and builds the body, holds them separate until life withdraws.  More life means higher being.  Certainly men can be refined and recapacitated as well as ore.  In Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” he represents the lion in process of formation from earth, hind quarters still clay, but fore quarters, head, erect mane, and blazing eye—­live lion—­and pawing to get free.  We have seen winged spirits yet linked to forms of clay, but beating the celestial air, endeavoring to be free; and we have seen them, dowered with new sight, filled with new love, break loose and rise to higher being.

In this grand apotheosis of man which nature teaches, progress lias already been made.  Man has already outgrown his harmony with the environment of mere matter.  He has given his hand to science, and been lifted up above the earth into the voids of infinite space.  He [Page 266] has gone on and on, till thought, wearied amidst the infinities of velocity and distance, has ceased to note them.  But he is not content; all his faculties are not filled.  He feels that his future self is in danger of not being satisfied with space, and worlds, and all mental delights, even as his manhood fails to be satisfied with the materiel toys of his babyhood.  He asks for an Author and Maker of things, infinitely above them.  He has seen wisdom unsearchable, power illimitable; but he asks for personal sympathy and love.  Paul expresses his feeling:  every creature—­not the whole creation—­groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, waiting for the adoption—­the uplifting from orphanage to parentage—­a translation out of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.  He hears that a man in Christ is a new creation:  old things pass away, all things become new.  There is then a possibility of finding the Author of nature, and the Father of man.  He begins his studies anew.  Now he sees that all lines of knowledge converge as they go out toward the infinite mystery; sees that these converging lines are the reins of government in this world; sees the converging lines grasped by an almighty hand; sees a loving face and form behind; sees that these lines of knowledge and power are his personal nerves, along which flashes his will, and every force in the universe answers like a perfect muscle.

Then he asks if this Personality is as full of love as of power.  He is told of a tenderness too deep for tears, a love that has the Cross for its symbol, and a dying cry for its expression:  seeking it, he is a new creation.  He sees more wondrous things in the Word than in the [Page 267] world.  He comes to know God with his heart, better than he knows God’s works by his mind.

Every song closes with the key-note with which it began, and the brief cadence at the close hints the realms of sound through which it has tried its wings.  The brief cadence at the close is this:  All force runs back into mind for its source, constant support, and uplifts into higher grades.