absolutist ideas. I take up the
hymn-book--not the English, but the sturdy, independent, democratic
American hymn-book. I have not opened it for twenty years, yet the
greater part of its contents is as familiar to me as the syllables of
my own name. I read:

Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim bowing down before Thee,
Which wert, and art, and ever more shall be!

One might quote a hundred other hymns made thus out of royal imagery.
I turn at random to the part headed "General," and find that there is
hardly one hymn in which there is not "king," "throne," or some image
of homage and flattery. The first hymn begins--

Ancient of days, Who sittest, throned in glory;
To Thee all knees are bent, all voices pray.

And the second--

Christ, whose glory fills the skies--

And the third--

Lord of all being, throned afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star.

There is a court in Heaven above, to which all good Britons look up,
and about which they read with exactly the same thrills as they read
the Court Circular. The two courts have the same ethical code and the
same manners; their Sovereigns are jealous, greedy of attention,
self-conscious and profoundly serious, punctilious and precise; their
existence consisting of an endless round of ceremonies, and they being
incapable of boredom. No member of the Royal Family can escape this
regime even if he wishes; and no more can any member of the Holy
Family--not even the meek and lowly Jesus, who chose a carpenter's
wife for his mother, and showed all his earthly days a preference for
low society.

This unconventional Son lived obscurely; he never carried weapons, he
could not bear to have so much as a human ear cut off in his presence.
But see how he figures in the Court Circular:

The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain:

His blood-red banner streams afar:
Who follows in His train?

This carpenter's son was one of the most unpretentious men on earth;
utterly simple and honest--he would not even let anyone praise him.
When some one called him "good Master," he answered, quickly, "Why
callest thou me good? There is none good save one, that is, God." But
this simplicity has been taken with deprecation by his church, which
persists in heaping compliments upon him in conventional, courtly
style:

The company of angels
Are praising