which regulate all God's action. But since it is an eternal truth of Reason that the infinite can never be completely expressed in the finite, the realization of the archetypal thought must be under limits of space, time, and quantity, and therefore must be always progressive, and at every point of time and boundary of space and limit of quantity must be incomplete, awaiting further development. But since nature as it exists at any point of time is so far a realization of the thought of God, the divine Reason energizing on and through it produces results commensurate with its existing limitations; yet as continuing the realization of the same plan of perfect reason, all further evolution must be in harmony with the preceding, to whatever extent it may transcend it. Thus we have all natural things and forces through all time and space in the unity of a rational system. But without a God nature expresses no rational thought, conforms to no rational law, realizes no rational end and has not the unity and harmony of a system.

When rational beings appear, they also exist in the unity of a rational system in their common relations to God and under the same universal law of love. They are in unity, not by a physical force like attraction, but by common truth, law and ends influencing them as rational free agents under God, the Father of spirits. Without God there could be no system of rational free agents under the universal law of love; and in fact rational free agents could not be conceived as existing.

And the two systems are in the unity of a universe through their common relations to God. But there is no antagonism between nature and spirit, between the natural and the moral systems, for both are in unison as realizing the archetypal thought of absolute reason. The finite spirit itself is evolved only when nature is prepared for its presence and action. A finite spirit is a person considered abstractly from matter and physical nature, and may conceivably exist separate from any material organism. But since personality makes its appearance in the evolution of nature and is known to us in a human body, there is no antagonism between the two, and finite spirits may always exist and act in some organic medium, though we know not what ethereal refinement the future body may attain. The antagonism of nature and spirit is abnormal and arises from sin by which the spirit has perverted itself in the wrong action of free-will.

And nature is in harmony with spirit as the sphere in which spiritual creatures live and act under the limits of time and space, and as subordinate to all the ends of the spiritual system. Thus the two systems become one as realizing the archetypal thought of God.

In this system sin is the only essential evil. All other privation or suffering is incidental to the limitations inseparable from the finite. Borne in fortitude or removed by energy, and in either case triumphed

over by faith and love, they become occasions of discipline and development, and of spiritual enrichment in the true good. Sin is possible to finite free agents through the individuation inseparable from finiteness. The law of love, grounded in the constitution of the universe, calls men beyond their individuation to recognize their unity in their common relation to God and their unity one with another in the rational system, in which they are to be workers together with God in the progressive realization of His perfect wisdom and love. Every thing and every person in the universe is included in this all-embracing dual system of nature and spirit. Nothing exists in isolation; nothing exists for itself; "no man liveth for himself." Blessedness is possible to man only as he lives for others as well as for himself in obedience to the law of universal love, and thus in harmony with the supreme and absolute Reason.

In this system the conflict is not between spirit and matter; matter is the instrument of spirit. The conflict is between God and all wise and righteous beings against the unreasonable and sinful. It is the conflict of love against selfishness, of the spiritual against the earthly and the sensual. In this conflict the good must progressively prevail over the evil. In expectation of that triumph in the redemption of the human race," according to His promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." As man unites in himself both nature and spirit, and the powers of both the natural and the rational system meet in him, Jesus the Christ, "the word made flesh," unites in Himself both the human and the divine; He is the ideal of man receiving the assaults of evil and standing against them in love, overcoming evil with good, and by humiliation and suffering, the cross and the grave exalted to the heavenly glory; and at the same time in him God is most completely revealed as the God of love, the Most High coming down to the lowly to lift it up. And as through ages upon ages God continues in the universe action of which this is the type, he will not only offer himself as the redeemer of rational beings. from their lowliness and sin, but will redeem nature itself more and more from its restrictions, imperfections and pains. "The creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God." No imagination can conceive what the world-births are to be with which already, as Paul says, "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together;" nor what the heavenly cities, the fields of light, the paradises of God may be which may take the place of these worlds of gross matter; nor what the purer light may be in that abode where there is no more need of the sun, "for the glory of God lightens it and the Lamb is the light thereof." And as to the saints of God peopling these heavenly abodes

no imagination can conceive what may be their transcendent beauty, swiftness and power, the vast range and keen penetration of their intuition like a keen, far-reaching eye-sight, the immensity of their knowledge, the majesty, grace, and energy of their love, and the immediacy and fullness of the vision of God, of which in their progress they may have become susceptible.

To the Christian theist these scriptural anticipations, reasonable in themselves, are made more conceivable by the scientific theory of evolution. Any theory of evolution excluding the presupposition, explicit or implicit, of Absolute Reason as the ultimate ground of the universe and energizing in its evolution, must be inconsistent with itself, incompatible with the necessary laws of thought, and contradictory to human

reason.