attitude of those "who see that against all appearances the nature of
things works for truth and right forever." He saw good not only in what
we call beauty, grace, and light, but in what we call foul and ugly. For
him a sky-born music sounds "from all that's fair; from all that's
foul:"--

"'Tis not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cups of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There alway, alway something sings."

The universe was ever new and fresh in his eyes, not spent, or fallen,
or degraded, but eternally tending upward:--

"No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew."

When we come to his interpretation of historical Christianity, we find
that in his view the life and works of Jesus fell entirely within the
field of human experience. He sees in the deification of Jesus an
evidence of lack of faith in the infinitude of the individual human
soul. He sees in every gleam of human virtue not only the presence of
God, but some atom of His nature. As a preacher he had no tone of
authority. A true non-conformist himself, he had no desire to impose his
views on anybody. Religious truth, like all other truth, was to his
thought an unrolling picture, not a deposit made once for all in some