life and action; vitalising the body with intelligence, until every
vein, muscle, and nerve, and function thrills and moves to the
impulse of thought; vitalising the soul with the vigorous activities
of reason, giving hands as well as wings to its hopes, faiths,
loves, and aspirations; giving a faculty of speech, action, and
influence to each, and play to all the tempers and tendencies of its
moral nature. Thus all the influences that the mind could inhale
from the material world through man's physical being, and all it
could draw out of the depths of Divine revelation, were the dew and
the light which it was its mission to bring to the fostering,
growth, and glory of the human soul. These were man's means
wherewith to shape it for its great destiny; these he was to bring
to its training and expansion; with these he was to co-work with the
Infinite Father of Spirits to fit it for His presence and
fellowship, just as he co-works with Nature in developing the latent
life and faculties of the rose. What distillations of spiritual
influence have dropped down out of heaven, through the ages, to help
onward this joint work! What histories of human experience have
come in the other direction to the same end!--fraught with the
emotions of the human heart, from the first sin and sorrow of Adam
to our own griefs, hopes, and joys; and all so many lessons for the
discipline of this high-born nature with us!

And yet how slow and almost imperceptible has been the development
of this nature! How gently and gradually the expanding influences,
human and divine, have been let in upon its latent faculties! See
with what delicate fostering the petals of love, faith, and hope
were taught to open, little by little, their hidden life and
beauty,--taking Moses' history of the process. First, one human
being on the earth, surrounded with beasts and birds that could give