impress of celestial things, reflected in its innermost depths; nay, realises a junction of heaven and earth, of God and the soul.

And then comes, in these hours of retirement, the vision of the old hopes out of which a great many persons can come as from a sanctuary. There is a great deal in the past for those who have had a happy home and a happy childhood, and for those who have had much experience. For any man who will use it, his own past, what he has been, what he has gone through, is of more service than any biography that has been written.

I plead, then, for more leisure. I plead for having more rest. I plead for having less to do with men, and more pious meditation. You are commanded to "be diligent in business," but likewise, in connection with this, to "be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Business ought not to be allowed to interfere with the duties of religion. Better lose a little in a worldly point of view than become spiritually bankrupt. Every day ought to have some moments in which you hear and obey the voice of Christ, which says, "Let us go apart for a little rest."

"Go forth to the fields with the dew on their sod,
And let thy thoughts soar to the heavens above;
Rise, rise from the earth and commune with thy God,
And rest in the calm of His shadowless love.

Thou shalt see Him beyond the fast-deepening skies,
Thou shall hear His still voice in the whispering trees;
Thou mayst send up thy prayers, and receive His replies,
Thou mayst feel He is near in the soft swelling breeze.

Go forth to the fields far away from the strife,

And hear what the Father shall say unto thee;

And take to thy heart all His lessons of life,

To make thee more humble, and happy, and free."

Learn to leave the world behind you, and go with the Master to the Mount of Olives at evening. While the great city roars on the other side, seek quiet and meditation in the wilderness. While the people imagine a vain thing, find this soul rest, spirit rest, heavenly rest, which is a necessity to every one.

Your life will soon be over, and on the other shore that is without storm, that was never shaken by an earthquake, and that never feels the summer's heat nor the winter's cold. You shall, with the perfected spirits of the just, dwell in an everlasting rest. THOS. STONELEY.

RUSKIN AND PROTESTANTISM.

MR. RUSKIN is a man of whom all Britons may be justly proud. He has done a service for our literature, perhaps surpassed only by that of Shakespeare and Milton. He has made our rough language, in his use of it," musical as is Apollo's lute," and he has made it shine with a radiance which only comes from the visions of genius. Still, the sun has his spots, and Mr. Ruskin has his failings. In the lectures recently delivered at Oxford we see all the brilliancy and charm, as well as the inconsistencies and caprices, of his later writings. His very waywardness, however, is attended with a picturesqueness which makes it intensely interesting. Mr. Ruskin, in a famous libel case, said that a man had no right to throw a paintpot at a canvas and call it a picture. Still he himself did something not very dissimilar to this when in his last lecture, on "Protestantism: The Pleasures of Truth," he runs away to denounce our iron steamships as "iron bubbles," and our talk about our splendid British steamships as "bombastic English blarney." Such a fantastic digression as this, mixed up, too, with the statement that "Governments were donkeys enough to build in iron instead of wood," is almost as wild work as throwing a paintpot upon a canvas, whatever the work may be called. Evidently Mr. Ruskin is becoming more and more a Protester, though now shying off from Protestantism. His latest development is remarkable and significant. We are told that on the day of the above lecture "the Catholic community in Oxford must apparently have been forewarned of Mr. Ruskin's conversion to their party, for there was an important deputation of them in the front seats on Saturday afternoon, and very pretty it was to see them cheering the winged words of their fiery ally." It is difficult to say which is most entitled to notice, the cheering of the Oxford Catholics or the winged words of assault which were sent against Protestantism. Fortunately, we know that it is not the first time that Protestantism has been assailed in Oxford and little damage done. A man almost the equal in genius of Mr. Ruskin (Cardinal Newman) led such an assault more than forty years ago; but what was true in Protestantism then is true to-day, and what was powerful then is equally powerful now. Mr. Ruskin is a formidable foe, no doubt, to reckon with, on any line; but the faith of his childhood, though it has become older, is not weaker. It may have passed from him, but it abides in others, a perennial source of joy and strength, of high purpose and of spiritual vision.

Mr. Ruskin very fairly and truly admits that the period of Protestantism includes the two movements known severally in

history as the Reformation and the Revolution. "Every country passes through one Reformation and one Revolution-reformation, when it bears witness for spiritual truth against manifest falsehood; revolution, when it secures the rights of the subjects from tyranny." This statement shows that though Mr. Ruskin may be " a fiery ally," he is too great a man not to see some of the grander aspects and issues of the form of faith which somehow now excites his wrath. It is remarkable that with the admission this statement involves, Mr. Ruskin did not ask himself whether two such great events could be matched by any Catholic developments. The Reformation emancipated the conscience and intellect of Europe from the bondage of a Catholicism which, now that it is restrained by the ascendency of a Protestant civilisation, Mr. Ruskin thinks has some "beauty." Truth and justice should count for something, even where the love of beauty is a supreme sentiment. The Revolution laid the broad foundations of a freedom which no Catholic country has ever equalled. Mr. Ruskin's maxim of one Reformation and one Revolution does not hold good in the case of France. France had no Reformation. An attempt to start one was drowned in blood. France had a Revolution, however, which rose in blood, as if it were the unsleeping and avenging fate of that great movement which was so ruthlessly struck down on the eve of St. Bartholomew. It is strange that Mr. Ruskin never thought of this when he coined his maxim, that every country passes through one Reformation and one Revolution. The maxim is pre-eminently true in relation to England, and as the result she has been conspicuously the mother of free nations, and her Protestantism has been the life-blood of her sympathy with freedom in every land. Why did not Mr. Ruskin ask himself why Catholicism had never done so much for human freedom and justice? It is quite true that Protestantism has not lavished the wealth of its genius in building "beautiful churches," or in painting pictures which carry upon them "the peace of heaven, of infancy, and of death." But there are creations of liberty, and there are developments of justice as between man and man, and there are advances in humanising progress which it has helped to make which will surely count for something. A grand [cathedral and a beautiful painting are no doubt to be highly valued, but hardly so much as a free soul, pursuing what is nobly just, and knowing that God, and not a priest or a pope, is the sole dispenser of life's highest gifts.

