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Festival Shrines 
 
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 WILL SCRANTON WOODHULL 
 
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 JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
 
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 EATON AND MAINS 
 
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 COPYRIGHT, 19 13, BY 
 JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
 
 
 
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 WHOSE PRAISE FOR THESE FRAGMENTS 
 MEANS MOST TO ME 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Thanksgiving Shrines, - - - 11 
 
 Christmas-Tide, 41 
 
 Easter Miracles, 57 
 
 " Sunset and Evening Star," - - 89 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
WHEN AUTUMN WALKS ACROSS THE HILLS 
 
 When Autumn walks across the hills, 
 The hunchback maples blush aflame; 
 The slender asp-trees quiver white 
 Through shining green shot with the light 
 Of midnight moons. 
 
 The red-stemmed osiers, bending where 
 The brooks run still, full proudly wear 
 Their royal robes. With soft acclaim 
 Come canons musical with rills 
 When Autumn walks across the hills. 
 
 When Autumn walks across the hills, 
 
 The peasant sage unheeding stands 
 
 Dust-gray upon the long gray slope; 
 
 The gloomy cedar, void of hope, 
 
 Knows not, nor cares. 
 
 The dark-browed laurel, crouching low, 
 
 Hears not her feet impassioned go; 
 
 Yet, on the dull up-tilted lands, 
 
 Each step the riot color fills 
 
 When Autumn walks across the hills. 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 MY friend and I can never go walking 
 together with much satisfaction to both, 
 for he must always have a goal, if it be 
 for no other purpose than that of a turning-post 
 to indicate the exact spot at which the outward 
 journey should end and the homeward trip begin. 
 Further, he will go to that particular spot and 
 return from it by the legitimate routes — -roads that 
 run straight and corners that are square. He will 
 not tolerate those cross-cuts that charm me with 
 their uncertain promises and their childlike mys- 
 teries. He abhors the obtuse angles of a highland 
 trail and abominates the sinuous curves of a low- 
 land path. The former, he acknowledges, may be 
 necessary evils, but the latter he holds to be in- 
 excusable impositions upon the time and patience 
 of the wayfarer. Now I, to my friend's supreme 
 disgust, am different. The straight road is very 
 tiresome to me unless, perchance, it be lined with 
 one of those old-fashioned rail-fences that offer, 
 whimsically, to the traveler a possible surprise in 
 
 ii 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 every corner. In such a case, on a sudden — and 
 in the suddenness of the discovery lies much of the 
 charm — we find here a teeming ant-hill, like a 
 miniature city of men, giving birth to a thousand 
 fanciful conjectures concerning its thronging life; 
 there we see all at once a bunch of crane's-bill, its 
 delicate lavender hues blending with the soft grays 
 of the weathered rails behind; further on we start 
 a rabbit from his couching place in the thick grass, 
 and watch him run across the pasture with sundry 
 saucy flirts of that bunch of cotton called by 
 courtesy his tail, and repeated petulant kicks of his 
 long hind feet, which express to his satisfaction his 
 opinion of us. Nor is the highway unattractive if 
 it run straight through a bit of woodland. Then 
 it becomes the wonderful nave of a Gothic cathe- 
 dral open to the skies, flanked with shadowy clois- 
 ters among the columnar trunks, and filled to the 
 central aisle with kneeling worshipers of hazel- 
 brush and blackberry bushes, who whisper their 
 prayers while a gentle, weird wind-spirit moves 
 with halting penitence toward the distant altar-hill. 
 Such are pleasant enough, but, in the main, I 
 find no use for roads save for certain utilitarian 
 purposes, with which I will have nothing to do 
 
 12 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 to-day. When people ask me where I am going, 
 I like to answer with the alluring participle of 
 aimless activity rather than the stern prepositional 
 phrase of exact location: "I am not going any- 
 where, — just walking." So, forgetting the points 
 of the compass and becoming blind to the familiar 
 landmarks, I follow the path or leave it, climb 
 the hill or skirt its base, plunge into the cool halls 
 and lofty chambers of the wood or seek the wide, 
 wind-swept spaces of the open field, as the whim 
 takes me or the nearest charm allures me. My 
 friend's honest and emphatic execration of the whole 
 proceeding is to me somewhat incomprehensible and 
 wholly amusing. 
 
 All of which is to say that my friend is logical 
 and thinks, while I am imaginative and dream. So 
 I call his arguments dry, and he says that my 
 meditations fully prove the possibility of a complete 
 mental vacuum. Therefore, since each man can 
 do what the other can not, we do vastly admire 
 each other, albeit our minds, like our feet, stray 
 far apart. Thus it came to pass that, on a Thanks- 
 giving morning, he and I sat together in the church, 
 and while waiting for the services to begin — for, 
 as becomes men and ministers, we came early — each 
 
 13 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 praised God after his own fashion. He looked 
 about the place of worship, appraising its practical 
 worth and, meantime, gave God formal thanks for 
 health and for prosperity, for home and for loved 
 ones, for friends and for their kindnesses, for a 
 free country abiding in peace, for the high privilege 
 of feeding and clothing some of God's poor, of 
 proclaiming the gospel of the Master, and of ex- 
 tending in some measure the Kingdom of heaven. 
 I trust that I was not wholly unmindful of these 
 things, but I can not be sure, for hardly was I 
 seated, when my eyes found a wonderful window 
 in which ever walked the Master with face aglow 
 and gesturing hand, while on either side a thirsty 
 man drank deep from the fountain and knew it 
 not. I did not much notice the men, nor did I 
 think of the way to Emmaus, nor of what He 
 talked, for I saw only that He was walking, and 
 that the path went not straight, but curved gently, 
 as though it would extend the glory of that hour, 
 and that it passed into the window-casing, and thus 
 became my own, winding where I would. Straight- 
 way I dreamed; the men were left behind and the 
 Master walked with me, and the way led through 
 the year I had just lived. It all seemed new to 
 
 14 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 me that morning in the church, though I had not 
 lived blindly. Here and there He showed me a 
 Jacob's well, at which I could have found unexpected 
 living water, and here and there a Bethel, where 
 I might have reared an altar to the present God 
 out of my "stony griefs." Then we came to a 
 Pisgah of glorious prospect, and what was dim 
 when I looked alone, became richly clear now He 
 stood by my side. And there was my Patmos of 
 bitter suffering ; but I forgot its hardness that morn- 
 ing when, by only a gesture, He revealed to me 
 with a wondrous vividness the vision of the City 
 of God which that hour contained. 
 
 But all these are hid away in the secret places 
 of the soul, which can be opened to none except 
 now and again to our high priests of friendship. 
 Of these, therefore, I can not speak. But the pe- 
 culiar wonder and glory of the walk I took with 
 the Master that morning were found in the fashion 
 in which He would be showing me every little way 
 some nook or corner made bright by the presence 
 of God, places where I might have raised little 
 shrines and offered oblations of praise with very 
 great joy. These are so many that I can not tell 
 of them all, and so common to every life that you 
 
 15 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 will soon be finding some of your own, and they, 
 being your own, will prove far more interesting 
 to you than any of mine. 
 
 One of these shrines was in a sunset. My day 
 had been hard, filled to overflowing with toil that 
 came to nothing. Annoyances had swarmed about 
 me, failure in precious plans seemed imminent, life 
 appeared cheap and unworthy, its dust and turmoil 
 offended ear and eye. Besides, I had not borne 
 myself altogether like a man, and I was somewhat 
 shamed. Back through that day we went, the 
 Master and I. The weariness of it drew down 
 the corners of my mouth again, its discouragements 
 clouded my eyes, and the sin that entered it red- 
 dened my cheek. Through its hours we passed 
 silently till we came to its sunset and stood on 
 the hill, whence I saw the sun sink into the broken 
 clouds of evening. I remembered that it had 
 brought something of comfort to me; but with 
 Him by my side I saw that God had sent much 
 more by it than I had taken. So here I built the 
 Shrine of the August Fellowship. 
 
 All day long I had worked, and much of my toil 
 had come to nothing. All day long the sun with 
 
 16 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 infinite energy had been shooting out its shafts of 
 light and heat, and most of them were lost in the 
 vast darkness and the measureless cold of the uni- 
 versal spaces. From our point of view, however, 
 the few rays that fell upon our pin-point of matter 
 were indispensable and justified the great waste. 
 Must I complain, then, because so much of my day's 
 work was wasted if by some word or deed I helped 
 some one a little? Shall I not be a brother to the 
 sun and scatter broadcast what I am able, that a 
 little may be useful somewhere? But the annoy- 
 ances of the day? Did not the steady sun pull 
 against the attraction of a million million stars and 
 pursue his course with calmness? Indeed, did not 
 these very hindrances hold him in his path? Why, 
 then, should I have fretted about the obstacles and 
 the distractions of the day? I made my way to 
 the sunset in spite of them, or, it may be, because 
 of them. The sun and I are fellows. It sinks 
 behind the western hills, its light is lost, its heat 
 is Being dissipated, it seems to fail; but we know 
 that in the morning it will sweep over the hills 
 in the east with light and warmth again. And is 
 not my failure more apparent than real, and shall 
 I not rise to other service and to other success for- 
 
 17 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 ever? The pink and the yellow and the red and 
 the scarlet that made the beauty of the sunset were 
 possible only because the dust rose and the clouds 
 gathered. The peculiar magnificence of the hour 
 was found in the triumph of the sun over the 
 sordid dust and the heavy clouds. How blind I 
 was, not to see that the cheap, dusty turmoil of 
 unworthiness that offended me was but my oppor- 
 tunity to reveal what glory was in me. So I was 
 reminded of my sin. My shame deepened until 
 I remembered that every sunset is followed by a 
 sunrise. Then I knelt in the strangely quiet twi- 
 light and found the place of pardon. From it I 
 came with a solemn gladness to face the unborn 
 morrow. Part of this I saw that day, and part in 
 my dream. But in my dream I saw clearly that, 
 after all, I was not just a brother to the insensate 
 sun moving blindly as it must, but a fellow-worker 
 with Him who upholdeth all things by the word 
 of His power. I was a thinking part of His vast 
 and mighty universe, an intelligent element in His 
 eternal plan. More than this I saw, standing be- 
 side the Christ. Since my best offering was a will- 
 ing, a chosen service, I was become a partner of 
 God. So that Thanksgiving morning I erected a 
 
 18 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 Shrine there to the August Fellowship, and many 
 a time since I have found it a place of praise. 
 
 Many another shrine He showed me, but of them 
 I w T ill not say one word, lest I never cease, until 
 we come to the day made sacred by the laughter 
 of a babe. There I built the Shrine of the Child's 
 Laughter. It was in the full flush of new-born 
 spring. The tender grass was weaving its trans- 
 lucent fabric over the gray-brown of last year's 
 blades ; the trees were hung with a shimmering veil 
 of soft green, save that the maples were red with 
 buds, and the oaks, sullenly repelling the caresses 
 of the sun, held still their winter bareness. On 
 the slopes of the hills the broad wheatfields were 
 squares of dark green, and above them the snow 
 lay on the shoulders of the mountains, dazzling 
 white in the morning sun. The robins were sing- 
 ing cheerily, and the sparrows chattered busily about 
 their tasks of home-building. My own pulses beat 
 warmly, while in me, like a rising tide, surged the 
 joy of living, the sense of power, and the desire 
 for accomplishment. It was not at all strange, then, 
 that a toddling babe, fleeing with uncertain haste 
 from the mother's outstretched hands, should stay 
 
 19 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 my steps and win a word from my lips. But its 
 confidence was not to be given carelessly to every 
 stray passer-by. When I stopped, the babe came 
 to a stand, wavering from one foot to the other 
 till it solved that particular problem in the main- 
 tenance of its equilibrium. Then it looked at me; 
 first timidly, next questioningly, then with a grow- 
 ing confidence, and at last with a complete trust. 
 What its eyes, accustomed so short a time ago to 
 angels' faces, saw in mine to win the little heart, 
 I know not; but this I know — and when I re- 
 membered it, in the presence of the Master, it be- 
 came the surpassing glory of that spring day and 
 an abiding cause for thanksgiving — the babe trusted 
 me and came to me gravely, with increasing eager- 
 ness, and held out its tiny, chubby arms. I lifted 
 the little one high in the air, and held it so. Then 
 came the laugh, a glint in the blue eyes, a lifting 
 of the corners of the tender mouth, a parting of 
 the bow-shaped lips, a wrinkling of rosy cheeks, 
 a gleam of four white teeth; then, the eyes being 
 lost in the merrily furrowed cheeks and the mouth 
 opened wide, the laughter gurgled out in liquid 
 sweetness. Starlight in the shining eyes, moonlight 
 in the parted lips, dawnlight in the dimpling cheeks 
 
 20 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 with their roses, sunrise in the scarlet tongue-tip 
 guarded by the snowy peaks of the teeth, the full 
 choir of birdsongs in the bubbling laughter. Nor 
 is this all, for, though I knew it but dimly till the 
 Master showed me, the sweetest glories of heaven 
 beat in upon my soul from that merry face. So 
 it came to pass that I, laughing, gave the merry 
 child into the hands of the laughing mother and 
 went my way not knowing the miracle that had 
 been wrought in me, for that morning there came 
 to me a temptation to dishonesty in subtle strength, 
 and I might have yielded but for the memory of 
 the child's confidence. In the afternoon came 
 somewhat of uncleanness clad in its daintiest gar- 
 ments, and surely it had soiled me but for the 
 thought of the limpid depths of purity in the eyes 
 of the child. And that evening, as I went home 
 through the sullen dripping of a cold rain, there 
 rose up out of certain failures of the day a monster 
 of discouragement by which I would have been 
 sore wounded were it not that I caught just a 
 glimpse of the little one's face in the window, 
 and was reminded that, however I had failed other- 
 wise, still I had brought something of happiness 
 to one child beloved of the Master and but lately 
 
 21 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 come from Paradise. As I in my dream walked 
 again through that day I realized what a rich 
 benison came to me in the laughter of the child. 
 So there I built my altar and laid on it my praise- 
 offering. 
 
