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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
f6? 
 
 
 Copyright, 191 1, 
 By Jennings and Graham 
 
 5CLA292619 
 

 I 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Preface, 7 
 
 The Leakage of Power, - 11 
 
 The Fight of the Soul, - 43 
 
 The Lure of the Quiet, - 89 
 
 The Love that Abides, - - - 113 
 
 The Empty Crib, 149 
 
 The Longing for Home, - - - 171 
 
To the Gentle Reader: 
 
 In classic days Time was painted or 
 sculptured as full-winged. Tempus fu- 
 git is a quotation in every tongue. But 
 Chronos is not always in the air. Dur- 
 ing the day while absorbed in work we 
 take no note of the flight of time. The 
 busy hours, like flying birds, pass over 
 our heads, and we observe them not. 
 They are Winged Hours. 
 
 But when the day's work is done and 
 one is away from home and alone, the 
 hours drag heavily ; not with light wing 
 do they come or go, but with feet of 
 lead. These are the Wingless Hours. 
 
 Idle moments, however, need not, like 
 mountain streams, go to waste. Many 
 a wheel may be turned by waters that 
 aimlessly flow. Spare moments contrib- 
 ute largely to the world's wealth, and 
 
 7 
 
PREFACE 
 
 the quiet hour may become the golden 
 opportunity for highest intellectual or 
 spiritual enjoyment and profit — quiet 
 moments when the soul shut in from the 
 sights and sounds of the garish day may 
 strengthen its waning powers in medita- 
 tion, or hold high converse with the real 
 kings of men, and find itself "never so 
 little alone as when alone." 
 
 Possibly, you have often wished for 
 a little book which you could dip into 
 anywhere to beguile an idle hour, and 
 for you and for all other thoughtful 
 souls who amid the carking cares of life 
 yet live in the world of the spirit, these 
 few pages — by-products of spare mo- 
 ments — are written, to warn, strengthen, 
 sweeten and console. They are not ser- 
 mons, they are really not essays, they are 
 simply the collected dreamings of the 
 Wingless Hour. 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 And he wist not that the Lord was de- 
 parted from him. — Judges 16 : 20. 
 
 It went gradually. As the light dies 
 upon the hills, as a gorgeous sunset 
 fades into colorless glow, and evening 
 slowly sinks into loneliness and night — 
 so went the Spirit of God. Samson did 
 not know it was gone. He was asleep. 
 But back of the sleep, the sleep of death 
 in the lap of Delilah, were days of dally- 
 ing with sin, of playing with it, seeking 
 it, indulging in it, and all those days led 
 up to the fatal hour when, like an Em- 
 peror bartering an Empire for a bauble, 
 he abandoned himself to the power of 
 sin and lost the power of God. Shorn 
 locks — shorn strength! Forgetting the 
 stars, he sank in the mire. 
 II 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Born of godly parents, consecrated to 
 the service of God, destined savior of 
 his country — great things were expected 
 of Samson. But he was a disappoint- 
 ment. Of all disappointments he was 
 the worst. He played the fool. He 
 played it with his eyes wide open. He 
 played it, as many another has played 
 it, against every restraining influence of 
 home and religion and interest and call- 
 ing. A traitor to himself, he played 
 false to every holy thing. The glamour 
 of life outside his circle, the morally dis- 
 integrating power of unholy love, the 
 fascinating charm of novel experiences 
 among strange people, so unlike the 
 quiet simplicity of his Israelitish home, 
 appealed mightily to his imagination, to 
 every vibrant nerve of his lawless being. 
 He gloried in his strength. He ridi- 
 culed the dream that he could ever fall 
 a victim to Philistine snares or heathen 
 woman's wiles. 
 
 12 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 But do the eyes of the basilisk ever 
 wink? Does the charm of the serpent 
 ever loosen its grip on the quivering 
 bird? Stealthily, but persistently and 
 surely, the filmy tentacles of the octopus, 
 as Victor Hugo pictures for us in "The 
 Toilers of the Sea," reach out for the 
 neck and arms of the unthinking fisher- 
 man till suddenly the mighty muscles of 
 the frightful thing are wrapped around 
 the shrieking victim as he is dragged 
 down into the oozy depths of ocean, 
 where he is not so much devoured as he 
 is absorbed into the belly of the monster. 
 
 Thus was it with the Fool of History. 
 Drawn gradually from his family to a 
 heathen family; from the religion of 
 wholesome living to the debaucheries of 
 aliens, he finally gave away the blessed 
 secret of his strength. Compared to his 
 pleasure, he held this gift of God as 
 of little worth. And here was the depth 
 of his shame, the climax of his perfidy. 
 
 13 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 As a traitor he surrendered the keys of 
 the citadel. For the fellowship of God 
 he sought the love of a harlot. He flung 
 away his calling as a Nazarite and de- 
 voted himself to lust. Against God and 
 home, church and country, honor and 
 interest — Delilah won. "He told her 
 all his heart and said unto her, There 
 hath not come a razor upon my head 
 from my mother's womb ; if I be shaven 
 then my strength will go from me, and 
 I shall become weak and be like any 
 other man." 
 
 Sin did not come to him. He sought 
 it. He put himself in the way of it. 
 He walked in the way to be shorn of 
 his character and his glory, and so by 
 the inevitable working of inflexible law 
 he who was named Shimshon, mean- 
 ing Sunlight, ended his days in darkness ! 
 "And the Philistines laid hold on him 
 and put out his eyes; and they brought 
 him down to Gaza and bound him in 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 fetters of brass, and he did grind in the 
 prison house." 
 
 In Gaza I Of all places on earth, 
 Gaza! once the scene of his mightiest 
 triumphs in the days of his strength, 
 now the scene of his deepest degrada- 
 tion! What a tragedy! What infinite 
 irony! He who once tore away the 
 gates of this city and carried them away 
 with a shout to the tops of the hills, 
 now grinds Philistine corn as a slave in 
 its prison. The strength that should 
 have been used in the service of God, be- 
 ing wasted, is now put to the labor of a 
 beast. Too late does Samson realize 
 that he played the fool and in himself 
 received the reward of a fool. 
 
 I yielded and unlocked her all my heart, 
 Who with a grain of manhood well resolved 
 Might easily have shaken off all her snares; 
 But foul effeminacy held me yoked 
 Her bond-slave. O indignity! O blot 
 To Honor and Religion! Servile mind 
 Rewarded well with servile punishment! 
 
 15 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 'T is a long way from health to dis- 
 ease, from strength and power to lean- 
 ness and trembling. But the change is 
 not sudden. Health is not lost in a day. 
 In every instance there has been a leak- 
 age, a stealthy flow of vigor, scarcely 
 felt at first, perhaps, but which un- 
 checked has gradually increased in vol- 
 ume till now the physical constitution is 
 undermined, the fine bloom has faded 
 from the cheek, and the joy of living is 
 gone. 
 
 The saint does not turn sinner in a 
 night. Experience and world-knowledge 
 teaches that one does not forsake in an 
 instant all that love and honor holds 
 dear, the confiding wife with springtime 
 love, the little ones with innocent joys 
 and ringing laughter careless of the day, 
 — friends and social standing and all the 
 reality and richness and repose of a 
 happy home for the embraces of one 
 who at last is nothing but 
 16 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 A rag and a bone 
 And a hank of hair, 
 
 though her cheeks be painted with the 
 colors of the lily and the rose. No one 
 suddenly flings to the winds the splendid 
 achievements of a lifetime and plunges 
 headlong into knavery and all the sure 
 results of evil-doing. 
 
 In many cultured minds the loss of 
 power comes through the gradual loss 
 of faith, however that may have been 
 brought about. Unbelief is a sure 
 leak of all spiritual power. How grad- 
 ual was the drift of the great skeptic 
 Renan from his simple Christian faith, 
 and religious associations at Trequier, 
 his birthplace, with its cathedral and 
 cloisters and the picturesque practices of 
 its peasantry! From Trequier, where 
 he had been under the careful instruction 
 of the pious clergy whom he ever after 
 venerated, he went when sixteen years 
 old to the St. Nicholas Academy in Paris. 
 17 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 From there he went to the college at Issy 
 to prepare for the renowned St. Sulpice 
 Seminary in Paris. At Issy he continued 
 the drift from his childhood faith which 
 had imperceptibly begun some time be- 
 fore. He expresses his doubts and hesi- 
 tates to be ordained, though he after- 
 ward submits to taking the tonsure. 
 Science becomes his absorbing passion. 
 "The one thing lacking," he says of 
 those days, "was positive science, the 
 idea of a critical search after truth. 
 This superficial humanism [which he 
 had been studying] kept my reasoning 
 powers fallow for three years, while at 
 the same time it wore away the candor 
 of my faith." He begins to deny the 
 possibility of miracle and revelation, 
 and to substitute an ideal system of the 
 universe of his own making for the liv- 
 ing God. At St. Sulpice his unbelief 
 deepens. "For four years," he writes 
 in his "Recollections of My Youth," 
 18 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 "a terrible struggle went on within me, 
 until at last the phrase which I had long 
 put away from me, as a temptation of 
 the devil — 'It is not true' — would not 
 be denied." 
 
 The Roman Church had failed to rec- 
 ognize the demands of science and the 
 advent of a new era in thought. The 
 drift in the case of the young Renan 
 was accelerated. On October 6, 1845, 
 when only twenty-two years old, he left 
 the Seminary of St. Sulpice and aban- 
 doned his faith in Christianity. "At 
 evening bell he went down the steps for 
 the last time in his cassock, crossed the 
 square rapidly, and made his way to 
 the neighboring hotel or lodging-house 
 of Mile. Celeste. The change to lay 
 attire was not at once completed. But 
 in this abrupt fashion the unknown had 
 been faced and Renan had flung himself 
 upon the pavement of Paris." On June 
 2 3> 1 863, eighteen years later, he pub- 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 lished his "Life of Jesus" one of the 
 most pernicious books that ever was 
 written. But when in the Church of 
 St. Sulpice some years ago, to see where 
 Renan once worshiped and to look at 
 some old pictures there, I saw Christ 
 still honored as God, and the little chil- 
 dren playing in the square to the music 
 of the spurting fountains and take their 
 turns to run in and repeat their cate- 
 chism just the same as if the Vie de Jesu 
 had never been written. 
 
 From the time that David F. Strauss 
 submitted to the influence of such Ra- 
 tionalists as Professors Semler and 
 Paulus till he produced his unhistorical 
 "Life of Jesus" which reduced the Gos- 
 pel narratives to myths, and by its bold- 
 ness shocked the religious sense of the 
 nineteenth century, we can trace the 
 gradual descent of his belief until at 
 last, losing all faith in a personal God, 
 he passed away in the shadows of death, 
 20 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 leaving a sad memory to his only daugh- 
 ter. He was only twenty-eight when his 
 destructive book appeared "A young 
 man full of candor, of sweetness and 
 modesty; of a spirit almost mystical and 
 apparently saddened by the disturbance 
 which he had occasioned." But he died 
 without sweetness and without hope of 
 this world or of life in the next. 
 
 And in the world of letters, how 
 clearly is seen the downward slope of 
 the soul from the sunny heights of 
 prayer and serene faith to the darkness 
 of unbelief in the life history of George 
 Eliot ! Like Herbert Spencer, the great 
 philosopher and her friend, she came of, 
 or was related to, good Methodist stock. 
 Her mother, like Spencer's mother, was 
 a Methodist, and beautiful. Dinah Mor- 
 ris in "Adam Bede" was George Eliot's 
 aunt. George Eliot herself in early life 
 was deeply pious. At nineteen she 
 writes: 
 
 21 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 "May the Lord give me such an in- 
 sight into what is truly good that I may 
 not rest contented with making Chris- 
 tianity a mere addendum to my pursuits 
 or with tacking it as a fringe to my gar- 
 ments. May I seek to be sanctified 
 wholly." 
 
 Then she was a happy girl in her 
 country home, helping her father make 
 butter and cheese, studying Italian and 
 German and French, and enjoying the 
 same spiritual life as her relatives. 
 Later, led astray by an infidel book on 
 the "Origin of Christianity " which was 
 placed in her hands, she gradually 
 drifted from the faith of her childhood. 
 She refuses to go to church, becomes 
 alienated from her father, seeks anti- 
 Christian society, becomes the translater 
 of Feuerbach and Strauss, mixes with 
 Agnostics, marries a man who had al- 
 ready a wife and children living, and 
 finally died without God or hope of im- 
 22 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 mortality, and leaving to us the regret 
 that such a brilliant light should sputter 
 out in starless night. Do we need to 
 add more names in the literary or philo- 
 sophical world to show the downward 
 trend of the soul that abandons the 
 Gospel of Right-doing, Mary Wool- 
 stonecroft, Shelley, James Mill, the 
 father of John Stuart Mill, Harriet 
 Martineau, for example? 
 
 These are typical instances of the loss 
 of spiritual power in matters of faith. 
 How is it in the personal life? Its his- 
 tory is clear. The leakage of power is 
 gradual. First the unholy thought is 
 held for an instant, then dismissed. It 
 returns and is entertained. There is a 
 feeling that it can be shaken off at any 
 time. One is astonished, affronted, 
 deeply insulted at the idea that he could 
 be so easily, or, indeed, ever be under 
 any circumstance swerved from his in- 
 tegrity. "Is thy servant a dog that he 
 
 23 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 should do this thing?" But the eyes of 
 the serpent glitter. The poison works. 
 The novelty fascinates. The victim 
 plays with it and halfway delights in it. 
 The brain-cells grow accustomed to the 
 new thrill, and the thrill comes oftener 
 and stronger. The soul now quarrels 
 with itself. The super-man protests 
 against the lower-man, and for a time 
 the upper-man beats down the animal. 
 But there is a rebound, a faint quiver of 
 hesitancy, and — as at length the needle 
 gradually yields to the relentless pull of 
 the magnet — the infatuated soul finally 
 surrenders to its Delilah. 
 
 Vice is a monster of such frightful mien 
 As, to be dreaded, needs but to be seen; 
 But seen too oft, familiar with its face, 
 We first endure, then pity, then embrace. 
 
 Lucifer, Son of the Morning, who 
 has been falling from Heaven all day, 
 from rosy morn till dewy eve, strikes the 
 24 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 earth at last. The electric fluid has 
 leaked away on inducting pipes, or old 
 iron, and the lights are all out! 
 
 To what darkling worlds of duplicity 
 and falsehood does this falling away 
 from God and home lead the unhappy 
 victim! For reality which was his he 
 enters a world of shadows where the 
 light is as darkness. His personality is 
 changed. Changed himself, all else is 
 changed. Donatello in the "Marble 
 Faun," once in harmony with Nature, 
 comes to the fountain to wash his guilty 
 hands, but all Nature shuns him; the 
 birds, the rabbits, the squirrels, they all 
 flee from him. Severed from the life 
 and gladness of God no one is ever the 
 same again. There is opened a wide 
 gulf between the backslider and the re- 
 ality that was his. He lives in the 
 shadow land, where the sunshine never 
 sleeps on mossy banks, nor moonbeams 
 frolic with the fire-flies. Home is not 
 
 25 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 the same any more, nor the laughter of 
 children. Distant, or fearful, is his 
 meeting with old friends of the Sanctu- 
 ary. He is so changed that he is a 
 stranger in a strange land when he en- 
 ters the House of God. The meaning 
 of the Gospel message awakens no re- 
 sponse as in former days; it is a remote, 
 a far-away, fading reminiscence. Hol- 
 low is the sound of sacred song and the 
 voices of prayer, which like incense rise 
 fragrant and sweet in the world of the 
 spirit. Like Gothe's "Faust" listening 
 with dead heart to the bells of Easter 
 Morn, he may well say, 
 
 Ye heavenly tones, with soft enchanting 
 
 Your message well I hear, but faith to me 
 is wanting. 
 
 By degrees the Spirit left him. He 
 knows not the moment when God for- 
 sook him, forsook his soul, and left His 
 26 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 sign on the door — Here Once God 
 Dwelt. 
 
 Deny it, or ignore it as we may, there 
 is a Nemesis which camps on the trail 
 of every violator of moral law. This is 
 the universal experience of the race from 
 the beginning. It is the clear-sounding 
 note in Greek tragedy, in Hebrew teach- 
 ing, in Roman poetry, in the stories of 
 the early morning of Time which were 
 old stories when Egypt and Babylon 
 were laying the foundations of empire. 
 Sin is its own avenger. The wages of 
 sin is death. Like a poisonous microbe 
 in the blood, spreading disease through 
 the whole body, "Sin," says St. James, 
 "when it is full grown bringeth forth 
 death." 
 
 Not since the world began did any 
 one fall over that precipice of deadly 
 sin who did not play on the edge of it. 
 When one determines to sin, God lets 
 him sin. From the pinnacle of the 
 27 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Temple, fascinated by the lure of the 
 world, he flings himself down. Out of 
 the imagination comes the wish, and out 
 of the wish springs the act. Once he 
 was in Eden and walked with God. He 
 was warned of evil powers, 
 
 . . . heard born on the wind the articulate 
 
 voice 
 Of God, and Angels to his sight appeared 
 Crowning the glorious hills of Paradise. 
 
 But to what end, when he listens to the 
 low whispering of the tempter in the 
 rustling of the leaves and deliberately 
 falls, in spite of all warning! 
 
 The first beginning of the leakage of 
 power is when one ceases to pray. No 
 one who prays ever departs from God, 
 nor God from him. "They that wait 
 upon the Lord shall renew their 
 strength, they shall mount up on wings 
 as eagles, they shall run and not be 
 weary, they shall walk and not faint." 
 Prayer is the link which binds us to God. 
 28 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 Along the conducting line of prayer 
 flows the life and the power of God. 
 It is the fountain where we wash and 
 are clean; the open door through which 
 we look up to far-away heights of spir- 
 itual attainment, or behold the nearness 
 of heaven and the ministering hosts of 
 Mahanaim. In prayer we touch ever- 
 lasting reality and know ourselves im- 
 mortal. There, peace is ours, inward 
 peace, flowing like a river full tide 
 through all the areas of sense giving 
 life and vigor to the soul. Prayer is 
 the Power-house of God. No prayer, 
 no power. When prayer is neglected, 
 all evil is at the door. Sin crouches 
 there. The soul is imprisoned in its 
 own self, now a dungeon, and at the 
 door sits Sin, like Milton's Death at 
 the gates of Hell. Between the soul 
 and God, the source of its life and 
 power, the link is broken, the wires are 
 down, the power is shut off, the lights 
 29 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 are all out ! One more tragedy is added 
 to life's sad record. Another promising 
 life has gone to pieces like a ship on the 
 rocks, and he who has forsaken his God 
 awakes at last to realize the value of a 
 reputation only when it is lost! 
 
 How different the man who feels the 
 pull of the Heavens and yields to it. 
 He does n't know how gloriously strong 
 he is growing. He is not thinking about 
 it. Healthy people are not forever 
 thinking about their health, feeling their 
 pulse, testing their lungs. They live in 
 the open. They are sun-lovers. The 
 God-lover lives in the atmosphere of 
 God. He becomes fitted to his environ- 
 ment, is at home in it and nowhere else. 
 He is gradually changed from strength 
 and glory of spirit to higher efficiencies 
 by the Spirit of all power dwelling in 
 him. He does n't know the process. 
 God keeps some things to Himself. He 
 simply does his duty, the grace of God 
 
 30 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 does the rest. But the power is in him. 
 The glory of spiritual beauty is in him 
 and works, in time, from within out- 
 wardly, as if it would transform even 
 the material body into its own likeness. 
 It works out through every little nerve, 
 through the eye, the face, the voice, and 
 hand, and bearing of the whole per- 
 sonality. Moses "wist not that his face 
 shone." 
 
