herself is the parent of song, and that in early times poetry was conditioned by the same law of purity and singleheartedness which is indispensable in religion. It is thus that our question is answered by the history of the dawn of the drama.

We turn now to facts which all can verify. We find that there is often a structural bond between religion and poetry. The framework of the greatest poems of the world depends upon certain current religious conceptions. Take away these and the whole structure will fall. The "Iliad" is built upon the Olympian theology. The "Eneid" not only shows us how the gods work in the affairs of men, but it introduces us to the great untravelled region of the underworld of shades. The theological conception of his time supplies Dante with the structure of the "Divina Commedia," and Milton in the "Paradise Lost" endeavours, with the aid of seventeenth century theology, to justify "the ways of God to men.” The problems which arise out of the conflict between the experience of men and the conventional religious notions of the age are, in fact, the foundations of the greatest poems of the Hebrew, the Greek and the Teuton, of Job, Prometheus and Faust. We

may form what theories we please about the essential relationship between religion and poetry; but it will remain for ever true that the imagination of the poets who have produced the great works of the world, have so employed the religious thought of their age that no one can enter into the spirit or trace the significance of these poems without some acquaintance with the theology of Judæa, Greece and Rome, of the Middle Ages, and the Reformation.

But the connection of religion and poetry is even closer than that of the framework of the epic and the drama. As has heen hinted, poetry reflects the religious problems which agitate men's minds from age to age. The questions, "What relation do the unseen powers bear to human life?" "What influence do they exercise upon human destiny?" reach the poet's soul and stir his genius. That the gods do occupy themselves with human affairs is taken for granted in the poems of a nation's infancy. The gods are introduced as sharing in conflicts upon which men's fortunes, hopes and affections hang. Over the battlefields, when heroes contend, flit the forms of the immortals. Zeus and Mars, Juno and Minerva, Wodin and Thor, mingle in the storm of war to protect their favourites, to

strike down their foes, or to receive the parting spirit of the warrior when he falls. Venus will shelter Paris by enveloping him in a heavensent mist. Pallas and Mars will put on armour and will mingle, disguised, as combatants in the fray.

With the progress of time men's thoughts are widened and their conception of the gods change. They put away the childish notion of the gods. and goddesses; but the realisation of the inscrutable power or powers which influence the currents of human life still remains. There are certain aims and purposes which are being achieved, and, in the accomplishment of these, homes may be broken up and the happiness of individuals sacrificed. A dark, inscrutable neces-sity, which is not blind fate, but the action of a great though perhaps vaguely understood righteous principle, is discovered thwarting or overruling the actions of men. The recognition of some force which appeals to men's moral and religious instincts meets us in the tragedies of Æschylus and Sophocles. The strong religious element is still there. Men may no longer believe, as children did, in the exact literal personality of those who were called gods, but the divine is felt to be operative in human life. The

vast and unexplored regions which lie beyond the range of man's investigating power afford scope for imagination. There are no uninhabited worlds, no regions where fortune, right, and intelligence do not find expression. There are forces encountered by man which prove alike his helplessness and his greatness. There are realms which challenge imagination and there are powers and incidents which provoke curiosity. Life teems with experiences which suggest problems, and with conflicts which create tragedies. The religious man will think and evolve a theology. The poet will think and produce a drama. There will be poetry in the theology of the one and there will be religion in the poetry of the other. The constant questions of existence combine to foster the religious element in poetry.

That this is the case the most casual glance at the poetry of the past will prove to us. One or two illustrations will suffice.

We turn to Eschylus, for example, and we find that the pressing sense of the power, not ourselves, which makes itself felt resistlessly in human life, becomes operative in the poet's works. He represents an advance in human thought. The more childish conceptions of the

gods have lost hold upon men's minds. The thinking men and women of Athens can no longer believe in the capricious intervention of petulant and jealous deities in human affairs; but the great tide which moves forward and bears all human life along with it cannot be ignored. It must have a name. It is stronger than all gods. It is Fate or Necessity-man

must endure.

I needs must bear

My destiny as best I may, knowing well
The might resistless of Necessity.

It is not, however, eyeless or senseless. It has the nature of deity, vague and dim perhaps, but great, with some wide moral sweep of action, as an overlord of gods.

This power is not understood. Its actions are mysterious to men; they look capricious, envious at times, enigmatical, but they are actions which mean discipline and order. The proud are lowered, the bribes of men are disdained, the curse comes but comes not causeless. There is a force or power which men may forget but which they cannot wholly ignore.

There come times when the most careless is compelled to recognise it. Men are startled into the religiousness, which in easy times pleasure