not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” And, once more, you must remember the distinction between mind and spirit does not imply two separate entities, but only distinct faculties in the one indivisible man. The mind stands for the lower intellectual faculties, such as imagination or reason, the spirit for the higher, such as faith and the religious affections. With these qualifications, we may, if we please, talk of the three kinds of sight as bodily, mental, and spiritual, remembering that these adjectives refer only to the most striking factor in the process of vision in each particular case.

Now not one of these three faculties of sight is used by any of us as much as it should be. Even the first and simplest kind we often allow to lie dormant, though it requires no more exertion than to open our eyes and look about us. I remember noticing on a summer's evening at an English watering-place, while the spectacle of one of the most glorious sunsets ever seen was being unfolded on the horizon, there were a number of persons sitting on the promenade with their backs to it. That is the way in which nature's beauty is not unfrequently ignored. "Men have eyes, but they see not."

The second faculty of sight is still more neglected by most of us, for this requires not only that we use our eyes, but that we think about what we see. We might know a great deal more about Nature's ways than we do, we might decipher for ourselves some of her unspoken poems, if we would use our mental vision. But, as Carlyle says, "We have to regret not only that men have no religion, but that they have no reflection. They go about with their heads full of mere extraneous noises, with their eyes wide open but visionless,-for the most part in the somnambulist state." And I think that the diversity between men, in regard to their scientific or poetic insight into nature, does not depend upon a difference in their ability, so much as it does upon their greater or less industry and application. No man was ever a poet or a discoverer without an effort proportionate to the greatness of his achievements. Why, genius itself has been defined as patience; and patience is, at any rate, its most important constituent. Intellectual vision requires a determined effort― ay, thousands of determined efforts to think. We must "interrogate nature," as Bacon puts it —that is, we must inquire carefully into the causes and effects and uses and meanings of the

phenomena taking place everywhere around us. And we might all do this if we would. It is quite true that "the eye can only see what it brings with it the power of seeing." But it is also true that the power which it brings with it may be intensified by practice. Even our physical faculty of sight (as I have called it) can only be developed by experience. Those of you who know anything of psychology, or have read Berkeley's 'Theory of Vision,' will understand what I mean. All that you actually see at any moment is but a little flat patch of colour on the retina of your eye. What you seem to see —namely, such and such an object at such and such a distance-is an inference. The correctness of such inferences is due to the constant and lifelong practice you have had in drawing them. This practice is forced upon you by the common experiences of life. But the development of mental vision requires not only longcontinued involuntary practice, but long-continued voluntary effort. The greatest living orator, who is remarkable for the number and force of the illustrations with which his subject, whatever it may be, is embellished and elucidated, has told us that in the beginning of his career he had great difficulty in finding illustra

tions at all. He acquired the faculty merely by determining that he would acquire it. I venture to say that there is not one young man now present who might not, before he died, discover something in nature, either after the manner of the scientist or of the poet, which has never yet been seen, and which the world would be much the better for knowing, if only he would take the trouble to look for it.

Similarly, in regard to spiritual vision, we all have the capacity within us-latent if not developed. This kind of sight Christ teaches us depends on pureness of heart. A pure heart, I take it, is one that is not entirely consecrated to the acquisition of pleasure, or money, or fame, or any other form of self-seeking,-a heart that is not altogether set upon self- gratification, — a heart "at leisure from itself," and so at leisure to seek for God.

Some of you may be inclined to ask, How is it, then, that modern scientists find the vision of God in nature so blurred and indistinct? They are certainly not selfish pleasure-seekers or money-makers. They are for the most part disinterested and enthusiastic seekers after truth. But to them, generally speaking, the Deity is an unknown God. Yet others far less gifted than

they, and not more unselfish, have "seen the King in His beauty," and while they traversed the mazes of this present world, have felt their hearts "burn within them" as He talked to them by the way. I think the chief reason is this. Just as the body may be over-trained, and its powers developed to the injury of the mind, so the mental faculties may be over-educated,educated, that is, at the expense of the spiritual. This has been the case, it seems to me, with a good many modern physicists. Their whole lives are spent in weighing, measuring and analysing things, so that they feel hopelessly lost in regard to subjects which do not admit of such treatment. There are not many of them, I admit, who would make such a foolish remark as that of Lalande: "I have swept the heavens with my telescope, and have not seen God,”—a remark which would equally disprove the existence of gravitation. It is a popular error to suppose that Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, Spencer, Virchow, and others are atheists. They are nothing of the kind. They think, however, that we can know little or nothing about God, inasmuch as we cannot discover anything by means of the ordinary scientific methods. They forget that these methods equally fail us in examining a human

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