conviction of the mistake of imagining him under the form of man, it has at the same time acquired an immense and perpetually increasing knowledge of the laws through which he manifests himself in the universe.

itable poems, pictures, etc., should be pro- | it has revived the Hebrew awe of God and duced this is a very secondary matterbut that the largest possible number should take those elevated views of life and have that keen enjoyment of nature which are ends in themselves, and which may at the same time encourage the artist, admonish him to aim high, and insure his success. When one religion is set up against anIn other words, it is not so much culture other controversies begin and embarrassas religion that is wanted, not so much ments. But when the principle of all that the artist should be taken out of the religion is compared with the opposite community and trained, as that the percep- principle, when the life inspired by admitions and sensibilities of the community ration and devotion is compared with the itself should be quickened. And here life that begins and ends in mere acquisiculture, so far from being equivalent to tion, then there is no controversy at all religion, becomes too frequently antago- among those whose opinions are valuable. nistic to it. The differentiation of the Looked at so, religion is seen to be enartist class may prove unfavorable to the tirely beyond dispute and to be only anspirit of art. It may make art a thing of other name for the higher life, the life of schools and cliques, the affair of a profes- the soul. Again when on the scene of sion now become rich enough to judge history religion appears in some partial, itself and applaud itself, and tyrannizing one-sided form, it is easy to find fault with over a public of whose suffrages it has its workings, and, as it is a principle of become independent. Just so in the enormous vigor, it has been in such cases Christian Church in its first inspired and the instigator of more tremendous deeds victorious moment, the maxim was that and the cause of more wide-working ruin every Christian was a priest; it was not than any other principle. It has been easy till somewhat later that a sacerdotal order for philosophers preaching on the text was differentiated. The differentiation tantum religio potuit, etc., to make out was probably necessary, but who does not religion itself a mischievous principle and see the danger of this increase of machin- that it ought to be a main object to moderery? Who does not see now that the ate, if we cannot hope to kill, this unforonly hope for the Christian religion lies in tunate propensity in human nature. And moderating this professional influence? yet almost everything else that is highest Clericalism is well-nigh fatal to Christian-in man might be looked at in the same ity. Precisely the same law holds in the way. In the individual, for instance, what lower religion of art. Goethe asks him- a dangerous, mischievous thing is genius self, "What drives poetry out of the or originality! What sleepless nights world?" And he answers," The poets!" | does it cause, what weariness of spirit! Such then, it seems to me, looked at in How it disconcerts society, interrupts the outline, is religion in its modern aspect. tranquil course of its vegetation, perplexes It is not forward to assume the name of the methodical logomachy of parties! Or religion, because of the ecclesiastical asso- philanthropy again! What hindrances to ciations that have gathered round that trade has this restless principle caused, name, but for the most part prefers the now putting down slavery, now passing somewhat less appropriate name of cul- factory-laws; and what flagrant mistakes ture. It is a natural religion, rejecting has it made at times! And then there is for the present everything called miracu- the spirit of liberty. Why, it may safely lous as inconsistent with the notion it has be said that if only this spirit did not exist formed of the laws of nature; and it has the art of government would be a comparasuffered so much from the abuse of priest- tively simple matter, whereas it is an ally power in former days that it dislikes most impossible problem to govern tolerand avoids, certainly more than is reason-ably nations in which it has been allowed able, everything that reminds it of Church to become strong. Of all these intractable organization. On the other hand it is larger and richer than the religion of past times. It is richer by the Renaissance in art and by science. From the buried ruins of the pagan world it has dug up a precious treasure, the worth of which early Christianity had not been able to perceive, and under the influence of science, while

forces the greatest by far is religion. If only it could be destroyed! In that case we might picture the human family entering upon that happiness which has no history, beginning a career chequered by nothing that could be called incident, and varied only by the gradations of progress, a career the annals of which would con

