a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mould- Selfered nation in another country, in Reliance another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past? Is The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye maketh, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming. Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not say " I think," " I am," but quotes some Self- saint or sage. He is ashamed before Reliance the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower, there is no more; in the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is no time to it But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that sur Reliance round him, stands on tiptoe to forsee use words as good, when occasion comes. So was it with us, so will it Self- be, if we proceed. If we live truly, Reliance we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburthen the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably, cannot be said; for all that we say is the far off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or appointed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any Selfname;-the way, the thought, the Reliance good shall be wholly strange and new It shall exclude all other being. You take the way from man not to man. All persons that ever existed are its fugitive ministers There shall be no fear in it. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. It asks nothing There is somewhat low even in hope. We are then in vision. There is nothing that can be called gratitude nor properly joy. The soul is raised over passions It seeth identity and eternal causation. It is a perceiving that Truth and Right are. Hence it becomes a Tranquillity out of the knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast |