to which so much is devoted, and which
absorbs so much care, are but appearances also. While that which may
seem to you as a shadow--the spiritual substratum of life, the basis of
those spiritual laws which run through all our conditions--is the only
abiding substance.

If we only look in this light, my friends, upon the continuous spectacle
of human movement and human change, we shall find that "Wisdom...
uttereth her voice in the streets." Old as the thought may be, in the
rush of the great crowd it will come to us fresh and impressively, that
all this is but a form of spiritual and eternal being. A day in the city
is like life itself. Out of unconscious slumber into the brilliant
morning and the thick activity we come. But, by-and-by, the heaving mass
breaks into units, and one by one dissolves into the shadow of the
night. Two cities grow up side by side--the city in which men appear,
the city into which they vanish; the city whose houses and goods they
possess for a little while and then leave behind them, and the city
whose white monuments just show us the pinnacles of their estates in the
eternal world. The busy, diversified crowd that rolls through the
streets--it is only an appearance! It is a ceaseless march of
emigration. In a little while, the names in this year's Directory may be
read in Greenwood.

But we must not rest with this as the final lesson of the street. It is
only the form of Life that is transient and phenomenal; but the _Life_
itself is here, also--here, in these flashing eyes, and heaving breasts,
and active limbs. These conditions, however transient, involve the great
interest of Humanity; and that lends the deepest significance to these
conditions. The interest of Humanity! which gives importance to all it
touches, and transforms nature into history; which imparts dignity to
the rudest workshop, and the most barren shore, and the humblest
grave--this permits us to draw no mean or discouraging conclusions from
the achievements and the changes of the multitudes around us. It may do
for the skeptic, who sees nothing in existence but these forms of
things; who sees nothing but the limited phenomena of our present state,
and thinks that includes all; it may do for him to croak over the
transitoriness of life, and call it a trivial game. But it is _not_
trivial; and there is no spot where man acts, there is nothing that he
does, that is insignificant. Perhaps you have a quick eye for the
foibles