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plication, making it a kingdom in which each and all might have a portion. In other words, there was needed a theoretical and practical recognition of the individual man as such, which would at the same time allow him to express his will in free harmony with his fellow-men. What, then, was the intellectual development of the age, and how far did it understand this need? Look first at its theoretical teaching. Plato had laid stress on the greatness of the difference between the ideal or divine world, where eternal Truth and Beauty dwell, and the world of things that we can touch and see; and on the greatness of the difference between the highest rational life and the life of emotion and passion. Aristotle, his successor, made the highest life one of pure intellectual activity. In the period which followed, this "intellectualist" tendency grew stronger still. The highest or purely rational life became something divine, which was more and more removed from the natural life of this world, and at length was opposed to the world in its very nature; so that men could not reach anything divine and holy,

anything in which their spirits could rest, except by forsaking all the interests which make up this earthly life of ours. Similarly, on its practical side, the mind of the age made the isolation of individuals more sharply felt. Profoundly dissatisfied with the actual world, men tried in Stoicism and kindred systems to escape from it by withdrawing wholly into themselves: "Abstain and endure; be not dependent for thy happiness on the accidents of the surrounding world-be sufficient for thyself" ! This relentless resignation was only an expression of defeat.

Thus, when men needed above all things to be brought nearer to one another and nearer to divine realities, the mind of the age emphasised their isolation and separation in both respects. There was no great prophetic or scientific genius for three centuries after the death of Aristotle-no one with insight enough to tell the age what all its restless distracted feeling meant. This is the supreme instance which history affords, of the human mind not only being ignorant of its own deepest needs, but con

ceiving them to be the opposite of what they really were. There is no need to dwell on the way in which primitive Christianity brought forth an idea of the Kingdom of Heaven which was equal to universalising the righteousness which Plato taught, making it a life in which all could share; and the way in which it brought men nigh unto God by finding that the divinest life had verily been lived on this earth.

The meaning of our principle must now surely be evident, whether it is applied to the single life or to the life of the age. Self-knowledge, in every direction of it, has and must have degrees of truth. It attains truth by rationalising or interpreting the facts of immediate experience, which are always real, but may be so tumultuous as to entail disastrous consequences, if the intellect is not sufficiently developed to be capable of giving them adequate form or expression.

We have been dwelling on a little group of principles which endeavour to express the conditions on which the progressive

growth of truth depends. The fourth and last of these now comes under our notice.

Some observers have supposed that the ceaseless conflict and confusion among religious and other beliefs proves that truth never be attained by man. This is only to apply to all our spiritual life on its intellectual side, a mode of criticism which is constantly applied in particular cases: as when the defenders of the "orthodox" view of the Bible speak about the "discordant theories of the so-called Higher Critics." The assumption seems to be that if those who are investigating the truth in any branch of inquiry disagree in their methods or conclusions, they are proved to be pursuing an illusion. This assumption is not only false as a matter of fact and experience; it is absurd, from the nature of our intelligence. The attainment of truth would be impossible without this mutual struggle. Of Truth, as of Goodness, we may say sub pondere crescit-its growth is only possible through strife and opposition overcome. Let us consider this principle in its ethical aspect for a moment. The higher ethical teaching

of to-day-which is that of Christianity from the beginning-shows that the victory of Goodness comes through its work in transforming evil: not annihilating the evil, but, as it were, rearranging the energy and turning it to good purposes, "unmaking to remake." What Christian thinkers have called Love is the root and vital principle of all the highest human goodness. And this living Love which is Divine, the Love which is ever bearing, believing, hoping, enduring, rejoicing not in iniquity but rejoicing in the truth-the Love which not only can do this but must needs do itcould never come to be but for the sufferings, sins, mistakes, and conflicts of life: while yet it is ever overcoming these and turning them to good. So, in matters of the intellect, Truth is in its own way a transforming power which can be realised only through the conflict of partial truths. This has been finely said by Professor Pfleiderer :

To learn from History aright, we need an insight, penetrating through the confused play of outward events into the reality of men and things, into the deep

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