. 1, 4; Zech. xiv. 20). And here, "in the priestly
interest," is an avowal that the Divine habitation which they boast of
is but the likeness and shadow of some Divine reality concealed. And
these strange expectations have proved to be the most fruitful and
energetic principles in their religion.

This very presence of the ideal is what will for ever make the highest
natures quite certain that the visible universe is no mere resultant of
clashing forces without a soul, but the genuine work of a Creator. The
universe is charged throughout with the most powerful appeals to all
that is artistic and vital within us; so that a cataract is more than
water falling noisily, and the silence of midnight more than the absence
of disturbance, and a snow mountain more than a storehouse to feed the
torrents in summer, being also poems, appeals, revelations, whispers
from a spirit, heard in the depth of ours.

Does any one, listening to Beethoven's funeral march, doubt the
utterance of a soul, as distinct from clanging metal and vibrating
chords? And the world has in it this mysterious witness to something
more than heat and cold, moisture and drought: something which makes the
difference between a well-filled granary and a field of grain rippling
golden in the breeze. This is not a coercive argument for the hostile
logic-monger: it is an appeal for the open heart. "He that hath ears to
hear, let him hear."

To fill the tabernacle of Moses with spiritual meaning, the ideal
tabernacle was revealed to him in the Mount of God.

Let us apply the same principle to human life. There also harmony and
unity, a pervading sense of beauty and of soul, are not to be won by
mere obedience to a mandate here and a prohibition there. Like Moses, it
is not by labour according to specification that we may erect a shrine
for deity. Those parables which tell of obedient toil would be sadly
defective, therefore, without those which speak of love and joy, a
supper, a Shepherd bearing home His sheep, a prodigal whose dull
expectation of hired service is changed for investiture with the best
robe and the gold ring, and welcome of dance and music.

How shall our lives be made thus harmonious, a spiritual poem and not a
task, a chord vibrating under the musician's hand? How shall thought and
word, desire and deed, become like the blended voices of river and wind
and wood, a witness for the divine? Not by mere elaboration of detail
(though correctness is a