 Spirit is self-revealing. In his "Choir 
 Invisible," James Lane Allen describes 
 for us an old face that was lighted with 
 unseen glory: "For prayers will in time 
 make the human countenance its own 
 divinest altar! Years upon years of 
 fine thought like music shut up within 
 us, will vibrate along the nerves of ex- 
 pression until the lines of the living in- 
 strument are drawn into correspond- 
 ence, and the harmony of visible form 
 matches the unheard harmony of the 
 mind." Thus we become like that we 
 
 3i 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 love and has strongest sway over our 
 inmost lives. 
 
 But there came a change in Samson, 
 and we ask in the face of hard and fast 
 doctrines of Necessity, in the face of 
 some modern theories of the compelling 
 power of Heredity, If a man fall, may 
 he rise again? Is there no return? Is 
 it true that the bird with the broken 
 wing will never climb the heights of 
 air again? Is it true that in the nature 
 of things, in the order and constitution 
 of the universe Karma must forever 
 work its awful power, Sin forever mean 
 more sin? It is not true. Are any of 
 us what we once were, innocent children 
 and youth? Has the imagination never 
 been stained? the conscience never out- 
 raged? Have we never dropped the 
 penitential tear? Have you never cried 
 to yourself, 
 
 "... Ah, for a man to rise in me, 
 That the man I am may cease to be?" 
 
 32 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 Have we not all sinned? and have we 
 not been born again to newness of life? 
 
 I called the boy to my knee one day, 
 
 And I said: "You're just past four; 
 Will you laugh in that same light-hearted way 
 When you 're turned, say, thirty more ?" 
 Then I thought of a past I 'd fain erase — 
 
 More clouded skies than blue — 
 And I anxiously peered in his upturned face, 
 For it seemed to say: 
 "Did you?" 
 
 I touched my lips to his tiny own, 
 
 And I said to the boy: "Heigh, ho! 
 Those lips are as sweet as the hay, new-mown ; 
 
 Will you keep them always so?" 
 Then back from those years came a rakish 
 song— 
 
 With a ribald jest or two — 
 And I gazed at the child who knew no wrong, 
 
 And I thought he asked: 
 "Did you?" 
 I looked in his eyes, big, brown, and clear, 
 
 And I cried: "Oh, boy of mine! 
 Will you keep them true in the after-year? 
 
 Will you leave no heart to pine?" 
 
 3 33 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Then out of the past came another's eyes — 
 
 Sad eyes of tear-dimmed blue — 
 Did he know they were not his mother's eyes ? 
 For he answered me: 
 "Did you?" 
 
 — Carl Werner. 
 
 No, it is not true that sin must mean 
 more sin. 
 
 For like a child sent with a fluttering light 
 To feel his way across a gusty night, 
 Man walks the world. Again and yet again 
 The lamp shall be by fits of passion slain; 
 But shall not He who sent him from the door 
 Relight the lamp once more, and yet once 
 more? 
 
 We know by personal experience that 
 there is salvation from sin — from the 
 love of it, the guilt of it, and the power 
 of it. Even Prince Hal, Shakespeare's 
 best-loved character, who forsook the 
 decencies and honors of his father's 
 court to revel with brawlers in low tav- 
 erns, has in him yet tender memories of 
 
 34 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 better days, and there does come a time 
 when remorse for his evil ways and 
 shame and for the grief he brought to 
 his royal father's heart suddenly awak- 
 ens in him a tremendous hunger for 
 clean living and high thinking worthy 
 of a king. There arises in his awakened 
 soul such fierce contempt for his former 
 days that when Falstaff, sin-bitten 
 tempter of his youth, would draw him 
 away again, he turns on him with re- 
 proving words: 
 
 I know thee not, old man ; fall to thy prayers. 
 How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! 
 I long have dreamed of such a kind of man, 
 So surfeit, swelled, so old, and so profane. 
 But being awake, I do despise my dream. 
 
 Reply not to me with a fool-born jest. 
 Presume not that I am the thing I was; 
 For God doth know, so shall the world per- 
 ceive, 
 That I have turned away my former self. 
 So will I those that kept me company. 
 
 35 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 And even old Falstaff, the bragging, 
 drunken Falstaff, dies at last murmuring 
 u o' green fields and babbling brooks," 
 as if perhaps (I hope Shakespearian 
 critics will forgive me) he would recall 
 the Twenty-third Psalm. And why not ? 
 Did not our Lord after His resurrec- 
 tion, remembering Peter's fall, say, "Go, 
 tell My disciples and — Peter that I go 
 before them into Galilee?" 
 
 And so Samson's hair grew again, 
 and with its growth came strength. 
 Deep in the dungeon of himself he 
 found God and himself, and triumphed 
 at last over all his enemies. And we 
 shall find him again, find him in an un- 
 expected place and in better company 
 than we ever thought we would. We 
 shall find him mentioned among the he- 
 roes of Faith in the Valhalla of Israel. 
 For, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 when the writer calls the roll of Israel- 
 
 36 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 itish heroes, he says, "Time would fail 
 me to tell of Gideon, Barak and Sam- 
 son, who through faith subdued king- 
 doms, wrought righteousness, stopped 
 the mouths of lions, and put to flight 
 the armies of the aliens." 
 
 If a man fall he may rise again. The 
 glory and the gladness of the Universe 
 is Redemption. The leakage of moral 
 character may be stopped. Sin may be 
 blotted out and the haunting memory 
 of it be banished forever. God does 
 forgive, and the proof of it is the Cross. 
 And when God forgives He forgets. 
 "I will blot out your iniquities and re- 
 member them against you no more for- 
 ever." That is final. Like a note of 
 wailing in a penitential Psalm or the sor- 
 rowing spirit in the Inflamata subdued, 
 rising, falling, and soaring up at last on 
 the wings of faith it breaks out in peans 
 of triumphal joy and deliverance, so the 
 
 37 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 repentant soul repudiating the past may 
 rise again to heights of purity and 
 power. 
 
 Power? Yes. It was Samson re- 
 stored who destroyed the temple of Da- 
 gon and flung the gods of the Philistines 
 in the dust at last. It is he who knows 
 the personal defilement of sin who can 
 keep others from its foulness. It is he 
 who in agony of soul has walked in the 
 lurid light of Hadean shades where no 
 angel ever plumed his snowy wings, that 
 can lead others to the sweet light of God 
 and the green meadows in the Land of 
 Beulah. Once more for Winter may 
 come Spring and the golden days of 
 Summer! Once more may anthems of 
 praise fill the Cathedral of the Soul as 
 in other days "when prayer was the ec- 
 stasy of bliss," and all the sin and shame 
 of life pass forever; 
 
 Like a rolled syllable 
 Of midnight thunder from the coming day. 
 
 38 
 
THE LEAKAGE OF POWER 
 
 There is never a day so dreary 
 
 But God can make it bright, 
 And unto the soul that trusts Him 
 
 He giveth songs in the night. 
 There is never a path so hidden 
 
 But God can lead the way, 
 If we seek for the Spirit's guidance 
 
 And patiently wait and pray. 
 
 There is never a cross so heavy 
 
 But the nail-scarred hands are there, 
 Outstretched in tender compassion 
 
 The burden to help us bear. 
 There is never a heart so broken 
 
 But the loving Lord can heal, 
 For the heart that was pierced on Calvary 
 
 Doth still for His loved ones feel. 
 
 There is never a life so darkened, 
 
 So hopeless and unblest, 
 But may be filled with the light of God 
 
 And enter His promised rest. 
 There is never a sin or sorrow, 
 
 There is never a care or loss, 
 But that we may bring to Jesus 
 
 And leave at the foot of the cross. 
 
 — Selected. 
 
 39 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 And Jesus returned in the power of the 
 Spirit into Galilee — Luke 4: 14, 
 
 From the excitable throngs, with their 
 buzzing curiosity, ferment of ideas and 
 vague expectations, that crowded the 
 banks of the Jordan to hear the Prophet 
 John, Jesus, having received the bap- 
 tism of the Spirit, quietly withdrew to 
 the solitude of the wilderness to medi- 
 tate on the ways and means of accom- 
 plishing His mission. "And He was 
 there in the wilderness forty days 
 tempted of Satan, and was with the wild 
 beasts." (Mark i: 13.) 
 
 Thoughtful days, those in the desert, 
 days fraught with eternal interest for 
 humanity. Task such as was never 
 man's, nor ever could be, was before 
 
 43 
 
. THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 him. He must see that task in all its 
 vastness and vivid detail, must compre- 
 hend to its uttermost depths the mean- 
 ing of his call, isolation of spirit, mis- 
 conception, persecution, derision, and 
 death. For all this he must make up 
 his mind. Will he do it? Tremen- 
 dous struggle in the world of the spirit ! 
 For what if he were mistaken? Were 
 there not two Messiahs in the Old Tes- 
 tament, one the Suffering Servant of 
 Jehovah, the other the Hero of Israel, 
 the King who subdues all nations ? Did 
 not God establish the law, ordain a 
 priesthood? and must he set all this 
 aside and breaking away from the inter- 
 pretation of ages, and the hopes of po- 
 litical Israel, engage in a life or death 
 struggle with his people and the hier- 
 archy? On the other side there was 
 the broad road to universal conquest, to 
 glory and fame. Which side will he 
 take? 
 
 44 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 Alone he enters the desert, alone he 
 enters into communion with his soul. 
 No, not alone. The invisible Power of 
 Evil draws nigh and, using the thoughts 
 that naturally arise in the mind as means 
 of temptation, enters into conflict with 
 the Son of God. Now, or never, will 
 the Kingdom of Moral Chaos in all 
 worlds rise in supreme conquest over the 
 Kingdom of Righteousness and all the 
 plans of God. Now, or never, will Di- 
 abolus reign in history and from his 
 throne influence the ages to come. 
 Never was there such a conflict! All 
 that came after was settled there. The 
 shame and suffering, the blasphemy and 
 rejection of later days were there, Geth- 
 semane and Calvary and Olivet, they 
 were all there. 
 
 But it was not until Jesus was worn 
 by fastings and long vigils, when the 
 physical man was exhausted, that the 
 Tempter began his attack. By appeal 
 
 45 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 to his bodily wants and to all the 
 thoughts and visions of a possible future 
 for humanity that would possess such a 
 majestic mind as Jesus', Satan sought to 
 penetrate into the very depths of his 
 soul and to swerve him from his de- 
 pendence on God and the path of his 
 calling. Decision once and forever final 
 must be made. Will Jesus make it? 
 Shall his kingdom be a copy of world- 
 kingdoms, surpassing them in earthly 
 splendor and glory plus justice and uni- 
 versal brotherhood, founded on philo- 
 sophical or political principles? That 
 is for him to decide. He can of course 
 adopt the Messianic dream of his peo- 
 ple and start the flames of a holy war 
 against the hated Roman, arousing all 
 nations, and be carried at last in triumph 
 through blood and fire to the throne of 
 his father David in Jerusalem. On the 
 other hand, it is for him to establish, 
 instead, a Kingdom of the Spirit, a king- 
 
 4 6 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOVL 
 
 dom of humility, of purity and holiness. 
 But this shall mean for him the blast- 
 ing of his people's hopes, their fierce 
 rejection of him, and an ignominious 
 death. This also is for him to decide. 
 
 Then again, will he use his powers 
 for his own ends? Will he save his 
 life by miraculous deed rather than as 
 an ordinary man depend upon the provi- 
 dence of God? Will he be forever 
 tempting God to exert His power in his 
 interest instead of accepting the condi- 
 tions of the human life and influencing 
 men, if he can, by the power of truth? 
 That also is for him to decide. 
 
 How will he decide? What argu- 
 ments pro and con jostle each other 
 here ! What noxious vapors arise, blind- 
 ing clear vision ! What sophistry ! 
 what casuistry ! what balancing of prob- 
 abilities in a universe of infinitely varied 
 possibilities ! Why can he not accom- 
 plish his mission without suffering? 
 
 47 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Why can he not in the extremity of 
 hunger save his life by turning useless 
 stones into bread ? Ah, had he done 
 so we might have had bread, but no 
 Christ. But suppose he should die of 
 starvation in the wilderness, what good 
 will that be to the Kingdom he has 
 come to establish? Surely he will be 
 no less loyal to God should he employ 
 his power in direct need for the inter- 
 est of God's Kingdom! 
 
 Then once more, why could he not 
 usher in the reign of God quicker, and 
 without controversy, by flinging him- 
 self down from the dizzy heights of the 
 Temple in the presence of the rulers and 
 the priests and all Jerusalem, thus dem- 
 onstrating to them beyond quibble of 
 darkest doubt his divine authority and 
 power? What possible harm could 
 come to any purpose of God by a 
 method which saves innocence from 
 death, which does quickly and univer- 
 
 4 8 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 sally what can be accomplished other- 
 wise only through the slow process of 
 preaching. Here is the fight of the soul ! 
 One of two paths he must choose. 
 One, the path of self-preservation, of 
 glory and fame. The other, the thorny 
 way, self-abasement, lowly service, suf- 
 fering, death — the Way of the Cross. 
 
 Jesus decided. Instantly he made 
 his choice. No false reasoning, no so- 
 phistications of conscience, no fear of 
 death or consequences to himself, could 
 blind his soul to the light. Fall he 
 could, but he would not. Over against 
 the ever-present "I Can/' stood the ever- 
 lasting "I Will Not." He thrust aside 
 the crown of the world, and took, in- 
 stead, the crown of thorns! 
 
 O Christ— 
 
 "Victorious deeds 
 Flamed in Thy heart, heroic acts — one while 
 To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke; 
 Men to subdue, and quell, o'er all the earth, 
 
 4 49 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Brute violence and proud tyrannic power, 
 Till truth were freed, and equity restored; 
 Yet held it more humane, more heavenly, first 
 By winning words to conquer willing hearts 
 And make persuasion do the work of fear." 
 
 Never yet was good without conflict 
 with evil. Never yet freedom without 
 struggle. It is a law of life, invin- 
 cible, omnipresent, and escape from it, 
 in soul or body, there is none. To 
 every soul of us there comes a time when 
 we are driven into the Wilderness to be 
 tempted of the devil, for there is our 
 temptation and there is our wilderness 
 and there is our destiny wherever we 
 face a moral crisis in the soul. 
 
 "Temptation in the wilderness!" ex- 
 claims Teufelsdroch. "Have we not all 
 to be tried with such? . . . Name it 
 as we choose: with or without visible 
 devil, whether in the natural desert of 
 rocks and sands or in the populous moral 
 desert of selfishness and baseness, — to 
 5° 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 such temptation are we called. Un- 
 happy if we are not! Unhappy if we 
 are but half-men, in whom that divine 
 hand-writing has never blazed forth, all 
 subduing, in true sun-splendor; but quiv- 
 ers dubiously amid meaner lights; or 
 smolders in dull pain, in darkness, un- 
 der earthly vapors!" 
 
 In the innermost being of him is 
 man's battleground, and the decisive 
 choice of good or evil must be fought 
 out there to ultimate finish. Compro- 
 mise there can be none, for that itself 
 is defeat. Nor can there be postpone- 
 ment. That too is defeat. The su- 
 preme moment is now, and the soul now 
 must fight or die. Only thus can the 
 soul ever come into conscious triumph 
 over evil. Lacking this consciousness, 
 what sense has it other than of flat sub- 
 jection to evil? By conflict only comes 
 knowledge of power over the things of 
 darkness, gorgons and shapes from the 
 
 51 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 abyss, spectres of the; cave and dragons 
 of the slime. For unless strength is 
 tested, what clear fact of your strength 
 is known to you ? What have you done? 
 What enemy have you felled? "Let 
 not him that girdeth on his armor boast 
 himself as he that taketh it off" ( i Kings 
 20: 21). 
 
 One example is better than a thou- 
 sand precepts. The pitifulest shadow 
 of a man is he who is always saying what 
 he can do but never does it ; who is for- 
 ever sharpening the scythe but never 
 cutting the grass, forever tuning the 
 fiddle but never playing the music. I 
 dipped again the other night into 
 Amiel's Journal. What insight into 
 philosophies and notions is there ! What 
 discriminating criticism! what fine say- 
 ings, penetrating to the heart of things ! 
 what knowledge, tenderness, beauty on 
 every page ! And yet what dreary, des- 
 olating indecision! Like low wintry 
 
 52 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 clouds, inertness broods over it all! It 
 was always expected by his friends that 
 he would do something really great, but 
 the "something" never happened. 
 "What use," he asks of himself, "have 
 I made of my gifts . . . ? Are all the 
 documents I have produced, taken to- 
 gether, my correspondence, these thou- 
 sands of Journal pages, my lectures, my 
 articles, my poems, my notes of different 
 kinds, anything better than withered 
 leaves?" What was the malady which 
 afflicted this fine, sensitive soul, so sad 
 in its self-reproaches? Indecision! 
 Amiel died a possibility, as every one 
 dies who lacks the enthusiasm of doing. 
 The test of skill is result. What the 
 soul can do is known only by perform- 
 ance. "We often know not what we 
 can do," says Thomas a Kempis, "but 
 temptation discovers what we are." 
 
 Many a Pharisee is a Pharisee be- 
 cause he never had a paying chance to 
 
 53 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 become a Sadducee. It would make a 
 difference in some people's moral world, 
 some slight change in their self-conceit, 
 if they went to bed hungry. It is the 
 easiest thing in the world for stall-fed 
 people of comfort and culture, dwellers 
 in clean streets and luxurious palaces, 
 heedless of the day and careless of the 
 morrow, to tell the ignorant starvelings 
 in filthy slums and sickening wretched- 
 ness to be good. Come out from your 
 beautiful homes, from all your rich as- 
 sociations of literature and art, silken 
 refinement and splendid social surround- 
 ings; come out from your friends and 
 your clubs, from your banquets and the 
 liquid mazes of your dances, throw 
 aside your soft raiment; come out from 
 your world of light and beauty into this 
 underworld, to these streets, to these in- 
 fernos filled with raucous voices such 
 as Dante heard in Malebolge — to these 
 dens, to these sickening sights and 
 
 54 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 sounds and all the dreary outlook on a 
 world from which God Himself seems 
 to have gone, and then try to be good! 
 Come and live here ! Come down here 
 and fight the fight of the soul! Well 
 is it for thee if it is fought wherever 
 thou art! "For, what doth it profit a 
 man if he gain the whole world and lose 
 his own soul ? Or, what will a man give 
 in exchange for his soul?" 
 
 He who is never sorely tempted, be- 
 cause he has already surrendered, knows 
 nothing of victory, of the glorious power 
 of decision against one's self in self- 
 denial. He is a cipher with the rim 
 rubbed out. To him may be applied, 
 as Amiel says, words like those with 
 which Henry IV greeted the slow-mov- 
 ing Crillon, after a great victory had 
 been won : "Go and hang yourself, brave 
 Crillon, we fought at Argues and you 
 were not there." For him there re- 
 mains, as a worthless thing, the scrap- 
 
 55 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 pile of the universe which, also, at bot- 
 tom, is his choice. For while every soul 
 of us must enter the Wilderness some 
 time or other, there are those who sur- 
 render at the first suggestion of evil. 
 Without a struggle they deliver them- 
 selves, soul and body, for a mess of pot- 
 tage. Such are no serious drain on the 
 resources of Diabolus ! The grim irony 
 of it, after all, is that Satan possesses 
 nothing, though he makes them think he 
 does, and from him they get nothing 
 that is not of their own making. They 
 are the veriest victims of illusion. Satan 
 is the cosmic bankrupt. Stripped of all 
 but the power of suggestion, he is Lord 
 only of Emptiness, master of nothing, 
 not even of dismalest Hell which en- 
 velops him wherever he is, for the evil 
 which flows from him revolves upon him 
 as a whirlpool upon itself, and holds 
 him in its grip. False promises are his 
 resources, lies and phantoms of the brain 
 
 56 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 conjured up in unsettled minds, by means 
 of which, himself without the power to 
 destroy, he persuades his victims to de- 
 stroy themselves. Sin is the suicide of 
 the soul. 
 
