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nature. Adam and Eve outgrew the walls of Eden—how soon! The highest harp in heaven jars with the same discord, of the same amount in proportion to its grade. The giant is at Gabriel's elbow as he is at yours: his grade is higher, but is still a grade,—and had it been his first grade be were as uneasy in it as you are in yours.—The point we start from matters nothing, and neither does the speed; so neither does the steepness of the ascent. You may object, "That it is because the plane of our life here would ascend as it were too few inches to the foot, that we should cease to feel the ascent. But set it perpendicular, and give us lightning speed; let us feel in an hour the joys of youth, the first dawn of love, the excitements of passion and ambition, and the triumph over death: let the Almighty tax his strength to lift us, and we should be happy." This is an error in logic, and a presumption in defiance of experience. Doubtless in memory of your past experience, now, such a rate would please you for a time; but it were only because of your past experience,—and time would as surely balance you into a monotony of consciousness as hopeless and barren as that we first supposed, as it would in a grade whose speed and ascent were but as from our lowest misery to our highest joy in thirty years.
See you not an object in the slowness of our ascent? It is that we may learn all, truly, surely, and well,—learn that the universe is full. Such is the expansive force of the soul that, two truths being presented, a greater and a lesser, the lesser will be slighted for the greater. Give us a series of truths,—the soul