CHAPTER VI.

THE PROVISION FOR THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MAN.

In speaking of the spiritual nature of man, reference is not had to a side or faculty or power of himself, but to his real, essential life. Man is a spirit. All faculties and powers exist for him as such. The hunger, and the food provided for it, are to serve man as spirit. The social element, and the power provided for it, are to serve him as spirit. The intellect and truth, the will and right, the æsthetic sense and beauty, are all to serve him as spirit. The correlate of man as spirit, on one side of himself, we have seen to be the life of humanity—the correlate of man as spirit, on the other side of himself, is the life of God. Man’s spiritual nature is mediated to him on one side by the family, by the school, by the institutions of the state, by the establishments of trade, by the newspaper, by literature, by art, by history. Man’s spiritual nature is mediated to him on the other side by love, embodied in the one Mediator between God and man.

The mud-philosophy of Locke, and Hume, and Mill, and Spencer dissolves spirit, because it dissolves the idea of a mind, an ego, or an external world. If the mind can know nothing but a succession of things in time, if nothing but a constant flow and flux of sensations; of course it cannot know itself, only as a sensation in the perpetual procession of sensations always passing by. But how is it possible for the mind to know a succession of things in time, and a procession of things in space, unless it is itself out of and apart from the succession and the procession. One sensation, say of the self, in a flow of sensations, could not know itself as a part of such a flow, without knowing itself as related to a before and an after in the process. To know even a procession of sensations, we must have a spirit that stands still and does not pass on with the procession. The spirit, then, must be out of time to know succession, and out of space to know procession, and self-conscious, so as to distinguish itself from the succession and the procession. The human spirit is something in the midst of time, yet passes not with the tides of time. It is to the succession of things ever passing through it, and to the procession of sensations ever passing before it, like some mighty Teneriffe with its peak of Teyde in the midst of the sea, pushing its proud head up 12,000 feet above the sea, and contrasting with its ever changing waves, the immutability of eternity. Man, as a spirit, is after God, the most universal of all facts. He is illimitable in more ways than space, remaining when all the events of time have passed, and with a nature dipping into the eternal spirit of God. The respect in which man is made in the image of God, is, that he is endowed with self-consciousness, and self-determination. Self-consciousness and self-determination are the universal forms of spiritual activity. Man, as a self-conscious and self-determining spirit, is not independent. He must find his true self beyond himself. He is dependent upon the absolute self-consciousness and self-determination of God. He is the child of God, and as there cannot be an absolute without a relative, he is the relativity of the absolute. God’s nature is the ground of man’s nature, and in God he is mirrored to himself.

In God man lives and moves and has his being. In finding God, man finds himself. In the revelation of God is the revelation of man. God is a spirit and man is a spirit; but man, as a relative spirit, comes to himself in God, the absolute spirit; as the life-germ of the acorn comes to itself in the natural conditions of soil and sky which environ it.

I.

As man is essentially spirit, he can never come to unity, only as he comes to it in himself as a spirit. As long as he abandons himself to mere bread, or power, or knowledge, or law, or beauty, there is contradiction. Not in any one of these can he find full-orbed life. These all bring nutriment to him, as a spirit, from the several spheres to which they are variously correlated. But provision is made not only for the sides and faculties of himself, but for the essential nature of himself. We have seen how hunger was met by bread, the needs of the social nature by power, intellect by truth, will by law, and the æsthetic sense by beauty; but here we come to life, and find that love, timeless and illimitable love, alone corresponds to it. But love can only find its embodiment and its expression in life. Therefore, love has taken the form of life to meet the needs of man as a spirit.

We do not propose to discuss this subject dogmatically. The writer believes in dogmatism; but in this work the attempt has been to treat man, and the things provided for him, scientifically. We have taken nothing for granted, and have intended to say nothing but what was warranted by the facts. That man is a spirit, and related to an unseen realm, is attested by the fact that all round this world temples and mosques, and synagogues and churches lift themselves sublimely, or modestly, to the sky. That there is something in man that seeks provision from beyond the range of sense and sight, no one in his senses can deny. This deep and fundamental and irrepressible need of man’s nature finds its correlate in love. Speaking out of the depths of his life, it is an everlasting call for sympathy, for reconciliation, for pardon, for peace. Love gives sympathy, insures reconciliation, grants pardon, and secures peace. But love can only come from the unseen and eternal in the form of life. Let us see how the love expressed in the life and sacrifice and death of Jesus Christ, as the embodiment of divine love, is set over against the spiritual nature of man, as its correlate; as completely as bread is set over against hunger, or the truth against the intellect, or as beauty is set over against the æsthetic sense. We believe this is so in the nature of things, and will finally be taught as truth, as absolute and unfailing as the multiplication table. Men will come to it, after a while, not only as a dogmatic doctrine taught by the churches, but also as absolute doctrine, taught by the constitution and needs of human nature. The time will come when to doubt this will not simply be to write one’s self down as mean, but as mentally unbalanced. If Jesus Christ, as love, is the correlate of the spiritual needs of the human race, then his life is peculiar and unique. It cannot be classed with any other life. It cannot be measured by any rule used to measure other things or other lives. We propose to test this life by a principle said, by scientific men, to have universal application in this time.

