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bility, and M. Renan dismisses them with this half-tolerant, half-sceptical smile, that M. Renan's Souvenirs inform and entertain us, while the Journal Intime makes a deep impression on that moral sense which is at the root of individual and national life.

The Journal is full, indeed, of this note of personal religion. Religion, Amiel declares again and again, cannot be replaced by philosophy. The redemption of the intelligence is not the redemption of the heart. The philosopher and critic may succeed in demonstrating that the various definite forms into which the religious thought of man has thrown itself throughout history are not absolute truth, but only the temporary creations of a need which gradually and surely outgrows them all. The Trinity, the life to come, paradise and hell, may cease to be dogmas and spiritual realities, the form and the letter may vanish away the question of humanity remains: What is it which saves ? ' Amiel's answer to the question will recall to a wide English circle the method and spirit of an English teacher, whose dear memory lives to-day in many a heart, and is guiding many an effort in the cause of good, the method and spirit of the late

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Professor Green of Balliol. In many respects there was a gulf of difference between the two men. The one had all the will and force of personality which the other lacked. But the ultimate creed of both, the way in which both interpret the facts of nature and consciousness, is practically the same. In Amiel's case, we have to gather it through all the variations and inevitable contradictions of a Journal which is the reflection of a life, not the systematic expression of a series of ideas, but the main results are clear enough. Man is saved by love and duty, and by the hope which springs from duty, or rather from the moral facts of consciousness, as a flower springs from the soil. Conscience and the moral progress of the race, these are his points of departure. Faith in the reality of the moral law is what he clings to when his inherited creed has yielded to the pressure of the intellect, and after all the storms of pessimism and necessitarianism have passed over him. The reconciliation of the two certitudes, the two methods, the scientific and the religious, 'is to be sought for in that moral law which is also a fact, and every step of which requires for its explanation another cosmos than the cosmos

of necessity.'

Nature is the virtuality of mind, the soul the fruit of life, and liberty the flower of necessity.' Consciousness is the one fixed point in this boundless and. bottomless gulf of things, and the soul's inward law, as it has been painfully elaborated by human history, the only revelation of God.

The only but the sufficient revelation ! For this first article of a reasonable creed is the key to all else - the clue which leads the mind safely through the labyrinth of doubt into the presence of the Eternal. Without attempting to define the indefinable, the soul rises from the belief in the reality of love and duty to the belief in 'a holy will at the root of nature and destiny'

-for if man is capable of conceiving goodness, the general principle of things, which cannot be inferior to man, must be good.' And then the religious consciousness seizes on this intellectual deduction, and clothes it in language of the heart, in the tender and beautiful language of faith. 'There is but one thing needful-to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and soul, are so many ways of approaching the Divine, so many modes of tasting and adoring God. Religion is not

a method: it is a life-a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.' And the faith of his youth and his maturity bears the shock of suffering, and supports him through his last hours. He writes a few months before the end: The animal expires; man surrenders his soul to the author of the soul.' We dream alone, we suffer alone, we die alone, we inhabit the last resting-place alone. But there is nothing to prevent us from opening our solitude to God. And so what was an austere monologue becomes dialogue, reluctance becomes docility, renunciation passes into peace, and the sense of painful defeat is lost in the sense of recovered liberty'—' Tout est bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppe."

Nor is this all. It is not only that Amiel's inmost thought and affections are stayed on this conception of a holy will at the root of nature and destiny,' in a certain very real sense he is a Christian. No one is more sensitive than he to the contribution which Christianity has made to the religious wealth of mankind; no one more penetrated

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than he with the truth of its essential doctrine death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness.' 'The religion of sin, of repentance and reconciliation,' he cries, 'the religion of the new birth and of eternal life, is not a religion to be ashamed of.' The world has found inspiration and guidance for eighteen centuries in the religious consciousness of Jesus. 'The Gospel has modified the world and consoled mankind,' and so 6 'we may hold aloof from the churches and yet bow ourselves before Jesus. We may be suspicious of the clergy and refuse to have anything to do with catechisms, and yet love the Holy and the Just who came to save and not to curse." And in fact Amiel's whole life and thought are steeped in Christianity. He is the spiritual descendant of one of the intensest and most individual forms of Christian belief, and traces of his religious ancestry are visible in him at every step. Protestantism of the sincerer and nobler kind leaves an indelible impression on the nature which has once surrendered itself to the austere and penetrating influences flowing from the religion of sin and grace; and so far as feeling and temperament are concerned, Amiel retained throughout his life the marks of Calvinism and Geneva.

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