beliefs exist only in two places,—in the creeds of older churches and in the minds of scoffers. In both places they work much harm to religion. Let them be taken from the creeds, since they have vanished from living thought. Those who profess these creeds must feel under some constraint to accept their teachings. And not only is a falsity wrought between the profession and conviction, not only is much valuable spiritual energy wasted in the attempt to believe what cannot longer be believed; but more serious injury is wrought to the reverence of man by holding before the world, even as formal truth, these shocking beliefs. And still more mischief is wrought by the attempt to destroy these older systems, an attempt made by those who regard them as vitally accepted by those who make profession of them. The blows of the iconoclast upon the forgotten image cannot but attract attention to that which otherwise would be ignored; and the attempt to destroy cannot but arouse resistance from those who otherwise were passive. The destructive methods of controversy thus preserve the formal statements of outgrown faith; and the things that are really believed are not permitted to work their healing way in the world. This will doubtless be the case as long as these old statements usurp the place of living ones; for while men falsely profess, others must in truth protest. In the mean time the real life of the spirit is ignored.

Reverence in the Churches.

There is reverence in the church world because reverent beliefs animate the present mind. Not the old anthropomorphic God, but the Being which cannot be described, yet whose dearest name is Father, because that is the highest name man can give; not vassals to serve at a monarch's court in heaven, but men to live out their own lives and glorify their God by the glory of their triumph over sin and all that is low; not the vicarious atonement of Jesus, the only hope of heaven, but the suffering of each and every noble life for all, as typified in Jesus; not eternal punishment, but inevitable suffering due to sin,- these and such as these, are the living convictions of the theologic mind to-day. And these thoughts

are leading the world to a sense of vastness, grandeur, and goodness which is making man to bow before the Infinite.

The Indefiniteness of Belief.

If religious truths are less clearly and definitely stated to-day than in the past, it is well for the reverence of to-day; for part of the irreverence which all must overcome is due to the very definiteness of the creeds that have been professed. A God who can be fully defined is not very inspiring; a heaven that can be measured is a poor heaven for the imaginative. As Martineau says of the materialistic view of the universe, so we may say of much speculative theology, "Its very clearness [proclaims] its insuffi ciency for those affections which seek not the finite but the infinite." Compare the clear conception of God that was given us in our childhood with Job's vision of God's being when he said, "It is more high than heaven, what canst thou do; deeper than hell, what canst thou know?" Or even with Herbert Spencer's, "Infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed." Which conception fills you with most spiritual devotion?

The need of to-day may be more clearness of the grounds of belief. Men need to see where they stand in the thought and spirit of the age, but they do not need more clearly defined conclusions; beliefs should not be concluded. We need more height and depth and breadth of vision and of dream.

The Faith of the Future.

In the greater faith of the future men shall learn to revere that which they cannot see, and the God who cannot be named shall be their God. The heaven that cannot be pictured to earthly sense will be their heaven, and the Church of the Holy Presence which cannot be portrayed will be their church. When the readjustments theology is now making are completed, men will have a more settled starting-point for their relig. ious thinking; they will have abiding ground upon which to stand to behold the heavens; but they will look up and out.

For the present, in the transitions of to-day, when the old thoughts are gone or going, and the readjustments of the new

thought are not completed, the one surpassing problem is to disbelieve devoutly. Lowell sang in the presence of the Cathedral:

"Perhaps the deeper faith that is to come
Will see God rather in strenuous doubt
Than in the creed held as an infant's hand
Holds purposeless whatso is placed therein."

Some are coming now to see that strenuous doubt reveals God more clearly than he is revealed by the purposeless acceptance of a creed. But strenuous doubt belongs to the transition. An affirmation only can be doubted. Men cannot doubt that God that has not yet been named. And when they have ceased to doubt the name of God or the God of the name, they may come to revere the God beyond the limits of the name.