sist only of the ever-improving statistics | only to have acquired what comes latest, of production and enjoyment; in short, but also to retain and not to lose what "feeding like horses when you hear them came earlier. Humanity must constantly feed!" But indeed such a consummation renew its childhood and its youth as well would be only a kind of euthanasia of as advance in experience. At the same human nature. It is precisely these im- time that it observes and reasons with pulses and emotions that are so hard to scientific rigor, it must learn to hope with control which give dignity and worth to Christian enthusiasm, and also to enjoy life. It is for their sakes that we produce with pagan freshness. and consume. And so it is a more hopeful course to consider whether those sinister workings of the higher life may not be as happily prevented by giving it a full and harmonious development as by vainly trying to extinguish it.

How different does paganism look when we contemplate it in the age of Pericles, or that of Scipio, when it began to be quietly left behind, and, again, in the days of the final triumph of Christianity when it was aggressively destroyed. In the one Such harmony, I think, is to be found, case we see with contempt its childish and is gradually being found, by the relig- absurdity; in the other we mark with some ion or culture of the age in the coalition of regret its freshness and brightness. In three forms of religion, which in past his-the great Athenian age a few artists still tory have generally regarded each other with studied conservatism cling to it; and as enemies. A form of religion which, we may indeed observe that when this when it appears by itself, does mischief, works ill, and so is justly attacked as false, may, when it finds its right place and proper subordination, turn out to be true and fruitful of good. Paganism was very justly attacked by the Christians as a false religion, but its falseness did not consist in the honor it paid to sensuous beauty, but in its paying honor to nothing higher (as well as to many things lower), and the very same worship of visible things, when it is revived in proper moderation by modern culture, may be not merely harmless, but most right and valuable, most indispensable to the harmony of religion. The same may be said of ecclesiastical Christianity, and of that new religion of modern science, viz., that each by itself may be attacked as false, but that each, taken in conjunction with the other, is true and indispensable.

These three forms of religion have a sort of correspondence to the three stages of human life. Paganism may be called the childhood of the higher life, and so when continued too long, and not duly subordinated, it is the childishness and frivolity of it. Christianity (in the narrow sense) is its youth, its phase of enthusiasm and unbounded faith both in man and the universe; this, too, if it stands too much alone, becomes degraded into sentimentalism. Science is the later phase, when reality is firmly faced, when the sombre greatness of the law under which we live, and at the same time the limitations it imposes on us, and the patience it requires from us, are manfully confessed; but this also taken alone is no more than the cynical old age of the higher life. For it is essential to its complete manhood not

is no longer possible the great imaginative
poets come no more; but to the majority
of intelligent men it has become a mass
of absurdity no more credible than Brah-
minism to the young Bengal of to-day.
With still more decisive contempt do the
strong prosaic intellects of Rome put
aside and utterly forget their old Italian
religion. All this seems to us, when we
read of it, neither to be avoided nor to be
regretted; what was absurd could not but
appear to be so sooner or later. But
when, after many centuries, the revolu
tion has gone much further; when the
Church has rooted out of the minds of the
common people what then only dropped
quietly out of the belief of philosophers;
when the temples of the gods are thrown
down and their names held abominable;
when a completely new page of history
begins, and all such ways of thinking are
decisively left behind, some sort of revul-
sion takes place in our feelings.
new world appears too monastic, too much
tormented with conscience, not spontane-
ous or natural enough. We delight to
see the old pagan fire break out some-
times in Caedmon, and are inclined to
wish it had free way, and that there were
no Christianity near to smother it. How
much we prize what glimpses we can get
of those old beliefs; how much it disap-
points us when the writings of those times
are silent about them, and give us instead
only Christianity and monotonous lives of
saints! In some cases we are disposed to
complain even that the native genius of a
nation has been killed by the foreign faith
when we find a literature, after perhaps a
promising commencement, paralyzed for
long ages by ecclesiastical influence. Then

