people,—especially on the one day when they might see them, they have not yet done the only work they can do: they have not stimulated the horny lens in the labourer's brow into an eye. There is beauty enough all around us, had we eyes to see it. "Mr. Turner," said a sagacious lady, "I never saw anything in Nature like your picture there." "Don't you wish you could?" answered the artist. The artist is he who sees a thing; the rest of us see but a little surface of any object. When the people have eyes, Apollos and Madonnas will walk the streets before them. Can any art equal, O mother, the shining hair and blue eyes of thy child? One day, an eye like that which looks from the parent to the babe will be taught to scan the vast cartoons of Eternal Beauty covering earth and sky, and not only the one darling lineament of it revealed by love.

Who built the grandeurs of Baalbec? the conviction that induced three hundred of the Carthaginian youth to lie victims upon its altar for the good of their city. Baal, Jupiter, Jahvé, the Sun in his manifold apotheoses, they have had their kingdoms, their sacrifices; but Humanity has its temples and altars yet to come. Already the flower of the American youth has shown itself ready to die for the most despised of races; and over their graves shall ascend the conviction that to create man himself, to rescue him from degradation and unfold his powers, is the high task of the coming Art. In its light, the finer souls shall look upon the meanest abode where a human Spirit dwells with a reverence equal to that which ancient Syrians felt for the temple of the Sun; and what was once done for saints and gods shall be done for men and women. So wrought the original Creators of Art. A beggar sat for one of the apostles in the Vatican, a barefooted flowergirl for one of its angels. But I dream of a yet higher Art,

which shall make the beggar an apostle of God— not in paint, but in reality; which shall transform the flower-girl to an angel in deed and in truth; under whose touch dead hearts and string brains shall come forth, like rock from the quarry, to rise in the walls and domes of a humanized world. Of the creations of that future Art the greatest sculptures and pictures of the past are but sketches and studies; its destiny shall be to realize those patterns seen on the Mount" in purified towns, happy homes, clean and sweet tenements, universal education, beautiful health, and, above all, in securing to every human being the freedom to carve his or her own being into the character for which each life exists, the statue worthy to be unveiled in the presence of God and man.

66

THE PILGRIM'S LAST REFLECTIONS

AFTER all, one of those gentlemen so recently employed by the upper classes to laugh down the rights of man in Parliament might not be without something to say for himself. "You have the majority, it is true," he might say; so had Herod and Pilate when they joined hands. But I know that one with Truth is a more real majority. The rights of man? Read the statistics of false measures, the statistics of gin and beer; walk through St. Giles's with your pockets shut tight and your eyes wide open; visit the police court; watch the crowd gathered about the prize-ring; and tell me what you think of their sacredness. How would you like such people to make laws for you? Linger a little under the arches at St. Pancras, and listen to the religious ranters; then put it to the vote of the assembly what shall be your creed."

Lately I read the legend of a youth caught up in the

air by an angel, with whom he floated over the world, that he might see the whole of it. The angel went too near the stars for him. "Let us go lower," said the youth; "I love the earth." The angel went lower-near enough for him to seethe out lines of continents. "Lower yet!" said the youth; "I love the smell of the earth, its scented trees and grass; and the bright ships, the fishermen, are dearer to me than hemispheres and continents." So the angel went lower still. But now they saw sad scenes: a poor slave and his wife pursued by bloodhounds; they saw them plunge in the river, hand in hand, to find freedom in death. They saw an army besieging a city; shot and shell bore death among women kneeling with babes in their arms. The city falls; the survivors are given over to the cruelty and lust of the victorious soldiery. They saw the dens of cities where the human image is seared out of men and women by vice. And now the young man's wings began to droop. "Higher, higher!" he cried to the angel. "I have seen enough-too much; let us soar higher!"-"Nay, not so," replied the angel; " thou hast seen, not too much, but too little; we must go lower." Then, lowering their wings, they skimmed the earth like swallows, and they saw men and women coming from far and near to break every fetter of the slaves whose cry they had heard, they saw hovering near the pillaged city a host with white banners binding up the wounded, warring upon war; and amid the dens of vice they saw busy workers building schools, asylums, hospitals; nay, even amid the wretched and vile they found many heroically vanquishing the dangers and temptations of their hard lot, and coming closer still, saw tints of kindliness and feeling in tainted hearts,—in all, the hope and prophecy of a fairer destiny.

May it not be that our philosophers and politicians also too generally come but close enough to see the outlines of nations, or the aggregates of populations?

And now to you, O freethinkers, liberals, emancipated souls, the Pilgrim utters this his final word.

We have deeply learned that God is our Father! we need to feel as deeply that every man is our brother. Who of you, if his own son or brother were the victim of some delusion that darkened life, would spare effort to relieve him of it? Yet all around us are the children of our common Father tossed from the delusion that God is a Tyrant to the delusion that there is no God at all. As we look into the past, we see what men have done for the love of Christ, what they have surrendered and endured in their misdirected zeal and passion for him whom they adored as a Saviour. As much as they loved the dead, let us love the living Christ- Humanity. Surely Truth and Spiritual Liberty should not have less power to animate and inspire, or to command sacrifices, than Superstition!

There is a story of the Holy Grail which the Laureate has passed by, but which we may remember. In the days when men wandered through the world seeking that cup, made of a single precious stone, holding the real blood of Christ, a Knight left England to search for the same in distant lands. As he passed from his door, a poor sufferer cried to him for help. Absorbed in his grand hope, the Knight heeded him not, but went on. He wandered to the Holy Land, fought in many wars, endured much, but found not the precious cup; and at last, disappointed and dejected, he returned home. As he neared his own house, the same poor sufferer cried to him for help. "What dost thou require?" asked the Knight. The aged man said,

"Lo I, am perishing with thirst." The Knight dismounted and hastened to fetch a cup of water. He held the half-clad sufferer in his arms, raised his head, and proffered the water to his parched lips. Even as he did so the cup sparkled into a gem, and the knight saw in his hand the Holy Grail, flushed with the true blood of Christ. And you, my brothers, may wander far, and traverse many realms of philosophy and theology, to find the truth which represents the true life-blood of the noblest soul; but you shall find it only when and where you love and serve as he did. If you can but give to the fainting soul at your door a cup of water from the wells of truth, it shall flash back on you the radiance of God. As you can save, so shall you be saved. And be you sure that when you are really moved by the outcries of famished hearts and brains, as by the wailings of helpless babes, when you deeply long to bear light and hope to men,-the ways of doing so will open before you, even as undreamed energies to fill them full shall be born within you.