Part 11

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"We had letters to send; couriers could not go fast enough, not far enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in spring, snowdrifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a walk.

"But we found out that the air and earth were full of Electricity, and always going our way--just the way we wanted to send. Would he take a message? Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred one staggering objection--he had no carpet bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much thought and many experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the letter in such invisible, compact form as he could carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread--and it went like a charm.

"Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chores done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing."

With his wonderful insight into conditions, Emerson thus expresses a provision of conditions that are now being realized to an even greater degree than he consciously knew, although he unconsciously foretold them. Now it is wireless telegraphy that is the ultimate fulfilment of what he saw,--the method that will reduce to practical realization his counsel to hitch one's wagon to a star, and "see his chores done by the gods themselves."

It is not only humanity--civilization--the onward sweep and march by the progress of the world, but the individual life also that can take advantage of "the might of the elements." The one irresistible element is the power of will, the power that results from the perfect uniting of the human will with the divine will. People talk of fate, and conditions, and burdens, and limitations. They are all merely negative, and are easily and instantly subject to the infinite and irresistible potency of the will brought to bear upon them.

On the threshold of any endeavor when one takes account of his possessions and conditions,--material and immaterial; when he again, from a new vantage ground, surveys his future, it is his salvation and success to realize the depth and height of his own personal power over his own life.

"There are points from which we may command our life, When the soul sweeps the future like a glass, And coming things, full freighted with our fate, Jut out on the dark offing of the mind."

But when these points appear they must be taken advantage of at the moment. They are the result of an occultation of events that may never occur again within the limits of a lifetime. The swift intuition that leaps over all conceivable processes is the heaven-appointed monitor. It is the divine voice speaking. It is the word which must be obeyed. When one

"... by the Vision splendid Is on his way attended,"

he must give heed to the vision or it vanishes and returns no more.

We need a new, a deeper, a far more practical realization that the ideals and visions which flash before us are the real mechanism of life; that they are the working model by which one is to pattern his experience, in outward selection and in grouping by means of his own force of will. Somewhere has Emerson said,--

"All is waste and worthless till Arrives the wise selecting will,"

which is, to the potential circumstances, like a magnet introduced among filings that suddenly attracts to itself and draws all into related and orderly groups. Circumstances are thus amenable to the power of will brought to bear that selects, arranges, combines, after the pattern of the revealed ideal held in view.

Each individual life may "borrow the might of the elements." Man is created, not only in the image of God, but with God-like faculties and potency, which, if he but truly relate them to the divine potency, if he unite his will with God's will, there is then no limit, no bound to that which he may achieve.

In one of the most wonderful creations of Vedder, the artist shows us the figure of a woman whose eyes are closed, and whose hands, lying in her lap, are inextricably entangled amid crewels and threads that bind and hold them. But one sees, also, that she has but to open her eyes, and lift her hands, and all the entanglement would fall off of itself. The picture offers the most typical lesson of life. All imprisonment of conditions is dissolved into thin air the instant one impresses his own will-power on the affairs and circumstances of his life. He can do that which he desires to do. The desire has only to be intensified into conscious, intelligent choice, into absolute will,--and all the minor barriers melt away and are no more. Every life may hitch its wagon to a star. It may borrow the might of the elements. It has but to resolve to hold its ideal firmly and clearly in mind, and it will then be realized as the sculptor's dream in clay is realized in the marble. "All things are yours," said Saint Paul. One has but to take his own; to wisely and clearly select the elements and combine them by that irresistible potency of mental magnetism and energy.

THE POWER OF THE EXALTED MOMENT.

"The salvation of Christ is the complete occupation of the human life by the divine life."

It is in our best moments, not in our worst moments, that we are most truly ourselves. Oh believe in your noblest impulses, in your purest instincts, in your most unworldly and spiritual thoughts! You see man most truly when he seems to you to be made for the best things. You see your true self when you believe that the best and purest and devoutest moment which ever came to you is only the suggestion of what you were meant to be and might be all the time. Believe that, O children of God! This is the way in which a soul lives forever in the light which first began to burn around it when it was with Jesus in the Holy Mount.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.

