follow Christ and he did believe Him. Hence it was that he prayed. That was the logic of a judge, and it was sound reasoning, and the reasoning was justified in his experience. If there were need of it, there would be an access of confidence through our admiration for a man of this character, who had made personal proof of the things upon which he based his decision.

I am interested to see how easily I have passed in this writing, and I hope the reader has easily come with me,-into the realm of the spiritual life. If I had done less I should have curbed and restrained reason, in whose interest these things have been said.

Perhaps it will be best now to come down, and to think of reason in some of its humbler relations. But I think the reader should be warned that, if he consents to follow reason as far as it will lead, he will surely come into the larger life. It may be little by little, step by step, but he will find himself there. Still, if he is there under the guidance of reason, and if his faith is simply reason at work, and if reason stays with him on the heights, there is nothing to fear.

Let it be repeated that reason is the gift of Nature, that is, of the Creator, and is an essential part of manhood. How early it comes into exercise cannot be stated. It cannot be very remote from the first conscious acts. Life has not advanced far before its presence is manifest.

The problems which present themselves to the child's mind are difficult and his system of solution is his own. It is not long before the child puts his powers to use, with results which content him, over which he smiles or sighs in riper years.

I remember, I remember

The fir-trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy."

This is an experience which many of us can match. Then comes the home discipline wherein the child submits with more or less readiness to parental reason, or unreason. It is easier for him to consent to this, if he is allowed to know the reasons which are in the prohibitions and commands, and these will be given to him, if his superiors are discreet. He has a right to them so far as he is able to receive them. does not lessen the authority which is over him, but increases its facility. Here is good training for the time when he is his own master. The necessity of submitting to the reasoning of his masters and teachers grows with his years. But the teachers and masters make their tasks harder by withholding the reasons for their require

It

ments. This is, of course, upon the supposition that they have reasons beyond their own will. As the boy comes on in life he enters into customs and methods to which he is expected to conform. There have been reasons for these, although they may have been lost as habit has taken their place. They are often but little more than the way in which things are done. They rest on precedent more than on reasoning. Indeed, it is surprising to see how much of the work of the world is done because it has been done, and it is simpler to repeat it than to change it. The custom may be retained long after it should have been superseded, because thought has been supplanted by mechanism. This is a condition of mind with which it is hard to deal. Reason rebounds from unreason. "Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff. You shall seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them, they are not worth the search."

The young man at first accepts and conforms, but not without thought. He soon finds better. ways of doing his work and reasons himself forward into more rational methods. He saves force and increases results. This is in business, in trade or manufactures. If he studies law, he finds all his faculties employed, and besides

learning of statutes and decisions, he gets down to the principles of them, that he may make decisions and applications for himself. Whatever his calling-Law, Medicine, Theology, Education, Science-the student enters on a process which will keep him busy so long as he lives. His honours, his pleasure in his work, the true professional zeal and advance, will be conditioned on his fidelity to reason and reasoning, and his ability to use in his own way that which he discovers. He can get a living, become rich, as a mere mechanic in Law or Science. But if he is reasonable this is not his aim, and if he would be more he must reason his way onward. It is unworthy of one who can do better to sink himself into any mechanism, or to let the wheels which others turn grind out his thoughts. Parties have their uses, but they go beyond their mandate when they dare to crush liberty of thought, and to make men deny their reason and merely follow their leader. Advice is very well if one be competent to give it. But it should be brought into the court of reason and have its claims rationally determined. Men should be on their guard against partisan advice, and prove things for themselves. This is the rule by which society improves upon itself. I am not marking out an easy way. To reason well is no pastime. To draw rational conclusions is man's higher work, and lies close upon their transforming

into conduct. But it is worth striving for; worth defending as a part of liberty. Using the reason in simpler affairs prepares the man to reason in the larger sense and in weightier matters. At any rate, reason is in us, and in us to be used. It is of the man, and when it fails so far manhood fails. Socrates taught that "no greater evil can happen to anyone than to hate reasoning."

Certainly all pains should be taken to have the reasoning accurate and thus trustworthy. First of all, a man must be sure of his premises. Good reasoning must know the facts. Mr. Gradgrind was a fool, but he was sane in his demand tor facts. Many a man has come to grief by basing arguments upon errors. Some years ago an anatomist came to Jeffries Wyman to tell him that he had discovered why the valves of the heart open in a certain way. The information brought no response. It was repeated, and after an awkward pause the wiser man said, “As a matter of fact the valves of the heart do not open that way." Obviously the explanation had lost its value. Make sure of the facts to begin with. I like to draw upon Selden, and he wrote this: "The Reason of a Thing is not to be inquired after till you are sure the thing itself be so. It was an excellent Question of my Lady Cotton, when Sir Robert Cotton was magnifying of a Shoe, which was Moses's or Noah's, and won