In the future there will come a time when reverence will pervade belief and transcend belief. It will come in the future of every man who will persevere in the cultivation of his spiritual impulses; but to this end all must learn to disbelieve devoutly. I do not accept my brother's creed, must I therefore feel no rapture toward the infinite? I have no patience with that friend's dream of heaven. Must I then have no sense of the heavenly? I do not agree with what is taught about religion. Must I then have no devout upreaching of the soul? I cannot shape for myself a satisfactory belief about God or heaven, nor define the meanings of religion; but does that absolve me from the inborn instincts of my heart? Must I stop my ears to the call, "Come up higher, because I cannot see the face of the One that calls? Must I quell within me the hopes that mount upward because I cannot see the height whither they tend? Must I still the beating of love in my heart because that which appeals to my love is too infinite, too holy to be grasped in my earthly hands? Must I turn my eyes

toward the earth because I cannot see out

there beyond the stars? Must I look no more at the beauty of the flower because I cannot comprehend infinite beauty?

Surely, there is something in the great nature of Being that inspires these loves and hopes and longings within us; and, if there is not, still are they worthy of our cherishing. But they are not born of poor human statements. Rather are poor human

statements born of them. We may escape definitions, but not that the defining of which was attempted. Something divine has been pressed in upon man all the way from the beginning. Man would know what it is that presses in; and, though no man has known, though we cast aside what all men say of it as vain, though we ourselves cannot name that which presses in upon us, we cannot escape the pressure. Oh, my brethren, the Infinite is at your door! Will you forbid it entrance because your fathers have called it petty names, or because you yourself cannot call it by its right name as it enters? Let it enter. Open wide the gateway of your being, that the glory may come in, even though you may not call it King.

A STUDY OF CARLYLE.

BY GEORGE W. BUCKLEY.

I. Humorist.

The genius of Thomas Carlyle presents itself under the three aspects of humorist, poet-historian, and prophet or poet-prophet. The term humorist I apply not in any limited, precise sense, trying to mark off humor from wit, but as a general term covering both, standing for that spontaneous quality of the intellect which conveys truth through the sense of the absurd, the comic or the false in human conduct.

This faculty Carlyle exercises vigorously and unstintedly in manifold ways, sometimes as the illuminating flash of wit, sometimes as the caustic sting of sarcasm, sometimes as the more extended flow of humor. In using it he is more affluent, profound, and incisive than Macaulay, and, what is better, is guided by a moral earnestness of purpose such as neither Macaulay nor any other historian has manifested to

men.

How forceful and pungent, how grim and grave, how free and sportive he is in his criticisms of men and life! I think we often go wrong in our harsh judgment of this man by not making sufficient allowance for the play of his irrepressible sense of humor. To this, quite as much as to an unworthy pessimism, should be attributed much of the

grumble and fault-finding which appear so often in his writings and letters. We doubt not that he and his "Dear Goody" toogot much enjoyment out of it. Here are two of many illustrations taken from his letters to Mrs. Carlyle. Morning after morning, aroused from slumber by earlier risers than he, this doleful-humorous message sped its way: :

"Last night I awoke at three, and made nothing more of it, owing to cocks and other blessed fellow-inhabitants of this planet, not all of whom are friendly to me, I perceive. In fact, this planet was not wholly made for me, but for me and others, including cocks, unclean things many, and even the Devil; that is the real secret of it."

Again he pours out his distracted brain over cocks, pianos, and various auricular irritations:

"How the ear of man is tortured in this terrestrial planet! Go where you will, the cock's shrill clarion, the dog's harsh watchnote, not to speak of the melody of wheelbarrows, wooden clogs, loud-voiced men, perhaps watchmen, break upon the hapless brain; and, as if this was not enough, 'the Piety of the Middle Ages' has founded tremendous bells; and the hollow triviality of the present age has everywhere instituted the piano. Why are not, at least, all those cocks and cockerels boiled into soup, into everlasting silence? Or, if the Devil some good night should take his hammer and smite in shivers all and every piano of our European world, so that in broad Europe there were not one piano left soundable, would the harm be great?

"And this miserable young woman that now in the next house to me spends all her young, bright days, not in learning to darn stockings, sew shirts, bake pastry, or any art, mystery, or business that will profit herself or others; not even amusing herself or skipping on the grass-plots with laughter of her mates; but simply and solely in raging from dawn to dusk, to night and midnight, on a hapless piano, which it is evident she will never in this world learn to render more musical than a pair of barn-fanners. The miserable young female! The sound of her through the wall is to me an emblem of the whole distracted misery of this age; and her barn-fanners' rhythm becomes all too significant."

Once, as I fancy, being induced to attend light opera, he returns home, and spends the night in writing a criticism of such wit and sarcasm as Voltaire might envy.

