. But what do we in reality see there? Only a kind
of large tent, dimly lighted with gas jets. This is the noblest thing
the noblest sense reveals. But let the soul appear, and the tent flies
into invisible shreds; the heavens break open from abyss to abyss, still
widening into limitless expanse, until imagination reels. The gas jets
grow into suns, blazing since innumerable ages with unendurable light,
and binding whole planetary systems into harmony and life. So infinitely
does the soul transcend the senses! The world it lives in is boundless,
eternal, sublime. This is its home; this the sphere in which it grows,
and awakens to consciousness of kinship with God. This is the
fathomless, shoreless abyss of being wherein it is plunged, from which
it draws its life, its yearning for the absolute, its undying hope, its
love of the best, its craving for immortality, its instinct for eternal
things. To condemn it to work merely for money, for position, for
applause, for pleasure, is to degrade it to the condition of a slave. It
is as though we should take some supreme poet or hero and bid him break
stones or grind corn,--he who has the faculty to give to truth its
divinest form, and to lift the hearts of nations to the love of heavenly
things.

Whatever our lot on earth may be--whether we toil with the hand, with
the brain, or with the heart--we may not bind the soul to any slavish
service. Let us do our work like men,--till the soil, build homes,
refine brute matter, be learned in law, in medicine, in theology; but
let us never chain our souls to what they work in. No earthly work can
lay claim to the whole life of man; for every man is born for God, for
the Universe, and may not narrow his mind. We must have some practical
thing to do in the world,--some way of living which will place us in
harmony with the requirements and needs of earthly life; and what this
daily business of ours shall be, each one, in view of his endowments and
surroundings, must decide for himself.

It is well to bear in mind that every kind of life has its advantages,
except an immoral life. Whatever we make of ourselves, then,--whether
farmers, mechanics, lawyers, doctors, or priests,--let us above all
things first have a care that we are men; and if we are to be men, our
special business work must form only a part of our life-work. The
aim--at least in this way alone can I look at human life--is not to make
rich and successful bankers, merchants,