The

it is that we see the other side of paganism, and what before appeared childish we are now disposed rather to describe as childlike. We are struck now by the free zest and relish of the world that went to the making of those frivolous creeds; here and there perhaps we see in them the rudiments of a true philosophy. We are angry that this vigorous play of mind should be brought to an end, and that not by a truer philosophy of nature, but by a timid morality which looks only within, and is afraid to philosophize on nature at all. In fact, we have just the same feelings as when in an individual we see childhood come to an end, and the merry, boisterous boy turned into the awkward, perhaps self-conscious and sickly youth.

having gained something unknown both to
youth and childhood. Beyond the forms
of nature and the ideal of moral goodness
there remains another discovery to be
made, the recognition of a law in the
universe stronger than ourselves and dif-
ferent from ourselves, and refusing to us
not only the indulgence of our desires but
also, as we learn slowly and with painful
astonishment, the complete realization of
our ideals. It is not in the time when we
are forming those ideals that it is possible
for us to recognize the limitation imposed
by nature upon the fulfilment of them,
and yet until we can make the recognition
we shall be liable to constant mistake and
disappointment. The special superiority
of manhood to youth lies in this recogni-
tion, in the sense of reality and limitation.
Youth is fantastic and utopian compared
to manhood, as it is melancholy compared
both to manhood and childhood. Here
again the parallel holds between Christian-

Nothing can be more mistaken than the
comparison made by some of those who
have regretted paganism (Schiller, for in-
stance, in "The Gods of Greece "), between
the melancholy of Christianity and the
melancholy which is the mark of old age.
Most evidently all that has been mor-
bid in Christian views of the world has
resembled the sickliness of early youth
rather than the decay of age. Old age is
subject to cynical melancholy, early youth
to fantastic melancholy, and assuredly it is
the latter rather than the former that has
shown itself in Christianity. All the faults
that have ever been reasonably charged
against the practical working of Christian-
ity (apart from those arising from faulty
organization) are the faults which in the
individual we recognize as the faults of
youth, a melancholy view of life, in morals
a disposition to think rather of purity
than of justice, but principally a Schick-
salslosigkeit, an intolerance of all limita-
tion either in hope or belief.
"All things
are possible to him that believeth," is a
glorious formula of philanthropic heroism;
the mistake of the Church, as the mistake
of young men, is to treat it as literally and
prosaically true.

Hence the reaction which steadily and more or less secretly has for so many centuries gone on under the name of Renaissance. It is analogous to the growth in cheerfulness and healthy worldliness which comes to the youth as he grows accus-ity (in the narrow sense) and youth. tomed to manhood. The hobbledehoyhood of humanity was long and trying. Its pagan childhood was artificially prolonged till it was more like dotage than childhood, and when the new feelings of self-sacrifice, duty, enthusiasm came, instead of quietly controlling and modifying the old, they began a violent war against them. One extreme was substituted for another for the pagan view of life, not properly the Christian, but the monastic. The renunciation of selfishness was violent in proportion to the intensity with which it had been indulged; the world was hated as much as it had been loved; the extremes of self-devotion were explored with the eagerness natural to a first discovery. These excesses are outlived in time, and youth ripens into manhood by recovering something of the child. And thus the Renaissance is not merely the revival of ancient arts, the adoption of ancient models, it is the revival in proper degree and subordination of the ancient religion. It is the restoration of the worship of the forms of nature. This worship returns, purified, of course, from all mixture of delusion, purified from superstition, and, what is still more important, subordinated duly to other worships infinitely higher and more solemn, but none the less a worship, an admiration which may become unbounded in degree and rise to ecstasy, and which is essential to the healthy vigor of the higher life.

But manhood differs from youth, not merely in having recovered something which youth had parted with, but also in VOL. XV. 731

LIVING AGE.

