he work began, from the foundation of the world, and the old habit
still clings about it and is not easily laid aside....

That which we have been considering as the death that is in every moment
is a reaction proper to life itself, waking or sleeping, whereby it is
renewed, sharing at once Time and Eternity--time as outward form, and
eternity as its essential quality. Sleep is a special relaxation,
relieving a special strain. As daily we build with effort and design an
elaborate superstructure above the living foundation, so must this
edifice nightly be laid in ruins. Sleep is thus a disembarrassment, the
unloading of a burden wherewith we have weighted ourselves. Here again
we are brought into a kind of repentance, and receive absolution. Sleep
is forgiveness.

From 'A Study of Death,' copyright 1895, by Harper and Brothers

THE PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL

I

Standing at the gate of Birth, it would seem as if it were the vital
destination of all things to fly from their source, as if it were the
dominant desire of life to enter into limitations. We might mentally
represent to ourselves an essence simple and indivisible that denies
itself in diversified manifold existence. To us, this side the veil,
nay, immeshed in innumerable veils that hide from us the Father's face,
this insistence appears to have the stress of urgency, as if the effort
of all being, its unceasing travail, were like the beating of the
infinite ocean upon the shores of Time; and as if, within the continent
of Time, all existence were forever knocking at new gates, seeking,
through some as yet untried path of progression, greater complexity, a
deeper involvement. All the children seem to be beseeching the Father to
divide unto them His living, none willingly abiding in that Father's
house. But in reality their will is His will--they fly, and they are
driven, like fledglings from the mother-nest.

II

The story of a solar system, or of any synthesis in time, repeats the
parable of the Prodigal Son, in its essential features. It is a
cosmic parable.

The planet is a wanderer (_planes_), and the individual planetary
destiny can be accomplished only through flight from its source. After
all its prodigality it shall sicken and return.

Attributing to the Earth, thus apparently separated from the Sun, some
macrocosmic sentience, what must have been her wondering dream, finding
herself at once thrust away and securely held, poised between her