on the fact that man speaks, and is spoken to, for language implies thought, and thought implies unlimited teachableness, since objects of thought are as boundless as the universe. The whole creation corresponds with reason, and speech in its fulness includes all philosophy. We cannot set boundaries to man's capacity to be taught, for our mind is of a nature to become by instruction more and more capable of apprehending the reason of things, and receiving more and more light out of the infinite intelligence. Hence, man ever looks up for higher knowledge. Wherever he dwells he forms some theory, however rude and incoherent, of his own relation to the Maker of all, some faith concerning the dependence of his reason and its connection with invisible being and spiritual power. The highest science and philosophy we have amongst us may be but folly and superstition in comparison with the truth for which all awakened minds are ever looking. In moral sense, in self-consciousness, in conscience, in the feeling of the infinitely good and infinitely wise, the human reflects, however dimly, the divine, because God speaks to humanity in all things. For man was made to be taught how to attain his own perfection. Professor Huxley, in consistence with his theory, asserts that a man born dumb, notwithstanding his large brain, would be capable of few higher intellectual manifestations than an orang or chimpanzee, if confined to the society of dumb associates.' If this were true, no stronger evidence could be afforded of the connection of reason with speech.

But facts do not tell us that such a human existence, even in fancy, is possible; nor do facts affirm that a dumb man would, under any such circumstances, lose his human nature. Reason would still be in relation to the eternal Logos which speaks to man not only in words, but by every object that awakens the senses; and the eye is as much the medium of ideas as the ear, and the touch alone may tell of reason, as the pathetic and beautiful history of Laura Bridgman, and others similarly excluded from the 'sweet music of speech' and the intelligence of sight, abundantly proves. If touch alone were not in itself a sufficient avenue through which to arouse the rational soul to reasonable thought, how could such men as Dr. Howe have contrived to convey to the blind deaf-mute a knowledge of eternity and the love of Heaven, as he has done? Yes; the human finger is the instrument of reason, for reason feels the meaning of its touches, and with it alone Dr. Howe has taught the blind deaf-mute, so to say, to speak responsively to his own enlightened mind, as with discourse to touch our hearts, when Laura Bridgman with her first tangible utterances spon taneously spelt out the words, 'My mother loves me!' The human soul may lie buried in a living body, but it lies there waiting only the touch of the finger that can unstop the deaf ear and loosen the dumb tongue, that it may respond with all its faculties to the Great Teacher, for the human soul and no other is perfected by the teachings of love and truth. Let light reach the eye, and words the ear, and love the touch, and reason,

recognising these, will answer them aright. Impediments in the way of any force do not destroy that force, and thus the force of soul is manifest when obstruction is removed. But brutes are not imprisoned men-they need no schooling to instruct their instincts: but man is unmanned without divine and human teaching; all his faculties lie waste unless brought into relation with that discourse of reason intended for them, which teaches love and moral beauty, and without which man is a terrible being to his fellow-man. If man's distinctive characteristic be that of a being endowed with language and thought, it follows that his destiny is connected with the ultimate purpose of thinking and speaking. We know that ideas are preserved in memory, and become operative as human motives, and are conveyed from generation to generation, in words which are not limited to the uses of this world, but intimate, however vaguely, our interest is a life beyond, and in some degree prepare us for it by imparting a faith that already conquers death. Thus reason sees the end of teaching in that religion which connects the everlasting future with the past and present, and thus begets a feeling of man's moral and spiritual relation to his eternal Source. And that science which excludes this view of man's will and thought in estimating man's place, excludes all that is really manly, and reduces him to a specimen of anatomy fit only for a museum of natural history. But as long as men do not mistake their bodies for themselves, they will look for a higher destiny. Reason, when rightly instructed,

unavoidably assumes that the truths we know are to conduct us onwards to the enjoyment of truth for ever. We cannot believe that this mental, moral life, this faith, this foreseeing, anticipative energy, this inspiring, prophecying hope, full of immortality, is to find its end in darkness and in death. The antecedents must be in harmony with the coming and close future. Bending with solemn, longing, lingering gaze over the silent beauty of the dead, with whom an hour since we whispered words of love and living faith, we feel that death is an intolerable, a terrible, a degrading interference with the purposes of humanity, until the Spirit within us bids us look beyond the horizon of clouds to the home of light, where we behold a glorious anastasis, in which the divine mystery of godliness is revealed through a humanity made safe and perfect.

111

CHAPTER X.

LIFE, BREATH, SPIRIT.

THE simplest form of words in which the creation of a living being can be described is that a body was made and life breathed into it by the Creator. Every derived life is embodied, and yet the body neither produces the life nor the life the body. Life is that something superadded to an organised mass which enables that mass to breathe. Let us suppose the simplest body that can live-a mere cell, a monad. This is an organised creature consisting of different forms of matter in ordained relation each to other. It may be a mere bag, or closed fibrinous membrane, containing a solution of albumen-an egg of the least complicated construction we can conceive. But it is constructed—that is, built up together-both by life and for life. Being alive, what is its action? Undoubtedly first of all to breathe. A breathing power is the essential characteristic of every living thing. Its life-gift is breath. This word 'breath,' however, is not to be restricted to the idea of merely inhaling and exhaling air through an especial organism, as by lungs. It means this and much more. It signifies also a