I confess I never find myself quite unmoved in this sacred hour, announced only by the stars veiling their faces and the birds breaking the silence with their tumultuous song. The universal faith becomes mine also, and from the common worship I am not debarred. My thought rises whither the mists, parted from the unseen censers, are rising: I feel within me the revival of aspirations and faiths that were fast overclouding; the stir of old hopes is in my heart; the thrill of old purposes is in my soul. Once more Nature is serving me in an hour of need; serving me not by drawing me to herself, but by setting me free from a world that was beginning to master and make me its slave. Now all that insensibly growing servitude slips from me; once more I am free and my own. The inexhaustible life that is behind all visible things, constantly flowing in upon us when we keep the channels open, recreates whatever was noblest and truest in me. With Nature, I believe; and believing, I also share in the universal worship. Emerson somewhere says, writing about the most difficult of Plato's dialogues, that one must often wait long for the hour when one is strong enough to grapple with and master it, but sooner or later the fitting morning will come. It is the morning which gives us faith in the most arduous achievements, and invigorates us to undertake them. In the morning all things are possible because the heavens and the earth are so visibly united in the fellowship of common life; the one pouring down a measureless and penetrating tide of vitality, the other eagerly, worshipfully receptive. Nature has no more inspiring truth for us than this constant and complete enfolding of our life by a higher and vaster life, this unbroken play of a diviner purpose and force through us. Nothing is lost, nothing really dies; all things are conserved by an energy which transforms, reorganises, and perpetuates in new and finer forms all visible things. The silence of winter counterfeits the repose of death, but it is not even a pause of life; invisibly to us the great movement goes on in the earth under our feet. While we watch by our household fires, the unseen architects are planning the summer, and the sublime march of the stars is noiselessly bringing back the bloom and the perfume that seem to have vanished forever. Every morning restores something we thought lost, recalls some charm that seemed to have escaped.