mocking echoes of labors which brought no gain and applause, which lay in the ear for a moment and then dissolved in that appalling silence in which at last all human cries and songs are hushed. It was a dead past which lay behind him; a path through a desert without bloom or shelter or the shadow of trees in which birds rest and sing; the desolate and solitary way of a lonely man through a world which always bloomed as he advanced and withered as he stretched out his hand to grasp its offerings.

Tired as he was to the verge of extinc tion, he had not wholly lost the remembrance of the energy which once sent him with vigorous step along the ascending way, of the high things which summoned him from their inaccessible fastnesses, of the steady and unbending purpose which kept him to his task. He had set himself to go alone to the end of the journey; to break all bonds which held him in place among his fellows that he might follow

nearer

"Knowledge like a sinking star Beyond the utmost bound of human thought." Others might be content with and lesser things; he gave himself to the remoter and greater ends. Others might carry the common burdens and share the common fortunes; his way led him apart from the crowd to some remote and soli. tary place where the mystery of the universe would suddenly disclose itself in cloud and fire and splendor unspeakable; a fate too large and terrible for any save those who had taken the path of solitude and lonely watching of sun and star in the awful silence of space.

There had been a time when the hopes that men cherish had knocked at his heart, and more than once he had struggled long before he barred the door. But the path lay before him, and he who walked in must be free of hindrances. In those earliest years love had held him for a moment with eyes that looked into his strangely sorrowful, and had walked a little way with him, not pleading, but with a touch on his hand so full of pity that his pride flung it aside. There was no room for such companionship on that narrow path; no smoothness for such tender feet on that rough highway. What had he to do with love whose heart was set on knowledge? In those first years

voices had often called to him as he passed, imploring his aid, and sometimes through his growing self-absorption the anguish in these voices had reached his heart and stung the old human sympathies into life; but he looked up at the far heights and hardened his heart and passed on resolute and unshaken. The morning was already moving toward noon; why should he waste the hours that were to carry him to the goal? What claim had common souls, content with the small gains and losses of life, with love and the prattle of children and the cheer of friendship, on one who sought the highest and the remotest secret of life? They were content with the hour; he would accept nothing less than the full content of eternity.

Long ago love had left him; long ago men had ceased to call upon him for help as he passed swift and unswerving on his way. And the way had grown more silent and solitary, until nothing was audible save the touch of his own foot, and he had no companionship save his own thought. He had broken every tie, discarded every hindrance; and freedom had brought him measureless weariness and a passionate longing for death!

He had learned much by the way, and that wisdom of old age was his which had been distilled, drop by drop, out of disillusion and despair-that wisdom which is often called knowledge of life, but which is really knowledge of death. What had been born of the man's long travel was the knowledge of himself. The world about him was so vast that as he scanned it there seemed neither measure nor limit; but it was hard, barren, dead to the uttermost verge. The order which pervaded it was the rigid regularity of death; no seed was germinating in the soil, no egg was brooded over in any nest, no throat was swelling with its song, no sap was rising in any tree; vastness there was and sublimity, but it was without the speech of beauty; for the soul of the man was dead, and saw only its own desolation. Long ago the power of vision had faded within him, and he saw only the shell of things: the secret was farther from him than when he set out on his journey! He had gained knowledge, but without love there is neither wisdom nor life.

Lenten Meditations

The Day of Judgment Every day is a day of judgment. Christ's fan is in his hand, and he is separating the chaff from the wheat. The Son of man has already come, and before him are gathered all people, and he is separating the sheep from the goats. We are taking our places, each one selecting his own, and we know it not. We classify ourselves by various artificial and temporal distinctions—as rich and poor, laborer and capitalist, employer and employed, cultured and ignorant, white and black; and all the time we are sorting ourselves unconsciously by the only real, eternal distinction, that of character. The rifts and chasms in society are shallow and superficial; the fellowships of society are apparent and temporary. Virtue and vice, honor and shame, probity and corruption, live side by side in the same street, shoulder against each other in the same tenement, work together in the same political party, chat together in the same club, kneel together in the same church. It is better so; for only so can virtue and honor and probity do anything for the world's redemption. But all the time the great gulf is imperceptibly increasing between them the gulf which presently will become impassable. And all the time He sees, He knows, He understands.

