Have you ever pondered that dark mystery of human nature, the origin of the frightful idolatries of India? It seems to be proved that they had their beginning, not (as the prepossessions of modern science would suggest) through development from some form of fetishism baser and coarser still, but by degradation from the most refined and abstract speculations on the infinity, the spirituality, and the immutability of God. No subtler metaphysics is taught to-day in the lecture-rooms of Yale and Princeton than was taught long centuries ago by Hindoo sages, enthroning their supreme divinity in the everlasting, impassive repose of the unconditioned, far beyond the reach of affection, sympathy or prayer, until the needy millions cried out, stifling, famishing, "Give us a God to love, to worship, to pray to!" and, for lack of answer, betook them to the forest or the quarry or the mine, to the carver and the smith, and made them gods that were no gods. So little can argument and reason hold us back in times when the stress of life comes down upon us, and the cravings of the soul grow strong! I am bringing to the altar of God my offering--my poor little offering of thankfulness and prayer. Here have I my little bundle of anxieties, cares, troubles,--it may be the concerns of a nation in fear and perplexity; it may be the distress and terror of some sorely afflicted little household; it may be the secret of bitterness of some humble and contrite spirit; in any case, a matter how infinitely small when measured by the scale of immensity and eternity; but oh, how great a thing to me! And there meets me, in the way, a philosopher. "And what, forsooth, have you there? Show it me, now." And I unroll before Him my little bundle of griefs, of cares, of pains, of sickness, of fears, of forebodings,--here a handful of myrrh from a troubled heart, and there a sprig of frankincense from a grateful spirit. "And this, then, is what you would bring to lay before the infinite, the eternal, the omniscient, the unchangeable God!" And each great title smites upon my heart with discouragement and dismay. "This is what you would bring to Him in prayer and deprecation! But do you not know that all this is a part of a perfect system?--that it is all fixt by the laws of nature, which no prayer can change or suspend without upsetting the constitution of the universe. You would lay before God your wretched plight to move His pity? Tush! Did He not know it all a hundred thousand ages ago, or ever the earth was?" And I cannot gainsay Him, and I cannot cease to pray. But by and by the philosopher himself comes face to face with some of the overwhelming things in human life and human death. He hangs with tears and wringing of hands over some cradleful of childish anguish, and shrinks from what the laws of nature, the system of the universe, are doing there--so pitiless, so deaf to prayer, so blind to agony; and he looks away, and looks