doxy. The immediate effect of the popularizing of Evolution was to create a sort of secular scientific establishment. And to a certain extent that may be said still.

It is to that extent the inevitable and reasonable result of the doctrine of Evolution. That doctrine may be compressed into the statement that the world was not made 6000 years ago, but is making still. The process which, within living memory, was accepted as complete in the first week of our planet's existence has expanded itself to mean the history of that planet, so that we are travelling not from, but toward the completed work of the Creator. Every day, we used to think -we who can remember the world before evolution-carried us farther from that time when the hand of God was laid on this framework of things in which we live. Every day, we are taught now, shows us more creative aim in ourselves and the world. The fall of man was once an accepted assumption of historic retrospect. It is no merely Christian dogma; rather it is a classic belief which has been grafted on a single page of the Old Testament; it became the centre of a great doctrinal system, and held its place in virtue not of a few texts, but of many facts of human life which it connected, if it could not explain them. Now we may say that its hold on human imagination is seen in its inversion. The fall of man is at once expanded and inverted into the ascent of man. It is like that effect which Dante describes when he passed the centre of gravity in going through the centre of the earth, and saw what had been below him suddenly above him, and vice versa. had been travelling away from an Eden, a golden age. Suddenly we saw a change, and our Eden was before us. The Sabbath rest is ahead of us. We are all co-operators with the Creator, and have to help on that blessed day when He shall look upon His work and find it very good. I am speaking of popular notions; I am trying to express vague general feelings. It would carry us too far to try to estimate exactly how much in them is true. It is enough for our present purpose that there they are.

We

We have thus a sort of inverted orthodoxy, in which the place of every object is altered, and the direction of every movement is reversed. The sudden fusion of the idea of progress and the idea of science-two ideas, each potent alone, united almost omnipotent -seemed at first to have supplied in a moment the force that was the slow growth of centuries of tradition, and to have created a new central doctrine which should gather up the influence of authority as well as of argument. Already we see that to be less true than we imagined. Nothing supplies the centralizing influence of tradition except tradition. An epoch of eccentricity cannot convert its most salient and unquestioned truth into a dogia. Still it remains that the double influence of Democracy and Evolution do keep many of these inversions. It is a commonplace that the goal of flattery now is rather on the side of the poor than on that of the rich; it is an incontestable truth that the prerogative of influence is rather with the young than the old. The young have become the old in every sense in which age is an advantage. Listen to our experience," the old used to say, or wish to say; "we have lived longer than you; we have lived through much that lies before you; our past is a map for your future." It was always difficult enough to bring home the experience of age to the imagination of youth; but fifty or sixty years ago it was an endeavor that was seconded by every serious thought and belief; it seemed obvious that, however much more attractive youth might be than age, wisdom was on the side of years. I am afraid the ideas of Evolution have robbed us of that solitary advantage. The young now, inasmuch as they are heirs to the storedup and growing experience of the race, are in a sense richer in it than the old. They come a generation later in that vast secular development which measures its wisdom by its progress; they started with all our ideas, born in them as feelings. We have sometimes found it difficult, perhaps, in reading ancient history, to remember that we must invert the significance of a date, to fix in our minds that 1896, for instance, would be not the end, but the begin

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ning of the nineteenth century B.C. Something like this happens when we turn to the new ideas of Evolution. They mark the gain of years in a different direction, and change the signs of all our quantities. We have to review all that we thought unquestionable, and must sometimes feel as if the only use to be made of our early notions was just to turn them topsy-turvy, and remind ourselves that all anticipations have changed places.

What has been written above looks like a repetition of the well-known lament, the former days were better than these." An endeavor to recall the convictions prevalent in a distant youth must always have something of that aspect. To recall a vanished youth is to recall possibilities which have passed out of life, aspirations which it has not fulfilled-more or fewer according to individual cases, but surely many for all. The years whose record we seek merely to interpret might check our transcript with the appeal, "Look in my face, my name is Might-have-been." Such is the attendant doubt of every endeavor like the present; but when space has been made for all that belongs to an individual youth, I believe a certain regret given to ideas then dominant and feeling since passed away is neither unnatural nor impolitic. To discern that whatever may be the disadvantages of orthodoxy, it supplies a valuable fence for the growth of originality; that the assumptions of authority shelter and foster that development of character which withers under the breath of mere criticism; this is no doubt to confess a certain divergence from that full adherence to the ideal of progress which, in the second half of our century, succeeded to the vacant throne of belief. It is to doubt whether that premium which an ideal of progress and a theory of natural selection unite to set on all eccentricity, does not to some extent defeat its own object. But the world has always progressed by a surrender to alternate impulses. The great year of our devel opment has its seed-time and harvest, and for him who ignores its successive seasons no fields shall ever be white unto harvest. The epochs of centralization are as naturally succeeded by

epochs of eccentricity as April is succeeded by August; some of us may yearn after the flowers and the songs of spring, but we cannot have them and the waving corn together.

