is intoxicating, which is consoling even to the highest degree. But
intellect, after all, finds its frontier. I may say of it what I
have said of the esthetic sentiment, what I have said of the active
sentiment in man: it attracts, it delights--what is more, I think
it even consoles; but the one thing I find about it that to me is
perfectly appalling is that it does not satisfy.

There are many of you perhaps to-day who will demand that I should
take my fourth instance, and will ask that that at least may do its
duty. Will it? There is the region of the affections--that region
wherein we stray in early spring days as pickers of the spring-flowers
of our opening life, where suns are always glorious and sunsets only
speak of brighter dawn, where poetry is in all ordinary conversation
and hope springs to higher heights from hour to hour, where Mays
are always Mays and Junes are always Junes, where flowers are ever
bursting, and there seems no end to our nosegays, no limit to our
imaginations, no fetter to our fancies, no restraint to our desires.
There is the world, the vast, powerful world, of the passions,
purified by exhaustive cultivation into what we call the affections
of a higher life. By them we deal with our fellow-creatures; by them,
when we are young, we form great friendships; by them, as we grow
older, we form around us certain associations that we intend to
support us as life goes off. We have all known it. There is the
friend, there is the sweetheart, there is the wife, there is the
child, there are the dear expressions of the strong heart that after
all beats in Englishmen. But as life goes on, first in one object and
then by anticipation and terror perhaps in others, we watch those who
have been dear to us pass in dim procession to the grave, and we find,
after all, that in the world of affections that old strange law that
pervades one branch of the contrast prevails; it can stimulate, it can
support, it can console, it can delight, it can lead to delirium
at moments, but it does not satisfy. And, my brothers and sisters,
because you and I are born not for a moment, but for infinite moments;
not for the struggle of time, but for the great platform and career of
eternity--because that is so, never, never, never, if we are true to
ourselves, shall we pause in the midst of our mortal pilgrimage until
we find, and grasp, and embrace, and love that which satisfies. When
you awaken up a young heart to that truth