reached the very citadel of knowledge
and robbed it of its treasures. I think they lost a plane of being only
a little lower than the angels. I believe they lost youth, beauty, and
physical immortality. I believe they lost the virtues of heart and soul,
and many of the magnificent powers of mind, which made them the images
of God, and which would have even brushed aside the now impenetrable
veil which hides from mortal eyes the face of Infinite Love; that Love
which gave the ever-blessed light, and filled the earth with music of
bird, and breeze, and sea; that Love whose melodies we sometimes faintly
catch, like spirit voices, from the souls of orators and poets; that
Love which inlaid the arching firmament of heaven with jewels sparkling
with eternal fires. But thank God, their fall was not like the
remediless fall of Lucifer and his angels, into eternal darkness. Thank
God, in this "night of death" hope _does_ see a star! It is the star of
Bethlehem. Thank God, "listening Love" _does_ "hear the rustle of a
wing!" It is the wing of the resurrection angel.

The memories and images of paradise lost have been impressed on every
human heart, and every individual of the race has his own ideal of that
paradise, from the cradle to the grave. But that ideal in so far as its
realization in this world is concerned, is like the rainbow, an elusive
phantom, ever in sight, never in reach, resting ever on the horizon of
hope.

THE PARADISE OF CHILDHOOD.

I saw a blue-eyed child, with sunny curls, toddling on the lawn before
the door of a happy home. He toddled under the trees, prattling to the
birds and playing with the ripening apples that fell upon the ground.
He toddled among the roses and plucked their leaves as he would have
plucked an angel's wing, strewing their glory upon the green grass at
his feet. He chased the butterflies from flower to flower, and shouted
with glee as they eluded his grasp and sailed away on the summer air.
Here I thought his childish fancy had built a paradise and peopled it
with dainty seraphim and made himself its Adam. He saw the sunshine
of Eden glint on every leaf and beam in every petal. The flitting
honey-bee, the wheeling June-bug, the fluttering breeze, the silvery
pulse-beat of the dashing brook sounded in his ear notes of its swelling
music. The iris-winged humming-bird, darting like a sunbeam, to kiss the
pouting lips of the upturned flowers was, to him, the impersonation of
its