certain feeling of an He has, so to speak, which has hitherto been able to give a oneness to the whole, so that you read on from page to page with a underlying continuity of thought. opened a few eyeholes in the wall hid Mr. Ruskin from the mass of reading Englishmen, so that now a pretty clear glimpse of his spiritual life may be obtained, if no full and complete survey be possible. It is well surely that each one be free to fill his pitcher at a fountain which has for long been sending forth such rich and refreshing streams, and to distribute it within the circle of his own influence. It is hoped this selection may be more and more widely read; and find a place on many a working man's shelf along with the works of Robertson of Brighton, and Mr. Maurice-good friends of the people both. And with this last good wish I take leave of the subject. ADDENDA. HISTORICAL CHRISTIANITY. They SOME people of the very keen logical cast, I am very well aware, would be ready to point out a lurking contradiction or inconsistency in the text here. would remind me, doubtless, that the most historical of all systems is the Christian-that more than any other it depends for its power over the memories and hearts of men on the direct testimony borne to it by the doings and especially the miracles of its Sacred Founder, when he walked about on earth at once "a glory" and a reproof to our race. While willing to admit that those facts on which the greatest stress has been laid in order to logically establish His Divine claims are of vast importance, it may yet be permitted me to point out that it was quite on other facts of a more spiritual, properly mystical, or at all events strictly individual character that He himself always sought to base his essential claims as a Divine teacher. “If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe though one rose from the dead." And again when speaking to the disciples of removing mountains, He said, referring to conversion-"Greater miracles than these shall ye do." Indeed, it is a most remarkable fact, and one that has been sadly missed sight of by those who have written logical treatises on "Miracles" and "Evidences of Christianity," that conversion, the true all-including miracle, preceded historical miracle proper that Peter and Andrew were called and followed our Saviour before water was turned into wine, lepers cleansed or the dead raised up. When this fact is considered thoughtfully, it might then perhaps occur to one whether it is not possible that our Lord's miracles have another purpose than conversion. At this point the quaintly-expressed desire of Sir Thomas Browne to have been born under the dispensation of the Patriarchs, that he might have had some room for the exercise of his faith, suggests itself, and it is certainly not without meaning for the people who reason logically from the miracles, if they would only for a little time exercise faculties a degree loftier in character than the logical ones. That mystical union with the Father which permitted no form of logical proof because it scorned all reference to tests of reason, which could present no evidence HISTORICAL CHRISTIANITY. 247 higher than its own holy presence, and by its mere presence condemned the Jews for seeking after a sign, was the great all-including fact in which miracles, or, indeed, anything involving the idea of the assertion of an outgo of conscious personality, was swallowed up. To discern its presence was matter not of the universal reason, but of the individual heart and conscience. And so it remains. In one very strict and very deeply significant sense, Christianity, though influencing the history of the world, yet itself remains unhistoricala thing appealing purely to the individual soul, and resting its claims for reception upon those mystical relations which underlie, and yet remove themselves away from contact with, all those civil and political elements which make up the body of public history. As we are bound to believe that a true church still exists in the world, so we are bound to believe that the spirit of all miracle is still powerfully present with men -a fact which is tacitly admitted when even two or three meet for worship, when they pray together, and when, above all, a specially anointed servant of God stands up to proclaim the Gospel of Reconciliation. Thus the age of miracles still exists; and while we are talking or writing eloquently of "miracles " in the past, we might and ought to be doing "greater miracles than these" in the living present. But here as elsewhere, men are apt to take form for spirit, shadow for substance, Time for Eternity, and thus |