THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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 BY 
 
 MINNIE WILLIS BAINES 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "THE SILENT LAND," "HIS COUSIN, THE DOCTOR," ETC. 
 
 CINCINNATI: CRANSTON & STOWE 
 
 NEW YORK : HUNT & EATON 
 
 1892.
 
 -S3JM 
 
 Copyrig-ht by 
 CRANSTON & STOWK,
 
 rs 
 
 
 TO 
 
 A Christian Pilgrim Consistently Walking 
 in the Narrow Way. 
 
 759408
 
 pHE Pilgrim s Vision " explains its own 
 purpose and excuse for being. 
 
 The characters introduced in this Alle 
 gory are among those which are disturbing, to 
 a considerable extent, the faith of a certain 
 class of believers in the Christian Church of 
 to-day. I expect neither to wound nor bruise the Phi 
 listine giants indicated, with these " smooth stones 
 out of the brook." My design in hurling them is 
 to attract attention to the fact that they are agents 
 of such disquietude, in the hope that, by so doing, 
 I may deter some bewildered souls from becoming 
 their prisoners, and being carried off to their "Doubt 
 ing Castles." 
 
 M. W. B. 
 SPRINGFIELD, O., 1891.
 
 ;iTHER the Worker did in ancient days, 
 
 Give us the word, his tale of love and might, 
 (And if, in truth, He gave it us, who says 
 He did not give it right?) 
 
 Or else He gave it not, and then indeed 
 
 We know not if He is, by whom our years 
 
 Are portioned who the orphan moons doth lead, 
 And the unfathered spheres. 
 
 How would it make the weight and wonder less, 
 If lifted from immortal shoulders down, 
 
 The worlds were cast on seas of emptiness, 
 In realms without a crown? 
 
 And (if there were no God) were left to rue 
 Dominion of the air and of the fire ? 
 
 Then, if there be a God, " Let God be true, 
 And every man a liar." 
 
 Far better, in its place, the lowliest bird 
 
 Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song, 
 Than that a seraph strayed should take the word, 
 
 And sing his glory wrong. 
 
 JEAN INGELOW.
 
 PART I. 
 THE PILGRIM AT EVENTIDE, 
 
 Illustration. 
 
 PART II. 
 FANCIES AND DREAMS, ......... 25 
 
 Illustration. 
 
 PART III. 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE ......... 31 
 
 
 PART TV. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION, ............ 61 
 
 Illustration. 
 
 PART V. 
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY, . ......... 91 
 
 Illustration.
 
 ilrim af
 
 PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 WEARY pilgrim, as the sun went down, 
 Sighed thankfully to know the day was 
 
 past; 
 
 For it had been to her all cheerlessness. 
 Not that the light had been with clouds ob 
 scured; 
 
 Nor storms, with wailing voices, swept the land ; 
 Nor mighty winds, held captive in their lairs, 
 Waked from their slumbers, shook their clanking 
 
 chains, 
 And, breaking from their bondage, cast themselves 
 
 In fury on, and ravaged all the earth. 
 
 13
 
 14 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Not this. The day, to look upon, had been 
 
 Most fair. T was to the beauty-loving eye 
 
 As music to the ear soothed by its sound. 
 
 T was turquoise sky, up which the sun had wheeled 
 
 His jeweled chariot, every shining spoke 
 
 Within its whirling disks ablaze with light. 
 
 The earth, which met it, at that far-off rim 
 
 Where they unite in one, and softly blend, 
 
 Each with the other, like a flexured gem, 
 
 Blue, shading to a softer blue, that pales 
 
 And fades, in turn, to blue impearled with gray, 
 
 Was earth at loveliest, in balmy spring. 
 
