ture, is like the view from a window; and, gazing upon it,
sits feeling, thinking, aspiring man. His consciousness is environed
and conditioned by the surrounding world, but is utterly unexplained by
it, wholly untranslatable in its terms. Definite and precise is the
language of mathematics, of chemistry, of physical procedure. Mystery
of mysteries is the human spirit,--mystery of mysteries and holy of
holies. A new sense of the sacredness of human life has been born in
this later age. It is our most precious acquisition. Better could we
have waited for modern science than for modern humanity. Better could
we spare the telegraph and the steam-engine and anaesthesia than that
quickened sense of the value of man as man which inspires the deepest
political and social movements of to-day. In all sober minds, in all
lofty effort,--whatever there may be of despair of God or hopelessness
of a personal future,--we see a profound recognition of the solemnity
and sacredness of human existence. Through the sad pages of George
Eliot, through Emerson's exultant psalm, through the reformer's battle,
the socialist's scheme, runs this golden link,--the value of simple
humanity.

This, then, we may say is the characteristic attitude of the man of
to-day,--before the processes of nature, awe and reverence; before the
life of humanity, sympathy and tenderness.

But now rises a heart-moving question. The dearest article of
religious faith has been a Divine Power, governing the universe and
holding to man an intimate relation involving issues of supreme
significance to humanity. At this point modern thought falters. The
long-familiar expression of that belief is the assertion of a personal,
providential, all-just, and all-loving God. What reason have men
assigned to themselves for belief in such a God, while confronted all
the time by the fearful spectacle of a world in which sin and misery
perpetually mingle with goodness and happiness? What has been the
resource of the Christian intellect against that mystery of evil which
baffled the questioner in the book of Job, and drove Lucretius to
virtual atheism, and left Marcus Aurelius in doubt whether there be
gods or not? The resource of the Christian thinker has been his belief
that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. Here was a soul which was sinless
and holy, which loved sinners so as to die for them; and this was God
himself. That belief has been the foundation of Christian t