42 THE LIGHT OF DAT 



mutterings of wrath, what tenderness and sublimity, 

 what darkness and terror are in this book ! What 

 pearls of wisdom it holds, what gems of poetry ! 

 Verily, the Spirit of the Eternal moves upon it. 

 Whether, then, there be a personal God or not, 

 whether our aspirations after immortality are well 

 founded or not, yet the Bible is such an expres- 

 sion of the awe, and reverence, and yearning of 

 the human soul iu the presence of the facts of life 

 and death, and of the power and mystery of the 

 world, as pales all other expression of these things ; 

 not a cool, calculated expression of it, but an emo- 

 tional, religious expression of it. To demonstrate 

 its divergence from science is nothing ; from the 

 religious aspirations of the soul it does not diverge. 



What I wish to say, therefore, is that we are 

 conscious of emotions and promptings that are of 

 deeper birth than the reason, that we are capable of 

 a satisfaction in the universe quite apart from our 

 exact knowledge of it, and that the religious senti- 

 ment of man belongs to this order of truths. This 

 sentiment takes on various forms ; the forms them- 

 selves are not true, but the sentiment is. To recur 

 to my former illustration of the constellations — 

 however fantastic the figures which the soul has 

 pictured upon the fathomless dome, the stars are 

 there ; the religious impulse remains. 



It is perhaps inevitable that systems should arise, 

 that creeds should be formed, and that the name of 

 science should be invoked in their behalf, but the 

 wise man knows they are perishable, and that the 



