I might go on to augment the number of "Ifs" by citing other passages from this learnedly-written and clearly-reasoned volume, but the conclusion would only more variedly manifest that neither philosophy, science, nor human experience can furnish an authorized, and therefore a fixed foundation for all knowledge, and a sure guide in all life-experiences. And, as every child comes into the world in helpless ignorance, and needs instruction before entering upon the duties of life, the trials attendant upon the opening exercises of its bodily and mental powers and faculties, and the responsible uses of social, domestic, and civil as well as religious life, it is clear that an authorized and safe guide, in all these things, is as absolutely needful as existence itself. And humanity had better never had birth, the universe had better never had existence, than this sceptical condition of human learning and research been the truth respecting its order. But, blessed be God, it is not so. A safe guide, a sure foundation, does exist: authority is not wanting. That authority is the written revelation of the will and wisdom of the Creator-the Divine Word.

There is a term which has the power of calling forth more rancour in the minds of thinking men at the present day than any other which I remember. I mean the term "Dogmatism" in its various forms. And yet, in its primitive acceptation, it merely designates a thing that is as absolutely needful to the building up of an intelligent, free, and noble human character as is the granite rock to the stability of the earth. Dogma-Established principle. Dogmatic-Authoritative, magisterial, positive" (Johnson). But when the outcome of all human learning, apart from the teaching of the written revelation of the wisdom of the Creator-which revelation is in the world, and which all the united force of scepticism and scientific infidelity can no more destroy than it can destroy creation itself,-when, I say, the outcome of all this is confessedly doubt and conflicting conjecture, who will say that the dogmatic teaching in the Bible-the revelation of the wisdom of God for the instruction of the human race-is not needful, and may be dispensed with? But when the term "Dogma" is used, as it commonly is, to designate the haughty annunciation of some favourite system of doctrine, philosophy, or science; the outcome of an education in any particular university or seat of learning, or of any Church; it must excite the prejudices of all other classes of minds, differently educated in other and conflicting dogmatic assumptions. But this seems to be because no such institution, or class, or profession, has, or can have, the absolute authority needful to settle disputes in the inquiring mind. God has created the world, He has formed the mind, has implanted the desire to know, and in His written revela

tion He has given all the varieties of satisfying food needful to the tastes and varied conditions of all hungering and thirsting human inquirers, whether in religion, philosophy, or science. But human learning not based thereupon is powerless to satisfy the cravings of the honest and earnest inquirer. And it has been to the writer a source of satisfaction to find that the learned David Hume, after having laid before his readers, in clear, vivid, and honest forms, all the main philosophical arguments against a written revelation, and the denial of the existence of a God, and infidelity to the Christian religion, comes to the following conclusion: "A person, seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity; while the haughty dogmatist, persuaded that he can erect a complete system of theology by the mere help of philosophy, disdains any farther aid, and rejects this adventitious instructor. To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian." In the commencement of the Gospel according to John we find it written: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God." "All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.' And in the Psalms it is written, "The Lord gave the Word; great was the company of those who published it." To teach the Word then, to make known the boundless riches of its Divine contents, appears to be an indispensable requisite to the existence and perfection of human life and character; and to be the foremost duty and privilege of the Christian Church. But further remarks upon the authority of the Word must be left for a future opportunity.

T. R.

"THE SENSITIVE PLANT."

IN an article contributed to the Revue des Deux Mondes some months ago, M. Schuré, a writer of great ability, calls Shelley "le poète panthéiste de l'Angleterre," but he is careful to tell us further on that he has called him a pantheist "not to box him in a system" (his spirit was too wide a one to admit of barriers of any kind), "but to mark the point of view from which he saw the world and his tendency to behold in its varied sights the developments of a universal spirit."

Swedenborg constantly speaks of the influx of Divine life into the world, it is one of the grandest of his teachings; and Shelley appears

to have felt this truth strongly, although in a half-blind way, Take, for example, "Adonais," which Shelley called "the least imperfect of my compositions." It is full of passages expressing his belief in a mighty supernatural power; for instance, the thirty-eighth verse :

"Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow

Back to the burning fountain whence it came,

A portion of the Eternal which must glow
Through time and change unquenchably the same."

And again the last verse but one :

"That light whose smile kindles the universe,
That beauty in which all things work and move,
That benediction which the eclipsing curse
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining love,
Which through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast, and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim as each are mirrors of

The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.",

What could be stronger than this? And I could give many more examples both from "Adonais" and others of Shelley's poems, but I will restrict myself now to his less ambitious "Sensitive Plant."

