flower, and whose awakening into life, whose consciousness of
existence, whose living breath, are a thousand-fold more wonderful than
the tissue of the flower, or the dead mechanism of the heavenly bodies.
Consider that thou also belongest to this infinite warp and woof, and
that thou art permitted to comfort thyself with the infinite creatures
which revolve and live and disappear with thee. But if this All, with
its smallest and its greatest, with its wisdom and its power, with the
wonders of its existence, and the existence of its wonders, is the work
of a Being in whose presence thy soul does not shrink back, before whom
thou fallest prostrate in a feeling of weakness and nothingness, and to
whom thou risest again in the feeling of His love and mercy--if thou
really feelest that something dwells in thee more endless and eternal
than the cells of the flowers, the spheres of the planets, and the life
of the insect--if thou recognizest in thyself as in a shadow the
reflection of the Eternal which illuminates thee--if thou feelest in
thyself, and under and above thyself, the omnipresence of the Real, in
which thy seeming becomes being, thy trouble, rest, thy solitude,
universality--then thou knowest the One to Whom thou criest in the dark
night of life: "Creator and Father, Thy will be done in Heaven as upon
earth, and as on earth so also in me." Then it grows bright in and
about thee. The daybreak disappears with its cold mists, and a new
warmth streams through shivering nature. Thou hast found a hand which
never again leaves thee, which holds thee when the mountains tremble
and moons are extinguished. Wherever thou may'st be, thou art with
Him, and He with thee. He is the eternally near, and His is the world
with its flowers and thorns, His is man with his joys and sorrows.
"The least important thing does not happen except as God wills it."

With such thoughts I went on my way. At one time, all was well with
me; at another, troubled; for even when we have found rest and peace in