tific man says that light is a mode of motion only, we need to refer back to that force which is behind all modes of motion, that force which is the life and spirit of things, when manifested in that mode of motion that we call light — influences the ether so that it moves with an inconceivable rapidity. Figures here mean to us nothing.

The generally accepted theory of light, at the present time, is that it is caused by undulations, or wave motions, of the ether, and these wave motions strike the eye and then are reported to another centre behind the eye, from that centre reported to still a third, from that to a fourth, and there, here in the frontal convolutions of the brain, by the gray matter, in some mysterious way, no man knows how, these undulations of ether are translated into my vision of a flower, or a vase, or a star, or a magnificent building, or a landscape.

What is it that sees? There is no sort of likeness between the undulations of the ether and the color of a flower or the expression of a face, that reveals to me the soul that is behind it. We have to transcend all that we should speak of as physical before we can get even into the region of that mysterious self which sees. That you may note how wonderful are some of these discoveries of science concerning the motions of the ether, I wish to give you just two or three figures. The consciousness of the color that we call red is the result of the motions of this ether reaching a rapidity of more than four hundred and ninety-six millions of millions of wave motions in a second. When we say we see a violet color, that means that the ether is moving seven hundred and twenty-eight millions of millions of times in a second. And the differences of color mean simply the different number of ether undulations. I speak of this merely to illustrate to you what a wonderful thing this commonplace looking is, and how unlike this sense of vision is to the ethereal motions of the outside world that produce it.

Now, you will understand easily that, if there is any physical defect in the mechanism of any part of the eye,

whose work it is to transfer the undulations of the outer ether to the molecular movements of the brain, there will be defective vision,-what we call false seeing, that it will entirely disarrange our whole conception of the external world. In order, then, that we may see clearly, see truly, see things just as they are, this mechanism must be nearly perfect. Our vision can be no better than is the machinery that transmits these ethereal undulations to the brain, where, as I said, in some mysterious way, they are translated into consciousness.

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And then, when you remember that it is the soul, the man, that sees, and not the brain, you will easily understand all these differences and varieties of vision in the higher ranges of thought and life. A man sees what he is He is capable of seeing, what he is educated to see. blinded, his vision is warped and perverted by any one of a thousand things. It may be his fault in some cases; it may be merely his misfortune in others. But, as we longer punish the engineer of a railway train for being color-blind, though the accident caused by the defect may be ever so disastrous,- as we only examine him before we put him into that position, and say that, while he may be capable of doing a thousand other things, he is not capable of being there,- so we are beginning to understand that, in the ranges of the mental, the moral, the spiritual, people may not always be perverted, wicked, because they do not see accurately, or because they do not see precisely as we do. It may be here defect, and not evil intent.

With these principles clearly in mind, I wish now to point out a few out of the many defects of vision, or, rather, causes of the differences and defects of vision,-point out those things, or some of them, that hinder us from seeing clearly, from seeing things in their proportions, from seeing things I do this that we may in their right relations to each other. comprehend the kind of world we are in a little better, the kind of mechanism with which we are endowed for discovering it, that we may recognize our defects, learn charity, and help each other in the mutual search for truth.

1. The first thing that I shall point out, that which stands in the way of seeing rightly, is either lack of faculty or defective or undeveloped faculty. Mr. Gladstone tells us, as the result of his careful study of Homer, that he is of opinion that the people of Homer's time were unable to discern a large number of shades and colors that are perfectly familiar to us; for, in all the range of the Homeric writings, there are no words to express these differences of shade and color. It is well known to those who have made a study of the matter that the women and girls in India whose business it is to select and assort the colors of the yarns out of which shawls and rugs and other things are to be woven are capable of discerning dozens and dozens, perhaps hundreds, of shades and distinctions that mean nothing whatever to our ordinary Western eye, or to the eye of any one who is not trained to that peculiar kind of work. These indicate that this is a physical fact,- a defect, an undeveloped capacity.