 Nor can I forbear telling you of my Shrine in 
 the Place of the Silences. Sometimes I have thought 
 that one reason for the barren spots of earth in 
 which man can not dwell with his continual hurry 
 and clatter is that he may withdraw into these 
 solitudes now and again, according to his need, and 
 listen to the voice that Elijah heard on Horeb, "a 
 sound of gentle stillness." Often I tire of men 
 and their affairs, though I love them individually 
 and collectively, and hold it to be an ideal of 
 Homeric grandeur "to live by the side of the road 
 and be a friend to man." So it came to pass that 
 one morning I found fault with the breakfast coffee, 
 the unvarying excellence of which is one proof of 
 my good matrimonial judgment, left the house with 
 a curt and inclusive "Good-bye" to the whole 
 family, was brutal to a timid college boy trying to 
 make his way up the steeps of learning with a 
 prospectus under his coat, listened indifferently to 
 
 22 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 the sad story of a burdened woman, needlessly of- 
 fended my Sunday-school superintendent, crumpled 
 up and hurled into the waste-basket with a minis- 
 terial malediction a bit of paper on which I had 
 been endeavoring to outline a sermon from the text, 
 "But let patience have her perfect work." My 
 lunch-table behavior I will cover with a charitable 
 veil of silence. Enough to say that, when it was 
 over, my wife, with a wisdom born out of much 
 association with me, suggested that I go fishing, and 
 I had just sufficient sense left to take her advice. 
 So I went out after trout and found a shrine. 
 
 I was surly enough as I went through the streets, 
 but somehow the magic of the open began its work 
 very soon. The stiff climb up the bench, the long 
 walk across the rising slope of sage, untangled the 
 scowls. The mild excitement of surprising the 
 draws by sudden flanking movements which carried 
 me across them with the least expenditure of energy, 
 the startling leap of a long-eared rabbit, the swift 
 rush of the sage-hen into flight from almost beneath 
 my feet, charged again and again with much effect 
 against my stubborn host of blues; but they were 
 not wholly routed until I heard the soft roaring of 
 the hidden brook and hurried down the slope to 
 
 23 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 lie at full length on the stones and drink of its ice- 
 cold, crystal waters from a little pool in the lee 
 of a rock. I drank and rested and drank again, 
 thinking the while, with a new sense of the provi- 
 dence in them, of the words, "He leadeth me be- 
 side the waters of rest." 
 
 The story of an afternoon with the trout is always 
 the same and always different: the same shouting 
 stream, with the quiet pools where it stops to get 
 its breath; the rocks and the willows and the black 
 birch, with the occasional fir or copse of quaking 
 asp ; the echoes from the cliff and the strange voices 
 in the brook; the continual matching of strength 
 and toughness against the rocks and the brush, and 
 of wit and skill against the fish; the same patient 
 insinuation of rod-tip and fly down arrowy riffles 
 or across dark pools ; the same repeated thrills from 
 the strike of the fish — the tug, the dive, the rush, 
 the leap; the same joy of victory when you land 
 your prize, mingled with a bit of pity that so brave 
 a fighter should fight in vain; the same bitter dis- 
 appointment and self-arraignment when the biggest 
 get away ; the same unconsciousness of time and dis- 
 stance — these are all the same, yet, in some unac- 
 countable way, these manifold experiences are always 
 
 24 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 different, so that each adventure after the speckled 
 braves stands out vividly by itself. 
 
 I will not speak in detail of this excursion, only 
 near the head of the stream I found the hour so 
 late and the creel so full that I put away my 
 tackle and started for home, across the silver-gray 
 ridge which cut the western blue with its sinuous 
 skyline and stood ready to cast its shadow across 
 the narrow valley. This spur I climbed, and found 
 as I passed the crest that the westering sun still 
 shone warmly on its afternoon side. Being weary 
 and at peace with all the world — a fact of which 
 some were still in ignorance — -I slipped off my 
 heavy basket and stretched myself on a bit of grassy 
 slope to rest and gaze and invite my soul. I was 
 too content even to be ashamed of my unmitigated 
 surliness of the forenoon. I looked forward with 
 something of complacent joy to the privilege of ask- 
 ing my wife to forgive me, of apologizing to my 
 superintendent, of visiting the burdened woman and 
 helping as I might be able, and of buying a book 
 from the college boy. The trout in my basket had 
 not died in vain. Then I ceased to think, and fell 
 a-gazing. There at my feet was the city, overhung 
 .with a cloud of dust and smoke, where lived those 
 
 25 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 dear friends of mine with whom and for whom I 
 joyed to labor. Beyond lay the irrigated valley, 
 "full of ditches," with its scattered houses hiding 
 in clumps of trees, its fields of golden wheat, brown 
 plowed land, and dark-green alfalfa. Through the 
 valley the river ran in its winding lane of willows, 
 and away beyond, on the gray of the desert, it wound 
 its silver loops that glistened in the far-slanted rays 
 of the sun. Clear against the distant horizon stood 
 the ragged outline of the real mountains with I 
 knew not what mysteries of stream and peak, of 
 windy highland and resounding canon. While I 
 looked, I listened as idly. I listened, but heard 
 nothing save the faintest ghosts of sound, a wisp 
 of music from the brook, the passing buzz of a 
 single restless fly, the barest whisper of a runaway 
 baby breeze, and those faint tinklings that come in 
 such a silence only to him who does not try to 
 hear, as though playful, timid fairies rang their 
 silver bells when it seemed safe. Silence was about 
 me. I rested on the silent earth; I looked out over 
 a silent landscape; the silent air hung motionless 
 around me; the afternoon sunshine seemed a warm 
 and visible silence. Silence held me up, covered 
 me over, stretched out illimitably on every side; 
 
 26 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 silence pressed upon me, embraced and held me 
 close. Such stillness seemed sacred. I dared not 
 move lest I break it; I breathed quietly; my very 
 heart beat softly. I floated on a great sea of 
 silence; I lay beneath a sky of stillness. For a 
 season I was carried beyond all sense of space or 
 of time. Then a wind whispered softly, and out 
 of the canon came a low rush of the brook's song, 
 and a bumble-bee boomed past, and the call of 
 a boy driving cattle came up from the valley at 
 my feet. As I watched his herd I could hear the 
 beating of their feet on the hard ground; the veer- 
 ing wind brought to my ears the rattle of a wagon 
 on the valley road ; then the great shop- whistle sent 
 its deep note rolling up from the city, and I rose 
 and with a high and solemn joy went down from 
 the place of the silences to a larger life and a more 
 perfect work. 
 
 As I went I remembered that Jacob had caught 
 a glimpse of heaven from a wilderness, that 
 Moses heard the Divine Voice from granite Sinai 
 and fell headlong into God's arms from Pisgah, 
 that David found the Shepherd of Israel on the 
 sheep-dotted hills of Judah. Elijah heard Him in 
 the silences of Carmel and Horeb; Jesus retired 
 
 27 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 more than once into a mountain to pray, and John 
 saw things on lonely Patmos that broke his speech 
 into splendid fragments. And I — the thought shook 
 my soul with rapture — I that very afternoon had 
 come into this wondrous fellowship of solitude and 
 with these of old had worshiped in the Shrine of 
 the Silences. 
 
 Perhaps because the contrast made my heart a 
 little more sensitive I found the Shrine of the 
 Market-place the very next day. And Jesus would 
 stop there even as He had tarried on the hillsides. 
 In the noisy, busy, mighty, brave market-place He 
 showed me a shrine that I had seen before but 
 dimly. It was named the Shrine of the Unbounded 
 Brotherhood. The shop-windows with their rich 
 display were to me that day centers from which, 
 through innumerable intricacies, ran lines of com- 
 munication to the corners of the world, involv- 
 ing what abilities and dominions of man I could 
 hardly conjecture, and suggesting as various needs. 
 In the wide sweep of his activities, in the resistless 
 might of his accomplishments, in the vast dimensions 
 of his desires, and in the measureless variety of his 
 needs — how like to God is man ! "Sons of the Most 
 
 28 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 High/' said the shop-windows to me that day. And 
 this further: men dwelling at the ends of the earth 
 from one another, and as far apart in race and cus- 
 toms, in philosophy and religion are still brothers 
 by virtue of their giving and receiving. 
 
 The steady, purposeful, interrelated flitting of 
 the shuttles of commerce, the intricately reciprocal 
 movements of the great loom of business, the weav- 
 ing of the many-colored threads of trade into one 
 far-spread fabric of life, startled me anew with the 
 consciousness of the universal reign of law, a do- 
 minion that bound us all together in a kind of in- 
 evitable fraternity. I discovered a tender pity in 
 my heart for the man who was crushed because 
 he did not know the law or forgot it. I was more 
 grieved for those unwilling martyrs who through 
 the very perfecting of the machinery of commerce 
 and industry came into a heritage of misery. Still 
 the vision I had of an infinitely complicated force 
 moving ever upward toward "one far-off event," 
 according to a law that never varies, not even 
 through the pity of a Heavenly Father, gave me a 
 deep sense, not so much of my personal security 
 as of the safety of the race. In the midst of 
 blunder and futile effort to conform to constantly 
 
 29 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 changing conditions, out of toil and sweat and 
 seeming accident I beheld brokenly through the 
 scaffolding the edifice of the ultimate purpose of 
 our God arising beautiful in its delicate fitnesses 
 and sublime in its race-wide and age-long measures. 
 On the cornerstone I w r as able, with the Master by 
 my side, to read the inscription, The Common- 
 wealth of Brothers. I saw a racial destiny uniting 
 men in an all-inclusive fraternity. 
 
