joys that, in them, can be experienced?  To give a full expression to the utmost intelligence, potency, amiability, purity, meritoriousness and majesty that can reside in the capability—­rooms of a human soul—­would be equivalent to picturing the imaginable or to portraying the infinite, and to do either the one or the other is impossible.  One may be sadly indifferent to the value of his soul’s foremost capabilities, may inadequately exercise them, and may secure to them merely a dwarf-like compass; but there is never a time when they can not be made to transcend the limits of development to which they have attained.  Their possessor can educate them forever.  He can unceasingly add to their roominess and resource.  In all time to come he can cause them to continue to exceed breadth after breadth.  Oh, who can conceive how great his mental being is able to become?  Who can comprehend how elevated a life it is possible for him to live?  Who can be liable to overrate the vastness of the destiny for which he was created?

In the language of Hughes, “Our case is like that of a traveler on the Alps, who should fancy that the top of the next hill must end his journey because it terminates his prospect, but he no sooner arrives at it, than he sees new ground and other hills beyond it, and continues to travel on as before.”  The thought of the soul’s improvability is well adapted to quicken torpid virtue and to revive drooping aspirations.  It tends to scatter the gloom resulting from disappointed endeavors.  Let it but have a star-like clearness in the mind, and there will spring from it an ever-new interest in life and being.

We know that the paths of usefulness and affection must sometimes be strewn with smitten leaves and faded bloom, and that the heart must sometimes be chilled by harsh changes, even as the face of nature is chilled by rude winds.  We know that we are doomed to find thorns in roses, and to suffer from “thorns in the flesh.”  We know that there are for us hours when the sunshine without must be darkened by shadows within; when we must be pierced by trials; when we must be humbled by afflictions.  Yet, so we but duly know our mental possibilities, how much there is to animate us and to make us hopeful.  Well may we go our way, with a high ambition and with good cheer.  Well may we prize, as a stage of action, this old stone-ribbed earth, whereon we can behold the beauty of emerald meadows and of blossoming plants, and can hear the songs of russet-bosomed robins and the prattle of children, the voice of the vernal breeze, and the sound of the summer rain.  Oh, who that ever muses on the soul’s heirship to the divine, can wish he had never been born?  I am grateful for my existence.  I rejoice that I have place amid the bright-robed mysteries which surround me.  I glory in the shifting scenery of the seasons.  No flaw do I find in the sun, the moon, or the stars.  No prayer have I to make that the grass which grows at my feet may be