578 THE MOUNTAIN. 



derness of barbarism, a Sahara of death. Let us be thank- 

 ful that the oases exist ; that brave living souls have been 

 here, are here, and will come again ; that the fight with 

 the dragons goes on ; that the pythons of the past, the 

 saurians of the ancient slimes of the soul, still extant, must 

 perish, and the "new man," and the "new world," redeemed 

 from the chaos of antagonistic elements, shall be indeed the 

 " entire image and likeness" of each other. Sorrowful is his 

 present attitude, and full of despair, for now he dwells among 

 dust, shrouds, and grave-stones, and turns from the living 

 world, which, with gentle, kindly invitations and smiles, im- 

 portunes him to explore, to interrogate, to grow, promising 

 incalulable expansions and perfections beyond his hopes. Is 

 he sane to make the past a millstone around his neck, in- 

 stead of a stepping-stone under his feet for progress into the 

 future ? Will the milk-founts of the venerable mother never 

 be dry ? While change and growth are written upon all 

 things, and the new condition asks to develop the new man, 

 and the expanding future invites him to untried manifesta- 

 tions, and with infinite hope promises that " all things shall 

 be added to that kingdom," why must the soul still cling for 

 nourishment to this ancient bosom, and seek there alone for 

 nourishment where all is withered and dry ? The procession 

 of the ages has called forth a few souls- to whom the past 

 was "the dead burying the dead," who used the present to 

 work in, and to whom the future offered a fresh living and 

 promising harvest. Ignoring the past, this order of trans- 

 cendent spirits have fixed all its hopes and efforts in the 

 future. Vast, prophetic men, the only real lovers of the 

 race, with souls genial and expansive, these transcendent be- 

 ings, striding whole ages before the rest of their kind, have 

 always either located their heavens in other worlds, or in 

 i^Q future of this. With instincts of finest love, with hopes 

 so golden in their riches, with faith so childlike in its trust, 

 and a self-reliance so divine in its imperturbable quiet, these 

 angelic natures, the great radical reformers of humanity, 

 have held their eyes on the future, or world to come, with 



