where we are. But give us time to recover ourselves, and we shall soon look back with wonder that we were ever deceived so far. Like the Lady in Comus, some fell enchanter's drug must have deceived us, and we are lulled into a sleep of false security. But soon we shall arise and shake ourselves, like Samson, and, like the strong man bound, rend like tow these chains of the Philistines. Already the reaction against the reaction has set in; and Oxford, which gives us movements,' as they are called in the religious world, has gone out of its way to choose a head for its most famous intellectual centre and a successor to Dr. Jowett. It has gone to the North to fetch from Scotland the head of the College which in its very title carries a proud recollection of its origin. The Scotch King who gave his name to Balliol could have scarcely foreseen that the reaction against Roman formalism, which was only another name for spiritual despotism, would go so far as that a Scotchman, himself a distinguished student of Oxford, should be sent for to preside over this famous college. It is a sign of the times that as Pusey, Keble, and Newman were representative names at Oxford a half century ago, so in our day Jowett and Caird should take the lead in bringing Christian thought back to its true fountain-head. This is the triumph of Greek philosophy, not of Roman

With

law. The hard, magisterial notion of religion which so long prevailed, and out of which the Reformation itself only wrought a half-deliverance, is at last being broken down. The name of Augustine is no longer a sound of awe to which we are to bow as to something which carries authority on its very front. Augustine has passed away the whole of the Roman school: Cyprian, the sainted Bishop and Martyr; with him is Tertullian, the rugged, harsh advocate, who turned the Church into a forum, where he took up the sacred cause of Christ to wrangle over with the same licence of tongue and bitterness of speech as of an Old Bailey advocate. These three Carthaginians, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, filled so large a place in Church history that they may be said to have set a distinct type of theology out of which, as by a natural process of growth, Roman theology was evolved. The Anglican school for one reason, as the Calvinist for another, would deal tenderly with this monstrous after-growth of dogmatic Christianity. I have traced it to its source in the denial or suppression of that precious truth of the Logos or interior light of men which until the rise of George Fox and the Quakers was practically a forgotten truth in the entire West. Do not let me mislead you, as if the East held on to the last to the better traditions of Justin

Martyr and Origen. The sacerdotal, ascetic temper there prevailed as much as in the West. The night of superstition and priestcraft set in and darkened the Churches of Antioch and Alexandria as much as it did those of Carthage and Rome. There is little to choose between Cyril of Alexandria and one of these Carthaginian dogmatists. The apostasy had set in. The simplicity of the Gospel had been departed from, the fine gold had become dim; and all were preparing for that mighty earthquake when a third part of the city fell, and a third part of mankind revolted from the yoke of Roman supremacy, and set up that century of sects which we are slowly living under down to this day.

But we do not despair. God's jewels may be buried; they never can be finally lost to the world. Slowly, some day, we are working back to sweeter, simpler conceptions of God. He is our Father, and all we are brethren. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity have been cynically defined as un songe entre deux mensonges, a dream between two lies. Equality is the dream of an age whose keynote is Democracy; but surely Liberty and Fraternity do not deserve the stinging name of lies. Liberty means, if it means anything, that man is a law unto himself-he is subject to the law within. Fraternity means that the

second term, after the Fatherhood of God, is and must be the Brotherhood of Men. What right have we to preach and teach a Universal Fatherhood unless we go on to teach a Universal Brotherhood? Democracy is the maddest, most unmeaning of phrases unless it is founded on that noble sentiment of Fraternity. Let us not be ashamed of it because it has been put to such vile uses by degenerate descendants of that same Latin race who made Roman law the master-key by which they opened the universe, as Pistol did with his sword. Liberty and Fraternity are under an eclipse in our day, and we never can expect to see the truth unless full-orbed. Let us return to regard God as our Father. seen Me hath seen the Father also.' order of brotherhood. In a new relation to Christ we enter upon a new relation with the world at large— all we are brethren. Thus, 'lapped in universal law,' we shall at last begin to realise part of that dream of 'Locksley Hall,' long regarded as Utopian.

He that hath This is the true

V

CHRIST IN THE REALM OF ART

'I am the door.'-JOHN x. 9.

It is a strange text to take for a sermon on Christ in the Realm of Art,' but it is taken with a purpose.

For what, after all, is Art? The definitions are endless. The embodiment and communication of man's thoughts about man, Nature, and God. Man's way of giving utterance to his inspired thought. Man's way of glorifying his Maker.' So wrote the architect, John Sedding.

'Art-which I may style the love of loving, rage

Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things
For truth's sake whole and sole!'

That is the poet Browning's definition.

'Art is the expression of man's delight in the works of God. All great Art is praise.' So writes a third; a master he, who has led and is leading this England of ours to a truer perception of what art is than any prophet of the century-John Ruskin.