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 THE COMPLETE LIFE. Six Sermon-Lectures, from 
 the Standpoint of Modern Thought. Cloth, square 
 18mo, 112 pages, 60 cents. 
 
 "They really have extraordinary merit."— A neiv Eng- 
 land Unitarian minister. 
 
 "A real feast. I do not know when I have read any- 
 thing which I have enjoyed more thoroughly."— A reader 
 in New York State. 
 
 UPLIFTS OF HEART AND WILL. A Series of Re- 
 ligious Meditations, or Aspirations, addressed to Earn- 
 est Men and Women. Cloth, square 18mo, 50 cents. 
 
 "Free from the mechanism of ritual or liturgy, and yet 
 saturated throughout with the devoutness of one who 
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 revelation that shines through its clouds. The book 
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 tian Register. 
 
 VOICES OF YOUTH. "Holiday Idlesse, and other 
 Poems." New Red-Line Edition. Illustrated. Large 
 square 12mo, 252 pages. $1.00. 
 
 "As works of art these poems stand among the most 
 marked and promising of any which have been essayed 
 by a youthful writer in this or the Old World. They are 
 the creations of a true poet."— Christian Leader. 
 
 THE WORK OF A TRUE CHURCH. A Paper de- 
 voted to a consideration of the needs of Humanity in 
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 " It is well worth while, we think, to call attention to it, 
 
 and increase its circulation." — Unity. 
 
 **# Any of the above sent postpaid, on receipt of price, 
 by CHARLES H. KERR & CO., Publishers, 175 Dearborn 
 Street, Chicago. 
 
 [See rear pages of this book for further writings, 
 press-notices, etc.] 
 
THE COMPLETE LIFE 
 
 Six Sermon- Cectures 
 
 FROM THE STANDPOINT OF MODERN THOUGHT 
 
 y 
 
 By JAMES H. WEST 
 
 AUTHOR OF "UPLIFTS OF HEART AND WILL," '* VOICES 
 OF YOUTH, 1 ' ETC., ETC. 
 
 "This world— it means intensely, and means good ; 
 To find its meaning is my meat and drink." 
 
 tQ 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
 
 175 Dearborn Street 
 
 1888 
 
QH, who shall say, my brother and my friend! — 
 
 Shall e'er again our feet together hie? 
 
 Oh, blest the woodlands, blest the peaceful sky 
 Where oft we two, light-hearted without end, 
 Our eager way t as children might, would wend ! 
 
 The first Spring fiowWs were those which met 
 our eye. 
 
 The hurrying, road-edged river running by 
 Ne'er failed us once — its every nook and bend 
 Fresh corners offered for our search and growth. 
 
 But years are flying — though they still are grand! 
 Be ready, friend ! Ere long, perchance, we go 
 A farther road than any, where we both 
 
 May solve the mystery of some other land, 
 And wander joyous still, in quest to Know. 
 
 Dultjth, Minnesota, June, 1883. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The first three of these discourses in the form 
 in which they have heretofore been printed, have 
 met favor to a degree unexpected by their author. 
 The first one, in its pamphlet edition, has reached 
 its sixth thousand. The last three have not 
 before been in type. A few of the six have been 
 given, as addresses, in various places through 
 New England and the West, and all of them have 
 been used publicly more than once. Concerning 
 the last one, it may be said in one sense to " have 
 a history," — inasmuch as its delivery here and 
 there in New England, in 1883, brought upon its 
 author, from those in ecclesiastical authority, the 
 demand that he should never again speak in the 
 pulpits of a certain "liberal " religious denomina- 
 tion ! Re-reading it now, as it goes to press, 
 after five years and more have passed, the author 
 finds little in it that he would care to change, — 
 except possibly, here and there (as in the case, 
 indeed, of others of the discourses here gathered), 
 the theistic terminology. But who, in whatever 
 form of words, and especially in the matter in 
 hand, shall express the inexpressible, and do it 
 to his own satisfaction or the satisfaction of 
 any other ! Let none, however (if the author 
 may here anticipate a criticism of his work), say 
 that these discourses are either "theistic" or 
 "atheistic." For, in the narrow sense in which 
 the words just written are most often used, the 
 lectures are neither. They are universal. 
 
 5 
 
vi Prefatory Note. 
 
 It would not be just to many of the most help- 
 ful leaders of modern thought if no acknowledge- 
 ment were here made of the author's indebtedness 
 to them,— sometimes not only for inspiring 
 thought, but also for actual expression, even 
 where, as a result of interlineation or an import- 
 ant change of phrase, no marks of appropriation 
 are shown. In addition to the scientific and 
 other writers here and there quoted by name in 
 the text, the author wishes especially to mention 
 Lecky, O. B. Frothingham, John Fiske, William 
 J. Potter, and John W. Chadwick, as sources, in 
 a general way, of much of his whole endeavor as 
 an independent minister. And right here, how- 
 ever odd the place, he would like to say that what 
 modern American progress in religious thought 
 owes to the four fine minds last named, only 
 future results of good to men will show. But the 
 wreath is theirs, if invisible ; and if, as in the case 
 of Parker and Emerson, they never wear it in life, 
 it will be accorded them in due time. 
 
 Dttluth, Minnesota, June, 1888. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 The Complete Life, 9 
 
 The Helper- On, - 83 
 
 Moral Purpose, 49 
 
 The Deification of Man, 63 
 
 Equilibrium, 79 
 
 "The Holy Spirit;" 93 
 
 7 
 
The Complete Life. 
 
 A life complete — that is, a lire perfect — has 
 always been, in some sort, the aim and endeavor 
 of the serious ones among men, since first, far 
 back, man looked upward and out and dreamed of 
 the perfect; dreamed that the better and the best 
 might come to be. Since first he looked within his 
 own expanding soul, and m^t there the Moral 
 Ideal ever rebuking the evil in him, and urging 
 him on to new attainment. 
 
 And not only have the men who are distinctive- 
 ly cnlled " religionists " labored to this end. The 
 scientific worker and thinker, equally with the 
 religious worker and thinker, has urged upon 
 men the duty of completeness — of perfection. 
 To be sure, the method, the means, which 
 science has proposed lias been very different, 
 oftentimes, from the method or means proposed 
 by theology. Bat the end to be gained has al- 
 ways, in the closer view, been the same in the 
 case of both. 
 
 Many people have not thought this to be a 
 fact — have not seen the matter in the proper 
 light. But consider the point a moment. What 
 is it that theologians have always demanded? 
 What has been the cry of the church through 
 all the ages? "Be ye reconciled to God." And what 
 have the men of science demanded, in order that 
 humanity might be " saved "? What is the cry of 
 science to the world to-day, echoing above all the 
 detail of discovery, echoing above all the minutiae 
 of declaration of new truth? "Men should 
 come into accord with their environment"; — 
 
 9 
 
10 The Complete Life. 
 
 into accord with the highest, truest life-forces 
 known, and with the universe's developing soul- 
 forces. 
 
 Theology says "God." Science says u Nature." 
 But both say " Come.' 1 Both speak of harmony, of 
 communion, of accord — declaring that out of such 
 harmony there is no peace, no beauty, no per- 
 fection, no completeness, while in such harmony 
 there is peace and completeness. "Reconcilia- 
 tion," — perfect " reconciliation, " — this, says the 
 one, is perfection. Complete "harmony" — 
 complete "adjustment" — this, says the other, 
 is perfection. So that, in the last analysis, both 
 lead, we see, to the same goal. The only 
 difference is the difference between a speculative, 
 rhetorical, energy-retarding child- world scheme, 
 and a modern, intelligent, understandable, 
 practicable method. In humanity's endeavor 
 still for the attainment of a higher life, the words 
 of old time come yet to all, — in this age with added 
 force, — " Choose ye this day whom ye will serve," 
 — Theology or Reason! 
 
 I will like to show, now, in passing, by a single 
 vivid example, how science as well as religion 
 (how science much more than "theology") is 
 on the side of man's perfect life. 
 
 Two or three years ago,* Herbert Spencer, 
 the leading scientist of the world at the present 
 day, was in this country for a few weeks. At 
 the Farewell Banquet given in New York city 
 iri his honor, just before his return to Europe, he 
 made an address which attracted wide social and 
 newspaper comment at the time, and which 
 thinkers have not since allowed, at any period, 
 to be forgotten. We still meet extracts from it 
 in sermons and editorials; we shall continue to 
 meet such, no doubt, for a long time to come. 
 To quote one instance of the wide discussion ex- 
 
 *This discourse was written in April of 18S5. 
 
The Complete Life. 11 
 
 cited by Mr. Spencer's remarks on that occasion, 
 we may recall that by the Independent, of New 
 York city, the address was very adversely 
 criticized, while by the Christian Union, of the 
 same city, the philosopher's words were highly 
 commended, and the Independent held up, in a 
 certain degree, to reproach. The difference be- 
 tween the two papers lay in this : one did not 
 look at all to science for aid or encouragement in 
 religion ; indeed, did not believe science could 
 furnish such ; believed, rather, that its sole 
 purpose, even in its fairest words, was to pull 
 religion down: while the other stood ready to 
 credit science with all its good, and to work with 
 it so far as it might. The reply of the Union to 
 the Independent (for the Union's article really 
 amounted to a reply) was headed, "Herbert 
 Spencer's Ideal of Life." And it began thus : 
 "Hegel used to say, 'There is only one man in 
 all the world who understands me, — and he 
 doesn't ! ' Perhaps since his time there is none 
 who might more justly make the same complaint 
 than Herbert Spencer. There is less excuse, how- 
 ever, for mistaking Spencer than was ever the 
 case with Hegel. Self-constituted defenders of 
 the faith, in every direction, seem to feel bound 
 to find fault with everything the philosopher says, 
 and to put an anti-Christian construction upon 
 his every utterance, — simply because it is Herbert 
 Spencer who says it." 
 
 In this illustration, which I have thus given, 
 Mr. Spencer stands but as a type of science as a 
 whole,— to oppose which, in the mass, whether 
 it be good or bad, as the Union well said, "self- 
 constituted defenders" of an obsolete theology 
 start up "in every direction." 
 
 But just here let me quote a few sentences from 
 Mr. Spencer's own address, which I will take from 
 the authorized reprint of his remarks, published by 
 the Appletons ; and then I will return, for 
 
12 The Complete Life. 
 
 a moment, to the newspaper criticisms of which 
 I have been speaking. Mr. Spencer, in his re- 
 marks, had been hinting something of the world's 
 mad rush, in these modern times, for place and 
 power and education and wealth. Referring es- 
 pecially to the people of the United States, — 
 
 " It seems to me," he said, " that in one re- 
 spect Americans have diverged too widely from 
 savages. I do not mean to say that they are, in 
 gen er al , unduly ci vilized . Thoughou t large parts 
 of the population, even in long-settled regions, 
 there is no excess of those virtues needed for the 
 maintenance of social harmony. Men's dealings 
 do not yet betray too much of the ' sweetness and 
 light' which we are told distinguish the cultured 
 man from the barbarian. Nevertheless, there is a 
 sense in which the assertion is true. Eagerly 
 pursuing a future good, man almost ignores 
 what good the passing day offers him ; and, when 
 the future good is gained, he neglects that while 
 striving for some still remoter good. Every- 
 where I have been struck with the number of 
 faces which told in strong lines of the burdens 
 that had to be borne. I do but echo the opinion 
 of all the observant persons I have spoken to, 
 when I say that immense injury is being done by 
 this high-pressure life. We hear a great deal 
 (in pseudo-religious circles) about ' the vile body ■ ; 
 and many are encouraged thereby to transgress 
 the laws of health. But Nature quietly sup- 
 presses those who treat thus disrespectfully one of 
 her highest products, and leaves the world to be 
 peopled by the descendants of those who are not 
 so foolish. Is this modern ideal to survive 
 throughout the future? I think not. Life is not 
 for learning, nor is life for working ; but learning 
 and working are for life. Industry, bodily or 
 mental, is but a means ; and it is as irrational to 
 pursue industry to the exclusion of that complete 
 
The Complete Life. 13 
 
 living which it subserves, as it is for the miser to 
 accumulate money and make no use of it. Again, 
 the primary use of 'knowledge* is for such 
 guidance of conduct, under all circumstances, as 
 shall make living complete. All other uses of 
 knowledge are secondary. Hereafter, when this 
 age of active material progress has yielded man- 
 kind its benefits, there will be, I think, a better 
 adjustment of labor and enjoyment." 
 
 There is a great deal of grand wwcommon sense 
 in that address. I wish I had time to quote it 
 all to you. That is the kind of " discourse "which 
 the world, to-day, waits to hear from the pulpit. 
 It is the bread and fish which weary and despair- 
 ing congregations would fain receive in place of 
 the customary stone and serpent. But such a 
 sermon is too unique — altogether too unconven- 
 tional — to meet favor yet, at the hands of the 
 generality of popular religionists. It deals too 
 directly with human life ! We see no objection 
 to it. Indeed, we deem it most excellent. But 
 at the time when it was spoken it met loud 
 opposition in many quarters. Said the Independ- 
 ent, ominously, "It may be all very well as it 
 stands ; but there is a great deal more than this 
 which Mr. Spencer means to teach." 
 
 This is the suspicious, hypercritical comment 
 to which science is accustomed, even in its noblest 
 utterances ! 
 
 But what is it that Mr. Spencer "means to teach" ? 
 The Union asked this question, and, discerning 
 its answer, continued, Well, we fail to find any- 
 thing so terrible even in that. The lion's claws 
 of Mr. Spencer, under the velvet of his words, 
 even when those claws are exposed to view, draw 
 no blood. He u means to teach," the Independent 
 would say, that "man's chief end is to make him- 
 self as complete, as beautiful, and as happy as he 
 
H The Complete Life. 
 
 Indeed a tremendous charge ! And what could 
 the Union answer to this ? What could we answer 
 to it ? From the standpoint of a certain false 
 scheme of theology, this is indeed a serious mat- 
 ter. No wonder that formal religionists were 
 alarmed when Mr. Spencer spoke. But do we care 
 to reply to the charge ? ' ' Man's chief end is to make 
 himself as complete, as beautiful, and as happy 
 as he can ! ' ' The perfect life, then, — the complete 
 life, — word concerning which, for our strength 
 and encouragement, we are striving to present in 
 this discourse, — would be, according to Spencer, 
 a life symmetrical, a life beautiful, a life happy ! 
 Our chief end in this world — our main aim and 
 endeavor — should be symmetry, beauty, happiness. 
 
 Friends, however the old scheme of " theology " 
 may deride such thought, is there not here, for 
 us, an inspiration? From the standpoint of a 
 rational religion, which has nothing to do with 
 schemes of theology, is not this charge against 
 science the crowning glory of science? Surely 
 there is " nothing dangerous, nothing terrifying" 
 in this. Indeed, the Union, with all its retention 
 of much of the older thought, goes so far as to 
 say, in opposition to the Independent, that there 
 is nothing either "anti-biblical" or "anti-Chris- 
 tian" in this ! In the broader view of both bible 
 and Christianity, probably there is not. "Does 
 not Jesus himself command," the Union well 
 asks, "Be ye perfect (complete)"? And Paul, 
 the early Christian apostle, exhorted those to 
 whom he wrote, to strive to attain " unto a per- 
 fect man," unto " the measure of the fullness " of 
 the ideal. But the broader, universal view of bible 
 and Christianity is not the view we most often 
 meet. 
 
 Moreover, the poets of the world, who are most 
 always the world's prophets, — they too are in sym- 
 pathy with science in this matter, as are the real 
 bible and the earlier Christianity. I have time to 
 
The Complete, Life. 15 
 
 quote but one. Longfellow, years ago, bade us, 
 as our chief concern on earth, to 
 
 "Make the house where Gods may dwell 
 
 Beautiful, entire and clean. 
 Else our lives are ^complete." 
 
 After this manner have many of the bards spoken . 
 
 And what is all this, whether ancient or mod ■ 
 ern, — and I have not taken the opportunity, as I 
 might take it, of quoting to you, in the same 
 strain, from the Greeks, from the Persians and 
 Hindus, — what is all this, but telling us, in dif- 
 ferent forms, to make ourselves, as Spencer is 
 charged with urging us to make ourselves, "as 
 complete, as beautiful, and as happy as we can"? 
 Moreover, the Union quotes further: " Completed ' ' 
 That is the New-Testament word, all through, for 
 the fruition of Christian experience, as Chris- 
 tianity was first preached. " Beautiful %" The 
 Greek word for goodness, as constantly used by 
 the New-Testament writers, is " beautiful." And 
 as to happiness, "joy" is one of the "fruits of the 
 spirit" recognized by Paul ("Now the fruits of 
 the spirit are these : love, joy," and so on). And 
 in the frequent personal teachings of Jesus the 
 thought is also recognized : for example, "These 
 things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might 
 remain in you and that your joy might be full." 
 So that here we have science's most dreaded word 
 — the word which, to the zealous ritualist, seems the 
 most ultra egoism and utilitarianism — supported 
 by the early leaders of that very faith which now 
 derides it : " Man's chief end is to make himself 
 as complete, as beautiful, and as happy as he can." 
 
 It is difficult, for most of us of the wider 
 thought, to see where the opposition to this can 
 come in. But we know what the mediseval the- 
 ology asserted. It said, and says still, "Man's 
 chief end is to glorify God. 1 ' Recalling this, we 
 catch a glimmer of light. We no longer wonder, 
 
16 The Complete Life. 
 
 this in mind, that the earnest, unreasoning 
 " churchman," from his standpoint, deems science 
 and its teachings the 4k invention of Satan." I 
 say the earnest unreasoning churchman. There 
 are many thousands to-clay who exercise their 
 reason, and thus stand far in the advance. Per- 
 haps a very little candid thought easily reconciles, 
 for such, "the glory of God" with man's own 
 perfection and exaltation. Then, the way all be- 
 comes clear. 
 
 But much of all this latter treatment of our 
 topic has been from the older, ecclesiastical stand- 
 point. Going back now, just here, once more, 
 and for the last time, to the newspaper argument, 
 we are ready to admit (following the Union) that 
 the charge that Spencer "means to teach" that 
 happiness is an end of life — happiness, together 
 with completeness and beauty — is not an unfair 
 deduction from his writings. At the same time, 
 no critic can deduce, from any words or works 
 of the great philosopher, authority for saying that 
 by "happiness" science means a low, sensuous, 
 selfish form of happiness. Rather, it is the high- 
 est, the most exalted form of it, which science 
 would urge men to labor for. It is even that form 
 of happiness which (as we have already seen) 
 " the New Testament calls peace and joy." The 
 happiness which comes from the complete equi- 
 librium of all man's faculties and feelings with one 
 another, and with his circumstances, — which 
 comes from the approval of a pure conscience, 
 and from peace, or harmony, with the over-ruling, 
 interfused spirit of things, and with man. It is 
 the highest possible happiness attainable by the 
 soul. "If anything is clear to those who know 
 aught about Herbert Spencer and his philosophy, 
 it is that when he urges man to try to make him- 
 self as complete and as happy as he can, he means 
 not that he shall do this at the expense of right 
 and truth, or of the happiness and completeness 
 
The Complete Life. 17 
 
 of others, nor even regardless of these, but by 
 means of right and truth ; — if necessary, himself 
 suffering personal loss, pain, and injustice, as Mr. 
 Spencer has done nearly all his life" (the Union 
 admits) for the sake of truth, parity, good- will, 
 and progress, and for the advancement of the 
 happiness of others. 
 
 We may admit, too, that "of love and service 
 to God" — the first of Jesus' two great command- 
 ments — " Mr. Spencer nowhere has anything to 
 say." Indeed, science as a whole has little to say 
 of the formal worship of an abstraction. But of 
 love and service to humanity Spencer's works say 
 much, and love and humanity are illustrated by 
 his life. Opposing, as Mr. Darwin did, — not 
 directly, but by the tenor of his philosophy in 
 general, — much of the older, erroneous religious 
 thought of the world, Mr. Spencer yet gives himself 
 practically, as Darwin did, to good deeds. The 
 years of patient, untiring attention which Mr. 
 Darwin gave to the study of insects, worms, and 
 plant-parasites, are often classed by the great 
 public as years wasted over trifling things. And 
 the world deems that such a man could have 
 little care or thought for the great struggling 
 mass of humanity. But every grain of new 
 knowledge gained by him has helped, and will 
 yet help, in the progress of mankind. And in 
 matters of direct good cheer and charity, to those 
 in need, he was no less earnest than he was over 
 his own heart's studies. Few men, of whatsoever 
 " creed," have been so faithful as was he, in even 
 the trifles of life and its little duties, — "which 
 yet, however small in themselves, make so much 
 of the comfort and peace of daily experience." 
 In a letter from England soon after Mr. Darwin's 
 death, Miss Frances E. Willard related of the 
 great scientist that he was "the soul of philan- 
 thropic work in his own village," and that '''for a 
 lifetime he kept the records of its * Friendly 
 
18 The Complete Life. 
 
 Society.' The hand that wrote the 'Origin of 
 Species ' was for many an hour busy noting the 
 amounts of coal, sugar and flour sent by that 
 organization to the poor people of the place." 
 The same, or similar things might be told of 
 many others of the leaders of the world's scien- 
 tific thought. Their hands and their hearts, 
 both, are open. 
 
 And, now, it is unquestionable, I deem, that 
 the religion of science is the rational religion of 
 our time. It is unquestionable, obversely, that 
 the rational religion of our time is necessarily the 
 religion of science. 
 
 And science and rational religion, both, are 
 crying aloud to men to-day, from a thousand 
 quarters, — by precept, by example, by the inspir- 
 ing of hope, by urgent calls to come into harmony 
 with the true laws of existence ; are crying aloud 
 to men to make their lives, in the certain practi- 
 cal ways directly pointed out, complete, and 
 beautiful and happy — as Spencer hints. Are 
 crying to men to let all other things, all less 
 things, assume proper place : the mere thirst for 
 power, the mere desire for wealth, the mere per- 
 sonal longing for ease and self -gratification, the 
 mere dwelling in theological subtleties : to let all 
 these assume proper place, a subordinate place, 
 and to realize in truth that "the chief end of 
 man" is none of these things, but something far 
 higher. The chief end of man is to make himself 
 as complete, — that is, as symmetrical, — in all 
 ways, bodily, intellectually, spiritually, as he can, 
 and as beautiful, and as happy. 
 
