David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on
a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the
sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men
of talents and character they chance to see,--painfully recollecting the
exact words they spoke; afterward, when they come into the point of view
which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them and are
willing to let the words go; for at any time they can use words as good
when occasion comes. So was it with us, so will it be, if we proceed. If
we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to
be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new
perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded
treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be
as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.

And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid;
probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far off remembering
of the intuition: That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to
say it, is this: When good is near you, when you have life in
yourself,--it is not by any known or appointed way; you shall not
discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man;
you shall not hear any name;--the way, the thought, the good, shall be
wholly strange and new. It shall exclude all other being. You take the
way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its fugitive
ministers. There shall be no fear in it. Fear and hope are alike
beneath it. It asks nothing. There is somewhat low even in hope. We are
then in vision. There is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor
properly joy. The soul is raised over passion. It seeth identity and
eternal causation. It is a perceiving that Truth and Right are. Hence it
becomes a Tranquillity out of the knowing that all things go well. Vast
spaces of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast intervals of