When first we learned the word Evolution, the spiritual life was under an eclipse. With the new doctrine, which under its first aspect enthroned Chance as the source of all things, a great wave of materialism passed over the world; and for a time the Eternal seemed to lose its meaning. It was inevitable that that meaning should grow dim. We had been taught that the world had been created in six days, and even those who looked upon that expression as merely poetical had regarded it as symbolic of a great truth, pointing back to an epoch when creative force was exerted on the world, and keeping the idea of a Creator supreme before us by this very separateness from its ordinary course. When we learned that there never was any definite enclosure given up to the drama of Creation, it seemed to us that the Creator had vanished. We felt like David, driven forth from the little enclosure of our early worship and forced to "serve other gods.' "Nature red in tooth and claw" presented herself as the Creator, and those facts of nature which went on daily before our eyes suddenly acquired a lurid significance when they were lit up with the electric light that issues from the idea of Origin. But many signs come upon us at the end of this nineteenth century that the wave of materialism, which seemed so strong and steady only a generation ago, has spent its force, and that if the national recognition of our spiritual life be no longer suited to our spiritual development (a point on which no opinion is expressed here), it is to be succeeded by some form of individual discernment which shall again make the unseen world a reality to us and to our children. The process of evolution is by no means confined to the material world. If it have any truth at all, it is not a principle that was true before man's existence on the earth and afterward ceased to be true; it is rather the rhythm and spring of all history. It may be that man's appearance marked the conclusion of one great stage in the development of this

vast whole, but we cannot imagine that the drama of creation, which we are taught to see unfolding itself through the ages, has come to a conclusion now, and that all we have to do is to look backward for its progress and record. The principle of evolution is still among us. The young are born into a more developed world than the old. The thoughts of the fathers, it has been well said, become the feelings of the children. The speculations of one generation are recorded in the desires of its successor. In the material world, since man became dominant, natural selection has been, to a great extent, superseded by artificial selection, and the process whereby new species were fashioned is no longer exhibited to the outward eye; but it has entered the sphere of the invisible. It is made manifest in the world of "admiration, hope, and love"-in the world of the ideal, which is also most truly the world of the real.

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It is an era in an individual life when the man or woman wakes up to discover that his or her desires, aims, hopesare no longer what they were. It comes first for the most part as a sense of loss. Qui aimé j'ai je n'aime plus" -the exclamation of Madame de Staël -gathers up some of the most unforgettable and most instructive experience of life. But it is not mainly an experience of loss. Surely all who have attained old age have been startled when some chance fragment from the wreck of years has revealed to them the narrow limits of sympathy in youth. It is wonderful to be confronted with the limitations of a past self. The wealth of a past self is a more conspicuous and usual object of retrospect, because loss is always more salient than gain. But those who rehearse the lessons of a long life and find among them no record of expanded sympathies can find but little worthy of attention in the whole review. The change, if it be felt as real in individual memories, is a clew to something wider. In some sense our children start where we started, but it is in a deeper sense that they start from our goal. The process of the ages passes through us to them, and the widened sympathy which no individual life wholly fails to bequeath

becomes the secure and growing inheritance of the race. Sympathy widens downward. We cannot ignore the sufferings of the weak and the poor as the best men of former ages ignored them. What each man means when he says "I" is actually in closer contact with the pains and sorrows of which his bodily organism brings him no direct report; the truth that we are members one of another is more vital. But does sympathy widen only downward? Some time ago one might have thought that it had that limitation, and at all times we find it more hard to track its upward than its downward course. But there is such a thing as a new development of sympathy with God. We may in our day discern the working of what is called Evolution in those very channels which the idea of Evolution, at first, appeared to close. We may recognize that what we have called Revelation is but one aspect of the perennial widening of man's horizon which belongs to his slow descent. We have been accustomed to look on Revelation, like Creation, as confined within a narrow enclosure of the world's history, and then again perhaps, we swung back, in both cases, to an opposite error, and refused to recognize eras which concentrated the slow processes of ordinary development and simulated in their intensive force the work of ages. Such eras have been, and may yet recur; it is my belief that such an age is opening upon us now.

Nineteen hundred years ago, it is believed by all who look upon this world as the scene of any spiritual history, mankind reached the end of a dispensation. Great events were the landmarks and symbols of changes even greater than themselves-changes so great that to those who saw them close at hand they appeared to herald, in the literal sense of the words, the end of the world. They did herald the end of an age. The old world passed away with the coming of Christ; what followed was disappointing enough, if we look back upon it with the eyes of those who looked forward to it in the hopes of discovering a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, but at least it was not in the extent of the change they were mistaken. The

