Thus standing face to face with truth, and being endowed with intellectual capacities capable of recognizing it, grasping it, in its unity and in its particulars, it is proper to inquire the object and the purpose of it. It is the revelation which the infinite mind has made to the finite. It is the language of God, in which he has embodied his thought. It is the word of the universal spirit. Man is a spirit, and he is to grow and come to the full realization of himself by partaking of the word of God. Truth has been revealed for no other purpose than to make men. Sir William Hamilton represents truth as game, and the method of getting truth to a chase. He says the exercise of our powers involved in the process of getting truth is better than the game we seek. Lessings says, “If the Almighty, holding in one hand truth, and in the other search after truth, presented them to me and asked me which I would choose, with all humility, but without hesitation, I should say, give me search after truth.” Mallbranche says: “If I held truth captive, like a bird in my hand, I would let it go again, that I might chase and capture it.” Müller says: “Truth is the property of God alone. Search after truth belongs to man.” Such sentiments indicate that the men who uttered them had no correct idea of the real nature of truth, or of man’s intellectual nature, the necessary food of which is truth. It is true that the search after truth gives exercise and pleasure to the intellectual faculties, as search after bread gives exercise and health to the physical powers. But an eternal search for bread is not sufficient to keep man’s body robust and strong. The very condition upon which he will be able to keep up the search for it is, that he regularly and steadily partake of it. A tree, had it intelligence and emotion, would, doubtless, enjoy wrestling with the storms, and throwing its roots into the earth and its branches into the heavens, making levies upon earth and sky for its own nourishment; but if it did not constantly turn the elements it found into its trunk and branches, it would not be able to wrestle long with the storms, or forage long upon the earth and sky.