I am not sorry that the place and occasion require me to make this a popular theme. I am not to speak for philosophers, but for the people. I wish to meet the questions which arise in all minds that have awaked to any degree of reflection upon their nature and being, and upon the collective being of their race. I have hoped that I should escape the charge of presumption by the humbleness of my attempt--the attempt, that is to say, to popularize a theme which has hitherto been the domain of scholars. The lecture assumes the existence of a Personal God, the reality of a conscious soul, the freedom of the human will, the fact of a moral purpose in creation, the perfectibility of man, the idea of progress, the evidence of design in the universe attesting a divine intelligence. The treatment nowhere shows metaphysical acumen or speculative insight. On every page is brilliancy, eloquence, skilful manipulation of arguments, fervent appeal to conscience. Nowhere is subtilty or depth of intuition. Take for example the discourse on "The Problem of Evil," the most intellectually exacting of all subjects. It ends thus after a series of pictures: Give me freedom, give me knowledge, give me breadth of experience; I would have it all. No memory is so hallowed, no memory is so dear, as that of temptation nobly withstood, or of suffering nobly endured. What is it that we gather and garner up from the solemn story of the world, like its struggles, its sorrows, its martyrdoms? Come to the great battle, thou wrestling, glorious, marred nature! strong nature! weak nature! Come to the great battle, and in this mortal strife strike for immortal victory! The highest Son of God, the best beloved of Heaven that ever stood upon earth, was "made perfect through suffering." And sweeter shall be the cup of immortal joy, for that it once was dashed with bitter drops of pain and sorrow; and brighter shall roll the everlasting ages, for the dark shadows that clouded the birth-time of our being. This is not argument, but preaching--- very fine, stimulating, powerful preaching, but preaching nevertheless; quite different from James Martineau's treatment of the same theme, in the course of the Liverpool lectures (delivered in 1839). Mr. Martineau, too, addressed a popular assembly, and closed his discourse in a strain of exhortation. Still, the grave tone of the previous discussion sobered the rhetoric, and the background of the ancient debate made the moral lessons solemn. Philosophy yielded to the necessities of ethics, much as the "Kritik der Reinen Vernunft" gave place to the "Kritik der Practischen Vernunft" of Kant--the preacher and the reasoner standing indeed on different ground, but the moral instruction being tempered by the philosophical.