day he would have been encouraged in his speculations, which would have had the effect of modifying his extreme tendencies.

III. Bruno the Seer. The inscription on his monument is suggestive: "IX Giugno, MLCCCLXXXIX. A Bruno: il Secolo da lui divinato" (June 9, 1889. To Bruno: the Century foreseen by him). He knew the time was coming when the freedom he fought for would be respected. The prophetic instinct was strong in him. That strange dialogue of his, Spaccio della Bestia Trionjante, or "Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast," is an allegory, and in some of the passages one might almost imagine a second Isaiah or Ezekiel telling the story of some dread vision. It is a treatise on moral philosophy, and is conspicuous for being the sum total of Bruno's philosophy. To quote Professor Adamson once

more:

The gods are represented as resolving to banish from the heavens the constellations, which served to remind them of their evil deeds. In their places are put the moral virtues. The first of the three dialogues contains the substance of the allegory, which, under the disguise of an assault on heathen mythology, is a direct attack on all forms of anthropomorphic religion. . Among the moral virtues which take the place of the beasts are Truth, Prudence, Wisdom, Law, and Universal Judgment. Wisdom is Providence itself in its supersensible aspect, in man it is reason which grasps the truth of things; Law results from Wisdom, for no good law is irrational, and its sole end and aim, the good of mankind; Universal Judgment is the principle whereby men are judged according to their deeds, and not according to their belief in this or that catechism.

Then he launches out in the bitterest attacks on the established religion. The monks he stigmatises as "pedants who would destroy the joy of life on earth, who are avaricious, dissolute, and the breeders of eternal dissensions and squabbles." In his righteous revolt from time-worn dogmas he runs riot, ridiculing miracles and the mysteries of faith. His enthusiasm for freedom ran away with his judgment, and he was impatient of restraint. If Bruno had lived in the nineteenth century he would have been a Cavour, or a Garibaldi,

or possibly a Mazzini or a Gavazzi. But living three hundred years ahead of his time he became the victim of unreasoning prejudice and ecclesiastical misrule.

IV. Bruno the Martyr. His uncompromising attitude toward his ecclesiastical enemies brought him into trouble wherever he went. At Venice he was seized, and for six years was a prisoner in that city. He was then brought to Rome for trial. One of the bas-reliefs on the monument represents him before the ecclesiastical court. There he stands with head erect, and clenched fists, his whole bearing one of proud defiance. "Do your worst," he seems to say, "I fear you not." He was sentenced to be burned at the stake in the Field of Flowers-strange irony of Fate. On the seventeenth of February, 1600, he was led out to death. The story is told, doubtless by his enemies, that the monks offered him the crucifix as he was led to the stake, and that he turned away, refusing to kiss it. That does not depreciate him in the eyes of Protestants; that is no proof that he had lost faith in Christ. Scioppus, the Latinist, who was present at the execution, referring sarcastically to one of Bruno's socalled heresies-the infinity of worlds, which by the way, orthodox Christians believe to-day-wrote, "The flames carried him to those worlds which he had imagined." Cruel sarcasm and yet unvarnished truth. He was ushered into the presence of his Maker, who knew Bruno's heart better than any man could, and as we believe in Christ, we believe also in his word, "In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."

The world is the better for the life of this fearless advocate of freedom; the Church that persecuted him to death is now ashamed of the part it performed, while all men who enjoy political and religious liberty ought to thank God for the life and work of the heroic monk of Naples.

Indrick Kwright

ART. V.-SHAKESPEARE'S DOCTRINE OF SIN. WHO Comes to Shakespeare for moral lessons, set forth as such, labeled and sorted, will go away empty. The poet presents facts; he awakens, quickens, fires the moral sensibilities. Then we can make our own lessons. We leave Shakespeare with a more clearly defined bias to that which is good, because of his wholesome attitude toward sin. Shakespeare does not preach. But a preacher may take the old familiar texts, "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap," "Be sure your sin will find you out," and Shakespeare will furnish him material and illustration for sermons plenty. And there shall be in them no hesitant note, no nice balancing 'twixt righteousness and sin. Character determines conduct. What a man will do in a crisis may be determined by what he is when the crisis arrives. All his development has been preparing him for the supreme moment. So Hamlet comes to his crucial hour unfit for it. He is impelled to a signal revenge for his father's murder, and everything outside his own character draws him to this fearful filial duty. Even he himself struggles with himself to this end. He feels that he must do this thing; he will have proof and then he will act. But his years of study and dreaming have left him unfit for terrible deeds, and he makes no opportunity, and takes none, though often they offer themselves. Even at the last he acts under compulsion. Accident is heaped on accident to show the King's new villainy before Hamlet is nerved to slay him.

