A horse-dealer of Montivilliers shouted at him:

"Get out, get out, you old scamp: I know all about your

string!"

Hauchecorne stammered:

"But since they found it again, the pocket-book—!"

But the other continued:

"Hold your tongue, daddy: there's one who finds it and there's another who returns it. And no one the wiser."

The peasant was choked. He understood at last. They accused him of having had the pocket-book brought back by an accomplice, by a confederate.

He tried to protest.

The whole table began to laugh.

He could not finish his dinner, and went away amid a chorus of jeers.

He went home ashamed and indignant, choked with rage, with confusion; the more cast down since from his Norman cunning, he was perhaps capable of having done what they accused him. of, and even of boasting of it as a good trick. His innocence dimly seemed to him impossible to prove, his craftiness being so well known. And he felt himself struck to the heart by the injustice of the suspicion.

Then he began anew to tell of his adventure, lengthening his recital every day, each time adding new proofs, more energetic protestations, and more solemn oaths which he thought of, which he prepared in his hours of solitude, his mind being entirely occupied by the story of the string. The more complicated his defense, the more artful his arguments, the less he was believed. "Those are liars' proofs," they said behind his back.

He felt this; it preyed upon his heart. He exhausted himself in useless efforts.

He was visibly wasting away.

The jokers now made him tell "the story of the piece of string" to amuse them, just as you make a soldier who has been on a campaign tell his story of the battle. His mind, struck at

the root, grew weak.

About the end of December he took to his bed.

He died early in January, and in the delirium of the death agony he protested his innocence, repeating:

"A little bit of string-a little bit of string-see, here it is, M'sieu' le Maire."

Translation of Jonathan Sturges.

FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE

(1805-1870)

REDERICK DENISON MAURICE takes high rank among the religious teachers of this century, more by virtue of what he was than of what he wrote. He is of those elect souls whose insight becomes a guiding force both to themselves and to their fellows. Of a generation which knew Carlyle and Mill and Darwin, which was given over to the dry-rot of intellectual despair in all matters concerning the religious life of man, Maurice seemed born out of due time. He belonged apparently to an earlier or to a

later day. Yet by force, not of his intellect but of his faith, he succeeded in turning many of his contemporaries to the Christian ideal which haunted him throughout his life, and which perpetually dominated his nineteenth-century inheritance of skepticism. Unlike Newman, with whom he was associated at Oxford, Maurice was content to find in the Church of England, as in all churches, only a partial realization of his ideal of righteousness. He is of those who believe that the whole truth can never be revealed to one generation. He shares FREDERICK D. MAURICE the Platonic belief that the vision of God becomes gradually apparent through many æons. This liberalism was the mainspring of his power as gious teacher.

a reli

His early training had enlarged his sympathies and prepared the way for his future ministrations. He was born in 1805 of a Unitarian father, and of a mother who adhered to the doctrines of Calvin. His first religious problem was to reconcile these differences of faith. Later his education at Cambridge deepened within him the evangelical sympathies, which made him long to unite the world under one banner as Sons of God. Upon leaving Cambridge he undertook the editorship of the Athenæum in London, and while engaged upon this work became a member of the Church of England. His residence at Oxford was the natural outcome of this step. The stronghold of medievalism was then vital with the presence of Newman,

of Pusey, of Keble, and of others who were seeking with passionate eagerness a refuge from the insistent doubts and difficulties of the age. The spirit of the age was then trying all men through the religious faculty. Maurice, as if anticipating the Christianity of the twentieth century, found the key to all problems, not in an infallible church nor in infallible reason, but in the everlasting love and fatherhood of God, and in the universal sonship of men. Cambridge had increased his liberality; Oxford deepened his idealism. Maurice would exclude no man, whether Jew, Turk, infidel, or heretic, from the Divine family; yet in his exalted worship of Jesus he was linked to the mediæval mystic. This rare combination gave him charm, and drew to him thoughtful and cultured men who were too large for narrowed and dogmatic Christianity, yet who longed to give expression to the soul of worship within them. It drew to him also the workingmen of London. After Maurice left Oxford he was appointed to the chaplaincy of Guy's Hospital in London. He held also the chairs of history, literature, and divinity in King's College, and the chaplaincy of Lincoln's Inn and of St. Peter's. During his long residence in London, from 1834 until 1866, the broad and fervent religious spirit of Maurice found expression in social work. The man who would knit together all the kindreds of the world in the bonds of Divine fellowship could not limit his ministrations to certain classes of society. He was in strong sympathy with workingmen, believing that their lack of education by no means debarred them from the apprehension of the highest spiritual truths. His foundation of the Workingman's College was the outcome of this sympathy. He founded also Queen's College for women; and thus established still further his claim to be ranked with the prophets of his time. In 1866 he became professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge. He died in 1872.