 My understanding grew as I saw men marching 
 under the banner of a trades union, watched other 
 men coming from a meeting of a manufacturers' 
 association, read the names on the directorate of a 
 huge corporation, and caught a glimpse of capital 
 and labor working out a collective bargain called 
 a wage-scale for a hundred thousand men. I found 
 the symbol of it all in a buzzing, clanging factory, 
 where a host of men worked at a thousand tasks that 
 at the last would be welded into one product. This 
 was but a microcosm, a miniature of that great in- 
 terwoven world of work in which one man is served 
 by a thousand, and in his turn serves a thousand. 
 In my shrine I was able to see an ever-widening, 
 self-chosen brotherhood of work in which each has 
 his own task and in which all join together in pro- 
 ducing Life. 30 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 I stood in the market-place among men. I 
 watched their meetings and their partings ; I listened 
 to their agreements and their strifes; I heard their 
 congratulations and their condolences. It was 
 strangely given to me to see into their hidden lives. 
 Their plans and hopes, their ambitions, their suc- 
 cesses and their failures, their joys and their bitter 
 sorrows, that which was in them of worthiness and 
 that which soiled them with its own uncleanness, — 
 all were revealed to me. Much that was ignoble 
 I saw; but this I well-nigh forgot in the glory of 
 nobility that shone from so many knightly lives. 
 One man was fighting to maintain his business 
 with his back against the wall, but he bore himself 
 bravely and honorably. Some workmen came from 
 a factory-gate that would not open in the morning, 
 nor for many another morning. The wages had 
 stopped, but the lads and lassies must eat still, and 
 fuel and clothing must be bought and the rent paid. 
 Yet they faced the trying search for work and the 
 possible destitution with a laugh, and with mutual 
 good wishes they parted and went their separate 
 ways right bravely. A man walked down the 
 street wondering whether the child he had left at 
 the little home sick unto death still lived, and yet 
 
 31 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 the friends whom he greeted found his voice only 
 a little less merry and his smile only a little less 
 bright than on other days. I saw men giving, too, 
 to help another — poor men in a continual hand-to- 
 hand struggle with sordid poverty giving to aid a 
 wounded brother with a liberality that ought to 
 make us all ashamed because we have so fulsomely 
 praised those who, with all their munificent gifts, 
 have never known a touch of self-denial, and be- 
 cause we have forgotten these who give their mites, 
 all that they have, even their livings. So there 
 came to me a great gladness. I saw beneath the 
 hard hurry of the market-place a brotherhood of 
 knightly hearts that forgot all things before honor 
 and love and each other's needs. To my own heart 
 came the memory of that incident of unexpected 
 mercy on the Jericho road. It became to me, in 
 that hour, more than an example — a prophecy of 
 that unbounded brotherhood in which the hands 
 and minds and hearts of all shall be joined together 
 in bringing to pass the common good. With the 
 Master I lifted up my eyes and saw God in that 
 shrine hammering out His dream of the perfect 
 brotherhood. The God of the silences, whose vast 
 train filled all the temple of the hills, appeared to 
 
 32 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 me also as the God of the rattling market-place, 
 where hosts of busy men were helping Him work 
 out His Fatherly purpose. 
 
 On the first real winter night of that same No- 
 vember I found my Shrine of a Book. I had 
 finished the work of the day; its problems had 
 been laid aside till morning; the loved ones of the 
 home had retired, and I was alone in the quiet 
 enjoyment of such a delicious sense of freedom and 
 ease as comes when one lays aside a heavy burden 
 after bearing it for hours. Outside the wind 
 howled, the driving snow bit viciously at the 
 window-glass, the bare trees clashed their branches 
 together; somewhere a loose board rattled; the 
 bitter, savage night had its way. But in the room 
 the wisdom of man had imprisoned somewhat of 
 summer. The open fire glowed richly red; the 
 incandescent filament sent a flood of brilliance from 
 the study-lamp. The shade directed the radiance 
 downward on the polished oak of the table, the 
 book in my lap, and the rich red of the rug, and 
 held it back from the upper corners of the room, 
 where the soft shadows lay. The comfortable neg- 
 ligence of dress; the soft, firm embrace of the 
 3 33 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 leather rocker; the rich morocco, the smooth paper, 
 the excellent typography of the book, the contrast 
 between the calm brightness within and the stormy 
 darkness without made the room seem like the land 
 of the lotus-eaters, where it is always afternoon. 
 With a long-drawn breath of ease I opened the book 
 leisurely, and straightway there leaped out from 
 the page a sword. I forgot the bitter night outside, 
 the warm comfort within. The message of the 
 book stabbed me wide awake. My eyes leaped from 
 sentence to sentence ; my lips paled ; I almost forgot 
 to breathe. The weapon from the book slashed 
 through my wrappings of self-esteem, cut away my 
 false confidence, showed me to myself in weakness 
 and in dire peril, pierced to the dividing asunder 
 of bone and marrow. I do not wisely call the 
 message a sword, for it was not wielded by the 
 hand of an enemy. Rather was it the keen lancet 
 of the Divine Surgeon wherewith He excised from 
 my soul a tumor that was fast becoming malignant. 
 Before I closed the book I prayed intensely and 
 with a clinging faith — and not without an answer. 
 That Thanksgiving morning, as I looked again on 
 the pages of the book, with the Master by my side, 
 I understood far better than before what an utter- 
 
 34 
 
THANKSGIVING SHRINES 
 
 most need it had met for me. So I bowed my head 
 as I sat, and thanked God that He had led me 
 to the Shrine of the Book. 
 
 Then the first notes of the great organ — rich, 
 tender, and mighty — rose and swelled in harmoni- 
 ous grandeur, and my Savior and I came back to 
 the window again. Our path had led through the 
 whole year, ending where it began on that solemn 
 festival morning. The twelvemonth had been won- 
 drously glorified by His presence along its ways. 
 I have told you of only a few of the shrines He 
 showed me. Others there were and valleys of rest 
 into which He led my tired feet, and peaks of glory 
 from which He swept away the clouds. Now the 
 master at the organ poured out his soul through 
 its marvelous pipes. We heard the wind lisp 
 through miles of prairie-grass; a host of meadow- 
 larks called to one another in melodious confusion, 
 and were answered by a multitude of blackbirds in 
 full-rushing harmony. The rain pattered on the 
 roof and tinkled on the lake; brooks laughed over 
 their pebbles and cascades shouted above their boul- 
 ders; seas called majestically from far away. We 
 heard the mingled voices of many waters. Then 
 
 35 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 the glory of the music rose higher. The organ 
 shook, the walls trembled, the imprisoned air 
 throbbed in a rapture of melody. The reverbera- 
 tion of distant thunder was heard; the voices of 
 a singing multitude swelled ever louder; the jubi- 
 lant anthems of the angelic host burst in billows of 
 music over the parapets of heaven. A great choir 
 articulated the speechless harmonies into the words 
 of inspired verse. The marvels of science and of 
 art united with devotion in the praise of God ; but 
 somehow, as the eyes of the pictured Christ looked 
 right comradely into mine, and His hand pointed 
 down the path we had just walked together, above 
 all rose the silent praise of my heart to God, for 
 on that wonderful morning He had brought me 
 to the Shrine of the Window. 
 
 On the way home my friend remarked that the 
 preacher was an able man ; that the organ was very 
 good ; that the church would seat nearly a thousand, 
 though the arrangement of the pews might be im- 
 proved so as to increase its capacity; that some of 
 the leads of the Emmaus window were loose. I 
 held my peace. 
 
 36 
 
CHRISTMAS-TIDE 
 
THEY KNEW 
 
 O'er little, lonely Bethlehem, this night, 
 
 So many weary centuries ago, 
 
 The music, pulsing now across the snow, 
 
 Hung trembling in the raptured air. The light 
 
 Of myriad beating angel -wings, — not bright, 
 
 But throbbing softly, one deep, tremulous glow, — 
 
 Ineffably encrowned the town below. 
 
 Its folk slept on, ears stopped, eyes sealed from sight. 
 
 The hour past. The Virgin's Babe was born. 
 
 The busy townsmen, rising with the day, 
 
 Spake of the cloud, the cold, the wind that blew; 
 
 They saw no glory save that of the morn; 
 
 Nor dreamed that angels came and went away. 
 
 The Babe and Mary and the shepherds knew. 
 
CHRISTMAS-TIDE 
 
 CHRISTMAS-TIME is here. Frosty, 
 happy, hurrying, enthusiastic Christmas- 
 time! And we laugh with our friends, 
 and give cordial greetings to mere acquaintances, 
 and smile at strangers, and, most of all, our hearts 
 get warm on the side next the children. We wish 
 everybody /'Merry Christmas !" — a phrase that 
 grows more sweet with multiplied reiteration. We 
 jostle and are jostled in the crowded stores with 
 all patience; we push our way through the stormy 
 streets with imperturbable good nature; we warm 
 our stiffened fingers before the dancing blaze at 
 home with much merriment, holding the stalwart 
 opinion that this is certainly the best season in the 
 whole year. 
 
 True it is, we admit, that every month has hidden 
 in its common cargo of days and nights some bit 
 of choice freight peculiarly its own. January car- 
 ries its bales of bright, new resolutions; February 
 holds that queer piece of chronological elastic, by 
 
 41 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 which men accommodate their calculations to the 
 unyielding contrariness of Old Sol; March puffs 
 his cheeks like a big schoolboy and romps and 
 shouts, and then turns in his tracks, still like the 
 boy, and gives us pussy-willows; April enjoys her 
 quaint birthday so much that she keeps it for 
 twenty-nine more with practical jokes of snow and 
 hail and shine and shower; May is fragrant in her 
 apple-blossoms ; June has her wealth of "rare days" 
 and fair brides and sweet girl-graduates; July re- 
 verberates with the Glorious Fourth ; August brings 
 full freightage of indolence, and we, being very lazy, 
 follow Peter's example and go a-fishing — if we can ; 
 September overflows with hex harvest-home, the 
 fruitage and the vintage of the year; October is 
 serenely glorious in her robes of Indian summer; 
 November redeems her cold rains and her dreary 
 east winds by bringing us the Pilgrim festival. 
 
 Then comes December. The frost pries its way 
 through every crack, no less persistent because so 
 obviously unwelcome. In the pasture the oaks stand 
 stark and gaunt, stiffened by the biting cold; the 
 dry weeds at the roadside rattle disconsolately, and 
 the snow drifts into the fence-corners and between 
 the furrows. A most inhospitable, harsh, and stingy 
 
 42 
 
CHRISTMAS-TIDE 
 
 old miser of sunshine and gladness were December 
 but that he brings us Christmas. This being in- 
 dubitably so, we can forgive his bleakness, for it 
 is the very fitting background for the fires of Yule- 
 tide. Think of Christmas in the midst of April's 
 showers or August's blazing heat, or even set among 
 the crimson and yellow drifts of October's falling 
 leaves ! Wholly out of keeping ! What the holiday 
 can be to those unfortunate folk who live south of 
 the equator, where the summer comes in the winter- 
 time, I really can not quite imagine; but the an- 
 cients who guessed the day lived this side the belt 
 of the earth, and therefore fixed the festival where 
 it belongs — in bleak December. We owe them 
 thanks for their nice discrimination. So outside the 
 wind howls; the frozen ground rings under the jar- 
 ring wheels; the snow drives viciously against the 
 hindering glass; the maples crack like rifles as the 
 sap freezes in their veins; but inside are the glow- 
 ing Christmas hearth, the tree glistening with can- 
 dles and tinsel, and the tables bending under their 
 abundance. Besides, the home-folks are all there 
 gathering about the fire, exclaiming over the tree, 
 thrilling with expectation, bursting with secrets, 
 and, if it were possible, satiated with the joy of 
 
 43 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 manifested love. Then it is no wonder that we 
 at this season forget Athens and Rome and London 
 and New York, and think only of little Bethlehem, 
 whence Christmas came. 
 
 We love this Bethlehem holiday, as I have in- 
 timated, because it is the giving-time of the year. 
 Those Wise Men who first celebrated the day were 
 unaware that the thing they did in bringing gifts 
 to the little Judean village was to be so widely 
 imitated. Doers of great deeds are often so. But 
 for two thousand years men have been following 
 the custom set by the Magi, and of its increase there 
 will be no end; for earth would be dreary, indeed, 
 without this day, and even heaven, with Christmas 
 left out, might well seem a poor exchange for cold 
 December with its joyous holiday. These men 
 from the East, then, brought gifts and made the 
 Christmas-tide a giving time ever since, and so it 
 will be, world without end. Let us all say "Amen." 
 
 And folks do give at this glad time of the year. 
 With here and there the possible exception of some 
 flinty-hearted, pitiable Old Scrooge, we fall into 
 a most prodigal generosity, a blessed insanity of 
 hilarious giving. Sometimes, indeed, unworthy gift- 
 making intrudes itself, being of the flesh but not 
 
 44 
 
CHRISTMAS-TIDE 
 
 of the spirit of Christmas. Some such presents are 
 but for lavish display, which is in exceeding bad 
 taste; some are duty-gifts, bought reluctantly, given 
 grudgingly, tied in hard knots frowningly, com- 
 pounded of hypocrisy and slavish convention; some 
 are seed sown thriftily in good ground, from which 
 is expected an abundant harvest, thirty, sixty, a hun- 
 dred fold — a most contemptible and selfish desecra- 
 tion of the day. But go to, now. This is Christ- 
 mas. Let these sink into disreputable oblivion, 
 which is the only sanitary treatment of such gar- 
 bage. So we will turn our thoughts right gladly 
 to that other host of gifts, which no man can num- 
 ber, that are fragrant with self-forgetful love. 
 