And when the Cmforter is come, he will convince the world of sin, because they have not had faith in me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.

Christ convinces the world of sin. The great picture judges the two men who stand before it. Their judgment of the picture is the picture's judgment of them. The great symphony judges the two hearers who sit side by side apparently listening to it. What one hears the other does not hear. In their judgment of the music they reveal their own musical capacity. The measure of our appreciation of Christ is the measure of our own character. Faith in Christ is not faith in what the Church has said about Christ; that is faith in the Church. Faith in Christ is understanding him, appreciating him, loving him. Both his friends and his foes thought that Christ was put on trial in the

court of Caiaphas and before the judg ment-seat of Pilate. They were mistaken. He was the Judge; Caiaphas and Pilate were brought before him for trial. He uttered no sentence; they adjudged themselves, and wrote the sentences so clearly that all the world has read them ever since. Each actor in that tragedy unconsciously announced his own judgment of condemnation or approval on himself:John-I am a loyal friend; Peter—I am a cowardly disciple; Judas-I am a despicable traitor; Caiaphas—I am an unscrupulous ecclesiastic; Pilate—I am a trimming politician. Still the vociferous tragedy of life is enacted while Christ stands silent by. Without word or movement he compels iniquity to tear the mask from its countenance, and the treacherous follower, and the cowardly friend, and the ambitious ecclesiastic, and the trimming politician appear as what they really are, silhouetted in their hideous blackness against his luminous judgment presence.

Christ convicts the world of sin because he is the revealer of righteousness. Not by what he says, but by what he is, he condemns the world. His life is the standard for all life; his character is the measure for all characters. The world instinctively accepts him as the only measuring-rod. Not the Bible, but Christ, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. His utterances are the rule by which all other utterances are to be measured; his character is the standard by which all other characters are to be tested. By him we measure Abraham and David and Isaiah and Paul no less than Gregory VII. and Martin Luther and Oliver Cromwell and John Wesley. By his utterances we measure the Books of Deuteronomy and of Leviticus no less than the Puritan code of morals and the Roman Catholic canons. Not "God is a man of war," but "Our Father which art in heaven," is the rule of faith. Not Paul before Ananias, but Christ before Caiaphas; not "God shall smite thee, thou whited wall," but "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?" is the rule of practice.

By Christ is the prince of this world judged. Betrayed, denied, forsaken, convicted, executed-his death draws all men unto him. His defeat is his victory. Judas, Caiaphas, Pilate, crown him

with glory and honor. Death entombs him only to make him the Lord and Giver of life. All the forces of evil league together-treachery, cowardice, forms of law, mob violence, cunning malice, brutal stupidity; against them all is one unfriended man, his character his only armor, his God his only ally. And he is conqueror and more than conqueror. Wickedness is folly and weakness; right

eousness is wisdom and strength: this is the lesson of Passion Week; this is the lesson which history is continually repeating. Napoleon is wrong: God is not on the side of the strong battalions. Frederick Douglass is right: one with God is a majority.

Every day is a day of judgment. Every day Christ's fan is in his hand; every day he is separating the chaff from the wheat.

T

May 12.

HIS is the third time I have been in St. Peter's to-day. Mass was being said in one of the chapels, which was crowded to and beyond the doors, so that my companions made no attempt to enter. But I had long anticipated joining in such a service with fellow worshipers of the Christ whom we both love and endeavor loyally to follow; for I thought that the spiritual atmosphere of this ancient church would deepen my reverence for God and broaden my fellowship with my fellow-men. I have joined gladly and heartily in the silent services of Friends, in the emotional services of Methodists, in the historic and orderly services of the Episcopalians, in the simple and unornate ritual of Congregationalists, and in one with as much spiritual help as in another. And I had looked forward to a special impulse from a service in St. Peter's, though conducted in a ritual I could not understand; for understand ing is not necessary to fellowship in worship. I easily and quietly worked my way in a few moments through the outer row of mere sightseers with their Baedekers in hand and got into the inner circle of the pious pilgrims. So long as I looked at them I could realize and share in their service, though it did not seem like a very deep or enduring feeling; but when I looked away from them to the priests, I could discern no reverence at all. There were three or four officials at the altar, attended by their acolytes; the seats in the chapel were all occupied by ecclesiastics of various degrees, from two or three cardinals, designated by their red caps, to simple priests. During parts of