 Into the wilderness each one goes 
 alone. As both Pascal and Newman 
 say, "We live alone and we die alone." 
 Nous mourrons seuls. We must fight 
 alone. There are no substitutes in this 
 war. The rewards of victory, character, 
 spiritual power, fellowship with God 
 and the Warrior King Christ Jesus, 
 which means supremacy over all powers 
 of darkness and the fear of death, are 
 for each, and the battle is for each. 
 Alone, Jacob struggles with the Un- 
 known in the darkness till the breaking 
 of the day. Alone, Peter denied his 
 Lord, though surrounded by a motley 
 crowd; and though he is flung to the 
 ground by the buffeting of Satan, yet 
 alone he goes out into the night and 
 
 57 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 fights it all out again till tears of re- 
 pentance proclaimed him such victor 
 that in days to come he will die for Him 
 he once denied. 
 
 And the reason why we must do bat- 
 tle alone is, because no one can give his 
 personality to another. He can not en- 
 ter into the depths of another's inner- 
 most being, where the man himself lives 
 with all his thoughts and feelings and 
 dreamings and visions, perhaps, of God 
 and man and views of the smaller world 
 outside of him. Another can not enter 
 there and give him his belief or unbe- 
 lief, his virtue or his sin. No two live 
 in the same world. Though under the 
 same roof they may be as far apart as 
 the stars. We live alone, and the bat- 
 tle of the soul must be fought alone. 
 
 Doubts, and social conditions, and 
 personal failures confront us, and they 
 are mighty to stand up against. But the 
 severest battle is not with doubts, re- 
 
 58 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 ligious or other, for while one may suf- 
 fer intellectual conflict, still his heart 
 may, for all that, beat true to that which 
 is honest and clean. It is a long way 
 from Doubt to Denial, though both live 
 on the same road. Some men have 
 doubts, others think they have, but 
 they are really nothing more than men- 
 tal exhalations befogging common sense. 
 The large majority of doubts have their 
 origin not in plainly visible contradic- 
 tions in the moral or physical universe, 
 but in the ignorance of the doubter. 
 Suppose our knowledge were perfect, or 
 suppose our knowledge of nature and of 
 God was as superior to our present high- 
 est knowledge as this is to the knowledge 
 and understanding of the lowest savage 
 in Australian Bush who can not count 
 beyond the fingers on one hand, how 
 many insuperable doubts would remain 
 to worry the candid thinker? Time 
 makes man ashamed of his doubts. 
 
 59 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 That all doubts are easily disposed 
 of, however, may be a very blustering 
 conviction of him who is indifferent to 
 either truth or untruth so long as his 
 physical needs are supplied. They may 
 be all moonshine also to him who never 
 knew enough to have a doubt. But how- 
 ever enormous our doubt may be, there 
 was never yet a doubt that behind it 
 there was not a doubt that the doubt was 
 nothing but a doubt; a creepy feeling 
 that when the clouds have rolled away 
 the mountain may be still there! In 
 the Hibbert Journal recently (January, 
 191 1 ) a writer says "even the hard- 
 shelled skeptics are beginning to look 
 wistfully for some spiritual solidarity 
 and long for that peace which they sus- 
 pect may still be burning quietly like a 
 sanctuary lamp within the hush and dim- 
 ness of the Church." To-day a black 
 storm-cloud rose with threatening aspect 
 in the sky. It broke in the middle ; be- 
 60 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 tween the two halves there burst through 
 the crimson glory of sunset. Clouds ob- 
 scure, they also break away. 
 
 Worse than mental troubles of this 
 sort, which one may perhaps reason him- 
 self out of, or have them knocked out 
 of him by wider knowledge and expe- 
 rience, is the growing consciousness of 
 life's failure to achieve what might have 
 been accomplished under other condi- 
 tions, or of the utter vanity of self- 
 denial for the attainment of any good. 
 "What's the use?" is the saddest sigh 
 a man ever breathes. Nothing so fa- 
 tally cuts the nerve of finest endeavor as 
 discouragement. Here is where a losing 
 battle for one's very self is often fought 
 by superior men. Such men are some- 
 times beaten down by grosser natures, 
 ruthless creatures, Goths and Vandals, 
 who scorn the finer things of life. 
 Sometimes they become the victims of 
 envy and jealousy and smiling treachery 
 61 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 because of that superiority, which, in- 
 stead of being an inspiration to others, 
 becomes the very reason why they should 
 be isolated from the pack and devoured. 
 I am reminded here of one of Maxim 
 Gorki's stories. A man caught a vision 
 of better things and endeavored to 
 arouse his fellows to their realization. 
 He argued with them, pleaded with 
 them, showed them the way out of their 
 grossness and ignorance and all the de- 
 basement of their sordid surroundings. 
 They laughed at him, and when he per- 
 sisted they became resentful. Finally, 
 he saw little groups of them whispering 
 to each other. They were debating 
 whether he was a maniac or a nuisance, 
 in either case an individual to be sup- 
 pressed or confined. The poor man, 
 overwhelmed with his terrible sense of 
 failure, rushes down a street and dashes 
 his brains out against a stone wall at 
 the end of it. Tennyson has sharp 
 62 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 words for those mediocrities who, being 
 themselves on a low level, would level 
 the mountain to the plain. The moun- 
 tain is a standing grievance to the plain. 
 Surrounded by stupidity against which, 
 as Schiller in his "Jungfrau" tells us, 
 the gods themselves are powerless 
 ("Mit der Dummheit kdmpfen Gotter 
 selbst vergebens." ) what encourage- 
 ment is there for even the strong swim- 
 mer to go against the stream? Why 
 not go with the crowd and be popular? 
 Why not be a coward and call it pru- 
 dence? John the Baptist lost his head 
 for telling the truth ; why not keep yours 
 and call it the conservatism of experi- 
 ence? 
 
 To look out upon the shell of mod- 
 ern life with its tumultuous energies, its 
 politics, its parliaments and conventions, 
 industries and operations of capital belt- 
 ing the globe, its science and knowledge, 
 its struggle for wealth and power, one 
 
 63 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 would hardly think that behind all this 
 ceaseless activity in another world, the 
 invisible world of mind and spirit of 
 which this visible world is the reflection, 
 there was any fierce battle going on at 
 all. Everything seems to exert itself in 
 this. But life's tragedies and life's vic- 
 tories teach us better. The invisible is 
 the real world. There is the battle- 
 ground of the forces. Here we see the 
 results of the invisible conflict, not at 
 all the flash of steel or the deadly thrust. 
 Every heart knows its own bitterness, 
 though it fronts the world with a smil- 
 ing face. To-day in wealth and honor, 
 sought for and flattered, holding high 
 head among respectabilities; to-morrow 
 stripped of all he bargained his soul for, 
 but clad instead in criminal garb and sit- 
 ting alone in a felon's cell, is all we see 
 of the man who has gone wrong. But, 
 it is enough. The procession of dead 
 souls, men and women, tells its own 
 
 6 4 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 story. There was a battle — this is the 
 result ! 
 
 The result, heartening beyond meas- 
 ure, is also seen in the triumphs of those 
 who do not surrender to Diabolus. 
 Not for all the kingdoms of the world 
 will they fall down and worship him. 
 In a moment, like a gleam of lightning 
 across the night, the kindly light of God 
 has flashed in their souls. They see the 
 truth, and worse than death is the love 
 of a lie. 
 
 "Oh, we're sunk enough here. God knows! 
 
 But not quite so sunk that moments, 
 Sure though seldom, are denied us, 
 
 When the spirit 's true endowments 
 Stand out plainly from its false ones, 
 
 And apprise it if pursuing 
 Or the right way or the wrong way, 
 
 To its triumph or undoing. 
 
 "There are flashes struck from midnights, 
 There are fire-flames noondays kindle, 
 Whereby piled-up honors perish, 
 
 Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, 
 5 65 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 While just this or that poor impulse, 
 Which for once had play unstifled, 
 
 Seems the sole work of a lifetime 
 That away the rest have trifled." 
 
 — Browning in " Cristina" 
 
 In "Ned Bratts" also, Browning tells 
 of the struggle for a soul. Mr. John A. 
 Hutton pictures it for us. It is Special 
 Session in Bedford Courthouse. Cases 
 are being disposed of. Prisoners are 
 tried and sent to jail. Pleadings are be- 
 ing heard when suddenly into the midst 
 of judges and lawyers and assembled 
 people Ned Bratts and his wife clinging 
 close to each other break in, and facing 
 the whole court plead in God's name — 
 to be allowed to speak. Their story is 
 staggering. They had just come from 
 Bedford Jail, where they had been im- 
 prisoned with John Bunyan. Aban- 
 doned criminals from early life, they 
 had blasphemed and scorned the good 
 man's pleadings. But Bunyan had read 
 to them from "the blessed book" of the 
 66 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 bottomless love and mercy of God, of 
 the pity of Christ for poor sinners, of 
 the infinite joy of forgiveness, of cleans- 
 ing of soul, and of heaven. They had 
 never heard of it all before, nor had 
 they dreamed that the compassion of 
 God was for such as they. And now 
 they feel that they must go down into 
 the blackness of their sinful lives and 
 bring up into the light of day all the 
 frightful iniquities of the years that God 
 in mercy might destroy those iniquities 
 forever. There they stood, those two, 
 once hardened criminals, now fearlessly 
 yet sorrowfully confessing their sins. 
 Not one foul blot is left hidden, not one 
 crime is forgotten. They tell it all. 
 Each helps the other to remember what 
 might otherwise be forgotten, feeling, 
 as they tell it all, the burden on their 
 souls slipping away from them. The 
 blackness of their night rolls up like a 
 scroll as they repent before God and 
 
 6 7 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 man in the courthouse there. At last 
 the horrible story of sin and crime is 
 finished; and now, their faces wet with 
 tears but illumined with a strange light, 
 they beseech the judges on the bench to 
 condemn them quickly to death. This is 
 the only way they can expiate the past. 
 They are willing to die. They are not 
 afraid of the darkness beyond; they 
 have passed through the darkness here. 
 They are executed, and that speedily. 
 But Ned Bratts and his wife fought for 
 their souls and — won! 
 
 In many other places Browning shows 
 us the struggle of the soul, its victory 
 and its defeat, as in "Pippa Passes," 
 "The Ring and the Book," "Soul's 
 Tragedy," and "The Lost Leader." 
 
 In Victor Hugo's masterpiece, "Jean 
 Valjean," we also see the sublime maj- 
 esty of conscience, the struggle of a 
 mighty soul to do right in spite of all 
 that earth or hell can do against him. 
 68 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 Valjean is an escaped convict. Some 
 years ago he stole two loaves of bread 
 for starving children and was sent to 
 the galleys. There, herding with crim- 
 inals of basest breed and suffering all 
 the hardships and cruelty of the most 
 savage character, his moral nature be- 
 comes so brutalized that almost every 
 feeling of pity or sense of wrong is ob- 
 literated in him. The great deeps of 
 his soul, however, are partly broken up 
 by the kindness of the good Bishop who 
 gave him food and shelter when hiding 
 from justice, and after various relapses, 
 the awakened soul of him not yet hav- 
 ing recovered its strength, he resolves to 
 tread the white way of integrity and 
 honor. He assumes another name, M. 
 Madeleine. By inventive genius and in- 
 dustry he rises to prominence and im- 
 portance. His name and his influence 
 become known everywhere to officials 
 and judges and honorable men, and he 
 
 6 9 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 is respected for his sterling character. 
 Factories spring up around him, and 
 happy homes where the workmen live, 
 and prosperous industries which bring 
 comfort and plenty. He grows to 
 wealth and increasing esteem, this M. 
 Madeleine. He becomes Mayor of the 
 town. Life full of satisfaction and dis- 
 tinction stretches out before him. To 
 live thus in quietness and ease, helpful 
 to others and adored by all, is sweet. 
 
 But the officers of the law are looking 
 for Valjean, the dangerous criminal and 
 escaped convict from Toulon. Per- 
 sonal enmity adds zest to their zeal. 
 Finally a poor, ignorant wheelwright is 
 picked up in the road for some crime 
 in the neighborhood and is brought by 
 the gendarmes into court as the long- 
 hunted Jean Valjean. Small prospect 
 for the poor wheelwright ever enjoying 
 another hour's freedom ! Never again 
 will he wander away from the streets of 
 70 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 Paris through country lanes and high- 
 ways, the birds singing to him, talking 
 at him, and expressing their opinion of 
 him in their way, as he goes in search 
 of work. The galleys or the gallows 
 awaits him. M. Madeleine learns that 
 this innocent man is to be tried for his 
 life, perhaps, as the convict Valjean. 
 Then the struggle begins. Valjean en- 
 ters the wilderness. The past springs 
 up, terrible in its meaning. It comes 
 forth again like a ghost from its grave. 
 He had long hated the name of Valjean. 
 In hours of self-communion he had 
 thought "that the day in which that 
 name should re-appear would see vanish 
 from about him his new life — and who 
 knows, even perhaps, his new soul from 
 within him." What should he do? 
 Should he deliver himself to the police, 
 or let this unfortunate go to the galleys 
 or die, as the case may be? Terrible 
 conflict! He is in torment. His brain 
 
 7i 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 is in a whirl. The sweat rolled off his 
 forehead. He argued with himself. 
 He expostulated with himself. Why 
 should he throw away the security, the 
 honor and wealth that he had gained? 
 Surely, it was the will of God, that now 
 by the arrest of this unknown man the 
 Valjean of other days should pass out 
 forever and that he, M. the Mayor, 
 should be free from discovery the re- 
 mainder of his life. Yes, let things take 
 their course ; this is wise ; this is prudent. 
 It is a little hard, it must be confessed, 
 on the innocent prisoner, but surely he 
 is not responsible for the man's plight; 
 he did n't accuse him, he did n't arrest 
 him. He will therefore destroy all re- 
 minders of the past, the Bishop's candle- 
 stick, the forty-sou piece stolen from the 
 little Savoyard, and enjoy the freedom 
 and comfort God has given him. He 
 will do all this. But he will not be able 
 to do away with Conscience. Con- 
 72 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 science is not dead. Louder than the 
 thunders of Sinai the Voice thunders in 
 his soul. What, then, will he do? De- 
 nounce himself? Give himself up? 
 Leave this goodly life, this room, these 
 books, these honors, and liberty itself, 
 for the chained-leg, the dungeon , the 
 weariness and wretchedness and all the 
 revolting horrors of the galleys? 
 Dreadful thought? Dreadful alterna- 
 tive, "To remain in Paradise and there 
 become a demon ! To re-enter into hell 
 and there become an angel!" 
 
 And so the fight of the soul goes on. 
 Now, he is driving the enemy, and again, 
 he is beaten to the ground. At length 
 with a mighty resolve he reaches the 
 town of Arras and enters the room ad- 
 joining the court where the prisoner is 
 being tried. The arguments of the pros- 
 ecutor are going hard against the unfor- 
 tunate man at the bar. He can not ac- 
 count for himself. Well-known officers 
 
 73 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 who were once fellow-convicts in the 
 galleys with Valjean identify him as that 
 dangerous felon now acting a part. The 
 prisoner himself is bewildered, dum- 
 founded, and understands nothing at all 
 of what this is all about, and so can not 
 defend himself. This makes a bad im- 
 pression on the judges. His own coun- 
 sel has not been able to do much for 
 him. The prison-doors are gaping for 
 him! 
 
 In the room yonder, whose door is 
 shut, another tragedy is going on, a 
 worse one. M. Madeleine is in there, 
 his wilderness, fighting for his soul. 
 For some time he has been there trying 
 to consummate his resolves ; but the flesh 
 is weak and he can not make the fatal 
 plunge. "Well ! who is there to compel 
 me?" Then he turned quickly, saw be- 
 fore him the door by which he had en- 
 tered, went to it, opened it, and went 
 out. He ran terror-stricken from the 
 
 74 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 conflict, from all the wretchedness that 
 lay beyond. His soul is in agony. Will 
 he surrender? It would be as if a tall 
 tower had crumbled to its base, as if 
 the dome of St. Peter's had fallen, 
 crashing through the roof. He stops, 
 leans against a wall to recover himself. 
 He reflects. "He had reflected all 
 night, he had reflected all day; he had 
 heard but one voice within him, which 
 said, 'Alas!' . . . Finally, he bowed 
 his head, sighed with anguish, let his 
 arms fall, and retraced his steps. . . . 
 He entered the council chamber again. 
 . . . Suddenly, without himself know- 
 ing how, he found himself near the 
 door; he seized the knob convulsively; 
 the door opened. He was in the court- 
 room. 
 
 "I am Jean Valjean!" 
 
 And with what loyalty to conscience 
 does Scott in the trial of Eflie Deans 
 show forth the fight of the soul in sister 
 
 75 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Jeanie's martyrdom for Truth? Ar- 
 thur Dinsdale in the "Scarlet Letter" 
 is a conquered spirit, beaten and put to 
 flight by the very demons, the demons 
 of fear and shame, which heroic souls 
 who "count not their lives dear unto 
 themselves" scorn to parley with. This 
 is the price of eternal life. "He that 
 seeketh his life shall lose it, but he that 
 loseth his life for My sake shall find it." 
 Self-abandonment, self-destruction, then 
 peace — peace rolling in from the Infinite 
 like the waves of the boundless sea. 
 Such is the experience of the twice-born 
 souls who have met Diabolus in the wil- 
 derness and laid him. Such was the joy 
 of Caponsacchi in Browning's "Ring 
 and the Book:" 
 
 "In rushed new things, the old were rapt 
 
 away; 
 Alike abolished — the imprisonment 
 Of the outside air, the inside weight o' the 
 
 world 
 
 76 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 That pulled me down. Death meant, to 
 
 spurn the ground, 
 Soar to the sky, — dfe well and you do that." 
 
 Listen also to Carlyle in "Sartor Re- 
 sartus:" "To me also was given, if not 
 Victory yet the Consciousness of Battle, 
 and the resolve to persevere therein 
 while life or faculty is left. To me 
 also, entangled in the enchanted forests, 
 demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of 
 sound, it was given, after weariest wan- 
 derings, to work out my way into the 
 higher sunlit slopes — of that mountain 
 which has no summit, or whose summit 
 is in Heaven only! n 
 
 'T is a far cry from Carlyle to St. 
 Augustine, but hear him in his "Con- 
 fessions." Deploring former days, he 
 cries out to God: "Too late I loved 
 Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, 
 yet ever new ! too late I loved Thee ! 
 And behold, Thou wert within, and I 
 abroad, and there I searched for Thee ! 
 
 77 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 plunging deformed amid those fair 
 forms which Thou hadst made. Thou 
 wert with me, but I was not with Thee. 
 Things held me far from Thee which, 
 unless they were in Thee were not at 
 all. Thou didst call and shout and 
 burst my deafness. Thou didst flash, 
 shine, and scatter my blindness. . . . 
 Thou didst touch me, and I am on fire 
 for Thy peace." 
 
 Is all this too violent for modern 
 Christians of the velvet cushion type? 
 Time was when earnest men discounted 
 any pretension to the God-life that was 
 not born of fierce conflict with the pow- 
 ers of darkness. Now, in some quar- 
 ters, they are tired, or opposed to fight- 
 ing and to marked conversions. They 
 seek the easier way. Psychology is sub- 
 stituted for Theology and the New Tes- 
 tament. Education and religious prac- 
 tices will do the work that once was 
 done by the aid of the Spirit in the 
 
 7 8 • 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 fight of the soul. But to all this a 
 Paul and a Wesley, a Jonathan Ed- 
 wards, a Valjean, or a Mary Voce, in 
 "Adam Bede," who has fought her way 
 through with the prayers of Dinah 
 Morris, would say: 
 
 ". . . Call yourselves, if the calling please 
 
 you, 
 Christians — abhor the deist's pravity — 
 Go on, you shall no more move my gravity 
 Than, when I see boys ride a cockhorse, 
 I find it in my heart to embarrass them 
 By hinting that their stick 's a mockhorse 
 And they really carry what they say carries 
 
 them." 
 
