THE NEW PARADISE LOST AND REGAINED.* MR. BICKERSTETH is, we

believe, an excellent parish priest, pious, laborious, and conscientious, but he is not a second Milton, and

none but a poet greater than Milton would be justified in choos- ing as subjects for an epic poem themes like "The Creation of Angels and of Men," "The Bridal of the Lamb," " The Millennial Sabbath," "The Last Judgment," the abodes of the blest, the torments of the damned, and the highest mysteries of the Cal- vinistic theology. Mr. Bickersteth, a clergyman of high Calvin- istic opinions, with a strong faith, a low concrete imagination, and considerable eloquence of the ordinary pulpit kind, has attempted them, and the result will, we suspect, astonish all of his congre- gation whose taste has not been utterly debauched by minatory hymns. The poet's faith is so strong, is, so to speak, so gross, that he ventures incessantly upon scenes which to sceptics seem shock- ing, and descriptions which, if Mr. Swinburne had attempted them, -would have been pronounced blasphemous ; his imagination is so earthly that he spoils by anthropomorphism the most beautiful or majestic figures used by the Hebrew seers, and his habit of the pul- pit is so strong that he incessantly follows passages of fair eloquence by bursts, the whole charm of which is a certain sonorousness, or it maybe grandeur of sound. After the organ the wind blows through the church keyhole with effect, but not effect upon the mind. He seems to have studied Milton until not to imitate him was impossible, but the peculiarities of Milton which he has chosen for imitation are not his beauties, but those strange defects which have made some critics question if the great Puritan had the true poetic fire. There was want of inventiveness in making the angels, faithful and faith- less alike, war with earthly weapons, and invent cannon, and shriek with physical pain, want of perception as to the nature even of the grand figures he himself was able to conceive. But Mr. Bickersteth not only accepts the•idea, but dwells on it in detail, as if he were describing the hosts of God as special correspondent -to the Times.

" Goodly was the sight and bravo.

Far as the eye could reach, beneath him lay,

In tunas and squadrons and battalions rank'd, The armies of the living God. Like light Their helmets shone ; like lightnings flash'd their swords ; While over them their ensigns waved like fire : Warriors innumerable, of whom the least Thus militant appearing among men Would loose the loins of thousands. On the right Was Gabriel marshalling his endless hosts ; Nor less upon the left was Raphael's charge ; Michael the centre hold: while far in front Ten thousand times ten thousand chariots blazed, And horsemen clad in armour white as snow, Who oft to right and left disparting show'd The forest of impenetrable spears behind.'

" Straight to those guards of flaming seraphim, Where Michael stood alone pre-eminent, Directing with his eye, and hand, and spear, The glorious tryst, sped Suriel and announced The scornful answer of the foe : whereat, From chief to chief, from armed rank to rank, And from brigade to battalions brigade

Rolling, arose a shout of martial wrath

Indignant.' "

• Yesterday, To-Day, and for Ever. By H. Bickersteth Incumbent of Christ Chnrab, Hampstead, and Chaplain to the Bishop of Rip,m. London: Rivingtons. Alter the rhythm a little, and leave out that absurd word " bat- talions," and Mr. Russell would have described that army very nearly in that style, Milton every now and then shows that his purity does not spring from want of power to appreciate the sen- suous, and Mr. Bickersteth imitates this also in lines which he means to be purer than Milton's, which must have been composed in conscious rivalry to Milton's, but which have in them an in- sufferable consciousness, a taint of earthy prudery, from which Milton was wholly free. He is speaking of Eve :— " ' Her loose dishevell'd hair

Part hid the scarlet of her cheek, and part Curl'd liko a wreathen chain about his neck ; While underneath her slender waist his arm Embracing pass'd, until the listless hand Rested upon her heaving bosom. Round A company of angels lean'd entranced. Nor marvel: thou heat known in pilgrim days Earth's princes, weary of their royal state,

