Even at that time a future was spoken of where changes should again occur, where a great Teacher should again appear, where a new age should be born, a new heaven and a new earth should be seen. It is in that next transition age, then, that you and I are standing; and although many of you may say, as they would have said of old, that I am a dreamer or am mad, none the less will I strive to tell you this evening, and the Sundays that follow, something of the signs by which you may judge for yourselves whether a great change is not coming over the world, whether there is not coming a new kingdom and a mighty Teacher, whether in our days again, as in the days of the past, the world is not to take on a new form and a nobler type of humanity to live and rule on earth, for many are the signs of the age that is closing, and many the signs also of the day that is dawning upon earth. In this and in the following lecture we shall be dealing with the dying, not the race which is to be born; and if in some ways, therefore, these two lectures may seem a little gloomy or a little grey, then I would remind you that the night must come before the dawn, and the greyness of the sky before the sunrising. If we can see behind the greyness the first faint gleams of the rose-tipped fingers of the dawn, ah! then we need not mind that the night is still with us, for the night is closing, and we, the children of the day, shall see the rising of the sun. I have taken for this evening three great departments of human thought—Religion, Science, Art; and our task now is to see whether, looking over the world of religion, of science, and of art, we can find that the old methods have carried us as far as we can go, that they are breaking in our hands, that we no longer can use them for opening up new vistas of thought and hope for man. On every side there is a feeling of uncertainty, a feeling, I might almost say, of distress; a questioning what is truth, what is reliable? where can we find some rock on which we may put our feet amid all the buffeting of various opinions, of doubt, nay, of scepticism and unbelief? I.—RELIGION.