capacity of the higher? After
considering the chief achievements of human genius, the mysterious
powers of the human soul now, the doctrine of immortality does not
seem too great and wonderful for belief; but, on the contrary, it
appears the coherent complement of the facts of the present.

Nothing can be more marvelous or imply greater glory for the
destiny of the individual being than the fact that each
consciousness is to itself the antithetical equivalent or balance
of the totality of being beside; since the whole universe, all
other beings, God himself, are known to the individual
consciousness only as revealed in itself through its personal
faculties. The slightest change in the subject is reported by a
correspondent change in objects. Heighten the internal activities
of the soul to a certain pitch, and the convictions they engender
will be so intense, and the experience so absorbing, as
irresistibly to sweep away all opposing doubts and fill every
craving with the triumphant flood of life. What overwhelming
revelations of the providence of God and eternal life, crowding
the cosmos at every point with the workings of poetic justice, may
thus be made to prepared spirits, only those who receive them
know. Paul said he was caught up into the third heaven and heard
unspeakable words. It is to be believed that such visions, while
often illusory, are sometimes genuine. A test to discriminate the
spurious and the authentic will one day be secured. Meanwhile it
is either a faithless faintheartedness or a vulgar arrogance to
omit from the data of our expected fate those thoughts, which,
though beyond the reaches of our souls, nevertheless irresistibly
allure our attention and enchain our affection; ideas belonging to
our nature, though transcending our experience, and, while
surpassing our faculties, still attracting us to our destiny. What
are presentiments but divine wings of the spirit fluttering toward
our unseen goal?

Again, the great metaphysicians, who have elaborated the
idealistic philosophy in so many forms, exhibit the mind of man to
us as superior to the cosmic spectacle it contemplates projected
in immensity. They portray the material creation as a phantasmal
show of mind, a phenomenal process and aspect of spirit,
indissoluble centers of consciousness alone having solid verity
and stay, while matter and force and times and places whirl and
pass, combine and dissolve.

Likewise the mathematicians, with