atoms in the personal relations of joy and sorrow born of this world, and in this world to have an end.
We may engage in a benevolent operation to relieve present suffering, or by some act of self-sacrifice deserve a martyr's fame, without exciting that all-absorbing interest which calls into play the highest faculties of the soul, overpowering with their comprehensive sublimity petty trials of transient duration, in that exercise of faith and hope which carry us forward to those higher conceptions of the great purpose for which life was created, as impossible to gain in lives of frivolity and ease, as to be ignored in the safe combat with the waves of passion and prejudice flowing out of them. Responsibility,—a reaching forward to grasp momentous issues which extend beyond present interests, and embrace a wider field than our own individual necessities require, is an inevitable condition for the normal development of the spiritual nature of every man and woman.
