multitude of men scattered over the world. All business investment is a trust in the future and often in the antipodes. The traveler from Boston to San Francisco blindly commits himself by day and by night to the skill and fidelity of a great army of engineers, brakemen, switch-tenders, wheel-hammerers, and sectionhands, makers of time-tables and time-keepers, mechanics of wheels and axles and bolts, and manufacturers of forty millions of rails, any one of whom or of which, if untrue, might land him not in San Francisco but in eternity. At home he trusts his life and property all the day and all the night to the hourly integrity of his many neighbors. Or if once in a lifetime he appeal from the conduct of some one of them it is still to the supposed uprightness of courts and truthfulness of witnesses. Some little village lies nestled away among the hills. It is thronged with students. A small cluster of residents, men, women, and children, are in the power of some hundreds of young men in the vigor of youthful strength and of youthful impulse. Do they lie down at night in perpetual anxiety lest their property be destroyed, their houses burned, and themselves abused and outraged? No; they sleep all the more peacefully, knowing that those young men. will on the morrow, if need be, exert their utmost strength to save their homes from the devouring flames, and even give of their scanty means to relieve the sufferers by fire.1

1 An allusion to what had taken place in the village of Hanover, a few weeks previously.

Such is the settled and accepted condition of life. With whatever qualifications, we believe the past, we trust the future, we confide in the present. We fling ourselves upon the waves and the winds. We cast our hopes boldly upon the seasons of the year and the ancient promise. We put ourselves in the hands of natural law, of brute force, and of men, individually and by multitudes the men we have seen and the men we never saw nor shall see. This vast network of trust and confidence is interwoven with the woof of our life and entwined with the fibers of our being. Our life, and every part of it, like some suspension bridge, swings by a cable in the air, with Niagara rolling beneath; and we ride boldly on. The attempt to evade it or escape by doubt or suspicion is fruitless. It is as when "one did flee from a lion, and a bear met him." Abbas Pasha built him a high watch-tower and kept swift dromedaries always saddled for flight; but it could not save him from the hand of the assassin.

We are also inclined, trained, and compelled to live by faith in regard to things less tangible and more supersensual. Men naturally accept implicitly their intuitions and are dominated by their religious convictions. When one asked stout old Samuel Johnson how he would deal with Berkeley's idealism, "Sir," said he, "I refute it thus," and he brought his foot vigorously against a stone. Neither Johnson nor mankind can be reasoned out of a primary belief, ultimate but unprovable. The agnosticism which would shut out from human purview all that is beyond and above

is "as much at war with human experience as with reason and revelation." In token of profound belief in a future life the old Egyptian embalmed his dead and hewed out his vast tombs on the banks of the Nile; and the Indian on the shores of Lake Superior placed food and weapons, apparel and ornaments in the grave. And so resolute has been the faith of the human race in superior beings that "they will worship a stock or a stone sooner than have no God" will bow their very intellect before the demands of their spirit. Much more will they cleave to the dictates of their moral nature against all puzzling shows of logical acuteness.

It is useless for the metaphysician, whether he be a Tappan or even an Edwards, to say: "Unless you accept this or that theory of the will you cannot hold to human freedom." I answer him: "My knowledge of my freedom is older, deeper, clearer than your speculations. They may, or may not, go to the winds; my freedom stands on a rock. I know it without you or in spite of you." Vainly would Clifford or Tyndall parade their theory of necessitated action, and therefore no proper responsibility. We answer: "Your brainspinning can no more withstand the instincts and necessities of humanity than any other spider's web. Responsibility is the ultimate fact and settled law of humanity, so all-embracing and inevitable that he who denies it in word will sternly hold all other men responsible to him in fact and will himself be held forever responsible by all other men, and by his Maker too."

The believing spirit is the normal, rational state, the unbelieving is abnormal, unnatural, and irrational.

In every line of thought and action doubts will occur and perplexities arise. But we solve them or act in spite of them. We see the objections, and in view of the proofs we overrule them. We recognize the difficulties, and under the exigency of life we override them. The most cautious inquiry must point to some settled result. A state of chronic indecision is intolerable, whether in the business man, the scholar, the physician, the lawyer, the general, or the theologian. Your business man sees what and how to do. Your scholar decides, or he is no scholar. Your physician diagnoses and prescribes, or you drop him. Your judge finds out the law and applies it. Your general plans, often in a flash, and by the flash, and fights. McClellan doubted and dawdled; Grant believed and struck. While the Reverend Sydney Smith questioned whether missions in India could succeed or would comport with the safety of the British empire, Carey, Marshman, and Ward, his "consecrated cobblers," were in India leading the vanguard of the great host of Christian converts, to the saving of souls and perhaps of the Indian empire.

There is no good reason why the same principle that prevails everywhere should halt upon the threshold of the very highest sphere, religion. But there is the best of reasons to the contrary in the inconceivable magnitude of the interests. Unsettlement here, in the main issues and fundamental truths, instead of being the

mark of strength, must, on every analogy, be regarded as the token of weakness. It is but mental and moral flabbiness. And though, not seldom, good men attain to bright hope through long distressing doubts, and we rejoice in the issue, is it at all needful to desire the process, much less to call it the necessary or even natural way? Is it the only or the best way to confirmed temperance through inebriety, or to health through dangerous disease? I believe it to be our privilege to reach the full assurance of faith without the long conflict with darkness. But whether or not we pass by that way, it is our privilege and our duty not to have our home in the dark valley but to come out and dwell in the clear light.

For the main aspects of our spiritual relationships are plain and simple: an intellect looking, a heart yearning, a conscience commanding, towards the One Supreme Excellence; that glorious One shadowing forth his eternal power and Godhead in the visible things of creation, openly declaring himself in the divine and matchless Word, unveiling himself tenderly and intimately in that mighty Saviour whose historic coming revolutionized the world's career, whose living power and presence are as manifest all over the world to-day as in Jerusalem eighteen centuries ago, and whose calm. voice calls to every man, "Rise and follow me." Surely the benign influence of the blessed sun is hardly more unmistakable than that of him who calls himself "the light of the world." It is inscribed in the volume of the book, on the human soul, in the Christian life, on