Truth, triumphant out of oppression, is a tear falling on the world’s cold cheek to make it burn forever.  Why fear the revelation of truth?  Greece had her Athens and her Corinth, but where is Greece to-day?  Rome, too, Imperial Rome, with all her pomp and polish!  They were, but they are not—­for want of Truth.  But might not we hope for a land where Truth would reign—­from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the frozen North to the ever-tepid waters of the sunny South?

Truth is the grand motor-power which, like a giant engine, has rolled the car of civilisation out from the maze of antiquity where it now waits to be freighted with the precious fruits of living genius.

The young man’s final flight was observed by Aunt Bell to impress visibly even the bishop—­a personage whom she had begun to suspect was the least bit cynical, perhaps from having listened to many first sermons.

“Standing one day,” it began, “near the summit of one of the grand old Rocky Mountains that in primeval ages was elevated from ocean’s depths and now towers its snow-capped peak heavenward touching the azure blue, I witnessed a scene which, for beauty of illustration of the thought in hand, the world cannot surpass.  Placing my feet upon a solid rock, I saw, far down in the valley below, the tempest gathering.  Soon the low-muttered thunder and vivid flashes of lightning gave token of increasing turbulence with Nature’s elements.  Thus the storm raged far below while all around me and above glittered the pure sunlight of heaven, where I mingled in the blue serene; until at last the thought came electric-like, as half-divine, here is exemplified in Nature’s own impressive language the simple grandeurs of Truth.  While we are in the valley below, we have ebullitions of discontent and murmurings of strife; but as we near the summit of Truth our thought becomes elevated.  Then placing our feet on the solid Rock of Ages, we call to those in the valley below to cease their bickerings and come up higher.

“Truth!  Oh, of all the flowers that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Truth.  Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed in order that their fragrance become perceptible.  But the soul of this flower courses its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark dell, over the burning plain, up the mountain-side, up and ever UP it rises into the beautiful blue; all along the cloudy corridors of the day, up along the misty pathway to the skies, till it touches the beautiful shore and mingles with the breath of angels!”

Yet a perverse old man had sat stonily under this sermon—­had, even after so effective a baptism, neglected to undo that which he should never have done.  Moreover, even on the day of this notable sermon, he was known to have referred to the young man, within the hearing of a discreet housekeeper, as “the son of his father”—­which was an invidious circumlocution, amounting almost to an epithet.  And he had most weakly continued to grieve for the wayward lost son of his daughter—­the godless boy whom he had driven from his door.