o ffl <c o o > H I I CO K W Z D Cftcle 115oofe of .iVliltou COPYRIGHT BY JOHN V. SEARS, PHILADELPHIA, PA. TO JEANIE, WHO IS WITH THE FATHER IN HEAVEN, AND TO PROF. J. E. 0., HE OF THE CHILD-HEART, WHOSE GENTLE ENCOURAGEMENT FIRST LED TO THE GIVING OF THESE HYMNS TO OTHER EYES, AND WHO IS ALSO WITH THE FATHER IN HEAVEN; TO THESE TWO, TRUSTING THAT THEY KNOW AND LOVE EACH OTHER, THESE ASPIRATIONS AFTER THE BETTER LIFE ARE LOVINGLY DEDICATED. THESE meditations began in a soul s effort to commune with the Soul of the soul, to speak in secret with the Father of Lights about the problems of being, the sorrows and joys, the sins and sanctities, the emptiness and fullness, the shames and glories, the deaths and lives, of the human experience. And the communion was always in the hope, in the confidence, that love is the secret of the universe and wisdom the light of its revealing ; and that, in the fact of creation s being continuous, its deed but being done, lies the explanation of its imperfections, the assurance that its shadows but conceal a light that it may all the brighter break forth, because for the little while it is concealed. Later, some of these uplifts of heart were shared with a pastor s people, some of these people so kindly acknowledging a helpful ness that it seems there may be others whose thoughts of things might brighten by a sharing of this heart. And so the little book is sent forth ; al- though from the nature of their origin, its meditations lack that literary unity, that freedom from any repetition, which a differ ent kind of book might show, their unity being in the fact of aspiration, and their repetitions, in again and again thinking upon the love of God, which, like His blessings of life, though they are the old, old blessings are yet new every morning and fresh every night. Their meanings, therefore, will best clear, their help best help, by using them after the manner of their origin, the one meditation for the one silent time, as the mood maybe, as the need may ask. VI CONTENTS. PAGE I. THE LOVE OF LOVE, i II. MORE LIFE AND RICHER, ... 9 III. LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE, .... 17 IV. FATHER AND CHILD, ... 25 V. THE BLESSED FLIGHT, .... 33 VI. LOVING s PERFECT WING, . . 39 VII. THOU LIFE OF EVERYTHING, . 47 VIII. A PERFECT HARMONY, ... 53 IX. ABOVE IT ALL GOD Is, .... 59 X. A HUMAN FACE, 65 XI. LOVE FASHIONS EVERY WING, 73 XII. MAY WE BLESS BACK AGAIN, . 81 XIII. WHEN SURE OF THEE, .... 89 XIV. BEAUTIES EVERYWHERE, ... 95 XV. A MULTITUDE OF TENDER THOUGHTS, 103 XVI. MY BROTHER S FACE, 109 XVII. THAT WE MAY THY BEAUTY BEHOLD, 117 XVIII. THE CHRIST is BORN, . . . . 125 vii viii Contents. PAGE XIX. BY GRACIOUS CHANGING, ... 133 XX. NOT FAR AWAY, 141 XXI. ALL WINGS THAT FLY, .... 147 XXII. DREAMS AND WAKINGS, . . . 155 XXIII. MY THOUGHTS ARE FLOWERS, . 163 XXIV. LAUGHS AT DEATH, 171 XXV. IN EVERYTHING REVEALED, . . 179 XXVI. I GRIEVE NOT HOPELESS, ... 185 XXVII. OUR HUMAN HUNGER S MINIS TRY, 193 XXVIII. BEING S FULL BLOSSOM WILL BLOW, 201 XXIX. WITHIN MY HEART, 207 XXX. ABROAD ON THE THOUGHT OF GOD, 215 XXXI. EVERYWHERE, 223 XXXII. SOMETHING HIGHER SINGS, . . 229 XXXIII. To EVERY HEART THAT BEATS, 237 1. THE LOVE OF LOVE, THE LOVE OF LOVE. God s love rounds the sun, and our happy earth For its beasts and its growing grains ; His love is a chanting, generous song, And the fruits are its sweet refrains. All life that burns any loving s flames His tender, His true heart wills ; In spite of the sin, with its aching shames, All the earth with His goodness fills. His love sets the clover s stalk afire With the flame that woos the bees ; His love as well wove the bees desire, And the eye that the clover sees. His love makes the fire in the thrush s breast, And burns in its tender lay ; His love loved it well in the mother-nest, And loved it the summer s day. In the human mind His thought thinks true, In the human love He loves ; His heart is a sky of the tender blue, Our hearts are its flocks of doves. On His love s great waves we rise, we fall, And can ne er be lost from His arms ; Though countless things of the earth appall, No eternal evil harms. The Love of Love. In the life of His holy Christ is seen The truth of His human deeps, That we might know what His lovings mean In our life that laughs and weeps. His love is the throbbing within my heart Of a tender, a human grace ; My eyes are His love s own shining part When they rest on my dear friend s face. We are kept by His love as no unfledged birds Are kept by the mother-wings ; When we lift from the nest of earth, we re words That His deathless loving sings. So I trust to His love s great certainty, And in holy quiet rest, Assured that whate er befalleth me Is that holy loving s best. "I17E thank Thee, Master of our love and * V of our life, that Thy hard earth breaks forth into all these gentle .things, that are flowers, and beasts, and birds, and little chil dren. We thank Thee that so the hardness of our conditions, the severity of our experi ences, our very hardnesses of heart, are but some of Thy conditions, whereby and where- The Love of Love. through we will break forth into all tender and true thoughts, into a goodness that out rivals Thy earth s mellow autumns. Thou hast not cast us forth from Thy heart, things of Thy contempt and failure. With thinkings unsearchable in their holy tenderness Thou dost cherish us, determin ing that we shall become what Thy deepest and truest heart intends. This confidence in Thee as a present Creator, still at Thy tasks, brings us peace for our trouble, strength for our weakness, diligence for our indifference, holiness for our sin, and, for our hatreds, love, sweetening all our ways. It is this that gives to us a meaning, and makes our lives move through their changes with a touch of eter nity upon them, within them. Thou hast large places and patient times in which to work out Thy meanings of us ; and these places and times are ours, as we work out our lives unto Thy meanings, helping Thee com plete Thy nature in the eternal children of Thy love. This faith makes man sacred unto us, and helps us to discover Thee in these human deeps. We believe truly that Jesus, Thy Christ, said truth when He said the word : "He that hath seen Me hath seen the The Love of Love. Father." Thou art just the beautiful and tender humanity He was, in Him Thyself appearing for our gain in every beauty of kindness, in every glory of love. Thou dost come forth in Thy creation to make Thyself known, and to bless Thy children with the graces of Thy noble nature. Thou art light within the sun and stars ! Thou art beauty within the sky and rose ! Thou art strength within the oak and granite! In the seasons Thou art faithfulness ! In the grains and fruits Thou art kindness ! In the birds and lambs Thou art gentleness ! We are glad that, seeing all these, we are seeing Thee ; they, some truth and beauty of Thy heart spoken to us in the simple speech of our childhood ; we, unable to hear Thy love s full word, to understand Thy wisdom s full thought. But we need to know that all these are the expressions of a human life and love ; and this we come at in Jesus ; this is the mean ing of the Christ ; this is the meaning of the Creative Word, by which all things were made that are made, becoming flesh and dwelling among us that we might behold the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth ; this is the service The Love of Love. with which He serves us, helping us, in all the highest and holiest of our race, to catch some glimpses of Thy everlasting meanings in creating the earth and its human chil dren. And so for Him, our gracious Elder Brother, showing forth the secrets of our selves as we behold in Him the ideals of what Thou dost mean in the making of us ; show ing forth the secrets of Thine own heart out of whose holy love we are fashioned, we thank Thee ! It is in Him, as the ideal humanity, that we foresee the gentle blos soms, the ripened fruits, into which the hard nesses of our conditions and experiences break forth. In Him we see the everlasting meanings which Thou art working out through us and through our lives. And so we have in Thee a peace passing understanding, a diligence in every good word and work, grounded in a confidence which means that failure can not take us in any abiding desolation. This truth brings Thee near unto us, even within the deeps of our own beings, where we may rind Thee unto every worship, unto what inspiration we need in order to be beautiful, good, and true. In making our- The Love of Love. selves noble and true, in doing all we can to ennoble our fellows in the truth that is loving and the loving that is true, we are rendering unto Thee the truest and most acceptable service. For this great faith we thank Thee, and with its great comfort would comfort all Thy people, with its holy enthusiasm stir up every soul to attain its highest. In this faith s great passioning, that the beauty of humanity may become the daily reality of our lives, we are but seeking diligently that the beauty of the Lord our God be established upon us all. II. MORE LIFE AND RICHER, More Life and Richer. 11 MORE LIFE AND RICHER. The violet knoweth not the sun But when its blossom s blowing, A bit of other answering sun, Its being s father knowing. And we must know Thee, living Lord, By this, that we are being ; Tis only love alive in us That life in Thee is seeing. Within us deep, must be Thyself, An answering music giving, Or we can never certain sing, " We re life eternal living ! " So have Thy Easter here in us ; Be Christ and Mary meeting, And all His happy Easter friends, Our hopes of life completing. Ah, then ! Thou lt see Thyself in us, Our hearts together blending ; And we shall see ourselves in Thee, A childhood never ending. LORD of life, from whom we come, in whom we live, unto whom we rise in every change, we ask Thee to give unto us more life and richer to-day. Let these 12 More Life and Richer. shadows in which we are so lost from Thee be all dispelled by Thy bright shining, until we, like flowers breathing in the sun, may know we are in Thee and bathed in Thy ce lestial light, by Thine own holiest loving warmed. We mistake the form of life for life itself, and so, when that form changes as it ever does, we think the life is gone, we lament us, saying death, and breathing out our end less, sad good-bys. By Thine own joyous fulness in our hearts, help us to know that every change of life is but for fuller life, the low form cast aside that that life s fuller form may come, a hap pier embodiment, a day of journey nearer Thee, Thou life s own perfect home. About us -ever, by a busy change, life s lowest showing forth is becoming its higher manifestation. The soil that has itself from Thee, the living One, goes up and on the chemic ways of change until it is a blossom sweetening all the air, a fruit that feeds the hungry kind. The low grass runs in won drous ways of change until it is the strength of kine, the gentleness of sheep. And these go on until in man they are thought and love and great activity. More Life and Richer. 13 And yet this matter throughout all the ways of its so marveling change was touched unto its glory by indwelling life. Although it seemed to us alive, it was not life, but only life s fair showing forth. In change that came to it, when passed it back again to soil, there was no going down of life. Life has but cast its garment off to live on some other where, some other how in Thy great universe. The seed goes up the life-filled ways of death until it is a blossom smiling in the sun. The grub goes up the life-filled ways of death until it is a dragon-fly with joying rainbow wings. The creeping worm goes up the life-filled ways of death until it is a butterfly to sup in sinless joy the ban quets of the flowers. The egg goes up the life-filled ways of death until it is yon bird of blue with sky upon its back, upon its breast the earth, its modest song a glory in the air. Within ourselves are changes busy ever, in love and thought and purpose, and in the out ward life ; the old is passing away, the new becoming, until each day we are some dif ferent thing from what we were before. But in this change of our becoming, life always is itself the weaver of the change. And so 14 More Life and Richer. when our beloved go the shadow ways, we are sure that they go up into life, not down into death, death but a change through which the life fulfills. We can not say in truth that they have been ; they are ! Thy life is breathing through them still, Thy love is still their beauty and becoming. But oh, so lost we are from Thee, that this great happy truth seems to us a lie, a dream of beauty vanishing before some cruel, grim reality. But come into us now, Thou Life eternal and divine, and give us in Thy self a holy resurrection. From graves that hold in darkness call us forth until we shall have conscious, everlasting life in Thee. As Thou from out our graves art coming forth to say our names, may all our Marys so en raptured say, " Rabboni," may all our Johns be forever filled with deathless love ! When Thou art thus arisen in us to ascend and take us captive with Thee into fullest life, we ll know our beautiful beloved ones have risen in Thee and are, although the eye of sense, that blessed us with theirvision once, can not behold the glory now revealed in them. In having Thee in conscious fulness, we ll know them ours in deathless love, in joy that sings above the discords of all grief. More Life and Richer. __ So give us Easter time in Thee, Thou risen Life and glorified, and we will hold some dear companionship with these we call the dead, who are Thy living ones and ours. III. LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE, 17 Life Feeds on Life. 19 LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE. Life feeds on life, and every joy Has grieving as its root ; The happy worms go out in death That happy birds may flute. Doves glorify the winds, and make Them some dear tenderness ; But hawks are there with cruel beaks That all the winds distress. Though rapturing beauty s everywhere, And joys break forth and sing ; Yet ugliness as present is, And serpent fangs that sting. And not alone without, but in My being s deeps there be The ugliness that grieving is, The beauty that is glee ; Some truest thoughts on wings of light, Some false that fly to kill ; Some loves that seem Thy holiness, And some that evil will. And so, dear Lord, I can not read Life s riddle Thou hast set ; I can not see Thee perfect good In evils that so fret. 20 Life Feeds on Life. I can not read some life divine At joyings in the hawk ; Some gentleness that maketh great Where murders cruel walk ; Some holy love in lion s jaws When feasting on a child; It shows but greed that cruel is, Creation that s defiled. Within, without I can not find Thee in these evil things ; They make a night upon my faith ; And cripple all my wings. They put such discord in my tune That foolish are my words ; They make such winter desolate Thou canst not hear my birds. And yet I can not live unless Love be the soul of things ; Unless truth be the deepest cause, All life its blossomings. And so I trust Thee where my heart Can not Thy goodness trace; Creation s shadow yet will break And show Thy loving face. Life Feeds on Life. 21 I still believe, Thyself fulfilled, Thy universe become, Will hear each thing thy kindness praise, And not a voice be dumb ; That I ll the perfect beauty be Thy heart has always meant ; And with these awful makings then Be at a dear content. T^HY greatness, O Lord, baffles us. We * can not understand Thee. We believe that Thou art a perfect wisdom, and boldest all things in the tenderness of a perfect love. But our sight denies our faith. There seem what confuses our lives as the brain of the fool is confused ; and we can not realize that Thou art in everything all-wise and all-lov ing. There is the beneficence of quiet days ; but Thy noisy storms make havoc. There are in nature the gentle, beautiful things, tender as a baby s kiss, pure as a true mother s love. The dove blesses the winds ; the hawk curses them with the cruelty of death. The sheep and the kine make the fields holy, but the cruel dogs waste the flock, crimsoning the greenness with the sin of death. In the 22 Life Feeds on Life. shallows of rivers the minnows swim, mak ing the waves athrill with their life ; but the perch is near with the hunger Thou hast given it, until this beautiful minnow life goes the dark ways of death. There is the lily for beauty and fragrance ; and the poison vine for aching and death. The soil gives us life; as well it gives us death. Even the thrush feeds its high flight and song, that make the winds a glory, upon the helpless worm. Our cradles are in our homes, and oh, life is so satisfying ; but the coffins come and fill with our cradle s treasure, and oh, life is so desolate ! Love is here, making life a June day for perfectness ; death, swallow ing up love, and life is desolate winter and starless night. So fly our lives away, a wing woven of the very light, and making all the winds to be music ; a wing woven of the very darkness, and making all the winds a moan of desola tion. Within us, too, the fairness, gentle and holy loves, thoughts of truth and right eousness ; but as well the fierce and unhol] feelings, the false and wicked thoughts From the nests of our deepest souls fly dove for blessing; and after them go the hawk for cursing, and the leaves of our tree of lifi Life Feeds on Life. 23 are red with murder, like Lady Macbeth s hand, and no rainfalls purify them to their innocent green again, but they do rather all the rains that fall incarnadine, making the crystal crimson, and the ways of sin and death familiar friend. So runs our riddle of life, O Lord, in its tangling confusion ; and it is hard for us to believe that Thou art good, that all Thy ways are love, and that Thou wrongest no little life that takes its rhythmic heart-beats from Thine own. Yet still is nothing lost. So have we had experience that helps us to believe that noth ing is in vain, that each, that is, is servant to some higher end. Back of our confusing thought must be Thy perfect wisdom working out the holiness of Thy love which surely means the happiness of all that is. As we see about us that change is but fulfilment, these changes in us, in our lives, must be but some pushing on to fulness of life in Thee, the all-living, all-loving One. But for some holier becoming Thou surely wouldst not have these changes coming swift and sad. These heart-breaks surely would not be, but that Thou through them art giving fuller, holier, happier love. Surely Thy love at 24 Life Feeds on Life. travail now has birth that ever satisfies each pang of its begetting. Surely Thou hast a father heart, and all its love shall be for us a perfect childhood, laughing in a perfect life. In this faith keep our hearts in spite of all that seems, in spite of all we suffer ; and to this faith be ever proving Thy tender faithfulness, until we shall find at last for this sorrow of existence, a perfect love and life that satisfies. Be to us hope ; and wing our dark de spairs until they fly and sing, our birds of perfect dawn, love s day of June, our blessing, endless, beautiful. So make our faith be passing into sight that our souls may abide in the certainty that in all Thy crea tion Thou art seeing of the travail of Thy soul and being satisfied, Thy soul that is the perfect, the eternal love. IV. FATHER AND CHILD, 25 Father and Child. 27 FATHER AND CHILD. Thy holiest heart must have a child, And so, in love, I m here ; Thy yearnings deep in fatherhood In me, a child, appear. A Father I must have, as wings Of birds must have the air ; And so Love s dearest father-heart I m finding everywhere. And who shall say us nay, when we Together weep and laugh ? What hand refuse the love s dear cup Wherein life s full we quaff? O let the holy cups o erbrim With love s exhaustless wine ; Each one together quaffed in joy Makes fellowship divine. And fellowship divine doth make A holier, truer child, The glory of Thy fatherhood Within me undefiled. T^HOU, our Master in love and life, art not 1 lonely amid Thy worlds, but hast an infinite companionship everywhere. Each 28 Father and Child. thing Thou hast made is a dear companion to Thee, keeping Thee company through all these sad and happy ways of creation. Each child of Thy begetting is a fellow-heart to Thee, answering back Thy smiles and laughter, giving Thee heart-beat for heart beat, life for life, appreciation for apprecia tion. Thou couldst not be at joy, Thy life would be unfulfilled, if Thou couldst not create Thy fellow-hearts to love and com panion with; if Thy life could not flow its devious happy ways through all these ruddy veins which it has fashioned. We need Thee. Thou art our daily, necessary life, although we may not know it ; although it seems that we breathe out our own breath, live out our own life, with no great need of Thee. But we ought to know Thee, to realize that Thou art, and have some conscious fellowship with Thee. Life s lone liness is so laughed away with friendly face when we, in truth, know Thee our friend. Life s sorrows are so comforted when we know Thee, the comforter. Life has such meanings large and deathless, when we know that all its changes move in Thee, the gra cious, changeless One. With Thee at fellow ship with us, how duty grandeurs, how glad- Father and Child. 