recognise and accept the divine in all things, wherever it is manifested.

I accept the principle, All light is good. It was simply a mistake to say:

'The light that led astray was light from heaven.'

It is an unworthy fear and a hurtful prejudice which makes us unwilling to have Nature's as well as the Bible's exposition of God. Let us regard Athens and Jerusalem as two great original lights (of different kinds) still shining on the world. In different senses both are ordinances of God. Neither light is to be condemned-rather the two are to be blended, and thus we shall neither neglect our highest faculty nor deprive the lower faculties of cultivation.

We

Mr. Arnold, while admitting that the churches do good by making life orderly, moral, and serious, accuses them of starving more than half of the finest faculties of human nature. do not make so grave an accusation, but think the churches should be zealous in striving to give not even the slightest ground for the charge. As all true knowledge is resolved at last into the knowledge of God, when men, by refusing wider intelligence, refuse to remove what obscures the divine image, are they not in this akin to idolaters? We are simple beginners —we have not left behind us the 'beggarly elements '—unless we acknowledge that scientific truth and religious truth are both emanations from the same Divine source of light; and surely, in presence of Him who is the Maker of all, it becomes us to say we fear not, but are grateful for, every true source of knowledge, every true help towards the advancement of our immortal natures !

It is, I believe, quite possible to show that there is no opposition, but a divine harmony between true religion and true literary culture. Indeed, one might think, since we use a Bible containing what literary men have described as the very highest specimens of literature, the proof is scarcely necessary. Nevertheless, whatever we say, there exists a lurking suspicion

among religious men ; and often by those who are reputed to be pre-eminently evangelical the pursuit of literature is frowned upon. However unwilling to learn, such persons must be taught that they cannot take such a course without causing results disastrous even to the faith and morality which they seek to conserve. Let them know that the mind in which a true literary ardour has been created, will read with the sanction of religion or without it; and if the latter happens, what is the result? Then you have that sad spectacle, the cultivated man without faith and without reverence; one delighting in all forms of intellectual beauty, but, unhappily, shut out from contemplating the very highest, feeling the sweetness and light which stream from all books but one, that has infinite riches of sweetness and light. It is evil for such a one to be exiled from the luminous circle which we call the Church, it is evil also for the Church that has banished him. By such an action the Church grows poorer, less interesting, less verdant, less powerful; and her literary exiles are left in the company of strumpet Pleasure instead of maiden Virtue, and to wear on haggard faces the hollow sceptic sneer, instead of beaming with the true celestial smile of hope.

If I wear

Thoughts of this kind should somewhat mollify even our sternest religionists in their disposition towards literature. They should be reminded, too, of its humanizing influence diffusing itself where religion cannot enter. Sects and parties are places fenced in, grounds rendered private. Only the family and its friends are permitted to walk there. the habiliments of a Capulet, will the Montagues receive me? If I disguise myself as a Montague, I am not honest, and among the Montagues I shall get into danger, and do harm where I wish to do good. A sectary myself, I cannot cure sectarianism. I cannot persuade all the other sects to come over to mine. The only hope at present for all the sects and parties, is in all being more highly educated. To whatever sect or party you belong, you may rise in the scale of being, by bringing your mind into contact with whatever of greatest and

best is to be found in the writings of literary men. No man is educated who is not being educated all his life long. No man is educated unless he has apprehended and felt in sympathy with the highest thoughts and best sentiments in literature-say, if you like, in English literature; for if you know the best things in that language you know what is best in all languages. There is a softening, moderating power in such study. It makes mutual forbearance, justice, and tolerance possible between parties and sects. Religious and political fanaticism, the bane of our country, finds its congenial home among those who are utterly unacquainted with such culture. The fiercest political fanatics on either side, were they addicted to reading a little true poetry, would beat their drums in a milder spirit. There is a troubled atmosphere of dogmatic controversy-there is an equally troubled atmosphere of political warfare: the home of literature is far from both. Amid those dreary storms the human spirit does not put forth its tender and delicate blossoms, fragrant of immortality; let us for a season retire to a calmer region. By way of introduction to some literary studies, let me ask you first to pause on this question: What is Literature?

