in
all sunsets. He is filling the universe with His breath and holding us
all in His "Mighty Moulding Hand."

The relation in which all this stands to Christianity is a very curious
question. The splendour, beauty, and spirituality of it all are evident
enough, but the references to anything like dogmatic or definite
Christian doctrine are confusing and obscure. Perhaps it was impossible
that one so literally a child of nature, and who had led such an
open-air life from his childhood, could possibly have done otherwise
than to rebel. It was the gipsy in him that revolted against
Christianity and every other form and convention of civilised life, and
claimed a freedom far beyond any which he ever used. We read that in his
sixth year, when already he found the God of the pulpit remote and
forbidding, he was nevertheless conscious of a benign and beautiful
presence. On the shore of Loch Long he built a little altar of rough
stones beneath a swaying pine, and laid an offering of white flowers
upon it. In the college days he turned still more definitely against
orthodox Presbyterianism; but he retained all along, not only belief in
the central truths that underlie all religions, but great reverence and
affection for them.

It is probable that towards the close he was approaching nearer to
formal Christianity than he knew. We are told that he "does not
reverence the Bible or Christian Theology in themselves, but for the
beautiful spirituality which faintly breathes through them like a vague
wind blowing through intricate forests." His quarrel with Christianity
was that it had never done justice to beauty, that it had a gloom upon
it, and an unlovely austerity. This indeed is a strange accusation from
so perfect an interpreter of the Celtic gloom as he was, and the retort
_tu quoque_ is obvious enough. There have indeed been phases of
Christianity which seemed to love and honour the ugly for its own sake,
yet there is a rarer beauty in the Man of Sorrows than in all the
smiling faces of the world. This is that hidden beauty of which the
saints and mystics tell us. They have seen it in the face more marred
than any man's, and their record is that he who would find a lasting
beauty that will satisfy his soul, must find it through pain conquered
and ugliness transformed and sorrow assuaged. The Christ Beautiful can
never be seen when you have stripped him of the Crown of Thorns, nor is
there any loveliness that has not been ma