In turning to Hunt’s earlier picture, “The Scapegoat,” we pass from the problem of the slavery of labour to the deeper question of vicarious sacrifice. The solitary figure of the dumb and helpless animal, dying in the utter desolation of the wilderness, the unconscious and involuntary victim of human sin, speaks more eloquently than any words of the reality and pathos of the suffering of innocence for guilt. Seldom if ever has the problem been so directly urged upon us in pictorial art,— Can the law of vicarious sacrifice be reconciled with our highest ideals of moral justice? Can a beneficent and omnipotent God permit one innocent being, without choice or knowledge, to pay another’s penalty? Or, on the other hand, can we formulate any other method by which humanity could be taught its own solemn power, and its absolute community and interdependence of soul with soul? The painter’s business is to state that problem, not to solve it; and this Hunt does with the utmost simplicity, sincerity, and earnestness. Pitching his tent in the most inhospitable region on the shores of the Dead Sea, the artist painted the actual landscape upon which the ancient victim was cast adrift, to perish slowly in the desert without the camp; and from that strange, wild studio his picture came full-charged with the loneliness and terror of the scene, and the momentous meaning of the scapegoat’s sacrifice. “The Light of the World,” frequently regarded as Holman Hunt’s greatest work, though more mystical and appealing less directly to common sentiment than “The Shadow of Death,” is purely symbolic in design and character; and indeed may be taken to represent the high-water mark of abstract symbolism, as distinct from Biblical history, in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The circumstances of its execution, partly at Oxford, and partly in his studio at Chelsea by moonlight, have already been referred to. The picture tells no story; deals with no incident or condition of the human life of Christ, but presents the ideal figure in the threefold aspect of prophet, priest, and king. The Saviour appears in the guise of a pilgrim, carrying a lantern, and knocking in the night at a fast-closed door. He wears the white robe of inspiration, typical of prophecy; the jewelled robe and breastplate of a priest; and a crown of gold interwoven with one of thorns. The legend from Revelation, iii. 20, gives the keynote of the work: “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.” The fast- barred door, with its rusty nails and bolts overgrown with ivy, and its threshold blocked up with brambles and weeds, is the door of the human soul. The light from the lantern in Christ’s hand is the light of conscience (according to Mr. Ruskin’s well-known description of the picture), and the light which suffuses the head of the Saviour, issuing