But what is this to the processes of thought and observation through which the mind of man has reached its present expansion; through which it has developed all these sciences, arts, industries and tastes, the literature and the intellectual life of these bright days of humanity! The figure is weak, and every figure would be weak when applied to the ratio or the result of this progression; but, at what future age of time, or of the existence beyond time, will the mind, that has thus wrought on earth, open its last petal, put forth no new breathing, unfold no new beauty under the eye of the Infinite, who breathed it, as an immortal atom of His own essence, into the being of man?
Follow the radius up into the next concentric circle, and we see this law working to finer and sublimer issues in man's moral nature.
We have glanced at what the mind has done for and through his physical faculties and being; how that being has re-acted upon the mind, and kept all its capacities at work in procuring new delight to the eye, ear, palate, and all the senses that yearned for enjoyment.

We have noticed how the inside and outside world acted upon his reasoning powers in the dawn of creation; how slowly they mastered the simplest facts and phenomena of life in and around them, how slowly they expanded, through the intervening centuries, to their present development.

The mind is the central personage in the trinity of man's being; linking the mortal and immortal to its life and action; vitalising the body with intelligence, until every vein, muscle, and nerve, and function thrills and moves to the impulse of thought; vitalising the soul with the vigorous activities of reason, giving hands as well as wings to its hopes, faiths, loves, and aspirations; giving a faculty of speech, action, and influence to each, and play to all the tempers and tendencies of its moral nature.

Thus all the influences that the mind could inhale from the material world through man's physical being, and all it could draw out of the depths of Divine revelation, were the dew and the light which it was its mission to bring to the fostering, growth, and glory of the human soul.

These were man's means wherewith to shape it for its great destiny; these he was to bring to its training and expansion; with these he was to co-work with the Infinite Father of Spirits to fit it for His presence and fellowship, just as he co-works with Nature in developing the latent life and faculties of the rose.