come, all are yours, and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.” VII. One life has appeared among men, then, that was all love. Jesus Christ is the only original, absolutely unselfish life that has been lived on earth. The saints have found the secret, and strength, and inspiration of their unselfishness and love in him. The love which matches and meets the illimitable nature of the human spirit is embodied in a life that cannot be measured by the ordinary rules and standards of men. The object of which hunger is the subject, is bread; the object of which intellect is the subject, is truth; the object of which will is the subject, is law; the object of which the æsthetic sense is the subject, is beauty; the object of which the spiritual nature is the subject, is Jesus Christ. The spirit of man which has for its correlate in time, the race, has for its correlate in eternity, the life of one in which is summed up all power, all truth, all law, all beauty, and all love. As the embodiment of love the human spirit finds in Christ the climate and the conditions exactly adapted to its own realization. The plan and pattern, the invisible framework and ideal of every man’s life is Christian. To be an oak is to be a perfect acorn, to be an apple is to be a complete flower, to be a Christian is to be a complete man. _IMMORTALITY._ “How does the rivulet find its way? How does the floweret know its day And open its cup to catch the ray? “I see the germ to the sunlight reach, And the nestling knows the old bird’s speech. I do not know who is there to teach. “I see the hare through the thicket glide, And the stars through the trackless spaces ride. I do not see who is there to guide. “He is eyes for all, who is eyes for the mole, See motion goes to the rightful goal. O God! I can trust for the human soul.” CHAPTER VII. THE PERMANENCE OF THE COMPLETED LIFE OF MAN. Back of the movement which began in creation and culminated in man, we posited the mind of a self-conscious, self-determining, self-active, personal God. Necessity was upon us to assume a first principle of some kind, and it seemed proper to have one large enough to account for the facts we were about to consider. The first principle Thales set up was water. In water he saw the origin of all and the end of all. But all that came out of water must, in the end, find its death in water. With nothing but a vast ocean to start with, we shall find, at the conclusion, nothing more articulate and rational than an infinite expanse of water to end with. Herbert Spencer, “the heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time,” took as the starting point of his philosophy the unknowable. In the selection of a first principle, however, we think Thales, though the first philosopher who ever lived, had the advantage of him.