endeavoured to weigh my words, and to try them again and again by the test of fresh experience. My desire has been to encourage patient reflection, to suggest lines of inquiry, to indicate necessary limits to knowledge, and not to convey formulas or ready-made arguments. Thoughts cannot be transferred: they must be appropriated.

Charged myself with the heavy responsibility of teaching, I have had constantly before me the trials, the dangers, the hopes, of teachers. The world is not clear or intelligible. If we are to deliver our message as Christians we must face the riddles of life and consider how others have faced them. So only shall we come to learn the meaning and resources of our Faith, in which we have that on which, as I believe, we can reasonably rest the whole burden of the past, the present and the future.

To some I shall necessarily appear to speak too doubtfully on questions of great moment, and to others too confidently. The relative value of different lines of thought will be variously estimated by different minds. Nothing however has been set down which does not seem to require some consideration. Not by one way but by many must we strive to reach the fulness of truth. Every argument involves some assumptions; and I have pointed out distinctly what the Chris

tian teacher assumes, and how far his assumptions are justified by the manifold experience of life. I have also ventured to use experience in confirmation of the Gospel which he proclaims. In spite of the objections which are used against the argument, I cannot but hold that human desire includes potentially the promise of satisfaction. The question is not, of course, of personal arbitrary or chance desires, but of those which answer to our constitution, and which have found the widest and most spontaneous expression. To think otherwise is to condemn the whole course of things as false. And if, as we assume, it answers to the will of GOD, that cannot be.

In this respect we may justly lay stress on the personal effort to grow better and on the confident expectation of general progress, in spite of numberless disappointments and delays. So through this unconquerable persistence of effort, failure becomes a triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days.'

In other words we 'walk by faith' in the face of riddles which remain to the last unanswered. Nor is there any ground for discontent at this condition of life. It not unfrequently happens that the clear perception that a difficulty is at present irremovable suggests a reasonable hope of fuller light hereafter. And though it may be

possible to put many questions aside, life is proportionately impoverished if we do so.

If indeed we consider the nature of the conclusions which we form, it will appear that two classes alone are for us absolutely valid: the deductions which are made from the fundamental conceptions of succession and space, and the deductions as to the operation of forces assumed to be constant under conditions assumed to be perfectly known. As soon as we enter on the world without and act, we enter on the unseen and the unknown, and Faith is required to sustain and extend thought.

But while this is so, there can be no opposition between Reason and Faith. If Reason is the energy of the sum of man's highest powersof his true self-then Faith is the highest energy of Reason. And it is most significant that the popular antithesis of Reason and Faith finds no place in Scripture. In Scripture the opposite to Faith is Sight.

So it is that partial theories of life can be formed which are logically unassailable. It is possible to maintain with the great Hindu philosophers that there is but one existence and that an existence purely spiritual, unchanged and unchangeable, and that all else is a delusive phantom. It is possible to maintain on the other

hand, that all of which we can ever be cognisant is purely material, subject to constant and inevitable change, and that all else is a mere abstraction. Both positions are beyond successful logical attack; but both are hopelessly at variance with the universal instinct and conduct of men. Men live as bound by their very nature to recognise both the reality of the outer world on the one hand, and their personal responsibility on the other. Such is the ultimate issue to which we are brought as living men; and Christianity enters at once into the fulness of life, and deals with it as men have found it to be.

For no Christian doctrine is purely speculative. No opinion as to facts of the world if vitally apprehended can fail to influence conduct, least of all the message of the Gospel. The Incarnation binds all action, all experience, all creation to GOD; and supplies at once the motive and the power of service.

In this sense the final test of the truth and the permanence of the Gospel is life, through the power of good which the Gospel exercises in every region of human thought and conduct perfectly in itself, though the use of its resources is marred by man's imperfection. We find in the lower interests of life that the best results come from action in conformity with the truth of things are we to

suppose that in the highest the law fails? and that the best results come from the false?

But it may be said that we have no right to infer the truth of a doctrine from its utility: that many beliefs have been morally useful which certainly were not true. Yet here a distinction must be made. They were effective because they were not wholly false: they were effective in virtue of the truth which they inadequately embodied. And the absolute uniqueness of Christianity lies in this that its capacity for good is universal and in itself without alloy. It has been proved to avail for all circumstances, for all races, for all times.

For Christianity offers in a real human life the thoughts by which other religions live. Nature herself does not give an answer to the riddles which she proposes; but the whole life of men points to the answer which Christianity has given. All earlier history leads up to the Incarnation all later history has contributed to the interpretation of it. The divine destiny of Creation and the variety of outward things: the conflict of good and evil: the responsibility of the individual and the unity of the race: the incomprehensible majesty of GOD and His infinite love: these truths, which found fragmentary expression in præ-Christian religions, are set before us in the Person and Work of the Lord, in His Birth and