“To be required to accept your past is most unpleasant.  Perhaps the society with which I was surrounded did not afford a being that unified with mine own.  And I have faith that there are spiritual laws beneath all this outward framework of sight and sense, which will, if rightly believed in and trusted, lead to the goal of eternal life, harmony of being, and union with God.  So I accept my being led here.  Am I superstitious or egoistic in believing this?  This is, no doubt, disputed territory.  Have we any objective rule to compare our faith with which would give us the measure of our superstition?  How much of to-day would have seemed miraculous or superstitious to the past?  I confess I have no rule or measure to judge the faith of any man.

“The past is always the state of infancy.  The present is an eternal youth, aspiring after manhood; hoping wistfully, intensely desiring, listfully listening, dimly seeing the bright star of hope in the future, beckoning him to move rapidly on, while his strong heart beats with enthusiasm and glowing joy.  The past is dead.  Wish me not the dead from the grave, for that would be death re-enacted. . . .

“Oh, were our wishes in harmony with heaven, how changed would be the scenes of our life! . . .  This accordance would be music which only the angels now hear—­too delicate for beings such as we are at present.  List! hast thou not heard in some bright moment a strain from heaven’s angelic choirs?  Oh, yes!  In our sleep the angels have whispered such rich music, and the soul being then passive, we can hear.  And the pleasure does not leave us when passion and thought take their accustomed course.

“O man! were thy soul more pure, what a world would open to thy inner senses!  There would be no moment of thy existence but would be filled with the music of love.  The prophet said:  ’In that day my eyes were opened.’  And behold what he saw!  He saw it.  Could we but hear!  The word of the Lord is ever speaking—­alas! where is one that can hear?  Where are our Isaiahs, our Ezekiels, our Jeremiahs?  Oh! thou shrunken-visaged, black, hollow-eyed doubt! hast thou passed like a cloud over men’s souls, making them blind, deaf and dumb?  Ah, ha! dost thou shudder?  I chant thy requiem, and prophets, poets, and seers shall rise again!  I see them coming.  Great heaven!  Earth shall be again a paradise, and God converse with men!”

The next entry is undated, but it was probably made on the last day of May.  It has served to fix the proximate time of the illness and disquiet which led to his first withdrawal from business and home.