g and insatiate
desires for the infinite, we vainly seek their gratification in the
dying forms which surround us, and obstinately adorn our perishable
idols with that immaterial beauty which haunts our dreams. The
emotions of the senses do not suffice us; in the treasure house of
the simple joys of nature there is nothing sufficiently exquisite
to fill our high demands; we would fain grasp heaven, and it is not
within our reach. Then we seek it in a creature fallible as
ourselves; we expend upon it all the high energies given us for far
nobler ends. We refuse to worship God, and kneel before a worm like
ourselves! But when the veil falls, when we see behind the clouds
of incense and the halos woven by love, only a miserable and
imperfect creature--we blush for our delusion, overturn our idol in
our despair, and trample it rudely under foot. But as we must love,
and will not give our hearts to God, for whom they were created, we
seek another idol--and are again deceived! Through this bitter,
bitter school we are purified and enlightened, until, abandoning
all hope of finding perfection on earth, we are at last ready to
offer God that pure, but now broken-hearted worship, which should
never have been given save to Him alone.'--GEORGE SAND.

Thus is it that 'love's best interpreter is still a sigh.'

Let him who would in safety delight his soul with mystic intuitions of
the infinite, turn to that most exquisite of all poems, the Apocalypse,
for 'blessed is he that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy,
and keepeth those things which are written in it.' St. Jerome says 'it
contains as many mysteries as words'--as many truths as mysteries--and
these truths are all revelations of the infinite. 'Be thou faithful unto
death, and I will give thee the crown of life,' says He who can bring
thee into that heavenly city which needeth no temple: 'For the Lord God
Almighty is the temple thereof, and the Lamb! And the city hath no need
of the sun, nor of the moon to shine in it. For the glory of God hath
enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp of it.' There shall we feed
upon the infinite!

The pantheistic _feeling_ into which the imaginative mind so readily
falls, is thus sketched by a poet of our own times:

'I seated myself, after sunset, by the water's side; nothing was to
be heard save the dash of the waves as the