previous influences of the Sanctifier" (Bishop of Ely, ut supra, page 622). So Waterland: "Regeneration may be granted and received (as in infants) where renovation has yet no place for the time being." Again: "Regeneration and renovation differ in respect to the effective cause or agency; for one is the work of the Spirit in the use of water, that is, of the Spirit singly, since water really does nothing, is no agent at all; but the other is the work of the Spirit and the man together." And this agrees with St. Paul: "We are buried with him by Baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead, even so we also should walk in newness of life." He says we should walk, not do walk. That is, Baptism is the new birth unto righteousness, not righteousness itself. It is the new birth, and that is the beginning of the Christian life; renovation, or sanctification, is the work of the life that follows that beginning.

Here we are obliged to stop with this exhibition of the conditions of the Christian life and its commencement; our limits will not allow us to follow it out from its beginning. That life is the practical activity of the spirit, working out its own salvation in union with the Spirit of God; carried on in communion with the Church; nourished by participation in all its means of grace, and by constant intercourse with God through prayer. Always it is a spiritual life; that is, the moral life, not simply as such, but taken up into a higher plane, transformed into a higher consciousness. For the reality of this spiritual life we can appeal to the religious consciousness; that consciousness will respond, and its answer is as reliable as that of the moral consciousness to Mr. Arnold's appeal in behalf of an abstract "power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness."

Hasty and incomplete as this view of the Christian revelation and life has been, it yet may serve our purpose in these papers, which is to show, first, by the "revelation," that Christianity is not

with the preëxistent life. (2) Halıyyeveola occurs in Matt. xix. 28, in a tropical sense, unknown in classical usage, for "renovation," the renovation of all things at the last day, when "there shall be new heavens and a new earth." This secondary and derivative sense is commonly confused with the literal and primary sense, namely, new birth, and so baptismal regeneration is taken to signify moral renovation; thus Baptism is "made not only the seal of the new birth, but the sacrament of progressive sanctification." That is, birth is confounded with the subsequent life. A common but erroneous reading of Titus, iii. 5, which makes ȧvakaiwσɛwç depend upon lovтpov, makes St. Paul favor this view; but see Alford in loco. We hold him to be thoroughly sound in understanding διά again before ἀνακαινώσεως.

merely one of many religions, out of which the true religion is to be constructed with much painstaking and study,' but that if it is anything, it is itself the one true religion, self-complete, and absolutely exclusive of others; and, secondly, by the "life," to show that Christianity is not mere morality, that the essential element in Christianity is something else than morality, and that in such a reduction of it as Mr. Arnold attempts, to mere morality, or even to "morality touched by emotion," Christianity utterly evaporates.

'We may add to our former references to the advocates of this theory, Johnson's "Oriental Religions" (Introduction).

WITH every civilized people, art is an essential element. Like

the flower of the plant, it expands only at a certain maturing stage of life. Of whatever kind and character that is, the art of a nation must also be. As the flower might be called the essence of a plant, in the same manner is art the essence of a people's character and mental life-not, indeed, the only exponent of it, but certainly not an insignificant one. We may, therefore, justly say that the art of a people and the art of a given age exhibit the characteristics of that people or age. It grew from the people. It is a part of the people. It reflects popular modes of thought and feeling to no slight extent. Let a person think little or much of art, have a living interest in the same, or none, its value as an exponent of a people's character, and its reacting influence upon that character, cannot reasonably be denied or doubted.

If Mr. Ruskin's definition be accepted, art is the conjoint product of the whole man,-heart, head, and hand; the heart, the affections, giving the impulse, the intellect directing this impulse, and the hand executing, as a ready and fitting instrument. And if the artist, as of a necessity he must be, is a child of his age and nation, educated and marked by the family traits, we cannot expect of him an emancipation from that which distinguishes the age in which he lives, or the nation to which he belongs. Egyptian art emphatically

belonged to Egypt, Greek to Greece, Mediæval to the age of religious chivalry. And so, also, English, French, German, and American art have their peculiarities, which are not to be mistaken or confused together.

