er. One cannot bear the sins or
appropriate the virtues of another. It is true, we have relations to the
great whole, to the world of mankind, and to the material universe. We
are linked to these by subtle affinities. We are interwoven with them
all,--bound up with them in arterial unity and life. They have all
poured their results into our souls, and helped to form us, and do now
support us; and we, in like manner, react upon them, and upon others.
This truth is a vital one, not to be neglected. But a deeper truth than
this and one upon which this depends, is the individual peculiarity of
each,--his integral distinctiveness, without which there would be no
such thing as union, or relationship; nothing but monotony and inertia.

The great fact, then, which I would impress upon you is, that,
essentially as spiritual beings, we are alone. And I remark that there
are experiences in life when we are made to feel this deep fact; when
each must deal with his reason, his heart, his conscience, for himself;
when each is to act as if the sole-existent in the universe, realizing
that he is a spirit breathed from God, complete in himself, subject
to all spiritual laws, interested in all spiritual welfare; when no
stranger soul, though it be that of his dearest friend, can intermeddle
with all that occupies him, or share it.

Such experiences we have when reflection binds us to the past.
Memory then opens for us a volume that no eye but God's and ours can
read;--memories of neglect, of sin, of deep secrets that our hearts have
hidden in their innermost folds. Such experiences sometimes there
are when we muse upon the external universe; when we reflect upon the
vastness of creation, the littleness of human effort, the transciency
of human relations; when our souls are drawn away from all ordinary
communions, and we feel that we are drifting before an almighty will,
bound to an inevitable destiny, hemmed in by irresistible forces. Then,
with every tie of association shrinking from us; then, keeping the
solitary vigil; then with cold, vast nature all around us, we are alone.
Or, there is a solitude which oppresses us even in the heart of the
great city;--a solitude more intense even than that of naked nature;
when all faces are strange to us; when no pulse of sympathy throbs from
our heart to the hearts of others when each passes us by, engaged with
his own destiny, and leaving us to fulfil ours. In this tantalizing
solitude of the c