best, only be indicated. Who
can tell how much knowledge can find place in them, or what volumes of
feeling they can contain? Who can declare the magnitude of the
grandest traits that, in them, can have freedom to thrive and bear
fruit? Who can estimate the length and breadth, the height and depth
of the loftiest inspirations or the noblest joys that, in them, can be
experienced? To give a full expression to the utmost intelligence,
potency, amiability, purity, meritoriousness and majesty that can
reside in the capability--rooms of a human soul--would be equivalent to
picturing the imaginable or to portraying the infinite, and to do
either the one or the other is impossible. One may be sadly
indifferent to the value of his soul's foremost capabilities, may
inadequately exercise them, and may secure to them merely a dwarf-like
compass; but there is never a time when they can not be made to
transcend the limits of development to which they have attained. Their
possessor can educate them forever. He can unceasingly add to their
roominess and resource. In all time to come he can cause them to
continue to exceed breadth after breadth. Oh, who can conceive how
great his mental being is able to become? Who can comprehend how
elevated a life it is possible for him to live? Who can be liable to
overrate the vastness of the destiny for which he was created?

In the language of Hughes, "Our case is like that of a traveler on the
Alps, who should fancy that the top of the next hill must end his
journey because it terminates his prospect, but he no sooner arrives at
it, than he sees new ground and other hills beyond it, and continues to
travel on as before." The thought of the soul's improvability is well
adapted to quicken torpid virtue and to revive drooping aspirations.
It tends to scatter the gloom resulting from disappointed endeavors.
Let it but have a star-like clearness in the mind, and there will
spring from it an ever-new interest in life and being.

We know that the paths of usefulness and affection must sometimes be
strewn with smitten leaves and faded bloom, and that the heart must
sometimes be chilled by harsh changes, even as the face of nature is
chilled by rude winds. We know that we are doomed to find thorns in
roses, and to suffer from "thorns in the flesh." We know that there
are for us hours when the sunshine without must be darkened by shadows
within; when we must be pierced by trials; when we mu