The power of the exalted moment is the very motor of human life. The exalted moment is the dynamo that generates the working energy. The moment itself fades; it passes into the region of memory where its true service is to shine, with the unfailing continuance of radium, as a perpetual illumination of life. It is the greatest, the saddest, the most hopelessly fatal error that can be made,--to cast away from one the exalted moment because it has not fulfilled itself in outer condition and circumstance. Vision and prophecy are given by God for a working model, which the long patient days--days of monotony, of trial, of commonplace work under commonplace conditions, amid commonplace people and events--are yet to fashion and fulfil. These are the material,--the ordinary events, the commonplace daily duty. The perplexity of problems rather than the clear grasping of their significance; the misunderstanding and the misconstruction of motive that make the tragedy of life; the interpretation of evil where one only meant all that was true, and sympathetic, and appreciative, and holy; the torture and trial, where should be only sweetness of spirit and true recognition,--of all these are the days made; all these are a part of "the flowing conditions of life," which it is the business, the responsibility, the personal duty, to transmute into noble living, into poetry and ecstasy and exaltation, and into that perfect faith in God that can truly say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Though He slay all that made life seem worth the living; the enchantment, the response of sympathy; recognition rather than misconstruction,--though all these be obscured in what may seem a total eclipse,--still let one not forget "The Gleam;" still let one keep faith with the power of the exalted moment. It came from God and held its deep significance. It laid upon its beholder consecration of divinest aspiration and unfaltering effort. "If I could uncover the hearts of you who are listening to me this morning," said Phillips Brooks, in a memorable sermon, "I should find in almost all--perhaps in all--of them a sacred chamber where burns the bright memory of some loftiest moment, some supreme experience, which is your transfiguration time. Once on a certain morning you felt the glory of living, and the misery of life has never since that been able quite to take possession of your soul. Once for a few days you knew the delight of a perfect friendship. Once you saw for an inspired instant the idea of your profession blaze out of the midst of its dull drudgery. Once, just for a glorious moment, you saw the very truth, and believed it, without the shadow of a cloud. And so the question comes,--What do they mean? What value shall I give to those transformation experiences?"

On the personal answer to that question depends all the success or the failure; all the nobleness or the unworthiness of the individual life. No one can estimate too ardently, or too earnestly, the spiritual salvation of keeping faith with the exalted moment,--

"Delayed, it may be, for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse--not a few, With much to learn and much to forget"--

ere the golden hour of fulfilment shall come; but faith in the exalted moment is but another name for faith in God.

The great truth of life--that which we may well hold as its central and controlling and dominating truth--is that "our best moments are not departures from ourselves, but are really the only moments in which we have truly been ourselves." These moments flash upon the horizon of the soul and vanish; they image themselves before us as in vision, and fade; but the fact of their appearance is its own proof of their deep reality. They are the substance compared with which all the lower and lesser experiences are mere phantasmagoria.

And this fulfilment is not found, but made. It is a spiritual achievement. So let one not reject, or ignore, or be despairing before undreamed-of, unexplained, and incomprehensible forms of trial, but know that it is trial that worketh patience; know that "no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby."

"It was given unto me," wrote Dante in the Vita Nuova, "to behold a very wonderful vision; wherein I saw things that determined me."

It may be given to any one at any time to behold the vision. Circumstances are fluidic and impressionable, and take on any form that the mental power has achieved sufficient strength to stamp, and because of this--which is the explanation of the outward phenomena whose significance, on the spiritual side, is all condensed in prayer--one need never despond or despair. At any instant he can so unite his own will with the divine will that new combinations of event and circumstance will appear in his life. A writer on this line of thought has recently said:--

"There is an elemental essence--a strange living essence--which surrounds us on every side, and which is singularly susceptible to the influence of human thought.