All this progress, however, has cost its price. Step by step has the race advanced from primeval animalism to its present status. It has walked with bleeding feet. The Divine economy works in many ways. One of its ways is to educate, stimulate and spiritualize through antagonism and pain. All faculties, functions and potencies must be worked in order that they may grow. Atrophy, decay, death, are the resultant of non-use. The sullen earth was to be fertilized by man's sweat and blood before it would yield any increase beyond its spontaneous productions. Conflict with the elements, conquest over the lower organisms; ages of toilsome effort, were to come before man was able "to dress the earth and keep it." Out of the iron necessities of his being came initial progress; and progress once begun has never ceased. The great factor in progress was Co-operation. One man alone can do little. The moment human necessities were recognized, the law of association applied. Man needed man. The family group, the clan, the tribe, the town, the city, the state, the nation, have been stages in the process of closer and closer co-operation. Confederation, association, combination, require adjustment, compromise, regulation. Hence the germ of government. To live together each man must give way in something to the other. Man is gregarious; he is naturally social; instinctively he availed himself of the companionship of other men. The social status, the _foedera generis humani,_ were slowly evolved from the increasing demands of man upon man; they were not the result of bargaining. What a magnificent drama; the world, the theatre; all mankind, emerging from primitive ignorance, the actors. How many or how long the acts were, we know not; but through "that duration which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment," the wonderful scenes moved on. Out of the strong came forth sweetness. From brute selfishness, from animal passion, came love. Slowly the central idea was reached, and, in the sublime language of the Scripture, man became a living soul! and his body became the temple of the Holy Spirit; his consciousness a part of the infinite consciousness; his personality a world-copy of a divine universe. Reason, conscious, love, were his dower. The curtain has not yet fallen, and will never fall, upon the last act. We live in a world which is always in process. Nature's genesis is unceasing. "Without haste, without rest," her creative and re-creative processes are always operating.