ultimate purpose to enjoy, knew not the immensity and nobility of the human soul.  He could not then take his rest and be happy.  As long as one realm remained unconquered, so long rest was impossible; he would weep for fresh worlds to conquer.  And thus, that which was spoken by our Lord of one earthly gratification, is true of all—­“Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.”  The boundless, endless, infinite void in the soul of man can be satisfied with nothing but God.  Satisfaction lies not in having, but in being.  There is no satisfaction even in doing.  Man cannot be satisfied with his own performances.  When the righteous young ruler came to Christ, and declared that in reference to the life gone by, he had kept all the commandments and fulfilled all the duties required by the Law, still came the question—­“What lack I yet?”

The Scribes and Pharisees were the strictest observers of the ceremonies of the Jewish religion, “touching the righteousness which is by the Law” they were blameless, but yet they wanted something more than that, and they were found on the brink of Jordan imploring the baptism of John, seeking after a new and higher state than they had yet attained to,—­a significant proof that man cannot be satisfied with his own works.  And again, there is not one of us who has ever been satisfied with his own performances.  There is no man whose doings are worth anything, who has not felt that he has not yet done that which he feels himself able to do.  While he was doing it, he was kept up by the spirit of hope; but when done the thing seemed to him worthless.  And therefore it is that the author cannot read his own book again, nor the sculptor look with pleasure upon his finished work.  With respect to one of the greatest of all modern sculptors, we are told that he longed for the termination of his earthly career, for this reason—­that he had been satisfied with his own performance:  satisfied for the first time in his life.  And this expression of his satisfaction was but equivalent to saying that he had reached the goal, beyond which there could be no progress.  This impossibility of being satisfied with his own performances is one of the strongest proofs of our immortality—­a proof of that perfection towards which we shall for ever tend, but which we can never attain.

A second trace of this infinitude in man’s nature we find in the infinite capacities of the soul.  This is true intellectually and morally.  With reference to our intellectual capacities, it would perhaps be more strictly correct to say that they are indefinite, rather than infinite; that is we can affix to them no limit.  For there is no man, however low his intellectual powers may be, who has not at one time or another felt a rush of thought, a glow of inspiration, which seemed to make all things possible, as if it were merely the effect of some imperfect organization which stood in the way of his