of the jury when the inquest is held over Christianity, for at least he knows the symptoms of life and can tell the difference between a live thing and a dead thing. As for all undevout and godless learning, all culture which is of the earth earthy—merely mundane and not cosmic, terrestrial and excluding the celestial-the only symbolically proper place for its university is down in the dark caverns of the Mammoth Cave, where, secure from the annoying intrusion of the light of other worlds, they may successfully teach the folly of those who believe in a sky, and where the bats and the mice and the eyeless fish may be trained to join with them in their agnostic chant, and conjugate their "ignoramus," "We don't know; you don't know; nobody knows." And the department of astronomy should be put in charge of some wise old mole with powerful jaws, a penetrative snout, and undiscoverable eyes, whose first lecture on astronomy should begin thus: "Astronomy! My beloved pupils, there can be no such science as astronomy; for there are no other worlds but this; therefore we will take up the sublime science of burrowing, study the glorious movements of our cousins the earthworms, and consider how noble is their destiny and ours -to bore a hole in the ground, crawl into it and die happy in the magnanimous and altruistic thought that our precious carcasses will enrich the soil and fatten the generation that comes crawling after us."

There are not wanting a few who seem to have a spite against celestial things and would fain extinguish all faith in the starry realities which light the firmament of the human soul. Carlyle pictures a conjurer denouncing the stars and trying to squirt them to death with a syringe filled with mud and dirty water, which he aims at the zenith; the sole result being that the conjurer and his friends are badly spattered with falling mud and foul water. Of such conjurers the most rabidly spiteful in our day was Nietzsche, who cried out to his comrades: "I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of supernatural hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not. They are despisers of life, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary; let them begone!" In Byron and Bradlaugh and Blatchford there is something of this bitterness against things high and holy, as also in Edgar A. Poe, who is reported to have said once that his whole nature revolted from the idea that there existed any being superior to himself! And he said only what many act. His life shows with tragic completeness how insufficient was this enormous self-sufficiency for any good to himself or others. Little enough basis had even he for such mad inflated intellectual pride; and pitiable enough was the phenomenal misery he succeeded in achieving for himself.

It is better to study the sky than to ignore

it, for it is just as real as the ground. It is more seemly to be in love with it than to hate it, for we and all men are its daily debtors. Influences and gifts immeasurable come from above. Our day comes down to us and all growth is by its assistance, for growth is largely by celestial traction. The sky pulls the seed up into stalk and the acorn up out of the black forest loam. It is not done without the up-tug of the force that reaches down. We owe all food, in a measure, to the sky. The "dear blue" above us contributes to the ripe result of the harvests around us. Bread is manna without a miracle, since partly it falls from the sky. It is now known that all physical or vital energy at work on the surface of this planet comes from the sun. Every drop of water that falls, every wave that beats, every wind that blows, every creature that moves here, one and all are animated and sustained by that mysterious effluence we call the sunbeam. And no man knows how it is done, nor even how that tremendous power is transmitted across the ninetytwo millions of miles of space between sun and earth. Furthermore, we know that the sun is continually flinging on this earth magnetic disturbances which run periods of a solar day, a solar year, and a solar cycle. In these magnetic storms the heavens literally seize the earth by its poles and shake it. Such well-known facts as these are not made less certain by being profound and inexplicable mysteries.

Now, our religion affirms just the same to be true of the spiritual sky which pours and pulses on man's soul a mighty and moving influence. The Sun of Righteousness is shedding his quickening beams upon the world of humanity, and unseen forces from above are acting upon the moral life of men and nations. More and more it becomes apparent that the earth is powerfully affected by the heavens. In fact, spiritually as well as physically, this world is run by skypower.

Whether planets and stars in our sky are inhabited we do not with certainty know. But native human instincts affirm a peopled region above our souls, a spiritual realm populous and palpitant with life. In Georgia, John Wesley, conversing with the Indian chief Paustoobee, asked him concerning the religion of his people, and was answered, "We believe there are four sacred things above the clouds, the sun, the clear sky, and He who lives in the clear sky." No belief is more Christian than this of inhabited heavens, and those pagan aborigines were at least facing in the Christian direction. Inhabited heavens, coming now and then into view and hearing, are a part of the historic setting of Christianity in the Old and New Testaments. The skies above Bethlehem broke into song when a company of the heavenly hosts appeared and sang. When Jesus was baptized at the fords of the Jordan a voice was heard speaking out of

heaven. And the sky was vocal when Peter and James and John were with the Master on the Mount of Transfiguration. All religions worthy of the name declare that the skies under which man lives are attentive and responsive. Between the human soul and the heavens there is telephonic communication. In the inner office of man's nature is a sensitive instrument wired into connection with the infinite, and often when he is alone and all is still he can hear fragments as of conversation going past on the wires. Sometimes he hears something like the goings on in an office of government, orders being sent out: "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not"; and the voice of what some call the Imperative Absolute distinctly recognizable. Such things even an indifferent listener may sometimes hear when he is all alone with his conscience. The moment of happy intelligence is when one learns that this great Authoritative Voice is not roaming at random, nor calling past him on a party wire, but has a message for him; when he understands that the bell which strikes in his own soul means that he himself is called, realizes that it is a signal from the celestial Central Office that Someone whom no distance can put far off wishes to speak to him; and when he puts the spiritual receiver close to his ear and listens reverently to the mysterious Voice from out the unseen. Surely it is a momentous hour when any soul becomes aware of the heavens and conscious of a