 Fragrant with love — is it not a fitting phrase? 
 The far-flung breath of apple-blossoms and of the 
 sunset-hued clusters of peach-bloom, the redolence 
 of basswoods and of clover-fields thronged with 
 bees, the heavy perfume of the queenly rose and of 
 the wealthy hyacinth, the delicate, almost ghostly 
 fragrance of the gentle violet and the shy arbutus, — 
 all these summerfuls of delightsome odors burst 
 forth as gifts are untied by fingers that tremble with 
 loving expectancy. What matter whether the gift 
 be a diamond or a penwiper ! It is anointed, bathed, 
 
 45 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 saturated with love. Whatever its price in the 
 sordid market-place, to you it is infinitely precious 
 for love's sweet sake. In the homes of the rich 
 the stockings are crowded and the tables overflow 
 with automobiles that run, and engines that puff, 
 and dolls that talk, and jewels that sparkle in ever- 
 changing hues, and books bound in morocco. In 
 the home of the poor the lean little patched stock- 
 ings have in them an apple or two, some raisins and 
 nuts, a penny-whistle, and a rag doll. Mother gets 
 a handkerchief, and father a book of shaving-paper. 
 But these latter in their bare room keep Christmas 
 as merrily as their neighbors in the mansion, for in 
 both homes is a glory of love whose revealing is not 
 limited by the monetary dimensions of a gift. 
 
 But, nevertheless, a real Christmas present must 
 be costly. This is a suggestion of worth which 
 we may find in the coming of the Wise Men with 
 their gifts. Gold they had, and frankincense and 
 myrrh in abundance. To give of these meant noth- 
 ing of sacrifice to them. They must face the hard- 
 ships and the perils of the long journey to the 
 throne-room of the Kingly Babe that thus they 
 might put something of themselves into their pres- 
 ent, for what it bears of the giver is the true heart 
 
 4 6 
 
CHRISTMAS-TIDE 
 
 of the gift always. That is the reason one turns 
 carelessly from the expensive token, which was pur- 
 chased easily and given thoughtlessly, to the coarse 
 handkerchief with its wavering hem and its stag- 
 gering stitches that cost the child who gave it hours 
 of loving toil. What our gifts are matters very 
 little. What they contain of the giver is of great 
 concern. When "our ship comes in" we wfll not 
 care much about its rig — whether it be bark or 
 schooner or sloop — but we will want to know what 
 cargo she bears to us. So let us pray that, when 
 our Christmas ships sail into the harbor of this day, 
 they may be deep-freighted with the very hearts of 
 our friends wrought into a richness of thought and 
 labor and sacrifice, for so comes Christmas Day 
 to us. Or, if w T e would ask a nobler thing, let us 
 entreat the One of Bethlehem for grace through 
 which our outbound Yuletide vessels may be loaded 
 with a like cargo to the water's edge, for from us 
 in such a fashion should Christmas Day go forth. 
 Nor will we be unmindful of the sorts of presents 
 we bestow. "What shall we give?" is in truth De- 
 cember's distinctive question. If, therefore, we 
 pause long enough to look at the kinds of gifts 
 the Wise Men brought we may find help in an- 
 
 47 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 swering the query. They gave gold, for one thing — 
 very practical stuff, and soon to be needed for that 
 sudden Egyptian journey. Practical presents, that 
 may be used, and used up, in the work and the 
 wear of everyday life, have in their giving wisdom 
 as well as love. A diamond pin would be of small 
 value to a man without a shirt, and a gold ring 
 would be a mockery on a hand transparent with 
 semi-starvation. The instances may be extreme, but 
 such kinds of ill-chosen gifts are common enough. 
 We will do well to see that the unsentimental, 
 homely thing which is able to lubricate the wheels 
 of life is among the presents we give. 
 
 However, the overplus of a virtue may become 
 a fault. We need to remember that for one prac- 
 tical gift the Wise Men gave two unpractical. 
 Some hard-headed, forehanded old Bethlehemite — 
 for there must have been such, albeit the village 
 was not in New England — may have said, as did 
 Judas on a somewhat similar occasion, "To what 
 purpose is this waste ? Frankincense and myrrh for 
 a carpenter's Son, forsooth!" But what did Mary 
 with these two bits of unnecessary luxury? To 
 me it is an assured conclusion that long after the 
 
 48 
 
CHRISTMAS-TIDE 
 
 gold was gone and the imperative need of it for- 
 gotten, she kept the other gifts sacredly, often look- 
 ing upon their magnificence with joy. So they re- 
 mained to her a little rose-garden hidden among the 
 bare hills of her poverty till the day of His burial. 
 Then, at the last, as she sadly thought, no other 
 ointment or spice could serve so well for the body 
 of her Son as these into which had been wrought 
 the dreams and the memories of thirty years. So 
 to-day it may be that a bit of luxury, a gift to be 
 kept, not worn out, will let much sunshine into some 
 gray life, being treasured through many years, till 
 at the last it prove indispensable in a vast emergency. 
 At Christmas-time, then, loving wisdom remembers 
 that there are hearts hungering after a scrap of 
 brightness for which there is no stern exigency, and 
 it permits them to taste for once the joy of the 
 unnecessary. With the gold we will give a little 
 frankincense and myrrh. 
 
 Withal we should bear well in mind that the 
 real gift is not the tangible thing that passes from 
 hand to hand. That is but the symbol, the rough, 
 worthless shell. And if we see only the shell at 
 this season, then we are alms-givers and alms-takers, 
 
 49 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 nor have we found our Christmas Day. The fra- 
 grance of which I have spoken, the deep heart- 
 message, the soul of the token — these constitute the 
 real gift, and therein is the tender glory of Christ- 
 mas. What, then, of the gold, the frankincense, 
 the myrrh? Leaving the givers out of mind, these 
 are the messages of the gifts concerning the soul of 
 our Yuletide. The gold tells us that a loyalty which 
 shall abide untarnished till death and beyond, that 
 an unenvious well-wishing that is ever ready to be- 
 come well-doing, are gifts altogether worthy the 
 Christmas-time. The frankincense, reminding us 
 of temples and smoking censers and chanted wor- 
 ship, tells of the high honor in which we hold these 
 friends of ours, the strong and solemn beauties of 
 character which our hearts desire for them, and the 
 prayers that rise year-long from our lips that so 
 
 they may be 
 
 "every way, 
 Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 
 
 The myrrh is just our love, an ethereal ointment 
 gently soothing sore hearts, odorous with the sweet 
 forgiveness of faults and sins, belonging most of 
 all to the solemn hours of great events, and so 
 
 50 
 
CHRISTMAS-TIDE 
 
 builded into the very foundations of life. Choice 
 presents are these so far transcending their sym- 
 bols that we are well-nigh unmindful of the ma- 
 terial gift, the mere wooden casket, while we look 
 with glad eyes on the precious jewels of good wishes 
 and loyalty, of honor and prayers, of tender, heal- 
 ing love. 
 
 But would you know the best of all? Then 
 listen! The Wise Men brought gifts — let us say 
 it very quietly and briefly as men tell the supremest 
 happenings of life — they brought gifts to the Christ. 
 And — we must whisper it for our great gladness — 
 so may we. To Him who gives so lavishly and 
 lovingly of His gold and frankincense and myrrh, 
 with their infinitely various significance; to Him 
 who is so awful in His supreme holiness that we 
 worship Him as God, yet so simple in His loving- 
 kindness that we talk with Him as with a familiar 
 friend; to Him, so persuasive in His perfect sym- 
 metry and in His boundless love that He has made 
 the cross — a shameful instrument of ignominious 
 death — into The Cross, the badge of all high honor 
 — we may give gifts to Him. And He uses, He 
 needs, the gold of our service, the frankincense of 
 
 5i 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 our worship, the myrrh of our charity. Still more, 
 He rejoices in the loyalty and the honor and the 
 love that we lay at His feet on this birthday of 
 His, the day which we have made our great festival 
 of giving and of joy. Sing, my heart, for this best 
 of the blessed Christmas-tide! 
 
 5* 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
GOD'S GUEST 
 " He has gone to be a guest of God." 
 
 The house has been so empty since he went, 
 The whole wide world of work and play 
 So vacant seems and lonesome since — 
 He went away. 
 
 I can not find content. 
 For, if I work, my heart will stray 
 Past idle hands and task undone 
 Back to the happy labor of that day 
 Ere he had gone. 
 
 And, if I smile, 
 Beguiled by music or the sound 
 Of merry voices mixed in mirth, 
 My lonely heart aches hard the while, 
 For I remember on the whole round earth 
 He is not found. 
 
 "Gone," did some one say, 
 "To be a guest?" Before he went away, 
 It was a joy to him to be a guest — 
 Or host: it mattered not at all, 
 If but his smile and merry jest 
 Found answer in the kindling face 
 Of host or guest. 
 
 55 
 
So, if the call 
 That drew him hence and left me sad 
 Has only led him to some gracious place 
 Of friendliness, where one shall smile and take 
 His hand with welcome warm, I shall be glad, 
 Just for his sake. 
 
 But in my heart I know 
 That in the genial warmth he misses me ; 
 That with each rustling welcome at the door 
 He turns with eager, wistful glance to see 
 If I am come. So I will weep no more 
 Until I go. 
 
 For sometime I shall go 
 To be a guest with him. But where? 
 I had not thought save just to be with him, 
 To hear his voice, to touch his hand, and there, 
 Somewhere beyond life's sunset rim, 
 To be with him. 
 
 "God's guest!" Why, so 
 Will be great joy to him. For he 
 Loved God. "God's guest!" I can not weep. 
 For now I know he did not die, 
 He is not dead. He fell asleep — 
 He was so tired, and he longed for rest — 
 And, when he wakened by and by, 
 He was God's guest. 
 
 Smiles after tears 
 Shine out. Some glad day I shall see 
 His face, and He will be through all the years 
 God's guest — with me. 
 
 56 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 IT is Easter-time, and miracles abound. Mir- 
 acles, I said, and with somewhat of delibera- 
 tion; for, if we will but open our eyes, the 
 superabundance of the miraculous will press upon 
 us till we see not one burning bush, but every com- 
 mon thing radiant with the presence of God. It 
 will be very well if to our unsealed vision the pass- 
 ing day with all its ordinary freight be dignified by 
 this august presence of the Almighty. It will prove 
 far better if, through continued indwelling and 
 abiding, the secret places of God and the shadow 
 of the Almighty become very familiar to us. 
 
 With Divine appropriateness the Easter-tide 
 comes in the springtime. The age-old prophecy 
 and symbol of the resurrection is spring. To people 
 who think and feel the vernal renewal of the pulse 
 of life never becomes commonplace. Always there 
 abides in it a wonder that grows rather than di- 
 minishes with its repetition. We have so little to 
 do in the matter, save to stand and look, that even 
 our garden-hoes seem to be transformed into awk- 
 
 57 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 ward but very mighty wands, and we become ma- 
 gicians than which there are no greater. For, see: 
 we only stir the ground and drop into it little round 
 pellets or light-pointed shells with a mystery of life 
 in the heart of each, or big flat seeds or bulbs or 
 tubers; and then, by and by, out of the damp earth, 
 warmed with the sunshine of April, comes a bit of 
 green that reaches upward and spreads outward into 
 a blade or a leaf after its kind. So forth from its 
 tiny house bursts the plant, stem and leaf and flower 
 and fruit and seed again. We wonder unspeakably 
 that it all could have been crowded with such in- 
 credible compactness into so small a compass. We 
 marvel at the impulse and the power revealed in 
 its unrolling. We are amazed that the rootlets 
 should so unerringly seek the depths, while the blade 
 turns to the heights. The fashion in which the 
 destiny wrought into the seed leaps, at the caress 
 of the rain and the kiss of the sun, into the formal 
 expression of parental likeness is to us a continual 
 mystery of mysteries. This alchemy of growth, 
 when we stop to think of it, makes us look about 
 our quite ordinary garden whispering with the awe 
 that Jacob knew, " Surely, God is in this place, 
 and I knew it not." 
 
