sufficient to have been visited by such an idea at times, to have had it forced occasionally on one's mind by the teachings of experience. No; he that hath the bride is the bridegroom; the idea belongs to him who has most loved it. Common prudence can say: Honesty is the best policy; morality can say: To conduct belongs happiness. But Israel and the Bible are filled with religious joy, and rise higher and say: 'Righteousness is salvation!'-and this is what is inspiring. I have stuck unto thy testimonies! Eternal, what love have I unto thy law! all the day long is my study in it. Thy testimonies have I claimed as mine heritage for ever, and why? they are the very joy of my heart!' This is why the testimonies of righteousness are Israel's heritage for ever, because they were the very joy of his heart. Herein Israel stood alone, the friend and elect of the Eternal.

'He showeth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and ordinances unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation, neither have the heathen knowledge of his laws.'

Poor Israel! poor 'ancient people'! It was revealed to thee that righteousness is salvation; the question, what righteousness is, was thy stumbling-stone. Seer of the vision of peace, that yet couldst not see the things which belong unto thy peace! with that blindness thy solitary pre-eminence ended, and the new Israel, made up out of all nations and languages, took thy room. But, thy visitation complete, thy temple in ruins, thy reign over, thine

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office done, thy children dispersed, thy teeth drawn, thy shekels of silver and gold plundered, did there yet stay with thee any remembrance of thy primitive intuition, simple and sublime, of the Eternal that loveth righteousness? Perhaps not; the Talmudists were fully as well able to efface it as the Fathers. But if there did, what punishment can have been to thee like the punishment of watching the performances of the Aryan genius upon the foundation which thou hadst given to it ?—to behold this terrible and triumphant philosopher, with his monotheistic idea and his metaphysical Trinity, 'neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance'? Like the torture for a poet to hear people laying down the law about poetry who have not the sense what poetry is,--a sense with which he was born! like the affliction to a man of science to hear people talk of things as proved, who do not even know what constitutes a fact! From the Council of Nicea down to Convocation and our two bishops 'doing something' for the Godhead of the Eternal Son, what must thou have had to suffer !—Literature and Dogma.

GRANDEUR OF CHRISTIANITY.

THE grandeur of Christianity, and the imposing and impressive attestation of it, if one could but worthily bring the thing out, is here in that immense experimental proof of the necessity of it, which the whole course of the world has steadily accumulated, and indicates to us

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as still continuing and extending. Men will not admit assumptions, the popular legend they call a fairy-tale, the metaphysical demonstrations do not demonstrate, nothing but experimental proof will go down; and here is an experimental proof which never fails, and which at the same time is infinitely grander, by the vastness of its scale, the scope of its duration, the gravity of its results, than the machinery of the popular fairy-tale. Walking on the water, multiplying loaves, raising corpses, a heavenly judge appearing with trumpets in the clouds while we are yet alive,—what is this compared to the real experience offered as witness to us by Christianity? It is like the difference between the grandeur of an extravaganza and the grandeur of the sea or the sky,-immense objects which dwarf us, but where we are in contact with reality, and a reality of which we can gradually, though very slowly, trace the laws.—Literature and Dogma.

IMMORTALITY.

By what futilities the demonstration of our immortality may be attempted, is to be seen in Plato's 'Phædo.' Man's natural desire for continuance, however little it may be worth as a scientific proof of our immortality, is at least a proof a thousand times stronger than any such demonstration. The want of solidity in such argument is so palpable, that one scarcely cares to turn a steady regard upon it at all. And even of the com

mon Christian conception of immortality the want of solidity is, perhaps, most conclusively shown, by the impossibility of so framing it as that it will at all support a steady regard turned upon it. In our English popular religion, for instance, the common conception of a future state of bliss is just that of the Vision of Mirza: 'Persons dressed in glorious habits with garlands on their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the fountains, or resting on beds of flowers, amid a confused harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments.' Or, even, with many, it is that of a kind of perfected middle-class home, with labour ended, the table spread, goodness all around, the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant. 'Poor fragments all of this low earth!' Keble might well say. That this conception of immortality cannot possibly be true, we feel, the moment we consider it seriously. And yet who can devise any conception of a future state of bliss, which shall bear close examination better?

Here, again, it is far best to take what is experimentally true, and nothing else, as our foundation, and afterwards to let hope and aspiration grow, if so it may be, out of this. Israel had said: 'In the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death.' He had said: The righteous hath hope in his death.' He had cried to his Eternal that loveth righteousness: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave, neither wilt thou

suffer thy faithful servant to see corruption! thou wilt show me the path of life!' And by a kind of short eut to the conclusion thus laid down, the Jews constructed their fairy-tale of an advent, judgment, and resurrection, as we find it in the Book of Daniel. Jesus, again, had said: 'If a man keep my word, he shall never see death.' And by a kind of short cut to the conclusion thus laid down, Christians constructed their fairy-tale of the second advent, the resurrection of the body, the New Jerusalem. But, instead of fairy-tales, let us begin, at least, with certainties.

And a certainty is the sense of life, of being truly alive, which accompanies righteousness. If this experimental sense does not rise to be stronger in us, does not rise to the sense of being inextinguishable, that is probably because our experience of righteousness is really so very small. Here, therefore, we may well permit ourselves to trust Jesus, whose practice and intuition, both of them, went, in these matters, so far deeper than ours. At any rate, we have in our experience this strong sense of life from righteousness to start with; capable of being developed, apparently, by progress in righteousness into something immeasurably stronger. Here is the true basis for all religious aspiration after immortality. And it is an experimental basis; and therefore, as to grandeur, it is again, when compared with the popular Aberglaube,