suffering, and death, --alas! For the great world at large,
waiting at the foot of the hill -the groups of humanity in
all ages; -- the sin-possessed sufferers -- the caviling
skeptics; the philosophers, with their books and instruments;
the bereaved and frantic mourners in their need!

So, my hearers, wrapped in the higher moods of the soul, and
wishing to abide among upper glories, we may not see the work
that waits for us along our daily path; without doing which
all our visions are vain. We must have the visions., We need
them in our estimate of the world around us, --of the aspects
and destinies of humanity. There are times when justice is
balked, and truth covered up, and freedom trampled down; --
when we may well be tempted to ask, "What is the use of
trying to work?" --when we may well inquire whether what-we
are doing is work at all. And in such a case, or in any
other, one is lifted up, and inspired, and enabled to do and
to endure all things, when in steady vision he beholds the
everliving God, --when all around the injustice, and
conflict, and suffering of the world, he detects the Divine
Presence, like a bright cloud overshadowing. O! then doubt
melts away, and wrong dwindles, and the jubilee of victorious
falsehood is but a peal of drunken laughter, and the
spittings of guilt and contempt no more than flakes of foam
flung against a hero's breast-plate. Then one sees, as it
were, with the vision of God, who looked down upon the old
cycles, when a sweltering waste covered the face of the
globe, and huge, reptile natures held it in dominion; -- who
beholds the pulpy worm, down in the sea, building the pillars
of continents; --so one sees the principalities of evil