harmonious development of a man's faculties to an ideal symmetry.

When you consider the intricacy of a construction like Babbage's calculating machine, it tires your brain and you give up attempting to form a conception of it. When you consider the problems which are involved in a great astronomical calculation, they are so many and so intricate that unless one has rare genius and long practice they are insoluble to him. But no physical problems such as these are comparable to the difficulty which there is in the development of absolute power and co-operative harmony in the ideal perfect man.

Consider the rawness of men, their rudeness, their weakness in moral elements, and their strength in basilar forces. Consider the circumstances under which men come into the world, and under which they have to play their part in the development of their character and in the fulfillment of the behests of God's ideal law, or law of ideal perfection. What is the preparation with which a man starts in life? Not only does he inherit from his parents, from his ancestors, all conceivable combinations of normal qualities, in all degrees of proportion, but he inherits these qualities in an endless, varying series; so that the first child that is born into a family is not the type of the second. In other words, the alphabet which spells out each man is found in father and mother, in grandfather and grandmother; and the lines which come down to the formation of each individual one, select, from long reaches backward, qualities in different degrees, in different proportions, and with different susceptibilities. Every man, differently, for himself, inherits, in varying degrees, that which comes down to him through his ancestors. So that one man has a large intellect, with small feeling; and another has a small intellect with large feeling. One man has radiancy of imagination and no practicalness, while another man is stone blind in imagination and has excessive practicalness. In the same household one sings as a poet, and all the rest are mute; one is an eminent mathematician, and none of the others has any gifts in that direction. In the same brood of children, representing the same father and

mother, by various combinations of qualities, in accordance with God's law of heredity, there is infinite variation. So every man stands for himself.

In mankind the individual is a thousand times more characteristic than anywhere else in creation. Although the genus among men is well marked, the species under that genus are so distinct one from another that they would constitute, in any other department of knowledge, distinct genera.

It is true, also, that we inherit, at the start, morbid conditions. Some men are born with perfect health. Their brain is healthy. All the nerves that run out from it are healthy. Their heart is healthy. Their lungs are healthy. Their stomach is healthy. Their bone-system is good, and their muscular system is good. Each part is in proportion to every other, and all the parts work harmoniously. But right by the side of such a one, and born of the same father and mother, is one whose head is in great disproportion to all the rest of his body. Another is born with a good head and a good heart, but poor lungs. Still another is born with poor digestion.

Not only so, but some men are born with morbid appetites and with tendencies toward lust. They inherit evil propensities from their parents for which they are no more responsible than they would be for a club-foot, or for a deformed arm. In some the appetite for drink is hereditary. Insanity is born in some. There is every conceivable variety of conditions in which men are born. And they who study men most closely, those who are the best physiologists, are the most assured of the fact that we are born with infinitely different and varying proportions, not only of physical organs, but of moral qualities.

And yet, no man has a bill of items when he is born. No invoice comes with a man when he enters this world, saying, "Brain so much; heart so much," and so on. The father does not know what is in the child; the mother does not know it; the child itself does not know it; nobody knows it until the person finds it out himself, when he is shoved into life, and the school-master runs against it, and it is restrained; or until the minister discovers it; or until the man, stum

bling this way or that way, driven by forces which he has not calculated, comes to a knowledge of it.

There are generic public laws; and there are also special laws which apply to individual men, and which are required by each one for himself; but where is there, in any revelation, or in any book of accumulated human experience, anything that tells a man what he is when he starts in this world blindly on the race of the ideal perfection of manhood?

I am not exaggerating this; it is worse than I can possibly draw it; but the looking in the face the facts of the condition in which men actually exist is indispensable to the right understanding of divine grace.

Consider, also, the surroundings into which men are born. How blessed are they who are half-way in heaven when they sit in their mother's lap! How many there are who have no such benign and sacred place! How many there are whose parents are their perverters! How many there are who are made selfish by their instruction, as well as by the hereditary tendencies which are in themselves! How many are rendered base, frivolous, coarse, animal, and sensuous, by parents who are worse than no teachers, perverting their children!

