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"know the world," the average man in society and business, all tend to a mental largeness that has extent without height. It is always difficult to maintain the equilibrium of truth. In preceding centuries the mind shot upward, but within narrow limits; the gaze of thought was heavenward, as in the pictures of the saints. There was no look abroad, almost none upon the earth; nature was simply to be used as found, not studied for further uses. Hence, there was great familiarity with the lore of religion, but dense ignorance of the laws of matter and of human society; there were no mysteries in heaven, but the earth did not even suggest a problem. Knowledge was high, but it was not broad. To-day the reverse is true: thought runs earthward and along the level of material things, but hesitates to ascend into the region of the spirit. It is interesting to note how this tendency pervades classes that apparently do not influence one another thus the scientific class, and the lighter literary class; neither reads the works of the other, nor are there any natural avenues of sympathy between them, yet in each we find the same close study of matter and man, and the same ignoring of God and the spiritual nature. Or, compare the man of universal culture with the average man of the world, who reads the newspaper, and keeps his eyes open on the street: the latter knows little of the former, never reads his books, nor even dilutions of them, yet we find them holding nearly the same opinions about God and the Faith, vague, misty, and indifferent; but both are very obser

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vant of what is about them. Such a fact seems to indicate that, instead of one class leading the way, or one set of minds dominating the rest, all are swept along by currents that flow out of some unseen source. It seems to controvert the familiar saying that philosophy shapes the thought of the world. Never were the demonstrations of ethical and spiritual philosophy clearer or stronger than at present, but the age is materialistic. Never were the evils of materialism and the necessity of the spiritual so keenly felt, yet the tide of the former sweeps on without abatement. It seems to indicate the presence of other forces than those found in chance habits of thought, or in the brain of the strongest thinker. Aquinas and Hume, Bacon and Spencer, are not so much originators as exponents of currents of thought; they represent a force which they themselves seem to be. There are ages of faith and ages of doubt; it is not easy to doubt in one or to believe in the other. None of us are exempt from these prevailing tendencies, however much we may contend against them. Nor is it well that we should be wholly exempt; it is doubtless better that an age should have homogeneousness, else it will work at cross - purpose, and unduly chafe and fret at itself. It is for some wise end that the gaze of men is for a time diverted from the heavens and turned to what is about them. It had become necessary that man should have a somewhat better knowledge of the world, and of his relations to it and to society. Hence his attention is directed thither by a divine and

guiding inspiration, and no thinking man can be exempt from it. The only danger is lest the tendency become excessive, and we forget to look upward in our eagerness to see what is about us. It is the office of Christian thought to temper and restrain these monopolizing tendencies and secure a proper balance between them, to hold and enforce the twofold fact, that while our eyes are made to look into the heavens, our feet are planted in the soil of this world. Tennyson has no wiser lines than these:

"God fulfills himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."

The thing we are apt to fail of to-day is not breadth and thoroughness of knowledge of what is about us, but of what is above and within us.

I have fallen into this train of thought by reflecting how God led Peter away from his small notions of religion, the doing or not doing this or that, and brought him into a higher and larger conception of Himself.

As we read the story we wonder at the readiness and ease with which Peter gave up old habits of thought and entered into new ones. It is not easy for us to realize how great and violent a change he thus made in a moment. We have our convictions, strong enough they seem; but we have little conception of the power of an Oriental's convictions in respect to religion. Our strongest convictions pertain to liberty and social order; the Oriental's pertain to religion. He is easily en

slaved, but not easily converted. The western mind will not brook tyranny, but it readily modifies its faith. Still, it is not easy for any one suddenly to lay down one's life-long convictions and take up new ones. Change of opinion is naturally slow and partial. But here is Peter, with the traditional spirit of an Oriental, and the added inflexibility of the Jew, violating this apparently natural order, and passing at once under a new set of ideas. What is the explanation?

1. It seems to be in the nature of religious changes that they shall occur suddenly. There may be, there must be, long seasons of preparation for any moral change, but the transition is instantaneous. It is the law of revelation. Its way is prepared by the slow processes of reason and education, but the revelation itself is quick, immediate, and not to be traced. Divine truth comes by flashes. The heavens open, and the Spirit descends as on the swift wings of a dove. Saul goes a-persecuting, and a light above the sun's dazzles him into instant submission. The Holy Spirit comes like a rushing wind upon the disciples, and in an hour they are new men. The jailer hears and believes. in a night. Luther, while toiling up the holy stairs of the Lateran, holding to salvation by works, drops that scheme on the way, and lays hold of the higher one of salvation by faith. Ignatius Loyola in a dream has sight of the Mother of Christ, and awakes a soldier of Jesus. It is often so. We do not so much grow into the possession of new spiritual truths as we awake to them. Their coming

is not like the sunrise that slowly discloses the shapes and relations of things, but is like the lightning that illuminates earth and sky in one quick flash, and so imprints them forever on the vision, like the coming of the Son of man, if indeed there be any other coming of Him than in fresh revelations of truth. Intensity makes up for time; the subtler agency engraves a deeper impression. Character is of slow and steady growth, but the revelations of truth that inspire character are sudden. A new outlook is gained and the man is changed, as, in climbing a mountain, it is some sharp turn in the path that reveals the new prospect which inspires the onward march. Some can affirm that it was in a moment that the charm of poetry, the pleasurable consciousness of thought, the passion of love, the dignity of manhood, the obligation of service, the sense of the divine goodness, came upon them. These experiences are not so much growths as revelations, and because they come quick they move us; we take up their motion; we are inspired by their energy. To provide us with such experiences, the element of unexpectedness, of surprise and catastrophe, is put into life. An uneventful life is apt to be poor and barren, unless one has the rare gift, like Wordsworth, of turning every sunrise and sunset, every storm, every changing phase of the old landscape, every fresh day of uneventful household life, into newness. It is the events of life— marriage, births, sickness, travel, new scenes and relations, the changes that drop from fortune's wheel, the thunderbolts out of clear skies, the sud

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