Her preparations took her less than half an hour, and they had time to talk before they started for the train. 64 she had given him. I took it, and laid it in my own desk, and I forgot all about it till this moment. Wait! it may tell us all that we want to 'Are you happier, dear Alison?" asked Gil- know." bert. "Yes," she said; "at least I feel as if I am going to be happier. My faith has been sorely tried, at times, Gilbert. The sky has been dark, indeed. I have had sometimes to school myself not to think of him as dishonored, and yet I have never been able to think of him as dead. It always seems as if one day-some day-the old familiar step will be heard in the hall, and I shall be in his arms again." Her eyes filled again with the tears that were now so ready to spring. "And you know, Alison, what this discovery means to me?" Hush, Gilbert! I know," she said, with her sweet, grave way. “I know, but I must not think of those things now. I have to restore my father's name, to show my cousins, those who would persuade me to make a compromise, that he was no hypocrite, skulking behind a fair reputation. That is what I must think about for the present-that, and the memory of my unknown mother." "She is known now," said Gilbert. "Your mother is known; you shall stand beside her grave; you shall see her sister." Who is her sister?" asked Alison, with sudden interest. A dead mother whom she could not remember was like some pale and sorrowful shade of the past, to be contemplated with pity, but yet without suffering; but a mother's sister-that was tangible; that was something to bring home to her the reality of a mother. Perhaps, as she was now, so her mother might have been, in the old time. "Who is her sister?" she asked. "Her name is Miss Rachel Nethersole," said he. "What is the matter, Alison ?" For the girl started to her feet with a cry. Rachel Nethersole!" she repeated, "Olivet Lodge? She is the lady who called the night before-it happened-while we were all singing. Do you remember, Gilbert? Ah! no. You would not have noticed it. They brought a card to him, which he dropped when he went out to see her. I picked it up, and gave it to him after ward. Her visit troubled him. He said she revived old and painful memories-they must have been those of his married life and early loss. No wonder he was sad next morning, and strange in his manner." "Only the night before?" asked Gilbert. "And she has never been here since ?" She ran up stairs, and opened her desk, which was full of the little things accumulated by the girl in her progress through life: photographs of her friends, mementos of the places she had visited, the elementary jewels of her childhood, the silver crosses and little golden lockets given her by her father. Lying on the top of all these things there was the manuscript. As she took it out, her finger caught in a string, and drew out with the paper a little red coral necklace. It was the one thing which connected her with babyhood, the one ornament which Mrs. Duncombe had found upon her neck when Mr. Hamblin brought her, a child of two years old, to Brighton. The necklace, too, was old, and some of the beads were broken. It could not have been bought for her, a baby. She carried down stairs both manuscript and coral. Here is the manuscript," she said. "It is marked 'Private,' but you may read it. And see-here is the one thing which I have received from my mother. You may take it, to show my aunt-Miss Nethersole." Gilbert took both and placed them in his pocket. "If these are secrets," he said, "they shall be safely kept by me. There can be nothing of which your father has cause to be ashamed." He spoke stoutly, but he had misgivings. What was the meaning of this sudden melancholy, caused by a simple visit from his dead wife's sister? And what were the contents of the paper headed "Private and confidential"? Whatever they were, he put them away for the present. They could wait. Meanwhile he was going to travel with Alison; to sit beside her for three short hours, to see her for the first time since the day of disaster bright and animated, to find great joy for himself, in the fact that it was himself who had been the messenger of glad tidings. Gilbert was only five-and-twenty or so, he was in love, and since the fatal 4th of January, there had been no passages of love possible, only protestations on the maiden's part that, unless she could bring her lover an unsullied name, she would never come to him at all. These protestations did not present love in its most cheerful and most favorable aspect. Mrs. Duncombe was good enough to drop off into a comfortable and easy sleep in her own corner. She was a lady who "did" with a good deal of sleep; the rumble of the carriage soothed her; and there was a young man with her young lady to take good care of her. He did; he took such good care of her. that he held her by the hand the whole way; he never lost sight of her face for a moment, and he had so much to say that long before he came to the end of his