the world
are not so much in matter as in man. We were meant to be more
sensitive to finer influences than we are. We are far more so than we
think. Take your child into the street. Another child coughs at a
window on the other side, and your child has three months of terrific
whooping-cough. All such diseases are taken by homeopathic doses of
the millionth dilution. Many people feel "in their bones" the coming
of storms days before their arrival. We knew a man who ate honey with
delight till he was twenty-five years old, and then could do so no
more. This peculiarity he inherited from his father. One man has an
insatiable desire for drink because some ancestor of his, back in the
third or fourth generation, bequeathed him that curse. In the South
you can go a mile in the face of the wind and find that peerless
blossom of a magnolia by following the drift of its far-reaching odor.
Who has not received a letter and knew before opening it that it had
violets within? It had atmosphered itself with rich perfume, and
something far richer, for three thousand miles. The first influences
which came over the Atlantic cable were so feeble that a sleeping
infant's breath were a whirlwind in comparison. But they were read.
It is no wonder that the old astrologers thought that men's whole lives
were influenced by the stars. Every vegetable life, from the meanest
flower that blows to the largest tree, has its whole existence shaped
by the sun. Doubtless man's body was meant to be an Aeolian (how the
vowels and liquids flow into the very name!) harp of a thousand strings
over which a thousand delicate influences might breathe. Soul was
meant to be sensitive to the influences of the Spirit. This capability
has been somewhat lost in our deterioration. To recover these finer
faculties men are required to die. And for the field of exercising
them the world must be changed. Paul understood this. He associated
some sort of perfection with the resurrection, with the buying back of
the powers of the body. And the whole creation waiteth for the
apocalypse of the full-sized sons of God.

Does one fear the change from gross to fine, from force of freezing to
the winged energy of steam, from solid zinc to lightning? Our whole
desire for education is a desire for refining influences. We know
there is a higher love for country than that begotten by the fanfare of
the Fourth of July. There is a smile of joy at our country's