in refutation of a particular text. Others propose and discuss emendations in the text of Horace. Four epistles enquire into the exact nature of the miracle on the day of Pentecost, in such verses as these:

'Are not these,' said the men (the devout) of each land,
'Galileans that speak? whom we all understand?'
As much as to say, by what wonderful powers

Does the tongue Galilean become to us, ours?

Whilst the good were unjustly astonished, the bad,
Whose hearts were unopened, cried out, 'They are mad.'
Unaccountable charge, if we do not recall

That, in one single tongue, the apostles speak all.

If these marvellous productions be intentionally facetious, Byrom was perfectly serious in versifying Law's sentiments with a closer fidelity than Pope exerted in turning Bolingbroke's philosophising into poetry. The poem which is pronounced to be his best, 'On Enthusiasm,' is simply a fragment from one of Law's works; and people who like their theology done up into neat couplets may read him in place of his original.

72. Law, however, will be to most tastes the best exponent of his own principles. His masterpiece, the 'Serious Call,' which seems to have superseded the similar book on 'Christian Perfection,' may be read with pleasure even by the purely literary critic. Perhaps, indeed, there is a touch of profanity in reading in cold blood a book which throughout palpitates with the deepest emotions of its author, and which has thrilled so many sympathetic spirits. The power can only be adequately felt by readers who can study it on their knees; and those to whom a difference of faith renders that attitude impossible, doubt whether they are not in a position somewhat resembling that of Mephistopheles in the cathedral. When a man is forced by an overmastering impulse to lay bare his inmost soul, the recipient of the confession should be in harmony with the writer. The creed which is accepted by Law with such unhesitating faith, and enables him to express such vivid emotions, is not exactly my own; and, if I do not infer that respectful silence is the only criticism possible, I admit that any criticism of mine is likely enough to be inappreciative. One who has yielded to the fascination would alone be qualified fully to explain its secret. And yet no

one, however far apart from Law's mode of conceiving of the universe, would willingly acknowledge that he is insensible to the thoughts interpreted into his unfamiliar dialect. In one sense, not only the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, but all great movers of mankind, speak a universal tongue. Law, indeed, requires a tolerably lax interpretation to be turned to account by a complete outsider; and many within the sacred pale would more or less explicitly disavow his definite conclusions. The dominant idea in each book is the contrast between the Church and the world; or, as we might say, between the morality taught by Jesus of Nazareth and the morality practised by a Walpole or a Warburton. It requires no belief in the supernatural origin of any religious doctrine to admit the force of much of this teaching. The 'world,' if the world is the aggregate of petty and selfish motives, is 'too much with us, late and soon.' The nobler impulses are in constant danger of being stifled under the crust of petty cares and subservience to the meaner social conventions. Not to be galled at times by the harness in which the world drives us is to be dull to all the finer feelings, and to have a blunted intellect and imagination. But a divergence appears so soon as we attempt to lay down the boundary between the kingdoms of light and darkness. Which are the sentiments which can be rightly cultivated? and which are those which require to be restrained or extirpated? In Law's dialect, which is the divine and which the carnal element of our lives? As the answer to that question varies, we pass from one end to the other of the scale of moral teaching. Is everything good which is 'natural?' and all pleasure, so far as it is pleasant, deserving of cultivation? Or are we to say that every natural impulse is tainted by some mysterious corruption, and that all that the unregenerate man agrees to call pleasant is so much outward show, and turns to ashes in the mouth?

73. Law, one might say, takes the specifically Christian. view of it, were it not that Christian has become one of the vaguest epithets in the language. It must be added, therefore, that he was one of those peculiar thinkers who refuse to allow a commonplace to lie in a merely dormant state in their minds. Most men blandly accept formula which appear to

condemn not only their practice but their most settled convictions, either because an illogical state of mind is not painful to them, or because they have tacitly put some conveniently rationalising interpretation upon the familiar words. Law, whose sensitiveness to logic is as marked as his sensitiveness to conscience, is incapable of any such compromise. He not only believes what he professes, but he believes it in the most downright sense, and he is not content till it is thoroughly worked into his whole system of thought. He accepts unhesitatingly the literal meaning even of those passages which the fairest commentators may take to be intended as hyperbolical expressions of one aspect of the truth. Law, for example, feels none of the difficulty which perplexed some contemporary divines in expounding Christ's precept to the young man to sell all he had and give it to the poor. In the treatise on Christian Perfection,' he energetically assails the various devices by which the duty imposed by Christ's command could be represented as of temporary or partial obligation; though he maintains, of course, that the spirit of the command is more important than the letter. If we sincerely humble ourselves, we need not be particular as to literal sackcloth and ashes; and it may be right to hold our estates for the good of the poor instead of parting with them; but all that is not distinctly necessary for health is part of that encumbrance which prevents the rich man from entering the narrow gateway of the kingdom of heaven. Good, easy-going divines considered that rules of this inconvenient severity were made exclusively for the early Christians. The Church and the world had become tolerably reconciled. A strict training was necessary in the early days of warfare; and miracles were required to keep up the spirits of expectant martyrs. But good living might now serve the turn. The profession of the Christian faith, as Warburton naïvely remarked, was now attended with case and honour; patronage would produce quite as much zeal as was necessary or desirable; and why should we reject the good things of the world when they were thus the natural reward of virtue?

