HYMNS FROM THE GERMAN.

TO THE ORIGINAL MELODIES.

XXI.

"AUS TIEFER NOTH RUF' ICH ZU DIR."

[The famous One Hundred and Thirtieth Psalm, "De profundis clamavi;" paraphrased by Martin Luther, 1524.]

FROM lowest deeps I cry, O God!

In thee all hope doth centre;
Do not with me, who dread thy rod,
Into strict judgment enter.

For if thou look severely through
The sin and wrong that mortals do,

What flesh could stand before thee?

There's nought avails but sovereign grace,
To cover our transgressions;
And man's deserts fill little place

In the best life's confessions.

No claim is heard, and boasting none;
But fears before thee every one,

And lives to Grace, Grace only.

On God alone my hope I plant,
And nought on my deserving;
To thee committing my sore want,
In thee my spirit nerving.
The promise of thy precious word
That trust and refuge must accord,
On which I wait for ever.

And though delayed till falls the night,
Delayed till breaks the morning,
I'll not mistrust the Heavenly Might,-
All other succor scorning.

Such is the true believer's way,

Who, of the Spirit born, can say,

When this mortal life is closing,

Full of faith my soul shall flit,

Yielding all to his disposing.

Heart and tongue the strain have caught: "My Redeemer quit I not.”

Let it go, the strength of sight,

All the powers of sense be failing;

Let the latest beams of light

In the feeble eyes be paling;

When the frame its death has got,
My Redeemer quit I not.

I shall ne'er his presence quit;
When I reach the heavenly dwelling
Where the faith of Holy Writ,

Turned to sight, its joy is telling;
What shall veil his glory? What?
My Redeemer quit I not.

N. L. F.

SUPERNATURALISM.

[An extract from Edmond Scherer's “Mélanges de Critique Religieuse;" being part of a conversation between himself and an antisupernaturalist, Montaigu.] "FOR the rest, my dear sir," said Montaigu in closing, "there is one point on which you will certainly agree with me. Belief in the supernatural is not a little weakened in men's minds. Right or wrong, our modern culture repels miracle: it does not precisely deny it, it is indifferent to it. Even the preacher knows not what to do with it. The more serious he is, the deeper and more vital his Christianity, so much the more does the miraculous disappear from his teaching. Formerly, miracles made the power of a religious discourse; to-day, they are its secret embarrassment. Everybody vaguely feels, in presence of the marvellous narratives of our sacred books, what one feels in regard to the legends of the saints This cannot be religion: it is only an excrescence upon religion. Look at the place which the resurrection of Jesus Christ holds in the theology of St. Paul, and then at the place which it holds in our own! Such facts, believe me, are just what the unbeliever wants, and what the serious man is greatly disturbed by."

"It is true," I replied, "we no longer believe in miracles : you might as well add that we no longer believe in God. And the two things hold together. Much is said, now-a-days, about Christian spiritualism, about the religion of the conscience; and you yourself seem to see a progress of religion in giving up the miracles. Ah! could I only say strongly enough how the deepest experience of my heart protests against such an opinion! When I find my faith in miracles wavering, then also I see more dimly the image of my God: he ceases gradually to be for me the free, living, and personal God, the God with whom the soul converses as with a master and a friend. Let this sacred dialogue be interrupted, and what have we left? How sad and disenchanted does life then appear! With nothing to do but eat and sleep and lay

up money, with no wider horizon, how puerile does our mature life look, how melancholy our old age, how aimless and absurd all our agitations! The more mystery, that is to say, the more of the unknown, the more of the infinite, the more of heaven above us, the more poetry everywhere. Ah! you may rely upon it, the unbelief which rejects miracle tends to unpeople the heaven and to disenchant the earth. The supernatural is the soul's natural sphere. It is the essence of its faith, its hope, its love. I know very well that criticism is specious, that its arguments often appear victorious; but I know one thing besides, and perhaps I might appeal here to your own testimony, -in ceasing to believe in miracle, the soul finds that it has lost the secret of divine life; it is henceforth impelled towards the abyss; an accelerating fall draws it away from God and the holy angels; it loses successively piety, rectitude, genius; soon it comes flat to the ground: yes, and sometimes lies extended in the mud."

I spoke with a good deal of emotion. Having myself known what doubt was, I described these dangers as one who had incurred them; as one whose own eyes had, in some sort, measured the abyss in question. I thought I had made some impression on my interlocutor; and so I experienced a feeling of pain when I heard his answer. "It is not necessary," said he, “to exaggerate things so. Perhaps, in point of fact, the supernatural was a necessary form of religion for less cultivated minds." He had himself known men who had become serious, devout, practical Christians around the turning-table from which they were demanding oracles. In all this there was a psychological phenomenon to study. But, after having spoken in this way for some time, Montaigu turned towards me with an animated and earnest look:

"For the rest," said he, "I should be sorry to push the discussion further. I am of your opinion at the bottom of my heart. I know but too well that miracle is the proper element of faith, and that, with the disappearance of miracle, there would be great risk of the disappearance of heaven and hell, and Jesus Christ and God himself, and the distinction of good and evil, and all that has raised us above Paganism.

Yes we must have a living and present God; and the supernatural alone gives him to us. The God who cannot or will not descend upon our earth, and there manifest his power and his glory, this God is the God of deism, a machinery hidden in the heavens, an abstraction of the mind, a dead God."

"Are you jesting," I said, "and do you not see how you contradict yourself? A moment ago you were presenting the miraculous as a heterogeneous element in religion; and now you make it the very foundation of faith."

"I do not contradict myself, for I was speaking before of religion according to its idea; and now I am speaking of faith, that is, of religion as it produces itself in reality. Perhaps the future will undertake to reconcile the fact with the idea, by remodelling the Christian beliefs. If Christianity is imperishable, it is on condition of being the same identical principle which gives rise to successive transformations. As for us, our task is to collect all the facts and to welcome all the truths. It is the way to keep sincere. Now, one fact is manifest in our day, this conversation of ours has just made it apparent, I mean the antagonism between criticism and faith. We cannot renounce the latter, without abdicating that good which is no other than the very truth of life; and we cannot renounce the former, without falling into superstition. In losing faith, we lose our souls; in abandoning knowledge, we abandon the dignity of reasonable beings. And yet knowledge tends to dissolve faith, and faith maintains itself only by forgetting or despising knowledge; so that we are reduced, like Jacobi, to being Christians through the heart, and Pagans through the understanding. But man cannot rest in this contradiction with himself. Hence perpetually renewed efforts at reconciliation, efforts which serve only to render the opposition of principles stronger or more manifest. So far has this gone, that society is divided into two camps, a minority of zealous but narrow-minded. Christians, and a majority of intelligent unbelievers; on the one side the materialism of modern science, on the other the religion of the immaculate conception. Do you see what we