In order to indicate this more vividly, let us suppose that there is
no other condition necessary to the glory of human nature and the
world,--let us suppose that no other provision has been made, and that
the age is to go on developing only in this one direction,--what a
dreary grandeur would soon surround us! As icebergs floating in an
Arctic sea are splendid, so would be these ponderous and glistering
works. As the gilded and crimsoned cliffs of snow beautify the Polar
day, so would these achievements beautify the present day. But expect no
life, no joy, no soul, amid such ice-bound circumstances as these. The
tropical heart must congeal and die; its luxuriant fruits can never
spring up. The earth must lie sepulchred under its own magnificence; and
the divinest feelings of the spirit, floating upward in the instinct of
a higher life, but benumbed by the frigid air, and rebuked by the leaden
sky, must fall back like clouds of frozen vapor upon the soul: and "so
shall its thoughts perish."

It would be a gloomy picture to paint, if one could for a moment imagine
that intellectual power and material success were all that enter into
the development of the race. For if there is no other capacity, and no
other field in which at least an equal commission to achieve is given,
and for which equal arrangements have been made by the Providence that
orders all, then the soul must soon be smothered, society dismembered,
and human nature ruined.

But this very fact, which we purposely put in these strong colors,
proves that there must be another and greater element, another and
higher faculty, another and wider department, likewise under express and
secret conditions of success. It shall come to pass, as the development
goes on, that this other will become the foremost and all-important,