The opposite maxim has to be learned in time, that some things are impossible, and to master this is to enter upon the manhood of the higher life. But it ought not to be mastered as a mere depressing negation, but rather as a new religion. The law that is independent of us and that conditions all our actions is not to be reluctantly acknowledged, but studied

with absorbing delight and awe. At the moment when our own self-consciousness is liveliest, when our own beliefs, hopes, and purposes are most precious to us, we are to acknowledge that the universe is greater than ourselves, and that our wills are weak compared with the law that governs it, and our purposes futile except so far as they are in agreement with that law. This assuredly is the transition which the world is now making. It is throwing off at once the melancholy and the unmeasured imaginations of youth; it is recovering, as manhood does, something of the glee of childhood, and adding to that a new sense of reality. Its return to childhood is called Renaissance, its acquisition of the sense of reality is called science. We may be glad of both; science will save us from those heroic mistakes of which the Catholic centuries were so fruitful, from unworldliness ending on the one hand in squalor and pestilence, on the other in greedy mendicancy, from pity creating pauperism, and chastity by reaction promoting vice. Renaissance will redeem the lower levels of life from the bald barrenness of money-getting, and give humanity the fond gaillard that may carry her through the trials in store for her. We may take sides firmly with the modern world against the Syllabus, against all unfortunate attempts to preserve a justly cherished ideal by denying and repudiating reality, to protect against all subsequent modification the first sublime exaggerations of the new-born spirit of self-sacrifice, to banish criticism because it is cold, and philosophy because it is calm, and to try and give the feelings of youth the one thing precisely which is most foreign to them-infallibility and unchanging permanence.

ties cease to seem admirable, and the man begins to be praised for the opposite qualities, for ardor, for enthusiasm, in short for being still capable of that of which youth is only too capable. But in the individual we regard this persistent vitality as only possible for a time. Old age sets in at last, when, if enthusiasm still survive, it is not so much a merit as a kind of prodigy. Is humanity to verify the analogy in this respect also? When we have learnt to recognize the limitations imposed on us, that we cannot have everything as our enthusiasm would make it, and that if our ideals are to be realized in any considerable measure it must be by taking honest account of the conditions of possibility; when we have gone so far, are we to advance another step and confess that the conditions of possibility are so rigorous that most of our ideals must be given up, and that in fact humanity has little to hope or to wish for? It need not be so if, as was said above, the service of necessity may become freedom instead of bondage, if the power above us which so often checks our impatience and pours contempt on our enthusiasms can be conceived as not necessarily giving less than we hope for because it does not give precisely what we hope for, but perhaps even as giving infinitely more. On this hypothesis humanity may preserve the vigor of its manhood. Otherwise, if reality, when we acquire the power of distinguishing it, turns out not merely different from what we expect but much below what we expect; if this universe, so vast and glorious in itself, proves in relation to the satisfaction of our desires narrow and ill-furnished, if it disappoints not only our particular wishes but the very faculty of wishing by furnishing no sufficient food, then humanity also Nevertheless, the analogy that we have has its necessary old age. And if its old been pursuing will suggest to us that the age, then surely that which lies beyond victory of the modern spirit would be fatal old age. We must not merely give up the if pressed too far, as indeed it is essential- immortality of the individual soul—which ly a melancholy triumph, and that the some have persuaded themselves they can youth of humanity, crushed out too ruth-afford to give up-but we must learn to lessly, would have a Renaissance still more think of humanity itself as mortal.

irresistible than its childhood. The sense

From The Cornhill Magazine.
CARITA.
CHAPTER I.

of reality gives new force when it comes in to correct the vagueness of our ideals; this is manhood; but when it takes the place or destroys the charm of them, this is the feebleness of old age. Healthy manhood must continue to savor of its youth as of its infancy, to be enthusiastic and tender as well as to be buoyant. It must continue to hope much and believe JAMES BERESFORD and Annie his wife much; we praise caution and coolness in had been married for more than a dozen a youth, but a few stages on these quali-years- their only child, indeed, had

THE BERESFORDS.