"The very ballet girls," he says, "with their muslin saucers round them, were perhaps little short of miraculous, whirling and spinning there in mad vortexes... A truly notable motion, marvellous, were not the people there so used to it. Motion peculiar to the opera; perhaps the ugliest, and surely one of the most difficult ever taught a female creature in this world. Nature abhors it; but art does at least admit it to border on the impossible. One little Cerito, or Taglioni the Second, went bounding from the floor, as if she had been made of Indian rubber, or filled with hydrogen gas, and inclined by positive levity to bolt through the ceiling; perhaps neither Semiramis nor Catherine the Second had bred herself so carefully."

A social or religious sham, a vice or defect of character, he often presents in a phrase, a sentence, a brief paragraph. Of the impurity of a novel by Diderot, he remarks, "If any mortal creature, even a reviewer, . . . be compelled to glance into that book, let him bathe himself in running water, put on change of raiment, and be unclean until the even."

Popery in the time of Cromwell is the "three-hatted chimera." In its hands eternal truth is a “shamming grimace." Parliament is a "talking apparatus." John Stuart Mill he loves, "as a friend frozen in ice." Robespierre is the "sea-green monster in spectacles; meant by nature for pastor of the stricter sort, to doom men who departed from the written confession." Describing the vanity for dress of a Saxon minister in the time of Frederick the Great, he pronounces him the "vainest of human clotheshorses." The conversation of a dignitary of the English Church he calls "distractively speculative, oftenest purposely distracted, never altogether boring. His talk has one great property, it saved all task of talk on my part." He refers to Dean Stanley's liberalism as "boring holes in the bottom of the Church of England." Of one of Cromwell's enemies he observes: "John Lilburn, who could not live without a quarrel, who, if he were left alone in the world, would have to divide himself in two,

and set the John to fight with Lilburn, and the Lilburn with John." In the life of John Sterling, that beautiful and just tribute of duty and affection to an intimate friend, Carlyle has occasion to touch upon Coleridge as a conversationalist. Any one acquainted with the life and productions of that poetic, mystical, vague, though vast, genius must appreciate the humor and critical vivacity of the following description :

"It was talk not flowing anywhither like a river, but everywhither in inextricable currents and regurgitations, like a lake or sea; terribly deficient in definite goal or aim, nay often in logical intelligibility; what you are to believe or do, on any earthly or heavenly thing, obstinately refusing to appear from it. . .

"To sit as a passive bucket of water and be pumped into whether you consent or not, can in the long run be exhilarating to no creature, how eloquent soever the flood of utterance that is descending. But if it be withal a confused unintelligible flood of utterance threatening to submerge all known landmarks of thought, and drown the world and you! I have heard Coleridge talk with eager musical energy two stricken hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any individual of his hearers.

"He began anywhere. You put some question to him, made some suggestive observation. Instead of answering this, or decidedly setting out toward answer of it, he would accumulate formidable apparatus, logical swim-bladders, transcendental lifepreservers, and other precautionary and vehiculatory gear for setting out; perhaps did at last get under way, but was swiftly solicited, turned aside by the glance of some radiant new game on this hand or that into new courses, and ever into new; and before long into all the Universe, where it was uncertain what game you would catch, or whether any."

man.

it is the lightning of displeasure concentrated in a nickname or a phrase. Now it spreads itself over whole pages, an electrical current, cutting away at some disease of social life, some sham belief or practice of Or it may take the form of a playful picture or description of a historic event, a character scene in social or domestic life, a mere pessimistic observation on men and things that irritated his nervous, dyspeptic apparatus. In his diaries and letters, espepecially to Mrs. Carlyle and to Emerson, one finds excitants enough for hearty laughter. On visiting him in England, Emerson was greatly impressed with this humor side of his friend's genius. "There is nothing deeper in his constitution than his humor. . . He feels that the perfection of health is sportiveness, and will not look grave even at dulness and tragedy."

...

(To be continued.)

THE GROWTH OF LIBERAL AND TRUE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AS SEEN IN THE WRITINGS OF IAN MACLAREN.

BY REV. ALBERT WALKLEY.

