hey have overdone it. The
Christianity of Tennyson is a very different thing from the Christianity
they vend to the credulous multitude.

There is no real evidence that Tennyson accepted the legendary part of
Christianity. Even in "In Memoriam," which was published forty-three
years ago, the thought is often extremely Pantheistic. It is nearly
always so in the later poems. God, not Christ, became more and more the
object of the poet's adoration, "Strong Son of God, immortal Love"--the
first line of tne earlier poem--does not necessarily mean Christ; while
the exclamation, "Ring in the Christ that is to be," is more symbolic
than personal. There is also a strong hope, rather than the certitude,
of a future life. No thoroughly convinced Christian could have written
of

The Shadow cloaked from head to foot,
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds.

Nay, the very deity of Christ is held loosely, if at all, in the
thirty-third section, where he

Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form.

is bidden to leave his sister undisturbed when she prays; the poet
exclaiming

Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!

In the last line of the next stanza this "sacred flesh and blood"
of Christ (it is to be presumed) is called "a type"--which is a wide
departure from orthodox Christianity. And what shall we say of the final
lines of the whole poem?

One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.

Like other passages of "In Memoriam," it is a distinct anticipation of
the thought of "The Higher Pantheism," "Flower in the Crannied Wall,"
"De Profundus," and "The Ancient Sage."

Much has been made of the "Pilot" in one of Tennyson's last poems,
"Crossing the Bar."

I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

This has been treated as a reference to Christ; but a friend of
Tennyson's, writing in the _Athenaeum_, says that the reference was
really to the poet's son, Lionel Tennyson, who "crossed the bar" of
death some years previously. How much more natural and human is the
reference in the light of this explanation! Yet it appears, after all,
from a later letter to the press by Tennyson's surviving son, that he
_did_ mean Christ. This is not, however, a confession of orthodoxy. The
sentiment might be shared by men like the venerable Dr. Martineau, who