the other forces in the world of faith; without love, that world is worthless.

This principle seems to me of such moment for the Christian mind of to-day in its confusion of issues great and small, in its dependence upon sense and its feebleness in the august sphere of the soul, in its general condition of panic and superficiality, that I have determined to strengthen the argument of my book by an essay on the things that are really worth while in the world of religious belief.

The first step into clearness in the bewildering total of the subjects of theological science would seem to be an agreement concerning the true perspective of faith. In some way or other the world of religious thought needs to be ordered in different degrees of worth. Some scheme involving a gradation of rank, valid for the religious human being, should be imposed upon the objects of religious concern. Relativity is the law of our being,—not the relativity which excludes, but that which

is contained in the absolute, as the planet in infinite space; and a deep and sure grasp of this law would seem to be of the utmost moment in theology. The story is told that Francis W. Newman, the radical, made a journey from London to Birmingham to discuss the profounder issues of religious belief with his brother, John Henry Newman, the Catholic; and when the question arose as to the axiom from which debate should begin, the Catholic proposed to the radical as the surest principle of faith the infallibility of the Pope. This story has, if not literal, at least symbolic truth. It serves admirably as an illustration of Cardinal Newman's sense of the perplexity and contradiction of his time, and his fine irony. It is almost needless to add that, while men are thus at variance concerning the relative security and value of the different interests of Christian faith, discussion can be nothing but a discipline in confusion.

Doubtless it would be worth while to know everything that exists, whether as fact or force or idea, if one had mind enough and time

enough for the task. We figure that in the Divine intellect all being and all phases of being find perfect reflection. We cannot, however, bring ourselves to believe that even for the Divine intellect one thing is as important as another. It may be difficult, perhaps impossible, to make out the perspective of values in the vision of God, but it can hardly be doubted that for him there exists some perspective. Nothing is more impressive in the teaching of Jesus than his representation of the Eternal perspective: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father. Fear not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows."-"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" According to this teaching, while all

things are known to God, all things have not the same worth for God; for him there is substance and accident, essential and incidental, temporal and eternal.

As matter of fact, perspective rules the lives of men. The world is shaped for each man according to his dominant interest. The chief object in the human landscape with the barber is the hair of his fellow-men, with the bootblack it is the feet. The special scholar is a person with a special perspective of values; it may be Greek, classic, Hellenistic, ecclesiastic; it may be Hebrew or Aramaic or Syriac, or any one of a large number of antique tongues; it may be research in any one of a score of different lines; in each case the world is shaped into important and unimportant by the special interest. The elective system is grounded upon two necessities: first, upon the necessity for division of labor, and second upon the necessity for freedom in determining this division. The world of knowledge is too big for the individual scholar or scientist. Bacon's boast that he took all knowledge for his province

was vain even in his day; it would be a sign of insanity in ours. Bacon did nothing for his province in ethics, in political theory, in metaphysics, or in the philosophy of religion. He stands simply as a great prophet of the coming glory of natural science; as such he has a definite and limited outlook upon reality.

The mere fact of perspective does not help us much. Nor do we gain very much in clearness when we note that perspective is determined partly by capacity and partly by environment. The ideal physician has an outlook upon life that has arisen from native force and opportunity. Capacity and call, in a way, fix the perspective of mankind; and the capacities being many and the calls different, the perspective becomes a vast aggregate of contrasts. So far relativity would seem to reduce all value to mere like and dislike working through the call and the prohibition of society. It would appear to be impossible to escape this issue unless we are willing to go .deeper and stand upon the universal capacity