Such the distance, however, to which our times have removed from the Unseen, and such the hold which they have given to natural powers and interests over the affections, the thoughts, and the pursuits, that before we proceed to interpret any special invitation, we need a persuasion in us that the whole thing is more than illusion. Some may deny, some even ridicule, the very notion, as if Christianity were not, in its very definition, God with us; and others possibly do not deny, though they may ridicule it, simply because they have not thought enough to doubt, as if the greatest thing might be the least considered. Where neither despised nor denied, this spiritual experience may be so far from the heart that men accept it as the article of a creed; they hear it as the faint echo of a far-off age, or the strange sound of a foreign language, rather than welcome it as the life of the soul, bringing with it celestial airs, and opening the heart to receive them as familiar words always spoken in the Father's house. I have somewhere heard it said, that the great work of modern preaching is to transfer into the West the readier faith of the East. We want a faith which shall rise from opinion into trust and hope and love; which shall quicken conviction into experience; which shall transfigure doctrine into Truth, and shall make that Truth alive through communion with God, and full of power to overcome evil, to enthrone right, and to do good to all; gathering back the knowledge and strength and maturity of the West into the bosom of a childlike Oriental vision. Look

not only to our Scriptures, themselves the greatest product of the East, but to those other books which have been held sacred among its nations, and observe how constant and how simple the recognitions everywhere met with of the Divine Presence and the universal laws; their tone is oracular; we seem, not to be questioning the philosopher, whose very name denotes the love and the pursuit of wisdom rather than the attainment or the communication, but listening to the prophet who, from being the seer of a Divine vision, has become speaker of its holy message. The absolute reason comes to us with its wealth and its beauty. A richer importation this were to us than all the treasures and the splendors which the East has yielded to our shores!

The truth, after all, in holiest Scriptures is enshrined, not exposed; it is suggested, rather than expressed; it is reserved, not obtruded; and as we find it in such hallowed secrecy, so do we feel ourselves drawn to guard it by silence. As there is sometimes a shallow religion, which flows smoothly from the tongue, or ripples noisily in its course when there is a freshet, then runs out and leaves a dry, barren bed, so when the devotion is deep and of the heavenly fountain, it rather turns itself away from glare and show, seeking silence and the shade, moving unseen, but deepening and widening always as it draws nearer to the great ocean within which it dwells for ever undistinguished. The cause is plain enough. The devout man bears in his soul a mystery of love and beauty; he cannot open it,

and he feels that it grows best in secret, such its nature, and he will not waste it by exposure. In this is found, moreover, the ground of what may have sometimes dwindled into reasonless custom or idle superstition. There is a name of the Highest which, it is said, the ancient Hebrews never repeated; there is a mystic word, they tell us, in the East, which the devotee never pronounces. The soul may seek in contemplation or prayer or deeds of charity to perceive the Being whom it reveals; the lips must be silent. Accuse not the reverence, if it looks dim of sight; there is wisdom in it. The name infolds the nature; let us not articulate the sounds idly or profanely, while the meaning, the soul, the great reality, fades away from them, the lips pronouncing a mighty word, the heart void of all which gives it life. There is in truth an unspeakable Name, the Being to whose ancient saying the universe for ever repeats the echo, I AM. His influence flows into us for ever, his attraction draws us, his blessing is upon us. Who shall presume to draw the veil aside which covers Him? to speak the mystery which every hour is laying open? There was a time when Jewish reverence would not let a piece of paper lying on the ground be trodden on: the Great Name might be written upon it. Be sure, in the immensity of this universe there is nothing, great or small, but that Name is written over it and through it, within and without. There are now seen houses of worship whose form represents the cross, which are surmounted by the cross, and as we go within, we

see the cross painted, and the cross borne on priestly robes, and human art seeking everywhere to set the cross before our eyes. But the figure can never be ingrained; nothing can make it one with the building itself. Nature, on the contrary, silent and secret as the processes always are, is for ever revealing the vital and creative presence. Everything is full of life and meaning. The same, and yet other, one in soul, varied endlessly in form, the universe is always unfolding an everlasting order. As the principle of its growth pervades the whole flower, from its root through every fibre and tissue, every leaf and bud and petal, perfect in every part; so throughout the heavens and the earth, a secret Power, the unspeakable reality, lives and bodies itself forth, perfect alike in the whole and in the part, not carved or painted here and there as the hand works, but constituting the essential all in all. This Presence in Nature, its several realms, mineral, vegetative, animal, through formation, growth, and life; and in Man, his several organs, capacities, and powers, through sense, through thought, through affection; in the reciprocal relations of Man and Nature, and the perpetual courses of action passing between both, and from each into the whole, from the whole into each, up to the very limit of our knowledge; this Presence, revealed in all which we see, then seeming to us to stretch away beyond our sight, and to live wherever life is, and to fill even if there be any void, through infinitude and eternity, we confess to be, not some reasonless power, some -soulless law, but Living

Spirit, the very Being of Wisdom and Love, moving forth in endless creations, and seeking to make all one harmony. Thus the Infinite is unveiled; thus the Invisible is seen; thus the Unspeakable is pronounced; thus the Spirit speaks, and the Word goes out evermore, a light and a blessing. The voice is always silent; but the silence is vocal.

sun.

Now this is the first thing which our age needs, the perception, at least the hearty belief, of this Divine Presence. The world seems near to us, surrounds us, presses upon us, holds possession of us. The kingdom of God, meantime, appears as if far off from us, and, if anything, but a dim shade in the evening. It is night, in which the wide, dark earth spreads out between her children and their The rays shoot off into spaces farther than our sight reaches, and we stand as if shut up within the unillumined cone. Unlike the shadow which our earth casts in this, that, whereas the night has its hours pre-established by destiny, so that we can neither hasten nor stay them, the inner darkness is of ourselves, so that no sooner do we turn away from it, looking earnestly to the East, than it is already morning. A gray dawn it may seem at first; but the sun is there, and while we look is always rising. With its sweet breath, out of its holy light, a calm and soothing voice flows into the soul: "Trust thou for ever in me; fear never that I shall fail thee; doubt not the power which strengthens thee, nor the wisdom which enlightens. As the light shines into thine eye; as the sound