confidences the train had left Southampton far behind, and was running through the green glades of the New Forest; past the hoary oaks and stretches of coarse grass where the ponies find a rude and rough pasture; past rural stations planted lonely among the coppice; past the wild hills and barren heaths of Ringwood; past the stately minster of Christ Church, and gliding softly into the station of Bournemouth. "It has been such a short journey!" said Gilbert, sighing. Alison laughed happily. It was delicious to hear her laugh again; her spirits had come back to her: away from the old house, so full of sad associations, so troubled with fears, it was possible to remember that one was young, that there was still sunshine in the world, and that one had a lover. Moreover, the cloud which had so long hung over her soul had lifted; her self-abasement and shame were gone, because she had found her mother, even though she found her dead. She waited at the hotel while Gilbert went to make search for the first thing, the grave of Dora Hamblin. Presently, he came back with a grave, set face, very different from that with which he had looked in her eyes all the way from Waterloo Station. ing 'maidens to look for the tree of life in that garden, and to breathe those airs. They do not find that tree, but the air revives them for a while, and they linger on a little longer, and have time to lie in the sunshine and see the flowers come again before they die. This is the city of Youth and Death. Every house amid these pines is sacred to the memory of some long agony, some bitter wrench of parting, some ruthless trampling down of hope and joy. From every house has been poured the gloomy pageant of death, with mourners who followed the bier of the widow's only son, the father's cherished daughter. Then that great genius who laid out the garden said: "They come here to die: let us make death beautiful." And they did so. They built a church upon a hill; they left the pines to stand as cypresses; they ran winding walks and planted flowering shrubs; they put up marble crosses on the graves of the youthful dead; they brought flowers of every season, and all sorts of trees which are sweet and graceful to look upon; they refused to have any rude and vulgar monuments; they would have nothing but white-marble crosses. Some stand in rows all together on an open slope, bounded and sheltered by the whispering pines with saffron-colored cones; some stand each in its own little oblong, surrounded by plants and trees, shaded and guarded for ever. "I have found it, Alison," he said. “Come, They bear the names of those who lie beneath; a surprise awaits you!" they are all of young men and girls: one is She walked with him, trembling. What was twenty-four, one is eighteen, one is twenty. the surprise? Of all seaside cities, watering-places, retreats, hospitals, convalescent-houses, or bathing-places, Bournemouth is the most remarkable. There was once a forest of pines. Somebody made a clearing and built a house, just as if he was in Canada. Then another man made another clearing and built another house, and so on. The pines stand still between the houses, along the roads, in the gardens, on the hills, and round the town. The air is heavy with the breath of the pine. The sea is nothing; you are on the seashore, but there is no fierce sea-breeze, no curling line of waves, no dash of foam and spray. The waters creep lazily along the beach, and on the pier the fragrance of the pines crushes out the smell of the salt sea. When the settlements were cleared, and the houses built, and rows of shops run up, there arose a great unknown genius who said: "We have slopes, streams, and woods; we have a town planted in a forest by the seaside; let us make a garden in our midst." And they did so; a garden of Eden. Hither come, when the rest of the world is still battling with the east wind and frost, hollow-cheeked young men and droop Here and there you find an old man who has stumbled into the graveyard by accident. It jars upon the sense of right; it is a disgrace for him to have lived till seventy; he ought not to be here; he should have been carried five miles away, to the acre where the venerable pile of Christ Church guards the heaped-up dust of thirty generations, and the river runs swiftly below; but not here, not among the weeping girls and sad-faced boys. Let them all rise together, at the end, this army of young martyrs, with never an old man among them, to find with joyful eyes a fuller life than that from which they were so soon snatched away. Thither Gilbert brought Alison. He said nothing, for, in truth, his own heart was filled with the sadness and beauty of the place. He led her up the slope to the most retired part of the churchyard, where the graves, those of twenty years back, were not so close together, and where each had its generous space, with amplitude of breadth, such as is accorded to abbots and bishops in cathedrals. Quite at the farthest boundary, where the pines are the