ter.

form a heavy burden to many of usfind a counterpart in the single soul. And here again light is thrown upon the discipline of personal suffering through the work of Christ. That reveals to us the love from which it flows, and the perfection to which it is able to minisAgain, we may not be able to see far into the application of these lessons; but it becomes intelligible that if the virtue of Christ's life and death was made available for man through suffering-if it was through suffering that He fulfilled the destiny of man fallen-the appropriation of that which He has gained may be carried into effect through the same law. The mystery of the forgiveness of sins is fulfilled, and we can bear cheerfully the temporal consequences of sin.

In both respects, in regard to personal sufferings and to social sufferings, it is enough to remember that He who was the Man of sorrows, He who was a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world, first revealed the Fatherhood of God.

2. These considerations, which I can only indicate in the faintest outline, prove our first point. We need light, as conscious of failure in ourselves, sensible of failure around us; and Christianity takes the fullest account of this great gloom and illuminates it.

But in the next place, as men-as men in our essential constitution, and not only as fallen men-we need an ideal which may move us to effort. Now here, up to a certain point, there is no difference of opinion.

It is generally agreed that the type of character presented to us in the Gospels is the highest which we can fashion. The Person of the Lord meets us at every point in our strivings, and discloses something to call out in us loftier endeavor. In Him we discover in the most complete harmony all the excellences which are divided not unequally between man and woman. In Him we can recognize the gift which has been entrusted to each one of us severally, used in its true relation to the other endowments of humanity. He enters into the fulness of life, and makes known the value of each detail of life.

And what He is for us, He is for all men, and for all time. There is noth

ing in the ideal which He offers which belongs to any particular age, or class, or nation. He stands above all and unites all. That which was local or transitory in the circumstances under which He lived, in the controversies of rival sects, in the struggles of patriotism, in the isolation of religious pride, leave no color in His character. All that is abiding, all that is human, is there without admixture, in that eternal energy which man's heart can recognize in its time of trial.

So it is that the Person of the Lord satisfies the requirement of growth which belongs to the religious nature of man. Our sense of His perfections grows with our own moral advance. We see more of His beauty as our power of vision is disciplined and purified. The slow unfolding of life enables us to discern new meaning in His presence. In His humanity is included whatever belongs to

the consummation of the individual and of the race, not only in one stage but in all stages of progress, not only in regard to some endowments but in regard to the whole inheritance of our nature enlarged by the most vigorous use while the world lasts. We, in our weakness and littleness, confine our thoughts from generation to generation, now to this fragment of His fulness and now to that; but it is, I believe, true without exception in every realm of man's activity, true in action, true in literature, true in art, that the works which receive the most lasting homage of the soul are those which are most Christian, and that it is in each the Christian element, the element which answers to the fact of the Incarnation, to the fellowship of God with man as an accomplished reality of the present order, which attracts and holds our reverence. In the essence of things it cannot be otherwise. Our infirmity alone enfeebles the effect of the truth which we have to embody.

in Christ as that which interprets perfectly our own aspirations. No accumulation of failures can destroy the sense of our destiny. But alone, in ourselves, as we look back sadly, we confess that we have no new resource of strength for the future, as we have no ability to undo the past. The loftiest souls apart from Christ recognize that they were made for an end which naturally' is unattainable. They do homage (for example) to a purity which they personally dishonor. This need brings into prominence the supreme characteristic of the faith. Christ meets the acknowledgment of individual helplessness with the offer of fellowship. He reveals union with Himself, union with God, and union with man in Him, as the spring of power, and the inspiration of effort. The knowledge which flows from the vision of the world as He has disclosed it is not simply for speculation the glory of the image of man which He shows is not for contemplative admiration. Both are intensely practical. Both tend directly to kindle and support love in and through Him; and love, which is the transfigurement of pain, is also strength for action and motive for action.

