In the still higher departments of morality and religion, artificiality or want of spontaneity fills us with something akin to disgust. To be good or true for the sake of some ulterior end is to value goodness and truth less than that end. In all this region it is essential, for our thorough sympathy and admiration, that the being who evokes it should in himself be pure, loving, honourable, and true, and that actions evincing those qualities should be the outcome of himself, otherwise we call them hypocritical. But, inasmuch as the immoral man is capable of becoming a moral one, we find that here also the same process has to be gone through. The moral state can only be attained by the determined performance of moral actions through extraneous effort. And this often repeated becomes habitual; the feelings filled with the delight of finding themselves in harmonious relationship to the nature of things, react, and the man who started by doing a good action to his neighbour through an effort, ends by doing it impelled by the love within him, which would make it a pain to him to leave that action undone. Thus it will be seen that the law, whose action we have been attempting to trace, applies equally to the formation of moral character as to the formation of what we may call faculty.

Here, then, we come back to the point where we digressed, when we were met by the fact that children arrived in this world with character and faculty already formed. In point of fact, it is only by the possession of this ready-made faculty that a high degree of attainment in any department of intellectual or spiritual life can be reached in this life.

The naturally stupid never becomes what we should understand by "bright." Special gifts, such as an appreciation of music, or an almost intuitive power of calculation, can never be acquired, and can only be developed to a very small extent in the course of a lifetime, in those devoid of what we call a natural bent. If we suppose that the Spirit has pre-existed, and has gone through an evolutionary process analagous to that of the body, passing through experience after experience (not necessarily in connection with the life on earth), and with each acquiring its modicum of character and faculty, we seem at once to have a key which will explain the wonderful differences which are presented to us in the intellectual and spiritual powers of human beings. It at once can be understood how it is that one person may be unable to distinguish between the high and the low notes of a scale, and another, almost without any special education, can extemporise beautiful music from any musical instrument. It would explain those differences in the moral calibre of children which so frequently puzzle and distress parents; and, moreover, it offers an explanation of the moral anomalies of the world, the unequal adjustments of character and situation, and what appears to many to be the favouritism of Providence. This theory, too, removes the difficulty which we frequently feel in respect to the nonresponsibility of those whose natural characteristics are against them. Of such we often say by way of excuse "They did not make themselves;" but, if pre-existence be true, this is precisely what they have done. They are as much responsible for what they are when they

arrive here as for what they become whilst living here, though we must always bear in mind that they may be in very various stages of experience, and that the Savage, whether of aboriginal race or low down in the strata of so-called civilised life, is probably only beginning the alphabet of intellectual and spiritual existence. On no moral theory apart from this can the present unequal adjustment of external and internal conditions be considered both equitable and final. On the theory of a coming rectification in another world, the conviction still is that justice is not now being done. On the theory which connects us with the past as well as with the future, we may well suppose that justice is being done now, and at all stages of our existence.

No point is brought into greater prominence in all scientific research than that Nature usually occupies, what seems to our finite minds enormous reaches of time in carrying out her various developments. We are all familiar with this fact, as illustrated in the sciences of astronomy and geology, in which the contemplation of piled-up ages, which are quite unrealisable, bewilder the mind at every turn. The modern doctrine of evolution provides only one more illustration of this law. If the evolution of species has thus occupied untold ages, the ordinary duration of the life of a human being appears to be entirely inadequate to produce spiritual development, such as is usually supposed to be the outcome of a single earthly life. That much may be learnt in the three-score years and ten may be admitted, but carefully observing individual growth, especially in the light of the theory of instinct being transmuted experience, we shall be struck with the very small advance individuals make in the course of the thirty or forty years which is more than the average of human life. Although growth may be supposed to be always taking place, yet, like all nature's processes, it will be apparently intermittent, and like the rising tide be accompanied by receding as well as advancing waves, which may readily deceive a casual observer; so that to such Dr. Young's lines may appear to cover the whole truth, when he thus summarised human life :

"At thirty man suspects himself a fool,
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan,
At fifty chides his infamous delay,

Resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same!"

This theory, too, provides a lofty summit from which reason and imagination can survey the future possibilities in store for the human soul. The silly prejudice which has always endeavoured to cast discredit on the doctrine of evolution by an appeal to man's vanity, and by calling on him to disclaim past connection with the lower animal types, may well pass away in the presence of the probability opened out before him, that if he has been able to rise from so low an estate to his present comparative dignity and power, there can be no reason why the steady action of the same law should not eventually provide him with faculties and powers hitherto undreamt of, and which will place as great a distance between the highest type of man to-day and his then state, as he now perceives to exist between his present attainments and those of his much

despised fore-runners in the ages before a biped appeared upon the earth. New senses it may be, new developments, spiritual, moral, and intellectual, may land us in such glorious exaltations as we now indefinitely attach to the angels and archangels of the apocalypse.

Of course, in thinking out a problem of this nature innumerable questions and difficulties present themselves which it is quite impossible to answer, and on which it is almost useless to speculate. That which, after all, we have to do is to take all the known facts and phenomena and to see which theory covers them best, and leaves the fewest unsolved difficulties behind. It has to be confessed that we cannot solve such a problem as this by the inductive process alone. None the less, however, is it true that the interest of a question which touches us individually so closely, and which involves likewise the future of our race, cannot fail to be enormous, and it is inconceivable that any intelligent mind should be willing to go through life without forming some theory on the subject.

That the theory of spiritual evolution here shadowed forth, suggested, as it has been, by the analogy of physical evolution, which is now so greatly enlarging our outlook into the actualities of the past and the possibilities of the future, is at least a self-consistent and suggestive one, will, I think, be admitted, if I have in any way succeeded in making intelligible a somewhat obscure subject.

SENEX.

APRIL.

CLEAR, golden, soft, the springtide sunshine beams
With tranquil splendour, piercing grove and dingle,
As though bright morning, noon, and eve could mingle
In some eternal home of daylight dreams;

Even as though this radiance were not fleeting,
But shone for ever from the slumbering skies,
Calming with tender light impassioned eyes,
And sleepless brain, and heart too strongly beating.
Yet cold March winds prepared these breezes warm,
And heralded this glow of April weather,
And soon dim flakes of cloud will float together,
And earth be sad once more with rain and storm;
For all fresh glory must be born of strife,
And still perfection were but death in life.

C. C. W. N.

VII.

When we invade, attack, subdue, and slay,
We write it down "A glorious victory;"
But should the foe resist, dispute our sway,
And slaughter us, 66 a massacre we cry.

VIII.

When we've done wrong, and thence are ill at ease,
How quick at other's faults we angry grow;

And self-accusing conscience to appease,

Make haste to be the first the stone to throw.

IX.

Still, by its fruit, Christ said, you know the tree;
Who does the Father's will is also Son;

Not so, say priests, you must believe as we,
For only by our faith is safety won.

X.

Organic things from low to higher rise,
A still-ascending scale in Nature's plan;
Beginning with the simplest strains,

And ending in the crowning glory, man.

*

Yet can we say this is in truth the end?
Or at this crown must evolution rest?
For death itself may be indeed the friend

To lead to life still higher and more blest.

*

From high to higher still life will ascend,

Through worlds which even yet we cannot see; For who can deem that consciousness will end, Nor gain perfection in eternity?

XI.

"More light!" the poet said, and passed away; Like his, our cry should always be "more light;" We need it even on the brightest day,

Much more to guide us through the dark of night.

XII.

One prayer above all prayers a man should pray,
Not seeking any vain or temporal thing;
Nor wealth, nor pleasure, lasting but a day,
But strength to bear whatever life may bring.

J. A. L.