generations which followed did see a new heaven and a new earth; if they were not permitted to behold an indwelling righteousness, it was perhaps because that is a vision reserved for those who have quitted the trammels of mortality. It may be that they confused, and that at such crises all men confuse, the future that a few years must reveal to every one of us, and the future that belongs to the race in this visible framework of things. But that eager forward look of the disciples of Christ, so much more steadfast after His departure, if it overlooked barriers, and saw much development in a foreshortening which distorted its meaning, was yet not directed toward vacancy. Those vague, vast anticipations no doubt embodied many fancies of their own, but it is impossible to think that the attitude of mind was not inspired by Him. It is impossible, I believe, not to recognize it as a characteristic of all that is nearest His teaching in what we call Christianity. We must learn here, just as much as in the case of creation, that we have mistaken a phase of concentration in a ceaseless process for that process itself; we must welcome new change as a tribute to and growth from that which we once supposed given to preclude all further change. If what we mean by Christianity has not all the hold on the world that it once had, do we not also see that ideas and aspirations which we have hitherto recognized under the name of Christianity are taking up new aspects and appearing in unexpected quarters? If there is a weakening of that common recognition of an invisible world which hitherto has made a part of the very existence of a nation, is there not a flow of strength and energy into other forms of that recognition which teaches us that it is indeed eternal? It is not that the old has lost its preciousness. The family and the nation are still divine, the Church is still a channel of divine influence. It is rather that their meaning is enlarged, that they are seen not only as facts, vast and important as these facts are, but also as symbols. New centres, new groupings, new forms of divine teaching are upon us now. The powers, the perceptions of an individual

life are widened; individuality itself may be discerned to be richer than it was thought to be. The very lack of exceptional eminence among us is an aid in guiding our attention to the powers and opportunities that are common to every child of man. If great men have disappeared from among us, may it not be because we are meant to take a new view of the capacities and resources of the most ordinary men?

Here it is that the democratic movement of our day gains a new and hopeful meaning. The great truths of earth are associated with great names, with all that definiteness of impression which we associate with the word genius. With the great truths of heaven it is not necessarily so. Here it not seldom happens that the rich are sent empty away." It must often have occurred to one who seeks reverently to gather up records of those dear and lost, to lament the coldness within left by the perusal of some deeply felt utterance, and wonder at what we may call, for want of better words, the rapid obsoleteness of religious expression. What a paradox we chronicle in the words! Here was a glimpse of the eternal to the eyes which met it; why has the hand which transcribed it, power of conveying that impression only, as it were, on a short lease? Because of the strong power in the human mind of absorbing all religious influences. We have drawn in all that in some form, and do not want it over again. It has something of the discord of the semitone, it comes too near our deepest feelings for concord, and is divided from unison by those mysterious and subtle differences which separate one generation from another. If we would restore it to the realm of harmony we must accept it as a message from the remote, we must feel that in some sense it is past. No doubt there are expressions of the heart's yearning for God which have the permanence of a work of genius. The Psalms are not bygone. But similar expressions, hardly less adequate to convey those yearnings when they were spoken, have passed out of the world of vitality. They express an eternal desire, but they associate it with some feeling that belonged to a particular age, and the answer

came to that age in a form unsuitable to its successor-all the more unsuit able because it was drunk in eagerly at the time, and assimilated into the life. blood of a generation. Men may record their emotions, their beliefs, and such record is perhaps its most interesting page in the volume of history, but the record which is fullest of interest falls flat as an appeal. Thus they yearned, hoped, loved-our hearts are thrilled with the thought. Thus they bid us yearn, love, hope-alas! we could as soon fly. Neither close bonds nor great powers can triumph here. Genius is as impotent as love to stamp this coin with its image and superscription. Dante and Milton seem exceptions because their religion is just what we ignore in them. It seems a strange paradox, but we are dealing with material in which we must be fearless of paradox. It is not for finite minds to harmonize the glimpses which in their rush through the bewildering experience of life they gain successively of the infinite. They must be content with a faithful transcript and a faithfal acceptance of other transcripts. Surely it is apparent how this falling away of human interpreters leads all to

open their ear to the voice which is speaking now.

The last Prophet who spoke before His coming, in whom the prophecy of every forerunner was gathered up, foretold that in the last days it would be the menservants and the maidservants who would form the channels of the divine afflatus. We must transport ourselves to the ages of slavery to appreciate the daring hope of that anticipation. The Highest is to speak through the lowest An age when genius slumbers may be meant to show us some new manifestation of that truth. "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord," but we put out the candle when we would watch the stars. A higher than human wisdom seems to have extinguished our candles that the light of other worlds may gleam through our casements and no human medium intervene between the flash of revelation, and the human gaze seeking to follow it. Does the individual hope, which in life's evening once more salutes the stars of the dawn, here tinge the human outlook? It may be so, but I believe the hope belongs to an epoch. -Contemporary Review.

"HISTORY never repeats herself? She is the least original of all the Muses; a spun-out tautology." The remark was Mr. Disraeli's way of putting a familiar sentiment.

It was,

which Professor de Martens has relieved his recent collection of AngloRussian treaties between 1800 and 1831.* Mr. Disraeli's observation was made on the same day, in the same place, though not at the same time, that, for the last occasion, on the neutral ground of society in a drawingroom in St. James's Square, he happened to meet his old rival, Mr. Gladstone. The incident is now cited on the authority of a former private secretary of Mr. Disraeli, since dead, who happened to be present at the moment. The scene may be recollected by the single still surviving witness of it. The whole episode was brought

*Recueil de Traités conclues entre La Russie