 
 
 Fringed were her hillsides with the new-grown grass, 
 That caught the violet in tangling leash; 
 And on the trees the crinkled yellow leaves 
 Held their creased foliage out to zephyr-loves 
 To blow it smooth and wide and beautiful. 
 In clefts of rocks the honeysuckle bloomed ; 
 Grew fronds of ferns and myriad sweet things, 
 Hardy and wild and of erratic growth. 
 The flying birds fanned all the air with wings 
 So swift they sped like arrows on their way,
 
 THE PILGRIM AT EVENTIDE. 15 
 
 With changeful glints of red and yellow play, 
 
 And flashes fugitive, that did combine 
 
 Blue blent with green, and green that verged on 
 
 blue ; 
 
 Red reappeared, and struck to Tyrian hue. 
 Thus ran their wings the gamut of the light. 
 Their songs like memories of vanished joys, 
 Whene er their chansons did some pause beguile, 
 Touched minor chords within her heart, that rang 
 Like merry echo s distance-mellowed sound, 
 Which, though it joyful strikes the pulsing air, 
 Grows strange and hollow in its weird rebound ; 
 With other spirit touches waiting ears. 
 In its fair bed, to which the moss crept down, 
 From which the cress threw up its white star-flower, 
 The river rippled on in silver curves, 
 Laved water-lilies bursting from the bud, 
 And kissed, in passing, isles of reed and sedge. 
 Fair Nature s graces had the hours disclosed : 
 Why, then, rejoice at setting of the sun? 
 
 Ah ! there was that within her being deep 
 That answered to each touch, in earth and sky,
 
 1 6 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Of beauty, and the speech its imagery 
 
 Impresses on the soul in language high ! 
 
 Answered, and struggled with strong throes to rend 
 
 The power of place and circumstance that held 
 
 Her bound, and rise to altitudes ideal, 
 
 That, with their grand suggestions, wooed her on. 
 
 And as it answered these diviner calls 
 
 That thrilled her to such agonized desire, 
 
 O, how she loathed her lower life s demands, 
 
 The fetters that they fitted to her limbs, 
 
 And manacles to her rebellious hands ! 
 
 Upon life s flowery uplands she beheld 
 Great palace walls, within whose massive piles, 
 Twixt arch and column, under sculptured frieze, 
 The crystal casements glittered in the sun ; 
 Green-tendriled vineyard rows that promised grapes, 
 And gardens with their breaths of mingled balms. 
 Swift equipages, there, went to and fro, 
 With mettled steeds that, flying, spurned the earth, 
 Their shining harness rich with touch of gold. 
 And there were throngs of people, like the flowers, 
 More gloriously than Solomon arrayed,
 
 THE PILGRIM AT EVENTIDE. 17 
 
 \ 
 
 In silken vesture and in jewels rare, 
 
 Bright with reflection of the sunbeam s rays. 
 
 And little children led they by the hand, 
 
 With dusky tresses crowned, or golden hair. 
 
 And on the uplands, where they idly strayed, 
 
 No shadow fell, nor storm-cloud cast its gloom. 
 
 And there were homes. O, how the pilgrim s heart 
 
 Throbbed in her bosom at the thought of home ; 
 
 Name next to heaven in sweetness and in power, 
 
 And in potential happiness and good ! 
 
 And in these homes were daughters dear, and sons, 
 
 Fulfilling all the promise of their youth ; 
 
 And blissful circles round the festal board, 
 
 And at the fireside, woke the gladsome laugh, 
 
 Or summoned to the lips the tenderer smile. 
 
 And there was music ; voices tuned to song ; 
 
 And love and sympathy, divinest gift 
 
 That human heart to human heart can yield. 
 
 The light and music and the consciousness 
 
 Of all this joy, whose brimming draught held not 
 
 One drop of all its overflow for her, 
 
 Upon the pilgrim smote with painful stroke, 
 
 Like smarting touch upon a wound unhealed. 
 
 2
 
 1 8 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 For all that she had ever known of home 
 
 Was but a memory of a by-gone past ; 
 
 A heap of ashes from a fire long spent ; 
 
 A mournful repetition of a sound 
 
 Grown still, that through the chambers of her heart 
 
 And from sharp angles of her stony grief, 
 
 By day and night, went ever echoing on. 
 
 Her sons and daughters? There were long, green 
 
 graves 
 
 That evidenced what narrow space of earth, 
 In opening, may ingulf the hopes of time. 
 And there were names, upon the marble cut, 
 That Love had chiseled deeper in her heart 
 Than mason s knife could ever grave on stone. 
 If Life with Death fond fellowship might hold ; 
 Her vigil keep beneath the cypress shade ; 
 Dwell evermore beside the long green graves ! 
 
