region of the spiritual, all men must be under this one most sacred Law.1 It is required of every clergyman of every persuasion to preach this sacred doctrine with all his sacred might. It is the central, the vital, doctrine of all true Religion-the doctrine which we wish to hear resounding through all our Churches. Ethically, the true man will be absolutely indifferent to everything but intrinsic Honour. Personal worth is really the only thing that is one's own, the only possession that bids fair to be of eternal worth, and by which we may hope to co-operate with God (become "joint-labourers with God," as the Apostle phrases it) and add to the Opulence of the Universe. As Arcturus and Orion, the Pleiades and the Chambers of the South, excel a streetlamp in sparkling beauty, so does moral worth excel all other beauty. It is the Pearl of Great Price. With all thy getting, get that Great Pearl first of all. Living or dead, the possession of it must necessarily be our glory, as the failure to possess it must necessarily be our shamethis and nothing else. Heaven and Hell are mainly a question as to our mental and moral habitudes and characteristic energies. As the greatest of Authorities said: "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," or, obversely, the slavery of Hell. Hence arise our notions, our ideas, our anticipations of dread Justice: hence our fears

1 A Vicar of Aldershot is reported to have expressed himself, touching electors and elections, in these terms: Every elector "has to make the sign of Christ's Holy Cross opposite the name of the person he votes for"; therefore no Christian can allow himself "to vote for any Jew, atheist, anti-Churchman, or heretic." -The Church Gazette,' 24th November 1900, p. 62. To find this dark-souled sacerdotal superstition in the Church of England at the close of the Nineteenth Century is distressing enough. It would be highly becoming, surely, for this vicar's Bishop to start out in stern pursuit of him.

of future loss, our hopes of future bliss. All such thoughts-thoughts, obviously, which should be of the most tremendous significance to all menhave their origin not in material, but in what we call spiritual considerations.

46. Men have a dim consciousness that the Spiritual should be their chief concern.-And, indeed, in a rough kind of way, mankind know these things. What better proof of it than in the fact that in Christendom alone there are probably some hundreds of thousands of persons told off to preach Religion or the doctrine of the Spiritual ; which they do for the most part, unhappily, in a poor blind way. Consider Human Nature in view of this prodigious fact. Notwithstanding the all-embracing folly of the Human Race, notwithstanding the moral myopy by which human vision is so disastrously obscured, they yet halfunconsciously declare, even in spite of themselves, that the Spiritual is the chief thing.

47. The right and left hand possibilities of Human Nature.-For all this there are thousands of persons in the world who try to convince themselves that it is quite philosophical to be indifferent about such facts. It is a great pity. I would suggest that by a more reasonable and sacred use of his head the least intellectual among them, if he be honest with himself, has knowledge enough (we are all living below our knowledge-some, how far!) to become a kind of angel of light, co-operant with the Divine; and that if he be dishonest, there is a possibility of his becoming a demon of darkness. On the one hand, for example, there is John the Baptist; on the other, Herod and Herodias. Here we have Peter and Paul; there, Judas surnamed Iscariot-and much worse men than he (for it should always be remembered to his honour, that he repented and hanged him

self). Such persons, so far apart from each other in their moral worth, indicate the right and left hand possibilities of Human Nature within the clear circle of knowledge, so that our more extreme sceptics and materialists seem to be to be without excuse. There should be no materialistic or sceptical talk about the prime concerns of Life. The more kind and sympathetic and serviceable we show ourselves, the better for everybody with whom we come into contact: the more selfish, base, and malign, the worse for everybody. Virtue is the health, wealth, and glory of the Soul: sin is the sickness, poverty, and shame of it. That should be plain as daylight to every thinker. To any one who professes to think, it should be as plain as daylight that the acceptance of the doctrines of materialism necessarily destroys even the theoretic possibility of personal worththe most glorious conceivable of all acquisitions, the very thought of which is calculated to inspire lofty Life. If all that sort of light-material and sceptical-were placed under a bushel or quite snuffed out, the World would be no darker for the loss of it. In fact it would be much less murky, and altogether a very much more hopeful place.

48. The Supreme value of the Mind or Soul.Another remark upon this point-the surpassing worth of the Spiritual. Everybody Everybody rightly thinks it a dignified thing to be placed in charge of something important. Now it should be noticed that everybody is actually placed in charge of something important (of more importance, perhaps, than a Planet)-namely, his own Soul, Himself. It is especially incumbent upon all authors and preachers and teachers to reflect upon this fact. Each mind is intended to be honourable and sacred; each mind should be honourable and

sacred; each mind, whether that of king or cotter, should have an honourable and sacred history; each should be wedded to, and find its chief concern in, the Eternal.

49. The vision of the awakened Soul in communion with itself. And, by the wisdom of the Creator, I believe there is such a proud sense of Honour in the awakened and alert Soul that it cannot be at peace even with itself as long as it is consciously subject to any sinful disposition or habit. To rouse up and assiduously cultivate this sacred sense of Honour in themselves and others should be the constant effort of all educators. I submit that the grand and only Catholicon for Spiritual and Social health, strength, and joy is-Heroic Life. (You will not catch the politicians inculcating this doctrine!)

50. Cæteris paribus, Literature is to be valued according to the degree in which it ministers to our higher nature. To bring out such lessons (by plot and narrative and description, by delineation of persons, by tracing and deducing the effect of the actions and character of one person upon another, and by any, the most hopeful, means in his power) must needs be one of the chief aims of the author who would toil for beneficent results. As with Human Life in its general interests and activities, so it is in all our efforts to please, teach, or guide our fellow-beings. Cæteris paribus, all such work is great in the degree in which it ministers effectually to the higher nature of Man; small or worthless, or worse than worthless, in the proportion in which it addresses itself to his insignificance. The first requisite of Literary Art is that it be essentially true to Nature. But truth to Nature is not enough. It is now required that the quality of the truth, or what I would call the Thought-Fabric of the poem or any other

literary work, shall be of real worth. Just as there is fact of chaff and wheat, of cotton and silk, of tin and gold, of glass and diamond, of candle-light and sunlight, of pig-stye and Temple of Divinity, so there is Literature ranging in its subject-matter and Thought-Fabric from the extremes of the common, the insignificant, the trifling, the base, up to the loftiest themes of human thought; and just as glass is inferior to diamond, candle-light to sunlight, pig-stye to Temple of Divinity, so is the literature of base, common, and insignificant and insignificant substance inferior, cæteris paribus, to the literature whose substance is of diamond lustre, of sunlight splendour, of sacred grandeur.

51. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Goethe, and Ruskin on the subject. Thus Sir Joshua Reynolds: "Wellturned periods in eloquence, or harmony of numbers in poetry, which are in those arts what colouring is in painting, however highly we may esteem them, can never be considered as of equal importance with the art of unfolding truths that are useful to mankind, and which makes us wiser and better. Nor can those works which remind us of the poverty and meanness of our nature be considered as of equal rank with what excites ideas of grandeur, or raises and dignifies humanity, or, in the words of Goldsmith, which make the beholder learn to venerate himself as a man. It is reason and good sense, therefore, which ranks and estimates every art, and every part of that art, according to its importance, from the painter of animated down to inanimated nature. We will not allow a man who shall prefer the inferior style to say it is his taste; taste here, has nothing, or at least ought to have nothing to do with the question. He wants (such a one) not taste, but sense and a sound judg