Thus we see the spirit of these two teachers of men. Further comparison would but illustrate more clearly that the Christian book, because it is in a sense divine, is intensely human, adequate to fulfil all that is best in man; while the pagan book, because it is merely human, does not satisfy the human soul, which always seeks for something better than itself. The one is centred in God and draws its inspiration from the inspired books themselves, concentrating all its efforts on the reproduction of Christ in the Christian. The other, though it bids us to “love man and follow God,” means something quite different by this love of man and this following of whatever its author understood by “God.” For it is essentially centred in man, in self; and has no inspiration but the gropings of the unaided intellect. Nor can it propose to us any higher model for our imitation than the blind subjection to law which prevails in the inanimate and organic universe; the stones, a fig-tree, or the brutes. It is true that in the spirit of the Meditations there is something akin to the sayings of à Kempis; but the Christian time and again feels in the pagan book the sense of void, the vain strivings after ideals--ideals fully realised and expressed by the lowly brother of the Common Life. The humblest Christian has as his birthright truths which were the fruit of years of training and much struggle in the noble pagan soul; and he has more. THE END