e
of such. The poet, with his burning, immortal lines, while doing his
work, lives all the coming ages of his fame. From every marble feature
he chisels, the sculptor draws an intensity of being that cannot be
imparted by a mere extension of years. The philanthropist, in his walks
of mercy and his ministrations of love, lives more comprehensively
than another may in a century. His is the fathomless bliss of
benevolence,--the experience of God. The martyr, in his dying hour, with
his face shining like an angel's, does not live longer, but he lives
more than all his persecutors.

Consider, too, the experiences of religion, of worship, of prayer. In
the act of communion with God, in the realization of immortality, in the
aspirations and the idea of perfection, there is a depth and scope of
being from which all sensual estimates of time drop away.

Our mortal life, then, is very comprehensive. If we measure it, not by
its length of years, but by its spiritual results, be they good or evil,
it is a full and large life. It then appears, like the immortal state,
not as a fact of succession, but of experience. Christ has defined
eternal life as such a fact. "Eternal life," he says, "is to know thee,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." The life of
the blessed in heaven is not marked by years and cycles; it is not so
much protracted being, as a power of knowledge,--a depth of glad and
holy consciousness,--a constant pulsation of harmony with God.

Again, every life may be compared to "a tale that is told," because it
has a plot. In the narrative there is a combination of agencies
working to a crisis. There is a main-point with which all the action is
involved. And so every human life has its main-point.. I will not
now take up time to carry out this illustration minutely. The mere
suggestion that each one is working out a peculiar destiny invests even
the meanest life with a solemn dignity, and counteracts any disparaging
argument drawn from its brevity.

But still I would urge, that the propriety of this comparison between
the peculiar tendency of an individual life and the plot of a story, is
seen in the fact that every man is accomplishing a certain moral result
in and for himself. This is inevitable. We may be inactive, but that
result is forming; the mould of habit is growing, and the inward life
is unfolding itself, after its kind. We may think our career is
aimless, but all things give a shape to