noblest impulses, in your
purest instincts, in your most unworldly and spiritual thoughts!
You see man most truly when he seems to you to be made for the best
things. You see your true self when you believe that the best and
purest and devoutest moment which ever came to you is only the
suggestion of what you were meant to be and might be all the time.
Believe that, O children of God! This is the way in which a soul
lives forever in the light which first began to burn around it when
it was with Jesus in the Holy Mount._--PHILLIPS BROOKS.

The power of the exalted moment is the very motor of human life. The
exalted moment is the dynamo that generates the working energy. The
moment itself fades; it passes into the region of memory where its true
service is to shine, with the unfailing continuance of radium, as a
perpetual illumination of life. It is the greatest, the saddest, the
most hopelessly fatal error that can be made,--to cast away from one the
exalted moment because it has not fulfilled itself in outer condition
and circumstance. Vision and prophecy are given by God for a working
model, which the long patient days--days of monotony, of trial, of
commonplace work under commonplace conditions, amid commonplace people
and events--are yet to fashion and fulfil. These are the material,--the
ordinary events, the commonplace daily duty. The perplexity of problems
rather than the clear grasping of their significance; the
misunderstanding and the misconstruction of motive that make the tragedy
of life; the interpretation of evil where one only meant all that was
true, and sympathetic, and appreciative, and holy; the torture and
trial, where should be only sweetness of spirit and true
recognition,--of all these are the days made; all these are a part of
"the flowing conditions of life," which it is the business, the
responsibility, the personal duty, to transmute into noble living, into
poetry and ecstasy and exaltation, and into that perfect faith in God
that can truly say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Though
He slay all that made life seem worth the living; the enchantment, the
response of sympathy; recognition rather than misconstruction,--though
all these be obscured in what may seem a total eclipse,--still let one
not forget "The Gleam;" still let one keep faith with the power of the
exalted moment. It came from God and held its deep significance. It laid
upon