system." 1

This is not the place in which such matters of detail can be discussed.

Hooker's liberal spirit is tolerant of many diversities of opinion. There is a point, however, at which his tolerance disappears. Regarding true religión as not only the root of the private virtues but also as the support of all well-ordered commonwealths, he has no feeling but indignation for that atheism which is bred rather from intellectual conceit than from rude ignorance. Towards the "forlorn creatures" who would sap the foundations of all order in the world we are "too patient." They profess to see a politic use in religion; godless themselves, they would as a piece of political craft invent a God by art. For such an "execrable creed," such a "wicked brood," such "wise malignants," Hooker would not shrink from making ready the faggot and the stake. Towards the other chief enemy of true religion, towards superstition, he is more tolerant than many of his contemporaries. Its sources are zeal,

unguided by sobriety, and fear, which leads men to employ every means suggested by fancy to propitiate an angry Deity. From the East, with its subtleties of the intellect, have come the ingenious creations of superstitious thought; from the West have come the cruder and grosser forms of error. Yet even in many superstitions that seem upon a first view gross or fantastical, Hooker recognises a portion of truth, or, as Burke would have called it, a certain latent wisdom. Thus the doctrine of the transmigration of souls contained. within an envelope of falsehood, the truth of human 1 "Masters in English Theology," edited by Alfred Barry, D.D., p. 36.

immortality; the belief in auguries drawn from the flight of birds or the entrails of beasts, contained within it a recognition of Divine power and providence. Hooker's respect for human intelligence had put him on the track of a modern way of regarding the religions of the world. He did not dismiss them in the manner of many of his own contemporaries, as the inventions of the fallen angels to delude mankind; he did not view them, in the manner of eighteenth-century philosophers, as the frauds of priestcraft. The false religions lived by that in them which was true "no religion can wholly and only consist of untruths."

Before the revolutionist ventures on the redress of superstitious ceremonies in the Church, there are certain considerations which he would do well to bear in mind, and which may serve to temper his zeal. First, a particular rite or ordinance, though not better than some other which can be devised, may yet be fit and convenient; this may be the case although certain inconveniences should also be present. Secondly, the approval of past generations and the long-continued practice of the whole Church may indicate that some fitness resides in things, even should the fitness not be at once apparent. Thirdly, the Church is itself a living authority, having power to ordain new rites and ceremonies or to ratify those that are old; her sentence concerning fitness and expediency is surely weightier than any "bare and naked conceit to the contrary." Last, it must be remembered that there are evils which must needs be endured, lest, if they should be removed, greater evils might take their place.

Important as may be the results arrived at by Hooker's argument, his method and his temper are more important. His influence is at once to liberalise and to sober the mind of one who has submitted to his teaching. Possessed by a deep enthusiasm for order, he had nothing of the arbitrary temper of Laud, which without adequate regard to circumstances, and with a pitiful indifference to the proportion of things, would work from without inwards, and skin the ulcer of disunion with the superficial healing of an enforced uniformity. Yet Laud, who was far from intolerant in matters of dogma, however harsh he was in discipline, probably owed to Hooker some of his affinities to liberal thought. Hooker's vindication of the claims of reason prepared the way for Chillingworth and Hales. It is his high distinction that he cannot be identified with any party within the English Church; in his method and in his temper he represents nothing less than the better mind of England; its courage and its prudence; its audacity and its spirit of reverence; its regard for principles and its dislike of doctrinaire abstractions; its capacity for speculation controlled by its consideration of circumstances; its respect for the past and its readiness for new developments; its practical tendency; its lofty common sense.

ANGLO-CATHOLIC POETS:

HERBERT, VAUGHAN

I

THE poetry of the Anglican communion is most happily represented by two books-George Herbert's "The Temple" and Keble's "The Christian Year." Each was the fruit or the foretaste of an Anglican revival. But Keble's collection of poems-designed to exhibit "the soothing tendency in the Prayer Book "—had more of a deliberate purpose and plan than that of Herbert. Many of Keble's pieces are poetical studies of themes, delicately touched with personal feeling, but rather meditative than possessed by lyrical passion. Herbert's best poems are lyrical cries, taken up by the intelligence and daintily arranged as if for the viol or the lute. The vitality of what he wrote is attested by the witness of two centuries, the seventeenth and the nineteenth. During the eighteenth century-the sæculum rationalisticum—his light shone dimly through a cloud.

The great event of Herbert's life was undoubtedly his turning from a mundane career to the humble duties and the quiet gladness of a country parson's lot. As a child, Walton tells us, "the beauties of his pretty behaviour and wit shined and became so eminent and lovely . . . that he seemed to be marked out for piety, and to become the care of Heaven,

and of a particular good angel to guide and guard him." His classical scholarship at the age of twentyfive justified his appointment as public orator at Cambridge; he was skilled in Italian, Spanish, French, and hoped at one time that he might attain to the position of a Secretary of State. He kept himself at a distance from his inferiors, valued his parts and his distinguished parentage, and enjoyed his "gentle humour for clothes and court-like company." We learn with some satisfaction from his brother, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, that he was not exempt from passion and choler, the infirmities of his race; meekness that is grafted on ardour of temperament is something far removed from tameness.

A time came when Herbert began to doubt of the world and its coloured gifts:

I shake my head, and all the thoughts and ends,
Which my fierce youth did bandy, fall and flow
Like leaves about me.

In the poem named "The Pilgrim," he appears as a traveller whose eyes are set upon a distant hill; passing the dangers of the way and its meadows of flowery temptation, he comes to the wild of passion, which some call the wold

A wasted place but sometimes rich.

At length the hill where lie his heart and hope is attained; alas! when the brow has been reached, all that the pilgrim finds is a brackish pool of tears; his true goal lies yet onward, only to be come at by the way of death; yet even so, weary but courageous, he resolves to pursue his brave adventure.