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 T HE E X P ER T ’S VOIC E ® IN JAVA

Java XML
and JSON
—
Jeff Friesen
Java XML and JSON

Jeff Friesen
Java XML and JSON
Jeff Friesen
Dauphin, Manitoba, Canada
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-1915-7 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-1916-4
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4842-1916-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016943840
Copyright © 2016 by Jeff Friesen
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission
or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are
brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for
the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser
of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions
of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must
always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the
Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law.
Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol
with every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only
in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of
the trademark.
The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they
are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are
subject to proprietary rights.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of
publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility
for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein.
Managing Director: Welmoed Spahr
Lead Editor: Steve Anglin
Technical Reviewer: Wallace Jackson
Editorial Board: Steve Anglin, Pramila Balan, Louise Corrigan, James T. DeWolf,
Jonathan Gennick, Robert Hutchinson, Celestin Suresh John, James Markham,
Susan McDermott, Matthew Moodie, Ben Renow-Clarke, Gwenan Spearing
Coordinating Editor: Mark Powers
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Any source code or other supplementary materials referenced by the author in this text is available
to readers at www.apress.com/9781484219157. For detailed information about how to locate your
book’s source code, go to www.apress.com/source-code/. Readers can also access source code at
SpringerLink in the Supplementary Material section for each chapter.
Printed on acid-free paper
To Dave, the late Father Lucian, Jane, and Rob.
Contents at a
Glance
About the Author ............................................................................ xiii
About the Technical Reviewer ..........................................................xv
Acknowledgments ..........................................................................xvii
Introduction .....................................................................................xix

■Chapter 1: Introducing XML ............................................................ 1

■Chapter 2: Parsing XML Documents with SAX.............................. 29
■Chapter 3: Parsing and Creating XML Documents with DOM ....... 57
■Chapter 4: Parsing and Creating XML Documents with StAX ....... 75
■Chapter 5: Selecting Nodes with XPath ........................................ 97
■Chapter 6: Transforming XML Documents with XSLT ................. 119
■Chapter 7: Introducing JSON ...................................................... 133
■Chapter 8: Parsing and Creating JSON Objects with mJson.......... 149
■Chapter 9: Parsing and Creating JSON Objects with Gson ......... 179

v
vi Contents at a Glance

■Chapter 10: Extracting JSON Values with JsonPath ................... 223

■Appendix A: Answers to Exercises ............................................ 241

Index .............................................................................................. 279

Contents
About the Author ............................................................................ xiii
About the Technical Reviewer ..........................................................xv
Acknowledgments ..........................................................................xvii
Introduction .....................................................................................xix

■Chapter 1: Introducing XML ............................................................ 1

What Is XML? .......................................................................................... 1
Language Features Tour .......................................................................... 3
XML Declaration ....................................................................................................... 3
Elements and Attributes ........................................................................................... 5
Character References and CDATA Sections .............................................................. 7
Namespaces ............................................................................................................. 8
Comments and Processing Instructions ................................................................. 13

Well-Formed Documents ....................................................................... 14

Valid Documents ................................................................................... 15
Document Type Definition ....................................................................................... 15
XML Schema........................................................................................................... 21

Summary ............................................................................................... 28

vii
viii Contents

■Chapter 2: Parsing XML Documents with SAX.............................. 29

What Is SAX? ......................................................................................... 29
Exploring the SAX API ............................................................................ 30
Obtaining a SAX 2 Parser........................................................................................ 30
Touring XMLReader Methods.................................................................................. 31
Touring the Handler and Resolver Interfaces.......................................................... 35

Demonstrating the SAX API ................................................................... 40

Creating a Custom Entity Resolver ........................................................ 49
Summary ............................................................................................... 54
■Chapter 3: Parsing and Creating XML Documents with DOM ....... 57
What Is DOM? ........................................................................................ 57
A Tree of Nodes ..................................................................................... 58
Exploring the DOM API........................................................................... 61
Obtaining a DOM Parser/Document Builder............................................................ 61
Parsing and Creating XML Documents ................................................................... 63

Demonstrating the DOM API .................................................................. 67

Summary ............................................................................................... 74
■Chapter 4: Parsing and Creating XML Documents with StAX ....... 75
What Is StAX? ........................................................................................ 75
Exploring StAX ....................................................................................... 76
Parsing XML Documents......................................................................................... 77
Creating XML Documents ....................................................................................... 85

Summary ............................................................................................... 95
■Chapter 5: Selecting Nodes with XPath ........................................ 97
What Is XPath? ...................................................................................... 97
XPath Language Primer ......................................................................... 97
Location Path Expressions...................................................................................... 98
General Expressions ............................................................................................. 101
 Contents ix

XPath and DOM ................................................................................... 103

Advanced XPath .................................................................................. 110
Namespace Contexts ............................................................................................ 110
Extension Functions and Function Resolvers ....................................................... 111
Variables and Variable Resolvers.......................................................................... 115
Summary ............................................................................................. 118
■Chapter 6: Transforming XML Documents with XSLT ................. 119
What Is XSLT? ...................................................................................... 119
Exploring the XSLT API......................................................................... 120
Demonstrating the XSLT API ................................................................ 123
Summary ............................................................................................. 132
■Chapter 7: Introducing JSON ...................................................... 133
What Is JSON? ..................................................................................... 133
JSON Syntax Tour ................................................................................ 134
Demonstrating JSON with JavaScript ................................................. 137
Validating JSON Objects ...................................................................... 140
Summary ............................................................................................. 147
■Chapter 8: Parsing and Creating JSON Objects with mJson.......... 149
What Is mJson? ................................................................................... 149
Obtaining and Using mJson .................................................................................. 150

Exploring the Json Class ..................................................................... 150

Creating Json Objects........................................................................................... 151
Learning About Json Objects ................................................................................ 155
Navigating Json Object Hierarchies...................................................................... 163
Modifying Json Objects ........................................................................................ 165
Validation .............................................................................................................. 170
Customization via Factories ................................................................................. 173

Summary ............................................................................................. 178

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x Contents

■Chapter 9: Parsing and Creating JSON Objects with Gson ......... 179
What Is Gson? ..................................................................................... 179
Obtaining and Using Gson .................................................................................... 180

Exploring GSon .................................................................................... 180

Introducing the Gson Class ................................................................................... 181
Parsing JSON Objects Through Deserialization .................................................... 183
Creating JSON Objects Through Serialization ....................................................... 190
Learning More About Gson ................................................................................... 197