 But Duty beckoned with remorseless hand, 
 And Care said: "None may lay my burden down, 
 Until, within celestial gates, it slips 
 And falls away from shoulders that are winged. 
 So from the cypress shadows she had passed,
 
 THE PILGRIM AT EVENTIDE. 19 
 
 Albeit those shadows lay upon her soul, 
 
 And took the path of pilgrimage that stretched 
 
 In cheerless course beneath her troubled eyes. 
 
 T was a long road, and through its blistering dust 
 
 The pointed flints found contact with her feet, 
 
 And, piercing, pained them. 
 
 On this thoroughfare 
 
 Did thousands walk, each selfishly shut up 
 Within his own perplexities and woes. 
 Of kindred birth, these tribulations all, 
 Yet alien, in the one relating touch 
 Of comprehensive feeling, each for each. 
 Unique each man s, in being his very own; 
 Exclusive to his sole experience ; 
 Interpretative to himself alone, 
 And making separate atmosphere, in which 
 Each pilgrim lived and moved and thought and 
 
 felt; 
 
 Wherein each dwelt in state of ceaseless siege 
 That made him blind and deaf to others ruth. 
 
 Beside this highway scanty herbage grew, 
 And branches few protecting covert made
 
 20 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 From fierce and fervent rays of scorching sun. 
 When, at long distances, a fountain leaped, 
 Or from the earth a turbid pool up-welled, 
 Whose waters were but liquid bitterness, 
 Leader nor prophet from their midst came forth, 
 With tree or salt, to turn it sweet for them. 
 And on the level distance beat the sun ; 
 Upon their heads and faces beat the sun, 
 In steady, stern, and all-revealing light, 
 That left no refuge for a lurking hope 
 That better than it seemed might be the way. 
 
 And yet there was a shadow to refresh, 
 Which, when the pilgrim s spirit weariest felt, 
 And most opprest, if she but upward looked, 
 Seemed hovering o er her like a restful cloud, 
 E en when trees were infrequent, and the hills 
 Their grateful shadowy semblance had withdrawn. 
 It seemed a form all vague and nebulous, 
 In shape and contour like unto a cross 
 A half-imagined thing when first perceived; 
 But as the pilgrim longer on it gazed, 
 She saw it darken, as the darkling air
 
 THE PILGRIM AT EVENTIDE. 21 
 
 In purple distance, cool and soft and calm, 
 
 That floods the pass between two mountain peaks, 
 
 And seems a very gateway into heaven. 
 
 And on its summit grew a silver light, 
 
 As white and clear as the pure light of truth, 
 
 Whose rays, converging, formed a royal crown, 
 
 Which, as it were, seemed woven out of thorns, 
 
 Whose every point like diamond facets shone, 
 
 As if each separate thorn impaled a gem. 
 
 And on its arms, and at its mighty base, 
 
 Were scarlet lilies lavishly entwined, 
 
 Each brilliant goblet filled with globules red, 
 
 Whose perfume scented all the earth and air. 
 
 And when the pilgrim saw this deepening shade, 
 
 This growing crown, these scarlet-chaliced flowers, 
 
 She felt no more the weariness and pain ; 
 
 No longer thirsted in a desert way ; 
 
 No more went sorrowing for a dear, dead past. 
 
 For, as she gazed, those lengthening shadowy arms 
 
 Reached down and clasped and folded all her life, 
 
 Uplifting it to nobler bliss than earth s 
 
 Intensest joys and pleasures comprehend ; 
 
 She seemed to understand those mystic words,
 
 22 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 "For ye are dead, and hid with Christ in God." 
 So, when the sun into the west went down, 
 And the day s journey to its end had drawn, 
 And the gray twilight glimmered to its close, 
 She sat down, meekly, on the scanty grass, 
 Withdrawn a little from the dusty way, 
 And sighed a thankful sigh that one more day 
 Into the vast eternity was gone. 
 
 / Nearer, by one day s journey, had she come 
 To Him who hung upon that crowned cross ; 
 Nearer to that far city where they dwelt, 
 Beyond the hinged pearls of those lustrous gates, 
 / Who left her here, so desolate and forlorn, 
 \ The limit of their pilgrimages reached. 
 1 And in the evening stillness she could hear 
 \ Her fellow-pilgrims footsteps, as they walked, 
 \ Or voices, as each with the other talked, 
 
 they, too, sank to silence, and were hushed.
 
 II. 
 
 ant)
 
 
 
 FANCIES AND DREAMS.
 
 THROUGH space descending, slowly came 
 strange forms 
 
 Half cloud, half mist, and fanciful their shape, 
 And singular the colors that they wore. 
 ** These ranged from somber blackness to bright 
 
 gold, 
 
 Through each chromatic change of tint and tone; 
 And, on a sudden, as the figures moved, 
 All were commingled in one joint array, 
 So bright, so sparkling, so complexly blent, 
 The pilgrim closed o erpowered and dazzled eyes 
 That could not bear the splendor of their light. 
 They stooped and lifted her on pinions broad, 
 
 That, as they outward spread in wide expanse, 
 
 3 25
 
 26 THE PILGRIM S. VISION. 
 
 Bore on their edges scintillating gleams, 
 
 Ivike to whipped foam that tops the billows swell, 
 
 Whose crest to feathery lightness winds have 
 
 lashed ; 
 
 Whose every sphere, a spectrum, light divides 
 Gives back the golden largess it bestowed 
 In thrice ten thousand arcs of mellow hues. 
 Their bodies diaphanic were, and thin ; 
 Their web-like texture she seemed slipping through, 
 But fell not; for with firm, elastic strength, 
 And buoyant poise, they held her in suspense. 
 Beneath her, faded out the weary world, 
 The long, hard road, the meager wayside cheer; 
 The skies drew nearer, and the stars came down, 
 A constellated convoy, on their way. 
 "Who art thou?" asked the pilgrim, wond ringly 
 One said: "I m daylight fancies, winged at night; 
 Thoughts and impressions subtly taking on 
 Perceived identities. Beneath my sway, 
 Impersonal ideas personified 
 Become, and speak and act. The principles 
 That shape the purposes of life, themselves 
 To sentient existence are transformed ;
 
 FANCIES AND DREAMS. 27 
 
 And things man thinks and feels and knows combine 
 To furnish his conceits a liberal field, 
 Give his uncurbed imaginings full play." 
 
 And one said: " We are brothers, he and I, 
 Born in the self-same hour; of different names, 
 But twin relationship. He who knows one, 
 The features of the other finds not strange. 
 Of changeful mien and Protean shape are we ; 
 Sometimes one stature represents us twain ; 
 One argent plumage gives us dual flight. 
 Out of one airy fabric are we framed ; 
 Its tissues light as gossamer, but strong 
 Its filaments, as armor wrought of chain. 
 One course is ours, along the hazy way 
 Imagination s sinuous curves have traced 
 In undulating path across the realm 
 Of fitful, varied, and fantastic thought. 
 Men name him Fancies, but they call me Dreams. " 
 
 And silence followed on his spoken words; 
 And swift and far, out of this world she knew, 
 Into another type of world and clime,
 
 28 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 A visionary sphere, the brothers twain 
 Half human, half divine, possessed, withal, 
 Of fanciful caprice, like that which marks 
 The playful elf or sportive sprite, conveyed 
 The pilgrim, unresisting, where they would. 
 
 Then, on a sudden, in a distant place, 
 She felt the wings that bore her cease to beat. 
 From tip of quill and vane, the radiance died 
 On their lowered points that, closing, looked less 
 
 bright; 
 
 From them she gently slid, and stood alone, 
 Mid changed surroundings unfamiliar scenes.
 
 III. 
 jftppnmrf; u
 
 ATURE encompassed her on every side, 
 But not the Nature she aforetime knew. 
 Some transformation, seemingly, had passed 
 Upon, and altered each familiar phase. 
 There were high mountains and colossal 
 
 rocks, 
 
 Enough to vertebrate a continent; 
 And, thus environed, did the valleys lie, 
 Green jewels in the casket of the heights. 
 But all the mountains bore upon their fronts 
 What looked to her like network spun thereon, 
 Which some Arachne, Pallas-cursed, had wrought. 
 
 So fine its gleaming meshes that they seemed 
 
 31
 
 32 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Ivike vaporous films that, on the autumn morns, 
 
 Stretch in transparent webs across the fields; 
 
 That sometimes hang in silvery tatters, caught 
 
 On bush outreaching, or obtrusive thorns. 
 
