n
life and other lives. All the human love he has ever experienced he
holds as an abiding possession. There comes to him not so much the
premonition of a future state as the consciousness of some state in
which past, present, and future blend. He is free from illusions, and
serene. It does not disturb him even to know that the vision will
pass, and he will return to earth's level. He sees the truth, he feels
the divine reality; and the certainty and the gladness are such that
not even the prevision of his own relapse into dimmer perception can
depress him. The hour speaks with command to the hours that are to
follow; it bids them to fidelity, to love, to highest courage.

When turning from contemplation we throw ourselves into the work and
the battle, a pulse of divine energy blends with our noblest effort,
touches our joy with an ineffable sweetness, and hushes our sorrow like
a child folded in its mother's arms.

The key of the world is given into our hands when we throw ourselves
unreservedly into the service of the highest truth we know, "with
fidelity to the right as God gives us to see the right." So it is that
we may find ourselves

"Wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion."

III

A TRAVELER'S NOTE-BOOK

A tourist who roams for a brief while through some great country like
England or Russia may jot down a few of the impressions which come home
to him, making no pretense at completeness or symmetry of description.
So, one who has journeyed like a hasty traveler over some passages in
that vast tract of years which we describe as the classic and Christian
civilizations, notes down in the following pages a few of the salient
features that have impressed him. He has already prefaced this with a
sort of outline map, drawn largely from familiar authorities, under the
title "Our Spiritual Ancestry;" and has further ventured to interpret
some phases of our own time, as "The Ideal of To-Day." Now he goes on to
group a few observations on some special phases of the historical survey,
disclaiming any attempt at exact proportion and perspective, but
lingering where the prospect has pleased his fancy, or at points which
seemed to yield some necessary clew or fruitful suggestion.

When, in the poems bearing the name of Homer, the curtain rises on the
drama of man as it was acted in Greece, after the immeasurable
prehistoric space, we are amazed at the sudden brilliance. The men and