It is in keeping with such an aspiration that this and kindred natures should perceive in Christianity the sacred mystery from which is to be drawn, in the world to come, the full fruition of the tenderest and most vital impulse of the human heart, and therefore to be most fitly meditated and vividly anticipated in cloistered seclusion.  Throughout their revelations there is a yearning for Infinite Love; and ardent receptivity is regarded as the true condition for the conception and enjoyment of religion.  It is clear that they have a passion, sublimated and glorified indeed, but still a passion, for Christ.  This is the mightiest impulse to that exaltation of His person against which the calm and consummate reasoner contends in vain.  Truly we are fearfully and wonderfully made!  The soul is touched with the strong necessity of loving; and its power becomes intense and inappeasable in proportion to the capacity of the heart; and yet some of the greatest of those have reposed so supremely in the innate and ineffable Ideal that to the uninitiated they have seemed in their serenity as pulseless as pearls.  Through this sublime influence lovely women have become nuns, and have lived and died saints, that they might continually indulge and constantly cherish the blissful hope of being, in some spiritual form, the brides of Jesus.  A long line of these, coeval with the Crucifixion, have passed on in maiden meditation, and so were fancy-free from all of mortal mould.  This ecstatic dreaming is so charming, and so insatiable withal, that it seems to those who entertain it a divine vision.  It is an enchantment so complete that Reason cannot penetrate its circle, and Logic has never approached it.  Doubtless this fond aspiration finds freest and fairest expression in the Roman Church,—­a communion that not only encourages, but enjoins, the adoration of the Virgin, in order that certain enthusiasts among men may also aspire to the skies on the wings of pure, yet passionate love.

The ready objection to this course of life is that it leads to solitude.  It wins the devotee apart, and away from the influences to that universal brotherhood whereto Philanthropy fondly turns as the finest manifestation of the spirit of the Redeemer.  And yet they are equally the fruits of His coming.  Without the perfect Man the sublimest endurance and most marvellous aspiration of Hope would never have found development below.  Now it has become a power that so pervades the bosoms of sects that they accept its soaring wing as one to which the heaven of heavens is open.  This, certainly, is the greatest triumph that human nature has achieved over those who have systematically depreciated it; inasmuch as it is a heightening, not a change of heart.  Verily, Love is stronger than Death; and in its complete presence or utter absence, here or hereafter, there is and will be the extreme of bliss or bale.  Therefore it is in the affections to lead those sweetly and swiftly heavenward who singly