Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/67

 of mere acquaintance with learned authorities, and the accumulation and piling up of knowledge of various common and popular sorts; for it frequently happens that men and women, who are very ignorant of all these things,—and who, so far as they are concerned, are not "progressed" at all, prove on trial to be far more "unfolded" than thousands of those who have grown gray in the service of Letters, and who have, by persistent assiduity succeeded in transforming themselves from human beings into locomotive encyclopedias—splendid to look at, interesting. to dine with and talk to—but cold, unheartful encyclopedias after all. Education is often a mere mechanical mastery of useless abstrusities,—coins, which on the social counters jingle well,—but which are not over and above current in the far-off worlds,—where a boor's earnest prayer weighs far more than the ornate, rhapsodical orisons of scores of learned pedants, who* to judge them by their language, take God to be a school committee, rather than a loving, tender Parent. Thus I found true, what had previously been surmised, that a person may know but little, yet approach much nearer the Divine, than one who has more brain furniture, with a great deal less heart.

It was revealed to my understanding that the great law of Vastation, by whose operation the monad developed moss, threw it off, and brought forth something better and higher, until at last the conscious point—the truly human degree—was, after the lapse of ages, reached, did not cease its functions even after the death of the body, albeit its mode of action was somewhat changed and modified; for now it was observed by me,