 58 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 Nor is the Miracle of Spring exhausted in its fun- 
 damental fact of stirring life. The multitudinous 
 variety of this life is in itself a miracle. The same 
 soil hides the roots, the same water moistens their 
 thirsty mouths, the same breeze kisses the leaves 
 of an infinitely varied host of growing things. 
 There, at the foot of the hill, a great oak lifts its 
 sturdy boughs over the tender grass, the tufted moss, 
 the yellow adder's-tongue, the timid violet, the 
 faintly-perfumed hepatica, and the blue, white, and 
 pink-blossomed mayflower. At one edge of the 
 sweep of its branches the buttercup shines in its 
 yellow enamel on the brink of the pool, while at 
 the other, under the clump of little pines, a leathern- 
 leaved, waxen-belled arbutus hides shyly away. Be- 
 yond this crowd of differences lies the great world 
 of rooted things that grow — from the mighty Cali- 
 fornia redwood to its miniature, the mare's-tail, in 
 the barren spots. So limited is the genius of man 
 that he must needs stamp his signature on his work 
 in certain fashions of doing. The picture, the 
 symphony, the poem, the story, the oration, every 
 bit of handiwork has in it a certain individuality, 
 a kind of likeness to all other work coming from 
 the mind or the hand of the same worker. But 
 
 59 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 in this God is vastly different. His work has ever 
 in it an infinite variety. In color, in form, in size, 
 in relation the manifested thoughts of God in their 
 manifold differences indicate the inexhaustible re- 
 sources of the Divine genius. And this is no small 
 part of the Miracle of Spring. 
 
 But the greatest wonder of Spring is that it should 
 stir us to wonder at all. Why should we not be 
 unconscious of its mystery and of its significance? 
 Who are we, that we set ourselves up to be critics, 
 albeit favorable ones, of the ways and the works of 
 the Most High? Is it not, indeed, a sign of a 
 noble past and a nobler future that we are at all 
 aware of the distances of those unexplored regions 
 out of which every blade of meadow grass, every 
 leaf of forest tree, every friendly roadside flower 
 calls to us so alluringly in the springtime? That 
 we can wonder shows that our ignorance is super- 
 ficial, of our infancy, not of our mature nature e 
 So, while we rejoice in the wine of spring sunshine 
 and stand in silent awe before its miracle of re- 
 newed life and lose ourselves in wonder at the 
 deeper meanings that beckon to us from the doors 
 of its mysteries, we are amazed most of all that 
 we are able to marvel at this whole primeval Mir- 
 
 60 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 acle of the Easter-tide. We somehow feel that the 
 physical in Spring is permeated with a vaster spir- 
 itual. Lowell sets this chord throbbing in our 
 souls by his suggestion in his well-known verse that 
 the activities of Spring are to be predicated not of 
 things, but of a person. With him we project into 
 the very clod this music of the spiritual that trembles 
 in our souls. 
 
 "Whether we look or whether we listen, 
 We hear life murmur or see it glisten; 
 Every clod feels a stir of might, 
 
 An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
 And, groping blindly above it for light, 
 
 Climbs to a soul in the grass and the flowers.' , 
 
 Softly the overtones of that music whisper to us 
 wondrous things about a divinity that dwells in 
 ourselves and is part of us. So death loses its grim- 
 ness and the grave its hopelessness and the future 
 its barren blankness, and so, not by any hard-built 
 logic, but by the sweet persuasions and the warm 
 assurances that blossom with the violets and the 
 daffodils as bright and rich as they, do we catch 
 some glimpse of the life that waits us just past our 
 rainy vernal equinox. At this Easter-tide, then, we 
 will thank God for the Miracle of the Spring. 
 
 61 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 The second marvel of Easter is the Miracle of 
 the Garden. There happened that supernatural 
 event which, seen in the perspective of the centuries, 
 seems the only natural sequence of the preceding 
 life. But I will not at this time speak of the pri- 
 mary fact of the Resurrection, but rather of its evi- 
 dences in the words and deeds of those who were 
 immediately touched by it, for every truth comes 
 into our knowledge through its relations to tangible 
 facts. We know the coming of spring through the 
 grass and the flowers; we know love through 
 caresses and sacrifices; we know conversion through 
 the changed face and the reformed life; we know 
 the Resurrection through the words and deeds and 
 lives that flowed forth from it like streams which 
 come out of a fountain in the desert and make fruit- 
 ful fields in the midst of a wilderness. 
 
 First of all, then — that we may be done with it 
 and turn to things more pleasing — is the proof of the 
 miracle in its denial. The incredible explanations 
 of the alleged consequences of a fact in question 
 offered by those who deny it, are often the best evi- 
 dences of its truth. Thrust this question at your 
 wise, superior skeptic, "If this, which is undeniable, 
 be not caused by that which you deny, then, in your 
 
 62 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 turn, tell me its real cause." While he flounders 
 in the superstitions of science, falsely so called, your 
 own faith will be strengthened. When the soldiers 
 at the tomb must give an account for the absence 
 of the body that they were set to guard, they, taught 
 by the priests, said, "His disciples came by night, 
 while we slept, and stole it away." These were 
 Roman soldiers, inured to all the hardships of war, 
 and yet, without being exhausted by marching or 
 fighting, they slept. They were under the severest 
 military discipline, still they brought upon them- 
 selves the sentence of death because they slept. 
 There were at least two on guard, but they both 
 slept at the same time. On an unusual duty, in 
 the fearful precincts of a graveyard, watching 
 against the fulfillment of a startling prophecy, they 
 slept. And while they slept they saw the disciples 
 come and take away the body ! What better proof 
 of the Resurrection do we ask than this absurdity 
 of explanation on the part of those who were set 
 to guard against any imposture? And those who 
 through the centuries have tried to explain Easter 
 away have succeeded only in multiplying incredi- 
 bilities. They have turned from a mystery of un- 
 fathomed power, like which there are many about 
 
 63 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 us, to a contradictory mass of intellectual confusion. 
 It may be possible that to these an atrophy of in- 
 tellect in this particular has happened, so that they 
 are become incapable of perceiving this truth or its 
 evidence, but for the rest of us Easter Day abides. 
 In this composite Miracle of the Garden there 
 are those other sweeter wonders. There was the 
 healing of the broken hearts, and I think that our 
 Comrade would like us to put that first, as He did. 
 Mary came into the garden through the misty dawn, 
 seeking where they had laid her Lord, in order that 
 she might show to His poor, wounded body, now 
 mercifully free from the thorn-crown and the nails, 
 those last tokens of love which men so pathetically 
 bestow on the abandoned tenements of their beloved. 
 So she came to the tomb, and it was empty. Not 
 content to crucify her Master, they must now bear 
 His precious body away from her care to what 
 humiliation she knew not. So she thought, in heart- 
 broken fashion. It was not the mist of the morning 
 that blinded her eyes when One approached who, 
 she thought, was the gardener. Through her tears 
 she lifted up her pitiful cry, " Where have you laid 
 Him?" The single word "Mary" was the elo- 
 quent reply, and, brushing away her tears, she 
 
 64 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 looked up and knew Him, and fell in loving wor- 
 ship at His feet. With sobs and laughter mingled 
 she cried, "My Master!" But for His restraint, 
 she would have kissed the wounds in His feet which 
 the ragged spike had made. The rains were over 
 and gone, and the time of the singing of birds was 
 come in the heart of Mary. She, who went into 
 the garden weeping under the shadow of the pas- 
 sion, came out rejoicing in the glory of the first 
 Easter. 
 
 Another broken heart was healed at no great 
 time later. Peter, notwithstanding all his honors 
 and service and boasting, had denied the Christ in 
 the most aggravated manner, in spite of warnings — 
 openly, repeatedly, angrily denied Him. Since 
 that unhappy hour shame had been eating at his 
 heart. If only he could have the opportunity to 
 say to Him, "I am sorry," to ask His forgiveness, 
 to do before Him some heroic deed, and so prove 
 his repentance and renewed loyalty. But now it 
 was too late ; for that beloved Friend was dead and, 
 whatever others might do for Him, he who had 
 been one of the inner circle must stand forever 
 outside; his name must be coupled with that of 
 Judas. Then somewhere on that Easter day, in 
 5 65 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 a place too hallowed to be named, Jesus came to 
 him, and with words too sacred ever to be repeated 
 his dear Master gave him the assurance of forgive- 
 ness. Into the room where the others were gathered 
 burst Peter out of the blackness of his midnight, 
 wearing a radiant morning face and shouting with 
 jubilation: "I have seen Him! I have seen Him!" 
 In such a blessed fashion Peter found his Easter; 
 for what other than a resurrection could have 
 brought peace and joy to the shamed heart of this 
 fisherman ? 
 
 Then there was the wonder of doubt leaping into 
 faith. Easter brimmed over the edge of the Garden, 
 flowed into the Upper Room, and found Thomas 
 there. Now, Thomas was a constitutional skeptic, 
 a man who always insisted on the margin of proof, 
 a kind of Galilean Scotchman. Mary's shining face 
 did not convince him; the story of the women and 
 the message from the angels did not lead him into 
 belief; Peter's glory of soul was not sufficient evi- 
 dence. He must see Him, put his fingers into the 
 prints of the nails, his hand into the wounded side 
 before he would believe. To him, then, came the 
 Christ ; the pierced palms extended and the wounded 
 side uncovered were open to his test, and with one 
 
 66 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 bound he sprang from the dull hopelessness of "I 
 will not believe" into the joyous faith of "My 
 Lord and my God!" So came Easter to Thomas. 
 Nor may we forget the wonderful transformation 
 of the fear which hid behind locked doors into the 
 courage which boldly charged the rulers of the 
 nation with murder and trembled not at death. 
 The disciples expected much of Jesus in their 
 blind, material way. Even when the dangers 
 thickened and His enemies crowded Him toward 
 the hill, notwithstanding His positive words of 
 warning and His evident agony, they still were so 
 sure that it was just the hour before dawn that, in 
 Gethsemane itself, the inner circle yielded to sleep. 
 Then He was seized, and they fled ; He was con- 
 demned, and no angels came to His rescue ; He was 
 crucified, and though the heavens and the earth 
 were moved at the tragedy, yet He died, and the 
 disciples themselves laid Him in Joseph's new tomb. 
 From the height of their boundless expectations they 
 fell confusedly to the depths of utter discourage- 
 ment. "They trusted" — observe the past tense, as 
 of hope ended — "that He had been the one to re- 
 store the kingdom to Israel." In their bewilder- 
 ment they hid themselves in a locked room till they 
 
 67 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 might safely slip out of the city and find their way 
 back to the dullness of the old life now so sadly 
 empty since they had known Him. Then came 
 Easter and the forty days' communion and the 
 dynamic of the Spirit. So they went forth, facing 
 all ridicule and hatred and persecution and martyr- 
 dom, courageously declaring the truth, which burned 
 its way out of their hearts, that this same Jesus 
 whom the leaders of the people had crucified was 
 risen from the dead, and so was the Messiah. They 
 did not assert His resurrection because of His Mes- 
 siahship, but His Messiahship because of His resur- 
 rection. This was their continual message: "And 
 the third day He rose from the dead. Must not 
 this Jesus, then, be the Christ of God ?" This glad 
 news drove them through all the land proclaiming 
 the miracle of Easter as the very heart of their 
 evangel till, one by one, they fell asleep in Him. 
 No adequate motive for such hardy boldness, such 
 joyous sacrifice, can be found save in the fact of 
 the resurrection. So grief became joy, and the lash- 
 ings of a guilty conscience gave way to a surpassing 
 peace, and doubt was lost in high faith, and trem- 
 bling timidity was transformed into armed courage. 
 
 68 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 These glories interwoven became the Miracle of the 
 Garden at Easter time. 
 
 Not least in wonder among these marvels is the 
 Easter Miracle of Words. Now, a word is the 
 crystallized essence of many experiences. This is 
 emphatically true of the great terms in our speech. 
 To the landsman who has never caught the wind 
 fresh off the wide water the word "sea" means 
 little more than an extended duckpond, but to the 
 sailor the term is a symbol of varied and wonder- 
 ful experiences. There is in it a panorama of 
 motion, from the sparkling dance of the ripples and 
 the long, lazy lift of the swell to the headlong 
 rush of huge billows, whipped with flying spray, 
 and the tumbling cascades of breakers tripping on 
 the bars in their haste to reach the shore and falling 
 into thunder and foam. In it there runs back and 
 forth a riot of color from the blackness of the mid- 
 night water through the grays and greens and blues 
 and purples of dawn and noon and twilight to the 
 silvery sheen that the moon makes on the calm sea 
 and to the white ghost on the crests of fleeing waves. 
 A multitude of voices hide for him in the word, 
 
 69 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 from the whisperings of the breeze-ruffled ocean to 
 the calling of strong winds and the shouting of bois- 
 terous seas as they romp together. It becomes ob- 
 vious that a great word without an adequate reality 
 back of it is a sign lacking significance, an imple- 
 ment without a use, an effect without a cause. 
 