Summary ............................................................................................. 222

■Chapter 10: Extracting JSON Values with JsonPath ................... 223
What Is JsonPath? ............................................................................... 223
Learning the JsonPath Language ........................................................ 224
Obtaining and Using the JsonPath Library .......................................... 227
Exploring the JsonPath Library ........................................................... 228
Extracting Values from JSON Objects ................................................................... 229
Using Predicates to Filter Items............................................................................ 232

Summary ............................................................................................. 239

■Appendix A: Answers to Exercises ............................................ 241
Chapter 1: Introducing XML ................................................................. 241
Chapter 2: Parsing XML Documents with SAX..................................... 246
Chapter 3: Parsing and Creating XML Documents with DOM .............. 251
Chapter 4: Parsing and Creating XML Documents with StAX .............. 258
Chapter 5: Selecting Nodes with XPath ............................................... 261
Chapter 6: Transforming XML Documents with XSLT .......................... 264
Chapter 7: Introducing JSON ............................................................... 267
 Contents xi

Chapter 8: Parsing and Creating JSON Objects with mJson ............... 269
Chapter 9: Parsing and Creating JSON Objects with Gson .................. 272
Chapter 10: Extracting JSON Property Values with JsonPath.............. 276

Index .............................................................................................. 279

About the Author
Jeff Friesen is a freelance teacher and
software developer with an emphasis on Java.
In addition to authoring Java I/O, NIO and NIO.2
(Apress) and Java Threads and the Concurrency
Utilities (Apress), Jeff has written numerous
articles on Java and other technologies
(such as Android) for JavaWorld (JavaWorld.com),
informIT (InformIT.com), Java.net, SitePoint
(SitePoint.com), and other web sites. Jeff can
be contacted via his web site at JavaJeff.ca.
or via his LinkedIn (LinkedIn.com) profile
(www.linkedin.com/in/javajeff).

xiii
About the Technical
Reviewer
Wallace Jackson has been writing for leading
multimedia publications about his work in new
media content development since the advent
of Multimedia Producer Magazine nearly two
decades ago. He has authored a half-dozen
Android book titles for Apress, including four
titles in the popular Pro Android series. Wallace
received his undergraduate degree in business
economics from the University of California
at Los Angeles and a graduate degree in MIS
design and implementation from the University
of Southern California. He is currently the CEO
of Mind Taffy Design, a new media content
production and digital campaign design and
development agency.

xv
Acknowledgments
Many people assisted me in the development of this book, and I thank them.
I especially thank Steve Anglin for asking me to write it and Mark Powers for
guiding me through the writing process.

xvii
Introduction
XML and (the more popular) JSON let you organize data in textual formats.
This book introduces you to these technologies along with Java APIs for
integrating them into your Java code. This book introduces you to XML and
JSON as of Java 8 update 60.
Chapter 1 introduces XML, where you learn about basic language features
(such as the XML declaration, elements and attributes, and namespaces).
You also learn about well-formed XML documents and how to validate them
via the Document Type Definition and XML Schema grammar languages.
Chapter 2 focuses on Java’s SAX API for parsing XML documents. You learn
how to obtain a SAX 2 parser; you then tour XMLReader methods along with
handler and entity resolver interfaces. Finally, you explore a demonstration
of this API and learn how to create a custom entity resolver.
Chapter 3 addresses Java’s DOM API for parsing and creating XML
documents. After discovering the various nodes that form a DOM document
tree, you explore the DOM API, where you learn how to obtain a DOM
parser/document builder and how to parse and create XML documents.
Chapter 4 places the spotlight on Java’s StAX API for parsing and creating
XML documents. You learn how to use StAX to parse XML documents with
stream-based and event-based readers, and how to create XML documents
with stream-based and event-based writers.
Moving on, Chapter 5 presents Java’s XPath API for simplifying access to
a DOM tree’s nodes. You receive a primer on the XPath language, learning
about location path expressions and general expressions. You also explore
advanced features starting with namespace contexts.
Chapter 6 completes my coverage of XML by targeting Java’s XSLT API. You
learn about transformer factories and transformers, and much more.

xix
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xx Introduction

Chapter 7 switches gears to JSON. You receive an introduction to JSON,

take a tour of its syntax, explore a demonstration of JSON in a JavaScript
context (because Java doesn’t yet officially support JSON), and learn how to
validate JSON objects in the context of JSON Schema.
You’ll need to work with third-party libraries to parse and create JSON
documents. Chapter 8 introduces you to the mJson library. After learning
how to obtain and use mJson, you explore the Json class, which is the entry
point for working with mJSon.
Google has released an even more powerful library for parsing and creating
JSON documents. The Gson library is the focus of Chapter 9. In this chapter,
you learn how to parse JSON objects through deserialization, how to create
JSON objects through serialization, and much more.
Chapter 10 completes my coverage of JSON by presenting the JsonPath
API for performing XPath-like operations on JSON documents.
Each chapter ends with assorted exercises that are designed to help you
master the content. Along with long answers and true/false questions,
you must also perform programming exercises. Appendix A provides the
answers and solutions.
Thanks for purchasing this book. I hope you find it helpful in understanding
XML and JSON in a Java context.
—Jeff Friesen
(April, 2016)

Note You can download this book’s source code by pointing your web browser
to www.apress.com/9781484219157 and clicking the Source Code tab
followed by the Download Now link.
 Chapter 1
Introducing XML
Applications commonly use XML documents to store and exchange data.
XML defines rules for encoding documents in a format that is both
human-readable and machine-readable. This chapter introduces XML, tours
the XML language features, and discusses well-formed and valid documents.

What Is XML?
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a metalanguage (a language used to
describe other languages) for defining vocabularies (custom markup languages),
which is the key to XML’s importance and popularity. XML-based vocabularies
(such as XHTML) let you describe documents in a meaningful way.
XML vocabulary documents are like HTML (see http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/HTML) documents in that they are text-based and consist of markup
(encoded descriptions of a document’s logical structure) and content
(document text not interpreted as markup). Markup is evidenced via tags
(angle bracket-delimited syntactic constructs) and each tag has a name.
Furthermore, some tags have attributes (name-value pairs).

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this chapter

(doi:10.1007/978-1-4842-1916-4_1) contains supplementary material, which is
available to authorized users.