29 ness sings, and everything is full of holy life that evermore grows more alive, each change a growth and blossoming, a sunnier fulness of Thy perfect love. O give me to realize that companionship ! Give me to know Thee, Friend and Father, in all my life s great way. The beating of Thine own heart be consciousness in mine. Thy breath of life, eternal, beautiful, be breathing forth in mine. Than any friend to me, than my hands and feet, than myself to myself, be Thou nearer, more real, my daily, dear delight. To be known so by me must be Thy joy, as Thou dost realize I am becoming the truest Thou dost mean. So knowing Thee, I will have a deep and satis fying life, a large and perfect attainment in all duty, in all I am and all I am becoming, a new depth and sacredness of being. And having Thee so, I will have my brother in new and loving joy, for he is some coming- forth of Thy humanity, even as I am some thing of Thine own human heartedness. It is Thy life in him that has so fashioned him in the truth and beauty that delights me. Thy love is human in his face. He is the joy of Thy fellowshipping heart revealed in flesh. In all the need in which we need 30 Father and Child. Thee, we need each other; our lives without each other, incomplete. We can not dwell in perfect solitude and yet in life. Life means love, friendship, companions, a dwelling together with others. It means marriage and home and children, society, the state, commerce, the church. Naught in the universe is segregated soli tude. All things are by some dear together ness. In fellowship everything becomes. By each living for all and all for each there is a perfect order, a thrilling life. Selfish isolation makes one wing halt, and life is crippled in its flight. It puts discord in the tune, and the song can not sing its perfect joy and holiness. And yet, while so each unto each must be for love and service, we are ourselves, not lost in these for whom, with whom, we live. Indeed, such life of fellowship is the way of our becoming more and more ourselves. It is forever the differentiation of the indi vidual until he is a life and beauty of his own, no senseless saying of some one else by rote. The more I am my brother s in service and in love, the more I am myself, the very child Thy everlasting Fatherhood thinks, as Thou thinkest no one else of all the countless Father and Child. 31 children of Thy love. I am not merged in Thee, nor ever will be. The more Thou livest for me, in me, the more Thou art trans- cendant God. The more I live for Thee, in Thee, the more I am a child unique, a beauty of Thy heart, which Thou canst not reveal in any other child of Thy making. I am needed by Thee and needed by my fellows for completion, and none other can fulfil my place. So grant me, Master of Being, the grace of Thyself, realizing in all life, in every holiness. Give unto me my brother of this human-life-divine in a perfecting love. Give me unto him in life unselfish and beautiful. So will Thy universe grow perfect, and I become that treasure of Thy heart, a true, ideal child, a human heart filled with Thine everlasting love and truth. V. THE BLESSED FLIGHT, 33 The Blessed Flight. 35 THE BLESSED FLIGHT. No flight is, Lord, but Thou art wind On which the wings do beat ; In flight from Thee at every turn Tis life of Thine we meet. And what in fear we name dark death Is just a little night, Where, neath the shadow of Thy wings, We rest for newer flight. O happy earth ! though seeming sad, O changes coming swift ! There are no wings of changing but In God to God they lift. O tender, deathless Life that is ! A life that never dies ; In Thee, the Perfect, everywhere, Through griefs to joys I rise, Until I am at perfect flight, Thy dearest face my skies, And sing out certain what we guess, That no one ever dies. T HOU art nowhere absent from Thy crea tion. No part of Thy creation is in a loneliness without Thee. Thou art the companion of all. Thine is the inmost life 36 The Blessed Flight. of all. Not a sparrow is upon the winds but that Thou dost fly with it. When it droops in the shadow of death, Thou dost experience the darkness with it, together passing the change into some resurrection of deathlessness in Thy great love. No grain of sand, no granite, no bit of lifting har vest, no water in the deep, is at its work alone. Thou art with it at its tasks. It is some part of Thy everlasting being. Truly, Thou art the "God of the granite and the rose." Thou art in the restless sea, and the flocks in the fields are alive in the quiet of Thy being. And more true it is that none of Thy human children is bereft of Thee. There can be no human solitude where Thou art not. Whatever blindness may be in our eyes, wherever a man journeys the pilgrimage of life, there goes a Father and a child. The journey is but a journey of childhood into Fatherhood ; in the far-traveling, enriching and growing toward that fulness of life wherein Father and child complete each other, and know each other in many a dear delight. In all the strifes of the earth Thou art, that they may come at last into a holy peace. Master of the sin Thou art, that it The Blessed Flight. 37 may somehow serve Thy great holiness. In the human frailty Thou art, that it may issue into strength, Thy strength made perfect in weakness. In all earth s great unmakings that pain us so Thou art, that so Thy perfect makings may appear, as when trees and stones are cut and destroyed that so may issue the cathedral, that like an anthem in stone sings Thy praises in all the winds. And so, not only what the sparrow experi ences dost Thou experience, but what every human child of Thine experiences, in that Thy heart has its part. In the unseen holies of his being Thou abidest, that he may be come and be. In him, beyond his experience, Thou art an infinite life, in which he may ever grow and unfold Thy truest thought of his nature. Wherever he wanders, a prodigal in sin and shame and rioting, in the holiness of his higher nature, of an innocency he has known, Thou abidest a Father still, to wel come him returning with the kiss, the ring, the robe, the feast, the true, rich life, with out which consciously lived there is sorrow on our sea, and it can not be quiet. And so in all the religions of the earth Thou art, helping Thy children ; in each faith some truth, some love from Thine own 38 The Blessed Flight. divine heart. Thou hast left none of Thy earth without a witness to Thee. Thou hast left none of Thy creation without Thyself. And in Thy presence we are glad that Thou art bringing all Thy children into a realized brotherhood, in religion and in life, in all that goes to make up Thy race of men. We are glad that the antagonism of re ligions is giving way to a peace wherein differences may be discussed in a spirit of love, in an increasing desire to know but the truth. It is blessed to see this day, when the sympathy of religions is being felt, and each is in the way of enriching the other ; when their blending voices will sing the sweet, true anthem of holiness and love, whereby the hosts of humanity will take up the music of Thy righteousness with rejoicing lip and life. In the light of all religions blending, we will see our way into a clearer truth. When the race of man abides in a full, rich brother-love, out of that love the unseen will vision itself, the full great truth appearing, and making for man his holy, joying summer. Even so come, Thou gracious Life of all, and let Thy kingdom be at its tasks of glad ness in every human heart. VI. LOVING S PERFECT WING, 39 Loving s Perfect Wing. 41 LOVING S PERFECT WING. Thou lovest, Lord, and by that love Art living everywhere ; No little heart beats out its joys But thou art living there. Thy love comes out in all the beasts, In all the wings that fly ; We hear it in all songs that sing, In all the sounds that sigh. In every fairness we but see Thy loving s grace a-bloom ; In every ugliness no less, In every night and gloom. But not at perfect love thou art In this that here we see ; Tis here Thy love s but fashioning A perfect home for Thee. What we shall be in what we are Is scarcely any shown ; As in the root we can not see The blossom that is blown. But we are sure Thy holiest love Gives life to everything ; That all Thy makings yet will spread Thy loving s perfect wing. 42 Loving s Perfect Wing. And for such faith we give Thee praise, And love life s tender grace, And pray Thee that in us Thou It make Thyself still holier place. THINE, O Lord, is a love incarnate. It dwells with men. It is men. What it is in its absolute transcendence, we do not know. What it is dwelling with us, and in us, we are learning in many a gracious les son. It comes forth in the beauty of the earth, flower, bird, radiant sky, and we know that Thou art beautiful. It comes forth in these things of use which keep the fires of life at their tender glowings, grain, fruit, the streams that run among the hills watering the valleys, and we know Thou art a faithful servant unto us. It comes forth in the things of truth, each true to its nature and true in its relations, oak, oak ; fire, fire ; water, water ; steadfastness every where, from which science is born, and this great progress of man we call civilization, and we know that Thou art a God of truth, faith-keeping always with Thy children whom thou lovest. It comes forth in these babes, making holy our homes ; in these ten- Loving s Perfect Wing. 43 der women, these strong men. In all this humankind Thou art dear unto us, showing Thyself friend and lover. We love Thee, but not in a love absolute and worthy Thine infinitely perfect being. We love Thee in this in which Thou dost dwell for the enrichment of us all in the treasures of Thine own holy life. As Thou dost come forth in flowers, in them we love Thee ! love Thee ! As Thou art at flight and at song in the birds, in them we love Thee ! love Thee ! As Thou art at Thy gracious kindness in grains and fruits, in them we love Thee ! love Thee ! As Thou art true in these faithful laws of everything s becoming, oak, oak; fire, fire; water, water, in them we love Thee ! love Thee ! In all this that makes life and joy and thought and truth, we give Thee adoration. As Thou art human in our dear babes, the men and women we love and trust, who ennoble us, we love Thee ! love Thee ! with the deepest, tenderest, truest love. And loving Thee so, Thou dost help us into Thine image and likeness. Loving babes, we grow childlike ; loving women, we grow tender and true ; loving men, we grow strong, unselfish, faithful we become chil- 44 Loving s Perfect Wing. dren in Thee who can indeed show forth in them the beauty and holiness of their Father. And so, for these human-divine children of Thine, we thank Thee. We rejoice that Thou hast made us members with them in the great and holy family of life. Forever the universe is gracious, and ourselves en larged in nobleness, because Thou hast given us mothers. Forever has life and the uni verse some dear meanings, because Thou hast given us fathers. Forever life has glad ness, beauty, worth, because Thou hast given us brothers, sisters, friends. In wife- hood, in husbandhood, we enter into Thy holiest love wherein Thy universe becomes, Thy children flocking all these happy ways of life. In giving us children, we enter through the gates of experience into Thy holy and tender fatherhood, and know how Thou lovest; how, with everlasting faithful ness, Thou hast devoted Thyself to our eternal well-being. So give we Thee thanks for every man, woman, and child who has enriched us in life ; who have been what ennobles, who have said what purifies, who have done what gives grace and greatness unto us. Through Loving s Perfect Wing. 45 these we love Thee. Through them Thou lovest us. In faithful kindness to them, we serve Thee ; in their faithfulness and kind ness, Thou servest us. Therefore we are glad in Thy presence for Thy love that is divine and human, for the life that in that love we are living increasingly unto becoming Thy perfect children. VII. THOU LIFE OF EVERYTHING, 47 Thou Life of Everything. 49 THOU LIFE OF EVERYTHING. I can become but what Thou art, Thou life of everything ; If Thou art bird with beating heart, Then I may be its wing. When Thou art some sweet, holy voice, Then I may be its tune ; My life may be an orchard sweet When Thou wilt be its June. All that Thou art I may become, If Thou be what I am ; Be Thou the voice that singeth me, And I will be the psalm, Which Thou wilt hear, so satisfied In all its holy words ; Each note will fly Thy heart s dear sky Like dawn-rejoicing birds. Bring forth in me Thy purest love, Thy wisest, truest thought ; Then I, Thy heart s ideal, shall A perfect child be wrought ; Thy fatherhood at deepest joy In all my quiet bliss, And peace eternal in my heart In answer to Thy kiss. 50 Thou Life of Everything. T^HOU art, O Lord, and we are becom- * ing ! Thou art the perfection of beauty. Thou art the fulness of life. What comes forth in the earth comes out of the abundant multitude of Thy wise and tender thinkings. Thou art loving, Thou art thinking, and the earth about us is and the heavens above ; and we are here, loving, and thinking, and growing. Thou art the beautiful cause of us ; and we are the meaning and joy of creation. Ours are the ears by which Thou dost listen to the wonderful music of the earth s busy life. Ours are the eyes by which Thou dost behold the beauty everywhere. In our hearts Thou dost love, in our brains Thou dost think. In us Thy creation has fulfil ment and meaning. In us Thou art under stood, appreciated, delighted in. Thy meanings in the earth about and the heavens above are for us. Thou speakest out and we hear. Thou Greatest and we see. Thou bringest forth, and we love what Thou hast made with a great and ever-deepening joy. Thy birds have their appreciation in us. They fly their meanings in our souls. Thy beasts, Thy fishes, Thy grasses and grains, the earth s countless things that are and are Thou Life of Everything. 5 1 becoming, are saying their secrets to us, are used and mastered by us unto a greater ful ness of this growing life of ours. We are Thy living, loving, thinking workmanship ; and these are the touches with which Thou dost fashion us. Through these is Thy quickening of us. Through these Thou dost lay great necessities upon us, whereby we must think and toil and grow. Through these Thou dost fascinate us into a great loving, into a great thinking, into a great activity, a great growth. We belong to each other. We complete each other. We grow together, together become that unto which Thou hast made us. In the sunbeam is red. In the growing rose is its revelation. But only when the rose is grown to its blossom, and it and the sunbeam become one, are we delighted with this dear marvel of color. So in Thy earth there are many things, and in man is their revelation, their meaning, their use ; but only when man is grown up to the point at which he becomes one with these thoughts of Thy thinking, do we behold the wonders of a great civilization. Thou art love, but only as we grow loving can we know it, can we show it. Thou art truth, but only as we 52 Thou Life of Everything. become truthful can we know it, can we show it. Thou art forgiveness, but only when we become forgiving can we know it, can we show it. Thou art holiness, but only as we become holy can we know it, can we show it. And so in all Thy perfec tions, only as we become what Thou art can we know Thee, can we reveal Thee. And, as we are growing, we know that these graces of growth in Thee are infinite. When love comes forth in us, it is our joy and strength to know that in Thee it is infinite. When holiness sings its songs within us, in Thee we know that it is in finite. When we experience any beauty and power, in Thee we know that it is infinite. Our fondest and fairest and holiest dreams in Thee are awakings. The best that we think, the best toward which we aspire, the best that we know, the best that we love, are in Thee ever true and abiding ; and in us they are becoming as true, as abiding, for we are growing up in Thy image and like ness. We are becoming what Thou art. Thou art taking us in the beauty of Thyself, and, when we awake in Thy likeness, we shall be satisfied, and Thou delighting Thy self in the blossom and fruit of Thy dream- creation come true. VIII. A PERFECT HARMONY. 53 A Perfect Harmony. 55 A PERFECT HARMONY. Thou art a perfect harmony ; Thy universe doth sing; Creation beats its journey out Upon a happy wing. But I a discord seem to be In all the dear refrain ; Instead of answering with joy, I answer only pain. O fashion me, such tuneless reed, Unto thy blowing breath ; Then play on me Thy spirit airs, Enchanting even death, When all my friends will hear in joy, And each one better be ; And every throbbing of my heart Be gladness unto Thee. \ 17 E find the life Thou givest us to live, * our Father, gracious beyond telling. Being is just gladness ; and that we are alive we thank Thee. There has been the sadness, when we have somehow abused Thy life and made it scant. When the full expression of that life has been interfered with, there is 56 A Perfect Harmony. pain. But the very pain is that life s crying out for its fulness, that so we may be at the joy of Thine own heart s great beatings. When the heart has been miserable, we have shut thee out of that dear companionship wherein we blend unto love s perfect fulness as wind and throat of bird making their music. When the conscience is an aching nerve, and all the moral nature drooping unto death, it is Thy protest against our self-destruction ; it is Thy holiness crying out for the fellowship of that beauty of holiness which is always Thy peace passing understanding. And so we have found life good, even when pain did its work, whether the strange hands of working Thy will were laid upon the body, heart, or conscience. Some making of Thine own is always at its work. Thou woundest that Thou mightest make alive again with fuller life. Thou makest us miserable that we may come into a joy unspeakable and full of glory. It is Thy passioning for our perfection which makes us ache in all our shortcomings, in all our sin and shame. And so the life that has slipped away from us was in every way good, though our eyes were too often blind beyond A Perfect Harmony. 