and of all the changes of the material universe.

Surely you have seen such. And surely what you loved in them was the
Spirit of God Himself,--that love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, which the natural savage man has not. Has not,
I say, look at him where you will, from the tropics to the pole,
because it is a gift above man; the gift of the Spirit of God; the
Eternal Life of goodness, which natural birth cannot give to man, nor
natural death take away.

You have surely seen such persons--if you have not, _I_ have, thank
God, full many a time;--but if you have seen them, did you not see
this?--That it was not riches which gave them this Life, if they were
rich; or intellect, if they were clever; or science, if they were
learned; or rank, if they were cultivated; or bodily organization, if
they were beautiful and strong: that this noble and gentle life of
theirs was independent of their body, of their mind, of their
circumstances? Nay, have you not seen this,--_I_ have, thank God,
full many a time,--That not many rich, not many mighty, not many
noble are called: but that God's strength is rather made perfect in
man's weakness,--that in foul garrets, in lonely sick-beds, in dark
places of the earth, you find ignorant people, sickly people, ugly
people, stupid people, in spite of, in defiance of, every opposing
circumstance, leading heroic lives,--a blessing, a comfort, an
example, a very Fount of Life to all around them; and dying heroic
deaths, because they know they have Eternal Life?

And what was that which had made them different from the mean, the
savage, the drunken, the profligate beings around them? This at
least. That they were of those of whom it is written, 'Let him that