However minute the task, it reveals the polish of perfection. Omnipotent
skill is stamped on the infinitely small, as on the infinitely great.
It is a moral stenography like this which we need in daily life....
The lesson of Christianity, then, urged and enforced by Nature, is
the inestimable worth of common duties, as manifesting the greatest
principles; it bids us attain perfection, not by striving to do dazzling
deeds, but by making our experience divine; it tells us that the
Christian hero will ennoble the humblest field of labor; that nothing is
mean which can be performed as duty; but that religious virtue, like the
touch of Midas, converts the humblest call of conscience into spiritual
gold.
The Greek philosopher, Plato, has left an instructive and beautiful
poetic picture of the judgment of souls, when they had been collected
from the regions of temporary bliss and pain, and suffered once more to
return to the duties and pleasures of earthly life. The spirits advanced
by lot, to make their choice of the condition and form under which they
should re-enter the world. The dazzling and showy fortunes, the lives of
kings and warriors and statesmen were soon exhausted; and the spirit of
Ulysses, who had been the wisest prince among all the Greeks, came last
to choose.
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