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that race bas produced the greatest accumulators of money, and also, no doubt, the greatest musicians, in Europe; but of intellectual and spiritual idealism, and especially of anything like the sentimental idealism of which the French nation and M. Renan are the great representatives, there has hardly been a trace. And even so far as the Jews were the depositaries of a religious revelation, they were the most realistic of religious teachers. Their faith in a divine will, in a divine omnipotence, and a divine providence, was immutable; but it never even curred to them that this was a subjective conviction which depended upon an im. aginative temperament or a poetical fancy of their own. The chief characteristic of the Hebrew teaching from Abraham to Christ was profound belief in the " covenant' of God with their race. You could hardly find a less subjective word than "covenant" to express that the initiative was divine, and that nothing but the consent and submission of man was required to fulfil its conditions. Even the rite of circumcision which sealed the covenant, seems to have been carefully chosen to separate it from any sentimental or ideal origin. Nothing can be more evident than that all the aspects of the Jewish revelation were distasteful to M. Renan. He was eager to evaporate this carnal and objective character of the Jewish revelation, and to dissipate it in clouds of French sentiment. He delighted, most of all, in contrasting what he regarded as the genius of Jesus Christ with the hard genius of the Semitic literature, and in ignoring, what he certainly did ignore, that Jesus Christ founded his teaching entirely on the great and solid substance of the Jew ish revelation, though he softened and refined and irradiated it with the tenderer and happier spirit of a divine humanity. M. Renan, in endeavoring to reduce Christianity to a human sentiment, has been compelled to eradicate its very essencethe steady recognition that the whole drift of the teaching which led up to it, and the teaching which it embodied, was received directly from above, and only humbly accepted by the race to which especially its propagation was for a time confided.

Perhaps the most puzzling feature of M. Renan's popularity in France is the eagerness with which his criticisms have

been received, as if they were in some sense a vindication of Christianity. Of course, they are a vindication of Christianity from the coarse attacks of those who regarded Christ and his followers as a group of impostors. But that is so intrinsically absurd a view that it never could have endured careful criticism, or even any rational handling. Of course, too, M. Renan was himself enamored of his own picture of our Lord, and was delighted with himself for making so gracious and tender a miniature of that benignant countenance. But it was a miniature with the most characteristic lines carefully effaced. It was a Frenchified countenance with manifold signs of weakness as well as tenderness in it, with a genius for self-deception written in the wavering expression of the eyes, and inability to resist the pressure of others betraying itself in all the lines about the mouth. It was not the likeness of him who, when told that he should not suffer shame and death, said to his most loyal and devoted follower, "Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me; for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men." It was not the likeness of him who, when struck by the officer of the high priest, said calmly, "If I have done evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou me ?" It was not the likeness of him who, when invited to make some statement that might warrant his release, quietly told his Roman judge that he could have no power against him "except it were given him from above," and kept the silence which he knew that it would be mere weakness to break. M. Renan's miniature was painted to please the sentimental sceptics who rejected a master and a saviour, but were perfectly willing and even pleased to acknowledge with effusion one whose weaknesses and evasions of the strict truth seemed to nake him in a sense their comrade. astonishing thing to me is that French culture should find in M. Renan's criticisms anything that could by any stretch of imagination be called even a remnant or vestige of the Christian faith. It tried to reduce Christianity from a revelation to an aspiration, from that which controls and binds and rescues man, to the vain sigh of an overburdened heart. In the place of a saviour it places one who himself needed to be saved from illusions, from

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insincerities, from his own weakness. I cannot help thinking that even a Christianity against which the nations rage and the people imagine a vain thing, is more likely to conquer those who denounce it than a Christianity which has become the subject of sentimental patronage and scientific condescension. The French people, no more than any other people, can get any good out of a religion which, like music or poetry or art, merely expresses themselves, their weakness as well as their strength, their lassitude as well as their fortitude, their capricious desires as well as their faithfulness and constancy. It is to govern and subdue us to the severe purity, the strenuous purpose, the unshrinking love of a nature infinitely higher than our own, that religious truth is revealed to us; and nothing that is as pliant as wax to the will and wantonness of human nature, can possibly stand in the place of a religion. M. Renan has himself shown us, by various remarks excusing what Matthew Arnold called the “lubricity" of French sentiment, that his