© Jeff Friesen 2016 1

J. Friesen, Java XML and JSON, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4842-1916-4_1
2 CHAPTER 1: Introducing XML

Note XML and HTML are descendants of Standard Generalized Markup

Language (SGML), which is the original metalanguage for creating vocabularies.
XML is essentially a restricted form of SGML, while HTML is an application of
SGML. The key difference between XML and HTML is that XML invites you to
create your own vocabularies with its own tags and rules, whereas HTML gives
you a single precreated vocabulary with its own fixed set of tags and rules.
XHTML and other XML-based vocabularies are XML applications. XHTML was
created to be a cleaner implementation of HTML.

If you haven’t previously encountered XML, you might be surprised by its

simplicity and how closely its vocabularies resemble HTML. You don’t need
to be a rocket scientist to learn how to create an XML document. To prove
this to yourself, check out Listing 1-1.

Listing 1-1. XML-Based Recipe for a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

<recipe>
<title>
Grilled Cheese Sandwich
</title>
<ingredients>
<ingredient qty="2">
bread slice
</ingredient>
<ingredient>
cheese slice
</ingredient>
<ingredient qty="2">
margarine pat
</ingredient>
</ingredients>
<instructions>
Place frying pan on element and select medium heat. For each bread
slice, smear one pat of margarine on one side of bread slice. Place cheese
slice between bread slices with margarine-smeared sides away from the
cheese. Place sandwich in frying pan with one margarine-smeared side in
contact with pan. Fry for a couple of minutes and flip. Fry other side for a
minute and serve.
</instructions>
</recipe>

Listing 1-1 presents an XML document that describes a recipe for making
a grilled cheese sandwich. This document is reminiscent of an HTML
document in that it consists of tags, attributes, and content. However, that’s
 CHAPTER 1: Introducing XML 3

where the similarity ends. Instead of presenting HTML tags such as <html>,
<head>, <img>, and <p>, this informal recipe language presents its own
<recipe>, <ingredients>, and other tags.

Note Although Listing 1-1’s <title> and </title> tags are also found in
HTML, they differ from their HTML counterparts. Web browsers typically display
the content between these tags in their title bars. In contrast, the content
between Listing 1-1’s <title> and </title> tags might be displayed as a
recipe header, spoken aloud, or presented in some other way, depending on the
application that parses this document.

Language Features Tour

XML provides several language features for use in defining custom markup
languages: XML declaration, elements and attributes, character references
and CDATA sections, namespaces, and comments and processing
instructions. You will learn about these language features in this section.

XML Declaration
An XML document usually begins with the XML declaration, which is special
markup telling an XML parser that the document is XML. The absence of the
XML declaration in Listing 1-1 reveals that this special markup isn’t mandatory.
When the XML declaration is present, nothing can appear before it.
The XML declaration minimally looks like <?xml version="1.0"?> in which
the nonoptional version attribute identifies the version of the XML
specification to which the document conforms. The initial version of this
specification (1.0) was introduced in 1998 and is widely implemented.

Note The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which maintains XML, released
version 1.1 in 2004. This version mainly supports the use of line-ending
characters used on EBCDIC platforms (see http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/EBCDIC) and the use of scripts and characters that are absent from
Unicode 3.2 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode). Unlike
XML 1.0, XML 1.1 isn’t widely implemented and should be used only by those
needing its unique features.
4 CHAPTER 1: Introducing XML

XML supports Unicode, which means that XML documents consist entirely
of characters taken from the Unicode character set. The document’s
characters are encoded into bytes for storage or transmission, and the
encoding is specified via the XML declaration’s optional encoding attribute.
One common encoding is UTF-8 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8),
which is a variable-length encoding of the Unicode character set. UTF-8 is a
strict superset of ASCII (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII), which
means that pure ASCII text files are also UTF-8 documents.

Note In the absence of the XML declaration or when the XML declaration’s
encoding attribute isn’t present, an XML parser typically looks for a special
character sequence at the start of a document to determine the document’s
encoding. This character sequence is known as the byte-order-mark (BOM) and
is created by an editor program (such as Microsoft Windows Notepad) when it
saves the document according to UTF-8 or some other encoding. For example,
the hexadecimal sequence EF BB BF signifies UTF-8 as the encoding. Similarly,
FE FF signifies UTF-16 big endian (see https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/UTF-16), FF FE signifies UTF-16 little endian, 00 00 FE FF signifies
UTF-32 big endian (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-32), and
FF FE 00 00 signifies UTF-32 little endian. UTF-8 is assumed when no
BOM is present.

If you’ll never use characters apart from the ASCII character set, you can
probably forget about the encoding attribute. However, when your native
language isn’t English or when you’re called to create XML documents that
include non-ASCII characters, you need to properly specify encoding.
For example, when your document contains ASCII plus characters from
a non-English Western European language (such as ç, the cedilla used in
French, Portuguese, and other languages), you might want to choose
ISO-8859-1 as the encoding attribute’s value—the document will probably
have a smaller size when encoded in this manner than when encoded with
UTF-8. Listing 1-2 shows you the resulting XML declaration.

