exultation, and die without sorrow.]

20. Quite the most beautiful sign of the power of true
Christian-Catholic faith is this continual acknowledgment by it of the
brotherhood--nay, more, the fatherhood, of the elder nations who had
not seen Christ; but had been filled with the Spirit of God; and
obeyed, according to their knowledge, His unwritten law. The pure
charity and humility of this temper are seen in all Christian art,
according to its strength and purity of race; but best, to the full,
seen and interpreted by the three great Christian-Heathen poets,
Dante, Douglas of Dunkeld,[49] and George Chapman. The prayer with
which the last ends his life's work is, so far as I know, the
perfectest and deepest expression of Natural Religion given us in
literature; and if you can, pray it here--standing on the spot where
the builder once wrote the history of the Parthenon of Christianity.

[Footnote 49: See 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter LXI., p. 22.]

21. "I pray thee, Lord, the Father, and the Guide of our reason, that
we may remember the nobleness with which Thou hast adorned us; and
that Thou wouldst be always on our right hand and on our left,[50] in
the motion of our own Wills: that so we may be purged from the
contagion of the Body and the Affections of the Brute, and overcome
them and rule; and use, as it becomes men to use them, for
instruments. And then, that Thou wouldst be in Fellowship with us for
the careful correction of our reason, and for its conjunction by the
light of truth with the things that truly are.

[Footnote 50: Thus, the command to the children of Israel "that they go
forward" is to their own wills. They obeying, the sea retreats, _but not
before_ they dare to advance into it. _Then_, the waters are a wall unto
them, on their right hand and their left.]

"And in the third place, I pray to Thee the Saviour, that
Thou wouldst utterly cleanse away the closing gloom from
the eyes of our souls, that we may know well who is to be held
for God, and who for mortal. Amen."[51]

[Footnote 51: The original is written in Latin only. "Supplico tibi,
Domine, Pater et Dux rationis nostrae, ut nostrae Nobilitatis
recordemur, qua tu nos ornasti: et ut tu nobis presto sis, ut iis qui
per sese moventur; ut et a Corporis contagio, Brutorumque affectuum
repurgemur, eosque superemus, atque regamus; et, sicut decet, pro
instruments iis utamur. Deinde, ut nobis adjuncto sis; ad accuratam
rationis nostrae correctionem,