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does it need almost nothing, a word, a gesture, a little thing that is not even a thought. 'Before, I loved thee as a brother, John,' says one of Shakespeare's heroes, admiring the other's action, 'but now I do respect thee as my soul.' On that day it is probably that a being will have come into the world.

We can be born thus more than once; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God. But most of us are content to wait till an event, charged with almost irresistible radiance, intrudes itself violently upon our darkness, and enlightens us, in our despite. We await I know not what happy coincidence, when it may so come about that the eyes of our soul shall be open at the very moment that something extraordinary takes place. But in everything that happens is there light; and the greatness of the greatest of men has but consisted in that they had trained their