of things in relation to the eternal; to coordinate man and his life with the basic harmony which proceeds from the central Source of all things, by unity with which all our discords can be resolved; to insist that reason, and not madness, concord, and not discord, reigns. In a universe which is itself rhythmic and metrical, poetry should regulate the cadences, inflections, and surges of the human soul into harmony corresponding with cosmic movements-with swinging tides and circling stars, and all the periodicities of nature, the intermissions and recurrences, the seasons and successions, alternations, oscillations, and balancings, lapses and recurrences, the licit ebb and flow, surgings and subsidings, systole and diastole, inspirations and expirations, which give to the breathing, throbbing cosmos something like meter and rhyme and rhythm. "Throughout the universe," he says, "the smallest break in the eternal order and harmony is an immeasurable vacuum of the kind that both art and science abhor; for, if we admit it, the universe has no meaning. The poet demanding that not a worm should be cloven in vain, or crying with Blake that a robin in a cage shakes heaven with anger, is at one with that profound truth-a sparrow shall not fall to the ground without our Father's knowledge. The blades of the grass are all numbered. There is no break in the roll of that harmony 'whereto the worlds beat time,' and it is because great art

brings out, as a conductor with a wand, the harmonies hidden by the noise and jar of daily affairs, that in poetry, as time goes on, our race will come to find an ever surer and surer stay. A certain carping philosophy which poets will always resent denies this harmony and sees in the creation of this earth a mere accident, or the mistake of an eyeless blunderer, a hideous, blood-stained monster, a grinning jester. The poetry that shall dominate the next age will have nothing to do with such a spirit. All great poetry brings us in touch with the harmony which is the basis of the universe." Thus Alfred Noyes beats the drum of Eternity.

Resuming his talk about the proper business of the true poet, he says: "Poetry's mission should be to consecrate all life, to pour on every sphere of human action what Wordsworth calls 'the light that never was on sea or land,' and give to everything that touch of consecration which is every true poet's dream." "It may sound ludicrous," says Mr. Noyes, "to say that, if a poet writes about a modern skyscraper, his mission is to consecrate the skyscraper; but so it is nevertheless." Yes, surely. And that is what that brilliant boy Frederic Lawrence Knowles did in his lofty verses, "To a Modern Office Building," which Alfred Noyes would seem to have had in mind.

Buoyancy and joyousness may well be emphasized as elements in the significance and charm

of Alfred Noyes. Agnosticism and negation have no Te Deums and Hallelujah Choruses, nothing to be jubilant about, not music enough to make even one small cricket elate. With Tennyson and Browning gone and the major key sunk to the minor, and the rasping voice of the pessimist jarring the air, it was high time for a real musician like Alfred Noyes, in whom God once more sent a bugler with heart and lungs and lips to make the bugle give its proper golden cry, and to put courage into the hearts of men. In the disbelieving and blaspheming camp of the sour and sulky pessimists there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, or would be if they were consistent. At any rate, they set our teeth on edge as with the filing of a saw. "What do you miss most?" was asked of Lucifer, some time out of heaven. "The sound of the trumpet in the morning," answered he, down amid the dolor of a sinning and suffering earth. When Alfred Noyes puts the slughorn to his mouth and blows, we hear a trumpet that has the sound of morning in it. He rather than Swinburne, to whom the title was given, deserves to be called "the trumpet of days that darken."

The great Victorians-Browning and Tennyson-sang faith, hope, and love to the nineteenth century in a period which Ernest Hello described as "having desire without light, curiosity without wisdom, seeking God by strange ways, ways traced by the blind, and offering rash incense

upon the high places to an unknown God, who is the God of darkness." While those two great Victorians lived there was plenty of noble and heartening poetry in England. When they were gone, Frederic W. H. Myers, himself no mean poet (witness his lofty and ever-memorable "Saint Paul"), said: "There is no future for English verse. English poetry has come to an end." If it seemed so then it does not seem so now, for alone by himself Alfred Noyes is enough to dispel that gloomy view. And he believes with Matthew Arnold that the future of poetry is immense, "because in poetry which is worthy of its high destiny our race as time goes on will come to feel a surer and ever surer stay."

We have done little more than dwell upon a single phase of the significance of Alfred Noyes; but it is the phase which we count most interesting and important. From our point of view the highest value of his undeniable charm is that it has power to gain the attention of a world now sorely in need of the spirit and the truth which suffuse and vitalize his poetry.

A VETERAN MISSIONARY1

WHY are we here? John Burroughs deifies Walt Whitman. We are Christians and not pagans; we do not deify any man. If this celebration were simply for the glorification of James M. Thoburn, he would hold up his hand in horror and in protest. If he were to speak to us here this afternoon, I think he would suggest that we join together in that refrain of the sweet and holy German hymn, "Let Jesus Christ be praised."

We are here to rejoice in a conspicuous illustration of what Jesus Christ can do with the man and the life wholly surrendered to his control. And its lesson, especially to the students of this college, is: Consecrate your life, fling it away in splendid abandon for Christ and the world, and see what will come of it for you in the fifty years ahead. It is for us to realize more fully through this celebration the ineffable majesty, the immeasurable power, the imperishable grandeur of Christian ideals and Christian service. If this be not the result, the whole program will be a profitless performance.

We are here to nail a few epithets upon the name of Thoburn, to call him some names indic'Address at the jubilee celebration of Bishop James M. Thoburn, Allegheny College, Meadville, Pa.