1H8 EXPLANATIONS. 



that the beauteous phenomena of personal ex- 

 istence — the thrill of the lover, the mother's smile 

 on cherub infancy, the brightness of loving fire- 

 sides, the aspirations of generous poets and philo- 

 sophers, the thought cast up and beyond the 

 earthly, that petard which breaks down every door 

 — the tear of penitence, the meekness of the 

 suffering humble, the ardour of the strong in good 

 causes, all that the great and beneficent of all ages 

 have felt, all that each of us now sees, and muses 

 on, in his home, his people, his age, — that all 

 these should be thus resolved ; fleeting away 

 whole " equinoxes" into the past, as far as we 

 particular men are concerned, still passing further 

 back as respects the larger personalities called 

 nations, and still further in inconceivable multipli- 

 cation with regard to the species — gone, lost, 

 hushed in the stillness of a mightier death than 

 has hitherto been thought of ! But yet the faith 

 may not be shaken, that that which has been 

 endowed vdth the power of godlike thought, and 

 allowed to come into communion with its Eternal 

 Author, cannot be truly lost. The vital flame 

 which proceeded from him at first retiuns to him 

 in our perfected fonn at last, bearing with it all 

 good and lovely things, and making of all the far- 

 extending Past but one intense Present, glorious 

 and everlasting. 



