Clouds Without Water

abominations spoken of by the apostle are freely practised in our midst. Nay ! they are even the boast and the defence of that spectre of evil, So- cialism. The awful drama which the unhappy wretch who penned these horrible utterances has to unfold is alas! too common. Its study may be useful to us as showing the logical outcome of Atheism and Free Love. For the former, death ; for the latter, the death- in-life of a frightful, loathsome, shameful disease. “ Receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet ”. It may seem almost incredible to many of us, perhaps safely established in our comfortable cures, among a simple and Godfearing people, that any man should have been found to pen the disgusting blasphemies, the revolting obscenities, which defile these pages. Nor can it be denied that a certain power of expression, even at times a certain felicity of phrasing— always, indeed, a profound dramatic feeling — is to be found in these poems, Alas ! that we should be compelled to write the words! That an art essentially spiritual, an art dignified by the great names of Gascoigne Mackie, Chris- tina Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, George Herbert, should here be prostituted to such “ ignoble use ”, Truly the corruption of the best is the lowest —- corruptio optimi pessima. Nor can one gleam of Hope, even in the infinite mercy of our loving Father, tinge with gold the leprous gloom of our outlook. These clouds without water havenosilver lining. The unhappy man need not have feared that the poor servants of God would claim him as repentant, though surely we would all have shed the last drop of our blood to bring him to the grace of God. Alas ! it was not to be. The devilish precautions of this human fiend excluded all such possibilities. He died as he had lived, no doubt. Alas! no doubt. — VII—