gence and will. The sundering gulph is just as deep and impassable in one case as it is in the other. But we must not so understand this, as to lose sight at the same time of the mysterious life union which holds notwithstanding between nature and mind. The world in its lower view, is not simply the outward theatre or stage on which man is to act his part, as a candidate for heaven. In the midst of all its different forms of existence, it is pervaded throughout with the power of a single life, which comes ultimately to its full sense and force only in the human person. This should be plain to the most common observation. Nature is constructed, or we should say rather exists, on the plan of a vast pyramid; which starts in the mass of inorganic matter, and rises steadily through successive stages of organization, first vegetable then animal, till at length it gains in man the summit and crown, towards which it has been evidently reaching and tending from the start. So, in the first chapter of Genesis, we have the process of creation described in this very order, and all conducted to its majestic conclusion finally, only towards the close of the sixth day, in that oracle of infinite majesty and love: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every moving thing that moveth upon the earth." Man is the centre of nature, without which it could not be in any of its parts the living constitution which it is in fact; for the parts in this case subsist not, by themselves or for themselves simply, but in virtue only of their organic comprehension in the whole. Nature of course then rests in man as her own universal sense and end, and can never be disjoined from his life. The union is not outward simply, but inward and vital. Man carries in V himself the full mystery of the material world and remains from first to last the organ of its power. He is indeed, in another view, far more than nature. Reason and freedom, as they meet together in the idea of personality, belong to a wholly different order of existence; in virtue of which, he towers high above the whole surrounding world, as the immediate representative and vicegerent of God in its midst; made in the image, and after the likeness of his glorious Maker, as we are told, and for this reason clothed with supremacy over the entire inferior creation. But still, in all this dignity, his native affinity with this creation is not in the least impaired or broken. Nature clings to him still, as the noblest fruit of her own womb, in whose mysterious presence is fulfilled the last prophetic sense of her whole previous life, while at the same time this is made to pass away in

something quite beyond itself. His personality, with all his world-transcending, heaven-climbing powers, remains rooted to to the earth, conditioned at every point by the material soil from which it has sprung, and reflecting in clear image the outward life which has become etherealized in its constitution. The process of nature is thus rising upwards perpetually into the process of morality, by which in the end the problem of the world is to become complete in the history of man. The first is the necessary basis and support of the second, as truly as the stock is made to carry the flower in which it passes away. Man is the efflorescence of nature, the full bursting forth of her inmost sense and endeavor, into the form of intelligence and will; and his whole thinking and working consequently can be sound and solid, only as they are in fact borne and carried by a growth that springs immediately from her womb.

There is no opposition then, as is sometimes dreamed, between the natural and the moral. They are indeed widely different, but not in such a way as to contradict each other. On the contrary, they can never be rightly sundered or disjoined. Nature, in order to be true to itself, must ascend into the sphere of morality; and morality, on the other hand, can have no truth or substance, except as it is found to embody in itself the life of nature, thus emancipated into a higher form. Daughters of heaven as they all are, there is still not a single virtue, which is not in this respect at the same time truly and fully earth-born; as much so, we may say, as its own sweet image, the natural flower, be it modest daisy or stately dahlia, that quietly blooms at its side. A morality that affects to be purely of the skies, can never be other than sickly and sentimental. The more of nature our virtues enshrine, the more vigorous will they be found to be and worthy of respect.

This is one universal law, in the constitution of our human life. Another presents itself, as already stated, in the conception of an organic process, in virtue of which the problem of every individual life is from the start involved in the problem that includes humanity as a whole.

Morality, by its very nature, is something social. It does not simply require the relations which society creates, as an outward field for its action, but stands also only in the sense of these relations as a part of its own being. The idea of man, which is of course originally one and single, in order that it may become actual, must resolve itself into an innumerable multitude of individual lives, whose perfection subsequently can be found again in no other form than that of their general union in a free way.

Provision is made for such a union in the natural constitution of humanity, bound together as it is by a common origin, and upheld by perpetual evolution from itself in the way of history. But mere nature here is not sufficient to secure all that is required. Humanity comes to its full sense only in the sphere of intelligence and freedom; and its proper wholeness therefore is something to be reached, only by the activity of the will, recognizing and embracing, with full consent, the relations in which it is required to move. This again supposes a process, growing forth continually from the law of natural evolution and growth just noticed, by which the individual life, in finding itself under its higher form of self-consciousness, may be still engaged to seek its true place in the integration of life as a whole, flowing into this by the spontaneous force of love, and resting in it as the proper and necessary perfection of its own being. The unity of the race can be fully accomplished thus, only through the free action of the living elements into which it is resolved for this purpose. The process of the union is moral, and in no sense physical, except as conditioned by a natural constitution, which adumbrates and supports the spiritual structure that springs from its presence. It is possible in such case, of course, that the freedom of the individual subject may be abused, and the law of love denied which he is bound by his nature to honor and obey. He may so cling to his own separate and single life, through selfishness and sin, as to wrong perpetually the claims of the general life in which this should become complete. But in all this he wrongs at the same time the inmost sense and meaning also of his own individual being. Whether he choose to make account of it or not, he is formed for morality, that is for free inward union with his race, through the social relations in which he stands; and his life can come to no right development in itself, but must suffer rather perpetual violence in its nature, if it be not allowed to unfold itself in this its only normal and legitimate form. Morality, including as it does the conception of personality, or the self-conscious and self-acting force of reason and will, is something general and universal by its very naIt implies throughout the idea of fellowship and union, the organic marriage of reciprocally necessary and mutually supplemental parts, working into each other and conspiring towards a common whole. In the power of this universal, omnipotent and irreversible law, the life of every man stands from the beginning, in virtue of its spiritual and moral constitution. He can never be true to himself at a single point, he can never exercise a single moral function, a single act of intelligence or

