In some respects, and without any word spoken against the achievements of modern men, the most important invention or discovery that man ever achieved was that of fire. I do not know, so far away was this discovery made, when it took place, nor the man who first hit on that magnificent achievement; but the first great step that the race took above and beyond the animal life of the world was this discovery of the use, the mastery, of fire. For this, note, and this alone, it is which has made man a citizen of the world. In origin and by nature, man is a tropical animal. If we trace his far-off home, we find it somewhere in the tropics. You will notice that it is still true of the other animals of the earth that they are confined to some local habitat, except in so far as they have come under the control of and have shared the conditions of the life of man. It is only in certain conditions that special races and tribes of animals can continue to exist; but man, although tropical in origin and tropical in nature, is at home anywhere through the mastery of fire. We talk about the conquering races of the world being those that live in the cooler climes. We forget that the first and in some respects the mightiest civilizations of the world were in or near the tropics; and we forget that other fact, that all our lives, all our achievements, are wrought out in the midst of tropics, that we have created our own climate, and carry it with us wherever we please. Our homes, our offices, our stores, the places where we live and carry out our work are tropical climates still, made so by our mastery of the first great discovery of man,-fire.

Next to this discovery came another carrying the advance. to a place of which we are very far from seeing the end yet. Man learned to use the metals, so that by smelting and fusing these he has been able to control the manufacture of weapons, of implements, of utensils of all sorts, so that they have given him the mastery of all human conditions. Without this first great discovery of fire, however, he would have been helpless in the presence of the metals. You cannot look in any direction without seeing some token of the mastery that this has given him over the conditions of his life.

Then by and by some one discovers the alphabet, through rude picture writings such as was discovered by Cortez in ancient Mexico, such as we know have been found among our North American Indians. The next step was the hieroglyphics, such as we find in Egypt; and at last the alphabet was discovered as the result of the thought, the invention, the experience of man through thousands of years. Then for the first time man becomes conscious that he has a history because he can record his experiences. He becomes conscious of the fact that he is a being who can ascend, conscious of progress; for by making a record of his yesterday he can compare it with his to-day, and can forecast something better for to-morrow. In the discovery of the alphabet, then, man first becomes conscious of the fact that he is capable of ascending.

The next step that we will note seems to be connected with barbarism rather than with progress; and yet, if we look a little closely into this, we shall see that it has proved to be one of God's mysteries in helping on the human race. I refer to the discovery of gunpowder, that force which was able to batter down the exclusive walls of old castles and old cities, and help to make flow together all peoples and all

races.

Then came the discovery of printing,—I am not necessarily following the chronological order, but an ideal order of my own, the discovery of movable type. And now for the first time we have the ability not only to multiply the literature, the song, the philosophy, the science, the art of the world, but the means for its indefinite diffusion, the power of making common property on the part of the race of all the finest, highest things that any of the noblest souls have thought, have felt, have dreamed. You see what a tremendous step in the development of the race is here.

Then came the mariner's compass. If you are at all familiar with the thoughts of antiquity, with the writers of the classical world, with Virgil, Horace, Homer, you will remember that the ocean is spoken of as a wild, impenetrable, un

tillable waste. You will recall the vision of John, or whoever he may have been, of Patmos. You will remember that in the ideal condition of humanity which he pictures as to come in the future, he says there is to be no more sea. And so in the ancient world it represented the barrier between peoples; but the mariner's compass made it the highway of nations, the means of communication and intercourse with every part of the world.

Then came the discovery of steam, and the multiplication indefinitely of man's ability not only to print thought, but to scatter it; to carry not only his ideas, but his productions and inventions and all those things that help civilization until the whole world now flows together, and is one.

Then, with the application of the power of electricity, the telegraph, the telephone, and the increased means of transportation of things as well as of thoughts, we see how space is becoming of little account; and whatever belongs to one man or to one people is in the way of becoming the common property of all.

