, sending the crimson
streams of life bounding and circling through every vein and artery?
Whence, and what, if not of God, is this mystery we call the mind? What
is this mystery we call the soul? What is it that thinks and feels and
knows and acts? Oh, who can comprehend, who can deny, the Divinity that
stirs within us!

God is everywhere, and in everything. His mystery is in every bud, and
blossom, and leaf, and tree; in every rock, and hill, and vale, and
mountain; in every spring, and rivulet, and river. The rustle of His
wing is in every zephyr; its might is in every tempest. He dwells in the
dark pavilions of every storm cloud. The lightning is His messenger, and
the thunder is His voice. His awful tread is in every earthquake and on
every angry ocean; and the heavens above us teem with His myriads of
shining witnesses. The universe of solar systems whose wheeling orbs
course the crystal paths of space proclaim through the dread halls of
eternity, the glory, and power, and dominion, of the all-wise,
omnipotent, and eternal God.

"VISIONS AND DREAMS."

[Illustration]

The infinite wisdom of Almighty God has made a plane of intelligence,
and a horizon of happiness, for every being in the universe, from
the butterfly to the archangel. And every plane has its own horizon,
narrowest and darkest on the lowest level, but broad as the universe
on the highest. Man stands on that wondrous plane where mortality and
immortality meet. Below him is animal life, lighted only by the dim lamp
of instinct; above him is spiritual life, illuminated by the light of
reason and the glory of God. Below him is this old material world of
rock, and hill, and vale, and mountain; above him is the mysterious
world of the imagination whose rivers are dreams, whose continents are
visions of beauty, and upon whose shadowy shores the surfs of phantom
seas forever break.

We hear the song of the cricket on the hearth, and the joyous hum of
the bees among the poppies; we hear the light-winged lark gladden the
morning with her song, and the silver-throated thrush warble in the
tree-top. What are these, and all the sweet melodies we hear, but echoes
from the realm of visions and dreams?

The humming-bird, that swift fairy of the rainbow, fluttering down from
the land of the sun when June scatters her roses northward, and poising
on wings that never weary, kisses the nectar from the waiting flowers;
how bright and beautiful is the horiz