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Soul that is behind nature. We have seen his religion telling him
that he can not live by bread alone, that he can rest only under
the shelter of the unseen, that he is infinitely more akin to the
invisible than to the visible, that he has a spirit and must therefore
hunger for the fellowship of the eternal Spirit. We see Christianity
lifting this religious capacity to its highest, and bringing in the
divine appeal in its sublimest form. We behold the earth transfigured
in this Christian dream, the ladder set that reaches from the dreamer
to heaven, and upon it, going up and coming down, the great prayers of
the soul and the tender responses of the Most High. To what shall we
refer this sublime, transfiguring dream? Is it the delusion of the
sleeper, or the whisper of God? Is the ladder set up from the earth,
or is it let down from above? Did man shape it out of his abysmal
desire, or did God make and establish it out of His love. What can
we say of that which is the highest wisdom, the widest sympathy, the
divinest love, and the mightiest power in human history? What can
we do with that which is the true life of man? Can the trees of the
field, as they clap their hands and sing in the freshening breeze, do
other than refer it to heaven? And man, as he sees the light of Christ
upon the Spirit behind nature, beholds in the gospel that which
interprets his highest dreams, feels in Christianity the power to
understand and to become his own best self--can he do other than say
that his Christian faith is the gift of God? The star in the brook
refers you for the explanation of its being to the star in the sky;
and the glory of the gospel living in the depths of man's soul has no
other origin than the love of God.

The hope of science lies in exploring the natural environment. All
material reality is here, and here science has found all her truth,
and every season reminds her that inexpressible wonders still wait her
search. In the heavens above, and in the earth beneath, and in the
waters under the earth are hidden the treasure for which she is to
toil. Earth and sea and sky; the waveless depths and the windless
heights, and the wide expanse between, now sunlit and again
stormswept, are the field of her enterprise and hope. And in the same
way the human environment is the region that the spirit must explore.
The meaning of humanity must be found in and through humanity. "Say
not in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven?