From our birth to our death we are encompassed by mystery, but it is a mystery which may, if we will have it so, grow warm, luminous, divine.
So, by simple fidelity, man may find within himself harmony, victory, and peace. When now, from this standpoint, he looks out on the universe,—and from no other standpoint can he hope for any clear vision,—what does he most clearly discern? These three aspects,—Order, Beauty, Life.
As he opens himself to these three aspects and actively conforms himself to them,—as he studies, obeys, and reveres the Order, as he perceives and rejoices in the Beauty, as in sympathy and service he merges his personal life in the multiform Life,—so he grows in the impression of a divine harmony and unity pervading all things. So he becomes aware of a Cosmos,—a universal order of beauty and of love. He becomes aware of it only as he becomes voluntarily and consciously a part of it. Only through the fidelity of his moral life does he feel beneath his feet a sure foundation. Only as his soul glows a spark of love does it recognize the celestial ether in which it is an atom.
At every moment and on every side we are in touch with the realities of being.
We live and move in a world of orderly procedure, to which we may adapt ourselves with growing intelligence and purpose.
Both the animate and inanimate creation is clothed in forms which minister to the sense of beauty; and the more that sense is cultivated in us, the more universally do we recognize beauty, and the more profound is its appeal to our consciousness.
In our social existence we come in touch with other souls, each with its actual or potential wealth of being, and each inviting our sympathetic response.
These—order, beauty, conscious existence—are the impact on us of the universe. The right apprehension of these and the active response to them constitute the true exercise of our own nature; and it is through that exercise that we know Life,—the one Life,—and know it to be divine.
These three aspects,—order, beauty, our fellow-lives,—let us dwell for a moment on each in turn.
An amazing stimulus to man's powers has come in the discovery that he may penetrate and follow to an indefinite extent the actual procedure of the Universe. We are only on the threshold of our discoveries. We are just beginning to see where they have their highest application. We have been harnessing the steeds of power to the service of our physical wants. We are just beginning to understand that they are to be made the ministers of building up a complete manhood. The theologian has sought to demonstrate that all natural processes work in the service of a divine righteousness. In place of any such demonstration, we are finding the true exercise of knowledge in applying for ourselves the processes of nature to the fulfillment of our noblest purposes.