stery of the sunset or the starry heavens.

So of the mystery of death. The veil is not lifted, but it stirs
before the breath of our prayers and hopes. The deepest fear in man is
the fear of death, and that fear is conquered in him by something
greater than itself. Even on the natural plane man is seldom afraid of
death when it comes; it is rather the distant image that appalls him.
Before the reality some instinct seems to bid him not to fear. Every
noble sentiment lifts men above the dread of death. For their country
on the battlefield, for other men in sudden accidents and perils, men
give their lives instinctively or deliberately.

It is personal love to which death seems to menace irretrievable and
final disaster. But it is personal love to which comes the divinest
presage. Some voice says to our yearning heart, "Fear nothing, doubt
nothing, only _live_!"

From our birth to our death we are encompassed by mystery, but it is a
mystery which may, if we will have it so, grow warm, luminous, divine.

So, by simple fidelity, man may find within himself harmony, victory,
and peace. When now, from this standpoint, he looks out on the
universe,--and from no other standpoint can he hope for any clear
vision,--what does he most clearly discern? These three
aspects,--Order, Beauty, Life.

As he opens himself to these three aspects and actively conforms
himself to them,--as he studies, obeys, and reveres the Order, as he
perceives and rejoices in the Beauty, as in sympathy and service he
merges his personal life in the multiform Life,--so he grows in the
impression of a divine harmony and unity pervading all things. So he
becomes aware of a Cosmos,--a universal order of beauty and of love.
He becomes aware of it only as he becomes voluntarily and consciously a
part of it. Only through the fidelity of his moral life does he feel
beneath his feet a sure foundation. Only as his soul glows a spark of
love does it recognize the celestial ether in which it is an atom.

At every moment and on every side we are in touch with the realities of
being.

We live and move in a world of orderly procedure, to which we may adapt
ourselves with growing intelligence and purpose.

Both the animate and inanimate creation is clothed in forms which
minister to the sense of beauty; and the more that sense is cultivated
in us, the more universally do we recognize beauty, and the more
profound is its appeal to our consciousnes