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I may extract-more, however, for its intrinsic beauty than as an illustration of the above remark-Tennyson's charming translation of perhaps the most imaginative simile in the Iliad:

"As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful; when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart;
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty, in the blaze of burning fire;
And, champing golden grain, the horses stood
Hard by their chariots, waiting for the dawn."

To the later poets of Greece the same character may be ascribed. They grew refined, musical, full of spirit, grace, and vivacity. But their highest flight reached but to the borders of the unseen world. We find them nowhere passing that intangible limit or grasping the key to the door of the infinite. The picture of the poet which Shakspere draws applies only to our modern bard. It is his verse alone which is filled with the pure idealism of thought. Despite the physical limitation of so much of our poetry, it may justly be claimed the indwelling spirit of modern verse is what we may call its metaphysical power, its inner illumination by that magic lustre, "the light that never was on sea or land." The world of thought as well as the world of sense is deeply searched for its treasures and its far-reaching analogies. The poet no longer stands upon the firm shores of thought, but plunges into the infinitudes of time, space, and circumstance,

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"The deeds that stubborn mortals do

In this disordered nook of Jove's domain, All find their meed; and there's a judge below Whose hateful doom inflicts th' inevitable pain.

O'er the good, soft suns awhile,

Through the mild day, the night serene, Alike with cloudless lustre smile,

Tempering all the tranquil scene.
Theirs is leisure: tempt not they
Stubborn soil or watery way,

To wring from toil Want's worthless bread;
No ills they know, nor tears they shed,
But with the glorious gods below

Ages of peace contented share.
Meanwhile the bad, in bitterest woe,
Eye-startling tasks and endless tortures bear.
All, whose steadfast virtue thrice

Each side the grave unchanged has stood, Still unseduced, unstained with vice,

They, by Jove's mysterious road, Pass to Saturn's realm of rest, Happy Isle, that holds the blest; Where sea-born breezes gently blow O'er blooms of gold that round them glow, Which nature boon from stream or strand Or goodly tree profusely showers; Whence pluck they many a fragrant band, And braid their locks with never-fading flowers."

It is not necessary to enter into a description of the peculiar features of the realms of pain and bliss here poetically indicated. Any work on Greek mythology will give a conception of the utter lack of ideality in the ancient Tartarus and Elysium, in which the poet here finds the future home of the bad and the good. These lines, no doubt, are graceful and picturesque. But their range of thought is strictly limited. Let us compare them

with a modern treatment of an antique theme, that in which Tennyson describes the wanderings of Ulysses:

"I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees. I am become a name.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin
fades

Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on
life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."

of

This is not the Greek tone. The Ulysses of Homer was possessed by no such divine thirst for knowledge, no such yearning for the beyond. There is an outreach thought here which would be sought in vain within the tomes of ancient verse, a flowing over the bounds of time and space, and an aspiration for a something beyond the reach of sense which no Greek would have understood.

It may be well to give another illustration. I may compare an extract from the pathetic elegy of Moschus on the death of Bion with a parallel extract from Shelley's imaginative elegy on the death of Keats. Thus the Greek poet sweetly deplores his. dead friend :

"Ye woods, with grief your waving summits bow;

Ye Dorian fountains, murmur as ye flow,
From weeping urns your copious sorrows shed,
And bid the rivers mourn for Bion dead;
Ye shady groves, in robes of sable hue
Bewail; ye plants, in pearly drops of dew;
Ye drooping flowers, diffuse a languid breath,
And die with sorrow at sweet Bion's death;
Ye roses, change from red to sickly pale;
And, all ye bright anemones, bewail.
Ye nightingales, that perch among the sprays,
Tune to melodious elegy your lays,
And bid the streams of Arethuse deplore
Bion's sad fate; loved Bion is no more;
Nor verse nor music could his life prolong.
He died, and with him died the Doric song."

This is pretty, pathetic, but physical in its tone. It clings to visible nature as if it dared not let go its hold on the tangible. Compare it with Shelley's bold outlaunch into the infinitudes of thought :

"The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly;

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,

Stains the white radiance of eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.-Die,

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek;

Follow where all is fled!-Rome's azure sky,

Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng

Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven; I am borne darkly, fearfully afar,

Whilst, burning through the inmost vail of Heaven,

The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."

This spirit of outreach into the illimitable nowhere exists in the verse of Greek poets. Their songs are built on the plane of the senses. They show us nothing of the spirit instinct in the flesh, of the soul that burns To them the world is a through the sense.

mighty appearance, the universe a vast exterior. The poetic remains of Greece, like the ruins of its sculpture, appear

"Strange fragments

Of forms once held divine, and still, like angels, Immortal everywhere."

But the spirit of modern poetry is like the genius of the Arabian fisherman, escaping from the open casket of verse in gliding vapor before the eyes of its uncultured possessor, but to eyes of deeper vision gathering into majestic and sublime forms, all whose strength and beauty no eye can fathom.

There remains still to be considered that highest phase of human thought, that deepest reach into the kingdom of the abstract which the soul of man is capable of making; namely, the conception of Deity. In this search for the infinite we leave furthest behind us the realm of the material and

gain the extremest depth behind the veil of sense; and, in comparing the power of races for abstract thought, we may truly say, "By their gods shall ye know them."

