its own difficulties.

9

in GOD than some who do not pause to question the common Creed. Here as elsewhere we are taught to know men as they really are not by words but by experience.

We find ourselves then face to face with these ultimate elements of being and thought; and as soon as we begin to reflect upon any one of them, as soon as we begin to act, we are beset by speculative difficulties and contradictions. Each existence, as we have come to apprehend it, brings its own difficulties with it; and the difficulties of each taken by themselves are final, inexplicable. Whether we admit 'self' alone to be the one ultimate existence which we know, or recognise self and the world, or self and the world and GOD, we must bear with what patience or faith we can mysteries which are like in kind though they may differ in number. These mysteries furnish the problems with which religions deal, problems which we have now to endeavour to apprehend, problems which, as I believe, Christianity solves so far as a solution is possible, though it does not alone or primarily propose them.

i. We will take the idea of 'self' first. We have no sooner named the word than we are

10

Difficulties of Self:

confronted with an overwhelming mystery. What can we say as to the origin of 'self'? How can we adjust in thought the relation of the child to the line from which he springs? How much do we directly derive from our parents, and where or from what source is that communicated which gives to us our individuality? We may say, and say with justice, that 'the dead rule the living,' but what are the limits of their dominion? The most absolute tyrant finds bounds set to his power somewhere. And the idea of 'self' involves separation, personality, something which is ours only. How do we obtain and justify that conception of our own'?

We go a step further. The germ of 'self' is given, and we watch the progress of its development. The growth of this personality is up to a certain point like the growth of a plant. The product of any particular seed is fixed within the limits of a type, while within these limits there is room for the widest variation in health, and vigour, and shape, and colour, and beauty, and fruitfulness, from the action of external influences which we can trace and measure. it is, up to a certain point, with a man. His type of character is fixed at his birth: and at the same time there is the possibility of endless differences

So

Origin, Growth, Dependence.

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in the particular realisation of the type from the conditions of the environment under which it takes outward shape. It would be easy to multiply illustrations. No one who has looked patiently and reverently upon life will be inclined to underrate the influences upon a man's nature which are wholly beyond his control, influences of country and class and parentage and education and material circumstances. It is of momentous consequence for the final character of any one whether he be one of many or an only child in his first home; whether he belong to a class accustomed to rule, or to a class accustomed to labour or to serve; whether he be a Latin or a Celt or a Teuton; whether he be born in the 9th or the 19th century. We hardly realise how even a lifeless machine or a mere intellectual conception can stir human life to its inmost depths, so that a discovery made at a particular time separates by an ineffaceable partition those who came before from those who come after. The steam-engine, for example, not only increased enormously the power of material transformations, but it has also modified irrevocably the conditions of labour, that is, it has modified the conditions of the social discipline of men. Or, to take an illustration of the other class, the Copernican system has changed the whole aspect

12

Influence of intellectual conceptions.

of the universe for man, and with this the whole influence which it exercises upon his character. It has given the earth a new position in relation to the stellar system which later investigations are slowly enabling us to interpret. And the lesson is one which we shall do well to take to heart. For, if for a time it appeared that we had lost something by the removal of our globe from its central place, we are now beginning to see that the final effect of the changed view is to ennoble our conception alike of the world and of man's place in it; to lead us to abandon a physical standard in our estimate of things; to perceive a harmony between the conditions of being realised in space and the conditions of being realised in time; for there is nothing irrational in supposing that the earth occupies towards the material universe a position corresponding to that which man occupies with regard to the multitudinous forms of life, which, as we observe them in geological records, converge towards him as their crown. The earth, that is, is brought back again to be a true centre in a deeper sense than that of local position. And no one probably will now deny that the heliocentric view of our system, passing, as it necessarily does, into some dim. conception of a still vaster order, when it is thus considered, is more religious and, in the fullest

sense, more scriptural than the geocentric view which it displaced.

By this signal illustration we can see how the interpretation of the same conception, as well as the introduction of a new conception, may profoundly influence the commonest and the highest thoughts of man. The same law holds good even where at present we are less able to trace its working, as in theories of creation and development, of law, and the like. Man in a word is dependent on that which lies outside himself socially, materially, intellectually; and the results of this dependence reach to every part of his being. He is dependent on the past, from which he draws his inheritance of manifold wealth for thought and action. He is dependent on the present, in which he finds the scene, the materials, and the conditions of his activity. He is dependent even on the future, in which he finds through hope the inspiration and support of effort which cannot bring a return in the limits of his hour of work.

Man is dependent: this is one side of the Truth. But his circumstances are the materials out of which he has to build his life with an indeterminate personal power. He is conscious of responsibility; this consciousness is indeed the