My whole, complete destination, I do not comprehend.  What I am called to be and shall be, surpasses all my thought.  A part of this destination is yet hidden to me, visible only to him, the Father of Spirits, to whom it is committed.  I know only that it is secured to me, and that it is eternal and glorious as himself.  But that portion of it which is committed to me, I know.  I know it entirely, and it is the root of all my other knowledge.  I know, in every moment of my life, with certainty, what I am to do in that moment.  And this is my whole destination, so far as it depends upon me.  From this, since my knowledge goes no farther, I must not depart.  I must not desire to know anything beyond it.  I must stand fast in this one centre, and take root in it.  All my scheming and striving, and all my faculty, must be directed to that.  My whole existence must inweave itself with it.

* * * * *

I raise myself to this viewpoint, and am a new creature.  My whole relation to the existing world is changed.  The threads by which my mind was heretofore bound to this world, and by whose mysterious traction it followed all the movements of this world, are forever severed, and I stand free—­myself, my own world, peaceful and unmoved.  No longer with the heart, with the eye alone, I seize the objects about me, and, through the eye alone, am connected with them.  And this eye itself, made clearer by freedom, looks through error and deformity to the true and the beautiful; as, on the unmoved surface of the water, forms mirror themselves pure and with a softened light.

My mind is forever closed against embarrassment and confusion, against doubt and anxiety; my heart is forever closed against sorrow, and remorse, and desire.  There is but one thing that I care to know:  What I must do; and this I know, infallibly, always.  Concerning all besides I know nothing, and I know that I know nothing; and I root myself fast in this my ignorance, and forbear to conjecture, to opine, to quarrel with myself concerning that of which I know nothing.  No event in this world can move me to joy, and none to sorrow.  Cold and unmoved I look down upon them all; for I know that I cannot interpret one of them, nor discern its connection with that which is my only concern.  Everything which takes place belongs to the plan of the eternal world, and is good in relation to that plan; so much I know.  But what, in that plan, is pure gain, and what is only meant to remove existing evil, accordingly what I should most or least rejoice in, I know not.  In his world everything succeeds.  This suffices me, and in this faith I stand firm as a rock.  But what in his world is only germ, what blossom, what the fruit itself, I know not.  The only thing which can interest me is the progress of reason and morality in the kingdom of rational beings—­and that purely for its own sake, for the sake of the progress.  Whether I am the instrument of