 The children call them fairies counterpanes, 
 
 And Catholics devout make the cross s sign 
 
 The while they gaze, believing them to be 
 
 Shreds of the cere-cloth that the virgin wore 
 
 In the tomb s cloister, but that, .when to heaven 
 
 Caught up by hosts angelic, she cast off. 
 
 Yet seemed they firmer than these airy things, 
 
 Less frail; each line deep graven, cutting through 
 
 The greenery that hung its high facade, 
 
 Into the very structure of the mount. 
 
 And they bore shape of geometric forms, 
 
 And diagrams with numerals displayed. 
 
 And every rock she looked upon was stripped 
 
 Of all composite character, resolved 
 
 To primal elements; each stratum showed 
 
 Uncompromising lines, and each seemed less 
 
 Combined with that which followed, than o erlaid. 
 
 The soil beneath her, all disintegrate, 
 
 Her wonder-wide exploring eyes beheld ;
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 33 
 
 Each earth-grain separate and distinct appeared; 
 Each particle an entity in fact. 
 
 And, walking mid these strange, perplexing scenes, 
 A female figure did her eyes descry. 
 Tall and commanding, with an air assured 
 Of gracious certitude, she forward moved. 
 No fluctuant curves gave languorous ease of port, 
 Or sensuous motion ; for her frame, well knit, 
 Seemed as of close-impacted angles wrought. 
 Not one superfluous ounce of matter there, 
 Beyond that used in welding each to each. 
 Yet was there grace, such as the iceberg shows, 
 When, under-currents towing its great base, 
 Its upper pinnacle moves slowly on, 
 In stately grandeur, through the open sea. 
 
 And she was clad in garment straight and long. 
 No drapery fettered that majestic form ; 
 But every fold and every line, disposed 
 In strict simplicity, so moveless seemed, 
 It might have been by iron ridged in stone. 
 A simple fillet bound her flowing hair,
 
 34 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 And kept its long luxuriance, straight and fine, 
 
 No wave nor ringlet broke, in ordered place. 
 
 Her face was fair and seriously calm ; 
 
 So calm, the pilgrim thought, no passionate storm 
 
 Had ever o er its placid surface played. 
 
 Mild was its look, and yet inflexible 
 
 Serene, but with no trace of sympathy. 
 
 It was unlike all faces she had known. 
 
 No color touched the rigid cheek and lip ; 
 
 Emotion lit no flame in the keen eyes ; 
 
 Not even speculative was their gleam, 
 
 But wide-extended were those orbs of sight 
 
 As if to compass all that might be seen, 
 
 And pass upon its character and worth. 
 
 And, while the pilgrim gazed, the figure drew 
 More near, and silent stood and looked on her. 
 And as she met that penetrating glance, 
 Abashed, for the first time, the pilgrim felt 
 She was a body of compacted dust. 
 
 "And thou?" the stranger asked; "and who art 
 thou?"
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 35 
 
 "A weary pilgrim to this region borne 
 
 By Dreams and Fancies, who have onward passed." 
 
 i 
 The stranger smiled. So singular a smile 
 
 The pilgrim, till this moment, ne er had seen. 
 No mirth nor merriment, delight nor joy 
 Seemed to constrain the motion of the lips 
 That, unrelaxing, coldly smiled on her. 
 
 "It is not strange they onward passed," said she, 
 " But strange they ever should have borne you here. 
 This is the realm of Fact, and idle Dreams 
 And Fancies have not power to here survive. 
 For, if, perchance they reach its boundary metes, 
 Some foolish mortal bearing, in their flight, 
 They must pass hence or perish neath the rays 
 Of the great sun of Truth that lights our world. 
 I ve seen such disappear beneath Truth s rays, 
 And to behold them is a curious sight. 
 First, all the colors fade that overlay 
 The edges of their wings ; to nebulae, 
 Then into naught, the wings themselves dissolve. 
 Then their thin bodies lose cohesive power, 
 And alienated, all their particles,
 
 36 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 No more resisting separation, drift 
 Asunder, and to union ne er return. 
 Sometimes, however, with a mighty noise 
 These airy nothings do explode, nor leave 
 A molecule to tell they ever were ; 
 For, unlike matter, they can cease to be. 
 
 "And who art thou?" the pilgrim asked, in turn. 
 
