strivings of the soul cannot understand
one of the noblest capabilities of humanity.

No real artist or philosopher ever lived who has not at some hours risen
to the height of utter self-abnegation for the glory of the invisible.
There have been painters who would have been crucified to demonstrate
the action of a muscle,--chemists who would gladly have melted
themselves and all humanity in their crucible, if so a new discovery
might arise out of its fumes. Even persons of mere artistic sensibility
are at times raised by music, painting, or poetry to a momentary trance
of self-oblivion, in which they would offer their whole being before the
shrine of an invisible loveliness. These hard old New England divines
were the poets of metaphysical philosophy, who built systems in an
artistic fervor, and felt self exhale from beneath them as they rose
into the higher regions of thought. But where theorists and philosophers
tread with sublime assurance, woman often follows with bleeding
footsteps;--women are always turning from the abstract to the
individual, and feeling where the philosopher only thinks.

It was easy enough for Mary to believe in _self_-renunciation, for she
was one with a born vocation for martyrdom; and so, when the idea was
put to her of suffering eternal pains for the glory of God and the good
of being in general, she responded to it with a sort of sublime thrill,
such as it is given to some natures to feel in view of uttermost
sacrifice. But when she looked around on the warm, living faces of
friends, acquaintances, and neighbors, viewing them as possible
candidates for dooms so fearfully different, she sometimes felt the
walls of her faith closing round her as an iron shroud,--she wondered
that the sun could shine so brightly, that flowers could flaunt such
dazzling colors, that sweet airs could breathe, and little children
play, and youth love and hope, and a thousand intoxicating influences
combine to cheat the victims from the thought that their next step might
be into an abyss of horrors without end. The blood of youth and hope was
saddened by this great sorrow, which lay ever on her heart,--and her
life, unknown to herself, was a sweet tune in the minor key; it was only
in prayer, or deeds of love and charity, or in rapt contemplation of
that beautiful millennial day which her spiritual guide most delighted
to speak of, that the tone of her feelings ever rose to the height of
joy.

Among Mary's yo