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hearts are one. Place never changes the Deity. God on his throne and God in Christian impulse are one in nature and design. Christians cannot suffer because others sin unless God suffers for the same reason. Christian experience pro

claims the suffering of God.

III. The reason from revelation. No array of scriptural texts is needed here. This is as much an inference, perhaps, as a direct statement. Some things are true that God has never orally said. It is well to note, however, that the first expression ascribed to God is one of pleasure; the second is of grief. The finished creation is pronounced "very good." The proclamation describes not only the creation, but also the feelings of the Creator. Anon it is said that the wickedness of man was great, and that it grieved God "at his heart." Forty years Israel grieved him in the desert. Grief without sorrow is not possible. He who has sorrow suffers. Will any suppose that the lives of Pharaoh and Moses, Paul and Nero, produced the same feelings in the divine nature? Will any hold they produced none? How can it be said Enoch "pleased God" and Israel " grieved" him, unless there be opposite feelings to describe? Does some one say "figures of speech?" Granted. But a figure of speech is filled to the brim with truth, when God uses it, plus an unknown quantity of the same truth, which the figure will not contain. Parables teach truth in kind, not degree. The figure falls short of the truth in measure, but never exaggerates it. How can one follow the Master in his humiliation, see him weep over the sinful city, watch his agony in the garden, hear his cry on the cross, remembering he is the brightness of his Father's glory and the image of his person-not in form but disposition-and that with him the Father is ever well pleased, and yet doubt that God suffers? Immanuel is the man of sorrows and the one acquainted with grief. If God does not suffer Jesus is not his representative. He is the "Son of man," but not the "Son of God." The one who doubts that God suffers must wait for some Christ who will know no sorrow, will not be grieved with the hardness of men's hearts, or hurt by their rejection-one who will not weep over the city he could not save because they would not. We believe Christ to be the highest possible reve

lation to man. Yet the most pathetic picture drawn by pen, the most sorrowful life drawn by men, is the life of the Godman. The most beautiful picture of God we have is a picture of the most loving, most suffering, divine-human Being the world will ever see. A Christ proclaims that God suffers.

From a loving mother, a thoughtful father, and an elegant home a youth departed. Going into sin, he tarnished his name and blighted his prospects. The home was just as lovely, but the boy was gone. A little girl stealing into her father's room caught him in tears. Climbing into his lap, putting her arms around his neck, she said, "I know why you cry. 'Cause John's away. Papa, I's sorry for you, but I's mad at John. Naughty John!" The home in which we live is the most beautiful on earth. Kindness unmeasured is the law in our Father's house. Yet from it there have gone so many of our Father's children that all the paths of vice are crowded by them. When sometimes we come near enough to get a glimpse of his face it is a face of sorrow that we see. Down it there course the tears of grief. The Father hath sorrow. We know why Jesus suffered so much. He is the elder brother, and knows the Father best. Our fellowship with the Son and with the Father is often the fellowship of his suffering. Our converse with God is not always joyous, though we joy in it. We are coming to blame John and feel for the Father, to censure the prodigal and pity the parent. We have pitied the sinner and censured the Father long enough. It is time our sympathies were touched for Him who rejoices, as none other can rejoice, when John comes home. In our best moments we are sorry for God. And when he wipes all tears from our eyes it will not be by taking away the disposition to feel and molding us in marble, but by removing all cause for grief. No tears in heaven will be a result and not a cause. Philosophy, analogy, and revelation unitedly proclaim that the greatest sufferer in the universe is the Father of us all. God suffers.

FB. Stockdale

ART. IX.-MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE AND ITS TENDENCIES.

FROM an article by Professor Kuhns in the Review for November-December, 1897, we quote the following: "Ancient literature was thoroughly objective; it flourished chiefly in the epic and drama. . . . To-day a great change has taken place; drama and epic are out of date. All literature is subjective, and this subjectivity finds its expression in lyrical poetry and the novel." Let the reader compare with these words a part of a paragraph from the fourth page of Dr. Wolff's History of the German Literature of To-day: "The drama occupies by far the most important place in our literary interest; the lyric, and particularly the epic, have taken subordinate positions. . . . The epic is practically dead. . . . The lyric, which in the earliest period of the various peoples was so well represented, is to-day on the decline. The drama alone . . . has unexhausted possibilities." The two sets of generalizations are hard to reconcile. That the latter approaches the more nearly the truth the following article will, so far as German literature is concerned, prove. It is our purpose to show briefly the trend of the German lyric, novel, and drama from the Second Classic Period to the FrancoPrussian War, to give a short account of the chief writers of the new German empire, and to conclude with a word on the tendencies of the German literature of to-day.

