I have often dwelt upon the lines of Wordsworth:
“To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
I have often wished to hear a sermon arguing from this thought the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The peculiar nature of the soul, that transmutes sensation into divine emotion—a sweetness, longing, and reverence that are not of earth—is it not suggestive of all that is claimed by religious faith? Wordsworth rightly ascribed a dwarfed nature to him who sees only meaningless form and dull color in the flower:
“A primrose by a river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.”
That education is inadequate which ignores the value of man’s æsthetic nature and neglects its growth.
PROGRESS AS REALIZATION.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly.”