ture.

will, in a free way, without going beyond his own person, and mingling, with conscious coalescence, in the sea of life with which he is surrounded.

By one of the greatest discoveries in modern science, placing the name of Schleiermacher in the sphere of ethics on the same high level with that of Kepler in the sphere of physics, the general moral function, as it may be styled, in man, is found to resolve itself, by a process of analysis which we have no time here to follow, into four cardinal forms of action, two lying on the side of the understanding and two on the side of the will. Each of these can hold properly only under a social character, by which the individual in order that he may be at all complete in himself, is forced to enter into fellowship with his race. Thus arise four great spheres of moral union, in the proper constitution of the world's life. The first is exhibited to us predominantly in the idea of Art; the second, in the idea of Science; the third, in the idea of Sociality, (Geselligkeit,) corresponding very much with the conception of Play, in its widest and most dignified sense; the fourth and last in the idea of Business. These four orders of life are not to be regarded, indeed, as standing wholly out of each other in the way of external distinction; the case requires, on the contrary, that they should grow into one another with inward reciprocal embrace, and it is only their complete concretion in this way at last, as the power of a single life, that can bring the moral process to its rightful conclusion. Still they are for the most part, as the world now stands, more or less out of each other in fact; and each has a nature also of its own, which it must always be important to understand and cultivate under such separate view. They are the four grand depart ments of humanity, each an organism of universal power within itself, in whose organic conjunction alone we have revealed to us the full idea of morality, as the proper life of man.

Not as co-ordinate in any sense with these, but as above them all, and as constituting indeed the only form in which they can become complete, stands the idea of Religion, as fully actualiz ed in the glorious union of the One Holy Catholic Church. In one aspect, we may style such a moral whole, the State. But in a perfect state of society, this idea itself must become merged in the broader and deeper idea of the Church, in which alone we reach the final and adequate expression for our universal human life. Religion of course then stands in no opposition to any of the great divisions of this life, as they have just been named; for this would imply an original contrariety between it and the actual constitution of the world, which the nature of the

case must be held to exclude. On the contrary, it must have power finally to lift them all into its own sphere. Art, science, social and civil life, must all be capable of being sanctified by its transforming presence. It belongs to the very conception of Christianity and the Church thus, that they should take full possession of the world at last, not extensively alone in its outward population, but intensively also in the entire range of its inward life; and it is only in proportion as we find their actual form commensurate with the idea of such catholicity, that this can be said to have reached in any given stadium of their history, its true significance and design.

Underneath this whole magnificent superstructure, on the other side, appears the primitive fundamental form of society, in the constitution of the Family. As the four-fold organism of morality terminates in the idea of the Church, so it takes its start here from an organization, that may be regarded as the root of its whole process, rising into view immediately from the mys terious life of nature itself. The domestic constitution stands in no way parallel simply, with the four forms of society that make up the union of humanity as a whole; it includes them all rather in its single nature, in the way of beginning and germ. It is the rich well spring, out of which flows the river of Eden, that is parted from thence into four heads, and carried forward with fruitful irrigation over the fair garden of life, till all its streams become one again in the deep bosom of the sea.

All society rests on distinction and difference. So the primary form of fellowship now mentioned, lying as it does at the ground of our universal life, is at once provided for and secured, by a radical disruption of the entire race into two great sections or halves, in the form of sex. Of all distinctions that exist in our nature, this must be held to be the most significant and profound, as entering before all others into its universal constitution, and forming the basis on the ground of which only all other relations belonging to it become possible and real. It comes into view accordingly in the first mention of man's creation; where we are told that he was made in the image and likeness of God, and at the same time under the two-fold character of male and female, as the necessary form of his perfection. His nature became complete, only when woman was taken from his side, and he was permitted to hail her bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, in the new consciousness to which he first woke by her presence.

Thus radical and original in the constitution of our nature, the sexual difference must necessarily pervade, not simply a part