grandeur
inexpressible, but with some apparent signs of an opposite kind--the
conflagration of a star, a moon bereft of atmosphere, errant comets and
aerolites. In our own abode we have variations of weather, apparently
accidental and sometimes noxious, atmospheric influences which beget
plagues, ministers of destruction such as earthquakes and volcanoes.
The plan, if plan there is, transcends our sense and comprehension.

Still, be it ever borne in mind, of the human race, progress, moral and
mental, is the unique characteristic, and the one which suggests a
divine plan to be fulfilled in the sum of things. It distinguishes man
vitally and immeasurably from all other creatures. Fitful, often
arrested, sometimes reversed, it does not cease. It may point to an
ultimate solution of the enigma of our chequered being such as shall
"justify the ways of God to man." This may be still the world's
childhood, and the faith which seems to be collapsing may be only that
of the child.

Whatever trouble, moral, social, or political, a great change of belief
may bring, there is surely nothing for it but to seek and embrace the
truth. Whatever may become of our creeds and of the dogma, so plainly
human in its origin, of some of them, we have still the Christian ideal
of character, which has not yet been seriously challenged, does not
depend on miracle or dogma for its claim to acceptance, and may
continue to unite Christendom.

Superstition can be of no use morally; even politically it can be of
little use, and not for long. In the Christian ideal we still have a
rule of life. Robinson, the good Puritan pastor, taking leave of the
members of his flock who were embarking for America, bade them not
confine themselves to what they had learned from his teaching, but to
"be ready to receive whatever truth might be made known to them from
the written word of God." If there is a God, are not all truths,
scientific, historic, or critical, as much as anything written in the
Bible, the word of God?

September 20th, 1908.

II.

NEW FAITH LINKED WITH OLD.

A preacher cites a lecture of mine, delivered nearly half a century
ago, a part of which has had the honour of being embalmed in the work
of that most eminent theologian, the late Dean Westcott, on "The
Historic Faith." I turned rather nervously to the lecture to see what
it was that I had said. Not that I should have been much shocked had I
found that my opinion