the generation which is now closing, by Lord Tennyson, but next to him there is no one who has been so widely accepted by the ordinary run of general readers as Mr. Lewis Morris.

The weakness of Mr. Morris, on the other hand, appears to lie in a defect of the poetic imagination. Bacon draws a distinction between the 'sublime and discursive' minds which detect analogies, and the 'persevering and acute' minds which discern differences. The distinction is true in philosophy, as between two such minds as Plato's and Aristotle's; but it is still more true as the distinction between the poetic and the prosaic mind. The true poet sees analogies and similitudes everywhere, and illustrates his thought by materials drawn. from sources of the most diverse kind. It is from this gift that Milton gets his similes and his epithets, and Browning his overwhelming mass of comparisons and metaphors, and Rossetti his highly-coloured and imaginative language. They bring together ideas from most dissimilar sources, and their poetry gains thereby in beauty, in force, and in distinction. It is here that we seem to find Mr. Morris wanting. The sense of monotone which pervades most of his writing (and his later work, such as the Vision of Saints, more than the Epic of Hades) is largely due to the limitation of his sources of illustration, and the consequent repetition of similar words or terms of expression. The reader would gain if he could completely forget all Mr. Morris's previous writings whenever he takes in hand a new poem by him. The tone is too equal, the colour too unvarying, the emotions too similar; and the reader begins to think before long that he has discovered the trick of Mr. Morris's composition and has seen to the bottom the extent of his poetical resources.

But, if it is impossible to find in Mr. Lewis Morris the poet of first-class rank for whom the lovers of English literature are looking to replace the leaders of the generation which is passing away, it is quite possible to be thankful that we have minor poets such as he is. With the greater extent of more than respectable verse which is written nowadays goes a greater power of appreciating good poetry in the world at large. The number of persons who are really good judges of poetry must, no doubt, always be small; but this too is far larger now than at any earlier period in English literature. It is not in mortals to command a greater supply of poetic genius of the first rank; it still remains true that the poet must be born, though after he is born, he still has to make himself a poet by much labour. But a greater supply of poetic talent can be and is produced by a greater extent of

the taste for and appreciation of good poetry. And many a writer whose name is not written among the immortals has given pleasure and enlightenment and help to many a reader whose name he never knows, and has so done his good work to the extent of the talents with which he is gifted. In the fine words which we have already quoted once, but which seem to sum up better than mere prose can do the moral of Mr. Morris's poetical achievements—

'Not only those

Who keep clear accents of the voice divine
Are honourable-they are happy, indeed,

Whate'er the world has held but those who hear
Some fair faint echoes, though the crowd be deaf,
And see the white gods' garments on the hills.'

ART. VII.-BISHOP KINGDON ON THE

INCARNATION.

The Bishop Paddock Lectures, 1890. God Incarnate. By the Right Rev. H. T. KINGDON, D.D., Bishop-Coadjutor of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. (New York 1890.)

THIS remarkable volume, on the highest of all possible themes, will be gratefully welcomed by the Church at large.1 The 'Bishop Paddock Lectureship' was founded in 1880, by George A. Jarvis, a warm personal friend of Dr. Paddock, the Bishop of Massachusetts, by a gift in trust to the General Theological Seminary of the Anglican Church in the United States. Like the Oxford Bampton Lectures it has an apologetic purpose. The Deed of Trust declares that the Lectures shall be devoted to

'the defence of the religion of Jesus Christ . . . against the varying errors of the day, whether materialistic, rationalistic, or professedly religious, and also to its defence and confirmation in respect of such central truths as the Trinity, the Atonement, Justification, and the Inspiration of the Word of God, and of such central facts as the Church's Divine Order and Sacraments, &c.'

The English Bishop Coadjutor of Fredericton, Dr. Kingdon,

We regret that its title-page does not bear the name of an English publisher, and that the work is not more readily procurable in this country. Perhaps this, as well as its one defect, the want of an Index, may be remedied in the second edition.

well-known in London as an able colleague of Benjamin Webb's on the clerical staff of St. Andrew's, Wells Street, was selected, by the Board of Appointment created by the Trust, to deliver in New York the Paddock Lectures of 1890. He rightly perceived that of the varying errors of the day a large proportion arises from inadequate or erroneous views of the Incarnation, and, thinking especially, as it was natural a Bishop should, of the needs of a class whose more adequate training for their holy function is just now engaging the earnest attention of the Church at home, he insists, in his brief Preface, that it is of the utmost importance that the attention of candidates for Holy Orders should be concentrated upon the fundamental doctrine of the Incarnation. At no time has this been of greater importance than at the present moment.' This special object has been worthily kept in view throughout the volume, which will accordingly be of the greatest possible value to theological students.

