their own essence. It is so far up that the eyes deceive and men dispute who it is that stands at the top, but, whoever he may be, he has carried by the force of strength, determination and patient will the whole swarm of his evil bacteria with him. They swarm through every terrace below, increasing in force as the pyramid enlarges downward. It is the pyramidal bulk of human nature with its finest brain, true to anatomic principles, at the top. That radiance at the summit is the delight and the aspiration of all below. As it rises as slowly as growth of a coral reef it increases the courage of those below in proportion as they are near.

But the whole bulk is alive with the bacteria of animalism, under increasing control as it rises, still with the ferocity, rapacity and selfish passions of the gloomy mass at the bottom and forever in revolt. Is this not proved by history, written and unwritten? Is it not proved by the ghastly secrets of individual introspection that men never reveal or admit to others; secrets guarded by a system of conventions so impenetrable and vast that to attempt to personalize it in the sneaking figure of Hypocrisy would be as absurd as to try to enlarge the significance of an ivory chessman by setting it up on a lady's jewel box and naming it Moloch. All men feel how much of them is brute and how much is reason; but it is the unimpartable secret of human society whose betrayal has been rendered impossible by universal denials in advance, enacted in to what we call criminal laws, under which admissions are denied by the brand of proportionate infamies, to demonstrate that the traitor who has acted or spoken has not put into expression the secrets of the mass. Great armies and constabularies are kept to commit upon a large scale the murders and violence which, when committed upon a small scale, they punish.

What is the record of the officialism of public opinion? There has been nothing so abhorrent and cruel, so sordid, mean, frivolous, indecent or insane, that the representative fashion and respectability of some splendid civilization has not justified, approved and sustained it. It has licensed every wanton passion of the body. It has even indulged, contemptuously at times, those individuals inspired through the mysterious selection of immortal genius to safeguard the slender flame of spiritual light and life. But those indulged have always been made to feel that they were secure only as long as their performances excited jaded appetites as a novelty. If dwarfs and monstrosities staled; if dancing girls palled; if gladiators wearied; if there were no new games invented—then bring in a poet or artist—some queer fellow who had discovered something that he called truth or beauty, and let him amuse. But if he does not amuse, or if he wear out his welcome, away with him. In the history of our own civilization, as our ideals go, there was one divine incarnation of spiritual and intellectual life that struggled through the tears, blood and dirt of existence without one stain upon the purity of his nature. This essence was a beacon light that has shone steadily through nearly two thousand years. And Him the officialism of human nature, in exaltation of savage contempt, nailed upon a cross, and set up for an ominous warning to the whole world. It had already marked the noble Socrates, and, like Cleopatra to her slave, handed him a cup of poison. It was afterward to compel Gallileo to swallow in shame and agony his testimony to unalterable truth. Even in this year, under the title of a great church, it has, with pitiless persistence, forced a great student and educator, not to deny a historical fact that he had discovered, but to humbly regret its promulgation. As if the concealment of a truth for your advantage in moral controversy were not a greater crime than the concealment of a murderer for pay! Whenever this officialism has concluded to amuse itself with spiritual inquiries in the name of religious controversies, it has