SOUNDINGS 



beauty of naturalism. The sacred, the celestial, the 

 divine, the holy, all are terms that date from a pre- 

 scientific age, before man's relation to the universe 

 was understood. They are significant only in refer- 

 ence to another world and another life of an entirely 

 different order. 



The eternal, immutable moral law to which 

 Balfour refers, what is it? Who instituted it? Is it 

 other than the law of right and wrong which man- 

 kind is coming more and more clearly to see, and 

 more and more fully to value in the course of evolu- 

 tion? You may set the seal of some hypothetical, 

 supernatural power upon it, but what about super- 

 natural powers in a universe governed by natural 

 laws? The religious enthusiasm of the race, the 

 saints, the devotees, the so-called holy ones, have 

 doubtless had their value; they have helped lubri- 

 cate the grinding machinery of life; but their day 

 is at an end. We must invest our fund of love, our 

 veneration, our heroism, our martyrdom in this 

 world, and not look to the next. 



That Nature is irrational, unhuman, no one can 

 deny, not because she is less, but because she is 

 more; she is above reason, above man. Our reason 

 calls Nature irrational because the reason is a special 

 faculty, and is limited; it takes in the arc, so to 

 speak, but not the full circle. Nature is irrational, 

 not because she is not suffused with mind, but be- 

 cause she does not count the cost, because our 



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