human mind understands another. For the human point of view to develop
and develop and develop till it becomes identical with God's is perhaps
the whole purpose of existence.



IV


To me personally it was no small help in overcoming fear when I saw the
purpose of existence as expressed in the single word, Growth. That, at
least, is a legitimate inference to draw from the history of life on
this planet. Assuming that the universe contains an intelligible design
of any sort, and that life on this planet is part of it, a vast
development going on eternally toward complete understanding of Infinite
Right and Happiness would give us some explanation of the mystery of our
being here. Beginning, for reasons at which we can only guess, far away
from that understanding, we are forever approaching it, with forever the
joy of something new to master or to learn. New perceptions, new
comprehensions, new insights gained, new victories, even little
victories, won, constitute, I think, our treasures laid up in that
heaven where neither moth nor wear-and-tear destroys, and where thieves
do not break in and steal. Where this treasure is, there, naturally
enough, our hearts will be also. Looking back over the ages since the
life-principle first glided into our planet waters--how it did so is as
yet part of our unsolved mystery--what we chiefly see is a great
surging of the living thing upward and upward toward that Highest
Universal to which we give the name of God.