Listing 1-2. An Encoded Document Containing Non-ASCII Characters

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<movie>
<name>Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain</name>
<language>français</language>
</movie>
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content Scribd suggests to you:
Christ, we shall learn the full interpretation of that profound word. He
will draw all men, because it is not possible for any human soul to
resist the divine loveliness once it is fairly and fully presented to his
vision.
The sermon on the “Worship of Faith,” sets forth that “to worship
Christ is to bow down with love and wonder and thankfulness, before
the most perfect goodness that the world has ever seen, and to
believe that that goodness was the express image of God the
Father.” All aims and all ideals, that are not the aims and ideals of
Christ, are distinctly opposed to such worship, and the man who
entertains these alien ideals may not call himself a Christian. After
examining that attitude of the spirit towards Christ which belongs to
the worship of faith, the rest of the sermon is very practical. “Work is
Worship,” is the keynote: one longs that a writer who knows so well
how to touch the secret springs had taken this opportunity to move
us to that “heart’s adoration,” which is dearer to God; but, indeed, the
whole volume has this tendency. It is well to be reminded that “the
thorough and willing performance of any duty, however humble or
however exalted, is like the offering of incense to Christ, well-
pleasing and acceptable.”
The sermon on the “Righteousness of Faith,” is extremely
important and instructive. The writer dwells on the “deplorable cant”
with which we pronounce ourselves “miserable sinners,” combining
the “sentiments of the Pharisees in the parable with the expressions
of the publican.”
“Christ’s language about man’s sinfulness is altogether free from
vagueness and hyperbole; when He blames He blames for definite
faults which we can appreciate, and He is so far from declaring that
men can do no good thing, that He assumes always that man in his
proper state of dependence upon God has the power to do
righteousness. ‘Whosoever shall do the will of My Father, which is in
heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother.’... But the
question remains, How, considering our actual shortcomings, can
any of us be spoken of by Christ as righteous here and now? This is
the question in answer to which St. Paul wrote two of his greatest
Epistles. His answer was, that according to Christ, a man is
accounted righteous, not from a consideration of his works, but from
a consideration of his faith in God. Human righteousness is not a
verdict upon the summing up of a life, but it is reckoned to a man at
any moment from a certain disposition of his spirit to the Spirit of
God; a disposition of trust, love, reverence, the disposition of a
dutiful son to a good father.... Righteousness, in the only sense in
which it is possible for men, means believing and trusting God.”
We have not space to take up in detail all the teaching of this
inspiring little volume. We commend it to parents. Who, as they, have
need to nourish the spiritual life in themselves? Who, as they, have
need to examine themselves as to with how firm a grasp they hold
the mysteries of our faith? Who, as they, need to have their ideas as
to the supreme relationship so clear that they can be translated into
baby speech? Besides, we have seen that it is the duty of the
educator to put the first thing foremost, and all things in sequence;
only one thing is needful—that we “have faith in God”; let us deliver
our thoughts from vagueness and our ways from variableness, if we
would help the children towards this higher life. To this end, we
gladly welcome teaching which is rather nourishing than stimulating,
and which should afford real help towards “sober walking in pure
Gospel ways.”

FOOTNOTES:
[11] “The Imitation of Christ” (Rhythmic translation).
[12] Pendennis. Thackeray.
 CHAPTER XIV

THE HEROIC IMPULSE[13]

“To set forth, as only art can, the beauty and the joy of living, the
beauty and the blessedness of death, the glory of battle and
adventure, the nobility of devotion—to a cause, an ideal, a passion
even—the dignity of resistance, the sacred quality of patriotism, that
is my ambition here,” says the editor of “Lyra Heroica” in his preface.
We all feel that some such expression of the “simpler sentiments,
more elemental emotions” should be freely used in the education of
children, that, in fact, heroic poetry contains such inspiration to noble
living as is hardly to be found elsewhere; and also we are aware that
it is only in the youth of peoples that these elemental emotions find
free expression in song. We look at our own ballad literature and find
plenty of the right material, but it is too occasional and too little
connected, and so though we would prefer that the children should
imbibe patriotism and heroism at the one fountain head, we think it
cannot be done. We have no truly English material, we say, for
education in this kind, and we fall back on the Homeric myths in one
or other of the graceful and spirited renderings which have been
made specially for children.
But what if it should turn out that we have our own Homer, our
own Ulysses? Mr. Stopford Brooke has made a great discovery for
us who look at all things from the child standpoint. Possibly he would
not be gratified to know that his “History of Early English Literature,”
invaluable addition as it is to the library of the student and the man of
letters, should be appropriated as food for babes. All the same, here
is what we have long wanted. The elemental emotions and heroic
adventures of the early English put into verse and tale, strange and
eerie as the wildest fairy tale, yet breathing in every line the English
temper and the English virtue that go to the making of heroes. Not
that Beowulf, the hero of the great poem, was precisely English, but
where the English came from, there dwelt he, and Beowulf was early
adopted as the national hero, whose achievements were sung in
every hall.
The poem, says Mr. Stopford Brooke, consisting of three
thousand one hundred and eighty-three lines, is divided into two
parts by an interval of fifty years; the first, containing Beowulf’s great
deeds against the monster Grendel and his dam; the second,
Beowulf’s conquest of the Fire-drake and his death and burial. We
are told that we may fairly claim the poem as English, that it is in our
tongue and in our country alone that it is preserved. The hero
Beowulf comes of brave and noble parents, and mildness and more
than mortal daring meet in him. When he comes to Hrothgar to
conquer Grendel it is of his counsel as much as of his strength that
we hear. The queen begs him to be friendly in council to her sons.
Hrothgar says to him, “Thou holdest thy faith with patience and thy
might with prudence of mind. Thou shalt be a comfort to thy people
and a help to heroes.” None, it is said, could order matters more
wisely than he. When he is dying he looks back on his life, and that
which he thinks of the most is not his great war deeds, but his
patience, his prudence, his power of holding his own well and of
avoiding new enmities. “Each of us must await the close of life,” says
he; “let him who can, gain honour before he die. That is best for a
warrior when he is dead. But do thou throughout this day have
patience of thy woes; I look for that from thee.” Such the philosophy
of this hero, legendary or otherwise, of some early century after
Christ, before His religion had found its way among those northern
tribes. Gentle, like Nelson, he had Nelson’s iron resolution. What he
undertook to do he went through without a thought, save of getting to
the end of it. Fear is wholly unknown to him, and he seems, like
Nelson, to have inspired his captains with his own courage. “I swore
no false oaths,” he said when dying; so also he kept his honour in
faithfulness to his lord. On foot, alone, in front, while life lasted, he
was his king’s defence. He kept it in equal faithfulness when his lord
was dead, and that to his own loss, for when the kingdom was
offered to him he refused, and trained Heardreg, the king’s son, to
war and learning, guarded him kindly with honour, and avenged him
when he was slain. He kept it in generosity, for he gave away all the
gifts that he received; in courtesy, for he gave even to those who had
been rude to him; and he is always gentle and grave with women.
Above all, he kept it in war, for these things are said of him, “so shall
a man do when he thinks to gain praise that shall never end, and
cares not for his life in battle.” “Let us have fame or death,” he cries,
and when Wiglaf comes to help him against the dragon, and Beowulf
is wrapped in the flame, Wiglaf recalls to him the aim of his whole
life:—
“Beowulf, beloved, bear thyself well. Thou wert wont to say in
youth that thou wouldst never let honour go. Now, strong in deeds,
ward thy life, firm-souled prince, with all thy might, I will be thy
helper.” “These,” adds Mr. Stopford Brooke, “are the qualities of the
man and the hero, and I have thought it worth while to dwell on
them, because they represent the ancient English ideal, the
manhood which pleased the English folk even before they came to
Britain, and because in all our histories since Beowulf’s time, for
twelve hundred years or so, they have been repeated in the lives of
the English warriors by land and sea whom we chiefly honour. But it
is not only the idea of a hero which we have in Beowulf, it is also the
idea of a king, the just governor, the wise politician, the builder of
peace, the defender of his own folk at the price of his life, ‘the good
king, the folk king, the beloved king, the war ward of his land, the
winner of treasure for the need of his people, the hero who thinks in
death of those who sail the sea, the gentle and terrible warrior, who
is buried amid the tears of his people.’”
We owe Mr. Stopford Brooke earnest gratitude for bringing this
heroic ideal of the youth of our nation within reach of the unlearned.
But what have we been about to let a thousand years and more go
by without ever drawing on the inspiration of this noble ideal in giving
impulse to our children’s lives. We have many English heroes, it may
be objected: we have no need of this resuscitated great one from a
long buried past. We have indeed heroes galore to be proud of, but
somehow they have not often been put into song in such wise as to
reach the hearts of the children and the unlearned. We have to thank
Tennyson for our Arthur, and Shakespeare for our Henry the Fifth,
but we imagine that parents will find their children’s souls more in
touch with Beowulf than with either of these, because, no doubt, the
legends of a nation’s youth are the pages of history which most
easily reach a child, and Beowulf belongs to a younger stage of
civilisation than even Arthur. We hope the author of “Early English
Literature” will sometime give us the whole of the poem translated
with a special view to children, and interspersed with his own
luminous teaching as we have it here. The quaintness of the metre
employed gives a feeling of eld which carries the reader back, very
successfully, to the long ago of the poem.
We have already quoted largely from this “History of Early English
Literature,” but perhaps a fuller extract will give a better idea of the
work and of its real helpfulness to parents. The cost of the two rather
expensive volumes should be well repaid if a single child were to be
fired with emulation of the heroic qualities therein sung:—
“The action of the poem now begins with the voyage of Beowulf to
the Danish coast. The hero has heard that Hrothgar, the chief of the
Danes, is tormented by Grendel, a man-devouring monster. If
Hrothgar’s warriors sleep in Heorot—the great hall he has built—they
are seized, torn to pieces, and devoured. ‘I will deliver the king,’
thought Beowulf, when he heard the tale from the roving seamen.
‘Over the swan road I will seek Hrothgar; he has need of men.’ His
comrades urged him to the adventure, and fifteen of them were
willing to fight it out with him. Among the rest was a sea-crafty man
who knew the ocean-paths. Their ship lay drawn up on the beach,
under the high cliff. Then—
“There the well-geared heroes
Stepped upon the stem, while the stream of ocean
Whirled the sea against the sand. To the ship, to its breast.
Bright and carved things of cost carried then the heroes
And the armour well-arrayed. So the men outpushed,
On desired adventure, their tight ocean wood.
Swiftly went above the waves, with a wind well-fitted,
Likest to a fowl, the Floater, foam around its neck,
Till about the same time, on the second day,
The up-curvéd prow had come on so far,
That at last the seamen saw the land ahead;
 Shining sea-cliffs, soaring headlands,
Broad sea-nesses. So the Sailor of the Sea
Reached the sea-way’s end.”
Beowulf l. 211.

