world he has the same key. When the voice of a prophet
out of the deeps of antiquity merely echoes to him a
sentiment of his infancy, a prayer of his youth, he then
pierces to the truth through all the confusion of
tradition and the caricature of institutions.

Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at intervals, who
disclose to us new facts in nature. I see that men of
God have from time to time walked among men and made
their commission felt in the heart and soul of the
commonest hearer. Hence evidently the tripod, the
priest, the priestess inspired by the divine afflatus.

Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They
cannot unite him to history, or reconcile him with
themselves. As they come to revere their intuitions
and aspire to live holily, their own piety explains
every fact, every word.

How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster,
of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate themselves in the
mind. I cannot find any antiquity in them. They are
mine as much as theirs.

I have seen the first monks and anchorets, without
crossing seas or centuries. More than once some
individual has appeared to me with such negligence of
labor and such commanding contemplation, a haughty
beneficiary begging in the name of God, as made good
to the nineteenth century Simeon the Stylite, the