the service they responded together in a sing-song tone to the sing-song tones of the officiating priest; at other times they were reading in the devotional book as though they were taking this time to go through certain pages prescribed by their rules; or were looking about the chapel with a gaze as devoid of any appearance of spiritual interest as that of the Baedeker sightseers. In general, their appearance betokened, not hypocrisy, but pure formalism; and their ceremonial performance to have about the same relation to piety that court etiquette does to love. There were two or three priests whose faces were expressive of intellectual or spiritual life, or both, though I recall only one which was so at all eminently; but in general they were stolidly inexpressive, while a few were distinctively gross and sensual looking. There were no seats in the chapel except for the priests; the worshipers stood or knelt; the music was fairly good, but not extraordinary. I mean to come to another service on some Sunday, when perhaps there will be more worshipers and fewer sightseers, and I can come early and get from the beginning into the spirit of the service.

St. Peter's itself disappoints me. Why? Its approach is imposing; so would be its interior, if the authorities had not interfered with the simple design of its great architect. But they have done what they could to spoil its sublimity by despoiling it of its simplicity. The massive pillars are ornamented with what I suppose to be winged cherubs, and they suggest classical cupids, and they are draped from top to bottom with hideous red hangings put up, I believe, to celebrate some church

festival, I know not what ; even the statues of heroic size at the far corners of the dome attempt to be impressive only by being big. There is but one piece of statuary in the church that impresses me as really artistic-the monument to Clement XIII. by Canova, on the right hand side of the church. Even the Pietà of Michael Angelo, with the Christ held in the lap of Mary, does not seem worthy of the great sculptor. There is only one point where the effect on the imagination is what Michael Angelo meant it should be; it is obtained by standing under the dome and looking directly up into it. Then the cupids and the red trouserings of the pillars disappear, and even Bernini's statues are lost to sight, and there is an impression of immensity which I can compare to nothing but to that which sometimes overcomes one in looking up to the starlit dome above him on a clear night.

May 14.

I have been looking over Symonds's life of Michael Angelo, and I confess myself glad to find that my own impression respecting what are St. Peter's characteristically impressive features is confirmed by what he says. "St. Peter's," he says, "is vast without being really great, magnificent without touching the heart, proudly but not harmoniously ordered. The one redeeming feature in the structure is the cupola; and that is the one thing which Michael Angelo bequeathed to the intelligence of his successor. The curve which it describes finds no phrase of language to express its grace. It is neither ellipse, nor parabola, nor section of a circle, but an inspiration of the creator's fancy. It outsoars in vital force, in elegance of form, the dome of the Pantheon, and the dome of Brunelleschi (at Florence) upon which it is actually modeled." And Symonds quotes an unnamed English critic as saying that "internally the sublime concave of this immense dome is the one redeeming feature of St. Peter's." This is stronger language than I should use; St. Peter's seems to me to be not without grandeur, though perplexing to the observer for its lack of harmony.

May 16.

I have now spent three mornings in the Vatican galleries; one of them in the gallery of sculpture, one in the Sistine

Chapel and adjoining apartments, and one in the picture gallery. It would be useless to attempt to record here impressions in detail; I have underlined in my Baedeker special sculptures and special pictures and frescoes, and this will serve to supplement my diary. I am impressed with the generosity of the Vatican in throwing open all its treasures to the public. There is a moderate charge for admission to the gallery of sculpture, but the picture gallery, the Sistine Chapel, and the apartments are free. It is not easy for one who is born and bred a Protestant and a Puritan to define exactly what is the relation between these galleries of art and the functions of the Church; perhaps this zeal to define everything with exactitude is a mistaken one. But I am sure that it is impossible to estimate the effect on the human race of throwing open to the whole world these art treasures. It is true that a considerable number of those who go to these galleries really see nothing, and there are those who use them merely as a convenient place to meet and gossip with friends; but I am inclined to believe that the proportion of interested observers to indifferent sightseers in the Vatican is quite as great as the proportion of serious worshipers to indifferent sightseers in St. Peter's. Yesterday morning we fell in with a very courteous attendant in the Borgian apartments who spoke French, and, finding us interested, gave us a good deal of information not in the guide-books. He pointed out to us two portraits of the same face-Lucretia Borgia; in the one case she was presented as a fine lady in her court robes; in the adjoining fresco she was made to do duty as Saint Somebody-I forget who. It struck me as a curious illustration of the relation, or rather lack of relation, between ethics and religion in the Middle Ages that Lucretia Borgia should have been selected by a court painter to serve as a saint, and this on the walls of the palace of the Holy Father. To-day I have been sitting for half an hour before Raphael's picture of the Transfiguration; it is the only picture a distinct remembrance of which I have brought away with me from the Vatican picture gallery. The critics, I believe, say that a picture ought not to tell a story, and if that is so they are quite

