too numerous to mention, but one or two may be given. The distracted Edith cries:

No help but prayer,

A breath that fleets beyond this iron world,

And touches Him that made it.

It was prayer that sustained Enoch Arden in the loneliness of his splendid island:

Had not his poor heart,

Spoken with that, which being everywhere,

Lets none who speaks with Him, seem all alone,

Surely the man had died of solitude.

The blameless King, breathing out his soul in death murmurs:

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of.

And in the Higher Pantheism we find these splendid lines:

Speak to Him, Thou, for He hears, and spirit

with spirit can meet,

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands

or feet.

To Tennyson, God was not only Infinite Mind but also Infinite Heart.

3. Tennyson was a Theist. Was he also a Christian? Could he join in the second clause of the Creed and say: "I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord." There are in his poems certain conventional references to Jesus, that are demanded by the circumstances of the person using them, as, "Him who died for me," in the May Queen. But in the In Memoriam, a poem not at first intended for publication, and therefore a kind of book of confessions, he speaks more definitely. He speaks of "the sinless years that breathed beneath the Syrian blue;" of the Word who "had breath and wrought, with human hands the Creed of Creeds;" of "Him who is the Life indeed;" and, in the prologue invokes Jesus as "Strong Son of God immortal love." We know from sources outside

the poems that he did believe in the divinity of our Lord, that nothing was such a distress to him as to have this doctrine of the Church assailed, that he attached a very high value to the Holy Communion, and was conscious of a special nearness of Christ in the Sacrament.

4. Tennyson's teaching about sin. It has been already noticed that in many of his poems, Tennyson warns men of the bitter entail of sin, and, with a severity almost Biblical, discribes its disintegrating effects upon the inner life of the individual. Its equally disastrous results upon society are described in the Idylls. Two things broke up the Table Rounda false idealism, and the sin of those in high places. Arthur, in his last interview with Guinevere, tells her how the sin of those nearest to him was like leaven in the lump, corrupting the whole mass.

Then came thy shameful sin with Lancelot;

Then came the sin of Tristram and Isolt;

Then others following these my mightiest knights,
And drawing foul example from fair names,

Sinn'd also, till the loathsome opposite

Of all my heart had destined did obtain.

The Idylls from first to last may be regarded as a commentary upon the awful words of St. James, "When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death."

5. Tennyson's name is most closely associated with the doctrine of Immortality. Very early in his life he began to ask the old, old question: "If a man die, shall he live again?" But it was the death of the young Hallam, "the passing of the sweetest soul that ever looked with human eyes," his friend, his more than friend, the brothers of his love, more even than his brothers were to him, that raised the question in its acutest form. The In Memoriam is a record of his grief, his doubts, his fears, and of his victory over doubt-and tells of the full conviction reached after many a weary struggle that the spirit walks from state to state, that this is but the ruined chrysalis of one, that those we call the dead are breathers of an ampler day, that his friend now lives in God. But the victory of the In Memoriam was but one in a long campaign, whose fortunes ebbed and flowed, now inclining to the poet, and now leaving him, if not beaten and in despair, fighting a losing battle. But in the closing poems we have the paean. There is doubt no longer that the Highest is the Wisest and the Best. Nor does he allow all that Saddens Nature to blight his hope or break his rest And when the day of life is done and the sunset

falls, and the evening star is hung in the darkening sky, and the call comes clear and strong for the sailor to leave the port, he feels, whether there be rough weather crossing the bar, or a full tide without sound or foam, he goes to other seas and other skies, and other ports, not without guidance, and not without hope that he may see his Guide and Pilot face to face.

With the hope of immortality singing in his heart, Tennyson felt man could make merry over death. It may seem a dark and starless road; a strait and dreadful pass; it may be the shadow feared of man; but it is also like a friend's voice from a distant field; its true name is Onward, the Opener of the Gates; it is liker a blooming boy than a dark shadow. When Gareth went forth to fight the fearsome knight that called himself Death:

A maiden swooned,

The Lady Lyonors wrung her hands and wept,
Sir Gareth's head prickled beneath the helm,
And ev'n Sir Lancelot thro' his warm blood felt
Ice strike.

But what actually happened?

From the trappings of the

Knight over-thrown by Gareth there

Issued the bright face of a blooming boy
Fresh as a flower new born.

And Lady Lyonors and her house, with dance
And revel and song made merry over Death,
As being after all their foolish fears

And horrors only proven a blooming boy.

What thanks do we not owe to Tennyson for his religious teaching, so sane, so wise, so stimulating! But we owe him greater thanks for a still nobler legacy. The good and beautiful life he lived. What he said of another great and good man may with equal truth be said ofhimself-he wore the white flower of a blameless life.

T. B. MCCORKINDALE, M.A.
Lakefield, Ontario.

NEW LIGHT ON THE STRUCTURE OF MATTER.

THE

HE problem of the structure of matter is by no means modern. The conception of atoms dates back to ancient classical days. That matter consisted of ultimate discrete particles was the view advanced by Democritus and later expounded by Epicurus and his followers. Again, during the unscientific Middle Ages, discussions as to whether matter were a plenum or of a grained structure were common among the Schoolmen. But old as the problem is, it is to comparatively modern scientists that we owe all the real advances. which have been made in this field of enquiry. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Dalton advanced his atomic theory of matter and since that time much has been done to place this theory on a firm basis. Concerning the structure of the atom itself, however, little was known until within the last twenty-five years. The position in 1875 may be summed up in the following words of J. Clerk Maxwell: "The formation of a molecule is therefore an event not belonging to that order of nature under which we live. It is an operation of a kind which is not, so far as we are aware, going on on earth or in the sun or the stars, either now or since these bodies began to be formed. . . . Each (atom) is physically independent of all the others." In these words we have the conception of the greatest physicist of his time. At this time, it is true, the atom was not considered to be a simple body. Indeed, in the early eighties, we find another famous physicist, from a consideration of spectroscopic work, remarking that "compared with a grand piano,the atom of iron must be a very complex structure." But the absolute independence of atoms of different substances, their absolute constancy and unchangeability were universally accepted.

During the last quarter of a century, since 1895, if one were asked to assign a definite year, little short of a revolution has taken place in the physicist's concept of the atom. No longer does each atom reign supreme in its own domain, no longer does an atom of silver refuse to have anything in com