“This was the voyage, ending in a fiord with two high sea-capes at
its entrance. The same kind of scenery belongs to the land whence
they had set out. When Beowulf returns over the sea the boat groans
as it is pushed forth. It is heavily laden; the hollow, under the single
mast with the single sail, holds eight horses, swords and treasure
and rich armours. The sail is hoisted, the wind drives the foam-
throated bark over the waves, until they see the Geats’ Cliffs—the
well-known sea-nesses. The keel is pressed up by the wind on the
sand, and the ‘harbour-guard, who had looked forth afar o’er the sea
with longing for their return’—one of the many human touches of the
poem—‘fastens the wide-bosomed ship with anchoring chains to the
strand, lest the violence of the waves should sweep away the
winsome boat.’... At the end of the bay into which Beowulf sails is a
low shore, on which he drives his ship, stem on. Planks are pushed
out on either side of the prow; the Weder-folk slipped down on the
shore, tied up their sea-wood; their battle-sarks clanged on them as
they moved. Then they thanked the gods that the war-paths had
been easy to them.... On the ridge of the hill above the landing-place
the ward of the coast of the Scyldings sat on his horse, and saw the
strangers bear their bright shields over the bulwarks of the ship to
the shore. He rode down, wondering, to the sea, and shook mightily
in his hands his heavy spear, and called to the men—”
“Who are ye of men, having arms in hand,
Covered with your coats of mail. Who your keel afoaming
O’er the ocean street thus have urged along.
Hither on the high sea!”
* * * * *
“Never saw I greater
Earl upon this earth than is one of you;
Hero in his harness. He is no home-stayer,
‘Less his looks belie him, lovely with his weapons.
Noble is his air!”
 Beowulf, ll. 237-247.

“Beowulf replies that he is Hrothgar’s friend, and comes to free

him from ‘Grendel, the secret foe on the dark nights.’ He pities
Hrothgar, old and good. Yet, as he speaks, the Teutonic sense of the
inevitable Wyrd passes by in his mind, and he knows not if Hrothgar
can ever escape sorrow. ‘If ever,’ he says, ‘sorrow should cease from
him, release ever come, and the welter of care become cooler.’ The
coast-guard shows them the path, and promises to watch over their
ship. The ground rises from the shore, and they pass on to the hilly
ridge, behind which lies Heorot.”
“The History of the Early English Literature” takes us into other
pleasant places. Here are two or three specimens of the riddles of
the old bards, and in riddle and saga we get most vivid pictures of
the life and thoughts, the ways and words of the forefathers whom
we are too ready to think of as ‘rude,’ but who are here portrayed to
us as gentle, mild, and large of soul; men and women whom we,
their posterity, may well delight to honour.

I. Here is Cynewulf’s Riddle of the Sword.

“I’m a wondrous wight for warstrife shapen;
By my lord beloved, lovelily adorned:
Many coloured is my corslet, and a clasping wire
Glitters round the gem of death which my wielder gave to me:
He who whiles doth urge me, wide-wanderer that I am,
With him to conquest.
Then I carry treasure,
Cold above the garths, through the glittering day;
I of smiths the handiwork! Often do I quell
Breathing men with battle edges! Me bedecks a king
With his hoard and silver; honours me in hall,
Doth withhold no word of praise! Of my ways he boasts
‘Fore the many heroes, where the mead they drink.
In restraint he lulls me, then he lets me loose again,
Far and wide to rush along; me the weary with wayfarings,
Cursed of all weapons.”
Riddle xxi.
 II. The helmet speaks:—
“Wretchedness I bear;
Wheresoe’er he carries me, he who clasps the spear!
On me, still upstanding, smite the streams (of rain);
Hail, the hard grain (helms me), and the hoar-frost covers me;
And the (flying) snow (in flakes) falls all over me.”
Riddle, lxxix. 6-10.

