Favorite Songs and Hymns For School and Home, page: 0340

450 Of The World's Best Songs And Hymns, With Lyrics & Sheet music for voice & piano.

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	Hull in this book which I was reading when yon so kindly came to see me, are withered flowers, which I have gathered in my rambles and keep as friends and companions of pleasant places, streams and meadows, and of some who have been with me, and now are not There is one, this single yellow flower�what is it, that, as I hold it, makes me think of it as I do ? Faded flowers have something, to me, miraculous and supernatural about them: though, in fact, it is nothing wonderful that the texture of a flower being dried survives. It is not in the flower, but in our immortal spirit that the miracle is. All these delightful thoughts that come into my mind when I look at this flower�thoughts and fan�cies, and memories�what are they but the result of the alchemy of the immortal spirit, which takes all the pleasant, fragile things of life, and transmutes them into immortality in our own nature! And if the poor spirit and intellect of man can do this, how much more may	the supreme creative intellect mould and form all things, and bring the presence of the supernatural face to face with us in our daily walk! Earth becomes to us, if we thus think, nothing but the garden of the Lord, and every fellow-being we meet and see tn it, a beautiful and invited guest; and, as I think, I remember many of the heathen poets, after their manner, have said very fine things about this; that we should rise cheerfully from this life, as a grateful guest rises from an abundant feast; and though doubtless they were very dark and mistaken, yet I confess they always seemed to me to have something of a close and entire fellowship with the wants of men, which I think the Saviour would have approved. If you, sir, can receive this mystery, and go through the honorable path of life which lies before you, looking upon yourself as an immortal spirit walk�ing among supernatural things�for the natural things of this life would be nothing were they not moved and
	LORD, DISMISS US WITH THY BLESSING.		W. Sitmunr, 1774. Sicilian Mariners' Htm*."
	animated by the efficacy of that which is above nature� I think you may find this doctrine a light which will guide your feet in dark places; and it would seem, un�less I am mistaken, that this habit of mind is very likely to lead to the blessedness of the Beatific Vision of God, on the quest of which you have happily entered so young; for surely it should lead to that state to which this vision is promised�the state of those who are Pure in Heart For if it be true, that the reason we see not God is the grossness of this tabernacle wherein the soul is incased, then the more and the oftener we recognize the supernatural in our ordinary life, and not only ex�pect and find it in those rare and short moments of de�votion and prayer, the more, surely, the rays of the Divine Light will shine through the dark glass of this outward form of life, and the more our own spirit will he enlightened and purified by it until we come to that	likeness to the Divine Nature, and that purity of heart to which a share of the Beatific Vision is promised, and which, as some teach, can be attained by being abstract from the body and the bodily life. As we see every day that the supernatural in some men gives a particular brightness of air to the countenance, and makes the face to shine with an inimitable lustre, and if it be true that in the life to come we shall have to see through a body and a glass however transparent, we may well practisa our eyes by making this life spiritual, as we shall have also to strive to do in that to which we go. My pre�decessor, doubtless a very worthy man (for I knew him not), has left it recorded on his tombstone�as I will show you in the church�that he was " full of cares and full of years, of neither weary, but full of hope and of heaven.'' I should desire that it may be faithfully re�corded of me that I was the same 1�"John Inglesant."