w appear to us to be isolated and mysterious
phenomena.

But there is a larger thing than even that behind. In humanity we have
merely a certain portion of this large life, which may spread for all we
know beyond the visible universe, globed and bounded, like the spray
of a fountain, into little separate individualities. Some of the
urgent inexplicable emotions which visit us from time to time, immense,
far-reaching, mysterious, are, I believe with all my heart, the
pulsations of this vast life outside us, stirring for an instant the
silence of our sleeping spirit. It is possible, I cannot help feeling,
that those people live the best of all possible lives who devote
themselves to receiving these pulsations. It may well be that in
following anxiously the movement of the world, in giving ourselves to
politics or business, or technical religion, or material cares, we are
but delaying the day of our freedom by throwing ourselves intently into
our limitations, and forgetting the wider life. It may be that the life
which Christ seems to have suggested as the type of Christian life--the
life of constant prayer, simple and kindly relations, indifference to
worldly conditions, absence of ambitions, fearlessness, sincerity--may
be the life in which we can best draw near to the larger spirit--for
Christ spoke as one who knew some prodigious secret, as one in whose
soul the larger life leapt and plunged like fresh sea-billows; who was
incapable of sin and even of temptation, because His soul had free
and open contact with the all-pervading spirit, and to whom the human
limitations were no barrier at all.

We do not know as yet the mechanical means, so to speak, by which the
connection can be established, the door set wide. But we can at least
open our soul to every breathing of divine influences; and when the
great wind rises and thunders in our spirits, we can see that no claim
of business, or weakness, or comfort, or convention shall hinder us from
admitting it.

And thus when one of these sweet, high, uplifting thoughts draws near
and visits us, we can but say, as the child Samuel said in the dim-lit
temple, "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." The music comes upon the
air, in faint and tremulous gusts; it dies away across the garden, over
the far hill-side, into the cloudless sky; but we have heard; we are not
the same; we are transfigured.

Why then, lastly, it may be asked, do these experiences befall us so
faintly,