truth he says: "Let every one speak the truth with his neighbor." Why? Because we are members one of another, and truth is the social bond. It is truth that binds man to man in the usual economic relations of life. Lies bring confusion into business and industry and politics and home. Truth binds man to man, and man to God. We may say, indeed, that all virtues resolve themselves into the sense of truth.

Justice is but the truth of act; mercy is but the truth of sympathy; honesty is but the truth of daily action. Now, what is meant by truth? This word is so very old that its original meaning is lost, but a secondary meaning is that of fidelity. Truth and fidelity come from the same root and are different words for the same things. Truth-let me give you this as a definition-is fidelity to the fact, faithfulness to things as they are. A true line is a line that is mathematically faithful to the fact. A true law is a law that is faithful to justice. A true man is a man that is faithful to the noblest conceptions of life. The one thing that we have to do, of course, in this world, is to live here according to the laws that are imposed upon life. We do not know these laws naturally, but we search for them. The laws are the facts with regard to life. Truth is living according to the facts of life, faithfulness to the fact. We discover these facts with regard to life very painfully. We build them into our sciences and we codify them into our laws. They need constant renewal and amplification and fulfillment. But the heart and center of the thought of truth is fidelity to the facts that are revealed to us through search. Life in its deepest meaning, then, is bearing witness to the truth. This is the end for which we are born. This is the cause for which we come into the world, by speech and by act, to be faithful to facts. A man is a revelation of a fact of God. By

our lives men gain

lations are partial.

ideas of God's truths. These reveNone is complete. Each one, as it

were, gives a glimpse or emphasizes some one fact, and from the study of many such revelations we ascertain, in the main, what are the great conditions of life, what are the laws of existence, what are the ideas of the Most High.

A false man confuses God's fact. A false man says that is black which is white; that is honest which is dishonest. The study of the flowers reveals to Darwin the method of God in creation. The study of the movement of planetary bodies gives to Kepler the laws of motion which do not err or vary. The study of a falling apple and a moving moon gives to Newton the fact of the law of gravitation. The study of heat gives to Tyndall the laws of the mechanical motion of heat. These do not lie; these are true to the fact. The deductions made from them may err or vary a little, but in the main here are things that do not lie. Flowers do not lie; stars do not lie; dust does not lie; animals do not lie. The facts of God are all there; they are true to the fact.

Life, the play of force and feeling, is a mystery, and death is a mystery. Everything is a mystery until a man comes forth from God and reveals some facts about him. A philosopher states the facts with regard to mental development and gives us the science of education; and another the science of health. Observations from facts give us laws. Every soul comes out of the unknown and begins to live a life under the pressure of certain spiritual forces that act upon life; and we watch that man, or woman, or child, and we gain some slight conception of the truth, as it is behind nature and with God. So these revelations are new or they confirm things that are already known. Certain things are commonly received among us and belong to the history

of the ages. A life bears witness, then, to what? To the order of God's universe. Does it bear witness to the fact that all is confusion, that lies work in the court of the Most High, that dishonesty is the law of life? Know that order, honesty, truth and justice are the attributes of the Most High, and when we use these words in our own action and dealing they have real, ringing, current value, and they mean the same with man that they do with God.

The obligations that truth imposes upon us are: First, the search for it; second, the formation of convictions or opinions as the result of this search; third, the duty of expression, by speech and by act; and, fourth, the duty of the attempt to realize, so far as it is possible, these convictions in society. The search for truth is imposed upon us at our birth. We read it in a little child's curiosity and in a man's love of knowledge. We can well appreciate the remark of the great Lessing: "If God were to offer me, on the one hand, the whole world and the knowledge of all things that are in it; and, on the other hand, the privilege of searching for truth, with the pain and disappointment, but still the privilege of search, I should take the privilege of the search for truth rather than the absolute perfect knowledge of things as they are." So great a love has the human soul for knowing things, and so great a privilege does it account the search for them. Compare with Lessing this sneer of Pilate's, no honest word, but a skeptic's sneer, "What is truth?" As if he had said, You talk about truth before me; there is no such thing as truth in the world. It expresses the hopeless skepticism of the last days of Rome.

A child's curiosity and a man's love of knowledgethese stand at the extremes, the one at the beginning, the other at the height of the desire to know what is

truth. Otherwise, there is idiocy or paralysis, and at last the disappearance of the very intellectual power to search for truth.

That duty we all recognize, and I will pass to the next, which is the duty of forming opinions as the result of our search. Consciously or unconsciously, we make up our minds in regard to things. There is no place for a man or a woman who has not an opinion, definite and clear, upon the great questions of life and duty. It is the duty of the intellect, and it lies within its power to make up a judgment or an opinion. This must be done, however painful. Whenever a man sees the beckoning finger, however shadowy, of the truthhowever contented he is and well to do-he must leave his house and go out, like Abraham, to a land he knows not of, which God is showing him, even though he may never have settled habitation, but dwell in tents like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The duty of forming an opinion of things-for this cause must a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto the truth. We can not live by a code. We can live by the truth which we are continually seeing and which makes an impression upon us; and also by the truth which we are hearing day by day. You can not ride two horses. You can not do two things. You must choose one or the other. You must hate the one and love the other. But when once this vision is given to you of the newer and the better and the higher life, all things must be left for its sake, whatever the cost may be.

The duty of expressing this truth, when you have once made up your mind, falls under two heads-that of speaking it and that of acting it. To speak the truth and to act it may give the expression of the conviction that you have. A conviction of truth is not a thing to be put aside. It is a thing to live by, day by day. It must be expressed. While it is in its formative period

you may hold it; you can suspend your judgment for a time; you can say, I am not quite certain about it; but when fully realized it demands instant obedience to it by voice and by action. Especially is this true when one differs from the current thought in anything. The consequences we have nothing to do with. The simple question is, am I true to myself and the vision that is given me? The realization, or the attempt to realize our truth in life, that is, to live our own life in it, is a more troublesome thing. Jesus, while he held himself rigidly to the truth that was revealed to him, said to his disciples, "I have many things to say unto you, but you can not bear them now." What belongs to the world, that we must speak at all times. The truth belongs to it. At no time conceal a truth for any fear.

But the attempt to realize a thing may need a peculiar conjunction of circumstances which have not yet come. A man may well have believed in the old time that he must bear his witness against slavery. He speaks against it. He will not consort with those who believe in it. But whether he attempts to eject slavery from this government or not depends entirely upon other things. If one man, however, holds a truth and voices it, it is always to be remembered that that same truth is just about to be revealed, if it is not already revealed, to another, and to many other men. When the great planet Neptune was discovered, it was discovered simultaneously by two men-Adams in this country and Leverrier in France. Every great discovery has been given not to one man, but to many. One man is the fortunate voicer of it, the one who comes out of the wilderness saying; Prepare ye the way of the Lord. But there are left seven thousand who have not bowed their knee to evil, and he who would voice the truth at any cost will know that there are others who think as he does; and it hastens the good time that is coming, to