May 25

There are certain experiences in every life which have their power just in this, that they break through the elaborate surface, and get down to the simplest thoughts and emotions of the

human heart. Great sickness, sudden bereavement, great joy, intense love or enthusiasm, fatherhood, the near sight of death, - all of these supreme experiences of life are characterized by the breadth, the largeness of the simple thoughts and feelings they awaken. In them you have the crust broken to fragments, and the great heart of life laid open. And if that heart, laid open, is inevitably, universally spiritual; if, as we always see in these supreme moments of the life, a soul most vividly asserts itself, the man insists upon another world and on a God.