"Ah! thus must the children of this world ever toil, wearily, wearily, but in vain. We grasp at shadows, we grapple with the fashionless air, we walk in the blindness of our own vain imaginations, we compass heaven and earth for our objects, and marvel that we find them not. The truth which is of God, the crown of wisdom, the pearl of exceeding price, demands not this vain-glorious research; easily to be entreated, it lieth within the reach of all. The eye of the humblest spirit may discern it. For He who respecteth not the persons of His children hath not set it afar off, unapproachable save to the proud and lofty; but hath made its refreshing fountains to murmur, as it were, at the very door of our hearts. But in the encumbering hurry of the world we perceive it not; in the noise of our daily vanities we hear not the waters of Siloah which go softly. We look widely abroad; we lose ourselves in vain speculation; we wander in the crooked paths of those who have gone before us; yea, in the language of one of the old fathers, we ask the earth and it replieth not, we question the sea and its inhabitants, we turn to the sun, and the moon, and the stars of heaven, and they may not satisfy us; we ask our eyes, and they cannot see, and our ears, and they cannot hear; we turn to books, and they delude us; we seek philosophy, and no response cometh from its dead and silent learning. [August. Soliloq. Cap. XXXI. "Interrogavi Terram," etc.] "It is not in the sky above, nor in the air around, nor in the earth beneath; it is in our own spirits, it lives within us; and if we would find it, like the lost silver of the woman of the parable, we must look at home, to the inward temple, which the inward eye discovereth, and wherein the spirit of all truth is manifested. The voice of that spirit is still and small, and the light about it shineth in darkness. But truth is there; and if we seek it in low humility, in a patient waiting upon its author, with a giving up of our natural pride of knowledge, a seducing of self, a quiet from all outward endeavor, it will assuredly be revealed and fully made known. For as the angel rose of old from the altar of Manoah even so shall truth arise from the humbling sacrifice of self-knowledge and human vanity, in all its eternal and ineffable beauty.