of phenomena, advancing to the reconciliation of opposing elements, that all differences may be embraced and harmonized. The universe is one vast cathedral in which all worlds and all things do service, a majestic whole resting on the triple foundation of Wisdom and Might and Goodness.

A linked purpose unites the universe. Every particle of matter has outer form, inner permanence, external and internal media, joining it to this world, linking it to all other worlds and to every kind of existence. In a sense, while on the earth, it climbs the skies; in a sense, the very commonest stuff of the universe possesses body and soul. Nor is that all-take any physical substance and fact, say fire, water, combustion; water quenches fire, yet water is essentially fiery, and each from each may be extracted; fire from water, water from fire. They may be life, or they may be death, to one another; apart, or in union, they are solvents of each; and by action, interaction, joint action, control seasons, change existences, rule and suspend laws, even that of gravity. Likewise, man, both as to body and mind, is subject to law, but can rise above it. He has a power of self-differentiation, adapts and perfects himself by divergencies. Again-Chemical union changes the nature of constituents; so the more mysterious union of matter and mind in regenerate man forms that amalgam which, by physical and mental process, effects transformations in matter, elevation of laws, resurrections of life from the dead, which render the miracles of Christ small, as He Himself testified, in comparison with those hereafter to be wrought. Not the least of miracles is that richness, vastness, concreteness of thought and faith, by

which religion and science, each in its own province, restores the secret unity of phenomena: so that we anticipate the final synthesis, or reasoned unity of the world, and the human spirit, our true self, is at home in the life and being of God.

Miracles are master-works, lights in nature, prophecies of a sublime rule by glorified Humanity. In their actuality, resting on nature; in their essentiality, partaking of that which, out of and apart from nature, pervades nature; on one side, anomalies; on the other, enterings of energies to enlarge mental and material forces. "Miracle is no suspension of law; it is the emergence of new consequents from new antecedents. What is law? The observed customary relation of consequents to antecedents; but if new antecedents be introduced, new consequents will follow" (Griffiths, "Studies of the Divine Master," p. 411). Miracles are operations accentuating, elevating, somewhat akin or analogous to those which raise formless matter into crystals, the dead into life, and life into intelligence, They are a signature and counter-signature of the Almighty, by which He owns men as His; yet restrains them, lest they regard nature as ordained by Fate rather than by Intelligence. Profound logic which seeks the genesis, and traces the evolution and secret rhythm of thought, discerns in miracle constituent elements of that living process by which truth energizes intelligence. The value of a member in the living organism is shown by its being a means and end in all the rest: so the intellectual and moral idea of miracle, its all-sufficient justification, is the emphasizing the fact that eternal order and system do not originate or end of themselves, are

not necessities of nature, but come from Him who is at once the source and consummation of all things, the essence of truth; who proves by miracles that the supernatural is not a territory secluded from philosophy, but a domain revealed to reason.

Only men whose reason has been somewhat narrowed by limitation to physical processes, who prove the Italian proverb "Puro matematico puro asino," refuse these facts: men like him who, having read through "Paradise Lost," said, "But what does it prove?" Our best men, those of highest culture, moulded into completeness by far-reaching intellectual and emotional activity, discern that evil and seeming waste will be turned to good and use; that the earth is not a rubbishheap thrown upon marshy land. Their faith is not kindled by fiery terror of a brimstone lake, a light of Lucifer; it is an illumination of reason, and grows into brightness of assured verification. It will never sink to ineffectuality, or gloom, nor lie down in the wreck of worlds. It is a far-extending intelligence as to the Ways of Providence and the Love of God. It is that devout activity of the mind, in correlation with the divine process of self-revelation, which enables the finite to apprehend the Holy and Eternal: not by motion towards the Infinite, which is impossible, but by moying within.

THOUGHT XXVI.

THE GOD-MAN.

"Thou seemest human and Divine,

The highest, holiest Manhood, Thou:
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine."

In Memoriam.

"If Christ, Himself, be not a mystery from His birth, through His life, to His death and reappearance and final vanishing out of sight, He can be no Christ for us. We may as well cease at once to write, speak, think, or care about Him at all."-THOMAS GRIFFITHS, Studies of the Divine Master, p. 407.

CARLYLE says, "As I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators. . . . This is an age that as it were denies the existence of great men; denies the desirableness of great men. Show our critics a great man, Luther for example, they begin to do what they call account for him; not to worship him, but to take the dimensions of him,—and bring him out to be a little kind of man." Melancholy work, false work, dead work is this, done by the makebelieve sort of men; who, not being kindled lamps

themselves, would have us think that neither by God's gift, nor by any other's gift, do we have moral and spiritual luminaries shining by the light of Heaven.

Great men are real, grand in themselves-"In iis quasi lumina quædam probitatis et virtutis perspicere videmur" (Cicero, "De Amicit")-not creatures of circumstances, but more frequently makers of opportunity. Poets, great in splendour of imagination, pouring forth words sparkling with passionate beauty, give gorgeous array and divinity of inspiration to the commonest things. of life. The truly great are profitable company, we can hardly look upon them-certainly not be with them without gaining something. Even a sentence of rhythm and melody, musically worded, possesses something deep and good in the meaning; much more a life which can greatly dare and nobly die, in which body and soul, language and idea, are gracefully linked in truth and power.

The Great Man is a force in nature which subdues and transcends nature. He gives expression to hopes, feelings, power, latent in the human race. He perceives a want—has ability to supply it; a wrong, and has strength to redress it. He establishes a perfection, not exceeded but exemplified by others' progress. For power, highest reach and widest range of mental and spiritual capacity, some of the ancients have not even yet been surpassed. Which sculptor excels Phidias? Do modern poets possess more imagination than Æschylus and Homer? The writer of the Book of Job soars whither the genius of our own day can hardly follow. David and Isaiah in holy pathos, gentleness yet force, simplicity and sublimity, transcend all sacred