the sagacity, order, and industry of these marvellous insects. They build homes, store food for the future; they have leaders and rulers; they maintain a kind of government, their building is akin to art and to science; their social nature and conduct invite philosophy; their mutual devotion and their happiness suggest religion; their sympathy with well-doers, their punishment of wrongdoers would seem to imply the sense of good and evil. One notes this wonder and something more. One sees that this beehive is after all of little significance. All its interests are confined to a tiny portion of space, and to a brief moment of time. Miraculous as is the life of this society of insects, it is wholly in the seen and temporal, and there it is only for a season.

We are often tempted to look at human society in this way. We take a position in imagination far above the world. We look down upon the earth, and note a small globe floating in the boundless ether; we are able by one means or another to make out the race of man,

his indus

try, art, science, philosophy, government, religion, and we are indeed filled with wonder. But up where we stand we are not profoundly affected by the vision. We see a race of wonderful creatures rise up out of the dust; in a few years we see a generation of them return to dust; we say, miraculous as this race is, it is significant only

for a small part of infinite space, and a brief portion of infinite time. Human society is only a greater beehive, with a harder fate, to be conscious of its nothingness to the Universe, to be aware of its doom.

This mood that has greatly troubled the modern mind dissolves only in the presence of great religion. Great religion breaks through time; it breaks through time to find and to worship the Absolute worth; it binds God and man in one communion, the Beloved and the lover; the Beloved as Infinite worth, the lover as made to adore, and rejoice in, and serve the Infinite worth. Great religion thus sets the human soul in universal relations; fills these relations with high moment, burdens them with solemn accountability, brings to them the increasing sense of worth. As our earth is known to astronomy as part of a universal system, so our human world is known by great religion as part of the Infinite being.

These great relations of the human spirit, these super-temporal meanings of our existence, this ultimate scope of man's being, and its highest content, oftenest appear, like the vast mountain range, in mist, in trouble, in storm, in sunlight, or moonlight, broken by fragments of flying clouds; the whole stands clear and sublime only at favored moments. Now we see in a mirror

darkly; now we know in part, and we prophesy in part. When that which is perfect is come that which is in part shall be done away. Our knowledge of the Eternal God is provisional not because it is not true so far as it goes, but because God and the world of worth are immeasurably beyond our highest thought, our devoutest and surest dream. We are in the presence of the Infinite mystery of Godliness; our increasing sense of this Reality means the increasing life of humanity; yet this life must ever be in the awe of the uncomprehended Fullness of truth and love. Wise men still sing their way into the Divine secret, as Charles Wesley did,

“Come, Oh thou traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see:
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee;
With Thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day."

CHAPTER II

THE GOOD AS THE PATH TO GOD

I

WHEN We look at a piece of tapestry we see at once that it is a whole, that it is one thing; and when we analyze it and discover the parts that compose it as a whole, again we see at once that one part, as far as it goes, is as real as any other part, and that all the parts taken together constitute the one, complete thing. We analyze it and we find first of all the warp, that is, the threads that run lengthwise on the loom; in the second place we find the woof, that is, the threads that run crosswise on the loom; in the third place we find the design, the figure, which is inlaid in the warp and woof, woven into them; and in the fourth place we find the color, the character, the spirit, the beauty and the power that live in the whole.

When we look into the experience of a normal and highly developed human being, we discover that it is one thing, a whole, and when we analyze it, we find that this whole is made up of parts, that each part, as far as it goes, is as real as another, and that all the parts together constitute the whole.

There is the feeling of self, the sense that one is a real being, that is aboriginal; without that there can be no experience; before there can be an experience, there must be a subject of experience; nothing can experience nothing. A real being is the subject of a real experience, that is the warp, the thread that runs lengthwise on the loom of existence. The ground of experience is the sense of self, the conviction that each self is an indubitable reality. I think, that is to say I am; I act, that is to say I am; I experience life, that is to say I am.

This self is set into the world of nature, and the world of nature is set into the world of the self. We feel nature a reality in us; we feel ourselves a reality in nature. Nature is in our self as fact, as beauty, as law; that is the woof of experience, the thread that runs crosswise on the loom of being. Together these constitute the real groundwork of existence; they each hold the other in place; they prepare for the richer development of life.

We are conscious that there are human beings other than ourselves, that we live in a human fellowship. This feeling is developed through home, play, school, friends; through the sense of community and humanity. This is the social design of our being set into the warp and woof of experience, woven into the sense of personality and the sense of nature.