I came home another way, after one of the most delightful days I had ever spent.  Having reached the river in the course of my wandering, I came down the side of it towards Old Rogers’s cottage, loitering and looking, quiet in heart and soul and mind, because I had committed my cares to Him who careth for us.  The earth was round me—­I was rooted, as it were, in it, but the air of a higher life was about me.  I was swayed to and fro by the motions of a spiritual power; feelings and desires and hopes passed through me, passed away, and returned; and still my head rose into the truth, and the will of God was the regnant sunlight upon it.  I might change my place and condition; new feelings might come forth, and old feelings retire into the lonely corners of my being; but still my heart should be glad and strong in the one changeless thing, in the truth that maketh free; still my head should rise into the sunlight of God, and I should know that because He lived I should live also, and because He was true I should remain true also, nor should any change pass upon me that should make me mourn the decadence of humanity.  And then I found that I was gazing over the stump of an old pollard, on which I was leaning, down on a great bed of white water-lilies, that lay in the broad slow river, here broader and slower than in most places.  The slanting yellow sunlight shone through the water down to the very roots anchored in the soil, and the water swathed their stems with coolness and freshness, and a universal sense, I doubt not, of watery presence and nurture.  And there on their lovely heads, as they lay on the pillow of the water, shone the life-giving light of the summer sun, filling all the spaces between their outspread petals of living silver with its sea of radiance, and making them gleam with the whiteness which was born of them and the sun.  And then came a hand on my shoulder, and, turning, I saw the gray head and the white smock of my old friend Rogers, and I was glad that he loved me enough not to be afraid of the parson and the gentleman.

“I’ve found it, sir, I do think,” he said, his brown furrowed old face shining with a yet lovelier light than that which shone from the blossoms of the water-lilies, though, after what I had been thinking about them, it was no wonder that they seemed both to mean the same thing,—­both to shine in the light of His countenance.

“Found what, Old Rogers?” I returned, raising myself, and laying my hand in return on his shoulder.

“Why He was displeased with the disciples for not knowing—­”

“What He meant about the leaven of the Pharisees,” I interrupted.  “Yes, yes, of course.  Tell me then.”