love is the capacity and opportunity for larger
love. Virtuous choices gradually become the law of liberty. These facts
are index fingers pointing toward large and loving, strenuous and
sympathetic manhood. And toward such human types, as a matter of fact,
the race has been moving. The expectation of the seers and prophets,
also, has been of a golden age in which all souls will have had time,
and opportunity, of reaching the far-off but splendid goal. Believing,
as we do, that death is never a finality, but that it is only an
incident in progress; that instead of being an end it is only freedom
from limitation, we find ourselves often vaguely, but ever eagerly,
asking, To what are all these souls tending? Toward a state glorious
beyond language to utter we deeply feel. But has no clearer voice
spoken? At last we have reached the end of our inquiry. If any other
voices speak they must sound from above. We stand by the unseen like
children by the ocean's shore. They know that beyond the storms and
waves lie fair and wealthy lands, but the waters separate and their eyes
are weak. So we stand before the future, and ask, Toward what goal are
all this education, experience and discipline tending? Are they
perfecting souls which at last are to be laid away with the bodies which
were fortunate enough to win an earlier death? It would be impiety to
believe that. Then indeed should we be put to "permanent intellectual
confusion." If all the voices of the soul are mockeries, then life is
worse than a mistake--it is a crime.

The solution of the mystery is now before us. The man that is to be has
walked this earth, and wrought with human hands, and lived and labored
and loved, and passed into the silent land. Is Jesus the unique
revelation of the divine? There may be many to question that, but there
are few, indeed, who doubt that He embodied all of the perfect humanity
which could be expressed within the limitations of the body. He
represented Himself as essential truth and very life. He condensed duty
into such love as He manifested toward men. He embodied the heroism of
meekness, the courage of self-sacrifice, the vision of goodness. He was
an example of all that is strong, serene, sacrificial, in the midst of
the lowest and most unresponsive conditions. So much we see, and the
rest we dimly, but surely, feel.

It was reserved for Paul, in a moment of inspiration, to put into a
single phrase a description of the goal of the hu