even in the character as moulded by physical or social
circumstance or need. But is there not also a conscious effort of
self-improvement not dependent on these? That all is material, nothing
spiritual, does not seem yet to have been proved.

It is by close examination of our own nature and its workings, perhaps,
that we are most likely to solve the enigma of our being. The word
spiritual surely has a meaning; it suggests self-culture not only for
the present but for a higher state.

Evolution is a great discovery. But evolution cannot have evolved
itself, nor does there seem to have been an observed case of it.
Points of similarity between the ape and man are not proofs of
transition. Has any animal given, like man, the slightest sign of
self-improvement or conscious tendency to progress?

The putting on by the mortal of immortality, it must however be owned,
baffles conception. In the apologue of Dives and Lazarus the dead
appear still in their human forms and talk to each other across the
gulf, apparently narrow, which divides the abode of the damned from
that of the blessed. This clearly is the work of imagination. Nor,
seeing the infinite gradations of character and the frequent mixture of
good and evil in the same man, can we understand how a clear line can
be drawn between those who are admitted to heaven and those who are
condemned to hell.

Mere difficulties of sense or intellect on mundane questions might be
met by appeal to the mysteries of a universe which may conceivably be
other in reality than to us it appears. But it is to be supposed that
divine beneficence would give its creatures all powers of intelligence
necessary to their moral welfare, above all those entailing reward or
punishment in a future life.

What is to be said in this connection of man's aesthetic nature, of his
sense of beauty and melody? Can they be the offspring of material
evolution? As they meet no material need, we might almost take them
for the smile of a beneficent and sympathizing spirit. The basis of
the gifts no doubt is physical, but we cannot easily understand how
they can have been developed by a purely physical process.

To ghosts and apparitions of all kinds, spiritualism included, we bid a
long farewell.

We turn to the universe, of which while we believed in the Incarnation
our earth was the central and all-important scene, but in which it now
holds the place only of a minor planet. We see order and