recognized that the knowledge of God, which Christ Himself tells us is Everlasting Life, may be gained by the study of the material creation; his words were sadly overlooked by many who, half a century ago, were afraid that the discoveries of Science were dangerous to belief in the Deity; he says the unrighteous shall be without excuse because "The invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity" (Romans i, 18 to 20, R.V.).

We have seen to-night the truth of this wonderful statement, we have traced the reflection of the greatest attribute of the Deity, Divine Love, on the material plane; what has been the result of our investigation? We find that throughout the whole of Nature the one great universal power is Sympathy.

'Tis verily "Love that makes the world go round." What a marvellous conclusion to our investigation, let us see where it leads us The whole of creation is the materialization of the Thoughts of the Deity, we have, therefore, in the forces of Nature, the impress of the very Essence of God. Our Innermost Self is an emanation from Him, and Prayer which, at the beginning, is only a striving to bring ourselves into harmony with the Deity, must, as the Soul grows in strength and knowledge, become a great power working under the wonderful principle of Sympathy. True prayer, indeed, becomes love in action and, under certain conditions, Prayer may actually be looked upon as the greatest physical force in Nature. But let us carry this one step further: can we by our analogy of Matter praying understand why "The knowledge of God is Everlasting Life?" Look at the first iron bar and watch how, as long as it keeps on vibrating, the second bar, because it is in sympathy, will be kept in motion; if it were possible for the first bar to vibrate for ever, the second bar would, speaking materially, have everlasting life, through its being in perfect sympathy with the first bar, without this connection the bar would be lifeless. Now apply this to our Transcendental Personality: it is being nourished-the knowledge of God is increasing-it is at last pulsating in perfect harmony with the Deity, and when, for it, the Material Universe disappears, its affinity to Infinite Love must give it Everlasting Life. Everything that has not that connection is but a shadow which will cease to be manifest when the Great Thought is completed, the volition of the Deity is withdrawn and the Physical Universe ceases to exist; nothing can then exist except that which is perfected, that which is of the essence of God, namely, the Spiritual. Perfect harmony will then reign supreme, such

happiness as cannot be described in earthly language, nor even imagined by our corporeal senses; hence, in the many passages referring to that wondrous Life hereafter, we are not told what Heaven is like but only what is not to be found there:

"Eye hath not seen nor ear heard,

Neither have entered into the heart of man

The things that God hath prepared for them that love Him.” (1 Cor. ii, 9.)

DISCUSSION.

The SECRETARY read the following communication from the Rev. Canon GIRDLESTONE:

In reading Mr. Klein's remarkable paper I have been reminded again and again of the writings of Philo, the Alexandrine Jew, Paul's contemporary. Thus, Philo says, "The world was not created in time, but time has its existence in consequence of the world; it is the motion of the heaven that has displayed the nature of time." Again, "what has been made by the author of all things has no limitation; and in this way the idea is excluded that the universe was created in six days." God is regarded by him as "the mind or soul of the universe" and to be contemplated by the soul alone without utterance of any voice. He also held that every one of us has two persons, the animal and the man, the life-faculty and the reason faculty.

Mr. Klein holds with Kant that time and space are human forms of thought, or, as Carlyle calls them, the warp and woof of existence : still, they stand for something, and they help to give us an idea of the eternal and infinite spring of existence. I wonder that Mr. Klein did not point to the Incarnation as supplying the key to the problem, e.g., in pp. 139-142.

On p. 131 he says that certain negatives (e.g., evil) have no real existence. They are shadows. We are familiar with this view in the writings of Christian Science, but does it stand the test of Scripture or of experience? Victory over evil is a very real thing. A good deal depends on the definition of the word "real." I am sorry that we have not this useful word in the English Bible, though we have what answers to it in the original.

P. 132, middle, "only an image of our retina." Surely the image is

caused by something, as Mill pointed out when discussing sensation. Mr. Klein has hardly called sufficient attention to muscular action in connection with form and distance. Perception, to which he refers, p. 133, is a bad master, but a very useful servant. We must not disparage the use of our senses, especially when their evidence converges.

Mr. Klein here departs from We have to discern between

P. 134, "man became a living Soul." Paul's interpretation in I Cor. xv. Soul and Spirit. I wish I could be as optimistic as Mr. Klein is on that page. A day spent in the dens and alleys of London (say with a City Missionary) shows that Progress is very slow and there are many adversaries. I think a little qualification is needed on p. 137, with respect to the omnipresence and omniscience of our real personality. By cutting off patches of brain, Mr. Klein tells us, patches of the ego are destroyed. Certainly the brain is the condition of our physical life but not the cause of it. It is the nursery of the soul and of character, and free-will, which is reduced to a minimum on p. 146, is vital for the formation of character and so of destiny.

