s temporal and
circumstantial, preserves whatever is essential and eternal in them,
combines these vital elements with the polar truths needful to their
wholesomeness, and crystallizes ethical and spiritual religion into
perfect forms, forms capable of translation into the idioms of every race
of earth. This religion of the Christ is the one religion which to-day
holds the promise and potency of further evolution, in the progressive
civilization of mankind on which it is enthroned.

9. _Of the literature of the people through whom came this organic
evolution of the keystoning religion of earth what can we say but that it
records a real revelation coming through genuine personal inspirations
from on high!_

Revelation is the opposite aspect of the mystery which we call discovery;
the uncovering of that which was hidden; the unveiling of that which was
not known; the coming on of truth into the light wherein man can see it.
"Discovery" expresses the human effort by which truth is thus uncovered
and found out. "Revelation" expresses the divine effort which lies back of
all human aspirations and endeavors; as the Spirit within man stirs him up
to seek for Truth, flashes in upon his mind strange hints of where and
how she is to be found, allures him onward with the mystic whispers of her
voice, until at length he stands upon the mount of vision whence her holy
form is seen, and cries--"I have found her!"

To him who believes in a Spirit of Truth, guiding men into all truth, the
growth of ethical and spiritual religion into perfect form in Jesus Christ
is a real revelation. It is the oncoming of the Light which lighteth every
man that is in the world; the dawning of the day of earth on the hills of
Judea, over which has risen the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His
wings.

This revelation came not to the mystic "man writ large" we call society,
direct from heaven in abstract form. It came to individual men, struggling
for larger light and nobler life, and breathing their higher spirit on
their fellows. Religion is always _life_, the experience of _souls_. We
can name the individuals through whom each important advance was made. The
greater souls who led the worship of the host welcoming the rising Light,
thrilled with the vibrations of a voice deeper and holier than the voice
of man. The lesser souls who formed the chorus of this anthem of The Dawn
thrilled each alike with this mystic sense of God. That which we mus