It has been all the while alive, but
in a sort of trance; little good has come of it, but it is something that
it was there. It is the divine germ of a flower and fruit too precious to
mature in the first years after grafting; in other soils, by other waters,
when the healing of the nations is fulfilled, we shall see its perfection.
Oh! what atonement will be there! What allowances we shall make for each
other, then! with what love we shall love!
But the souls who have what my friend meant by a "genius for affection"
are in another atmosphere than that which common men breathe. Their "upper
air" is clearer, more rarefied than any to which mere intellectual genius
can soar. Because, to this last, always remain higher heights which it
cannot grasp, see, nor comprehend.
Michel Angelo may build his dome of marble, and human intellect may see as
clearly as if God had said it that no other dome can ever be built so
grand, so beautiful. But above St. Peter's hangs the blue tent-dome of the
sky, vaster, rounder, elastic, unfathomable, making St.
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