hands,--else he becomes repugnant. But
virtue as we understand it now can no more
have any special relation to the state beyond
that to which we are limited than any other
part of our constitution. Spirit is not a gas
created by matter, and we cannot create our
future by forcibly using one material agent
and leaving out the rest. Spirit is the great life
on which matter rests, as does the rocky world
on the free and fluid ether; whenever we can
break our limitations we find ourselves on that
marvellous shore where Wordsworth once saw
the gleam of the gold. When we enter there
all the present must disappear alike,--virtue
and vice, thought and sense. That a man reaps
what he has sown must of course be true also;
he has no power to carry virtue, which is of the
material life, with him; yet the aroma of his
good deeds is a far sweeter sacrifice than the
odor of crime and cruelty. Yet it may be,
however, that by the practice of virtue he will
fetter himself into one groove, one changeless
fashion of life in matter, so firmly that it is
impossible for the mind to conceive that death
is a sufficient power to free him, and cast him
upon the broad and glorious ocean,--a sufficient
power to undo for him the inexorable
and heavy latch of the Golden Gate. And
sometimes the man who has sinned so deeply
that his whole nature is scarred and blackened