57 our seeing. The life that we are now living is a blessed life, though we may fail to feel it so, blessed because it is a part of our becoming Thy perfected children, and that means an everlasting gladness that wearies not in all its singing. These changes that sadden us, the years that fly to come not back again, the vanished faces that return no more, are, too, some graces of Thy life which we are living, the fuller life that we shall enter by-and-by. The song can not sing itself but as note after note fulfils and goes into silence. Its very becoming is a passing away. Nor can the flower bloom, but that it is sad change s graciousness. Nor can the sheep bleat in the fields, the kine low in the meadows, but that change is at its work. Nor can the bird be on its wing, but as the wing and wind, at dearest touchings now, must part as fills the flight its happy measure full. Nor can it sing those rhapsodies of summer days but as the dear, sad change is there, a sanity and holi ness ; the wind and throat at kissings of companionship must part before the rapture can come forth to fill its golden measure full and pass. So change guides all the ways of a dear child s becoming man, and saint, and 58 A Perfect Harmony. hero, and saving presence in the world. So come our purest loves, our holiest thoughts, our highest aspirations, our achievements of life and character. And so,. O Lord, we see Thee gracious, not alone in what hurts when life cries out against each wound that strives for death, not alone in that the sufferings of the man show Thy dear working hands upon him, but, as well, we see Thee gracious in these changes that must come. Not gracious simply that those changes come which lead from sorrow into joy, which break life s thread and end the sickness all too long, but gracious in those changes that seem sor- roward from joy in changing s doom that s on us every hour, in every heart-beat, every thought. By change is life s dear manifest ing in our heart. Life s stream in us is holy from the doom of death because it hurries on, and pauses not in all its joy. So now we thank Thee for the days that are no more, the days that are, and those that are to come. In all the changes Thou abidest, Life of our life ! Our glory and be coming perfect child in Thee our perfect Father, is by the grace of Thy angel of change, O Thou beautiful, divine, and ever- lasting Love. IX. ABOVE IT ALL GOD IS, 59 Above it All God Is. 61 ABOVE IT ALL GOD IS. My failures many weaknesses Have blended to create ; My love is other love than mine, My hate is other hate. Some growth afar, some spinning done, Has fed my weary loom ; I weave the shine of other days ; As well, I weave the gloom. If all alone I work for blame, Or for some word of praise, A deepest wrong is done my soul, Injustice holds my ways. But if, above it all, God is A weaver, tender, wise, I ll weave the mystery out with Him, Whatever shuttle flies, Assured that it will certain be Some glory of His heart; I, but himself wrought beautiful Through all our toiling art. SO much of graciousness is about us, Master of Life, that we are glad for this home of the earth Thou hast given unto us. The tender and true life Thou art living for 62 Above it All God Is. us takes countless shapes of loveliness. The very food Thou givest us takes the eye in beauty and fills the taste with delight, like songs. But yet, that these things of beauty and service become, there is Thy perfect life causing them. Entering into them is Thy truth, Thy goodness. The center out of which they unfold is reality ; the life, cloth ing itself in their forms, genuine. That life may shape itself to its services, it must be itself and keep true to itself. Oak life can only become the oak as it abides itself through all the ways of its becoming. In the egg is the essential thrush that upon the winds makes brooks of melody laugh through all the sky. In the center, the be ginning of growth, the reality must be ; or blossom, fruit, or bird can not be a soul of joy within the passing hours. And yet must this genuine life that hides in what to us is faint beginnings, keep faith ful to itself and to its work, as it, in answer to the wooings of the sun, reveals the hidings of its heart. A genuineness of being, a toil of true reality, and then the perfected being, the lovely intent of Thy heart revealed. And so, dear Maker of us, at Thy tasks Above it All God Ts. 63 of the everlasting love, we too become the lovely revealings of Thy heart, the blessed children showing forth Thy deeps of Father hood. Some reality of Thyself must be in us; a glow of true love, a life that is the child Thy purpose means us to become. The oak unfolds from within. Were it not in the acorn, it could not be upon the hill. Were there no pulse of life in the prison-house here, there could be no laughter of leaves in the freedom of summer winds yonder. So, indeed, is Thy kingdom of childhood within us, or it cannot be un folded in a life, at once Thy joy and great enrichment of the world. The hidings of Thy purpose are the beginnings of our life. But that Thou art secret in our beings, we could not be Thy open thought of man. What Thou hast put within us, that we must unfold. To other than that we can not attain. And yet, as we are at our growth, there must be reality, faithfulness in all our work which is a part of our becoming, the part we most may shape, and in it have some willing of our own. So much depends upon our toil that unfolds Thy hidings unto new revelations of ourselves. So much can enter Above it All God Is. in to mar ; defeat may come as we turn out Thy purposes from their full climbing into bloom. So would we be careful of that which we admit into our feelings to become a part of our making. We would be careful about what we admit into our thoughts to be our truth or our falsehood. We would be careful about what we admit into our purposes, of which our life is but the work ing out. We would be careful in the form ing of our convictions, for these are our creator in their image and likeness. And having true thoughts, pure feelings, lofty purposes, holy convictions, we would, with patient diligence, work them out into our lives, into what we ourselves are becoming, so that we may indeed become our own highest ideals, Thine own thought of a child fulfilled in us. So, O Master of all being, will our inmost life be good and true, and its form shaped forth be a very great delight to Thee, to our brothers, we some beauty of Thine own, some holiness of Thy true, true heart, the hidings of Thy grace revealed in us, Thy thought of child made plain to all, some dear reality of Thyself at blessing in our life. X. A HUMAN FACE. 65 A Human Face. 67 A HUMAN FACE. Thou needest, Lord, a human face To smile and make Thee known ; O be in me a tenderness, That smiling face mine own. Thou needest, Lord, a human tongue To say Thy truth divine ; O be in me a holy thought, That truthful tongue be mine. Thou needest, Lord, a human hand To bind man s aching wound ; O be in me compassion sweet, That hand mine own be found. Thou needest, Lord, a human life To live Thee out on earth ; O be in me a beating heart, My life that holy worth. I d show Thee, Lord, in all my ways, In all I am and do ; I d be Thine own self realized, Myself divine and true. Abide in me, live out in me Thy being s perfect bliss ; May all my life so move in love That I be Thy dear kiss, 68 A Human Face. To touch with life and love divine Whom evil so destroys, And waken through their night of death Life s dawn of holy joys. \ 17E bless Thee, Thou Love of all, for * * the wonder and greatness of the human face. It seems the meaning and holiness of everything that is. But for it bird songs and flower fragrances, strength of the oaks and purple of the hills, beasts in the fields and fruits on the vines, skies, rain-falls, oceans all would fail of joy and hallowedness. All that is, grows tender and full of holy meanings in a human face. Thou, the in finite Love and Holiness, quenchest Thy great brightness into this dear gentleness that is my baby laughing back my love, my mother giving summer sky unto my life, my friend enlarging me into a world divine. It shows, it interprets all life. All moods, all meanings are here. Dawn is here, with every bird awake and breath of flowers on the winds ; a golden shimmer from the sun, a silver radiance answering from the dew. And noon is here, a droop on blossoms and A Human Face. 69 on leaves, a silence of the birds ; in vain the kine are seeking shade, the low brook scarcely wetting pebbles thirst, and dust at dreariness on all. And eve is here, the shadows long and gracious, a fall of dew, the leaves at life again, the birds at song, the low of cattle in a glad content. And night is here, the voice of whippoorwill abroad, the bat at dartings for its prey, star- beam athwart the dusk, the moon a glory in the clouds or liquid silver laughing on the waves. And storm is here, a cloud, a fierce ness, a great, destroying wrath. And peace is here, a holy quiet, as when babes are still in sleep, as when in worship the voiceless heart of man communes with the voiceless spirit of all life. O, help us ! that these faces of our own be peace and joy and strength and sunny sum mer days to these our friends. Be they for them a springtime all athrill with life. Be they a June s own perfect day ; an autumn splendor of ripeness rich in satisfying love. If winter comes, when hearts and minds must be at sterner duty, let them be yet some inspiration, a new thrill in the air, a tingling sense of fuller life ; a snow for merrymaking, and for enriching grain, that 70 A Human Face. it become a grace that feeds our hungering. May we feel all that is beauty, and shine it in our faces. May we feel comforting in grief, tender, holy, and give it countenance to bless. All nobleness, all purity, all un selfish love that does and dares for this kind of ours, glow in our hearts, and make our faces a blessed day for all about us now. Be truth in all our thought that so its splendors may make us give out some inspiration, helping others lead a truest life. Be in our being s deeps a shekinah, shaping forth Thy benedictions in faces that are joy and strength of holiness to all. And for these holy faces blessing us, we give Thee praise. Thou art so beautiful, when looking out from Thy fathomless eter nities through some dear human face, that Thou mayest show Thy love for us, that we may see Thy loveliness, desiring Thee. O, Infinite Tenderness that is a dear babe s face ! O, Everlasting Love, becoming a mother s face, to sanctify our lives ! O, Strength Eternal, showing in a father s face, that we in nobleness be strong ! Thyself art here, the dear wife s face, a benediction hallowing home ! In every loving human face and true, there is Thy countenance for A Human Face. 71 joy and blessing lifted upon us, that we walk in light and be at home with Thee. Thou art a human heart, a human face ! We are Thy children, growing more child like, our Father s grace and goodness show ing through, until, transfigured, we are very like Thyself, heart and heart at one, and every pulse of life but holiness and joy. XI. LOVE FASHIONS EVERY WING, 73 Love Fashions Every Wing. 75 LOVE FASHIONS EVERY WING. In joy are all the flowers roots, And love makes everything ; Tis love glows in the lowest brutes And fashions every wing. A happy heart is everywhere, A loving thought in all ; A father heart beats on to share Whatever may befall. In me it gracious doth abide, Moves with my pilgrimage ; I know, if it were selfish pride, If it were wicked rage, The birds would die, the flowers blight, And all things rot in graves ; The sun put out, eternal night, Insanity that raves. But birds at song and blooming flowers And beating heart of mine, Each thing that moves in life s dear powers Are in the love divine. So fare I forth, whatever way May call my growing soul ; Through all the changes love doth stay, And joy laughs through the whole. 76 Love Fashions Every Wing. NO hate holds Thy hidden ways in Thy universe, O Lord of life. Thou art love. Thy secrets are the glowings of a tender, everlasting love. Thy revealings are the graces of Thy fatherhood at its tasks of fulfilment. In love each thing roots, in love fulfils. Life everywhere is love going forth to bless. The flowers open that the hidden graces of love may appear. Birds fly that love s graces may be seen, may be heard. Streams are love at its laughter. The oak is love at its strength. Mountains and seas are love at its powers and beauties. Grains and fruits are Thy love at its minis tries. Thy love s gentleness is the sheep ; Thy love s meekness, the kine of the fields. Everywhere the hearts, beating out their music of life, are in tune with Thy everlast ing love. In spite of all the fears, the tragedies and deaths, life is sweet in all ; and life is love. Each life is a hymn of gladness ; and only the discord that haunts its singing is pain, and, to the passing thought, the fleet ing experience, defeat. Secret of all being is love. Hate can not create. Joy is the piping to which all the walls of life s fair Love Fashions Every Wing. 77 cities rise. Pain is but a pause in the glad ness of becoming. In this faith, that Thou art indeed a ten der Father to everything, we are at peace, and hope is a sun-filled sky in which we can infinitely grow. In men Thou art, their secret, their revealing. Each little child is a grace of Thine own heart come forth to make Thee known, to lay hold of us with the beauty of an unselfish love, making us partakers of Thine own nature. Thy powers about us, within us, are creative. We are but being made. Thou art be getting us. The very pangs are life s becom ings ; and, come, what a satisfaction of soul in an enrichment of being, in some new grace and power from Thee ! That which is evil is no such alien in Thy universe that it may defeat the purpose of Thy love. To that love everything must some how be servant. Deeper than all deeps are the undefeated gulfs of Thy love. Of all Thou art the gracious master. Thy winters, with all their seeming death and blight, Thou makest to enter into the richness of all the things the summer s tenderness calls forth. Thy storms, so dark, so seeming 78 Love Fashions Every Wing. full of wreck and waste, Thou makest to do Thy works of purity, cleansing the winds, renewing life. No waste is any where. No useless rubbish is. Change works its will on everything, and so what s waste becomes transformed into some beauty, some service in all life. Upon decay and waste no change makes pause. Its dear intent can not thus be fulfilled. It passes on that so its service may fulfil in some new glory, love creative still. So, Lord, behind all seemings is Thy love s reality. Within all evil hides some good of Thine which will not take defeat, but at its patient waiting, patient tasks, fulfils Thy love s intent, reveals Thy fatherhood at last. And so again for this dear truth of father hood we thank Thee, for this truth of ever lasting love. It is a gladness in the soul, a confidence for faithfulness. It makes us work with Thee that we may more become Thy truest thought of child. It makes us diligent in tasks of brother love that we may help Thy love fulfil itself in every man. For every duty hard to do it girds us. It is holiness, strength in all our convictions. Love Fashions Every Wing. 79 In it we are confident that our ideals shall become a very part of us ; that Thy ideals for us will become Thy realities within us. And so, for the infinite pity that answers the infinite pathos of life, we are glad, and find a holy strength to hymn in every hour, to sing for every man. XII. MAY WE BLESS BACK AGAIN, 81 May We Bless Back Again. 83 MAY WE BLESS BACK AGAIN. As faithful nature blesses us May we bless back again, With what will make some sweeter strains Sing in her dear refrain. With wisest thought upon her fields May we our help bestow, Till rich and richer harvestings Her summer toil may show. When she gives flower marvelings May we, with knowing hand, Be fellow-worker, that she may Make finer bless the land. May we, by all that in us lies, Bless her with faithful thought, That by her ever-growing life Some fuller beauty s wrought. And, when from throes of patient love Her skies with dear birds fill, May not our murder bruise her heart, Her singing children kill. When they have hived her summer-love May we not kill her bees, But sacred hold such patient life, Such holy ministries. 84 May We Bless Back Again. May we not shame our gratitude And ruthlessly destroy A single tree her many years Have wrought in deepening joy. May we through beasts she s giving us An answering kindness give, Make happier for each of them These lives which now they live. May we be thankful for her skies, Her mountains and her seas, For all such splendors measureless Our hearts be rhapsodies. In all her life which we must live May we be tenderness, That powers of ours and powers of hers May work but what can bless. And so, somehow, we ll bless Thy heart, From whom her graces spring ; Thou unto us, we unto Thee, In all her kindness sing. A17E thank Thee, O Lord, for an earth in V which Thy growing things root, for a sky in which they grow and fruit. We thank Thee for this change and becoming May We Bless Back Again. 85 that everywhere we see. It is life, and life at its center is joy, and joy is always satisfy ing, and is each thing s enlarging fulfilment. We are glad to be of the earth earthy, to have this kinship with the soil and the beasts, to have these lowly duties that mean the body s care, this life in nature which is as the very face of delight. Our dear old earth is ever beautiful. We love its lowly beauties, its lofty grandeurs. That Thou hast made it and us to be in love and at joy with each other, we thank Thee. But we are glad, in a joy hallowing this joy, that we are of the heavens heavenly ; that we have affections and thoughts and aspira tions and experiences that lift above our lowest life, like a sky above the earth ; that we have a thought of Thee, a love for Thee, an experience in Thee, Thou perfect love and wisdom out of which all things have come, beneath whose tender face they fulfil their holy destinies. In our beings deeps we are children to Thee. Hallowing our earth-life and making it but soil in which to root, we have Thy fatherhood, a growing power and beauty within us, a begetting of us ever into the highest in Thy universe. We are more than Thy grass, that in lowly grandeur makes 86 May We Bless Back Again. the earth alive ; more than Thy beasts that walk the earth \ than Thy birds that fly the air. They live their life in just the joy of it. They can not know Thee, the happy Center and Giver of their blessed life. We have the lowly grandeur of the grass, the larger life of Thy beasts, and the heart-beats that fly with wing and song that we have named the birds. But, more than this we have, a thought of Thee, a love for Thee, a holy of holies in which Thou art at one with us in dearest fellowship, when in Thee we have the Life of all life as ours, the Love of all love, the Joy of all joy, the tender Eternity that lieth in all the time making it, the beating of a Heart whose greatness sets everything at growth and becoming, gives grace of life to every little heart that beats out the joys and sorrows of life. We root in the earth, and are glad for all its ministries, its fellowships of life and love ; we blossom in Thee, and, beyond telling, are at joy in that great and divine life which in Thee we have. And help us, Lord, to see the large and everlasting meanings in this fact, that we have a life of the earth in nature and a life of the heavens in Thee. Our life means that we are to bring heaven to earth, to fulfil the May We Bless Back Again. 