"All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players."
Nothing opens up this truism like practical metaphysics. We observe, apparently moving uppermost in the great sea of sense, mortal actors stirred hither and thither by impulses for the transient and non-essential conditions of their shadowy existence. Some float into sudden ecstacies over slight comings and goings, with faces beaming like fragile crystals that an unexpected jar, a sudden mischance, would shatter to atoms; others, incomplete, unfinished., untoned,—though travelled, learned, world-polished.
"Sell all—follow me," was the command. "I said in my heart, All men are a lie," saith the Psalmist. How marvellous the change that will be wrought in the superficial, the world-loving, and world-trained among men by obedience to the command and knowledge of the truth of the Psalmist's words. Then the lightest character becomes spiritually minded and grasps the realities of being with calm dignity. Out of sense exaltations into true serenity he passes, to become a tower of strength to others yet in the field of restless mortality.
