Page:Poems Greenwell.djvu/330

 world's history a time in which, to speak after a human manner, it was so easy to miss Christ, so hard to do without him as now. For it is not only the outward courts that have become wide, yet crowded; science continues to open up infinite yet densely peopled spaces, lengthening out, although every link lie golden, the chain between man's soul and God, so that even the Christian thinker must respond with sadness to the bold and satirical saying of Hazlitt, In the days of Jacob there was a ladder between heaven and earth, but now the heavens have gone farther off, and are become astronomical. The very revelation of God's power has tended to weaken the sense of his immediate presence; yet it is not here, but in another region still richer, fairer, and more perilous that our peculiar danger lies. Man, within the limits of his own nature has broken into a world of which former ages, and these the most intellectually subtle and refined, knew nothing. The time is past when all things within that nature could be mapped out in broad and even lines; how many motives and impulses do we find at work within us of which we cannot say that they are good or evil, only that they are natural, human. Therefore is there a difficulty, oft-times an agony, introduced into the Christian life of which earlier ages were unconscious partly because the forms of good and evil were then more definite, and partly because what Goethe says of the individual holds true for the race he belongs to the easy-hearted, even reckless simplicity of youth carries it unawares past many a danger where to pause and to investigate would be to be lost. For there are voices that even to hear is bewilderment; shapes that but to look upon is madness. Our path is beset with such, alluring, beckoning, inviting us we know not whither; must we parley, must we wrestle with each of these to compel it to utter a clear message, to assume a certain likeness? The way is long, the day is short—we must onwards though the leaves above our lead mutter, though the flowers that we would pluck are charactered, though each simple and familiar thing beside our way has become instinct with n terrible consciousness, linking it with our own being. Literature and art, even nature herself, these which for freer spirits had a charm of their own, and needed not any other, now breathe and burn in the fulness of a parasitical life; the fever of man's conflict has passed across them; their bloom and fragrance feels and is fed by fire kindled far down at the central heart. The shadow of Humanity falls wide, darkening the world's play- ground, and games, be they those of Hero and Demi-God, can no more enthral us. What is science itself but a gigantic toy, which may delight but can never satisfy the heart, which, even through its sadness and perplexity, has learnt that it is greater than all that surrounds it? Which confesses that though the light within It is too often darkness, still is that very light 'more worthy than the things which are shown by it; still are Man's errors greater than Nature's order, his miseries nobler than her splendour....

Yet let the heart of man be comforted; it cannot outgrow its Christ: yes, let the heart be comforted in him out of its poverty and its riches alike. When we remember that Christ in taking unto himself Man's nature, foot upon him all that would become, in how glorious and serene a light do the acquisitions of science stand! This thought gives, as it were, music and measure to the onward march of humanity changes it from an outbreak of tumultuous forces to steady and disciplined progress. And if, turning from the world of action, we flash the light of this truth within the dim and many-chambered region that lies beneath it all; here also we shall discover that in Christ there is a provision, though we may not at once find it for the growth and expansion which has made Humanity without him like a fruit too heavy for the stalk it Fangs on, dragged and trailed to dust by its very weight and splendour. Even through the wealth and apparent waste of tendrils and suckers it is now putting forth, it may cleave closer, drink deeper unto Him. For all that awakens a sense of need within us, draws us by so much nearer Christ: no spiritual truth being our own until we have needed it, as long as we can to without these Divine friends, they stand in some degree aloof from us-feeble, wounded, even despairing, must cast ourselves upon their very bosoms before they will receive or return our clasp."—News of the Churches.

HIS unpretending volume is of no common stamp, possessing merit of a very high order. Thoughtful, original, suggestive, pervaded by a tone of the most deep and earnest piety-we are persuaded that no devout reader can fail to derive from it solid satisfaction and advantage. It is of a meditative and contemplative cast, though its tendency is eminently practical. It is written in a style singularly attractive and poetical, exhibiting everywhere traces of a well-stored and highly-cultivated mind, a glowing imagination, a luxuriant fancy, and a large and generous heart thoroughly penetrated with the love of God and man. There is something strikingly genuine and real about the book. Coming from the heart. it finds its way direct to the heart. The writer has evidently had inward personal experience of the doubt, the hopes, the conflicts, the consolations which here occupy her pen. Hence her book will have a permanent value, and touch hidden springs of comfort in many a breast. One great charm of her writing is the felicitous way in which she seems able to give form and expression to the deep musings and yearning which, doubtless, are silently stirring in the spirits of many Christians, struggling for birth, and unable to find utterance. In this respect the writer shows herself a true poet....

We have only to repeat, that we cordially recommend this beautiful and suggestive little work to all our thoughtful Christian readers, of whatever shade of theological opinion. We doubt not it will be one to whose pages they will often recur for comfort, sympathy, and encouragement—Durham Advertiser.

HIS is not a common book. It shows much thoughtfulness and a refined piety. We proceed to give some extracts:—

"We have more than enough of systems, of machinery, which, whether more or less perfect, will not go of itself. We may have done all that of ourselves we can do, and the moving spring may be wanting,-The spirit of the living creature in the wheels. . . . ..

We are met, comparatively speaking, by little direct opposition to revealed religion; its moral teaching is respected; the sacred person of its