 The world does not see this yet, with any vivid- 
 ness ! It is still bound up merely in intellectual 
 religious " beliefs," or in simple struggle _ for 
 " social position." But it will see it, in time. 
 The church doctrines of "God," and of "Immor- 
 tality," even, if men are wise, will in time be 
 seen by them to be really unessential to the highest 
 
The Complete Life. 19 
 
 kind of life which it is possible for man to attain. 
 And if these be unessential, what time or thought 
 must needs be given to the multitudinous less 
 doctrines? The mythical "Fall," and the me- 
 chanical "Atonement," the Inspiration of Human- 
 ity's Scriptures, the nature and being of the great 
 World-Prophets — what have any of these things 
 to do, in reality, with a practical, helpful, aspir- 
 ing human life ! Happy indeed, we may earn- 
 estly allow, are those who, in their work and 
 hope, and in their striving after the Blessed Best, 
 have vision of the essential deity — a belief in the 
 steadfastness, and the upward-trending nature, of 
 the world-forces ; and confidence in a Future of 
 Progress and Attainment. But let not these say 
 that others, lacking their vision and their confi- 
 dence, have nothing ! Nor let them deem that, 
 without either the vision or the confidence, a 
 complete, perfect, upright, helpful life may not 
 be lived. "The chief end of man is to make 
 himself as complete, as beautiful, and as happy, 
 as he can." What more is absolutely essential ? 
 
 I. As complete physically. We hear word 
 spoken, not seldom, of "the crown of life.'* 
 Among the many such crowns which may be 
 ours in the human lot, — for they are not one, but 
 a thousand, — we may place almost at the head of 
 the list the crown of bodily health. Men and 
 women more and more largely to-day, in all 
 intelligent quarters, are looking at the matter of 
 health, of bodily perfection, and giving to the 
 subject something of the study and thought and 
 care which formerly they gavemerely to the dress 
 in which they should strive to hide the body's 
 weakness and unshapeliness. But they yet must 
 do much more. There is little valid excuse, in 
 this age, for chronic illness or deformity. Of 
 course I have no reference to the results of acci- 
 dents, to the natural weaknesses of old age, nor 
 to disease acquired in infected districts, where 
 
20 The Complete Life. 
 
 duty, or the spirit of helpful discovery, may have 
 called the sufferer. But ordinarily, there is little 
 valid excuse for illness, and in course of time 
 men and women will be ashamed to be ill. 
 Especially will men and women, in course of 
 time, deem it a disgrace to have their children or 
 grandchildren diseased or deformed, or born 
 with any erratic mental or moral tendency. By 
 nature — or, it were perhaps nearer proper to say, 
 by development, by evolution — men and women 
 are at the head of the physical creation. The 
 human body is the most marvelous organism, the 
 most wonderful piece of machinery, known to 
 man. It is our duty to care for our bodies, — our 
 duty to ourselves, and to those who are to follow 
 us; and it is at the same time the only proper 
 respect we can show for the developing spirit of 
 the universe, out of which we have come. It is 
 only through direct and culpable ignorance, or 
 wanton sin, on the part of humanity, that disease 
 continues to have such large place in the world 
 as it still holds. Disease ought to have been 
 eradicated from among men before this. It 
 might soon be eradicated now. If men during 
 the past twenty-five hundred years had given 
 themselves to reasonable work of this kind, — the 
 annihilation of disease, — towards which devoutly- 
 to-be-desired consummation the Buddha and Jesus 
 did their part in a natural way centuries ago in the 
 inauguration of the work, — if men had given them- 
 selves to this, instead of bowing listlessly before 
 Buddhistic and Christian idols, and fighting over 
 fanciful creeds built on erroneous ideas of " God" 
 and of the supposed "teachings" of the men I 
 have named, the world which has been groaning 
 and travailing in bondage until now would have 
 been freed before this from its physical slavery, 
 and the children of men would have come up, 
 out of Egypt, into a Promised Land worth enter- 
 ing. If this world is indeed a "vale of tears," as 
 
The Complete Life. 21 
 
 so many men and women are fond of claiming, — 
 and what shame and disgrace it is for men to 
 say, simply in excuse for laziness and apathy, 
 that this world is a " Providence-designed 7 ■ valley 
 of shadow and woe, "in order that we may not 
 get too much attached to it," but give our whole 
 time and thought to a hypothetical future! — if 
 this world is indeed a "vale of tears," I assert, it 
 is so simply and only because man has not the 
 faith and energy to make it a breezy, sunlit 
 plnteau of peace and health and happiness ! 
 
 How much the so-called "scientific infidels" 
 and "atheists" of to-day are doing towards the 
 gracious end of changing all this — getting rid of 
 the germs of disease, and laying a stilling hand 
 upon epidemic and plague! Such "infidels" 
 and " atheists " as these, however partisan pulpit 
 and theological press may sneer and revile, are 
 the men who have built up the world. And they 
 are still going on. 
 
 Throughout the universe there are good forces ! 
 — forces of Nature; forces which, if men come 
 into accord with them, are unfailingly beneficent. 
 Every force of Nature, in its normal attitude, is 
 beneficent. Could we but fathom all — in their 
 full sweep — and understand them, I believe we 
 should see this to be true. And in every depart- 
 ment of man's being, physical, mental, moral, 
 spiritual, there are likewise good forces, — forces 
 of Nature ; forces which, if obeyed, are unfail- 
 ingly beneficent. There are laws of mental 
 growth, laws of spiritual growth ; and there are 
 laws which, obeyed by man, preserve, renew and 
 invigorate his body, — exciting it to fuller, fresher, 
 nobler life, making it to glow and tingle with the 
 bounding pulse of health. It remains only for 
 these forces to be more fully apprehended, and 
 their laws obeyed, — and the world is freed from 
 much of its woe. The "Complete Life" will be 
 more nearly entered on. 
 
22 The Complete Life. 
 
 Especially upon the minds of the young, every- 
 where, do I wish there might be impressed cer- 
 tain words of Prof. Huxley, delivered a few years 
 ago before the student-competitors for prizes for 
 intellectual and physical proficiency, at University 
 College, England. 
 
 "Upon whatever career you may enter," he 
 said to them, " intellectual quickness, industry, 
 and the power of bearing fatigue, are three great 
 advantages. But I want to impress upon you, 
 and through you upon others, the conviction 
 which I entertain that, as a general rule, the rel- 
 ative importance of these three qualifications is 
 not rightly estimated, and that there are other 
 qualities of no less value. I am much disposed, 
 the longer I live, to set the less value upon mere 
 cleverness, and to think that the power of endur- 
 ance, with persistency, is the most valuable 
 quality of all. If any of you were a son of mine, 
 and a good fairy were to offer to equip him ac- 
 cording to my wishes for the battle of practical 
 life, I should say, ' I do not care to trouble you 
 for any cleverness ; put in as much industry as 
 you can, instead; and oh, if you please, a broad, 
 deep chest, and a stomach of whose existence he 
 should never know anything.' I should be well 
 content with the prospect of a young fellow so 
 endowed." 
 
 This matter of health might well engage an 
 entire discourse. Far too little attention is paid 
 to the subject by those who, from week to week, 
 have the divine opportunity of speaking publicly 
 to their fellows on matters of gracious import. 
 Hopeful, instructive, faithful labor with even one 
 or two generations of our families would work 
 divine wonders in the health and happiness of 
 the race. By and by the pulpit and the platform 
 will begin to preach a real " salvation "J 
 
The Complete Life. 23 
 
 But symmetry of life, now, has not to do with 
 the body only. It requires, also, — 
 
 2. Completeness morally. And "completeness 
 morally" implies a hard, a continuous battle for 
 the upbuilding of a perfect character. The 
 "struggle," however, no matter how hard, is 
 good. It is the making of men. It is a trite and 
 tattered word that the sublimest character comes 
 oftenest through the severest experience. The 
 attainment of any virtue is worth all the bitter- 
 ness and strife it costs. And if the endeavor be 
 not only against one's own natural inclinations, 
 but against odds which are external, or which 
 are hereditary (as is the case with many), so 
 much greater the nobility of the struggle ! Tears 
 and groans, fightings and conflicts, even to the 
 day of one's death, — all these are as nothing, if 
 the victory over self be gained at last, or even a 
 little progress made. To him that " overcometh " 
 it is indeed given to sit upon life's highest 
 ." throne." 
 
 Again, if ever there is " a time to be ambitious," 
 it is not when ambition is easy, but when it is 
 hard. "Fight, therefore," comes the command 
 to all, — " even in darkness ! Fight when you are 
 down ; die hard, — determine, at least, so to do,— 
 and you won't die at all." Happy are those who 
 see themselves, even slowly, year by year, gain- 
 ing ! Let them be encouraged, — encouraged with 
 the thought that the real " salvation" is not some- 
 thing "instantaneous." Let them be encouraged 
 with the thought — and let anxious mothers and 
 fathers, fearful for their boys and girls, be encour- 
 aged with the knowledge, proven in the world's 
 experience — that in human life and the building 
 of character "that is not first" which is lofty, 
 high, sublime, spiritual, — "but that which is 
 natural"; and afterwards, if men guide them- 
 selves aright, — afterwards that which is spiritual 
 and lofty and divine. 
 
2U The Complete Life, 
 
 If any, however, have reached middle age, and 
 are not getting the lower self under, the higher 
 self in the supreme, let them ponder well their 
 course. Above all, if there be any who are old, 
 and who still go on, slaves to the meanest and 
 worst in their being, let them turn hastily their 
 thought, and magnify their wills while yet even 
 a single month remains in which they may re- 
 deem their humanity and prove themselves true 
 offspring of the eternal spirit-presence which 
 dwelleth in all. They must make haste ! 
 
 Nor, again now, is perfection of body, even 
 when accompanied by a high morality, all that 
 the symmetrical life implies. There must be, 
 furthermore, — 
 
 3. Completeness intellectually. And here, how- 
 ever briefly I may speak, I speak with all the 
 bounding pulse of an enthusiast ! For, how 
 divine a joy it is ! — that joy which never fails to 
 come to a man or worn in who so works and 
 
 Elans and hoards the moments day by day that 
 e or she is conscious of some new progress 
 made, some new soul-growth gained, some new 
 attainment acquired in mental a*nd spiritual 
 ways, as weeks and months and years hurry all 
 onward towards life's fruition ! 
 
 In one of his lectures, — that upon "the most 
 brilliant meteor in nature, the rainbow," — Prof. 
 Tyndall, ascribing to the French philosopher 
 Descartes the honor of having first explained the 
 phenomenon in question, uses language like this : 
 
 " There is a certain form of emotion called intel- 
 lectual pleasure. It may be caused by poetry, 
 literature, nature, or art; but I doubt whether 
 there is a pleasure of the intellect more pure and 
 concentrated than that of a scientific mm, who, 
 looking at a difficulty that has challenged the 
 human mind for ages, sees that difficulty melt 
 before his eyes, and re-crystallize as a simple 
 
The Complete Life. 25. 
 
 illustration of a law of nature. Such pleasure 
 must have been that of Descartes, when he suc- 
 ceeded in uncovering the laws which rule the 
 appearance of the rainbow." 
 
 Now, something akin, friends, to the purity 
 and " concentration " of a discovery such as this 
 of Descartes, even if not wholly equal thereto, is 
 every consciousness, on our own individual part, 
 of mental and spiritual advances made. How 
 much indeed there is that we may learn ! Around 
 about us exists an illimitable universe. And 
 every flower, every star, every pebble by the way, 
 rightly looked into, shall usher us within the 
 divine presence — into the secret habitations of 
 the infinite and eternal "I AM," — the power 
 which was and is and is to be, and whose veil 
 hath no man taken away. 
 
 " We live," said Carlyle, " no more of our time 
 than we spend well." I know, friends, how full 
 of struggle are our lives, how full of work and 
 care, how empty of leisure and rest. Yet do I 
 believe, at the same time, most thoroughly, with 
 him who said, " There is no business, no avoca- 
 tion whatever, which will not permit a man who 
 has the inclination, to give a little time, every day, 
 to study." You who know what joy there indeed 
 is, what rest from care and weariness, in the 
 helpful thought to be gleaned, even in a snatched 
 moment, from the page of science, or of poetry, 
 or of romance, or of music, or of art, do not need 
 that I should speak this word. But if there are 
 any whom these words may reach who read little, 
 — who read nothing, perhaps, that is of worth, — 
 yet who know that their lives are sordid and nar- 
 row and monotonous ; from whom cheerfulness, 
 if it ever made its home with them, has long 
 since flown; to whom happiness, rapt joy, 
 divine blessedness, are but words of air, meaning- 
 less and cold and distant ; to such I would say, in 
 
£6 The Complete Life, 
 
 all earnestness, With a single dollar buy some 
 earnest book, whether about the heavens above, 
 or about the earth beneath, or about the waters 
 under the earth ; seize, then, from your work, 
 from your sleep, an hour a day, a half hour, Jive 
 minutes, in which to pore over the new-gained 
 volume; and, through your brain the livelong 
 day, as you sit at your office-desk, as you stand at 
 the bench, or the counter, or the kitchen- table, 
 as you push the plane or measure the wheat or 
 dress the little-ones that clamber over your knees, 
 — through your brain the livelong day, and in the 
 still watches of the night, there shall course 
 visions of beauty and delight before undreamed 
 of ; visions of wonder and awe, which shall make 
 you, forever thence, a new being. You will come 
 to feel, that, after all, whatever its toil and weari- 
 ness, life is u worth living"; for you will have 
 direct converse with the universe's mighty, inter- 
 fused Spirit-Presence ; with the mystic, majestic 
 Life which is the All-in-all, — which is above all, 
 and through all, and in us all. And certainly, 
 with the universe's on-leading divinity, "the all- 
 unfolding, the all-upholding,' ' for a Paraclete — 
 an eternal u Stand- By" — no life on earth can be 
 otherwise than sweet and good, cheerful and 
 blessed. The intellectual life is the life of every 
 true man's desire. 
 
 And we have not even yet the full thought I 
 would have this discourse bear. The chief end 
 of man is not only to make himself as " com- 
 plete " as he can, in all ways, physically, morally, 
 spiritually ; but also, — 
 
 II. As beautiful. Not beautiful, necessarily, 
 on the outside, though that is good. And often- 
 times, indeed, the outward semblance may be 
 changed — may be degraded in beauty, or il- 
 lumined — by that which goes on within. 
 
 " For soul is form, and doth the body make." 
 
The Complete Life. 27 
 
 But, whatever the outside, especially is it the 
 chief end of man to make himself beautiful 
 within; beautiful in soul. In soul, which is 
 more than " intellect. " It is ours to be strong ! 
 It is ours, also, to find our own growth in the 
 growth of others. It is ours, not to let our own 
 selfish woe and griefs, if these throng upon us, — 
 nor even our weakness, our poverty, as we say, 
 of u high powers," — weigh us down. But rather 
 to go forth such helpers as we may in the little 
 world close about us ; helpers like those of 
 whom Whittier speaks in his lines to the Trailing 
 Arbutus : 
 
 U I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made 
 Against the bitter east their barricade ; 
 
 And, guided by its sweet 
 Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell, 
 
 Amid dry moss and dead leaves at my feet, 
 The trailing spring flower, tinted like a shell. 
 
 " Low bending o'er it, not irreverent, 
 
 I thought of lives thus lowly clogged and pent, 
 
 Which yet found room, 
 Thro' daily cumberings of deep decay and death, 
 To give to heaven the sweetness of their breath, 
 
 And to the earth the beauty of their bloom." 
 
 Moreover, as the strongest, sublimest character 
 (as we have already said) comes oftenest through 
 conflict, through severest struggle, so is it often- 
 est of all, perhaps, that out of one's sorrows, 
 pains, and disappointments come the highest 
 joys and truest soul-beauty. " In old stories of 
 celestial visitants," Geo. Macdonald says, "the 
 clouds do much ; and it is down the misty slope 
 of griefs and pains and tears that the most 
 powerful joy slides into the hearts of men and 
 women and children." Then let us accept life's 
 unavoidable chastenings gladly, patiently ! Note 
 many of the sweet-spirited old men and old 
 
£8 The Complete Life. 
 
 women whom you know. Has their experience 
 not been thus, — confirming this word ? Sad if 
 the old are fretful and peevish and sullen ! Life's 
 truest lessons have indeed been lost by them. 
 
 And yet once more. The chief end of man is 
 to make himself as ' ' complete n and as 4 ' beauti- 
 ful' ' as he can ; and also, — still lacking, other- 
 wise, somewhat of the perfect symmetry, — 
 
 III. As happy. The greatest minds of the 
 race have been for the most part joyous minds, 
 optimistic minds,— the poets naturally so : Goethe, 
 Shelley, Burns, Emerson, Lowell, Wordsworth. 
 So of the world's so-called "saviours." The 
 Buddha of India, rightly understood, must have 
 been, we feel, a man of undoubted cheerfulness, 
 ioyfulness, hopefulness, though indeed sobered 
 by the fret, the fury, the unsatisfied hunger of 
 the world, and serious in the presence of its sin 
 and foment. So also, as in part hinted in an 
 earlier portion of this discourse, may it be said 
 of the man Jesus of Nazareth, that he was of 
 cheerful heart. Too often has the hopeful, sunny- 
 spirited leader of Galilee been painted only as 
 14 a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." 
 Jesus must have been naturally joyous-hearted, 
 and full always of a sublime hope and earnest- 
 ness. Had his really been the gaunt-visaged, 
 sorrowful aspect most often pictured, — tell me, 
 would the little children have leaped into his 
 arms as they did ? Would the lambs have 
 frolicked about him as they did ? Would the 
 sinner and the needy have opened their secret 
 shame, their bitter want, to him ? Would the 
 lily of the field, the clinging vine, the flitting 
 sparrow, have found expression in his love ? 
 Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Cyril of Alexandria, 
 — these wrote the ascetic ideas of their age into 
 Jesus' personality. Corregio, Rubens, Rem- 
 brandt, — even Raphael and Dore, — these have per- 
 petuated the misinterpretation; have painted a lie. 
 
The Complete Life. 29 
 
 Both the Buddha of India and the man of 
 Galilee must have been noble-featured and cheer- 
 ful-hearted. Nay, more than this ; both labored 
 and taught, directly and openly, against all 
 spiritual depression ; especially against all man- 
 ner and kind of stated fasts and formulistic sad- 
 ness. 
 
 And the great leaders of the race, in all 
 branches of life and thought, have been joyful, — 
 why ? Because, for the most part, they have 
 come more nearly than have the majority of 
 men into a fine harmony with Nature's free good 
 forces, both physical and spiritual. There is 
 much here that might well engage our thought. 
 We should soon see, if we make close observa- 
 tion, — it is being pointed out to us time and time 
 again, now, in the world's new Vision of Things, 
 — that everywhere throughout Nature, under a 
 normal reign of things, joy and ease and blessed- 
 ness abound. There is no call in Nature to 
 despondency, much less to self-mortification. In 
 the ordinary course of things, — setting aside all 
 direct breakings of law and special accidents, — 
 a state of happiness, of cheerfulness, even of 
 sprightliness, is the only proper and orderly 
 outcome of things everywhere, as the universe 
 seems to exist. Looking wide enough and deep 
 enough, I believe this will be found to be, 
 invariably, the case. The Spirit of Life itself that 
 throbs through the world, normally met by man, 
 is a spirit of light and sweetness and good ; a 
 spirit in perfect sympathy with joy and gladness 
 and laughter and song. Flowers bloom, birds 
 sing, children laugh and romp, — all the expression 
 of the mysterious Unknown. In that beautiful 
 little refrain of his, "The God of Glee," Prof. J. 
 Stuart Blackie, of Edinboro' University, gives 
 admirable expression to something of this thought. 
 In his song he sings, — 
 
SO The Complete Life. 
 
 " Thou art each, and thou art all 
 
 In Creation's living hall. 
 
 Every breathing shape of beauty, 
 
 Every solemn voice of duty, 
 
 Every high and holy mood, 
 
 All that's great and all that's good, — 
 
 All is echo sent from thee, 
 
 God of gladness, God of glee ! " 
 
 And Prof. Blackie is by no means alone, in this 
 earnest belief of his in Nature's order and beauty, 
 and in her joy-giving attributes. A thousand 
 high voices join in with him. 
 
 But Nature, in her dealings with man, requires 
 " co-operation." True human happiness comes 
 not without "completeness" ; — completeness of 
 life, and "soul-beauty." It indeed makes little 
 difference where we live, — in city or solitude, in 
 palace or cottage. 
 
 " It is not the wall of stone without 
 
 That makes the building small or great ; 
 But the soul's light, shining round about, 
 And the faith that overcometh doubt, 
 And the love that stronger is than hate." 
 
 But goodness is essential — goodness, which 
 itself means " co-operation." The highest happi- 
 ness comes never without goodness. "Men call 
 the proud, the worldly, happy. But they are not. 
 The former — the proud — may seem to have more 
 than heart can wish ; but there is a gnawing 
 worm at the root of their joy. And satisfied 
 with life the worldly man cannot be. He eats 
 and hungers still ; he drinks, and is yet more 
 athirst ; for husks are not food and brine is not 
 drink." Again be it uttered, it is only goodness 
 that makes true happiness ! Science — all modern 
 research— all modern knowledge — points finger 
 along the path of implicit obedience ; along the 
 path of purity and temperance, of affection and 
 
The Complete Life. 31 
 
 patience and generosity and sympathy, — along 
 the path of truest communion with the eternal 
 right which upholds the worlds : points finger 
 thus, and says, — " This is the way ! walk ye in it ! " 
 
 "Oh, blind to truth, and life's whole scheme below, 
 Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe ! 
 Who sees and follows life's great scheme the best, 
 Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest." 
 
 Summing up all, now, we know that the uni- 
 verse, nor any of its powers, calls on us for 
 sadness ; that it calls on us never for despond- 
 ency, nor for self -mortification, nor for any 
 denial whatsoever simply for its own sake. We 
 know, on the other hand, that it does call on us 
 for cheerfulness, and hope, and purity, and 
 earnest work, both for ourselves and those around 
 us. May it be ours to fulfill our destiny ! — ours 
 to fulfill, in every direction, "the chief end of 
 man," that so we may enter into The Complete 
 Life. Then we need not fear, no matter what 
 the "world outside" may think of us, nor what 
 they may say of us. Need not fear ! For there 
 will be peace within, — the peace that passeth 
 knowledge. And the universe is on our side. 
 
 "For him in vain the envious seasons roll, 
 Who bears eternal summer in his soul ! " 
 
The Helper-On. 
 
 I am to speak, in this discourse, of those who 
 help on in the world. Incidentally therefore, 
 also, of those who hold back. 
 