87 highest in the lowest. The earth is a fulfil ment of the sun. The sky, with its winds and warmth, its rainfalls and dew gentle ness, has fulfilment and realization in every thing that grows, in lichen on walls and oaks on mountain sides, in mice of the field and lions of the jungle, in wing of gnat and poise of mighty eagle. And so Thou art ful filled in us. We are Thyself becoming. And our duty and diligence ever is to bring Thee forth in all our life; and doing this is eternal life. Help us, then, from the righteous ness we know and do, to see the loftier that may, that ought to be done. Always may ideal life be ours. Always may that ideal life be being realized by us in lowliest duties, in humblest joys. Ever be we seeing a truer way to live ; ever be we living in Thy kingdom come, Thy will done on earth as it is in heaven. May we fulfil in all our duties and gladnesses the same faithful ness and love in which Thou dost make the worlds and keep them to their happy paths of service. Then what Thou art we will be always becoming, and Thou in us will be seeing Thyself to love Thyself, and yet from self-loving be blessedly free. When Thou 88 May We Bless Back Again. in us and we in Thee are fulfilled, then cometh to its full Thy glory of fatherhood and our beauty of childhood. XIII. WHEN SURE OF THEE. When Sure of Thee. 91 WHEN SURE OF THEE. When sure of Thee, O Love Divine, I m sure of everything ; Thou rt holy, laughing certainty Which I can endless sing. When Thou art mine, let outer life Bring what may heal or rend ; Secure I ll rest in Thee, my Peace, And all my troubles end. Yea ; know that in them hideth deep Some blossom yet to blow ; In newer springtime tenderness, Thy perfect kindness show. Be Thou my secret resting-place When days with trouble fill ; Be Shepherd holy leading me ; Be pastures green and still. I then will be but beauty that Fulfils Thy tenderness, And know that Thou not only mine, But I Thy being bless. OLORD of all being ! Thou art all in all ! Naught is but that Thou hast made it. It is some going forth of Thy wisdom, some fashioning of Thy love. 92 When Sure of Thee. Though to our eye it may seem a scar, a tangled tarn where death lurks with hideous forms that but make mock at life, still it is the servant of Thy wisdom, the drudge of Thy perfect love. The touch of Thy making is upon everything. And the finished work of all shall in its splendid beauty praise ever Thy loving kindness and tender mercies. Out of Thy heart have we come. Not straight out of Thy heart s burning deeps, but by Thy wisest indirection. From out the heart of the great sun comes the daisy whose smile so tender greets the glowing dawn. Not straight out of the burning deeps of the sun came it, but by indirection of the clouds and soils and winds and rains and the great line of ancestral daisies. But still, out of the sun s central deeps is it fashioned fair. And so we come. By what long ways we know not. By clouds of sin, by circumstance of race, by touch of clime, by large and sad heredity. But yet from out Thy fatherhood we come, and could not be but that Thou lovest constantly with perfect love these beings of ours which are but parts of Thine. And so, O Lord, on Thee each breath depends. Each heart-beat is a pulse of When Sure of Thee. 93 Thine. Each humble life of ours is not dropped wholly from Thy wisdom. As on we go in sin and suffering, in this freedom of ours so nobly used or so basely abused, we go on beneath Thy tender gaze. We move about in Thy perfect watch-care. We are never beyond the reach of Thy hand, that determines still to make us become something worthy of Thy love ; something that in all its fine and finished lines shall show forth the beauty of Thy wisdom. May this great faith give us the courage of our convictions, that we may speak them forth for Thee and do that for which to us they are intrusted. May it open our souls wide that Thou mayest enter, mak ing us true in Thy truth, wise in Thy wis dom, loving in Thy love, faithful in Thy faithfulness ; a busy, gentle servant to all our brothers here in Thy servanthood that joys to fashion the wing of a gnat and the heart of Thy Christ, that each may help to fulfil Thee in Thy great work of creation which is being done. May it make all life sacred to us and joyous. May it give its large and holy meanings to all about us. May it fulfil in us all the blessed Christ-dreams of brother hood. May it make for us these death 94 When Sure of Thee. darknesses to be but the shadows of Thy gracious dawns of fuller life. May it bring Thee " behind our ears and eyes," until all life shall lie before us in the holiness of Thy love, in the gladness of Thy wisdom, which sees the growing work that in its finished glory shall make a finer holiness in place of every sin, a sunnier smile for every sadness, a dearer love in place of every hatred, a fuller peace for every strife, a brighter life for every death, a heavenlier heaven for all the darkness of this little earth. When life is now conscious of Thee, its source and sustenance, how inexpressibly glad and holy it is ! Into this dear con sciousness bring us more and more, and Thy heart will joy toward its fulfilment in us, and ours in growing holiness be so satis fied. XIV. BEAUTIES EVERYWHERE, 95 Beauties Everywhere. 97 BEAUTIES EVERYWHERE. O Lord, such beauties everywhere Enchant the happy earth, We wonder what Thy beauty is Which gives to each its birth. What melody must be Thy Tieart To sing these flying birds ; What thoughts sublime Thy thinking makes To speak such winged words. What loveliness must be Thy dream That makes the flowers grow ; What infinite unselfishness The purpling autumns show. What peace-enrapturing gentleness Outjoying in the sheep ! We can but trust a love like this Our hidden ways to keep. What holiness of perfect life Whence happy childhood springs ; Sure we can trust its unseen deeps When death a shadow brings. We worship Thee in this we see So lovely everywhere, But hunger deepest to become In spirit beauties fair. G Beauties Everywhere. Oh, fashion forth Thy holy deeps Until we are like Thee ; Till we to Thee and Thou to us Eternal beauty be. So will our lives atune and sing Thy being s lovely calm, With everything of earth a note, Ourselves the holy psalm. OECRET of my life, I would find Thee, ^ that I may prove my gratitude for the grace Thou givest, that Thy more abundant fulness may be mine. Father, who hast be gotten me, I would look upon Thy face, I would hold sweet converse with Thee, I would enter into the fuller glory of Thy love. I would realize that I am one with Thee in holiness, one with Thee in truthful ness, one with Thee in love, one with Thee in Thy pure spirit of service, one with Thee in Thy creative joy, ever making anew. I would know that Thou art but begetting me, that in Thy heart s deeps there is the true thought of me, Thy divine ideal of a child whose wondrous fulness I shall be come. Beauties Everywhere. 99 Unquiet is about me, within me ; trouble is tossing my life everywhere about. I would be taken into Thy great peace, I would be in Thy holy quiet, as sheep whom gentle shepherds lead into green pastures. Surely our longing desires for better, fuller, holier life, is echo of Thy desire for a per fected childhood, in which Thou canst sat isfy Thy great and gracious heart. Let, therefore, the desire of Thy heart be fulfilled in us. Thy heavenly thought think in us ; Thy heavenly affection love in us ; Thy heavenly gladness sing in us ; Thy heavenly life live in us ; Thy heavenly truth reign in us ; Thy heavenly service serve in us, until shall be realized the desire of our hearts so often prayed to Thee, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Surely Thou art coming to us always, when we know it not, think it not. Thou hast come to us in the blessed Christ, a dear and holy joy, an inspiration in life, a new- creation in love, a presence hallowing the very winds with heavenliness, a vision of Thee, deep and satisfying. In Him we learn that Thou art altogether a part of our human life, that in Thee is the source and 100 Beauties Everywhere. fulness of our humanity, that Thou art our Father dwelling in all, that we are brethren. In Him we learn the holiness of brother- love, the divineness of brother-service. If for all He has done for us we would do some answering deed of love, He has taught us that such deed is done to Him when done to any of our unfortunate and needy brothers. He whose deeps were Thy pres ence with us, taught us how Thou art in all to bear its pain, to bless us as we minister unto Thee who art secret in every one of our human kind to receive what ministry we may give. Thou art in all a dear human presence. Passioning for the purification and happi ness of man, we are passioning for Thee. Finding our brother in some newness of life, as we live for his blessing, is finding Thee. As through the door of service we go out from ourselves, we enter into the temple of Thy gladness and become partakers of Thy great life. Every door of lowly doing for the good of others is the entrance through which Thou dost come with growing fulness of Thy life, and we become more truly Thy children. Grant unto us to know by an ever-grow- Beauties Everywhere. 101 ing experience that inward communion with Thee deepens, sweetens, as outward ser vice for our brother increases. In service for our kind are deepest, truest visions of Thee. In a self-forgetting doing of what deed we may to bless our kind, there is ever our perfecting in Thy thought of us, in Thy fatherhood to us. Grant unto us, therefore, this wisdom also, the wisdom of the tender, busy, serving hand ; and, with it, this joy of Thy presence more and more realized in transfiguring communings with Thee, Thou Father of our never-dying spirits, of our glorious childhood, deepening ever in Thy grace of life. XV. A MULTITUDE OF TENDER THOUGHTS. 103 A Multitude of Tender Thoughts. 105 A MULTITUDE OF TENDER THOUGHTS. The thrush drinks the grace of Thy streams, And turns all its thirst into songs ; Each leaf takes the kiss of Thy winds, And the joy into music prolongs. The rain sings itself to the earth, The earth ballads back with its Junes ; Thy hand never touches the fields, But they blossom with life s holy tunes. Thy sun in its tenderness smiles, Enchanting the quivering vines, When they sing in their murmurous leaves, And blush into sweetest of wines. My heart alone seems to be dumb, For Thy goodness no gratitude shows; Yet Thy loving keeps on at its songs, Thy creation with kindness o erflows. O, would that my love answered Thine, As the thrush with the dew on its wings ; Then would I be gladness to Thee, My life a pure rapture that sings. DEAR Lord, who art our gracious Father, we thank Thee that Thou givest unto us, everywhere, a multitude of tender 106 A Multitude of Tender Thoughts. thoughts. Without us they are in everything that is; within us, in these thinkings of ours, which make us Thy sane and free children, knowing and doing without the compulsion of thoughtless and heartless fate. But we most rejoice that Thy thoughts in us and about us are not lifeless thoughts. Death that is anything but change is not in all their ways. They are aglow with life, and love is in all their becoming. For little whiles they rest, they sleep, but only to awaken in newer days of diligent endeavor. But not a thing of Thy creation is that lies inactive in some endless death. All is in motion, all at some dear deed of service, as Thou dost make Thy universe become some dearer fulness of Thine own most loving thought, a happier breath of Thine own great tender life. Everything is somehow servant unto life, and only has fulfilment of itself in life. And so with us. Not knowledge stored, as grain in useless garners, but knowledge lived, as grain at growth of harvests, at loving task of satisfying hunger s need, is knowledge deepening ever into life within us, widening ever in a life that blesses man, and making place for Thee, in joy of Thy A Multitude of Tender Thoughts. 107 becoming something holier yet, in all Thy world. So help us to be alive in Thy great life, our knowledge always serving life ; our life at happy searchings after deeper knowl edge ; our wisdom all aglow with love, our love most sane in wisdom, that, in nothing, lets unguided impulse wreck the very beauty of its fine intent. At love in largeness of Thy love that seeks the good of all, we will ever grow in knowledge, each growth a pulse of joy. At wisdom in Thine own truth, we will ever deepen into love, and know that life is all that is, and we its beating gracious heart. So may we, by Thy presence all alive in us, turn all our knowledge into life, make it, as seeds their deeds of blossom and of fruit, do in the world the kindness and the righteousness men need. And each affection that we have, may we inform by highest knowledge, that it be not lawless hurt instead of help. No flower is a blind impulse of gentleness. That glow of love, that is its deepest cause and meaning, is wrought out by careful law, by order wise ; itself not only love, but order, beautiful. And so this love of ours be wisely lived, go forth in orderliness that it may really bless, its deed a holiness. 108 A Multitude of Tender Thoughts. So will our place in Thy great universe be filled. So will our sorrows turn to joy. So will what seems our mean inglessn ess and Thine, be large with satisfying purpose. So will Thyself and the eternal life be real, no thing of dreams, no thing of dead authorities, but thing of great experience, that knows because it does, and does be cause it knows, the living will in which we but abide and change unto an everlasting growth. So will the earth be beautiful, its sad sincerity but working out the holy deeds that must become a joy within Thy joy, forever and forever more. So truly will we know Thee in Thy heaven, and all right with the world. So truly will we help on the world s becoming a kinder, juster, hap pier world. XVI. MY BROTHER S FACE. 109 My Brothers Face. Ill MY BROTHER S FACE. God dwells within the stars, I know, To glorify the night ; And in the birds that spread their wings In singing s dear delight. He shows himself in lilies fair, Breathes blessings in their breath ; He speaks in every voice of life, Grows silent in each death. And yet my heart, in finding Him The life and grace of these, Aches still, as when no flowers bloom For honey-hungry bees. Their changing life so beautiful Leaves love a-hungering still ; My life a weary loneliness Their friendship can not fill. But now I see my brother s face, And know God dwelleth there, Though wet sometimes with bitter tears, And sometimes smiling fair. He is my hunger satisfied, My dear companionship ; God breaks the lonely silences With a dear human lip. And now the stars but brighter shine, And sweeter sing the birds, And fairer all the lilies are In saying holy words ; My Brother s Face. For the dear life that lives in them Is dearer brother-grace ; The whole great universe in man, A tender, human face. T^vEAR Lord who lovest, we are Thy love *-^ and righteousness unto men. Thy sky is bountiful, Thy earth with plenty teeming ; but we must be Thy co-workers, if these are to fufil Thy perfect intent. The soil that feeds its countless millions will hold a starving babe upon its vastness lifting mountains, upon its minuteness fash ioning grassblades, and never pity, never flow a bit of gracious nourishment to answer all the wailing cry. Some tender human love must find the babe, and human ministry complete the work of soils. There is power in the winds and waves, giants of steam and electricity all about, but man must come in and think out their se crets, capturing their strength that so they may do their great tasks for us. There is truth everywhere, in everything, but we must think it out, we must call it forth, we must make it alive in our service, enlarging ever in our lives. There is love about us in My Brother s Face. 1 1 3 everything, some life at graciousness, some ministry with ever ready unselfishness, but we must find it, help it love and minister. The soil must have the seed to reveal its hidden beauties, to bring it forth in grains and fruits to bless the hunger of us all. Even the sun must have the seed that it may fulfil itself, its unseen glories revealed in all the growing things of earth. So this great earth about us needs the man, that it may become its higher self, that it may work out its perfect graces, blessing all. And all our life is unto this one great end, the helping nature to its blossoms and its fruits that min ister unto the growing race, in food for bodies, minds, and souls, a grace and gen tleness forever making great. So this great heaven above, this Father of the universe, all tender and all true, needs man to be His interpreter unto man ; to bring forth all His hidden truth, a glory to the eyes of men ; to manifest His unseen love that it may have a human face and hands, through which its human heart may show those powers forth which all men need, that grace of kindness in which comes life s great meanings and its joys that never end. And all our life is this, to think Thee, feel H 114 My Brother s Face. Thee, say Thee, live Thee out in lives that hallow and make great. So be it that nature s powers we master may beat service to our kind, all knowledge shaping to some deed that helps. So may our music be made, for what it may of glad ness give to these our fellows in the joy of life. So be it that our business be not sim ply unto gatherings for ourselves, but unto scatterings that increase for all the worth of life. So be it that our thoughts of Thee, our deepest feelings of Thy dwelling deep and gracious in our hearts, be but for lead ing these our weaker brothers up these heights of holiness and joy and the eternal life. As our faces are turned outward from our selves that they may be for others, so may all life, all love, all thought, be away from ourselves for all these of our race whom we in any way may bless with this great higher life. As violets and oaks do show the sun in what may bless, so be in us a grace and greatness of Thyself, that we may think Thy tender thoughts toward all Thy chil dren, and so show Thee forth that they shall know Thou art, and they in Thee some dear eternal life. We are the blessing of each My Brother s Face. 115 human need. O, grant us that we bless ; and so Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth so low as in Thy heavens high. XVII. THAT WE MAY THY BEAUTY BEHOLD. 117 That We May Thy Beauty Behold. 119 THAT WE MAY THY BEAUTY BEHOLD. Thou comest forth in the rose, That we may Thy beauty behold ; And in every harvest Thou art, Thy goodness its bountiful gold. Thou comest forth in the birds, That we may their joyancing hear ; We lift unto Thee on their wings, In their songs answer cheering with cheer. Thou comest forth in the kine, That gentleness be to us charm ; In doves Thou appearest, to say, Creation is meaning no harm. Thyself art in beautiful June, In the autumn s yellow and red, That our hunger for beauty as well As our bodies be bountiful fed. No thing but is living in thee, And showing Thee forth to the wise ; As Thy holiness cleanses our hearts, Thy beauty gladdens our eyes. As Thou comest forth in each thing, Be beauty within us that grows, Until every deed of our lives The truth of Thy loving but shows. 120 That We May Thy Beauty Behold. Each thing we behold but a door By which we may enter to Thee, And worship in perfecting love Through the truth and the beauty we see. The rose and the grain and the kine, The bird that Thy rapturing sings, Somehow but the breath of Thy love That to lost ones a homing wind brings. Each thing but a deed Thou dost do In these secrets and deeps of our loves, That Thy beautiful heart may appear In our thoughts, as in summer Thy doves. That we be a perfecting soul To reveal Thy humanity s deeps, Forever our nature s a life Which Thy beauty of holiness keeps. A17HAT Thou art in the deeps of Thy * being, O Lord of life, we do not know. What Thou art revealed in Thy creation, we are learning in many a poor and pained endeavor. We learn that Thy way of making things is the slow and patient one of growth. Through the count less centuries this earth came to be what it That We May Thy Beauty Behold. 121 now is. By ways of struggle, suffering, and defeat, Thine earth was chiseled to its form, and its life unfolded in endless processions. Through an infinite pathos of endeavor man has become what he is. And that he may hold what he has, that he may grow into the realization of ideals that beckon as the blue indefinite sky above, there must be a con stant struggle, suffering, undefeated en deavor. So it is that Thou art coming forth in a race of men that we trust will more and more show Thee as a Father of perfect truth and justice and love. With all the bounties Thou dost give in Thy creation, Thy chil dren of men must work out in a great and patient toil the fruits of that bounty. With all these infinitely varied and exhaustless powers in the nature about us, the human nature within us, we must co-operate, mingling with them our thought and toil, and so attain unto the growth of becoming what we are. For the countless ones who have thought and toiled and suffered, giving themselves unto the growth of our race, we thank Thee, holding them in some tender and grateful thought. For the known ones who have made our history great, enriching 122 That We May Thy Beauty Behold. our life to-day, we thank Thee, holding them also in tender and grateful thought. That Thou dost come to us in the great and good men of our race, giving us in them glimpses of Thy deepest and truest self, we thank Thee, and are glad that Thy beauty of holiness is what they show it to be, though transcending all that they are or suggest to our fervid imaginings. We thank Thee for the great movements that have led in grander eras of thought and life and endeavor for the children of men. For these, and the men who were its em bodiments, blessing us with enlarged life, kindling our imaginations with npble ideals of life, giving us courage and inspiration, we give Thee a grateful thought, and ask that we may be worthy of all that has been done : that by the accomplished, and the spirits of those who achieved, we may be consecrated to do our part in life with faithfulness and enthusiasm, leaving this race of ours ennobled by our lives when we pass away to live out otherwheres this life of Thine of which Thou hast strangely made us par takers. In ourselves we may realize all nobleness, having true thoughts, pure affections, ideals That We May Thy Beauty Behold. 