TEE REV. JAMKfi MARTIN EAU. 31 



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 

 in cessary 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 by its release from the practical 

 materialism of the present, as well as from the torn 