 It is a splendid thing, amid all the world's war- 
 ring opinions in matters of intellect and religion, 
 to stand always upon the progressive side. It is 
 a trait of forward-looking and nobility. Yes, and 
 this is true even if, for the time being, one can 
 "do little more" than stand. Morley has said : 
 "It is better to be broad and liberal in the wrong 
 than not to be broad and liberal at all." High 
 words ! And so here. Simply to stand for the 
 larger light and nobler hope, however often mis- 
 understood, and though against the world, — this 
 is well worth any individual man's or any 
 religious society's existence, no matter how feeble 
 in influence he or it may seem to be, or how op- 
 posed to more popular thought. Moreover, such 
 shall not always be feeble in influence. Quickly 
 or tardily the future, even on earth, shall give 
 them due meed of reward ; and in the enlarged 
 and ennobled life of Man, if not otherwise, they 
 find fit and growing memorial. And, than this, 
 no man could ask more. 
 
 "'Tis true, 
 The long day of their trifling, men delight 
 In tricks of mountebanks, and freely give 
 Their pence and shillings to the first light fool 
 That dons the cap and bells. But Truth decrees 
 Days of a deeper import, when the world, 
 Frowning and fearful, will no longer bear 
 The feeble resource. Then, O patient seer, 
 Man of the shady place and silent power, 
 
 33 
 
34 The Helper- On. 
 
 Thou shalt have room and audience. Then 
 
 shall weigh 
 More heavy in the scale thy lightest tear 
 Than the spent laughter of a thousand fools ! " 
 
 Surely it should never trouble the sincere re- 
 ligionist of the forward look, whether he be a 
 private worker or a public one, that he is misun- 
 derstood, and that men pass by on the other side. 
 Let him be at peace. Even Channing, a thinker 
 in many ways highly conservative, did not al- 
 ways have honor from men ; yet Channing dared 
 to say, — 
 
 11 Speak always with moral courage ! Speak 
 what you account great truths frankly, strongly, 
 boldly. Do not spoil them of life to avoid offense. 
 Do not seek to propitiate passion and prejudice 
 by compromise and concession. Beware of the 
 sophistry which reconciles the conscience to the 
 suppression, or vague lifeless utterance, of un- 
 popular truth. Do not wink at wrong deeds or 
 unholy prejudices because sheltered by custom 
 or respected names. Having deliberately, con- 
 scientiously, sought the truth, abide by your con- 
 viction at all hazards. Never shrink from speak- 
 ing your mind through dread of reproach. Wait 
 not to be backed by numbers. Wait not till you 
 are sure of an echo from the crowd. The fewer 
 the voices on the side of truth, the more distinct 
 and strong must be your own. Courage even on 
 the side of error is power. How must it prove 
 on the side of truth ! One speaking not from 
 selfish calculation, but giving out his mind in 
 earnest sincerity, uttering his convictions in 
 natural tones, and always faithful to the light 
 he has received, however he may give occasional 
 offense, will not speak in vain ; he will have an 
 ally in the moral sense, in the principle of justice, 
 in the reverence for virtue, which is never wholly 
 extinguished in the human soul." 
 
The Helper- On. 35 
 
 Channing's word is a word to all those who 
 would be helpers-on. He had seldom sympathy 
 with holders-back. 
 
 And to be a helper-on in the world, I would 
 now endeavor to manifest, is to be one with the 
 eternal progress of the divine power. To be a help- 
 er-on is to be, in the only possible way in which 
 a man can be such, a " co-worker together " with 
 the eternal energy. 
 
 " Onward and on the eternal Pan, 
 
 Who layeth the world's incessant plan, 
 
 Halteth never in one shape, 
 
 But forever doth escape, 
 
 Like wave or flame, into new forms." 
 
 Would we, therefore, truly (in Theology's 
 phrase) be "one with" the mighty inhabiting 
 Presence immanent in all things, we too must 
 eternally follow on. As dying Arthur answered 
 from the barge, — 
 
 "The old order changeth, giving place to new ; 
 
 And Truth fulfils itself in many ways, 
 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 
 
 Progress is written everywhere. * ' I have seen," 
 says Wordsworth, in the familiar words which 
 some of you, at least, know by heart,— 
 
 "I have seen 
 A curious child who dwelt upon a tract 
 Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
 The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell, 
 To which, in silence hushed, his very soul 
 Listened intently : and his countenance soon 
 Brightened with joy; for, murmuring from 
 
 within, 
 Were heard sonorous cadences, whereby, 
 To his belief, the monitor expressed 
 Mysterious union with its native sea." 
 
36 The Helper- On. 
 
 For the production, however, of similar " sono- 
 rous cadences," a common table-cup held lightly 
 to the ear will serve almost as well as the poet's 
 44 convoluted, smooth-lipped shell. " What, then, 
 in reality, is the sound that is heard ? — it cannot 
 be the roaring of the sea. No, it is simply the 
 circulation of the blood within the ear, echoing 
 in the convoluted chambers of the shell, or, less 
 distinctly, in the hollow 44 dorue" of the cup. 
 4 'Insert the end of the linger in the ear, and a 
 roaring is heard like the hum of a great mill. It 
 is the noise of the circulation of the blood in the 
 finger?' All the smallest organs of our bodies, 
 our ears and the points of our fingers even, are 
 44 such busy workshops" that they roar like the 
 water over the rapids yonder in St. Louis River. 
 But at the same time, the roaring, we are told, is 
 probably something more than the noise of the 
 circulation of the blood. It is the voice of all the 
 vital forces of Nature in the human frame to- 
 gether — the tearing down and building up pro- 
 cesses that are always going forward in the living 
 body from the earliest moment until death. The 
 entire human body is in perpetual flux. The 
 physiologist tells us that during every seven years 
 of our life, every particle of our entire bodies is 
 changed — dies away, is carried off, being mean- 
 while renewed. These bodies of ours, which we 
 see and feel and walk about with this morning, 
 are not the same bodies at all that we possessed 
 seven years ago. 
 
 And so is it with the universe as a whole. 
 
 "The tide rises, the tide falls. 
 
 Darkness settles on roofs and walls ; 
 
 The little waves, with their soft, white hands, 
 
 Efface the footprints in the sands, 
 
 And the tide rises, the tide falls." 
 
 Stars burst out into glory— worlds like ours. 
 
The Helper- On. 37 
 
 And some' fine, clear night we look upward, and 
 across the heavens see a sudden fiery trail. 
 
 " Was it a golden lance 
 
 Into the darkness hurled 
 By the Spirit of Air — a new-born star ? . . . 
 
 Or the wreck of a world I" 
 
 What, to our ordinary thought, is nearer to 
 immutability than the rock ? "Firm as a rock " 
 is our familiar phrase. Yet every granite cliff, 
 as well as every stone in the fields and pastures, 
 is steadily disintegrating, either fast or slow. 
 Once in a while — frequently, in some districts — 
 we meet great rocks which a touch will crumble 
 into sand. Often, on Cape Ann, on the north- 
 eastern Massachusetts coast, — where everything 
 is one of three things, rock, or sand, or salt- 
 water, — there are acres on acres of elevated 
 " common," which some of us have walked over, 
 — sandy fields, which once were as solid as the 
 rocks now on the shore below, which the sea and 
 the atmosphere are eternally tearing down. So 
 is it with everything throughout the earth, and 
 throughout all worlds. Always change. 
 
 And moreover, now, as it is in physical things, 
 so is it in the mental, moral and spiritual worlds. 
 This physical universe, of which our own little 
 earth is a dust-grain, millions on millions of years 
 ago began in chaos. But through constant 
 change, and almost constant progression, it has 
 attained to its present marvelous order and beau- 
 ty. Thus, also, hundreds of thousands of years 
 ago, the human mind, developing from something 
 less than self- consciousness — no one yet knows 
 from how much less — at last attained to self-con- 
 sciousness, and began its march upward and 
 Truthward — Ideal ward. 
 
 Like physical Nature, it is conjectured, the 
 human mind, as I have recounted, began in 
 "chaos." But here, suddenly, the comparison 
 
38 The Helper- On. 
 
 ends, — at the " beginning." For although the ma- 
 terial worlds, as it would appear, have many of 
 them been brought, during the lapse of ages, into 
 comparative ' * completeness, ' ' — notably our own 
 earth, — much the larger part of humanity is not 
 yet out of the chaotic state— is yet in the rough 
 clay. Even in the world's most intelligent quar- 
 ters, among the virtue-loving, the aspiring, the 
 "religious," — especially at the present time,— -do 
 the majority of men's minds, in consideration of 
 the great problems of life, of duty and of destiny, 
 seem apparently "without form and void," with 
 darkness upon the face of the deep. Of those, 
 then who still grovel in the slime, who have no 
 vision of Natural Law, but dwell, the rather, 
 wholly in lawlessness —lias brutal, the sensual, 
 the densely ignorant, the madly lustful, — of these, 
 what shall be said ? 
 
 In the past history of the universe and of man, 
 however, we think we have the prophecy of man's 
 future. We look for mankind's "completeness." 
 The eternal forces of growth are working in man, 
 as they worked in the primeval fire-mist. And 
 even though man himself holds himself back, 
 still, by the general trend of things he is carried 
 forward. He cannot altogether hold back. The 
 problem to-day with the real leaders of the race 
 is, How man may yet more rapidly be urged 
 forward. 
 
 Though it look upon it blindly, humanity in 
 these days is making history fast. By rapid 
 strides the universe's progressive energy is work- 
 ing now. Happy for those in humanity who are 
 willing to "co-operate," and glad! who are 
 really numbered among the Helpers-on ! 
 
 O that men would not be afraid of the progress- 
 ive God-force ! O that men would really "trust 
 God ! " Such is the cry, to-day, of many and 
 many a one among the real fore-runners of the 
 time to be. 
 
The Helper- On. 39 
 
 Yet while they say this, they mean by " God " 
 (it may be not altogether unnecessary for me to 
 explain) not the popular misconception of God. 
 Nor, indeed, anything perhaps that they can well 
 
 5ut into terms of human thought. They feel the 
 lystery too much. Their heart bounds inwardly ; 
 song is on their lips ; hope and joy light their 
 souls. But they shrink from the expression of 
 the inexpressible. They work silently, as does the 
 Mystery itself ! Nevertheless, the animating 
 Spirit of Nature ; the Unknown Reality back of 
 all things ; the developing, upholding Energy of 
 the universe ; the Power that circles itself orderly 
 in the off-flung ring of nebula and the unswerv- 
 ing path of comet ; the Power that blossoms itself 
 beautiful in meadow violet and forest fern ; the 
 Power that laughs itself gleeful in the ripple of 
 brook, in the song of bird, in the dancing of the 
 little child's eye ; the Power that surges itself to 
 aspiration in the soul of man ; the rower that 
 holds the myriad star-worlds in its bosom and 
 croons the planet-song that hushes human need 
 when in midnight's weariness man looks skyward 
 — the leaders of thought say little, I have declared, 
 but This is something of what they mean ; This is 
 something of what they would say, if they said at 
 all ; This is a faint inharmonious echo of the in- 
 finite melody in their hearts. Whence shall come 
 words that livingly breathe, that divinely pulsate? 
 When they are nigh, then at last, perhaps, shall 
 something of the Vision Splendid by which we 
 are attended first begin really to shape itself in 
 speech. 
 
 O that men would not be afraid of the develop- 
 ing Over-Soul ; the Source of all things visible 
 and invisible ; the Whirler of the universe's glow- 
 ing wheels and the Seether of the universe's an- 
 cient elements ; the Power infinite and absolute in 
 which we live, and move and have our being ; the 
 Power which, when co-operated with, carries all 
 
40 The Helper- On, 
 
 things on and up ! O that men would trust this 
 Power, — the real God, — and not be afraid of it, 
 nor seek to and feel that they must hide them- 
 selves from its glorious light under the shelter of 
 old, delapidated, child- world misconceptions of 
 the true deity. For in This Power, and in This 
 alone, is life, is all possibility, and all hope. 
 
 But with rare exceptions men do not worship 
 or trust the true God. By far the large majority 
 of men are afraid of ,or ignorant of , the real divin- 
 ity — so tenacious in men's minds are old ideas, 
 and so fearful seems the human intellect of the 
 slightest advance. I dreamed, once, that for a 
 thousand years the particles and elements of the 
 inanimate world were granted, and used, the 
 power of freedom which is exclusively man's, — 
 fighting, as he does, against all progress, and 
 holding back from every expanding, upward- 
 drawing influence which inheres in every throb- 
 bing atom of matter as a part of the rhythmic 
 Whole. And at the end of the thousand years 
 the world was back, millions of years back, in 
 some one of the primary geologic periods, Silurian, 
 Cambrian, Laurentian ! — back, it may have been 
 (for the dream was swept through and through 
 by obscuring clouds) beyond the time of the first 
 beginnings of f ossil- bearing strata ; back, indeed, 
 it might well be, in the nebulous haze which, 
 aeons ago, swept in a fiery chaos about the parent 
 sun! 
 
 But this was indeed only a dream ! Inherent 
 in every atom of matter there is the eternal Force, 
 the Divinity, which carries it on and up — trans- 
 muting dross into gold, transmuting even the 
 diseased membranous secretion of the oyster into 
 pearl, transmuting earth and air and water into 
 lily and rose and peach and human face — and 
 the particles cannot say yea or nay ! It is only 
 man — it is only man, who, by his own blindness 
 and narrowness and perversity, can hold himself 
 back! 
 
The Helper- On. 41 
 
 But ah, even in man, — in Man, that is, as a 
 whole, — there is a progressive Force at work, a 
 Divinity, a Deity, to which even man cannot say 
 yea or nay. However we may shrink from at- 
 tempting to define or explain it, there is indeed, 
 and unmistakably, in the nature of things, the 
 " Power not ourselves," — a Power to all appear- 
 ances infinite and absolute, — which, through the 
 ages, however men may disbelieve it and fight 
 against it, and however they may neglect to co- 
 operate with it, makes for progress and right- 
 eousness ! O that men would see that it is man's 
 glory to believe in," and welcome, and live in 
 accord with this Power,-— working with it, not 
 against it. 
 
 I am never weary of pointing to the great 
 mental and moral heroes, the spiritual saviours of 
 the race, some of whom, in all ages, have glimpsed 
 something of the real truth, and in varying gar- 
 ment of thought and speech have borne witness 
 to the true light. The world has never been with- 
 out aid; without the possibility of uplifting. And 
 even though the mass of men have indeed almost 
 invariably fought against these leaders, — burned 
 them, racked them, beheaded them, crucified 
 them, — there have always been others ready to 
 take their places, risking all that they had risked, 
 braving hunger and alienation, and daring the 
 same death — for the world's sake ! the unkind 
 world's sake — the world which, in all ages, has 
 sought to humiliate its real saviours, and to turn 
 back, rather than urge onward, the tide of pro- 
 gressive truth ! 
 
 Ah, who indeed have been the world's real hold- 
 ers-back? Who are the world's realdefamers and 
 weaklings to-day ? Of old were they indeed Thales 
 and Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Seneca, Galileo, 
 Bruno, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Hegel ? — how shall 
 I name them all ! Yet all these, and a thousand 
 others as superb, have been condemned, have 
 
■4& The Helper- On. 
 
 been branded, and driven without the pale of 
 human love. Have the real holders-back indeed 
 been those who have given up home and friends 
 and ease and wealth, bearing all evil things for 
 their love of truth and progress ? Are they in- 
 deed those whom the world has over and over 
 called its holders-back — those who have risked all 
 and given up all, even life, out of their desire for 
 the world's true benefit ? We hear this often said. 
 We hear it hinted, in one way or another, every 
 week ! 
 
 The rather, however, are not the real enemies 
 of Truth and Man those who always have opposed 
 advance ; those who have really believed so little 
 that they have never dared to cross ' ' new Jor- 
 dans," even when some new divine Moses led 
 them to the very brink ? — but have always stood 
 fixed, immovable, by the one narrow Jordan of 
 old time ? Decriers of their fellowmen ! Pious 
 upholders of impiety ! God-fearing dethroners 
 of the true deity ! 
 
 " Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they were 
 souls that stood alone, 
 
 While the men they agonized for hurled the con- 
 tumelious stone. 
 
 They were men of present valor, stalwart old 
 iconoclasts, 
 
 Unconvinced by axe or fagot that all virtue was 
 the Past's." 
 
 What opposition all Progress has indeed met, 
 in every age ; — and still meets ! 
 
 ' Tor all the past of time reveals 
 A bridal-dawn of thunder-peals 
 Whenever thought has wedded fact." 
 
 Yet of what avail is opposition, when Truth 
 once really begins to get a hearing ? There never 
 was a time in the world's history when men in 
 the mass were thinking harder than they are to- 
 
The Helper- On. 4$ 
 
 day. Pious opposition has never stayed infidelity 
 to what is false. 
 
 For a single example now, as we were not long 
 ago reminded, " a generation since, to most New 
 England christians, the theological opinions of Vol- 
 taire were held to be synonymous with those com- 
 monly attributed to the devil ; and no amount of 
 argument could have convinced the church that 
 it was wrong in this supposition. A later genera- 
 tion, however, has discovered that, when com- 
 pared with much of more modern thought, Vol- 
 taire's religious views may be looked upon as 
 highly conservative.' ' 
 
 Opposition to truth is indeed of temporary 
 avail only. Though slow in process, final victory 
 is always on t the side of the right. The real 
 holders-back are in time thrust aside. Who and 
 where, to-day, — for a single other modern ex- 
 ample, — are the men who scoffed at Emerson, 
 who opposed Theodore Parker ? They are all but 
 forgotten. Their fame is unknown. While the 
 honor of those whom they called destroyers and 
 holders-back is every year brightening, and their 
 words of hope and prophecy are stars in the 
 night. 
 
 The real holders-back ? Are they indeed men 
 like Jesus ? Yet how he was denounced by the 
 pious Scribes and Pharisees, and driven to his 
 death. The cross for him ! Are they indeed men 
 like Socrates ? — poison-hemlock for him ! Men 
 like Newton and Galileo and Laplace ? men like 
 Channing and Parker and Emerson and Matthew 
 Arnold ? men who are trying to lift the world 
 upward and lead it onward ? Or are they not, in 
 reality, the men who are afraid of the Truth ; who 
 denounce progress ; the men who would keep the 
 world in ignorance ; the men who hold to old 
 thought ; the men who preach old doctrine ; the 
 men who hold to " worn-out dogmas" because 
 they still are the most popular, or perhaps simply 
 
U The Helper- On, 
 
 because Paul, or Peter, or St. Augustine, or Cal- 
 vin, held to them? 
 
 I would not be misunderstood, friends. Are my 
 words sounding harsh ? Such is not intentional. 
 I am not saying, by any means, that " all virtue" 
 is in leaving the old ; that virtue and acceptance 
 of the new are synonymous ; that outside of con- 
 tinuous advance there is no virtue. I know, as 
 well as any can, — J was nurtured in it all, — that 
 there is much of good, much of help, much of 
 rest, in the old faiths — though too often the " rest " 
 is of inertia. And I know, too, that there is much 
 of " progress," so-called, that is mere bravado; 
 that is mere truckling ; that is bald, blank, ignor- 
 ant denial, without a thought of, or a desire for, 
 anything that is better, and truer, and purer, and 
 more helpful. Mere bluster, unwilling weakness, 
 like this, we cannot disallow or denounce in terms 
 too severe. He who truly foregoes the old and the 
 false also earnestly searches for and is a devoted 
 follower of the newer and truer. 
 
 Moreover, although I indeed believe in works ; 
 in morality; although I believe in " salvation 
 through works ' ' ; although I believe that the only 
 salvation worth the name, for individual men or 
 for the world, is through morality, through indi- 
 vidual endeavor; — for " salvation," with me, 
 means the perfection of the man, in every possible 
 direction, physical, mental, moral, spiritual, and 
 here is no child's play, nor a task calling simply 
 for some supernatural religious "formula"; — 
 yet do I believe also in faith ! in trust ! Indeed, 
 without my faith — as bars of steel for strength, 
 as cords of love for courage — I certainly never 
 could work, or speak, another day. But of faith 
 I have unfailing store, I trust the universe. I 
 believe in the stability of things. I feel that no 
 high endeavor is, or, in the nature of things, can 
 be, in vain. I believe in the continuity of law, 
 and of good. And nothing, I deem, can shake 
 
The Helper- On, 45 
 
 this my faith, for I consider it founded on verifi- 
 able foundation. 
 
 On verifiable foundation. It is not, then, a 
 blind faith. And yet it is still " faith," for it is 
 not complete knowledge. To-morrow the sun 
 may not rise ; to-morrow fire may not burn ; to- 
 morrow sin may not scar ; to-morrow love and 
 aspiration and helpfulness may not upbuild and 
 consecrate. But I do not believe any such " To- 
 morrow of Death ' ' as this will ever come. I have 
 " faith " that it will not, — for back of me is all the 
 record of Nature's past, unchanged, immutable, 
 since time began. Yet a change may come ; Na- 
 ture may not be steadfast. All the facts may not 
 yet be in. So my faith is still " faith." It is not 
 complete knowledge. But it is helpful, and peace- 
 giving, and arm and heart strengthening, and I 
 go on undismayed. 
 
 " Of what worth, however," — this I know will 
 be in the hearts, if not on the lips, of many who 
 hear or read these words; "of what worth is 
 such faith as this if not backed by a 'God'!" 
 " Can I tell what ' God ' is ? " No, no more than 
 can the theological " powers that be," who persist- 
 ently, every now and then, ask us if we " believe " 
 in God ; the men who would praise us, and grant 
 us religious fellowship, in exact accordance with 
 the degree of ignorance with which we might 
 answer. No one of any wisdom "defines God" 
 to-day. " To define is always to confine." 
 
 But I believe in the Power which is the Life of 
 the universe. I trust that Power. I believe in 
 and trust the unknown yet eternal Energy that 
 pulsates through the world ; the unknown Spirit 
 of divine Might that throbs through us and 
 through all the world. And I believe that this 
 Power, this Spirit, this Energy, — call it what you 
 will, — accepted, assisted, worked together with 
 by man, will bring all things out right — in the 
 end. What that end will be, I must say again, 
 
46 The Helper- On. 
 
 I do not profess to know, in entirety, or even in 
 little. Who does or can ? But here again I hope 
 and trust, — and am willing to wait. This is all I 
 can do. 
 