 "I? Is it possible thou knowest me not? 
 Why, I am Science, ruler of this realm. 
 Sure thou hast heard of me ; the master minds 
 That give to thy low world the only thoughts 
 That elevate its life, my subjects are ; 
 Ennobled mortals, wearing lofty names 
 That brightest shine in earth s empyrean." 
 The pilgrim answered : "There is one more bright." 
 "And that?" 
 
 " The name of Jesus." 
 
 Science stood 
 
 And for a season brief, did gaze on her, 
 With those observant, open eyes, then spake: 
 "Dies Superstition, then, such lingering death?
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 37 
 
 Dost worship the impostor Nazarene ? 
 Dost thou .believe there is a Father-God ; 
 A far-off heaven s beneficent reward? 
 What is that in thine hand?" 
 
 All unaware 
 
 That aught within its hold she had retained, 
 The pilgrim, downward glancing, now beheld 
 The little Bible she had clasped at eve, 
 When from the roadside she had sat withdrawn, 
 And mused on heaven and immortality. 
 
 "The Book of books," she answered, speaking low. 
 
 " Thy Book that tells how six days carpentry 
 Made the great earth that on its axes swung 
 For many million years, ere yet complete, 
 A ball of fiery vapor, hardening slow, 
 Whose inmost heart this hour is yet alive 
 With blazing tumult and portentous glow ! 
 Thy six days world ! O pilgrim, how believe 
 Thy Book of books, beginning with a lie?" 
 
 The pilgrim clasped her fingers closer yet 
 About her Book of books, and answering, said:
 
 38 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 "I do believe thou, Science, hast obtained 
 A better insight than of old was had 
 Into activities which served to form 
 And set afloat in space our beauteous world. 
 But there are things thou canst not comprehend, 
 If, reading that sweet idyl of earth s dawn, 
 In which, with loving and artistic touch 
 A painter poet on the canvas spreads 
 The gathered legends of the earliest times, 
 Thou brandest the narration as a lie. 
 Six days? We understand the little words 
 That serve conveyance of ephemeral thoughts; 
 But ever in the Bible are we taught 
 That days with God are not as days with men ; 
 That when, concerning him and what he does, 
 Are used the common words we know so well, 
 They oft take on a meaning more remote, 
 And from things understood to mysteries turn. 
 I know not of the days nor years employed, 
 Nor know I of the agencies he used; 
 But this I know, that he the world did frame, 
 And things now seen from what doth not ap 
 pear."
 
 APPROACH OF SCIEATCE. 39 
 
 "Thou knowest? That is well. How knowest 
 thou?" 
 
 The pilgrim drew a breath that was a sigh. 
 How, then, might words explain the how she knew? 
 
 She answered, saying : " First, by being told. 
 That datum being given, I know by faith, 
 Which in me apprehendeth the thing told ; 
 And Reason, which to Faith s support doth come ; 
 And Inference, offspring of their union born. 
 These tell me that behind things caused, exists 
 The cause producing them ; their argument 
 Informs me that the nature of things caused 
 Being good, beneficent their cause must be; 
 Displaying wise design, must wisdom have; 
 And Reason, Inference, Revelation, all, 
 Do of this Power initiative speak. 
 In the same language, with the self-same tongue, 
 This Book of books speaks of the One Most High, 
 Father of spirits and the God of men. 
 Nature, from which thou, Science, dost deduce 
 Thy truths, is not, herself, beneficent ;
 
 40 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Hath not intelligence ; no evidence 
 Of feeling nor of thought doth she betray; 
 No plan hath she ; perfunctorily evolves, 
 Through processes established, carried on 
 In her, by cause that lies outside herself; 
 Is subject to a power transcending hers. 
 Faith, Reason, Inference, Revelation, show 
 Of mind and spirit this great Cause possest, 
 To which, their origin all things confess." 
 
 Science looked down, and on the pilgrim smiled; 
 A smile still, slow, of scorn and passion void, 
 Where tolerance lingered that on pity verged. 
 "Tis strange," she said, "how thoughts like these 
 
 can live 
 
 In the broad daylight of the realm of Fact! 
 Thou dost not as thou sayest, pilgrim, know! 
 It is not knowledge but belief thou hast." 
 
 "And dost thou, Science, say it is not so?" 
 