I. In an age which produces such floods of books, papers, pamphlets, and magazines—in an age in which almost every one reads, in which every railway-carriage is filled with students the question may seem unnecessary. All reading, however, is not reading of literature. The reading that is done to find out the price of wheat, the rise or fall of stocks, the prizes of the racecourse, the victory of certain electors, or the name of a dear friend in some presentation paragraph, has little or nothing to do with literature. In a loose way, you may term everything that is printed literature; but the name properly belongs to a special product of that kind. That special product is the work of an artist, just as a picture on canvas, or a statue which makes the cold marble speak, is artistic work. The literary artist uses language as the others use colours or stone, to present to us the conception of genius;

for genius, or the genial element, is in a greater or less degree manifested in all true literature. Like any other living natural product, literature is difficult to define. It would be hard to give a perfect definition of a tree; it is pleasanter and more satisfactory to take your child to the wood and show him one. If you have learned to distinguish the true literary product when you meet it, it matters little whether you can define it or One can perhaps best do that directly by making the acquaintance of some of our literary kings, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, getting into sympathy with the author, and waiting patiently till the impression of the literary product is gradually formed in the mind.

not.

Some define literature as the beautiful realized in language. In this sense the beautiful includes the good and the true. Deformity is the result of some imperfection, or want, or disease. The beautiful is 'the true in all its truth, in all its light, and with all its reflections.' It is the complex and most perfect expression of nature. Literature is therefore a truer expression of nature than science, just as the artist's painting is truer, because fuller of nature, than the mere plan of the architect. The common idea that poetry is composed more or less of falsehood is therefore wrong, and it is the highest praise of a poet to say he is true to nature. Literature has been referred to as the expression of superior mind in writing -superior meaning what is removed from the commonplace. The quality which is essential in literature is originality. The mere communication of facts, or the imitation of a style which you have studied, is not literature. As without heat in the animal world, without originality in the literary world, nothing can live. The literary man fuses in his own soul as in a furnace the matter he receives, and when it comes forth it has the glow of his own life-heat. Originality can be seen and known, but is difficult to describe. Carlyle somewhere speaks of original men as those who do not go blindly by formula, but have an eye, and can see into the heart of things, with a fresh natural piercing glance of their own. 'When the word

that will express the thing follows of itself from your clear intense sight of the thing,' what you write is original, creative -in a word, literary.

In another aspect, we might say that literature is preeminently human. It is the revelation of man to man. Its special branch of knowledge is human nature and human life. Hence it is so generally interesting. Hence it is a power of such widespread influence. The word genius is related to genial. Pure literature at once impresses the mind as easy and pleasing; and men call the man a genius who brings them good new thoughts so easily. Not every one can present truth as he does, so that its perception is pleasant. The thoughts of the literary man come home to the heart, and we have pleasure from their beauty as well as from their truth. M. Taine says: 'They are instructive, because they are beautiful '—as if the complete truth could not be communicated except under the forms of beauty. The most gifted minds have the power of producing the most quickening and most beautiful thoughts; and because they are attractive, they are universally instructive. Thus, by the arrangement of the all-wise Creator, beauty and truth, pleasure and usefulness, are made inseparable in the thoughts that most widely influence mankind.

Again, literature is eminently the expression of sentiment. Thus it gives a sense of brotherhood to all who read the same language; for the true brotherhood is that of sentiment. late excellent series of literary works therefore bears the appropriate motto: One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.' M. Taine says: 'The more a work makes sentiment visible, the more it is literary; for the proper business of literature is to note sentiments. The more a book notes important sentiments, the higher is its place in literature; for it is in representing the mode of being of a whole nation and of a whole age that a writer rallies round him the sympathies of the whole age and the whole nation. Therefore,' adds

M. Taine, of all documents placing before us the sentiments of preceding generations, a literature, and especially a great