which reach beyond the human body.  I remember well a day of serious mental depression which I once suffered.  But out of my sadness came peace.  Points in our memory lose their coloring rapidly, of course, yet the feelings of that day and night still cause a thrill of pleasure in my mind.  I had been for days convinced that there were no real joys in life.  As my peace came, I began laboriously to pick out some chords on a piano from the opera of “Lucretia Borgia”—­the finale of the second act.  My labor was rewarded by the most pleasing sounds I had ever made with my own fingers, and there was a general ebullition of pleasure and expectation of future harmonies through my whole body for many hours afterward.  That night I went to hear a great scientist lecture on astronomy.

THE SUBLIMITY OF HIS SUBJECT,

the idea of a universe of stars as yet unbounded, the higher idea of an infinitude of such universes, each but a handful of mist in the greatest telescope, raised me to a point of feeling which made life an ineffable delight.  I went to my bed, and thanked a Creator out of a boundless thankfulness.  I have thought that the twenty-third Psalm (beginning, “The Lord is my shepherd)” is a hymn of thanksgiving inspired with the same high quality of satisfaction.  Surely,

MAN IS NOT THE VICIOUS LUMP OF CLAY

which the atheist would have him when he is able to command that picture of Faith which Wordsworth wrote: 

                                    I have seen
     A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
     Of inland ground, applying to his ear
     The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
     To which in silence hushed, his very soul
     Listened intensely, and his countenance soon
     Brightened with joy,—­for murmurings from within
     Were heard, sonorous cadences! whereby,
     To his belief the monitor expressed
     Mysterious union with its native sea. 
     Even such a shell the universe itself
     Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times
     I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
     Authentic tidings of invisible things.

No!  No!  To found the problem or the actions of man on any one agent, and to cut him off from God, is peurile!  The reason of man necessitated the discovery of gravitation, and it is to-day the best-established physical fact before our view.  The reason of man also demands a Creator, to endow us with motives above our own development, and that reason, in the soul of every man, atheist and Christian alike, must and will, secretly or openly, have divine satisfaction.

The atheist, in these days, is the champion and the leader of a scrubby lot of social and religious ideas.  He should not “march them through Coventry that’s flat.”

THE BIBLE.