 Real men who know the world and 
 themselves laugh at the "Ride-a-cock- 
 horse-to-Banbury-Cross" method of re- 
 demption. 
 
 "A spotless child sleeps on the flowery moss, 
 'T is well for him — but when a guilty man, 
 Envying such slumber, may desire to put 
 His guilt away — can he return to rest 
 
 79 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 At once by lying there? Our sires knew well 
 The fitting way for such: dark cells, dim 
 
 lamps, 
 A stony floor one may writhe on like a worm, 
 No mossy pillow blue with violets." 
 
 The sure result of victory in our wil- 
 derness is — power. "Jesus returned in 
 the power of the Spirit into Galilee; 
 and there went a fame of Him through 
 all the regions round about." Jacob 
 wins at the brook Jabbok and is no more 
 Jacob, but Israel: "For as a prince hast 
 thou power with God and with men, 
 and hast prevailed." The forces that 
 would destroy us become the very means 
 by which we gain strength: "Out of the 
 eater came forth meat, and out of the 
 strong came forth sweetness" (Judges 
 14: 14). It is the Law of Increase. 
 "To him that hath it shall be given, and 
 he shall have abundance; but from him 
 that hath not shall be taken away even 
 that which he hath." 
 80 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 "When the fight begins within himself 
 
 A man 's worth something. God stoops o'er 
 
 his head, 
 Satan looks up between his feet — both tug — 
 He 's left, himself, l the middle ; the soul 
 
 wakes 
 And grows." 
 
 One mighty, sustained effort of the will 
 shatters all habits. Down deep into the 
 very foundations of vital being goes the 
 imperial mandate of the desperate will 
 that will never surrender. It breaks up 
 the old order. It is a French Revolu- 
 tion, a Reign of Terror, at the center 
 of life, when the old sins that held sway 
 are brought up and guillotined. Win 
 one battle worth while, and the rest be- 
 comes easy, for it is a law of our men- 
 tal and spiritual life that any act volun- 
 tarily repeated induces an immediate 
 tendency to its repetition. One set of 
 acts are, thereby, substituted for an- 
 other. We feel ourselves grow by the 
 6 81 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 exercise of our wills. Hence, says he 
 who fought the good fight of faith, 
 "Exercise — gymnasticise — yourselves 
 unto godliness." 
 
 Then again, the beauty of it all is, the 
 sympathy that is born in us for others 
 by such experiences. It is said of Jesus, 
 "In that He Himself hath suffered be- 
 ing tempted, He is able to succor them 
 that are tempted" (Heb. 3: 18). The 
 best helpers of the poor are the poor. 
 Sympathy makes kin. It begets confi- 
 dence, and out of that grows courage 
 and all the sweet fruit of helpfulness. 
 But no one can suffer with another who 
 has not himself suffered. It is because 
 the poor know poverty that they are the 
 best helpers of the poor. Jerry Mc- 
 Aulay down in Water Street could do 
 for the derelicts of New York what all 
 the preachers in Christendom might fail 
 to do. He had been through the wil- 
 derness. He knew the shame and the 
 82 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 foulness of sin, the failures of good res- 
 olutions, what it was to be beaten again 
 and again, only to triumph at last. A 
 mighty love is born in the heart for 
 humanity battling with its weaknesses, 
 its inherited burdens, its aggravated sins, 
 its hopes and fears. It is the human 
 touch that touches the human. 
 
 He who has suffered will not con- 
 demn. We do not know how often, 
 how fiercely, men have resisted and 
 failed. We do not know how often they 
 have triumphed over some throttling 
 evil. What physical or moral impulse 
 was born with them, what limitations 
 shut them in. It is all unknown to us. 
 "Hold your book in the other hand," 
 said a professor to a student who stood 
 up to read. The student went on read- 
 ing, seemingly giving no heed. "Do 
 you hear me, sir?" The student ceased 
 reading, but holding the book as be- 
 fore. "Sir!" shouted the exasperated 
 
 83 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 professor. Then the student, his lips 
 quivering, held up his other arm — a 
 mere stump, from which the hand had 
 been cut away. The class cried out, 
 "Shame! Shame!" But the professor 
 rushed to the boy, and falling down on 
 his knees before him pleaded, "Will you 
 ever be able to forgive me?" // we 
 only knew! Little wonder is it that 
 those who have suffered most do most 
 for the rest of us. And he is likest 
 God, likest Him who went up into the 
 wilderness to be tempted, who stretches 
 out the helping hand to discouraged men 
 and women who amid terrible odds are 
 fighting every day like grim death for 
 the integrity of their souls. I know of 
 nothing that can make one feel happier 
 or more boy-like than helping a lame dog 
 over a fence. There is One who does 
 help, One who was Himself tempted, 
 and is able to succor them that are 
 tempted. 
 
 8 4 
 
THE FIGHT OF THE SOUL 
 
 He who did most, shall bear most, the strong- 
 est shall stand the most weak. 
 
 'T is the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! 
 my flesh, that I seek 
 
 In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O 
 Saul, it shall be 
 
 A Face like my face that receives thee, a 
 Man like to me 
 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever; a 
 Hand like this hand 
 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! 
 See the Christ Stand/ 
 
 85 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 I can not do it alone, 
 
 The waves run fast and high, 
 And the fogs close chill around, 
 
 And the light goes out in the sky ; 
 But I know that we two 
 Shall win in the end — 
 
 Jesus and I. 
 
 I can not row it myself, 
 My boat on the raging sea; 
 
 But beside me sits Another, 
 Who pulls or steers with me; 
 
 And I know that we two 
 
 Shall come safe into port — 
 His child and He. 
 
 Coward and wayward and weak, 
 I change with the changing sky. 
 
 To-day so eager and brave, 
 To-morrow not caring to try; 
 
 But He never gives in, 
 
 So we two shall win — 
 Jesus and I. 
 
 Strong and tender and true, 
 
 Crucified once for me ! 
 Never will He change I know, 
 
 Whatever I may be! 
 But all He says I must do, 
 
 Ever from sin to keep free. 
 We shall finish our course 
 And reach home at least — 
 
 His child and He. 
 
 — The British Weekly. 
 
 86 
 
THE LURE OF THE QUIET 
 
THE LURE OF THE QUIET 
 
 Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging 
 place.— /er. 9:2. 
 
 It must have been an unwelcome change 
 for Jeremiah from his quiet home at 
 Anathoth to the bustling city of Jeru- 
 salem and the palace of the king. He 
 was not a stranger to the capital; he 
 well knew its streets and walls and 
 towers, for he had lived all his life 
 within six miles of it. But he was 
 country-bred and was a stranger to the 
 hidden life of the city, which was known 
 only to the politicians and hangers-on at 
 court, who fattened on its vices. He 
 was out of place there, as such men al- 
 ways are, and there was sure to be 
 trouble. Kings' palaces are not good 
 
 8 9 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 for prophets. Some men fit anywhere 
 and at all times. That is their business. 
 It is no inconvenience for them to run 
 with the hare and to play with the 
 hounds. But earnest men who really 
 believe in God are always trouble- 
 makers to wrong-doers. 
 
 Around the throne of the Shadow- 
 King who was permitted to rule stood 
 wily counselors, worldly preachers with 
 perennial smiles and deferential spine, 
 false prophets, bolder than their lesser 
 brethren of the willowy back, who 
 prophesied in the name of Jehovah what 
 was needed to strengthen the counsels of 
 lying statesmen. From the courts of the 
 Temple the curling smoke of sacrifice 
 rose regularly. The solemn processions 
 of white-robed priests and chanting Le- 
 vite, clouds of fragrant incense, the 
 pomp and splendor of ritual, the prayers 
 of thousands of people rising and fall- 
 ing with the fervor of devotion like the 
 90 
 
THE LURE OF THE QUIET 
 
 sounds of many waters, — all seemed to 
 suggest that Jehovah was again the God 
 of Israel. But it was only in seeming. 
 At heart the nation was morally bank- 
 rupt, and its doom was approaching like 
 a black whirlwind on the horizon. 
 
 At this juncture stood up the prophet 
 Jeremiah. He was a seer who saw the 
 sure results of the workings of eternal 
 law. He was also a poet with a heart 
 as tender as woman's love. But he was 
 no weakling. We think of him as the 
 weeping prophet, soft and lacking in 
 fiber. But that is because of our wrong 
 estimate of character. In spite of his 
 tears and threnodies which sadden us 
 like the low moanings of the sea, he was 
 a born hero. In its darkest hour he 
 never despaired of his country, nor of 
 the ultimate triumph of righteousness. 
 
 The religious man is the only true 
 optimist. There are those, of course, 
 who think they are officially appointed 
 
 9i 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 dispensers of sunshine, but they live in 
 a fool's paradise. Others there are who 
 ignore the real situation, or, they are pro- 
 fessionals, hired to laugh, as in the days 
 of our Lord there were those who were 
 hired to weep. They never oppose any- 
 thing, they smile or look solemn in mar- 
 velous wisdom and play their oracular 
 part. But evil is here, nevertheless ; and 
 there is no use in blinking at it. "I have 
 investigated the dust heaps of human- 
 ity," says Mr. Chesterton, "and found 
 a treasure in all of them." He assumes 
 that all we have to do is to think that 
 the dust heap is a gold mine, and it be- 
 comes one. But the City of the Dread- 
 ful Night is not the City of God which 
 dazzles us with its glory in the Apoca- 
 lypse, and no mere thinking will ever 
 make it so. Evil is here. Misery, 
 wretchedness, the lying tongue, moral 
 leprosy, and all the Protean forms of 
 dirty sin which defiles everything it 
 92 
 
THE LURE OF THE QUIET 
 
 touches, are all here doing their sad 
 work. The devil is not dead. Mr. 
 Chesterton in his happy-go-lucky view 
 of the world thinks he is. "At the 
 least," says Mr. Masterman, in pointing 
 out the fallacy of Mr. Chesterton, u at 
 the least, he would design to make the 
 author of evil die of chagrin at persist- 
 ent neglect, or perish from the repletion 
 of persistent flattery. The scheme is 
 attractive but delusive. That ancient 
 strategist has seen so many Chestertons 
 flare and fade that he is unlikely to be 
 entrapped by such naive methods." 
 
 But Jeremiah knew, as all who be- 
 lieve in God know, that evil has no right 
 to be here, and in the ultimate will not 
 be here. The universe is against it and 
 will yet get good rid of it, and for this 
 reason Jeremiah fought it. We admire 
 the heroism of the Roman who bought 
 at full value the very field on which 
 Hannibal was encamped with his army; 
 
 93 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 but during the siege of Jerusalem Jere- 
 miah was so confident that God would 
 deliver his country, though defeated, 
 from the yoke of Babylon, that he pur- 
 chased a farm near the city from his 
 uncle's son and took wise care to secure 
 the title deeds. When the corrupt Ma- 
 nasseh fell, Jeremiah swept the land in 
 favor of religious reform. When false 
 prophets sought to delude the nation, he 
 denounced them and their political allies 
 at Jerusalem. When conspiracies were 
 hatched against him, he broke through 
 all snares and appealed to the people to 
 mend their ways and avert, if possible, 
 the gathering of "those vultures which 
 smell decaying empires from afar." He 
 was a hero. 
 
 But heroes are not gods. They are 
 human, sometimes very human. They 
 are of like passions with ourselves in 
 their weaknesses and failures. Indeed, 
 there are times when the strength of the 
 
 94 
 
THE LURE OF THE OUIET 
 
 strongest becomes as weak as water. 
 The cedars of Lebanon bend to the 
 storm. The forests of Carmel are 
 shaken with the wind. No one is al- 
 ways at his best. He would not be if 
 he were. Life is a struggle either with 
 itself or with its condition, and from 
 many a brave soul cramped by opposi- 
 tion or poverty, or misfortune, the cry 
 goes up, with the Psalmist, "Thou hast 
 shut me so I can not get out." 
 
 To many life consists in being 
 knocked down and picked up again. 
 They seem to be the foot-balls of fate. 
 Then again, the strain of living on high 
 levels seems to be too much for the ma- 
 jority of us. There are select spirits, 
 indeed, who, like eagles, are at home 
 only on the mountain tops. But the 
 most of us live down here, and nerves 
 are not steel cables. There is a pace 
 that kills as surely as does the pace 
 downward. We get tired of the fuss 
 
 95 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 and feathers, of the dust and heat, the 
 ceaseless toil, the humiliating drudgery 
 of the common round, and in the face 
 of all our endeavors to be philosophical 
 and brave we long to flee away as a bird 
 to the mountains. We want to get 
 away from the crowd, from the jungle 
 cries of struggle in the marts of trade, 
 from the illusions of life, from the im- 
 pudence of the self-advertiser, those pit- 
 iable gluttons of the limelight, and from 
 the newly arrived with their bold ag- 
 gressiveness and incessant buzzing of 
 "paltry aims that end with self" — from 
 the inartistic materialism of mere shop 
 — we want to get away from it all and 
 rest ourselves in depths of green woods, 
 in quiet noons and musical mornings, far 
 remote from the vulgar glamour and 
 jostle and barbaric tumult of the street! 
 And it is quite natural that we should 
 feel so. 
 
 Yesterday Jeremiah fronted the royal 
 
 9 6 
 
THE LURE OF THE QUIET 
 
 court at Jerusalem. To the loud pre- 
 tensions of false prophets he cried out 
 with conscious superiority, "The prophet 
 that hath a dream let him tell a dream, 
 but he that hath My word let him 
 preach My word, what is the chaff to 
 the wheat, saith the Lord?" But to- 
 day there is reaction. Broken and spent 
 from his fruitless struggle with civic 
 wrong, he longs to break away from it 
 all, from all human relations, from poli- 
 tics and prophesying, from the glitter 
 and splendor of kingly courts, hypocri- 
 sies and ritualisms and priestly intrigues 
 — to get away from it all and rest him- 
 self in the wilderness, where not a sound 
 of human voice would mar his solitude 
 or remind him of the wrongs and woes 
 of his people. "O, that I had in the 
 wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring 
 men, that I might leave my people and 
 go from them!" 
 
 And, so it is. Yesterday, we were 
 7 97 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 on Carmel, like Elijah, triumphing on 
 the heights of spiritual power, or with 
 unspeakable love gazing on the beauty 
 of the Transfigured Christ, with the 
 disciples on Tabor. To-day, we are 
 with the bats and creeping things of the 
 cave at Horeb, or sighing for a lodge 
 in the far-away desert. The brightness 
 of the morning has faded into the dull 
 red glow of evening. Like a sudden 
 apparition in the dark the seeming un- 
 reality of all that we have done, or 
 strive to do, startles us. The wear and 
 tear of many yesterdays cry out in our 
 jaded spirits, we are in the abyss and 
 "All Thy billows have gone over me." 
 Life's problems and our own little af- 
 fairs grow no less for all our fretting 
 and for all our efforts at world-mending. 
 The birds hop on the leafy branches of 
 the trees along the road as we carry 
 our hopes to the grave and they sing on 
 sweetly just the same. What does the 
 
 9 8 
 
THE LURE OF THE QUIET 
 
 storm care for the man in the boat, or 
 for the boat? As Dolly in "Silas 
 Marner" says: "Ah, it's like the night 
 and the morning, and the sleeping and 
 the waking, and the rain and the har- 
 vest — one goes and the other comes, and 
 we know nothing how or where. We 
 may strive and scrat and fend, but it 's 
 little we can do arter all — the big things 
 come and go wi' no striving o' ourn — 
 they do that they do." Then, our 
 ideals are ever larger than our achieve- 
 ments, and we never get to the top of 
 the hill. In our broken condition, jaded 
 and spent, there is for us no more in- 
 spiration, great passion, or entrancing 
 vision of moral beauty. "Oh, that I 
 had the wings of a dove, then would I 
 flee away and be at rest." 
 
 Now, is there anything wrong or un- 
 worthy in all this? Not if we are 
 human. You are simply tired and in 
 need of repairs — in need of re-charging 
 
 99 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 your nerve batteries. You need other 
 skies. Jesus knew the secret of effi- 
 ciency, and to His disciples He said, 
 "Come ye apart and rest awhile." 
 Nerves are not cables. Every mount of 
 triumph has its valley of humiliation. 
 Was there ever a saint of God from 
 Elijah to the last one yesterday who did 
 not at some time or other lie under a 
 juniper-tree ? Jeremiah longed for even 
 a hut in the wilderness, that he might es- 
 cape the strife of tongues and the chaos 
 around him. John the Baptist becomes 
 a broken victim of doubt when shut in 
 within prison walls from far-circling 
 horizons of the desert and measureless 
 depths of blue in the uttermost sky. 
 Didn't Paul have lurid mornings and 
 distressing weariness betimes? Even 
 Jesus himself had times of depression, 
 immeasurably sad, lonely hours when 
 He sought human sympathy, saying to 
 His friends, "Now is My soul trou- 
 ioo 
 
THE LURE OF THE QUIET 
 
 bled." Life has its heights and also its 
 depths. One is as useful as the other, 
 and without both there would be neither. 
 No, the sin of the juniper tree is not 
 in being there, but in staying there. 
 Anybody can be brave when there is no 
 lion in the way, or smile broadly when 
 fortune blossoms. But the test of a man 
 is when he is down. The true man who 
 has in him the stuff that saints are made 
 of, will not stay down; he will rise 
 again, will rise like a rubber ball — the 
 harder it is knocked down the higher it 
 springs. 
 
 You are beaten to earth ? Well, well, what 's 
 that? 
 Come up with a smiling face. 
 It 's nothing against you to fall down flat, 
 
 But to lie there — that 's disgrace. 
 The harder you 're thrown, why, the higher 
 you bounce. 
 Be proud of your blackened eye ! 
 It is n't the fact that you 're licked that counts, 
 It 's how did you fight — and why ? 
 IOI 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Heaven has limited respect for him 
 who runs away from the evil around 
 him. His business is to fight it. A 
 man's place is among men. Not in the 
 wilderness, but in the city; not in the 
 cave at Horeb hiding from Jezebel, but 
 on Carmel slaying false prophets; not 
 lost in the crowd, but stalwart in the 
 arena, fighting with beasts at Ephesus. 
 Over against the Lure of the Quiet, is 
 the call of duty in the crowded haunts 
 of men. Into the silence of Horeb 
 comes the voice of God: "Elijah, what 
 are you doing here?" 
 
 The value of a man as a social being 
 is his contribution to the happiness of 
 society, his contribution to the solution 
 of the Question before the House. We 
 can not always have things as we would 
 have them. Of course there are Chad- 
 bands and Pecksniffs, but are there not 
 also Dinah Morrisses and Cheeryble 
 Brothers? As the author of Festus 
 102 
 
THE LURE OF THE OUIET 
 
 says, "There are thorns and nettles ev- 
 erywhere, but the smooth green grass is 
 more common still, and the blue of 
 heaven is larger than the cloud." And 
 even of the cloud, let us say with Ellen 
 Thornycroft Fowler: 
 
 The inner side of every Cloud 
 
 Is bright and shining. 
 I therefore turn my Clouds about 
 And always wear them inside out, 
 
 To show the lining. 
 
 A man's place, then, is in the world. 
 Just as you enter the Appian Way after 
 passing the little Chapel of St. Sebastian 
 on the left, beyond the Arch of Constan- 
 tine, there is a church, a memorial, 
 marking a sacred spot, one of the most 
 sacred in the Eternal City. Around 
 this hallowed ground Legend has woven 
 its beautiful fancy. The story is that 
 during the persecution under Nero, 
 Peter's heart failed him and he deter- 
 103 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 mined to flee from the city. Having 
 eluded the spies and passed the gates, 
 he was congratulating himself on his 
 escape when, suddenly, on this spot he 
 met Jesus bearing His cross. Aston- 
 ished at the vision, he cried out, "Lord! 
 where are You going?" (Domine, quo 
 vadisf) and Jesus answered, "To 
 Rome, to be crucified again" (Vado ad 
 Romam iterum crucifigi). Ah, so it 
 ever is! 
 
