Poems first published in ‘Friendship's Offering' (1834).

My Baptismal Birthday.

Fragments of the Wreck of Memory; or, Portions of Poems composed in Early Manhood:

1. Hymn to the Earth.

2. English Hexameters, written during a Temporary Blindness (1799).

3. The Homeric Hexameter Described and Exemplified. 4. The Ovidian Elegiac Metre described and exemplified.

Love's Apparition and Evanishment. Lightheartednesses in Rhyme by S. T. Coleridge. 1. The Reproof and Reply.

2. In Answer to a Friend's Question.

3. Lines to a Comic Author, on an Abusive Review. An Expectoration, or Splenetic Extempore on my Joyful Departure from the City of Cologne ("As I am a rhymer," etc.).

Expectoration the Second ("In Cöln,” etc.).

FAITH'S ROSARY: SONNETS ON THE

RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD.

BY HERBERT BAYNES, M.R.A.S.

[Read April 29th, 1903.]

If there be one thing more than another by which the nineteenth century will be remembered, it is surely the almost universal interest taken in all forms of religion. Great as the achievements of the mind have been in the realm of nature, more especially the supreme discovery of the reign of law, they are as nothing compared with the results of a sympathetic study of the human heart. The consciousness that God has never left Himself without a witness in the world, that all things have been working together for good to those who love Him, has gradually become clear as the manifold forms of faith have been made manifest. The rapid rise and growth of comparative philology during the last fifty years have rendered possible the far more interesting and important study of comparative theology. "L'histoire des religions, qui a pris au xixe siècle son plein développement, a sa place marquée dans la grande revue des conquêtes de l'esprit humain où sera dressé pour le xxe siècle le bilan du siècle finissant. Elle est appelée à fournir des contributions chaque jour plus importante à

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notre connaissance du passé de l'humanité et à jeter une lumière toujours plus vive sur les problèmes moraux et sociaux." "Dans cet itinéraire des peuples vers Dieu," says Edgar Quinet, "chaque pas mesure l'infini." In the spirit of these weighty words the following sonnets have been written. As the hart after the waterbrooks, so pants the soul of man for God, and in its flight, though bound by space and time, for ever probes the infinite. To-day we have before us all the sacred books of mankind : we know the aspirations and inspirations of our race, and woe worth the man whose spirit does not bend before the vision of the Eternal!

In the Tôrah, the Vêda, the Avesta, the Grant', and the Kurân there are doubtless many things by which the Jew, the Brâhman, the Pârsî, the Sik', and the Muslim would rather not be judged; and though for a full understanding of each system a thorough knowledge of the literature is necessary, it has been my endeavour to give the reader in each case only the highest and the best which has been thought and felt. To do this at once tersely and with the requisite sympathy is not easy, but it is surely well that it should be attempted. As a distinguished Persian scholar well says: "It behoves Orientalists to remember that nothing will ultimately conduce so much to the advancement of their favourite studies as an increase in the interest of the general reading public in their results; and that, in literature, form, if not everything, is at least a very important factor." The excellent Oxford series of translations, begun in 1875 and only just completed, has been a splendid contribution to a right under

standing of the Orient, but, even in English, the study of the sacred books of the East is mostly confined to scholars. May I venture to hope that the busy Christian missionary may find in these sonnets some vantage-ground for his holy calling without having to spend perhaps half his time upon the acquisition of unessentials?

The forms of faith here summarised in verse do not exhaust the religious consciousness of mankind, but they seem to me to present the highest stages in its evolution, and to lead upward and onward to that

"Far-off divine event

To which the whole creation moves!"

BRAHMANISM.

In its earlier forms Indian theology presents a double aspect, that of g'ñânam (knowledge) and that of Karma and B'akti (action and devotion). Thus the oldest of the writings which are looked upon as revelation, namely, the Vêdas, are divided into. two sections-g'ñâna Kâṇḍa, the rational element; and Karma Kanda, the emotional side of religion.

The doctrine of unity, of Brahman the Word or First Cause, and of Atman the Self, is found in the Upanisadas, which represent the high-water mark of religious literature and belong to the second period of Indian philosophy. They are theosophical treatises attached to the Brâhmaņas, forming the priestly Codex of the Vêda. Composed about the seventh century B.C. in the rich language of ancient