The second condition necessary to the development of noble character is that man shall be capable of receiving inspiration from the great source of all life, especially of all spiritual life. The universal belief of our race that there is a community of nature between God and man, expressed alike in the words of Aratus, the Asiatic poet, Cleanthes, the Stoic philosopher, and Paul, the Christian teacher--"_We are the offspring of God_"--justifies the further expectation and hope that there may be a real communion between the human and the Divine. Of course this is fundamentally "a question between Theism and Atheism, between a God and no God," between a conscious Being and an unconscious Force. If there is a personal God, then He may communicate with our souls which dwell, as it were, within the ocean of his immensity, and are surrounded and interpenetrated by his living presence. Then there may be a real sympathy, a loving fellowship, and a sanctifying communion. Even should science forbid the Author of nature to interpose in the slightest degree in the procession of phenomena or modify in the least the action of the so-called natural forces, surely it will not be so "audacious"[423] as to forbid that He shall come near to human souls, and interpose in the moral order of the world to deliver man from sin and purify and elevate human society. Here at any rate science is out of its place. It is guilty of that very presumption with which it is evermore charging the theology of the Middle Ages, viz., the attempt to monopolize the whole field of human knowledge and experience. If the good man does feel that God is with him and in him, if he knows by experience that prayer is an act of Divine communion--that it opens to him an unfailing fountain of refreshment, solace, and strength; if he is conscious that it does lift him up to a larger and more blessed life, then even science, which boasts its rigid adherence to the inductive method, and its unswerving loyalty to fact and experience, must obey the Divine injunction--"Be still, and know that I am God." "I dwell with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite." 2. We come now to the consideration of the second question, What are the facts concerning the order of nature which have been placed beyond controversy by the inductions of science, and what are the logical inferences from these facts?