For some reason or other the contractor from Venice never turned up, and one of the local newspapers emitted an angry growl," We told you how it would be. What could you expect if you insisted on employing a contractor from Venice instead of encouraging local talent?" Next night, however, I suppose he had made his appearance; at any rate, for some hours the bang of rockets was ever in one's ears, and their quickly scattered brilliancy mocked the silent stars. But much more grateful to my sense of sight than these commonplace signs of rejoicing were the long lines of lamps which bordered the banks of the Natisone. If one could only have had the moon's rays to bring out the lights and shadows of the beautiful pictures seen from the Devil's Bridge, and to show us the snow on the far distant mountains of Julius, the effect would have been perfect.

Of course, the whole population of Cividale and the region round was abroad in the streets and squares gazing at the show. Though the disappointment on the first night over the undisplayed fireworks was keen, the crowd bore it in good temper. There were no police that I could see, but perfect order was observed, and there was no unseemly pushing or crowding. The people of Cividale are in truth famous for their civility to strangers, the result, perhaps, in part, of their own deeply rooted Roman civilisation, the heritage of two thousand years; but partly also the fruit of the teaching of one of their own poets, who has written :

"If thou meet a stranger be courteous to him;

If he be unworthy thou hast done honour to thyself:

If he be worthy thou hast honoured two persons at once."

In this connection I feel that I must allude to the gracious hospitality which we received from the members of two of the leading families in Cividale. We came amongst them as absolute strangers, with no introduction except my ticket of membership at the Congress, yet we were received as if we had been old friends, and we had the great privilege of seeing a little of that life of high-bred, unostentatious refinement which exists in so many of the old cities of Italy, but with which we English tourists, journeying from one hotel to another, so seldom come in contact. On the whole, notwithstanding one or two slight drawbacks, I felt that this Historical Congress was a great success and well worth the labour which the Committee had evidently bestowed on the preliminary preparations. Even more than the proceedings of the Congress itself, the sight of the little city all en fête, to do honour to its student son who died eleven centuries ago, the happy crowds that filled the streets, the illumined reaches of the river, the news-boys calling out "Vita di Paolo Diacono," made one feel how deep in the heart of the ordinary Italian is the love of his own special corner of his great country, his consciousness of a noble

historic past outstretched behind him, his determination that, as far as his efforts may avail, the waters of oblivion shall not cover that rich inheritance. In this peculiar instinct, this power of telegraphing, without the wires of an accurate historical education, across many centuries, I do not think that the English nation can be compared with the Italian. The Scots and the Irish, owing to their strain of Celtic blood, have more of it than we, and the latter especially are perhaps sometimes disposed to dwell too much on the memories of the past. But our prosaic Saxon temperament would be all the better for a touch of that historical imaginativeness which made the eleventh centenary of Paulus Diaconus a genuine popular festival to the inhabitants of Cividale.

THOMAS HODGKIN.

"THE SILENCE OF GOD."

THE

HERE was a double purpose in the remarkable treatise entitled "But is God Silent?" which appeared in these pages in September. The writer's aim was, first, to give proof from the history of Christendom that the divine government of the world is a reality; and, secondly, to criticise and censure the book which appeared two years ago under the title of the present article. Of his main thesis it may be said at once that no one but an infidel disputes it; and a bolder and plainer statement of it will be found in the volume he condemns than he himself has furnished. Here, for example, is one of several kindred passages: "Not that the moral government of the world is in abeyance. Even here and now men reap what they sow. Righteousness prospers and iniquity brings its own penalty. Not always indeed, nor openly; but generally and with sufficient definiteness to make it clear that this is the rule" (p. 142). Were it not that Mr. Heath quotes from the very chapter from which the above sentence is taken, one might suppose he had only read the first eighteen pages of the book. But the very quotation to which I allude is a signal proof of his strange incapacity to understand my meaning. Here are his words: "God, Dr. Anderson actually says, wants neither our morality nor our religion." And he proceeds to deplore the benighted condition of the "Evangelicals" because "a book in which such statements occur" has been received by them “with marked approval." The passage thus misused is as follows: "God claims our homage, and we offer Him our patronage. He claims the undivided devotion of our life, and we offer Him religion and morality. But God does not want our patronage; neither does He want our morality or our religion. Monstrous!' the reader will exclaim..." (p. 133). And I go on to explain and enforce my

words. The opening sentences of his article afford a strange and significant instance of a fatal habit of inaccuracy. On the first page he states in my own language the difficulty which my book is designed to answer. It is this: "The divine history of the favoured race for thousands of years teems with miracles by which God gave proof of His power with men, and yet we are confronted by the astounding fact that from the days of the Apostles to the present hour the history of Christendom will be searched in vain for the record of a single public event to compel belief that there is a God at all.” This surely is plain enough. And yet a few lines further on he re-quotes my words, again in "inverted commas," but substituting the word produce for the word "compel"; and on this basis he proceeds to criticise and refute my thesis !

