they may lead the soul into a land as waste and famishing as what only concerns the body, or even into a still more howling and hungry wilderness. The spiritual affections if denied appropriate sustenance, if presented only with purely intellectual truth, will either die of inanition to the sore impoverishment of the mind, or they will live on to torment it with a pain more grievous than that of unappeased animal appetite. For true it is, as an eloquent preacher has said, in words which I cannot exactly recall, but which are nearly as follows: "There is on earth a greater misfortune than to crave for bread and not to have it, and a sadness more complete than that of bereavement, sickness, poverty, even pushed to their extremest limits; there is the bitterness of a soul which has studied, and searched, and speculated, which has pursued with eager and anxious heart, truth in many directions, and yet, because it sought it away from the light and life which are in God, has only found in all directions doubt and nothingness."

What we cannot find in truth, however, may we not find in the enjoyment of the beautiful in nature and art? In his last work-'The Old and the New Faith'-this is what Strauss points to as a substitute for religion. The admiration of fair scenery, of painting, music, and poetry, may, it is hoped, fill the void in the heart caused by the

absence of faith in God. The picture-gallery, the concert-room, the theatre, may help us to dispense with the Church and its services. Now, certainly, it is greatly to be desired that the love of the beautiful in nature and art were more widely diffused among all classes of the community. He who contributes to its cultivation and extension confers on his fellow-men no mean boon, no slight service. But so far from being able to supply the place of the love of God, the love of the beautiful itself withers and corrupts, becomes weak or becomes foul, severed from that love. Art of a high and healthy order has ever drawn its inspiration largely from religion. The grandest buildings, the most beautiful paintings, the noblest music, the greatest poems, are religious. The arts have hitherto spread and advanced in the service of religion, or at least in connection with it. They have never flourished except in a spiritual atmosphere which is the breath of religious faith. Atheism unbelief- has, alike in ancient and in modern times, and in all lands, been found fatal to art. Before it is entitled to point us to art as a substitute for religion, it must be able to show us where there is an art which can elevate and improve the mind that has not been directly or indirectly engendered by religion. It must show us that it can create and sustain a noble art. Atheistical art, so far as the world has yet known

it, has been art of a diseased and degrading kind. It need scarcely be added that art, whether good or bad, can never be more for the majority of men than a source of comparatively rare, fragmentary, and temporary enjoyment. It is for the leisure hour and for the lighter moods and occasions of life; not for times either of heavy toil or heavy trial. It were well that hard-working men valued art more generally and highly than they do, and so enjoyed such power as it possesses,—a real and precious power of its kind,-to refresh those who are weary, and to soothe those who are troubled; but it were ill that they abandoned for it religion. Art is a beautiful flower, but religion is a strong staff. Art is a sweet perfume, but religion is necessary sustenance. Without aid from art the spirit will lack many a charm, but without aid from religion it will lack life itself.

Is it said that nature lies open to the inspection and contemplation of all, and presents the same. beauties and sublimities to the atheist as to the theist? It must be answered that the atheist and the theist, so far as they are thoughtful and selfconsistent men, cannot but view nature very differently and feel very differently towards it. To the atheist nature may be beautiful and sublime, but it must be, above all, terrible. Nature stands to him in place of Deity, but is the mere embodiment of force, the god of the iron foot, without ear

for prayer, or heart for sympathy, or arm for help. It is immense, it is sublime, it sparkles with beauties, but it is senseless, aimless, pitiless. It is an interminable succession of causes and effects, with no reason or love as either their beginning or end; it is an unlimited ocean of restlessness and change, the waves of which heave and moan, under the influence of necessity, in darkness for evermore; it is an enormous mechanism, driving and grinding on of itself from age to age, but towards no goal and for no good. Says Strauss himself, "In the enormous machine of the universe, amid the incessant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron wheels— amid the deafening crash of its ponderous stamps and hammers-in the midst of this terrific commotion, man, a helpless and defenceless creature, finds himself placed-not secure for a moment, that on some unguarded motion, a wheel may not seize and rend him, or a hammer crush him to powder. This sense of abandonment is at first very awful." And we may add, the longer it is realised it should grow more and more awful, ever deeper, denser, and darker, until the atheist feels that for him to talk of heartily enjoying nature were a cruel mockery of his own helplessness. We can only be rationally free to enjoy nature when we have confidence that one hand of an almighty Father is working the mechanism of the universe and another guiding his children in the midst of

it, so that neither wheel nor hammer shall injure one hair of their heads.

When truth and beauty fail, will the atheist find his virtue suffice? Will morality, when exclusive of service to God, when separated from the thought of God, satisfy and sustain the human heart? Does atheism meet the claims and supply the wants of conscience? This is to ask, in other words, if a man will be as strong for duty without as with belief in an almighty and perfect moral Judge and Governor? And the question is surely one which answers itself. The believer in God has every motive to virtue which the unbeliever has, and he has his belief in addition, which is the mightiest motive of all. It is often hard enough even for the believing man to conquer his passions, to bear the burden which Providence imposes, and to be valiant for the right against wrong; but how much harder must it be for the unbeliever? His evil desires are not checked by the feeling that Infinite Justice beholds them and condemns, nor are his strivings after God sustained by the consciousness that the Almighty and All-merciful approves and favours them. When he sees falsehood widely triumphant over truth, vice over virtue, he has no right to expect that it will ever be otherwise. If the highest wisdom and goodness in existence are man's own, the mystery is not that the world is so bad as it is, but that it is