There was a time when collisions among the masses of the sidereal system were frequent, shocks of unimaginable force by which the celestial bodies were shivered into atoms, so that what now remains is but a survival of worlds which escaped destruction in the chaotic struggle when suns madly rushed on one another and rose in star-dust about the face of God, who was, and is, and shall be, eternal and forever the same. Where there is no thinker, there is no thing. It is in, and through, and with Him that we know ourselves and our environment; and recognize that our particular life is, in its implications, universal and divine. He is the principle of unity which is present in whatever is an object of thought, and which gives the mind the power to co-ordinate the manifold of sensation into the harmony of truth; He is the principle of goodness and beauty, which makes the universe fair, and thrills the heart of man with hope and love. Amid endless change, He alone is permanent, and He is power and wisdom and love, and they only are good and wise and strong who cleave to His eternal and absolute being. But since here and now the real world of matter as distinguished from the apparent is hidden behind the veil of sense, it is vain to hope that the world of eternal life shall be made plain to the pure reason. Religion, like life, is faith, hope, and love, striving and doing, not intellectual intuition and beatific vision. We find it impossible to separate our thought of God from that of infinite goodness and love; but when we look away from our own souls to Nature's pitiless and fatal laws, we realize that this faith in all-embracing and all-conquering love is opposed by seemingly insurmountable difficulties. It is a mystery we believe, not a truth we comprehend. Systems of philosophy, morality, and religion, however cunningly devised, cannot make men philosophers, sages, or saints. This they can become only through the communion which faith, hope, and love have power to establish with the living fountain-head of truth, wisdom, and goodness.