man's physical nature is but the condition of a higher good. The body exists for the soul that inhabits and glorifies it. Physical comforts, health, and perfection are but means to a sublimer end—that end the nurture and perfection of man's spiritual nature. What is the worth of this physical temple, when reason chatters at its portals, or idiocy stares through its windows? The soul is the Supreme human fact, and the perfection of that soul is man's SUPREME PER

SONAL DUTY.

Nor am I forgetful in this statement of the teachings of the Westminster divines that "man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." I accépt this as a concise and comprehensive statement of human duty. But how is man to glorify his maker? Says a recent writer, "The cultivation and increase of all the powers of our nature to the greatest possible intensity, and in the greatest possible harmony, glorifies Him in whose image our nature is cast, and translates the Westminster formula from the abstract into the concrete."

But this is not the whole truth. God is glorified in the right use as well as by the perfection of man's powers. Man can not live to himself. He dwells in no profound solitude where self is the centre and circumference of duty. He is confronted, not only by Nature with her substances, forms, forces, laws, and life, and the universe with its light and truth, but on every side he is surrounded by human relationships, calling him to duty and serving as channels for his outflowing activities. Filial dependence

and gratitude bind him to parents, and paternal love links him to his offspring. While the first great commandment bids him love God with all the heart, the second seals him as a member of the great brotherhood of man, whose condition and needs call for his deepest sympathies and afford the widest scope for his activities. Nor can man shun these human relationships except at the peril of his own personal culture and well-being. The command to love one's neighbor is not a mere sentiment; it is the divine law of human progress and welfare written in the constitution of man and society. Brotherly love has a reflex flow. Like mercy it is twice blessed; it blesses him that gives as well as him that receives.

Nor is this subordination of man's two natures changed if we make earthly happiness the supreme end of being. Here we shall find the highest enjoyments flowing from the perfection and use of man's higher powers. The sensualist, the glutton, and the savage are not the best types of human happiness. The exalted delights of the intellect, the exquisite thrills of esthetic taste, the sacred raptures of moral beauty and Christian faith far exceed the Epicurean pleasures of appetite and sense.

Moreover, the culture and perfection of man's higher nature, multiplies and ennobles the sources of physical enjoyment. The nearer a man comes to the brute the fewer and coarser are his physical wants, and, on the contrary, the higher his elevation above the mere animal, the more exalted his desires, and the richer and nobler his enjoyments.

Ignorance everywhere clothes itself in rags and dwells in hovels. The Indian builds his rude wigwam, and fashions his bow and arrow and tomahawk, and with these his wants are met. But open the capabilities of the mind and heart by education and Christian culture, and man's desires take the wings of the very light, and the earth, the universe and heaven are articulate with joy and peace. To a hungry body the dinner horn is a herald of good news, but to the hungering soul the proclamation that a Savior is born is "the good tidings of great joy to all people."

The supply of man's physical wants has, indeed, its attendant enjoyments, but a view of the harmonies of creation and of the sublimer truths of God's redeeming love, thrills the soul with raptures unknown to sense.

Here, then, we find a law of subordination-the body subordinated to the soul-and my next point is that this same law of subordination which rules in man's nature, pervades all human activities and relations. As man's chief personal duty is the perfection of his higher nature, so the highest parental duty is the development and culture of the child's spiritual being. The body of the child is, indeed, to be tenderly cared for and nurtured, and its health and vigor faithfully and wisely secured, but there is something in that unfolding life dearer to the parent's heart than physical perfection and beauty. In every smile of joy, in every gleam of dawning intelligence, is seen the indwelling worth, the object

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of supremest care and solicitude—the God-imaged soul.

A like subordination is seen in man's relation to material civilization. The great enterprises that tax and honor human skill and industry, the humming manufactories, the winged and steam-pulsed commerce, the iron highways belting the continents, the lightning's nerves stretched through the ocean's depths and pulsating with the world's passing history, these are all but agencies to minister to man's needs and well-being. Their glory and their value are alike the reflex of the soul's worth. Let intellectual and moral civilization be turned back toward paganism, and how quickly the tide of material progress recedes. The truth is, what the race most needs, even to secure physical well-being, is not better leeks and onions, but deliverance from animal dominion—a passage through the Red Sea out of this Egypt of spiritual bondage into the Canaan of spiritual freedom. The supreme human earthly want is a higher, broader, and truer manhood.

The same law of subordination pervades man's civil and political activities. An important function of government is the protection of life and property, because these are necessary to realize the higher ends of life. Likewise material advancement and the multiplication of physical comforts and easements are important elements of national prosperity, and should receive due attention. But these are not the highest ends of government. The vital elements of national life are liberty, justice, truth, honor, vir

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THE TRUE EDUCATION.

tue, knowledge, manhood, dwelling regally in human hearts, and when these cease to vitalize and ennoble a nation's material civilization, its bloom and fruitage perish. Constitutions and laws, executives and courts, commerce and art, churches and schools, are but coördinate agencies for the protection and nurture of man in his complete birthright and destiny. A republic is something more than a few millions of ballots or an organized impulse. It is an organized people, with faith in God and man, and trained to a comprehension of their mutual rights and duties. Republicanism in its essence is a civil brotherhood, whose conscience speaks in the name of the King of Kings and whose decrees are justice and truth.

This brief survey of the ends of human existence and their true subordination may thus be summed up: Man has a dual nature-an immortal soul and a mortal body, the former the supreme worth, the latter the wondrous means of the soul's activity and perfection. The comprehensive personal end of existence is the development and perfection of man's entire nature, and the highest personal duty is the perfection of his spiritual nature. As a consequence of this subordination of man's two natures, the phys ical to the spiritual, all the duties and activities of life are in like manner subordinated-those that minister to the soul and its needs being higher and more important than those that directly nurture and sustain the body. In the order of time, physical wants may take precedence, but in intrinsic value the soul is the chief good, and its development and