“Yes,” said August, smiling, “but the sky is clear, and your eyes are raining, Julia.  But can it be possible that God, who made this world so beautiful, will burn it up to-night?  It used to seem a hard world to me when I was away from you, and I didn’t care how quickly it burned up.  But now—­”

Somehow August forgot to finish that sentence.  Words are of so little use under such circumstances.  A little pressure on Julia’s arm which was in his, told all that he meant.  When love makes earth a heaven, it is enough.

“But how beautiful the new earth will be,” said Julia, still looking at the sleeping river, “the river of life will be clear as crystal!”

“Yes,” said August, “the Spanish version says, ’Most resplendent, like unto crystal.’”

“I think,” said Julia, “that it must be something like this river.  The trees of life will stand on either side, like those great sycamores that lean over the water so gracefully.”

Any landscape would have seemed heavenly to Julia on this night.  A venerable friend of mine, a true Christian philanthropist, whose praise is in all the churches, wants me to undertake to reform fictitious literature by leaving out the love.  And so I may when God reforms His universe by leaving out the love.  Love is the best thing in novels; not until love is turned out of heaven will I help turn it out of literature.  It is only the misrepresentation of love in literature that is bad, as the poisoning of love in life is bad.  It was the love of August that had opened Julia’s heart to the influences of heaven, and Julia was to August a mediator of God’s grace.

By eleven o’clock August Wehle and his wife—­it gives me nearly as much pleasure as it did August to use that locution—­were standing not far away from the surging crowd of those who, in singing hymns and in excited prayer, were waiting for the judgment.  Jonas and Cynthy and Andrew were with them.  August, though not a recognized Millerite, almost blamed himself that he should have been away these two hours from the services.  But why should he?  The most sacramental of all the sacraments is marriage.  Is it not an arbitrary distinction of theologians, that which makes two rites to be sacraments and others not?  But if the distinction is to be made at all, I should apply the solemn word to the solemnest rite and the holiest ordinance of God’s, even if I left out the sacred washing in the name of the Trinity and the broken emblematic bread and the wine.  These are sacramental in their solemn symbolism, that in the solemnest symbolism and the holiest reality.

August’s whole attention was now turned toward the coming judgment; and as he stood thinking of the awfulness of this critical moment, the exercises of the Adventists grated on the deep peacefulness of his spirit, for from singing their more beautiful hymns, they had passed to an excited shouting of the old camp-meeting ditty whose refrain is: