It might have seemed so to Draxy, but it did not to her hearers.  No one would have supposed her conscious of any disturbing presence.  And more than one visitor carried away with him written records of her eloquent words.

One of her most remarkable sermons was called “The Gospel of Mystery.”

The text was Psalm xix. 2:—­

  “Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.”

First she dwelt on the sweet meaning of the word Gospel.  “Dear friends,” she said, “it is a much simpler word than we realize; it is only ’good news,’ ‘good tidings.’  We get gospels every day.  Our children send us good news of their lives.  What gospels of joy are such letters!  And nations to nations send good news:  a race of slaves is set free; a war has ended; shiploads of grain have been sent to the starving; a good man has been made ruler; these are good tidings—­gospels.”

After dwelling on this first, simplest idea of the word, until every one of her hearers had begun to think vividly of all the good tidings journeying in words back and forth between heart and heart, continent and continent, she spoke of the good news which nature tells without words.  Here she was eloquent.  Subtle as the ideas were, they were yet clothed in the plain speech which the plain people understood:  the tidings of the spring, of the winter, of the river, of the mountain; of gold, of silver, of electric fire; of blossom and fruit; of seed-time and harvest; of suns and stars and waters,—­these were the “speech” which “day uttered unto day.”

But “knowledge was greater” than speech:  night in her silence “showed” what day could not tell.  Here the faces of the people grew fixed and earnest.  In any other hands than Draxy’s the thought would have been too deep for them, and they would have turned from it wearily.  But her simplicity controlled them always.  “Stand on your door-steps on a dark night,” she said,—­“a night so dark that you can see nothing:  looking out into this silent darkness, you will presently feel a far greater sense of how vast the world is, than you do in broad noon-day, when you can see up to the very sun himself.”

More than one young face in the congregation showed that this sentence struck home and threw light on hitherto unexplained emotions.  “This is like what I mean,” continued Draxy, “by the Gospel of Mystery, the good tidings of the things we cannot understand.  This gospel is everywhere.  Not the wisest man that has ever lived can fully understand the smallest created thing:  a drop of water, a grain of dust, a beam of light, can baffle his utmost research.  So with our own lives, with our own hearts; every day brings a mystery—­sin and grief and death:  all these are mysteries; gospels of mystery, good tidings of mystery; yes, good tidings!  These are what prove that God means to take us into another world after this one; into a world where all things which perplexed us here will be explained....  O my dear friends!” she exclaimed at last, clasping her hands tightly, “thank God for the things which we cannot understand:  except for them, how should we ever be sure of immortality?”