 "I? Nay. I only say, I do not know. 
 Tis to the subject safer to ascribe
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 41 
 
 The thing beyond a peradventure known. 
 From all past ages life has been evolved, 
 And matter inorganic been produced, 
 From natural causes ; only source we see. 
 Thou sayest mediate, I zVw-mediate claim. 
 This Nature never was to laws untrue, 
 Which govern her, and from beginning had 
 A trend progressive, in the which we see 
 The steady, onward march of fact, evolved 
 From fact anterior, evolving it." 
 
 "But back of all ere yet was Nature formed?" 
 
 "Why sayest thou ere yet? How knowest 
 
 thou, 
 
 Since man can never antedate the hour 
 When first creation did revolve in space, 
 That this same Nature not immortal was? 
 Or for thine eyes do negative the thought 
 T is easy to assume once on a time 
 A germ-cell, with the mighty mission fraught 
 Of introducing the initial cause 
 
 Of all the centuries evolutions, lived." 
 
 4
 
 42 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 " Once on what time, ere yet time did exist, 
 And there was none to speak and bid it be?" 
 
 "And a persistent force behind it stood, 
 In life and mission to continuance breed. 
 Why must thou summon a mechanic God 
 To hammer out, and on its axes hang 
 A wound-up, clock-work universe, since He, 
 Himself, remains a being yet unproved?" 
 
 "And dost thou, Science, seeing what thou sayest 
 Is law that Nature never yet transgressed, 
 Not likewise see that law must comprehend 
 A giver who the law has introduced ? 
 But if thou canst, like this, dismiss the claims 
 Of Nature to an origin divine, 
 Thou dost at least in species and in kind 
 Believe her true to universal law, 
 No matter whence derived, nor how confirmed. 
 For the first impulse toward the mind of man 
 That crowns creation like a diadem, 
 Enwraps with purple its material life, 
 And stands as surety for a life to come,
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 43 
 
 Where dost thou look? To beasts quadrumanous ? 
 Dost find it from the flattened cranium sprung, 
 And shadowed in the instinct of the brute ? 
 If such beginnings such results can show, 
 Then Nature must, like Eastern weavers, work 
 According to some pattern hung o erhead 
 By Him who guideth evolution s way, 
 
 And ordereth every issue it declares. 
 
 
 
 Where in the germ-cell doth the wisdom lie, 
 That, by the theory thyself doth hold, 
 Bestows the gift upon irrational life 
 Of that, in embryo, whose stature full 
 On man confers the scepter and the throne? 
 Nor thou nor I by searching can find out ; 
 And life and soul are equal mysteries. 
 And as thou canst not know life s origin, 
 Know that its germ began to fructify 
 In the dim morning of creation s dawn 
 At back of which a morning must have been 
 That to the germ gave its potential life 
 How better thy hypothesis than mine ? 
 I contradict of thine no premises 
 Involving what is known ; for Nature s page
 
 44 THE PILGRIM S VISION, 
 
 Whereon is seen the impress of God s hand, 
 Is one with revelation, I admit. 
 But, Science, hast thou ever, then, beheld 
 Atoms of which, oft, thou assuredly speak st?" 
 
 Then Science passed her hand across her brow- 
 That fair, firm hand, so supple and so strong 
 
 As if to clear from out her active brain 
 
 
 Obstructive cobwebs that had gathered there, 
 
 Impeding the free exercise of thought. 
 Slowly she said : "I certainly must grant 
 The atom thou hast mentioned, I ve not seen ; 
 No microscope has e er invented been 
 That has revealed it to the searching eye. 
 But some concession ever must be be made, 
 Assumption from which reasoning be deduced, 
 And this most rational in itself appears ; 
 Doth best agree with known phenomena." 
 
 The pilgrim smiled on Science as she said : 
 "This is not knowledge, it is but belief. 1 
 If I accept a God omnipotent, 
 Instead of atoms eye hath never seen,
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 45 
 
 Whereih is superstition in my mind 
 
 More deeply rooted than it is in thine ? 
 
 Nay, of the two, my thought hath broader scope, 
 
 For I assume the God and atom, too. 
 
 I grant assent to thy Persistent Force. 
 
 We differ merely in the form of words; 
 
 Thou only callest God another name." 
 
