That he was a man of any deep religious feeling, there had been up to this time, little to indicate. In character he was pugnacious, assertive, and intolerant of the least opposition. For years his life had been spent in continual strife, and the result had been far from commensurate with the wealth of genius and energy he had expended. Now he was embarking on an enterprise in which he would have no rivals, and which offered as great a scope for his powers as that which he had relinquished. Well, whatever it was that decided him, the world has reason to be thankful for the momentous decision. In any case, to attempt to explain the ways of genius is, generally, time hopelessly lost. His first oratorios were devoted to subjects from the Old Testament. In manner and expression, they are quite like his operas. The arias might, indeed, be exchanged without any perceptible difference; the choruses, however, are on a grander scale. So far as the English people were concerned, their attraction lay in the fact of being associated with Biblical incidents, and thus making it possible to go and hear them, without any suspicion of irreligious motive. This first and great result was of immense import, for it laid the seeds that were, later, to bring forth such good fruit. As regards their religious message, they might just as well have been written, great as they are, and stupendous in the case of "Israel in Egypt," for a pagan festival. Nevertheless, the great work was in progress, the great mission in course of fulfilment. It may be said that they were like S. John the Baptist, in that they were the forerunners of that which was to be, for the English people at least, the greatest glory in Christendom, in the sense of religious music. THE "MESSIAH." It was on April 13th, 1742, that the immortal and epoch-making work, the "Messiah," was produced in Dublin. Its success was immediate, and the effect produced by it extraordinary. Repetitions of the performance were demanded, and its fame spread with such rapidity that the excitement was intense on the occasion of its first representation in London on March 23, 1743. The audience embraced the highest personages in the realm, from the King downwards, and as the performance progressed, so did the excitement, which culminated during the singing of the "Hallelujah" chorus, by the people, headed by the King, springing to their feet and remaining standing until the end. The "Messiah" may be said to have crowned the work that the earlier oratorios had begun. Henceforth the English people were to see, as their ancestors had before them, that music was not only great as an art, but that it could be both an aid and inspiration to religion. It is little to be wondered at, that a people who must have been thirsting for music so long, should give vent to outbursts of emotion and enthusiasm, when it was restored to them in the form of so sublime a conception.