he sleeping countenance--then dropped on his knees, and cried,

"God, if Thou be anywhere, I thank Thee."

Reader, who knowest better, do not mock him. Gently excuse him. His
brain was excited; there was a commotion in the particles of human
cauliflower; a rush of chemical changes and interchanges was going on;
the tide was setting for the vasty deep of marvel, which was nowhere but
within itself. And then he was in love with his wife, therefore open to
deceptions without end, for is not all love a longing after what never
was and never can be?

He was beaten. But scorn him not for yielding. Think how he was beaten.
Could he help it that the life in him proved too much for the death with
which he had sided? Was it poltroonery to desert the cause of ruin for
that of growth? of essential slavery for ordered freedom? of
disintegration for vital and enlarging unity? He had "said to
corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my
sister;" but a Mightier than he, the Life that lighteth every man that
cometh into the world, had said, "O thou enemy, destruction shall have a
perpetual end;" and he could not stand against the life by which he
stood. When it comes to this, what can a man do? Remember he was a
created being--or, if you will not allow that, then something greatly
less. If not "loved into being" by a perfect Will, in his own image of
life and law, he had but a mother whom he never could see, because she
could never behold either herself or him: he was the offspring of the
dead, and must be pardoned if he gave a foolish cry after a parent worth
having.

Wait, thou who countest such a cry a weak submission, until, having
refused to take thine hour with thee, thine hour overtakes thee: then
see if thou wilt stand out. Another's battle is easy. God only knows
with what earthquakes and thunders, that hour, on its way to find thee,
may level the mountains and valleys between. If thou wouldst be perfect
in the greatness of thy way, thou must learn to live in the fire of thy
own divine nature turned against thy conscious self: learn to smile
content in that, and thou wilt out-satan Satan in the putridity of
essential meanness, yea, self-satisfied in very virtue of thy shame,
thou wilt count it the throned apotheosis of inbred honor. But seeming
is not being--least of all self-seeming. Dishonor will yet be dishonor,
if all the fools in creation should be in love with it, and call it
glory.

In an