THE LAMP OF LIFE

ADDEST OF all the chapters is that on

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"Dead Architecture." By that Ruskin does not mean, as he carefully points out, coarse cutting, nor blunt cutting, but cold cutting-the look of equal trouble everywhere-the smooth diffused tranquillity of heartless pains-the regularity of a plough in a level field." It is work done without heart, by hands soulless as some machine. The chill is more frequently felt in finished work, "for men cool and tire as they complete."

Once again we are reminded of our Lord's dread of mechanism in religion, when ceremonies and sacrifices and prayers are offered with monotonous regularity, but all without the deep throb and splendid passion of life. Bring to Him the rough work and He will be patient-bring the blundering work and He will not chide; but heartless service He will not accept. The widow's mite was worth more to Him than all the "icily regular" donations of wealthy Pharisees, because it was spiritualised by her heart's devotion. "He came that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly."

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THE LAMP OF MEMORY

NA noble passage, Ruskin illustrates how much of Nature's appeal to the mind is derived from her human associations. Standing under the spell of a scene, above the village of Champagnole, in the Jura, he endeavoured to imagine it placed in some aboriginal forest of the New Continent and immediately the glory departed and left the mind blank and chill. "Those ever springing flowers and ever flowing streams had been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue; and the crests of the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron walls of Joux and the four-square keep of Granson."

Architecture should be the protectress of this sacred influence of memory. It is for her "to render the art of our day historical, and to preserve, as the most precious of inheritances, that of past ages." He must be strangely constituted, who does not feel the appeal of the past, brooding like some mysterious spirit amid the structures that stand as monuments of the strength and

faith of other days. One day lives in my memory when, having stood in Westminster Abbey among

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The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns"

I passed into the prayer-room of John Wesley, at City Road. The Cathedral is a superb majesty embodied in stone; the sanctuary of the great evangelist stands bare and unadorned; but in each there shone the radiant lamp of memory throwing its hallowing light upon our wistful minds.

Gilbert Chesterton complained that Ruskin was interested in every part of the cathedral except the Altar. The true statement is that he found the Altar everywhere. All places had been sanctified by human prayers and tears, by the adoration and faith of many generations.

Memory should lead us not merely to guard the inheritance which is ours to hold in trust for the future; it should also inspire us to live after such a fashion as shall make the temples in which we worship, and the homes in which we dwell, hallowed to the generations that are to be. It

is well that we should place, in the cities and towns of Canada, some memorial, in enduring stone, of those who have made the great sacrifice, so that, in coming days, when children ask "What mean these stones?" teachers and parents may tell of the chivalrous lives and heroic deeds wrought by the manhood and womanhood of our own time.

If human association can give such moving power to scenes of Nature and fabrics of stone, how much greater the appeal of memory to the architect of character. The Lamp of Memory casts its light back upon the soul's birth and uprising, upon the dawning of responsibility, upon fierce battles fought on its broad plains, upon sorrows endured, and sins washed in scalding tears, upon "pulses of nobleness and aches of shame." It reveals the coming of the Great Lover Who sought us for His own, "by His Agony and bloody Sweat, by His precious Death and Burial, by His glorious Resurrection and Ascension and by the coming of the Holy Ghost." It flashes upon our minds the amazing truth that God seeks this redeemed soul for His Temple and dwelling-place.

Powerful indeed becomes the appeal of Memory in Soul Architecture. If we cherish the palaces and homes of our mighty dead, how much more carefully should we guard with reverence the abode of a living God. If we walk softly where the utterance of human genius was once heard, or some voice of prayer became potent in the history of nations, should we not stand with feet unshod where God utters His word, where the Holy Spirit intercedes "with groanings that cannot be uttered "? "We are not our own; we are bought with a price."

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THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE

HE ARCHITECT is a man under authority. He may build freely only when he has learned to obey. There is no such thing in the Universe as the license which men have miscalled Liberty. "The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment." If the builder has not been loyal to the laws of Nature, then will the building be hurled to ruin by inexorable powers. Gravitation