II.

The doctrine of the correlation, equivalence, persistence, transmutability and indestructibility of force, or the conservation of energy has had vast influence upon the thought and life of our time. It has furnished a new opening through which to behold the nature of things. It has given to men a new working hypothesis and richer views and conceptions of the universe and its author.

The tremendous advancement made in the material civilization of the present is due more to this than any other scientific doctrine or principle. According to Professor Balfour Stewart, there are eight forms of energy or force. The energy of visible motion, visible energy of position, heat motion, molecular separation, atomic or chemical separation, electrical separation, electricity in motion, and radiant energy. Now taking this earth as a complete whole, containing within itself all these forms of energy, and so isolated from the rest of the universe as to receive nothing from it and to add nothing to it, then the principle of the correlation of forces asserts that the sum of all these forces is constant.

“This does not assert that each is constant in itself, or any other of the forms of force enumerated, for in truth they are always changing about into each other—now some visible energy being changed into heat or electricity, and heat or electricity being changed back again into visible energy; but it only means that the sum of all the energies taken together is constant. There are eight variable quantities, and it is only asserted that their sum is constant, not by any means that they are constant themselves.”

For the purpose of elucidating our principle in the realm of nature, we will consider it as it applies to some of the useful forces whose effects we can measure and whose origin we can trace and determine.

There is the force of conserved fuel. Away back in the carboniferous period of the world’s history, there grew immense forests, which in succeeding ages were turned under the earth, and, in the process of the years, were changed into coal and oil and gas. These have been treasured for untold ages in the mountains and in the bowels of the earth. Now they are brought forth by the applied intelligence of man, to turn his wheel, draw his car, cook his food, propel his plow, and to light his home and his street. The force in one ton of coal is capable of accomplishing more work in a few hours than one man could in a lifetime. All this force, as well as that contained in the growing forests of to-day, originated in the sun.

There is the conserved force of food. This is found primarily in the grass, the wheat, the rice, the fruit, which grow in our fields and orchards. The lower animals feed on these, and through the process of digestion and assimilation, they are transmuted into blood and bone and muscle—thus furnishing man, who stands at the top and the end of the creative process, with a more refined higher form of food. But whether in the shape of grass, rice, wheat, or in the more refined form of animal flesh, these various elements of food are only so much transmuted sunshine. Before they ever adorned the surface of our fields, or moved in the lowing herd over the meadow, they were held in solution in the sunshine. The food, the fuel, and the animal life of our earth are all traceable to the sun.

There is the conserved force of flowing water. This turns the wheel, spins the thread, gins the cotton, weaves the cloth, and grinds the corn. All the force that water possesses for the performance of work, comes from the sun. The warm rays of the sun, coming down on southern seas and rivers, causes the waters thereof to evaporate, and then it is carried on the wings of north-bound winds to a colder clime. There the diffused waters gather themselves into clouds and fall in rain to flow down the rivers, thus exchanging their energy of position, which they have obtained from the sun, for the actual energy of the turning wheel.

There is also the conserved force of moving winds. By the aid of this ships spread their sails, and pass from continent to continent with the products of the earth. Again all the force the winds possess for the accomplishment of work comes from the sun. The rays of the sun come down with great intensity upon certain parts of the earth and heat the atmosphere. Into these heated places come the winds from colder regions. Thus currents and counter-currents are created. By putting the wheel of the windmill into these currents this force is converted into the ground wheat and the drawn water. Thus all the different forms of force displayed in the growing forests, the waving harvest fields, the flying birds, the lowing herds, the rushing railway train, the whir of the spindle, the ring of the hammer, and the pulsating blood come directly from the sun. The force, too, seen in all these physical, vegetable, animal, commercial realms, is the exact equivalent of what was poured into them from the sun. The earth contains no other force capital than what was paid over to it by the sun. It has issued no currency of its own, not even enough to run a watch, or to send the blood once around the body, or even to transport a piece of bread to a starving man. All the force our earth possesses is borrowed, and if we were to cease to borrow, we would be bankrupt in a single day. We are to remember, too, that by so much force as the sun has parted with to our earth, and to other worlds which look to it for supplies, by so much has its own force been decreased. If we knew how much force the sun had in the beginning, and would subtract from this amount all that it has given away to the present time, we might be able to form some estimate of its assets to-day.

