that is to open wide the great gates of the Divine Life, and make the way more clear for the children to their Father. Every new experience is a new opportunity of knowing God. Every new experience is like a jewel set into the texture of your life, on which God shines and makes interpretation and revelation of Himself. You hang a great rich dark cloth up into the sunlight, and the sun shines on it and shows the broad general color that is there. Then, one by one, you sew great precious stones upon the cloth, and each one, as you set it there, catches the sunlight and pours it forth in a flood of peculiar glory. A diamond here, an emerald there, an opal there; the sun seems to rejoice as he finds each moment a new interpreter of his splendor, until at last the whole jewelled cloth is burning and blazing with the gorgeous revelation. A much-living life is like a robe that bursts forth of itself to jewels. They are not sewn on from the outside. They are born out of the substance of that life as the stars are born out of the heart of the night. And God shines with new revelation upon every one." 66 We cannot kindle when we will "With aching hands and bleeding feet LII. A MODERN PROPHET-BARD.* Appropriate Selections. "To us have Prophet-Bards of old, So was it when the Holy One And meaningless the watch He kept Yet shrink not thou, whoe'er thou art, Through Heaven's dim spaces angel-trod, "Our common Master did not pen his followers up from other men : His service liberty indeed, he built no Sect, imposed no Creed; *See special acknowledgement on page 9 of opening pages. But, while the boasting Pharisee made broader his phylactery, As from the synagogue was seen the dusty-sandalled Nazarene Through ripening cornfields led the way upon the awful Sabbath day, His sermons were the healthful talk that shorter made the mountain-walk, His wayside texts were flowers and birds, while mingled with his gracious words The rustle of the tamarisk-tree and ripple-wash of Galilee. "With noiseless slide of stone to stone, the mystic Church of God has grown. Invisible and silent stands the temple never made with hands, Unheard the voices still and small of its unseen confessional. He needs no special place of prayer whose hearing ear is everywhere ; He brings not back the childish days that ringed the earth with stones of praise, Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid the plinths of Phila's colonnade. Still less He owns the selfish good and sickly growth of soli tude; Dissevered from the suffering whole, love hath no power to save a soul. Not out of Self, the origin-but, out of Others saved from sin, The living waters spring and flow, the trees with leaves of healing grow." "I ask no organ's soulless breath to drone the themes of life and death, No altar candle-lit by day, no ornate wordsman's rhetoric play, No cool philosophy to teach its bland audacities of speech pers, No pulpit hammered by the fist of loud-asserting dogmatist, Who borrows for the hand of love the smoking thunderbolts of Jove. I know how well the fathers taught, what work the later schoolmen wrought; I reverence old-time faith and men, but God is near us now as then; His force of love is still unspent, his hate of sin is imminent; And still the measure of our needs outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds; The manna gathered yesterday already savors of decay; Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown question us now from star and stone; Too little or too much we know, and sight is swift and faith is slow; The power is lost to self-deceive with shallow forms of make believe. "We walk at high noon, and the bells call to a thousand oracles. I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify to the oneness of humanity. He findeth not who seeks his own, the soul is lost that's saved alone. Not on one favored forehead fell of old the fire-tongued mira cle, But flamed o'er all the thronging host the baptism of the Holy Ghost; Heart answers heart; in one desire the blending lines of prayer aspire ; 'Where, in my name, meet two or three,' The Christ hath said, " I there will be !' "So sometimes comes to soul and sense the feeling, which is evidence, That very near about us lies the realm of spiritual mysteries. The sphere of the supernal powers impinges on this world of ours." THE ANSWER. "True Worship's deeper meaning lies in mercy and not sacrifice, Not posturing of penitence, but love's unforced obedience. The Book and Church and Day are given for man, not God,for earth, not heaven. The blessed means to holiest ends, not Masters are, but helping friends; And the dear Christ dwells not afar the King of some remoter star, Listening, at times, with flattered ear to homage wrung from selfish fear :— But here, amidst the poor and blind, the bound and suffering of our kind, In works we do, in prayers we pray, life of our life, he lives today." 66 What care I that the crowd requite My love with hate, my truth with lies? "T is but to Faith, and not to sight, The walls of God's true Temple rise! "I'll faint not, falter not, nor plead 66 66 My weakness: Truth itself is strong : My nature, which, through fire and flood, "So, haply, when my task shall end, The Wrong shall lose itself in Right, With that long Sabbath of the Light." "Grown wiser for the lesson given, I fear no longer, for I know That, where the share is deepest driven, the best fruits grow. The outworn rite, the old abuse, the pious fraud transparent grown, The good held captive in the use of wrong alone,— These wait their doom, from that great law which makes the past time serve to-day ; And fresher life the world shall draw from their decay. “Take heart!—the Waster builds again,—a charmèd life old Goodness hath; The tares may perish,-but the grain is not for death. |