It has been well said that "on earth there is

nothing great but man, and in man there is nothing great but mind." I think we may add that in mind there is nothing great but goodness. In comparison with this all else is little. Goodness is the one thing in the universe that deserves our homage. He who renders that homage does not thereby demean himself; he demeans himself only by withholding it. There is nothing that exalts a man so much as reverence. Our place in the scale of being is determined by the intensity of our devotion to what is good. The highest type of man is the man in whom the reverential spirit is most developed.

Reverence

It is not the

is not cringing; it is aspiration. prostration of the body before a power that repels; it is the elevation of the spirit to a goodness that attracts. We become noble just in proportion as we yield to this attractive influence. Devotion to goodness will make us in a sense divine. When that devotion is constant and complete, we shall be perfect, "as He is perfect," good even as that absolute goodness which we are accustomed to call “ God.”

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Reverence.

II.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REVERENCE

AND RESPECT.

R LECKY asserts that reverence springs

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from a sense of dependence, that it is fostered by superstition, by political servitude, by everything which tends to make us conscious of dependence, and that, since the conditions which were most favourable to it are now passing away, the spirit of reverence is actually on the wane. I pointed out to you that all these assertions were demonstrably false. The fact is, he confuses reverence with dread. True reverencereverence properly so called-has its root not in fear but in love. The feeling of reverence has

nothing whatever to do with the feeling of dependence. The latter, the feeling of dependence, is strong in the lower animals; and yet in them the former, the feeling of reverence, is, by common consent, always absent. The dog, whom we feed and flog, has a very lively sense of dependence; but we should not imagine that he is manifesting a spirit of reverence when he stands hopefully upon his hind legs, or tremblingly puts his tail between them. Nor do we ever in common life say that we ourselves revere anything of which we are afraid. We do not, for instance, imagine that we revere a man, simply because we should be frightened to meet him in a dark lane. There is one thing, and one thing only, to which the word reverence properly and naturally applies-viz., goodness. We can speak without any impropriety-we do sometimes speak, -of revering those who are supremely and in a rare degree good. In proportion as a man rises above the level of the savage, he comes to feel that goodness is the most admirable, the most lovable, the most desirable thing in the universe. All this-admiration, love, desire-is implied in

the word "reverence," which may therefore be defined as the devotion of the soul to goodness. And I said further, that the conditions of the present age, so far from being incompatible with the sentiment of reverence, are distinctly in its favour. We should have expected, à priori, that this highest sentiment of the soul would become more intense during the progress of evolution. And so it has. Science, in diminishing our fear of nature, makes it at any rate possible for us to reverence the Creator. We have got rid of the old superstitious belief in the "divine right" of kings, but we are all the more ready to reverence them for their actual goodness. In point of fact, real goodness, wherever it exists, is more valued by a large number of persons in the present than in the past. This is emphatically the age of

reverence.

To-day I shall be mainly occupied in explaining the difference between reverence and respect. And, first of all, you will observe that you may often respect what you do not and cannot reverence. We may respect men, for instance, on account of their ability; but it is impossible on

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that ground alone to revere them. You would never think of saying that you revered a mathematician or an opera singer as such. We may respect men again on account of their position; but there is nothing in mere position to revere. A king, a judge, a professor, are to be treated with respect, there is a certain dignity and authority attaching to their respective offices; but no one in his senses would think of revering them if their characters were bad. The clergy, as you know, have appropriated the word "Reverend " as their official title. Now in my judgment this is a mistake. There is indeed a measure of respect due to a clergyman on account of the office which he holds, but in a clergyman as such there is nothing reverend. If you are to revere him, it can only be on account of his goodness; and a layman deserves just as much reverence, if he be equally good. However, the word “Reverend," as applied to the clergy, has long since become a matter of mere convention; its etymological meaning is no longer remembered. When you are addressing an envelope, and put the mystic letters" Rev." before a name, you have no