'behind the veil,-behind the veil!' But, is there not another oracle in which the voice of love, and that of death, are blended-infinite Love, and all human deaths in One? Should not that oracle have been listened to more calmly and persistently? How do we know that the prophecies of love are not fallacious? Where is our assurance that the heart, when pure and true, is wise beyond all other wisdom of our nature? It is in the declaration that GOD is Love.' Else, the wildest forebodings might be the vision of the truth, and hopelessness, in a hopeless world, the only possible wisdom. But we are not left to this conclusion; for God has spoken. Our aspiration he meets with His own merciful teaching; and when the wings of the soul falter most tremblingly, and the dimness gathers most darkly about its vision, He raises us into His light that we may see light. Revelation,' writes Arthur Hallam, is a voluntary approximation of the Infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of finite humanity. But until this step has been taken by Almighty Grace, how should a man have a warrant for loving, with all his heart, and mind, and strength?' The feebleness of the spirit of speculation, even when most large-hearted and hopeful, is touchingly illustrated in the following lines, especially in the last stanza :

'Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill;

To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood :

'That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete ;

That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth, with vain desire,
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall
At last-far off-at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

'So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light;
And with no language but a cry.'

The speculation itself might be criticised had not the poet himself confessed to its weakness. Otherwise, I might quote as against the dream of every Winter turned to Spring,' the wise words of Arthur Hallam; however much we should rejoice to discover that the eternal scheme of God, the necessary completion, let us remember, of His Almighty Nature-did not require the absolute perdition of

any spirit called by Him into existence, we are certainly not entitled to consider the perpetual misery of many individuals as incompatible with sovereign love.' The difficulty must be looked fairly in the face; it is one which only Revelation can solve. Nay, may not the same be said of the very doctrine of Immortality? Strong as is the persuasion and the hope of a future life, which breathes throughout In Memoriam, we yet lack the bright assurance of him who calmly looks up to Heaven and says, Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, nor wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one to see corruption.' There is something shadowy in the poet's sublimest vision; and even his tenderest hopes of re-union with the 'happy dead' are darkened by mystery, or chilled with awe. The vision is different from that of sweet Henry Vaughan, singing of his friends, who ‘are all gone into a world of light:

'I see them walking in an air of glory,

Whose light doth trample on my days.'

As it has been well said, had Dante or Milton thus mourned a departed friend, the happy spirit would have been represented as in some far-off glorious home, of which the many mansions would have beamed in splendour before us; the place and employment of the blessed would have been depicted, and we should have been able almost to listen to their song. Tennyson's faith has none of this rapture. There is a Heaven: there shall be re-union: all else is mystery.

Or, again,

6

'And, doubtless, unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In such great offices as suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.

But thou and I have shaken hands,
Till growing winters lay me low;
My paths are in the fields I know,
And thine in undiscover'd lands.'

'Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit otherwhere.

For this alone on Death I wreak

The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart,

We cannot hear each other speak.'

Like-toned also is the consolation addressed to others who have sorrowed, as in the closing lines of the exquisite dedication to Prince Albert's memory, prefixed to the new edition of the 'Idylls:'

In the predominance of sentiment, Mr. Tennyson is pre-eminently the religious poet of our age. There is a spirit of scepticism even in our highest faith. The tendency of religious thought is to the twilight. Dogma often gives place unduly to emotion. Men believe, but they are impatient of the attempt to define what or why. The Bible is accepted as God's truth, because, as Arthur Hallam says, it fits into every fold of the human heart,' rather than because we believe on credible external testimony, that its teachings are declared from above. System and theory are decried in their application to religious truth. Descartes laid the foundation of his metaphysics in his aphorism, 'I think, therefore, I exist;' the starting point of much of the religion of the age is, I feel, therefore, I am immortal, and will worship.' Hence the fascination of In Memoriam. Any one who is in evident fellowship with the invisible, and can tell clearly and strongly what he thus apprehends, is sure of attracting listeners and disciples, whether he be Ranter or Mystic. But how much stronger the attraction, when the insight arises from the deep realisation of that which is most intense and pure in our humanity, and a way thus seems opened up to the innermost shrine of truth, from the affections which are common to us all! In the case of Mr. Tennyson, we must, of course, add all the effect of his poetic genius, and wide and various culture. What wonder, then, that this poem shapes the faith and devotion of thou. sands? There are questions of our day, too, to which it is a relief to be able to apply the sharp decisive answer of a deep, though sentimental religious philosophy. How the heart of the poet, for instance, triumphs over certain physiological speculators of the time.

