it is not a land of real life.

My friends, the activity of man, the poetic faculty of man, all the
gifts and all the capacities of man--they are beautiful, they are
touching, they are attractive; but if they are all, if they express
all that you have to offer, and all that is in you to feel, then they
are hollow, or they-are poisonous, and like that city of flowers. Why?
Because there is in you and me a soul that lies behind our thought,
altho there is more than feeling there--a soul that supports our will,
and is more than our volition. It thinks, but is not thought; it
feels, but is not feeling; it wills, but is not volition. There
is something deeper in man than his esthetic desire or his active
practise, something deeper beneath us all than anything that finds
expression, certainly than anything that finds satisfaction. There is
the self; there is myself, yourself; there is that strange, mysterious
life of loneliness which stands, and thinks, and judges, and
appraises. When, by divine grace, we escape from the voice of the
crowd, and from the cry of custom, from the delirium of desire, that
poor lonely self within us pleads to us in a cry like the call of
the starveling crying to the rich man that passes by, "Oh, will you
gratify desire? Oh, will you gratify pleasure? Oh, will you stimulate
activity, and will you leave me alone? I, yourself, your very self,
the foundation of your life, the permanent expression of your
immortality--I must be satisfied, and being infinite and immortal, I
know but one satisfaction: 'My soul is athirst for God, for the living
God; when shall I come, and appear before the presence of God?'"

If that be true, or if it be approximately true, dear friends, let us
ask ourselves this morning these questions. Let us be quite practical.
What do you mean, you may say for a moment, by the thirst for God? I
remember long ago in Paris, in conversation with one whom I deem
one of the greatest modern statesmen, tho not one of the most
successful--I remember, when a mere boy, talking to that thoughtful
man just at the moment when he was standing amidst the ruins of his
activity, and gazing with the placid spirit with which a good man
gazes when he feels that he has done his duty, tho the world can see
that he has failed--I remember talking to him on such questions as
these, and what he said, among other things, was this: "In dealing
with mankind and in dealing with yourself you must rise by degrees,