 And meantime, friends, I try, and call also 
 upon you— to be faithful ; faithful to the newest 
 and truest and best light that men can gather 
 together into the lamp of human knowledge 
 and reflect forth for the guidance and up- 
 lifting of the world. I try, and I call upon you, 
 to renounce all that is old and hurtful — all that 
 holds man back from personal, individual en- 
 deavor. I try, and I call upon you, to renounce all 
 evil habits, — all ways of life that injure the body 
 or degrade the soul. I try, and I call upon you, 
 to give over all unkindness and uncharitableness, 
 all pettiness of spirit, all harshness, and all habit 
 of domineering tyranny. I try, and I call upon 
 you, to be pure in heart and pure in life. I try, 
 and I call upon you, to strive for the upbuilding 
 both of yourselves and of all men around about, 
 in mental and ethical and social ways ; to strive 
 for a larger presence of justice in the world, a 
 truer bond of peace. And whatever people may 
 say or think, — however people, dear friends even, 
 mother or brother or wife or husband, may be 
 " hurt" in mind or heart, — I try, and I call upon 
 you, to be faithful to the world's expanding 
 thought For this is the only possible means 
 through which man as a whole can ever come to 
 his best. 
 
 Said John Stuart Mill years ago, in his auto- 
 biography, "The time has come in which it is the 
 duty of all qualified persons to speak their minds 
 about popular religious beliefs." One of the lead- 
 ers among the so-called ' ' evangelical " churches 
 said not long since to an assembly of his 
 brother-ministers, "When you have to give up 
 what your mother taught you, do it, honestly, — 
 but do not say much about it publicly" The day 
 
The Helper- On. 47 
 
 of "suppression," however, has gone by. John 
 Stuart Mill, whom I just quoted, did not believe 
 in the method of " suppression." Channing, as 
 we saw in the beginning, did not believe in " sup- 
 pression." Nor did Jesus, the prophet-hero of 
 Galilee. Renouncing all the tattered temple up- 
 holstery and soul-less technicalities of the Jewish 
 faith, " A new commandment," said Jesus, " give 
 I unto you." And others and others since have 
 shown newer commandments still. 
 
 Especially perhaps since Mill's time have a 
 growing multitude been speaking, — among them 
 Mr. Leslie Stephen, who, in his "Apology for 
 Plain Speaking," cautions thus : 
 
 "Destroy credit, and you ruin commerce; 
 destroy all faith in religious honesty, and you ruin 
 something of infinitely more importance than 
 commerce. Who can see without impatience the 
 fearful waste of good purpose and noble aspira- 
 tion, caused by our reticence at a time when it is 
 of primary importance to turn to account all the 
 forces which make for the elevation of mankind ? 
 If we had always waited to clear away shams till 
 we were certain that our action would produce 
 absolutely unmixed benefits, we should still be 
 worshiping Mumbo- Jumbo." 
 
 And so others, without number, had I not 
 quoted enough. 
 
 But now, above all technicalities, friends ; 
 above all bickerings and disputes, let me, as I 
 conclude, point once more, and with voice of 
 emphasis, to those two things at which 1 have 
 already hinted, upon which all, or almost all, are 
 agreed — conduct, and the spirit of human help- 
 fulness. Conduct, which, as Matthew Arnold has 
 well said, is "three-fourths of life " ; and the spirit 
 of helpfulness, — the enthusiasm of humanity, — 
 without which all men can never be uplifted. 
 
48 The Helper- On. 
 
 And co-worker, once more, with these two, 
 guider and controller of these two — let me repeat 
 it ! — is faith. Not blind faith, not foundationless 
 faith, nor faith in follies. But faith in the stead- 
 fastness of the universe ; faith in the universe's 
 unchanging beneficent forces, obedience to which 
 is life ; faith in the general Heart of Good ! To 
 which faith, counting by the past, and dreaming 
 that what always has been will always continue 
 to be, we have, I deem, a legitimate right. 
 
 In order to accomplish anything good and true, 
 we must " believe"; — must at least believe that 
 there is sanity in our doing ; that some good shall 
 help us in the doing ; that, some good shall result 
 from our doing. 
 
 So, then, believe ! Believe ! — never less, but 
 more. We of the liberal thought are not working 
 to do away with belief. A harder task by far, 
 than that, is ours. We are endeavoring to clarify 
 belief. And moreover, friends, work also ! Work 
 as well as believe. Give of your thought, your 
 study, your leisure, your means, your soul, — it is 
 activity that " saves.' 7 Work, together with all 
 the universe's powers of good, to lift yourselves 
 up, and to lift mankind up ; to make men and 
 women high, broad, temperate, helpful men and 
 women, — men and women who shall find God in 
 Nature and in Humanity, and who, in their love 
 for and service of both these latter, shall really, 
 for the first time, begin to "worship." Then you 
 cannot fail of Helping-On. You will not be of 
 those who hold back. 
 
Moral Purpose. 
 
 A number of years ago, in a little Massachu- 
 setts town, after a season of drought and dust, 
 there sprang up, all unannounced, in the lawn 
 fronting a certain quiet residence, a young, 
 thrifty shoot. Following its appearance came a 
 break in the Summer's dryness. Showers and 
 sunshine alternated frequently, so that the sprout 
 grew rapidly. And gradually it developed into 
 a handsome tree, with striking and beautiful 
 foliage, aflame with buds and blossoms of unusual 
 delicacy and fragrance. The fruit is a berry of 
 bright scarlet and green. The tree passes through 
 Winter unscathed, and needs no touch of arti- 
 ficial aid. And what is singular about it all is, 
 that the tree seems to be a stranger in a strange 
 land. No one who has seen it knows how it 
 came there, nor what it is. Was the seed from 
 which it grew shaken from the wing of a bird, on 
 its way from some other clime ? Did it fall from 
 amid the plumage of the berry-eating wild-goose, 
 in some semi-annual migration of that bird from 
 north or south ? Who shall say ? But, dropped 
 from the sky or not, and whatever its native 
 home, its beauty, I have read, is indescribable. 
 It is a treasure to its owner, a delight to all who 
 visit it. It is a gem in the creation ; a ceaseless 
 wonder. 
 
 I am to speak, in this discourse, of Moral Pur- 
 pose. Whence came, think you, into the human 
 soul, that bud of promise ? And when came it, 
 first ? 
 
 49 
 
50 Moral Purpose, 
 
 Moral Purpose ! It is that which gives mean- 
 ing and depth to life! It is that alone which 
 gives sane thought to the mystery of the universe. 
 It is that which is the modern "tree whose fruit 
 is for the healing of the nations." Where and 
 when indeed, in human history, did it first 
 spring up ? 
 
 Dry and dusty it was, I have said, over Massa- 
 chusetts lawns, when the unknown flower-beauty 
 of which I have told sprang to be. What of the 
 far times in human experience, before Moral 
 Purpose in the universe was dreamed of as 
 present in the heaven-spaces, and known actu- 
 ally, on earth, among men ! Drear and desert- 
 like, even to-day, oftentimes, notwithstanding 
 our highest vision, — arid and unprofitable often, 
 even for the noblest souls of the race, — seems 
 the human lot, when trials and disappointments 
 press hard ; when bereavement is nigh ; when 
 injustice holds harsh sway, when poverty is 
 present, or material loss comes suddenly ; when 
 physical pain racks the body ; when friends prove 
 false ; when pleasure has failed ; when ambition 
 has a moment or two flared in promised flame — 
 and then sunk to ashes ! The hearts of the 
 noblest men and women on earth are, even now, 
 at times, kept from fainting, and their souls from 
 death, only through their strong, even impas- 
 sioned holding to the belief in some high if indeed 
 faintly manifested Moral Purpose in the unfath- 
 omed Scheme of Things, back of all apparent 
 earthly shifts and shocks. And if this to-day, 
 and among the pure and true, what then must 
 have been the fact far back in remote earthly 
 ages; back in the aeons when "dragons of the 
 prime," tearing each other "in their slime," and 
 "red in tooth and claw," had but a short time 
 given way to the coming of a being manifesting 
 an approach towards manhood? or even many 
 centuries and hundreds of centuries later, when 
 
Moral Purpose. 51 
 
 man really began to be a sensitively conscious 
 soul, and self-conscious ? How terribly unmean- 
 ing, arid, full of pain and fear and doubt, must 
 life then have been ! — if any there were, then on 
 earth, of eager, thoughtful, questioning soul. 
 
 And must there not have been thoughtful, 
 earnest, anxious men and women then? — 
 mothers, laying softly down their dead boys or 
 girls amid forest-branches, or by the river-side, 
 and turning to look back and wonder what the 
 stillness meant ? men, dying of hunger and 
 thirst, and turning weary eyes to the pitiless sky 
 — unconscious even of the thought "Law"? 
 What could life be but black and barren ? 
 
 And even to-day again, to those still without 
 any slightest gleam of a supreme overruling Pur- 
 pose immanent in all things, permeating alike 
 suns and souls — permeating comet-flash in the 
 far heaven-spaces, and, no whit less, ghastly 
 famine in woody hut of half -human savage ; per- 
 meating nebulous trails high yonder in ether, 
 and, iust as certainly, the lightning-flashes and 
 thunder-rumblings in the lowering air much 
 nearer at hand ; the earthquakings and hot-lava 
 spoutings beneath men's feet, no less or more 
 than the whirr of the cricket or the wail of a 
 child ; — with no faintest realizing consciousness 
 of a power so mighty and so morally just that it 
 " doth preserve the stars from wrong," and yet, 
 at the same time, if recognized, is so universal 
 that M it singeth low in every heart " ! — how 
 desert-like and woeful such as these, even to-day, 
 must find life — the willfully dissolute, the will- 
 lessly drunken, the crowded in foul city tene- 
 ments, the miserly, the lustful — and their name is 
 legion ! — the men who cannot see ! 
 
 x et, far back, — hundreds of thousands of years 
 back, — at some dim point in human history, the 
 first gleam of a resplendent moral purpose, over- 
 arching all, and calling on man for co-operation, 
 
52 Moral Purpose. 
 
 did flash, clear and growing, into earthly heart 
 and soul, — the heart and soul of some first, 
 poetic, spiritual-minded child of Nature, — though 
 exactly when we know not. Suffice it that 
 it came ! — and the first man stood Hope- 
 conquered, with his face Idealward turned. 
 And then indeed began progress — forward-look- 
 ing — high endeavor ! 
 
 And do we repeat our other question, — Whence ? 
 — now that we have tried to answer the When ? 
 (tried, and failed !) Well, we do not need to stop 
 long here, — though not in entirety, indeed, do 
 we know ; not fully; not transcendently. But, 
 surely, from that unity it came, — that mighty 
 unity, — the all-mystery, — which in its very unity 
 and mightiness bears all things in its bosom, even 
 as it includes all ! — which gave birth to all, in 
 which all live, towards which all tend ; — the 
 supreme ; the ever-onworking ; — unto which " the 
 weary weight of all this unintelligible world," 
 we can but believe, is shot through and through, 
 somehow, with light — as, sometime, we may see it : 
 light which is, literally, now, " insufferable.' ' 
 
 Is there indeed room — sane room — for any 
 other hypothesis ? Nay, there must be, in the 
 universe, Moral Purpose. And the seed of that 
 Moral Purpose, unquestionably, in order that 
 men might have it, existed potential in the Nature 
 of Things. It has " overbrooded " man from the 
 first. And when, finally, after many groanings 
 and stumblings, man stood at last a conscious 
 worshiper of the Ideal, then might Nature well 
 have burst forth into that Voice as from the 
 clouds, — seeing what manner of man-child she, 
 after many strivings, had finally gotten unto her- 
 self through elemental seethings, — " This is my 
 beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." For 
 at last man had entered on his birthright. He was 
 a conscious co-worker with Good. 
 
Moral Purpose. 53 
 
 Say, if you will, and as some do, that "man 
 * discovered ' morality " ; that morality never was 
 u revealed," except as the growing necessities of 
 humanity's highest life brought, with them, in 
 the very fact that they were necessities, the 
 suggestions of the true way of harmony. Grant 
 all this, I say, and there yet remains the truth 
 that bach of those "necessities," and back of that 
 "required harmony," was the somewhat which 
 compelled those necessities and that harmony. 
 And thus once more, — only, one step farther on, 
 — we are again in the presence of " the great first 
 cause, least understood," from which all sprang, 
 to which all tend, "path, motive, guide, original, 
 and end." Discovery is, itself, " revelation," — 
 and the only revelation. 
 
 And moreover, now, like the coming of the 
 exquisite and fragrant tree-blooms to the faded 
 Massachusetts lawn, — unheralded, unfathomed, 
 yet beautiful and sweet, and a saving delight to 
 all who behold, — so the coming, into the soul of 
 man, of the sight of Moral Purpose as the end 
 and aim of being, whether in streaming sun or 
 upyearning soul, has been the blossom above all 
 other blossoms of earthly existence which has 
 given man faith and courage. He now has 
 strength to go on. 
 
 And sure, as he deems, of this much, he may 
 certainly, so again he deems, be sure of more. So 
 that "to live," now, is synonymous with strife 
 for growth, for progress. " To live " is no more, 
 in this age, simply "to exist." Really to live 
 means to expand, to grow in beauty of soul and 
 mind and body ; to battle, in every way possible, 
 for truth and good, and for higher justice in the 
 world ; to strive to bring all things, and all souls, 
 into truer communion with the Nature of Things. 
 "To live," that is to say, is synonymous, now, 
 with deeds of daring rectitude, with pulses stirred 
 to generosity, with scorn of miserable aims that 
 
54 Moral Purpose. 
 
 end with self ; is synonymous with thoughts 
 sublime that pierce the night like stars, and by 
 their mild persistence urge man's search to vaster 
 issues. Nothing less than this satisfies. 
 
 And with the idea of " unity" in mind, — the 
 idea of u oneness" everywhere, — we can but 
 believe the whole universe to be somehow per- 
 meated thus, with this meaningful, increasing 
 "life," — life which is life — "Life of Ages, richly 
 poured " ; — and that the final outcome of things 
 shall prove all well. 
 
 See f now, for a moment or two, how, out 
 of all the chaos of the past, — the waste and 
 lumber of being's shore, — Moral Purpose in 
 human life, whatever its far, weak origin, has 
 
 gradually so grown, and become beautified, as to 
 ominate, to-day, the entirety of earnest modern 
 life. From beginnings in meanness, it is blossom- 
 ing now to -perfect flower. And how could this 
 be better manifested to us than in the single 
 illustration of the springs and purpose of modern 
 literature ? For, as Charles Dudley Warner two 
 or three years ago hinted, the life of any people, 
 and its literature, are intimately related. And the 
 voice of the better and nobler world to-day is 
 indeed as one voice, echoing Warner's words, — 
 Men cannot be happy unless they are good, and 
 they cannot be good unless the care of the soul 
 (the high part of man), — the upbuilding, that is to 
 say, of character, — occupies the first place in their 
 thoughts. That is the first interest of man. The 
 interest of the body is mid- way ; and last of all, and 
 least of all, when rightly regarded, is the interest 
 about " place" in the world, and about " money." 
 Many refuse this order of interests, true ; and 
 many set "literature" altogether to one side, as 
 of small or no practical account in human life. 
 Yet is there, to-day, a growing minority (if still a 
 minority) on the side of all high soul-helps, on the 
 side of all high aids to individuality, to personal 
 
Moral Purpose. 55 
 
 strength; — of which aids, literature, probably, 
 now, has become chief. And by and by, — slowly, 
 — far off, — the minority will become a majority. 
 
 Using the illustration, and in large part the 
 words, of a writer in the Boston Herald, — 
 Nothing is so free as letters. It is always 
 the unchecked expression of the individual senti- 
 ment ; and it is also the correct photograph 
 of national feeling. The scholar unhesitatingly 
 looks to literature for the true effect of the 
 French Revolution, not less than for the con- 
 dition of Athens in the age of Pericles. And 
 exactly thus we say of literature to-day that 
 its predominant characteristic is Moral Purpose. 
 Or, at any rate, purpose. In part it may be nation- 
 al or individual purpose, but, largely, it is ethical. 
 Its tendency is to take up the obstinate question- 
 ings which relate to the origin of life, the being 
 of God, the root-ideas of duty, the sphere of con- 
 science, the evils of society. It has also to do, 
 actively, with matters of reform, with matters of 
 development, — the regeneration of society, the 
 amelioration of life. The books of the day are 
 full of suggestions for the improvement of social 
 and personal conditions. The serious writing in 
 the great reviews is of this sort. There has never 
 been a time when so many persons were writing 
 essays for the purpose of influencing both opinion 
 and action. A hundred and fifty years ago, when 
 Addison was initiating the modern newspaper in 
 England and shaping the social morals of his day, 
 it seemed a great thing to have an object in view. 
 But to-day Addison's work seems light and flip- 
 pant beside the essays in the Forum or the North 
 American Review, or the social discussions in the 
 leading daily press. Look at it in the case of 
 individual writers : There is nothing to relieve 
 the prevailing seriousness in Matthew Arnold's 
 writings but his exquisite raillery. Dr. Holmes 
 has plenty of wit on the surface, but he is always 
 
56 Moral Purpose. 
 
 striking at moral issues. Emerson separated him- 
 self from social life chiefly that he might turn his 
 thoughts to social problems with greater devotion. 
 Carlyle was a tremendous moralist. George Eliot 
 could never withdraw her mind from the great 
 questions of personal duty and present existence. 
 Her imagination gravitated to these issues, be- 
 cause they had her large and constant thought. 
 And so of others. Many authors of lighter vein 
 may " please " us for a moment ; they may lift us 
 up from care, by a burst of realistic joy or woe as 
 pictured in other souls ; but in literature not to 
 avow an ultimate aim, and a moral aim, seems to- 
 day to be looked upon as a positive discredit. 
 
 For it is the bettering of the world ! It is the 
 improvement of mankind ! It is the lessening of 
 sorrow ! It is the giving of hope, and of trust in 
 the universe ! These are what men to-day are 
 seeking ! 
 
 And there is good to come out of all this. Some- 
 thing great, and noble, and permanent, shall be 
 its outcome — nay, is already its outcome. The 
 world is beginning to swing into line with its 
 glorious army of Brownings and Arnolds and 
 Eliots, who heretofore have been almost as leaders 
 without an army to follow them. The followers 
 now are mustering. 
 
 And the question, the great question, to-day, 
 for every man and woman, is, Am I to be of them ? 
 For every man may know that if he — even he — is 
 faithful, the victory of the good shall come the 
 sooner ; that thus the Moral Purpose of the 
 universe shall the quicklier be demonstrated to 
 all laggards and slow. It is the time for every 
 man to take his stand. Religion of the old kind 
 — the ecstatic, the somnolent, the rapt, the merely 
 contemplative or laudatory — has been tried, and 
 has largely failed. Religion of the new kind — the 
 active, the ethical, the upright — the religion which 
 is the teacher and promoter of Truth, Righteous- 
 
Moral Purpose. 57 
 
 ness and Love in the world — this waits for every 
 man, and for every man's self-sacrifice, for every 
 man and every man's faithfulness, in body, in 
 mind and in morals, to put it into forceful opera- 
 tion among men. As the means of doing away 
 with all the great sins, the " Babylonian woes," 
 of modern society, our hope and our only hope, 
 in the new view of things, is the practical applica- 
 tion, in the hearts and minds and lives of the 
 masses, high and low, rich and poor, intellectual 
 and ignorant, of modern ethics and the spirit of 
 co-operation, — co-operation man with man, and 
 the intelligent co-operation of all with the hidden 
 yet ever-manifest Moral Purpose in the nature of 
 things. No longer must the world wait idly for 
 some far-off redemption, which, without human 
 effort, shall establish "thousand years of peace. " 
 The progressive universe-energy, forever on- 
 working, redeems humanity through man. Oper- 
 ating in Sirius, in Aldebaran, the universe-energy 
 works there in ways unknown to us it may be, — 
 but, we may be sure, never by miracle other than 
 the eternal miracle. And the same eternal mir- 
 acle is around about, and over, and in us, here, 
 on this little, divine, complex, soul-producing, 
 love-producing mystery of an earth, as much as 
 in any farthest heaven-spaces. And we have all 
 the help and all the miracle we need. If all the 
 men and women in the world to-day who can 
 and might, only would, act, the great regenera- 
 tion would come ! 
 The Moral Purpose in Words worth says to us, — 
 
 "The law by which mankind now suffers is most 
 
 just. 
 For by superior energies, more strict 
 Affiance in each other, faith more firm 
 In their unhallowed principles, the Bad 
 Have fairly earned a victory o'er the weak, 
 The vacillating, inconsistent Good." 
 
58 Moral Purpose. 
 
 " They who engage in the service of evil give to it 
 all their energies. ISTo wonder it has thrived in the 
 world." But good is mightier in the end, and 
 good shall sometime prevail — if we help ! The 
 Moral Purpose of the universe dwells in highest 
 men ! in Man ! 
 
 " Therefore not unconsoled we wait, — in hope 
 
 To see the moment when the righteous cause 
 
 Shall gain defenders zealous and devout 
 
 As they who have opposed her ; in which Virtue 
 
 Will to her efforts tolerate no bounds 
 
 That are not lofty as her rights ; aspiring 
 
 By impulse of her own ethereal zeal. 
 
 And when that sacred spirit shall appear, 
 
 Then shall our victory be complete as theirs." 
 
 Every noble work is at first impossible. This 
 truth must we bear in mind when to us the years 
 seem to move slow. In this age we may be 
 assured for a truth, — reading Nature's past, and 
 learning patience from the fact, — that the Moral 
 Aim of the Cosmos swings forward only by 
 revolutions of thousands of years, not by ticks of 
 the little clock upon our wall. Happy you, happy 
 I, if even by one " tick " in our life-time we urge 
 the Cosmos on ! The world may be transfigured. 
 We may help in the transfiguration. 
 
 "A youthful painter found one day 
 In the streets of Rome a child at play ; 
 And moved by the beauty that it bore, 
 The heavenly look its features wore, 
 On a canvas radiant and grand 
 He painted its face with a master hand. 
 
 " Year after year on his wall it hung ; 
 'T was ever joyful and always young, 
 Driving away all thought of gloom 
 As the painter toiled in his lonely room. 
 
Moral Purpose. 59 
 
 " But the painter's locks grew thin and gray ; 
 His young ambition had passed away ; 
 He looked for years, in many a place, 
 To find a contrast to that sweet face. 
 Through haunts of vice in the night he strayed 
 To find some ruin that crime had made : 
 And at last, in a prison-cell, he caught 
 A glimpse of the hideous face he sought. 
 On a canvas, weird and wild, but grand, 
 He painted the features with master hand. 
 
