That loves his friend, — and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him;
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on!

I tell you that which you yourselves do know;

Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths!
And bid them speak for me. But, were I Brutus,

And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue
In every wound of Cæsar, that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny!

COMPOSITION.

Write a short sketch of Mark Antony's speech, from the following points:

Cæsar has been murdered by Brutus and others. The hour for burial is at hand. Mark Antony comes to mourn over his friend's body. The people call for a speech. Mark Antony tells what a man Cæsar was -- how generous, brave, ambitious. The people become excited. Desire to attack the murderers. The people are asked to examine the rent mantle formerly worn by Cæsar. The wounds are shown. Compared to mouths. Cæsar's will is discovered, held up. Antony tells what he would do, were he in the place of his enemies, and guilty as they. Describe the murderer as hiding away, and Antony as carried by the grateful people. Say a few words about the true character of Cæsar, and show that he was not great in the Christian sense of the word. None can be truly great who are not truly good.

NO human act can be purely spiritual. The law of

our being is that we rise from the visible to the

invisible, from the sensible to the supersensible. An invisible and purely spiritual religion would be to us an unreal and intangible religion. An invisible church is a contradiction in terms, and without a church there can be, amongst men, no authoritative religious teaching. Neither religious nor intellectual life, in our present state, can exist without language, and language addresses itself, both directly and primarily, to the senses. It is therefore impossible for man to express the spiritual without making use of the material. Hence art, which seeks to adumbrate the infinite under a finite form, in this simply conforms to the universal law of man's nature, in which all things, even in thought, subject him to matter.

Is not Christianity based upon this fact? Did not God take unto himself a visible and material nature in order to manifest to the world his invisible power, and beauty, and holiness? Is not the Christian religion a system of things invisible, visibly manifested? The end of religion is spiritual; but in order to attain this end it must possess a visible and material element. This fact of itself gives to art a religious mission of the highest order.

This mission is to proclaim to the world Jesus Christ, and him crucified and glorified-by poetry, by song, by painting, by architecture; in a word, by every artistic creation of which genius is capable.

Jesus Christ is the beau ideal of art- the most lovely and beautiful conception of the divine mind itself. He is the visible manifestation of God, the all-beautiful.

Purity, and gentleness, and grace, with power and majesty, all combine to make him the most beautiful of the sons of woman, the fairest and the loveliest figure in all history, to whom the whole world bows in

instinctive love and homage. There is a shadow on the countenance of Jesus which gives to it its artistic completeness. It is sorrow. There is something trivial in gayety and joy which deprives them of artistic effect. The cheek of beauty is not divine, except the tear of sorrow trickle down it. Hence to preach Jesus Christ, and him crucified, is not to preach perfect religion alone, but also the perfect ideal of art.

Christian science, which is theology, has as its object the dogmas of the Church. Christian art relates directly to religious worship, but it has incidentally a doctrinal significance. If we consider eloquence an art, which we may do, for true eloquence is always artistic, we must concede that it holds a most important place in the Church of Jesus Christ. He blessed eloquence and bade it convert the world, when he spoke to the apostles these memorable words: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations." The divine command was to preach the Gospel, not to write it. The living word spoken by the divinely commissioned teacher has alone borne fruit in the world, converted the nations, and changed the face of the earth. Eloquence must be spoken. If you take from it its voice, you take away its soul. of an impassioned nature, in which love deep abiding conviction are enrooted. purity and holiness of life in him who speaks, and let him be in earnest, and he will be eloquent. Eloquence in the mouth of a consecrated teacher has a sacramental power. It is one of the divinely established ordinances for the propagation of religious truth, and for the conversion of the soul to God.

It is the cry and faith and

Add to this

Poetry, too, is consecrated to the service of religion. The muse never soars her loftiest flight except when lifted up on the wings of religious inspiration. The most

poetic word in language is that brief, immense wordGod. It is the sublimest, the profoundest, the holiest word that human tongue can utter. It forms the instinctive cry of the soul in the hour of every deep emotion. In the hour of victory, in the hour of death, in the ecstasy of joy, in the agony of woe, that sacred word bursts spontaneously from the human heart. It is the first word that our mother taught our infant lips to lisp, when, pointing to heaven, she told us that there was God, our Father, and bade us look above this base, contagious earth. When the mother for the first time. feels her first-born's breath, in tenderness of gratitude she pronounces the name of God; when in utter helplessness of woe she bends over the grave of her only child, and her heart is breaking, she can find no relief for her agonizing soul, until, raising her tearful eyes to-heaven, she breathes in prayer the name of God.

When two young hearts that are one vow eternal love and fealty, it is in the name of God they do it: and the union of love loses half its poetry and half its charm except it be contracted before the altar of God and in his holy name.

When her mother sends her son to do battle for his country, she says, "God be with thee, my boy!"

When nations are marshalled in deadly array of arms, and the alarming drum foretells the danger nigh, and the trumpet's clangor sounds the charge, and contending armies meet in a death-grapple, amid fire and smoke and the cannon's awful roar, until victory crowns them that win; those banners that were borne proudly on till they floated in triumph over the field of glory are gathered together in some vast temple of religion, and there an assembled nation sings aloud in thanksgiving: “We praise thee, O God! we glorify thee, O Lord!" How

often has not God chosen the muse of poetry in order to convey to the world his divine doctrines! The Bible contains much of the sublimest poetry ever written. Some of the Psalms of David, portions of Job and Isaias, equal in deep and lofty poetic feeling anything that Dante or Milton wrote. And did not these privileged minds also receive their highest inspirations from religion?

We may not separate poetry from music. Music is poetry in tones. It is the language of feeling, the universal language of man. The cry of joy and of sorrow, of triumph and of despair, of ecstasy and of agony, is understood by every human being, because it is the language of nature. All the deep emotions of the soul seek expression in modulation of sound.

Cousin says: "There is physically and morally a marvellous relation between a sound and the soul. It seems as though the soul were an echo in which the sound takes a new power."

Byron, too, seems to have felt this:

"Oh, that I were

The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,
A living voice, a breathing harmony;
A bodiless enjoyment, born and dying
With the blest Tone that made me!"

The ancients

At the awakening call of music, all the universal harmonies of nature stir in the soul. were wont to say that he who cultivates music imitates the divinity; and St. Augustine tells us that it was the sweet sound of psalmody which made the lives of the monks of old so beautiful and harmonious. God is eternal harmony, and the works of his hand are harmonious, and his great precept to men is that they live in harmony. Did not Jesus Christ come into the