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In this way believing in Christ-believing in Christ, and not merely believing Christ-brings into exercise the deepest human feelings. It has been excellently laid down by one who was not of us, that 'the solution of the problem of essence, of the questions, Whence? What? and Whither? must be in a life and not in a book.' For the solution which is to sway life must have been already shown in its sovereign efficacy. And more than this, it must have been shown to have potentially a universal and not only a singular application. And this is exactly what the Gospel brings home to us. He who said, "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father,' illuminated the words by actions which made known the divine original and the divine destiny of man. The Son of man did not separate Himself from those whom He was not ashamed to call brethren. He bade, and bids, them find in His humanity-His "flesh and blood "flesh and blood" -the support of their own humanity.

In His life, for our sakes, the heavenly interpreted the earthly. He called out, and He still calls out in us, as we dwell upon the records of the Gospel, the response of that which is indeed kindred to Himself, of that which becomes one with Himself.

The sympathy which is thus awakened by Christ makes known to the soul its latent capacities. Again and again our own experience startles us with unexpected welcomes to the highest thoughts and claims. Even in ordinary life contact with nobler natures arouses the feeling of unused power, and quickens the consciousness of responsibility. And when union with the Son of man, the Son of God, is the basis of our religion, all these natural influences produce the highest conceivable effect. We each draw from fellowship with the perfect life that which our little life requires for its sustenance and growth.

Such considerations enable us to understand a little better than we commonly do those two words of St. Paul,

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in Christ," which form an implicit creed. We come to see that they correspond with the fact of a larger life to which our lives are contributory, a life which reaches potentially to all redeemed beings, a life which takes into itself all that is harmonious with its character, and conveys of its infinite wealth to each fragment included in its organization.

The revelation which places us in direct connection with unfailing power supplies us also with a sovereign motive. When we accept such a revelation, the same instinct which constrains us to labor for ourselves constrains us to labor for others. To labor for others is, we then see in literal truth, to labor for ourselves. The separate consciousness of the individual parts of the body of Christ does not modify their inter-dependence, but gives a new meaning to the social destination of work. There is, we know, no pain which the devotion of love is unable to transfigure; and it is this devotion which the Christian conception of humanity and nature is essentially fitted to stir and to deepen. Not by accident, not by a remote or precarious deduction, but directly, in its simplest announcement, the Gospel proclaims that we are members one of

another, and that all creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God.

And it is obvious that this belief in the solidarity of life, if once we could give it vivid distinctness, is able-perhaps is alone able to deal with the evils which spring from selfishness. It enables us to estimate rightly the burden of poverty and the heavier burden of wealth, when we take account of the conditions under which the one life is fulfilled in many parts. It quickens that keen sense of responsibility to God which best regulates the use of large means; and it quickens that conviction of Divine fellowship which brings dignity even to indigence. And meanwhile it delivers us from the bondage of material standards, when it makes known all that is of the earth as that through which the spiritual is brought within our reach.

If now I have succeeded in any degree in marking clearly the lines of thought which I have wished to trace, we shall see that the capacity of Christianity to illuminate, to guide, to inspire, belongs to its very nature; that we cannot hold our Faith without finding in it light to dispel the heaviest clouds of life, an ideal to keep before us the divine purpose of creation, power to support us in our strivings to fulfil God's will; that, when it fails us in theory or in deed, we have so far limited or misunderstood or misused it. In other words we shall see that Christianity is the perfect religion.

It gives stability and energy to thought, and feeling, and action. Nothing can be without its scope, but to all things transitory it adds the element of the infinite.

It supplies the foundation of perfect freedom in absolute self-devotion. It ennobles dependence as the correlative of social fellowship. It presents the total aspect of being not as a conflict but as a unity. Politicians aim at the greatest happiness of the greatest number," but we have a surer and wider principle for our guidance, that the happiness of the whole is the happiness of all.

