reaped the benefit? Will the moral order which has been so slowly and painfully evolved, and which so many souls have struggled to live up to, still go on? Where? with whom? I seem to see dimly that you cannot bring the Infinite to book, that you cannot ask, "What for?" of the All, of that which has neither beginning nor end, neither centre nor circumference, neither fulfillment nor design, which knows neither failure nor success, neither loss nor gain, and which is complete in and of itself.

We are tied to the sphere, its laws shape our minds, we cannot get away from it and see it in perspective; away from it there is no direction; at either pole on its surface there is the contradiction of the sky being always overhead. We are tied to the Infinite in the same way. We are part of it, but may not measure it. Our boldest thought comes back like a projectile fired into the heavens the curve of the infinite sphere holds us. I know I am trying to say the unsayable. I would fain indicate how human and hopeless is our question, "What for?" when asked of the totality of things. There is no totality of things. To say that there is, does not express it. To say there is not, does not express it. To say that the universe was created, does not express the mystery; to say that it was not created, but always existed, does not express it any nearer. To say that the heavens are overhead is only half the truth; they are underfoot also.

Down is toward the centre of the earth, but go on through and come out at the surface on the other side, and which way is down then?

The Unspeakable will not be spoken.

In the light of science we must see that life and progress and evolution and the moral order must go on and on somewhere, that the birth of systems and the evolution of planets must and does continue, and always has continued; that if one sun fades, another blazes out; that as there must have been an infinite number (how can there be an infinite number? where is the end of the endless?) of worlds in the past, so there will be an infinite number in the future; that if the moral order and the mathematical order and the intellectual order disappear from one planet, they will appear in due time on another.

All that which in our limited view of nature we call waste and delay - how can such terms apply to the Infinite? Can we ever speak truly of the Infinite in terms of the finite? To be sure, we have no other terms, and can never have. Then let us be silent and reverent.

XII

AN OUTLOOK UPON LIFE

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\HIS chapter, with its personal and autobiographical note, seems to call for some word of explanation. A few years since, a magazine editor asked me, as he asked others, to tell his readers something of what life meant to me, basing the paper largely upon my own personal experiences. The main part of the following essay was the result. The paper was so well received by a good many readers that, with some additions, I have decided to include it in this collection.

I have had a happy life, and there is not much of it I would change if I could live it over again. I think I was born under happy stars, with a keen sense of wonder, which has never left me, and which only becomes jaded a little now and then, and with no exaggerated notion of my own deserts. I have shared the common lot, and have found it good enough for me. Unlucky is the man who is born with great expectations, and who finds nothing in life quite up to the mark.

One of the best things a man can bring into the world with him is natural humility of spirit. About

the next best thing he can bring, and they usually go together, is an appreciative spirit — a a loving and susceptible heart. If he is going to be a reformer and stir up things, and slay the dragons, he needs other qualities more. But if he is going to get the most out of life in a worthy way, if he is going to enjoy the grand spectacle of the world from first to last, then he needs his life pitched in a low key and well attuned to common universal things. The strained, the loud, the far-fetched, the extravagant, the frenzied how lucky we are to escape them, and to be born with dispositions that cause us to flee from them!

I would gladly chant a pæan for the world as I find it. What a mighty interesting place to live in! If I had my life to live over again, and had my choice of celestial abodes, I am sure I should take this planet, and I should choose these men and women for my friends and companions. This great rolling sphere with its sky, its stars, its sunrises and sunsets, and with its outlook into infinity- what could be more desirable? What more satisfying? Garlanded by the seasons, embosomed in sidereal influences, thrilling with life, with a heart of fire and a garment of azure seas, and fruitful continents -one might ransack the heavens in vain for a better or a more picturesque abode. As Emerson says, it is "well worth the heart and pith of great men to subdue and enjoy it."

O to share the great, sunny, joyous life of the earth! to be as happy as the birds are! as contented as the cattle on the hills! as the leaves of the trees that dance and rustle in the wind! as the waters that murmur and sparkle to the sea! To be able to see that the sin and sorrow and suffering of the world are a necessary part of the natural course of things, a phase of the law of growth and development that runs through the universe, bitter in its personal application, but illuminating when we look upon life as a whole! Without death and decay, how could life go on? Without what we call sin (which is another name for imperfection) and the struggle consequent upon it, how could our development proceed? I know the waste, the delay, the suffering in the history of the race are appalling, but they only repeat the waste, the delay, the conflict through which the earth itself has gone and is still going, and which finally issues in peace and tranquillity. Look at the grass, the flowers, the sweet serenity and repose of the fields — at what a price it has all been bought, of what a warring of the elements, of what overturnings, and pulverizings and shiftings of land and sea, and slow grindings of the mills of the gods of the fore-world it is all the outcome!

The agony of Russia at the present time (1904), the fire and sword, the snapping of social and political ties, the chaos and destruction that seem imminent —what is it but a geologic upheaval, the price that

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