that swept over his being when he first encountered the flippant and mordant sarcasm of Voltaire, or such hurtling lines as these from Queen Mab:

66

Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,

Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men,

And heaven with slaves."

But now, it seems to me, there has come a change. I do not wish to imply that the fiery, ruthless, jeering types of rationalist, realist, and atheist are no longer to be found; I only mean that there are signs of a gentler spirit in Science, of a greater breadth in Naturalism, and of a kindlier heart in Humanism. Belike their champions feel that a triumphant cause may doff its most bristling arms; or it may be they have traced more clearly the course of religion, and have reached an understanding of its place in evolution as a direct outcome of elemental human nature. Perhaps, again, they have simply learned that a sweet reasonableness" is, after all, the surest path to the upward surging heart of man in his present stage of progress. At any rate, they seem more willing to grant that eternity is no slight thing to lose; that "the hope, whereto so passionately cling the dreaming generations from of old," is not to be dashed lightly down like a childish gaud; and that the final dayspring of victorious truth ought to come richly fraught with tenderness and healing.

And to-day, if my ears have heard aright, Science is standing before the great congregation of civilized mankind and declaring this gospel: "Come unto me, and ye shall not labor with wrung hands unto bitterness, nor be heavy laden unto faintness. Come unto me, and for the peace that passeth understanding I will give you the peace that is based upon reason and knowledge. Come unto me, and for the inveterate hope of a life to be, ye shall learn the glorious meaning of the life that is. Come unto me, and for your need of an Omnipotent Kindness to save you from sin and shame, I will teach you the beauty and dignity of human nature. Come unto me, and the Earth shall have more gladness and the Hours more hope."

II

In this serene evangel the opening promise may well prove to be the most fruitful and important. It is desperately hard to decide just how large a part has been played in the history of religious feeling by physical want and weakness and fear; but it has been very large. When a thoughtful delver into the psychology of religion tells us that "hungering after righteousness is an irradiation of the crude instinct of Food-getting," our lips may start to word a protest; yet we must agree with the author of The Mystic Rose that every man, when he happens to be brought down face to face with the elemental realities of existence, birth and death, hunger and thirst, ipso facto becomes a religious subject. And it is indisputable that in the dim abysses of time, when primitive man first became feelingly aware of his own weakness, he soon learned to appeal for help to something outside himself. Then, with the development of the race, with the growth of needs and emotions and capacities, this instinct to look beyond the known kept taking on new aspects, until it is almost impossible to trace the remote and humble origins of many phases of religious experience. From the transcendental ecstasies of St. Mary of Ognies and other famous ascetics it might seem a far cry to the physiological needs of early man, yet who can be quite sure that they are not closely akin?

In any event, the factors just enumerated have been powerfully operative in a score of ways. King Hunger has made many sinners; but he has also made many saints. Pain and suffering and fear have driven many men to violate laws and conventions; but they have driven more to seek some superhuman stay and solace. "I am lord of bodies, I am lord of souls," runs the proud vaunt of Poverty in one of the saddest of the Little Gray Songs; and it is heartbreakingly true.

But what if want and distress should be replaced by comparative material comfort? What if Poverty should be driven from his lordship, and King Hunger should be dethroned? There can be little doubt, I think, that we should see a decided decrease in the number of men and women who profess a need of the supernatural. Our youngest poet of the workaday world

time. And if one tragic-hearted poet of humanity could return to his earthly haunts, he might hear his brothers singing a hymn like this:

"

WA creed is a rod,

And a crown is of night;

But this thing is God,

To be man with thy might,

To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit,
And live out thy life as the light."

VII

With that rhythmic admonition ringing in my ears, I must take leave of my subject. The day of supernaturalism will not quickly pass for all mankind. Generation after generation we have been taught to mistrust our nature, to see in it only weakness and imperfection, to regard this world as merely a door to another, to consider our life here as a shadow in comparison with the reality beyond. Habits of belief ingrained for centuries do not easily yield to a new evangel. But each hour is increasing the number of those who seek their revelation in human nature, their guidance in reason and the experience of the race. Scientific thought, insisting on realistic clarity and soundly based ethics, but transfusing them with kindness and love, is proclaiming to the sons of men such a gospel as I have feebly suggested in the foregoing pages; and one cannot fail to be impressed by the number of those who are quietly accepting this less mystical faith. "A future state, a purely spiritual world, in short, the universe of the unseen and transcendent, may all be there; but we can know our duty and live our life without the help of voices heard so faintly that we cannot be sure whether they belong to Truth or to Hope." Such is the profession of many earnest hearts, and who shall say that they do not toil for their fellow men devotedly and unselfishly,-and happily withal? Striving toward a clear-purposed goal, they are glad and confident in the knowledge that the surest path, nay, the only path, to the realm of things-as-they-ought-to-be lies through the land-of-things-asthey-are.

And let me not be told that such spirits are rare in this grim

old world! Do we not know goodly numbers of them, you and I? Do they not move beside us quietly and helpfully day by day? If they nurse no delusions, they allow no fear. If their calm lucidity of soul is marred now and again by sadness, it is begotten by pity for the present, not by fears for the future. If they are not radiant with visionary ardor, they are inspired by unconquerable faith; nor does the star of joy shine any the less brightly above them because it is kindled of reality. And thus they build the City of God, not by heaven-compelling rites or magic words, in a sphere of mystic unreality, but patiently, stone by stone, with faithful hands, in their own daily walks. For they know that when all is known the City of God can be none other than the city of man.

T

THE COMRADES OF MAETERLINCK

BERNARD MUDDIMAN

HE Belgian literary movement was one of those strange art waves that emanated from the personality of Baudelaire. It was not, of course, a direct wave, for the Belgians all began life as Symbolists. "L'art," in their youth, as one of them writes, " était l'œuvre d'inscrire un dogme dans un symbole." But symbolism itself grew up under Baudelaire's true literary son, the inscrutable Mallarmé. For Baudelaire made it possible by discovering a world of strange and aberrant senses long forgotten. And indeed all the Belgians from Verhaeren to Le Roy owe Baudelaire a debt. But the writer whom Fortune in her own peculiar fashion has chosen to hail as the true prophet of the movement, Maurice Maeterlinck, owes Baudelaire less than the others. Perhaps this is one of the strange reasons why our Lady of Caprices has chosen to crown him and leave with scant courtesy the others severely alone. For when Belgian literature is mentioned our mind always reverts instantaneously to the author of La Vie des Abeilles, the poet, essayist and dramatist of L'Oiseau Bleu. We never remember the others. Yet who knows but that an age may come which will claim a saner estimate of the "Belgian Shakespeare," as some have been pleased to call him, and render at the same time unto the others what is their due. For the comrades of Maeterlinck also formed part and parcel of the Belgian literary movement. Of course there were many who played only pawns' parts, but there were others who were leaders. Verhaeren, the oldest of them all, still lives and has given to Belgian literature a glorious abundance of many-sided genius. He has written richly, if wildly; vividly, even if without restraint; he may have given us too much, but, as with Browning, there is gold for the finding, and it is not the gold of a pocket mine. Georges Rodenbach has painted those sensations the great majority pass over-such as silence and fading colors and the odors of the past and decaying towns. Then Charles Van Lerberghe like a veritable Ariel of the nineteenth century has winged by, singing of a paradise he once