123 and endeavors that shall make our conscious life the temple of Thine indwelling, a center of revealing Thyself as a Father, holy, tender, true. May we live out righteous ness and brotherly love, becoming a factor in the world s highest and holiest growth. Keep us from self-service. May we be no parasites that take what is precious in our day and generation, giving nothing in re turn. May every good cause have our word for its help, our work for its triumph. And may opposition not overpower us, nor difficulties discourage. May we have every bravery in the right as Thou givest us to see the right. If we go down in failure, may we go down with our flag still flying its truth and love from the topmost mast. May our guns speak until the waters of death silence them forever. For so Thy kingdom comes and the doing of Thy will on earth as it is done in Heaven. XVIII. THE CHRIST IS BORN, 125 The Christ is Born. 127 THE CHRIST IS BORN. The Christ is born, when kindness done Makes hearts in joyance beat, The light of heaven streaming down, The winds with angels sweet. When thoughts are gentle like the sheep, And gracious like the kine, The dear Christ-child is cradled there, His baby face a-shine. Where life is lived unselfishly, A hand that open gives, The humble shepherds always know That Christ is born and lives. Where life is poured out lavishly In passioning for men, The wise men with their treasures are, And Christ is born again. Where thought is true and life is pure, And goodness, dear delight, The Christ is come and glory shines Through every winter night. O, not afar is Bethlehem, In ages long ago, But here and now may every heart Its Christmas glories know. 128 The Christ is Born. My heart I open, Lord, to Thee, My life would give Thee place ; O, break my selfish silences, And show Thy baby face. Then Thou wilt hallow all my home, A grace that never dies, Our hearts through every grief that comes To dearer gladness rise. OUT of Thy deepest tenderness Thou hast given us, Our Father, the Christ- child. We are glad therefor, in many a gracious nobleness, in many a holy largeness of life. We are happy in the thought of the dear mother, in her blessed experience, on that first Christmas night so long ago. We are glad for the dawn of holy love that shone so quietly across the world s selfish and cruel darkness. What a thought of Thy love came to us then ! What a reality of Thy Fatherhood ! How Thou hast been, since then, not apart from us the stern judge, but within us the loving Father; not a power indifferent working upon us, but a thoughtful, gentle, holy life within us. Thou hast, through that little baby, become to us, not simply a nature power, but a dear hu- The Christ is Born. 129 inanity, our human -heartedness out of Thee coming, in Thee abiding, in Thee becom ing a holier, happier reality. With this great truth of Thy tenderest in dwelling, all life about us lies hallowed, and has some dearer meanings of Thyself. The life that lives in beast and bird is some dear tenderness of Thine at its unselfish work ; the blossom but some beauty of Thyself; the grains and fruits Thy comings forth in kindness for the care of men ; the earth some ministry of Thine as Thou art perfect ing the children of Thy father-love. And what a dawn of brotherhood is here in this dear baby s face ! How consecrate is man to every pulse of love ! Not now may we hate our fellows, not now do them any hurt, not now be indifferent to their woes, not now be content with anything short of helping them each and all become the highest possible. Now find we, Thou in them, to love Thee and to serve. Now fold we the weary wings of a vain searching, if we may find Thee, in this dear busy field of brotherhood, and lo ! here Thou art to many a fine degree; here beauty, love, and service ; here need that we may minister unto Thee who dost unfailing do so mtfch I 130 The Christ is Born. for us. Just to find this truth and love and purity of man, these holiest men, these pur est women, is just to find Thyself, and know what Thou art infinitely in all Thy worlds. To be at work among the lowly and the failing, to help them with some inspiration, some uplift throughout all their life, why this is at Thy secret that doth sing the birds and make the flowers beautiful, the holy babes such rapturing beauty to our eyes, the joy Thou hast in serving everywhere, Thy dear delight in creating children that they may come at last to be the glory of Thy perfect heart. What honor is to us, that we may be co-workers with Thyself in making Thy thought of children be fulfilled through all this joy and sorrow of the humankind, this sin and holiness of men ! For all the blessed Christ has been and is to us, we praise Thee at this Christmas time. For all he is in us, for all he is becoming in us and in all, we give Thee adoration from our deepest, truest hearts. Our hearts now sing a rapture far above the sweetest songs of birds in this new holiness of motherhood. Thou art incarnate in our babes. In them we hold some holiness of Thine. They are some beauty of Thy love for us. They are The Christ is Born. \ 31 some coming of Thine own to bless us with Thyself, to lead us forth into that great un selfishness of Thine by which Thou hast a joy eternal as Thou dost live Thy life for all who are and all who are becoming. O, dear Christ-child, born yet again in our dear babes, we give Thee love, born in our hearts we give Thee welcome, and the dear grace Thou givest holds our hearts and all our thoughts and words and lives in some strong, tender kindness for each thing alive, in the gentleness that makes our brother great. XIX. BY GRACIOUS CHANGING, 133 By Gracious Changing. 135 BY GRACIOUS CHANGING. By gracious changing, Lord, Thy birds Their music sweet are making, But that life passeth in their notes No songs the winds were taking. Thou art at change within the flowers, Their fragrance s outpouring, And so from seeds and soils and dews Thou winnest sweet adoring. Thy doom of change makes autumn s vines, Be garnered summer s treasures, Their fruits but changing glorified In all their rapturing pleasures. By change Thou makest babes be saints, With lives so purifying, The tender women and brave men, A comfort for earth s sighing. Change is Thy grace by which we grow In every thought and feeling, The worth of manhood gaining still, Thy truer life revealing. This grace Thou givest everything, Its present, future glory, No thing without such graciousness Could tell its full, sweet story. 136 By Gracious Changing. And so we praise Thee through our smiles, And when our tears are falling, That change is just Thine own sweet voice To holier childhood calling. We bless Thee for so dear a bird That never stops its winging ; But on through every kind of sky Our destiny is singing. Dear, gracious dawn-voice, lead us on, Thy song our fate is holding ; Our perfect sainthood yet a peace Wherein thy wings are folding. /""CHANGE is upon us. The stream flows ^ by and never returns. Out into the world our beloved ones go ; we may see them again, but the dear spell of the olden day comes no more ; something is gone forever. Streams turn not backward and find the hills again, not even the stream of our lives. Banks once kissed, kissed no more forever ; pebbles once laughed over, laughed over no more forever ; the mill-wheel once turned, turned no more forever. On and still on, ever a losing and a finding are these lives we live. Shadows fall, and through them into the By Gracious Changing. 137 light some dear one goes, never returning from the beauty of the unseen sun. And yet in the midst of .all these changes is one dear eternity, a spring that flows and sings in the desert s heart, that dries not up for all the scorching sands ; this dear, this holy memory that keeps our past a happy pres ent in the midst of every change. In count ing our blessings, that we may grow happy unto gratitude, we count a dearest one this memory, that holds so sacred all our past ; that makes us, for our help, relive the days gone by ; its laughter laugh again ; its tears reweep, and all its faces framed in hallowed days shine on us like bright stars at night, and like the glow of dawns with dews on the grass and birds on the waking winds. We thank Thee that so Thou givest our lives a unity, an aid to growth and greatness, a meaning saving it from loss that hides no gain, the secret of its heart come forth as seeds decaying reveal the blossoms hiding in their deeps. So knowledge abides as fishes in the sea, as gold in rocks, to yield a food to wisdom, a worth to life. So have we from many fields and flocks a gathering for each distaff to spin our thoughts, our purposes, and weave them in the web of life. 138 By Gracious Changing. There is much we would forget because remembrance of it is a pain, a discord steal ing into the strings of life and spoiling its sweet tune. And yet such things do make us wiser than we think, the aching saving us from foolishness, the memory holding us from multiplying folly until we are that shame of life, a fool that never learns. The prodigal at home joys never in his shame which memory keeps so near; and yet it is such nearness of his shame that hallows home, even as clouds spin from the sunbeams the beauties of the rainbow. Indeed, as colors come by help of the black which breaks the sunbeams glories into revelations of themselves, so these dark things of memory make the white holiness of God break through our lives in colors of all pure feeling and true thought. So even for memory that brings back the days of dread, the experiences in old evils, we thank Thee. But, for the dear bright days that come again by grace of memory, we give Thee hearty thanks. These holy faces we have lost, the veil of death so sadly falling over them, how blessed that they come again and yet again as memory does its gracious work, lives out in us its blessed life, its deed, Thy By Gracious Changing. 139 mercy set it unto, done. We are glad that, in losing so much we love, we have not, as well, lost the blessed memory, that sweet eternity in which our beloved all abide and live again for us their dear old holy life. So, Thinker of us, Soul in whom we live, we bless Thee for this dear grace of memory, this help to the meaning and fulfilment of our lives, this continuity of being making all our life of some great worth. XX. NOT FAR AWAY, 141 Not Far Away. 143 NOT FAR AWAY. Not far away where journey vast And weary must be trod, In unseen stars or ancient days Thou dwellest, Father-God. But in the grain that s daily bread, In hunger satisfied, In my heart s threnodies and glees, O God, Thou dost abide. I find Thee in all life that is To think Thy thought of man, And not a thing of earth but fits That tender thinking plan. My being s deeps Thy hidings are, To make my shallows clear ; Within that shaping word, myself, Thy voice of truth I hear. So not afar I journey forth To find my Lord s dear face, But in and in my own deep soul, For there s His dwelling place ; Wherein He s ever home to me With purifying kiss, I taking childhood s joy in Him, He taking Father bliss. 144 Not Far Away. WE are glad, our Father, that Thou dost always give us a sky in which to grow ; in that sky a sunshine that feeds us for oiir blossom ; a dew becoming our fra grance ; an air enwrapping us around with its eternal presence. We have the thought of Thee, an infinite goodness into whose image and likeness it is destiny to grow. We have the thought of Thy universe, its countless truths, its graces and powers, never weary, never failing. What high companion ships with these we have ! How they make us great in feeling, in thought, in outlook, in aspiration ! Then here are our brothers in the strange mystery of life. They bless us. They give meaning and enlargement to our lives. And so we are not the animals of a day. We are the children of the cen turies. We own the sun and stars, the splendid hearts of the ages, the heroic lives of the centuries. And this so priceless heritage which Thou hast given us, we would use as being worthy of it ; we would increase, in a worth appre ciative of Thee, who hast given us of Thine own life, who hast made us partakers of Thine own nature. From low aims we would be delivered; from low thoughts; Not Far Away. 145 from affections that are of the earth earthy. We would dignify the lowest service with the highest spirit, even as Thou dost make Thyself faithful in fashioning gnat s wings or Shakespeare s brain, or the blessed Christ s heart. So to the least work, the greatest, we must do, we would always bring the divinest spirit, beautifying it with faith fulness, and thereby enter into the secrets of Thy being, realizing our sonship to Thee. And yet we would not be content with small duties. Even the trivialties which faith fully done make great, we would not have engage our attention so as to exclude the high things of life, the great themes, the lofty duties. Our roots we would have toil diligent in the soil, but as well our leaves we would have rejoice in the winds, weaving the sunbeams in a happy faithfulness into all this that becomes the grace and substance of our being. We would aspire to become some glory above the ground, some perfect ing oak, some flower yearning to give its blossom to the sun. It is in these higher things that we know our own meanings to fulfil them. It is by discourse upon these highest themes that our brother is revealed to us in his richness, that we grow together J 146 Not Far Away. fulfilling the divine intent. So would we hold together the fellowship of highest thought, of noblest feeling, of splendid, heroic action. In such fellowship the low is transfigured, becoming blossom and fruit. Not so touched with transfiguring friendship, it is like dust upon the winds, when it might be soil in the glory of the clover filling honey-cups for bees. There is a great peace in such fellowship. No thing can be at peace but as it is becom ing Thy thought of it. Fulfilling the divine impulse of destiny, there is a satisfaction for all travail of soul. So are we grateful for books, for art, for music, for church, and home, and all these noble and ennobling fellowships with one another by which life becomes Thy fuller meanings and we Thy dearer, truer children. May we keep all these fellowships of earth in the heavenliness of these diviner themes and thoughts. May we grow together in the sky Thou hast given us, that in it we may be enlarged and blessed by its winds and suns and falling dews. So will we be come in Thee, and Thou in us, the fuller, tenderer, holier meaning of Thy Father hood. XXI. ALL WINGS THAT FLY, 147 All Wings that Fly. 149 ALL WINGS THAT FLY. No bird there is but that it wings Its flight in love divine ; Love makes the winds on which it sings, The wings for flyings fine. Love wove it in its little nest, And in its song appears ; That same love glowing in my breast Through me its rapture hears. Within, without, all wings that fly, Take being from Thy love ; No flight anear, afar they try, But Thou rt beneath, above. O, beating heart ! O, throbbing brain ! O, blessed life that lives ! All earth s fulfilments but refrain Thy perfect loving gives. O, truth that fills my heart with peace ! A joy through all my days, My destiny but love s increase As sing Thy endless lays. Dear Lord, indeed for faith like this My truest love is Thine ; Through earth s each changing, holy bliss Thou more and more art mine. 150 All Wings that Fly. Until I have Thee perfectly In joys that never die, Thou, wind eternal, bearing me, Thou, wings with which I fly. THY love to us takes many a beautiful shape. It comes to us a bird enchant ing with itself, its song, its flight. It comes to us in the sheep, making the pastures al most human. It comes to us in the flowers, until we wonder how beautiful Thou must be out of whose heart comes the endless pro cession of the blossoms. It comes to us in the harvests, laughing out our hunger, giv ing us so much help in thinking about Thy exhaustless kindness. It comes to us in the rills that are like truth s pleasant thoughts that never fail of refreshing. Now it is a falling rain, and now a sunset. Now it is a sea, and now a mountain empurpled with an infinite tenderness. And, as Thou art taking hold of us through these, we are wrought into some strength and beauty to mate and sing with them our anthem of praise for Thy beauty of holiness making everywhere such dear shadows of it self. All Wings that Fly. 151 But the dear human shape of Thy love is holiest. How it enraptures, coming to us a little child ! How it hallows, coming to us a holy mother ! How it strengthens, coming to us a wise father ! How it is gentleness making great, in an unselfish sister ! How it is a spirit ennobling, in a manly brother ! How it enlarges as it comes a procession of friends ever multiplying ! It is the wife making home holy; the husband, making it a safe dwelling place. Now it is some book born through a human heart to up lift, giving us new soils, new skies in which to grow. It is the song of the poet, the story of the novelist, the life of the biogra pher, the past living over again by the faithfulness of the historian, the meanings of things growing clear in the patient work of the scientist. Now it is art, a canvas like Thy creation of a field, a marble seem ing to breathe as though its beauty and strength were flesh and blood, a building that takes the morning sun with an anthem of stone singing to the eye. So comes Thy love in countless ways ever beautiful. And so does it take hold of us, transforming us into a new and growing life, as we answer Thee love for love. Only 152 All Wings that Fly. so can we attain unto fulness of life. Holi ness grows beautiful with a beauty we passion to be like when it is a tender woman or true man, when it is the sweet child that moves a grace of life through the home. In the pres ence of some royal human soul we can not be selfish, but are like trees in the presence of the all-gracious sun who can not abide in themselves, but must push out their heart s treasures into blossom and fruit, that the winds may be enriched, that man s hunger for beauty and for bread may be satisfied. These splendid great souls which help us to think of Thee, which realize Thee to us, charm us into thought and speech and ac tion that become the nourishment of beau tiful, full life in those over whom we have an influence. It is good men and pure wo men that make in the world that passioning holiness that " Hunts the tiger of oppression out From office ; and spreads the divine faith Like calming oil on all the stormy creeds, And fills the hollows between wave and wave ; Nurses Thy children on the milk of truth, And alchemizes old hates into the gold of love." That Thou givest Thyself unto us through them we thank Thee. That we, becoming All Wings that Fly. 153 like them, may give Thee a grace of saving nobleness, unto all our fellows, we bless Thy holy name. In them, in us, in all, be Thy life at an everlasting increase of humanity until we shall realize that Thy doing is but Thy humanity at its full. XXII. DREAMS AND WAKINGS. 155 Dreams and Wakings. 157 DREAMS AND WAKINGS. Thy dreams become Thy wakings, Lord, In everything we see ; Thou hadst a dream that clover is, Another that is bee. Thou hadst a dream of happy songs Each one with wings to fly ; That dream awoke in countless birds, And in the tender sky. Thy dreaming wakens in the grass, And in the giant oak ; It seemed to whisper out the flowers, And then the lambs it spoke. In every life Thou happy art, As when our dreams come true ; No little heart beats out Thy joys But from Thy dreaming grew. Thy deepest heart a dreaming has Of perfect child to be ; Thou drawest near in tenderness That it awake in me. It will come true ; I shall become Thy truest dream awake ; Thy fullest, holiest thought of child Shall all my being take. 158 Dreams and Wakings. And that this be, O grant me, Lord, Experience like Thine, That all my noblest dreamings may Awake in life of mine. That my dream-clover and its bee, My grass and birds and sky, My child and oak, my flowers and lambs, Awake and live and fly. Myself some happy, holy earth, Some heaven s tender glow, All new, divine, such holiness As Thy dear beauties show. Then Thou wilt be the holy dream, And I Thyself come true ; Thyself come forth in all my life Like suns in violets blue. Each other so we ll satisfy, And endless pleasure take, To know our holiest dreamings in Each other come awake. OTANDING in the presence of death, we ^ thank Thee, O Lord, for the faith that we are in the presence of life ; for Thou art life, and Thou art every where. What seems is not the real. It is but the shadow that Dreams and Wakings. 