the Master's teachings, as Protestantism has been able to get closer to the spirit of those teachings than Catholicism. In Italy and France the poetry has always been under the spell of the Vatican; in England, never.

In the Elizabethan age, there were, besides Spenser and Shakespeare, a host of lesser poets. Some of these wrote with their poesy deeply imbued with Christianity, as Southwell, the Catholic poet, whose two longest pieces, written in prison, were St. Peter's Complaint and Mary Magdalene's Tears. His short poem, The Burning Babe, depicts most sweetly the Child Jesus as the world's propitiation. Sir John Davis wrote a long poem on the Immortality of the Soul, a pioneer in that field. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, produced among other kinds, some strong, religious poems. Sir Walter Raleigh, while awaiting his doom in prison, could write verses of Christian hope and warning. Giles Fletcher's only poem of length was Christ's Victory and Triumph.

The drama rose in England from rude miracle-plays, carried on for several hundred years under the direction of the priests. Gradually, in the sixteenth century, it changed, first to moral plays, and later, toward the end of that century, to those laying claim to no other principles than such as are of general literature and of the legitimate drama; that is, of comedy and tragedy. The real drama of that age attained its place in such themes as the one by George Peele, treating of David and Absalom. Christopher Marlowe, the greatest of the dramatists before Shakespeare, was atheistical, yet in his works has some of the pure teachings of Christianity.

The "myriad-minded Shakespeare" is so fully English, that along with other glories of his genius the spirit of Christianity has a large place. He is said to be so obscure in his teachings as to leave it impossible to say whether he was Catholic or Protestant. But careful searching for his religious views shows that the petted dramatist of the Protestant Elizabeth put many pure Christian sentiments into his writings. Of course, Shakespeare is too great an artist to ascribe constantly the teachings and beliefs of Protestanism to the characters of his plays representing times long before the Reformation. Hence, in his historical works there are references to purgatory, penances and the like, as we should expect; but through the plays which are not historical, there are everywhere the great truths of the Bible which are common alike to Protestant and Catholic. The Bible is drawn upon, from Genesis to the end of the New Testament, for references, truths and pictures. Falstaff says to his prince: "Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou knowest in a state of innocency Adam fell." The atonement was doubtless believed in by Shakespeare, for in Richard Third, Clarence says to the man who has been sent to take his life:

"I charge you as you hope to have redemption
By Christ's dear blood, shed for our grievous sins,
That thou depart and lay no hands on me.”

Shakespeare puts orthodox views of the judgment into his plays,

thus:

"Why, he shall never wake till the great judgment day."

He believed in the immortality of the soul:

"And for my soul, what can it do to that,

Being a thing immortal as itself?"

In Hamlet's soliloquy there are no more questionings about death and hereafter than would naturally come to a Dane yet half barbarian. See how true is Shakespeare's picture of mercy:

"It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth there show likest God's,
When mercy tempers justice.

We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."

After the dramatists, whose influence, on the whole, was not deeply Christian, but tending toward looseness, came the greatest of all English poets, John Milton. His greatest poem, Paradise Lost, was the product of long deliberation, the one vast toil and travail of his life. He chose the scriptural theme in preference to many others which crowded upon his consideration and imagination. It was not composed till twenty years after its conception. He felt that through that poem he was to be a preacher of righteousness to the English nation, He knew that to Englishmen a Bible theme would be a popular one. So true was his judgment that Englishmen on both sides of the Atlantic find it the masterpiece of their language. All are familiar with that wonderful work-its stately movement, its vivid, strong pictures, its pathos and fierce, deep passion, its exquisite delineation of feeling and sentiment, its clear statement of theology-till skeptical scientists of the present think they state current belief in Genesis by quoting Paradise Lost. The deep-moving tide of religious life in the middle of the seventeenth century, which was able to give birth to Paradise Lost, shows that this was foremost in the Englishman's thoughts. For half a hundred years England had stood at the head of European Protestantism; her diplomacy and arms were successful; her generals and admirals of the noblest; her yoemanry for recruiting armies and navies brave and sturdy; her constitutional history was grandly unfolding; riches were flowing in upon her from every sea and contitinent; but the mightiest force in all the national movement was that of the Christian religion and the life from the Bible. Paradise

Regained was the necessary complement of Paradise Lost, and while inferior to the latter poem, was the expression of the theology and Bible knowledge of the English people of that epoch, as understood and interpreted by Milton. His other and earlier poems are as truly of the same Puritan faith.

Andrew Marvell was eminently a Christian poet; and another contemporary of Milton, the witty author of Hudibras, saw through the forms to discern so fully the spirit and simplicity of Christianity, that this brilliant burlesque on the affected manners and habits of the Puritans is sure to remain forever an English classic.

Dryden's dramatic powers were not of a low order, but his productions in that line are rather loose, even for the age of Charles II.; his biting satire, however, was cast in moulds shaped by Bible scenes and language. His defence of the Church of England against dissenters brought out some strong poetry; and when he became a convert to Romanism, the Hind and Panther was produced in defence of his new faith, and is possibly among the best of his works, while Alexander's Feast was written with the judgment revealed in the Bible before his eyes. One says, "His muse was a fallen angel, cast down for manifold sins and impurities, yet radiant with the light of heaven."

