The facts of history show us man in all ages renouncing all that the animal craves for, for the sake of the ideal, the transcendent.
2. Man is self-conscious, he can become an object to himself; that he can do this proves him to have a dual nature. The higher sits in judgment on the lower, or animal nature (identified with the individual), seeks to bring it into obedience to the universal. Since we can identify conscience with the universal mind and will, we infer that we are on the one side in communion with God, as on the other with the universe.
Man has the power of sympathy. As we cannot conceive of light without postulating an all-comprehending æther, through which all things are related, so the fact that we are affected, actually feel physically and mentally with others, is inconceivable without postulating one all-embracing Personality.
The faith that good must ultimately triumph is an axiom of the moral life; we find it impossible to believe the reverse.
These are some of the broad bases on which rest the Christian dogmas of the relation of man to God the All-Father, which tell of a perfect Son, and of the power given to all to rise through grace into the spiritual life.
I have dwelt on the subject at some length, because it seems to me that the intellectual relation to God has been too much ignored; we should love with the mind as well as with the heart; with the developing of the physical and psychical life, the soul craves to root itself more firmly on the consciousness of the universal, it desires to be at one with the All-Wise and the All-Good Father of spirits to work out the purpose of its own existence. It seeks to be in harmony with all who are living by the highest ideal; hence the impulse to work in associations, specially in the spiritual life, for life must overflow into action! It seeks evermore to be at one in its being, and to bring the individual self into harmony with the all-embracing Spirit in whom we are one.
I may recommend to teachers the recently published volume on Religious Teaching in Schools, by Dr. Bell of Marlborough.
PART II. MATHEMATICS.
ARITHMETIC.
By Dorothea Beale.