To the dull, blind skeptic few, who think, with the rough surgeon in Tennyson's poem "In the Hospital," that "the good Lord Jesus has had his day," Gilder speaks his powerful resisting word in "The Passing of Christ." He wants to know if they really think that the fierce rays of science which search through every cranny show nothing divine left on the earth; that because there are no physical miracles the Holy One is gone; that the Son of God, the Hope and Saviour of men, has been hurled from the throne of the hearts of the world? He asks if they mean to say that he who made birth holy and brought to the eyes of death visions of heavenly light; who looked through shame and sin and saw sanctity lingering or germinant within; who spoke the tenderest, truest words that sorrow has ever heard, and gladdened a world of men; whose life and death and memory have sanctified the earth, have been the stay and support of millions of noble lives, and have led the world on an upward path-do they say that he has lost his hold and is passing from power? To all such despairing deniers of our Lord this poet opposes a strenuous affirmative answer:

Ah no!

Behold Him now where he comes!

Not the Christ of our subtile creeds,

But the Lord of our hearts, of our homes,

Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs;

The brother of want and blame,

The lover of women and men

With a love that puts to shame
All passions of mortal ken;

'Tis he, as none other can,
Makes free the spirit of man,

And speaks in darkest night

One word of awful light,

That strikes, through the dreadful pain

Of life, a reason sane

That word divine which brought

A universe from naught.

Ah no, thou life of the heart,

Never shalt thou depart!

Not till the leaven of God

Shall lighten each human clod;

Not till the world shall climb

To thy height, serene, sublime,

Shall the Christ who enters our door

Pass to return no more.

If aught seems lacking in the words used or the titles accorded here to Jesus Christ, one can easily and plainly learn from Gilder's Christmas hymn and Easter verses and other poems that he whom the angels sang, and the shepherds went to find, and the wise men sought and worshiped, and who left an empty tomb where he had lain dead, was the Lord of heaven and earth, the King of kings, the Son of God and Saviour of mankind.

By far the most widely and frequently quoted of all that Gilder has written is his poem of only eight lines, entitled "The Song of a Heathen." The poet supposes this heathen man to be a sojourner in Galilee in the year 32 of the Christian era. He has heard the conflicting reports which filled the land concerning the strange Prophet, the mysterious Teacher who journeys to and fro, and who is by some reprobated and denounced as a political schemer, an impostor, an evildoer, and by others called a messenger from God, the true Messiah, the longexpected Redeemer. One feels that this thoughtful and reasoning heathen who speaks must have seen Jesus; perhaps has mingled somewhere in the crowd that thronged about him, looking upon his impressive face and listening to his wonderful words, and then has gone away to brood and ponder over it all until at last his captive soul utters its confession in these decisive words:

If Jesus Christ is a man

And only a man-I say

That of all mankind I cleave to him,

And to him will I cleave alway.

If Jesus Christ is a God

And the only God-I swear

I will follow him through heaven and hell,
The earth, the sea, and the air!

Although Gilder does not say so, it is left to us to perceive, what is perfectly plain, that the heathen man's affirmation contains a great doctrine and befits all thoughtful and reasonable men alike, from the first Christian century down to the twentieth and on to the end of earth's history. "What think ye of Christ?" is a question which no age and no intelligent race can ever let alone. It will not let them alone; it forces itself on every tribe and nation; it will finally hunt down and confront every human being on the earth, for to this end the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. To this insistent question one hears

numerous and widely differing answers given. It is sometimes intellectually confusing to hear what the many voices say. With the fine shadings of definition between those who almost agree and the point-blank opposition of those who vehemently differ, the listener is sometimes bewildered and perplexed in mind, and at a loss how to choose among the varying views. But practically he should not be at any loss. The push of Gilder's resolute poem is to the point that only one course is really open to the man who seriously considers Christ and reflects on all that is written and said of him.

For on the lowest of all decent estimates of Jesus there is but one thing for the rational and earnest soul to do, and that is to follow him. At the end of all dispute, and after all reductions and detractions, there remains enough of mysterious majesty, of singular purity, of lofty wisdom, and of superhuman love to command reverence and bind in affectionate attachment all sincere and thoughtful men. If a searching, weighing, and balancing mind stands and listens all down the line from right to left, from the most conservative orthodoxy to the most unbridled and venturesome heresy, to all that is said concerning the nature, mission, and power of Christ, the only respectable and sane conclusion that is possible at last must amount substantially to this: "I have listened, and pondered, and prayed. And now for myself I say, I hold to Jesus Christ. Him must I follow and obey. He is my soul's central orb. If only he will take me along with him, and turn my night to day, and give me warmth and light, why, he shall be my sun, I will be his satellite." That is what Gilder's heathen said in Galilee in A. D. 32. That is what every serious-minded, fair-minded human being ought to say to-day.

