fulfilled; so that no one can see beyond the immediate point for which
he is making.

The wide ocean is before that ship, and a wider mystery. But in the
passage of time, as the strange cruise proceeds, its course begins to
tell upon the chart. The zigzag line, like obscure chirography, has an
intelligible look, and seems to spell out intimations. As order after
order is opened, those sibyl leaves of the cabin commence to prophesy,
glimpses multiply, surmises come quick, and shortly the whole ship's
company more than suspect, from the accumulating _data_ behind them,
what must be their destination, and the mission they have been sent to
accomplish.

People are beginning to imagine that the career of the human race is
something like this. There is a fast-growing conviction that man has
been sent out, from the first, to fulfil some inexplicable purpose, and
that he holds a Divine commission to perform a wonderful work on the
earth. It would seem as if his marvellous brain were the bundle of
mystic scrolls on which it is written, and within which its terms are
hid,--and as if his imperishable soul were the great seal, bearing the
Divine image and superscription, which attests its Almighty original.

This commission is yet obscure. It has so far only gradually opened to
him, for he is sailing under sealed orders. He is still led on from
point to point. But the farther he goes, and the more his past gathers
behind him, the better is he able to imagine what must be before him.
His chart is every day getting more full of amazing indications. He is
beginning to feel about him the increasing press of some Providential
design that has been permeating and moulding age after age, and to
discover that be has been all along unconsciously prosecuting a secret