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longing to a limited view. This race-doctrine, proclaimed as a part of God's great system, coördinate and coincident with nature, and as a part of nature looked at, not from a theologic standard, but from the divine standpoint, in which time, and the world's history, and the evolution of the races, by all influences as being elements of God's vast economy, by the influx of the divine Spirit lifting men higher and higher, through the moral state, through commerce, through industries, through everything, from heaven to earth-all things, working together for good-this doctrine of race-development by a new birth into a new life is grander than the special doctrine taught by the old theology. The special doctrine is true even in its specialty; and it is more true than it has been taught to be hitherto. Its limits are wider, its operation is more universal, than men have been wont to suppose.

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This view shows why it is that a larger revelation of the future is not given to men; why so much is yet vague. are constantly met with difficulties about the world to come. Things have been exaggerated and over-estimated. The Bible has been taught as containing something of everything that a man could ever want; and men have used it as though it were an encyclopedia of human knowledge, as well as a book of hints and general sailing directions. It was supposed, in the earlier ages of the church, that it taught astronomy. There was a grand fight on that subject, and then the church turned round and said, Well, it is a revelation; and revelation does not undertake to teach science: it only undertakes to teach morality;" and gradually they gave up that the astronomy of Galileo need not be squared with the astronomy of Genesis.

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The modern school of astronomers do not admit that there were simply six literal days of creation. When the geologists of England first began to develop the fact of the ages of creation as indicated in that other book, that revelation which men had tramped on and had not read, another theory was set on foot; and by and by the force of facts as developed in scientific schools compelled men of reason to admit that time and the world were right in the

way of the theory of the absolute creation in six days of twenty-four hours each. Here and there you will find a man yet who holds that the world was created in six days by a direct fiat of the divine will. Such a man is twin brother of the oldest mummy in the tombs of Egypt; and I think the mummy is the better of the two!

But, then, it was said that the Scriptures taught it; and the difficulty was evaded by saying, again, that the Scriptures were designed to teach, not how the world came into existence, but how men were to get out of it and be saved.

In the same way, the whole Levitical system was necessarily dropped out of Christian ecclesiasticism, because it was not adapted to modern times and ways.

Then, more lately, have come the psychological and ethnological investigations, inquiries into the history of the race, by which is to be determined how men came into this world; and it looks as though it were going to be shown that men did not come according to the literal statements concerning the Garden of Eden, that they did not come from the loins of the one man, Adam: all the facts disclosed by scientific investigation point to the development of men from the lowest form of savage life, by continuous gradations, running through all ages. 'But," say men, "if you take that view, you will destroy the Bible;" and they have said that at every single step in which science has set forth the facts of God. as they are revealed in the immutable testimony of nature. First the priest has run his head against it-and the fact has not been destroyed in any case.

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Now, if it be determined, by the analogy of nature, by the study of customs and of governments, by tracing the peculiarities of judicial systems, by examining into ethnic ideas, the history of law being studied, the history of schools being studied, the history of the moral sense of mankind being studied-if it be determined as a fact that these things all converge toward one central teaching of the past, the time is coming when you will do in this case what you did in the cases of geology and astronomy and the Levitical systemadmit the fact as incontrovertible; and you must see to it, if the fact is universal and belongs to the divine economy, and

is a part of the structure of God's creation, and is a revelation of God, that it is reconciled with the other divine revelation.

It is assumed that the revelation of the letter, on paper, is superior to the revelation of fact in nature. I shall not discuss that question. I only say this: that the revelation of fact exterior to the Bible invariably carries the day,—and will; must; ought to. God has spoken by the heavens, by the earth, and by the experience of the race. His revelation is embodied in laws, in customs, in religions, in histories. It is set forth by the industries of the world, and by the whole earthly conception of life. These have been gathered up in various. ways; and all of them are part and parcel of a grander and wider scheme than has hitherto been embraced in the interpretation of the religion of the New Testament. Paul saw it, and John felt it. Paul almost stated it in philosophical terms. He looked out upon the world, and he saw that the problem of life was the problem of a race striving on one side against the animal, and seeking on the other side for the highest manhood elements; and he says, "These are irreconcilable. The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” And he tell us too that this conflict did not come in in consequence of the fall of man. We have nothing to do with it. It was the divine decree, or the problem of creation, that men, born in a lower state, should escape, by development and education under the divine Spirit, out of the lower forms of life into the higher forms. And conversion, translation, is the successive evolution of men toward that higher development in the life that is to come.

