e do.
However, this I know, that if among our many spiritual teachers, there
are indeed any who heartily and literally believe that the wisdom they
have to teach "is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou
canst desire are not to be compared unto her," and if, so believing,
they will further dare to affront their congregations by the
assertion; and plainly tell them they are not to hunt for rubies or
gold any more, at their peril, till they have gained that which cannot
be gotten for gold, nor silver weighed for the price thereof,--such
believers, so preaching, and refusing to preach otherwise till they
are in that attended to, will never want congregations, both of
working men, and every other kind of men.

[A] "Mercy," in its full sense, means delight in perceiving
nobleness, or in doing kindness. Compare Sec. 50.

88. Did you ever hear of anything else so ill-named as the phantom
called the "Philosopher's Stone"? A talisman that shall turn base
metal into precious metal, nature acknowledges not; nor would any but
fools seek after it. But a talisman to turn base souls into noble
souls, nature has given us! and that is a "Philosopher's Stone"
indeed, but it is a stone which the builders refuse.

89. If there were two valleys in California or Australia, with two
different kinds of gravel in the bottom of them; and in the one stream
bed you could dig up, occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of
gold; and in the other stream bed, certainly and without hazard, you
could dig up little caskets, containing talismans which gave length of
days and peace; and alabaster vases of precious balms, which were
better than the Arabian Dervish's ointment, and made not only the eyes
to see, but the mind to know, whatever it would--I wonder in which of
the stream beds there would be most diggers?

90. "Time is money"--so say your practised merchants and economists.
None of them, however, I fancy, as they draw towards death, find that
the reverse is true, and that "money is time"? Perhaps it might be
better for them, in the end, if they did not turn so much of their
time into money, lest, perchance, they also turn Eternity into it!
There are other things, however, which in the same sense are money, or
can be changed into it, as well as time. Health is money, wit is
money, knowledge is money; and all your health, and wit, and knowledge
may be changed for gold; and the happy goal so reached, of a sick,
insane, and