atching, as in play, at the golden
particles of the light with their tiny fingers. Work and play, in short,
are the universal ordinance of God for the living races; in which they
symbolize the fortune and interpret the errand of man. No creature lives
that must not work and may not play.

Returning now to himself and to man, and meditating yet more deeply, as
he is thus prepared to do, on work and play, and play and work, as
blended in the compound of our human life; asking again what is work and
what is play, what are the relations of one to the other, and which is
the final end of all, he discovers in what he was observing round him a
sublimity of import, a solemnity even, that is deep as the shadow of
eternity.

I believe in a future age yet to be revealed, which is to be
distinguished from all others as the godly or godlike age,--an age not
of universal education simply, or universal philanthropy, or external
freedom, or political well-being, but a day of reciprocity and free
intimacy between all souls and God. Learning and religion, the scholar
and the Christian, will not be divided as they have been. The
universities will be filled with a profound spirit of religion, and
the _bene orasse_ will be a fountain of inspiration to all the
investigations of study and the creations of genius.

I raise this expectation of the future, not because some prophet of old
time has spoken of a day to come when "the streets of the city shall be
full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof" (for I know not
that he meant to be so interpreted), but because I find a prophecy of
play in our nature itself which it were a violation of all insight not
to believe will sometime be fulfilled. And when it is fulfilled it will
be found that Christianity has at last developed a new literary era, the
era of religious love.

Hitherto the passion of love has been the central fire of the
world's literature. The dramas, epics, odes, novels, and even
histories, have spoken to the world's heart chiefly through this
passion, and through this have been able to get their answer. For
this passion is a state of play, wherein the man loses himself
in the ardor of a devotion regardless of interest, fear, care,
prudence, and even of life itself. Hence there gathers round the
lover a tragic interest, and we hang upon his destiny as if some
natural charm or spell were in it. Now this passion of love, which
has hitherto been the staple of literature