ideal, in actualizing which he persists and grows more and more himself-his every longing, effort, attainment, concreting into character that, in the ratio of its energy, stands out positive and colossal, after the type of genius. Genius is but an advanced development of every man's humanity,-in Shakespeare, for example, sympathy that orbs the life of the race within a single brow; in Napoleon, will so strong as to mistake itself for fate; in Michael Angelo, imagination that has already survived Doomsday, and painted the sublimity of it as an eye-witness; in Dante, aspiration disembodied before death and become a winged splendor; in Beethoven, thought clairaudient of the harmonies of Heaven. These are but men,—and, all combined in one, were less than Man,-the whole Man that is in you and me. Their works elate us by revealing us to ourselves. It is the genius in us which recognizes the genius in them, and which, arbiter of their fame, implies, by the very rôle of crowning them, a royalty greater than they have yet revealed. Thus they stand as vouchers for our immortality, more indubitable than the lips of risen Lazarus. What they are we shall yet become. Therein the "hoe" man is their immortal peer.

Death is alteration.

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To sum up. things whose existence is not in themselves, but in other things. Hence they are always "othering,' always seeking a life which is not theirs and which flees as fast as they follow it. Life, true life, is selfcontained,-alters only into itself, and so never ceases. Such life exists in thought alone; thought which can know no other or alien, to itself, since that

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other or alien, as soon as known, becomes knowledge, and thus is one with thought; thought which transcends all limits set by its own circumscription, its space by greater space, its time by greater time, itself the only infinite; thought which amid endless change keeps clear consciousness of its own identity, the sole type of permanence in a world of passing shows. Man thinks. Man is self-conscious. Man is his own ideal. Man can only fulfil his destiny by life, more and more abundant life. Man therefore cannot die. His death would be the death of doubt no less than the death of faith,-the death of all thought, including the thought of death. In man's grave God Himself would be buried and leave no universe behind as a ghost.

Jesus answered them: "Is it not written in your law, I said Ye are gods"?

"By his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh.”—Isaiah lxvi., 6.

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WHEN man becomes perfect, then will be universal and eternal peace. Swords will then be turned into ploughshares, spears into pruninghooks, prisons into music-halls, and courts of justice into sanctuaries, while she-lions suckle lambs as they lie down together in green pastures. All these beatitudes will happen at once when man becomes perfect, but not a day sooner. Nor should they. They would ill befit a world where still stalk ignorance, vice, crime, stiff-necked prejudice calling itself conscience; superstition, convinced that its own will is the will of God; and sentimentalism proud of its cheap tears as if they were a colognewater wash for every kind of sin and sorrow. Such a world needs the discipline of pain. Its unreason, which will not listen to reason, must be taught by force. Its fierce passions, the wild beast still left in man, must be caged by force. Its wilfulness, disposed to wander from the forward paths of will, must be harnessed and driven along those paths by force. Its sloth of spirit, too prone to sleep, must be whipped to waking, and set to tasks that keep it awake, by force. And such force is wisdom and love and freedom and gladness, the

very heart of charity, the most compassionate grace of God. The symbol of it is the sword. The sword civilizes. The sword sways the tribe and holds its clans together. The sword welds tribes into nations. The sword determines which nation among nations shall gather them into the greater form of empire and give empire its dominant soul. The sword writes the epitaph of empires when they have ceased to serve the purpose of history, and decrees their successors. The sword points the way of progress, and cuts it clear through hindrances. The sword is the mightiest of missionaries.

Individuals may be converted by sermons; nations are converted by conquest. In barbaric days the baptism of the kings was the baptism of their kingdoms; and the days are still barbaric wherever barbarism reigns. Japan changes its creed with the changing belief of its Mikado. China will accept a new creed by imperial command. Rome itself and Europe became Christendom when Constantine became Christian. There is no other way. The individualistic method of preachment is well enough for individualistic peoples, but where the individual, as such, does not yet exist; where he takes his reason, his conscience, his morality, and his religion from the State, and the State exists only in its head, the conversion of the head is the conversion of the State and of all the inchoate individuals within its vast household. As adult infants, their law is the law of infant baptism, which pledges the baptized mind to a nurture that is afterwards to make the pledge good. So Gaul, Britain, Germany, baptized without popular or personal consent, have been educated up

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to the faith of their sovereigns and laws. religion of a people is not in its closets and sanctuaries alone-a private piety or a public cult. It is the cause and consequence of the entire national life -the spirit of all its manners, customs, ordinances, and literatures. Hence, as nation has conquered nation, religion has conquered religion. The divini

ties of the vanquished religion have become the devils of the victorious-devils, as the root-word signifies, being still divine or devine, though slaves to their master-gods. Christianity has civilized the world by bayonets far more than by missionary boards. Its Chrysostoms or golden mouths have been less convincing than its mouths of steel. Its supreme evangelist has ever been and still is the sword.

The modern unbelief in the righteousness of war is but the bigotry of individualism. The individualist has no category of national conduct except his own individual conscience. Because an individual has no right to murder, he thinks the nation has no right to slay. Because the individual may not steal, the nation may not confiscate or tax. Because the individual should not eavesdrop or deceive, the nation sins that employs stratagems, or ambuscades, or spies, or detectives. As individuals may not avenge wrongs, neither may nations. Nations, then, no more than individuals, have a right to compel. Hence, when the argument is run out to its last conclusion, no magistrate, no bailiff, no State; for the relation of the State to its own unwilling citizens, quite as much as to hostile States, is one of war. The sword is the weapon of all