duty, to do the right thing at whatever
temporary cost to himself. The right thing for him will be that which
produces most good. And he will deem that the most good which
best promotes human fellowship, warms it with love, colours it with
beauty, enlightens it with truth, and sweetens it with grace. Finally,
and culminatingly, he will have that spirituality and fine
sensitiveness of soul which will put him in touch with the true Heart
of Nature and make him eagerly responsive to the subtlest
promptings which spring therefrom; so he will be possessed of a
profound conviction, rooted in the very depths of his being, that in
doing the right thing, or in other words pursuing righteousness, he is
carrying out the will and intention of that Divine Being whom we
here call Nature but whom we might also call God.

This, or something like it, is the ideal of a man which most of us
would form under the impress and impetus of the indwelling genius
of Nature. But this ideal can only be reached by an individual when
his country also has reached it. He will be driven, therefore, to make
his country behave and act up to this ideal. And his country cannot
so act till the general society of nations conducts itself on the same
general lines. His country, therefore, will be driven to make the
general society of nations behave in accordance with the principles
of high fellowship.

* * *

We have made for ourselves the ideal of a man. It remains to show
that the finest pitch of all is only reached in the union of man and
woman. The man is not complete without the woman, nor the
woman without the man. It is in their union, therefore, that the ideal
in its greatest perfection will be seen. The flower which results from
the working of the ideal in the Heart of Nature, as the flower of the
rose results from the working of the rose-ideal in the heart of the
rose-seed, we see in the love of man and woman at the supreme
moment of their union. This is the very holiest thing in Nature. It is
then that both the man and the woman are to the fullest extent
themselves, both to be and to express all that is in them to be. They
love then to their extreme capacity to love. They are gentle then to
the utmost limit of tenderness. And they are strong then to the
farthest stretch of their strength.

And while they thus reach the very acme of Nature's ideal so far as
we men can discern it, they, at the same time and in so doing, touch
the very foundation