in the affections of the British peoples, and this is so because a majority of British sovereigns have been so genuinely imbued with love for their people, have so fully realized that Noblesse oblige, as to make service to the realm their first consideration. Alfred, with his penetrative insight into the qualities of true greatness, held the most democratic and metaphysical opinion regarding true nobility. He writes:

"True high-birth is in the mind; it was never in the flesh, even as we have said before. But every man who is altogether enslaved by his evil ways forsaketh his Creator and his first origin and his high birth, and from thence shall be lowered in degree until he shall become as low born."

This passage expresses the teaching of Christian Science, and the more it is examined the more remarkable it becomes. Note Mrs. Eddy's statement:

"More than regal is the majesty of the meekness of the Christ-principle; and its might is the everflowing tides of truth that sweep the universe, create and govern it; and its radiant stores of knowledge are the mysteries of exhaustless being." (Miscellany, P. 149.)

"The origin, substance, and life of man are one, and that one is God,-Life, Truth, Love. The selfexistent, perfect, and eternal, are God; and man is their reflection and glory." (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 187.)

God, good, and man in His image and likeness is the pure and simple Principle of all that Christian Science claims to reveal and accentuate; and it is wonderful that

our early Saxon ancestor should have received Christianity in just this light. In a Hymn of Adoration, Alfred exclaims:

"Most wonderful is the nature of Thy Goodness because it is all one, Thou and Thy Goodness; the Good did not come to Thee from without, but it is Thine own for all Good Thou didst plan and work by Thine own thought." His description of evil as "a mist of error" is also extremely interesting to Christian Scientists.

"For no heaviness of the body," he writes, in the thirtyfifth chapter of his translation, "nor no evil habit can altogether draw away righteousness from the mind, though the sluggishness of the body and evil habits often trouble the mind with forgetfulness, and lead it astray by the mist of error, so that it cannot shine as brightly as it would. Yet a grain of the seed of truth is ever dwelling in the soul while the soul and the body are together."

Perhaps the grandest sustained literary utterance of Alfred is a magnificent summary, in chapter xlii, of the Nature of God*, a summary as clear and metaphysical as the one we have already quoted from Theophilus of Antioch. Its freedom from all sensualism, polytheism, or ritualism is equalled only by the definition of God in Science and Health. It opens with the bold assertion that:

"We ought with all our might to search after God that we may know what He is:" and then unrolls in sublime spiritual understanding.

"One thing therein thou must of need know-why God is called the Highest Eternity! Then said I, Why? Then answered she (Wisdom), Because we know very little of that which was before us except by memory and by asking ... but to Him is all present, both what was before and

Translated from Old English by Kate M. Warren. Passages largely made up of Alfred's additions to text of Boethius.

what now is, and what shall be after us; all that is present with Him. His wealth waxeth not, likewise it never waneth. Nor doth He ever remember aught for He hath never forgotten aught. He seeketh nothing because He hath lost nothing. Nor pursueth He any creature because no creature can flee Him. Nor doth He dread any creature because He hath none stronger than Himself, nor indeed any like. He is always giving and naught of His waneth. He is ever Almighty because He ever willeth good and never evil. Nothing is needful to Him. He is ever looking, He sleepeth never. He is ever kind alike. Alway He is eternal, for the time never was that He was not, nor ever shall be. Alway He is free nor is He forced to any work. Because of His Godlike power He is everywhere present, His greatness can no man measure; yet is that to be thought of as not of the body but of the Spirit, even as now wisdom is, and Righteousness, for He Himself is that."

Even Saint Augustine does not so forcibly present God as a practical, imminent reality in the affairs of men, a deity to be indeed known for "what He is" as does King Alfred. And now let us compare his definition of God with Mrs. Eddy's definitions of God or Good.

"Good. God; Spirit; omnipotence; omniscience; omnipresence; omni-action.”

"The Christian Science God is universal, eternal, divine Love, which changeth not and causeth no evil, disease, nor death." "The 'divine ear' is not an auditory nerve. It is the all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to whom each need of man is always known and by whom it will be supplied." (Science and Health, pp. 587, 140, 7.)

Reflecting in a degree this divine grace, Alfred did his

utmost to meet the needs of his subjects and uplift his race. With soldier-like simplicity he observes, "Now would I say briefly that I have wished to live worthily while I lived and after my life to leave to men who should come after me my memory in good deeds." We have already mentioned that the British Navy and Oxford University are among those achievements for which posterity has called Alfred great. With regard to the latter there are some points of interest connected with heraldic emblems.

The arms of the University of Oxford (so dear and so familiar to all her students) are an open book with seven seals presumably the Bible—and three crowns on a deep azure blue ground. The book bears the inscription "Dominus illuminatio Mea," the Lord is my light.

Strangely enough the origin of these arms is shrouded in obscurity. No definite trace of them is found before A.D. 1400. But the three crowns on the azure ground are the arms or emblem of Saint Edmund the Saxon King, and they appear to have been associated with Oxford by Richard II.* Now Alfred's emblem was a cross with four Martlets (Martins). Indeed, a cross, surrounded by as many birds as the field would permit, seems to have been the emblem of all the Anglo-Saxon Kings.

In making a crest or distinguishing sign for the cover of her books Mrs. Eddy chose a cross and a crown; and it will be remembered that the original design was a small cross in a large heraldic crown, exactly like the crown of Saxon Edmund, surrounded by rays of light. That this design should appear on a spiritual book, Science and Health, which is a light to illumine our understanding of the Bible, and a Key to open the seals of false sense, and that it should

*From notes on the Heraldry of the Oxford Colleges by Percival Landon. Archæologia Oxoniensis. 1892-95.

combine the emblems belonging to a line of kings who gave the word God-Good,—to the English tongue, is certainly somewhat remarkable.

These coincidences show that spiritual thoughts in all ages spring from one divine source, and gather together across the vast spaces of time, partakers in the one glorious hope. They naturally express themselves in those forms which symbolize uplifting, victorious, Christ-like qualities; and like the stones which the children of Israel set up by the passage of the Red Sea, they mark the pathways of saint, martyr, prophet, and king in their torch-bearing for the salvation of the world.

It is further interestingly coincident that, like our great Saxon forbear, the founder of the Christian Science movement had a regal way of governing, a modus operandi that would have been purely autocratic, had it not been so entirely thoughtful of the welfare of the movement, and so often laid aside in order that her followers might gain by their own experience. But her high standard of duty, and the breadth of her plans present a parallel to the character and purpose of this most wise and good King. Spiritually she inherited all the freedom and liberty of conscience which Puritanism had won for the world. She loved democratic ideals and citizenship with a deep and active constancy. Tyranny, ecclesiastical or civil, was utterly abhorrent to her in its every form; but for the House of David and its descendants, for the country which gave birth to the English Bible, and for the spiritual freedom of the Englishspeaking peoples from any ecclesiastical overlord, she had a spontaneous and natural affinity. In January, 1901, she

wrote:

"I am interested in a meeting to be held in the capital of my native State in memoriam of the late