Praying or vowing; and vouchsafed His voice To whom our Saviour, with unaltered brow: Into thin air diffused: for now began The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couched; And now wild beasts came forth the woods to roam." So ends the first book of "Paradise Regained." In the opening of the second book Jesus has been missed by the disciples Andrew and Simon, who, after vain search, lament the failure of their expectations. "Then on the banks of Jordan, by a creek, Their unexpected loss and plaints outbreathed." In the moment of their highest hope all seemed to be lost. The Messiah, the deliverer who was to free the chosen people from oppression, was rapt from them. But their short plaint ends with a glad faith in Him upon whose Providence they lay their fears. "He will not fail, Nor will withdraw Him now, nor will recall, Mary also, when "Others returned from baptism, not her Son, The course of them, by recalling more passages in the earlier life of Christ, completes the work of episode in the construction of the poem, and the doubts of Mary, as the doubts of Andrew and Simon, lead only to the constant burden of the poem "Rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him." "Afflicted I may be, it seems, and blest; I will not argue that, nor will repine.— But where delays He now? Some great intent Since first her salutation heard, with thoughts Meekly composed awaited the fulfilling." Christ meanwhile tracing the desert "Sole, but with holiest meditation fed, Into himself descended, and at once All His great work to come before Him set." Satan rejoined the council of his potentates, and without sign of boast or sign of joy, solicitous and blank, sought aid of them all. Then "Belial the dissolutest spirit that fell, the sensualest" counselled "Set women in his eye." The poem is planned for the strengthening of men's hearts through the example of Christ against all the chief temptations of the world. What was perhaps the foremost temptation to many in the days of Charles II. is skilfully included by giving to Belial the suggestion, disdained by Satan, of the lure of Circe, a temptation inapplicable to Christ, although among those which have to be resisted by the Christian. "Therefore with manlier objects we must try Lawful desires of nature, not beyond. And now I know He hungers, where no food Is to be found, in the wide wilderness: No advantage, and His strength as oft assay."" The first temptation shall be through hunger, absolute want. The poem then turns to Christ hungering, and represents Christ's holy thoughts, that still find rest in God. He sleeps, and hunger suggests sinless dreams of food, in which the recognition of God's providence blends even with dream thoughts "of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet." "Him thought, He by the brook of Cherith stood, He saw the Prophet also, how he fled Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse." When morning came, Christ saw from a hill a pleasant grove, and was met by Satan "Not rustic as before, but seemlier clad, As one in city, or court, or palace bred," with suggestion that He had been forgotten by God, and with subtle pleading to His brief answer of content. Then Satan spread a table in the wilderness with all that could entice the appetite. The spirits Satan brought with him there waited as attendant youths, sweet odours and sweet music graced the splendour of the feast. Then Satan asked, "What doubts the Son of God to sit and eat?" but to his solicitation he received temperate answer of unbroken confidence in God, and the table vanished to the sound of harpies' wings. The next temptation was by the desire for wealth as means to great ends. "Riches are mine," said Satan, "fortune is in my hand," "They whom I favour thrive in wealth amain; While virtue, valour, wisdom, sit in want. And Jesus patiently replied that wealth without these three is impotent to gain or keep dominion; but men endued with them have often attained in lowest poverty to highest deeds. "Extol not riches then, the toil of fools, The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare; more apt Riches and realms! yet not, for that a crown, Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights, When on his shoulders each man's burden lies; For therein stands the office of a king, Or lawless passions in him, which he serves. Of most-erected spirits, most-tempered pure, And dignities and powers, all but the highest.'" Calmly Christ answered; and to men who for earthly glory may be tempted to swerve from the heavenward path this answer speaks: "For what is glory but the blaze of fame, The people's praise, if always praise unmixed? Things vulgar, and, well weighed, scarce worth the praise? They praise, and they admire, they know not what, To things not glorious, men not worthy of fame. It may by means far different be attained, 1 "Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies; Of so much Fame in heaven expect thy meed." Poor Socrates-who next more memorable?