216 THE LIGHT OF DAY 



forgive me if I say this view represents a phase of 

 thought which is transient and limited, and which 

 is certainly passing away. It is one phase of Puri- 

 tanism, and is fading out with the rest. How can 

 we deny spiritual insight, spiritual-mindedness, or 

 faith, hope, charity, to such pagans as Plato, So- 

 crates, Marcus Aurelius, or Plutarch, or to Seneca ? 

 or, in our own time and country, to such a man as 

 Emerson, — a man, as it seems to me, of the most 

 heroic spiritual fibre ? " But Esaias is very bold, 

 and saith, I was foiind of them that sought me not, 

 I was made manifest unto them that asked not after 

 me." Think you the man of science does not also 

 find God ? that Huxley and Darwin and Tyndall 

 do not find God, though they may hesitate to use 

 that name ? Whoever finds truth finds God, does 

 he not ? whoever loves truth loves God ? " He 

 judged the cause of the poor and the needy : was 

 not this to know me ? saith the Lord." 



Has conversion, then, no power to open the eyes ? 

 The old-fashioned conversion of our fathers and 

 mothers was an emotional, not an intellectual pro- 

 cess ; it was an upheaval of the conscience and not 

 a turning over of the mind, and is impossible to most 

 natures. It did not open the eyes, but it enlisted 

 the heart and the feelings ; it begat love. Love is 

 not sharp-sighted, but it is creative ; it finds mean- 

 ing and value which an outsider does not find. A 

 man who loves his church and its sacraments and 

 ceremonies finds a significance and an importance 

 in them which another does not. But it is to be 