thickest, surrounded, too, by silver beeches, stripling oaks, and rhododendrons, stood the cross they came to see; and behind it were the flowers of summer, tended and cared for as if the poor young mother had never been forgotten by her child. There were only the initials "D. H.," with the date of her death and her age. "But that was all over now," she said. "No one henceforth would dare to whisper a word against his sacred memory." And then she sat and tried to realize that, like other girls, she could now speak and think of her Alison sank at the foot of the grave, and Gil- own mother lying dead at her feet. bert left her there. It was a solemn moment, the most solemn in her life. To kneel beside that grave was in itself an act of thanksgiving and gratitude. For in it lay not only her mother, but the honor of her father. She thought of him more than of the mother whom she had never seen. Her tears fell for him more than for the young life cut off so early. Was there ever a father so kind, so thoughtful, so untiring in generous and self-denying actions? Was there ever one so entirely to be loved by a daughter? And for four months she had been bearing about with her the bitter thought that perhaps this man-this good, religious, and Christian man—was what she never dared to put to herself in words. (To be continued.) Presently she returned to the hotel, and they passed a quiet, silent evening, walking on the seashore, or the pier, while the summer sun went down in splendor, and in the opal breadths of twilight sky they saw the silver curve of the new moon. It was no time for love. Alison talked in whispers of her mother; what she was like; why her father had kept silence about her. Gilbert listened. The place was very quiet; in June most of the people have left Bournemouth; they were alone on the pier; there was a weight upon both their hearts, and yet the heart of one, at least, was full of gratitude and joy. But needs must that he who stays in the City of Death feels the solemn presence of Azrael. IN WHAT IS RELIGION? N Professor Max Müller's "Lectures on the Science of Religion,”* the best part of the book is its title. This suggests that religion may be treated scientifically, after the same method of induction and classification which has been applied so successfully to the study of language, and which is in use in the physical sciences. Indeed, Müller would associate comparative theology with comparative philology not only in method, but also in material. He finds "the outward framework of the incipient religions of antiquity" in a few words-such as names of the Deity, and in certain spiritual and technical terms-which were substantially the same among all earlier peoples. "If we look at this simple manifestation of religion, we see at once why religion, during those early ages of which we are here speaking, may really and truly be called a sacred dialect of human speech; how, at all events, early religion and early language are most intimately connected, religion depending entirely for its outward expression on the more or less adequate resources of language." But while finding in words the key to religions, Müller furnishes no terms by which to define or describe "Introduction to the Science of Religion." Four Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution. By F. Max Müller, M. A. London: Longmans, Green & Co. + Ibid., p. 153. 66 religion. His nearest approach to this is a for- The phrase we have italicized above would bar the claim of religion to a place among the sciences; for though the physical sciences themselves employ faith as a prelude and guide to discovery, science could never admit an hypothetical belief "in spite of sense and reason." And, on the other hand, the Christian faith does 17. * Introduction to the Science of Religion," pp. 16, rest throughout upon the " "simply historical are of minor importance; what here concerns us facts" that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin is that the thing itself is true; that the human Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, was mind is “necessarily theologic";* that a someburied, and rose from the dead. thing within us impels us to religion; that metaphysical analysis lands us at last in the absolute; that the induction of physical facts and the unification of the laws of the universe, through the correlation of forces, leads us to the conception of a supreme cause or power; and that the study of mankind under all conditions forces us to conclude with Spencer, that "religion, everywhere present as a weft running through the warp of human history, expresses some eternal fact." + That fact is the aim of our inquiry. By the "science of religion" Müller intends what is better styled "comparative theology." Now, to theology, as the logical statement and systematic arrangement of the facts and doctrines within its province, the title of a science is commonly conceded; and the comparison of different systems of religious belief and worship, by discovering resemblances