spirit close to the present world, and watchful for*its affairs. It is not a selfish feeling, but often one intensely social and humane, not any mean fascination with mere material interests, but a devotion to justice and right, and an assertion of the sacred authority of human duties and affections. A man thus tempered deals chiefly with this visible life and his comrades in it, because, as nearest to him, they are better known. He plants his standard on the present, as on a vantage ground, where he can survey his field, and manoeuvre all his force, and compute the battle he is to fight. Whatever his bearings fervours towards beyond his range, he has no insensibility to the claims that fall within his acknowledged province, and that appeal to him in the native speech of his humanity. He so reverences veracity, honour, and good faith, as to expect them like the daylight, and hears of their violation with a flush of scorn. His word is a rock, and he expects that yours will not be a quicksand. If you are lax, you cannot hope for his trust; but if you are in trouble, you easily move his pity. And the sight of a real oppression, though the sufferer be no ornamental hero, but black, unsightly, and disreputable, suffices perhaps to set him to work for life, that he may expunge the disgrace from the records of mankind. Such men as he constitute for our world its moral centre of gravity; and whoever would compute the path of improvement that has brought it thus far on its way, or trace its sweep into a brighter future, must take account of their steady mass. The effect of this style of thought and taste on the religion of its possessor, is not difficult to trace. It may, no doubt, stop short of avowed and conscious religion altogether; its basis being simply moral, and its scene temporal, its conditions may be imagined as complete, without any acknowledgment of higher relations."* * Professor Martineau, in Octagon Chapel, Norwich, 1856. XX. Nature is. That which is, is the primary subject of study. The study of Nature reveals the laws of Nature. The laws of Nature furnish safe guidance to humanity. Safe guidance is to help available in daily life--to happiness, self-contained--to service, which knows how "to labour and to wait." For authority, Nature refers us to Experience and to Reason. For help, to Science, the nearest available help of man. Science implies disciplined powers on the part of the people, and concert in their use, to realize the security and sufficiency necessary to happiness. Happiness depends on moral, no less than on physical conditions. The moral condition is the full and fearless discharge of Duty. Duty is devotion to the Right. Right is that which is morally expedient. That is morally expedient which is conducive to the happiness of the greatest numbers. The service of others is the practical form of duty; and endurance in the service of others, the highest form of happiness. It is pleasure, peace, security, and desert.