Mr. Ruskin takes John Knox as "the perfect symbol" of the Reformation, and John Hampden of the Revolution. He could not have selected better types. Mr. Ruskin's own ingrained Protestantism comes out finely in this selection. He tells us he likes

Knox better than Luther. Knox said, "I won't be cheated in religion;" and Hampden said, "I won't be taxed in my pockets." In this vivid summary of the action of these two men, we have the very essence of the Reformation, and its inevitable consequence in the Revolution. Priestcraft is synonymous with robbery of that which is most sacred to man, and taxation without freedom is synonymous with the most degrading tyranny. The men who had been most strongly imbued with the spirit of the Reformation were the men who made the Revolution such a necessity. If the frivolity and debauchery of Charles the Second's time could have tainted Puritanism, we should have had no Revolution, but that was as impossible as that the heated effluvia of a midden should poison the pure air of the entire firmament of heaven. Reverting to these types of the Reformation and the Revolution," the Catholic community," in the "front seats," must have had " a bad quarter of an hour." The one man demanded that the faith which God gave should come to him pure and undefiled, neither tainted nor limited by priestcraft. The other demanded justice as between sovereign and subject believing that no theory of " Divine right" gave heaven's sanction to do wrong. These men thus expressed two of the finest and grandest phases of Protestantism. In contrast with this, Mr. Ruskin boldly stated that "the Catholic sometimes fights for lies and taxes together." His knowledge of history, and his Protestantism, forcing themselves into such emphatic speech, must again have been unpleasant to the Catholic community in the front seats. His statement gives a very blunt description of the times and countries when Catholic ascendency has been dominant. Lies, in the shape of gross superstitions, flourished when cathedrals rose in all their grandeur, and when taxes or labour were forced by the twin-grip of superstition and tyranny. Dean Stanley once said to a friend of mine, that some of those cathedrals were built when work was worship. That may be true in part, but the worship was not of God, as a Spirit and in truth. There was the blending of saint worship, and perhaps the nearer and more powerful spell was got from the superstitious element in this worship. It seems marvellous that Mr. Ruskin can overlook the significance of these facts.

But here is another marvel. Protestantism, he says, is still in the ascendant; "but the Catholics think that the day will yet come when we shall again see visions (or he might have added, dream dreams) of things that are not as though they were, and even be able, like Edward, to build a beautiful church with a weathercock upon it to rise above the filth of nasty London.” This is a provokingly suggestive statement, for if we are to believe

many writers who have taken a wide survey, and to accept the truth of much that we see, no one would suppose that Catholicism and filth are troubled with any very energetic antagonism. It is well known what Macaulay says about the south of Ireland. Can anybody believe that the social or political condition of that country would have been possible under Protestantism? We have had recently some curious revelations about filth in Naples, one of the most priest-ridden cities, where beautiful churches and pictures abound, and where Lazarettos exist, in comparison with which even "nasty London " is clean. In this city the cholera found a most congenial soil in the filth and superstition of the people. Instead of cleansing their houses and backyards the Catholics indulged in religious processions and invoking saints. They believed in supplicating saints rather than scouring with soap-suds, in sanctifying the stench of their streets with incense, rather than in trying to breathe the pure air of heaven, and the epidemic smote them in their folly. Popery has always winked at material degradation, if only there were spiritual devotion. Is cleanliness. next to godliness? If so, why has no Catholic saint arisen during the ages the patron of the scrubbing-brush, and besom, and mop, and a bucket of water?

Mr. Ruskin proposed to show in his lecture the narrowness of the rigid truth of Protestantism. There is some reason to fear that Mr. Ruskin himself was afflicted with this narrowness when he spoke of Protestantism as "partly honest and partly hypocritical, with a good knowledge of a few minor things, but ignorant hatred of all above and beyond itself." What is it that is above and beyond? If there is any system which prompts free and fearless search into all realms of truth, it is Protestantism. It would be interesting to know whether when Mr. Ruskin was an unquestioned Protestant, he was likewise afflicted with this partial hypocrisy and ignorant hatred of all above and beyond himself, and how he found his emancipation. But has he found his emancipation? Can a man be said to be free from "ignorant hatred" who employs as a type of the honest but not liberally-minded Protestant "a sketch of a little porker"?"The little pig walks along, you see, knowing every inch of the ground, having in its snout a capital instrument for grubbing up things. You may be shocked, perhaps, at [my selection of this animal for the type of a religious sect; but if you could but realise all the beautiful things which the insolence of Protestantism has destroyed, you would surely think the Gadarene swine too good for them." Mr. Ruskin speaks about the "insolence of Protestantism."

It would be difficult for any Protestant to surpass the insolence