approved to us, that there is that within us which reaches out through all, to a Reality of Existence which answers to Our Own in its Unity, its Totality, its Harmony of contrasted and opposing elements. While to those of us who are alive to the significance of such a discovery, it must also become clear that the supreme practical Problem of life is to so use this central faculty of the soul as to recognise and grasp at all times the Universal presented to us in the Particular, the Permanent as it gives all its meaning and value to the Fleeting, the Eternal as it gleams forth upon us from the Temporal. This is the paramount opportunity of life; its duty and privilege; and it is ours throughout every day. Or, to borrow again from the Apostle, there is that noble and allcomprehensive phrase which gives us a compact summary of all of these: 'Lay hold of eternal life (1 Tim. vi. 12), of the life which is really life' (Tns ovτws (wns) (1 Tim. vi. 19).

These, I say, are the things driven home to our minds simply by a steady consideration of what Philosophy in its essential nature truly is, and how it came to exist in the world.

These are things which, had we lived in those twilight times, and in pagan places, we might still have delighted to see and clasp and proclaim. For they are involved in the very nature of our necessary thinking, and, as we have seen, found striking historical expression in the utterances of those early sages.

But what of our Christian thinker, for whom I am seeking to trace some steady line of consecutive reflection ? A Christian thinker, I say, who, however imperfectly acquainted with the history of philosophical speculation, has, in other ways than are open to the mere thinker, found in his Christian faith the one sure rest for his heart and the one safe guidance for his life? Will not such an one share my feeling, a feeling of delight almost akin to rapture, when he perceives that, couched in this unfamiliar phrase of philosophical dialect, is presented with startling clearness the substance of that very Faith of his, which it may be he had sometimes been tempted to think must, in some way, be found in conflict and antagonism with Reason?

Thus to think is an error so sadly common

that it may not be out of place to interpolate here the trite remark, that surely it is with Sight and not with Reason that Faith can be justly contrasted.

To this, however, I will venture to add the assertion that, of all things that may claim Reason's sanction, there is nothing so intensely and deeply reasonable as is the Faith, whereby, in a true sense, all men live, and which is so interpreted and vitalised for the Christian believer that it stands as the one sure way to the Life Eternal-Believe and Live.'

LECTURE V.

WE were occupied in our last lecture with the ascertainment of such a concise, yet comprehensive, view of Philosophy as should sufficiently illuminate its origin, meaning, and aim; yet should, at the same time, exhibit the natural and necessary limits of its powers.1

Passing from the first simple dictum, that in all that has a right to be named philosophical there must be a Unity apprehended in the Totality of our thought, a unity of idea which can hold together, and harmonise, and interpret the whole range of intellectual endeavour; we have further come to recognise that in the working out of this philosophical interpretation due place must be found for three principles:

I. The immutable unity of absolute Being.

1 See Note 24.

II. The ceaseless flux of phenomenal Becoming.

III. The principle of order and Harmony.

These three principles have now been seen to possess no such separate and exclusive selfsufficiency as was claimed for each of them when it first made its appearance in speculative thought. They fall into their place as complementary elements of philosophical conception. They belong to no particular time or place or theory, but have the stamp of universality: so that they still abide, a test and standard of any system of thinking which can fairly claim to be entitled philosophical.

But Philosophy, though it moves in so wide an area, still, like Logic and Science, has necessary limits to its competency. From its very nature, as the exercise of the speculative intellect, it is confined within bounds beyond which, however, other powers and capacities inherent in our human nature can freely pass.

At first it might appear that, inasmuch as it is concerned with the totality of things and the totality of thought, there is an express repudiation of limit to the scope of its activity and