Hang o'er the cradle of a sleeping babe,

Spell-bound. And so in their most innocent loves Was that which moved us more than all the blaze Of seraphim, or song of heavenly choirs ; The very tenderness of flesh and blood; The very weakness of humanity; The unutterable sweetness of that bond Which link'd them, bone of bone and flesh of flesh; Tho promise of fertility to Eve ; The fresh bloom of that first and loveliest bride Unfolding, like rose petals, to the joy Of Adam, first and goodliest spouse ; the rites, Of their pure nuptial couch, a couch of flowers, Known but unwitness'd (there are mysteries, Which holy angels guard, but gaze not on); And the last awful issues life or death With their fidelity or frailty link'd.' "

It is neither purity nor sensuousness which is predominant in that description, but just monkishness, which is lower than either. Milton makes Satan protest against God in startling phrase, but he has not drawn a scene with Satan endeavouring to become Triune, or advising, in words which remind us rather of the Telegraph than of Ezekiel, " the defiling of the Bride of the Lamb," —we are quoting—or dreamt of corrupting the most glorious of all theological figures by anthropomorphism of this gross kind "And the Lord look'd on her ; and in His eye

Beam'd admiration infinite, Divine.

She was His chosen, His elect. When cast Abroad a foundling infant in her blood, Hers was the time of love ; no eyes but His Had pity ; but He took her to His heart, And nurtured all her helpless infancy, And taught her gentle childhood, and at last Betroth'd her virgin beauty to Himself, And, being that another claim'd her life, Had with His heart's blood ransom'd her from death, For her descending from His throne to die, And reascending to prepare her home, Had won her tender maidenhood to long For this chaste Bridal. Now His time was come And all her coy and childish bashfulness Had ripen'd into womanly reserve. Pure and intense affection o'er her threw A veil of soften'd light. To share His throne Was little in her eyes, whose glory' it was To bear Him whisper, My beloved is Mine,' To lean upon His bosom, and reflect The sunshine of His everlasting joy."

The man who could have written that may have every good quality under the sun, but the poetic faculty the power of seeing things not concrete, of imagining mysteries higher than any he has seen, certainly is not in him. He turns the glorious figure by which Ezekiel sought to express to Orientals the relation a purified humanity ought to bear to God into a village bride, and thinks that degradation is poetic. We can scarcely wonder at such a man imagining a scene like this, though even he might have felt the bitter shock most pious men would feel at hearing malignant laughter attributed to God by one who yet believes devoutly in His power :—

" And now the hosts

Of Satan flock'd around the holy realm

By foot unblest as yet inviolate ; When from the frowning heavens again that sound, Which shook the first fell council of the damn'd, More terrible than thunder vibrated Through every heart, Jehovah's awful laugh, Mocking their fears and scorning their designs, The laughter of Eternal Love incensed. From pole to pole it peed. And lo! the child, Whence it appear'd to issue, spread abroad Over the rebel hosts its pregnant gloom, And, louring, in the twinkling of an eye Flash'd into flame."

Homer makes Jove laugh, and in mockery, but this is the first time, we imagine, a Christian poet has ever ventured to paint the

Almighty ridiculing the damned. Had a poet less orthodox made the attempt, we should have had exclamations of horror through all the religious press, and Mr. Bickersteth would have been first to denounce the blasphemy. He himself is as far from blaspheming as man may be, he only wants to picture the phrase " God laughed them to scorn," but then he is at least equally far from poetry. To our minds the scene in book xi., wherein Messiah, embodied and visible to His saints, plants His " burning heel " upon the neck of Satan, prostrate and submissive, is even more repulsive; but Mr. Bickersteth would probably argue that he believes in the literal fulfilment of the prophecy in Genesis, proving for the hundredth time how utterly inconsistent are literalness and truth. He is no poet, but only a priest, who could conceive for Christ no higher honour than Southey has conceived for Kehama, whose triumph is so exactly reproduced.