Shakespeare takes the problem of evil as he finds it. He does not seek to justify the ways of God to man. Evil exists, and because of it the innocent suffer. Cordelia's pure and earnest life has but slight flaw, and yet she dies. Othello may have sinned, but he has no desert of Iago's fiendish malice, and we feel that a great soul has been hounded to death. Hamlet falls in the general ruin of a state in which he has been the only one of royal blood without the guilt of

mortal sin. Banquo dies, though the witch temptation has not moved him, and Macduff is robbed of wife and little ones, though a patriot and a man. But by the side of this evil there is ever a sweet and holy enthusiasm for the good. Why should the good folk fall? He does not know. But they do fall, in the plays as in the great world. Dr. Johnson thought it a much-bettered Lear that let Cordelia live and be a happy wife. Shakespeare offers no such cheap and superficial solutions. Cordelia does not die-she lives, as a poet's bright creation, more vitally and truly as a sacrifice. The poet is more moral and more true to nature than the critic. Shakespeare's world is one in which sin is. It has been there from the beginning. It taints the very air. The soul of weak vitality takes the infection; the healthy soul repels it. Macbeth and Banquo on the witches' heath are both the subjects of their oracles. Because Macbeth is already familiar with the thought of sin for ambition's sake, the thrice-told augury, rising at each step, finds lodgment in his heart. It seems almost like the echo of his own thought. The oracle has no such effect on Banquo. It slips harmless from his untarnished nature. But Macbeth is a potential villain, and for such there is always sufficient encouragement from the outer world. Let a Roderigo look with desire on another's wife, and Iago is not far away. Laertes must have gone some distance on the way of sin before the suggestion of a poisoned sword could win his hearing and consent. Macbeth is under no compulsion. Sin is not necessitated. Whatever metaphysics may teach, Shakespeare knows that as a practical proposition it is safe and sane to believe in human freedom. Macbeth holds parley with his conscience. He weighs, considers, plainly sees his contemplated sin. And seeing it, he chooses it. The supernatural beings are emphasizers and clarifiers of human act and thought. The witches are not fates. They do not impel Macbeth, resisting, to his sin. He has invited the devil to sup with him and finds the fiend will stay the night. His start when the witches speak is not surprise, but recognition. His own thought is objectified before

him, and he sees it more plainly than before. The apparitions which trouble Richard the night before Bosworth are not mere wraiths; they are cumulative testimony to Richard that his past is not forgotten. If he had thought the morrow would be a field for an unhampered soldier to win his final victory, these visions are his disillusionment. They show him himself as he is, not adding to or lessening his sin, but making it vivid and emphatic, and showing him that he goes to his last battle with the burden of all his past, not less heavy because impalpable, a burden that shall make his downfall sure.

Shakespeare is confident in his constant presentation of sin as doomed to hopeless failure. Sin never succeeds. It causes tragedies, it spoils nations and peoples and civilizations, but it ever increases to its own destruction. This is a great and beneficent law. It is the promise of the final harmony. It is the dominant note in the last scene of the great tragedies. It is sounded in "Lear," where filial love and tenderness are exalted and unnatural baseness cowers and dies. It is heard in the catastrophe of "Hamlet," where sin, like the rattlesnake, dies of its own sting. It is the message. of "Othello" that Iago can have no abiding triumph. He does not die; worse for him, he lives, an object lesson of the fatality of sin. It is the great lesson of "Richard III." He starts a career of sin. If for no better reason, he will sin for the sake of sinning. His philosophy is "Evil, be thou my good." He is an intense and consistent believer in his creed. He never falters, never swerves; he preserves the unities in his villainy. No man could be more devoted to his life purpose. He stops at nothing, knows neither kinship, nor reverfor age, nor pity for youth, nor consideration for woman. He is a perfect villain. But his very perfection of villainy is his ruin. He is one man against the leagued universe. The stars in their courses fight against him. His very tools. turn against him. He has chosen to cut himself off from humanity, and humanity cannot let him prosper. It is the unvarying voice of history and individual experience. No

ence