But great and beneficent as are these blessings, they are not the only certitudes, nor are they the greatest.  An outward life of ease and comfort is not the chief end of man.  The interests of the soul are more important than any comforts of the body.  The higher life is only reached by lofty contemplation on the true, the beautiful, and the good.  Subjective wisdom is worth more than objective knowledge.  What are the great realities,—­machinery, new breeds of horses, carpets, diamonds, mirrors, gas? or are they affections, friendships, generous impulses, inspiring thoughts?  Look to Socrates:  what raised that barefooted, ugly-looking, impecunious, persecuted, cross-questioning, self-constituted teacher, without pay, to the loftiest pedestal of Athenian fame?  What was the spirit of the truths he taught?  Was it objective or subjective truth; the way to become rich and comfortable, or the search for the indefinite, the infinite, the eternal,—­Utopia, not Middlesex,—­that which fed the wants of the immaterial soul, and enabled it to rise above temptation and vulgar rewards?  What raised Plato to the highest pinnacle of intellectual life?  Was it definite and practical knowledge of outward phenomena; or was it “a longing after love, in the contemplation of which the mortal soul sustains itself, and becomes participant in the glories of immortality”?  What were realities to Anselm, Bernard, and Bonaventura?  What gave beauty and placidity to Descartes and Leibnitz and Kant?  It may be very dignified for a modern savant to sit serenely on his tower of observation, indifferent to all the lofty speculations of the great men of bygone ages; yet those profound questions pertaining to the [Greek text omitted] and the [Greek text omitted], which had such attractions for Augustine and Pascal and Calvin, did have as real bearing on human life and on what is best worth knowing, as the scales of a leuciscus cephalus or the limbs of a magnified animalculus, or any of the facts of which physical science can boast.  The wonders of science are great, but so also are the secrets of the soul, the mysteries of the spiritual life, the truths which come from divine revelation.  Whatever most dignifies humanity, and makes our labors sweet, and causes us to forget our pains, and kindles us to lofty contemplations, and prompts us to heroic sacrifice, is the most real and the most useful.  Even the leaves of a barren and neglected philosophy may be in some important respects of more value than all the boasted fruit of utilitarian science.  Is that which is most useful always the most valuable,—­that, I mean, which gives the highest pleasure?  Do we not plant our grounds with the acacia, the oak, the cedar, the elm, as well as with the apple, the pear, and the cherry?  Are not flowers and shrubs which beautify the lawn as desirable as beans and turnips and cabbages?  Is not the rose or tulip as great an addition to even a poor man’s cottage as