them. But with all our keenness of appreciation of abstract Truth, it is certain that we do not insist that perception shall pass into action. From its incipiency, this failure has attended the Humanistic movement, and the prevailing characteristic of this its latest day is that it is well informed, keen, devoted to education, subtile in analysis and speculation, and not correspondingly serious in living; its intellectual vigour, not guided by serious purpose and attached to the springs of action, is being frittered away in the follies which make men of more depth of thought and character suspicious of its cleverness, distrustful of its achievements, and which dispose them to return to the remote past.

I am expressing no agreement with this disposition; I am trying to account for it. Were my opinion required, it would be that, with all its disappointments, the thought movement of the last four centuries has been one of unmistakable progress. Much of the vaunted New Truth, indeed, is in point of fact very old. Not yet have we moderns quite re-attained the rich splendour of

thought of the Christian Greeks, their vigour of vision into things profound. Not yet do we wield again as easily as they the mighty language of the Fathers. Yet we are to

day, as never since their age, reproducing the largeness of outlook and the modes. of thought of that early time; and we, moreover, possess a fulness of accurate knowledge concerning the universe with which it was unacquainted. Almost we are great. Almost we stand masters of the centuries in thought. Almost! Mere failure is so terrible! Real attainment lies just beyond. Shall we fail? Shall we fall back? I praise the New Learning, but I point out that it has reached its limits, and has not reached the goal. Alone it never can. It is not a complete movement. I go back to the profound truth put aside awhile ago. To know is to do. Complete Knowledge can come only with utter Obedience. I plead for a union of hearts to make possible the consummation of the New Learning;-I plead for a New Obedience! Yes! let us call it by that name. Let us found here, now, in these last years of the century, a

movement to whose banner we can summon the brave and great-hearted. Claiming for a nobler use that word which a novelty-loving age has so profaned by fastening to its follies, acknowledging its instinct, which is still divine, let us hold up before it something New, which is yet stern and royal, worthy to command large souls, -a New Obedience to the Truth of Almighty God. Let the New Learning pass into a New Loyalty. Promulgating no new doctrine; proposing no novel theory, no untried social scheme, no extension or interpretation hitherto unsuspected; let us ask only for a new, a passionate enthusiasm of Obedience, which shall pour its tides around the world, and set men demanding why the thoughts, the dreams, the hopes of the past, should not be given realization and actuality.

All these wonderful things which modern Science has discovered, and Art pictured, and History illustrated, and Philosophy proven -either they are true, or they are not true. If they are not true, then let us throw them away, and have done, and go back to barbarism. But if they are true, then they are

terribly and absolutely and everyhow true, and have tremendously to do with our daily lives and duties, as well as with our tastes and mental pleasures; then they are not beautiful fancies floating bodilessly in the air, but eternal principles demanding to be given flesh and bone in the deeds of those to whom they have revealed themselves. Let us have done forever with this dilettante nonsense, and either openly defy, or honestly accept Truth for what it is-stern, severe, and inexorable as it is fair, and requiring not to be talked about, but to be practised, not to be wrought into clever treatises, but to be obeyed. Has not all our learning taught us this as its supreme lesson ?-that Knowledge must pass into Life? Does not the highest philosophy alike of Art and Society, announce that Esthetics and Ethics, the logic of Beauty and the logic of Duty, are at base one? Is not the final declaration of Science this? the universality of Law; that is, the Authority of Truth? Has History any other lesson than that of the vanity of defiance by kings or empires or churches, of the divine Will who orders human concerns?

Has our modern psychological introspection any newer teaching than that given by One long ago, that if any man will do the will, he shall know of the doctrine; that is, that the price of Truth is its practice; that nothing is so illuminating as Obedience?

Has not the time come to hearken to these voices ? Is not this age, so great even in its follies, of stuff to be great also in nobler fashions? Is there not heroism among us, children of the world's old age, to set about sternly enquiring of every revelation of the true and the beautiful that is made, "What wilt thou have me to do?" and then to set as sternly about doing it, without hesitation or regard for expediency, stopping at no sacrifices, careless of apparent results? Are there not among us men who, feeling Knowledge within them calling to Action, will heed its importunity, and highly resolve under God, that His Truth shall be obeyed!

You see instantly how vast are the results for which the New Obedience looks, as it reaches out and claims its disciples from the