e advent men and events prepare and
foreshow, is one who shall enjoy his connection with a higher life, with
the man within man; shall destroy distrust by his trust, shall use his
native but forgotten methods, shall not take counsel of flesh and blood,
but shall rely on the Law alive and beautiful which works over our heads
and under our feet. Pitiless, it avails itself of our success when
we obey it, and of our ruin when we contravene it. Men are all secret
believers in it, else the word justice would have no meaning: they
believe that the best is the true; that right is done at last; or chaos
would come. It rewards actions after their nature, and not after the
design of the agent. 'Work,' it saith to man, 'in every hour, paid or
unpaid, see only that thou work, and thou canst not escape the reward:
whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so
only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn
a reward to the senses as well as to the thought: no matter how often
defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done, is
to have done it.'

As soon as a man is wonted to look beyond surfaces, and to see how
this high will prevails without an exception or an interval, he settles
himself into serenity. He can already rely on the laws of gravity, that
every stone will fall where it is due; the good globe is faithful, and
carries us securely through the celestial spaces, anxious or resigned,
we need not interfere to help it on: and he will learn one day the mild
lesson they teach, that our own orbit is all our task, and we need not
assist the administration of the universe. Do not be so impatient to
set the town right concerning the unfounded pretensions and the false
reputation of certain men of standing. They are laboring harder to
set the town right concerning themselves, and will certainly succeed.
Suppress for a few days your criticism on the insufficiency of this
or that teacher or experimenter, and he will have demonstrated his
insufficiency to all men's eyes. In like manner, let a man fall into the
divine circuits, and he is enlarged. Obedience to his genius is the only
liberating influence. We wish to escape from subjection and a sense of
inferiority, and we make self-denying ordinances, we drink water, we
eat grass, we refuse the laws, we go to jail: it is all in vain; only
by obedience to his genius, only by the freest activity in the way
constitutional to him