 " That loathsome wretch in the dungeon low, 
 With the face of a fiend and the look of woe, 
 Ruined by revels and stained by sin, 
 A pitiful wreck of what once he had been, 
 Hated, and shunned, and without a home — 
 Was the child that played in the streets of Rome !" 
 
 Pitiful poem ! we say. Yet every equally loath- 
 some wretch that treads Chicago streets to-day, 
 or slinks down yonder Lake Avenue south, was 
 once a laughing, innocent babe, with infinite 
 possibilities in him. And the instilling, into his 
 young soul, in the right way, of Moral Purpose, — 
 the binding of him, with links of love, to the pure 
 heart of the pure, to the strong heart of the 
 strong, to the Moral Core of Things, would have 
 been growth and blessing to him forever. But 
 somebody, who knew better, or who ought to 
 have known better, simply failed in duty ! Society 
 failed in duty ! And in a hundred ways we fail ; 
 in a hundred ways society fails. 
 
 Who shall spur us up ! What shall spur us up ! 
 Around about us, always, is blessing : and we 
 let it pass us, and let it pass the world, by ! The 
 good forces of the world-energy are never absent 
 fromus. Beckoning voices ceaselessly call. Yet 
 man's hight of attainment and hight of happiness 
 depend altogether on the use he makes of the 
 faculties which are his ; on the use he makes of 
 
60 Moral Purpose. 
 
 the blessings and means of progress which are 
 his. And so it will always be. Blessing, not 
 cursing, is offered us. But blessing is not forced 
 upon us. Lack of earnestness in inquiry con- 
 cerning the physical, moral, mental, spiritual 
 powers of the universe, debars us from a helpful 
 knowledge of the true order and beauty of the 
 world, into complete harmony with which order 
 and beauty we should come, bringing others 
 with us. 
 
 Moreover, every guilty deed shuts us out from 
 spiritual blessing and progress. The divine on- 
 working spirit of things will not, never does, 
 never can, forsake us. But (so to speak) we may 
 flee from the great Good, and from the healthful 
 results of "harmony." Nature grants us light : 
 we have our choice whether we will walk in the 
 darkness, or in the light which she gives. Here 
 is the blessing of the sun : but we may shut our- 
 selves in a dark room, or put out our eyes. Here 
 are the laws of health, which we may follow — or 
 disobey ; the laws of our moral nature, of up- 
 rightness, of justice, of personal purity, all of 
 which we may abuse, or neglect. Here is our 
 sense of the beautiful, through which our souls 
 may be educated, enlarged, made glorious, made 
 to rejoice in the light and manifest beauty of the 
 world. We may see beauty, we may find helpful- 
 ness and uplifting, in every rising sun, in the red 
 of every western sky, in the tree and the flower 
 and the ocean. Said Tennyson, of his dead 
 Arthur, — 
 
 "His voice is on the rolling air, 
 I hear him where the waters run, 
 He standeth in the rising sun, 
 
 And in the setting he is fair." 
 
 So may we say of the world-spirit. And there 
 are other manifestations of the divine, besides 
 Nature's beauty — manifestations multitudinous 
 in number : the history of Nature's past in rock 
 
Moral Purpose. 61 
 
 and glacier ; the formation of the tiniest forest 
 flower ; the face of a little child ; the love of 
 mother, of friends, of families ; — indeed a multi- 
 tude of things : all of which, discovered and 
 rightly used, may add to our joy and our growth ; 
 all of which we may accept and use as a part of 
 the Moral Order and Purpose of the universe. 
 But even all of these we may, on the other hand, 
 willfully neglect, and, in so far, separate our- 
 selves from the divine. 
 
 Our Ideal, moreover, — that high formation in 
 every man from out of the inherent Moral Pur- 
 pose of the universe resident in Humanity, — is all 
 that is bright and pure and holy and wise and 
 desirable. When we, by our own willfulness, by 
 our own carelessness, by our own contented 
 ignorance, fall short of the brightness of our 
 Ideal, strive not for its holiness and wisdom, we 
 so far, again, separate ourselves from Good. For 
 this is the nature of the universe, — discover and 
 use, or forfeit. Good is ever near. Nature's 
 order and beauty, — the transcendent seed let fall 
 into the heart of man in primal ages from the 
 universe's natural, developing, overbrooding, 
 inter brooding Spirit-Energy, — these beckon us 
 ever toward perfection. The eternal order will 
 not — can not, I say again — cast us out from itself. 
 But shall the universe's Moral Purpose work for 
 ever on, so far as the large part of mankind is 
 concerned, unregarded ? 
 
 And what about men's actual transgressions ! 
 Ah, would that every man might bear the full 
 consequences of his own sin — and only of his 
 own ! But this is not the way of the universe. 
 The consequences of sin are never absent ; but, 
 far too often, they fall upon guiltless souls. Pity, 
 O spirit of remorseless Law, for those who, 
 through our misdeeds, are made innocently to 
 suffer ! for those — our children, our friends, hu- 
 manity — upon whom our shortcomings and sins 
 bring sorrow and pain and loss ! 
 
62 Moral Purpose. 
 
 And what of the "highest "in ourselves — that 
 which religion calls the "soul"? Here, again, 
 "law "is no less steadfast. Every guilty deed 
 bears, in itself, its own retribution, — of pain, of 
 remorse, of the likeness of death. And not in the 
 possible future only, but now and here — if we 
 have within us such natures as permit true man- 
 hood. We are not what we might have been. For 
 that is what Moral Order means ! In its service 
 is joy and growth ; in disobedience to it is wreck 
 and loss. In carelessness of it is woe ; in regard 
 for it is fragrance and beauty like to the fragrance 
 and beauty of the unheralded blossoms in a far- 
 off State, with the story of which this discourse 
 opened, — the blossoms coming no one knows 
 whither, but full of grace and help, even in time 
 of aridness and drought. 
 
 What, then, remains ? 
 
 Bloom on, O flower, afar in Massachusetts 
 green ! Bloom on, and brighten, still, little 
 children's eyes ! give to youth and maiden hap- 
 pier ideal and converse ! and to age, the blessed 
 hope that the drought and dust of earth entire 
 shall sometime end in the fresh rains and verdure 
 of a ceaseless Springtime, of a land where it is 
 always early morning, where blossoms of per- 
 ennial glow and fragrance spring ever upon the 
 Tree of Life. 
 
 And thou, too, bloom on, O bud of Moral Pur- 
 pose in the soul of man ! From out of the unseen 
 thou, also, earnest, and we know not, for surety, 
 whence thou art. Yet know we that thou art of 
 good ! It is thou that dost bind us to the one, the 
 eternal ! In thee is the world's progressive Won- 
 der and Nature of Things revealed ! Our struggle 
 for thee is a struggle towards the heart and soul 
 of the universe ; our grasping of thee is a grasp- 
 ing of the garment of the World-Mystery, — is a 
 touch of the hand that alone shall lead us into 
 peace. 
 
The Deification of Man. 
 
 For two thousand years there have been theo- 
 ries formulated by philosophers in the endeavor 
 to explain the origin, among the Greeks and 
 Romans, of the idea of the Gods. Probably the 
 most generally accepted theory, to-day, is that 
 which makes the marvelous myths of antiquity 
 conceruing deities to be the storied personifica- 
 tions, on the part of the ancients, of the visible, 
 natural phenomena of the world into which they 
 were born. Apollo every day drove his chariot, 
 the sun, across the heavens. Beneath Mount iEtna 
 was the forge of Vulcan, spouting forth continu- 
 ally its flame and sparks. Neptune ever tossed 
 his arms about wildly — the waves of the sea. 
 And iEolus, the wind, dashed vessels in pieces, 
 or bore them swiftly on their way. 
 
 To-day, we know that there is nothing super- 
 natural. But neither in ancient times was any- 
 thing conceived as being supernatural. The 
 idea of the supernatural came in later. In the 
 far times of which I speak, however, the lack of 
 consciousness of the supernatural, amid all their 
 fanciful, often wild ideas, was not in disbelief, 
 through knowledge, as ours is ; but in simple 
 ignorance. For at that time it was not known 
 that there was any such thing as Nature — the 
 orderly, unintermittent ongoing of the universe's 
 forces. All life and action, in early ages, wher- 
 ever present, was looked upon as arbitrary. All 
 was marvelous, mysterious, utterly uncompre- 
 hended. Every incident and event of the out- 
 ward world — the rain, the wind, the thunder, the 
 
 63 
 
64 The Deification of Man. 
 
 movements of the heavenly bodies — were sup- 
 posed to be, not at all under law, as we now know 
 them, and resulting only through natural causa- 
 tion ; but altogether erratic, and according to 
 the ^ fickle disposition of personal, inhabiting 
 deities. Mankind, then, was utterly ignorant of 
 the natural forces now comparatively familiar to 
 men — gravitation, magnetism, molecular motion, 
 the whole list of chemical, electrical and atmos- 
 pheric forces which operate all about us. The 
 ancients knew of no active force whatever except 
 that of their own personal will. Naturally, 
 therefore, they inferred that all actions outside 
 of them, all the numberless activities of Nature, 
 were the result likewise of will ; of the volition of 
 personal, incorporated spirits, even though these 
 animating clevas in which men believed were 
 indeed invisible, and altogether unfathomed by 
 mortal mind. In times as late as the seventeenth 
 century, it is recorded, the great astronomer 
 Kepler deemed every star propelled through the 
 heavens by an attendant spirit. 
 
 With such idea as this of the world's forces 
 came naturally, in ancient times, the religion of 
 " sacrifices," to the all-powerful deities believed 
 to be present everywhere ; sacrifices in order 
 that anger might be warded off, or blessing 
 induced. Soon the sacrifices were accompanied 
 by praises, and later by increasingly ritualistic 
 services, with all species of pretended magic and 
 divination. 
 
 It was about the time of the decline of the 
 Roman Commonwealth, and of the inauguration 
 of the Empire, that, among the more educated — 
 among the philosophers, and even in the priest- 
 hood itself — the then-existing much corrupted 
 worship of the Gods began to be intelligently and 
 severely criticized, and even the existence itself 
 of the popular deities called loudly in question. 
 This very general and growing scepticism among 
 
The Deification of Man. 65 
 
 the intelligent ones of the people was the result 
 of a widening intellectual development and of 
 increased knowledge of the outward world. And 
 moreover (for the advanced views of men natur- 
 ally differed, then as always) the educated classes, 
 in their theories, speedily became divided into 
 two great parties. One of these, the Epicureans, 
 led by Lucretius and Petronius, regarded the 
 Gods simply as the creation of fear, and utterly 
 denied their existence. The other party, the 
 Stoics, became more or less Pantheistic in their 
 faith, believing in "one all-pervading soul of 
 Nature." Yet these, no less than the Epicureans, 
 treated with unutterable contempt all the pre- 
 vailing legends which made Gods in the likeness 
 of men. 
 
 The worship of the old deities continued, in- 
 deed, among the common people, for centuries, — 
 such worship was taught, and even commanded, 
 by those in power, that the masses might be kept 
 in subjection. But among the philosophers the 
 labor, thought and service formerly bestowed 
 upon the Gods came to be devoted to attempts to 
 explain the origin of the popular faith. Worship 
 was changed into criticism — that the truth might 
 be made clear. 
 
 We have already seen what is the nineteenth 
 century view of the Gods. But the modern the- 
 ory, although in the present age first well elabor- 
 ated, was not altogether unknown even among 
 the philosophers of the early Empire. Some of 
 the Stoics regarded the Gods as personifications 
 of the different forms of Nature, — or, as they more 
 often expressed it, of the "different attributes of 
 the one all-pervasive power." Thus, as I have 
 hinted, iEolus was the wind, Neptune the sea, 
 Pluto was fire, Hercules represented the strength 
 of God, Minerva the wisdom, Venus the outward 
 beauty, Ceres the fertilizing energy, and so on. 
 Indeed, it is recounted by Augustine, one of the 
 
66 The Deification of Man. 
 
 most widely- educated of the early christian fa- 
 thers, than more than a hundred years before the 
 Empire, Varro had declared that " the soul of the 
 world is God, and its parts are true divinities." 
 
 It is mainly, however, with the theory of Euhem- 
 eros the Sicilian that I have to do now. Through 
 many centuries his thought, however erroneous, 
 or only partially correct, held popular sway over 
 vast numbers, and even till within a hundred 
 years has had great force. Euhemeros endeav- 
 ored the very simple process of tracing all myths 
 and superstitions concerning the Gods to a nat- 
 ural source in purely human incidents. He taught 
 that u the Gods were originally great kings or 
 heroes, whom their admirers had deified." "All 
 that is related of the Gods," he said, "is but the 
 exaggeration and glorification of common human 
 events, which we may readily trace back to their 
 historical sources." 
 
 A very natural theory was this of Euhemeros, 
 and very probably not without some foundation 
 of truth. At any rate, whether partially true or 
 wholly false concerning the deifications of long 
 past time, this theory had a mighty influence in 
 history subsequent to the propounded s own age. 
 This is my point now. For, an easy transition it 
 was, in that corrupt and servile period, from the 
 doctrine of past dead kings and heroes exalted to 
 divinity, to the actual adoration of living men as 
 Gods. The reigning emperors, under the inspi- 
 ration of this idea, began to demand, and to 
 receive, worship and divine honors. Why not 
 they, as well as those who had gone before? 
 Looking, moreover, to other lands, the emperors 
 found as a common feature in the codes of law 
 and religion of the Hindus, and in Hindu prac- 
 tice, the deification of reigning princes. This 
 further urged them on, and apparently justified 
 them, in their own course. In the Institutes of 
 Manu it is written : * ' Even though a child, the king 
 
The Deification of Man. 67 
 
 must not be treated lightly, from the idea that he 
 is a mere mortal. No ; he is a powerful divinity 
 who appears in mortal shape." Transmitted from 
 India or Rome to the Eastern Branch of the chris- 
 tian church, this custom prevails in Russia even 
 at the present day. In the popular religious cat- 
 echism, prepared by the government and thrust 
 upon the people by the royal edict, the Czar is 
 to-day addressed as "our God on earth." The 
 divine right of kings to govern wrong, dead in 
 western Europe, is yet promulgated east of the 
 Baltic. In India, five hundred years before the 
 christian era, after the death of Gautama the 
 Buddha, he was deified, and to-day is worshiped 
 as Lord by five hundred millions of people. Alex- 
 ander "the Great" built temples for his own 
 worship as a God. Beginning with Augustus, 
 the Roman emperors from that time down were 
 so worshiped. 
 
 And in that age of the world, with these many 
 imperial precedents in mind, religious adherents 
 also, through Greece, Rome and Syria, began to 
 canonize and deify their great spiritual leaders. 
 The followers of Jesus did this, — indeed, they 
 were compelled to do so. For, with so many 
 Gods in their own religious galaxy, the Greeks 
 and Romans, among the inferior ranks of whom 
 Christianity made its first great conquests, would 
 and did look with disdain on a religion having a 
 merely human leader — a ISTazarene peasant. It is 
 a remarkable fact that, if Jesus were really the 
 almightybeing whom in the course of three cent- 
 uries he came to be considered, his own family 
 and nation should never have recognized him as 
 such. Jesus' own countrymen, even his own fol- 
 lowers, from Peter and John down, — the " Juda- 
 izing christians," so-called, — maintained to the last 
 the simple humanity of their leader. And it was 
 only among the Hellenists, that is, the Grecian 
 and Alexandrian proselytes, that the man of 
 
68 The Deification of Man. 
 
 Nazareth came, in the course of three hundred 
 years, to be voted " equal wih God and of the same 
 substance with him." By a closely contested 
 " vote," at the Council of Nicsea, as is now well- 
 known to all, — 300 years after Jesus' death, — 
 and then only after bitter controversy; only after 
 actual personal blows on the part of the contend- 
 ing bishops, and determined threats, falsity and 
 intrigue on the part of the emperor Constantine, 
 — was Jesus raised to the dignity of " God." Not 
 until the year 325, when those priestly factions 
 met at Nicsea, and stormed and howled and tore 
 each other's theses to tatters, and spat in each 
 other's faces in the presence of the emperor, was 
 it decidedly known by the early christian world 
 whether Jesus was a God-man or a Man-God. 
 
 So much for the "natural history," so to speak, 
 of the deification of individual men, — this in one 
 of its phases. And all this, friends, has seemed 
 to you, I know, in one sense, as indeed in one 
 sense it has seemed to me, barren of profit, and 
 small of incentive for us to-day. Almost all of 
 this has been the deification of merely meretri- 
 cious earthly power and pomp, or the exaltation 
 of simply temporal human greatness and desire, 
 to identity or equality with the Mysterious Un- 
 known, the hidden reality, the everywhere- 
 present spirit of all. 
 
 But another and nobler phase of this old 
 thought I would now touch upon, in the progress 
 of the idea which I have in mind to set forth in 
 this discourse. As mankind, through the long 
 ages of its existence on earth, has grown, it has 
 grown in mind and soul, as well as in things 
 merely external and temporal. Long before the 
 decline and death of the barren, profitless Greek 
 and Roman idea of the Gods, in that idea's severe 
 baldness, a deep spirituality had entered here and 
 there into a few serious and worshipful souls, till 
 these, now andthen in the course of centuries, 
 
The Deification of Man. 69 
 
 came to bow in true, manly, uplifting, spiritual 
 awe and adoration, before the mystery of the all- 
 in-all. And also, which is really a more impor- 
 tant point now, came to bow with earnest, hope- 
 ful search before the miracle of human life and 
 the mystery of human need and duty. Five hun- 
 dred years before Jesus, Pythagoras came very 
 near to the truth concerning u the divine, all- 
 pervading soul of things" (those are his own 
 words), and declared that " to be truthful, and to 
 do good" comprises the whole duty of man. 
 Socrates also, four centuries before Jesus, dwelt 
 much in the " unseen yet eternal," and lived for 
 the good of his fellows. Seneca, again, could 
 speak of l ' the guardian and ruler of the universe, 
 the soul and spirit of all, the cause of causes upon 
 which all things depend, from whom all things 
 proceed, by whose spirit we live, who comprises 
 all we see." How exalted this, above the gibings 
 and immoralities of the more popular Gods of 
 his time ! how exalted above the gibings and 
 immoralities even of Mcaea ! And Lucan, once 
 more, could dwell upon the divine as "that 
 majestic, all-pervasive spirit, whose throne is 
 virtue and the universe." So in other lands, — in 
 India, in Persia, in China and Egypt, and in 
 Judea. And with all this growing spirituality and 
 nobler exaltation of soul in the presence of the 
 one only supreme power, came also, on the 
 part of these later men, as previously in the case 
 of Pythagoras and Socrates, lofty desires for the 
 uplifting of humanity. Indeed, it was the great, 
 the never-ending, the age-after-age recurring cry 
 of the human soul for a loftier hope, for a nobler 
 ideal, a truer light, than any man in those distant 
 ages could seem to set forth, that in the course of 
 progress impelled serious, religious souls in all 
 lands, first to go altogether outside of humanity 
 in search of that which should bring the satisfac- 
 tion of their needs, — creating thus a spiritual 
 
70 The Deification of Man. 
 
 pantheon; and in later years to seize enthusi- 
 astically, passionately, on actual, exalted human 
 lives, lives of men, like the Buddha of India 
 and the reformer of G-alilee, — and uplift them to 
 the divine. 
 
 Moreover, down through all the eighteen hun- 
 dred years since Jesus, this same hope and long- 
 ing, and this manifest intent to deify, has been 
 time and time again manifested on the part of 
 christian writers, — the hope and longing being 
 held up by them, unhesitatingly, as ample justi- 
 fication in itself, of their assertion that the man 
 Jesus was very God. Bishop Home acknowl- 
 edged that long before Jesus was born the 
 doctrine of the 4t Incarnation " was of universal 
 prevalence. "That God should," he said, "in 
 some extraordinary manner visit and dwell with 
 man is an idea which, as we read the writings of 
 the ancient heathen, meets us in a thousand 
 forms." Another, again, said, after a hundred 
 others, that "many of the first christians being 
 converts from Gentileism, their imaginations 
 were familiar with the reputed incarnation of 
 heathen deities." "How natural it would be, 
 then, for such converts to worship Jesus as a 
 God, on account of his superior manhood." 
 
 Men were crying, as they had cried for centu- 
 ries, for a higher, truer, tenderer power than any 
 which they deemed resident in themselves; — 
 indeed, than any which Nature, in perceptible 
 measure, had up to that time evolved. And 
 dreaming that such power and love dwelt, per- 
 sonally, in some distant godhead, yonder some- 
 where above the stars, beyond the gold of sun- 
 sets, or high over the purple of mountains, they 
 cried to it to come down from the heights, to 
 learn their sorrows and needs, be touched with a 
 feeling of their infirmities, and give them aid. 
 A God of all pervasive spirit they could not com- 
 prehend — few can comprehend such yet, or 
 
The Deification of Man. 71 
 
 appreciate its mighty, uplifting power when 
 embraced by the soul. But a God coming down 
 to earth from above, dwelling in the flesh, and 
 thence returning to the skies, — such as that they 
 could understand. And moreover, such a God as 
 that, through his coming, would know in reality, 
 thereafter, the temptations and sorrows of men, 
 could pity their woes, and upon his return to his 
 own realm would realize how, justly, to judge 
 them, — that is, pityingly, — and forever after do 
 them good. Men wanted God near, and were 
 bound to have God near. Archbishop Tillotson, 
 of the Church of England, as late as the seven- 
 teenth century, went so far as to say that, there 
 being in Jesus' time a great inclination in man- 
 kind to the worship of a visible deity, "God was 
 pleased to appear in our nature, that they who 
 were so fond of a visible deity might have one " ! 
 And even Dr. Thomas Arnold of the present 
 century, who died only about forty years ago,* 
 wrote thus : "The incarnation of Christ was very 
 necessary, especially at a time when men were 
 so accustomed to worship the highest Gods under 
 the form of men." 
 
 Upon this desire for and worship of a mere 
 external deity, however, we have not time now 
 to dwell. There is something better for us. For 
 it is a truth, a deeper, nobler, more hopeful 
 truth, that men have not only called down, as 
 they have believed, a God from heaven to dwell 
 among them, but have, indeed and in truth, 
 raised up their moral and spiritual fellows to the 
 height of God ! have made deities of those who, 
 although actually, — in all points, — like as they 
 were ; of the same blood and bones, of the same 
 passions and needs, — were yet, at the same time, 
 by purity of ancestry, and by resolute, long, 
 
 * This discourse was written in December of 1884. 
 