 We use not a few words into which Easter has 
 poured a vastly larger meaning. They have been 
 transmuted into gold by its alchemy. Among them 
 are the radiant symbols: hope, faith, assurance, im- 
 mortality, heaven, love, loyalty, comradeship. Of 
 these I will not speak, but rather of two others 
 which through the generations stood opposed, each 
 to each, in unremitting battle till Easter made them 
 allies, the one mightier through the ages becoming 
 the servant of the weaker. Life and death yield 
 themselves to the peaceful sunshine of Easter. 
 
 We do well to consider the wonder for a little. 
 From the day on which Cain stood looking down 
 on the bruised and breathless body of his brother 
 lying unmoved by all the world about him and 
 impotent to so much as bend a grass-blade, until 
 the first Easter, there abode in the heart of man a 
 sense of the terrifying antithesis between life and 
 death. Here about him lay the sunny highland of 
 
 70 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 life with its bright activities and enjoyments, its 
 self-consciousness, and its warm familiarity. There, 
 somewhere, unseen until its brink crumbled beneath 
 his feet, waited the black chasm of death, and be- 
 yond it nothing, or dreams of weird and fearful 
 experiences, a place of shadows and of uncertainties. 
 Job could be sure of nothing more than rest from 
 the multiplied woes of his trial, and the psalmist 
 wrote, "The dead praise not the Lord, neither do 
 any that go down into the darkness." The ancient 
 preacher exclaimed of life when the shadow of 
 death fell upon it: "Vanity of vanities! All is 
 vanity !" The Greeks made their deity of death 
 altogether terrible with hour-glass and scythe, wait- 
 ing to cut down inexorably him whose sand should 
 next run out. The Romans wrote oh their tombs, 
 "Farewell, farewell; forever farewell!" The 
 African woman, weeping in the bush, wailed out 
 her despair to the kindly bishop who found her 
 there: "My baby is dead, and I will never see it 
 again!" So the day of life was ever shadowed with 
 the ominous night of death. 
 
 Then came Easter. We thought life a lane 
 ending yonder at the grave; but now we know 
 that it is a great highway sweeping round the 
 
 71 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 bend called death, and ever on and on. We thought 
 it a land-locked lake; but now we see that it is 
 a bay and flows through an unseen channel round 
 the end of what seemed its farther shore into the 
 vast ocean. We thought the whole home of man 
 was in this one little, frail hut; but we learn now 
 that this body is but the lodge at the gate, and be- 
 yond, in our Father's Paradise, are many palaces. 
 The Easter sunshine has not only boundlessly in- 
 creased our measure of life, but has greatly en- 
 riched its quality, for by it divinity is wrought into 
 its fabric. It multiplies life's meanings as we see 
 the years which we now have woven into the cen- 
 turies that await us. Thus does life become very 
 august, since it is a time of beginnings, of choosing 
 directions, of determining destinies; and it becomes 
 very glorious, for all its activities are allied with 
 the work of God. When the radiance of the empty 
 tomb shone upon Death, that huge, spectral event, 
 draped with black robes of horror and of woe, 
 dwindled to the dimensions of an incident. It be- 
 came a turn in the road, the first hurdle in the 
 race, the door into the other room, a night's sleep, 
 a crossing of a stream, a change of garments. Paul 
 answers Job, "It is better to be absent from the 
 
 72 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 body and present with the Lord." Over against 
 the darkness and the silence of the grave in the 
 wail of the psalmist stands the apostle's triumphant 
 cry, "O Grave, where is thy victory?" To the 
 preacher of pessimism, John the seer makes reply, 
 "They shall bring the glory and the honor of the 
 nations into it," and, "There shall be no night 
 there." The Greek god of death is replaced by 
 the shining angels whom the women saw at Joseph's 
 tomb. Opposite the Roman inscription is carved 
 the Christian, "In Christ, in peace, in hope." And 
 when the good bishop told the woman in the jungle 
 the story of Easter, she laid her babe in the earth 
 with a glad hope shining through her tears. In- 
 stead of weird, grief-laden dirges wailed over the 
 graves of our loved ones, we chant triumphantly: 
 "I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that be- 
 lieveth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
 live;" and then we sing softly, "Asleep in Jesus, 
 blessed sleep." Dr. Babcock reveals very beauti- 
 fully the overthrow of black death by shining Easter 
 in his lines: 
 
 "Why be afraid of death, as though your life were breath? 
 Death but anoints your eyes with clay. O glad surprise! 
 Why should you be forlorn? Death only husks the corn. 
 Why should you fear to meet the thresher of the wheat? 
 
 73 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 Is sleep a thing to dread? Yet sleeping you are dead, 
 Until you wake and rise here or beyond the skies. 
 Why should it be a wrench to leave your wooden bench? 
 Why not with happy shout run home when school is out? 
 The dear ones left behind? O foolish. one and blind! 
 A day and you will meet — a night and you will greet. 
 This is the death of death, to breathe away a breath 
 And know the end of strife and taste the deathless life 
 And joy without a fear and smile without a tear 
 And work nor care to rest and find the last the best." 
 
 As the Christ on the Excellent Mount was trans- 
 figured until even His garments became like woven 
 sunbeams, so in the Garden Life becomes celestial 
 in new meanings and Death appears as the tall 
 angel of God clad in robes of glory. These words 
 in this miracle of their transformation show how 
 large a place Easter has made for itself in our 
 speech. 
 
 How shall we tell in few words the Miracle of 
 Easter in the lives of men and in the life of the 
 world ? Napoleon once, in an hour of insight, said : 
 "Alexander, Charlemagne, and I have founded em- 
 pires. But on what have we built the creations of 
 our genius? On sheer force. Jesus alone has 
 founded His empire on love, and to-night millions 
 would die for Him." This utterance of the great 
 
 74 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 Corsican is deeply true, but it does not compass 
 the whole truth. It does, however, suggest it. Men 
 may willingly sacrifice their lives for the living, 
 but they do not die for the dead. They may believe 
 the precepts of Socrates, honor the morality of 
 Marcus Aurelius, feel their hearts warmed into love 
 by the sweet and sturdy simplicity of Abraham Lin- 
 coln; but none are ready to die that the stories of 
 these lives should be spread throughout the whole 
 world; few would choose martyrdom rather than 
 disloyalty to the names of any of these men. But 
 because Easter came into the Garden, and because 
 men realize that the Christ of Galilee and of Cal- 
 vary still lives as tender and as strong as ever, they 
 are ready to lay down their lives for Him. To 
 all His martyrs He is the living Friend to whom 
 they must in no manner be untrue. He is our Cap- 
 tain, and Him we love, to Him we will be loyal, 
 and for Him, if need be, we will even dare to die; 
 for, "Lo, He is with us alway." 
 
 Men die for Him and, more wonderful still, 
 they live for Him. Not in the exaltation of a 
 supreme deed of sacrifice done once for all, not in 
 sudden flaming courage of an hour, but in the steady 
 strain of a constant battle stretching wearily through 
 
 75 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 the years, in the continual repetition of small sac- 
 rifices, in the dull obscurity of daily routine men 
 and women are forgetting themselves in their love 
 and devotion to Him. Their abiding patience, their 
 unwavering loyalty, their unabating zeal manifest 
 the radiance of a devotion not to one who lived 
 and is dead, but to a supremer One, who lives for 
 evermore. Nor are these who thus live for Him 
 weak creatures with a preponderance of untrained 
 imagination. They are men of will and mind and 
 power. Some one has said: "Do you ask if Jesus 
 Christ is a strong man? See the strong men He 
 has conquered. " Men of primal strength, like 
 blind Samson, chained to heartless drudgery and 
 prisoned in unlovely surroundings, and there, with 
 brawny arms and rough hands, doing the world's 
 harsh work, crude and hard and mighty, have found 
 in His fellowship and service a Bethel ladder down 
 which come into their lives angels of a very genuine 
 refinement, of high ideals, and of true nobility. 
 Such a conquest is not the victory of a mere name, 
 but of One that lives. It is a Miracle of Easter. 
 With these are the favored ones of earth: men 
 whose days are filled with pleasant tasks, who are 
 environed with comfort and with beauty, to whom 
 
 76 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 in fullest measure come the privileges of this life. 
 Such men, lifted out of themselves by the vision 
 of His face, find in His service their supremest joy 
 and go gladly along the ways of men, following His 
 steps of toil and sacrifice and bearing something of 
 His compassion. Who but a living Master could 
 thus command them from their feasts and their 
 pleasures ? 
 
 Beside them are men who know the higher joy 
 of doing great deeds: masters of art and of science, 
 kings of statecraft and captains of industry, strong 
 men, Sauls who stand head and shoulders above 
 their fellows. These bow the knee of homage full 
 willingly to the Carpenter and pledge themselves 
 His vassals with their strong hands between His 
 pierced palms. The power of a risen Lord of men 
 masters them. 
 
 Do we ask if Jesus is a strong man? See the 
 weak men whom He has made strong. The fact 
 of conversion laughs to scorn all psychology that 
 makes no account of it; for here we find a man 
 born of evil parentage and so turned squarely to- 
 ward ruin by heredity. He is reared in the under- 
 world and so hurried on his way to destruction by 
 environment. Half his life is spent in vice and 
 
 77 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 crime, and thus he is fettered by the might of habit 
 to a hopeless destiny. All the precepts of wise 
 moralists, all the warnings of stern prophets, all 
 the high ideals of pure-hearted saints are but straws 
 to him, caught in the turbulent current of his life. 
 But one day this man of sin calls on the name of 
 Jesus, and his heritage of evil and his education 
 of sin and his practice of vice become but threads 
 of tow to the mighty power that bursts into his life. 
 He is converted, transformed, glorified. Nor is this 
 change merely apparent, a passing ecstasy, a will- 
 o'-the-wisp glittering illusively for a moment over 
 the morass of his hopelessness. He finds himself 
 living a new life in the strength of Jesus Christ. 
 Beside such a resurrection of a soul and such an 
 abiding of spiritual life the rising of a dead body 
 to fullness of physical life is an incident not spe- 
 cially worthy of note. But many such wrecks, 
 stranded on the shoals of sin, grinding on the reefs 
 of vice, caught in the maelstroms of moral ruin, 
 have been saved by Him and brought into the calm, 
 deep channels of life. These never question the 
 Resurrection. They know the Easter in the Gar- 
 den by the more wonderful Easter in their hearts. 
 This is a Christian civilization because the evan- 
 
 78 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 gel of Christ so largely determines the standards of 
 morality, furnishes the high ideals, and reveals the 
 satisfying hopes that persist in it. This message 
 finds its way into society at large, fundamentally, 
 through the preaching and teaching and singing of 
 the Church. We may give the fullest credit to 
 all those other institutions that are extending and 
 applying the word; yet it remains undeniably true 
 that the Church is the great power-house of our 
 civilization. But the dynamo of the Church is 
 Easter Day. If it were conclusively shown that 
 Jesus did not arise from the dead, the whole fabric 
 of the Church would come crashing about our ears. 
 Its form might for a little time continue as the 
 shape of a burned bit of wood sometimes still shows 
 in the ashes; but the Church so left without its 
 Easter would be but ashes, to dissolve at a touch. 
 A dead Master would not be able to command our 
 lives with supreme authority, nor could He save 
 us from our sins, nor would His promise of the 
 life to come be convincing, nor could such a one 
 by any means be a supremely inspirational example. 
 Then would come to pass the hopeless alternative 
 of the apostle's thought: "But if Christ hath not 
 been raised, then is our preaching vain and your 
 
 79 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 faith is also vain. Then they, also, who have fallen 
 asleep in Christ have perished. " If He be not 
 risen, there is no glad news to tell, no victorious 
 King to crown, no living Comrade to love. He 
 can only be remembered by the few as a Man too 
 good for His generation, and so crucified; a teacher 
 whose doctrines failed the ultimate test of experi- 
 ment; a dreamer of beauteous dreams — but only a 
 dreamer. In such a case our civilization could be 
 Christian neither in name nor in distinctive char- 
 acteristics. The marvelous leavening power of 
 Jesus in society is not the waning influence of one 
 who failed, an innocent victim of death; but the 
 waxing power of One who succeeds, death's con- 
 queror. Our Christian civilization is an unques- 
 tionable Miracle of Easter. 
 