right in criticising this picture. It does tell a story, and tells it with wonderful effectiveness. I have never before realized so perfectly how utterly inadequate a photograph is to reproduce a really great picture; for a really great picture I must think the Transfiguration to be, despite the critics, and despite the fact that what it represents never could have occurred as Raphael represents it.

May 18. I have been again to service in St. Peter's; this time on Sunday and in ample season, so that there was nothing in our entrance to disturb the devotional feeling. I am sorry to record a repetition of the disappointment experienced at the previous services at San Giovanni and St. Peter's. There was the same air of indifference in the priests, the same mechanical formalism in the service. At one point in the service my companion detected a priest making signs to two fellow-priests to join him at supper after the service was over.

May 20.

I have now visited half a dozen or more of the churches in Rome and have attended four services, and the impression is always the same; it may be expressed by the one word formalism. Comparing the ruins of ancient Rome with the religious services of modern Rome, the first are the remains of a civilization long since departed, the second of forms of a life that still exists, though there is no longer a reason for its existence or an enthusiasm which it expresses; in the Forum one finds the bones of the dead and is inclined to moralize over them as Hamlet does over the skull of Yorick, St. Peter's or San Giovanni reminds the Protestant of an old man living on long after he has lost the inclination, if not the power, to think or act in the present.

Dr. Kennedy, the head of the American College, tells me that all the text-books in Rome are in Latin, and practically all the lectures are given in Latin. The student, therefore, before he can take advantage of the theological courses in Rome, must be familiar with Latin as a means of communication. Why? For two reasons: First, these students come from all over the world-America, England, France, Germany, Greece, etc.-and they have. one language in which they all do their

studying. The language is one both as a symbol of the unity of the Church and as a means for its preservation. Second, the language is a dead language; it does not change; therefore the dogmas expressed in it do not change. The same dogmas are taught as in the fourteenth century, because they are taught in precisely the same linguistic forms. Dr. Kennedy's explanation makes it clear that there is a definite, and it must be added a skillfully devised and well-adapted, endeavor to continue the thought of the Middle Ages unchanged and unadapted to changing conditions either of time, race, or country. This petrifaction extends to everything in the Roman Church as one sees it in Rome. The churches, and there are said to be three hundred and sixty-five, are nearly all mediæval, and when one goes into a modern church he wishes that were medieval also, for it is but a poor copy of mediævalism. The churches are generally patterned after the old pagan temples; in some cases the pagan temple has been converted, with no great change, into a Christian church. I am inclined to think the Pantheon the most impressive church interior in Rome, and the addition of the unattractive altar and the movable choir gallery are, I believe, the only material changes made in it since it was used for the worship of all the gods. I know too little about the Roman ritual to be certain, but I judge that many of its features are borrowed from the pagan ritual which it at once modified and supplanted, and that substantially it repeats what had been repeated here for some centuries before the Christian era. In all the churches which I have visited the congregations are small; there are few or no seats; the congregation are spectators who stand and look on; even the devout pilgrims are quite apt to bow, to kneel, to join with silent moving lips for ten minutes, and then go about the church or cathedral with their guide, much as a Cook party might do. devout-appearing laymen, or rather laywomen, there are not a few-though they are the exception; but I have scarcely seen one priest who appeared to me as though to him the service was the expression of any real devotion.

Of

For my knowledge of the public sentiment in Italy toward the Church, and