To assume that every word, every letter, every parable, every figure was whispered to the authors of the Gospels, is certainly an absurdity, and rests only on human ... authority. But the true revelation, the real truth, as it was already anticipated by the Greek philosophers, slowly accepted by Jews, like Philo and the contemporaries of Jesus, taught by men like Clement and Origen in the ancient Greek Church, and, in fine, realised in the life of Jesus, and sealed by His death, is no absurdity: it is for every thinking Christian the eternal life, or the Kingdom of God on earth, which Jesus wished to establish, and in part did establish. To become a citizen of this Kingdom is the highest that man can attain, but it is not attained merely through baptism and confirmation; it must be gained in earnest spiritual conflict. _Silesian Horseherd._ THE RIG-VEDA The _Veda_ alone of all works I know treats of a genesis of God-consciousness, compared to which the Theogony of Hesiod is like a worn-out creature. We see it grow slowly and gradually with all its contradictions, its sudden terrors, its amazements, and its triumphs. As God reveals His Being in nature in her order, her indestructibility, in the eternal victory of light over darkness, of spring over winter, in the eternally returning course of the sun and the stars, so man has gradually spelt out of nature the Being of God, and after trying a thousand names for God in vain, we find Him in the _Veda_ already saying: 'They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna; then they call him the Heavenly, the bird with beautiful wings; that which is One they call in various ways.'... The belief in Immortality is only the other side, as it were, of the God-consciousness, and both are originally natural to the Aryan race. _Life._ SCIENCE Every true Science is like a hardy Alpine guide that leads us on from the narrow, though it may be the more peaceful and charming, valleys of our preconceived opinions, to higher points, apparently less attractive, nay often disappointing for a time, till, after hours of patient and silent climbing, we look round and see a new world around us. _Chips._ A new horizon has opened, our eyes see far and wide, and as the world beneath us grows wider and larger, our own hearts seem to grow wider and larger, and we learn to embrace the far and distant, and all that before seemed strange and indifferent, with a warmer recognition and a deeper human sympathy; we form wider concepts, we perceive higher truths. _Chips._ What is natural is divine; what is supernatural is human. _Gifford Lectures, I._