— Who sent me, and thereby witness whence I am.'" To Satan's plea that God Himself seeks glory, Christ fervently replies, leaving the tempter struck with guilt of his own sin, for he himself, insatiable of glory, had lost all. But next he urges upon Christ His right to the throne of David, and that for love of His enslaved people He should reign soon. "The happier reign, the sooner it begins: Reign then, what canst thou better do the while?" The reply is that all things are best fulfilled in their due time. God's time is to be waited for, His trials borne. "What if He hath decreed that I shall first Be tried in humble state, and things adverse, Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and violence, west side of the same mountain he shows imperial Rome, and tempts with a fuller mastery. Tiberius is lost in lust at Capreæ. With what ease, Endued with regal virtues as Thou art, Appearing, and beginning noble deeds, Mightest Thou expel this monster from his throne, Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending, A victor people free from servile yoke! And with my help Thou mayest; to me the power Is given, and by that right I give it Thee. On David's throne, be prophesied what will.'" Christ replies unmoved; but Satan then impudently exalts his gift, offers the whole world, but claims worship for it. To the rebuke thus brought upon himself, Satan replies abashed, but he next seeks to tempt with fame for wisdom. "As Thy empire must extend, So let extend Thy mind o'er all the world He shows Athens, and dilates upon its intellectual pre-eminence. The wisdom of Christ answers that "He who receives Light from above, from the fountain of light, No other doctrine needs, though granted true."" But these, what can they teach, and not mislead? 666 'Much of the soul they talk, but all awry, And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these A spirit and judgment equal or superior, -And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere scek? Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep versed in books and shallow in himself, Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge; Sir Isaac Newton applied that last line to his own sense of the relation between all he knew and all the knowable. Though it was knowable, few knew that he was quoting Milton. In its subdued tone and ethical purpose "Paradise Regained" has to "Paradise Lost in some sense a relation like that of the story of the wanderings of Ulysses to the story of the Fall of Troy, but the song is of a wisdom beyond that of Ulysses, and its calm note of trust in God attunes all the chief relations of man's life to earth and heaven. Looking to its theme and purpose, as the light struck in dark days for England that had caused some to despair, Milton might at the end of his life dwell especially upon "Paradise Regained," with the especial regard he is said to have had for it. We who can interpret the events of Milton's latter days by help of those which followed, and which Milton could not have foretold, know that his quiet trust in God was justified. In that which seemed the very hopelessness of the situation lay the elements of a safe rescue. Had Charles II. been a better and a wiser man, and had his brother JOHN MILTON. (From a Portrait in Crayon taken about 1666.) James not helped to dissipate faith in an absolute monarchy, England could not have passed, fourteen or fifteen years after the death of Milton, through a bloodless Revolution to a settlement of the relations between Crown and People that allowed development, with growth of culture, into the full powers of civil liberty. But we have yet to speak of the close of "Paradise Regained." Of Christ firm against every temptation, Satan asks, "Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts, Life of affliction was then contrasted with the ease refused, and the patient Son of God was left alone in a dark night compassed with terrors. "Sorrows and labours, opposition, hate Attends Thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries, Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death. A kingdom they portend Thee, but what kingdom, Nor when; eternal sure, as without end, So saying he took-for still he knew his power Not yet expired-and to the wilderness Brought back the Son of God, and left Him there, Feigning to disappear." "And either tropic now 'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven; the clouds, Unshaken! Nor yet stayed the terror there; Environed Thee; some howled, some yelled, some shrieked, Some bent at Thee their fiery darts, while Thou Satest unappalled in calm and sinless peace. Thus passed the night so foul; till Morning fair Cleared up their choicest notes in bush and spray, Satan also returns and tempts vainly to impatience, then angrily admits Jesus to be proof against tempta tion, but will try whether indeed He be "worth naming Son of God by voice from heaven." "So saying he caught Him up, and, without wing 'There stand, if Thou wilt stand; to stand upright 1 Amice, a priest's robe of fine linen. See Note 1, page 200 d also for any light flowing robe. Latin "amictus," an outer part Satan returned in dismay to his joyless band, while angels bore the Saviour to a table of celestial food, and hymned His victory. Man now can prevail through Christ, and by vanquishing temptation can regain lost Paradise. But the last lines of the poem pass from the angels' song of triumph to the meekness of the Saviour. "Thus they the Son of God, our Saviour meek, Sung victor, and from heavenly feast refreshed Brought on His way with joy: He, unobserved, Home to His mother's house private returned." Not only among maintainers of what they held to be the "good old cause" were questionings here and there that touched their faith in God. Among those who during the Commonwealth had lived in France, influenced by a polite society that affected criticism and wit, while wanting the essentials of both, the spirit of reverence was often weakened. The newlydeveloped middle class was showing the energies of France in writers of its own, whom the polite world claimed as theirs, but whose lead the polite world was too weak to follow; and the corruption of society in Church and State was already prompting the new generation of bold