Doubtless the reverent spirit, decisive faith, and forcible right-reasoning of this poet are measurably due to heredity and early nurture. It is his honor to be the son of Rev. William H. Gilder, a member of the New York East Conference, whose patriotism and self-sacrifice and Christian devotion are tenderly sung, though without mention of his name, in the fourteen verses entitled "Pro Patria." Like his divine Master, he laid down his life for others, dying that he might minister comfort to human misery. The chaplain of the Fortieth New York Volunteers, he voluntarily entered the army smallpox hospital at Brandy Station, Va., to care for the suffering soldiers, and himself died

there of the foul disease on April 13, 1863. Of this Christian martyr the son sings, filially and proudly:

Life was to him most dear-home, children, wife-
But, dearer still than life,

Duty-that passion of the soul which from the sod
Alone lifts man to God.

The pesthouse entering fearless-stricken he fearless fell,
Knowing that all was well;

The high mysterious Power whereof mankind has dreamed
To him not distant seemed.

No one can wonder that to all the sons and daughters of godly ancestry, children of parents passed into the skies, this gifted and prophetic singer writes:

Despise not thou thy father's ancient creed !
Of his pure life it was the golden thread
Whereon bright days were gathered bead by bead,
Till death laid low that dear and reverend head.
From olden faith how many a glorious deed

Hath lit the world; its blood-stained banner led
The martyrs heavenward; yea, it was the seed

Of knowledge, whence our modern freedom spread.
Not often has man's credo proved a snare-

But a deliverance, a sign, a flame

To purify the dense and pestilent air,

Writing on pitiless heavens one pitying Name;

And 'neath the shadow of the dread eclipse

It shines on dying eyes and pallid lips.

Nor is it strange that a minister's son should have the compassionate heart, the sensitive conscience, and the sense of responsibility which ask:

O, how shall I help to right the world which is going wrong?
And what can I do to hurry the promised time of peace?
The day of work is short and the night of sleep is long;
And whether to pray or preach, or whether to sing a song,
To plow in my neighbor's field, or to seek the golden fleece,
Or to sit with my hands in my lap, and wish for ill to cease!

The world knows that this poet has not folded idle hands, nor sat in selfish ease, nor sought the golden fleece, neglecting the needs of mankind, but has remembered the forgotten, and gone down into the slums, crucifying æsthetic tastes and delicate sensibilities, and toiling to the last limit of strength for the purifying of human homes and the bettering of human lives, for the possible saving of the bodies and souls of his brothers and sisters for whom, as well, Christ died.

THE ARENA.

IDEALISTIC THEISM.

THE facility with which speculative writers are transforming the religion of the nineteenth century into pantheism is transcended only by the supreme indifference manifested by the general Church at this sacrifice of old-time orthodoxy. This stolidity may in part be accounted for on the ground that, as Hume said, "We may not be able to disprove the theory of idealism, yet it makes no difference, as the doctrine produces no impression upon the mind." If a topic is clearly beyond the reach of our faculties, as whether or not Mars is inhabited, neither affirmations nor denials amount to anything. More likely the Church remains undisturbed by the strides this gigantic heresy is making because clergymen in general, as well as laymen, know but little of the drift of current speculative philosophy. The speculators control the magazines, and the weekly religious press discreetly preserves the profoundest silence on all abstruse themes.

...

The January-February number of the Review for 1898 contains the following language, which gives us the basal idea of an elaborate article by Professor G. A. Coe on this subject: "Undoubtedly the analysis of knowledge brings us to idealism in the sense of recognizing personal existence as the only real existence, and to monism in the sense of positing a single being who is somehow the immanent ground of all beings. If things are something more than mere ideas, and if the basal reality is an absolutely pervasive personality, nonpersonal things must be understood as functions of this being, in other words, as acts of will." Hence, if the idealists' theory of knowledge be correct, then we must conceive the universe to exist as follows: One "single being" exists, and only one; this "single being" embraces in himself, or is "the immanent ground of all beings." This one "personal existence" is "the only real existence," and all "nonpersonal things must be understood as . . . acts of will." The "basal reality is an absolutely pervasive personality." It follows that mind is not substance, not individuality, but is an "act of will," a phenomenon of the one "universal mind," and its intelligence is a fragment, more or less, of the universal intelligence. It is held that knowledge is being, "taking hold of itself." Being is thus conceived to be at the same time both subjective and objective. Being is subjective to its own thought exalted into objective being, and thought is subjective to being degraded into the objective; and this one "personal existence," this "universal mind," this "single being," this "absolutely pervasive personality," whose "acts of will" from moment to moment constitute the worlds about us, we are taught to regard as the God we worship, and worship as the reflex "acts" of God upon