1003. What the age needs is not an abandonment of effort, but an increase; the time is ripe for a study of unseen things as strenuous and sincere as that which Science has made familiar for the problems of earth. For now the scientific instinct, - so newly developed in mankind, - seems likely to spread until it becomes as dominant as was in time past the religious; and if there be even the narrowest chink through which man can look forth from his planetary cage, our descendants will not leave that chink neglected or unwidened. The scheme of knowledge which can commend itself to such seekers must be a scheme which, while it transcends our present knowledge, steadily continues it; - a scheme not catastrophic, but evolutionary; not promulgated and closed in a moment, but gradually unfolding itself to progressive inquiry.

Must there not also be a continuous change, an unending advance in the human ideal itself? so that Faith must shift her standpoint from the brief Past to the endless Future, not so much caring to supply the lacunae of tradition as to intensify the conviction that there is still a higher life to work for, a holiness which may be some day reached by grace and effort as yet unknown.

It may be that for some generations to come the truest faith will lie in the patient attempt to unravel from confused phenomena some trace of the supernal world; - to find thus at last "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I confess, indeed, that I have often felt as though this present age were even unduly favoured; - as though no future revelation and calm could equal the joy of this great struggle from doubt into certainty; - from the materialism or agnosticism which accompany the first advance of Science into the deeper scientific conviction that there is a deathless soul in man. I can imagine no other crisis of such deep delight. But after all this is but like the starving child's inability to imagine anything sweeter than his first bite at the crust. Give him but that, and he can hardly care for the moment whether he is fated to be Prime Minister or ploughboy.

Equally transitory, equally dependent on our special place in the story of man's upward effort, is another shade of feeling which many men have known. They have felt that uncertainty gave scope to faith and courage in a way which scientific assurance could never do. There has been a stern delight in the choice of virtue, - even though virtue might bring no reward. This joy, like the joy of Columbus sailing westward from Hierro, can hardly recur in precisely the same form. But neither (to descend to a humbler comparison) can we grown men again give ourselves up to learning in the same spirit of pure faith, without prefigurement of result, as when we learnt the alphabet at our mother's knees. Have we therefore relaxed since then our intellectual effort? Have we felt that there was no longer need to struggle against idleness when once we knew that knowledge brought a sure reward?

Endless are the varieties of lofty joy. In the age of Thales, Greece knew the delight of the first dim notion of cosmic unity and law. In the age of Christ, Europe felt the first high authentic message from a world beyond our own. In our own age we reach the perception that such messages may become continuous and progressive;- that between seen and unseen there is a channel and fairway which future generations may learn to widen and to clarify. Our own age may seem the best to us; so will their mightier ages seem to them.

"'Talia saecla' suis dixerunt 'currite' fusis Concordes stabili Fatorum numine Parcae".

Spiritual evolution:- that, then, is our destiny, in this and other worlds;- an evolution gradual with many gradations, and rising to no assignable close. And the passion for Life is no selfish weakness, it is a factor in the universal energy. It should keep its strength unbroken even when our weariness longs to fold the hands in endless slumber; it should outlast and annihilate the "pangs that conquer trust." If to the Greeks it seemed a - a desertion of one's post in battle - to quit by suicide the life of earth, how much more craven were the desire to desert the Cosmos, - the despair, not of this planet only, but of the Sum of Things !

Nay, in the infinite Universe man may now feel, for the first time, at home. The worst fear is over; the true security is won. The worst fear was the fear of spiritual extinction or spiritual solitude; the true security is in the telepathic law.