subterranean realms are reached by an easy and litera) descent from the volcanic hillsides of Naples. Who will refuse immortality to Dante because his purgatory bulges out from our southern hemisphere, or to Shakespeare because he furnishes a seacoast to Bohemia ?

No, the currency of poetry is independent of such matters of geography or astronomy; the truth it sets. forth is truth of a different sort; its universal and everlasting hold upon the human spirit consists in its ability to lift man above mere space and time into the region of the spiritual and eternal. It does this in two ways, and in each of these ways John Milton has no superior. First, he is our greatest English master of literary form. We can well believe John Bright, when he said that his own oratory was built upon John Milton. But since perfection of form can never exist by itself alone, we may add, secondly, that our poet proclaims to all ages the greatest moral message. Behind the form is substance such as never entered into Homer's or Virgil's or Dante's or Shakespeare's verse, namely, the profoundest conception of man's apostasy from God, and of his recovery from ruin through Jesus Christ.

Milton has not the spontaneity of imagination that distinguishes Shakespeare, nor has he so large a nature, but his sense of form is more unfailing, and in loftiness of character he towers far above the bard of Avon. Puritan as he is, he is more of an aristocrat, and more of a man, than is Shakespeare. His nobility of poetic form is but the expression of a lofty soul, thrilled to the center of its being with the greatest of possible themes -the struggle of good and evil, of God and Satan, and the triumph of the Almighty in the redemption of man.

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When this theme grows old, then will "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" grow old. But so long as man recognizes and values his own immortality, so long will the poetry of Milton vindicate its claim to be immortal.

With most poets, we are obliged to gather their doctrine from their verse. In the case of Milton, we get additional information from his biography; but, besides this, we are particularly favored by the fact that Milton, of all the great poets, was the one and only systematic theologian. In his early life he had planned a treatise on Christian truth; in his last years he composed it. Curiously enough, it was never printed during his lifetime; the very existence of it was forgotten; at last the manuscript of it, tied up in a bundle with the original copy of his State Letters, was discovered among the lumber of the State Paper Office in London, in 1823. So, after a disappearance lasting nearly a century and a half, the key to Milton's poetry came to light, and Macaulay justly signalized the event by the publication, in the "Edinburgh Review," of his famous first essay on John Milton. Though unfortunately it has never yet gained wide recognition in the theological world, this "Treatise of Christian Doctrine" is so original and so able a discussion of fundamental truth, that it merits careful attention.

At many points it shows a daring independence, and an anticipation of views only recently propounded or thought tolerable in the Christian church. Yet its doc

trine is proclaimed with a confidence and calmness which are themselves impressive. The importance and value which the author ascribed to his work are indi

R

cated by the fact that he begins it as if it were an apostolic general epistle: "John Milton, Englishman, to all the churches of Christ, and also to all everywhere on earth professing the Christian faith: Peace and knowledge of the truth, and eternal salvation in God the Father, and in our Lord Jesus Christ." He divides his treatise into two parts-a theoretical part, as to Christian knowledge, and a practical part, as to Christian duty. We can deal only with the former of these. But since our aim is to consider Milton's poetry especially in its theological aspect, we may be permitted a somewhat minute inspection of the great features of his doctrinal system.

First of all, then, Milton is an unwavering believer in the infallibility and sufficiency of the Bible as God's revelation of truth to men. Though his formal teaching with regard to Holy Scripture is reserved for the later portion of his treatise, it is plain, even from the beginning, that he assumes the divine inspiration of every part of the Old and the New Testaments. He gives no proof of this, but declares that the word of God carries with it its own evidence. Clearly, he writes for those who are Christians already, not for those who doubt the essentials of the Christian faith.

Yet this rigid doctrine of inspiration is held in a somewhat large and liberal way. It does not claim the absolute truth of every statement of Scripture taken by itself. There are many sorts of composition, and the Holy Spirit can make use of them all. He can set before us the complaints of Job, and the doubts of Solomon. "The Bible," says Milton, in his " Areopagitica," "brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against

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Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus." It is necessary to interpret Scripture, therefore; and every man has the right to interpret for himself. For this purpose he has the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit. There is an inner light, as well as an outer standard. In one place, Milton's words would at first sight seem to sanction the Quaker doctrine: "The Spirit," he says, "is a more certain guide than Scripture, whom, therefore, it is our duty to follow." But, taken in connection with the supremacy given to Scripture everywhere else in his writings, this must be understood to mean, not that the Holy Spirit is a co-ordinate source of truth, but only that his interpretation is so indispensable that even the Scriptures would fail to be apprehended aright without it.

Milton, in the second place, is an Arminian, so far as respects his doctrine of the divine decrees. Though God foreknows all events, he has not decreed them absolutely; he only decrees that, if his creatures act so and so, such and such will be the consequences. Here I quote his own words to show how remarkably he could anticipate certain methods of statement now current even among moderate Calvinists, yet statements which in those days would have been thought heresy itself. "Future events," he says, "will happen certainly, but not of necessity. They will happen certainly, because the divine prescience will not be deceived; but they will not happen necessarily, because prescience can have no influence on the object foreknown, inasmuch as it is only an intransitive action."

Thus far the modern Calvinist might assent, though he would claim that God's decree to create at all, when

he foreknew the results, was to all intents and purposes a decreeing of those results, the decree, however, in the case of moral evil, being a permissive, and not an efficient, decree. But when Milton applies his principle to the matter of salvation, he takes ground which the Calvinist cannot hold with him. "There is no particular predestination or election," he says, "but only general." He means, as Masson has expressed it, that John or Peter is not předestined to be saved as John or Peter; but believers are predestined to be saved, and John and Peter will be saved if they are in the class of believers." Of course this is a denial that God bestows any special grace to make John or Peter a believer; and so it must be regarded as the denial of a fundamental principle of Calvinism. This Arminian doctrine must be considered, however, as a later development of his theology, for in "Areopagitica," printed twenty-five years before this treatise was written, he had mentioned "the acute and distinct Arminius," but had spoken of him as "perverted."

In his views of the Person of Christ, thirdly, Milton was not an orthodox Trinitarian, but a high Arian. Here too, we must recognize a change from the poet's way of thinking in his earlier years. In 1629, in his wonderful "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," he had written of "the Son of heaven's eternal King":

That glorious form, that light unsufferable,

And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,

Wherewith he wont at heaven's high council-table

To sit the midst of trinal unity,

He laid aside; and, here with us to be,