private romance of the infinite" was extremely pliant to the sins to which French society is most lenient. His otherwise charming reminiscences of youth are blotted with laxity of expression on subjects of this kind, and, indeed, the whole drift of his criticisms goes to show that he attached no more authority of any kind to Christian ethics than he attached to Christian faith and hope. He thought Christ's a nature of rare beauty, which contact with practical life to some extent sullied and spoiled; he thought Christianity a very much diluted and perverted product of the teaching of Christ. He taught Frenchmen to admire and ignore it much as they might have admired and ignored medieval chivalry or the stoic piety of Marcus Aurelius. In other words, he taught them that Christianity was not a revelation, but a sigh from the heart of man. Sighs from the heart of man do not change man; they leave him to sigh on, or else to drown sighs in the burry of more absorbing and impetuous interests. National Review.

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bon dioxide, and is in a perfect condition for reabsorption by the leaves of vegetables. The oxygen of the compound carbon dioxide has been set free for renewed reoxidation. The carbon thus absorbed by vegetables may be transformed into fruit or other food for animals. Thus we have, if the conditions are not interfered with by man, a continuous exchange between animal and vegetable life. The cycle of natural actions, and their sequence, is regular and perfect. Interference is dangerous. Our methods of using carbonaceous fuel are particularly so. the flame combustion of coal the oxidation of the carbon goes on just as if the material in its vegetable form had been consumed by animals. If in our use of coal the oxidation of the carbon were as perfect as the oxidation of the carbon by animal action, the carbon dioxide produced would be available for absorption by vegetables; but our methods are so imperfect that, instead of producing carbon dioxide, we send into the pure air volumes of sooty particles which are poisonous to animals and to vegetables alike. Our error is particularly objectionable in Greater London. Over that mighty City, amid certain atmospheric conditions, the particles form a canopy that obstructs the passage of heat and of chemical rays from the centre of life, the sun. There is a lowering of the temperature, and animal vitality is diminished. Pure fog mist, such as we see in the country, does not seriously interfere with solar chemical energy. Mist is simply condensed vapor. When it is frozen the particles form storage for the deposition of particles of carbon or of sulphur if the vapor is merely in condensed watery particles, it absorbs the hydrocarbons and the sulphurous acid produced by imperfect combustion of bituminous coals. The innocent mist is thus converted into the yellow-black fog known to the dwellers in London.

The fog that enshrouded the town from November 1879 to the beginning of 1880 had serious results. The deaths from bronchitis increased to 331 per cent. above the average; those from whooping-cough, to 231 per cent. During the fog of 18911892, mortality increased almost as much. The particles prevent the perfect aëration of the blood. Interfering with the interdiffusion of gases in the lungs, they impede the oxidation of the carbon, and in

weak organisms they cause a loss of vital heat that frequently ends in death. The effect of smoke fog on vegetables may be properly taken as an index of its effect on animals. Horticulturists in and around London tell us that whenever the fog appears buds drop and many flowers are destroyed. Country horticulturists, on the other hand, say that the white fogs do not injure even conservatory plants. The fogs of 1890, 1891, and 1892, were unusually serious in their effects on flowers and foliage. During recent years the blight caused by London fog extended to Maidstone, 30 miles away. It would seem, then, that the area of the smoke fog is 60 miles in diameter. Thus, it is not London only that is concerned in our subject.

Let us trace the genesis of the evil. In the year 1259 King Henry III. granted to certain persons in Newcastle the right of "winning" coal, which was shipped to the port of London. Within half a century coal was in wide use. In 1306 Parliament complained to the King of the noxious vapors with which coal fires polluted the atmosphere. The use of coal was forbidden, and a man suffered death for having disobeyed the proclamation. The Royal edict, unhappily, gradually fell into abeyance. The matter, however, has had the consideration of Parliament within recent times: in 1829, in 1843, in 1853, in 1875, and in 1887. Commissions inquired into the evil, and sought means to abolish it. The efforts of Parliament have had no effect. The damage wrought by fog increases year by year. In criticising the Bill brought forward last Session by Lord Campbell, Lord Salisbury spoke of gas as a substitute for coal. In doing so, he indicated, I think, the only cure. It has been shown that the obnoxious characteristics of the smoke fog are essentially due to the presence of the hydrocarbon and the sulphurous constituents of the coal generally used. Therefore, if the solid coal is to be used, without production of smoke, it must be as free as possible from the constituents named. The solid fuels, having the specified quality, and composed of pure carbon and ash or clinker, are (1) the non-sulphurous anthracite, (2) the non-sulphurous charcoal, and (3) the non-sulphurous coke. Anthracite, unfortunately, is not favored by householders. Being very

