He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small,
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all.

I associate these vivid lines in my mind with the singularly beautiful verse of Tennyson, inspired also by the New Testament:

More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. For what are men better than sheep or goats,

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If knowing God they lift not hands of prayer,

Both for themselves and those who call them friend.

And a Wordsworth discerns the close and natural relation between the Creator and the creature that renders prayer at all possible. When observing the effect on a child of the murmurings from "the convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell," which proclaimed "mysterious union with its native sea," he adds:

Even such a shell the universe itself

Is to the ear of faith; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things;
Of ebb and flow, and ever during power;
And central peace, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation. Here you stand,
Adore and worship, when you know it not;
Pious beyond the intention of your thoughts;
Devout above the meaning of your will.

Browning also perceives the constant interblending of the divine and the human, and yet, perhaps with greater clearness than is found in Wordsworth lays stress on the Bible disclosure of God as interposing even

to the point of crucifixion in the mighty conflict between right and wrong:

Is not God now in the world his power first made?

Is not his love at issue still with sin?

Closed with and cast and conquered, crucified
Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?

But he has confidence that however for the moment the course of things may seem to prevail against the Almighty and his cause, the excitement past, and the bubbles of error broken, the imperiled will survive :

Vexed waters sank to smooth;
'Twas only when the last of bubbles broke,
The latest circlet widened all away,

And left a placid level, that up-swam

To the surface the drowned truth.

Mr. Browning does not hesitate to recognize the "Incarnation," and its related doctrines, concerning which Christopher Smart has sweetly sung:

There is but One who ne'er rebelled,

But One by passion unimpelled,

By pleasures unenticed ;

He from himself his semblance sent,
Grand object of his own content,

And saw the God in Christ.

Neither is Shakespeare silent on these great themes, though of late a noted infidel has been claiming the master poet as an ally. It is not our place to reconcile the derelict conduct of the Bard of Avon with his Christian sentiments; but to deny that he penned such sentiments, or that he did not mean what he wrote, is

inexcusably misleading. Remember that the following lines are among the most familiar in his works:

All the souls that were forfeit once;

And he that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. . .

The world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son. . .

Am by the death of him that died for all.

That dread King that took our state upon him,
To free us from his Father's "wrathful curse..

Those holy fields,

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed
For our vantage on the bitter cross.

For what I speak

My body shall make good upon this earth,
Or my divine soul answer it in heaven.

Blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth.
I pardon him as God shall pardon me.

I as free forgive as I would be forgiven.

How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none.

Consider this

That in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us to render
The deeds of mercy. . .

How would you be,

If he, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

I challenge the right of any man with these passages before him to class Shakespeare with the enemies of Christianity. He may have been inconsistent and weak; but the concessions we have just read could not have proceeded from the pen of a ribald reprobate or an irreclaimable and irreverent atheist.

The misconceptions abroad relative to the personal faith of our chief English bard recalls the constant effort made to associate the name of Robert Burns with the most offensive type of impiety. He has been

claimed by several schools of infidelity, and unfortunately by his conduct has exposed himself to the suspicion of indifference to the obligations of religion. But M. Taine admits that Burns is not to be ranked with scoffers of the French Revolution; and though undoubtedly he speaks of himself as "an unregenerated heathen," there are moments when he thinks seriously, writes devoutly, and candidly concedes what condemns himself and vindicates the Bible. In a letter to a friend, dated March 6, 1788, he wrote:

"

Nothing astonishes me more when a ltttle sickness clogs the wheels of life, than the thoughtless career we run in the hour of health. None saith, where is God my Maker that giveth songs in the night?" Oh! give me my Maker, to remember thee! Give me to act up to the dignity of my nature!

Again:

My life reminded me of a ruined temple; what strength, what proportion in some parts! What unsightly gaps, what prostrate ruin in others! I knelt down before the Father of mercies, and said: "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy

son!"

Well might he sing:

Yet ne'er with wits profane to range,

Be complaisance extended;

An atheist's laugh 's a poor exchange
For Deity offended!

When ranting round in pleasures' ring
Religion may be blinded;

Or if she gie a random sting,
It may be little minded :

But when in life we're tempest driven,
A conscience but a canker-
A correspondence fixed in heaven
Is sure a noble anchor.

The lamentations of the Scottish minstrel over his moral lapses and follies, coupled with this devout admonition, bring to mind one of the most terrible spiritual tragedies enacted within the republic of letters. I refer to the desolation experienced by the poet Keats on his deathbed. He was yet a young man when taken to Italy in the hopes that a change of climate would effect a cure. Every expectation was doomed to disappointment. He slowly faded away. During the closing hours of his life he underwent pathetic mental struggles, which are thus described in a letter to Archbishop Trench, the substance of which was communicated by Severn the artist, who was with the poet when he died:

The sufferings of Keats were terrible and prolonged. Shelly and Hunt deprived him of his belief in Christianity, which he wanted in the end, and he endeavored to fight back to it, saying if Severn could get him a Jeremy Taylor he thought he could believe; but it was not to be found in Rome. Another time, having been betrayed into considerable impatience by bodily