 I said, "Let me walk in the fields;" 
 He said, "Nay, walk in the town;" 
 
 I said, "There are no flowers there!" 
 He said, "No flowers, but a crown." 
 
 I said, "But the sky is black, 
 
 There is nothing but noise and din;" 
 
 But He wept as He sent me back — 
 
 "There is more," He said, "there is sin." 
 
 I said, "But the air is thick, 
 
 And fogs are veiling the sun;" 
 He answered, "Yet hearts are sick, 
 
 And souh in the dark undone." 
 104 
 
THE LURE OF THE QUIET 
 
 I said, "I shall miss the light, 
 
 And friends will miss me, they say;" 
 
 He answered me, "Choose to-night 
 If I am to miss you, or they." 
 
 I pleaded for time to be given; 
 
 He said, "Is it hard to decide? 
 It will not seem hard in heaven 
 
 To have followed the steps of your Guide." 
 
 I cast one look at the field 
 
 Then set my face to the town; 
 He said: "My child, do you yield? 
 
 Will you leave the flowers for the crown?" 
 
 Then into His hand went mine, 
 
 And into my heart came He. 
 And I walk in a light divine 
 
 The path I had feared to see. 
 
 — George Macdonald. 
 
 But supose you were in the wilderness, 
 what would you do with it or in it? We 
 may escape the vulgarisms and annoy- 
 ances of the dusty day, the fooleries of 
 society, and the sordidness of the crowd, 
 but we can not escape ourselves. Wher- 
 105 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 ever we go, we go. The desert is the 
 last place in the world where we may 
 lose ourselves or find innocence and 
 peace. He who thinks he can escape 
 the evils of his day by flying from them 
 to some imaginary "lodge in some vast 
 wilderness, some boundless contiguity 
 of shade," is like a philosophical Rus- 
 sian who jumped into the sea to es- 
 cape the storm. There are indeed 
 contemplative spirits who are independ- 
 ent of time and place — rare souls 
 to whom the populous city may be a 
 desert, and the silent wilderness no ne- 
 cessity. John Henry Newman, when 
 once found walking in a quadrangle at 
 Oxford, was asked if he were alone, to 
 which he instantly replied, "Never so 
 little alone as when alone." Cicero had 
 uttered the same thought when musing 
 alone in his Roman villa. But for the 
 average man the worst company he can 
 have is himself. It is not good for man 
 106 
 
THE LURE OF THE QUIET 
 
 to be alone, says Holy Writ, and that 's 
 the end of it. In the picture of St. An- 
 thony in the Desert we see the holy man 
 in his cave reading; but the cave is full 
 of imps, little demons, one climbing on 
 to his rock table, another perched on 
 his shoulder peering into the open book, 
 another looking into his water jar. Ah ! 
 these evil thoughts, these longings for 
 sins we dare not or can not commit, they 
 are with us in the wilderness. For, 
 while u the Kingdom of God is within 
 you," so also is the kingdom of evil. 
 No, the way to conquer evil is to face 
 it, just as the way to escape the wrath 
 of God is to fly to God. 
 
 The way to Peace is the way of the 
 Cross. Self-crucifixion is world-con- 
 quest, and it is he only who has con- 
 quered himself who can calmly stand at 
 his post, — he only who has stood the 
 test of defeat and knows the thorny road 
 of grief is the real hero who has the 
 107 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 respect and the admiration of God. 
 Neither heaven nor earth has any shout- 
 ings or palms for the chronic corn- 
 plainer, not even for him whose strength 
 in the day of adversity is small, but 
 whose laughter is long and loud upon 
 the hills when fortune smiles and the 
 dread of yesterday is no more. 
 
 It is easy enough to be pleasant 
 
 When life flows by like a song, 
 But the man worth while is one who will smile 
 
 When everything goes wrong; 
 For the test of the heart is trouble, 
 
 And it always comes with the years; 
 And the smile that is worth the praises of earth 
 
 Is the smile that shines through tears. 
 
 It is easy enough to be prudent 
 
 When nothing tempts you to stray; 
 When without or within no voice of sin 
 
 Is luring your soul away. 
 But it 's only a negative virtue 
 
 Until it is tried by fire, 
 And the life that is worth the honor of earth 
 
 Is the one that resists desire. 
 108 
 
THE LURE OF THE QUIET 
 
 By the cynic, the sad, the fallen, 
 
 Who had no strength for the strife, 
 The world's highway is cumbered to-day — 
 
 They make up the item of life; 
 But the virtue that conquers passion, 
 
 And the sorrow that hides in a smile, 
 It is these that are worth the homage of earth, 
 
 For we find them but once in a while. 
 — Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 
 
 109 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 And Jacob served seven years for Ra- 
 chel and they seemed unto him but a few 
 days for the love he had for her. 
 
 — Gen. 29: 20. 
 
 In the works of really great writers, 
 such as Scott or Dickens, George Eliot, 
 Tolstoi or Hugo, we come across pas- 
 sages here and there of strange pathetic 
 power, subtle touches of almost super- 
 human genius which reach down to the 
 depths of feeling and open at once the 
 springs of emotion. We know that ac- 
 cording to some canons we should not 
 permit such excitation of feeling; but it 
 is altogether useless for any human icicle 
 to tell us that we should suppress such 
 lawless impulses, for it is the business of 
 Genius to see that no appeal to cold 
 Reason shall be stronger than its appeal 
 to the human heart. Since we are in the 
 
 8 ii3 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 world we are in a way one with the 
 world, flesh of its flesh, bone of its bone. 
 The sorrows and the joys of the men 
 and women who live and act, laugh or 
 weep in the pages before us, weave 
 about us their bewitching spells, and, in 
 spite of all our philosophy or stolidity, 
 as the case may be, we become sympa- 
 thetic witnesses or partisan actors in 
 what we read. Let us not forget that 
 Kant, the greatest philosopher of Ger- 
 many and the inaugurator of a new era 
 in philosophy, omitted his daily walk to 
 read "Uncle Tom's Cabin;" that Lord 
 Palmerston, Prime Minister of England, 
 read it three times; that Darwin, whom 
 we picture as absorbed only in scientific 
 contemplation of Protozoa and the An- 
 thropoid Ape, immensely enjoyed sim- 
 ple love stories; that the "Heir of Red- 
 clyffe" brought tears to the eyes of G. 
 J. Romanes, the hard-headed skeptical 
 author of "A Candid Examination of 
 114 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 Theism" and not the least in that bril- 
 liant galaxy of scientists in England 
 which adorned the latter part of the 
 Nineteenth Century. If, however, you 
 are incurably insensible to these weak- 
 nesses, "and their comforts too," it is 
 not because pachydermatous indifference 
 to the finer feelings is an acquisition to 
 be proud of, or a virtue to be cultivated, 
 but because, probably, as Ben Winthrop 
 says to the parish clerk, "It 's your in- 
 sides as is n't right made for music, it 's 
 no better nor a hollow stalk." Feeling 
 is older than thought, and though we 
 may be a very Gradgrind for hard facts, 
 nevertheless stronger than any other 
 passion, Sentiment, at last, rules the 
 world. 
 
 It is not an accident that in all the 
 literature of humanity, rich as it is in 
 the poetry of sentiment, there should be 
 no book so full of emotion as the Bible. 
 What wonderfully touching stories from 
 
 "5 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Time's early dawn are told to us there 
 of Joseph, and Samuel, and Ruth ! And 
 to what glorious heights of sublimity 
 are we carried by the sublimest passages 
 in the Bible, Isaiah XL and LX, and 
 chapters XXXVIII and XXXIX of 
 Job ! The most perfect elegy in all lit- 
 erature is David's Lament for Saul and 
 Jonathan (2 Sam. 1:19-27), and the 
 most transporting expression of triumph 
 is the Song of Deborah in Judges 5 : 
 2-31. But in this Book, so full of His- 
 tory and Poetry and Drama, is there any 
 literary gem more exquisitely lovely in 
 its suggestiveness, more beautiful in its 
 simplicity, than this little story of Ja- 
 cob's love for his Rachel? The only 
 jewel equal to it — perhaps superior to 
 it, in a way — is the story of the birth 
 of Jesus, as told by Luke. But if that 
 is the Pearl of the New Testament, this 
 is the Kohi-noor of the Old. It is be- 
 yond the power of genius to improve 
 116 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 upon it. "And Jacob served seven years 
 for Rachel, and they seemed unto him 
 but a few days for the love he had for 
 her." 
 
 The most beautiful star in the sky is 
 the world we live on, and the dearest 
 spot in the world is the place we call 
 home. It matters not where it is, nor 
 what it is; whether it is a tent under a 
 palm-tree, a mansion in the midst of 
 culture and art, an old house in a smoky 
 town, or a log-cabin on a mountain-side 
 neighboring tall trees and the lonely 
 peaks that parley with the sun — it mat- 
 ters not, for around no other spot do 
 so many tender memories cluster, and 
 to no other place does imagination re- 
 turn as if to a lost Eden to find again 
 the innocence and gladness that were 
 once ours. For, if Paradise, as Augustus 
 Hare wrote, was the home of our first 
 parents, home is the Paradise of their 
 descendants. 
 
 117 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 One of the most delightful enjoy- 
 ments possible in London is visiting the 
 homes where great writers and men of 
 history lived and wrote their works; 
 No. 6 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, 
 where Goldsmith wrote his "Vicar of 
 Wakefield;" — No. i Devonshire Ter- 
 race, where Dickens wrote his "Cricket 
 on the Hearth," "Barnaby Rudge" 
 "The Curiosity Shop," "Dombey & 
 Son;" — Tavistock House, in the square 
 of that name, where he wrote "The Tale 
 of Two Cities," "Little Dorrit," and 
 portions of "Bleak House;" — No. 5 
 Great Cheyne Row, where Carlyle 
 wrote his "French Revolution;" — the 
 homes of George Eliot, Robert Brown- 
 ing, Thackeray, and the large house, 
 now the wing of an Homeopathic hos- 
 pital, at the corner of Great Ormond 
 Street, near the British Museum, where 
 Macaulay lived, and where he wrote his 
 Essay on Milton. What times the Mac- 
 118 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 aulay family had in that house! In 
 1857, long after the great historian had 
 become famous, he writes: 
 
 "I sent the carriage home and walked 
 to the Museum; passing through Great 
 Ormond Street, I saw a bill on No. 50. 
 I knocked, was let in, and went over the 
 house with a strange mixture of feelings. 
 It is more than twenty-six years since 
 I was in it. The dining-room and the 
 adjoining room in which I once slept 
 are scarcely changed; the same coloring 
 on the wall, but more dingy. My fa- 
 ther's study much the same; the draw- 
 ing-rooms too, except the papering; my 
 bedroom just as it was. My mother's 
 bedroom — I had never been in it since 
 her death. I went away sad." 
 
 Long after Disraeli had become 
 Prime Minister of England he visited 
 his old home in Bloomsbury Square, his 
 personality not being known to the care- 
 taker, where "He sat for some time pon- 
 119 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 dering and reflecting." Visiting one day 
 the rooms in Kensington Palace where 
 Queen Victoria was born, and where she 
 played with her dolls and toys which are 
 all there yet, an attendant told me that 
 on the occasion of the Queen's last visit 
 there, being too old and feeble to climb 
 the stairs, she had herself carried up in 
 a rolling chair to the room where in 
 the long, long ago she played as a child. 
 Thus does the home hold us to the end ! 
 And yet it is not the house that makes 
 the home, but the presence of her whose 
 mother-love, like God's arms, shelters 
 all who are there. Somewhere Ruskin 
 says of the true woman that "There may 
 be no roof above her but the stars; no 
 light to cheer her but the glow of the 
 fire-fly in the wet grass at her feet; but, 
 wherever she is, there is home." Should 
 she pass away there may be a house left, 
 but not a home. The soul of it has 
 gone out of it and left a void that star- 
 120 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 ties, an emptiness that fills the bereaved 
 heart with a loneliness longing from 
 which there is no escape. It is not home 
 any more. She is gone. 
 
 Should the father die, bad as that 
 may be, the mother will still be the rally- 
 ing center for her stricken brood; she 
 will pick up the wrecks of her broken 
 home, gather her children about her 
 "as a hen gathereth her chickens under 
 her wings," and manage in spite of 
 death to get along somehow. As only a 
 woman can she will manage without her 
 little ones knowing or sharing her heart- 
 aches and privations, to make for them 
 a home — one green little spot in the 
 desert — where love shall brood over 
 them and, like the wings of God, keep 
 them from the evil. "As a mother com- 
 forteth her children, so will I comfort 
 you, saith the Lord," is the Divine rec- 
 ognition of Itself in the heart of a 
 woman. 
 
 121 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 As God is heaven, woman is home. 
 There is no heaven without Him, and 
 there is no home without her. Gentle, 
 and strongest when gentlest, self-sacri- 
 ficing and patient, mindful of sweetest 
 courtesies, expectant ever as her only re- 
 ward of the caress of him she loves, or 
 of the velvet hands of those who call 
 her mother, she lives, and can only truly 
 live, in a world of love. She, and not 
 the Pope, is God's vicar on earth, for, 
 as Carlyle says with largest meaning, 
 "God made Mothers, and shall not all 
 be well?" The Mother is the visible 
 revelation of the Mother-Heart of God, 
 which quality in Him is the secret of the 
 love and beauty of the universe. Has 
 not Wordsworth, the poet of Nature, 
 drawn with insight as true as that spir- 
 itual perception we feel in the lines on 
 Tintern Abbey, the real woman, who is 
 always half angel, half human? 
 
 122 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 She was a Phantom of delight 
 
 When first she gleamed upon my sight! 
 
 A lovely Apparition, sent 
 
 To be a moment's ornament! 
 
 Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; 
 
 Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; 
 
 But all things else about her drawn 
 
 From May-time and the cheerful Dawn! 
 
 A dancing Shape, an Image gay, 
 
 To haunt, to startle, and waylay! 
 
 I saw her, upon nearer view, 
 
 A Spirit, yet a Woman too! 
 
 Her household motions light and free, 
 
 And steps of virgin liberty; 
 
 A countenance, in which did meet 
 
 Sweet records, promises as sweet! 
 
 A Creature not too bright, or good, 
 
 For human nature's daily food! 
 
 For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
 
 Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles! 
 
 And now I see, with eyes serene, 
 The very pulse of the machine! 
 A Being breathing thoughtful breath! 
 A Traveler betwixt life and death! 
 The reason firm, the temperate will, 
 123 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; 
 A perfect Woman, nobly planned 
 To warn, to comfort, and command: 
 And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
 With something of an angel light! 
 
 Such is the woman whom men rever- 
 ence from afar and love when near, the 
 mother of men. 
 
 One's opinion of mankind is largely 
 determined by the kind of mankind he 
 lives with. Bernard Shaw insists that 
 women lack intellect, which opinion does 
 discredit to his Celtic blood and to the 
 6,500 useful patents issued to women. 
 Tolstoi thinks they lack spirituality. 
 Schopenhauer, Heine, and Balzac think 
 they are idealized and are not what men 
 imagine them to be. 
 
 Now, there is nothing gained by quar- 
 reling with the fancies of novelists, 
 dramatists, or literary decadents who 
 misinterpret this world or create one of 
 their own and people it with all sorts 
 124 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 of creatures good, bad, and ridiculous. 
 In his "My Confession" Tolstoi says, 
 "I felt that I was not quite mentally 
 sound" — as one might perhaps judge 
 from his "Kreutzer Sonata" Balzac 
 never painted the portrait of a good 
 woman. Schopenhauer looked at cre- 
 ation through smoked glasses, and poor 
 Heine felt differently about women 
 when rising from his "mattress grave" 
 in the Rue d'Amsterdam, in Paris, when 
 for the last time he sought the consola- 
 tions of the Ideal in the Venus of the 
 Louvre. "With difficulty," says he, "I 
 dragged myself to the Louvre, and I al- 
 most sank down as I entered the magnifi- 
 cent hall where the ever-blessed goddess 
 of beauty, our beloved Lady of Milo, 
 stands on her pedestal. At her feet I 
 lay long, and wept so bitterly that a 
 stone must have pitied me. The god- 
 dess looked compassionately on me, but 
 ?X the same time disconsolately, as if she 
 125 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 would say, 'Dost thou not see, then, 
 that I have no arms, and thus can not 
 help thee ?' " Women there may be who 
 have more of the sub-human than the 
 super-human in their cosmos, just as 
 there are men who, according to Web- 
 ster's definition of "Model," may be 
 nothing more than "an imitation of 
 something existing," but real men know 
 real women, and, after all, it is only the 
 real that counts. 
 
 Of course, we can hardly be expected 
 to fall in love with such feminine types 
 as Mrs. Gummidge, "that poor lorn 
 creetur" to whom "everything goes 
 contra iry;" Mrs. Jellaby, "who devotes 
 herself to the public" and who is "hop- 
 ing by this time next year to have from 
 a hundred and fifty to two hundred 
 healthy families cultivating coffee and 
 educating the natives of Borrioboola- 
 Gha, on the left bank of the Niger;" 
 Miss Miggs of sharp and acid visage — 
 126 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 Miss Miggs who, "as a general princi- 
 ple and abstract proposition, held the 
 male sex to be utterly contemptible and 
 unworthy of notice; to be fickle, false, 
 base, sottish, inclined to perjury and 
 wholly undeserving." We can not, ab- 
 solutely, worship such worthy women. 
 Not even Mrs. Lupin, the good-looking, 
 comfortable Mistress of the Blue Dra- 
 gon — a fitting contrast to Balzac's Ma- 
 dame Valquer, sitting, like a huge brown 
 spider in its dusty cobweb, at the door 
 of her Parisian den full of odors and 
 mystery. 
 
 Nor will any but decadents reverence 
 as Sistine Madonnas those poor crea- 
 tures, mere simulacras of women, found 
 in the pages of a Herrick, a Zola, or a 
 D'Annunzio, those diabolically sweet- 
 toned, perfumed enchantresses who 
 "weave the winding sheet of souls and 
 lay them in the urn of everlasting death," 
 neurasthenic victims of ennui ; silly, vain 
 127 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 women, seekers of the other sex, desert- 
 ers of home but frequenters of the ball- 
 room; affectionate toward dogs but in- 
 different to children, alluring in dress 
 but strangers to taste. Such creatures, 
 pitiable rather than condemnable, of 
 whom we may read in the yellows and 
 purples of erotic fiction or, perchance, 
 may see flitting like moths around an 
 arc-light in the glitter of artificial so- 
 ciety, are not real women, they are not 
 the women who build the homes of a 
 stalwart nation, women who inspire real 
 men to noble living and magnificent 
 deeds. 
 
 The true woman finds her deepest joy 
 not in the glare of the lime-light, but in 
 the gladness of her home; not in the se- 
 ductive smiles of a burnt-out blase 
 habitue of the ballroom, but in the love 
 of her husband and the happiness of her 
 children. The path from her door does 
 not lead to the Divorce Court, but the 
 128 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 Courts of Heaven. In her home, where 
 she is Queen of heart and hearth, there 
 is nothing to hide. No secret shame 
 gnaws at the roots of her life, like the 
 serpent in Scandinavian Saga, eating 
 away the roots of Ygdrasil. No tu- 
 multuous unrest, or wild longing for the 
 intoxicating excitement of the crowd 
 singing uproariously down the Calami- 
 tous Way, or swept in the whirl of fren- 
 zied pleasure, disturbs her unruffled 
 peace. She is sane. She sails through 
 life's seas on an even keel. The home 
 may be humble and constant toil be 
 needed for its support, yet repose is 
 there; satisfaction is there; honor is 
 there ; love is there ; radiant, comforting, 
 glorifying, lifting even the earthy and 
 common-place into the ideal and the 
 heavenly. There, where she is more 
 than Vestal Virgin guarding the sacred 
 fire in Rome's most virile days, the an- 
 cient pieties are reverenced, the finer en- 
 9 129 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 thusiasms for the best and bravest are 
 bred into the blood and tissue of her off- 
 spring. 
 