It is unquestionably a true instinct which is guiding the Church of our generation to give special prominence to the clear and definite enunciation of the Christian belief as to this supreme central verity. In evidence of the strength and extent of this instinct, we are able to point-not to go beyond our own branch of the Church-to Archdeacon Wilberforce's work on the Incarnation; to a volume, far too little known, we fear, The Messiah (Murray, 1861), the work, it is said, of a pious layman, who preferred to withhold his name; to Prebendary Sadler's Emmanuel, less scholastic in treatment, but most practically helpful, and perhaps likely to be more attractive to the ordinary reader; to the precious treasure of Dr. Liddon's Bampton Lectures of 1866 On the Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; to the Rev. P. G. Medd's Bampton Lectures of 1882, The One Mediator, which bear very directly on the subject; and to Canon Mason's recent volume, The Faith of the Gospel. Further, it is an open secret that the Church is looking forward with interest, not unmingled with anxiety, to a treatment of the same majestic theme by the Bampton Lecturer of this year, the editor of Lux Mundi.

Very probably, Bishop Kingdon's transatlantic experience has made him feel, even more acutely than we on this side, the need of a careful corrective to prevalent errors. Here we are as yet hardly familiar with the wild extravagance of unbridled and irreverent, and even ridiculous, speculation which can argue-as transatlantic correspondents assure us—in the following kind of way: 'We learn from Scripture and Nature

that God works as gardeners and agriculturists work. They take common grass and foster it into wheat. They take wild roses and wild fruit-trees, and by budding and grafting produce good results. The same is seen in mankind. The monkey has been taken, and by successive graftings, as seen in Seth, Noah, Abraham, &c., an excellent stock has been produced, which naturally and necessarily produced Christ. This is a sample of what can be done. Hence, by carefully selecting subjects of marriage more Christs may be produced, so that eventually mankind may become a world of Christs.' This looks like Evolution gone mad. It was indeed high time that the intelligent faith of Christians, in any danger of being influenced by wild and absurd imaginations like these, should be stayed and steadied and reinforced by some careful and authoritative declaration of the truth from those in high and responsible positions in the Church of Christ. Amid his manifold labours, amid the interruptions of his constant and wearisome journeyings over what is practically a missionary diocese as large in area as Scotland, Bishop Kingdon has done this; and has thereby established a permanent claim on the gratitude of the whole Church.

In rendering this great and necessary service, he shows himself fully master of the literature of the subject, and has laid under contribution the most recent as well as the older authors. He refers to, and quotes from (we need hardly say), both the late and the present Bishop of Durham, and the late Dean of St. Paul's, whose name reminds us of another recent and irreparable loss. He is also indebted to the writings of Canon W. Cooke; and to the kindred works of Canon McColl (Christianity in Relation to Science and Morals), and of one, the early close of whose career, so full so promise, the Church is still lamenting, the Rev. Aubrey L. Moore, in his volume entitled Science and the Faith. We may indeed be thankful to be able to point, in these days of doubt and questioning and controversy, to so goodly a list, yet by no means an exhaustive one, of recent works within our own Communion, which are devoted to the elucidation and defence of the great central verities of the Faith.

And now, looking more particularly at Dr. Kingdon's work, which we earnestly trust our readers, and such of them especially as are students of theology and candidates for

1 Dean Church was very closely connected with the first founding of this Review, and some of the earliest meetings of its original promoters were held under his auspices. He was also, from time to time, a contributor to its pages.

Holy Orders, will procure for themselves, we note with satisfaction his dictum (pp. 5, 7) that, on questions of faith and religion, there is no theory which satisfies all demands of human reason as does the Christian teaching. . . . The difficulties which unbelief produces are by far the greater, and there is no door of reverent thought which true Christianity cannot unlock, while unbelief often helps to double-lock them and bar them up effectually.' The truth of these assertions is then exemplified in relation to the fundamental conceptions of the Existence, the Unity, the Perfection, and the plural Personality of the Supreme Being. With regard to this last point we may do well to quote the following weighty

passage:

'In a Perfect Being social capacities imply the means of gratifying them. The crowning revelation, therefore, is that "God is love." Now we cannot conceive of love without an object. Love would not then be love, it would only be the capacity for love. Love would not be love without exercise. We, therefore, could not conceive that God is love if He were a solitary Unit, to speak with deepest reverence. . . . Hence, we may say once more that reason is Christian in demanding that God be eternally a Father, eternally produced toward Himself, with a Son Who is "the Brightness of His glory, and the express Image of His Person" (p. 12).

And this the Bishop follows up with the true and pregnant remark of Aubrey Moore (Lux Mundi, p. 92):

'The Fathers do not treat the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity merely as a revealed mystery, still less as something which compli cates the simple teaching of Monotheism, but as the condition of rationally holding the Unity of God.'

From the thought of the Nature of God we are led to the thought of that mystery of Creation of which the Son, the Eternal Word, is the Mediatorial Agent;' and we find some thoughtful remarks on that earlier stage of Creation, viz. of the holy angels, and on the direct creation of each angel individually, from which it results that there is no common and identical nature of angels,' and that consequently, for this reason among others, the Eternal Son, in uniting Himself with the Creature, ' of the angels took not hold' (Heb. ii. 16).

The subject of Creation naturally suggests that of Evolution. As to this, the following weighty words dispose at once of any uneasiness that might be felt, if Darwinism-which is still on its trial, and which, after all, is only a question of methods and processes, not of origins-were to be finally accepted by the scientific world: