and years ago; you did not make it by finding it. We
grow spiritually, until we grasp some new great truth of God; but it was
always true, and waited for us until we came. What is there new and
strange in the world except ourselves! Our thoughts are our own; God
gives our life to us moment by moment, but He gives it to be our own.

"Ye on your harps must lean to hear
A secret chord that mine will bear."

As I looked about me that day I saw the difference that men had made
slowly fading out of sight. It was like a dam in a river; when it is
once swept away the river goes on the same as before. The old patient,
sublime forces were there at work in their appointed way, but perhaps by
and by, when the apple-trees are gone and the cellar is only a rough
hollow in the woods, some one will again set aside these forces that
have worked unhindered, and will bring this corner of the world into a
new use and shape. What if we could stop or change forever the working
of these powers! But Nature repossesses herself surely of what we boldly
claim. The pyramids stand yet, it happens, but where are all those
cities that used also to stand in old Egypt, proud and strong, and
dating back beyond men's memories or traditions,--turned into sand again
and dust that is like all the rest of the desert, and blows about in the
wind? Yet there cannot be such a thing as life that is lost. The tree
falls and decays, in the dampness of the woods, and is part of the earth
under foot, but another tree is growing out of it; perhaps it is part of
its own life that is springing again from the part of it that died. God
must always be putting again to some use the life that is withdrawn; it
must live, because it is Life. There can be no confusion to God in this
wonderful world, the new birth of the immortal, the new forms of the
life that is from everlasting to everlasting, or the new way in which it
comes. But it is only God who can plan and order it all,--who is a
father to his children, and cares for the least of us. I thought of his
unbroken promises; the people who lived and died in that lonely place
knew Him, and the chain of events was fitted to their thoughts and
lives, for their development and education. The world was made for them,
and God keeps them yet; somewhere in his kingdom they are in their
places,--they are not lost; while the trees they left grow older, and
the young trees spring up, and the fields they cleared are being covered