 The constant Miracle of Spring was the prophecy 
 of the Easter that was to be, and is the symbol of 
 the Easter that has been and is forever. The 
 miracle of gladness in the faces of Mary and Peter, 
 in the triumphant shout of Thomas, in the boldness 
 of the reanimated disciples, finds its only possible 
 source in Easter. The miracle wrought in our 
 common speech, by which the black god of death 
 
 So 
 
EASTER MIRACLES 
 
 has been transformed into the white-robed, fair- 
 faced angel of our Father come to lead us into one 
 of His other rooms, and by which the monosyllable 
 "life" was made to stand for infinite meanings, 
 must find its philosophy in the dawn of that day 
 which brought fear to the soldiers and glory to 
 the hearts of Jesus' friends. The manysided miracle 
 in the lives of men and in the life of man can 
 find no adequate account of itself save in the Risen 
 One. 
 
 81 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
OUT ON THE RANGE 
 
 Jim's girl — 
 For I saw her, you know, 
 Twice, only twice, in the long ago- 
 Had a single, willful, shining curl 
 That never would stay 
 With the rest, as it ought, 
 But rippled apart. 
 So it chanced one day, 
 As he was recklessly galloping down 
 The long, gray trail, in its coil it caught 
 And held Jim's heart. 
 For out on the range, they say, 
 Folks fall in love in the same strange way 
 That they do in town. 
 
 A lazy breeze that wonderful day 
 
 Had just slipped down from the blue-veiled hills 
 
 And loitered along in a careless way, 
 
 Whispering over old memories: 
 
 Sometimes about great solemn trees; 
 
 Sometimes of the silent dusk that fills 
 
 The higher canons; of drifts that weep, 
 
 Lonesome for comfort, till up from their sleep 
 
 Flowers come star-eyed; of sage-covered slopes 
 
 Lifting prayers all pungent with desperate hopes — 
 
 As of those who ever fight hard against odds — 
 
 To the cloud-bannered peaks where the wilderness gods 
 
 Dwell ever under a sky-roof blue. 
 
 85 
 
The breeze kissed the curl. 
 Then Jim leaped down 
 And, standing there by her horse's side — 
 The valley lay quiet, empty, and wide — 
 She stooped a bit and — he kissed the girl. 
 And what would you have him do? 
 For folks on the range, they say, 
 Tell their love in the same dear way 
 That they do in town. 
 
 The breeze wandered away, 
 
 The days drifted past, 
 
 And each one seemed to out-brim the last 
 
 With a strange, new joy to Jim. 
 
 A tender glory each hour lay 
 
 On the lava black and the sage-brush gray 
 
 And crowned the hilltops far away; 
 
 So he sang, for the world was fair to him. 
 
 Then a messenger came, hot with desperate speed; 
 
 One word, and Jim was up and away. 
 
 The long trail, narrow, sinuous, gray, 
 
 Leaped swiftly back from his horse's feet — ■ 
 
 It was life or death Jim rode to meet. 
 
 He knew the hot pace, but he seemed to creep, 
 
 For his heart's thick pulsing measured each leap 
 
 That brought him nearer her uttermost need. 
 
 The day was dark when he stood by her side; 
 
 Gloom filled the canons, the valley wide 
 
 Mourned in shadows, the breeze was still. 
 
 On the white forehead the golden curl 
 
 Lay unshaken. Jim bent down 
 
 And tenderly kissed the silent girl. 
 
 He sobbed as sometimes rough men will ; 
 
 For out on the range, they say, 
 
 Death comes in the same relentless way 
 
 That it does in town. 
 
 86 
 
Now Jim rides slow 
 Over the hills as the years pass by. 
 The trail and the sage and the arch of the sky 
 Change not. But each year finds Jim 
 Riding slower and slower yet, 
 Silent and stern, with mouth grim set; 
 For a grave in the valley down below 
 Holds all in the world that is dear to him; 
 For out on the range, they say, 
 Men's hearts break in as bitter a way 
 As they break in town. 
 
 87 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
 ABOUT each of our commoner flowers are 
 clustered the memories of its own day. 
 L Lilies hold Easter for their peculiar pos- 
 session; carnations suggest the congratulatory bustle 
 of graduations; roses recall old banquets or, it may 
 be, the dewy twilights in which were said those 
 first love-vows which seem now so foolish and so 
 precious; the queenly plumes of goldenrod tell of 
 harvest festivals. But the lilacs, in their white or 
 lavender masses, with their heavy perfume, bring 
 to our saddened eyes visions of Memorial Day. 
 Likewise each holiday has its distinctive form and 
 color in our thought. The Fourth of July is 
 boisterous with effervescent patriotism; Thanks- 
 giving has in it the firelight of home-comings and 
 the greetings of love; Christmas is full to the brim 
 and running over with all manner of dancing ex- 
 pectations and laughing surprises; there is about 
 New Year's Day a sense of newness — as if it had 
 
 89 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 rained hard over night and the air had been washed 
 clean; the glory of heavenly hopes and the vast 
 surging of eternal life breaks Easter into splendid 
 fragments of wonder. But the breath of the lilacs 
 quiets our laughter and halts our hurrying activities 
 and makes our hearts tender with a sad yearning 
 that is not all painful. We stand still for an hour 
 and look back wistfully over the way we have come. 
 We remember the other days and the faces now 
 gone from among men, and we sigh 
 
 For the touch of a vanished hand 
 And the sound of a voice that is still." 
 
 The others, perhaps, are holidays. Memorial Day 
 is a holy day. Its hours are sacred, each one a great 
 translucent pearl, because once it was filled to over- 
 flowing with tears. They have ceased, for they fell, 
 it may be, long ago; but we have not forgotten, 
 and the hours are all richly gray with the soft sheen 
 of old sad memories. It is a holy day, and a halo of 
 purity and of worthiness is about it, and a certain 
 majesty, for we are thinking of those who have 
 passed from the dust and the murk of our sin- 
 touched life into a cleaner air; we are remembering 
 those who have received the coronation of death. 
 
 90 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
 Heavenly visitors seem to stand just outside the too 
 palpable veil of the flesh, and 
 
 "Angel-faces smile, 
 Which we have loved long since, and lost awhile." 
 
 Being such a day, if we have any sense of the 
 fitness of things, we do not try to reason about it 
 or its contents. That were to err, to desecrate the 
 day, to show far too plainly our kinship to the 
 insensate clod. We must look and feel and re- 
 member and meditate and dream and see visions 
 and invite the Presence of God. And, if you weary 
 not, you and I will do just this for a little time 
 this Memorial Day, with the breath of the lilacs 
 about us: we will cast aside all dull reasonings and 
 bid logic be gone ; we will just look and, perchance, 
 see; open our hearts and, it may be, feel the deeper 
 movings of life ; lift up the gates of our souls, and 
 who knows but God will come in? If this be so, 
 then will the fragrance of the lilacs be precious to 
 us and the day be very holy for evermore. 
 
 Far down the street rolls the sudden rattle of 
 the snare-drum, then the boom of the bass-drum, 
 and in an instant the whole band pours out its 
 9i 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 mingled harmonies, all wrought into stirring but 
 solemn martial music. The magic of the trumpet- 
 call and the drum-beat lays its mighty hand upon 
 us. We look about and long for some heroic thing 
 to do. So we somewhat understand how men on 
 hard marches or in the horror of battle forget them- 
 selves in the beating glory of such strains, but we 
 are more mystified than ever why this should be. 
 The music swells, the musicians march briskly 
 along, conscious of the watching eyes and the listen- 
 ing ears and rejoicing in the gladness that always 
 attends the doing of a thing by the harmonious 
 massing of various individual activities. We re- 
 member that God made us " workmen together.' ' 
 The warmth of a great comradeship glows in our 
 hearts, and we highly resolve that henceforth we will 
 call men brothers a little more significantly ; that we 
 will do our small tasks with a bit more care; that 
 we will cause no discord in the splendid harmony 
 of the world's work. With a sudden lift, as though 
 on a mighty surge of recollection, we recall that 
 God said we were to be workers with Him. That 
 is too wonderful. Our very faces glow with the 
 marvel of it. Our poor strains are to be wrought, 
 not into the melodies of the world alone, but into 
 
 92 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
 the infinite music of the universe. We no longer 
 wish for the chance to do a great deed. The com- 
 mon chores of everyday are become very great since 
 we touch shoulders with God in their doing. We 
 no more look for the heroic things to do, but are 
 determined now to do the common thing heroically. 
 But the band is past, and we see the "boys in 
 blue" march by. Our hearts swell with admiration 
 and are like to break with pity. These are the men 
 who in their country's direst need shook hands with 
 their fathers in a new sense of manhood, bent their 
 heads on their mothers' shoulders and stood long in 
 their embraces, kissed the tear-stained and fear- 
 paled cheeks of their sweethearts, and then went 
 forth to hardship and peril, and, for aught they 
 knew, to death. These are the men who pushed 
 their way into the murky swamps of the Wilderness 
 when it crackled with musketry and roared with the 
 discharge of cannon and the burst of shell. Or 
 they are those who stood at Gettysburg unmoved 
 by the crashing of the artillery that played for hours 
 upon their entrenchments, undismayed by the long, 
 gray line of Pickett's men moving forward with a 
 veteran courage that seemed irresistible. It may 
 be that these men were with Sheridan when he 
 
 93 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 turned defeat into victory at Cedar Creek, or with 
 Sherman when, cut off from all communication, 
 he pushed his way through the heart of the Con- 
 federacy, or with Grant in the battering of Peters- 
 burg. Wherever they were, they faced grim death 
 again and again. It was no fault of theirs that 
 they did not fall in the terrible crash of battle or 
 perish miserably in Andersonville or Libby. These 
 men, then, are heroes — these whom we see every 
 day about our streets. There is one who is a car- 
 penter. We saw him shingling a house the other 
 day. This one is a grocer. Last week we bought 
 a box of crackers from him. This other drives a 
 dray and hauls baggage from the depot. Yesterday 
 they were all our common townsmen, but to-day 
 the memory of high achievements crowns each with 
 the laurels of a hero. And a hero each one is; 
 and whatever he may do of everyday work, he will 
 never be other. It is a little wonderful to live in 
 a house built by a hero, and to buy groceries of a 
 hero, and to have a trunk taken across town by 
 still another hero. The dust of yesterday and its 
 common work made us forget, but to-day we re- 
 member and do them honor with full hearts. This 
 further. We perceive that heroes are but common 
 
 94 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
 folk after all. We are surprised at the obvious 
 fact. Then its corollary is apparent, and we feel 
 a thrill in our hearts. We, being but common folk, 
 may yet be heroes. 
 
 So, filled with admiration and all high emotion, 
 we look at these heroes again, and our eyes grow 
 moist. They marched forth to battle with firm step 
 and back-thrown shoulders and clear eyes, in the 
 full strength of their unbroken young manhood. 
 Now they pass along the road to the decoration 
 of their comrades' graves with feeble step and shoul- 
 ders bent under the burden of the years and eyes 
 dimmed with age, in the tottering weakness of their 
 last days. They can't keep step any more, for one 
 limps with rheumatism and one shambles with a 
 touch of paralysis, and one, weakly tired with the 
 unusual march of a mile, lags a little behind. They 
 are all glad to halt at last in the coolness of the 
 quiet God's Acre, where lie the soldier-dead of the 
 country-side. The old commands that once rang 
 out so clearly are uttered quaveringly to-day, for 
 the voices that were so strong then are weak now 
 through the much laughter and the much sobbing 
 of the years. They blunder sometimes in the read- 
 ing of the solemn ritual of the hour; for the eyes 
 
 95 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 that were so clear are dimmed now by looking long 
 and intently upon the problems of life. They were 
 young then, and hope shone in their faces, and life 
 lay before them with its possibilities, and their paths 
 ran ever upward to the hill-crests of achievement. 
 Now they are old, and the pathetic twilight of 
 memory is on each countenance, and the fullness of 
 life is behind them, and their paths lead down- 
 ward through the loose sand of increasing decrepi- 
 tude to the sunset valley of the grave. They are 
 the last of the Old Guard — so few now, though 
 once so many. As they, with a love that under- 
 stands, place flowers on the green mounds that 
 cover silently the forms of the comrades gone a 
 day's march ahead, they wonder who will lay the 
 garlands on their graves. They doubt not in their 
 generous hearts that the coming generations will 
 remember and that the air of Memorial Days in 
 far-off years will still be redolent with the scent of 
 the lilacs and that the beloved flag will wave afresh 
 each May over the green mounds where rests their 
 dust. But they know that, however much of rever- 
 ence will guide the hands and hush the voices of 
 those who will observe this day in the years to 
 come, there will be lacking that blessed sense of 
 
 96 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
 fellowship interwoven in the same experiences. 
 Reverence is very good, but, oh, it is not comrade- 
 ship! So our hearts become tender, and in the 
 midst of our tears we come into the knowledge 
 that this faithful remembering of old comrades, this 
 brave holding up to the eyes of the whole people 
 the worth of a patriotism that counts not one's own 
 life dear unto oneself, this cheerful carelessness con- 
 cerning any memorial of themselves— so glad are 
 they that they may still remember the others — is 
 not the least heroic thing which they have done. 
 Their simple, deep reverence for the flag and their 
 faithful remembrance of those who cemented the 
 Union in their blood makes us a little more eager 
 to take off our hats to "Old Glory," makes us a 
 little more conscious of the debt we owe to the men 
 who wrought mightily in the days that were, makes 
 us desire to be ever loyal and courageous as soldiers 
 of the common good in these days of ours. And 
 so do these men serve us not a little. 
 