Frederick Denison Maurice was the author of many religious works, but his pre-eminent power is in his sermons. His Lectures on Ecclesiastical History,' his Theological Essays,' his 'Kingdom of Christ,' his Unity of the New Testament,' have literary value in proportion as they exhibit the spirit of the preacher. In his sermons the luminous spirituality of Maurice and his strength as a writer find completest expression. The man himself can be most closely approached in his sensitive and thoughtful letters to his friends.

I

FROM A LETTER TO REV. J. DE LA TOUCHE

HOLDOR HOUSE, DORKING, April 14th, 1863.

Do not know whether you will think me less or more fitted to enter into that tremendous difficulty of which you speak in your last letter, when I tell you that I was brought up a Unitarian, and that I have distinctly and deliberately accepted the belief which is expressed in the Nicene Creed as the only satisfaction of the infinite want which Unitarianism awakened in me; yes, and as the only vindication of the truth which Unitarianism taught me.

You feel that our Lord is a man in the most perfect sense of the word. You cannot convince yourself that he is more. No, nor will any arguments convince you that he is more. For what do you mean by that more? Is it a Jupiter Tonans whom you are investing with the name of God? is it to him you pray when you say "Our Father which art in heaven"? Is God a Father, really and actually a Father? is he in heaven, far away from our conceptions and confusions,-one whom we cannot make in the likeness of anything above, around, beneath us? Or is all this a dream? is there no God, no father? has he never made himself known, never come near to men? can men never come near to him?

Are you startled that I put these questions to you? Do they seem more terrible than any that have yet presented themselves to you? Oh, they are the way back to the faith of the little child, and to the faith of the grown man. It is not Christ about whom our doubts are. We are feeling after God if haply we may find him. We cannot find him in nature. Paley will not reveal him to us. But he is very near us; very near to those creatures whom he has formed in his own image; seeking after them; speaking to them in a thousand ways.

The belief of a Son who was with him before all worlds, in whom he created and loves the world; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and became incarnate, and died, and was buried, and rose again for us, and ascended on high to be the High Priest of the universe,- this belief is what? Something that I can prove by texts of Scripture or by cunning arguments of logic? God forbid! I simply commend it to you. I know that you want it. I know that it meets exactly what your spirit is looking after, and cannot meet with in any

books of divinity.

For we have to find out that God is not in a book; that he is; that he must reveal himself to us; - that he is revealing himself to us.

I am not distressed that you should be brought to feel that these deep and infinite questions-not questions about the arithmetic of the Bible - are what are really haunting and tormenting you. I believe that the clergy must make this discovery. We have been peating phrases and formulas. We have not entered into them, but only have accepted certain reasonings and proofs about them. Now they are starting up and looking at us as if they were alive, and we are frightened at the sight. It is good for us to be frightened; only let us not turn away from them, and find fault with them, but ask God—if we believe that he can hear usto search us and show us what is true, and to bring us out of our atheism.

How, you ask, can I use the prayers of the Church which assume Christ's divinity when I cannot see sufficient proof that he is divine? That is a question, it seems to me, which no man can answer for you; nay, which you cannot answer for yourself. If I am right, it is in prayer that you must find the answer. Yes, in prayer to be able to pray; in prayer to know what prayer is; in prayer to know whether, without a Mediator, prayer is not a dream and an impossibility for you, me, every one. I cannot solve this doubt. I can but show you how to get it solved. I can but say, The doubt itself may be the greatest blessing you ever had, may be the greatest striving of God's Spirit within you that you have ever known, may be the means of making every duty more real to you.

I do not know who your bishop is. If he is a person with whom it is possible to communicate freely, I should tell him that I had perplexities which made the use of the Prayer Book not as true to me as it once was; that I wanted time for quiet thought; that I should like to be silent for a little while; -I would ask him to let me commit my charge to a curate till I could see my way more clearly. That would be better, surely, than a resignation, painful not merely to your friends but injurious to the Church, and perhaps a reason for severe repentance afterwards. But I may be only increasing your puzzles by this suggestion. Of the fathers in God on earth I have no certainty. Of the Father in heaven I can be quite certain. Therefore one of my hints may be worth nothing. The other is worth everything.