produced the musical scale. In each of these discoveries you will find the three processes of scienceobservation, inference and verification.

Often a long time may elapse between the inference. and the verification. In that interval the unbelieving world laughs at the suggestion and scoffs and ridicules its author. In 1776 a young Frenchman (Marquis de Jouffroy) was experimenting with a steamboat, upon the river Doubs. The invention was a poor success. When he walked through the public streets, a thousand jests greeted his ears. And when he sent a petition to the Academy of Sciences, they refused even to look at his invention. But in fifty years Robert Fulton gave his inferences a most complete and practical demonstration. In 1791 an Italian, Galvani, noticed some frogs in motion on a table, although they had been killed the night before, and that the maximum effect was produced when a metallic arc of tin and copper was brought in contact with the lumbar nerves and pedal extremities. He inferred the existence of a new force. Afterwards Volta gave his inference credence, and discovered electricity. Faraday said it was as absurd to think of lighting a city with artificial gas as to cut off “a slice of the moon." But the absurdity of Faraday's position is now known by every school boy. In all the inventions and discoveries of science, you will find these three processes-observation, inference and verification.

The champion in the field of science, flushed with victory, rejoicing over some new verification, calls to the man of faith and says, "Give us such demonstrations as these." "Draw out from the unknown and unseen something tangible. Let us get hold of something. We, too, will then believe and enter your sphere in the glad search of truth." And oftentimes the believer is cast down. He feels his supposed weakness. He

would, if he could, draw out hands and voices and signs, but alas, all is silent. Now we ought not to be discouraged or cast down on account of this. It is just as we should expect it to be. From the very nature of the case we cannot have complete verification for the acts of faith. We can have only two of the scientific processes, namely, observation and inference; the verification is in the far future. These two processes are, however, just as firm and valid in the exercise of faith as in the exercise of reason. But from the nature of the case we cannot expect a verification by the microscope or the surgeon's knife. Faith is an elemental energy of the soul exercising itself in the realm of the unseen, seeking to lay hold upon God and the eternal life. The whole of the eternal life, which cannot be cramped into the conditions of space and time, will be its verification. He would be a very rash investigator who would sweep aside all the greatest truths of the world, simply because they cannot be brought forth and laid down in his laboratory, and refuse to yield their secret to the test of hammer and fire and acid.

II. What is faith? Faith is an elemental energy of the soul. It lies at the foundation of all our faculties, right at the fountain head of our spiritual being, down deep in our being where the spiritual elements of the creature touch the Creator. Faith is that energy of the soul, which, kindling on the one side into consciousness, on the other touches God. It is a sort of sub-consciousness of God, a conviction too deep for proof. It is deep down in our being, at that point where the seemingly indivisible self divides and puts forth its energies in thought and love and will. As one has said, "A consciousness that we are another's creature. Below all thinking and feeling and willing, we are conscious of another. Every act and desire and motive is dependent

on this source out of sight. As we put forth our powers, we are conscious of drawing unseen resources. We are sons. And faith is the active principle of sonship, the disclosure to self of its own vital secret.' God meant that every putting forth of energy should develop that inner consciousness of himself, that every thought springing up from this source should lead to a more intelligent knowledge of him, that every act of will should be subservient to the one greater will, that the intensity of love should not be spent upon outward and perishing forms, but reach satisfaction alone in his own changeless and lovable self. Thus should worship and service become intelligent and conscious and loving. This is the purpose and function of faith. It is the link that binds us to God, the means of the soul's perceptivity of God, of his riches and his love; the means, too, of the soul's activity toward what is highest and best, toward God and eternal life.

III. I would have you remember that when we ask you to recognize the validity of faith pertaining to the unseen God and the unseen soul, we do no more than the scientist does, if you would follow him in the search of the great secrets of the natural world. There used to be a great controversy among philosophers as to whether the external world was a reality, or whether the objects supposed to be real were not, after all, simply images on the eye and on the brain. The question has changed. No one now doubts the reality of trees and stars. But the question now is, to quote Dr. Bushnell," How, having a tree picture or a star picture in the back of the eye, we make it to be a tree, really existing on some distant hill, or a real star many hundred miles distant? The best solution is, they conceive the soul to be such a creature that it takes them, as it were, instinctively, to be more than forms; which is the