THE REV. JAMES MARTIN EAU. 531 
I figure it growing in the womb, woven by a something 
not itself, without conscious participation on the part of 
either father or mother, and appearing in due time a living 
miracle, with all its organs and all their implications. 
Consider the work accomplished during these nine months 
in forming the eye alone with its lens, and its humors, 
and its miraculous retina behind. Consider the ear with 
its tympanum, cochlea, and Corti's organ an instrument 
of three thousand strings, built adjacent to the brain, and 
employed by it to sift, separate, and interpret, antecedent 
to all consciousness, the sonorous tremors of the external 
world. All this has been accomplished, not only without 
man's contrivance, but without his knowledge, the secret 
of his own organization having been withheld from him 
since his birth in the immeasurable past, until these latter 
days. Matter I define as that mysterious thing by which 
all this is accomplished. How it came to have this power 
is a question on which I never ventured an opinion. If, 
then, matter starts as " a beggar," it is, in my view, 
because the Jacobs of theology have deprived it of its 
birthright. Mr. Martineau need fear no disenchantment. 
Theories of evolution go but a short way toward the expla- 
nation of this mystery; the Ages, let us hope, will at 
length give us a poet competent to deal with it aright. 
There are men, and they include among them some of 
the best of the race of man. upon whose minds this mystery 
falls without producing either warmth or color. The " dry 
light" of the intellect suffices for them, and they live 
their noble lives untouched by a desire to give the mystery 
shape or expression. There are, on the other hand, men 
whose minds are warmed and colored by its presence, and 
who, under its stimulus, attain to moral heights which have 
never been overtopped. Different spiritual climates are 
necessary for the healthy existence of these two classes of 
men; and different climates must be accorded them. The 
history of humanity, however, proves the experience of the 
second class to illustrate the most pervading need. The 
world will have religion of some kind, even though it 
should fly for it to the intellectual whoredom of "spirit- 
ualism." What is really wanted is the lifting power of an 
ideal element in human life. But the free play of this 
power must be preceded bv its release from the practical 
materialism of the present, as well as from the torn 
