with the advent of death does this process of change cease.
The same is true of every form of life. Human life, whether you think of the individual or of the mass, must have relation to the future. It must face the future. It must judge of the future. That means that it must judge of the trend of things—must know something about the direction in which the world is moving. The world is not like a stagnant pond without inlet or outlet. It is a stream flowing on and on from the past into the future. And only that man lives a normal life who sees it so, who finds out the direction of its current.
And here is the value of the past. It can tell us something about our present and about the future toward which we move. In it we can see the current better than anywhere else. The record of the past is made up, It lies before us like a panorama—like a vast laandscape stretching out beneath our feet as we climb a mountain side. The future is hidden by the heights that rise above us. But the past is clearer to the eyes of the man who climbs than it was when he was plodding wearily over its surface.
The real value, therefore, of a backward look into history lies in the fact that it is able to throw light on present day problems and duties. All the records of history are in this sense sacred, and it