159 the real doth cast. Clouds, be they deepest that have ever gloomed, have in themselves no reality ; and somehow even the light is their maker, and the light not very far off. So of this shadow of death. In itself it is not. No substance has it, no reality. Thou, the All-living, art not afar. It is but the show of some change Thou art making in Thine own, calling them into greater ful ness of life. The chrysalis we see, empty, dead, no life at all within its once so life-enhallowed walls. Does it say that Thou has forgotten to be gracious ? Does it sigh out that we are not in the presence of life, but where death holds a sway supreme? Then look we yonder, and lo ! a winged beauty gracing flowers and putting glory in the sinless air ; and not where death is, but where life, we stand, and see Thee but at work making Thy living beauties. A seed my pleased hand holds, beautiful, full of life. I lose it in the soil. Again I find it where some tangled roots do bed. And now alas ! it s beauty is gone, it is dead, a lifeless shell. Has it found death a dark reality that hides from life so deep, so far, that life can never search it out ? Nay truly ! yonder through those 160 Dreams and Wakings. roots goes life, the life that made the seed so beautiful, goes on by gracious changes Thou dost make, to grow more beautiful, to hang its blossoms out, to know fulfilment glorious that can not come but by these ways we name dark death, and from them blindly shrink and are afraid. I saw a nest upon Thy tree, where blos soms blow, and all the winds are sweetened with their breath ; within, an egg, in shape and color beautiful ; life-built and hallowed by the life that built. I find the nest again. My egg .so beautiful is broke; its colors faded; its life all shaming toward decay; a loss that I lament, and deem my heart of joy still lying in the shadows where death is master and life forgets to come. But there comes floating on the winds a song enrapturing, filled with holiest life ; and then I know that yonder flies my dead egg glorified in fuller life, in life that could not come but by this change of birth that seems to partial eyes a bit of death. So all about me in Thy world I find these changes that are loss, that seem to take us far from life and deep in death. But they are just the changes of growth. Life in them makes its changes for fuller life ; and every- Dreams and Wakings. 161 where we are in the presence of life ; in the , presence of the all-living One, the all-giving One, until we change from glory of life into glory of life, lifting ever into the infinite greatness with which His gentleness maketh great. And so of these, our beautiful, our be loved. It is but a life-change that we see, our eyes not perfect yet to look upon the blaze of glory where they went ; their gar ment here so plainly seen ; the chariots of fire, the horsemen glorious not seen by us lamenting at our loss. With Thee they are, in Thee ; and Thou art life ; and they are life and growth and beauty evermore. O, Living One in whom they live, glow down a little closer to our doubting hearts; give more of life ; Thyself make for us a great reality, and we shall know by the holiness of life and love we realize that Thou art, that they are, that we all are in a life divine, eternal, a growing fellowship of all that s good and great, each change a gracious growth, a blossom newer, finer far, and blown by these very lips of change. A father Thou art, eternal and divine ; we are Thy children that partake of Thine all- glorious nature. Thou art, and we become ; 162 Dreams and Wakings. and change by death is part of our becom ing great, divine, and beautiful like Thee. Thou dreamest and we awaken into being, and by all these changes we experience, are but Thy dreams coming true. For this we are glad, and give Thee the gratitude of our purifying, greatening hearts. XXIII. MY THOUGHTS ARE FLOWERS, 163 My Thoughts are Flowers. 165 MY THOUGHTS ARE FLOWERS. Thy tenderness in April skies Gives rain to all the thirsting, And branches of the pulseless trees With laughing leaves are bursting. So o er my soul Thou weavest clouds Distilling truths in showers ; And all my heart leaps up in joy, And all my thoughts are flowers. life is sweet that moves in Thee, And all things satisfying ; Thy love glows deathless in my soul, And all my thoughts are flying. 1 am an earth that moves along In all Thy holy beauties ; My seasons are Thy glowing thoughts That fruit in purple duties. A child I am ; from Thine own heart s Divinest love I m growing; When perfected Thy graces fine In all my being showing; Thy heart so satisfied to have An answer to its beating, As mine beats back again to Thine, Thy fatherhood completing. 166 My Thoughts are Flowers. OECAUSE Thou art, Thou strong father- D life, Thou tender mother-love in the universe, we are. Thou art the secret of our natures, the hidings of our lives. We are Thy revealings of Thyself. When Thou wouldst be in this outer rim of Thy creation, lo ! cometh to pass that the children of men are; of one blood, though with infinite va riety ; of one love and of one law, of one divine humanity. Not that Thou art here in perfect revela tion. Thou art but revealing in all the children of men, revealing as they work out in liberty their problem of being, their tasks of the race, their labors of manhood. Thou art so thoroughly here that we have being. Thou art so thoroughly withdrawn that we have self-conscious life, a large lib erty of choice and becoming. Like the seeds that rest on the ground that they may climb up into the air and unfold their blos som, so we begin low that we may climb high ; in the animal that we may attain unto the angel begin in a kingdom of earth that we may lift into a kingdom of heaven, and there unfold our being s perfected blossom. And so we are experiencing, learning, growing, our very mistakes mastered into My Thoughts are Flowers. 167 successes, the very shame of our sins awak ening the hunger of holiness, the dullness awakening the need of brightness, the ugli ness awakening the passion for beauty, the real asking for transformation into the ideal. Then so helps what we achieve of noble success, becoming a strength of character. So does the beauty of holiness become to us attainment and aspiration ; so does bright ness and beauty impel us on into life diviner yet ; so does ideal life, above us a tender and infinite sky, win us itself in a gracious growth. And all the while Thou art this without, which instructs, inspires, creates, as it is joy or sorrow unto us in this life which by experience we live. All the while Thou art within our deeps, giving unto us immeasurable life, whose growth rests upon this that is without. Thou art love and truth and aspiration and hope, yea, even the sorrows and despairs, as there is a cry ing out against any of these hurts of time. In all our great infinite within, Thou art the pure spirit out of which we have come, in which we are becoming the fulfilment of Thy tenderest, holiest thought of humanity, the thinkings upon Thyself which in us are 168 My Thoughts are Flowers. blessedly saved from selfishness. And so it is that Thou canst not deny us. We, all of us that girdle Thy round earth, are Thy children ; and we are brethren ow ing a brother s love and duties to one an other in every need, in every achievement. We have a common sorrow, and can under stand the voices of each other s grief with a heart for sympathy and a hand for help. We have common joy, and can understand each other s voice of gladness with a heart for sympathy and a hand for help. We have common despairs, and can understand each other s hopeless gloom, each other s thoughts that make Thy universe a woe, our lives a failure. We have common hopes, and can understand each other s sunny faith, our finding life a good, creation kind. Of one blood Thou hast made us, of one com mon frail humanity. Of one religious na ture we are begotten, and so our religions have their unity, and in exchange of their best and highest we may all become en riched, enlarged, and made great in Thy greatness ever fulfilling in a humanity grow ing diviner. And so, for the era of good fellowship and brotherhood, coming forth in all the My Thoughts are Flowers. 169 earth, we thank Thee, and pray that from all narrowness, and bigotry, and segregating prejudice we may be saved, attaining ever unto that truth that makes good, unto that life that is fulness of joy in our childhood perfecting in Thy everlasting love. XXIV. LAUGHS AT DEATH, 171 173 LAUGHS AT DEATH. Each thing we see is but Thy life Which Thou for us art living ; In every change we re calling death Thou fuller life art giving. The living seed drops in the soil Where night and death are glooming, A grief-glad way by which it finds The laughter of its blooming. The worm creeps lowly on the earth, Its journey s end in dying; Nay ! there at flower banquetings Its resurrection s flying. Where lily boats at anchor ride The grub s last pulse is beating ; But resurrection laughs at death, Its dragon-fly completing. The shame of dust to summer eggs The earth-old death is bringing ; But hark ! those birds on happy wing Death s coronation singing ! So ever life becomes itself In change that s but fulfilling ; And everything we re naming death Is but life s tender willing. 174 Laughs at Death. Eternal Lord of deathless life, Thy perfect love we re prizing, That in the earth and in ourselves Each death is but a rising. "THOU art life, and Thy fulness fills all. There is nowhere that Thou art not. All space is full of Thee. Nowhen has been, can be, and Thou not the pulse-beat of its seconds. Thou art the faithfulness of the grain of sand, the righteousness that keeps suns at their splendors. Thou art an ever lasting yea, saying out truth s words with the fire of a quenchless love in their hearts. Thou affirmest the rose. It is a yea of Thy heart. Thou couldst not deny it into exist ence. When it has faded from our sight, Thou hast said no nay to Thy heart. Thy love that is eternal is full of roses, and their endless beauty will always be. The going of the bloom is but the pause in the cadences of the speech, marking off the music of the voice that says the endless poem of the roses. Not only the music of the voice, but its meanings, is marked off by the silence. So the seed is said, and then is the silence of its decay as though there was a nay in Thy Laughs at Death. 175 beating heart ; but we listen on, and Thy heart s meanings clear as Thy voice is a tongue of green above the ground. That fades as though Thou hadst denied something, but it is the pause marking off the meaning of the speech ; for Thou sayest on and on, and the vine rhymes its verse in the vineyard s song. Then is the blossom said, to pause in that fading that is the silence marking off the greening grape. Then the empurpled speech, a splendor on the autumn winds : then the fading that is silence making seed; and so speaks on the endless rhythm of Thy speech we call the grape. Death is not denial. It is not the nega tion of life. Within the silence we call death there is life at the task of making its affirmations, nothing passing away, but each fulfilled in the fuller life that speaks, as when a note sweetens and gathers into the full song from the singer s throat. The denial of the caterpillar which we call death is life s affirmation of the butterfly. And when life to us seems gone, crushed out beneath some blundering, cruel feet, and we do not see it affirming butterflies, our faith holds still the truth that Thy heart s speech is moulded to some fuller word, the worm still on some 176 Laughs at Death. wings of ascent with pauses to help out the meaning and the music of its life, until it is a fulness of Thy heart s eternal yea. The babe on the mother s breast is the language of Thy heart. It is an affirmation of Thine everlasting love. When babyhood is in silence there is no denial, but simply pause that Thy music of human life may say on in the child. When the child is in si lence, it is but another pause that Thy fuller truth of man may speak out. And when has disappeared the consecrated flesh that seemed our beautiful friend, our faith holds it true that this silence is but a pause mark ing off the music and meaning of Thy per fecting human speech that sings in Thy endless music through Thy universe, finding nowhere, nowhen and Thou not filling it with the sweet positiveness of Thyself. Nothing can not create. Denial can not fulfil in anything that is. It is void, an emptiness that fills nothing. No world could come from it. Not a grain of sand or a star. Not rose nor oak. Not gnat nor bird. Not babe nor man. That the oak crowns the hill, that the bird is on the wing, that the babe is on the breast, is fact of a life that is positive and kind, creating the Laughs at Death. 177 universe in a glory that no deaths can deny. We are and have been and will be, the changes we call death but the pauses of Thy heart s speech marking off the music and meanings of Thy love s elo quence that is our endless human life. Thou art eternal life, and we are of that life an imperishable part, and no denial anywhere, for Thou and Thy creation art eternal yea and amen. XXV. IN EVERYTHING REVEALED. 179 In Everything Revealed. 181 IN EVERYTHING REVEALED. In everything Thou art revealed The faithfulness that gives The bounties of our happy earth, And every life that lives ; Thy love the grace in every flower, A rapture for our eyes ; In every bird Thy thinkings speak A holy word that flies. Thou art the dear humanity These brother faces show ; The holy deeps of Thine own life These lives of ours bestow ; And when we re sore a-hungering what Thy hidden lovings mean, In lives of human goodness Thou Dost vision Thy unseen. We give Thee back Thy holy love In loving everything The dear earth s faithfulness has won From Thy pure passioning ; We love Thee back Thy birds and flowers, Thy human children dear ; In every deed of kindness done Our troubled thinkings clear. Earth s changing beauties are to show How beautiful Thou art ; Their passing but some deepening grace Of Thine eternal heart, 182 In Everything Revealed. Compelling us for dying ones The happy faith to hold, That they in love diviner yet Their being s sweets unfold. "T 1 HY universe, O Lord of all being, is alive; and life must be its interpreter. It is a universe of life, and therefore uni versal life must interpret it. It is at play upon man, it is fulfilling in man, and so for its understanding the entire man must be at work upon it, must be fulfilling in it. Each thing is related to each other thing, and so are but the parts of the infinite whole. Nothing stands alone, and can alone be un derstood. In other things it loses itself, and in them must have a part of its interpreta tion. Then each thing is at some service, a diligence it is in all this wonderful becom ing, a part of which we are. By this ser vice, this diligence, it unfolds its nature, fulfils its place in the universal whole. The root of the rose can not interpret the mar velous red of the sunbeam. Its stalk can only show us the green. There must be the working out of leaf and bud and blossom, In Everything Revealed. 183 the bush s full nature, before the sun may know the rose, the rose the sun, before that man can know the glory of their work-fel lowship. Something in the violet responds to something in the sun, and both are glori fied in the perfected blossom. A dead seed can not answer a living sun, nor a dead sun call forth a beauty from a living seed. Life unto life, life for life, and so we behold the wonders of creation. As true is it of us, Thy children higher than that bit of living, lowly sky, we call the violet. If Thy universe is to fashion us, there must be that within us to respond to all its moods, its powers, its truths, its loves. Any part of our nature dead, the work of a living universe can not be done upon us, we can not together become the beauty of Thine intent. If we have killed ourselves with falsehood, we can not know the truth that maketh free. If we have de filed ourselves with evil affections, we can not know the pure love that is everywhere. If there is no beauty of holiness within us, there is no beauty of holiness without to bless us in the greatness of its life. Thou who art the God within us and the God without us, help us to realize this truth. Only as we realize it can we grow up into 184 In Everything Revealed. Thy thought of a child. Only so shall our knowledge be wisdom. Only so shall our lives be saved from foolish waste. We have so much useless knowledge which is but as the mould of graves ; so much idle specula tion about Thy universe, Thy Christ, Thy self, that is but the roadside dust, so thick on the grass that it can not breathe and grow. Help us into truer life than this. May the universe within be all alive and answer ing in a blessed growth the universe with out. May the Christ within be all respon sive to the Christ without; so shall we know Him the way, the truth, and the life, lead ing to Thee, our beautiful and everlasting Father. May Thyself within us be respon sive to Thyself without ; so shalt Thou have children giving unto Thee fullness of life \ so shall we have a Father who is our eternal life, our everlasting gladness ; so shall we be saved from the trivialities of men, and in Thy greatness be made great ; so shall we be at the full solution of our life s problem, our entire manhood interpreting it, our entire life fulfilling it ; so will our weeping in the essential sorrows of life endure but for the night, and in the morning come our laughter in the essential gladness of our life as it lies in Thy perfect fatherhood. XXVI. I GRIEVE NOT HOPELESS, 185 / Grieve not Hopeless. 187 I GRIEVE NOT HOPELESS. From silver winds thy sparrow s throat Spun golden skeins of song, Enchanting me till I forgot That earth has any wrong. But sudden shadow darkened down, And all the music stilled ; The cruel hawk reminding me That earth with wrong is filled. And yet, though death its silence brought, Bird songs are everywhere, And sing to me that right abides With wrong the earth to share. Though hell s aflight on wicked wing, Yet heaven s wings are spread, And truth still has its songs that sing, Though falsehood has its dead. I grieve not hopeless that thy earth So answers shine with shade ; For joy keeps singing in the faith, Thy earth s but being made. What thine eternal loving means Shall come from all the strife, And every bit of being know That Thou art willing life ; 188 / Grieve not Hopeless. Thy right but toiling at its tasks, With wrong its fashioning stroke ; Death but intenser shade of dawn As fuller life outbroke. So true and truer make my thoughts, My heart make wholly good, Each passing grief a shrine wherein Thyself creating stood ; Until no death s upon my winds, No songs that pass away, Each heart-beat but a song to praise, And not a fear to pray ; Thy finished work a holy peace, Wherein thy heart may rest ; A benediction earth says back For all thy words that blest. ONLY as Thou dost sustain us, Thou one pure, steadfast life, can we live out Thy nobleness amid these changes all about, these temporizings, these false and evil mo tives. It is the steady, eternal within which holds the without to high ends, in faithful ness to its nature, in the accomplishment of its work. The oak is not simply an outer / Grieve not Hopeless. 189 struggle and toil with the elements. It is a thought, an inward life fulfilling in the outer world. The bird upon the bough, that sways and sings and sings and sways, is not simply a bit of frail flesh with dangers everywhere. It is an inward thought, a life wrought out in flesh that all its fairness may help beautify the earth. And so of all these things we see. They are outward manifestations of inward realities. The inward reality makes them possible, sustains them, keeps them, when the outward form changes, vanishing away. So of us, Thy children of the human life. This flesh is manifestation, not reality. Its outward environment and relationships are but changes for the fulfilment of the in ward reality, the life that abides, the thought that is eternal. No thought begins in matter and ends in matter. Its beginning is in spirit, its work through matter, its end in spirit. It is the eternal with the temporal as theater of action, that so action may be fashioned into deathless beauties fulfilling ever. And so is life s immeasurable worth; in deathlessness, the dignity of our human nature. Not only we, but our deeds are immortal, spirits gathered from their outward 190 / Grieve not Hopeless. passing into the heavens and hells of our character. In this truth there is dread and sustain ing; dread that we can not do the low and mean, and escape it by distance of time and space ; sustaining that we can not waste a noble, true action, that it abides all the outward changes, still blessing. To him who lives and dares for the right there is the sustaining consciousness of union with the eternal, of inevitable success in the universe, that amid all the seeming failures there lies the true and everlasting success, upon the decay of failures feeding its very growing greatness. Amid every waste of winter, vegetation is still undefeated. Spring fails not in its coming, and the hidden life fails not of its revealing on every mountain, in every valley. So it is that we may have ever the courage of the undefeated heart ; that ever out of the most overwhelming de feat we may rally victory ; that there is no weariness unto death in the wars of righteous ness. In the fulness of this truth take our hearts. Possess us so that we may feel Thy sustaining presence always, making us wise, strong, victorious. Be Thou our fortress / Grieve not Hopeless. 