If these observations appear like those truisms which everybody is ready to admit, they are still not altogether out of place for the treatment of our subject. It has often occurred to the writer that there seems to exist, even among thinking persons, but a vague idea of the importance of contemporaneous art as a faithful mirror and exponent of the age. They scan current literature for lineaments of the inner life of thought, emotion, and morals in the community. They read, in popular theology, philosophy, and fiction, every shade of change that passes over society. They note, in the problems of daily life agitating the masses, signs of the times which it would be foolhardy not to study with earnest consideration. But art is either deemed of too little consequence, both as an impulse to, and a reflector of, mental life; or else her power, being veiled within the enchantments of beauty, steals over the analyzing intellect with a harmless and playful caprice, which may be indulged like the freaks of a handsome pupil by a sedate schoolmaster, who has not fortitude enough to correct the fairy. But if artists, like poets, are privileged characters, children of fancy who must have indulgence, what they say and do takes, nevertheless, a strange hold upon the people; all the more so if they fall in with the people's hobbies, with popular thinking, popular morals, habits, notions, and estimations. Popular speakers are only the people's mouthpieces. So, popular artists reproduce the people's fancies. "Artists must not expect that the people will buy what the artists like, unless artists first paint what the people like," once wrote a popular orator, famous for feeling the people's pulse, and uttering his oracles accordingly. Upon this sage advice, perhaps, too many artists are willing to exert themselves for filthy lucre's sake. Certain it is, that few are found, in any age, of iron hardiness sufficient to resist to the last, and for the sake of weighty truth, the temptations of fame or money. If a William Blake remains loyal to his reputation, he must be, to the wondering world, a sort of lunatic; and he may be assured of martyrdom. However, mentally isolated men are only expositors of themselves and their own mode of conceiving and depicting truth. Of the really useful man, it is required that he be in sympathy with his age; not like a sphinx of the past, looking, in dreary solemnity, from his bed of sand upon the rushing rail-train with its mock thunder. Aye, in sympathy!—yet not

with what is contrary to truth, to Divine will; not with the vicious craving, the shallow vanity, the sceptical selfishness of the age. The question is a plain one: "Is the artist designed to be a leader or a lackey?" It may be said that there can be but few leaders, as well among artists as in other pursuits. True indeed; but not to the extent imagined. Leadership, after all, is a thing of degrees, just as it is in an army. There are the corporal and the commanding general, and between them many useful and necessary grades. So, also, in society, in intellect, in morals, and in religion. Does not the fault consist in the failure of artists to recognize the Heavenappointed leadership of their profession? Has not the sacredness of their vocation been eclipsed by the love of gain, or fame, or public demand? Have they, as a whole, really a lofty object, of which they are humbly and, we may say, religiously conscious? Can the declaration of an ancient worthy be, in any sense, applied to a considerable number? "We painters occupy ourselves entirely in tracing saints on the walls and on the altars, in order that, by this means, men, to the great despite of the demons, may be more drawn. to virtue and piety." Is not rather the sweeping condemnation of Mr. Ruskin a mournful truth? "The artist is created an observer and an imitator, and his function is to convey knowledge to his fellow-men. For a long time, this function remained a religious one; it was to impress upon the popular mind the reality of the objects of faith, and the truth of the histories of Scripture, by giving visible form to both. That function has now passed away, and none has, as yet, taken its place. The painter has no profession, no purpose. He is an idler on the earth, chasing the shadows of his own fancies. But he was never meant to be this."

1

Reluctantly the great art-critic acknowledges the glaring fact. Yet it is not a recent one. With blinded severity of judgment, Protestantism has been called "a failure." It must be confessed that, in this matter of art also, there are evidences of revolution, rather than reformation. The confusion of ideas and sentiment wrought there, date back into the classic revival of the fifteenth century. Prior to that, the testimony of an eminent writer, of unquestionable authority, is to the effect that "the artist who felt conscious of his high vocation, considered himself the auxiliary of the preacher; and, in the constant struggle that man has to sustain against his evil inclinations, he always took the side of virtue."