The essence of the change is that in our consciousness of moral authority we are aware of the moral Ideal simply as something which ought to be but is not; we reverence it when we are aware of it as actually realised-and then it comes home to us with a personal claim far superior in vividness and effect to any "categorical imperative" or any moral doctrine. The first stage of Reverence arises when we see a higher goodness realised in another human life. Dr Martineau says:

And

The posture of mind which I describe as Reverence cares for right actions not simply as good phenomena, but as functions of pure, of faithful, of self-devoted, of lofty character. Not content to rest with the fruits, it presses on to the lovely or stately nature that bore them. in thus passing from them to their producing source, the feeling itself undergoes a change. In place of an approbation which looks with complacency down, it becomes a homage which looks reverently up, and finds itself in presence, not of a definite thing done, but of a living doer, the cause of it and of indefinite other possibilities of nobleness; and so it is transferred from the level of ethical satisfaction to the plane of personal affection and aspiration. Till this change takes place, there is hardly any sacred element in the ideas of right. The moralities of conduct occupy the human and civic platform; but even in our relations with each other, some other light— call it poetic or call it divine-dawns upon the heart, when the revelations of some pathetic experience, or the

disclosures of some rare biography, have opened to us the interior of a tender and strenuous soul, and kindled the heights above us with a fresh glory.

I have spoken thus far of Reverence in its direction upon persons; distinguishing it from simple approbation in this—that in approbation we look to the particular act, with praise of its inward spring as compared with its tempting rival; while Reverence looks through and past the act to the type of character which it expresses, as compared with the relative weakness of our own. In order to take this outward direction upon objective goodness, the sentiment must, however, have had a prior stage of experience. For that inward disposition and character in another, upon which it now fixes, is nothing that can be seen or heard or touched; its presence before us is learnt by suggestion, by outward signs, of language, look, and act, which, we are aware, have but one interpretation. We read him by the key of sympathy, and what we attribute to him is known to us by its gleams and movements within ourselves. There it is that we have learnt the feeling that is due to it; that it has looked upon us from above; that it has spoken to us in tones that lift us towards it. . . . The call at once carries our eye up; thence the authority descends; and instead of passing like coins of exchange, between men that make them and men that take them, it lies upon each, it lies upon all; it has the grasp of a moral unity, the range of a moral universality; it is the overflow of Infinite Perfection into the finite mind.

This, says Dr Martineau, is the final revelation of conscience, the issue of its full development; and he proceeds :

Thus, within our own consciousness, we find the same

difference which was observable in the appreciation of others, between simply moral approbation and the feeling of Reverence. The latter cannot express itself without resorting, in the notice of affection and character, to language more than ethical, and plainly crossing the boundary into the field of Religion. It lives in the presence of souls that are holy, of dispositions that are heavenly, of tempers that are saintly, of Love that is Divine,1

It is, therefore, not enough to say that "over a free and living person nothing short of a free and living person can have authority." What has authority must be more than the dictate of a free and living person; it must be a principle of life which is more than merely due to his personality, but is revealed by him because it is realised in his character. Through being his Real, it becomes revealed to us-if we fall short of it -as our Ideal.

This intervening position alone it is which renders the function of a Mediator,-Uplifter, Inspirer,-possible; and that not instead of immediate revelation, but simply as making us more aware of it and helping us to interpret it. For in the very constitution of the human soul there is provision for an immediate apprehension of God. But often in the transient lights and shades of conscience we pass on and "know not who it is"; and not till we

1 Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. p. 223 ff.

see in another the victory that shames our own defeat, and are caught up by an enthusiasm for some realised heroism or sanctity, the authority of right and the beauty of holiness come home to us as an appeal literally Divine. 1

Thus it is that other souls, going beyond our attainments, but not beyond our possibilities, first call Reverence into life. But they do so because the manifestation of realised goodness without awakens Reverence for the absolute, universal goodness which is or may be revealed within. When this happens, Reverence is passing into its highest stage, where-when Reason has grown deep enough to interpret it—it becomes nothing less than an apprehension of the indwelling God. This highest stage is reached when, "independently of actual or visible heroes or saints on whom Reverence may fix when they are present, it finds for itself the means of exercise; it goes forth in faith upon invisible objects, and discerns, behind the veil of the actual, a better and a higher before which it humbles itself with cries of dependence and adoration." When this happens, our aspiration after goodness which ought to 1 Seat of Authority, p. 652.

be, becomes the inspiration of Goodness which already is, in the deepest sense of the word; a Divine Life of Goodness, which is real all through our life of change, struggle, and growth; a Life on which our personal life is vitally dependent, and which is waiting, with all the might of its Reality, to flow gently into the wavering will and uplift the drooping resolves to the heights of a nobler constancy.

In one of his finest passages Dr Martineau has expressed the final meaning of the Symbolist view :

Amid all the sickly talk about Ideals, which has become the commonplace of our age, it is well to remember that so long as they are dreams of future possibility, and not faiths in present reality, so long as they are a mere self-painting of the yearning spirit, and not its personal surrender to immediate communion with Infinite Perfection, they have no more solidity or steadiness than floating air-bubbles glittering in the sunshine and broken by the passing wind. . . . The very gate of entrance to Religion, the moment of new birth, is the discovery that your gleaming Ideal is the everlasting Real-no transient brush of a fancied angel's wing, but the abiding presence and persuasion of the Soul of souls.

We may not often pass with clear consciousness into this stage of Reverence; but