This poem is, of course, familiar to most people; but perhaps my reading of it, though weak and unscientific, may throw new light on Shelley's motive and strengthen his claim to being the most spiritual of poets. I admit that a great deal of his writing is wild, and justifies his old classification as the British Philistine, but still, generally speaking, there is a wonderful method in his madness.

However, I did not intend to speak of Shelley's poems as a whole, my business lay with his "Sensitive Plant," and to this surely no exception could be taken. I shall give a short sketch of it, not in a critical spirit, but simply laying before the reader what it suggested to me in its esoteric as well as its exoteric sense.

The sensitive plant is described as growing in the middle of a beautiful garden, and its winding, sheltered paths, with the branches of flowering trees throwing flickering shadows over smooth, green turf, its clear stream with golden light slanting down upon water-lilies, its bright delicate changing flowers, are all brought before us in wonderfully suggestive language. Then comes the description of a lady who watches over the garden :—

"There was a power in this sweet place,

An Eve in this Eden; a ruling grace

Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,

Was as God is to the starry scheme."

She pulls up weeds, carries all mischievous insects away, ties up falling branches or top-heavy flowers, and keeps everything in the garden in perfect order; but in the autumn she dies, and then a change takes place.

"The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul."

The utter desolation and ruin is brought strikingly before us, the flowers dying, the rain beating down the plants in tangled network across the paths, the thistle, hemlock, henbane, springing up and spreading in rank growth over the beds, the stream becoming thick and stagnant and choked up with roots of flags and rushes. In one word, everything that had been beautiful in the garden was changed into ugliness and death. And in the midst of this the sensitive plant lingers for a time, and then sinks a leafless wreck among the overshadowing encroaching weeds.

This picture of a cared-for and of a deserted garden seems to me, among other things, to be a striking type of a man with faith and a man without faith. A man who believes in the Divine power of goodness and truth, that is, who has full faith in God, is a garden full of beauty, into which there is a constant flow of Divine life; and where faith, like the lady in Shelley's poem, keeps all evil things away and makes it a fit receptacle for God. But when a man's faith in God dies, when he denies that the source of everything must be spiritual, and that man is immortal, in Swedenborg's words, when he rejects God and worships Satan, then indeed he becomes a spiritual carcass, a barren deserted garden such as Shelley describes

"The garden, once fair, became cold and foul."

The sun still shone as before, but instead of causing beautiful plants and flowers to appear, all it awakened were groves of foul weeds. Instead of life it produced corruption !

So it is with the man who loses his faith in God and deliberately shuts the doors of his spiritual nature, putting himself on a level with animals.

It is not God who turns from man, but man who chooses darkness rather than light, and instead of becoming more and more worthy of receiving the Divine Spirit, becomes spiritually like rotten wood or mouldering earth-a spiritual carcass !

He is blind, deaf, and dumb, and worse still, he spreads corruption around him :

"And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds."

So a wicked man's words and actions fly over the world, and, sown far and wide, produce in their turn misery, sin, and death.

Much more could be said on this subject, but I must now touch on another point in the poem. The sensitive plant is said to have lingered for a time in its once beautiful home, but when the cold came, and the snow and hail beat it down, while weeds choked its roots, at last it also disappeared.

The sensitive plant might, I think, be compared to the conscience, which is the last thing to die in a man, for as long as he has a conscience he cannot be entirely bad, utterly lost. Conscience shuddered at the loss of faith, saw the destruction going on, tried feebly to struggle against death, but cold doubts descended like the snow and hail, and at last, overwhelmed by dark, quickly growing sin, it disappeared altogether.

I am afraid that perhaps these comparisons may seem far fetched, and my reading certainly one not intended by the poet, but part at least of my theory is upheld. Shelley always shows his belief in a Divine, unchanging, heavenly life, ever flowing into and upon this world, and in this case he makes it received first worthily and then unworthily; as he says in the "Conclusion:

"For love, and beauty, and delight

There is no death nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure

No light, being themselves obscure."

It was the garden that changed, not the sun; the man, not God! I will now end this short notice of a poem which, if not containing Shelley's grandest thoughts, still is a good example of his unceasing effort to discover life in everything, the working of one grand universal spirit in the world. And although I have not done the "Sensitive Plant" justice, only treating it as I have from the peculiar point of view which struck me, still I may have suggested something better to the reader, and I will now give the beautiful verses of the "Conclusion" that he may judge for himself :

"Whether the sensitive plant, or that

Which within its boughs like a spirit sat,
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt the change, I cannot say.

Whether that lady's gentle mind
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light,
Found sadness where it left delight,