, is
solved by the redemption of the soul. The ruin or the blank, that we
see when we look at nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision is
not coincident with the axis of things, and so they appear not
transparent but opake. The reason why the world lacks unity, and
lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
He cannot be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the demands of the
spirit. Love is as much its demand, as perception. Indeed, neither
can be perfect without the other. In the uttermost meaning of the
words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto
deep. But in actual life, the marriage is not celebrated. There are
innocent men who worship God after the tradition of their fathers,
but their sense of duty has not yet extended to the use of all their
faculties. And there are patient naturalists, but they freeze their
subject under the wintry light of the understanding. Is not prayer
also a study of truth,--a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite?
No man ever prayed heartily, without learning something. But when
a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal
relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time,
kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God
go forth anew into the creation.

It will not need, when the mind is prepared for study, to search for
objects. The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in
the common. What is a day? What is a year? What is summer? What
is woman? What is a child? What is sleep? To our blindness, these
things seem unaffecting. We make fables to hide the baldness of the
fact and conform it, as we say, to the higher law of the mind. But
when the fact is seen under the light of an idea, the gaudy fable
fades and shrivels. We behold the real higher law. To the wise,
therefore, a fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables.
These wonders are brought to our own door. You also are a man.
Man and woman, and their social life, poverty, labor, sleep, fear,
fortune, are known to you. Learn that none of these things is
superficial, but that each phenomenon has its roots in the faculties
and affections of the mind. Whilst the abstract question occupies
your intellect, nature brings it in the concrete to be solved by your
hands. It were a wise inquiry for the closet, to compare, point by
point, especially at remarkable crises in life, our daily history, with