cess follows any form of civilization only as it rests on justice and virtue; because the powers which make and maintain nations are ideas, virtues, and the degree of brotherhood which the national ideal permits men to attain. We need no legend of supernatural pestilence or fire from heaven to prove that the only strength of the nation is in righteousness. All history becomes moral and prophetic. It is the world's Bible, full of warning, judgment, and hope.

Still more does the "discovery of Man," which is the achievement of philosophy, affect religious thought. The study of the laws of thought, of the mystery of the soul and conscience,—this profound and systematic self-knowledge after which the philosophers strive, does it not show that the crowning miracle of the world is not above the heavens, nor in the deep, but simply in our human lives? In this power to think and know, in the sentiment of duty and the exaltation of a loving heart, we are in daily participation of a wonder, a miracle, a mystery, compared to which all "fables of the Alcoran or the Talmud" are trifles. To any thinking man, his power to say, "I live, I reason, I love the right and hate the wrong, I receive life from God," is a fact so unfathomable, that he need conjure no creed or theologian to invent mysteries of faith, lest God's world. should not seem sufficiently wonderful.

For my part, I want no better evidence that the divine mind exists, than the response of the world to my human reason, than the harmony of my tiny faculties with the law of life and truth, which sustains the

stars in such a manner that gravitation swings by rhythms which I understand. That my eye, mind,

and heart are so much at home in this universe of ours, is to me sufficient proof that, since the same Power made the world and me; made light and made the eye; produced the universal order and also the reasoning mind that calls it so: this all-embracing Creator includes intelligence in his being. The human soul, and the so-called material order, are parts of one spiritual organism, proceed from one source, from God.

The conclusion of religious philosophy seems to be that man's reasonable and spiritual nature both share the divine reason and the universal spirit; and that the finite is vouched for by the infinite. We trust our finite reason because God is reasonable; and we honor the moral sentiment, because it reveals an Eternal and Divine Will as authority over ours.

I have said all this, perhaps too little clearly, because we often forget that the so-called "liberal theology" is not the product or the opinion of solitary thinkers, but the slow outgrowth of the whole intellectual life of Europe for the past four centuries. Every denial, every affirmation, is allied with some assured result of the many-sided intellectual life of our time. Science, history, philosophy, art, literature, and political thought, are elements in that new interpretation of religion, which is rising into consciousness among thoughtful minds in the churches of to-day. Religion is to live no longer in a cloister, but in open communication with all the thoughts of men.

Let us be grateful that we live in such a time of fruitful harvesting, when men are binding up the sheaves of truth from many fields, and casting the chaff away. It is a great privilege to live when new light and higher faith are being won, when the power of religion is deepening, broadening as it is to-day, and the claims of the intellect are meeting the claims of the heart. But it is only a privilege to those whose minds are open to more truth, and who with the coming of the new light are faithful to the old light as well.

Let us in our thinking as well as in our living, be faithful; and, while we get light from many windows, let us remember from whom all truth is given, and that all these divided beams come down to us from the Central Mind, and are to lead us in adoring vision to God himself,- who is the "Father of lights, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

AS A LITTLE CHILD.

AITH is no miracle. She does not come

FAIT

An alien angel to man's awe-struck home, And bid all sweet, familiar talk be dumb. This heavenly visitant was ever near, Stood by thy cradle, calmed each childish fear, And clasped thee helpless with embraces dear. If now thou feel'st that round thy life must be Truth, justice, love, beyond what thou canst see, 'Tis Faith, thy soul's first friend, reclaiming thee.

THE LIBERAL FAITH TO-DAY.

It

Yet, wide

"Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."-2 COR. iii. 17. THE great affirmations of the liberal faith to-day are not heard in one denomination alone. They cannot be wholly excluded from any religion of thinking men. In many minds they stand vague and unuttered, side by side with much that is inconsistent with them. But the old theology is on the defensive. produces no longer the living faith that animated Crusader or Puritan. It has become to its cheerful adherents a piece of conventionality. spread as the liberal faith may be, it exists, in all but the few avowedly liberal churches, not as the substance and inspiration of all faith, but in the form of a mild concession. For nearly one hundred years Unitarianism in Massachusetts lay in people's minds as a speculation before it became a positive faith. So it lies to-day in the great body of churches. Some fear it may possibly be true. Others admit that it may be so believed as to do no harm. Only in the few liberal churches have people come to see that the doctrines of the liberal faith are not only unanswerable and harmless, but that they are a positive enlargement and invigoration of the religious life; and