And so the evil to be guarded against--or to be deplored--will be the declension of the mind and heart from this wider, more open and generous view, a loss inward, not outward. Mixing, as we soon must, among life’s pettinesses, how many of us forget the mountain upon which we once stood, nor care to ascend it still from time to time, but are content to sink into hardness, coldness of heart, narrow-mindedness, selfishness, a cynical, unsympathetic temper, a habit of low suspicion, a littleness of caution, a close hand, an absorbed heart. So that we should try, from time to time, to draw apart from the highways and byways and crowded walks of life’s daily cares and concerns, and to ascend a point which overlooks them and brings them more into their just proportion with that wider view which diminishes if it does not absorb them. In reading some of the highest poetry I have found this ascent gained. It carries you up into the ideal, from life’s mean realities and commonplaces; there is an atmosphere of honour and love and generosity; men think and act grandly, and money-getting is not the mainspring of all. And this is one profit of high and wholesome poetry, that it does water and keep alive those nobler greater ideas and yearnings that the dust of the world’s traffic might otherwise choke. For the heart’s true poetic sense (I do not mean mere sentimentality) is no doubt one of the links nearest to God in the chain which connects us with Him. How much of the sublimest poetry we find, in truth, in the Bible. And here I would point out especially how we may indeed breathe a mountain air--indeed obtain a mountain view, namely, in the sacredly-kept times of morning devotional reading. In a trouble, whether a small worry or a crushing anguish, how sweet, when the time has come round for the reading and meditation on the things of Eternity and of God. How, as we go on with our upward winding path, the fret or the agony insensibly takes its place in the wider landscape, and diminishes by an imperceptible process from the exaggerated size it presented to us when we stood beside it on the plain. Other greater objects open upon our view, and attract our attention; the far scenery of God’s mighty workings widens out before us, and the vast Ocean of Eternity stretching round and embracing the little island of Time; and we seem to feel a cool air fanning our hot tear-tired eyes, and we breathe more freely, and our heart, despite of itself, loses somewhat of its weary load. The world is left below; even the clouds sleep under our feet; and heaven is nearer, not only for that hour, but during the rest of the day. [Illustration]