ur hearts; and so, in
spite of all the advance of knowledge, all the criticism, it remains
untouched, brightening and growing. And so there is reason, as we gaze
out on the future, why we should look with contempt, if you will, upon
the conditions that trouble us in this life, the burdens, the sorrows,
the illnesses, when all that life means at its highest is that out of
the conditions, whatever they are, I should shape a manhood, cultivate
a soul, make myself worth living, fitting myself for that which gleams
through the mist a promise, if you will, of something there beyond.

Now I wish simply to call your attention to the fact that doubt does
not touch this eternal Power, does not touch the fact that this is a
good Power, and that it is on the side of goodness, does not touch the
fact that we are the children of that Power and may co-operate with it
for good and share its ultimate triumph, does not touch the great hope
that makes it worth while for us to suffer, to bear, to dare all
things. And these great trusts, are they not all we need to be men, to
be women, to conquer the conditions of life and prove ourselves
children of the Highest?

EVOLUTION LOSES NOTHING OF VALUE TO MAN.

I TAKE two texts, one of them from the New Testament. It may be found
in the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, the
seventeenth verse, "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the
prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil." The other text is from
Emerson: "One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never
lost."

The theory of evolution to-day, in the minds of all competent students,
is quite as firmly established as is the law of gravity or the
Copernican theory in astronomy. But, when it was first propounded in
its modern form by Herbert Spencer, when he issued his first book, and
when Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published, there was an outcry,
especially throughout the religious world. There was a great fear
shuddered through the hearts of men. They felt as though the dearest
things on earth were threatened and were likely to be destroyed.
Essayists declared that this theory undermined the foundations of
morals. They said that it took away, not only the Bible, but God and
all rational religion. They told us that, in tracing the ancestry of
man back and down to the animals, humanity was being desecrated, and
that the essential feature of man as a child of God was being taken
away.

If I believ