mander and Leader of Righteousness, and is himself engaged in a mighty grapple with the hosts of wickedness. While he must respect the sovereign free agency and responsibility of his moral creatures, yet he brings to bear upon them all his resources of influence and persuasion, punishment and love, to conquer their evil, win them to his fellowship, and transform them into his likeness. His ultimate aim is a kingdom of universal righteousness and love, in which all enmity shall be put down and He shall be Lord of all.

History's pages but record

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word.

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne:

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

(9) But this world is not complete in itself, and is only part of a larger world. The present is always running into the future for its further development, completion, and final vindication; it is always a fragment that implies the whole, a seed growing towards its fruit. The world is rolling forward into an eternal future, and its rudimentary stage and dark aspects wait for larger development and fuller light. We cannot follow the battle into that unseen realm. But as its tides are rising towards victory in this world, we can well believe that they will there sweep on to ultimate triumph. The unjust inequalities and rewards of this world will there be leveled up and redressed, and its partial rewards and

retributions be perfected. The Father will not have fulfilled the desire of his heart until he has put all things in subjection under his feet and is God over all, blessed forever.

Our examination of this world-old problem has not led us to any complete solution. Such solution is beyond human ken. The generations have come and gone and gazed at this Sphinx and questioned it, and still it stares at us with stony face and unopened lips. But we have gained some points of view that may help us to understand it better, or at least to bear it more patiently and hopefully.

The final word on this subject is faith. When we look upon the vast canvas of the universe, we can see only infinitesimal portions of it, and these are deeply darkened with shadows. Our hearts grow faint at the apparently dreadful vision, and we would fain call upon God to sweep the shadows away and flood the scene with golden light. But the Infinite Artist, seeing the whole picture in time and in eternity, lets the shadows lie upon it and pronounces everything beautiful in its time. And we must bow before his judgment as being true and righteous altogether. Only thus can we acquire and rest and rejoice in

that blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened.

4. IDEALISM AND RELIGION

Philosophy must furnish the necessary foundation for religion and theology. It gives shape and strength to religion and breathes into it vitality and warmth, or it cuts off its roots and devitalizes and stifles it. The soundest basis and most genial atmosphere for religion are found in idealism. It finds its home and breathes its native air in a world that is a spiritual system.

(1) The basal foundations of religion are affinity, dependence and fellowship of human spirits in their relation to the Father of Spirits; and these are laid down in the world as a spiritual organism. The human spirit is of the same fundamental nature or stuff as the divine Spirit, derives its being from it and is dependent upon it at every point. The way is thus open between God and man for "spirit with spirit to speak," and all.the capacities of the human soul are so many needs and yearnings for fellowship with the Father. This mutual fellowship is made intimate through the reciprocal immanence of the divine and the human. God holds all souls in himself so that he is in them and they are in him, and this makes them sensitive to his presence and quick to catch the accent of his voice and the breathing of his Spirit. In such a spiritual system prayer is as natural and necessary as communication between father and children, or between friend and friend; and inspiration is as natural as the quickening touch which one mind can give to another. God is not far off, but nigh us, even

U

in our heart; and this idealistic fact is the foundation

of all religion.

The purely dynamic theory of the world views it as a fire, burning to an ash-heap, in which spirit is only a fine flame; as a machine, running down never to go again, in which consciousness is only a cog. This view makes short work, not only with theology, but also with ethics, psychology, and history, by reducing them to physics, and raises over the entire universe the dread spectre of fatalism and final extinction. A sure escape from this fire and ash-heap is the view that sees the world as a spiritual system in which energy is will, subtance is soul, ultimate reality is personality, and God is all in all.

(2) We cannot go far in religion without encountering the supernatural. Almost all worthy religion in the world has or claims supernatural elements in its origin and operation, and this fact shows that such elements go down to its roots and are among its constituent fibers. Idealism furnishes the best soil for this element. Dualism is especially embarrassed at this point, and much of the difficulty in connection with the supernatural in religion, breeding doubt and skepticism, has been due to a mechanical dualistic philosophy. According to dualism, the world of matter and nature lies external to God and man as a huge mass or machine that goes on under laws which, although originally impressed upon it by God, are self-operative and invariable. This virtually separates God from his world, so that the only

66

way he can adapt it to special purposes is to thrust his hand into it and violently arrest or divert its action. A miracle thus becomes a violation of the laws of nature." It was such a view of the world that enabled Hume to deliver a telling blow against miracles, a blow and wound from which this mechanical view of the supernatural has not recovered to this day. Hume said that such an event as a violation of the laws of nature was so unnatural and improbable that no amount of human testimony could overthrow the presumption against it; and on the dualistic view of the world this argument still has force.

But idealism has cut the ground from under Hume's argument. When we view the world as a spiritual system, nature vanishes as an external machine with fixed laws, and becomes the internal constitution and operation of God's own life. God holds the world in solution in himself, and all its elements and activities are but the working of his thought and feeling and will. "Natural law in the spiritual world" expresses a relation just the reverse of the truth: "Spiritual law in the natural world" is the true relation. The laws of nature, that seem so fixed and unalterable to us, are only God's mental habits, or ordinary ways of working. But he can change a habit and adapt it to a special purpose. Even we can adapt our habitual action to unusual circumstances without violating any law of nature or of our own world; and what we can do, often imperfectly, God can do with infinite ease and perfection. The Creator has not tied himself up to or exhausted himself in his creation. He