Now in an earlier age than the age of Berengarius and St. Victor, there arose within Alexandria one whose thought in its range, in the sweep of its orbit, was perhaps the widest and most distant amongst the children of men. In the most remarkable and sublime of his six _Enneads_, another theory upon the same subject occurs.[1] The fate of the soul in passing from its home with the Everlasting is like the fate of a child which in infancy has been removed from its parents and reared in a foreign land. The child forgets its country and its kindred as the soul forgets in the joy of its freedom the felicity it knew when one with the Divine. But after the lapse of years if the child return amongst its kindred, at first indeed it shall not know them, but now a word, now a gesture, or again a trick of the hand, a cadence of the voice, will come to it like the murmur of forgotten seas by whose shores it once had dwelt, awaking within it strange memories, and gradually by the accumulation of these the truth will at last flash in upon the child--"Behold my father and my brethren!" So the soul of man, though knowing not whence it came, is by the teachings of Divine wisdom, and by inspired thinkers, quickened to a remembrance of its heavenly origin, and its life henceforth becomes an ever-increasing, ever more vivid memory of the tranced peace, the bliss that it knew there within the Everlasting. Let me attempt to apply this thought of the Egyptian mystic to the problem before us. Disregarding the theory of an infinite series of successive incarnations from the inexhaustible treasury of the Divine, permit me to recall the observations made in an earlier lecture on the contrast between the limited range of man's consciousness, and the measureless past stretching behind him, the infinite spaces around him. Judged by the perfect ideal of knowledge, the universe is necessary to the understanding of a flower, and the dateless past to the intelligence of the history of a day. But as the beam of light never severs itself from its fountain, as the faintest ray that falls within the caverns of the sea remains united with the orb whence it sprang, so the soul of man has grown old along with nature, and acquainted from its foundations with the fabric of the universe. Therefore when it confronts some simple object of sense or emotion, or the more intricate movements and events of history, or the rushing storm of the present, the soul has about it strange intimacies, it has within it preparations drawn from that fellowship with nature throughout the aeons, the abysses of Eternity. And as the aeons advance, the soul grows ever more conscious of the end of all its striving, and its serenity deepens as the certainty of the ultimate attainment of that end increases.