 But soldiers' graves are not the only ones gar- 
 landed to-day, and blue-clad men are not the only 
 ones who move about the solemn place in the hush 
 of tender memories and wistful regrets. Over there 
 7 97 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 is a little group about a monument whose inscrip- 
 tion tells that those whom it commemorates were 
 gathered like ripe wheat into the Master's granary. 
 The strong men and the fair women bending over 
 the low green hills pull out a tiny weed here, dig 
 a bit about a rosebush there, arrange the wreaths 
 lovingly, speaking softly the while of "father" and 
 "mother," and wondering if it had been possible 
 to do something more for them. It comes into our 
 hearts that those who lie there were soldiers, too, 
 and heroic in their lives. We are also persuaded 
 that one of the things very truly worth while is 
 to do our work so simply and so bravely through 
 the years that our sons and daughters will come 
 some day, with mature understanding, bearing rev- 
 erent laurels to our graves. 
 
 Yonder a little woman is weeping quietly over 
 the place where one dark day they laid the still 
 form of him on whose strength she had thought to 
 lean till the shadows of sunset descended on their 
 lives. The little one by her side weeps, too, but 
 in sympathy and bewilderment rather than for any 
 memory the child-mind can hold of the face be- 
 neath the sod. The woman is so alone in her woe. 
 Her bewilderment, her loneliness, her blind misery 
 
 98 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
 grip our hearts like skeleton hands until they ache 
 with a bitter helplessness. But a few feet of earth 
 between the needle-pricked fingers, the tear-dimmed 
 eyes, the pierced heart, and the hand that had held 
 her own and the lips that had promised to comfort 
 her in all life's sorrow; yet there come to her no 
 word of cheer, no tender caress, no encircling arm 
 of protection. Those lives that so few years ago 
 ran together like the meeting of brooks are now 
 separated by infinite distances or impassable bar- 
 riers. The bitter mystery of it beats upon our 
 hearts and our brains until we can only trust sadly 
 and wait till the day comes in which we shall know 
 as we are known. But hereafter, in the midst of 
 the marriage merriment, when we hear the words, 
 "until death do us part," will come the fragrance 
 of the lilacs and the memory of that still God's 
 Acre with its green grave-billows and the black- 
 clad woman broken underneath her woe. 
 
 Blind with our tears we wander away, and when 
 we see once more we are near to where a man and 
 a woman are beside a little grave — such a little 
 grave. The woman, after the fashion of women 
 the world over where children are concerned, is 
 kneeling down trying to make the little, soft-grassed 
 
 99 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 mound daintier, as though it were the empty crib 
 at home. The father stands by with his heart in 
 his face — as he used to stand watching the mother 
 bathe the tiny form that for months now had not 
 been kissed or fondled. Somehow both feel con- 
 victed of a strange, impossible neglect, as though 
 they had willingly left their babe uncared for, or 
 as though the child needed aught that they could 
 do for him. The tears run silently down the cheeks 
 of the mother, and the father's lips tremble as he 
 la5^s a comforting hand on her sob-shaken shoulders. 
 What a simple, world-old, infinite tragedy is here! 
 The small grave, the little marble slab, the wreath 
 of common flowers open the door through which 
 we may see it all: the humble home, now strangely 
 quiet, where so few months ago baby-feet pattered 
 and baby-lips prattled; the broken and stained toys 
 upstairs in the drawer, cheap at the beginning, 
 marred much but unspeakably precious; the little 
 empty bed all undisturbed that had pillowed the 
 shining head and had been so often trampled by 
 the dainty feet. There are little garments laid 
 carefully away, to be taken out and wept over, and 
 then put back again ; a lock of golden-brown hair, 
 a tiny ring, a silver cup, and a baby's spoon, and 
 
 IOO 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
 a thousand memories of broken baby-words and 
 funny baby-gestures, and tender baby-caresses. 
 They are all immeasurably precious, inexpressibly 
 sad. Sometimes the father and the mother wish 
 that they might forget it all; but the next instant 
 they cry: "No! No! The babe is gone, but these 
 memories are ours until we hold our child again." 
 "Till we hold our child again." So do the hopes 
 of Easter shine on the tears of Memorial Day and 
 make a rainbow, at whose feet lies no pot of gold, 
 but something more precious far; for there, at the 
 very place where they come to the end of the arch 
 that will make for their feet a glorious pathway 
 beyond the stars, they will find baby-hands and 
 baby-feet bathed in its mingled glories, and hear 
 baby-laughter at its wondrous beauty, and feel baby- 
 kisses of soft welcome for them. So they have their 
 dear grave and their memories and their dreams. 
 Still more they have, far more than that ; for into 
 their lives has come, because they had welcomed this 
 babe, and again had said "Good-bye" to him, an 
 exquisite fineness that nowhere has been revealed 
 more eloquently or more tenderly than in the piteous 
 words of the English divine, Dr. Parker: 
 
 "Baby was but two years old when, like a dew- 
 
 IOI 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 drop, he went up to the warm sun, yet he left my 
 heart as I have seen ground left out of which a 
 storm has torn a great tree. We talk about the in- 
 fluence of great thinkers, great speakers, great 
 writers; but what about the little infant's power? 
 Oh, child of my heart, no poet has been so poetical, 
 no soldier so victorious, no benefactor so kind, as 
 thy tiny, unconscious self. I feel thy soft kiss on 
 my withered lips just now, and would give all that 
 I have for one look of thy dreamy eyes. But I 
 can not have it. 
 
 "My God! Father of mine in the blue heaven, 
 is not this the heaviest cross that can crush the 
 weakness of man? Yet that green grave, not three 
 feet long, is to me a great estate, making me rich 
 with wealth untold. I can pray there. There I 
 meet the infant angels; there I see all the mothers 
 whose spirits are above; and there my heart says 
 strange things in strange words — Baby, I am com- 
 ing, coming soon! Do you know me? Do you 
 see me? Do you look from sunny places down to 
 this cold land of weariness? Oh, Baby; sweet, 
 sweet Baby ! I will try for your sake to be a better 
 man; I will be kind to other little babies and tell 
 them vour name and sometimes let them play with 
 I02 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
 your toys; but, oh, Baby, Baby, my poor, old heart 
 sobs and breaks." 
 
 We wait till the rest are gone and sit long in 
 that quiet place with the dead and our thoughts. 
 Nor are we without certain unspeakable messages 
 from God. Then we go home together in the cool 
 hush of the spring sunset, silently. The solemnity 
 of the day has discovered an unexpected profundity 
 in our own souls. We did not know that they were 
 so spacious as to give room for the little we said 
 and for the great deal that we left unsaid because 
 our speech became suddenly so crude and so insuffi- 
 cient. We have a larger respect for ourselves; 
 being at the same time somewhat humbled for the 
 notable disparity between the wealth of the revela- 
 tion we were able to receive and the poverty of 
 our power of expression. We are greater than we 
 thought, and smaller, and know not whether to be 
 glad or sorry. We are sure, only, that we can 
 never be so superficial in thinking and in feeling 
 and in living again. 
 
 Besides we have caught glimpses of unsuspected 
 depths in the lives of others. We will see those old 
 soldiers about their common work to-morrow, but 
 103 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 we will remember the revelation of their hearts and 
 the discovery of their souls that came to us to-day. 
 Our hands will instinctively touch our hats in a 
 reverent salute, not so much to them as to the ex- 
 alted patriotism and the cheerful courage that placed 
 them and keeps them ever in the Pantheon of heroes. 
 Then, when we see those hard-headed business men 
 through their office-windows, busy with their great 
 affairs, or catch a glimpse of those stately social 
 leaders moving from their big cars to some notable 
 function, we will remember that, after all, they are 
 just sons and daughters who love and who miss 
 their father and their mother, and who do rever- 
 ence to their memory. Perhaps we may meet the 
 little seamstress hurrying home from her day's work 
 to her little room and her child's greeting, and we 
 will see not just a commonplace, busy woman con- 
 cerned mainly over gusset and seam, tapeline and 
 pattern, but a patient life into which has come a 
 black tragedy, but in which still abides a pathetic 
 joy. Then the tears will come again. And to- 
 morrow evening we will see a man and a woman 
 enter their gate slowly and go up the walk reluc- 
 tantly and open their door with hesitation, and we 
 will wonder why they do not hurry into the happy 
 104 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
 precincts of the home until we catch a glimpse of 
 their faces and remember that the rooms are all 
 quiet and in order, that the little crib is empty, 
 and that no lullaby will be sung to-night for the 
 babe that sleeps on in the little grave yonder at 
 the foot of the hill. Because we have caught pass- 
 ing glimpses into these lives we are aware that 
 beneath the ripples of every day, in the deeps of all 
 men's hearts, move surging tides of sorrow and joy, 
 of dream and reality, of despair and hope. Forever 
 life will be to us more dignified, more significant, 
 more wonderful. 
 
 We walk home in the sunset thinking silently 
 that so will come the end of our lives and the 
 dew of tears will fall for us awhile. Then the 
 stars will shine through unnumbered years carelessly 
 on our forgotten graves, and we wonder sadly if 
 the end of life justifies its beginning. The sun has 
 sunk behind the western hills, but the dust and the 
 clouds have caught up its glory in a hundred mingled 
 hues and shines and shades. Yellow and pink and 
 orange and red and scarlet, great reaches of sky, 
 huge piles of clouds, and the marvelous, shifting 
 light and color over all. We stand and look, and 
 105 
 
FESTIVAL SHRINES 
 
 the clouds are mountains now in a vast plain of 
 glorious sky. Foothills and crags, canons and 
 ridges, high passes bathed in shadow and peaks 
 crowned with snow — all splendid in the changing 
 light and color. We find ourselves saying rever- 
 ently, "As the mountains are round about Jerusa- 
 lem — I will look to the hills.' ' Then there is a 
 mystery of change, and we are looking on the walls 
 of a city with tower and rampart and high gates, 
 and, within, the massed roofs, and over all the won- 
 drous glory. Now our lips are unconsciously whis- 
 pering: "And I saw the new Jerusalem, coming 
 down from God out of heaven, arrayed as a bride 
 for her husband — and her walls were precious stones 
 — her gates were pearls — the glory of God shall 
 lighten it — they shall bring the glory and the honor 
 of the nations into it." Then the towers fall and 
 the walls crumble and the gates vanish. We look 
 upon homes, palaces, and mansions, but still homes 
 lighted in the deepening twilight with the warm, 
 welcoming glow of hearth-fires. And those who 
 walk the streets are all clad in rich robes, and the 
 faces that look out of the windows are bright with 
 happiness, and One resplendent in a kind of out- 
 shining glory passes from house to house. Aged 
 106 
 
"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR" 
 
 fathers and mothers bow their heads for His bless- 
 ing; strong men and women talk eagerly with Him ; 
 children cling to His garments, and He carries a 
 babe in His arms. Now we know that we are 
 looking upon what David saw when he sang, "I 
 shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." We 
 are seeing the vision of Jesus when He said: "In 
 My Father's city are many palaces. I go to pre- 
 pare a place for you, that where I am, there ye 
 may be also." 
 
 We walk home in the gathering dark and part 
 with a silent handgrip, knowing that deeper than 
 the profound tragedies of life, deeper than our own 
 souls are the ways and the love of our God. With 
 the comforting pressure of the Everlasting Arms 
 beneath us we fall asleep, breathing the heavy fra- 
 grance of the lilacs through our open windows. 
 
 107 
 
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