The goddess of the Greek mythology springs from the crest of the
curling sea. The spirit of poetic and legendary lore is born
of moonbeams playing upon fountains. The glittering elf of the
household story leaps up on the shaft of the quivering flame.
The meteor is invoked, or the morning-star, to give birth to
new spirits; the sunset-sheen on distant hills is imagined to
become incorporate in them; or the west wind, toying over banks
of flowers, to drop their delicate life from its wings. But when
God forms the life, in each conscious soul, and fills this with
its strange and unsearchable powers, he creates it by a ministry
diverse from all these, and as distantly removed as it is
possible to conceive from its own unique nature, and its height
of prerogative. He creates it by the ministry of these fleshly
forms, which are authors, under Him, of a life that transcends
them; a life not limited as they are by space, not subject as
they are to material assaults, and not dependent as they are on
shelter or on food.--RICHARD S. STORRS.
(1814)