All the more, I judge, should it be ours, in whatever profession, of whatever communities or special opinions, to see that man is not "lost," as one has said, "in the bosom of the immensity and splendor of nature"; to maintain the preeminence of the sovereign personal spirit in him over all nerve-tissues, with all cerebral convolutions; to maintain the accordant supremacy in the universe of the spiritual order over the physical, the immutable sublimity, the superlative splendor, of realms of existence to which the prophesying spirit points, as having with them already, in its mysterious and prophetical life, embryonic connection. If that impression does not remain on this intrepid and powerful people, into whose veins all nations pour their mingling blood, it will be our immense calamity. Public action, without it, will lose the dignity of consecration. Eloquence, without it, will miss what is loftiest, will give place to a careless and pulseless disquisition, or fall to the flatness of political slang. Life, without it, will lose its sacred and mystic charm. Society, without it, will fail of inspirations, and be drowned in an animalism whose rising tides will keep pace with its wealth. It is the delightful assurance of Science that the tear and the star are equally embraced in an infinite scheme -"the glowworm, and the fire-sea of the sun ”—and that one law regulates the phyllotactic arrangement of leaves upon stems and the vast revolutions of the planets in the heavens. In like manner it is our prerogative to feel that the humblest life, which has intellect and will in it, is associated intimately with unreached cycles, surpassing thought, to which it has organic relation. On the full assurance of this funda mental scheme of the universe has rested hitherto the philosopher's enthusiasm, the martyr's self-sacrifice, the hero's endurance. On this affirmative and solid impression has securely been builded whatever has been grandest and most charming in the past. Only that which shall make the same conviction as wide and controlling in the centuries to come can give to them true power and beauty, esthetic grace, intellectual vision, moral wisdom. It is for us, then, personally to live in the clear apprehension of that unmeasured over-world, the shadow of whose glory fell not on Hebrew hills alone, but on Grecian, Persian, Indian heights, some echoes of whose magisterial harmonies have been heard in all superior spirits, and the touch of whose far-shining prediction on any pure mind makes hope elate and purpose high. We do not doubt this, I am sure. But high contemplation, with a deep and delicate moral experience, alone can give us that certainty of it which the great souls have had. Retreating inward, we shall ascend upward, till the vital realms surpassing Nature become luminous to our thought; and then-as jewels have sometimes been fancied to become impenetrated in their sensitive substance with the splendor of sunshine, till they emitted a subsequent luster through darkening shades-our spirits, steeped in this supreme vision, shall brighten others with irradiating glow. Nothing nobler than this can be proposed to any man. It is the supremest human office, in whatever relations, and whatever position, rising above the investing physical forces and laws, discerning the intensity and the boundlessness of life with which the spirit in man is allied, to make these also inspiring to others that thus through us may be transfused a glory from them into the minds which we affect; that we may cast from our brief years something of this transfiguring light upon the life of coming times; that we may honor as we ought that visioned and masterful spirit within, whose thought and love bear in themselves immortal presage; that we may honor Him above, in whose unseen infolding life the universe rests, And make our branches lift a golden fruit, |