As stated in our last discourse, astronomy, geology, chemistry, and the various sciences, as applied to daily life, are not to come to you by the royal road of being dictated step by step, construction by construction, without your turning to the sources from whence they come; and no genius in spirit state can come to your household to say: " This is the way to make money; this is the way to discover the stars; this is the correct chemical combination that you require," until you have taken the intermediate steps - until you have turned toward the spiritual source, and say, " I need the aid, and the guidance, and influence of spiritual powers."

There are several classes of people in the world who confess to this superior power, notably actors. And why? Because they live in the realm that is not formal, not mechanical - for it is dependent upon genius for its perfect portraiture. No merely mechanical actor can ever succeed, and the subtle line of genius that causes them to be dependent upon inspiration is perceived by every one endowed with that gift. You may ask them; they will acknowledge it.

Jefferson, in his portraiture of his master-piece, was distinctly conscious of the influence of his father. In an article published several years ago in the Atlantic Monthly, it was stated that he was frequently unconscious, performing tin-part in a trance during- the entire portrayal. Edwin Booth often felt the distinct presence of his deceased father. So accustomed are actors and actresses of the "very first genius to rely upon this power, that they believe as distinctly as possi-sible in the ever-present watchfulness of those who are their guardian spirits in that direction.

Poets, more than other men, expect the presence of this pervading spirit when they write; and they will tell you they cannot write poems to order; that there must be the inspiration; that they must feel like it. But this often extends to the conscious presence of the guardian or guarding genius; as in the case of Dante, the divine Beatrice dictated the words of the poem.

In the realm of painting or sculpture, more mechanical in themselves than the arts that we have named, there will almost always be found accompanying the genius that subtle gift of inspiration that works under the o'ermasterful and dominant influence of a propelling power that cannot be forced, that will not be governed, but will make itself manifest when the gleaming light comes from within.

Certain professions in human life - the lawyers, the doctors, and others - are less inspired, for the reason that their gifts belong to the mechanical and external uses of life. The lawyers - save in cases of transcendent humanity, where some human life is in peril, where before the cold judicial tribunal some innocent victim is to be sacrificed - can have but little opportunity for the exercise of that divine gift. Precedent, legal formulas, must take the place of inspiration. But the pleader, he who stands at the bar, can often secure by his very genius the triumph of his client when law is on the other side.

Fortunately, this is sometimes employed on behalf of humanity, and in such cases geniuses of good smile down from the azure heights that there is a power in human eloquence to triumph over legal formulas.

In the case of the physician (which should be by a divine gift) there is less inspiration in Materia Medica than almost in any school of human profession. From the days of Æscula-pius down to the present time, less progress has been made in the formulas of medicine. And yet even here there has been room for the corroding influence of the past to be penetrated by the light of inspiration. Genius has usurped the dull, external touch of the merely skillful physician, and where presidents are allowed to be murdered by science, ordinary citizens are privileged to recover by clairvoyance. Such is the triumph that will eventually come to the world, that skilled practice, which is external, will but supplement the perception of the clairvoyant, and the surgeon will but be the servant of the penetrating eye which says: " Cut or probe there," from the certainty of clairvoyant vision, but not probe inches and inches from the dull blindness of material science or incapacity.

The geniuses in the pulpit are so few and so marked that you can count them; and all of the success which clergymen have encountered or attained for the last two thousand years is owing to genius. The ordinary school of theology deals out nothing upon the world, save the dull tread-mill of creed and formula. But here and there spring forth such as Luther, for the Reformation, Calvin, Knox - each in their way. Unfortunate though it was that fear was a prominent element, it was something that was not clothed in inertia. And these geniuses, traced down by a direct line, can be counted upon the fingers of your hand, who have carried forward the work of real Christian evangelization in the world. Those who stir the hearts of their people; who move them to greater affection; who lead them to higher and grander contemplations, step out from the creed and formula as readily and distinctly as science has stepped out from the dull, flat level earth before Galileo, and have marched into the realm of the stars with the grand motion of the firmament above, without fear, without terror, without trembling.

So have the Parkers, the Channings, some of the Beechers, and others, stepped forward into the light, the realm of the spirit, fearlessly; so have those who have stirred your own lives with higher religious impulse than the narrow trammels of your boyhood and girlhood. These have come to you with the genius, with the inspiration; these have marked the religion that is intended for humanity; these have been inspired for you, not by prophets and teachers and sages of old, not from Jerusalem, not from Palestine or the disciples of Christ. But if you look for them at all in any other than the grand sphere that they occupy in angelic or spiritual existence, look for them in the lives of those men who kindle the thought of inspiration, of love of humanity; who teach that the love of God is found in your love of one another; who teach you that you can serve God best by serving one another. Look for them not with harps of gold in fabled, far-off cities, but look for them in the daily pathway of life where some strong hand is needed, some loving heart to show humanity the better and still higher way, and where, overcoming the strong worldliness and materialism of the present time, they have the courage to step out from the trammels of creed, and declare that God is the father of all mankind. Look for them there, we say, and then you will see what the geniuses of religion have to do in the world of spirits - molding, shaping, releasing mankind from the thralldom of creed and ritualism and bondage, to the light of inspiration that is every day and every hour in your midst. And your firesides become your altars, your children your prophets and counsellors, and young men and women reared up to teach the word of truth. Standing above convents, above all institutions of theological learning, the spirit of inspiration cleaves a pathway through theology to your thoughts, and makes you one with itself.

Geniuses? Yes ! They smile down upon you from the grandeur of the height that they have attained. And if the fierce creed of Calvinism met with a rebuff in human life, so has it met with one in his own spiritual life, and by slow yet careful degrees has he removed the great agony heaped upon the world by the mistaken formula of life.

If Wesley beamed benignly on his people in the midst of the fierce flame that burned around him, so now from the distant yet beauteous light of his home he kindles the pathway for human love and human hope. And if Theodore Parker could find no truth and nothing to serve in that God that was a God of terror, and that Christ that could smile upon human slavery, think not that from the light which his angelic home bestows he does not see the glory of inspiration born of the highest truth, cleaving the dark rock asunder, as Moses in the wilderness and Christ upon Olivet. These breathe out their words and works to humanity from the sphere of the spirit.

More than this: The Geniuses* of the Household, the loving hands and patient hearts that made life bearable, that sanctified the fireside, that consecrated it in memory as the most sacred of all places; the love of home, and the altar there; the genius of the mother's love; the genius of the sunshine of the child playing about you with ever-living, ever-perfect forms of love, do more to mold your lives, to shape your aspirations, to govern your impulses and direct them toward the truth than when veiled in the human form the weary hands were often powerless to toil, and the weary feet could go no longer.

Oh, that Genius of Love, encircling every heart and every home ! This is the genius that dies not, but lives in every revered and sacred image, and peoples the skies with the wonderful employments of spirits and angels - the employment of divine benefactions. For whosoever can bestow most of love, of thought, of truth, of purity, he is the foremost laborer in the vineyard of the Lord.