in conceptions, in terms, and in usages and forms, and by classifying these systematically under general principles, may create a science-say, if there be not a contradiction in the terms-the science of beliefs. Since the faculty of believing, equally with the faculty of knowing, is a native quality of the human mind, not only must this faculty itself fall within the categories of psychology, but the objects of belief must be capable of being reduced to some form of logical statement and classification. But theology and comparative theology are themselves but outward forms or expressions of the religious idea or sentiment. In religion we have to do with a conception, a feeling, a state of mind, which is common to mankind; and the essence of religion lies at the back of all forms of theology and of worship. What, then, is this universal phenomenon of the human spirit ?-this which experience and history testify, through all migrations and mixtures of races, through all fluctuations of social and political institutions, through all systems of philosophy and theology, and through all developments of science and art, is the one transmigratory soul, for ever inspiring human thought, for ever influencing human life? It is said of Comte that, toward the close of life, he openly confessed that "the human mind could not rest satisfied (ne peut se passer) without a belief in independent wills which interfere in the events of the world." Of this concession Comte's biographer says: "Never was there an avowal more fatal to the positive philosophy. If this be true, the human mind is necessarily theologic, and it would be as great a folly to contend against that necessity as against all other necessities, physical or organic."* This fatal concession of Comte Littré imputes to the weakness induced by excess of work, "a serious nervous disease," which caused the author of the "Philosophie Positive" to relapse into the subjective method and its theological tendencies. But the influences under which the great positivist admitted the universal necessity of a religious faith Religious questions shift their ground, change their form, vary in interest and importance, according to the temper of the times, the schools of thought, the bent of leaders in church or in state, in politics or in philosophy. The theological, the ecclesiastical, the speculative, the practical phases of religion are by turns predominant or antagonistic. Many a dogma and theory has been exploded, many a form set aside, many a practice abandoned, in the endeavor after that union of knowledge and freedom, of reason and will with faith, which is the ideal of a philosophical religion. But while religious questions have. been thus relative and fluctuating, the question of religion has suffered no abatement in its moment to the individual man and to the well-being of mankind. Whether with Lecky we regard religion as "modes of emotion," in distinction from theology, which consists of "intellectual propositions"; ‡ or, with Kant, hold that "religion, subjectively considered, is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands"; § whether, with Comte, we "refer the obligations of duty, as well as all sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once ideal and real-the human race conceived as one great being"; or, with Herbert Spencer, we find the root of religion in "the mystery of an inscrutable Power in the universe "; ¶ whether, with Mill, we rest in a dry formula of "the infinite nature of duty"; **** or share with Schleiermacher "the immediate feeling of the dependence of *The late Professor Trendelenburg, of Berlin, once said to the writer, "I believe in logic as strongly as did Hegel, but I believe also in theo-logic." + Herbert Spencer's "First Principles," p. 20, chapter i., "Religion and Science." "Rationalism in Europe," vol. i., p. 356. "Der philosophischen Religionslehre," viertes Stück, erster Theil. "The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte," p. 121. By John Stuart Mill. With Comte le grande étre is always l'humanité. ¶ "First Principles," chapter ii., "Ultimate Religious **John Stuart Mill, "Essay on Comte " * " Auguste Comte et la Philosophie Positive." Par Ideas." E. Littré, p. 578. Troisième partie, chapter vi. man upon God"; *-under all modes of statement, of expression, and even of negation, behind all objects of adoration, personal and impersonal, humanity, nature, God, there lies the reality of religion—an inalienable, indestructible, irrepressible something in the constitution of man, testified to by the finer instincts of the soul, by its sense of duty, its aspirations after virtue, its yearnings toward the invisible, and confirmed by man's experiences of nature and by the course of human history. It is this something in man that we are seeking to analyze and define: What is Religion? This question is broader than any question of natural science or of theology; broader than the question of adjusting theology with natural science; broader than the stream