consideration. With those natures which are narrow, hide-bound, and set in the belief that "man was made to mourn," be sick, suffering, unrestful, it seems almost useless to argue, but even they may be reached. Those who are fond of assuming the jester's attitude and quote with frequency and approbation the saying of the superficial humorist that "Life is just one damned old thing after another," are difficult of access because they are so engrossed with the task of getting something jolly out of life right Here and Now that they think they cannot afford the time to consider whether they are really getting the best of what is going. If they will pause for a moment and carefully scrutinize the difference between Life and Living, they may be led to seek further. Our mode of living is certainly "one old thing after another"—the same old tasks; carrying the same old bucket to the same old well; the same monotonous old grind for the man, relieved by occasional and admitted foolishness; the same dreary routine for the woman, housekeeping, cooking and dish-washing and bed-making, with occasional frivolities to vary the sameness, or it may be the same useless rounds of aimless frivolities, which result, in the end, in filling life with a nauseating sameness. This, as has been already said, may be Living, but it is not Life. Life avoids sameness, and when understood is seen to be filled with new and

changing things, as beautifully regular in their appearance as the changing seasons, which are never exactly alike. To those who study the Law of Being the ever-changing, ever beautiful, ever just expressions of Life become a delight. The old tasks assume new aspects, as they are undertaken with a new purpose, a new hope, a new perspective.

It is not our fondness for living as we do which makes us cling to Life. If it were, we would not see men risking or losing their lives as we do. It is something higher. It is that which is known to the thoughtful as the Infinite Urge to Rightness which is within all of us. We cannot question the existence of the Infinite, for when we look at the wonders of our own being and of all the beings in the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms we dimly comprehend, as the Cause is greater than the Effect, that there is something superior to ourselves or anything distinguishable by our senses. This Something, science and experience teach us, is Everywhere, and we reasonably conclude that it does Everything. This we call the Infinite. Each thing as we come to understand it appears to be for our good, and we conclude that the Cause of everything is good. In all Nature we every day see evidences of progress, the new, the fresh, the beautiful, the useful, replacing the old, the withered, the useless. In everything but

ourselves we see that this is good, and because things are not stationary, but progressive, we conclude that that which caused all these good things is still Causing, and we call this power the Infinite Urge to Rightness.

Let us look at a grain of wheat. With a proper environment of warmth and moisture it germinates; in proper soil it grows; the blade, the stalk appears, the head of wheat, the ripened grain. We do not know how it is done. We cannot make a grain of wheat that will grow. All we can say is that its growth and development are caused by the Infinite Urge to Rightness. The grain never develops into a thistle or a cabbage; it is always Right. It is so with the acorn and the oak. Each germinal thing develops its kind. That each thing develops in this way gives us faith that each thing will continue to do so, and in no sense can our sensuous understanding be the basis of believing that which we cannot demonstrate. So we must accept the Infinite Urge to Rightness as being the means by which the Infinite Causation produces results, even though we cannot sense it or technically understand its operations. Does the agnostic who is proud of his skepticism ever consider himself when he says that he cannot believe anything which he cannot see, hear, taste, smell, or feel? Does he ever consider his

origin even as far back as physical science will carry him? Is he not aware that in physics he can be traced back to an egg as small as the head of a wee pin, an egg beside which the one he has for breakfast would be mammoth in size? Does he cite to himself the fact that he is the product of this smaller egg, while the chicken is the product of the larger one? When he says that he does not believe in anything he does not understand, does he believe that he himself IS? He must know, not sensuously but unsensuously-spiritually-that he, six-footer as he may be, was potentially contained in that egg. He must know that his size, his shape, the color of his eyes and hair, and all his bodily and spiritual conditions in embryo, were contained in that egg; that just as the egg of the Dorking hen fecundated by one of her own kind produces a Dorking chick, so by the same law he is what he is. How does he account for the minute egg developing into the large man? His father and mother did not cause it to develop. He did not do it, though he may have assisted slightly in making the development more perfect than it was in embryo in the egg. But if he did so help development himself, does he ask why? Why should he make the effort? At this point he comes face to face with the fact that his apparently automatic and self development are both the effect

of the Infinite Urge to Rightness within him. It is the mainspring of Life, unerring in its workings throughout Unreasoning Nature, and equally unerring in Reasoning Man, who only doubts its goodness and justice because he reasons wrongly about It, as he is ignorant of the law by which It works and misunderstands his relation to It.

Let us now examine the means which we have at our disposal for studying the Infinite and learning its law, that we may conform to it and direct its irresistible power towards our happiness, harmony and well-being.