dense, it is difficult to light and to keep burning, and it produces no cheery flame. The Englishman's theory of what a household fire should be was casually set forth by Dr. Johnson on his return from the Hebrides. "Here am I," said he, an Englishman, sitting by a coal fire."* Coke makes a more cheery fire than anthracite. It is cleaner to carry and to store than either anthracite or coal; but it requires more storage room, and is more difficult to light. Charcoal is the ideal smokeless fuel. Its general use in Paris explains the beauty of that town. The hydrocarbons from bituminous coals, which have blackened and disfigured the grandeur of our architecture, are absent from the atmosphere of Paris. Consequently, the buildings are not nearly so much discolored they simply acquire, after centuries of exposure, the pleasant grayness of age, which, while adding dig. nity to graceful outline, does not wear away the carving of pilaster and column. Unfortunately, charcoal is not generally available in England. Our treasures of fuel are not the oak and the yew, but the carbonized wood of primeval times, deeply laid beneath the soil. We have, therefore, to seek a substitute which, while being smokeless and non-sulphurous, will give the luminous flame of bitu minous coal.

A substitute may be found in the gas obtainable from the distillation of bituminous coal. This gas, when properly used, has almost all the advantages, without any of the evils, of the coal fire. If purified properly, it is free from sulphur and ammonia. It is easily lit, and the heat thus produced, which it produces, is under perfect control. As Lord Salisbury says, fuel gas is admirable; but he thinks that its cost is great enough to prevent it from being generally adopted. The objection, I think, may be overcome. Before considering how the gaseous fuel may be reduced in price, let us estimate the value of the waste annually attributable to the ordinary system of consuming bituminous coal. Some 13,000,000 of tons are burned in London yearly. About 4,000,000 are utilized by the gas-manufacturing companies; 9,000,000 are burned in household and industrial fire

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grates. Each ton contains sufficient ammonia to produce, if treated with sulphuric acid, 22 to 28 lbs. of sulphate of ammonia. The total loss of this fertilizing agent is, therefore, say, 9,990 tons. the price of sulphate of ammonia is £9 10s. the ton, the monetary loss is £94,905 every year. If we were less wasteful, we should not be so much obliged to ransack Chili and Peru for artificial manures. is agreeable to learn that the nitrogenous matter in the 4,000,000 tons of coal which are used every year by the gas-manufacturing companies is now being made a considerable source of revenue. The value of sulphate of ammonia as a fertilizer is now beyond dispute. Where nitrogen has been deficient in the soil the application of 450 lbs. of sulphate of ammonia to each acre gave an increase of nearly four tons of potatoes. Sulphate of ammonia, although not quite so active a fertilizer as nitrate, is held in the soil with greater tenacity. It contains 24 per cent. of ammonia, which is equal to 20 per cent. of nitrogen. Then, there are the tarry hydrocarbon compounds, from which (thanks to the discovery of Kirkham and Perkins) beautiful aniline dyes can be extracted. The tar has been a source of such revenue to the gas companies that it may be seriously stated that every year there is more coloring matter sent into the atmosphere of London than would dye all the fabrics woven by English looms within the same time. take the waste of the hydrocarbons to equal 20 per cent. of the fuel burned, we shall find that in the 9,000,000 of tons of coal burned in the metropolis 1,800,000 tons of hydrocarbons are lost. In other words, some 16,000,000 cubic feet of rich hydrocarbons are every year uselessly thrown into the air of London, and the loss is £400,000.

If we

In the thriving States of Pennsylvania and Ohio, Nature has illustrated the ideal method of obtaining heat for the benefit of mankind. There the gaseous hydrocarbon is distilled by the internal heat of the earth from bituminous coal, or from naphtha deposits, in enormous volumes, and at high pressures, and is led for distances of seventy miles and upward to cities and villages, where it is used for household and industrial purposes. The distributing mains are already nearly 3,000 miles in length. The use of this natural