ence will co-operate and no longer conflict. With deepening insight
it is becoming plainer than ever that the phenomena of life, and even
of matter, are the expressions of a more than physical force.
Evolution is a law under which a forward process is moving on, and
moving up. There is an impulse of consciousness working from within,
and there is a spiritual, as well as a material, environment inviting
{105} to correspondence with itself. Freedom and power of choice are
admitted to be present in regions where their existence was for long
most strenuously denied. Even matter may have its own power of
insistence and resistance--how much more mind and will. This
consideration may give us a yet clearer clue to the mysteries of
failure, miscarriage, and waste. A world that was to produce
self-conscious, self-determining personalities needed to have freedom
through the whole of its development; and the consequent risk and
possible cost were inevitable. Shall we not be led to admire and
revere increasingly the wonder of it all, as there grows upon us the
sense of the quietness and gentleness, the foresight, and the infinite
patience of the Being of beings, who will never obtrude His presence
and action upon us, just because He would help us to be our own, not
dead but living, selves, and would have us rise with Him to the highest
things?

We are far from the end of our learning. There are many enigmas yet to
be made plain. We could not wish it otherwise. It has ever been
through the narrow gate of difficulty that we have passed into the
wider court of truth. We have good cause to be humble, but we have
full right to be hopeful. We must not be afraid to face the problems
that await {106} us, whatever they may be. We may be confident that we
are not to be deceived; but that, under a Guidance that has never
failed, we shall at length be brought to see the dawning of the
longed-for day,

"When that in us which thinks with that which feels
Shall everlastingly be reconciled,
And that which questioneth with that which kneels."

[1] This important distinction was carefully drawn by the Duke of
Argyll in his _Reign of Law_ (pp. 14, 25), published in 1866.

[2] Aubrey Moore, in one of a series of remarkable articles contributed
to the _Guardian_ (January 18th, 25th, February 1st, 1888).

[3] Aubrey Moore, _Lux Mundi_.

{107}

INDEX

AETHER, 73, 94.

Agnosticism, 32, 46-52.

Aquinas, St. Thom