from petty estimates and demands! To these, now first
encountered, we have been always known; in them we meet no private
motive, no accomplishment, reputation, ability, immediate haunting
purpose, but a Sabbath from personal fortunes. We meet the great above
all that can be mine or thine, above gifts and accidents in common
manhood and prosperity. Swedenborg reports no encounter on higher
ground. The seven heavens open to me in a mind which gives rank to its
own facts, and wherever it is housed still finds the universe only a
larger body around the soul.

Genius declares the total or representative value of its own facts
against the neglect or contempt of mankind. Intelligence is centre of
centres, and all things diminish as they recede from the eye. Every
natural law is some hint to us of our commanding position. The good
thought is never a toilsome going abroad, but some settling at home to
new intimacy with the fortune which waits on all. It is no putting out
legs, but a putting down roots to take possession of the earth and the
nether heavens, while we fill the upper sky with climbing shoots.
Intelligence is at one with the system, able to entertain it as a unit,
to refer every particle, dark as a particle, to its shining place in the
transparent whole. How can I afford to drop my errand, to go wonder
after the fore-world, after Plato, Washington, or Paul? These are men
who never dropped their errands to go wonder after the Maker himself.
They found God in the thing lying nearest to be done. As right action in
the remotest corner is a world-victory, so right thought applied to the
lowest circumstance is cosmic thought. In the fortune of the hour we
have a home beyond the fortune of the hour. The least circle of order
now organized and established in our lives is not a poor house frozen to
the ground, but a ship able to outride the currents of time, a charmed
circle of security which will serve us still in every following world.
Our future is to be found, not in multiplication of examples, but in
deeper sympathy with all we have superficially known.

We shall never rightly celebrate the stillness and sweetness of truth in
an open mind. Clear perception is refreshing as sleep. It is a sleep
from blunder, care, and sin. In every thought we are lifted to sit with
the serene rulers, and see how lightly, yet firmly, in their orbits the
worlds are borne. With insight we work freely, for every result is
secure; we rest, fo