But these personal issues are of trifling and transient interest. Not so, however, the great question raised once again by the article I comment on. It is not the statement of an opinion, but the assertion of a fact, that the history of Christendom does not record "a single public event to compel belief that there is a God." Were it otherwise atheism would be impossible, whereas in fact atheism is the product of the history of Christendom. It is the product, it will be answered, of a morbid view, a perverted reading of it. Yes, undoubtedly; but the deplorable fact remains. Are there no atheists in England to-day? I do not allude to persons like the baser sort of anarchists-men of filthy minds and foul tongues, who, to the discredit of English law, are allowed to outrage decency by their coarse and profane harangues in our public streets and parks-but to men of character and culture, men who hold high rank as thinkers and teachers. Many honoured names at once suggest themselves, but there is no need to set them out upon the page. I shall be told, perhaps, that men such as I allude to are not atheists, but only agnostics. The distinction is just, but so far as the present argument is concerned it is a distinction without a difference. These men are deeply read in philosophy and history; they are versed in science in all its branches; they are "men of affairs," some of them; and yet they deliberately reject belief in a personal God. It is no answer to say that such men are a comparatively small minority, or to urge what is possibly quite as true, that the next generation will refuse to give them the eminent position which their contemporaries have accorded them. Their presence among us is a fact which undermines the whole fabric of my critic's argument. Can he compel belief in these men by his narrative of the Nemesis which overtook French nobles or Plantagenet kings? Most of us would think that for the purpose in hand his use of the story of "Crecy and Poitiers and Agincourt" is far-fetched and inconclusive as compared with an appeal to the retribution accomplished at Whitehall on January 30, 1649. Let him, then, try the effect

Or let him

of "pointing his moral" by reference to that event! ask those whom he wants to convince to regard the horrors of the French Revolution as proof that a righteous and loving God is not silent in Christendom. And while he is on the subject of massacres in France, will he explain for us the massacre of St. Bartholomew on the same principle? The plain fact is that his argument is made plausible only by his skilfully getting away from the real question at issue, and then appealing to events so remote that they excite a purely academic interest. The victories of Edward III. in France, we are told, were marked by events which compel belief in God! I make bold to assert that every man of clear and unprejudiced mind, whether he be Christian or Turk or infidel, will reject such a statement as the merest trifling, giving proof that the writer who makes it has utterly failed to grasp the problem he pretends to solve.

Perhaps I ought to pause here to explain once again that I do not question the fact that there is a moral government of the world. But the Christian's intercourse with heaven, which enables him to triumph over difficulties and doubts that overwhelm other men, is not designed to constitute him the interpreter of the judgments and ways of God; for those judgments are unsearchable, and those ways past finding out. But what Boswell was to Johnson some men affect to be to the Supreme, ever ready at a moment's notice to describe and forecast His ways, and to unfold the secrets of His judgments. If the event be a great national disaster, they can label it at once with the precise "vial" or "trumpet " to which it pertains. And as for the sorrows and trials by which humble lives are so often made desolate, they can speak with a freedom and certainty that are quite amazing. There is, indeed, a moral government of the world, but even in "the short and simple annals of the poor" its manifestations are full of mystery. One element of the mystery depends on the startling but certain fact that, in this world, folly is punished with more definiteness and regularity than sin. Two young men return from the city to their lodging. One goes out to revel in a pre-arranged debauch, the other spends the evening writing to his old home in the country. Through stupid carelessness he scalds his hand by upsetting the teakettle and has to go to the neighbouring hospital for treatment. this is not all. For a week he cannot hold a pen, and he loses his employment in consequence; while his companion goes back to his work next day in the ordinary course. In a goody" book, no doubt, the story would go on to tell how "the sinner" was exposed and ruined, and "the fool" was taken back and ultimately became a partner in the house. But no one knows better than the Christian that "goody" books are not always to be trusted. Neither are they always wholesome reading. Let a man do right, not because it is right, but on commercial principles, with a view to his own profit, and

But