seems, and is, disordered by endless digressions; but all the lines converge on the Divine object of their love. So Ruskin's work is at once a Speculum Mundi and a Speculum Dei-it is a mirror of the world and of God in the world. Through all his books runs the golden thread of cheerful obedience to the Divine law. Especially is this true of Modern Painters, which is not only a beautiful treatise on art, but also the impassioned expression of an adoring faith. The subject is handled as it might have been treated by a mediæval mystic, or a Franciscan poet. Still more is it conceived in the spirit of the Psalmist. As, in his exquisite prose, Ruskin interprets to the nineteenth century God's message of creation, so David sang of God's handiwork, while he shepherded his sheep on the lonely uplands of Palestine. "He who, in any way "-the words are Carlyle's "shews us better than we knew before, that a lily of the fields is beautiful, does he not shew it us as an effluence of the Fountain of all Beauty; as the handwriting, made visible there, of the great Maker of the Universe? He has sung for us, made us sing with him,' a little verse of a sacred Psalm.'

CHAPTER XII

1688-1900 (continued)

The Psalms in philanthropic movements-Prison Reform and John Howard; in missionary enterprises-John Eliot, David Brainerd, William Carey, Henry Martyn, Alexander Duff, Allen Gardiner, David Livingstone, Bishop Hannington; in ordinary life-Colonel Gardiner, Thomas Carlyle, Jane Welsh Carlyle; in secular history -Brittany and La Vendée, the execution of Madame de Noailles, the evacuation of Moscow in 1812, the Revolution of 1848, Bourget in the Franco-German War of 1870-1, Captain Conolly at Bokhara and Havelock at Jellalabad, Duff, Edwards, and " Quaker Wallace in the Indian Mutiny, the Boer War.

In the preceding chapter, the influence of the Psalms during the last two centuries has been illustrated from the lives and writings of leaders of religion, science, and literature. Within the same period, their power may be traced, not only in philanthropic movements or missionary enterprises, but also in ordinary life and secular history.

The religious reawakening which revolutionised England in the latter half of the eighteenth century, inspired numerous efforts towards social progress. The abolition of the Slave Trade, the foundation of the Bible Society, the educational work of Raikes and Lancaster, were the outcome of new and higher standards of life. Among efforts to improve social conditions, an honourable place belongs to the struggle for Prison Reform, which is inseparably associated with the name of John Howard (1726-90). In all the stages of its progress, the Psalms were at work.

In 1755, on Howard's voyage to Lisbon, the Hanover packet, in which he was sailing, was captured by a French privateer. Herded together in a filthy dungeon at Brest, he and his companions experienced the horrors of imprisonment. The memory of his own sufferings may well have lingered in his mind. But it was not till 1773, nearly twenty years afterwards, that he began to devote himself to Prison

Reform. While serving as High Sheriff for the County, Howard officially inspected the Bedfordshire jails. Horrorstruck at the sufferings of the prisoners, whether criminals or debtors, he began his investigations in England, and gradually extended his visits to Scotland, Ireland, and the Continent. In the damp, unwholesome cells, ill-lighted and badly-ventilated, where prisoners were confined without exercise or employment, jail fever and smallpox raged. Howard's visits were paid in peril of his life. But Hold Thou up my goings" (Ps. xvii., verse 5) was the text which encouraged him to persevere. The fever had no terrors for him. "Trusting," he says, "in Divine Providence, and believing myself in the way of my duty, I visit the most noxious cells, and while so doing 'I fear no evil'" (Ps. xxiii., verse 4). Yet he did not always escape. At Lille, in May 1783, he caught the fever. It is in the language of the Psalms that he expresses his gratitude for his recovery: "For many days I have been in pain and sorrow, the sentence of death was, as it were, upon me, but I cried unto the Lord, and He heard me. Blessed, for ever blessed, be the name of the Lord." A deeply religious man, he jots down in his memorandum books his pious ejaculations and secret. aspirations. Often his thoughts are couched in the words of the Psalmist. As an example, may be quoted two entries from his Diary, made when he was lying ill at the Hague in 1778: "May 13th.-In pain and anguish all Night . . . help, Lord, for vain is the help of Man. In Thee do I put my trust, let me not be confounded. May 14th. This Night my Fever abaited, my Pains less Righteous art Thou in all Thy ways, and holy in all Thy works bring me out of the Furnace as Silver purified seven times."

