I know very well, of course, that I must not expect your appreciation, or even your attention, in matters purely spiritual.  The world is too much with you, and you become obstinate of opinion and rooted in prejudice.  Nevertheless, as I said before, this is not my concern.  Your moods are not mine, and with your prejudices I have nothing to do.  My creed is drawn from Nature—­Nature, just, invincible, yet tender—­Nature, who shows us that Life, as we know it now, at this very time and in this very world, is a blessing so rich in its as yet unused powers and possibilities, that it may be truly said of the greater majority of human beings that scarce one of them has ever begun to learn how to live.

Shakespeare, the greatest human exponent of human nature at its best and worst,—­the profound Thinker and Artist who dealt boldly with the facts of good and evil as they truly are,—­and did not hesitate to contrast them forcibly, without any of the deceptive ‘half-tones’ of vice and virtue which are the chief stock-in-trade of such modern authors as we may call ’degenerates,’—­makes his Hamlet exclaim:—­

“What a piece of work is man!—­how noble in reason!—­how infinite in faculty!—­in form and moving how express and admirable!—­in action how like an angel!—­in apprehension how like a god!”

Let us consider two of these designations in particular:  ’How infinite in faculty!’—­and ‘In apprehension how like a god!’ The sentences are prophetic, like so many of Shakespeare’s utterances.  They foretell the true condition of the Soul of Man when it shall have discovered its capabilities.  ’Infinite in faculty’—­that is to say—­Able to do all it shall will to do.  There is no end to this power,—­no hindrance in either earth or heaven to its resolute working—­no stint to the life-supplies on which it may draw unceasingly.  And—­’in apprehension how like a god!’ Here the word ‘apprehension’ is used in the sense of attaining knowledge,—­to learn, or to ‘apprehend’ wisdom.  It means, of course, that if the Soul’s capability of ‘apprehending’ or learning the true meaning and use of every fact and circumstance which environs its existence, were properly perceived and applied, then the ‘Image of God’ in which the Creator made humanity, would become the veritable likeness of the Divine.

But, as this powerful and infinite faculty of apprehension is seldom if ever rightly understood, and as Man generally concentrates his whole effort upon ministering to his purely material needs, utterly ignoring and wilfully refusing to realise those larger claims which are purely spiritual, he presents the appearance of a maimed and imperfect object,—­a creature who, having strong limbs, declines to use the same, or who, possessing incalculable wealth, crazily considers himself a pauper.  Jesus Christ, whom we may look upon as a human Incarnation of Divine Thought, an outcome and expression of the ‘Word’ or Law of God, came to teach us