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are the other shining worlds, in clusters, in fleets, all sailing on their great courses. It is impossible to take in a scene like that without expansion and elevation of the intellect, without the greatening of human intelligence. This influence of night upon thought has been going on through all the centuries of time.

The French philosopher Bergson in his most important book begins by calling attention to the practical character of the human intellect. He says it is given to provide for the body, to guide the body, to preserve it, to make a home for it, to fulfill primarily the uses of the body. He expresses in this thought in a striking way a remark that has been current among intelligent people for a long time; but he fails to observe, I think, that this is only the first stage of the intellect. True, we have to look out for our bodies, provide food, clothing, shelter, live in families and again provide for our families, enter vocations that have an economic and practical bearing; so the great world goes on. Our intellect is practical in the narrowest and clearest sense to begin with, but if you stop there you do not get the essential intellect of man at all.

What is the ideal of science? To understand the whole cosmos: what bearing has that upon bread and butter? What is the ideal of art? To build anew through creative imagination, by the

help of color and sound and form, the beauty of the universe. Again, is that practical? Is it not a value in itself? Is it not what the Greeks call freedom? What is the ideal of philosophy? To know the truth, through and through. What are the ideals of religion? The knowledge of God, of a soul that is to live forever, of a righteous life, of a kingdom of God in time: and what freedom and scope, what measureless ranges of being these ideals call into existence! These interests make the intellect as free as the wings and the flight of a bird. "God hath put eternity in man's heart," says one of the writers in the Old Testament; Hegel used to say, that man is the child of the Infinite, and your hand-to-mouth philosophers can never adequately set out the glory of the intellectual toil of mankind. It is a poor thing to represent the intellect as a petty farmer, going to his hencoop in the morning for an egg for breakfast. At best that is only one side; mere day, with its glare, its roar of activity, its sounding hammers of practicality give us only an aspect. Night with its infinite splendors gives us the greatness of man and the greatness of his interests as a rational being.

Finally, night is a discipline in trust. This universe, revealed by night, is so vast that no man is able to master it and no man is wise enough to find his way home through all those uncharted

seas; he must be guided, he must trust. He looks again and sees everything in perfect order through obedience to law; worlds upon worlds wheeled along the grooves of eternal harmony by the Infinite indwelling will, and he comes back and asks himself, "If I think my wisest, if I love my purest, if I act my bravest and my best, will not that same Universal Spirit wheel me along the grooves of divine harmony and bring me safely at last to my goal?” “Oh, night, and storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong!" "Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven"; so sings the poet; the wildness, the beauty and the infinity of it all excite within us the longing to trust the good God. Trust the Infinite Will, plant your strength on that and rest your weary life there. For a rational being who loves life and who would not like to part with it, the highest reason, the best wisdom, the supreme piety is to trust God and see it all. Is not that what Browning says?

"Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be.

Youth shows but half; trust God: see

all, nor be afraid!”

Do your best and trust God to bring you home.

VI

GREATNESS MEASURED BY THE IDEAL

"For thou hast made him but little lower than God and crownest him with glory and honor."

PB. VIII, 5.

PROBABLY a greater number of the greatest thoughts of mankind were never compressed in fewer words than in this truly wonderful psalm. Kant's two wonders are here: the starry heavens above and the moral law within; Kant's two wonders are here, and infinitely more. The world of nature is here in all its amazing splendor and wild, living beauty. The world of God is here, sublime, tender, mysterious, incomprehensible. In between the world of nature and the world of God is set the world of man. Upon each of these worlds, brief though the psalm is, we find a sample of the greatest thoughts that have occupied the mind of man.

It is primarily with the world of man that we are concerned now, and probably in the extant records of our race there is no more daring confession than that contained in these words: “Thou hast made him but little lower than God and crownest him with glory and honor." In this psalm there are two tests of greatness. The first

test is physical magnitude, in space, in time, in material might. The second test of greatness is intellectual and moral grandeur. According to the first test of greatness man falls and all faith with him, all human hope, and the whole world of precious human things. According to the second test man rises, and the cosmos falls and with it all atheism, all inhumanity, all despair, all sorrow. Consider, then, seriously with me for a few moments these two tests of greatness.

1. The first is the test of magnitude. This is presented in the psalm in three forms, with the utmost impressiveness and indeed with tremendous power. There is the universe in space; look at it when the night is clear through the wonder of the Syrian atmosphere; look at it when the night is clear through our own untroubled atmosphere with the naked eye, and what a scene of wild, endless beauty it presents; look at it through the astronomer's glass and bring upon your soul a yet greater amazement at those countless blazing worlds and galaxies of worlds. Then turn and ask, what is man? A speck of dust to a sun, a firefly to the star Sirius, a glowworm to the constellation of Orion. The organism, so minute as to require the strongest microscope to be seen, has a greater physical magnitude, measured against the totality of the solar system than man measured against the universe in space; so

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