a degree as the poetic, has, in "Faust," endeavoured to analyse, in a dramatic form, the phenomena of passion and temptation, and to unravel the mystery of evil.

Perhaps no modern poet has read Nature more deeply or lovingly than Wordsworth, who seems to feel the Divine Presence even in "the common things that round us lie." To many persons, indeed, Wordsworth's philosophy appears to be meaningless. They feel inclined to charge him with affectation, when he declares that to him

"The meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;"

and they seem to regard it as utterly irrational to say that

"One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good

Than all the sages can."

The reason of this apathy regarding the things for which the poct expresses such love, is because few persons look upon the material objects around them in a truly religious spirit.

The universe is not dead matter set in motion and regulated by mere mechanical laws. There is an active principle in Nature, which is the source of all its vital functions. Without God— the source of all life and beauty-matter is mere chaos, for then there would be no directing intelligence in Nature. What physical science calls "law," is only the uniform expression of the Divine Will. Even Pope-a poet of weak sensibility and limited imaginative power-grasped this grand idea :—

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul
That changed through all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame,

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars and blossoms in the trees,

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.'

Coleridge shadows forth the same notion in a more mystical fashion :

"And what if all of animated nature

Be but organic harps diversely framed,

That tremble into thought as o'er them sweep,
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the soul of each and God of all?"

Thus to the poet Nature is truly "a parable."* The vulgar mind regards all natural objects with contempt or indifference; it wonders at nothing which is not novel or grotesque. But to the

"Nature is a parable."-Dr. Newman. Apologia, c. I.

intuitive spirit of the poet all the beauty of the external world is suggestive of the Infinite Power that produced it: everything that the Divine Hand has touched bears upon it the impress of Divinity. Looking thus upon Nature with a deep sense of reverence and love, Wordsworth only described his actual sensations when he spoke of

"That blessed mood

In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world

Is lightened ;-that serene and blessed mood
In which the affections gently lead us on-
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human bloo l
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In spirit, and become a living soul:

While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."

Indeed, the poet never lost this feeling of religious awe in the presence of Nature. He tells us in the poem from which I have quoted, that though he has ceased to feel that sensuous delight in cataract and mountain, wood and stream, which animates the heart of youth, he does not repine at the change. Experience

has brought sadness, but not hardness or cynicism. A higher

ideal has been attained:

"For I have learned

To look on Nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh or grating, though of ample power
To soften or subdue. And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of animating thoughts, a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting sins,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the heart of man :
A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.'

"

The poet thus teaches us a nobler lesson than the scientific investigator. The universe and the soul of man were not created merely to be "examined, pondered, searched, probed, vexed and criticised." Knowledge must be sought with reverence and humility, and should never be regarded merely as

"A mirror that reflects

To proud self-love its own intelligence."

The scientific intellect does not seem to realize that it must necessarily move within a limited sphere. A knowledge of the laws of matter does not qualify a man to speak with authority on the nature of the human mind, the growth and decline of civiliza

tions, the relations of time and eternity, and all those solemn and
mysterious problems which have baffled philosophy. It is simply
absurd for a man who has been all his life blowing up gases or
classifying beetles to assume that he is qualified to discuss the
nature of the soul and of the future life. The late Sir William
Hamilton, in one of his essays on "Philosophy and Literature,"
endeavours to show that an exclusive devotion to positive science
tends to narrow the mind and incapacitate it for the sublimer in-
quiries into the moral and intellectual nature of man.
He says
that there are two classes of mathematicians, one of which would
believe nothing on earth below or heaven above that could not
be measured by compasses or solved by an equation, whilst the
other made an arbitrary distinction between things provable and
things not provable, and denied that there could be any science
of mind or any theology because those sciences dealt with im-
material entities, which cannot be seen through a microscope.
This may appear a harsh estimate of the votaries of exact
science; but, when we see so many rash attempts on the part of
the most eminent amongst them to destroy the faith to which we
owe all that is truly noble in modern civilization, are we not
forced to regard this scientific or pseudo-scientific spirit as
narrow, overbearing and irreverent? Mr. Tennyson, in one of
his poems, thus alludes to the scientific narrowness of the
age:

"The man of science himself is fonder of glory and vain,
An eye well practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor."