When we come up into the mental and moral and spiritual ranges, we find precisely parallel truths. There are men who cannot see beauty, who cannot appreciate distinctions between right and wrong. There seems to be a radical defect in their nature, their power to comprehend. There are men who go through the world utterly oblivious of some departments of life and thought that seem to others of even the very first moment, of supreme importance,- men who cannot see the beauty of a truth, men who cannot see the beauty of a moral idea,- just as there are men who have no discernment of differences in musical tones, who cannot, as they say, tell one tune from another. All of us, I suppose, are obliged to admit that, on one side or other of our nature, we have this defect of capacity, this lack of development. Possibly, probably, I think,- there are these latent powers in all these directions in all of us. But our life has compelled us to devote our time, our study, our energy, in this one direction, so here is a whole field of thought, a whole field of life, of beauty, of truth, concerning which we know

nothing. Some one who is familiar with these things tells us what he finds there, what ranges of joy, what beauty, what resource, and he tries to interest us in these things; but we look in that direction, and it is all a blank. There is nothing as yet in us that responds to this appeal. Precisely parallel is this to the case of the man who is colorblind. He sees red, for example, with perfect distinctness; but, from some defect in the mechanism of his own vision, his brain, blue either means nothing to him or else it appears to him of entirely another shade.

Here, then, is the first thing that stands in the way of seeing, this defective or undeveloped faculty of vision.

2. I mark, in the second place, the case of those who have in their minds a preconceived idea, or what is called expectancy. You know perfectly well how easy it is for us to cheat our own physical sight. In other words, a man sees or is brought to see that which he is looking for, that which for one reason or another he expects to see.

I have noticed this many a time, and made it a subject of study on the ocean. Far off on the horizon there is something,- what? The person who has made up his mind that it is probably a ship sees a ship. He fancies he can detect all the outlines, hull and spar and rope and sail. Another person believes that it is only a bit of a cloud, far down on the edge of the sea; and to him it is a cloud, and no ship at all. If we are nearing land, how easy it is for the passengers longing for land, expecting it at every moment, to turn any cloud-bank into solid shore!

This expectancy plays a large part in our seeing, and more, perhaps, in the higher ranges of thought and life, than even it does in regard to the physical world. A man is reading a book. Let him be under the power of preconceived idea, let him be the advocate of a special thought, be under the influence of a bias,-reading not to see precisely what the book says, but reading for the sake of finding out that his opinions are true, and he will see every passage, every line, every word, that tends to help on his own preconceived thought, to

substantiate it, to make it seem real, and he will pass over a thousand that teach a diametrically opposite doctrine.

You know how common this is in the study of the Bible. People go through the Bible, a hundred different men with a hundred different ideas as to what is divine truth; and they all find their truth there, and find nothing else. This does not mean, friends, that they are consciously dishonest. It is a defect of vision caused by this preconceived idea, caused by this expectancy that they will find such and such things there. How else can we account for it that there are so many different sects in Christendom? The Universalist finds everlasting hope in the New Testament. Professor Phelps, of Andover, finds eternal loss, and finds it so clearly that his heart is grieved and his soul is heavy because the ministers of the modern world no longer preach it as clearly and emphatically as he thinks they ought. The Unitarian reads the New Testament, and comes out of it with the firm conviction that Paul was a Unitarian. The Orthodox reads the same New Testament, and is firmly persuaded that Paul teaches the doctrine of the trinity. The same one book.

And it is not peculiar to religion. How else is it that we have political parties so diametrically opposed to each other? How else is it that we find statesmen fighting over the interpretation of the Constitution? A man sees what he expects to see, what he longs to see; and it is the rarest of all things in the world for a man to be cultured into such a clear vision, such balanced judgment, that he can see things just as they are, and report precisely what he sees, without any regard to its bearing on his own particular set of ideas.

There is a very striking illustration of this to be found in the scientific history of this country. There is no man in America who produced more effective evidence in support of the scientific doctrine of evolution than did Professor Agassiz. No one to-day questions the force and the drift of this evidence. Professor Agassiz, however, had been trained to look at the universe in such a different way that he could not see the force of his own discoveries, and died bitterly