the tides and storms of the human spirit the presence and the power of God are known.

The sense of God working in the souls of men, and waiting to invade their life through their ideals and their loyalty, is the basis of all revelation. Here comes the prophet sharing the consciousness of God's presence in the world and lifting it through his special endowment and grace to transcendent vision and power. A Beethoven is a mystery in music, a Shakespeare in poetry, a Newton in science, a Raphael or a Michael Angelo in painting, a Plato or an Aristotle in philosophy. When common men are set in the presence of these masters, they appear like foothills in comparison with the supreme summits of some sovereign mountain range. In the same way the genius, for the consciousness of God's presence in our human world, of an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, a Psalmist of the first order, a John or a Paul, is transcendent. It is a gift so far beyond the possession of ordinary men as to seem something miraculous. It is the special endowment for the special function of the prophet. It is an amazing gift, and the issue of its use is an amazing benefaction to mankind. We ordinary men should know little of the cosmos but for the illustrious line of specially endowed men of science; we should never have dreamed of the possibilities of expression in music, painting, building, sculpture,

and poetry but for the great apostolic succession of genius in this line; nor should we ever have risen to the universal outlook but for the high service of men of genius in the sphere of thought. In the same way we are under an immeasurable debt to the monumental minds in religion. They have seen what others could not see; they have imparted their vision to the multitude of humble men. The succession of the prophets is the highest in history; through the service of these men the fact of God's presence in his world has been discovered, taken up into a consciousness of awe and joy, carried through the whole sphere of human interests as illumination and transfiguration and made over into the heritage of the race. Revelation rests upon the fact of a speaking God; it goes forward in the sense of the prophet as the oracle of God to men; it has never been described with more fidelity to truth or with greater majesty than in these words: "God having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets, by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son." The word that became vision and character in the prophet at length became flesh in Jesus Christ and dwelt among men full of grace and truth. The greatest religious experience of mankind involves the sovereign consciousness of God; when this consciousness is rendered in the greatest words,

it becomes our Bible; when it is rendered in the supreme Teacher, Servant, and Sufferer, it becomes our Saviour.

In Jesus our Lord we have the great living answer to the question, What is revelation? It is his vision of the Eternal Father, his vision of the divine order of our human world in Sonhood to God and in brotherhood man to man; his vision attested by his life and in turn pervading that life with ineffable light. The manger in Bethlehem is still the East radiant with unutterable promise to our poor world; Christmas commemorates the beginning of the divine apocalypse; the day-spring from on high has greeted us and more and more it has become the daystar in the world's heart; on them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death a great light has shined. Now we dare believe that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all; that here in his supreme Son we have the light of the world, and that whosoever followeth Him shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.

II

WHAT IS THE IDEAL?

"Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus."

Phil. I, 12.

HERE we see the great apostle in eager and joyous pursuit of the goal and prize of his existence as a Christian man. He has become aware that Christ's thought for him is the true end of his being; that thought is an infinite thought; it is too vast for him to comprehend. He is not discouraged on that account; he is rather exhilarated; he prepares himself for a great pursuit, an endless quest; he flies in the glowing path of his retreating ideal as an eagle might in the fires of the setting and vanishing sun.

In these days, much more than in former times, we speak of the ideals of mankind. Among serious and vivid thinkers this mode of speech has become universal. It is a mode of speech impressive, significant, and altogether legitimate. Still it involves a good deal of vagueness; and therefore my object now is to introduce, if I may, clearness and sureness in the current use, among Christian people, of the ideal.

I begin with the question, What is an ideal? This is, in the strict use of words, a simple question, and not at all difficult to answer. An ideal is a mental picture or image of something that one would like to do or to become, to possess or to enjoy. A mental picture or image clearly held and steadily pursued is in the simplest sense of the term an ideal. A hunter beating about for game, a mechanic looking for a job, a young lawyer dreaming of some great case, a young physician beholding in imagination his office crowded with patients, a farmer on the way to the market with the produce of his farm and thinking of the bargains that he may make, the young lover building his paradise, the young mother picturing the future glory of the infant in her arms, the daring moralist forecasting a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness; each is an illustration of the ideal. Whoever entertains a mental picture or image of anything that he would like to do or to become, to possess or to enjoy, is, in the original and unqualified meaning of the word, an idealist. Such a compound of meanings having been packed into the term, there is clearly a call for analysis and distinction.

We think of science as an expression of the ideal; it seeks to attain complete knowledge of the cosmos in relation to man. The image of that