18
TALKS FOR THE TIMES.
trance, but here there is no spot. Here every avenue
is guarded. Here the goddess, as it were, stands
arrayed in complete panoply, and man retiring from her
presence still asks himself the question, What is life?
That secret is with God, and there must forever re¬
main, for to understand it would be to understand
him, as Tennyson has so well said in those exquisite
lines to the little flower:
" Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,—
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower; but if I could understand
What you are—root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."
This mysteriousness of life has affected men vari¬
ously, as they have viewed it from one point and
from another. It has given rise to numerous sects
and various schools of philosophy, both Christian and
Pagan, some of them differing diametrically from
others, as for instance, the famous schools of the
Stoics and the Epicureans; the one laying great stress
on the sterner virtues of life, utterly deprecated pleas¬
ure; the other emphasized pleasure as the supreme
object of all living. To the hermit, life was full of
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