101 in which we abide safely, from whence we make our assaults and order our campaigns. Then will Thy purpose to possess the earth by us in a perfecting holiness be at its gra cious fulfilment. Heart of our heart, be tender and pure within us. Life of our life, be ever gracious and true and kind as Thou dost live us out, Thy graces that can bless. Courage within our courage, be brave for every deed, endur ing for every warfare. Wisdom within our wisdom, be the fulness of our thought, the sacredness of our speech, the holiness of our action. Love within our love, be pure, peaceable, a fervent sun infilling the whole earth of our lives with creations of beauty and service. Fatherhood within our child hood, come forth, the holiness, the beauty of thy children, the transfiguration of earth in the glories of eternal life, through truth and love working out its delights that never gloom in any grief. So will the fulfilment of Thy meaning of us be an everlasting peace unto Thee. XXVII. OUR HUMAN HUNGER S MINISTRY, 193 Our Human Hunger s Ministry. 195 OUR HUMAN HUNGER S MINISTRY. Thou art the sun whose tender glow The earth s true heart of loving gains, Until its patient toilings grow Becoming fruits and golden grains ; In these the sun transformed to be Our human hunger s ministry. Thou art the air that breathes around, Becoming storm or gentle breeze, That so each leaf above the ground Works out its tasks of flowers and trees ; In these the winds transformed to be Our human hunger s ministry. Thou art the rain that gentles down From clouds that hide the blue above, The rain that weaves the blossoms crown, The fruit, sweet passion of its love ; In these the rain transformed to be Our human hunger s ministry. Thou art the ground whose darkness gives Its treasures to the growing roots, Until its life each glad thing lives, And loves into its ripened fruits ; In these the soils transformed to be Our human hunger s ministry. But more than these, O Lord, Thou art, In love divine that never dies ; Each hunger of the human heart 196 Our Human Hunger s Ministry. Thy human heart so satisfies ; Thyself each thing transformed to be Our human hunger s ministry. So weave we sun and wind and rain, And lowly grounds rich faithfulness, Into our hymning heart s refrain That would Thy deepest being bless ; Ourselves in love transformed to be Thy human hunger s ministry. BECAUSE Thou art love, O creation s Lord, Thou art the life of everything that is. Because Thou art wisdom, every thing has its own perfectness, living in law. Thy affection that is the rose comes to its wonder of bloom by no unguided impulse, by no lawless magic. Through wisdom it is wrought out to be the joy and fragrancing it is. Because it is what it is, it can come only in the way it comes. Coming in an other way it were not itself, but something other, the dear marvel of its joyance bless ing not at all. So of Thy aifection that is the lamb at play in the fields, the thrush at song on the winds, the child that is a joy in homes the grasses and grains, the flowers and fruits, the horses and kine, the Our Hitman Hunger s Ministry. 197 flocks that sing in groves and fly the upper fields of air. Each thing that is, is but some tenderness of Thine ; but not a tenderness that is idle, aimless feeling, beginning in and ending in Thyself, but a tenderness that is a thought, in wisdom wrought to be the thing that joys and blesses us. No aimless impulse is in all Thy being. No fickle love can pulse in Thy wise heart. Thy loves are thoughts ; Thy thoughts are loves ; and everything a steadfast law that moves in love, that fruits in wisdom ; and so in all that Thou hast made through which to love us we can trust Thee, and never be confounded with any failure of Thy faith-keeping with us in all that is. Gold is gold, the iron iron ; the grass is grass, the grape grape ; the sheep is sheep, and kine are kine ; the dove is dove, the robin robin ; man is man, and woman woman ; within pure love, right thought, themselves and nothing else; within, without, each thing, and all, is true to itself, its fellows no magic anywhere confusing. The wisdom of Thy love is the fervor of Thy love, the faithfulness of it, the saving power of it, the fine splendors of it by which the universe becomes, and man, Thy child, into Thy image and likeness ever growing. 198 Our Human Hunger s Ministry. That this is true we bless Thee, though it is truth that often wounds us, making us afraid. But yet, when we think deeper, we know well that everything that hurts in its own inmost being is a love at work to help, to be to us some grace of holiness and joy. We get at wrong with it and turn its help to hurt. Each thing in its place, and doing its own work, is always love at gracious toil of making good and glad this life. But out of place, and used in ignorance or sin, it hurts, and we defeat its gracious makings, having ashes for beauty and the spirit of heaviness for the garment of praise. Of this great truth make us to realize that we are partakers, for only so can we be come satisfying children to Thee, our lives not spent in vain. So help us to know that our affections must not be blind impulses, but thoughts, that they must work themselves out into acts that are pure and holy and full of help. To have a noblest impulse is not alone enough. It must be wrought into a wise thought, into a true work, into a right ac tion. So only can our love fulfil itself; a nobleness to those without; a childhood unto Thee who ever worketh out Thy love through wisdom, nothing erring, in all things true and steadfast, a very present Our Human Hunger s Ministry. 199 help to man, a final glory unto him as he lives the life Thou livest thus for him. So help that all our love through wisdom may work out a life, a character, like Thine tender, faithful, wise, abiding ; a child hood answering perfectly Thine own great fatherhood, that never fails in tenderness because of wisdom it has never any lack. XXVIII. BEING S FULL BLOSSOM WILL BLOW. 201 Being s Full Blossom will Blow. 203 BEING S FULL BLOSSOM WILL BLOW. Into slime, into foulness, is gone The seed that the lily s heart missed ; But its soul held a bit of the dawn That the lily in tenderness kissed. As it lay neath the waters so dark, It dreamed of the beautiful sun ; It dreamed of the song of the lark, And the winds that at playing did run. The sun loved the lily ; its beams Warmed down where the little seed lay ; It awoke from its love s tender dreams, And determined to climb into day. From the very foulness it won Some graces of courage to climb, That the dream of its heart might be done, A deed of the dear summer time. It clomb through the dark slimy ways ; It clomb from the pond s dreary night ; And lo ! through the bright summer days It walked with its dear Lord in white. E en so from these evils we ll grow ; For our hearts hold a bit of Thy grace ; And our being s full blossom will blow In the tender light of Thy face. 204 Being s Full Blossom will Blow. T^HOU, O Creator, who art Love, hast not 1 finished Thy work of making man and withdrawn afar, leaving him to his own de vices, to the devastations of enemies that prey upon his helplessness. Thou art here at work in a holy diligence. Thou art at work without him ; Thou art at work within him. Thou givest him an earth which will give him an experience. An earth without Thou givest, an earth within. And as he subdues this earth which seemeth to be two, Thou art creating him more and more into what Thy deepest heart doth purpose. He is rooting fast in the earth s hard and battling conditions ; he is growing toward his blos som of ethical and spiritual and divine life. Seems it that he works alone, but he is never uncompanioned by Thee. Thou hidest in the secrets of his being. Thou art not afar from all his experiences. Thou sittest above them as a weaver, and when their threads are spun Thou bringest them into their place in the web of his making. Indeed, what lies above and within all his life is greater than what he is conscious of; greater in Thy touch of fashioning than in that which he lives in all his conscious ways. He seems apart from this creation of Thine ; upon it, not built into it. Being s Full Blossom will Blow. 205 And yet Thou hast made him in the sub tlest relationships to everything that is. Upon his life, for lowest and for highest ends, each thing that is doth make its nature felt ; is texture woven fast within the growing man. If poisons be without, their moral qualities are within. If grains that grow for life unfold in fields, their moral counterparts are in man s deepest heart; are coming forth in all his conscious life. If beasts unclean apart do make their cruel lairs, their moral qualities within man hide to work destruction there. If beasts of sweetness roam the fields with gentleness, enriching all the earth, their spirit doubles are within each man to hallow and to sanctify. If birds without do darken all the air with their dread wings of foulness and of death, some how they fly within the soul of man, to darken there, and there to devastate. If birds of beauty, every flight a joy, and every heart-beat but a burst of song, make all the winds without seem sinless and di vine, they fly as well the soul of man ; they are his thoughts, they nest and bring forth young in all the nobler regions of his heart. Each thing that is without has deep in man its double ; spiritual, ethical, divine. 206 Being s Full Blossom will Blow. And so, Lord, help us do for ourselves within what we are doing for ourselves without. The foes without with diligence we subdue. We shun what would bring evil upon us the sicknesses and deaths. So may we shun and cast out from all our hearts within whatever is unclean or cruel, what ever is that makes our moral life grow sick and die. May every sight and sound and cruel thing that is evil be brought to death, and we grow pure and beautiful like Thee ; for us a heaven new, an earth re deemed and sanctified. As vines turn everything they feed upon into the blushing grape, may we from all that is, from all that we experience, grow for Thee something beautiful, divine, in which Thy heart will be forever satisfied, Thy whole great being so at joy that in our selves it has at last its own blessed fulfil ment, the great creation done. XXIX. WITHIN MY HEART, 207 Within My Heart. 200 WITHIN MY HEART. All beauty that without me lies Is there to fashion me, A child of beauty that Thy heart May love so joyously. A bird Thou lovest for itself ; Thy heart flies in its wings ; Some dear enchantment of Thyself In all its music sings. But yet it flies its happy way Within Thy tender thought, That somehow all its beauty may Within my heart be wrought. It wakens life within my soul That deathless beauty gives ; That life, its happy counterpart, In me eternal lives. And thus of all these wondrous things That stir my senses so, They are without, that I, within, May in their graces grow. Thy whole creation joys Thy heart For its own beauty s sake : And yet Thou dost through all its ways Thy human children make. N 210 Within My Heart. And they can love Thee as no bird Abroad on happy wing ; They understand Thy holy thought ; They feel Thy passioning. So through creation moves Thy life, That it may move in me, And Thou at last may have a child, Thy heart s dear company. The travail of my making then, Will both so satisfy ; Thou, as a bird s own beating heart, I, as its wings that fly. O life eternal, flying, then, One happy heart that beats ; My love in Thine is perfected, My life Thine own completes ! 117E find Thee for beauty in Thy flowers, W f or singing in Thy birds, for kind ness in Thy grains that grow to bless, for grandeur in Thy mountains and Thy seas, for gentleness in all Thy sheep and kine. Thou art the life of all, and everything is some dear fulfilment of Thyself. But most we thank Thee that, for hallow- Within My Heart. 211 ing, human love, we find Thee in our kind. Thou art the dear babe s tenderness, the children s holy innocence; Thou art the mother s deathless love, the father s ; Thou art in all these human lives incarnate ; Thou their causing and fulfilment, their deepest meaning, their always diviner be coming. As daisies smiling in the dawn translate the sun, too great for us to look upon his naked glory, so these dear human friends do make Thee known. They make Thy meanings unto us so plain and beautiful. In great endearment they hold our hearts along diviner ways that lead to Thee. Thou art the beauty of each face ; Thou art the love of each dear heart; the faithfulness, the holiness, that through them makes us great. And so for them we give Thee our thanks. Growing together into holiness, we will find Thee in a childhood deepening ever into what Thy truest love doth mean. We are glad that Thou hast given Thyself to us in the great and good of the earth ; in these, who have been tender and true, who are inspiration unto the holiest, who are pio neers of the ever-coming better day. What they were Thou art infinitely. In them Thou art made flesh and dost dwell among 212 Within My Heart. us, teaching us Thy beauty of holiness that we may desire Thee; teaching us the possibilities that in ourselves lie unfulfilled ; for what they are we may become, our be ing s full to faithfulness attained as fine as theirs, though in fame and greatness they surpass us far. Thou art in them unto their perfecting, and in us Thou dost abide that we become Thy holiest meanings of a child. In them Thou givest us some image of our selves as we may be, as we become admiring them and touched by consecrating fire from out their lives. So do they become Thy divine words blessing us, Thy gentleness making us great. They have been some quiet contemplation leading us into peace ; some battle deed, leading us into noble daring ; some unself ishness that has enlarged us in Thy greatness ; some love that has been to us a renewing unto the eternal life ; some purity that has been unto us holiness ; some truth that has been unto us wisdom ; some life that has lifted us into deathless regions of noble be ing ; in them the graces of Thyself becoming grace unto us that we may become grace unto Thee. For these, the noble of earth, we thank Within My Heart. 213 Thee ; for the tender and true ones we bless Thy holy name, and ask Thee that like them we may become, for the blessing of others, for the enrichment of this earth in the graces of the divine and eternal life. Make us so true that our lives will be a bugle blast for many a one so sorely battling against the false. Make us so good that we in others will create goodness, as Thy sun in its gentleness creates these growing things of Thy wide earth. Make us so loving that all our ways may lie in tenderness, and taking all the troubled and the sad in the great faith that Thou art love, and all Thy doings but a Father s faithful, tender, holy care. So wilt Thou ever be seeing of the travail of Thy soul, satisfied in Thy children ; and Thou in them and they in Thee so glorified. XXX. ABROAD ON THE THOUGHT OF GOD. 215 Abroad on the Thought of God. 217 ABROAD ON THE THOUGHT OF GOD. The birds in the morning sing, And the evening hears them still ; For they are abroad on the thought of God, And not by their own sweet will. No blame to their being is, No sin that compels to pray ; What they must be is His decree, Who heareth no creature s nay. O, peace of the birds steal in, Becoming my sore heart s ease ; For where s my blame for this life s red flame, Consuming as it may please ? Compelled unto what I am By a power I can not see, I have no voice in my being s choice, And this life s sweet tyranny. Then my voice in the morn may sing, And the evening hear it still ; For I am abroad on the thought of God, And not by my own sweet will. No blame to my being is, No sin that compels to pray ; What I must be is His decree, Who heareth no creature s nay. Yet does my heart declare I may sing as sings the free, Though without my nay, an eternal yea Determined that I must be. 21 8 Abroad on the Thought of God. I may choose what I become ; Creator with Him I am To share the blame for my life s red flame, Burning, or storm, or calm. So my voice in the morning sighs, And the evening hears it still ; For though abroad on the thought of God, And not by my own sweet will, Much blame to my being is, Much sin that compels to pray ; What I must be in His decree Is my answering yea or nay. Creative power is mine To reject or choose the right ; There is much I will that I may fulfil In liberty s dread delight ; Of His being mine own partakes Who has willed that I be free, And know His peace in a sweet increase As His truth s fulfilled in me. My voice in the morning sings, And the evening hears it still ; For I am abroad on the thought of God, And abroad on my own sweet will ; With Him I share my blame, And my sin that compels to pray ; What I must be is our joint decree As I answer Him yea or nay. Abroad on the Thought of God. 219 SO much we find in Thy creation, our Father, that hurts us, so much that seems the death of kindness and of love. Not simply that these things interfere with our life, retard our growth, turning us back upon the evil, but that it makes us ache to see and know the hurt of others of Thy creatures. We are hurt with the wounds of all, in the impoverishment of all we are made poor. Yet do we find in Thy creation a marvel ous kindness, a grace of unsearchable ten derness, in flowers breathing, in fruits and grains ministering, in the beating of count less hearts that may break and bleed ; in all Thy forces some kindness done, some crea tion of beauty and gladness marshaling out of the confusion of changing and of pain. Life that is everywhere, seeming to fill all fulness, is a grace of kindness, a pulse of some love going forth to bless, so that it comes to us in a great and happy faith, that Thou, who art the fulness of all life, art most kind, Thy being but an everlasting love, Thy creation making for the happiness of all. This very kindness in our hearts, by which the hurt of the world is our wound aching in the heart of all our joy, is from Thee, is 220 Abroad on the Thought of God. Thy meaning, as much as is a bird, or a harvest, or a stream. As soils, disturbed by change and set at toil of growth through magic looms of seeds, intend a blossom and a fruit, so are Thy meanings but this gentle ness that stirs our hearts, this kindness mov ing us that we may be in all its graces mer ciful. That which seems most natural, that which stirs us to the greatest glory of admira tion, is not fierceness, but gentleness ; is not destruction, but creation ; not cruelty, but kindness. Jesus more than Nero seems Thy true intent, a showing forth in lovely flesh the deepest meanings of Thy gracious heart. The earth is full of ministries, life giving up itself in service unto life, a neces sity of unselfishness everywhere, even in destruction creation but at work ; and so the law of life is love, the order of the universe is ministry, kindness the grace in which life drinks its fullest cups of bliss, all dear and serving tenderness at one with Thy great life, the kind and loving ones fulfilling in Thy being, deathless, full of everlasting joy. And we, to fulfil ourselves, must be kind, breathing out mercy as the flowers their fragrance, as the fruits round into beauty that they may feed earth s hungers, reknit- ting life s each raveling sleeve of service. Abroad on the Thought of God. 221 The holiness in Thy universe is loving kind ness. We mate Thy heart in love and life when we are busy doing to the least the kindness that Thy being means. Not pray ers, not gorgeous rituals, not cathedrals vast, or creeds of great thoughts fashioning, is that which pleases Thee and makes us great in Thy holiness, but little kindnesses done, so sweet and natural like, so unselfishly, that they are forgotten in the doing. Even as Thou dost fulfil in Thy creation, ever busy at the ministries of life, so may we fulfil in being kind to all, in healing wounds of body or of soul, in making life as rich, as happy as may be for every heart that beats. Not simply for our brothers of the human kind, but for our brothers of the earth and air, for each sharer with us in the joy and ministry of life. So will we reveal Thee, so become like Thee, Thou fulfilled in us and we in Thee ful filled unto a peace eternal, come from all the troubling of our making, our green pastures and still waters experienced here, when Thy shepherdhood is at the full glory of its love, loving in our love, serving in our service, a human kindness in all the kindnesses we do, a gentleness within our lives that says to all a mercy, grace, and peace. XXXI. EVERYWHERE. 