I.

LIFE.

"YOUR life is hid with Christ in God."-COL. 3; 3.

THIS text marks four steps in the growth of the thought which I wish to give you: Life; hidden life; life hid with Christ; and life hid in God.

Life is closely allied to the most central fact. If it is not being, it is the condition on which being passes into manifestation, and all attempts to retrace the steps of this process are sooner or later baffled by the mystery of life. So close is its affinity with existence that we can interpose between them no means of knowing what the one is apart from the other.

cause.

All the standard definitions of life define its modes, and not its essence. Schelling says, "Life is the tendency to individuation." But this only defines a process, and not its Where individuation is, there may be life; but that process is not life, it is only a sign of life. Richerand says, "Life is a collection of phenomena, which succeed. each other during a limited time in an organized body;" which is another statement of the signs by which the presence of life may be known. G. H. Lewes defines life as a series of definite and successive changes of structure and composition, which take place within an individual without

destroying its identity. But this only adds other signs of life, without saying any thing of what it is which produces this series of definite and successive changes. And all the definitions which I can find are open to the same criticism, that they describe the signs and not the essence of life. The proem to John's Gospel gives a very different definition. It says that in God there was life, and when that life passed into manifestation, it became the light of men, and was the true light, lighting every man which cometh into the world; that true light shining in the darkness of all time, giving to those who could comprehend it, power to become sons of God. This is, indeed, no definition to satisfy the exact sciences; but it is one of those guesses of genius which penetrates to the absolute unity, and anticipates, by many centuries, the last synthesis of the understanding.

The positive sciences seem to be approaching, by sure and rapid steps, the resolution of all phenomena into evolutions of simple force. The separate forces-heat, electricity, magnetism, light, and chemical action—are not, as once thought, ultimate and distinct realities, but are different forms of the same force, and are convertible into each other. Time and space are not ultimate realities, but only the necessary conditions of force. Matter is not an ultimate reality, but only another condition of force. We have no knowledge of matter except as combinations of forces. The chemist's ultimate atom is a figure of speech, the boldest poetic license. We can have no conception of an atom which is not still a compound of forces. The atomic theory of Dalton can go no further than to say that all chemical forces are related to each other in fixed mathematical proportions. The force of oxygen compared with the force of hydrogen is as eight to one; compared with carbon, as eight to six; with sulphur, as

eight to sixteen, and so on. But of the ultimate chemical atom it can say nothing, because it can know nothing. It only knows that oxygen force combines with other forces in proportions of eight and multiples of eight, and never in any other way; and yet from the combination of these forces is formed all that we call matter. Hence the substratum of materialism is spiritualism. The materialist can no longer take a pebble and say, "Here is reality; here is something which we know, and have no doubt about." For what is it that is real in the pebble, and what do we know about it? It is so much form, color, weight, brittleness, taste, and so on. That is, it is something which has power to produce in us a sensation of taste; the power to produce a sensation of color; the power to produce a sensation of weight, brittleness, extension, and so on. Or, in other words, it is a combination of so many forces; and further than that we know nothing about it, and can know nothing about it; for matter which is any thing else than a degree or quality of force, is unknowable and unthinkable. It is a curious fact that this old issue between materialism and spiritualism should have been decided in favor of spiritualism by science itself, which seeks nothing outside of

matter.

As this great synthesis of philosophy goes on to its completion, the religious insight and thought will dwell with increasing interest upon this great principle of force, out of which has been evolved all that is, and will be evolved all that is to be; that principle, conditioned always by matter, time, and space, but caused by nothing conditional; that mysterious principle, in which rested at the beginning all the possibilities of creation, worlds on worlds, systems on systems, all forms inanimate and animate in existence, the

highest modes of being in this world, and those higher modes which we hope for hereafter.

Now, if science attributes all these results to force, religion will be very busy with its old analogies of life. She will say that the philosopher's infinite force is but another term for religion's infinite life. She will wonder if that force the beginning, by which all

is not the Word which was in things were made; she will wonder if it is not the life which is the light of men; if it is not the light which lighted every man that cometh into the world; if it has not been shining in all the darkness, not comprehended by the darkness, yet always making of those rare, pure souls who could comprehend it sons and daughters of God. One is tempted to hazard a prophecy even now, that the dispute between philosophy and religion will at last resolve itself into a question of terms, whether this force into which philosophy resolves all phenomena is not the very life of God immanent in matter and mind.

To this mystery of life, then, we look with new wonder and hope; for it is the great hope. Because God's life has been in the world, it has not failed; and because his life is in it now, it can not fail; and because it must always be in it, it will never fail. There is hope so long as there is life, and there is life so long as there is God.

We are always running anxiously with our nostrums, and tonics, and pills to save nature; we fear and tremble at the general dissolution, and doubt, and death which seem near at hand. But chaos does not come back; humanity does not turn atheist nor infidel; the machinery of progress does not stop; because there is a soundness of heart in humanity, a light of life in man, a living spirit in the wheels of things which makes the hand that marks the hours of