III. The horn speaks:—

“I a weaponed warrior was! now in pride bedecks me
A young serving man all with silver and fine gold,
With the work of waving gyres! Warriors sometimes kiss me.
Sometimes I to strife of battle, summon with my calling
Willing war-companions; whiles, the horse doth carry
Me the march-paths over, or the ocean-stallion
Fares the flood with me, flashing in my jewels—
Often times a bower maiden, all bedecked with armlets,
Filleth up my bosom; whiles, bereft of covers,
I must, hard and headless, (in the houses) lie!
Then, again, hang I, with adornments fretted,
Winsome on the wall where the warriors drink.
Sometimes the folk fighters, as a fair thing on warfaring,
On the back of horses bear me; then bedecked with jewels
Shall I puff with wind from a warrior’s breast.
Then, again, to glee feasts I the guests invite
Haughty heroes to the wine— other whiles shall I
With my shouting, save from foes what is stolen away,
Make the plundering scather flee. Ask what is my name!”
Riddle xv.

We do not say a word about the literary value and importance of

Mr. Stopford Brooke’s great work; that is duly appraised elsewhere.
‘There is nothing like leather,’ and to us here all things present
themselves as they may tell on education. Here is a very treasure-
trove.

FOOTNOTES:
[13] “History of Early English Literature,” by Stopford A.
Brooke, 2 vols. Macmillan & Co.
 CHAPTER XV

IS IT POSSIBLE?

The economic aspects of the great philanthropic scheme[14] which

brought timely relief to the national conscience before the setting in
of the hard winter of 1891, are, perhaps, outside our province, but
there are educational aspects of it which, we are in some measure,
bound to discuss. In the first place, the children in many homes hear,
“I do not believe that”—it is possible for the leopard to change his
spots. ‘General’ Booth’s scheme brings this issue before us with
startling directness, and what the children hear said to-day at the
table and by the fireside will probably influence for all their lives their
attitude towards all philanthropic and all missionary endeavour. Not
only so, but we ourselves, who stand in some measure in loco
parentis to the distressed in mind, body, or estate, are compelled to
examine our own position. How far do we give, and work, for the
ease of our own conscience, and how far do we believe in the
possibility of the instant and utter restoration of the morally
degraded, are questions which, to-day, force themselves upon us.
We must be ready with a yea or a nay; we must take sides, for or
against such possibilities as should exalt philanthropic effort into a
burning passion. The fact is, this great scheme forced a sort of moral
crisis upon us.
Whether or no the scheme commends itself to us for its fitness,
seasonableness, and promise, one thing it has assuredly done: it
has revealed us to ourselves, and that in an agreeable light. It has
been discovered to us that we, too, love our brother; that we, too,
yearn over “the bruised” with something of the tenderness of Christ.
The brotherhood of man is no fancy bred in the brain, and we have
loved our brother all the time—the sick, the poor, the captive, and the
sinner, too; but the fearful, and unbelieving, and slothful amongst us
—that is, the most of us—have turned away our eyes from beholding
evils for which we saw no help. But now that a promise of
deliverance offers, more adequate, conceivably, than any heretofore
proposed, why, the solidarity of humanity asserts itself; our brother
who is bruised is not merely near and dear; he is our very self, and
whoso will ease and revive him is our deliverer too.
The first flush of enthusiasm subsides, and we ask, Are we not,
after all, led away by what Coleridge calls the “Idol of Size”? Wherein
does this scheme differ from ten thousand others, except in the
colossal scale on which the experiment is to be tried? And perhaps
we should concede at the outset that this hope of deliverance is “the
same, only more so,” as is being already worked out effectually in
many an otherwise sunless corner of the great vineyard. Indeed, the
great project has its great risks—risks which the quieter work
escapes. All the same, there are aspects in which the remedy,
because of its vastness and inclusiveness, is new.
Hitherto we have helped the wretched in impossible
circumstances, not out of them. Our help has been as a drop in the
bucket, reaching to hundreds or thousands only of the lost millions.
Even so, we cannot keep it up; we give to-day, and withhold to-
morrow; worse than all, our very giving is an injury, reducing the
power and the inclination for self-help. Or, do we start some small
amateur industry by way of making our people independent? This
pet industry may sometimes be a transparent mask for almsgiving,
and an encroachment upon regular industries and the rights of other
workers.
Now and then is a gleam of hope, now and then a soul and body
snatched into safety; but the hardest workers are glad of the noise of
the wheels to keep the eternal Cui bono? out of their ears. There is
so much to be done, and so little means of doing it. But this scheme
—what with the amplitude of its provisions, what with the
organisation and regimentation it promises, the strong and righteous
government, the moral compulsion to well-doing—considering these,
and the enormous staff of workers already prepared to carry it out,
the dreariest pessimist amongst us concedes that General Booth’s
scheme may be worth trying. “But,” he says, “but——