But it will be said that the theoretic claims of Christianity are paralleled by the claims of other religions; that they are disproved by the crimes of ChrisNEW SERIES.-VOL. XLV., No. 2

tians. I notice the objections only to point out that they do, in fact, if fairly examined, confirm my position with overwhelming force. If it could be shown that the vital force of any other great religion was alien from Christianity; if it could be shown that the crimes of Christians arose from that which is of the essence of their Faith, then the objections would be weighty; but if, on the other hand, it is obvious that the religions of the world each touched the hearts of men by a power of order or devotion, of sympathy with nature or of surrender to a supreme King, then each præ-Christian religion becomes a witness to the Faith which combines these manifold powers in a final unity; if it is obvious that the excesses of Christian men and Christian States are in defiance of the message of the Incarnation, then they only prove that the approach to the ideal is slow, and that it rises above attainment to condemn and to encourage. So it is that the gathered experience of men bears testimony to the truth of Christianity, both when it records anticipations and when it records corruptions of its teaching. In the one case it shows the Gospel as satisfying the cravings of men, and in the other as judging their self-will and selfishness.

It

And at the same time the wide, frank questionings of history which lead to these results, the attempt, however imperfect, to bring our Faith into actual contact with the most varied facts of life, reveals its breadth and grandeur and vitality. We are all tempted to limit our conception of its efficacy by our personal requirements. We forget that it is directed not only to the redemption of man as fallen, but to the consummation of man as created. requires a serious effort to look beyond ourselves, our nature, our age, and recognize how it meets wants which we have not felt, how it disciplines powers with which we are not endowed, how it supplements our offerings by the fruits. of other service. The effort is difficult, but it brings for its reward a calm assurance which is as firm as the far-reaching foundation of human experience on which it rests.

So it may well be that some of the lines of thought which I have endeavored to indicate-only to indicate-may

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be strange; but I know that they are worth following. I know that they are able to bring home to us with irresistible force the conviction that Christianity has a message for us; that the Holy Spirit is speaking to us with a voice which we can interpret; that the currents of action and thought by which we are swayed can be so guided as to generate a divine light; that the conceptions of the dependence of man upon man, and of man upon nature, of a fundamental unity, underlying the progress of phenomena, which are taking place about us, illuminate mysteries of apostolic teaching; that the theology which expresses the temporal apprehension of the facts of revelation advances still, as it has advanced from the first, with the accumulated movement of all ancillary sciences.

Such convictions restore to us the position and the spirit of conquerorsthe only position, the only spirit which befit our Faith. We are, we must be, as believers in Christ, in the presence of a living, that is, of a speaking God. Nothing, indeed, can be added to the facts of the Gospel, but all history and all nature is the commentary upon them. And the loftiest conceptions of human destiny and human duty cannot but be quickened and raised by the message which

reaches through the finite to the infinite, through time to eternity: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us. Our imaginations are dull and undisciplined. We can hardly for a brief moment strive to realize what this Historic Gospel means. Yet even so in the still silence it makes itself felt. Then we confess that nothing beautiful, or true, or good, which lies within the range of human powers, can be outside its hallowing influence; that it calls for an expression in doctrine, and in conduct, and in worship which exercises the utmost gifts of reason, and will, and feeling; that it restores to man the divine fellowship which has been interrupted by sin; that it discloses the importance of the present through which the interpretation of the eternal comes to us; that it confirms the value of the individual by revealing his relation to a whole of limitless majesty; that it offers a sovereign motive for seeking the help of unfailing might; that it asks, guides, sustains the ministry of all life, and the ministry of every life; and, therefore, that it is a complete satisfaction of the religious needs of men.-Contemporary Review.

