The touch of God upon men is not answered unless the soul be
spiritually alive:
The sun shines down upon the dead twig that has fallen from the
tree. All his rich and marvelous powers are exerted. He wraps
it about with his mighty arms. He kisses it and bathes it in
tides of summer warmth, and smiles upon it and beckons it to
come--but it lies there a dead twig to the last. But a vine
has peeped through the soil. The sun discovers it and whispers
the secrets of the sky to its tiny quivering leaves, and out
go the filmy tendrils, and up and up goes the loving plant,
climbing the golden trellis of the sunbeam toward its lover, the
sun.--JOHN K. WILLEY.
(1810)