Yet even in this loftiest phase of abstraction the thought of Greece was based on the physical plane. Their deities were simply invisible men and women, without even the virtue of being free from a single human weakness.

Religion is absolute faith, boundless hope, unlimited love.”—B. Fay Mills.

THE PASSING OF REV. HEZEKIAH

WARREN.

BY REV. MATTHEW LOCK.

Warren entered the Harvard Divinity School in the fall of '77. This was prior to the days of the higher criticism, and when the old thought had still an existence, if not a life.

The first glimpse I had of Warren was on the day of his arrival from Chicago. He was sitting in the passage-way of the third story of Divinity Hall. It was a warm September day,- too hot, in fact. Yet there he sat, wrapped in a blanket and quilt, and shaking as if he were out in the open air on a cold winter's day, in his summer clothing. "What's the matter?" I asked.

"Fever and ague," was the chattering reply.

"But why are you not in bed?" "They-are-fixing-up-my-room."

When his room, No. 30, was ready, I put him to bed, and begged him to stay there. "What can I get you? A doctor?" "No.

Ice! Lemons! Ice !"

After seeing him as comfortable as possible, I went down to the Square, and got ice and lemons and quinine. I nursed him as well as I could, and in two weeks he was well at work again.

This introduction made us fast friends until the day of Warren's death.

I do not think that my friend was cut out for a great philosopher or theologian, yet he was a good student. And he had in him the making of a good preacher.

In Hebrew his standing was low, in theology and philosophy passable, in general literature good. When, however, we met in the old chapel, and it was Warren's turn to preach, the sermon was one of the best.

We were, therefore, not surprised when before graduation Warren was called to one of our best churches in New Hampshire. Under his ministry the old church took on new life. A Sunday evening service was established, and the people filled the church. The Sunday-school increased in numbers and interest. Warren had the teachers meet regularly once a week to study the lessons for the following Sunday. changed the socials from the old gossip shops into club dinners, to which he invited

He

good speakers. In this way he made his parish acquainted with the ministers of our larger cities. There was a glow of life to the old parish, root and branch. And, to cap Warren's happiness, he fell in love with a most estimable lady, and she with him. It was no obstacle to their union that the lady had a yearly income of not less than $2,000.

In the fall of 18- the National Conference was held at Saratoga. Warren wrote inviting me to stop over for a few days with him on my way to Saratoga. As I was glad of the opportunity to visit him, I left home the week before the Conference, and arrived at Optimusville on Friday. But what a change in Warren! He was stout. He was slow in every movement. Instead of walking to his house, we took a carriage. Almost the first thing he said to me was that he was dieting, though I saw no signs of it at any time during my visit. His health also was a subject of too much of our conversation. wondered how all this came about. I therefore did all I could to get Warren to tell me about his work,-how many services he had on Sunday, about his Sunday-school, and the social gatherings.

I

I found out that he had given up the Sunday evening service. One sermon on Sunday morning was all the congregation cared for; and, in fact, they wished that to be short. It was also desirable to have the prayers as short as decency would permit. As for the singing, that was left wholly with a paid quartette.

"The fact is," said Warren, "I do not interfere in that matter at all. The leader is a trained musician. He shows great taste in his selections."

I asked, partly out of a spirit of opposition, "Does he show wisdom as well as taste?"

"What do you mean ?"

"I mean this, Warren: do his selections contradict every word you say in your sermon ?"

"Not quite, but sometimes the harmony is not all it ought to be. Now and then we do have 'Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.""

"And how about the Sunday-school?"

"Well, the truth is that I pitched into the Sunday-school with too much vim at first. I had a Bible class. I spoke to the school

before the close of the session. We had teachers' meetings, but I had to give this all up. The superintendent rather liked to manage things in the Sunday-school himself, and the social engagements of the teachers made regular teachers' meetings impossible. So it was! I let things have their way, and I am out of it."

"But, if you keep on, you'll be out of everything. You'll be only a figure-head."

"Possibly so, Mark; but it gives me time for reading."

"Yes; but we ministers ought to have something more to do than to read, read, read. There are the finances."

"Indeed! and I presume all this builds up the churches, and makes the conference meetings of great interest?"

"I can't say that you state the case as it is. Things are just so,-so. They run along. Besides, I do not feel now as if I had the health to take a more active part in outside work or to take upon me any great burdens."

Together we went to Saratoga, where Warren enjoyed himself, not by attending the meetings, but by indulging in the delightful excursions got up for the benefit of those who would help the cause by putting themselves beyond reach of knowing what

"Oh, the Parish Committee takes care of is demanded of them. all that."

"Well, the young people's meetings?" "The young people look after them. They don't like to be interfered with."

"The social gatherings?"

"Oh, as to them, the ladies prefer to manage them."

"The conferences?" in sheer desperation I exclaimed, "the local conferences ?"

With much composure Warren replied,"We have settled down in our conferences to the exquisite pleasure of hearing the continual roaring of a few of our prominent lions."