'Let him, the wiser man, who springs,
Hereafter, up from childhood shape,
His action like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things.'

Observe, this is not refutation in any logical sense, but it is sufficient. Nay, it leaves the way clear for the intellect to search and speculate at will, faith and conscience resting the while on the deeper assurance of the affections. Questions, too, are thus left open, the unsettlement of which, as evident in the theological and other literature of the day, is likely to exert an evil influence on our successors, if not on ourselves. Criticism, for instance, takes strange liberties with the Bible; the heart still saying, The Book is not the chief foundation of my trust,' for 'I have felt.' But for the prevalence of such a feeling, whether implicit or avowed, there could have been no Essays and Reviews' written by men of accredited religious character. In former days, to weaken the external testimony, would have been to destroy all. Now, entrenched in a sentiment, the religious faculty itself calmly looks on during the destruction of its own outworks. Too late, we fear, it will find that the fortress is not of itself impregnable.

Another danger closely connected with this way of holding the truth is, that one great class of facts in God's universe should be altogether set aside. I mean, of course, those which arise from the presence and the power of SIN. To discuss this subject would be out of place now. Suffice it to say that no high strain of religious musing can be complete where there is not the undertone of penitence, and the suppliant wail for mercy. In Memoriam itself would be the greater for a Miserere. The holiest sorrow is but the shadow cast by moral evil. 'Death came by sin,' is the utterance not of a theological common-place, but of the only deep and true philosophy. The affections themselves are out of joint.' Hence, the insufficiency of their aspiration; hence, their failure to discern and to overcome; hence, the necessity of the CROSS. 'He that died in Holy Land is not only the Friend of our heart; he is the Saviour of our souls! But it may be said, perhaps, that these themes would be too exclusively theological, perhaps that they would be too personally sacred, for a place in such a poem. I admit, to a great extent, the validity of the plea; and we, who prize and love this poem beyond all the other imaginative literature of the age are, perhaps, unreasonable to forget that In Memoriam is not an Apocalypse, or to lament because we discern not, enthroned upon its affections, its memories, and its hopes, 'a Lamb, as it had been slain.'

All that there is of sacredness of human affection is here; and the poet's great work has been to shew how that affection, when highest and purest, is the true point of the soul's contact with God. Here, and not in knowledge, lies the secret of faith. This faith gives

strength, not only for repose, but for action. If the Divine and the human spirit meet, it is for great and holy working, as well as for the joy of sacred followship. Thus are souls disciplined for noble deeds. In one of the finest of the sections of In Memoriam, the poet daringly compares the Divine operation on the soul of man, to the work of the Spirit of God, moving in the great creative ages, upon the face of the waters; and, borrowing a suggestion from the disclosures of geology, shews how the true dignity of man is thus perfected by the long-continued Divine energy, in change, and heat, and storm.

'If so he type this work of time

'Within himself, from more to more,

Or, crown'd with attributes of woe,
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not as idle ore,

'But iron dug from central gloom,

And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom,

'To shape and use.'

Yes; to take a manlike part in the world's affairs, this, too, is the delight of the soul that has sought to enter into fellowship with the Divine. Such fellowship is a place of vantage from which to see the vision which shall be before descending to take part in the work that shall bring about the great result. Thus, as Time rolls on, and the wild bells of the church tower, it may be, are ringing out the old year, and ringing in the new, the spirit, from its height of thought and sacred purpose, hears yet another chime, at once an inspiration to endeavour, and a prophecy to hope. Who is not familiar with the glorious carol ?—

'Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the CHRIST that is to be.'

In one sublime invocation the whole is summed up :-the yearning of the heart, the trust born of affection, the aspiration after noble and worthy deeds, the crown of immortality:

'O living will, that shall endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock,

Rise in the spiritual rock,

Flow thro' our deeds, and make them pure,

That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years,
To one that with us works, and trust,