TO BE CONTINUED.
[ORIGINAL.]
THE MARTYR.
Serene above the world he stands,
Uplift to heaven on wings of prayer:
Across his breast his folded hands
Recall the cross he loved to bear.
Upon his upturned brow the light
Flows like the smile of God: he sees
A flash of wings that daze his sight,
He hears seraphic melodies.
In vain the cruel crowd may roar,
In vain the cruel flames may hiss:
Like seas that lash a distant shore,
They faintly pierce his sphering bliss.
He hears them, and he does not hear--
His fleshly bonds are loosened all--
No earthly sound can claim the ear
That listens for his Father's call.
It comes--and swift the spirit spurns,
His quivering lips and soars away;
The blind crowd roars, the blind fire burns,
While God receives their fancied prey.
D. A. C.
From The Month.
ECCE HOMO. [Footnote 131]
[Footnote 131: "Ecce homo." A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Macmillan. 1866.]
[The London Reader says the following article is from the pen of the Very Rev. Dr. Newman.--Ed. C.W.]
The word "remarkable" has been so hacked of late in theological criticism--nearly as much so as "earnest" and "thoughtful"--that we do not like to make use of it on the present occasion without an apology. In truth, it presents itself as a very convenient epithet, whenever we do not like to commit ourselves to any definite judgment on a subject before us, and prefer to spread over it a broad neutral tint to painting it distinctly white, red, or black. A man, or his work, or his deed, is "remarkable" when he produces an effect; be he effective for good or for evil, for truth or for falsehood--a point which, as far as that expression goes, we leave it for others or for the future to determine. Accordingly it is just the word to use in the instance of a volume in which what is trite and what is novel, what is striking and what is startling, what is sound and what is untrustworthy, what is deep and what is shallow, are so mixed up together, or at least so vaguely suggested, or so perplexingly confessed, which has so much of occasional force, of circumambient glitter, of pretence and of seriousness, as to make it impossible either with a good conscience to praise it, or without harshness and unfairness to condemn. Such a book is at least likely to be effective, whatever else it is or is not; and if it is effective, it may be safely called remarkable, and therefore we apply the epithet "remarkable" to this "Ecce Homo."