hope of the race. Some of our leaders and teachers boldly declare, now, that property is the source of power; and then, that money is the thing which commands respect. At one time it is official position which is the masterful[Pg 5] influence in the elevation of the race; at another, men are disposed to fall back upon blood and lineage, as the root (source) of power and progress.

[Pg 5]

Blind men! For they fail to see that neither property, nor money, nor station, nor office, nor lineage, are fixed factors, in so large a thing as the destiny of man; that they are not vitalizing qualities in the changeless hopes of humanity. The greatness of peoples springs from their ability to grasp the grand conceptions of being. It is the absorption of a people, of a nation, of a race, in large majestic and abiding things which lifts them up to the skies. These once apprehended, all the minor details of life follow in their proper places, and spread abroad in the details and the comfort of practicality. But until these gifts of a lofty civilization are secured, men are sure to remain low, debased and grovelling.

It was the apprehension of this great truth which led Melancthon, 400 years ago, to declare—“Unless we have the scientific mind we shall surely revert again to barbarism.” He was a scholar and a classic, a theologian and a philosopher. With probably the exception of Erasmus, he was the most erudite man of his age. He was the greatest Grecian of his day. He was rich “with the spoils of time.” And so running down the annals of the ages, he discovered the majestic fact, which Coleridge has put in two simple lines:—

“We may not hope from outward things to win The passion and the life whose fountains are within;”

“We may not hope from outward things to win

which Wordsworth, in grand style, has declared,

“By the soul only the nations shall be free.”

But what is this other than the utterance of Melancthon,—“Without the scientific mind, barbarism.” This is the teaching of history. For 2,000 years, Europe has been governed, in all its developments, by Socrates, and Aristotle, and Plato, and Euclid. These were the great idealists; and as such, they were the great progenitors of all modern civilization, the majestic agents of God for the civil upbuilding of men and nations. For civilization is, in its origins, ideals; and hence, in the loftiest men, it bursts forth, producing letters, 

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