Soon the low-muttered thunder and vivid flashes of lightning gave token of increasing turbulence with Nature's elements.

Thus the storm raged far below while all around me and above glittered the pure sunlight of heaven, where I mingled in the blue serene; until at last the thought came electric-like, as half-divine, here is exemplified in Nature's own impressive language the simple grandeurs of Truth.

While we are in the valley below, we have ebullitions of discontent and murmurings of strife; but as we near the summit of Truth our thought becomes elevated.
Then placing our feet on the solid Rock of Ages, we call to those in the valley below to cease their bickerings and come up higher.
"Truth! Oh, of all the flowers that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Truth.

Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed in order that their fragrance become perceptible.
But the soul of this flower courses its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark dell, over the burning plain, up the mountain-side, _up_ and ever UP it rises into the beautiful blue; all along the cloudy corridors of the day, _up_ along the misty pathway to the skies, till it touches the beautiful shore and mingles with the breath of angels!" Yet a perverse old man had sat stonily under this sermon--had, even after so effective a baptism, neglected to undo that which he should never have done.

Moreover, even on the day of this notable sermon, he was known to have referred to the young man, within the hearing of a discreet housekeeper, as "the son of his father"-- which was an invidious circumlocution, amounting almost to an epithet.