Christ illustrates the purport of life as He descends from His transfiguration to toil, and goes forward to exchange that robe of heavenly brightness for the crown of thorns.

The excellence and inspiration of truth is in the pursuit, not in the mere having of it. The pursuit of all truth is a kind of gymnastics; a man swings from one truth with higher strength to gain another. The continual glory is the possibility opening before us.

It is not death to have the body called back to the earth, and dissolved into its kindred elements, and mouldered to dust, and, it may be, turn to daisies, in the grave. But it is death to have the soul paralyzed, its inner life quenched, its faculties dissipated; that is death.

Can you conceive of anything that so represents the glory, and truth, and marvelousness of God's nature as the idea of peace?

Hill and valley, seas and constellations, are but stereotypes of divine ideas appealing to and answered by the living soul of man.

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.

The universe is a vast system of exchange. Every artery of it is in motion, throbbing with reciprocity, from the planet to the rotting leaf. The vapor climbs the sunbeam, and comes back in blessings upon the exhausted herb. The exhalation of the plant is wafted to the ocean. And so goes on the beautiful commerce of nature. And all because of dissimilarity--because no one thing is sufficient in itself, but calls for the assistance of something else, and repays by a contribution in turn.