We had intended to say a few words about the astounding theology expounded in this epic, but after all, it is but the ordi- nary theology of the Calvinistic Millenarians, explained by a man to whom every figure is absolutely real, who paints the mystic Bride of the Lamb as a woman whose limbs are made up of millions of saints, describes Hell like Dante, and Heaven very little better than the Mohammedan doctors, a place brilliant with light, where the blessed, who are clearly vegetarians, pass their time in telling stories, looking at the condemned whenever the smoke of Hell blows aside, and eating fruits of which there are twelve kinds, each with a medicine growing to it to remove its -effects :—

"Shaded on either side by trees of life, • Which yielded in nnwearying interchange Their ripe vicissitude of monthly fruits, Amid their clustering leaves medicinal ; Of fruits twelve manner." •

'Christ reignd in the poem of course visibly on earth for a real thousand years, then Satan is loosed, and man rebels again, and then all in Heaven, and all in Hades, and all in Hell assemble to receive their judgment, in a scene which culminates in one of the few genuinely lofty passages in the poem. We do not know that the essential theorem of the theology of damnation, of that -cruel heresy foisted into Christianity by the priestly hate of man, ever received a more logical exposition. There is in Mr. Bickersteth's theology, as in that of almost every high Calvinist, an Ahriman and an Ormuszd, an Evil Power which the Almighty enust chain down, lest perchance Evil should permanently triumph ever Good, even though backed by His Omnipotence. Satan speaks from torment :—

" 'For ever lost : this is the Second Death :

Meet end for me who whisper'd in the ear Of fragile man, Ye shall not surely die.

So flattering falsehood spake to me. Man fell ; And falling, as I knew too well, he died.

The Lord is righteous ; I have sinn'd and die.

Lost, lost: nor could I crave it otherwise.

What would I otherwise? escape from chains? Were not we loosed from prison, I and mine, And only madly heap'd upon ourselves

Fresh torment by fresh crime ? Nay, in our death

Eternal Justice hath alone fulfill'd The equal sentence of Eternal Love.

Me miserable ! freedom were worse than bonds ; And life to me more terrible than death.

Myself alone am cause of all my woe.

Mercy constrain'd the stroke. Left to itself, My maniac suicidal wickedness Had still inflicted worse upon itself, And upon all beneath its cruel rule.

Goodness has hung these chains around my limbs.

4 God! I bow for over at Thy feet, The only Potentate, the only Lord.

I see far off the glory of Thy kingdom Basking in peace, uninterrupted peace : But were I free, and were my comrades free, Sin mightier than myself and them would drag Our armies to perplex those fields with war.

Only thus fetter'd can we safely gaze On that which is the only lenitive of pain, 'Virtue and goodness triumphing, and grace Evolving out of darkness light in heaven.

'Thus only to the prisoners of despair -Can Mercy, which is infinite, vouchsafe Far glimpses of the beauty of holiness, Albeit a beauty which can never clothe Ourselves, the heirs of everlasting wrath. Woe, woe 1 immedicable woe for those Whose hopeless ruin is their only hope, And hell their solitary resting-place.

Lost, lost: our doom is irreversible :

Power, justice, mercy, love hath Beard us here.

Glory to God who sitteth on the throne,

And to the Lamb for ever and for ever.'

The voice was hush'd a moment : then a deep Low murmur, like a hoarse resounding surge, Bose from the universal lake of fire: No tongue was mute, no damned spirit but swell'd That multitudinous tide of awful praise, Glory to God who sitteth on the throne, And to the Lamb for ever and for ever.' "

And the man who can pen those sentences cannot see that in their very utterance is repentance and utter submission, such as would compel even an earthly king to pardon penitent rebels. The poem probably will be forgotten in a year, but did it live, as its author doubtless hopes it will, and obtain the popu- larity its author doubtless desires it should, it would do more to make Christianity impossible to this generation than even the Record.