The ethical import of life can no more change than can life itself. We shall never escape the higher necessity of love, wisdom, truth. The facts of our life today thus afford analogies for eternity; hence the value of philosophic culture, of a perception of true values, of an insight into the real in short, of wise living, that we may address ourselves to what is worth while, and acquire that which may remain with us. But it takes only a simple philosophy so long as that be true.

There's no better philosophy than that of kindness. There's no true philosophy without it. Some little understanding of metaphysic, that is, of principle in relation to man, is indispensable in this day, if we would not die of fright at the thousand bugbears which have been conjured up. It is an antidote for theology. It is very useful, too, in destroying our illusion ; helps us to see clearly and emphasizes the necessity and economy of spiritual things.

It gives the framework of the spiritual life the understanding. But this in itself is not enough. We must look to religion for the soul of this; and what is true religion but love this alone. It is no abstract system of ethics we need; it is to be learned in no ponderous text-book, but springs from the heart, for, mark you, man was first, and then the book, though the pedants are inclined to believe to the contrary. Out of the heart all good things come. Out of the heart springs the true idea of God, and in the heart, too, is our relationship established.

The false god whom we have ignorantly worshipped came never from the heart. 'Tis there we have learned that God is Love. This is the essence of our life; from thence are we impelled to seek love and to render it again an hundred-fold, Ethics other than this we need none ; here is the law and the prophets. In the vital relation existing between the character of the thought and the condition of the body is a very utilitarian plea for the need of spiritual living, albeit a very forceful one. But the need lies deeper still as we have seen, is, indeed, inwrought in the moral constitution of the universe.

The significance of the spiritual life is mainly this, that man has no detached and separate existence, may not live to his own ends, but to universal ends. He has life in proportion as he perceives this. He is great only in virtue of a great love. He becomes free through his conscious identity with the Infinite Love. And so his happiness is cunningly placed beyond his personal desire ; it comes to him only as the flower of self-renunciation.