with the highest development of what we call intellect; so that, looking up to it from our human plane, it is proper for us to call it an intellectual order. And, further still, we see everywhere, on leaf and flower, on sunlit cloud, on curl of ocean surf, in mountain outline, and in wildwood glade, an inexpressible beauty that becomes the inspiration of artist and of poet.

Here, then, in inanimate nature, we see and know existence, motion, order, and beauty, and know them as the outcome, as the real and true manifestation, of the inscrutable and ineffable life of the universe. So far as they go, they are reliable and adequate revelations of the Unknowable One.

(2) As our next step up and on, let us glance at the lesson of human history. I do not here enter into any analysis of human nature, but wish simply to ask your attention to the way in which the universe has dealt with the race, taken in the mass. What is the lesson of the drift of our human destiny, taking the world as a whole? It is twofold, and may be indicated by the two words, "progress" and "righteousness." From the lowest forms of primeval life up to the topmost height of our modern civilization, there is evident a force of uplifting and onlooking.

"Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,

And, groping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers."

What the poet here sings of the lower life of the

spring may be taken as typical of the grand truth that binds together the Alpha and the Omega of creation.

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And not only do we see progress along certain definite lines of law that suggest the rightness of this life-force of the universe, but this progress has lifted up into what we call the sphere of morals, and has been along certain other definite lines of what we call righteousness; so that the lesson which Matthew Arnold so finely deduces from the history of Israel may be read with more emphasis still in the history of the race. This power of progress is also a power of progress toward a moral ideal, power that makes for righteousness." I need hardly illustrate this; for I suppose no one but a pessimist will hesitate to accept it. A full illustration would be an outline of universal history. This power making for righteousness has been that by which nations have grown, or the rock on which they have foundered. The nations which to-day stand highest in civilization are those which, on the whole, best conform to and live out this law.

And, indeed, not only is this so, but it is easy to see that it must be so. For as, in the body, if once disease gains supremacy over the healthy powers, death must ensue, so in the universe, if the lawless and evil forces were really in the majority, the cosmos would tumble into chaos.

This inscrutable power of the universe, then, is progress and righteousness as manifested in the outlines and drift of human history.

(3) Come, now, to man, individual and social, and see

what is manifested here. And just at this point I must stop to notice, and protest against, that which seems to me the height of what is irrational and strange in the reasoning of many, on the side of both science and theology. Theology, in its attempt to exalt man, takes him out of, and sets him apart from, the order of nature, and then abuses nature as an untrustworthy guide in religious things, because it does not find moral qualities-love and mercy-in stones and mountains and trees. It takes the soul out, and then wonders that it does not have any soul. And many scientists, as if willing to take theology at its word, go ranging through the inanimate universe, as though they were examining some mechanism with which they had nothing to do, and declare that they do not find what nobody supposed they would find in the material forms of the world. As if the mainspring of a watch should start into independent life, and go to searching through the rest of the machinery in the attempt to find that of which itself was the representative, and should then declare, on its honor as a good piece of steel, that the watch showed no signs of a mainspring, and thus was radically defective!

Whether or not there be any thing about man rightly called supernatural, we know, that, at any rate, he is natural. He is a part of the life and order of the world; and thus, in all the myriad manifestations of his varied life, he is an outcome of the central power and life of the universe. He is a part of the divine manifestation. What, then, are the things that he reveals?

In him, first, so far as we know, does the world come up into a consciousness of personal existence. While this does not prove that the inscrutable power of the world is a person, it does prove that this power is, at least, as much as, and as good as, personal.

Then, beyond this personality that consciousness reveals, man manifests all those qualities that we call social, moral, and spiritual, love, devotion, self-sacrifice, purity, integrity, patriotism, heroism, and the "enthusiasm of humanity." The mother watches tirelessly over some sick child; or she gives herself to the care of one idiotic or deformed. She forgets selfishness, and finds pleasure in wasting away, and wearing out her life, for the sake of her mother-love. Men ride at the front of embattled armies, meeting danger, nor shunning death, for the triumph of some noble sentiment or intangible principle. Winkelried takes the spears of the foe into his own breast, that he may make a breach through which his followers may pour to a patriotic victory. Mattie Stephenson goes to plague-stricken Memphis, and gives her life to a pure pity for the helpless sufferers. John Brown "counts not his life dear," so he may be able to help a degraded mass of slaves up into freedom and manhood. The religious martyr stands chained to the stake, with the kindling fagots about his shrivelling limbs, when one false word would set him free; and when the last flame leaps up, his life goes out on the air that still trembles with his song of triumph and all for what he holds as sacred truth and divine light. A Jesus or a Socrates dies peaceful and

calm, while with his last breath he forgives, or prays for, the ignorant rage, or pitiable malice, that puts him to death.

Now, this whole realm of the moral and spiritual is a real country. These things are facts of human life and history, just as much facts as the labelled fossil bones and the flint arrow-heads of scientific museums. These facts are real and verifiable manifestations of the power of which all the phenomena of the universe are expressions. And if this power cannot be adequately expressed in these terms of humanity, it is at least certain that it is as much and as good as these. The partial expression is not false it is only inadequate. This power, then, is as good and loving, and pitiful and devoted, as the best manifestations of itself in humanity.

(4) One step more we will take. Above the common level of our humanity there rise the exceptional and towering summits of those mountainous men seers, prophets, poets, lawgivers, leaders of every kind - that have served as landmarks and observatories for the race.

Consider, for a moment, the significance of the fact that there have been such men. If a daisy springs out of the sod, it is because there was a daisy in the sod. If such men spring out of humanity, it is because there is in humanity the stuff of which such men are made. If a man admires the grand and sublime, it is because there is grandeur and sublimity in him to respond to the outer appeal. And thus the fact that the race is seen on its face, adoring the idealized forms of these sublime and