genii of the Scandinavian seas, the subtle oriental faith, with the half-truth of its Trinity, its Brahma, and Vishnu and Siva; all spoke of the out-stretched hand of man, the worshipper, into the spirit world, of his nearness of kin to those whose veil is invisibility.

Then by a natural inversion, all spiritual truth was crystalized-fossilized, it may be, when its early keen vitality the ages had worn away. And that other strong human motive was springing out of its decay. Science was repudiating faith. The one harp was silencing the other.

The Church which grew with the ages was no separate life. It took what these brought, what Pagan culture also brought. Yet, with its sweeter humanity, took not physical nature for shrines, but lives that had been lived purely in the holy light of God; and not these lives alone, but all that they had touched, and touching, in subtle re-action, conferred upon, as they received from. The quickness of human sympathy produced those vivid forms, the vitalizing, passionate apprehension of tremors, and faiths, and convictions to which these common outward accessories had ministered in daily ways. And so quick the apprehending sympathy, the mode was scarcely perceived, the mode which would offer so many temptations to a less spiritual, or at least a less imaginative age.

In the slow rhythm of history that age came, a selfaggrandizing generation with no mental or moral impulse to raise them through the symbol to the real. And so there became idolatry in the forms which were once beautiful significant rites. And matter was no longer the expression of some out-breathing spirit, but spirit was itself materialized

in the rude thought of the people. The age required some other guiding hand than that lovely and restful and beneficent faith of early medievalism born. Its very richness had darkened while it beautified its growth, like the shadow of flower petals upon their own green leaves.

Every age with quick precision responds to its own necessities. The vigorous and keen life of the sixteenth century in Scotland, was the triumphant vindication of the ecclesiastical destruction and revolution out of which it arose.

Long afterwards, Schlegel, who was born a Protestant, philosophising in his unworldly goodness, clinging to the unity of the earlier faith, concludes, in that fond hopefulness which the purest spirits cannot lose--"The church was destined, by the losses it experienced, to learn the danger of its too worldly policy." And it may be that in quiet parishes, hidden away among the Scottish hills, there were priests who comforted themselves with the same unbreathed thought.

Men cannot scaithlessly doff their faiths, like the fashions which Van Dyk painted. Superstitions even may be possibly worn too lightly. For superstitions usually have a half that is true, and it is much to lose half a truth; while to many, even now, it seems a small ill to accept the mediæval rites with the hallowed medieval crown. But to Knox and Murray and Argyle, the nimbus was long paled away; and the church, into which they themselves were baptized, was discrowned by its own perversities. There was no thought of purification or renewal, but only of destruction, which would not flinch in the hearts of the Reformers.

WARNING.

EVIL still shall end in evil!

On the rude marauding race
Zens turns his frowning face,

And striketh those in sin that revel.

Schiller's "Feast of Victory."

CURIOUS letter or proclamation has been preserved

by John Knox. Its date is 1558. So the very youthful lord Claude wears then his Culgniensian mitre; and the stern pope Paul Fourth in Rome nears the end of his brief pontificate; and beautiful bright queen Mary is a newmade bride in France; and Mary of Guise in Scotland, subtle and gracious and fair, upholds her daughter's right and faith as best she may, against the leagued nobles of the land.

Through the bridal rejoicings there comes a clamorous, assertive voice, a protest, a threatening, an appeal. Not the Lords of the Congregation, not Argyle, not the gentle laird of Dun, so brave beneath his courtesy, have cast down defiance like this:

"The Blind, Crooked, Lame, Widows, Orphans and all "other Poor, so visited by the hand of God as cannot work. "To all the flock of friars within this realm, we wish res"titution of wrongs past, and reformation in times coming, "for salvation.

"Ye yourselves are not ignorant (and though ye would "be, it is now, thanks unto God, well known to the whole "world, by His most infallible Word), that the benignity or "alms of all Christian people pertaineth to us alone, which "ye, being whole of body, strong, sturdy and able to work, "what, under pretence of poverty (and yet poverty (and yet nevertheless pos"sessing most easily all abundance), what, through cloaked "and hidden humility (though your proudness is known), "and what through feigned holiness (which now is declared "to be superstition and idolatry), have these many years, "expressly against God's Word, and the practise of His holy "Apostles, to our great torment, alas! most falsely stolen "from us. And as ye have, by your false doctrine, and "wresting of God's Word, induced the whole people, "high and low, into a sure hope and belief, that to clothe, "feed, and nourish you, is the only most acceptable alms "allowed before God; and to give a penny or a piece of "bread once in a week is enough for us; even so ye have "persuaded them to build you great hospitals, and maintain "you therein by their force, which only pertains now to us "by all law as builded and given to the poor, of whose "number ye are not nor can be reputed, neither by the law "of God, nor yet by any other law proceeding of nature, "reason or civil policy. Wherefore, seeing our number is "so great, so indigent, so heavily oppressed by your false