From a Psalm (lxxix., verse 12) is taken the motto on the title-page of his Account of Lazarettos, "O let the sorrowful sighing of the prisoners come before thee," and he chose it because he had himself observed the effect which the words produced on the minds of the prisoners in Lancaster Gaol. In 1789, he left England on the journey which ended with his death at Kherson. He had previously chosen the inscription for his monument, left directions for his funeral, and even selected the text for the sermon which his friend

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and pastor would preach on the event. The text was Psalm xvii., verse 16. "That text," he says, is the most appropriate to my feelings of any I know; for I can indeed join with the Psalmist in saying, 'As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness; and when I awake up after thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it.'"

Howard's work among prisoners was continued, on different lines, by women like Elizabeth Fry and Sarah Martin. But meanwhile missionary enterprise was taking wider and more daring flight. In June 1793, William Carey and his colleague sailed for India. So opposed to the policy of the East India Company was the idea of a Christian mission, that they were obliged to embark in a Danish East Indiaman, and to settle in Danish territory. Nearly a century later, in April 1874, David Livingstone was buried in Westminster Abbey:

Open the Abbey doors and bear him in

To sleep with king and statesman, chief and sage,
The missionary come of weaver kin,

But great by work that brooks no lower wage."

The contrast marks the revulsion of public opinion, and suggests the importance of a movement which is among the marvels of the nineteenth century.

For Protestant England, the history of missions to the heathen begins with John Eliot (1604-90), the son of a Hertfordshire yeoman, an early settler in New England for conscience' sake, and one of the three authors of the metrical version of the Psalms, which was known as the Bay Psalm Book (1640). Few names in American history are more truly venerable than that of the man who gave the best years of his life to the task of preaching the Gospel to the Red Indians. Rising above the special faults which beset the religion of his contemporaries, he was neither sour, nor gloomy, nor fanatical-a kindly-natured, tender-hearted man-who always stored the deep pockets of his horseman's cloak with presents for the papooses. His metrical version of the Psalms in the Indian dialect of Massachusetts (1658) was the first part of the Bible which he published, and in the singing of the Psalms he found the readiest means of arresting the attention of his hearers, and the simplest expression for the religious feelings of the infants of humanity.

Eliot's communities of "Praying Indians were dead or dying before his successor began his mission work among the Indians of Delaware and Pennsylvania. The Journal of David Brainerd (1718-47), as published in Jonathan Edwards' account of his life (1765), is a remarkable piece of spiritual autobiography. In words which are largely drawn from the Psalms, it traces the inner life of the thoughtful, somewhat melancholy youth, who, growing up in his father's home in Connecticut, or working on his own farm, resolved to devote his whole life, first as a minister, then as a missionary to the Indians of Delaware and Pennsylvania. Five years (1742-7) of toil, anxiety, exposure, and privation, did their work on a sickly, overwrought frame. At the age of thirty, Brainerd died of consumption, with the words of Psalm cii., sung at his bedside by his friends, still ringing in his ears.

The Journal is a forgotten book. It contains few illuminating thoughts; it breathes a theology which to many men is repellent; it speaks a technical language, which, from less saintly and simple lips, might nauseate the modern reader. Yet the picture it presents of utter self-surrender, and of concentrated single-minded effort, is singularly impressive. As a record of religious conflict and spiritual triumph, it may be contrasted with the autobiographies of Bunyan or Henry Martyn. It shows little of the dramatic force and picturemaking imagination of the Grace Abounding; it reveals scarcely a trace of the natural struggle with human ties and passions, which gives to Martyn's Journal so pathetic, and even romantic, an interest. But, bare, simple, detached though it is, it stands apart from similar diaries by reason of its absorption in the one object of Brainerd's life-the strenuous, concentrated effort to attain nearness to God.

The early stages of his progress are common enough. His transient self-satisfaction in doing duty passed away, leaving him so despondent that, like Bunyan, he" begrutched the birds and beasts their happiness," and fancied that mountains obstructed his hopes of mercy. In alternate joy and despair he continued, till, in October 1740, his temper and habit of mind underwent a change. New and higher views of God and His relation to man seemed to take possession of his soul. There was no special call, no vision, no