his faith in his fair ideal of moral beauty. In his "Psalm of Grief"— enduring monument though it be to a nation's sorrow-he still spoke of the Holy Ghost shedding peace and harmony over a distracted world; he sang of brotherly love as the means of salvation on the very brink of the eternal abyss; he pointed to the soul winning her way to God through purity and pain.

And what was practically his last poem, the "Psalm of Good Will," marks the glorious highest point not only of his teaching, but also of his poetic genius. It is, indeed, more than that-it is the grand closing of the mystic prophetic phase of Polish literature, that literature so strange, so sad, so haunting in its beauty. What, then, was Krasinski's last message to the people for whom he had spent his life? Its title is the answer-that the greatest ideal may be reached with heart's blood, with tears and travail, if good will be there. The noble prayer rolls on in long, sweeping lines of incomparable majesty like deep organ harmonies, to use Klaczko's simile. The whole psalm breathes the solemn peace, albeit strongly tinged with the sorrow never absent from Krasinski's work, of one who had only gained thereto at the end of a bitter highway, only after passing through depths of unspeakable anguish.

In his last psalm Krasinski sings the magnificent vision of his nation's temptation. This is one of the best illustrations in his poetry of what we have already observed, namely, that his national mysticism is in reality that of each sore-beset unit of storm-tossed, tempted humanity.

We, says the poet, are above the yawning abyss, on the narrrow isthmus. Our wings are pointing to the resurrection, our lips are parted for the song of joy. From the blue heavens, as though from the bosom of God, as though His sheltering arms shoot down the golden shafts of the dawn that will take from our weary brows the weight of sorrow. The life-giving east is aflame and the angels are at gaze; but from the precipice rises the darkness, heaving, growing, measuring itself towards us (this sort of imagery is very characteristic of Krasinski), seething with passion, hatred, falsehoodthe pit itself, eternal death. Behold us, then, suspended between that never-ending death and life. If one glance is cast towards the darkness, if one step be turned to meet it, then the light of dawn will vanish from our foreheads, and neither Christ's pity nor the consolation of His Paraclete will be for us.

"Have mercy, Lord," cries the poet. "Defend us, be Thou with us." Then despair tells him that in that supreme moment of their fate none may aid, and that the tempted stand alone to make of their crisis what they will.

Count Tarnowski, op. cit.

But one name rises to his fainting heart, the name with which "upon their lips millions of Polish souls have gone to death," the name of Mary. Let her, prays the poet, remember them. "Look upon her, oh, Lord," as she is borne by those spirits who have been so true to her beyond the Milky Way, beyond the sun, across measureless space till she kneels at the feet of God while all the universe waits and hearkens. Below, hell clamors with its bitter laughter. The roar of its furious waves is in our ears, its darkness, by which it would drag our souls to death, is about us. Oh, vain one, cries the poet, it seeth not what is being wrought on high; it seeth not that its rage is nought since that pitiful heart for us is wrung. Then he pours out the last cry of his soul, his farewell to his nation, in the prayer that flows on to the end of the psalm like a majestic and untroubled sea:

"Oh Lord, Lord, not for hope do we pray-as a flower shall it be strewn; not for the death of those who have wronged us-their death will dawn with to-morrow's clouds; not for the rod of rule, not for help (for Thou hast already opened wide the field of events before us); but for one thing only in the terrible convulsion of such events do we implore of Thee, oh Lord, only a pure will, oh Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Oh Thou most dear, hidden and universal One, visible beyond the veil of transparent worlds; oh Thou all present, Immortal Holy One, oh Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Thou who hast commanded to the being of man, puny in strength and little in birth, that by the might of sacrifice he should become even as the angels, we beseech Thee, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, with the simplicity of children, with the lowliness of women—before Thee, oh God, we are children and women, but to the world menwe, suspended betwixt the abyss and Thy kingdom, oh Father, Son and Holy Ghost, we beseech Thee, with our foreheads bowed to earth, our temples bathed in the breath of Thy spring, surrounded by perishing government and worn out times; oh Father, Son and Holy Ghost, we beseech Thee create in us a pure heart, make new our thoughts, from our souls uproot the weeds of sacrilegious falsehood, and give us that gift, eternal among all Thy gifts-give us good will."

With these words closes the life work of Sigismund Krasinski. MONICA M. GARDNER.

Ipswich, England.

7 For the better appreciation of this passage, it should be understood that the deep devotion of the Poles to the Blessed Virgin is of an intensely patriotic as well as religious character. Many of their most sacred national associations are connected with the Madonna of Czenstochowa.

THE GOOD FAITH OF UNFAITH?

I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran than that this universal frame is without a mind.-Lord Bacon, Essay on Atheism.

I

N CERTAIN quarters not too well informed there is an impression abroad that the theory of evolution has demolished the doctrine of theism; that physical science has disproved the existence of God, and that unbelief is based on reason, but belief

on unreason.

These pretensions it is not proposed here to discuss. Unbelief, in point of fact, is a negation of reason. But is the unbeliever at any rate bona fide in his unbelief? To that question we propose in this paper to supply an answer.

I.

