for our true selves, for heart and mind, for powers that lie dormant in
the lowest, and are not stirred into full action in the highest, souls;
for all that universe of realities which encompass us undisclosed, and
known only by faint murmurs which pierce through the opiate sleep of
life, the end shall be an awaking.

The truth which corresponds to this metaphor, and which David felt when
he said, 'I shall be satisfied when I awake,' is that the spirit,
because emancipated from the body, shall spring into greater intensity
of action, shall put forth powers that have been held down here and
shall come into contact with an order of things which here it has but
indirectly known. To our true selves and to God we shall wake. Here we
are like men asleep in some chamber that looks towards the eastern sky.
Morning by morning comes the sunrise, with the tender glory of its rosy
light and blushing heavens, and the heavy eyes are closed to it all.
Here and there some lighter sleeper, with thinner eyelids or face turned
to the sun, is half conscious of a vague brightness, and feels the
light, though he sees not the colours of the sky nor the forms of the
filmy clouds. Such souls are our saints and prophets, but most of us
sleep on unconscious. To us all the moment comes when we shall wake and
see for ourselves the bright and terrible world which we have so often
forgotten, and so often been tempted to think was itself a dream.
Brethren, see to it that that awaking be for you the beholding of what
you have loved, the finding, in the sober certainty of waking bliss, of
all the objects which have been your visions of delight in the sleep of
earth.

This life of ours hides more than it reveals. The day shows the sky as
solitary but for wandering clouds that cover its blue emptiness. But the
night peoples its waste places with stars, and fills all its abysses