equality with the flea that perishes.

Suppose if, after all, the stars were really meant as his bedtime
candles, and the sun's purpose in rising is really that he may catch the
8.37!

For, as Sir Thomas Browne says in his solemn English, 'there is surely a
piece of Divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and
owes no homage unto the sun.'

The long winter of materialistic science seems to be breaking up, and
the old ideals are seen trooping back with something more than their old
beauty, in the new spiritual spring that seems to be moving in the
hearts of men.

After all its talk, science has done little more than correct the
misprints of religion. Essentially, the old spiritualistic and poetic
theories of life are seen, not merely weakly to satisfy the cravings of
man's nature, but to be mostly in harmony with certain strange and
moving facts in his constitution, which the materialists
unscientifically ignore.

It was important, and has been helpful, to insist that man is an animal,
but it is still more important to insist that he is a spirit as well. He
is, so to say, an animal by accident, a spirit by birthright: and,
however homely his duties may occasionally seem, his life is bathed in
the light of a sacred transfiguring significance, its smallest acts
flash with divine meanings, its highest moments are rich with 'the
pathos of eternity,' and its humblest duties mighty with the
responsibilities of a god.