To those who still believe in the importance of a classical education, it is an encouraging sign that as the area of the study of Greek is lessening year by year in England, its intensity is as steadily increasing. Step by step even the most strenuous upholders of the old system are being driven back by the force of public opinion, which says (rightly or wrongly we need not here discuss) that a knowledge of Greek is not necessary; and by the cry of parents who say that they will not have their sons taught, in these times of stress, what they consider to be at best an elegant accomplishment. At the same time we see in our universities and in our public schools a growing tendency to place classical study upon a wider and a sounder basis. It is felt that it is no

longer enough to instil into the youthful mind the mysteries of the verb in μ, or the subtle and manifold meanings of μev and de; but that through the gate of an accurate knowledge of a perfectly constructed language, the student should be continually invited to look beyond into the country which produced and at the men who used that language; to realize the part they played in the history of the world; to understand the high and noble ideas which inspired not merely their literature but their art, and in a sense the homeliest details of their daily life. Twenty, nay even ten years ago, a boy might pass, and pass with credit, through Eton and Oxford, through Harrow and Cambridge, and yet be ignorant of the very elements of Greek art. The mere names of Phidias

seen

and Praxiteles might conceivably be known to him, but he could certainly not place them in the history of their art, and would probably have neither cast nor photograph of their works. Still less would he hear of the art of the architect, the potter, the vasepainter, or the maker of coins. Now, happily, we have passed into a different era. The niceties of language are no less studied than of yore. Comparative philology, the study of dialects, the careful examination of the style and vocabulary of individual authors, have indeed, in this very department of Greek study, introduced a far more fruitful and scientific method. But it is recognized that there are other departments which are no less important, although they had been so long neglected. The group of subjects comprised under the general term "archæology" are now beginning to receive their due share of attention, not only at Oxford and Cambridge, but in our leading public schools. At Cambridge there has been established a Readership, and at Oxford a Professorship of Classical Archæology. At Cambridge has been formed an admirable museum of casts of the typical monuments of ancient sculpture, together with a reference-library of works bearing upon every branch of ancient art. At Cambridge, also, the old Classical Tripos has been subdivided so as to enable students, after qualifying in the preliminaries of scholarship, to devote themselves to special branches of classical study, archæology among them. At Oxford the subject is receiving scarcely less attention, although it is not yet definitely recognized in the Schools. The leading classical teachers there are fully alive to the importance of archæology, and a collection of casts is in course of formation. In the same connection, it is only fair to mention recent publications of the two University Presses: Prof. Michaelis's invaluable account of the private collections of ancient marbles in Great Britain, Professor Gardner's "Types of Greek Coins," Dr. Waldstein's Essays on the Art of Phidias," and Mr. Roberts's forthcoming hand-book of Greek Inscriptions, on the part of Cambridge; Mr. Hicks's Manual of Greek Historical Inscriptions," and Mr. Head's

forthcoming "Manual of Greek Numismatics, on the part of Oxford.

The idea of establishing a school for the study of Greek archæology in the very centre of Greek civilization is due to the French, whose school at Athens was founded just forty years ago. The German Institute there was established, as a branch of the much earlier Institute at Rome, in 1876. Six years later the scholars of the United States, defying the limitations of time and space, also founded a home of learning in a land whose ancient inhabitants had no conception of the New World. The vision of an English school at Athens upon the same lines, had been present to the minds and familiar in the mouths of many scholars, and others interested in Greek studies, for some years, and had found occasional expression in the magazines and elsewhere. But its fulfilment seemed far enough off, when an article published by Professor Jebb, in the Fortnightly Review" for May, 1883, unexpectedly brought the question to the front. Mr. Escott, then editor of the Review, warmly interested himself in the matter, and found means to bring it before the Prince of Wales. A meeting was shortly afterward held at Marlborough House, and a strong committee formed to carry the scheme into execution. Considering the difficulties which attend all such undertakings, and especially when the object in view does not readily appeal to the millionaire or the man in the street, this committee made good progress in the three years they held office. They did not, as they wished, raise a capital sum of twenty thousand pounds; perhaps few of them ever thought this possible. But considerably over four thousand pounds. have been raised. A valuable site upon Mount Lycabettus was generously given by the Greek government, and on this. site, at a cost of rather more than three thousand pounds, a good house has been built for the Director and a library. An income of four hundred pounds a year has been promised by corporate bodies and by individuals for three years, a period which will allow of the experiment being put to a fair test. An. excellent Director for the first year has been secured in Mr. F. C. Penrose, than. whom no available Englishman is bet