Of all eradications of this doctrine (of human progress), the most difficult is that connected with the outward shows--in air, in colouring, in form, in grouping of the great elements composing the furniture of the heavens and the earth. It is most difficult, even when confining one's attention to the modern case, and neglecting the comparison with the ancient, at all to assign the analysis of those steps by which to us Christians (but never before) the sea and the sky and the clouds and the many inter-modifications of these, A, B, C, D, and again the many interactions of the whole, the sun (S.), the moon (M.), the noon (N. S.)--the breathless, silent noon--the gay afternoon--the solemn glory of sunset--the dove-like glimpse of Paradise in the tender light of early dawn--by which these obtain a power utterly unknown, undreamed of, unintelligible to a Pagan. If we had spoken to Plato--to Cicero--of the deep pathos in a sunset, would he--would either--have gone along with us? The foolish reader thinks, Why, perhaps not, not altogether as to the quantity--the degree of emotion. Doubtless, it is undeniable that we moderns have far more sensibility to the phenomena and visual glories of this world which we inhabit. And it _is_ possible that, reflecting on the singularity of this characteristic badge worn by modern civilization, he may go so far as to suspect that Christianity has had something to do with it. But, on seeking to complete the chain which connects them, he finds himself quite unable to recover the principal link. Now, it will prove, after all, even for myself who have exposed and revealed these new ligatures by which Christianity connects man with awful interests in the world, a most insurmountable task to assign the total nidus in which this new power resides, or the total phenomenology through which that passes to and fro. Generally it seems to stand thus: God reveals Himself to us more or less dimly in vast numbers of processes; for example, in those of vegetation, animal growth, crystallization, etc. These impress us not primarily, but secondarily on reflection, after considering the enormity of changes worked annually, and working even at the moment we speak. Then, again, other arrangements throw us more powerfully upon the moral qualities of God; _e.g._, we see the fence, the shell, the covering, varied in ten million ways, by which in buds and blossoms He insures the ultimate protection of the fruit. What protection, analogous to this, has He established for animals; or, taking up the question in the ideal case, for man, the supreme of His creatures? We perceive that He has relied upon love, upon love strengthened to the adamantine force of insanity or delirium, by the mere aspect of utter, utter helplessness in the human infant. It is not by power, by means visibly developed, that this result is secured, but by means spiritual and 'transcendental' in the highest degree.