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the clouds, no sun beyond the mountains; life may be to us no more than a blind Titan staggering, falling down to darkness and the grave; but we may rest assured that all enduring literature will rebuke our pessimism. There is no immortality for sick men or sick philosophies. Ships that Pass in the Night, The Gadfly, Jack Raymond, The Story of an African Farm, The Open Question, some of the books of Mrs. Humphry Ward and of Thomas Hardy-these were on the crest of the popular wave but a short time ago, but we do not care to go back and read them again. They silently put up monitory hands, and we heed the warning. Thomas Carlyle in his early days brought a message to the world. The vigor of health came out with every telling blow at shams. The world could be a better world, and he saw a shining goal. This constitutes his claim on immortality. But soon his vision became obscured, his heart became sour, he lost his inspiration and brutalized his powers. His work became a menace rather than a tonic, and these have made him of the earth earthy. Ruskin followed in the same path. No man held a more polished lance than he, or placed it in a firmer rest as he charged down the lists of error. But his genius caught the taint of despair, and he became blind to heavenly visions. And so Carlyle and Ruskin both have given hostages to fame, and if their names get a firm footing in other centuries it is probable that they will go down shorn of that part of their lives nearest the tomb. Enduring literature has the child's heart, and the child's heart is essentially healthful and hopeful. It may not talk much of health. It may never speak of the need of hopefulness. God and immortality may seldom be upon its lips. But it has the upward-looking spirit, and claims no fraternity with the morbid and the hopeless. It holds the world to be a bright world, although tempests lower in the sky, and if pain comes on swift-footed to make its tabernacle with men it has found some medicine of the mind to give it joy. Some critic has pointed out that Shakespeare is not spiritual in the highest sense, but he is full of virile, worldly health. We much doubt whether he ever walked to Emmaus and met a Stranger on the way, who spoke some heart-burning things, which if a man. once hears his sky will infinitely expand. There is the music and

the clash and the clangor of love and hate and war, but we listen quite in vain for the trumpeter who stands on far eastern hills to herald the dawning of the perfect day. But this is the segment of the mighty life he failed to fill out. The deep rolling harmonies he heard, the irrefragable laws of justice he announced, the mighty currents of laughter he blew across the world, the loves that meekly walked down moonlit paths and under shining stars, the hates and jealousies that crouched like demons in the darkness-all these come forth so naturally that they betoken unbounded health. Tennyson came in another day, and the spirit of the lyric poet was on him. He heard the rumbling of the scientist delving deep in the caverns of life. Dark and fateful questions flashed through murky skies like fitful gleams of the lightning's wing. Men with spade and mattock were standing, at new-made graves and were preaching the funeral of humanity. And then Tennyson's soul took fire, and like Arthur, his beloved knight, he faced the pall and gloom and sin, and preached of hope and the coming out of light, and told men that they were not twinned with death, that there were joys for their pains and skies above their graves, and they must not forget the mighty hopes that make them men. And the words of the singer were set in deathless music, and they came to despairing minds like songs in the night. And this is Tennyson's health and optimism, and his name can be ventured for a large lease on the coming years. And so we conclude that he who would write enduringly must breathe the breath of health, and if he cannot see the path which shiningly runs up great and distant heights he must believe that it is there, for only thus will he gain the ear of the world for good and aye.

H. T. Scott

ART. X.-" WHEN I WAS A BOY."

THIS is the masculine gender, its feminine counterpart being "Once upon a time." At least "Once upon a time" suggests a female voice, and twilight and firelight and childhood and bedtime. "When I was a boy" means a memory. It has a flavor of sincerity. It carries a tone of authority. It bears an intimation of the survival of the fittest. In the majority of cases when this formula is used it is in reference to something good, and not bad, which happened long ago. In the very nature of things evil is perishable, the good is permanent. The most vivid recollections are not the affairs of last week. The sights and sounds and smells of childhood are indelible. Before me lie some most exquisite photographs made by my friend during the summer vacation in the Berkshires. The lines are wonderfully clear, yet the events of boyhood are even more clean-cut, and they contain color such as no artist photographer ever produced. Sometimes we wonder whether personal reminiscences will ever become colonial. Will people some day search for them as they do for old china and old books and old mahogany?

