haps, sin
and blaspheme. The Author of all has intended to confine our knowledge
within certain boundaries, has given us a short span of time for
a certain probation, for which our faculties are adapted. By wild
speculation and intemperate curiosity we violate His will, and incur
dangerous, perhaps fatal, consequences. We waste our powers, and,
becoming morbid and visionary, are unfitted to obey positive precepts,
and perform positive duties.

_Free Hope._ I do not see how it is possible to go further beyond the
results of a limited human experience than those do who pretend to
settle the origin and nature of sin, the final destiny of souls, and
the whole plan of the Causal Spirit with regard to them. I think those
who take your view have not examined themselves, and do not know the
ground on which they stand.

I acknowledge no limit, set up by man's opinion, as to the capacities
of man. "Care is taken," I see it, "that the trees grow not up into
heaven"; but, to me it seems, the more vigorously they aspire, the
better. Only let it be a vigorous, not a partial or sickly aspiration.
Let not the tree forget its root.

So long as the child insists on knowing where its dead parent is, so
long as bright eyes weep at mysterious pressures, too heavy for the
life, so long as that impulse is constantly arising which made the
Roman emperor address his soul in a strain of such touching softness,
vanishing from, the thought, as the column of smoke from the eye, I
know of no inquiry which the impulse of man suggests that is forbidden
to the resolution of man to pursue. In every inquiry, unless sustained
by a pure and reverent spirit, he gropes in the dark, or falls
headlong.

_Self-Poise._ All this may be very true, but what is the use of all
this straining? Far-sought is dear-bought. When we know that all is in
each, and that the ordinary contains the extraordinary, why should we
play the baby, and insist upon having the moon for a toy when a tin
dish will do as well? Our deep ignorance is a chasm that we can only
fill up by degrees, but the commonest rubbish will help us as well
as shred silk. The god Brahma, while on earth, was set to fill up a
valley, but he had only a basket given him in which to fetch earth for
this purpose; so is it with us all. No leaps, no starts, will avail
us; by patient crystallization alone, the equal temper of wisdom is
attainable. Sit at home, and the spirit-world will look in at your
window wit