do we believe in conversion?”
Everything turns on the condition the originator wisely puts first.
There is the crux. Given money enough, land enough, men enough,
fully equip and officer this teeming horde of incapables, and some
sort of mechanical drill may be got through somehow. But, “when a
man’s own character and defects constitute the reasons for his fall,
that character must be changed and that conduct altered if any
permanent beneficial results are to be obtained.” The drunkard must
be made sober; the criminal, honest; the impure, clean. Can this be
done? is the crucial question. Is it possible that a man can emerge
altogether out of his old self and become a new creature, with new
aims, new thoughts, even new habits? That such renovation is
possible is the old contention of Christianity. Here, and not on the
ground of the inspiration of the sacred text, must the battle be fought
out. The answer to the one urgent question of the age, What think ye
of Christ? depends upon the power of the idea of Christ to attract
and compel attention, and of the indwelling of Christ to vivify and
elevate a single debased and torpid human soul.
Many of us believe exultingly that the “All power” which is given
into the hands of our Master includes the power of upright standing,
strength, and beauty for every bruised human reed. That this is so,
we have evidence in plenty, beginning with ourselves. But many
others of us, and those not the less noble, consider with Robert
Elsmere, that “miracles do not happen.” The recorded miracles serve
as pegs for the discussion; the essential miracle is the utter and
immediate renovation of a human being. Upon this possibility the
saving of the world must hang, and this many cannot receive, not
because they are stiff-necked and perverse, but because it is dead
against natural law as they know it. Proofs? Cases without end? The
whole history of the Christian Church in evidence? Yes; but the
history of the Church is a chequered one; and, for individual cases,
we do not doubt the veracity of the details; only, nobody knows the
whole truth; some preparation in the past, some motive in the
present inadvertently kept out of sight, may alter the bearings of any
such case.
This is, roughly, the position of the honest sceptic, who would, if
he could, believe heartily in General Booth’s scheme, and, by
consequence, in the convertibility of the entire human race. To
improve the circumstances, even of millions, is only a question of the
magnitude of the measures taken, the wisdom of the administration.
But human nature itself, depraved human nature, is, to him, the
impossible quantity. Can the leopard change his spots?

the law against us—heredity.

Who are they whom General Booth cheerfully undertakes to re-
fashion and make amenable to the conditions of godly and righteous
and sober living? Let us hear the life history of many of them in his
own words:—
“The rakings of the human cesspool.”
“Little ones, whose parents are habitually drunk.... Whose ideas of
merriment are gained from the familiar spectacle of the nightly
debauch.”
“The obscenity of the talk of many of the children of some of our
public schools could hardly be outdone, even in Sodom and
Gomorrah.”
And the childhood—save the word!—of the children of to-day
reproduces the childhood of their parents, their grand-parents, who
knows? their great-grand-parents. These are, no doubt, the worst;
but the worst must be reckoned with first, for if these slip through the
meshes of the remedial net, the masses more inert than vicious slide
out through the breaks. In the first place, then, the scheme embraces
the vicious by inheritance; proposes to mix up with the rest a class
whose sole heritage is an inconceivable and incalculable
accumulation of vicious inclinations and propensities. And this, in the
face of that conception of heredity which is quietly taking possession
of the public mind, and causing many thoughtful parents to abstain
from very active efforts to mould the characters of their children.
Those of us whose attention has been fixed upon the working of
the law of heredity until it appears to us to run its course, unmodified
and unlimited by other laws, may well be pardoned for regarding with
doubtful eye a scheme which has, for its very first condition, the
regeneration of the vicious; of the vicious by inherited propensity.

the law against us—habit.

Use is second nature, we say. Habit is ten natures; habit begins
as a cobweb, and ends as a cable. “Oh, you’ll get used to it,”
whatever it is. Dare we face the habits in which these people have
their being? It is not only the obscene speech, the unholy acts; that
which signifies is the manner of thoughts we think; speech, act, are
the mere outcome; it is the habitual thought of a man which shapes
that which we call his character. And these, can we reasonably doubt
that every imagination of their heart is only evil continually? We say,
use is second nature, but let us consider what we mean by the
phrase; what is the philosophy of habit so far as it has been
discovered to us. The seat of habit is the brain; the actual grey
nervous matter of the cerebrum. And the history of a habit is shortly
this: “The cerebrum of man grows to those modes of thought in
which it is habitually exercised.” That ‘immaterial’ thought should
mould the ‘material’ brain need not surprise nor scandalise us, for do
we not see with our eyes that immaterial thought moulds the face,
forms what we call countenance, lovely or loathsome according to
the manner of thought it registers. The how of this brain growth is not
yet in evidence, nor is this the time and place to discuss it; but,
bearing in mind this structural adaptation to confirmed habit, what
chance, again, we say, has a scheme which has for its first condition
the regeneration of the vicious, vicious not only by inherited
propensity, but by unbroken inveterate habit?

the law against us—unconscious cerebration.

 Those who are accustomed to write know what it is to sit down
and “reel off” sheet after sheet of matter without plan or
premeditation, clear, coherent, ready for press, hardly needing
revision. We are told of a lawyer who wrote in his sleep a lucid
opinion throwing light on a most difficult case; of a mathematician
who worked out in his sleep a computation which baffled him when
awake. We know that Coleridge dreamed “Kubla Khan” in an after-
dinner nap, line by line, and wrote it down when he awoke. What do
these cases and a thousand like them point to? To no less than this:
that, though the all important ego must, no doubt, “assist” at the
thinking of the initial thought on a given subject, yet, after that first
thought or two, ‘brain’ and ‘mind’ manage the matter between them,
and the thoughts, so to speak, think themselves; not after the fashion
of a pendulum which moves to and fro, to and fro, in the same
interval of space, but in that of a carriage rolling along the same
road, but into ever new developments of the landscape. An amazing
thought—but have we not abundant internal evidence of the fact?
We all know that there are times when we cannot get rid of the
thoughts that will think themselves within us, though they drive away
sleep and peace and joy. In the face of this law, benign as it eases
us of the labour of original thought and decision about the everyday
affairs of life, terrible when it gets beyond our power of control and
diversion, what hope for those in whose debauched brain vile
thoughts, involuntary, automatic, are for ever running with frightful
rapidity in the one well-worn track? Truly, the in-look is appalling.
What hope for these? And what of a scheme whose first condition is
the regeneration of the vicious—vicious, not only by inherited
propensity, and by unbroken inveterate habit, but reduced to that
state of, shall we say, inevitable viciousness—when “unconscious
cerebration,” with untiring activity, goes to the emanation of vicious
imaginations? All these things are against us.

the law for us—limitations to the doctrine of heredity.

But the last word of Science, and she has more and better words
in store, is full of hope. The fathers have eaten sour grapes, but it is
not inevitable that the children’s teeth be set on edge. The soul that
sinneth it shall die, said the prophet of old, and Science is hurrying
up with her, “Even so.” The necessary corollary to the latest
modification of the theory of evolution is—acquired modifications of
structure are not transmitted. All hail to the good news; to realise it,
is like waking up from a hideous nightmare. This is, definitely, our
gain; the man who by the continuous thinking of criminal thoughts
has modified the structure of his brain so as to adapt it to the current
of such thoughts, does not necessarily pass on this modification to
his child. There is no necessary adaptation in the cerebrum of the
new-born child to make place for evil thoughts. In a word, the child of
the vicious may be born as fit and able for good living as the child of
the righteous. Inherent modifications are, it is true, transmitted, and
the line between inherent and acquired modifications may not be
easy to define. But, anyway, there is hope to go on with. The child of
the wicked may have as good a start in life, so far as his birthright
goes, as the child of the just. The child’s future depends not upon his
lineage so much as upon his bringing up, for education is stronger
than nature, and no human being need be given over to despair. We
need not abate our hope of the regeneration of the vicious for the
bugbear of an inheritance of irresistible propensity to evil.

the law for us—“one custom overcometh another.”