We know not what the sun’s resources are. We know not by what methods it has been replenishing its supplies of light and heat for ages past; whether by chemical combination, meteoric impact, or condensation; we only know by so much as it has in the ages past parted with, by so much less force it has to-day. That it has been able to supply our world and others like it, however, with heat and light and physical life for ages, is not at all strange when we remember what an immense ball of fire the sun is. It has a diameter of a million miles, in round numbers. Storms, which travel across our world at the rate of sixty miles an hour, would move across the surface of the sun at the rate of twenty thousand miles an hour. The flames of a burning forest, which on our world would rise one hundred feet in the air, on the sun would rise to the height of two hundred thousand miles. The sun, too, has enough force on hand to supply our earth and others with heat for untold ages yet to come, but unless its supply is replenished, the time will come when it will be bankrupt and nothing but a burnt out char in the heavens. This is so, because the sun is the center of that great natural realm, the universal law of which is the law of exclusiveness.

In accordance with this law what the sun has in the way of force the other planets do not have, and what other planets obtain from the sun that body has forever lost. This is only another name for the law of the correlation of forces. This law applies not only to the force of the sun, but to all forces on this earth which come from that body. What one tree gathers into itself is at the expense of the general fund of force which goes to make trees. What one bird takes into his body is at the expense of all force which goes to make birds. What one man takes into his physical frame is at the expense of the general fund of force which goes to make human bodies. Whatever amount of force is contained in the cloud, in conserved water to turn the wheel, or in conserved electricity to carry the message, is at the expense of the general fund of force.

According to the doctrine of the correlation of forces, the rising up of force in one place involves the subsidence of force in another place. The amount rising up, too, is the exact equivalent of the amount subsiding. When a rock falls from a church steeple the earth rises as much to meet the rock, in proportion to its mass, as the rock falls to meet the earth, in proportion to its mass. When a man shoots a rifle ball from a gun, as much force goes back against his shoulder as goes out through the muzzle of the gun. What the gun lacks in velocity it makes up in mass, and what the ball lacks in mass it makes up in velocity. When a pine tree is cut down and split into small pieces and put into an engine, just the same amount of heat is gathered from it that was garnered from the sun in the fifty years of its growth. This heat is also converted into an equivalent of steam, and this steam into an equivalent amount of mechanical motion. The sunshine, the pine tree, the heat, the steam, the mechanical motion, are only different forms of the same thing. Scientists of the materialistic school claim that this law holds good not only in the realm of the natural world, but in the mental and moral, as well. Prof. Thomas H. Huxley said, in a celebrated address in this country once, that a speech was only so much transmuted mutton. According to Prof. Alexander Bain, there are five chief powers, or forces in nature: one mechanical or molar, the momentum of moving matter; the others, molecular, are embodied in the molecules, also supposed in motion—these are light, heat, chemical force, electricity. One member of vital energies, the nerve force, allied to electricity, fully deserves to rank in the correlation. According to this same distinguished authority, mind is only a refined and sublimated form of physical force. In this view the great poems, paintings, and literature of the world would be only so much transmuted sunshine—a higher form of the same force we see manifested in the flying railway train. In the one case the solidified sunshine contained in the coal is transmuted through the furnace of the engine into mechanical motion; in the other, the heat contained in food is transmuted through the human brain into literature and art. Perhaps it might not be at wide variance from the truth to assume that the force, mental or otherwise, expended by men who spend their lives under the dominion of the natural law of exclusiveness, may be accounted for in accordance with the doctrine of the correlation of forces. Even mind, when earthly and low, is subject to the bearing of the law of sin and death, which is the scriptural name for the law of exclusiveness.

III.

