I believe in a future age yet to be revealed, which is to be distinguished from all others as the godly or godlike age,--an age not of universal education simply, or universal philanthropy, or external freedom, or political well-being, but a day of reciprocity and free intimacy between all souls and God. Learning and religion, the scholar and the Christian, will not be divided as they have been. The universities will be filled with a profound spirit of religion, and the _bene orâsse_ will be a fountain of inspiration to all the investigations of study and the creations of genius. I raise this expectation of the future, not because some prophet of old time has spoken of a day to come when "the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof" (for I know not that he meant to be so interpreted), but because I find a prophecy of play in our nature itself which it were a violation of all insight not to believe will sometime be fulfilled. And when it is fulfilled it will be found that Christianity has at last developed a new literary era, the era of religious love. Hitherto the passion of love has been the central fire of the world's literature. The dramas, epics, odes, novels, and even histories, have spoken to the world's heart chiefly through this passion, and through this have been able to get their answer. For this passion is a state of play, wherein the man loses himself in the ardor of a devotion regardless of interest, fear, care, prudence, and even of life itself. Hence there gathers round the lover a tragic interest, and we hang upon his destiny as if some natural charm or spell were in it. Now this passion of love, which has hitherto been the staple of literature, is only a crude symbol in the life of nature, by which God designs to interpret, and also to foreshadow, the higher love of religion,--nature's gentle Beatrice, who puts her image in the youthful Dante, by that to attend him afterwards in the spirit-flight of song, and be his guide up through the wards of Paradise to the shining mount of God. What then are we to think, but that God will sometime bring us up out of the literature of the lower love, into that of the higher?--that as the age of passion yields to the age of reason, so the crude love of instinct will give place to the loftier, finer, more impelling love of God? And then around that nobler love, or out of it, shall arise a new body of literature, as much more gifted as the inspiration is purer and more intellectual. Beauty, truth, and worship; song, science, and duty, will all be unfolded together in this common love. FROM 'THE AGE OF HOMESPUN'