But habit! It is bad enough to know that use is second nature, and
that man is a bundle of habits; but how much more hopeless to look
into the rationale of habit, and perceive that the enormous strength
of the habit that binds us connotes a structural modification, a
shaping of the brain tissues to the thought of which the habit is the
outward and visible sign and expression. Once such growth has
taken place, is not the thing done, so that it can’t be undone—has
not the man taken shape for life when his ways of thinking are
registered in the substance of his brain?
Not so; because one habit has been formed and registered in the
brain is no reason at all why another and contrary habit should not
be formed and registered in its turn. To-day is the day of salvation,
physically speaking, because a habit is a thing of now; it may be
begun in a moment, formed in a month, confirmed in three months,
become the character, the very man, in a year. There is growth to the
new thoughts in a new tract of the brain, and “One custom
overcometh another.” Here is the natural preparation for salvation.
The words are very old, the words of Thomas à Kempis, but the
perception that they have a literal physical meaning has been
reserved for us to-day. Only one train of ideas can be active at one
time; the old cell connections are broken, and benign nature is busy
building up the waste places, even be they the waste places of many
generations. NO ROAD is set up in the track where the unholy
thoughts carried on their busy traffic. New tissue is formed; the
wound is healed, and, save, perhaps, for a scar, some little
tenderness, that place is whole and sound as the rest.
This is how one custom overcometh another: there is no conflict,
no contention, no persuasion. Secure for the new idea a weighty
introduction, and it will accomplish all the rest for itself. It will feed
and grow; it will increase and multiply; it will run its course of its own
accord; will issue in that current of automatic unconscious
involuntary thought of the man which shapes his character. Behold, a
new man! Ye must be born again, we are told; and we say, with a
sense of superior knowledge of the laws of nature, How can a man
be born again? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s
womb and be born? This would be a miracle, and we have satisfied
ourselves that “miracles do not happen.” And now, at last, the
miracle of conversion is made plain to our dull understanding. We
perceive that conversion, however sudden, is no miracle at all—
using the word miracle to describe that which takes place in
opposition to natural law. On the contrary, we find that every man
carries in his physical substance the gospel of perpetual, or of
always possible, renovation; and we find how, from the beginning,
Nature was prepared with her response to the demand of Grace. Is
conversion possible? we ask; and the answer is, that it is, so to
speak, a function for which there is latent provision in our physical
constitution, to be called forth by the touch of a potent idea. Truly,
His commandment is exceeding broad, and grows broader day by
day with each new revelation of Science.
 A man may, most men do, undergo this process of renovation
many times in their lives; whenever an idea strong enough to divert
his thoughts (as we most correctly say) from all that went before is
introduced, the man becomes a new creature; when he is “in love,”
for example; when the fascinations of art or of nature take hold of
him; an access of responsibility may bring about a sudden and
complete conversion:—
The breath no sooner left his father’s body
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem’d to die too; yea, at that very moment,
Consideration, like an angel, came
And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him;
Leaving his body as a paradise
To envelop and contain celestial spirits.

Here is a picture—psychologically true, anyway, Shakespeare

makes no mistakes in psychology—of an immediate absolute
conversion. The conversion may be to the worse, alas, and not to
the better, and the value of the conversion must depend upon the
intrinsic worthiness of the idea by whose instrumentality it is brought
about. The point worth securing is, that man carries in his physical
structure the conditions of renovation; conditions, so far as we can
conceive, always in working order, always ready to be put in force.
Wherefore “conversion” in the Biblical sense, in the sense in which
the promoters of this scheme depend upon its efficacy, though a
miracle of divine grace in so far as it is a sign and a marvel, is no
miracle in the popular sense of that which is outside of and opposed
to the workings of “natural law.” Conversion is entirely within the
divine scheme of things, even if we choose to limit our vision of that
scheme to the “few, faint, and feeble” flashes which Science is as yet
able to throw upon the mysteries of being. But is this all? Ah, no; this
is no more than the dim vestibule of nature to the temple of grace;
we are not concerned, however, to say one word here of how “great
is the mystery of godliness;” of the cherishing of the Father, the
saving and the indwelling of the Son, the sanctifying of the Spirit;
neither need we speak of “spiritual wickedness in high places.” The
aim of this slight essay is to examine the assertion that what we call
conversion is contrary to natural law; and we do this with a view, not
to General Booth’s scheme only, but to all efforts of help.
Hope shows an ever stronger case for the regeneration of the
vicious. Not only need we be no more oppressed by the fear of an
inheritance of invincible propensities to evil, but the strength of life-
long habit may be vanquished by the power of an idea, new habits of
thought may be set up on the instant, and these may be fostered and
encouraged until that habit which is ten natures is the habit of the
new life, and the thoughts which, so to speak, think themselves all
day long are thoughts of purity and goodness.

the law for us—potency of an idea.

“Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions?”
In effecting the renovation of a man the external agent is ever an
idea, of such potency as to be seized upon with avidity by the mind,
and, therefore, to make an impression upon the nervous substance
of the cerebrum. The potency of an idea depends upon the fact of its
being complementary to some desire or affection within the man.
Man wants knowledge, for example, and power, and esteem, and
love, and company; also, he has within him capacities for love,
esteem, gratitude, reverence, kindness. He has an unrecognised
craving for an object on which to spend the good that is in him.
The idea which makes a strong appeal to any one of his primal
desires and affections must needs meet with a response. Such idea
and such capacity are made for one another; apart, they are
meaningless as ball and socket; together, they are a joint, effective in
a thousand ways. But the man who is utterly depraved has no
capacity for gratitude, for example? Yes, he has; depravity is a
disease, a morbid condition; beneath is the man, capable of
recovery. This is hardly the place to consider them, but think for a
moment of the fitness of the ideas which are summed up in the
thought of Christ to be presented to the poor degraded soul: divine
aid and compassion for his neglected body; divine love for his
loneliness; divine forgiveness in lieu of the shame of his sin; divine