visible world is only a fragment of a larger universe and swims in a vast invisible world which has no known or conceivable bounds. Out of this inexhaustible sea of energy come the forces which build our visible world-forces which we name and use but do not understand. Gravitation, cohesion, attraction, magnetism, electricity, molecular energy, ether-waves are a few of the words which stand for mighty forces. We say the words and look wise, as though our finger were on a secret. We know, however, no more about the real nature of these forces which build our world than Aladdin knew about the jinnee that reared his palace when he rubbed his lamp. We know little more than that the visible comes out of the invisible, and that we can learn how these invisible forces work and how to direct them for our practical ends.

Everywhere and always the invisible is the builder of the visible. Michelangelo saw the dome of St. Peter's in the viewless realm of his own soul before he raised it into visible beauty above the groined arches of the cathedral. Every creation of art is an instance of the same truth. The form of beauty which comes forth into visible shape for the many to see and admire has first been an inner possession, growing into perfection

in the spaceless soul of the creator, where only one could see it.

Plotinus used to hold that it is much truer to say that the body is in the soul than that the soul is in the body. And strange as it may sound, there is much to be said for this view of the ancient Greek philosopher. There are many good evidences to prove that some invisible reality — which we may just as well call soul as anything else, at least until we get a word that means more that some invisible reality builds and vivifies and directs this visible, corporeal bulk of ours. There is, for example, a tiny speech-center in the left hemisphere of the human brain, so complicated that all the telegraphic instruments in the United States, combined and worked from one central key, would make a very simple instrument compared with it. When a baby arrives here on his hazardous venture his speech-center is not yet organized. Even if he knew all the wonders of the world he has left behind he could tell nothing about it any more than Beethoven could have rendered a symphony without musical instruments. It looks as though the expanding mind of the child slowly organized and builded this marvelous center, which was only fleshy pulp before the organization was wrought

out in it. There is, at any rate, no way to account in terms of matter for the transcendent meanings which burst into consciousness at the sound of words, nor for the way in which conscious effort and attentive purpose build the little bridges between the cells of the brain and make of it an instrument for the spirit.

We are, once more, all familiar with the way an invisible ideal holds and controls and dominates and constructs a life. It is one of the most notable features of our strange human experience. That which is not yet for an ideal plainly is what ought to be but is not works like a mighty energy. It upholds the spirit in hours of defeat. It makes one oblivious to pain. It conquers all opposition. It carries the will, contrary to all laws of mechanics, along the line of greatest resistance. It turns obstacles and hindrances into chariots of victory. It does the impossible. Paul's great words, "the things which are not bring to naught the things which are!" What cannon of unwonted caliber, pounding at the battle-lines of men, can not do, the impalpable ideas and ideals of the common people may after all accomplish. Dreams and visions and hopes are not so empty and useless as they often seem.

In

Suddenly they find a potent voice, they grow mighty, they gather volume, and they do what cannon could not do.

"One man with a dream, at pleasure

Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.

"We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing
And Babel itself with our mirth;

"And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying

Or one that is coming to birth." 1

The religious books of ancient Persia say that when the soul of a good man arrives at the river of death a beautiful, shining, radiant figure meets it and says to it: "I am your true self, your best self, your real self. I am the image of your ideals, your strivings, your resolves, your determined purposes. I am you. Henceforth we merge together into one harmonious life." The parable is a genuine one. We are forever what our ideals make us.

1 The Dreamers by Arthur William O'Shaughnessy.

But deeper and surer than all other invisible realities is that divine Spirit, not seen, but felt, who is the ground of our real being, the source of our longings, the inspirer of our larger hopes, the inner energy by which we live. Some persons think he must be dead or asleep or on a journey. They see such stalking evils, such collapses of civilization, such ugly shadows over the fair world, that they cannot hold their thin clew of faith any longer. It has snapped and left them standing alone in their dark cave. But he is there all the same, though they see him not nor know him. He does not vanish in the dark or in the storm. There is much love working still in these hard, dark days. Grace abounds, often unsuspected, even though sin seems so potent. Courage and heroism never broke through and showed their greatness more clearly than now. Sacrifice, which is woven in the same warp with love, is moving like a radiant light everywhere through the storm. Faith in something still holds men and women to their hard tasks of endurance. All that Christ was and is still attracts the soul that sees it. If an eclipse dims or veils the sight of him for the moment, we may be sure that this warm, healing Sun of our life has not set. He is still there, and some of us continue to feel our