Between Dryden and Pope were a puny lot of poets, whose muse was of a low order, and whose sentiments were sometimes hurtful rather than helpful to the Christian life. Addison's poetry, however, not to be wholly obscured by his matchless essays, was sweet, and of the true spirit. Numbers of his hymns have been kept in use by the Church. In the Tragedy of Cato, the soliloquy of that Roman statesman on the immortality of the soul is very fine and true. Matthew Prior does not live among the greatest English poets, but his best work had for its subject, Solomon, in which there is high morality. Dean Swift was sharp in his wit, and too poor a Christian to put more than a few of the Master's heart-truths into his third-rate poetry.

Alexander Pope's name suggests at once the immortal Essay on Man. This is his best known work, if not his masterpiece. Pope's ill health caused him to excel in biting satire, yet his more sober productions are rich with Christian sentiment. The Essay on Man has certain philosophical and theological points which can hardly be deemed sound, yet it is a masterly treatment of man in certain relations as seen in that epoch. Now and then a rationalistic and even a pantheistic cast is given to it, and the problem, how to

"Vindicate the ways of God with man,"

is hardly settled to suit Nineteenth Century views. The freethinker, Bolingbroke, had too much influence with the impressible Pope for the latter to be untrammeled in his productions. But how finely he

could throw off a short poem of most exquisite Christian sentiment is seen in The Dying Christian to His Soul:

But Pope and the long line of lesser poets following him were tainted by the low grade of morals of their time, and much of their poetry would not stand the test of pure consideration.

Twenty years later than Pope, came better songs from Young and Thomson. Young's Night Thoughts is a poem which seems strange from a dissipated courtier, yet none can read that strong production, its depth of feeling, its sombre passages, its faithful delineation of Christian character and principles, without concluding that Young, at least at the time of writing them, felt all he expressed. How much everyone feels is in his description of time, which only the Bible could fully teach!

"The bell strikes one. We take no note of time But from its loss; to give it, then, a tongue

Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke

I feel the solemn sound."

It points to a change in the religious feelings of the age, which so soon after Pope could produce the Night Thoughts and the Seasons. For through all the latter poem runs a sweet, pure stream of Christian trust, linked as it is with the exquisite descriptions of nature and animate life. In his Hymn on the Seasons Thomson beautifully says:

These as they change, Almighty Father; these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year

Is full of thee."

Young and Thomson seem to have presaged the coming of a group of writers whose songs laid the foundation, and builded greatly in the structure of the English Protestant hymnology. These were Watts and Doddridge, the two Wesleys, Anne Steele and a host of others belonging to the latter part of the seventeenth, and reaching far into the eighteenth century. While the religious life had been most lamentably low during this time, these signers, as forerunners of the Master's great coming, were preparing the way, and furnishing some of the means for the wonderful growth of the kingdom of God, seen since Methodism began its marvellous work for the world. But a host of poetical writers, though with lowly muse, were earlier still becoming teachers of purer morals and nobler Christian sentiment. Shenstone and Akenside, Thomas Gray, the author of the Elegy, Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith and others, were doing valuable work for morals and pure feeling, in an age of filth and of smirching poetasters. The tide of

purity rose higher and higher, since their time almost no poet has sought immortal fame along lines of impurity.

The average historian of English literature is apt to pass rather lightly over those men whose songs and hymns have, for a century and a half, been a moulding power in the personal and religious life of the Anglo-Saxon race, and through these, of national life; but the philosophy of history which seeks the causes of things, though they be never so subtile, cannot ignore them. In those lyrics the religious life gave expression of a reviving Christianity, and their use has helped to carry the tide onward yet as a steady stream. They were the ballads of the Church, and everyone knows the worth of ballads to a nation. It was the Augustan age of English hymnology. Many sweet singers have risen since that epoch, but none to sing the outer glories of God's kingdom like Isaac Watts, and none who could sing the gospel of love and personal salvation like Charles Wesley.

William Cowper united an intense love of nature with deep religious sensibilities; and if, at times, his mind was clouded with his fatal trend toward insanity, his muse was always true to the light of the gospel. He was the most closely allied of any of the great poets with the Methodist movement, his sympathies and poesy touching all sides of that movement, whether it was represented by the evangelical labors of the Wesleys and Whitefield, or those of philanthropy by Clarkson and Wilberforce, or of Howard and Hannah More. His greatest poem, The Task, largely pervaded with the right glow of Christian ethics and practice, has also keen sensibility of the fitness of divine relations to mankind, and of our humanity's blessed relations to the Heavenly Father. Many of the hymns of Cowper, and of his beloved companion and life-long friend, Rev. John Newton, have passed into the use of the general church. Contemporary with Cowper were many lesser lights, who wrote pure, exalted hymns and poems. Rock of Ages, a gem of the purest water, was, with its messages to all human hearts always, given to the world in this epoch. Henry Kirke White's immortal Star of Bethlehem—

"When marshalled on the nightly plain,

The glittering host bestud the sky"—

is an enraptured, Methodist shout over one's own salvation in Christ. Grahame's Sabbath and Sabbath Walks, and George Crabbe's delineation of humble parish life and trust were among the best products of that time.

In Wordsworth, as in many other poets, there was united an intense love of nature with pure New Testament truths. He was also an ardent lover of liberty, being hopeful with others that the French Revolution was the auspicious dawn of a better day among the nations.