The phrase is suggestive of personal responsibility. The antique is not for the ash barrel. The survival of a moving picture a half century old does not qualify it for the waste-paper basket. Much of knowledge is by comparison. Progress is only fully appreciated by looking backward. When your man has had in his possession for a generation a fact of significance to himself he should be able to make use of it at the opportune moment. Such potent memories outweigh any amount of adolescent vaporings. Every worthy personal experience has its supreme moments, its turning points, its inspirations. It is in the power of each of us so to touch the childhood about us that years hence the veteran will preface his story with "When I was a boy." The peculiar sense of responsibility which results from being in the presence of a real boy is unlike any other. It is the exposure that counts; the development is mechanical, largely. From the divine standpoint child training is not an experiment or uncertain; the problem is

in the exposure. What is the boy thinking about as he looks and listens? First impressions remain. When I was a boy, to teach me the Bible better, my father sent to Holland for two fine vellumbound folio volumes containing the Bible history, in Dutch. Upon every alternate page were beautiful copper-plate illustrations. My conception of heaven alone, which came to me through those pictures, will last forever. The sea of glass, the four and twenty Elders, and the Lamb of God and the book and the seals are ever with me, and will be even should heaven be a mistake and a myth. It may be doubted whether childhood's conception of heaven is ever improved upon. Pictorial text-books are wise. The boy learns morals by the use of his eyes quite as much as his ears. When I was a boy I was taken one day by my mother to the home of the Rev. Henry Moore, in London. He was the executor of John Wesley, who burned in the fire Mr. Wesley's valuable notes on Shakespeare. My mother asked him to place his hands upon my head and pronounce a blessing. He did so. The very words he used are lying within my reach now. The words, the face of the man, the closed eyes, the heavy weight of his hands upon. my head, his clothing, and every piece of furniture in the room, are indelibly fixed in my mind. But the strongest impression of all was my mother's reverence for old age and her belief that the blessing or the curse of a good man counts. Later on in life I came to believe the same, and have seen the fruits of such benedictions. I can forgive the burning of the notes.

When I was a boy each Sunday afternoon a sermon was preached upon the lawn before my grandfather's house in London. Who the preachers were I never knew; I did not even hear them, but I saw them from the window. Men came and went. Sometimes a hundred stood and listened, and again when I looked there were but twenty. It seemed strange. It was evident that each passer on the street had an errand upon which he was intent, but which he was compelled for the moment to abandon that he might listen, and then go on. This particular feature puzzled and impressed me. Since my boyhood I recognize that street preaching is the severest test of all preaching. When I was a boy a storm at sea almost wrecked the vessel in which the family crossed the

Atlantic. Twice did the captain give up his ship in despair. And well he might, for as a boy I scarcely could tell the floor from the side of the stateroom. Twice the captain descended from the deck to tell his passengers to prepare for the worst. Each time as he approached my mother's stateroom her voice in earnest prayer arrested his attention, and after listening he resolved to go back to his post and try once more to weather the storm. He reported in New York that his ship was saved in answer to prayer. In after years the terrible hazard of that voyage became more apparent, and with it came a double conviction. I learned that sometimes God would have us answer our own prayers, and also that if we are praying for any particular persons it is better that they should know it. These facts are often overlooked. A soul once came to me under very serious religious conviction for which no assignable cause was given. The only explanation attempted was made by the individual himself in the words, "I have come to the conclusion that some one is praying for me." The prayer to God lost nothing because the captain heard it. Jesus asked his disciples to listen to the Lord's Prayer. In church more people listen than pray. We pray, not merely that God will save souls, but that we may help to save them and that they may be willing to be saved.

When I was a boy an elect lady in one of the churches died. A former pastor and an intimate friend of the family was asked to officiate at the obsequies. He could not do so because of important engagements elsewhere. The knowledge that another had been preferred led the regular incumbent so far to forget himself as to hesitate to perform the duty. This led me to resolve that, should I ever become a minister, in the case of any death in the congregation I would immediately ask the family if I might send for any valued friend or any other minister, from no matter where, to minister to them in their sorrow. There are various kinds of ministerial dignity, some manifestly better than others. In the death of Lazarus Jesus saw an invaluable opportunity to teach one of the greatest lessons of his ministry. The appearance of crape upon the doorpost of a member of the congregation is often the supreme moment of the pastor. The Valley of the Shadow of Death seems the only approach to some hearts. One of

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