And first. The Egyptian is right in holding that faith begins with mystery. It would perhaps be more correct to say that the sense of mystery is the essence of faith. One would be apt at first sight to suppose that faith would have its origin in revelation -in the seeing of all things clear. In truth it is not so. Faith demands beyond everything a hazy atmosphere. It cannot sing in the full light; it must at most have no more than the dawn. The root of all worship is wonder, and wonder comes from a sense of baffled reason. It originates in the conviction that we have come to a door for which we cannot find the key, and whose other side is incomprehensible. It is the concealed spots of nature that we worship; it is the veil and not the revelation that we reverence. Nor let it be said that such a view makes religion a thing of childhood. As a matter of fact, the sense of mystery is not deepest in the child; it grows with our growth and expands with our reason. Mr Herbert Spencer does not scruple to say that its highest development is the age of science. He tells us that the scheme. of evolution propounded by himself, which has certainly been accepted as the scheme of modern science, is fitted to awaken far deeper wonder than the popular theories of the olden time. In this all will agree with him, whatever they may think of his theory itself; and the concession on his part is remarkable. It amounts to a statement that

wonder increases in proportion to the degree of intelligence, and that the measure of human knowledge is the measure of man's sense of mystery.

The first position, therefore, of Egypt is uncontroverted even in the most modern times. Agnosticism is a more religious belief than Atheism, and why? Because it admits that there is something about the universe which compels it to say, "I do not know." In this it is at one with all religion; it finds at the core of things a background of mystery. The psalmist of Israel asks that his eyes may be open to behold "wonderful things out of the law." In old days men only conceived wonder in the violation of law, or, in other words, in the spirit of lawlessness. But the psalmist's prayer has been answered, and the commonplace has been glorified. If the belief in miracle has faded, it is not because the sense of wonder has passed away; it is rather because wonder has been found where miracle is not, because order has been discovered to yield that mystery which was once thought to belong to disorder alone. Thus, at the beginning and at the end of the process, we have perfect unity-the changeless amid the mutable. Between ancient Egypt and modern England there is externally and intellectually a wide gulf; there is all the difference of the meridian and the dawn. Yet as there is something in the dawn which exists in the meridian, so there is something in ancient Egypt which exists in modern England. The spirit of

mystery has persisted through all changes. Amid an opposite culture, amid an enlarged universe, amid. a new heaven and a new earth, there has remained in the sphere of law that which operated in the sphere of miracle, and the last state, like the first, has been a sense of wonder.

We pass to the second point in the message of Egypt. It is the belief that all mystery lies in the vision of a boundary-line-in that which divides one life from another life. And here again it will be found that the experience of modern times is the same. Take the mystery of modern Agnosticism. What is that which makes the scientist of our day say "I do not know"? It is the fact that he has discovered a boundary - line which he cannot pass. In every department the mystery is felt to be this boundary-line. Each thing is manifestly connected with every other thing; yet between any two objects the manner of connection is veiled. Take the simplest act of perception. What is the reason that a little thing like my eye can hold such a vast field as the visible universe? Why is it that a very small picture like the retina can take in such a wide expanse as the starry firmament with its countless worlds and its interstellar spaces? That is a question which no man can answer. It is an ultimate fact of knowledge, undisputed and indisputable, but perfectly inexplicable. It is the boundary-line between two creations- the human and the physical.

There they stand, parallel to one another and connected with one another, but connected by the riddle of the Sphinx-joined by a bond which no man has seen, and intertwined by a marriage that no man has witnessed. The first act of infancy, the most external act of all life, is as unintelligible to sense as any part of the universe, as profound a mystery as the problem of creation itself.

If we take any other sphere of thought, we shall find the same experience—that mystery lies in the boundary-line. There is a missing link between matter and force, between plant and animal, between animal and man, between one man and another man. It is these missing links which constitute the four great mysteries of earth- the mystery of life, the mystery of consciousness, the mystery of intelligence and the mystery of personality. Before these the scientist bows. They are the margin left for faith, or for what to him stands for faith-Agnosticism. He believes in the riddle of the Sphinx-in the fact that the lives of all creation are somehow united. But that "somehow" is the consecrated spot. It is consecrated by its mystery, by its inscrutability, by its unknowableness. It is a sea which ship has never sailed, a depth which line has never sounded. The ancient Egyptian and the modern scientist stand alike upon the shore and hear the play of incomprehensible waters. The past and the present are re

conciled in the vision of the fathomless, and the evening and the morning are one day.

And, if Egypt added yet another boundary-line in the great fact of death, she surely erred not by defect of logic. If she regarded it hypothetically as a transition field, and reverenced it as a hope, she had at least analogy on her side; she was consistent with herself, and consistent with the facts already known. In all departments of life she had found the presence of the Sphinx, found that the close of one form of being was but the entrance into another. She had discovered in each case that the process of transition was perfectly inexplicable. If matter became spirit, it did so by surrendering its own life; if the animal became the man, it did so by losing itself in an existence foreign and destructive to its own. Is it surprising that she should have gone one step further, and claimed a corresponding egress for the valley of the shadow of death? Is it surprising that in this terminus of the individual life she should have seen only a new beginning and a possible entrance into a higher sphere? At all events she has done so, and in doing so she has been guilty of no anachronism. Upon the shore of death the mass of humanity still stands with hope. Even the Positivism of a J. S. Mill did not seek to extinguish hope's trembling star. Agnosticism itself is a form of hope; if it objects to affirm, it refuses to