Let me close by saying what a pleasure it is to read such a meditative paper as this, even though at times one is inclined to question certain expressions. I wish the last line had been added to the closing text: "But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." (1. Cor. ii, 10.)

The SECRETARY read the following extract from a letter he had received from an Associate who was unable to attend :—

"I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed Mr. Klein's paper. He seemed to be clothing in words for me, thoughts of mine that had never broken through language and escaped'; or to use his own illustration, I found myself (the receiver) vibrating in perfect sympathy with him (the transmitter) nearly all through. The first thing that struck me as a probable point for discussion is his table of negatives on p. 131. Negative is not the same as opposite, is it? I mean is evil the negative of good, isn't it something much more active than not-good? Further on he talks of progression and stagnation' not retrogression. This point of view interests me because it is Browning's solution of the problem of evil. Compare the end part of the paragraph on p. 135, beginning 'If man became a conscious being' with:

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"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;

The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;

What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.'

"Then the stages of growth on pp. 136 and 137 are so beautiful and true :

"There is no good of life but love-but love!

What else looks good, is some shade flung from love;
Love gilds it, gives it worth.'

So let us say not 'Since we know, we love,'

But rather, Since we love, we know enough.'

"And in the passage on p. 139, beginning I will try to give my own experience,' he does indeed 'wake an echo.' He writes my own experience word for word, when he describes that yearning which is almost pain in its intensity, which is one of the most vivid impressions of childhood:

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My God, my God, let me for once look on Thee
As though nought else existed, we alone!
And as creation crumbles, my soul's spark
Expands till I can say,-Even from myself

I need Thee and I feel Thee and I love Thee,'

"And on p. 142, 'A wondrous feeling of perfect peace.'

"Thank God that wakes an echo too, and, as he says, is past describing. Two other points I hope will be discussed. One is, when he talks as on p. 139 of our Spiritual Personalities, does he mean that any kind of body is transient only and must disappear with Time and Space, surely our Spiritual bodies will be something more than Spirit The second point is, is he justified in arguing by analogy that the perfect sympathy between two material iron bars gives us the key to the perfect sympathy between ourselves and the Divine ? But perhaps he doesn't argue this and has got quite out of my reach here?

"I like the way the idea of God's Immanence seems to underlie the whole paper, and especially the expression bombarding our sense organs.'

The Rev. Dr. IRVING, D.Sc., B.A., thought that Mr. Sydney Klein's paper was one which many members of the Victoria

Institute would appreciate, even among those who could not follow him to the full extent in the mysticism which pervades the paper. The phrase "The Transcendental Ego" brought into strong relief the dual nature of the universe of Being-the material and the spiritual -the visible universe and the "invisible universe," in both of which Man, and man only (of created beings known to us on this planet) had a share. The author's powerful way of presenting the "spiritual" as penetrating the "material" and as "taking root" in the physical Ego, would be welcome to students of those deep questions, which make themselves heard in that philosophical zone of thought which forms the borderland of Religion and Science. Such questions would continue to present themselves for a long time yet to those minds, which were not so constituted that they could find a resting-place either in materialism, on the one hand, or in extreme mysticism, on the other. One who (like himself) had found it impossible on Scientific grounds to recognize an "evolution" of the moral and spiritual nature of Man out of the physical, would find much to appreciate and even admire in the paper; and he emphatically welcomed the author's suggestion (p. 146) that Religion and Science must go hand in hand in elucidating the Riddle of the Universe.

That striking phrase again (p. 142) which speaks of a "state of self-forgetting (as) the silencing or quieting down of the Physical Ego," seemed to have its counterpart in the dictum of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, when (II Cor. iv, 18) he speaks of the progressive growth to maturity of the spiritual man as consequent upon the soul turning its gaze more and more from “ things seen (Ta Bλeñóμeva)," and fixing its gaze more and more upon "the things unseen (Ta un Bλeñóμeva) and eternal." In that region things were seen by the "Inner Light" (as Dr. Arnold Whateley would say), they were realized in the sphere of the God-consciousness of the Soul. And there was a corresponding auditory soul-sense (if the term might be allowed) to which reference was made by the Prophet Isaiah (Ch. 1) when he made Jehovah's "Righteous Servant" to say "The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious neither turned away backwards" (from the call of the Spirit).

Yet, if truth is to be advanced by Religion and Science going hand in hand, we must allow as actualities the fundamental concepts of time and space, without which the phenomena, with which