72 The Deification of Man. 
 
 personal self-restraint and self-reliance, a degree, 
 or a number of degrees, above them, — and by 
 their acquired mental and moral and spiritual 
 superiority to the common run of humanity set 
 an uplifting example, gave the world incentive 
 and moral power to be even as they the 
 * 'saviours" themselves were. Here were men 
 of sympathy, who knew humanity's trials ; men 
 who were near — nearer than any "God" could 
 be who in himself had power other than human 
 power ; men who set a noble example of truth, 
 purity and good-will ; men who were able to 
 conquer the evil about them and within them, 
 put it under their feet, and say grandly, sub- 
 limely to their fellows, "Do you also overcome ! 
 for to him that overcometh will I, — even I, — 
 give to sit down with me upon my throne, even 
 as I also overcame, and am sat down with the 
 Infinite Helpfulness upon its throne." " Will I 
 give ' ' ! — how ? " By right and power of my love 
 and devotion and ennobling example" 
 
 What wonder that the race has made such men 
 as these Gods ! — even though the inherent divinity 
 of these men has indeed been simply and only in 
 an ideal humanity well lived out, and in their 
 courageous struggle for the good and the true, 
 whatever the obstacles ! 
 
 Such, then, is another and nobler chapter in 
 the history of the Deification of Man, — a rich, 
 golden-lettered chapter, if indeed, in one sense, 
 a palimpsest, from earliest times, over and over 
 written. 
 
 The third chapter is yet all unwritten. I can 
 not, therefore, recount it for you, friends, here 
 and now. But there is to be another chapter. 
 And I deem we may prophesy what it shall be. 
 We cannot recount it, for it has not yet hap- 
 pened. But we can look ahead; we can take 
 the past and from it anticipate the future. And 
 that is my whole idea in this discourse. All 
 
The Deification of Man. 73 
 
 that I have yet said is preparatory to what I 
 would say. 
 
 Whatever the origin of their ideas, men have 
 always dreamed of Gods ; — of beings of higher 
 power, and generally of holier purpose, than 
 their own power and purpose,— and yet still 
 humanlike. And not only have they dreamed of 
 Gods as men, but of men as Gods. 
 
 Is there indeed no truth, — no living, vital soul 
 of truth, — in humanity's age-long dream of 
 " divine-human " incarnations ? Most certainly, — 
 I believe, — there is! I do not believe that 
 through thousands on thousands of years man's 
 soarings and gropings the world over have been 
 for nothing — altogether meaningless, founda- 
 tionless — a mockery, a delusion. I believe, 
 rather, that, however crude the idea as yet in our 
 thought, — however much yet to be purified and 
 enlarged, — the eternal life-presence of all worlds 
 (God, with the clarified idea of God) is incar- 
 nated, deep incarnated, in every human soul. 
 Rather, is every human soul. The animating 
 Spirit of Nature, wherever manifested (call it 
 what you will), is forever one and the same. 
 Our spirits are breaths of the Mighty Breath. 
 
 What is really the truth concerning "God," 
 friends, as that truth is to-day read (or dreamed) 
 by the advance thought of the world — by the 
 deepest, tenderest, most spiritual minds of the 
 race? God is no longer a defined, bounded, 
 circumscribed "deity," tied up anywhere within 
 temporal and spacial limits, — but is the animat- 
 ing genius of the universe, for the first time 
 "infinite" and "eternal" in the minds of men 
 since modern discovery and research have found 
 God thrilling in the farthest star, and existing 
 backward and forward forever beyond the limits 
 of human appreciation; — while bound up with 
 "God," inseparably and henceforth forever 
 bound up with God, is Man. 
 
74 The Deification of Man. 
 
 " Behold I show you a mystery. " The eternal 
 world-presence — and Man ! 
 
 And would that I had the power, friends, to 
 set these forth to you, — these two mighty facts, 
 — this one mighty fact of the universe, — this 
 duality in unity, — as I have vision of it ! For in 
 the reasonable thought of this there is inspiration 
 to much upbuilding work. In the reasonable 
 thought of this there is "joy and peace in 
 believing." 
 
 Let us meditate just a moment, as best we may 
 in our ignorance and blindness, on this great 
 theme, — and arise to the buffeting and mystery of 
 life with renewed hope and faith, resolved on 
 new, untiring endeavor, on stronger, nobler 
 effort than we have ever yet made, to live worthy 
 of our high vocation and exalted nature. 
 
 Let us meditate on the eternal Presence, the 
 World-Spirit, the overbrooding and interbrooding 
 Energy of the Cosmos ; formless indeed, except 
 as the universe is formed ; and inconceivable : 
 yet manifested how abundantly to our thought 
 and sense. The force which is the life of all 
 things — unknown, indeed, and yet, in manifesta- 
 tion again, how well known. The mysterious 
 entity in which we and all things else are bound 
 up and inclosed. 
 
 " Breathing in the thinker's creed, 
 Pulsing in the hero's blood ; 
 Secret of the morning stars, 
 Motion of the oldest hours ; 
 Nature's uncreated Word, 
 Atom and Infinity ! " 
 
 Mother of man's time-traveling generations, 
 the breath of his nostrils, the heart-blood of his 
 heart. The inspiration of the gently- circling 
 planet, and of the wild, fiery swoop of the comet, 
 and of the red, gushing torrent which courses 
 through every vein and artery in our bodies — 
 
The Deification of Man. 75 
 
 star and pulse- beat throbbing rythmically to- 
 gether. Life that thrills in the inaudible current 
 that surges through every leaf in the summer 
 forest ; life that invigorates the tiniest grass- 
 blade. Law that disposes the unvarying forma- 
 tion of every crystal and every snow-flake. A 
 mighty, mystic presence as widely and deeply 
 interfused throughout and among all worlds as 
 is the enveloping atmosphere and the mysterious 
 ether beyond. 
 
 " Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, — 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 And let us meditate on Man. On man as we 
 now know him, — inhabited, from the very first, 
 even from the time when as yet he was only as 
 the formless vapor or the senseless clod, by the 
 potential spirit of the eternal. Man, — 
 
 "For whose birth the whole creation yearned 
 Through countless ages of the morning world ; 
 Who, first through fiery vapors fiercely hurled, 
 Next to the senseless crystal slowly turned, 
 Then to the plant, which grew to something more, 
 Humblest of creatures that draw breath of life ; 
 Wherefrom, through infinities of patient pain, 
 
 he came finally to consciousness and growing 
 power. 
 
 " While the long way behind is prophecy 
 Of those perfections which are yet to bey 
 
 Without doubt, in man himself — thrilled 
 through, as he is, and animated by the life- 
 breath of the universe, — exists power potential 
 for his every needful victory. In man himself ■ \ the 
 God" is forever incarnated. And men dream 
 
76 The Deification of Man. 
 
 not of this, nor put the God-power within them 
 to helpful use, but still search longingly without, 
 and pray upward empty words into the void of 
 space, while the living presence of the worlds 
 thrills and throbs all about them, crying to them 
 to accept its great salvation ! Outside, men have 
 sought ; upward and yonder, for sympathy, and 
 nearness, and high example ; for power to con- 
 quer evil, for providential aid and succor. But 
 every " saviour " of the race, time and time again, 
 invariably, has proved to the world, even though* 
 he himself may have held differently, that in man 
 — in generous, whole-souled, lofty-minded Man — 
 is the God of help and sympathy and patience 
 and providence. 
 
 Would that the world might recognize this, and 
 men begin to act out their Godhood ! — making 
 themselves a providence to each other ; making 
 themselves incarnate love and pity and sympathy 
 and patience and good -will, and putting away 
 from them forever all selfishness and avarice and 
 hatred and evil passion. What a bound onward 
 would humanity make, if such era as this might 
 only come about ; if men would only quit their 
 fruitless wailings and chantings and prayings to 
 a God outside, — a misunderstood, practically non- 
 existent God, — and bend their prayers to the God 
 within ! For therein, friends, lies the future hope 
 of the world — in self-reliance ! complete self- 
 reliance ! — not forever in supine dependence! 
 "This is the way, the truth, and the life." 
 
 " I saw on earth another light 
 
 Than that which lit my eye, 
 Come forth as from the soul within, 
 
 And from a higher sky. 
 
 " 'Twas brighter far than noonday's beam ; 
 
 It shone from God within, 
 And lit as by a lamp from heaven 
 
 The world's dark track of sin." 
 
The Deification of Man. 77 
 
 The age -accumulating dream of the world, the 
 universal longing of man for a present, helpful, 
 sympathetic God is not all a mockery. But 
 surely, if there were any power outside, which, 
 in the nature of things as the universe exists, 
 could help and save, long ere this, to relieve the 
 world's sin and misery, it would have stretched 
 one finger forth, or breathed one helpful, answer- 
 ing word ! But that is not the nature of the 
 universe-power, nor the way it works. We 
 know, to-day, that every step of humanity's 
 progress has been a step taken by man. So far 
 as is concerned the uplifting and growth of man, 
 the universal power works through men. We 
 know, to-day, that every word of hope and light 
 ever uttered for humanity's guidance has been a 
 word spoken by man. We know there is a pro- 
 gressive God incarnate in him ; a God that does, 
 in pure and lofty souls, sympathize and help and 
 uplift, and cheer the world on. 
 
 That is all. That is the third chapter. It 
 needs no elaboration. Only, let us strive, friends, 
 henceforth, each one of us,— as we all may, and 
 as we have never done before, — both for our own 
 sake and for the sake of others, — to realize well 
 our possibilities, our inherent divinity ; bring it 
 forth into the light. And live as recognizing 
 ourselves infinite souls, a help and a joy and an 
 uplifting power to all about us. 
 
 Men make themselves deified. They are not 
 made so by others. Others come in only to 
 ratify the deification. A throne awaits us all, if 
 we are faithful, — a throne in the kingdom of the 
 world's progress ; a throne whose reign shall be 
 a helpful life, — the exaltation of Mankind. 
 
Equilibrium. 
 
 I am to speak of Equilibrium. In other words, 
 of self-control, or self-possession. 
 
 To use one or two colloquial terms, the major- 
 ity of men are "crotchety," "cranky, " "erratic," 
 lacking in balance, lacking in stability, given to 
 the following of impulse, given to impatience, 
 and in some degree, greater or less, to vice and 
 passion — their bodies warring against their 
 minds, their minds against their bodies, and their 
 souls, often, against both. Equilibrium ! What 
 a boon this would be to most men ! Self-control, 
 — self-possession, — these should be their "salva- 
 tion " ! 
 
 Even physically, it would seem that Nature did 
 not originally intend man to stand upright ! It 
 is a somewhat singular fact — or appears so, at 
 first glimpse — that, of all animals on earth, man 
 is the only one, physically speaking, that is out 
 of structural equilibrium. Not many people are 
 aware of the fact, perhaps ; but, as every sculptor 
 knows, and possibly every anatomist, the body 
 of a man is decidedly "top-heavy," as we use 
 that term. No perfectly formed statue of a man 
 or woman would ever stand upon its feet. It 
 would topple over. So with man himself, if, 
 from the very first, he were not continually if 
 indeed unconsciously "holding himself up." 
 Man's physical structure is such that his " center 
 of gravity," so to speak, — the "line of direction" 
 of his body, to use the technical phrase, — falls 
 outside the base. Man is the only animal that in 
 walking turns out the toes; — this obviously to 
 
 79 
 
80 Equilibrium, 
 
 increase the breadth of the base supporting the 
 body. Watch a child learning to walk, or to 
 stand alone. How difficult a matter the child 
 finds it ! How it sways, backward and forward, 
 catching at the table-cover, — and leans this way 
 and that', reaching for a chair or the window-sill. 
 Watch a drunken man, whose brains are so 
 befogged that even his unconscious will is, for 
 the time being, suspended. How he totters, and 
 stumbles,— and shortly goes down in the gutter. 
 The child, however, by frequent practice, soon 
 acquires the power, or accomplishment, of bal- 
 ancing its body to a nicety. V ery soon it is so 
 perfectly in possession of the power of equilib- 
 rium that chairs, the wall, even mother's hand, 
 are altogether needless longer. In a brief time 
 further, even all conscious personal effort in 
 standing or walking is suspended. Thenceforth 
 the will operates wholly unconsciously. The 
 human being walks or runs or leaps automati- 
 cally as it were, without thought or care. But, 
 naturally, the human body is not in equilibrium. 
 
 The explanation of this singular feature in 
 man's physical structure — this feature of "top- 
 heaviness'' — is perhaps not difficult to work out. 
 The evolutionist, I presume, would say at once, 
 — though I have never seen such idea presented 
 in this connection, — Man's upright position is 
 really an acquirement ; is not his original nor his 
 normal attitude. He once went upon "all 
 fours"; and now, naturally, having come to 
 stand upon two limbs, finds equilibrium and 
 locomotion difficult. 
 
 Such explanation as this of that peculiarity 
 inherent in man's physical structure of which I 
 have spoken, leads me just here to a point of 
 interest and value. Man's position as an upright 
 being is an acquirement. He did not have it at 
 the first, — that is, away back in the far centuries. 
 It is something which he has come into, in the 
 
Equilibrium. 81 
 
 process of his development during hundreds of 
 thousands of years. 
 
 To a great many people, the idea that man has 
 descended from the lower animals — or, rather, 
 more correctly, the idea that man has risen, been 
 evolved from the lower animals, is an idea very 
 distasteful. I myself, however, do not see why 
 it should be so. For me, there is much of encour- 
 agement, much of hopeful prophecy, in the 
 thought, — especially when it is contrasted with 
 the more popular theory, the church-theory, of 
 " creation." The older theological idea concern- 
 ing man's origin, including as it necessarily does 
 the idea of man's "fall," makes man to-day the 
 degraded offspring of a race once far higher and 
 purer than it now is. The doctrines of evolution, 
 on the contrary, show man to-day the exalted 
 offspring of a race once ignorant and weak. If 
 the former theory, the theological thought, be 
 indeed true, and man's history on earth be really 
 one of retrogression from primal glory and hap- 
 piness, then is there no depth, logically following 
 out the line of this argument, to which man may 
 not yet, still farther, fall. This is legitimate 
 reasoning. What of hope or light is here I can- 
 not see. But if man, through all the past, has 
 risen, and to-day, from out of weakness has 
 come into strength, out of darkness has come 
 into light, and is still in possession of all 
 his normal powers, in possession even of added 
 powers, — then is there no height to which he 
 may not yet, still farther, attain. Who would 
 not belong to such race as the latter, rather than 
 to such a race as the former? Who would not 
 rather be a risen man than a fallen saint ! 
 
 Surely, the high from the low seems, in every 
 way, better and worthier than the low from the 
 high ; the high from the low seems the more 
 natural and more consistent method; the high 
 from the low rather than the low from the high 
 
82 Equilibrium. 
 
 seems the method more hopeful for man and 
 more honorable to Nature. 
 
 " Beneath this starry arch 
 
 Naught resteth or is still ; 
 But all things have their march, 
 
 As if by one great Will. 
 Moves one, move all, — hark to the footfall ! 
 
 On, on, forever ! " 
 
 In Nature, in the long run, there is no retro- 
 gression. There is no "fall." All, in the wide 
 spiral sweep, is progress. At times, — though 
 always temporarily, — there may seem to be a 
 "going back," .a falling off in grace, in beauty, 
 in power, in apparent meaning. But there is 
 never a halt; and after the "falling away," — of 
 a moment's space, — comes an onward leap of a 
 thousand years. 
 
 Marvelous is the sublime interworking force ! 
 Before the mighty mystery of the unknown — 
 before the sublime reality of the universe's life- 
 energy we bow in awe, in wonder, in adoration. 
 We can not fathom it. We can not explain it. 
 Much less can we "explain it away" as some 
 are charged with trying to do. But who wishes 
 to explain it away ! Our wish, the rather, is to 
 take it into our lives ! our desire is to open our 
 souls to it. Bather than wishing to do away 
 with it, we bow before it in uplifting, silent, 
 soulful aspiration, and rejoice that we are part 
 and parcel of it all; that we cannot be lost to it, 
 nor separated from it, whether in life or death ! 
 rejoice that we are of it, that we came out from 
 it, that we have our existence in it, that finally 
 we go back to it ! Much less, indeed, than fath- 
 oming the greatness of the Eternal Mystery, 
 and "explaining God away," we do not fathom 
 even our own greatness, nor can we explain 
 ourselves. We do not see one step before us ; 
 we do not understand what lies one day ahead of 
 
Equilibrium. 83 
 
 us. We only "feel that we are greater than we 
 know." We dimly grasp that even " now are we 
 the sons of God" (the offspring of the eternal 
 energy), though indeed " it doth not yet appear 
 what we shall be." And in this faith we have 
 courage to go on. Far from denying or doubting, 
 or striving to explain away, we wait with eager 
 hope till all shall be revealed. 
 
 This is the reverent attitude, I am confident, 
 in which every earnest and sincere teacher of the 
 modern ideas of man's origin stands, throughout 
 the world, to-day. Says Prof. Huxley himself, — 
 4 'So far as I can humbly venture to offer an 
 opinion on such a subject, the purpose of our 
 being in existence, the highest object that human 
 beings can set before themselves, is not the pur- 
 suit of any such chimera as the annihilation of 
 the unknown ; it is simply the unwearied endeavor 
 to remove its boundaries a little further from our 
 sphere of action." 
 
 The removal of the boundaries from man's 
 sphere of action ! Could anything be more 
 desirable ? Yet that is what all the earnest ones 
 among the holders and teachers of modern scien- 
 tific doctrines have in mind — action ! Self-help 
 on the part of the world ! Not the doing away 
 with a reasonable idea of the universe's unfath- 
 omed force, but the ux^building of men ! Action, 
 self-control, self-guidance, on the part of human- 
 ity, through a knowledge of the ways in which, 
 in the past, life and progress have really come to 
 be ; and through a knowledge of how life and 
 health and happiness and growth may be yet 
 more exalted and ennobled, and mankind gain 
 the mastery over all the evil forces and tenden- 
 cies which now hold it back and keep it low. 
 
 Humanity's complete self-control ! Perfect 
 " self-possession " on the part of men! A com- 
 plete and perfect Equilibrium, physical, mental, 
 moral, spiritual ; Equilibrium in all possible 
 
84 Equilibrium. 
 
 directions ! This is what the modern thought of 
 man's origin, and of man's growth upward, has 
 in mind for humanity, in all of its researches, 
 and in all its publication of new truth. 
 
 And in this line let us continue our thought, 
 now, a little farther. 
 
 I said, in beginning, that man's power of physi- 
 cal equilibrium, his power of standing erect 
 bodily, with his face towards heaven, and of 
 maintaining himself in that position while at 
 repose or while walking, was an acquired power. 
 1 said that man did not have this power at the 
 first, but that it is something which he has come 
 into. It is something which man has gained: 
 and which he gained in the first place, without 
 doubt, through much of pain and stumbling ; 
 through much of patience and fresh trial and 
 determined will. Nature is never in a hurry 
 when she is bringing something grand to be. 
 Moreover, it is something, as I said, which every 
 child has anew to learn, in some degree, though 
 indeed the accomplishment is now largely hered- 
 itary or instinctive. 
 
 A glance upward towards the stars, perhaps, 
 or towards a cluster of high-hanging fruit, or 
 towards a bunch of gorgeous blossoms on the 
 topmost bough of a tree, — some such thing as 
 this was it which first carried man's face, cent- 
 uries ago, skyward, — heavenward. Repeated 
 glances upward drew his arms and hands also, 
 in time, sympathetically, from the earth, that he 
 might also grope upward, as well as gaze, — 
 feeling after that which drew him on; " feeling 
 after it if haply he might find it." And so he 
 grew. 
 
 From very low powers and very low forms 
 indeed has man progressed, through the countless 
 centuries. But upward he has come, till now, 
 even physically, he has reached grace, suppleness 
 and power, so that men have come to talk even 
 
Equilibrium. 85 
 
 of "the human form divine." And all his pro- 
 gress — this is my point now : all his progress, in 
 every direction, — mental and spiritual, as well as 
 physical, — has been through this same upward 
 look! Through the desire for something higher ! 
 Through the inworking divine energy throbbing 
 within his soul and urging him on. All his 
 progress has been made through keeping his 
 natural vision open to the marvelous beauty of 
 the outward world ; — through keeping his natur- 
 ally growing mind open to the beauty of knowl- 
 edge, open to the desirability of new attainment, 
 of ever-fresh acquirement ; — through the keeping 
 of his soul ever open and responsive to the 
 upward-drawing cords of that Over-Soul, that 
 interfused spirit of all things in the universe, 
 which we call Divine. 
 
 And so must it ever be. So has it been ; so is it 
 now : and so will it be, so must it be, if by man 
 complete self-possession, the highest self-posses- 
 sion, the complete equilibrium of all his powers, 
 is ever gained. It will be through the upward 
 look! 
 
 And moreover, now, it will not be a light task 
 that he has before him. It will be a difficult 
 task. Perilous, oftentimes, has been man's 
 journey upward thus far. Yet a mighty goal 
 has ever beckoned him on, — and the prize has 
 seemed worth the race. In labors, in severest 
 toils, he has been abundant ; in stripes above 
 measure, in disappointments more frequent, in 
 deaths oft. Myriads of times he has been beaten 
 by Nature's rods — Nature has often seemed not 
 to care for him overmuch. Often she has stoned 
 him, often she has poisoned him, and stung him 
 with serpents. And so will it be for many seasons 
 yet. Thousands of times man has suffered ship- 
 wreck, millions of days and nights he has been 
 in the deep. In journeyings often, in perils of 
 waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own 
 
86 Equilibrium. 
 
 world-fellows, in perils in cities, in perils in the 
 wilderness ; in weariness and painfulness, in 
 watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings 
 often, in cold and nakedness, — this has been his 
 lot. Through all this he has passed. Yet he has 
 been ever courageous, and has ever progressed, 
 has ever kept his face towards the sky, his gaze 
 on the stars, his mind on knowledge, his heart 
 on good. Till we see him where he is to-day. 
 Through thousands on thousands of years he has 
 been seeking Equilibrium — mental, and moral, 
 and spiritual equilibrium ; has been fighting the 
 low things around him and in him, and seeking 
 the high things. And now, — now, in this age, — 
 a hundred evil demons vanquished, a hundred 
 hold-backs and superstitions forever past, — he is 
 coming to where he shall find equilibrium. And 
 to where, having found it, he shall perfect it. 
 
 How ! How ! We all are interested here. 
 How is it that man now, at last, shall really find 
 that which so long he has sought, and, having 
 found it, perfect it ? 
 
 I say again, it shall not be done easily. The 
 movement towards equilibrium was not begun 
 easily — we know that. It has not been approxi- 
 mated easily — we have seen that. Then shall its 
 fruition not be easy either — we may be very 
 confident of that. Harden your muscles, there- 
 fore, friends, and make stout your hearts and 
 your wills. For, if you are men, you must take 
 part in this conflict, — you must not shirk your 
 share in it. 
 
 And the victory is sure. We have encourage- 
 ment. Here and there, in every age, some few 
 men have risen, who have well been able to say 
 to us, "Not only from our study, our knowledge 
 of humanity's past history, as a whole ; not only 
 from our limited observation of the life-struggles 
 of other individual men and women, but out of 
 our own wearying and painful, yet ever hopeful 
 
Equilibrium. 87 
 
 experience, we can say this to all of you, our 
 fellows : ' Harden your muscles,' and so on ; and 
 can tell you that the task before humanity, in the 
 matter in hand, is not an easy one, and yet that, 
 victory is sure" 
 
 But tell me, friends, what you think of it ! you 
 who, when you would do good, find evil ever 
 present with you, — tell me ! You who know that 
 the price of all true attainment in life is ceaseless 
 activity, yet find yourselves slothful, and easily 
 disposed to put duty off, — tell me ! You who 
 know that every soul that reaches an exalted 
 height of being does so through the constant 
 presence and nurture of a lofty zeal and ambi- 
 tion, and yet feel that for the attainment of high 
 ideals you have not the persistent will, — tell me ! 
 You who know that serenity of spirit under trial, 
 and the manful endurance of evil and of tempta- 
 tion, are necessary to true beauty of life, and yet 
 find yourselves peevish and cross-grained and 
 easily in despair, — tell me ! You who know the 
 purity of heart and of life, the putting away of 
 evil thoughts and the successful combating of 
 evil promptings, that are necessary to perfect 
 standards of soul, and even to perfect health of 
 body, and yet who find yourselves, how often ! 
 harboring impure thoughts and giving way to 
 petty vices, and meeting, both in soul, and in 
 nerve, bone, and marrow, the sting that follows 
 broken law, — tell me ! You who know the value 
 of time, and how every moment should be made 
 to count, and yet so often waste hours and days, 
 — tell me ! You who know the loyal example of 
 honesty, generosity and sobriety which every 
 true man should set in the sight of his fellows, 
 yet allow yourselves to perpetrate meannesses 
 and be cowardly rather than courageous in the 
 presence of truth and goodness, — tell me ! You 
 who know all the hundred and the thousand 
 right demands and necessities which fall upon 
 
88 Equilibrium. 
 
 you as men and women, in every department of 
 life, and which, if you are true and loyal to your 
 ideal, you know you must bravely meet and 
 determinedly fulfill,— yet find yourselves weak 
 and vacillating and easily put to rout and even 
 to despairing night, — you tell me ! Do you think 
 that the attainment of perfect equilibrium in 
 heart and soul and mind on the part of humanity 
 as a whole is any light thing ? is to be an easy 
 thing ? 
 
 No, we must recognize the fact ! It is not to 
 be an easy thing. It is to be a very difficult 
 thing. But perfect Equilibrium must sometime 
 be gained, or true peace, true harmony and sym- 
 metry will never be man's lot. We can not 
 emphasize this truth too often or too much, even 
 while recognizing the immensity of the problem. 
 But the prize is still worth the race. It will 
 indeed be a matter to tax every man's strength 
 and loyalty to the utmost. But the gain is sure. 
 It is to be a matter ten times more difficult, and 
 perhaps requiring ten times more centuries, than 
 the whole past progress of man including even 
 his struggle up from the lowest animalism 
 to that point where first he lifted his gaze to 
 heaven a conscious soul, and began to dream the 
 dreams of God, of morality, and of immortality ! 
 Because down through all these hundreds of 
 centuries during which the race has been slowly 
 stumbling up out from lowness and ignorance 
 into nobility, it has been bringing along with it, 
 together with the gradually growing spiritual, 
 together with its aspirations after the divine, 
 some remnant large or small of all the passions 
 and jealousies, and instinctive avarice, and re- 
 vengefulness, and evil appetites, of its centuries 
 of previous animalism. And all these things — 
 every evil incentive of mind and body, every 
 incentive to base, abnormal gratification, and to 
 the pampering of low appetites, — all these things 
 
Equilibrium. 89 
 
 must be brought into full, instant, active obedience 
 to the warnings of reason and the demands of 
 the will, before man stands up free, harmonious, - 
 symmetrical, — body, mind and soul all in com- 
 plete and perfect equilibrium. Thousands of 
 years of struggle are yet before the race. We 
 have to work on long lines. We can not say to 
 humanity, with a single word of miracle, "Be 
 clean!" But the great work can be done. It 
 must be done. And I know, friends, that some- 
 time it will be done. I look ahead down the 
 years, — many though they be, — and see the 
 glorious consummation ! I believe in it ! And I 
 want, in some reasonable way, to have a part in 
 it. I want you, in some reasonable way, to have 
 a part in it. "The way man has come," one 
 has well said, "points the way that he is to 
 go. And I deem he has not come, as yet, even 
 to the^ half-way house upon his upward climb." 
 Inspiring words ! 
 
 The mighty work of the developing spirit of 
 the worlds in the soul of man has by no means 
 yet reached its full. It will not have reached its 
 full until that far time — would indeed that it 
 might more speedily come than we have wise 
 grounds for hoping! — when man's every lofty 
 desire shall meet fruition in act! When soul and 
 body shall be no longer at war ; when all that is 
 low and base in man's nature shall be rooted out, 
 and the high and noble take their place ; when 
 obedience to the laws of life, and the happy com- 
 bination of all proper functions with their legiti- 
 mate gratification shall insure perfect health of 
 body and unclouded activity and tranquillity of 
 mind ; when serenity of disposition shall be with 
 men, rather than bitterness and weariness and 
 dissatisfaction ; when smiles shall take the place 
 of grief ; when men, through larger co-operation, 
 shall rest from their severer labors, from all 
 
90 . Equilibrium. 
 
 pain, from all corroding cares and weakness ; 
 when they shall hunger no more, neither thirst 
 any more ; when there shall be no more war nor 
 deceit nor oppression, — for all these things shall 
 have passed away. 
 
 I believe, friends, there will come such a time 
 as this, — though it may not be for centuries. I 
 believe the developing spirit of the universe has 
 it yet in store for men ! This has been the 
 dream of the world from earliest recorded times, 
 and it shall yet have fulfillment. Men have been 
 aiding it on, themselves, always — the leaders of 
 men have, at least, — the Moseses and the Buddhas, 
 the Zoroasters and Confuciuses, the Jesuses and 
 the Emersons, the Darwins and the Spencers. 
 And so, in a smaller way, all ministers of good, 
 all teachers of truth and progress, however 
 humble. So, too, the smallest real workers in 
 every village and city and country-town through- 
 out the world, who strive for the moral health of 
 the community, who take the great questions of 
 temperance and of social purity and of political 
 uprightness to their bosoms, and strive in any 
 rational way to solve them. So again, every 
 individual man and woman in private life is a 
 laborer too, when each strives with himself, under 
 whatever incentive, whether of religion, or 
 ethics, or simple love of the good, to make and 
 keep himself true and pure and clean, putting 
 away all impatience and covetousness, and indo- 
 lence, and evil passion, and opening the soul to 
 Truth and the Light. 
 
 May we all have strength to do well our part ! 
 May we not be discouraged at the magnitude of 
 the task. I know it seems sometimes like trying 
 to stand a pyramid on its apex — this struggle of 
 the world's leaders for the exaltation and benefit 
 of humanity in the mass. I know it seems some- 
 times like trying to plow the air — our own indi- 
 
Equilibrium. 91 
 
 vidual struggle with our own lives, our endeavor 
 to make them fair and pure and sweet. But let 
 not even this affright or dishearten us. Every 
 little helps on. And social progress — the " sal- 
 vation " of the world from evil and selfishness — 
 depends altogether upon individual progress. 
 While there is courage, moreover, there is always 
 hope. And we know that the end, both for our- 
 selves and for the world, if we are earnest, must 
 be good. We may not see the fruition — time is 
 brief and we go our way. But there shall be 
 fruition — others shall see it, and enter into it. 
 
 "Not unbelief, nor ignorance, nor doubt, 
 
 Shall keep our heaven out : 
 
 Though this, and this indeed, is present hell, — 
 
 To see afar a brighter future shine, 
 
 With light as from some hidden shrine,' ' — 
 
 and, clogged by fear or doubt, give up in despair, 
 turning ourselves only to old-time thought, or 
 else only to pitiful unbelief. Infidelity ? Atheism ? 
 Nay, the only real atheist is "he who does not 
 believe that an ideal justice and truth can conquer 
 in the world " ; the only real atheist is he, of 
 whatever religious or irreligious creed, who does 
 not believe that the universe is on the side of 
 right, and that the final outcome of things for all 
 men shall be sweet and sane. 
 
 But everything depends upon ourselves. Let 
 us strive then, friends, ourselves, henceforth, 
 each one of us, for greater approach to true self- 
 possession than we have ever before known ; for 
 greater approach to equilibrium of life ; strive for 
 patience and purity ; for full, free, complete 
 self-control, and growth, in every department of 
 our nature. So then our bodies shall no longer 
 war against our minds, nor our minds against 
 our bodies, nor our souls against either. Then, 
 our physical frames will be indeed fit temples of 
 
92 Equilibrium. 
 
 the holy spirit of life that is in them ; our minds, 
 through careful study and wise use of opportuni- 
 ties, will behold more of the truth and beauty of 
 this marvelous world in which we live ; our souls 
 will be built up in saving faith and trust. For 
 thus shall we not be afraid, nor ashamed, as men 
 and women, to lift our faces, as once our far 
 ancestors lifted theirs for the first time, towards 
 the unbounded skies, our eyes being opened 
 towards the stars, reading in them a manifesta- 
 tion of the hidden beauty and life which called 
 them, as it called us, into being, and which still, 
 pulsating in our souls as in the farthest suu, 
 invites us, too, to harmony with itself , the eternal 
 spirit of things, in which alone is peace. 
 
"The Holy Spirit." 
 
 The present age, we are accustomed to say, is 
 an age of ever-changing thought, through the 
 attainment of higher truth ; an age, too, of new, 
 scientific inspiration and enthusiasm, through the 
 presence of this truth. Yet was there, undoubt- 
 edly, in much of the older thought, however 
 hidden beneath form and phrase, an ever-present 
 "soul of truth," possessing its own inspiration 
 and engendering its own enthusiasm. What is 
 itself truth does not ever really change. Its out- 
 ward garb or expression changes. 
 
 It is a delight, oftentimes, in the present age, 
 to trace out, so far as we can, by comparison 
 with the new, the spirit of truth which inhabited 
 the old. It is something of this kind that I pro- 
 pose to do in this discourse. From the stand- 
 point of modern scientific thought I wish to speak 
 on a very old-time theme. By contrast, however, 
 rather than by comparison, the old view of our 
 subject will be seen ; I will not have opportunity, 
 in one discourse, for direct and formal compari- 
 son. I propose to speak of "The Holy Spirit." 
 And I trust that in our present, modern treat- 
 ment of the theme, much that has often 
 seemed far away and mystical to us may be 
 brought near, and proved of incentive and of 
 strength. 
 
 A divine idea ! A holy spirit ! Every noble 
 and helpful idea which takes possession of the 
 hearts of men and lifts them upward ; which 
 tends to perfect mankind, in bram, in body, in 
 spirit, is a divine idea. And the spirit in which 
 
 93 
 
94 "The Holy Spirit." 
 
 all true leaders and inspirers of men labor, and 
 have labored since the beginning of the world, is 
 a holy spirit. 
 
 Moreover, without the animating, encouraging, 
 directing influence of a great idea — an idea which 
 takes possession of heart and brain and will ; 
 which reigns supreme over the life, determining 
 every thought and act, and this extending often- 
 times over the space of many years — there never 
 yet was accomplished a magnificent work, a 
 work worthy of record as the turning point either 
 of a nation's history or of the humblest individual 
 life. Possessed by some divine, animating, all- 
 absorbing "holy spirit" men must be, or their 
 lives are insipid, stagnant, valueless, and so far 
 as is concerned a noble warfare with life's thou- 
 sand ills, or any influence for good which they 
 leave behind them, they might as well never have 
 lived. Look at the Buddha, at Jesus, at Con- 
 fucius, at Wendell Phillips — men of influence 
 age-long and great — the essential spirit of life in 
 whom must, in the nature of things, 'have influ- 
 ence over the lives of men through all the ages 
 to come. They were men possessed of a great idea. 
 A mighty thought was in the deep, peaceful heart 
 of them ; a purpose, which was all in all to them 
 throughout their lives. All in all to them ! Their 
 surroundings, their circumstances, were nothing 
 to them ! Poverty, persecution, alienation from 
 home and friends, personal indignities without 
 number — all these, if not unnoted by them, were 
 at least uncared for ; all these were as nothing — 
 if only they might pursue that idea of theirs 
 (whatever it might be), and propagate it ; if only 
 through their life and teachings, through their 
 sufferings, through their own manifest love and 
 patience and the example of their own fidelity, 
 mankind might be brought to that vision of the 
 eternally true, the eternally just, to that vision of 
 
"The Holy Spirit:' 95 
 
 life and of duty, which they had been empowered 
 to look upon. 
 
 They were possessed of a holy spirit. Their 
 power was the power of a holy spirit. And 
 through them great wonders were worked for 
 the uplifting and benefit of men. 
 
 But this spirit, or power, of theirs was not ex- 
 ceptional in kind with them, — rather was it 
 exceptional only in degree, — from the spirit for 
 good possessed by all men. Their spirit was a 
 spirit which, if educated, encouraged, and heark- 
 ened to, may be heard by every man, appointing 
 him to some great work ; if not indeed to the 
 mighty work of some great hero, at least to a life 
 of labor, of patience, of fidelity, of constant hope. 
 
 Ponder, a moment, the different manner in 
 which the spirit which was in them has affected 
 a few others of the world's leaders. The spirit 
 which was in them is a spirit which inspires 
 different men to different work. It appointed 
 Abraham to leave the land and the home, and 
 the Gods, of his fathers, and go forth he knew 
 not whither — though to the founding, as it 
 proved, of a new and influential nation. It 
 appointed Moses to the leadership of Israel in its 
 migration from Egypt. It appointed Galileo to 
 scan the heavens and discover something of the 
 stellar verities, and the rotundity and motion of 
 the earth. It appointed Luther to his battle with 
 the hierarchy, and his victory over the church in 
 favor of independent thought. It appointed 
 Columbus to discover a new world, and Wash- 
 ington and Paine to save that newly discovered 
 country from the unjust demands of an older 
 and mightier people. It appointed Theodore 
 Parker to his work in freeing true religion from 
 the usurpation of forms and creeds. It appointed 
 Sir Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin, and a 
 host of living writers whom we might name, to 
 their great work in solving the mystery of the 
 
96 "The Holy Spirit." 
 
 age and formation of the earth and the origin of 
 the different forms of life inhabiting the globe, — 
 giving men new incentive to faithful living and 
 constant upward struggle. And so on. In all 
 these cases it was the same holy spirit at work 
 which appointed the man Jesus and the man 
 Gautama and the man Phillips to their forceful 
 life-work, — the preaching of a truer gospel to the 
 poor (as was the case with all of them), the 
 healing of the broken-hearted, the preaching of 
 deliverance to all captives, of recovery of sight to 
 the morally blind, the setting at liberty them 
 that are bruised, the preaching of the acceptable 
 year of humanity. 
 
 The power which dwelt in Jesus and Confucius 
 and Isaiah and Phillips and Emerson, and the 
 rest, was not an exceptional power, not an exclu- 
 sive power, but one possible to all. As Jesus 
 himself is reported once to have said to his 
 disciples, and, through them, to the world for all 
 time, " Ye shall receive power," — power like 
 unto his own ; power greater than his own, 
 indeed; for, " Greater works than these of mine 
 shall ye do," he hinted to them on another occa- 
 sion, " since I go away." As if he had said, 
 "Notwithstanding the high place, my disciples, 
 to which you would exalt me in this new work 
 in behalf of men, I have made only a beginning, 
 and you will acid to what I have done." And on 
 the first occasion of which I spoke he told them 
 how, as I began to quote : " Ye shall receive 
 power," he said to them, — power to go forward 
 with this new gospel of peace and good-will, — 
 "after that the holy spirit is come upon you." 
 The holy spirit, that is (as I understand him to 
 have meant), really to continue his work ; the 
 divine desire and impulse to seek truth, and to 
 pursue it, as he had done ; to search out the 
 origin and meaning of life ; to raise the fallen, 
 cheer the blind, reach out a hand to those lower 
 
"The Holy Spirit." 97 
 
 clown. In a word, the holy spirit which should 
 inspire his followers to lift up the world. This 
 was the spirit which animated Jesus himself, and 
 which animated every true soul who, during all 
 the history of mankind, has labored to educate 
 and elevate the world, to give nobler ideas of 
 life, to point men to a higher destiny, to combine 
 the sympathies of men in all nations, cause wars 
 and social injustice to cease, bring light out of 
 darkness and joy out of sorrow. The holy spirit 
 which animated them all was the natural spirit of 
 humanity at its best. 
 
 Humanity's natural spirit was it, I say. There 
 was nothing about it that was supernatural. 
 And yet, at the same time, it was divine. The 
 natural, at its best, is always the divine. 
 
 I said, in beginning, — Every noble and helpful 
 idea which takes possession of the hearts of men 
 and lifts them upward ; which tends to perfect 
 mankind, in brain, in body, in spirit, is a divine 
 idea ; and the spirit in which all true leaders and 
 inspirers of men labor and have labored since 
 the beginning of the world is a holy spirit. In 
 the view of modern science the universe is perme- 
 ated by a progressive influence ; a " holy spirit " 
 (we may safely dare call it) of truth and Tight- 
 ness; a tendency, name it what we will, of in- 
 creasing perfection. It pervades the stars in 
 their orbits, the lily in the field, the vine on the 
 tree, the tree itself. And it pervades man. And 
 in planet and lily and vine and tree and man it 
 is essentially one and the same. The holy spirit 
 which was in Jesus and all other leaders of men 
 was this holy spirit ; which to a certain extent is 
 in you and me is this. 
 
 And this holy spirit is divine, did I say ? It is 
 the All-in-all in man ! It is the developing spirit 
 of the universe ! the upward-reaching, outward 
 reaching, onward-reaching power, or faculty, or 
 energy, dwelling everywhere, — dwelling in us 
 
98 "The Holy Spirit:' 
 
 and in all things, — and making, eternally, towards 
 truth and Tightness and progress. It is science's 
 noblest word to the modern world that this is 
 "the spirit of the eternal, that giveth under- 
 standing" ! 
 
 "A subtle chain of countless rings 
 The nearest to the farthest brings ; 
 The eye reads omens where it goes, 
 And speaks all languages the rose ; 
 And, striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form." 
 
 And every good work of man, — whether victory 
 over sin and ignorance, whether the granting of 
 liberty to a people enslaved, whether the discov- 
 ery of a new planet or a new continent, or the 
 invention of a sewing-machine, or the writing of 
 a helpful book, or the raising of a fine crop of 
 wheat, or the faithful performance of our own 
 little duties from day to day, — all these, so far as 
 they tend to the life and growth and true progress 
 of ourselves and of the world, are inspired by 
 one and the same holy spirit. 
 
 "There is no great, and no small, 
 To the soul that maketh all ; 
 And where it cometh, all things are ; 
 And it cometh everywhere." 
 
 Pervading the universe in all its vast extent is 
 the developing, upholding, animating spirit 
 which is the energy of the visible worlds and of 
 all they contain ; the power out of which we, you 
 and I, have come, body and mind, and of which 
 we are a part. To be in perfect accord with this 
 spirit of power which fills the universe is perfect 
 existence for every atom which goes to make up 
 the throbbing worlds. To be in perfect accord 
 with this spirit of life is perfect existence for 
 everything that has breath — is ' ' true communion " 
 with the universe's " holy spirit." To be out of 
 
"The Holy Spirit:' 99 
 
 harmony with this spirit of life and power is ruin 
 and disaster, pain and death. For the planet 
 which should swerve a hair's breadth from its 
 appointed course, utter ruin, complete extermi- 
 nation. For the human being who ignores the 
 laws of life, ruin no less, and finally, if the 
 inharmony continues, physical extermination as 
 complete. For the bird which, flying over the 
 sea, weights its beak and its talons with carrion, 
 or droops its wings and ceases with steady and 
 tireless blows to beat the air, death in the wave 
 below. For the spirit in human guise, which, 
 floating in the universe of spirit which envelops 
 it, over- weights itself with carnal pleasures or 
 ceases to struggle ever upward, ceases to expand 
 itself, or is content to droop its pinions, perhaps 
 even to dive willfully downward, disaster no less 
 sure and certain. 
 
 Happily for us and for all things, however, the 
 universe is more than permeated by this holy 
 spirit of life and power. Every atom in every 
 star thrills responsive to the energy which devel- 
 oped it, and answers unerringly to the call which 
 continues to animate it. Eight years before her 
 last transit across the face of the sun, — one 
 hundred and five years before the transit imme- 
 diately preceding the last, — astronomers foretold 
 the hour and the second when men might look 
 into the heavens and behold the black circle of 
 Venus upon the glowing disc of the sun. And at 
 the very second prophesied we who looked saw 
 the planet in her place. No human eye which 
 beheld this sight last December* will ever look 
 upon it again ; but those who come after us, and 
 who look upward one hundred and twenty-one 
 years hence, on the 7th of June, 2004, at the hour 
 and second next again prophesied, will see the 
 
 * December of 1882. This discourse was first delivered (in 
 Rhode Island) in February of 1883. 
 
100 "The Holy Spirit." 
 
 planet again at her post. And not a minute 
 before that, and not a minute later. There are 
 comets which have sprung upon the sight of men 
 only to vanish again quickly, whose next coming, 
 it is estimated, will be thousands of years hence. 
 But they will come at their appointed time. 
 
