ue is the adherence in action to
the nature of things, and the nature of things makes it prevalent. It
consists in a perpetual substitution of being for seeming, and with
sublime propriety God is described as saying, I AM.

The lesson which these observations convey is, Be, and not seem. Let us
acquiesce. Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the
divine circuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low
in the Lord's power and learn that truth alone makes rich and great.

If you visit your friend, why need you apologize for not having visited
him, and waste his time and deface your own act? Visit him now. Let
him feel that the highest love has come to see him, in thee its
lowest organ. Or why need you torment yourself and friend by secret
self-reproaches that you have not assisted him or complimented him with
gifts and salutations heretofore? Be a gift and a benediction. Shine
with real light and not with the borrowed reflection of gifts. Common
men are apologies for men; they bow the head, excuse themselves with
prolix reasons, and accumulate appearances because the substance is not.

We are full of these superstitions of sense, the worship of magnitude.
We call the poet inactive, because he is not a president, a merchant, or
a porter. We adore an institution, and do not see that it is founded
on a thought which we have. But real action is in silent moments. The
epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a
calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like,
but in a silent thought by the way-side as we walk; in a thought which
revises our entire manner of life and says,--'Thus hast thou done, but
it were better thus.' And all our after years, like menials, serve and
wait on this, and according to their ability execute its will. This
revisal or correction is a constant force, which, as a tendency, reaches
through our lifetime. The object of the man, the aim of these moments,
is to make daylight shine through him, to suffer the law to traverse
his whole being without obstruction, so that on what point soever of his
doing your eye falls it shall report truly of his character, whether it
be his diet, his house, his religious forms, his society, his mirth, his
vote, his opposition. Now he is not homogeneous, but heterogeneous, and
the ray does not traverse; there are no thorough lights, but the eye of
the beholder is puzzled, detecting many unlike tendenci