than certainties; it desires to see God rather than to proclaim His wrath.  Such a man, tenderly courteous to all, patient, wise, sad with a hopeful sadness, living in an atmosphere of uplifted prayer, hearing the ripple of the spring or the bird’s song among the thickets, his heart rising in ecstasy upon the holy music, upborne by the grave organ-thunders, speaking sometimes out of a full heart of the secrets of God, would lead a life that would be shepherded by his Lord in a green pasture; led by waters of comfort and in paths of righteousness, with a table indeed prepared.  Such a life is apt nowadays to be viewed contemptuously by the virile man, by the practical philanthropist; but it is such a spirit as this that produced the Psalms, the Book of Job, the Apocalypse.  It is a type of religion that even those who base their faith upon the open Bible are apt to despise and condemn; if so, their Bible is not an open one, but sealed with many seals of ignorance and dulness.  Such a life should be full of energy, of faith, of purity.  It should speak to those that had ears to hear in secret chambers, even though it did not cry from the house-tops.  In this stupid and hypocritical age, that mistakes money for wealth, excitement for pleasure, interference for influence, fame for wisdom, speed for progress, volubility for eloquence, such a life is despised, if not actually condemned.

Yet such lives might break from underground, in a place of greensward and bushes, among the voices of birds and the mellow murmur of bells, even as the fountains themselves spring forth.  In these bustling days we are apt to think that streams have no work but to turn mills and make light for cities, to bear merchandise, to sweep foulness to the sea; we forget that they pass through woodland places, feeding the grasses and the trees, quenching the thirst of bird and beast, that they sparkle in the sun, gleam wan in the sunset, reflecting the pale sky.  Oh, perverse and forgetful generation, that knows better than God what the aim and goal of our pilgrimage is; that will not hear His murmured language, or see His patient writing on the wall!  That in teaching, forget to learn, and in prophesying, have no leisure to look backwards!  It is we that have despised life and beauty and God; it is we that make graven images, and worship the fire till we cannot see the sun, who pray daily for peace, and cast the jewel in the mire when it is put in our foolish hands.

And after all, though we shelter our lives and seclude them as we may, we have all of us a heavy burden to bear.  These mouldering walls, these soaring towers, the voice of many waters, teach me this, if they teach me nothing else, that peace and beauty are dear to the heart of God; that he sets them where he can; that we can perceive them and love them; and that if our life is a learning of some great and dim lesson, these sweet influences may sustain and comfort us at least as well as the phantoms which so many of us pursue.