It might be plausibly contended that the religious movement of the prophet Mohammed could be accounted for in accordance with the doctrine of the correlation of forces. It is to be remembered that the personality of Mohammed is no more the equivalent of the vast movement which has existed and exists to-day under his name, than the acorn is the quantitative equivalent of the immense oak tree which has grown from it. The acorn, plus all the oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and other forces of sky and earth which it caught and organized, is the equivalent of the oak tree. The soil and the sky contain oaks in solution. Through acorns these are precipitated into trees.

The mental, political, and social atmosphere of Turkey contained the Mohammedan movement in solution before Mohammed was born. Through him it was precipitated into Koran, mosque, prayer, and worship.

Mohammed relied for success upon the methods with which men ordinarily succeed. He appealed to men’s love of fame, of pleasure, of conquest, of power, of riches. He simply organized the latent aspirations, and hopes, and fears of his countrymen into a great kingdom, essentially secular and sensual.

In accordance with the principle of the correlation of forces, it might be possible to account for the success of Buddha, Confucius, Cæsar, and Bonaparte. What we wish now, is to apply this doctrine, which the materialists claim is capable of measuring everything, from an atom to Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” to the life and work of Christ. Granting, as we must, that all physical force may be estimated by it, and even that the work and thought of men, in so far as they live under the natural law of selfishness or exclusiveness, may be estimated by it.

What we desire to inquire is, if the life and work of Christ form no exception to its operation, as ordinarily regarded. Can we, in accordance with this principle, account for the life and influence of Christ on the assumption that he was only a man? Has no more force issued from the person of Christ than subsided when only a man named Jesus was crucified?

We have seen how the forms of physical force in the shape of fuel, food, moving waters, and winds may be traced directly to the sun. Let us also consider some of the forms of spiritual force which are traceable directly to the life of Christ, and inquire if they may be accounted for as the force which comes from the sun may be, by the principle of the convertibility of force.

IV.

There is the conserved spiritual force of Christian literature. This is stored up in the Bibles of the world, in commentaries upon its text, in expositions of its principles, in books illustrating its meaning. If all the Bibles of the world, books written about the Bible—in favor of it or against it—and all the books which have been inspired by some truth or precept taught in the Bible, and all the books which owe their existence directly or indirectly to the Bible, were burned up, Christendom would be well-nigh without literature. All Bibles and all books and literature which have grown out of the Bible owe their existence directly to Christ. They have come as straight from him as the coal in the mountain has come from the sun. Much force has been expended in the writing of all these books and in printing them, binding them, circulating them. They represent millions of dollars, ages of painful, patient thought. Into them a marvelous amount of force has lifted itself—physical force, money force, thought force. We are to find its equivalent. All the force that has arisen in Christian literature has subsided at some point, and the amount that subsided is the exact equivalent of that which has arisen. It must be remembered, too, that distinctly Christian literature has not made its way in the world, as have the writings of Homer and Plato, by their affinity with man’s fancy. The wonderful interest which has ever centered around the Bible is totally different in kind and degree from that which centers around the works of Shakspere. Whatever there is of literary merit, of philosophic thought, or of poetic depth in the Bible is incidental.

There is the conserved spiritual force of Christian art. The masterpieces in painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and architecture are Christian. The inspiration which produced Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” Handel’s “Messiah,” Powers’ “Eve,” and St. Peter’s at Rome, has all come from Christ. In the conception and production of these an immense amount of the most subtle, refined force has been expended.

There is the conserved force of Christian money. This has taken the form of church buildings, buildings for education, for orphans, for the sick, for the wretched and the poor. There is not a great city in the world to-day without a Christian church edifice. They are the expressions of a great force, of which we are seeking to find the equivalent. They owe their existence directly to the person of Christ. The millions of money which have been spent in their erection have been because of love to him. They are as directly related to him as the oak tree is to the sun. If all these churches were burned down to-day, men would begin at once the erection of better ones to take their places. The conserved force of Christian money, then, which tends to lift itself into church edifices, is not exhausted in those which already stand upon the earth; but just as much as has lifted itself into brick and marble, and window, and dome, and pinnacle is ready to take the same forms if the necessity for them were laid upon the Christian world.

There is the conserved force of Christian home life. The force here referred to is not manifest in the life itself, but in the form which family life has taken in the Christian world. There is hardly a home in Christendom to-day, but has been formed directly or indirectly with reference to Christ. Into those places where character is formed, where revolutions are started, where Wesleys and Gladstones are developed, where eternal issues pend, Christ has come quietly and silently to regulate, to dominate and control. To thus influence, regulate, and vitally touch homes, to thus determine their form, appointment, and character, requires a great deal of force.

There is the conserved force implied in the inception and perpetuation of the Christian Calendar. Infidels, materialists, and atheists, in dating their letters, pay tribute to the character of Christ in the fact that they recognize he has ushered in a new era. Christ has claimed and held through nearly two thousand years one day out of every week to be devoted to his service. The day upon which he was born is celebrated in the hearts of men and in the arts of men. To change the world’s calendar, to inaugurate and make permanent a new date, to impel the world to set apart a day for his worship, to furnish the world with new festivals and holidays, has required, certainly, a vast amount of force. This we are to trace and determine, and we are also to find its equivalent.

There is the conserved Christian force implied in the fact that Christ has won the hearts of men. To win the disinterested love of one man takes much force, more than most men have. To win the love of a state takes more. But to win and to hold, through the perturbations and revolutions of kingdoms and republics, the undying love of the best and purest men on earth requires an infinite amount of force. This point in Christ’s character greatly impressed the first Napoleon. Said he, “I know men. Christ is not a man. I have seen the time when I could inspire thousands to die for me, but it took the inspiration of my presence and the power of my word. Since I am away from men, a prisoner on Helena, no one will die for me. Christ, on the other hand, has been away from the world nearly two thousand years, and yet there are millions who would die for him. I tell you, Christ is not a man. I know men.”

V.

It would be impossible to recount all the institutions, books, civilizations, laws, discoveries, inventions, homes and hearts, into which the force of Christ’s life has for the past nineteen hundred years been lifting itself. As the sun expresses itself in the meadow, and lifts itself into the trees of the forests, so Christ has been embodying himself in the institutions, homes, and thoughts of men. The scientists say all force can be accounted for. When force has risen up at one point it has subsided at another: the amount rising up being the exact equivalent of that subsiding. Upon this principle we are seeking to account for all this force that, coming from Christ, has expressed itself in the domestic, social, political, and ecclesiastical institutions of men. More has risen than can be computed by human arithmetic, or compassed by human imagination, or comprehended by human thought. Where did it come from? Where did it subside? At what point did it disappear to rise again in such overwhelming volume, and such sweeping and far-reaching influence? We go back through eighteen hundred years. We are standing in Jerusalem. We hear conflicting reports of a strange, daring young man. At length he is pointed out to us. There is nothing remarkable about his appearance. He is a Jew. He was born among the poor. He is not noted for culture. He has no social position. He has no money. He has no political power or prestige. He has no army at his command. He has no philosophical system. He is connected with no academy. He is only thirty-three years old. His words are contained in no books. They are simply in the memory of his disciples. He is misunderstood. His own disciples do not know what to make of him. Finally he is arrested, and tried, and condemned, and crucified. He dies between two thieves, scorned, scoffed, buffeted, and friendless. Keep in mind the principle we are considering. All force can be measured. No more force rises up than subsides. Action and reaction are equal. We are seeking to account, in accordance with this principle, for the vast amount of force Christ has poured into the institutions and thoughts of humanity. Is this young man’s life, seemingly so insignificant and weak, the exact equivalent of all the churches, schools, colleges, arts, literature, homes, governments, sacrifice, heroism, good works, martyrdom, patience, love, and hope that have by general consent resulted from his existence in the world? If so, was he only a man? Multiply thirty-three years by poverty, toil, contempt, sorrow, and crucifixion, and you have one product. Multiply nineteen hundred years by millions of churches, schools, and homes; by millions of books, paintings, and poems; by social position, wealth, and power; by success, triumph, and conquest; by love, mercy, and truth; by a hold upon humanity unequaled, and by an influence on home and thought unrivaled, and you have another product. The question is: does one of these products seem to be the equivalent of the other? Does not the outcome surpass by an infinite degree the income? Is not the evolution out of all proportion to the involution? Has not a great deal more force risen up than seemingly subsided? Is there not much more power seemingly on this side the Cross than there was on the other? Manifestly and clearly Christ’s life and work cannot be accounted for by the principle of the correlation of forces.

