Part 15
Here, then, the argument lies in manageable shape before us. It is true we only see a small portion of humanity, as it has yet been drawn out; but just as mathematicians can determine, from any three given points, the nature of the curve to which they belong, so we have enough indications to guide us to a conclusion respecting the character of our race. In every department of our nature, save our perishable bodies, we find something which seems to point beyond our threescore years and ten,--something inconsistent with the hypothesis that those years complete our intended existence. Our busy intellects, persistently wrestling with the mysteries of eternity; our human affections craving for undying love; our sense of justice, born of no past experience of a reign of Astrea, but resolutely prophesying, _in spite_ of experience, a perfect judgment hereafter; the measureless meaning which moral distinctions carry to our consciences; the unutterable longing of our spirits for union (not wholly unattained even here) with the living God, the Father of spirits,--all these things seem to show that we are built, so to speak, on a larger scale than that of our earthly life. The foundations are too deep and wide, the corner-stones are by far too massive, if nothing but the Tabernacle of a day be the design of the Architect. In brief, then, we may admit freely that, for aught we know, “God could not give to a triangle the properties of a circle,” and yet, nevertheless, hold our faith undisturbed, since we find that the line which His hand has actually drawn _is a_ CURVE _already_,--a few degrees of the circumference of a stupendous circle.
[37] There is an insect, the Lunar Sphinx Moth, which exhibits, in its first stage, not only the usual prevision for its security while in the helpless chrysalis state, but a singular foresight of its own requirements when it shall have become a winged moth. Having made, by eating its way _upward_ through the pith of a willow, an appropriate hiding-place, it finds itself with its head in a position in which, were it to become a moth, it could never push itself down, and escape at the aperture below. The little creature accordingly, before it goes to sleep, laboriously turns round, and places its head near the entrance, where, as a moth, it will make its happy exit into the fields of air. There seems something curiously akin in the unaccountable foresight of this insect, of a state of existence it has never experienced, and the vague and dim sentiment of immortality, common to mankind since the days of the cave-dwellers of the Stone Age.
“_A VERITABLE HAND-BOOK OF NOBLE LIVING._”
THE DUTIES OF WOMEN.
A COURSE OF LECTURES
By FRANCES POWER COBBE.
CRITICAL NOTICES.
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A YEAR OF MIRACLE.
A Poem in Four Sermons.
BY WILLIAM C. GANNETT.
CONTENTS.
=1. Treasures of the Snow.= =2. Resurrection.= =3. Flowers.= =4. The Harvest Secret.=
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Transcriber’s Notes
Page 91: “consummation of nonenity” changed to “consummation of nonentity”
Page 127: In the footnote, “performed her tasl” changed to “performed her task”