 Her children rise up, and call her blessed; 
 
 Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying, 
 
 Many daughters have done worthily, 
 
 But thou excellest them all. 
 
 Grace is deceitful, and beauty is vain; 
 
 But a woman that feareth 
 
 Jehovah, she shall be praised. 
 
 How beautifully Tennyson in the 
 "Princess" rises up and blesses his 
 Mother. 
 
 "I love her, one 
 
 Not learned, save in gracious household ways ; 
 Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants; 
 No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
 In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise. 
 Interpreter between the gods and men, 
 Who look'd all native to her place, and yet 
 On tipetoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere 
 Too gross to tread, and all male minds per- 
 force 
 
 130 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved, 
 And girdled her with music. Happy he 
 With such a mother! faith in womankind 
 Beats with his blood, and trust in all things 
 
 high 
 Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall 
 He shall not bind his soul with clay." 
 
 Among the hidden beauties of this 
 story of love is the eager yearning of 
 Rachel to fill to the brim Jacob's cup 
 of joy. Not all women are perfect, 
 lacking nothing to the satisfying of 
 ideals of beauty and culture and the de- 
 sires of the heart. Not to all women 
 comes "that motherhood which was 
 God's primal plan," although, as Ella 
 Wheeler Wilcox sings, 
 
 All womenkind He meant to share its glories, 
 
 He meant us all to nurse our babes to rest ; 
 
 To croon them songs, and tell them sleepy 
 
 stories, 
 Else why the wonder of a woman's breast? 
 
 131 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 It is one of those lovely tricks that na- 
 ture some time plays, for where there is 
 no imperfection there is no dependence. 
 Though Rachel was "beautiful and well 
 favored," she had her limitations. But 
 this made no difference to Jacob. He 
 loved her. He loved her all the more 
 for that she needed his love all the more 
 to make up for what was lacking to com- 
 plete her happiness and his. Love sees 
 no defects. If such exist, they are ar- 
 tistic fictions, just as we talk of legal 
 fictions, or, they are mere flaws in a 
 diamond, happy blemishes whose quality 
 of imperfection is transformed into posi- 
 tive beauty by their heightening the ef- 
 fect of the virtues and graces of the be- 
 loved. The soul of genius which shone 
 through the frail body of Elizabeth Bar- 
 rett Browning, the sweetest songstress 
 in all the sky, appealed all the more 
 strongly to her robust lover, the virile, 
 masterful Browning, who won her and 
 132 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 carried her away to health and happi- 
 ness in sunny Italy. And how that love 
 glorified her limitations ! 
 
 First time he kissed me, he but only kissed 
 
 The fingers of this hand wherewith I write ; 
 
 And ever since, it grew more clean and 
 
 white. 
 
 Slow to world-greetings, quick with its "Oh, 
 
 list" 
 
 When the angels speak. 
 
 — Sonnets from the Portuguese. 
 
 Thus it is where there are real men 
 and women, and real love between them. 
 There may be men who by reason of 
 over-culture or some other fatality are 
 able to see nothing but limitations; cer- 
 tain cold intellectuals, perhaps, who see 
 at once every microscopic flaw, and be- 
 cause of this remain lonely strangers to 
 all the warmth of woman's love, and all 
 that it means to hear from one's own 
 child the sweet words, "My father!" 
 
 133 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Herbert Spencer tells us that George 
 Eliot was the most admirable woman, 
 mentally, he ever met. The "greatness 
 of her intellect conjoined with her wom- 
 anly qualities and manner" kept him by 
 her side. They met and took walks to- 
 gether in the terrace at Somerset House, 
 "at that time as little invaded by visitors 
 as by sounds." People drew their in- 
 ferences. "There were reports that I 
 was in love with her, and that we were 
 about to be married. But neither of 
 these reports was true." 
 
 Of course not. The author of the 
 Synthetic Philosophy , one of the great- 
 est philosophic minds of this or of any 
 age, was so fastidious and, as he himself 
 confesses, "so prone to look for faults 
 alike in the performances of others and 
 in my own" that his mind became too 
 keenly analytical for love to play any 
 part in his cold life's history. Herbert 
 Spencer admired George Eliot and is 
 
 134 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 generous in his tribute to her wonderful 
 abilities and beautiful self-depreciation, 
 but he can not help telling us that "her 
 head was larger than is usual in women. 
 It had, moreover, a peculiarity distin- 
 guishing it from most heads, whether 
 feminine or masculine; namely, that its 
 contour was very regular. Usually 
 heads have here and there either flat 
 places or slight hollows; but her head 
 was everywhere convex." How did she 
 think of him? for he was by no means 
 striking or handsome. 
 
 "My brightest spot," she writes, 
 "next to my love for old friends, is the 
 deliciously calm new friendship that 
 Herbert Spencer gives me. We see each 
 other every day, and have a delightful 
 camaradie in everything. But for him 
 my life would be desolate enough. 
 What a wretched lot of old shriveled 
 creatures we shall be by and by ! Never 
 mind, the uglier we get in the eyes of 
 
 135 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 others the lovelier we shall be to each 
 other." 
 
 The straight line is the beautiful line 
 in Ethics, but the curved line is the beau- 
 tiful line in Art, and so to the eyes of 
 love there are no flats and hollows. 
 They are all curves. Browning saw no 
 limitations in his Elizabeth. They were 
 there, for she was not beautiful. But 
 he saw her, the pure, sweet spirit which 
 looked up to him and leaned upon him 
 for that love which was her life. 
 
 Some time ago the world hung its 
 head in shame for a man, who having 
 become immensely rich and wishing, as 
 the newspapers said, to shine in a so- 
 ciety to which he did not belong by birth 
 or education, discarded the wife of his 
 youth. Through many years of poverty 
 and hardship, working in the kitchen 
 and at the washtub, she had helped him 
 to climb into prominence by sacrificing 
 herself. Now, faded and worn, and 
 136 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 possessing none of those accomplish- 
 ments necessary to cultured society, she 
 is to be thrust aside ! It would be diffi- 
 cult to imagine keener agony or more 
 benumbing grief than that of the broken- 
 hearted woman who sat that night 
 watching the hands of the clock slowly 
 turn to the hour of twelve, when he, 
 forsaking her, took to himself another 
 wife, and she, divorced, discarded, 
 thrown aside like an old dish-rag, passed 
 out of his life — once hers — forever! 
 But if the world hung its head in shame 
 for this wrong, it stood up straighter 
 and grew an inch taller when it knew 
 that a President of the United States 
 would steal away from the Cabinet of 
 a great nation or from the representa- 
 tives of kings and emperors to minister 
 to the slightest wish of the frail woman 
 in an adjoining room, who called him 
 "William." The greater the need the 
 greater the love. 
 
 137 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 The crowning worth of this story, 
 however, is the lesson it has been telling 
 ever since of the heartening power of 
 love. There is no inspiration like the 
 afflatus of love. Nothing so quickly 
 transfigures human life. In his "Buch 
 der Lieder" Heine suggests to us a poor 
 poet, misshapen, broken and spent until 
 the ideal of his love draws nigh, when 
 he is at once transformed into strength 
 and beauty. Nothing so strengthens 
 courage, nothing so toughens endurance. 
 "Jacob served seven years for Rachel, 
 and they seemed unto him but a few 
 days for the love he had for her." 
 Therein is the beauty and the glory of 
 service. It is not measured by time. 
 
 O Love is weak 
 Which counts the answers and the gains, 
 Weighs all the losses and the pains, 
 And eagerly each fond word drains 
 
 A joy to seek. 
 
 138 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 It hardly asks 
 If it be loved at all; to take 
 So barren seems, when it can make 
 Such bliss, for the beloved's sake, 
 
 Of bitter tasks. 
 
 Jacob's slavery to Laban was to him 
 the largest freedom, as service to God 
 is the gladdest liberty. Jacob had some 
 one to work for, some one to come home 
 to when the day's work was done. 
 From early morning till the slanting of 
 the sun he led the flocks of Laban to 
 pasture, watched over them, fought their 
 enemies, rescued the lost; but to him 
 all this hardship was sweet, for there 
 was a great motive in his heart; the 
 joy of showing his heart 's desire how 
 he loved her. Labor is not drudgery 
 any more. Filled with a great love 
 which glorifies him, life has worth and 
 meaning never felt before; and the life 
 that had been without purpose took on 
 dignity and character which nerved him 
 
 139 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 later for the struggle in the darkness 
 with the Unknown at the fords of Jor- 
 dan. 
 
 In traveling about Italy or France or 
 Germany one picks up many a charming 
 story and quaint legend of the old ca- 
 thedrals, such as the Cathedral at 
 Treves, at Bruges, at Cologne, the old 
 shrine at Antwerp, or the Church of St. 
 Maria Maggiore on the Esquilline in 
 Rome, which, according to the legend, 
 was built by order of the Virgin, who 
 appeared to Pope Liberius and a rich 
 patrician in a dream and commanded 
 that they should build a church on the 
 spot where on the following day 
 (August 5th) they should find newly- 
 fallen snow. But I think the most de- 
 lightful story of all is that which gathers 
 around the Cathedral at Tronjheim, 
 Norway: "When the building had been 
 covered in, an aged artist came and 
 asked to be allowed to carve one of the 
 140 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 blocks left for that purpose. Because of 
 his years his request was declined, but 
 he begged so hard, and he was an artist, 
 that eventually the chief architect al- 
 lotted him a block in a remote corner 
 of the roof, where, in that high latitude, 
 the sun can only strike upon it during six 
 weeks in the midst of summer. In those 
 weeks, however, artists from many lands 
 may be seen copying the work he 
 wrought. Thankfully the old man ac- 
 cepted his task, climbed slowly up to his 
 scaffold each morning, and retired early 
 each afternoon. One day he did not 
 come down as usual, and was found to 
 be dead, with open eyes fixed on a face 
 he had chiseled in the stone. It was 
 the face of a woman, a woman he had 
 loved in early life. She had loved him, 
 but death had snatched her away, and 
 he had cherished the fond image all 
 these years. He knew himself to be a 
 dying man, he knew also that his art 
 141 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 would be buried with him in the grave; 
 he was therefore resolved that the last 
 work of his hand should be to carve the 
 features of the woman so dear to his 
 heart in speaking stone. When the at- 
 tention of the chief architect had been 
 called to the circumstance he gathered 
 the other artists around him and said: 
 'Gentlemen, do you see that face? That 
 is the finest piece of work in this cathe- 
 dral, and it is the work of love.' ' 
 
 From all this we learn that at the 
 heart of Life is motive. As the motive 
 is, Life is. All great lives are the prod- 
 ucts of great motive. This was the se- 
 cret of Him "Who for the joy that was 
 set before Him endured the cross, de- 
 spising the shame and is set down at the 
 right hand of the throne of God" (Heb. 
 12:2). It was the secret of Gladstone. 
 On his first visit to Rome, when he be- 
 held St. Peter's there came into his heart 
 a deep longing for the re-union of 
 142 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 Christendom. "The figure of the 
 Church rose before me as a teacher. I 
 contemplated secular affairs," he says, 
 "chiefly as a means of being useful in 
 Church affairs." "And from the day 
 that he had his dream of a Universal 
 Visible Church," says Mr. Morley, 
 amid "the sublime and somber anarchy 
 of history he beheld the Church leading 
 the world." "This is the enigma, and 
 this is the solution in faith, and spirit, 
 in which Gladstone lived and moved. 
 In him it gave energies of life their 
 meaning, and to duty its foundation." 
 It was the secret of St. Paul, "This one 
 thing I do," of Gothe, of Bismarck, of 
 Disraeli, of Livingstone, of Agassiz, 
 and Darwin, and of every one, known or 
 unknown, who has lived the life worth 
 living. The lack of motive — ennobling 
 motive — lies at the heart of the wrecked 
 lives, the human derelicts which make 
 up the flotsam and jetsam of humanity. 
 
 H3 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 "Whatever lacks Purpose is evil ; a pool with- 
 out pebbles breeds slime. 
 
 Not any one step hath Chance fashioned on 
 the infinite stairway of time. 
 
 Not ever came Good without labor, in Toil 
 or in Science or Art, 
 
 It must be wrought out through the muscles, 
 born out of the soul and the heart." 
 
 What the listless millions, weary of 
 life, need more than anything else is the 
 power of a new inspiration. Grandeur, 
 wealth, vast combinations of industry 
 and commerce, freedom of thought, uni- 
 versal education in material things, have 
 not brought that happiness, that sweet 
 contentment to the millionaire and the 
 wage-earner that economists and soci- 
 ologists have promised us from the 
 housetops. These are not your gods, 
 O Israel ! Bring back Imagination, 
 bring back the hunger for the Beautiful 
 in conduct, thought, and speech! Put 
 an entrancing ideal into the soul of a 
 144 
 
THE LOVE THAT ABIDES 
 
 man, an angel dream in his brain, some- 
 thing, anything, that will illuminate his 
 inner being and light up the world in 
 which he labors ; then will he be happier 
 than kings and hardest toil will be 
 sweetest joy. 
 
 He whose life is centered in his home, 
 who carries in his heart as he goes to 
 his work the face of his Rachel and the 
 laughter of his children will under- 
 stand, as can not otherwise be under- 
 stood, the fullness and the glory of the 
 words, "And they seemed unto him but 
 a few days for the love he had for her." 
 
 Epilogue. 
 "And Rachel died, and was buried in the 
 way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem." 
 
 J-45 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 'Since she went — home- — 
 The saddened world has never seemed so 
 
 bright ; 
 There is less splendor in the morning's light 
 And duller now the radiant moonbeams 
 shine. 
 All nature's joys come now to slower birth, 
 And thou hast lost, O tender morning earth, 
 The glory that was thine! 
 
 'Since she went — home — 
 The dragging days seem now so drear and 
 
 long; 
 A hint of sadness chills the gayest song, 
 
 A plaintive tone in every sound I hear. 
 Even the sunlight's rays of purest gold, 
 Like all the world, seem something dull 
 and cold, 
 Missing her presence dear. 
 
 'Since she went — home — 
 So large a world to lose so very much, 
 In one small woman's face and voice and 
 touch, 
 The simple magic of her tender smile! 
 So full a world to have so empty grown 
 For one small woman's quiet soul and tone, 
 And yet — 'twill empty be for such a 
 while 
 
 Since she went — home!" 
 
 — Ethel Maude Cols on. 
 
 146 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
 And the streets of the city shall be full 
 of boys and girls, playing in the streets 
 thereof.— Zech. 8:5. 
 
 Love is the deepest passion. It is the 
 divinest quality. Soaring, singing, re- 
 joicing, it is forever young, forever re- 
 newing itself out of the boundless seas 
 of Infinite Love flowing from the essence 
 of God. It is the reason for Creation. 
 It is the impelling cause of Redemption. 
 Creation begins with its music, and Re- 
 demption closes with its triumph. Like 
 the warmth of suns it permeates all 
 worlds. Even where there is no life it 
 gambols and disports itself in infinite 
 variety of form and lines of Beauty. 
 Love is everywhere, for God is every- 
 where, and God is love. 
 149 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 But nowhere does this supreme qual- 
 ity manifest itself so strongly, so beauti- 
 fully tender, gentle and sweet, as in the 
 heart of a mother, whether that mother 
 be a brooding dove or a fresh young 
 wife bending in ecstasy of wonder and 
 delight over her first-born child. There, 
 in the soul of the mother, God reveals 
 Himself as He did between Angels' 
 Wings on the Mercy Seat, for there is a 
 light and a depth of glory not seen else- 
 where on earth or sea or sky. It is re- 
 markable how often He appeals to that 
 Mother-love, which in a measure we un- 
 derstand, to teach us the Love "that 
 passeth knowledge." The only time 
 God sings in the Bible is where in Zeph- 
 aniah 3: 17, He assumes the character 
 of a mother who presses her baby to 
 her bosom and croons and sings over it 
 with gladness and joy. Father's love 
 is strong, lacking perhaps the exquisite 
 fineness, the subtle poetry of love, but it 
 150 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
 is deep like the ocean, self-sacrificing to 
 the uttermost, as is mother's love; and 
 so, there is no love like parental love, 
 ever revealing itself, offering itself, ex- 
 erting itself, and finding its own un- 
 speakable reward in smiling at its own 
 reflection in the hearts of its loved ones. 
 But what when this love is stricken, 
 when it bends with fathomless grief over 
 an empty crib! "Rachel is mourning 
 for her children and will not be com- 
 forted, because they are not." Yester- 
 day the world was filled with music. 
 Life was full to the brim. The voice 
 of the little one and the patter of his 
 feet made melody in the home. Where 
 he was the atmosphere breathed love and 
 all the sweet intimacies and mysteries of 
 the Love-Life. Now, the whole world 
 is changed. The green trees waving 
 their branches to the passing clouds, the 
 gentle bravery of color on the hillsides, 
 the querulous monologue of the brook 
 
 151 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 rippling over the stones where he played, 
 the singing of birds, or the whispering 
 of the winds in the treetops,- — these 
 have no meaning any more, the whole 
 wide pitiless sweep of Creation is noth- 
 ing but a cruel, meaningless Blank, and 
 we wonder how anything can sing in a 
 Universe like this ! The light of the 
 parents' eyes, the living embodiment of 
 their mutual love is nothing now but a 
 "white silence." Love hovers over the 
 cold, unresponsive form which no kiss 
 will ever waken; memory recalls every 
 print of his fingers on the window-pane, 
 every print of his shoe in the garden, his 
 walk, his merry laugh, his soft touch, 
 his eyes full of mirth and mischief, and 
 all the pretty ways of him, now gone, 
 leaving only an abyssmal void, a bound- 
 less yearning for one more embrace of 
 the little one that Love in its grief will 
 not surrender. 
 
 152 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
 I wonder so that mothers ever fret 
 
 At little children clinging to their gown, 
 Or that the footprints when the days are wet 
 
 Are ever black enough to make them frown. 
 If I could find a little muddy boot, 
 
 Or cap, or jacket, on my chamber floor; 
 If I could kiss a rosy, restless foot, 
 
 And hear its patter in my home once more ; 
 
 If I could mend a broken cart to-day, 
 
 To-morrow make a kite to reach the sky — 
 There is no woman in God's world could say 
 
 She was more blissfully content than I. 
 But, ah! the dainty pillow next my own 
 
 Is never rumpled by a shining head; 
 My singing birdling from its nest has flown, 
 
 The little boy I used to kiss is dead! 
 
 — Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 
 
 It was a long time ago, perhaps, since 
 he went away — but the scar remains of 
 the deep wound made that day. Not 
 one of his little garments has been de- 
 stroyed; they are upstairs, folded away 
 in a safe place all these years, and his 
 playthings are there too — always going 
 
 153 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 to be done away with or disposed of in 
 some way, but never yet has the day 
 come. They stay as memory stays. 
 
 The little toy dog is covered with dust, 
 
 But sturdy and stanch he stands; 
 And the little toy soldier is red with rust, 
 
 And his musket molds in his hands. 
 Time was when the little toy dog was new, 
 
 And the soldier was passing fair; 
 And that was the time when our Little Boy 
 Blue 
 
 Kissed them and put them there. 
 
 "Now, do n't you go till I come," he said, 
 
 "And don't you make any noise!" 
 So, toddling off to his trundle bed, 
 
 He dreamt of the pretty toys; 
 And as he was dreaming an angel song 
 
 Awakened our Little Boy Blue — 
 Oh! the years are many, the years are long, 
 
 But the little toy friends are true. 
 
 Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand, 
 
 Each in the same old place, 
 Awaiting the touch of a little hand, 
 
 The smile of a little face; 
 
 154 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
 And they wonder, as waiting the long years 
 through 
 In the dust of that little chair, 
 What has become of our Little Boy Blue 
 Since he kissed them and put them there. 
 — Eugene Field. 
 
 At such times, crucial days in one's 
 life, there is apt to arise within us a 
 feeling of resentment against God and 
 the whole order of things. We enter 
 the cloud. We sink into brooding and 
 mystery, into doubt and unfaith. Does 
 God know? Why did He permit it? 
 Of what value was prayer? Does my 
 little child live, and where is he, and 
 what is he doing? Has he forgotten 
 me ? And imagination wanders into the 
 Unseen. All too well do we understand 
 the heart of the great London minister 
 Dr. Joseph Parker longing for a glimpse 
 of the little one gone! 
 
 "Amid all the whirl and dizziness of 
 life's tragedy, in which creation seems 
 
 I5S 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 to be but one great cloud, I find myself 
 suddenly brought to a sweet baby's 
 grave. A gray old church, a gurgling 
 stream, a far-spreading thorn tree on a 
 green hillock, and a grave on the sunny 
 southerly side. That is it. Thither I 
 hasten night and day, and in patting the 
 soft grass I feel as if conveying some 
 sense of love to the little sleeper far 
 down. Do not reason with me about it; 
 let the wild heart, in its sweet delirium 
 of love, have all its own way. 
 
 "Baby was but two years old when, 
 like a dewdrop, he went up to the warm 
 sun, yet he left my heart as I have seen 
 ground left out of which a storm had 
 torn a great tree. We talk about the 
 influence of great thinkers, great speak- 
 ers, and 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 
 
 i S 6 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
 feel thy soft kiss on my withered lips 
 just now, and would give all I have for 
 one look of thy dreamy eyes. But I 
 can not have it. 
 
 "Yet God is love. Not dark doubt, 
 not staggering argument, not subtle 
 sophism, but child-death, especially 
 where there is but one, makes me won- 
 der and makes me cry in pain. Baby! 
 baby! I could begin the world again 
 without a loaf or a friend if I had but 
 thee ; such a beginning, with all its hard- 
 ships, would be welcome misery. I do 
 not wonder that the grass is green and 
 soft that covers that little grave, and 
 that the summer birds sing their ten- 
 derest notes as they sit on the branches 
 of that old hawthorn tree. 
 
 "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 
 
 157 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 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 coming, 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 your name, 
 and sometimes let them play with your 
 toys; but, Oh, baby, baby, my old heart 
 sobs and breaks I" 
 
 Now, Religion has no conflict with 
 tears. This would be a poor world were 
 there no pain in it. It is sometimes bet- 
 ter to go to a funeral than to a banquet. 
 There we touch Realities; at the festal 
 board we may be playing with Illusions. 
 Through tears we see deeper into the 
 meaning of things about us, and farther 
 
 i 5 8 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
 into the mysteries of the heavens above 
 us. Against Nature Religion wages no 
 war. The natural and the spiritual are 
 two halves of the universal whole. Any 
 view of life which does not include both 
 is neither. 
 
 To mourn for our departed dead is 
 not distrust of God. Jesus wept. And 
 what a beautiful, though pathetic pic- 
 ture is that incidentally sketched in the 
 Acts of the Apostles, of Paul's farewell 
 of his friends at Ephesus: "And when 
 he had thus spoken, he kneeled down, 
 and prayed with them all. And they 
 all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, 
 and kissed him, sorrowing most of all 
 for the words which he spake, that they 
 should see his face no more." 
 
 Paganism, old or new, may steel it- 
 self against the sorrows of life, thinking 
 that they are of no concern to an in- 
 different God. But Stoicism is at war 
 with Nature and becomes callous to hu- 
 
 159 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 manity, for that philosophy which looks 
 with indifference on the evils of life will 
 not disturb its unruffled calm with labo- 
 rious efforts to relieve them. Religion 
 presents to us the Man of Sorrows as 
 the Ideal, and it is He, who is the true 
 image of God, that reveals to us not 
 the indifferent God — the God who-does- 
 not care, but the loving Father who 
 careth for us. 
 
 And let us here think for a moment. 
 If you had only one supreme wish for 
 your child and you could obtain that 
 without fail, what would it be ? Would 
 it be wealth ? Riches take to themselves 
 wings and fly away. Would it be honor 
 and place and power? These are but 
 for a day, and are often but sources of 
 trouble within and envyings and bicker- 
 ings without — degrading to noble spir- 
 its. No. It is only when the earth is 
 ours for the asking that we see how 
 little it is. Every parent looking back 
 1 60 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
 over the road he has come would cry 
 out: "After life's struggle give to my 
 child eternal rest in Heaven. Give him 
 immortal youth, number him with Thy 
 Redeemed, the white-robed sons of God 
 in the Land of the Unclouded Day." 
 Well, if this is the hunger of us for our 
 children's final welfare, should we weary 
 the stars with our lamentations because 
 God has given the child at the beginning 
 of life what we wish for him at the end 
 of his life? 
 
 But Oh, the finality of it! This 
 dreadful sense of loss, ever present, ever 
 tugging at the soul, how can one ever 
 be reconciled to it all! True, deeply 
 true, because it is the revolt of Nature 
 which shall some day itself be delivered 
 from the bondage of corruption. It is 
 Love crying out against Death. And 
 we are not to be reconciled to Death. 
 It is against Nature that we should be. 
 And "the last enemy that shall be de- 
 
 11 161 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 stroyed is Death." But to be reconciled 
 to the purpose of God is quite another 
 thing. Nevertheless, Heaven has made 
 even Death to serve holy uses. The 
 two great civilizers are Love and Grief. 
 Love inspires, energizes, glorifies. Sor- 
 row softens and refines. Love keeps the 
 world young. Sorrow makes the whole 
 world kin. The garden of Gethsemane 
 leads to Mount Calvary, but over 
 against Calvary is Mount Olivet and 
 the Ascension path to the throne of 
 God. And, after all, the going is not 
 final, and the time may come when we 
 shall be glad for that going. 
 
 I once knew a mother who for long 
 length of days mourned in secret for 
 her little darling, a beautiful boy of five, 
 and could not become reconciled to her 
 loss, though she tried hard to think that 
 it was all for the best. Many a time, 
 long after he had gone, as she went 
 about her duties in the home, did the 
 162 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
 silent tear course down her cheek, and 
 when spoken to would say, "I wonder 
 what he is doing to-day?" We all re- 
 member when heart-broken Enoch Ar- 
 den went back to his wretched hut to 
 die, carrying his secret with him, how 
 he fell back on the happy thought that 
 the little one of the long ago would 
 meet him at the gate of heaven. 
 
 "And now there is but one of all my blood 
 Who will embrace me in the world to be. 
 This hair is his; she cut it off and gave it, 
 And I have borne it all these years, 
 And thought to bear it with me to my grave, 
 But now my mind is changed, for I shall see 
 
 him, 
 My babe, in bliss." 
 
 And so the time came, many years later, 
 when this dear mother, going out her- 
 self into the Unseen, turned back for a 
 moment from the Shadows and with a 
 smile said, U I am so glad he went; he 
 will meet me there, and we will be to- 
 gether forever!" 
 
 163 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 But, after all, is it not true that much 
 of our immoderate grief springs from 
 our doubt of the Reality of God? Or, 
 perhaps we think of God as foreign to 
 us, and the Unseen as something to be 
 dreaded. The Immensities appall us. 
 We shrink into our quivering selves, 
 feeling no oneness with the glorious 
 Universe around us. We are strangers 
 to it, as all our fathers were, and when 
 Death robs us of our loved ones we 
 think of them as lost, swallowed up in 
 the infinite Nothing. And yet it is dif- 
 ferent if we think of God as not out 
 there among far-away stars, where no- 
 body lives, but as down here where we 
 live; as not being so much out there in 
 the illimitable spaces where there are no 
 bleeding hearts and grass-grown mounds 
 where loved ones lie, as He is down 
 here with us in our homes, in our joys 
 and griefs and foolish stumblings. 
 
 God is as much interested in our chil- 
 164 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
 dren as we are, and where they are, and 
 what they are doing. There is no Here 
 and There to him. It is all one. The 
 whole is our Father's House. In that 
 House there are many mansions, resting- 
 places for growth and fitness, homes for 
 spiritual nursing, homes for the worn 
 and weary. 
 
 And it is all one with those who go — 
 only it is higher and more real and beau- 
 tiful. So they are not lost, they are not 
 absorbed in infinite emptiness. The soul 
 there finds itself, realizes its own true 
 self, and does not forget, and does not 
 cease to love the dear faces wet with 
 tears in yonder Earth-star. They know 
 themselves as the children of this and 
 that other sorrowful home, and the 
 memory of it all, of father and mother, 
 of brothers and sisters, of sunny days, 
 of loving caresses and sweet nothings — 
 or of hard toil and patient sacrifice, of 
 poverty and hardship — stays. For, 
 
 i6 5 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 were there no memory there would be 
 no knowledge of one's self, and if no 
 sense of identity, then no knowledge of 
 life, or of death — nothing but a blank 
 without a beginning, and all of God's 
 providences from the cradle to the grave 
 would be lost for the furnishing of the 
 soul. 
 
 The Good Shepherd careth for His 
 sheep and carries the lambs in His 
 bosom. "They shall hunger no more, 
 nor thirst any more: neither shall the 
 sun light on them, nor any heat, for the 
 Lamb which is in the midst of the throne 
 shall feed them, and shall lead them into 
 living fountains of waters, and God 
 shall wipe away all tears from their 
 eyes." Beyond the empty crib we may 
 see the open door of heaven and u boys 
 and girls playing in the streets thereof;" 
 for — 
 
 166 
 
THE EMPTY CRIB 
 
 "Oh! what do you think the angels say?" 
 Said the children up in heaven; 
 
 "There 's a dear little girl coming home to- 
 day; 
 
 She 's almost ready to fly away 
 
 From the earth we used to live in; 
 
 Let 's go and open the gates of pearl, 
 
 Open them wide for the new little girl," 
 Said the children up in heaven. 
 
 "God wanted her here, where His little ones 
 meet," 
 
 Said the children up in heaven; 
 "She shall play with us in the golden street; 
 She has grown too fair, she has grown too 
 sweet 
 
 For the earth we used to live in; 
 She needed the sunshine, this dear little girl 
 That gilds this side of the gates of pearl," 
 
 Said the children up in heaven. 
 
 "So the King called down from the angels' 
 dome," 
 Said the children up in heaven; 
 " 'My little darling, arise and come 
 To the place prepared in the Father's home, 
 
 167 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 The home My children live in!' 
 Let 's go and watch the gates of pearl, 
 Ready to welcome the new little girl," 
 
 Said the children up in heaven. 
 
 "Far down on the earth, do you hear them 
 weep ?" 
 
 Said the children up in heaven; 
 "For the dear little girl has gone asleep! 
 The shadows fall and the night clouds sweep 
 
 O'er the earth we used to live in; 
 But we '11 go and open the gates of pearl ! 
 Oh! why do they weep for their dear little 
 girl?" 
 
 Said the children up in heaven. 
 
 "Fly with her quickly, Oh angels dear!" 
 Said the children up in heaven; 
 
 "See — she is coming! Look there! Look 
 there ! 
 
 At the jasper light on her sunny hair, 
 Where the veiling clouds are riven!" 
 
 Ah ! hush, hush, hush ! all the swift wings furl ! 
 
 For the King Himself, at the gates of pearl, 
 
 Is taking her hand, dear, tired little girl, 
 And is leading her into heaven. 
 
 168 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 I long to depart — to pull up anchor and 
 sail away — and be with Christ, which is 
 far better. — Ep. to the Philippians 1: 23. 
 
 Paul is lonely. A prisoner on the Pala- 
 tine Hill in Rome, he has had rough 
 experiences lately — thrilling days and 
 nights of preaching and prayer in the 
 soldiers' barracks amid the comings and 
 goings of guards and sentinels, the rat- 
 tle of clanging shields and spears and 
 breastplates thrown here or there, coarse 
 jokes, soldier-talk and reminiscences of 
 exploits in far-away battlefields by the 
 Nile, the Euphrates, or the Danube, and 
 it has all wearied him. But he has a 
 little respite now, and with it comes a 
 sagging of the spirit. He sits there at 
 the door of the barracks overlooking the 
 Circus Maximus weary and alone. The 
 171 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 jostling crowds beneath him in the Cir- 
 cus, with its vast expanse of seats rising 
 tier above tier, its glorious columns, the 
 glistening marbles of its temples, the 
 lights and shadows on the Aventine Hill 
 beyond, have no attractions for him. 
 He looks upon it all, but sees nothing. 
 His thoughts are in far-off Philippi, sol- 
 acing himself with memories of friends 
 in the little Christian community there. 
 Soon, these vagrant longings wander 
 away, as his loneliness deepens, to the 
 truest friend of all, who is in Heaven, 
 and then the sweeter side of the Apostle 
 quietly comes to the fore, crowding out 
 the ugly dreams that had worried him. 
 Like a smiling violet beside a snowdrift, 
 all that is beautiful and lovable in his 
 virile yet sensitive soul gently reveals 
 itself in this wonderfully tender, delight- 
 fully courteous letter to his Philippian 
 friends. 
 
 Why Paul is heavy-hearted and why 
 172 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 he longs so for the strengthening touch 
 of friendship is made clear at the begin- 
 ning of his Epistle. He had great times 
 with the stalwart soldiers of the Praeto- 
 rian Guard — some of whom, perhaps, 
 were yesterday bodyguard to Nero — 
 and to these bronzed empire-builders 
 he, too, soldier-like, had spoken high 
 thoughts of the Empire of the Spirit — 
 of kingdoms and empires they had never 
 dreamed of. But after that he had a 
 bad hour meditating on another sort of 
 people, certain babblers who had tried 
 to depreciate him by minimizing him, 
 disputing his doctrine, and making him, 
 if possible, a perverter of truth; not di- 
 rectly to be sure, which would fail; not 
 openly, but by whispered suggestion, 
 question, and innuendo. Experts these, 
 fine experts in the gentle art of moral 
 assassination, to worry a man like Paul ! 
 But, the nobler the character the keener 
 it suffers. 
 
 173 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 No wonder the Apostle is weary of 
 the strife. His thoughts are world- 
 wide, but the littleness of things about 
 him, the seemingly hopeless task of re- 
 alizing his dreams at the heart of the 
 Empire, his imprisonment, and his 
 doubtful future weigh upon him. In- 
 deed, as he sits there in his loneliness, 
 thinking of his hardships and conflicts; 
 of all that yet remains to be done in the 
 Churches and the world outside; of the 
 fathomless joy and blessedness of the 
 Unseen, of the infinite possibilities of 
 life there and fellowship with Jesus, a 
 divine homesickness steals over him. 
 He would, as of old, answer the trum- 
 pet-call to duty, but he longs for rest, 
 as men of God have often prayed, and 
 in a moment of despondency he cries, 
 "I long to pull up anchor and sail away 
 to the Christ which is far better!" 
 
 Brave soul, he has a tender side to 
 him! He has often been the victim of 
 
 174 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 mobs, and in many thrilling experiences 
 on land and sea has frightened Death 
 itself, but, after all, the vision of the 
 end, the meeting with the Christ in eter- 
 nal glory was the hope that lay hid down 
 deep in his heart. To be with Christ 
 was the dream of his life, the power 
 which impelled him, the hope that in- 
 spired him. 
 
 And so do many cultured souls to- 
 day ofttimes feel. They long to sail 
 away. Not the world, but the littleness 
 of it is too much for them. They hun- 
 ger for love, for largeness of spirit, and 
 the sweet serenity of peace. All beauti- 
 ful souls long for quietness and the fel- 
 lowship of the best. To the push and 
 roar and stampede of the crowd they 
 prefer the quiet woodlands, or the up- 
 lands where there is sky and vision and 
 creeping cloud, and where the trouble- 
 some voices of the day are hushed in the 
 silences of the stars. What would one 
 
 175 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 not give to wander away into the green 
 woods for a whole day with St. Paul, 
 to sit for an hour with Plato, or with 
 Seneca, as he writes his letters, or with 
 Augustine, brooding over his "City of 
 God," or to listen to the words of Jesus 
 in the home at Bethany? Wonderful 
 days for the soul when we sit and listen, 
 all eyes and ears, to the kings of men, 
 the great thinkers and prophets of hu- 
 manity, and beholding the worlds of 
 thought and Being expand before us, 
 feel ourselves grow ! 
 
 It takes a long time to get the world 
 out of us and the universe into us. We 
 are so provincial. Is there not some 
 difference between fowls in a barnyard 
 and eagles in the azure? Some differ- 
 ence between finding one's world in the 
 bottom of a well with three feet of sky 
 above, and tenting among the clouds on 
 mountain tops? The worst heresy is 
 narrowness. There is a divine reason 
 176 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 why the universe is not smaller. And 
 never till we turn from the little and 
 seek the large, drop the temporal and 
 seize the eternal, can we realize the 
 powers adapted to the eternal and the 
 limitless that are wrapped up within us. 
 The soul is built for the infinite, and in 
 the infinite alone can it find itself. In 
 our best moments we long instinctively 
 for the Heavens and the companionship 
 of the best. Do you not remember the 
 words of Socrates to his friends on the 
 day of his death, as recorded by Plato? 
 At sunset, according to Athenian law, 
 Socrates will drink the deadly hemlock 
 juice, and so, looking forward to his 
 meeting with noble spirits in the other 
 world, he says: 
 
 "If, my friends, I did not expect to 
 go to a wise and good God, and to men 
 who have died and are better than those 
 whom I leave here, I should do wrong 
 in not grieving at the prospect of death. 
 
 177 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 But now be assured that I hope to go 
 to good men, but this I am not entirely- 
 certain of; but that I shall go to God, 
 a Master wholly good, be assured, if 
 I am certain on any subject, I am on 
 this." 
 
 Then think of what Cicero says in his 
 treatise on Old Age in one of the 
 most splendid passages in all Classical 
 Literature: "O glorious day, when I 
 shall go to that divine assembly and 
 company of spirits, and when I shall 
 depart out of this bustle, this sink of 
 corruption; for I shall go not only to 
 those great men of whom I have before 
 spoken, but also to my dear Cato [his 
 son], than whom there never was a bet- 
 ter man, or one more excellent in filial 
 affection, whose funeral rites were per- 
 formed by me, when the contrary was 
 natural, viz., that mine should be per- 
 formed by him. His soul is not desir- 
 ing me, but looking back on me, has de- 
 
 i 7 8 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 parted into those regions where he saw 
 that I myself must come; and I seem to 
 bear firmly my affliction [viz., the loss 
 of him], not because I do not grieve for 
 it, but I comforted myself thinking that 
 the separation and parting between us 
 would not be for long duration." 
 
