are loving. _Thou
shalt sufficiently rest_! How perpetually in these days is that
commandment broken, and with what woeful penalty! The practical basis
of all religion is the religion of the body. The body politic, too,
the social organism, has its code of natural laws, intelligible,
imperative. And every new discovery yields guidance and utters
command. "Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened!"

Only through moral fidelity is the higher meaning of Beauty won. It is
the pure in heart who see God. The beauty of the human form is, on the
one side, uplifting to the soul, sacramental, as if it were the shrine
of a divinity. On the other side, it blends with the instincts which
when unchecked in their play degrade humanity. Plato pictures the two
mingled elements as two steeds yoked together, the one black, unruly,
down-plunging, the other white, celestial, up-mounting, while Reason,
the charioteer, strives to rule them. The nobler interpretation is
slowly acquired by mankind. There are great, sometimes catastrophic,
lapses; there are periods when art and literature become the servants
of the earthly instead of the heavenly Venus. We still look far
forward to

"The world's great bridals, chaste and calm."

Yet, little by little, the ennobling aspect of human beauty becomes a
familiar perception, is wrought into a habit, is transmitted as an
inheritance. Whoever achieves in himself the victory of personal
purity is helping to open the eyes of mankind.

The material world becomes instinct with majesty and with sweetness to
the eyes that can see. It is a revelation of which Wordsworth and
Emerson are the prophets in literature, but which is written no less in
many a heart quite untaught of books. The face of Mother Earth is the
book in which many a man and woman and child read lessons of delight,
spelled in letters of rock and fern, of brook and cowslip, of maple
leaf and goldenrod. Such lessons mean little save to the pure and
humble.

The distinctive voice of nature's gospel is a voice of joy. Mixing
freely with humanity, we encounter the almost perpetual presence of
trouble. But turning to forest and mountain and sea and sky, we are
confronted with gladness ineffable. Still "the morning stars sing
together and the sons of God shout for joy." Can our religion find no
other emblem than the cross,--the instrument of torture? Mankind has
pondered long the lesson of sorrow: dare it