recovered self-respect, compete not ingloriously with the majestic revelations of Natural Science.
Probation then had, for him, no dull and tiresome associations. It did not speak of disciplinary pedantries. It told of the joy of a continuous growth from stage to stage of apprenticeship and initiation; of gathering force; of progressive capacities; of daring adventures into the unknown; of prophetic intimations; of the sequence of life upon life, and advance from level to level, through many mansions towards a far-off Divine Event. It meant to him the moral training and equipment for a life of companionship in the transfigured Society, which was to be the consummation of all that draws men together into fertile brotherhood throughout all the long lives of their historic experience. It was of a piece with all that gave to this earthly life its peculiar delight, through its growth out of infancy into childhood, out of childhood into manhood. At every stage, we are under probation for another; and it is this which gives to each stage its importance. In each we have the thrill of feeling that we are acquiring faculties which will have a use far beyond what we can yet imagine. Even in moving through the separate moments of human development here on earth, the poet's cry has its meaning and value:—
Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,...
The Master's lips a-glow.
And this thrill, this prophetic anticipation of unknown achievement, is to be ours, not only for our short space of existence here, but continuously, throughout our whole spiritual career. Religion carries forward the process which Nature has begun.
Let us rehearse his massive summary of this, his high conception. Slowly, as he beats out his thought, the very weight and compass of its movement acquires a certain grandeur of tone:—
