and evidences of the nature of faith. Wordsworth calls poetry "the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge."
A few months ago I chanced to be looking from a railroad train near Lake Erie in the very early dawn. I beheld, as I supposed, a beautiful expanse of water, with islands and inlets, and, beyond, a range of blue hills. I was lost in admiration of the view. As the light increased, a suspicion, at last growing into certainty, arose that I was the subject of an illusion, and that my beautiful landscape was but a changing scene of cloud and open sky on the horizon. But the blue hills still seemed real; soon they, too, were resolved into clouds, and only a common wooded country remained to the vision. The analogy to the dawn of civilization and the flight of superstition, and, finally, of faith, forced itself upon me, and I was troubled, seeing no escape from the application. Just then the sun arose, bringing the glory of light to the eye, and with it came a thrilling mental flash. There was the solution, the all-revealing light, the greater truth, without which neither the appearance of the solid earth nor of its seeming aërial counterpart would have been possible. Both evidenced the greater existence. Are not our fancies and our facts, our errors in the search of truth and our truths, our doubts and our faith, our life and activity and being, proofs of a Universal Existence—the revealer of truth, the source of truth, and the Truth?
This address has more than a formal purpose. Our beliefs in great measure determine our practical life. Freedom, God, and Immortality are concep-
