ment, the recognition, of the Unchangeable in the fleeting the One in the many: the Universal in the particular: the Real in the phenomenal.

Now, if all this sounds repulsive in its metaphysical abstractness, yet this it is which our Christian thinker needs to grapple to his soul as the central, all-determining idea, which will give life and meaning to all that claims him in the name of Philosophy. And if he will but be patient, it will unfold and disclose its fulness. of significance when applied to the central verity of his soul's life of faith. He may come to see distinctly that this philosophic search for the real amid the fleeting shows of phenomenal existence, as they flit past hour by hour, is but the rendering in the terms of strict intellectual conception and expression, of what he himself is every day engaged in, as he seeks to live that life of Faith which is the summary of his Christian calling. For what is it to walk by faith, not by sight, but to discern and clasp, not simply with the mind, but with the will, the conscience, and the heart, the things which, manifested in time and its fleeting contents, are themselves eternal? What is it to lay hold on eternal life, but to

take as a clue, through these fleeting days, that pure gold thread of eternal reality which runs through all the flimsy material of our hurrying life, and gives it all its meaning and its value?

But further, it appears that thought, when it reaches its highest and widest sphere of exercise, demands imperatively a certain harmony of contrasts, nay, a conciliation of what to clear intellect reveal themselves as not merely contrasted, but absolute contradictories. Is not the One the contradictory of the Many? and the Fixed the contradictory of the Fleeting? and the Universal the contradictory of the Particular? Yet is the mind forced onwards and upwards to require that these shall melt into a Unity, which shall hold together these polar opposites in a perfect whole. This is certainly implied in all Philosophy that has clearly apprehended its generative motive and its final goal.

And here, again, I would ask our Christian thinker to set up this lamp in the dark, confused world of his thinking, and suffer it to cast its illuminating rays upon the several provinces where his thoughts are busy. Is not this samę

strange conciliation of contradictories implied when of any particular truth he asserts that it is true? What does such an assertion mean but simply that this particular statement bears with it, at its core, a Universal, which alone warrants the predication of the adjective? And what is it that confers such infinite dignity on the most insignificant of our daily duties-duties which meet us conditioned by numberless particulars of time and place and circumstance-but that each one of them expresses as its very soul a Universal common to all duties? What, again, is it that makes a particular object, be it thing or act or person, beautiful, but the essential implication with the existence of the innumerable particulars of a Universal which we call Beauty, a universal which is the logical contradictory of these particulars, and yet which constitutes each a unitary object on which thought and feeling may dwell with delight?

But let us venture to pass on to the highest application of this same principle. What is the mystery of the Incarnation when stated in bare skeleton outline of philosophic phrase? Is it not, amid much else, this very thing which has

met us and claimed us all along in every region where our highest faculties of spirit are in exercise? Is it not this same so-called conciliation of contradictories? Here, assuredly, we have the Infinite and the Finite, the Universal and the Particular presented in the Unity of a Personality. Surely it need not revolt us to put it so. Such statements have, of course, all the limitations that are inevitable when reason deals with a Reality that transcends reason. Still, shall the highest we know and trust be other than reasonable? Thus may we enter, at least in part, into the rapture of our Lord when, on a certain day, His ardent disciples, in a moment of clear, swift intuition of the Real in the Phenomenal, beheld in Jesus of Nazareth, the Carpenter in this particular separate individual man-the Eternal Son of God. And SO our Philosophy, in rising to its noblest speculative height, at once reveals its necessary limitations, and yet sets its seal of reasonableness upon the fundamental verity of our Christian faith. Again, now into the converging structure of this wide arch of Philosophic thought, the keystone which binds it together and makes it

one fit support of that fair palace which is the proper home of the soul's life, is dropped from the hands of the reverent believer. Philosophy is as free to him as science, and brings in her hands even a richer offering to the feet of his sovereign King, the Lord Christ.

But we ought not to stop here, though it is a high level and a wide prospect which we have reached. The principle, indeed, with which we started compels us to go further in the interest of that all-comprehending Unity which requires that all that claims us anywhere should be subdued to the unity of our total personality. The necessary canon of certitude itself compels us to widen our outlook. For Truth we found, as we proceeded, to be ever enlarging its significance; so that not mind alone, but the whole spiritual nature of man, was seen and acknowledged to be its organ. This it was that compelled us to make the great word at length synonymous with Reality, i.e. all that appeals to us and claims us as being as truly existent as are we ourselves. It was here that there came into view that large surplusage which gives for us a reasonable meaning, a legitimate place, to Mysticism, as