10 HISTORICAL SCIENCE 



their aspirations after the better things of hope and purpose. I know- 

 how it mirrors national as well as individual genius. And I know that 

 all of these data of organic life, whether he take them at first hand or 

 at second, throw a clarifying light upon many an obscure page of the 

 piled records that lie upon the historian's table. I fancy that the 

 historian who intimately uses the language of the race and people of 

 which he writes somehow gets intimation of its origin and history into 

 his ear and thought whether he be a deliberate student of its develop- 

 ment or not; but be that as it may, the historian of language stands 

 at his elbow, if he will but turn to him, with many an enlightening 

 fact and suggestion which he can ill afford to dispense withal. It is 

 significant, as it is interesting, that the students of language have 

 here been definitely called into the company of historians. May the 

 alliance be permanent and mutually profitable! 



My moral upon the whole list is, that, separated though we may 

 be by many formal lines of separation, sometimes insisted on with 

 much pedantic punctilio, we are all partners in a common under- 

 taking, the illumination of the thoughts and actions of men as asso- 

 ciated in society, the life of the human spirit in this familiar theatre 

 of cooperative effort in which we play, so changed from age to age 

 and yet so much the same throughout the hurrying centuries. Some 

 of the subjects here grouped may stand high in the list of organic 

 processes, others affect them less vigorously and directly; but all are 

 branches and parts of the life of society. In one of the great topics we 

 deal with there is, I know, another element which sets it quite apart 

 to a character of its own. The history of religion is not merely the 

 history of social forces, not merely the history of institutions and of 

 opinions. It is also the history of something which transcends our 

 divination, escapes our analysis, the power of God in the life of 

 men. God does, indeed, deal with men in society and through social 

 forces, but he deals with him also individually, as a single soul, not 

 lost in society or impoverished of his individual will and respons- 

 ibility by his connection with the lives of other men, but himself 

 sovereign and lonely in the choice of his destiny. This singleness 

 of the human soul, this several right and bounden duty of indi- 

 vidual faith and choice, to be exercised oftentimes in contempt and 

 defiance of society, is a thing no man is likely to overlook who has 

 noted the genesis of our modern liberty or assessed the forces of 

 reform and regeneration which have lifted us to our present enlighten- 

 ment; and it introduces into the history of religion, at any rate since 

 the day of Christ, the master of free souls, an element which plays 

 upon society like an independent force, like no native energy of its 

 own. This, nevertheless, like all things else that we handle, comes 

 into the sum of our common reckoning when we would analyze the 

 life of men as manifested in the book of their deeds, in the book of 



