THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF AUTHORITY.
"THE bottom's dun drop out, massa," said Sambo, apologetically, when he broke the teapot. Out of how many less earthen vessels in which truth comes to us—laws, codes, ideals, institutions, cults, and creeds—does the bottom seem to be dropping out to-day. Like Sambo's case, this is often due to our own unskilful handling. But it is also often due to a hasty judgment that they even seem to be irremediably shattered. It is certainly needless to repeat the commonplace remarks as to the present unsettled condition as regards the till recently unquestioned authorities in human affairs. Nor is it necessary to more than refer to the de profundis clamor in some quarters for the "good old ways," and in others for new ways that shall be equally authoritative. Nor is it necessary to analyze fully this craving for infallible guidance, showing its weak ethical and spiritual character. Neither is it necessary to trace the course and results of "the age of criticism," "a criticism," as Kant said, "to which everything is obliged to submit," and to which, since his day, everything has, nolens volens, submitted. Nor is it necessary to trace the deflecting tendencies of a weak romanticism ready to fall back upon irrational elements of life, or of a weaker agnosticism which no longer seeks for a ποῦ στῶ, while the main stream is making for reconstruction, rebottoming,—for criticised authorities that are still authorities. We believe that this is the great healthy moral and intellectual stream of tendency to-day, despite the many appearances to the contrary. The human spirit has been criticising authorities to find their real basis. The work has been the work of an age of faith,—of daring, soaring, and profound faith. The scepticism and iconoclasm has only been seeming or partial. The work has been search after reality, after bottom, after the "rock all the way down," after the authority of authorities. The real ques-
