his printed works remains to testify to his knowledge and to his skill in argument. He was the most learned sovereign who ever sat upon the English, or, I believe, upon any throne. A year or two after the date of which I am speaking, a Scottish divine, pleading before the English Privy Council, applied to one of the king's officials the words used in the Book of Revelation as a description of Satan―"the accuser of the brethren." The epithet was quoted not in English but in Greek, ὁ κατήγουρος τῶν ἀδελφῶν, but James recognized it at once. "By God," he exclaimed, "he is calling him the Devil-it is the name for the Devil in the Revelation," and in his wrath he closed the discussion. Could any other monarch, could any other Head of a State, have detected the allusion in these Greek words? James had the knowledge necessary to make the Supreme Governor of the Church of England an arbiter qualified to preside over such a discussion.

But though he possessed the knowledge he did not possess what was perhaps a more essential qualification-impartiality or sympathy. James hated the Puritans. I am not surprised that he hated them. It was not a case of "I do not like thee, Dr. Fell

The reason why I cannot tell."