150 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
All Truth is relative — ^but Existences are positive. It is 
only to man that the higher truth of these Existences was 
revealed, for he alone of Earth saw them in their relations. 
These relations were wide as the extended firmament — deep 
as abysmal space ; and, to him, in right of his angelic birth, 
the " seeing eye" was gifted. 
This is " the vision and the faculty divine and that his 
recreant spirituality does not always use it — ^that he has 
sometimes walked through life as one having eyes that saw 
not — does not, for an instant, alter the relations of things, or 
make their position on the eternal scale less absolute, or iron- 
hinged. 
That he has Free "Will, in this repect, is his own awful 
and peculiar gift — we cannot conceive, even of Gabriel, 
" nearest the throne," as one who could not fall ! But we 
can conceive — if man could only see as we do — or (more 
modestly) would only walk with his eyes open, how charm- 
ingly and pleasantly his relations to the Earth might be 
changed. 
It is not so absurd, as might appear at first glance, to sup- 
pose her our Primal Parent through whom we have been 
born of Spirit — for surely we owe to her what we have of 
flesh and blood. And, to our mind, how lovely such a faith 
would be ! 
"With our hearts possessed of it, then would all the rude 
tremendous phases of her energy be tempered with ameni- 
ties. It would then be our large Old Mother, chaunting in 
her seas a lullaby to us, when the long waves broke roaring 
on the sands, or shook the fast cliffs with lashings. 
Then it would be the heavy trample of her roused strength 
in chastenings, when the hoarse storm made noises and the 
" cross blue lightning" spit its shafts against the crags — or, 
when her mountainous brows shook off the mellow evening, 
it would he in parting smiles for us- — when their white fronts 
laughed out with the fiery kiss of morning, it would be to 
greet us. 
