e centre of a vast Theocracy.
Plainly, our community was but one of who knew how many?--governed by
an unseen Being, upon laws of which I knew nothing. The service of
this invisible Monarch vied only with the universal affection for Him.
So far as I could understand the spiritual life at all, it seemed to be
the highest possible development and expression of love. What these
people did that was noble, pure, and fine, they did, not because they
must, but because they would. They believed because they chose. They
were devout because they wished to be. They were unselfish and true,
and what below we should have called "unworldly," because it was the
most natural thing in the world. They seemed so happy, they had such
content in life, that I could have envied them from my soul.

How, now, was I to compass this national kind of happiness for my son?
Misery I could bear; I was sick and sore with it, but I was used to it.
My child must never suffer. Passed beyond the old system of suffering,
why should he? Joy was his birthright in this blessed place.

How was I, being at discord from it, to bring my child into harmony
with it? I was at odds, to start on, with the whole system of
education. The letters, art, science, industry, of the country were of
a sort that I knew not. They were consecrated to ends with which I was
unfamiliar. They were pursued in a spirit incomprehensible to me.
They were dedicated to the interests of a Being, Himself a stranger to
me. Proficiency, superiority, were rated on a scale quite out of my
experience. To be distinguished was to possess high spiritual traits.
Deep at the root of every public custom, of every private deed, there
hid the seed of one universal emotion,--the love of a living soul for
the Being who had created it.

I, who knew not of this feeling, I, who was as a savage among this
intelligence, who was no more than an object of charity at the hands of
this community,--what had I to offer to my son?

A father's personal position? Loving influence? Power to push the
little fellow to the front? A chance to endow him with every social
opportunity, every educational privilege, such as it is a father's
pride to enrich his child wherewith?

Nay, verily. An obscure man ignorant of the learning of the land,
destitute of its wealth, unacquainted among its magnates, and without a
share in its public interests--nothing was I; nothing had I; nothing
could I hope to do, or be,