223 Everywhere. 225 EVERYWHERE. Thou art lowing in Thy kine And bleating in Thy sheep ; Thy singing is the happy birds, Thy chanting, ocean s deep. Thou art blowing in Thy winds And shining in Thy sun ; Thou ripenest the growing grains And all the saps that run. Thy tenderness is baby s face ; Thy blushes are the grapes : No thing s within Thy universe But that Thy loving shapes. Creation is Thy coming forth To do Thy holy will ; And every voice when truest heard Is saying, " Peace ! be still ! " In everything Thy loving glows ; I find Thee everywhere ; No thing is anywhere but that Thy being it doth share. And so I live eternal life ; And nothing ever dies : What we are naming death is but Some fuller life s surprise. 226 Everywhere. "THY universe is one, O Lord ; Thy uni- * verse is many. One love through all beats out its holy tides of life. And yet in numbers countless are the affections that glow out in this so varied creation. There is the glow that is a star, that is a burning sun ; the glow that is a sea, that is a moun tain vast j the glow that is a rose, that is the blushing grape ; the glow that is a bird, that is a fish that swims the waves ; the glow that is the falling rain, the harvests lifting in the autumn winds ; the glow that is the gentle sheep, the lions fierce that make us so afraid ; the glow that is a mellow June, December harsh and cold ; the glow that is the wasting storm, the summer day of peace ; the glow that is the helpless babe, the great heroic man ; the glow that is in every leaf, and never one exactly like its mate ; the glow that is in every man and none is just the same ; the glow that is in this so sweet and strange a life we live, with many moods, our song played out in many keys. And yet the love that is at life in every thing so different each from each, and each to each ne er perfect like, is Thy one love that makes itself complete in many joys as everything becomes. One truth in all keeps Everywhere. 227 everything at faithfulness to its nature and its work. And yet in numbers countless are the truths that love works out in all this world of beauty infinite. A truth makes water water, always this and nothing else ; and fire but always fire and nothing else. A truth makes grain be always grain, and fruit in mellow globes be always fruit. A truth it is that makes the thrush a thrush, and never vulture darkening days with its so carrion-haunting wing. A truth makes sheep be always sheep, and never ravening wolves ; the oak be always oak, and never thistle stinging tongues of kine. Each life works out itself by truth, and so becomes itself, no other, changing ever and confus ing thought. And so there is the truth, the orderliness, that is a rose \ the truth that is a grape ; the truth that is a bird ; and every thing that is, from every other thing diverse, itself unto itself forever true. And change has its own truth, a law by which it works its transformations, as life, or we ourselves, fulfill among these elements of earth. And yet the truth that is the faithfulness, the being of everything, is Thy one truth by which Thou dost live and work out Thy thoughts in all these lives that are fulfilling 228 Everywhere. on Thy earth. So all things together live, together grow, each helping all, all helping each ; each enriched by all that is, and we in truth enriching all that makes its calls upon our lives, that asks a service of our hands. One tune Thy love through truth is sing ing out, each thing a note in Thy so great glad harmony. This truth, the shining face of tender love, let help us of the human kind, until we shall indeed be one in deepest love, in highest endeavor to live out our lives, howe er diverse we are and never meant to be the same. May we have love for each, for all ; and in that love do service beautiful in self-forgetfulness, in faithfulness as fine as are the deeds Thine own hand does. May we be so at peace with all, that their great good may bless us ; that our good be grace and riches unto them. Thy one love blend our hearts, until all differences be not hate, nor hurt, but help and healing for each other s wounds. Thy truth make all our thoughts so faithful that they may never be in confusion, but clear, and answering others as the notes for music do. Thy life live out in ours, that they be each to each Thy gentle ness making great. XXXII. SOMETHING HIGHER SINGS, 229 Something Higher Sings. 231 SOMETHING HIGHER SINGS. In everything some higher is, The lowlier to complete, And make for every loving heart Each change but bitter-sweet. Nor heart nor wing beats out a tune, But something higher sings, To sanctify in happier life This earth s sad passionings. Within the dove a tenderer Croons out its gentleness, With peace eternal every wind Of every heart to bless. Within the rose a finer rose Is sweetening all the air, That every garden of the soul Be always growing fair. Within the grape one ruddier Is at its blessed deed, That it may bless the soul of man In some great higher need. Within the kine some nobler herd Its gentler service yields, That there be ministry divine In all our spirit fields. 232 Something Higher Sings. __ No lowlier life is anywhere But that some higher makes ; No lowlier perishes at all But that the higher takes, Takes and works out in lovelier forms, In life diviner yet ; Each change ascension from the top Of holy Olivet. Within my love a purer love Is at its holy life ; In all my thought some truer thought With wiser thinkings rife. Within my being Fatherhood So satisfies its thought, As unto holier childhood I Am always being wrought. So life in me and for me sings But endless happy songs ; And death for them no silence is, But sky that each prolongs ; Where neath I ll find whom I have lost, The loving ones who died, Death but some dearer change of life That each has glorified. Something Higher Sings. 233 HTHINKING, our Father, Thou doest Thy 1 thoughts, creation becoming. When Thou hast a deep affection, a great stir ring of heart, Thou livest it forth, and it becomes a grace of things that are. Through what Thou doest Thou livest forth Thyself, that Thou mayest be fulfilled in many ways, in countless children. Thou art saved in Thy deeds from self-communion in a sel fishness meaning death. By what Thou doest, Thou dost enrich in fulness of life; what is expressed in creation becoming more and more some enriching of Thyself. Thou hast a dear thought, and it is done, a bird upon these winds of earth, and that thought is evermore a richer thought to Thee, enlarged in that thou didst share it with a glad-beating other heart. Thou hast a dear heart s tenderness, and it becomes a flower breathing out its sweetness on the winds ; in its deed Thy loving deepened, and it made far more Thine than if Thou hadst not shared it with Thy children of the earth. Thou hast a thought of child, Thy central being s tenderness, and Thou dost do its deed in the dear babe upon the mother s breast, in man immortal in Thy life that never dies; and in this deed of man Thou 234 Something Higher Sings. dost enrich Thyself, in gracious life Thyself more fixed, a greatening of Thy universe. In doing Thou hast being, and in all Thy passing deeds Thy thought, Thy love, en riches ever, Thou becoming more and more divine. So, too, must we fulfil ourselves. So is the doom upon us of doing well our deed of life, that in its passing we become a fuller, truer man, fulfilling in a grace of being beautiful like Thine. Teach us the saving power of a deed. Teach us that our being s fulness only comes as we do out whatever from Thee stirs within our hearts. So be this truth a part of us that we will always do the wise, right deed, the deed of love that fruits a glory in each opportunity. As Thou art fascinated unto making birds and flowers and all the green and growing things, as moves Thy heart to make all things alive, to bring forth man that Thy great being s graces may be shared, so may we seek ever to do the deed which is joy-bringer to the world, which is a saving righteousness to men, which is a kindness winning hearts into its spell, which is a holiness, a beauty s own great heart wrought out. We do the right, the deed but passing as Something Higher Sings. 235 it s done ; but yet is life enriched for us, for those for whom, to whom, the deed is done. No thought is richly ours until we do it well; then is it a fixture in this subtle life of ours. No love that stirs the heart is truly ours until.it becomes a deed, like bread for some poor hungry soul. Then it becomes a grace of being, a richness of life, an eternity abiding every change of time. The soil lies dead, a dull and disappointing thing, until the flowers lead it forth, until the harvests become its deeds that show its hidden glories to our happy eyes. Then is it rich in beauty, and in plenty that was not before. So we lie lifeless until in deeds we express ourselves, and then we are saved unto a fulness of life and glory, like the fields clothed in their harvests. Ever would we be doing, that so we may become; that from all wasting of this precious life we may be saved ; that being may fulfill in all Thy busy toil that thinks no ill to man; that Thy great heart may rejoice in its unselfishness, as all Thy uni verse is shaping to a song of joy, Thy crea tion moving to its blossom and its fruit. XXXIII. TO EVERY HEART THAT BEATS, 237 To Every Heart that Seats. 239 TO EVERY HEART THAT BEATS. Thou, Lord, art life, and giveth life To every heart that beats ; Each thing that pushes blossomward Thy holy life completes. Thou art at joy in everything That from Thy life takes shape ; Thy loving is the lily s breath, Thy laughter is the grape. Thou playest in the meadow lambs, Thy joy the robin sings ; Thy tenderness is mother-love That holy children brings. There is no cursing in Thy heart, Thy hand lifts not to blight, To make joy triumph everywhere, Thy being s deep delight. Thou perfect Fatherhood ! I d give A perfect child to Thee ; O enter all my being s deeps And make me such to be. Then we shall both be perfected, Each heart-beat satisfy ; Then every breath will be a song, Each change a wind to fly. 240 To Every Heart that Beats. hast a child s heart, O God, a child s heart that never grows old. So it is that tender flowers from that child heart of Thine come forth to bless the earth. So come the lambs at play ; the youngling birds at joy to learn their spread of wing, their flight of song. So morning s new each day, a dewy babe to take our hearts in joy of innocence. So comes the spring, a laugh ing child, to search out for us our lost child- heartedness and make us child again, from sin and care and selfishness so free, as we laugh answer to its blossoms and its birds and give ourselves to kisses of its winds. So come we to this everlasting flight of being, Thy dear child-heartedness in us made flesh. So come our sacred babes to flock with us in life s so joying, hallowing flight. That dear child-heartedness of Thine made flesh, the holy breast of Mary nour ished, and her first glad motherhood did guide in all those secret years where hills of Nazareth send answering beauty to the happy Galilee. O love and holiness beyond our thought an incarnation divine beyond the jangling, lifeless words of stupid, dead the ologiesmay our hearts open to the truth till Thou in us art born a holy, saving Christ, To Every Heart that Beats. 241 in all our conscious world, a laughing child of the eternal love and life. And yet, and yet, O glory far beyond our poor dull hearts to know ! Thou art made flesh through flesh of ours. Thou art here in our sacred babes at happy childhood in our homes. Their childhood is some holy, glad becoming of Thine own. Their child hood is Thy childhood come to earth. Thine own divine humanity in dear creative love lives out in them. Thy face becomes in theirs that we may look upon it without fear, nor suffer any hurt from its great holiness. Thy life is here in theirs, in gracious heart beats of a perfect love, that Thou mayest live it out before our eyes, within our homes, for blessing that its undimmed holiness could never give ; for, came it without such tender indirection, it would blight, as sun, direct, unveiled of clouds, would turn the beauty of Thy growing earth to aching desert wastes. And so, O God, beneath the weight of glory, lowly bow our hearts, too high, too wonderful the truth. Thou art here in this little babe of ours. Incarnate here Thine own child-heartedness that is eternal and living out in all Thy universe that we become in it an everlasting childhood, beautiful, divine, p 242 To Every Heart that Beats. at changeless, faithful answerings to Thy great fatherhood. O love and life ! in this great truth so take our hearts that we be growing ever childlike through the years. A childhood of innocence is the babe s. Be ours the childhood of wisdom ever beautiful, aging never, ever deepening into a being the holy counterpart of Thine. Then will life be to us, in us, what it ought. Then will it, lived out among our fellows, bless, and be some saving hymn that they will joy to sing, enraptured by such singing into holy, happy life. When we, O gracious Father, realize this high eternal truth though high as heavens, yet near as are these beating hearts of ours it gives to grief such holiness of comfort when Thou takest from us the beautiful chil dren that Thy tenderest loving gives. They are not dead. In Thine own everlasting childhood they but move to holier life, to deeper joy. In this, to us, so dark and sad a change, they have but gladdened into fuller life than earth could give. They are in Thee an everlasting joy and beauty. And what they are we shall become, and live with them in Thee our everlasting home. O Lord, from all the sin that makes so old, To Every Heart that Beats. 243 from all the selfishness whose cares so kill our childhood beauty, which they who live for others always know, from everything that keeps us from our right of conscious child- heartedness in Thine, save us with Thy re deeming, holy tenderness. Make us and keep us children, and so will Thy glory of truth and righteousness live out in us, and men be glad thereat, and by such gentleness of Thine own grow great. And then so wise and helpful we will be to these little ones, our trust from Thee ; and so near, so near to our translated ones, earth s blindness call the dead ; and Thou in us, and we in Thee, in childhood s ever glad becoming, will have a peace and joy the earth can never give nor ever take away. >on t Jcientific Law of Happiness* BY THEODORE F. SEWARD. BCOND EDITION. Paper, us Cents. \TQRDS OF COMMENDATION. esident George A. Gates, of Iowa College. - esn ire few lessons more universally needed among the :an people than that which this little book so .ity, r enforces. Genuine thanks lor the spirit that fail to and sends out so helpful a message." John Willis Baer, Secretary of the Society ne of Christian Endeavor. /IR.SEWARD: To displace worry and all its evils j ca l ;ace and quiet that comes by taking God at His r j s . hat this busy world needs to learn. Trusting , e j,_ His best will lead God to trust us with more of ter Where His grace abounds, worry and anger be found. 1 ,- ow ,j ce From a Private Letter. [* st year has been a precious one to me, in that I ; of n to practice what you so beautifully teach. iibelief in a most insidious form. 1 am casting i bit. The tremendous power of thought in its odily health has come to me as a fresh revela- r chapter on The Problem of Evil gives me . That evil is a fact, but not a positive force; o be warded off rather than attacked is a new d full of power." MKS. E. S. G., Grinnell, la. ERHOOD OF CHRISTIAN UNITY, 18 WALL STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y. School of !Hife, Divine Providence in the Light of Modern Science* BY THEODORE F. SEWARD. Library Edition, $1.50; Popular Edition, 50 Cts. What Prof. John Fiske says of the book: " It is a long time since I have seen a book of that kind which deals with the subject in so thorough and satisfac tory a manner. I shall read it over a second time. It is a book which is going to aid many souls and prove extremely helpful." What Rev. Arthur Lowndes, D.D., says of it: "In its trea metit of the deepest problems of life this book is a masterpiece. The more I read it the more I am amazed at the breadth and depth of the work. I have never read a book so suggestive of thought." What "The Critic" says of it: "The work is both deep and broad, very suggestive, magnetic with the kindling personality of the author, and worthy of a place on many a learned preacher s desk, as showing how deep thinking may be expressed in popular style." Can be procured from the BROTHERHOOD OF CHRISTIAN UNITY, 18 WALL STREET, NEW YORK. N. Y. IHeaven lver\> OR Common Sense Christianity* BY THEODORE F. SEWARD. 5O CENTS. The " New Orleans Picayune " says of this book : " Those who remember Mr. Seward s brilliant and schol arly volume, The School of Life, will welcome a fresh work from his accomplished pen. The sub-title of the book, Heaven Every Day, is Common .^ense Christianity. which indicates its nature. No one who reads it can fail to be benefited." The "American Church Sunday-School" magazine says : " Worth more than a bundled sermons upon technical points of theology is the plain, unvarnished truth of Chris tian doctrines as presented in Heaven Every Day. Open ing our understand ing to the free promises of the Master, he separates them from the interpretations by the Marrow minds who misdir ct us in presenting a labyrinth of nice distinctions to be sought out before heaven can be reached. To tho-e lost in the mazes of doubt and error, the sympa thetic help offered by Mr. Seward will doubtless prove of incalculable benefit." The "Chicago Inter-Ocean" says: " Heaven Every Day abounds in good practical com mon sense and good theology. It will awaken thought along right lines wherever read." Can be procure-* from the BROTHERHOOD OF CHRISTIAN UNITY, 18 WALL STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y. Swe&enborg anb Cbanning* By B. F. BARRETT. 288 pages, 5% * 7 inches. Price, 50 Cents, Cloth 25 Cents, Paper. SECOND EDITION. The "New York Tribune " says of this book: " Mr. Barrett has prepared his interesting volume in the spirit of profound reverence for Swedenborg and of affec- tioirUe admiration of Dr. Channing. In many cases the resemblances which he sets forth are of a striking char acter." The "Christian Register" says: " Under fifty-seven different titles, it shows how Sweden borg and Channing agree respecting the most dominant Christian truths, by pertinent quotations from the writings of both." Cburcb ne foundation, By B. F. BARRETT. 362 pages, 12mo. 75 Cents. "The Kingdom" says of this book: " This volume 01 sermons by an eminent minister of the New Church (Swedenborgian) is one of the most spirit ually and practically helpful which has come to our table. There are many who have an entirely false understanding of the teachings of Emanuel Swedmborg, and think that he was intent mainly on setting forth his ideas concerning the heavenly state. Such persons should read this little volume. ... Its great purpose is to apply the teach ings of Jesus to everyday life and to lead Christian be lievers to a better understanding of their duties and privileges as disciples of Chi ist." The "New York Independent" says: " These sermons will appeal to a wider conipa^y of readers outside of the New Church to whose ministry the author belonged. They are gentle and catholic in spirit, take a strong hold on the reader s conscience ard in his relations to present duty, and are composed in a i attrac tive literary style." SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, GERMANTOWN, PA. 156249