 Does not this remind us of the writer 
 of Hebrews 12: 22, and how the posi- 
 tive affirmations of the New Testament 
 answer the needs of the best in all ages : 
 "But ye are come to Mount Zion, to the 
 city of the living God, the heavenly Je- 
 rusalem, to an innumerable company of 
 angels, to the general assembly and 
 Church of the first-born — to God the 
 Judge of all, to the spirits of just men 
 made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of 
 the new covenant, and to the blood of 
 sprinkling that speaketh better things 
 than the blood of Abel.' , 
 
 There are those perhaps who really 
 think that it is a superior quality of piety 
 179 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 to be absorbed in what they call "prac- 
 tical religion" rather than to be medi- 
 tating on the blessedness of Heaven. 
 They are not thinking of Heaven, its 
 holy joys, its fellowships with kingly 
 souls, its glad meetings with loved ones 
 gone, its splendors and glory beyond 
 compare. They are not thinking even 
 between times of these things. They 
 tell us in finely balanced phrase that he 
 serves God best who serves man best; 
 that the cry of the human in festering 
 slums of crowded cities should fill our 
 ears rather than the songs of the re- 
 deemed; that to right wrongs here is 
 better than rejoicing over triumphs 
 there. And, indeed, they may not be 
 wholly wrong, though they seem to be 
 taking sides with Martha chiding Mary. 
 Christianity is not a sentimental dream. 
 It is not a religion of silks and per- 
 fumes; of ecstatic rapture over soaring 
 music and glorious cathedrals, those an- 
 1 80 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 gelic dreams chiseled in stone, nor of 
 spiritual aloofness, or of sighing over 
 the waywardness of the world. Chris- 
 tianity is spiritual virility. It is hero- 
 ical. In it is the rich red blood of en- 
 deavor, the fine stroke of conquest over 
 principalities and powers, earthly and 
 unearthly, which war against men's 
 souls. Oh, we need n't think that Chris- 
 tianity is an anaemic something adapted 
 to women, cowled monks, and lovers of 
 fine art. The great crowd of heroes, 
 champions of truth and freedom, and 
 all of worth we enjoy to-day, smile at 
 us from Roman amphitheaters and mar- 
 tyrs' stakes, and dungeons and battle- 
 fields, and turn away from us, when we 
 think so, to others of larger brow. 
 
 Certainly, there is much work to do 
 in this every-day world of ours. But, 
 may not one both work and pray? serve 
 and listen too? Is he not, in truth, the 
 best helper who does both? William 
 181 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Canton in his legends of the olden time 
 tells this beautiful story: 
 
 "In the ancient days of faith the 
 doors of the churches used to be opened 
 with the first glimmer of the dawn in 
 summer, and long before the moon had 
 set in winter; and many a ditcher and 
 woodcutter and ploughman on his way 
 to work used to enter and say a short 
 prayer before beginning the labor of the 
 long day. 
 
 "Now it happened that in Spain there 
 was a farm laborer named Isidore, who 
 went daily to his early prayer, whatever 
 the weather might be. His fellow 
 workmen were slothful and careless, and 
 they gibed and jeered at his piety; but 
 when they found that their mockery had 
 no effect upon him, they spoke spitefully 
 of him in the hearing of the master, and 
 accused him of wasting in prayer the 
 time which he should have given to his 
 work. 
 
 182 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 "When the farmer heard of this he 
 was displeased, and he spoke to Isidore 
 and bid him remember that true and 
 faithful service was better than any 
 prayer that could be uttered in words. 
 
 " 'Master,' replied Isidore, 'what you 
 say is true, but it is also true that no 
 time is ever lost in prayer. Those who 
 pray have God to work with them, and 
 the ploughshare which He guides draws 
 as goodly and fruitful a furrow as an- 
 other.' 
 
 "This the master could not deny, but 
 he resolved to keep a watch on Isidore's 
 comings and goings, and early on the 
 morrow he went to the fields. 
 
 "In the sharp air of the autumn morn- 
 ing he saw this one and that one of the 
 men sullenly following the plough be- 
 hind the oxen, and taking little joy in the 
 work. Then, as he passed on to the 
 rising ground, he heard a lark caroling 
 gayly in the gray sky, and in the hun- 
 
 183 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 dred acre which Isidore was engaged 
 he saw to his amazement not one plough 
 but three turning the hoary stubble into 
 ruddy furrows. 
 
 "And one plough was drawn by oxen 
 and guided by Isidore, but the two 
 others were drawn and guided by angels 
 of heaven. 
 
 "When next the master spoke to Isi- 
 dore it was not to reproach him, but to 
 beg that he might be remembered in his 
 prayers." 
 
 It is a stern truth which we do well 
 to grasp in its significance if we can, 
 that, whether we mean to or not, we put 
 ourselves into our work, of whatever 
 kind it is. Of whatever quality, texture, 
 or spirit we are, that will our work be. 
 Carlyle somewhere says, "A false man 
 can not build a straight wall." Nor can 
 he. Give him time enough and wall 
 enough, and he will build himself into 
 the wall. The noblest and the most 
 184 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 beautiful things of life in architecture, 
 and painting, and sculpture, and litera- 
 ture, and also in the deeds and philan- 
 thropies of men, are just those things 
 into which the Divine idea has entered 
 through the spirit of the doer. Did 
 Paul's dreaming of heaven impart no 
 tenderness, no sweet courtesy to the tone 
 of this Epistle? 
 
 The holiest men who have ever lived 
 have worked in one world and lived in 
 the other. Did not St. Anthony of 
 Padua defend the workingmen and 
 traders against the rapacity of the bish- 
 ops and the cruelty of the nobles ? The 
 saint sighing for heaven to-day is a mar- 
 tyr for liberty to-morrow . Telemachus, 
 the recluse, flung himself between the 
 swords of the gladiators in the arena 
 and by his death put an end to such 
 combats everywhere. "Play the man, 
 Brother Ridley!" cried Latimer at the 
 stake to his fellow martyr. "By God's 
 
 i8 5 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 help we will light a candle to-day in 
 England that will never be put out!" 
 
 The three greatest names, perhaps, of 
 our day in New Testament scholarship 
 in the English-speaking world were 
 Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort. Was 
 there ever a finer combination of the 
 practical and the mystical than is found 
 in the character of the saintly Westcott, 
 the great Bishop of Durham? He was 
 engaged with Dr. Hort on a revision of 
 the Greek Text of the New Testament, 
 writing great commentaries on St. John 
 and the Epistle to the Hebrews, pouring 
 out the wealth of his scholarship on the 
 Revised Version of the English Bible, 
 and yet in addition to all this he flung 
 himself with ardor into the social ques- 
 tions of the hour. We see him confer- 
 ring with leaders of Labor Unions, man- 
 aging the movement for eight hours' 
 work, presiding at a Christian Social 
 Union, applying all his energies in the 
 186 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 settlement of the Coal-miners' Strike, in 
 which was involved the interests of 
 thousands of poor homes. With all the 
 heat of an honest man he could and did 
 rebuke the vices and wrongs of his day. 
 And yet with all this he was a mystic. 
 He lived in the world of the spirit 
 while doing duty in the world of the 
 flesh. During the day, in the turmoils 
 of social problems; at night, far on till 
 midnight on his knees at the altar of the 
 vast Cathedral lighted only by the 
 moonbeams, wrapt in thought and 
 prayer. As a Cambridge scholar says 
 of him : "He lived in the height. Some- 
 thing of the glory seemed to have de- 
 scended on him as with rapt face and 
 eyes which saw things hidden from the 
 crowd around, he proclaimed the re- 
 ality of an unseen world or the coming 
 of the universal restoration. He lived 
 in constant communion with spiritual 
 powers. In the Cathedral or in his own 
 
 187 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Chapel at night the dead seemed very 
 near to him." He lived in the world 
 of the spirit. 
 
 And how many pastors in crowded 
 cities fling themselves with matchless de- 
 votion into the struggle for the rights 
 of the laborer, for the social betterment 
 of men everywhere, for the practical re- 
 alization of the Kingdom of God on 
 earth, and yet are as saintly in spirit and 
 life as any mediaeval saint whose effigy 
 ever looked down from his niche in a 
 Cathedral, or whose name was ever en- 
 shrined in legends of the olden time ! 
 Think for a moment of John Richard 
 Green, author of "History of the Eng- 
 lish People," "Short History of the 
 English People," "The Making of Eng- 
 land," etc. The other day I picked up 
 a volume of his Letters, edited by Les- 
 lie Stephen, and read this of him when 
 he was a pastor in London. The 
 cholera had broken out in his parish. 
 188 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 "Within an hour from the first seizure 
 in his parish, Green himself met the dy- 
 ing patients in the London Hospital, 
 and thenceforward while the plague 
 lasted, Green, like other clergy in the 
 parishes attacked, worked day and night 
 amidst the panic-stricken people, as offi- 
 cer of health, inspector of nuisances, am- 
 bulance superintendent, as well as spir- 
 itual consoler and burier of the dead. 
 . . . Green helped to secure the re- 
 moval of the dead from the houses, and 
 his best helpers were the lowest women 
 of the town." "It was no uncommon 
 thing to see him going to an infected 
 house between two such outcasts who 
 had volunteered to help him in an er- 
 rand of mercy. On one occasion he 
 found a man dangerously ill in an upper 
 room. Some big draymen in the street 
 refused to help. Green, therefore, tried 
 to carry the man downstairs. His slight 
 frame was unequal to the effort, and the 
 189 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 two fell from the top to the bottom of 
 the stairs together. The man, who was 
 in a state of collapse, was not injured." 
 And yet, as Leslie Stephen says, 
 "Green's religious sentiment was deep 
 and permanent. The spiritual life of 
 the mystics, the 'religion of the heart,' 
 which subordinates dogmas and histor- 
 ical matter of fact to the emotions, was 
 entirely congenial to him." 
 
 This man Paul, whose task is the re- 
 demption of an Empire, the welding of 
 diverse nationalities and tongues into 
 one common brotherhood in Christ Je- 
 sus, is no weakling. And who has re- 
 vealed to us the radiant splendors of the 
 Unseen but the very disciples of him 
 who went about doing good, men, 
 strange to say, with his peace in their 
 hearts but whose lives were spent in 
 everlasting combat with the wrongs of 
 humanity? Man shall not live by bread 
 alone, said Jesus, who lived in two 
 190 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 worlds. He who goes down the street 
 to plead the cause of a widow in the 
 police-court, to visit some invalid in a 
 back alley, to vote against some social 
 wrong or civic crime, may see above the 
 sky-scrapers and smoke of the town "the 
 City of God coming down from God 
 out of Heaven adorned as a bride for 
 her husband." Above the din of the 
 crowd and the roar of traffic he may 
 hear the sweet far-away chimes in the 
 Eternal City and carry that music with 
 him wherever he goes. 
 
 There are in this loud, stunning tide 
 
 Of human care and crime 
 With whom the Melodies abide 
 
 Of th' Everlasting Chime! 
 Who carry music in their heart 
 Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, 
 Plying their task with busier feet 
 Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat. 
 
 If some bright angel of God should 
 veil his glory, and coming into our life, 
 ioi 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 should put on our clothes and go out 
 into the street to help men everywhere, 
 we should all feel that an extraordinary 
 person had been among us. The heaven 
 within him would be heard in his voice, 
 seen in his eye, felt in his touch and in 
 the benediction of his presence. "Where 
 shall I put the Fra Angelico?" "Dear 
 old Beato," said Violet, "put him op- 
 posite the door, that he may give a 
 sensation of peace and beauty to every 
 one who enters the room." So with 
 those who carry the heavens in their 
 heart, and yet long to pull up anchor 
 and sail away. Everywhere men know 
 them among the swarms of mere phi- 
 lanthropists, reformers, and world- 
 menders, with their social programs and 
 Christless cure-alls for universal ills. 
 Forgetting bread and social wrong, men 
 of heart are drawn to them as steel to 
 a magnet, and by them are lifted out of 
 their poor selves into worlds of light 
 192 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 and moral beauty, thus themselves be- 
 coming ministering angels to their 
 broken fellows, which seems to be some- 
 how very practical idealism. 
 
 Then let it not be forgotten that the 
 arena of public life is not for all. There 
 is a wonderful variety in life. To some 
 is given to serve in legislative halls or 
 to battle for civic righteousness ; to fight 
 fiercely against entrenched iniquity, and 
 in doing so to mingle with the savage 
 elements of lowest society. Others serve 
 in the building of great industries, or in 
 the management of financial interests, 
 while to a few others may be given the 
 thankless task of defending truth. 
 
 But not all of us are built for the dust 
 and grime. There are some outside the 
 crowd who can not stand up against the 
 wrangle and controversy of life. The 
 law of the jungle is not for them. But 
 they are not the less useful for all that. 
 For, as George Eliot says in "Middle- 
 13 193 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 march" "That things are not so ill with 
 you and me as they might have been is 
 half owing to the number who lived 
 faithfully a hidden life and rest in un- 
 visited tombs." Life's coarseness, its 
 vices and tragedies, are too much for 
 many gentle souls to be attracted by it, 
 just as cultured folks, nurtured in fine 
 feeling and courtliness of manner, look 
 with horror on the stockyard behavior 
 of the ruthless and crass. They shrink 
 from the rougher side of life and think 
 of a purer and sweeter life — not neces- 
 sarily of 
 
 — A place where pearly streams 
 
 Glide over silver sand, 
 Like childhood's rosy, dazzling dreams 
 
 Of some far faery land. 
 — A clime where diamond dews 
 
 Glitter on fadeless flowers, 
 And mirth and music ring aloud 
 
 From amaranthine bowers; 
 
 194 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 but where the spiritual life is great and 
 clear and "self-continuous as the change- 
 less sea." 
 
 Such souls are not pessimists. They 
 are not cynics, despising God's world 
 and its innocent joys which gladden the 
 day, woman's love, and children's laugh- 
 ter. St. Francis Assisi used to call the 
 birds "Our little brothers of the air." 
 But these contemplative souls know life, 
 and because they know it in all its moods 
 and tenses is the why they seek a better 
 country — a city which hath foundations 
 of eternal reality, whose Builder and 
 Maker is God. They love to meditate 
 on the bliss awaiting the Sons of the 
 Morning, not because they are unhappy 
 here, but because to them it is given to 
 sing songs of the Celestial City and to 
 dream dreams which shall sweeten the 
 common life, shall put mighty vigor and 
 motive into that life, and wean men 
 from the belittling materialism of the 
 
 195 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 daily grind. How enriched is life be- 
 cause of these streams of inspiration 
 which flow down to us from these hills 
 of vision ! Think of Faber's 
 
 Oh Paradise! Oh Paradise! 
 
 The world is growing old. 
 Who would not be at rest and free 
 
 Where love is never cold? 
 
 Or of Samuel Rutherford's ecstatic joy 
 on his death-bed as he mused on Im- 
 manuel's Land: 
 
 The little birds at Anworth, I used to count 
 
 them blest; 
 Now, beside happier altars I go to build my 
 
 nest. 
 O'er these there broods no silence, no graves 
 
 around them stand; 
 For glory, deathless, dwelleth in Immanuel's 
 
 Land. 
 
 Such melodies of the Life Immortal ex- 
 press the yearnings of every heart in its 
 best moods, and in strengthening men 
 196 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 struggling with life's hard problems. 
 Furnishing heartening ideals, they per- 
 form the highest service. 
 
 The most beautiful hymn that was 
 ever written, perhaps, is Bernard of 
 Cluny's 
 
 Jesus, the very thought of Thee, 
 
 which voices the longing of the soul to 
 behold the face of its Lord. But in 
 "O Mother, dear Jerusalem," the un- 
 known saint of the eighth century who 
 wrote it seems to break his heart, as a 
 child for its mother, for a glimpse of his 
 heavenly home : 
 
 Thy walls are made of precious stone, 
 Thy bulwarks diamond square ; 
 
 Thy gates are all of Orient pearl — 
 Oh God, if I were there! 
 
 And thus in every age great souls 
 have desired to pull up anchor and sail 
 away. They long for the sinless life, 
 197 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 the stainless robe. It is therefore no 
 wonder that in contrast to the poor earth 
 life with its cloudy mornings and trou- 
 bled nights, its sin and strivings, St. 
 Bernard of Cluny should sing of the 
 Homeland and set sweet souls singing 
 after him his immortal lines : 
 
 For thee, Oh dear, dear country, 
 
 Mine eyes their vigil keep; 
 For very love beholding 
 
 Thy happy name they weep; 
 The mention of thy glory 
 
 Is unction to the breast, 
 A medicine in sickness, 
 
 And love and life and rest. 
 
 Then, as we grow old and the 
 shadows begin to lengthen, what is more 
 natural than that we should think of the 
 Land where the sun never goes down, 
 and of the loved ones who went away in 
 the long ago ! " We have not forgotten 
 them. We have carried their image in 
 the soul of our soul through all the 
 198 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 years, in all lands, and under all skies. 
 We would see them again! There are 
 many things that were left unsaid, many 
 things, perhaps, we would explain. 
 Faith in the good God encourages the 
 conviction that the mother here will not 
 be childless there. She will again clasp 
 her child left motherless here. The 
 loyal lover shall again meet the one he 
 loved on earth and shall walk with her 
 in white on the Hills of God. For, let 
 us not forget that nowhere in all the 
 universe shall we lose our humanity. 
 We leave everything here this side of 
 the curtain except ourselves. Memory 
 survives, love survives, all that God has 
 put into the human heart survives, and 
 no natural hunger of the soul shall re- 
 main unsatisfied forever. 
 
 "All that we have willed or hoped or dreamed 
 of good shall exist: 
 Not its semblance, but itself ; no beauty, nor 
 good, nor power, 
 I 99 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives 
 for the Melodist 
 Where eternity affirms the conception of 
 an hour. 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for 
 earth too hard, 
 The passion that left the ground to lose 
 itself in the sky, 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and 
 the bard; 
 Enough that He heard it once; we shall 
 hear it by-and-by." 
 
 If all this should seem to some supe- 
 rior souls a very human conception of 
 heaven, if they are so far removed from 
 what they are pleased to call human 
 weaknesses, the long reach of the soul 
 for its very own, real vision and happy 
 fellowship with all we love for evermore 
 — if all this be a material, sensuous idea 
 of the glories that await us — then let 
 them give us something better, that we 
 may strengthen ourselves with it in the 
 heat and toil of this uncertain life. 
 200 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 Longing for home is no weakness. 
 It is a means of grace. Thinking of 
 that stainless life we feel the degrada- 
 tion of sin. We know there is no sin 
 there. Nothing that defileth enters 
 those gates of pearl. The saints live 
 there, and we know that if ever we shall 
 live with them there we must be just 
 like them here. And such is the help- 
 fulness of God's grace co-operating with 
 the laws of our nature that we do be- 
 come like them by thinking of them, and 
 of the King in His beauty, and the Land 
 that is far off. For who can dwell with 
 holy thoughts and not become holy? 
 We grow like that we think the most 
 of. And it seems to us that it is worth 
 while to fall asleep betimes at Bethel 
 and see the Heavens open, or to stand 
 beside the holy John at Patmos and hear 
 him say, "I beheld and lo a great mul- 
 titude which no man could number of 
 all nations, and kindreds, and people, 
 201 
 
THE WINGLESS HOUR 
 
 and tongues stood before the throne, 
 and before the Lamb, clothed with 
 white robes and palms in their hands, 
 and cried with a loud voice saying, Sal- 
 vation to our God which sitteth upon the 
 throne and unto the Lamb. . . . And 
 they shall hunger no more, nor thirst 
 any more, neither shall the sun light on 
 them, nor any heat, for the Lamb 
 which is in the midst of the throne shall 
 feed them and shall lead them unto liv- 
 ing fountains of waters, and God shall 
 wipe away all tears from their eyes." 
 
 A weakness is it to long to depart 
 and to be with Christ? The poet Sted- 
 man sings: 
 
 Could we but know 
 The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel, 
 Where lie those happier hills and meadows 
 low. 
 Ah, if beyond the spirit's utmost cavil 
 
 Aught of that country could we surely 
 know — 
 
 Who would not go? 
 202 
 
THE LONGING FOR HOME 
 
 Might we but hear 
 The hovering angels' high imagined chorus 
 Or catch, betimes, with wakeful eyes and 
 clear, 
 One radiant vista of the realm before us, 
 With one rapt moment given to see and 
 hear — 
 
 Ah, who would fear? 
 
 Were we quite sure 
 To find the peerless friend who left us lonely, 
 Or there by some celestial stream as pure 
 To gaze on eyes that here were love-lit only — 
 This mortal coil, were we quite sure, 
 Who would endure? 
 
 Well, Paul was quite sure. John was 
 quite sure. And He who came from 
 there and went back there to prepare a 
 place for us, said, "They that do right- 
 eousness shall shine as the Sun in the 
 Kingdom of My Father." 
 
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