I do not wish to close this subject without a brief reference to the moral consequences of the later doctrine. There is nothing so terrible as the rotting down of a theology. The consequent morals, having lost the weight of authority, rest only as fetters that gall. Liberty striving to assert itself breaks into license. Since the day when the nations quietly believed in kings Dei gratia and priests Dei gratia, there has been a convulsion of moral convictions, until at last the wreck is complete by the fall of the Deus volens. Can evolution rebuild our shattered hopes and rehabilitate our worship? I have shown you that it can—that it leaves us neither godless nor lawless. The moral code of evolution is not weighted down by obligations involving an intricate knowledge of a divine plan, disrupted in a fall, or the remote and incomprehensible purpose to rescue a few by faith in a Saviour of whom the majority have never heard. On the contrary, the morals of evolution are right living--such living that our development shall be most substantial and unhindered, while with us our neighbors may be equally advanced. Evolution is the history of life, life, life, more life; to save life is the sum of duty. That is right which enlarges and ennobles living. That is sin which defaces and kills. Intemperance, unchastity, injustice, cruelty, are in the new code of sins, because they act counter to the ethical tendency of evolution. Salvation is to depart from self-destructive courses of thought and action. Degeneration is the doom of all those who refuse to obey the light that is in them, and love the darkness in preference. The truth emphasized by Jesus, and by his ablest disciples, that man has in him by birthright a directive ethical knowledge, a "Holy Spirit that illumines every one born into the world," evolution distinctly affirms. The Ourself-that-ought-to-be is a part of the heritage of vision that upholds the Ourself-thatis. Contemplating this moral obligation, we conform our choices to the desire that is in us. Morality is man, of his

own will, moving on the lines of evolution, taking conscious charge of his future character.

I understand quite well how happily some minds will content themselves by discharging at the view I have now expounded the charge of pantheism. Perhaps the simplest way of meeting the charge would be to accept it, and then declare that the idea pan-theism is after all not so objectionable in its crudest form as that dualistic interpretation of the universe which alienates God from Nature, makes him "exist alone and separate," and leaves, therefore, all Nature to be properly and essentially godless. But there is a pantheism that reduces the Infinite Oneness to matter and force; there is another pantheism that exalts all to be the phenomenon of immanent Self. With this latter pantheism evolution does not refuse to fraternize. I do not feel competent, however, to wisely add to or subtract from the superb answer given to this charge by Abbott in that initial volume of the rising theology, "Scientific Theism"; and I shall close this chapter, in which I find my heart most deeply enlisted, by quoting from the same author the eloquent words with which he launches his convictions: "If the glorious thought of a universe, in which the adoring Kepler might well exclaim in awe unspeakable, O God! I think thy thoughts after thee !'-a universe which is the eternally objectified Divine Idea, illumining the human intellect, inspiring the human conscience, warming the human heart; if this glorious thought, begotten of science, has no power to stir the depths of the human soul, and lift it up to the sublimest heights of worship and self-consecration, to the service of the Most High, then religion is dead indeed, and the light of the universe is gone out forever. But, if this thought has a divine force in itself to soothe the woes of life, and minister new strength to the soul faltering in the path of painful duty, then religion is not dead, but will rise from its bier at the commanding word of science."

LECTURE VIII.

THAT LAST ENEMY, DEATH.

It is impossible for one who has followed the path of Nature in evolution to consider the glory of life, concentering in man, without the question, Am I also only a temporary factor in this progress of events-appearing only to disappear? Or is there in the process of human evolution established a power of self-permanence-a concomitant of the changing physical, which, however, has the power of perpetual self-renovation? Is my body only that synthesis of environments which can be correlated into a mechanism suited to a higher relation to the universe?

The thought of immortality seems to have come into the minds of men as a late intellectual conception; but it has taken possession of all civilized races as an intense hope and conviction, so that we may say that now, apart from primitive races and degenerate savages, all men believe in life beyond death. For a basis for this belief they have questioned philosophy and theology, but have in all cases been compelled to rest either in the authority of revelation or in the speculation of metaphysics. Science destroys faith in both these authorities; can it do any better itself?

§1. The Purpose in Evolution fulfilled in Man. Evolution has led us by a path of remarkable directness, in which there has been no tortuousness nor subtlety. may sum up the steps so far as-1. Life is the primal fact

We

of the universe. It involves substance, force, and sentience. Sentience involves intelligent aim, expressed at the outset to us as hunger. 2. As more highly organic conditions have appeared, higher relations have been manifested pari passu. As any being has approached completion in structure or function, it has tended toward a lapse of conscious purpose into unconscious automatic action; living has tended toward mechanical conditions. 3. Physics and chemistry alone, operating in Nature, produce only periodicity. However large the cycle, Nature ever returns chemically into her own matrix. The elements become mineral; the mineral rises to the vegetable; the vegetable feeds the animal; but the animal, at death, is pulled down to elemental conditions. Out of chaos comes the cosmos; but it is certain to again return. 4. Yet Nature sustains through all periodicity, and in spite of the dropping of energy, a certain most positive progressive purpose and achievement. There is a persistency in the universe that does not fail. In the world at large it appears as function and organism; in man, as character. It has produced order, grace, and goodness. This potency of purpose precedes and determines; it is immanent and universal. It is intelligent will. 5. The end of the purpose is, if we are not wholly misled, the production of those ultimate relations which are most intelligent, orderly, and ethical, and on the whole productive of the greatest degree of ethical progress. 6. The universe is a unit. The more we discover of the unknown the more we find it possessed of the same laws as the known. The spectroscope confirms the telescope that all globes are of one system, and of one substance, with one law. Nor can we discover any flaw in our conviction that honor and truth are the same everywhere; that character, like energy, is cosmical. This moral unity

of the universe establishes not only an obligation of the less to the greater, but of the greater to the less; and comprehends the whole purpose in all its finite and infinite relations.

We have thus found that evolution defines an unfolding of life-energy from the definitively animal to the predominantly intelligent and moral. This ethico-intellectual state is expressed objectively in language, invention, commerce, art, and literature; subjectively in purpose, benevolence, altruism, character. There has been in the progress of evolution a positive exaltation of the processes of life to higher relations. The gates of death to the brute struggle for existence were opened; and lo! it was not death, but a new and more glorious manifestation of purpose! Reason crossed the threshold with the Golden Rule in its hand. Henceforth the law shall be that whosoever shall give his life shall find it; he shall live largest, fullest, most eternal, who lives not for himself, but for others. In fine, the aim of purpose in evolution has been ethical; and it has been steadily fulfilling itself. In previous lectures I have so fully established this fact that I do not need to delay for the purpose, to any extent, of demonstrating that ethical ends and relations are the fulfillment of the Eternal Purpose. I believe that no one will question the general purport and most positive logical import of the progressive facts of Nature.

I will at once pass to show you that man is the fulfillment of this purpose, and that he embodies in himself all that a just interpretation of Nature demands; that is, he is a being in whom evolution can proceed on an ethical line of unfoldment, a being not only embodying the whole past but involving the whole future. The purpose of Nature, which from the outset has been immanently intelligent and ethical, is fulfilled in the production of a being who in himself is capable of taking up this purpose and carrying it forward by his own determinative

power.

For, if this be not so, then Nature has only to produce another being of the same sort, and so repeat herself— which is contrary to the whole process and logic of evolu