Here are men who are born into life with nothing but capacities. They are ignorant as to what these capacities are ; and they exist in different men in such endlessly different proportions that no one man is a model for another. Then, men are frequently tainted with morbid conditions which are hereditary. And with these disabilities they are born into households where very little light or help is given to them. And not once nor twice, but many times, and in varying degrees, these facts characterize the condition of the human family.

In the very highest points of Christian culture and attainment things have been gradually growing better; but in looking over the past, consider as you go back, and as the light grows dimmer and dimmer, what must be the condition, not of the comparatively few favored families, not of here and there a small circle who have been blessed in overmeas

ure, but of all mankind, if the law of perfectness is enforced. What kind of a Christianity is that which takes no account of mankind? If there is any truth in Christianity, it must be a truth that covers the condition of the human family; it must be a truth that is able to solve all physical and social and moral phenomena; it must be a truth that shall meet, for instance, all physiological facts squarely in the face. There are men who will bow down with reverence before a text, but who will jump a fact. There are men who are profoundly reverential toward the revelation of God in the Bible, but who are most fractious and most presumptuous in treading under foot God's other revelation-the revelation of nature, and of actual human life. And when I look out on the condition of the race; when I see how they are born, how they are made up, how little they know about helping themselves, how little anybody knows about helping them, how ignorant they are, and how helpless they are; when I look at life as it undeniably is, I say that the theories which have accounted for these things are insufficient. We must have other ones; and other ones are dawning.

Consider what it is, in the best conditions, to come into life unformed and unbuilt, and to go on all the way through one's career with a law continually over one's head demanding perfectness-perfectness of body, with all its unknown conditions; perfectness of the basilar disposition, with all its fiery passions and appetites, untamed and and untamable; perfectness everywhere, always, and under all circumstances.

To put a child that has never seen a horse, on some Western prairie, or on the Southern pampas, behind a team of wild horses first harnessed, and to put the lines in his hands, and say to this little five-year-old, "Drive them, or be damned!"-how cruel it would be! And yet, how have men harnessed human life, and taken creatures born of the fieriest passions, of the intensest natures, about which they know so little; how have they taken such beings that are ignorant of themselves, and put them behind themselves, and said, "Be perfect, or be damned"!

Suppose you were to take a grown man, who knew the ship-building trade, and send him on a raft to sea, saying,

"Build your ship while you are making the voyage"! What sort of a voyage would a man make on a raft which he was compelled to convert into a ship while making his trip on the ocean? And yet, is it not so with you and me? Are we not very much equipped with lumber, but not at all with a good hull? Are we not to develop ourselves, and make our character, while all the time there is above our heads-yours, and mine, and everybody's - the imperious command, "Be thou perfect"?

Thanks be to God that there is such a requirement. Thanks be to God that so high a standard is held up before us. When I see how men come into life, and how they would destroy and obliterate all traces of divinity in them, I am glad that there is a law in the heavens which quietly says to them, "Be thou perfect, as I am perfect."

Consider what forces society generates. Consider what massive institutions men find already in society, which they cannot go around, which they cannot dig under, which they cannot pass through, and which throw lights and shadows upon them, and influence them for good or for evil, as the case may be. Consider what currents there are, which are like gulf-streams, with channels already cut, that are irresistible to the strongest men. Consider how impossible it is for a man to throw himself out from under the influence of those who are around him. Consider the conflicts of society. Consider its rivalries, and envies, and jealousies, and deceits, and cruelties, and oppressions. Consider the wrongs that are perpetrated everywhere. And then consider that a man is put into society where these great forces are at work, without any sociological knowledge, without any chart, with only functional and educational equipment.

When I consider what the conditions are under which human life is to develop itself; when I look simply at the facts of man's actual existence; when I think of the influences which are brought to bear upon the formation of men's characters, I not only do not marvel that civilization has progressed so little, but I marvel that it has progressed at all; and on the theory that there are no forces operating upon mankind except the forces of nature, I cannot under