And, first, as to the declarations of Scripture-declarations, it will be remarked, that were supernaturally uttered, but declarations of arguments that are wholly natural. Of these natural arguments, of these appeals to reason, two classes are put forth by Holy Writ as leading to knowledge of God-the historical and the cosmological. The historical argument was twice, at least, indicated by St. Paul, at Lystra and at Athens.

Preaching to the men of Lystra St. Paul said (Acts xiv., 14-16): "God, who made the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; who, in times past, suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless, He left not Himself without testimony, doing good from heaven, giving rains and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness."

And again, in the Areopagus at Athens: "God it is who giveth to all life and breath and all things; and hath made of one all mankind to dwell upon the face of the earth, determining appointed times and the limits of their habitation, that they should seek God, if haply they may feel after Him, or find Him, although He be not far from every one of us; for in Him we live and move and are."

In these texts the Apostle refers to the secondary causes of the physical order which, in God's guiding hand, minister to the preservation and well-being of mankind. Created things without a mind move towards an end, and in the main towards the relatively best end. The uniformity of their operation proves this. Nor is it less evident that motion towards an end must have an intellectual superintending cause. What is this cause? It cannot be the nonintellectual creation, animate or inanimate. It can only be God. St. Paul had also in mind the history of the nations of the earth, a

history so ordained by God that in the course of events men who were willing to see could not fail to see the divine element underlying and showing through the human: "Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways; nevertheless, He left not Himself without testimony."

What was this testimony? St. Paul answers: "Doing good from heaven, giving rains and fruitful seasons; filling our hearts with food and gladness." And this the Creator does with this object that: "Men should seek God, if haply they may feel after or find Him."

Lastly, the Apostle alludes to the benevolent providence of God which guides and directs the life of each individual human being, so that not even a hair falls from your head without His full permission: "God is not far from each of us; for in Him we live and move and are."

Thus St. Paul sets guardianship of man:

forth a threefold aspect of God's paternal First, He guides the brute creation, animate and inanimate, to a definite end for the good of man; secondly, He moulds the history of nations; thirdly, He shapes the life of the individual.

The conclusion to be drawn from all this evidence is too obvious to need expression, and therefore the Apostle does not express it. We may sum it up thus: Man is shown to be a dependent being; he has a Guardian; he is, consequently, a ward, with the rights, the duties, the obligations of a ward. Moreover, not only is man a ward, but he knows that he is a ward. Man knows, and cannot but know, his own dependence; for in every man in full possession of his reason there is begotten-spontaneously and inevitably-a knowledge, obscure indeed and confused, and yet withal unmistakable, of a Supreme Being watching over him, caring for him, teaching him right and wrong, threatening him for evil doing, promising reward for uprightness, so that he is led to grope after God and to find Him more clearly and know Him more explicitly through a consideration of the manifold blessings of Divine Providence.

1 To this "testimony" no race of men has ever been wholly blind. Taylor ("Primitive Culture," I., 384) says: "So far as I can judge from the immense mass of evidence, we have to admit that the belief in spiritual beings appears among all low races."

And C. P. Tiele ("Kompendium der Religiongeschechte," p. 7), the distinguished Assyriologist, declares that "no tribe or nation has ever been found which did not believe in beings greater than man, and that to assert the contrary is to be confuted by obvious facts."

Oskar Peschel, the noted ethnologist ("Völkerkunde," fifth ed., p. 260), having inquired whether or not anywhere on earth a tribe has been found entirely destitute of religious notions, answers: "Nowhere and never."

As Max Müller says pithily ("Science of Language," second series, p. 436): "All nations join in some way or other in the words of the Psalmist, 'It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.'"

II.

So much, in brief, for the historical or teleological argument for God's existence. We now pass on to a consideration of the Scriptural testimony to the value of the physical or cosmological argument. This is clearly set forth both in the Old and in the New Testament.

We take the older text first (Wisdom xiii., 1-10): "1. All men. are vain (fools) in whom there is not the knowledge of God; and who, by these good things that are seen, could not understand Him that is; neither, by attending to the works, have acknowledged who was the Workman. 2. But have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, to be gods that rule the world. 3. With whose beauty, if they being delighted, took them to be gods, let them know. how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they. For the First Author of beauty made all those things. 4. Or if they admired their power and their effects, let them understand by them that He who made them is mightier than they. 5. For by the splendour of creatures' beauty, the Creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby. 6. But yet (it may be objected) as to these they are less to be blamed. For they perhaps err, seeking God and desirous to find Him. 7. For being conversant among His works, they search; and they are persuaded that the things are good which are seen. 8. But then again (it is answered) they are not to be pardoned. 9. For if they were able to know so much as to make a judgment of the world, how did they not more easily find out the Lord thereof? 10. Therefore, unhappy are they and their hope is among the dead."

That is a striking passage indeed! It is couched, no doubt, in a rugged, old world style, but its argument is obvious and irresistible.

The New Testament text is from St. Paul to the Romans (i., 18-25), and runs thus: "18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice. 19. Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. 20. For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made; His eternal power also and divinity. So that they are inexcusable. 21. Because that when they knew God, they have not glorified Him as God, nor given thanks. But they became vain (they became fools) in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22. For professing themselves wise, they became fools. 23. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the