I was not going to return home by the route by which I came. So at the close of the conference I bade Warren good-by. As I did so, I made a mental comment to this effect: "Old man" (Warren was not old, but I so thought of him), "you can't keep this up."

I had no idea that my thought would meet with a confirmation as soon as it did. For I was home only a few weeks when word came to me that Warren was dead,-died of apoplexy.

THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE

OF UNITARIAN AND OTHER

CHRISTIAN CHURCHES.

confer with many minds promotes

Tliberality of thought. Saratoga, while

it offers no local field for missionary extension, does provide more than any other place the opportunity for a vast amount of individual personal conference.

In this way, younger ministers can enjoy the privilege of listening to the confidential talk of the fathers of our faith, and the fathers can hear, often with considerable astonishment, the inspiring hopes and expectations of their youthful juniors; while the members of prudential committees and other pillars of church properties can become acquainted with the trials of their fellow burden-bearers and their methods of alleviation.

An immense amount of the most practical kind of beneficial influence is thus generated, and we are inclined to make our first note read:

IN ELECTING CHURCH OFFICERS, LET IT BE UNDERSTOOD THAT EACH MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE IS EXPECTED TO ATTEND THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE.

This seventeenth meeting of the Conference opened on Monday evening, September 20, with quite a large gathering in Convention Hall at Saratoga. Dr. Robert Collyer offered the opening prayer. Rev. M. O. Simons read very impressively the magnifi cent fortieth chapter of Isaiah, and then Rev. Reed Stuart delivered a modern sermon that

might take its place with many of the great utterances of the prophets of old. We give all our readers the privilege of feeling the thrill of spiritual inspiration one cannot miss who reads this ideal discourse, by printing it in full in this issue. It is a plea for broader vision, for less petty measuring of insignificant and material details, and for more willing submission of the soul to the divinest influences. "One flashing moment of intimation that life is immortal is worth more to a soul than threescore years and ten of learning all there is to know about dollars and cents."

LET THE REPORT OF THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE BE READ FROM THE PULPIT OF EVERY UNITARIAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY AS AN OPEN LETTER

OF ENCOURAGEMENT AND ADVICE.

We presume Mr. Savage wrote the report himself, as it rings from end to end with the power and earnestness that always seem to cling to his vigorous speech.

This report, which sounded more like "orders for the day" than a dead report, was admirably followed by the secretary of the American Unitarian Association, Rev.

Our next note we address to the Council George Batchelor, in an address in which and managing secretary :

LET THERE BE USHERS.

When the devotional services are interrupted from opening to close with a constant incoming of laughing and chatting delegates who do not expect to be in time for the service of worship, but hope to secure good seats for the following exercises, it is well to alter the arrangements, and this irreverent confusion could be easily avoided if there were ushers instructed not to admit any one during prayer or address. Some simple strips of carpet or matting down the aisles might also be provided, with great benefit to us all. We were told that no preparation was made for the devotional exercises, not even a Bible provided for the men who had been invited to conduct the services.

Even at the communion service on Tuesday morning the continual interruptions by late arrivals made it impossible to enter into the spirit of the sacred service.

At the opening of the business part of the Conference the president, Senator Hoar, made a telling address, welcoming all "whose faces were turned toward the light, whose hearts were open to God." He gave some compact advice to both laymen and ministers. To the laymen he said he would ask them to make a contribution,— a contribution of that good old-fashioned virtue called "zeal." He wanted the ministers to stop giving definitions of all things under heaven, and preach more about practical godliness.

The chairman of the Council, Rev. Minot J. Savage, then read the report of the council, which was more vigorous, emphatic, and practical than any previous reports for many years; and our next note must be :

he emphasized the position of the Church in the world as a "master force," representing the "commanding things" of life as no other organization does, and appealed to the individual parishes to provide the means by which the American Unitarian Association as the chief missionary body, can go forward to larger works.

The business on which committees reported at this session was altogether confined to proposals for endowing the New World, a quarterly periodical which promotes scholarship in philosophy, the higher criticism, the scientific study of religion, and other valuable fields of inquiry. thoroughly believe in this good work, as we do in all other scholarly and literary publications; but our note on the subject must necessarily, for both practical and truly scientific reasons, read :

We

WHEN EVERY FAMILY IN EACH OF OUR PARISHES SUBSCRIBES FOR THE "UNITARIAN," THEN LET THE MINISTERS ENCOURAGE THE SUPPORT OF THE "NEW WORLD."

The meeting of the Women's Alliance was one of the most enthusiastic gatherings of the week. Mrs. B. Ward Dix, Mrs. Emily A. Fifield, Miss Florence Everett, Mrs. R. H. Davis, and Rev. Florence Buck were the principal speakers. The last two speakers were particularly eloquent, and moved the audience to great enthusiasm.

Rev. E. A. Horton presided at the mass meeting on Tuesday evening, and in a few brilliant words of introduction called attention to the vast opportunities of our Sundayschools and young people's societies. Rev. W. W. Fenn, Miss Lucy Wheelock, Rev. Thomas Van Ness, and Rev. John M. Pull

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