life is not merely a term of years and a span of action; it is a force,
a current and depth of being. Indeed, considered in its most literal
sense, as the vital spark of our animal organism, it is something more
than a measurement of time;--it is a mysterious, informing essence. No
man has yet been able to tell us what it is, where it resides, or how
it acts. We only know that when we gaze upon the features of the dead
we see there the same organs that pertained to the living; but something
has gone,--something of light, power, motion; and that something we call
life.

But it is chiefly in a moral sense that I make the remark that life is
something more than a term of years or a span of action. In fact, life
is a sum of spiritual experiences; and thus one act, or result, often
contains more than a century of time. Who does not understand the fact
to which I now refer? Who has not felt something of it? Has not each one
of us, at times, realized that he lived a year in a single day,--in
a moment,--in an emotion or thought? Nay, could that experience be
measured by any estimate of time? And if we should compute the length of
any life by such experiences, and not by a succession of years, would
it not be a long life? At least, would it not be a full and immeasurable
life?

But, while every man's history will furnish instances of what I mean,
let us, for the sake of clearer illustration, consider some of the
experiences which are common to all. Defining life to be depth and
intensity of being, then,--a current of spiritual power, and not a mere
succession of incidents,--how much we live when we acquire the knowledge
of a single truth! What an inexhaustible power!--what an immeasurable
experience it is! We are made absolutely stronger by it; we receive more
life with it,--a new and imperishable fibre of being. Fortune cannot
pluck it from us, age cannot weaken it, death cannot set limits to
it. And now, with the fulness of this one experience as a test, just
consider our whole mortal experience as filled up with such revelations
of truth. Suppose we improve all our opportunities; into what boundless
life does education admit us, and the discoveries of every day, and the
ordinary lessons of the world! Tell me, is this life to be called merely
a brief and worthless fact, when by a little reading, for instance, I
can make the experience of other men, and lands, and ages, all mine?
When in some favored hour, I can climb the star