74. Law's logic will admit of no such temporising. The very essence of Christianity is the production of a certain.

temper that temper must be good now which was good in the first century; then, as now, it can only be gained by systematic sanctification and self-denial, and a stern discipline is to the full as necessary to meet the cajolery of the world as to encounter its hostility. Phrases such as these may run glibly enough from the lips of some preachers, who at most consider sackcloth and ashes to be a picturesque dress in the great masquerade of sanctity; but Law applied them with the uncomfortable thoroughness of simple sincerity. All pursuit of money, of power, or of pleasure is vicious when it implies delight in pleasures for their own sake. Our bodies,' he says, and all bodily pleasures are at one dash struck out of the account of happiness' by the Christian doctrine. It teaches us that 'the whole race of mankind are a race of fallen spirits, that pass through this world as an arrow passes through air.' We are pilgrims who stay here but for an instant, but in that instant we are upon our road for eternity. Descriptions of earthly pleasures should interest us as little as descriptions of the world in the moon. The honours which a king can give are literally no more than the toys with which a nurse amuses a child. The contrivances which we break our peace to acquire are as worthless as the staff or money which some nations bury with a corpse. It is no more a hardship upon Christians to be restrained from such pleasures than for a man crossing a river upon a rope to be forbidden to walk in silver shoes, or to look about at the beauty of the waves.2 From such a point of view most pleasures are frivolous, or playing with forbidden things. Law was ridiculed for the very trenchant application of his maxims to the stage. He summarily declares that it is as unlawful for a Christian to go to a theatre as to be a drunkard, a glutton, or a swearer. 'The playhouse,' he says, 'is as certainly the house of the devil as the church is the house of God.' The entertainment there offered is as bad as the worship of the lewd deities of paganism, and differs from gladiatorial shows only because Christians are risking their souls as well as their bodies. You should remember that the laughter which you hear there is a laughter among devils, and that you are upon profane ground, and hearing music in the very porch of hell. It is to be feared

that the laughter was not quenched by Law's onslaught. To do him justice we must of course remember what was the state of the stage which had provoked Collier's attack; and to confess the truth, I must say that, in spite of all ingenious defences, it seems to me that pruriency and cynicism are the best qualifications for a thorough enjoyment of the Congreve school of comedy. Law, at any rate, took for granted that the one ultimate end and aim of all plays was to stimulate lust and facilitate debauchery. He assumes that, as a matter of fact, all actors and actresses were immoral by profession. 'Perhaps you had rather see your son chained to a galley, or your daughter driving a plough, than getting their bread on the stage by administering in so scandalous a manner to the vices and corrupt pleasures of the world.' If Law had rightly gauged the contemporary prejudice, he might fairly denounce people who, by their own showing, paid men and women to debase themselves for the amusement of their spectators.

75. Yet Law's logic would scarcely discriminate between the vilest ribaldry of Wycherley and the purest creations of Shakespeare's fancy. What is poetry or art or learning to the divine essence of the soul? When we are at the top of all human attainments we are at the bottom of all human misery, and have made no further advance towards true happiness than those whom we see in the want of all these excellences. Whether a man die before he has writ poems, compiled histories, or raised an estate, signifies no more than whether he died an hundred or a thousand years ago If human learning be not bad, and even in his mystical period Law disclaimed an absolute antipathy to it, it is good only in so far as it may be the instrument of the religious emotions. To the outsider it often seems as though the acceptance of such doctrines would fill the deserts with hermits, and gradually depopulate the world. Law, of course, like other ascetics, stops just short of such a conclusion. If virginity, retirement, and a life of mortification be the best, they are not the sole means of cultivating the pure spirit. The world may be condemned, but the world must continue; and therefore room must be allowed for a 2 Ib. vii. 93.

1 Law, iv. 438.