thinkers to doubts aiming at a search for truth by testing all beliefs, doubts lightly accepted by the triflers as indications in them of a of all religion), a thing too low and mean for their rank and condition in the world; while others pretend a quarrel against the principles of it as unsatisfactory to human reason. Thus religion suffers with the Author of it between two thieves, and it is hard to define which is more injurious to it, that which questions the principles, or that which despiseth the practice of it. And nothing certainly will more incline men to believe that we live in an age of prodigies, than that there should be any such in the Christian world who should account it a piece of gentility to despise religion, and a piece of reason to be Atheists. For if there be any such things in the world as a true height and magnanimity of spirit, if there be any solid reason and depth of judgment, they are not only consistent with, but only attainable by, a true generous spirit of religion. But if we look at that which the loose and profane world is apt to account the greatest gallantry, we shall find it made up of such pitiful ingredients, which any skilful and rational mind will be ashamed to plead for, much less to mention them in competition with true goodness and urfeigned piety. For how easy is it to observe such who would be accounted the most high and gallant spirits, to quarry on such mean prey which only tend to satisfy their brutish appetites, or flesh revenge with the blood of such who have stood in the way of that airy title, honour! In the following "Preface to the Reader," the plan of the book is thus stated : As the tempers and geniuses of ages and times alter, so do the arms and weapons which Atheists employ against fashionable sort of wit. It was to meet this spirit religion; the most popular pretences of the Atheists of our of doubt that Edward Stillingfleet, then Rector of Sutton in Bedfordshire, produced early in the reign. of Charles II. his "Origines Sacræ; or, a Rational Account of the Grounds of Christian Faith, as to the Truth and Divine Authority of the Scriptures, and the matters therein contained." This book was published in 1662, when Stillingfleet was twentyseven years old. He was born in 1635, at Cranbourne, in Dorsetshire, graduated at St. John's College, Cambridge, and obtained his rectory of Sutton in 1657. In 1659 Edward Stillingfleet published "Irenicum, a Weapon Salve for the Church's Wounds, or the Divine Right of Particular Forms of Church Government discussed." In the dedication of his "Origines Sacræ" to his most honoured friend and patron Sir Roger Burgoyne, Stillingfleet wrote: Were all who make a show of religion in the world really such as they pretend to be, discourses of this nature would be no more seasonable than the commendations of a great beauty to one who is already a passionate admirer of it; but on the contrary, we see how common it is for men first to throw dirt in the face of religion, and then persuade themselves it is its natural complexion; they represent it to themselves in a shape least pleasing to them, and then bring that as a plea why they give it no better entertainment. It may justly seem strange, that true religion, which contains nothing in it but what is truly noble and generous, most rational and pleasing to the spirits of all good men, should yet suffer so much in its esteem in the world, through those strange and uncouth vizards it is represented under: -some accounting the life and practice of it, as it speaks of subduing our wills to the will of God (which is the substance Vizards, masks. age have been the irreconcilableness of the account of times in Scripture with that of the learned and ancient heathen nations; the inconsistency of the belief of the Scriptures with the principles of reason; and the account which may be given of the origin of things from principles of philosophy without the Scriptures: these three therefore I have particularly set myself against, and directed against each of them a several book. In the first I have manifested that there is no ground of credibility in the account of ancient times given by any heathen nations different from the Scriptures, which I have with so much care and diligence inquired into, that from thence we may hope to hear no more of men before Adam to salve the authority of the Scriptures by, which yet was intended only as a design to undermine them. But I have not thought the frivolous pretences of the author of that hypothesis worth particular mentioning, supposing it sufficient to give a clear account of things without particular citation of authors, where it was not of great concernment for under standing the thing itself. In the second book I have undertaken to give a rational account of the grounds, why we are to believe these several persons who in several ages were employed to reveal the mind of God to the world; and with greater particularity than hath yet been used, I have insisted on the persons of Moses and the prophets, our Saviour and his apostles, and in every of them manifested the rational evidences on which they were to be believed, not only by the men of their own age, but by those of succeeding generations. In the third book I have insisted on the matters themselves which are either supposed by, or revealed in, the Scriptures; and have therein not only manifested the certainty of the foundations of all religion which lie in the being of God and immortality of the soul, but the undoubted truth of those particular accounts concerning the origin of the universe, of 1 evil, and of nations, which were most liable to the Atheist's |