e enough to be called a
village, and marked by no trait of nature or art to give it
distinction.

There are conditions and characteristics both in the natural and
moral world which can hardly be described fully in Saxon, Latin, or
Greek terminology, even with the largest license of construction.
There are attributes or qualities attaching to certain locations, of
the simplest natural features, which cannot even be hinted at or
suggested by the terms, _geography, topography, or biography_. Put
the three together and condense or collocate their several meanings
in one compound qualification which you can write and another spell,
and you do not compass the signification you want to convey. The
soul of man has its immortality, and the feeblest-minded peasant
believes he shall wear it through the ages of the great hereafter.
The literature of human thoughts claims a life that shall endure as
long as the future existence of humanity. The memory of many human
actions and lives puts in a plea and promise of a duration that
shall distance the sun's, and overlap upon the bright centuries of
eternity. The human body, even, is promised its resurrection by the
divinest authority and illustration, and waits hopefully, under all
its pains and weaknesses, for the glory to be revealed in it when
the earth on which it dwells shall have become "a forgotten
circumstance." Human loves, remembrances, faiths, and fellowships
lift up all their meek hands to the Father of Spirits, praying to be
lifted up into His great immortality, and to be permitted to take
with them unbroken the associations that sweetened this earthly
life. Many humble souls that have passed through the furnace of
affliction, poverty, and trial seven times heated, and heated daily
here, have believed that He who went up through the same suffering
to His great White Throne, would let them sing beside the crystal
waters the same good old psalm tunes and songs of Sion which they
sang under the willows of this lower world of tears and tribulation.
How all the sparks of the undying life in man fly upward to the
zenith of this immortality! You may call the steep flights of this
faith pleasant and poetical diversions of a fervid imagination, but
they are winged with the pinions that angels lift when they soar;
pinions less ethereal than theirs, but formed and plumed to beat
upward on the Milky Way to their Source, instead of swimming in the
thinly-starred cerulean, in whi