God has lifted up, whom God has addressed as "Thou," calling upon him to answer the Eternal Thou.

The palace of crystal when the sun rises upon it and floods it with the light of noon is not annihilated; it is made resplendent and all its contents are glorified by the illumination flowing in upon it. When our God is a moral God, when the moral Deity floods the personality with his light and infinity, he does not wipe it out; he makes it transparent, he fills it with splendor; he clothes it with a mightier reality and majesty.

3. And finally, there is the interpretation of all human life in the light of this experience, in the light of this faith. If you want a man to interpret human life, be sure that he comes with a great soul; with a great soul that has universalized itself in a great faith for mankind. Man is the measure of his faith; the greater man the greater faith; the Divine Man the divine faith. Christianity comes out of the soul of Jesus Christ; without his life in God his gospel for the world could not be; his interpretation of human existence could not be. If you would see the meaning of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, build your glass with the mightier lens; if you would behold the dignity of man, the meaning of man's life at each stage of its movement, read it through the vision of the greatest souls.

There are three divisions in human life. There is the morning with sunrise for its symbol; there is life's prime set forth in the noon; there is evening with its sunset in the sea. What is the source of the charm and wonder in childhood, set forth by the freshness, the fragrance of the morning, by the beauty and promise of daybreak, by the silent miracle of color in the east, by the uplift of ineffable glory in the gates of day? Is it not that God is in the instincts of childhood, in the structure of its nature, in the simplicity and clinging affections of its dear heart, in the blue of its eyes, the fire of its awakening spirit, in the whole mystic prophecy of its life? We do well when we interpret the childhood of the world into the Godhood of the universe.

The second division of our existence is soon upon us, when the sun is no longer in the east, but high in the heavens; when the notes of his career are strength, scope, sweep, conquest. What do these notes signify but man in his great prime? Look at a great human being in the prime of existence, and what are his notes? Strength, scope, sweep, conquest. What do these mean? They mean moral strength, moral scope, moral sweep, moral conquest. And what do these mean? That God in his splendor and power reigns in the strong man's life.

The third division of our existence is now upon

us; the sun is sinking in the sea; the red clouds of evening are gathering round it, and in the pathos and beauty of the end we read the meaning of the deepest mystery of our human life. The good life comes at length to the end of the day; in its decline there is beauty; in its wreck there is fire; as it sinks and seems to be engulfed in the abysses of darkness up through its weakness, in the place where it shone but a moment ago, there comes the sudden surprise of the utmost splendor and tenderness of our God. The awe of birth is in the advent of God; when in deeper awe we stand in the presence of our dead we are again face to face with God. All life lies within the compass of God's life; our morning, our noon, and our evening, our birth, our prime, our end are within the circle of his heart.

Sunset here means sunrise elsewhere; evening here means morning in other lands. Death is our name for birth into the heavenly world, the end in gloom the beginning in the vaster and brighter light. I like to believe that the soul goes as the sun goes, leaving the world dark because it goes, but itself essential light and fire, making for itself a luminous pathway in the new and mightier service upon which it has entered. While the sun survives, the last day can never come; till then every sunset must be a sunrise. While the soul lives in God and God in the soul, the final scene

can never arrive; till then every evening must be the obverse of a new and richer morning. Our world is a vanishing world, but it appears and vanishes in response to the infinite good will of God. He is builder, dissolver, rebuilder.

"Not of adamant and gold

Built he heaven stark and cold;
No, but a nest of bending reeds,
Flowering grass and scented weeds;
Or like a traveler's fleeing tent,
Or bow above the tempest bent;
Built of tears and sacred flames,
And Virtue reaching to its aims;
Built of furtherance and pursuing,
Not of spent deeds, but of doing.
Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless.
Plants with worlds the wilderness;
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found."

V

THE UNESCAPABLE IDEAL

"Even the night shall be light about me."

Ps. CXXXIX, 11.

THE universe comes to us under two great forms; it comes under the form of day and under the form of night. It is natural that we should greatly prefer the day. Our physical existence is dependent upon the heat and the light of the sun; and our vocations all lie in the sunshine. Our world circles the sun and the sun seems to belong to us, and day means health, opportunity, joy, hope. Symbolically, too, the day is great. "God is light and in him is no darkness at all." He is the Father of Lights. Our Lord Jesus .said of Himself, "I am the Light of the World," and He called upon his disciples to let their light so shine before men that others, seeing their good works, should glorify their Father who is in heaven.

We have come to identify this Light with the light of our day; at least we have come to find a symbol of that light in the light of day. Perhaps the most beautiful comparison that Jesus ever made was in speaking of the magnanimity of