So man has gone on through the ages step by step up this pathway of ascent, gradually making wider and wider conquests until now chemists are beginning to think that we shall even find a way by and by for the manufacture of food; and there ought not, in any far distant future, to be poverty, hunger, or ignorance. They should be simply horrible nightmare visions of a long outgrown past. This is what it means to control conditions, the external conditions of life.

Let us now come to consider for a little that parallel line of ascent that I spoke of which consists in the progressive conquest of man over himself. I intimated that the next step beyond brute force was the power of mind,— mind as cunning, mind as intelligence. I need only point to the

fact and there are living illustrations of it in every nation of the world - that the increase of knowledge is not at all of necessity the increase of goodness or the increase of happiness. A man who knows he is wise, who is shrewd, who is keen, if he be at the same time only animal, only brute, only

sensual, only selfish, is simply a mightier and more dangerous brute. That is all that intelligence can do if it be intelligence alone. And yet we need to note on the other hand, lest we seem to be slurring intelligence and making it of less importance than it really is, that, no matter how good people may be, how tender, how unselfish, how loving, unless they be also at the same time intelligent, the very power of their love may work infinite mischief and disaster; for in this universe of ours we want not only an impulse to move, but to move in the right way, and we need intelligence to tell us which is the right way. So after the development of intelligence there comes something else. We need to note that there is again, along with all this external mastery of the world, a tremendous advance and ascent of man's intellectual power; for the solving of every new problem means new and higher thought on the part of him who solves it, so that there must have been a growth of brain, a growth of mind power, along with every step of man's material ascent. The two are necessarily connected with each other.

But the next great step that man needs to take after the development of brain is the development of love. And this, too, has gone along with the development of the world in the past; for men have learned that they cannot get along alone. They have found the need of association, the husband with the wife, the father and mother with the child, the brother with the sister, and the sister with the brother, and so on through all conceivable human relationships which develop this tender sympathy, this power of love.

And, then, here and there, as promises of what shall be, we find those men who tower like mountains above their fellows, until their tops are touched with the finer sunlight of the spiritual life; and we catch a meaning, catch a sense of that meaning that we find in the thought of man's kinship and fellowship with the divine. This as a hint in a broad outline way of that other line of advance.

I wish to deal now a little more personally and practically with some phases of this, as indicating the problem of human

ascent which lies before us all to-day. Here we are dowered with all the heritage of the past, with the external conditions of the world more and more at our service; for we need not fear but human desire of wealth and power will lead ever to more and more complete conquest of these conditions. We need to turn inward upon ourselves, and to consider what steps of ascent are at our feet which we ought to take, in order to climb up into the heights of our manhood and womanhood. I wish to make three points, to point out three steps that lead upward before us.

1. In the first place, though a large amount of progress has been made in that direction, we need to climb up out of the selfish into the unselfish. We need to learn the meaning of the great word "love." We need to learn it in its practical applications. We need to learn that it is as real a thing, as touching our human welfare and happiness, as gold,-infinitely more real, because it has about it a touch of the eternal, and because, unlike gold, it is something within the range and reach of us all. I do not believe that God would construct a universe in such a fashion as that the best things are open only to the few. The best things are the common property of men. Any man, any woman, who can learn to see and feel what they are, can learn how to take them. In so far as we are selfish,- that is, in the evil sense of disregarding the rights, the happiness, the welfare, of other people and simply grasping for ourselves, we are only on the plane of the brutes at our feet. You expect a beast to be selfish; for that is the highest thing that the most of them have attained. A beast is a bundle of physical appetites, and by the instinct of hunger is led to seek the gratification of the particular hunger or thirst which happens to be uppermost at the time; and it is not deterred generally by any power of sympathy or any touch of unselfishness from so pursuing its dominant desire. And yet some men and women might be ashamed of their extreme selfishness by noting that among horses, among dogs, among animals

d birds of many kinds, there has been developed this ten