religious people, who never go to church, who despise Christianity, because they have only known it in connection with the forms of a barren worship, who despise Christianity, and yet are living high Christian lives. Thus we begin to see that although man has tried to imprison this glorious and free spirit in his Creeds and Articles, yet he cannot do it. There is a Christian spirit-be it said to our shame-working outside the Christian Church, an unacknowledged and anathematised Christianity still going on its triumphant way, leaving us alone in our orthodox sepulchres with the bones and ashes of bigotry and formalism.

165. But whose is still the figure that inspires all that is best and wisest in modern philanthropy and modern faith? The ideal form of the Christ still moves before us, and still we struggle after the for ever attainable yet unattained. His life doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man is still the latest cry. Have we not but just now (1871) had a hideous parody of it in the Communism of the late revolution in Paris? Do not our own legislators begin to feel that peace and good-will can only be established between workmen and masters, between rich and poor, between learned and ignorant, by caring for all alike, by rescuing class from the oppression of class and then binding all classes together by common interests as members of a sacred polity of justice and mercy? What is the most characteristic form of the religious spirit in the present age? If I look at the bright side I should say it is Philanthropy; and

where do we get this word 'Philanthropy'? Men used to care for themselves, their own family, their own society, and their own nation, but Jesus Christ revealed a moral tie and a spiritual communion which was superior even to the bond which bound together the members of one family. He told us that there were no bars between nations, that we were all of one blood, and one in the sight of God. Every philanthropic movement, every hospital that rises, every church erected in this great and populous city, has its roots deep down in the principle, announced by Jesus Christ, of the constraining love of our brother men. That philanthropy is the great principle upon which the Church of Jesus Christ is founded; we can say literally, with regard to all deeds of mercy, love, self-sacrifice, 'the love of Christ constraineth us.' This survives, the spirit of a divine life is still operative.

Christianity has survived many shocks. Let me once more remind you how many. It has survived the metaphysical speculations of the Alexandrine school and the subtleties of a mongrel Greek and Asian philosophy, -those speculations which were so true to their authors, and which are so unintelligible to us; it has survived the winking of saints, and the mediæval Mariolatry, and the handkerchiefs of St. Veronica, and all kinds of silly visions and foolish revelations; it has survived historical criticism, and it will survive what are called the attacks of modern science. It will go on still as it has gone on; you never can annihilate the principles upon which the Christian Church is founded. Reduced to their simplest

terms, stripped of casuistry, priestcraft, and superstition, they are seen to be the ultimate principles upon which human society depends for its happiness, I had almost said for its prolonged existence. Therefore, He who is Himself the incarnation of these principles, He who loved His fellow-man as never man loved another, He who spake as never man spake, He who was at one with God as man has never been since, He is still the Way, the Life, and the Truth to us; 'Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.'

166. And, lastly, I come to trace the Law of Progress in the development of the human soul. I need only ask you to contemplate yourselves, body and soul; our very complex bodies having various attributes, our mind various attributes, our spirit various and manifold aspirations, yet bound together in one communion. How has this come about? It has come in the order of nature: first, an unintelligent infant; then a self-conscious child; then a being with varied powers and fecund activities; and ever a higher unity has been reached, as beneath our eyes the simple has passed into the complex existence. You too are one with the same great law which reaches through all organic and inorganic beings, from the beginning of time until time shall be no more; it is your privilege, consciously and willingly, to become one with that Spirit who fills the universe with the breath of His life. But there is this difference; when we speak of the progress of society or of organic progress, we speak of an unconscious progress; but in individual progress

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a man is, or may be, conscious of getting better or getting worse, his eyes are opened to see the good and the evil, he may ally himself with a power and a law which make for righteousness, or he may forbear, he may foster or blight his own progress.

Into what circle of Divine affinities art thou come, O my soul! to what principalities and powers, to what majesty and beneficence! Let God henceforward be thy friend, let the voice be heard that is even now whispering in thy ears, This is the way, walk ye therein, when thou turnest to the right hand and when thou turnest to the left.' The Spirit and the Bride say, Come,' the Master Himself is calling you to go up higher out of the dregs of your own carnality. He makes you sit down with Him in heavenly places, He enlightens your mind; you no longer see men as trees walking; you no more see through a glass darkly, you put away childish things; and rapt from the fickle and the frail you enter daily more and more into the joy of your Lord!

167. And now, my brethren, to conclude; the Law of Progress carries us on the wings of the spirit beyond the grave and gate of death and the barriers of things seen and temporal. When you have once realised the intelligence of God lifting up your intelligence, and His beneficence calling out your aspirations, and keeping your love alive under unfavourable circumstances, can you ever lose the dream of an eternal life? Can you ever give up the Immortality of the Soul, and the individual conscious

ness of man after death? If you feel, although you have not got hold of God, He has got hold of you; do you think He will ever let you go? Shall any one pluck you out of His hand? Is there any question when the disintegration of the body takes place, and terminates the present mode of your existence, as to the permanence of you in your own individuality? I know you will point to the countless millions who have gone down to the dust, to the tribes of savages who seem never to have been the subject of any progress at all, to 'the backwaters of civilisation,' or again to the thousands of promising and gifted men who have been cut off in the flower of their age. Do you suppose that with the superior intelligence we have seen to exist, and with the traces of a beneficence such as we may deem does exist-do you think that all these really have ceased to be? and that they have been called into life, been neglected or cared for, as the case may be; have withered here, or developed power and sublime consciousness of an infinite beyond, simply to be extinguished in the foulest corruption?

When the heart rises in prayer to God, there is an end of all such doubts, only the evil in the heart and in the world comes in and sweeps away the good influences; but when the good influences come back, you rise again out of the mists of doubt and disconsolation, because your mind has been taken possession of, and you can say, breathing that divine air, 'Lord, I am surrounded by an atmosphere of love, though it be also one of mystery; I cannot see clearly through the dim