This, indeed, is the shallower side of those men who have devoted themselves exclusively to a study of the material world they cannot sympathize with anything outside the region of their own inquiries; and from this very intellectual selfishness has arisen the absurd assumption that there is no absolute truth outside the region of physical science. The vain attempt to trace a causal connection between molecular motion and consciousness would never have been made, if modern science had confined itself within proper limits. Baffled in his repeated efforts to solve this great problem, Professor Tyndall declares that, in one sense, physical science knows nothing, since it can tell us nothing as to "the origin or destiny of Nature." It would seem that, by trying to materialize everything, the man of science has darkened his own mental vision. The spirit illumines the mind as light illumines the earth; and the scientific intellect, having eliminated the idea of a spiritual world, now finds itself blindly groping in the dark. Not until reason acknowledges its own impotence to grasp the Infinite, and allows the light of faith to illumine and guide it in its search after knowledge, can it claim to be an unerring test of truth.

The poet has told us that "true knowledge leads to love," and

has shown us that the best lessons we can learn from Nature are reverence for the Omnipotent Creator of the universe and a true sense of our own moral responsibility. It was never meant

"That we should pry far off, yet be unraised,

That we should pore and dwindle as we pore,
Viewing all objects unremittingly

In disconnection dead and spiritless,
And still dividing and dividing still,
Break down all grandeur, still unsatisfied
With the perverse attempt, while littleness
May yet become more little; waging thus
An impious warfare with the very life
Of our own souls."

We must not search after truth "with an insolent and cold avarice of knowledge," but with patience, humility and love. Whatever be her material triumphs, science can never speak to us as a moral guide, or enlarge the sphere of true philosophy, until her votaries look on Nature as the mere handiwork of God. When all material progress is made subservient to moral purposes, and when faith and love are recognised as higher than reason, scientific inquiry may emerge from the chaos in which it is now plunged. Not by the vain phantom of a "Kingdom of Man,"* destined to outshine the splendours of Heaven, must the scientific enthusiast stimulate his fellow-men. Let him gather together with patience and care the scattered fragments of human knowledge. Let him value each newly-discovered fact as a precious boon, and never rush from certitude to blind conjecture. If he finds that, after years of incessant mental toil, he has not mastered all the secrets of Nature, let him learn from this the incompleteness of all human achievements and the littleness of intellectual pride. If the workings of his own spirit are still to him a dark enigma, let him not be discouraged, but rather see here a presentiment of the soul's glorious destiny. A living poet has beautifully said :

"All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist,
Not in semblance but itself; no beauty nor good nor power
Whose voice has gone forth but each exists for the melodist,
When Eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that seemed too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard :
Enough that He heard it once; we shall hear it by-and-by.”

It is by this sublime certainty of faith that all human endeavour is spiritualized and ennobled. In the midst of doubt and fear and baffled effort we feel that Death alone can uplift the veil that hides Eternity from mortal eyes. The greatest intellect and

"Those who can read the signs of the times, read in them that the Kingdom of Man is at hand."-PROFESSOR CLIFFORD in the Nineteenth Century.

the loftiest imagination fail to penetrate the cloud of mystery that surrounds human life on every side. Poet and philosopher alike must be mute in the presence of the Inscrutable, and bow down before the Supreme Intelligence that framed the universe, and can destroy it by a mere volition.

D. F. H.

TEMPTATIONS.

Saint Catherine of Sienna, having been tempted, asked Our Lord where He was that He did not succour her; and Our Lord tells her that all the time He was nestling in her heart.

Where wast Thou, Lord, my Lover true,
When doubt o'er me its mantle threw,
When Satan shot the fiery dart

With subtle knowledge at my heart?

Thou once didst calm the raging sca
When Thy Disciples called on Thee:
Why didst Thou not, dear Lord, control
The tempest towering round my soul?

He surely is asleep, I said,

And buried low my aching head.

Tell me, O Strength of tempted men,

Tell me, my Spouse, where wast Thou then?

Thus answered He, the Undefiled:

Lo, I was near to thee, my child;

I nestled in thy very heart,

To strengthen thee and take thy part."

I heard with joy thy whispered No
To every proffer of the foc;

I told thy tears, and they shall shine
Within thy crown with light divine.

Temptation is a gift of God:
A rod, perhaps, but still a rod
That buds-a fruitful stem that yields
Fair lilies for the eternal fields.

WILFRID MEYNELL.