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it seemed to have no life, and somebody they loved caught the effect of their saying there is no life in matter, and gave up the appearance of life. So with substance and so with intelligence. Yet, that third denial of metaphysics is perfectly correct, and in your use of it may do great works. If it tangles you at all make the third denial in a simple speech, as

"There is no absence of life, substance, or intelligence in omnipresent Good."

Carlyle felt poor and lonely and incompetent. Hardly one on the face of the earth has not had these feelings. They come from the belief of being apart from God apart from our Good. Those who have met the feeling with a strong "NO" have routed it out of their premises. Such feelings are the NO to Good. We meet them with the NO to evil. Carlyle calls the meeting of the NO to Good with the NO to evil "The Everlasting NO." He was met so strongly that it seemed as if all nature told him that the universe was void of life, of purpose, of volition. It was one huge, dead, immeasurable steam engine, rolling on its dead indifference to grind him limb from limb. All at once he entered his protest. His whole God-created nature rose and said, "I am not thine, but free, and forever hate thee." He felt that when he entered his protest against the power he began his spiritual birth. He then began to be a man.

"All evil is negation," says Emerson. Negation is nothingness. The reality of being is Truth. With the Truth we set ourselves free from negations. Does it not seem as if matter were reality? Yet it is nothing. We speak the truth, and the spiritual power we have rises in its divine substantiality and every material thing becomes subject to it. Does it not seem as if there were absence of life in some things? Yet life is omnipresent. Does it not often seem as if intelligence were lacking? Yet perfect intelligence is omnipresent. Marked