of human history, with all the collective interests of society, government, letters, art; broader than the measure of the earth and of the peoples that inhabit it; more vital and imperative than any question of reform in church or in state, or of progress in knowledge and in society; it is the question of every race and of every time, from the savage with his fetich to the Platonist with his ideas, and the positivist with his laws; a ques. tion new to each man and binding upon every man—the question of his own being, † its origin, its relations, its obligations, its possibilities, its destiny: "What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope"? As in defining science we should be careful to eliminate from the definition all theoretical prepossession-all that the Germans style Tendenzso, in seeking to define religion, we should divest ourselves of every theological bias, and in the very spirit of science search for the primary facts in this phenomenon of human consciousness. We should especially guard against a devout tendency to forestall the inquiry by assuming that this or that religion is the true religion; and "Reden über die Religion." In the same discourse Schleiermacher says: 66 Religion is neitherfa special mode of thought nor a special mode of deportment; it is neither knowledge nor action; it is feeling." Yet we † John Stuart Mill says in his autobiography, "I was brought up from the first without any religious belief, in the ordinary acceptation of the term." find Mill feeling his way toward "an ideal conception of a perfect Being," as the guide of conscience; we find him arguing "the beneficial effect" of a hope in God and in immortality, in that "it makes life and human nature a far greater thing to the feelings"; and at last rendering a sublime homage to the character and teachings of Christ. Then, with a pathetic weakness, which in a Bushman he would have smiled at as superstition, this great philosopher, after the death of his wife, records : "In order to feel her still near me, bought a cottage as close as possible to the place where she is buried. . . . Her memory is to me a religion." Kant, "Kritik der reinen Vernunft": "Der Kanon der reinen Vernunft," zweiter Abschnitt. should accept only that as truth which gives the reality of things. In every sphere of investigation truth is the sole demand of an honest mind; in physical science, the facts of Nature and the true explication of her phenomena; in the science, of mind, the facts of consciousness, the laws of a true psychology, and also what logic may determine to be true in the region of ultimate ideas and of the absolute; in the sphere of ethics, the true ground of virtue, the true science of rights, and the ultimate source of moral obligation; in history, not only truth in the record of events, but the true philosophy of human society; in theology, truth as seen in nature, felt in consciousness, or revealed by God. It is truth that Helmholtz is in quest of in his laboratory and Darwin in his cabinet; it is truth that Lepsius would decipher from the hieroglyphics of Egypt, and Broca from the remains of prehistoric man; it is truth that Sir William Hamilton and his critic Mill have sought with equal honesty in the study of the human intellect and of the unconditioned; it is truth that Huxley seeks in the hints of biology and Spencer in ultimate ideas; from Plato to Schleiermacher, his translator and expounder, truth has been the ideal in the world of thought; from Aristotle to Humboldt, his royal successor in the priesthood of nature, truth has been the objective in the world of fact; above all sects in Christianity, above all schools in theology, truth is confessed as the standard and authority. Truth is the pole of every explorer, around which he hopes to find an open sea, and either safe anchorage or a sure outlet into the infinite. And what if science at last shall discover that the star that must guide to that pole is religion, which there sits enthroned above all night, unchanged by all the revolutions of the world? What, then, is this constant fact of human experience? In the name of truth we ask, What is Religion? It should be easy to define a term which the Romanic and Teutonic peoples have alike appropriated from the Latin for the same thing; or to describe the thing itself, which exists almost universally in the experiences and usages of mankind. Yet the conception of religion varies according as the term is taken etymologically, popularly, or scientifically. Cicero has given the etymology of the word religio with a precision that has the air of authority: They who diligently and repeatedly review, and as it were rehearse again and again everything that pertains to the worship of the gods, are called religious, from religendo [going over again in reading or in thought]; as the elegant from eligendo [choosing with care, picking out]; the diligent from diligendo [attending carefully to what we value]; the intelligent from intelligendo [understanding persons and |