Some time ago a volume of sermons by Scotch ministers appeared, which showed that out of old and hard Calvinism a gentler, sweeter life was rising. That volume made us feel that the Scot had a warm, feeling heart underneath his rugged and stern creed. There is in him a good deal of Robert Burns as well as of John Knox. Of late this Scot has been occupying a large place in the mind of the religious world. The stories of George MacDonald made manifest the sweeter life in old Scotland's forbidding religion. And now Barrie and Lyall touch the same chord, and the many hands play the same tune of gentleness, and bring home the truth that not only of one blood, but of one heart hath God made all nations of men.

One name at this day takes up a large part of the world's attention. He is a minister of the gospel, who writes not only sermons, but stories, all, however, on the same theme, the religion of Jesus. John Watson, or Ian Maclaren, as he calls himself, is a sign of the times. It has been his good

His sermons are not at all such as the fathers would or could in good conscience have preached. In his last story-Kate Carnegie-he gives us a picture of one of the older ministers, who was compelled by his whole noble life to preach the old doctrine of God's wrath and election. Rabbi Sanderson, as they called him, had to preach that God was an exacting judge, whose inflexible justice demanded the damnation of some. It was not because the dear old saint wished to preach such stern truth that he did it, but because he had to. He felt that woe was he if he preached another gospel. But out of this obedience to conscience grew in time a fuller, sweeter light. We honor the men who through sorrow and tears obeyed their consciences, even if they seem to us terrible in their loyalty to those consciences. The reward is seen in the glorious religion which has arisen on our times. At the heart of old Calvinism was the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. But, says the modern, the centre of that sovereignty is love, not wrath. And this has lighted up the whole doctrine with grace and beauty.

The modern minister turns more to Jesus than to Paul or Calvin. He has less to do with the fall of Adam, and more to do with the Sermon on the Mount. In one of his stories Maclaren tells of a young man who was to preach his first sermon to a people who had called him to become their minister. He must preach, of course, a great and learned sermon. But the thoughts would not come, the pen would not write as it ought to. There was no warmth to the sermon he had, and he felt it. His aunt saw his perplexity, and called to mind for him the last words of his mother who had passed into the upper light some five years before: 'If God calls ye to the ministry, ye'll no refuse, an' the first day ye preach in yir ain kirk, speak a gude word for Jesus Christ. An', John, I'll hear ye that day though ye'll no see me, and I'll be satisfied." He burned the written sermon, and went into his pulpit with a heart filled with the memory of his mother and a love for Jesus; and he preached one of those sermons that get not into print, but into lives forever and for

ever.

This loyalty to Jesus marks Ian Mac

thought. In his prose work, "The Mind of the Master," he says: "When one reads the creed which was given by Jesus, and those which have been made by Christians, he cannot fail to detect an immense difference. They all have a likeness to each other, and a family unlikeness to the Sermon on the Mount. . . . What must strike every person about Jesus' sermon is that it is not metaphysical, but ethical. What he lays stress upon are such points as these: The Fatherhood of God over the human family; his perpetual and beneficent providence over all his children; the excellence of simple trust in God over the earthly care of this world; the obligation of God's children to be like their Father in heaven; the paramount importance of true and holy motives; the worthlessness of a merely formal righteousness; forgiveness dependent on our forgiving our neighbor; the fulfilling of the law of love; and the play of tender and passive virtues."

Around the Sermon on the Mount gathers all the religious thought of this man who is touching the modern mind and heart. He almost grows monotonous-if such a thing is possible-in his repetitions of loyalty to this highest standard of religious thought. He puts his creed in a short form, full of Christ, full of tenderness, full of hope and sympathy, which runs thus: "I believe in the Fatherhood of God; I believe in the words of Jesus; I believe in a clean heart; I believe in the service of God; I believe in the unworldly life; I promise to trust God and follow Christ; to forgive my enemies, and to seek after the righteousness of God." The religious papers of the sterner creeds tell us that this is no creed at all, that it is "worthless as a creed in honor of Christ."

Nevertheless, it is around this creed, or one like it, that the hearts of men gather. It is this creed which is moulding men into gentler and nobler forms. It is this creed is giving consolation in hours of sorrow. It is this creed is putting new life into the Church and winning men's adhesion to the Church. It is this creed that is making us see God in all noble men whose lives are given in work for their fellows. Such a creed compels us to honor the intellect, and also to give place to the heart. It is