as much religious significance in his work as in that of the great revivalists who count him utterly accursed, so much more deep and reverent than theirs is his sense of our relation to the universe, and so brave is his endeavor to convert this sense into a binding law of life for individuals and states.

Such are the satisfaction and the good I find in my belief in the simplicity of true religion: the satisfaction of a sympathy with all religions, even the lowest in the scale; the good of recognizing that there may be a really beautiful and glorious manifestation of religion even where there is the most conspicuous lack of certain doctrinal beliefs of vital interest to the majority of earnest men. But to affirm that the essential quality of true religion is independent of those doctrines without which so many think religion quite impossible is not by any means to affirm that true religion is simple in the sense of being all of one sort. From the untutored savage up to the filial heart of Jesus there is an almost infinite range of difference, though all within the bounds of true religion. Given the seeing eye, the hearing ear, and the appreciative mind, and, with each new insight into the make of things, the fashion of the world, the march of history, the mysteries of human life and love, the sense of our relation to the universe, and to the indwelling, infinite Life thereof, becomes more sweet and solemn, and more deep and full; and more and more do we resolve and strive to bring our lives into harmonious relations with that great principle of order which enters into all things, and that great sweep of tendency which

carries all things on from good to better, and from better on to best.

Do you remember what a night of stars we had a little while ago? It seemed that every one in heaven was out, and shining at its best. How cheap, compared with that transcendent spectacle, the sum of all the miracles which men would fain believe to have occurred!

Plainness and clearness, without shadow of stain !
Clearness divine!

It seemed to me that it would be a dreadful thing to take a life in any way unworthy or impure into that evening's hush, into that light of multitudinous stars. In Thy light we see light; ay, and the darkness of our lives; the stains upon our spirits. Much more it seems to me would one who, looking up into those awful spaces, should know the law of their inviolate seclusions, star from star, feel it to be a law unto his spirit, and say, How dare I not obey the strong attraction central to soul as well as star? "The undevout astronomer is mad;" nor the unrighteous any less.

No, it is no miscalculation that affirms that true religion is a very simple thing. It is not conditioned by any theory of the divine nature, by any theory of human destiny, by any estimate of historical events that happened eighteen hundred years ago. It is to be impressed by the majestic order of the universe, to thrill with recognition of the tender grace and awful sweep of things, and to convert this passive recognition into a voluntary energy of devotion to the Eternal Power that

makes for righteousness, so that the man becomes a conscious fellow-laborer with God.

But to the end that this may be accomplished, what a gain is that conception of the universe which for the irruptions of an arbitrary will substitutes the operations of an invariable Law which is essential Reason and Beneficence. Henceforth the way is clear, the method plain, by which we can convert our passion of devotion into a binding law of life. No longer crying, Oh! that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down! no longer waiting for some break in the established order of the world to attest the divine presence, this order itself becomes to us the voice of the Eternal, saying unto us, This do, and thou shalt live. Wherever we can read a law of physical or intellectual or moral life, a law of art or trade, a law of politics or social life, there is the way of life made plain to us; the way by which we can convert the passion of our adoration in the presence of the abounding glory of the universe into a voluntary energy of self-control and self-development; of self-surrender, too, at the behest of every cause that makes for human good.

Strong-builded world of ancient days,

Shown to me for a dwelling-place,

With heights and depths, and many a treasure,—
Come, I will count, and weigh, and measure,

And know you, house in which I live!

And what your chambers have to give :

And far more sure and far more swift

Shall be my use of every gift;
From land to land, from age to age,
Larger shall grow my heritage,

Amen! Thus spake the soul of man
In every age since time began ;
And louder yet and clearer grows
That voice divine since first it rose :-
"Wisdom and Love, not Wrath and Chance,
Showed me this fair inheritance;

And till I know it as I ought,

I know not all they meant and thought
When first they showed my world to me,
Nor all that I was meant to be."

Thou gracious voice! go sounding on
Till all the inheritance be won!

William Brighty Rands.

THE RISING FAITH.

Now more than eighteen centuries have passed away since the prime article of the Christian creed was that Jesus would come again, and he has not yet come. Some of us think that there was never any reason to suppose he would; that the belief was natural to the time, but as irrational as the contemporary belief that the Emperor Nero would come again, a belief explicitly maintained in the New Testament and common to the Roman world. As for the attempts to rationalize and spiritualize the second coming of Jesus, to make the belief and prophecy come true-all this has rested on the assumption that whatever is written in the New Testament must be true in one way or another, an assumption utterly groundless and absurd when we consider the anonymous character of the majority of the New Testament writings, and the uncritical and credulous character of the time when they appeared. To say the Bible must agree with history, or the Bible must agree with science, is to say that for which there is not a particle of warrant. There is no more reason why the Bible