suit of the Type is just
what all Nature is engaged in. Plant and insect, fish and reptile, bird
and mammal--these in their several spheres are striving after the Type.
To prevent its extinction, to ennoble it, to people earth and sea and
sky with it; this is the meaning of the Struggle for Life. And this is
our life--to pursue the Type, to populate the world with it.

Our religion is not all a mistake. We are not visionaries. We are not
"unpractical," as men pronounce us, when we worship. To try to follow
Christ is not to be "righteous overmuch." True men are not rhapsodizing
when they preach; nor do those waste their lives who waste themselves in
striving to extend the Kingdom of God on earth. This is what life is
for. The Christian in his life-aim is in strict line with Nature. What
men call his supernatural is quite natural.

Mark well also the splendor of this idea of salvation. It is not merely
final "safety," to be forgiven sin, to evade the curse. It is not,
vaguely, "to get to heaven." It is to be conformed to the Image of the
Son. It is for these poor elements to attain to the Supreme Beauty. The
organizing Life being Eternal, so must this Beauty be immortal. Its
progress toward the Immaculate is already guaranteed. And more than all
there is here fulfilled the sublimest of all prophecies; not Beauty
alone but Unity is secured by the Type--Unity of man and man, God and
man, God and Christ and man till "all shall be one."

Could Science in its most brilliant anticipations for the future of its
highest organism ever have foreshadowed a development like this? Now
that the revelation is made to it, it surely recognizes it as the
missing point in Evolution, the climax to which all Creation tends.
Hitherto Evolution had no future. It was a pillar with marvelous
carving, growing richer and finer toward the top, but without a capital;
a pyramid, the vast base buried in the inorganic, towering higher and
higher, tier above tier, life above life, mind above mind, ever more
perfect in its workmanship, more noble in its symmetry, and yet withal
so much the more mysterious in its aspiration. The most curious eye,
following it upward, saw nothing. The cloud fell and covered it. Just
what men wanted to see was hid. The work of the ages had no apex. But
the work begun by Nature is finished by the Supernatural--as we are wont
to call the higher natural. And as the veil is lifted by Christianity it
strikes men dumb with wonde