powers in the dawn of creation; how slowly they mastered the simplest facts and phenomena of life in and around them, how slowly they expanded, through the intervening centuries, to their present development.  The mind is the central personage in the trinity of man’s being; linking the mortal and immortal to its life and action; vitalising the body with intelligence, until every vein, muscle, and nerve, and function thrills and moves to the impulse of thought; vitalising the soul with the vigorous activities of reason, giving hands as well as wings to its hopes, faiths, loves, and aspirations; giving a faculty of speech, action, and influence to each, and play to all the tempers and tendencies of its moral nature.  Thus all the influences that the mind could inhale from the material world through man’s physical being, and all it could draw out of the depths of Divine revelation, were the dew and the light which it was its mission to bring to the fostering, growth, and glory of the human soul.  These were man’s means wherewith to shape it for its great destiny; these he was to bring to its training and expansion; with these he was to co-work with the Infinite Father of Spirits to fit it for His presence and fellowship, just as he co-works with Nature in developing the latent life and faculties of the rose.  What distillations of spiritual influence have dropped down out of heaven, through the ages, to help onward this joint work!  What histories of human experience have come in the other direction to the same end!—­fraught with the emotions of the human heart, from the first sin and sorrow of Adam to our own griefs, hopes, and joys; and all so many lessons for the discipline of this high-born nature with us!

And yet how slow and almost imperceptible has been the development of this nature!  How gently and gradually the expanding influences, human and divine, have been let in upon its latent faculties!  See with what delicate fostering the petals of love, faith, and hope were taught to open, little by little, their hidden life and beauty,—­taking Moses’ history of the process.  First, one human being on the earth, surrounded with beasts and birds that could give him no intelligent companionship and no fellow-feeling.  Then the beautiful being created to meet these awakening yearnings of his nature; then the first outflow and interchange of human love.  The narrative brings us to the next stage of the sentiment.  Sin and sorrow afflict, but unite, both hearts in the saddest experience of humanity.  They are driven out of the Eden of their first condition, but their very sufferings and fears re-Eden their mutual attachments in the very thorns of their troubles and sorrows.  Then another being, of their own flesh, heir to their changed lot, and to these attachments, is added to their companionship.  The first child’s face that heaven or earth ever saw, opened its baby eyes on them and smiled in the light of their parental love.  The history goes on.  In process of