ng back through these twenty-two
centuries, we nod assent to his grand proposition: "Man is the measure
of all things,--of the possible, how it is,--of the impossible, how it
is not." In the individual life are laid the foundations of the
universe, and upon each individual artist depend the symmetry and
meaning of the constructed whole. This Master-Artist it is who holds the
keys of life and death; and whatsoever he shall bind or loose in his
consciousness shall be bound or loosed throughout the universe. Apart
from him, Nature is resolved into an intangible, shapeless vanity of
silence and darkness,--without a name, and, in fact, no Nature at all.
To man, all Nature must be human in some soul. God himself is worshipped
under a human phase; and it is here that Christianity, the flower of all
Faith, furnishes the highest answer and realization of this world-riddle
of the Sphinx,--here that it rests its eternal Truth, even as here it
secures its unfailing appeal to the human heart!

The process by which any nature is _realized_ is the process by which it
is _humanized_. Thus are all things given to us for an inheritance. Let
it be, that, apart from us, the universe sinks into insignificance and
nothingness; _to_ us it is a royal possession; and we are all kings,
with a dominion as unlimited as our desire. _Ubi Caesar, ibi Roma!_ Rome
is the world; and each man, if he will, is Caesar.

_If he will_;--ay, there's the rub! In the strength of his will lie
glory and absolute sway. But if he fail, then becomes evident the
frailty of his tenure,--"he is a king of shreds and patches!"

Here is the crying treachery; and thus it happens that there are slaves
and craven hearts. This is the profound pathos of history, (for the
Sphinx has always more or less of sadness in her face,) which enters so
inevitably into all human triumphs. The monuments of Egypt, the palaces
and tombs of her kings,--revelations of the strength of will,--also by
inevitable suggestions call to our remembrance successive generations of
slaves and their endless toil. Morn after morn, at sunrise, for
thousands of years, did Memnon breathe forth his music, that his name
might be remembered upon the earth; but his music was the swell of a
broken harp, and his name was whispered in mournful silence! Among the
embalmed dead, in urn-burials, in the midst of catacombs, and among the
graves upon our hillsides and in our valleys, there lurks the same sad
mockery. Sure