Mohammed’s success and disciples we can understand. He succeeded by the ordinary methods by which men succeed. He appealed to men’s love of fame, conquest, wealth, power, pleasure. He offered men, as a reward for their fealty to him, a great earthly kingdom, and such a heaven beyond the grave as would regale the senses, please the fancy, and gratify the appetites. He simply organized and applied the latent earthly forces already existing in his countrymen. His success is in line with that of Cæsar and Bonaparte. The kingdom which he proposed to establish was merely an earthly, sensual kingdom. His methods were carnal, the motives to which he appealed were sensual, and the hopes which he inspired were carnal. Christ, on the other hand, condemned men’s love of conquest, power, fame, riches, and pleasure. He made the conditions of discipleship to consist in the denial of self and in the relinquishment of all earthly hopes, gratifications, and prospects. “If you find your life in my kingdom,” said he, “you must lose it in this.” He proposed to build up a kingdom as wide as the world, and as lasting as eternity, without adopting a single method or utilizing any of the means ordinarily relied on for success. Not only did he propose a new kingdom, but to populate it with new men, motives, hopes, conceptions, and opinions. Hence, to come into his kingdom, men were to be made over. They were to die to self, to the world, to pleasure. So Christ’s work and influence in the world not only forms an exception to the principle of the correlation of forces, but here we have an unparalleled amount of force rising up when, to all human appearances, none subsided at all.

VI.

A poor young carpenter dies. He goes down in ignominy. Amid the jeers and contempt of the multitude, he goes down into the grave. But from that moment, commotion begins. Forgiveness of sin in the name of Christ is preached; disciples are won; books are written; civilizations are touched; movements are inaugurated; persecutions, bloody and relentless, are waged. The fires of hate are kindled; storms from all round the social, political, and religious sky gather, and howl, and empty their fury upon the new movement. Nothing impedes it; fire cannot hinder it; persecution intensifies it; death does not alarm it. Now, we submit, does not such a movement, starting from such a source, and moving out with such vigor, and becoming intenser and deeper as it is extended, form a remarkable and singular exception to the principle we are considering? Is there any rule among men by which it may be estimated and classified and labeled? Can any human, or logical, or philosophical formula or principle measure the multiform and widely diversified facts in this case? Does it not form an exception to all rules and human methods of measurements? Do we not augment the difficulties of accounting for the work of Christ by minifying him, and calling him a mere man? Is not the easier way to account for Christ’s work, to accord to him all that he claims for himself and all that his disciples claimed for him. He said, “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.” If we accept this as true, we can account for his work. But in this view, we will see that his life was divine and one with the Father of us all. Then we will see that he was the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the incarnation of the divine mind and wisdom and power. It is impossible to account for the life and work of Christ by the principles with which physical force and merely human force and thought are measured. The sun is the center of the system of nature, a system destined to end. Any system, the center of which is gradually losing its force, cannot last. Christ is the center of a spiritual system totally different from the system of nature. By all the force the sun parts with to the worlds about it, by so much less has it. It is gradually losing itself, to find itself no more forever. Christ is pouring his force into the system of which he is the center, but by such a process he is not losing his force, but increasing it. By losing himself he finds himself. The universal law of the system of which he is the center, is the law of communion. The force he gives away comes back to him augmented by the personality of all who partake of it. Instead of becoming poorer by giving, he becomes richer. This great truth St. Paul saw when he said: “All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.”

VII.

One life has appeared among men, then, that was all love. Jesus Christ is the only original, absolutely unselfish life that has been lived on earth. The saints have found the secret, and strength, and inspiration of their unselfishness and love in him. The love which matches and meets the illimitable nature of the human spirit is embodied in a life that cannot be measured by the ordinary rules and standards of men. The object of which hunger is the subject, is bread; the object of which intellect is the subject, is truth; the object of which will is the subject, is law; the object of which the æsthetic sense is the subject, is beauty; the object of which the spiritual nature is the subject, is Jesus Christ. The spirit of man which has for its correlate in time, the race, has for its correlate in eternity, the life of one in which is summed up all power, all truth, all law, all beauty, and all love. As the embodiment of love the human spirit finds in Christ the climate and the conditions exactly adapted to its own realization. The plan and pattern, the invisible framework and ideal of every man’s life is Christian. To be an oak is to be a perfect acorn, to be an apple is to be a complete flower, to be a Christian is to be a complete man.

_IMMORTALITY._

“How does the rivulet find its way? How does the floweret know its day And open its cup to catch the ray?

“I see the germ to the sunlight reach, And the nestling knows the old bird’s speech. I do not know who is there to teach.

“I see the hare through the thicket glide, And the stars through the trackless spaces ride. I do not see who is there to guide.

“He is eyes for all, who is eyes for the mole, See motion goes to the rightful goal. O God! I can trust for the human soul.”