 This responsive action, as I have called it, on 
 the part of all things, to the power which devel- 
 oped and controls them, is seen everywhere. 
 Water does not run up hill, nor does smoke settle 
 in the valleys ; the one flows downward, the other 
 ascends. Light and moisture from above, and 
 the rich nourishment of the forces within the 
 ground beneath, are necessary to the growth of 
 the flower and the tree ; and the growing plant 
 or sapling reaches upward its leaves and limbs to 
 take the sunlight and the dew, and sends its roots 
 downward into the soil. The roots do not grow 
 upward nor the leaves and branches downward. 
 Constrained by the calls of hunger, only by the 
 satisfaction of which it can continue to live, the 
 lion seeks its prey. So with all the lower animals 
 — and so with man. 
 
 So with man ! The developing spirit is Life. 
 Coming into this Life, and accepting it, and 
 striving to under starid themselves and their en- 
 vironment, — impelled, indeed, to understand these 
 things, by the structure of their being and their 
 necessities, — men discover the way of continued 
 existence and the path of progress. And they 
 discover, moreover, that if they walk in the ap- 
 pointed way, — that is, if they put themselves in 
 unison with the environment of highest Nature 
 about and in them, — live in the highest, truest 
 and best accord and communion with Nature, — 
 they find health and peace. 
 
 This discovery of the Way of Life is not some- 
 thing instantaneous, — it is a gradual discovery ; 
 gradual in the case of individual men, and 
 especially in the case of mankind as a whole. 
 
"The Holy Spirit:' 101 
 
 But it ever goes on. Men have been thousands 
 of years, scores on scores of thousands of years, 
 in the process of this discovery. And it is only 
 in these later times that the duty of men towards 
 themselves, the duty of men in their own behalf, 
 in the relation which they bear to the great spirit 
 of life which fills the universe, is coming to be 
 well understood. This divine spirit of life doesn't 
 do everything. It requires co-operation. And 
 men at iast are beginning vividly to realize that 
 they must indeed work out their own salvation, 
 bodily and spiritual. Moreover, just so far as 
 they do this, — just so far as men are fortunate 
 and hajDpy enough to learn or discover the laws 
 of a prosperous and healthy life, bodily and 
 mental, and put themselves in accord with these 
 laws, just so far have they grand and sufficient 
 reason, grander and more sufficient reason than 
 ever before, to look upon the mighty Mystery of 
 Being out of which they have come — the over- 
 brooding spirit of the universe on which they 
 are dependent every moment of their lives — as 
 helper, protector, friend. Whereas, ignorant of 
 the pathway, or refusing to walk in it, men come 
 upon disease and suffering, meet poverty and 
 misfortune, are unjust to each other ; — where- 
 upon, in the unfortunate disguise of gods and 
 ghosts, with which disguise misapprehending 
 men have personified them, the varying manifes- 
 tations of the infinite spirit of life meet con- 
 tumely ! Men foolishly deny, and even curse, the 
 false fdeal of deity they themselves have set up, 
 for not being what a real, law-abiding deity could 
 never be, and think they have denied the eternal 
 life-spirit ! Or their icleal, still personalized, is 
 feared as an enemy, as a taskmaster, and deemed 
 heartless and cruel. 
 
 Now, this, friends, manifestly, is the state of 
 things in this universe. Manifestly, throughout 
 the universe, there is the divine, progressive influ- 
 
102 u The Holy Spirit." 
 
 ence of which I have spoken : the history of the 
 world proves it. If it is not what men ignorantly 
 may have deemed it, still it is. That it has its 
 dwelling also in men, and is drawing men 
 towards perfection — towards "righteousness" — 
 the history of the world proves also. And by 
 " righteousness " I mean Tightness. And not 
 u spiritual " Tightness only — religion has not to 
 do with the soul alone, but with the whole man ! 
 Not spiritual Tightness alone, but physical Tight- 
 ness, — bodily Tightness, that is, — and moral Tight- 
 ness. Brightness of total existence ! 
 
 For, just as the planet, as we have seen, is 
 influenced to a perfect unison with its call to 
 sweep through the eternal orbits ; just as the tree 
 and the flower are influenced, by the environ- 
 ment of Nature about them, to a perfect unison 
 with that environment, and could not exist other- 
 wise, — so surrounding man is there likewise an 
 "environment" (so to speak), a series of persist- 
 ently encircling influences, which forever creates 
 in him — not in any supernatural way, not in any 
 subternatural or preternatural or unnatural way, 
 but which forever creates in him, by the recognized 
 necessities of his highest and best existence, that 
 tendency which the ages have long since proved 
 is inherent in him : a tendency whereby, in all 
 times and in all nations, under many and varying 
 conditions, he has been urged to put himself in 
 accord with the universe, — in accord with the uni- 
 verse's physical and moral and spiritual forces : 
 which is at the same time to put himself in accord 
 with the infinite spirit of life and of power which 
 is our source and our goal. 
 
 To this end, — that men might come into this 
 true communion with the eternal spirit of life as 
 he saw it, — Jesus, after his own manner, labored. 
 To this end, as they saw it and after other manners, 
 consciously or unconsciously, labored Gautama 
 the Buddha, and Mohammed, and every other of 
 
"The Holy Spirit." 103 
 
 the sincere prophets and heroes of all time. To 
 this end labor to-day, with earnest, loyal, sym- 
 pathetic sonls, all of the sincere and reverent 
 ones, even among the so-called sceptics, the so- 
 called agnostics, the men of science and the up- 
 holders of ethical-culture, — who are searching 
 out what they honestly deem the true life-spirit ; 
 who are disproving what they consider super- 
 stitions and fallacies concerning "God" and the 
 universe ; and who are laboring to make life truer 
 and nobler and sweeter and better and higher by 
 telling men how they may rise, how they may gain 
 health and beauty and comfort and happiness, 
 how they may best elevate themselves, and how 
 elevate mankind as a whole. And all these — 
 from Abraham, who sought * 'God ' ' in the best way 
 he knew, down through Moses and Jesus and 
 Gautama, and Darwin and Spencer and all the 
 rest, — all these have been and are filled with one 
 and the same "holy spirit" — the holy spirit of the 
 universe's progressive life-force. 
 
 "Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line 
 Rightly severing that from thine, 
 Which is human, which divine." 
 
 Now, two things in conclusion, very briefly: 
 I. First, concerning this present life in its 
 material aspects. 
 
 If this is the true "holy spirit," and if we 
 become possessed of and animated by this spirit 
 (as we certainly do) the moment we strive to put 
 ourselves in accord with it and with its laws as I 
 have endeavored to interpret it and its laws, then 
 the sooner we endeavor — the sooner mankind as a 
 race endeavors — towards the attainment of this 
 end, the sooner we individually, and the sooner 
 mankind as a race, will "have power." The 
 sooner will there be increased health and happi- 
 ness in this life here on earth ; the greater cer- 
 tainty men will have of leaving to their children 
 
104 "The Holy Spirit." 
 
 a legacy of health and happiness, thus doing 
 something to make the world brighter and better, 
 tending to relieve mankind from the woes — the 
 poverty, the pain and the sorrow — which come 
 from disease, from the manifold weaknesses of 
 the body induced through ignorance, carelessness, 
 licentiousness, intemperance and over-work. In 
 a word, the sooner will the true Commonwealth 
 of Light and Beauty come on earth, and peace, 
 plenty and blessing have their home in human 
 lives, all men helping each other as brothers. We 
 shall ' ' receive power after that the holy spirit is 
 come upon us." 
 
 When a boy, in the church, I used often to 
 wonder — and met others, thinking people, who 
 wondered — that religion should be so " easy " a 
 thing; that "salvation," so far as man is con- 
 cerned, is something of mere receptivity, some- 
 thing merely passive. ~No true man or woman 
 wants something for nothing, or for a mere 
 "thank-you." That which we deserve; that 
 which we acquire ; that which, by favoring cir- 
 cumstances, we are enabled to earn, however 
 bitter or sorrowful the means, — that is truly ours, 
 and that is worth something to us. There is no 
 "salvation" in the mere mental acceptance of 
 the fact of the existence of a "God," or of a 
 supernatural " saviour," nor in merely calling 
 upon their names. From many sources, which 
 may well be called divine, we indeed have inspira- 
 tion to good works, to purity, to perfection. But 
 only so far as we manfully fight, struggling ever 
 towards purity and perfection, are we "saved." 
 And no man ever yet in this world was com- 
 pletely saved. We all are in process of salvation. 
 And " we have power after that the holy spirit is 
 come upon us," — the holy spirit, the divine desire 
 and impulse, to strive, ever, to enter into com- 
 plete communion with the universe, and with that 
 force which is our life. 
 
11 The Holy Spirit: ' 105 
 
 II. Secondly and lastly, concerning the pres- 
 ent life in its spiritual aspects. 
 
 If this is the true holy spirit, we have, in con- 
 templation of it, and by putting ourselves in true 
 communion with it, abundant encouragement 
 and inspiration for our souls. 
 
 The mighty spirit out of which we have come, 
 of which we are a part, and which one day will 
 receive us back to itself — which already has 
 received back to itself so many of our dear ones 
 — is a spirit of goodness, of tenderness, of help- 
 fulness, towards all who are in accord with it. 
 True, the goodness and the tenderness of the 
 universe are mingled at times with apparent 
 harshness ; with a bitter severity which we can- 
 not understand. But while we note — when con- 
 sidered by long reaches — the constant progress of 
 the world ; the evolution in mind and morals 
 which, counting not by years, perhaps, but 
 counting by centuries, by epochs, unceasingly 
 goes on, marking the ever upward growth of 
 men ; while we note about us the lavish life and 
 beauty which runs up and down so many merid- 
 ians of the globe and blossoms along so many 
 parallels ; when we look upward at the expanse 
 of the heavens, with its ten thousand worlds and 
 systems of worlds, and note the order and beauty 
 there — knowing as we do the chaos and compara- 
 tive nothingness of the original mighty nebula 
 from which all this has been evolved ; above all, 
 when we look into our own souls, and note the 
 grandeur, the mystery, the infinite possibilities 
 which there exist, — into our souls, never satisfied 
 with present attainment, looking always ahead 
 to something more and better, believing always 
 in something more and better : when we consider 
 all this, and ponder it well, we are confident — 
 confident enough to at least dream of a mighty 
 future before us, a future of peace, of progress, 
 of labor, of attainment. And we trust ! We 
 
106 "The Holy Spirit." 
 
 trust ! Notwithstanding the doubt and the dark- 
 ness, notwithstanding the pain and the suffering, 
 notwithstauding our own weakness and ignor- 
 ance and pettiness and frivolity, we trust ! 
 
 " trust that somehow good 
 
 Will be the final goal of ill, 
 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
 
 Defects of doubt and taints of blood." 
 
 And while we know that now and here and for- 
 ever we receive life and power, and shall con- 
 tinue to receive life and power, in the exact 
 degree in which we are in accord with the 
 infinite spirit of life and power which fills the 
 universe, — a spirit which forever (in the general 
 if indeed not always in the particular) rebukes 
 all wrong and blesses all right, — a spirit which, 
 manifestly, even to our narrow, finite ken, is 
 forever drawing all men nearer and nearer to 
 what we dream of as perfection, — we are encour- 
 aged to go on bravely, in faith and in hope. 
 
 I, at least, for one, am willing, with the poet 
 Whittier, to 
 
 " trust that he [or it] which heeds 
 
 The life that hides in mead and wold, 
 
 Which hangs yon alder's crimson beads 
 And stains these mosses green and gold, 
 Will still, as it hath done, incline 
 Its gracious care to me and mine, 
 Grant what we seek aright, from wrong debar, 
 And as the earth grows dark, make brighter 
 every star." 
 
 But, as I have endeavored to say before,— as I 
 have endeavored to suggest all through this dis- 
 course, — man himself must work. 
 
 Here are all beneficent forces. Here is the 
 eternal life-breath of the universe ever around us 
 and within us— Is it not written in your law, " I 
 said, Ye are Qods"? Here are all things for our 
 
"The Holy Spirit: 1 107 
 
 physical and mental and moral and spiritual 
 growth. One thing only is needful : that in us 
 may be born the sublime desire and purpose to 
 manifest our human divinity ! To live, as we 
 should, aright. To make ourselves a providence 
 to ourselves, and to our fellows. To build up, 
 here and now, on earth, a noble and a lofty 
 heaven, — a heaven of labor and faithful inquiry ; 
 a heaven of ever new attainment ; a heaven of 
 universal good-will, of unremitting love and 
 endeavor in behalf of an ideal humanity. And 
 truly, with such thought as this of a "holy spirit," 
 with such belief as this, if we put our thought 
 and belief into helpful act, there will come to us 
 blessing and helpfulness and peace. While if we 
 act not, — if we think and study and plan and 
 struggle not, — then are our belief and our preach- 
 ing vain, and we are yet in our sins. 
 
©tyer IDritmgs by VTiv. VOzst 
 
 UPLIFTS OF HEART AND WILL: A Series 
 of Religious Meditations or Aspirations, ad- 
 dressed to Earnest Men and Women. Cloth, 
 square 18mo., beveled edges. Price, postpaid, 50 
 
 cents. 
 
 PRESS NOTICES. 
 
 "On purely rational grounds it is not easy to meet the 
 position [of this little book] , except by saying that the words 
 and forms of our [usual] devotion must be accepted as 
 frankly symbolic, and not amenable to the understanding. 
 * * It is good to welcome a religious science better than 
 the old hard bigotry. Still, while we by no means accept 
 these 'Uplifts' as a necessary or adequate substitute for 
 the customary exercises of devotion, they are at least better 
 fitted than the ordinary practice to a state of mind far from 
 uncommon, and greatly deserving of respect. ,, — From a 
 seven-page notice in the Unitarian Review. 
 
 "A man of gifts and graces making an effort to get out of 
 the old and worn-out way of petitioning for special things 'to 
 a deity supposed to deal in special providences. Heartfelt 
 and choicely worded, the book is the reaching out for more 
 life and light of an earnest m& i D..' n —Beligio-Philosophical 
 Journal. 
 
 "The outpourings of a soul deeply religious in the best 
 sense, but suspicious of forms. Truly beautiful invocations. 
 The volume contains the strongest possible testimony to the 
 indestructibility of the religious sentiment. The poems at 
 the end are also full to overflowing with noble feeling. This 
 volume is one of the many assurances that the liberal church 
 will fast enough gather poetry, music and art, to invest its 
 nobler thought.' —Neiv Theology Herald. 
 
 "Finely named, and an inspiring book, though a most 
 peculiar one. While it especially asserts that it is addressed 
 to earnest men and women, and to no deity, yet the worship 
 of the ideal good breathes through every line. And the 
 poems take one by the hand and lead him up ; some of 
 them are lofty and sublime." — The Patrol. 
 
 "Avery earnest book, religious, worshipful. A book of 
 prayers without the ' Our Father,' or the ' Thou.' Full of a 
 happy sense of Nature's beauty and bounty. One unceasing 
 aspiration towards the 'Moral Ideal,' the 'Blessed Best.' 
 And not a prayer in it which does not strengthen one's hand- 
 clasp with men and women, and especially with those who 
 
sorrow, or voice the longing to be in some way a world- 
 helper. * * We take it that the man who cares to formu- 
 late and print such prayers, devoid of pronouns as they are, 
 must be a deeper worshiper than most of us."— From a two- 
 column review in Unity. 
 
 " Nobody will feel himself the poorer, or the more restless 
 or perturbed, for often looking into its pages. It is full of 
 an earnest endeavor to do good and make the world more 
 serious and thoughtful."— Chicago Evening Journal. 
 
 PERSONAL EXPRESSIONS. 
 
 An aged man, a physician,— of whom we know nothing 
 except that he ordered a copy of the book,— writes : " I have 
 read with delight the little book, ' Uplifts of Heart and Will.' 
 I am now nearly 62 years of age, and have lived a lonely life 
 as regards the satisfying of my liberal religious aspirations. 
 Your little book fills a void in my soul's loneliness which I 
 have suffered for more than 40 years." 
 
 From a Universalist : " The book is very sweet and tender. 
 I should call the ' Uplifts ' prayers ; they need but a change 
 of address to make them such. * * *I rejoice in all evi- 
 dences of spiritual communion and growth, and realize that 
 we strive toward the same results, however our methods 
 differ." 
 
 An ex-minister (Methodist) writes : "I am 71 years of age, 
 and an ex-preacher. I have been reading your ' Uplifts of 
 Heart and Will,' and I have never seen anything that pleased 
 me better." 
 
 Another : " They are indeed ' Uplifts.' " 
 
 One of the most earnest of modern woman workers says of 
 the book: "The 'Uplifts' have arrived, and I feel that I 
 deeply appreciate them, and the world's present need of 
 such. I shall use them in my Sunday services alternately 
 with Conway's and Stebbins' excellent selections." 
 
 From an orthodox lady: "The book of 'Uplifts ' is origi- 
 nal, certainly; and it says a great deal in a few words. I 
 like it very much, and read it every day with my old- 
 fashioned Bible." 
 
 From a scientific thinker and author: "I have had for 
 some time a copy of your 'Uplifts of Heart and Will.' 
 Whenever I look at it or into it, I am uplifted." 
 
 From a Unitarian minister: "I hail the 'Uplifts' as a 
 good sign,— another step out into the free, where we must be 
 content to let all consecrated thinking go." 
 
 From a liberal thinker: "I am well pleased with the 
 ' Uplifts,' and especially because they come near to my own 
 spirit's workings, when I have felt as if I stood alone." 
 
 One writes direct to the author: "Mrs. L wished me to 
 
 tell you how much your little book grows upon her. At first, 
 she said, she missed something in it, but found it was only 
 the old phraseology, and the more she read it the more she 
 enjoyed it, and she should always keep it near her." 
 
VOICES OF YOUTH: ''Holiday Idlesse, and 
 other Poems." New Red-Line Edition. Il- 
 lustrated. Printed on heavy paper, with extra 
 wide margins. Handsomely bound in appro- 
 priately pictured covers illustrating the title- 
 poem. Large square 12mo, 252 pages. Price, 
 postpaid, $1.00. 
 
 "Attractive, tasteful, elegant,— a beautiful gift-book. 
 And its contents cannot fail to please the lovers of verse of 
 the genuine sort. Mr.West is more than a verse-maker ; his 
 poems are full of thought and aspiration."— Worcester Spy. 
 
 "Mr. West has undoubted poetic conceptions and sym- 
 pathies. In much of his verse he shows himself to be a 
 genuine interpreter. His expression is often a fine instru- 
 ment ; melodious, imaginative and vital. Even where one 
 notes an imperfection of form, a fine thought or a beautiful 
 fancy redeems the fault."— Christian Union. 
 
 "We can hardly imagine anything neater. The very 
 sight begets a warm desire to peruse it. And the cultivated 
 reader will not be disappointed. The contents are eminently 
 worthy of their artistically beautiful dress. We commend 
 this beautiful volume."— Boston Home Journal. 
 
 "He manifests a somewhat rare degree of poetic ability, 
 which is also of fine and true quality. His poems rank 
 easily in the higher grade of those published in these days." 
 — Congregationalist. 
 
 "Externally, nothing has been spared to make the volume 
 attractive. Internally, the book is worthy of the tasteful 
 frame-work— the poems are of an unusual order of merit, 
 strong in expression and full of fine feeling. They will win 
 their way to appreciation."— Providence Journal. 
 
 "As works of art these poems stand among the most 
 marked and promising of any which have been essayed by a 
 youthful writer in this or the Old World. They are the crea- 
 tions of a true poet."— Christian Leader. 
 
 HYMNS LOOKING ONWARD, INWARD, UP- 
 WARD. "Valuable as a collection of untheo- 
 logical religious verse, even when not intended 
 to be sung." Single copy, postpaid, 10 cents. 
 More than ten copies, 5 cents each. 
 
 "A pamphlet of Forty -Two Hymns, collected and arranged 
 by James H. West. Older collections of church hymns 
 furnishing little that he could use consistently with modern 
 rational religious thought, this thin pamphlet was printed 
 for temporary use, to serve until something larger and better 
 should be demanded by a growing consistency on the part of 
 liberals as a whole. These hymns are of human hope and 
 
human endeavor, and are valuable as a collection of un- 
 theological religious verse, even when not intended to be 
 sung."— Index. 
 
 Says the poet Longfellow: "In the elder days of the 
 Church, when the Presbyter invested with his singing robes 
 the Psalmista, he said to him : \ See that what thou singest 
 with thy mouth thou believest also in thy heart, and that 
 what thou believest in thy heart thou confirmest also in thy 
 life.' " Not a bad text for a discourse on Church Singing. 
 Compilers of hymn-books, too, might find here something to 
 be regarded.— Unity. 
 
 THE WORK OF A TRUE CHURCH. A paper 
 
 devoted to a consideration of the needs of 
 
 Humanity in the modern world. Pamphlet. 
 
 Single copy, 6 cents. 
 
 " When such an earnest utterance is made on this business 
 as is contained in the pamphlet before us, it is well worth 
 while, we think, to call attention to it and increase its circu- 
 lation ."— Unity . 
 
 < < THE DIVINE SA TISFACTION." A Discourse 
 developing the modern scientific idea of Sin, 
 Atonement and Man's possible earthly Future. 
 
 In Unity form. Single copy, 5 cents. 
 
 " Whatever methods a writer of Mr. West's spirit may 
 assist in formulating, they will be charged with earnestness. 
 At the present moment nothing seems so essential. If we 
 can have genuine earnestness, however variant the points of 
 speculative belief, or the outward administration; if we can 
 have indeed the ' Church of Human Help,' changing those 
 who belong to it into true men and women, the interests of 
 religion will be safe."— J". C. Learned, in Unity. 
 
 KALLIGO: A POEM. A forty-page Broc hure, 
 bound in illuminated cards, with two Illustra- 
 tions and Proem. A Tale of the Florida Ever- 
 glades. Red-Lined. Price, postpaid, 25 cents. 
 
 u Excellent verse, of a very genuine sort,— full of poetic 
 suggestiveness, aspiration, and the glow of true feeling. * * 
 Unusually clear in outline and strong in expression."— 
 Christian Union. 
 
 "The poems of Mr. West are more than entertaining, they 
 are helpful. His grasp upon familiar objects, and a faculty 
 of voicing poetic thought concerning them, give a real 
 pleasure."— Advocate. 
 
 *** Any of the foregoing sent postpaid, on receipt of price, 
 by CHARLES H. KERR & CO., Publishers, 175 Dearborn 
 Street, Chicago. 
 
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