is farther away because we know Jupiter, and because we can tell how many miles of comparatively worthless ether Saturn swims through in the course of each cycle. We have made a tariff of these things, and have grown to believe that bigness means greatness-to associate bulk with majesty. I have seen mountains in my time. I have beheld the glories of nature in her most glorious aspects and places; but I have been weighed down by no feeling of my own meanness by their size. Is the soul of man small by reason of the Alps? We ask, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" owning our weakness in the sight of God; but then, again, we may say, even here," Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels." Though, at times, the greatness of the mere physical majesty of the earth seems to dwarf man, the soul counts itself above these things, and exults in its own majesty. These things have nought to do with those matters wherein man's real greatness lies; and if there is any one doctrine, which, in these days of Huntingdon sentiment,* I, for one, would scorn, it is that which professes that

* William Huntingdon, an eccentric preacher, loved to call himself "coal-heaver" and "sinner saved." See a notice in Chambers' "Book of Days."

man is, in himself, contemptibly small amid the vastnesses of the universe, and that when a man has run up a parcel of vulgar Alps, he is in duty bound to feel himself debased and made extremely small. As if he were not greater than those Alps, which are, after all, nothing more than heaps—the biggest heaps we know, perhaps, but only heaps, and which in these days we could get carted away for a "consideration"! What are your mountains after all? To stand and look at a young mother, and to watch her as she passionately kisses her baby, and lavishes all manner of foolish, sweet, tender names upon it-to have seen this, and to have understood it, is better than to have stood on the top of the biggest sand-heap the world has to show.

Suppose, for a moment, that God really dwelt in those astronomical heavens, and that for a little while again they should cease to be astronomical, and should come as near as in childhood's innocent folly we fancied them to be, so near, in fact, that if you wished to go into the immediate presence of God, you might get there by an arrangement of some fifteen post balloons. Do you-does any rational man-suppose that the human soul would be one whit nearer God than it is now? Or if you

sigh, as some have done, and as some still do, for the time in which God walked through the streets of Jerusalem, in some sense in which he does not walk about London, the advance of the ages has but thrown you back. You have degenerated from the spiritual religion of your own day to a longing for the physical perception which was necessary for Jew and Gentile in those early days, but which, by that man who has really absorbed the spirit of the Christianity of his time, is altogether unneeded. If the God you long to know is the God of the spirit, who comes to the hearts of all who seek for Him in spirit and in truth, who, in every motion of holy desire and love, lives in the soul, who stirs men to penitence, moves them to contrition, draws them by His own sweet, strong influence to Himself—if this is the God you seek and long to know, your God is always near you. So long as men can hold to this spiritual perception of God, science has done no mischief; and whilst it has increased man's knowledge, has increased, too, his belief in his nearness to God; has shown him that his knowledge of nature has altered no canon of the eternal laws; has cast no shade on any brightness of human mercy, or human love; has made no change in any way, in the glorious relationships between the

human soul and God, by which alone man can rise to the height of his own marvellous capacities, and in which alone is his belief, his pride, his hope.

No learned inanity of chemistry can rob of its glory one single human tear. I know exactly what my own blood consists of; but the marvel and the mystery, and the glory of my being is not chilled by that little bit of science. I know exactly what my bones are made of, and can calculate to a nicety what they would be worth when I have done with them, if applied to agricultural purposes-all these things I know; but what then? If you can analyze a tear, and can tell me that it consists of so much saline matter and so much water, and so forth, what then? Does the knowledge of that make less divinely beautiful the tear which comes of passionate love? the tear of the kindly hearted who look on misery? the tear of penitence? Are these less lovely? "Watery particles, with some saline matter," all of them. Take one's heart, and call it a "force-pump," and then what have you done? You have increased human knowledge and have done wisely and well; but what have you knocked down? You have destroyed no feeling, broken no hope, changed no place of sentiment. The scientific man has

nothing to do with these things, and, if he is wise, will not meddle with them.

When the day comes for a strong passion, the knowledge of the details of a scientific analysis will not hold it in check. There are two books-one of the body, and one of the soul-one of matter, and one of spirit; and that declaration of Hazlitt's about the heavens having become astronomical, is the result of trying to read God in the wrong book. There is but one book out of which God can be read, and that is the book of the spirit.

Thus, then, God is hidden to that man who seeks Him by the eye, and is revealed to him who seeks Him in spirit. Most closely hidden in thick darkness to him who seeks a physical presence of His deity, He is ever near to him who, with true spiritual perception, seeks Him. What is it to me that Jacob believed heaven could be scaled by a ladder, or that I know Jupiter is so many miles away? I know that God can be brought near in spirit, and through the heart's experiences, common to all. When King David's child dies, does not the king-warrior and poet feel it as strongly as he would have done when a shepherd? No height of position, or of intellect, can break through the power of feeling.