urselves face to face with our
better, nobler selves, and with the Mighty Power which created us and
all things. But there is, in this inner life, a pleasure higher and
more lasting than those evanescent ones which the world can afford, and
which elevates and purifies as they do not. And aside from mere
pleasure, there is in such a study a practicability--taking the word in
a broader and nobler sense--which puts to the blush man's busy schemes
for wealth and honor. The beauties and sublimity of nature may indeed
fill us with awe at the omnipotence of the mighty Architect, and with
love and gratitude for His goodness, but it is only in the presence of
the soul--His greatest work--that we realize the awful power of the
Creator; it is only when threading the secret avenues of our own
intellectual and spiritual being that we are brought into actual
communion with God, and bow in adoration before Him who 'doeth all
things well.' Therefore, I maintain that he whose meditations run most
in this channel is not only the happiest, but the purest man; that his
views of life are the broadest and noblest; that he it is who is most
open to the appeal of suffering or of sorrow; who is most ready to
sacrifice self and work for the good of his fellow beings, and to
discharge faithfully his duty in that state of life to which it has
pleased God to call him.

But I am digressing into a prosy essay, which I did not intend, and
neglecting that which I did intend, namely, to jot down a few theories
which have crept into the brain of one not much given to musing.

For even I--a poor 'marching sub'--sitting here by a cheery coal grate,
and watching the white smoke as it curls lazily up from the bowl of my
meerschaum, have theories touching the soul--theories born in the
glowing coals and mounting in the curling smoke wreaths, but, unlike
them, growing more and more voluminous as they ascend, till I am like to
be lost in the ocean of speculations which my own musings have summoned
up.

I heard, to-night, a strain of weird, unearthly music, sweet and sad
beyond expression, but distant and fleeting. Yet long after it had
ceased, the chord that it awakened in my heart continued to vibrate as
with the echo of the strain which had departed. An unutterable,
indescribable longing filled my soul--a vague yearning for something, I
knew not what. My whole spiritual being seemed exalted to the clouds,
yet restrained by some galling chain from the heave