f your perplexity came from a
deceit of eye-sight--see how the light of this world blinded you to the
immensity and the meaning of existence! See! over your head spreads the
great firmament. There are Sirius, and Orion, and the glittering
Pleiades. How harmoniously they are related; how calmly they roll! And
now, O man! fresh from the reeking dust, and the cry of pained hearts,
and the shadows of the grave, do not the scales of unbelief drop from
your eyes, when you see the width of God's universe, and feel that His
purpose girdles this little planet and steers its freight of souls? You
were deceived by your standards of greatness and duration. You thought
that this material city, with what it contains, was everything. But
_they_ have cherished the true view, who in the spirit of the text have
interpreted these Conditions of Humanity--the conditions of those who
seek and sin and suffer in the busy crowd; of those who rest beneath
yonder gleaming tomb-stones. And, as we read what all wise and good men
have virtually said, our mortal term contracts, our immortal career
opens, our years seem as ticks of a clock, and the entire sum of our
life but a minute-mark on the dial of eternity; and this huge metropolis
becomes a dim veil, a perishable symbol of real and enduring things.

THE END.

* * * * *

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including obsolete and variant spellings. Obvious
typographical errors in punctuation (misplaced quotes and the like) have
been fixed. Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted below:

page 27: quote typo corrected

But, say you, '["]here is one who is returning to a home of
destitution, of misery; where the

page 39: typo corrected

between those great agents of human achievment[achievement]
and the living intelligence

page 41: typo corrected

years. Remarkable for brilliant achievments[achievements] in
every department of physics, ours well deserves

page 45: hyphen removed

the old world without a telegraph, and Columbus found a new
one without a steam[-]ship.

page 49: typo corrected

open air and the sovreignty[sovereignty] of the soil. And if
this immense intrusion of machinery has

page 58: duplicate word removed

stream, and chained the fire; and now, [with] with the eye of
science and the hand of skill,

page