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Germany has produced two really great lyric poets, Walther and Goethe, the former of the thirteenth and the latter of the eighteenth century. In Goethe we find "the plastic, dramatic, and musical character of the primitive folkslied restored," and, besides, "the roots of a further development of the German lyric. Born of German life and spirit, his poems receive because of richness of form and fullness of action a classic stamp." On the other hand, the lyric of Schiller is largely didactic. "Nowhere else," we are told, "is the greatness of Germany's intellectual life so copiously revealed." The Earlier Romantic School, criticism tells us, followed Schiller, and the Later Romantic School, Goethe.

The poetry of Heine represents the highest development attained by the German lyric since the days of Goethe. Uhland, called "the classic of romanticis:n," "was more sincere in sentiment and more versatile in subject-matter, but was excelled by his contemporary in plastic power and melody. Körner and Arndt were the great lyric poets of the War of Liberation. If Körner's poems, which are brimful of patriotism, "represent the more brilliantly the war," Arndt's are "a truer expression of the folk character." Rückert and Platen complete the list of great lyric poets before the second half of our century. "Rückert wrote the most melodious verse to be found within the compass of German poetry," and Platen, "whose fame rests on the beauty of his versification," has been called the German Pindar.

In the third quarter of our century the most productive period of three great lyric poets falls. These are Geibel, Freiligrath, and Scheffel. Geibel, who was undoubtedly "the most lauded lyric poet of his day," and who may be considered one of the greatest literary artists Germany has produced, excels particularly "in perfection of form." Freiligrath, the German Whittier, the friend of England and America, and the translator of many English and American poems, and among others "Hiawatha," was "preeminently a poet of nature." "With glowing phantasy he reproduces her richness of color." Scheffel was the students' poet. Of all the poets who have contributed to the celebrated song book used by the German universities none has written so many or so popular student songs.

We have reached the Franco-Prussian War and the last period of German literature. A great war inspires poets and produces immortal poems. The War of Liberation had Körner and Arndt, whose patriotic songs will be sung as long as patriotism endures. The German nation hoped and expected that their struggle of 1870-71 would produce a Walther or a Goethe. Strange to say, however, the great lyric poets of the past quarter of a century are strikingly conspicuous by their absence. Of Germany's living lyric poets we think criticism awards the palm to Greif, Baumbach, and Liliencron. Greif understands well how to translate into poetic form "all

the feelings that move the human heart." Baumbach's poems have many of the characteristics possessed by those of Scheffel. Their favorite themes are, "wine, love, and delight in roving," and they excel in "humor, grace, and naturalness." He, too, has written hosts of student songs. During the past decade Liliencron has come into so great favor that he may be considered Germany's most popular lyric poet. One of the chief factors in German end-of-the-century life is the German army, and Liliencron, a retired captain, is the singer of the German army. The three lyric poets of to-day have great merit; however, they fall so far below the lyric poets of the Second Classic Period of the first half of our century, and even of the generation preceding the Franco-Prussian War, that they receive no great amount of consideration.

One of the important questions of modern criticism is, Why the decline in the lyric? A well-known authority says that of the various causes the two which have worked most potently are steam and electricity, with all the myriads of inventions based upon them. They have forced the lyric "from the magic realms of moonlit splendor into the glaring light of modern life," and deprived it of the most beautiful motifs which characterize the poetic gems of earlier days.

Goethe was Germany's first preeminently great writer of the novel. His Werther, Elective Affinities, and Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship have exerted a powerful influence on the Teutonic world. Again, criticism gives to Goethe the credit of having brought to a more perfect form the novelette, which has become so popular in the nineteenth century, and which bids fair to become the dominant literary form of futurity. Romanticism followed classicism. Francke tells us that the spirit of romanticism is best represented in three novels by three leading romanticists: Tieck's William Lovell, Schlegel's Lucinde, and Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Tieck, the greatest of the trio, is one of the chief figures of German literature. He was dramatist, dramaturgist, translator, and novelist. Both his novels and his novelettes belong to the best fiction of his time.

Of the novelists whose greatest literary activity falls in the third quarter of our century the most prominent are Reuter,

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