This brings me back to the opening sentence of this head —namely, Why are we not put in better information with regard to these ultimate conditions? Why does not the Word of God teach us more than it has on such subjects? The only explanation that we have is, that the lower stage cannot understand the higher stage.

If my beans that are just above the ground-two great fat leaves-could talk, they would say to me, "Explain to us, if you please, what we are going to be;" and I should say to these two fatties that stand there, "Well, you are both of

you going to be sucked dry, you are going to quirl up, and you are going to fall off." "But what is meant by our career of summer? We were promised that if we would be good beans we should have a whole summer of splendid development; and if we are going to be sucked dry, and quirl up, and fall off, how can that be? We are only leaves, and cannot understand all that belongs to our destiny; so explain to us the rest." I say, "There is going to be a stem, a vine, and it is going to twine about a dry stalk that is called by the dignified name of bean-pole; and there is to be a blossom at every axil; and from each blossom is to come a long pod." "What do you mean by a vine? We cannot understand anything except leaves. Being leaves, anything outside of leaves transcends our knowledge.'

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Well, leaves that do not understand anything but leaves, how can they understand a vine, or an axil, or blossoms, or pods, or future beans? The lower does not understand the higher.

I have a four-legged heathen on my place-"Tommy." He is a most intelligent and a most discriminating little dog; he is a gentleman in disguise; and I am really sorry for him that he cannot talk. If ever there was a dog that was distressed to think that he could not talk, that dog is. I sit by him on the bank, of a summer evening, and I say, "Tommy, I am sorry for you;" and he whines, as much as to say, "So am I." I say, "Tommy, I should like to tell you a great many things that you are worthy of knowing ;" and I do not know which is the most puzzled, he or I-I to get any idea into his head, or he to get any out of mine; but there it is: I know what he thinks, and he knows not what I think. He knows that there is something above a dog; and he manifests his canine uneasiness by whining, and in other ways. His aspiration shows itself from his ears to his tail. He longs to be something more and better; he yearns to occupy a larger sphere; but, after all, he does not, and he cannot.

I think you will find a much more dignified, and certainly a more philosophical, explanation of that very state of facts, in the first of Corinthians and the second chapter, from the twelfth to the sixteenth verses:

"Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man [the man of nature-the man of the body-the man of flesh] receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. [They are to be recognized by the spiritual or moral faculties, and not by the flesh, not by the passions and appetites.] But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. [The higher understands the lower, but the lower cannot understand the higher. You cannot reach up to things of which you have had no experience.] For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ."

By just so much as men have the mind of Christ they have entered into the higher life, they are in the experience of it, and they are able experimentally, and so spiritually, to understand the things which belong to it. Therefore there is a psychological impossibility of developing in this lower sphere the plenitude of the truths which belong to the higher sphere. We carry civilization down to the lowest races; but there is much in civilization that every missionary and philanthropist knows cannot be at first accepted by the converted heathen, and that they do not accept until after two or three generations, when they have risen to the higher forms. of civilization. These advanced conditions have to be grown into. They are the product of evolution.

So when it is asked that we should understand the whole economy of the other life, how is it possible to do it? How can I understand what that life is in which there is no flesh and blood-I, that was born and am nurtured by flesh and blood-except by fables, by poems, or by fictitious representations which disclose something to the imagination, but nothing to the philosophic and fact-loving powers? You cannot make heaven apparent to the earth until the heaven is like the earth, or the earth is like the heaven. Therefore it is impossible, in the nature of things, to bring down more than the shadow of divine realities to the minds of

men.

In the night, weary, worn with watching and anxiety, I say, "Show me the morning and the morning's sun." "Nay,"

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