 Again, across the brow the fair hand passed, 
 And, speaking slowly, Science said: " Perhaps! 
 I have affirmed not, neither do deny. 
 I do not so believe; but mere belief 
 That is not rooted in apparent fact 
 Ne er rises to conviction in my mind. 
 But, whether there exist a God or no, 
 Rest not thy faith upon his so-called Son, 
 Whom millions worship as his messenger, 
 Whose birth, career, and teachings are enwrapped 
 In what the ignorant call miracle. 
 Dost thou not know no miracle exists, 
 Nor ever did; that naught can contravene 
 Nor thwart the dicta Nature has laid down? 
 That miracle imposture only means?
 
 46 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 By tracing species origin we know 
 Men were developed from a lowlier life. 
 No man of woman born, who ever lived, 
 By miracle had birth it could not be." 
 
 " How can it chance that this Persistent Force 
 Thou dost admit existing back of life, 
 Supplying to it that continuing power, 
 Without which its vitality must fail, 
 Sustained by which tis richly animate, 
 Should be unable to communicate 
 Itself to matter in some line unknown 
 To partial Wisdom s self-sufficient sense ? 
 To Science, that is yet in infancy ; 
 But that when fully grown the power shall lack 
 To con, with carnal eyes, the Spirit s lore? 
 For to admit that thy Persistent Force 
 Is force transcending Nature s, but admits 
 The potency of miracle as well. 
 Thus thine objections to the Savior s birth 
 Are banished , likewise to his wondrous works ; 
 And there are proofs that verify his claims,
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 47 
 
 Transcending any proof that from the earth 
 Thy hands can dig, or figure on the rocks." 
 
 "And they?" 
 
 "Are written with a subtler pen, 
 Invisible to thee, on the soul s page. 
 Christ claimed that his dominion was the realm 
 Of spiritual life ; and on that life s 
 Kxperiences, he answers doth impress 
 To problems reason never yet has solved, 
 Though handmaid to thyself she claims to be. 
 Or rather, thou dost claim ; and yet methinks 
 She looks approval on the higher truth, 
 Whenever to her function it appeals. 
 But there s persuasion beyond reason s power, 
 Or knowledge s as thou know st it, or yet faith s; 
 From confident assurance it takes rise, 
 Which is the offspring of obedient love." 
 
 " Not in the realm of Fact." 
 
 " Thou dost mistake 
 For thou dost know thought and perception are
 
 48 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Possessions that distinguish man from brute; 
 
 And these to that domain of his belong, 
 
 Furnish that proof of spiritual sway 
 
 That crowns him as divine the Savior Son! 
 
 Feelings, emotions, aspirations high, 
 
 Are embryonic forms of prophecy ; 
 
 They are the subtle shapes of unseen life 
 
 Unseen, save in the issues they advance 
 
 Behind which, standing a Persistent Force, 
 
 Christ furnishes the mighty power that gives 
 
 Impulsion to a life wherein such thought 
 
 Finds fitting soil for its development; 
 
 That higher life whose evolution grand 
 
 Shall raise us from the dust of earth to heaven. 
 
 The strata of that spiritual life, 
 
 Thou, Science, hast not power to analyze ; 
 * 
 Yet, dost thou know, who art of Knowledge born, 
 
 In sequent process they are builded up ; 
 And principles result from tendencies. 
 The unseen influence working known effect, 
 Doth lie as much within the realm of Fact, 
 As nurture of the plant, directly traced 
 For origin to protoplasm s power."
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 49 
 
 " What should I know of fitful feeling weak ? 
 I have convictions, but I never feel." 
 
 " Not as do I, and yet I am assured 
 That thy convictions are compounded things, 
 In which both thought and feeling are involved. 
 Tenacity of grasp with which we cling 
 
 
 
 To that of which persuaded thought lays hold, 
 Has feeling that retentiveness doth urge. 
 One whose bright spirit caught the radiant flash 
 Of truth that vision gross might not discern, 
 Hath said in feeling s base the thought is laid 
 That o er it towers in moveless pyramid. * 
 O, Science, there s a miracle of grace, 
 Beyond thy power of judgment and award ! 
 Shouldst thou dispute that water turned to wine, 
 Blind eyes were opened, and loaves multiplied, 
 Thou never, never, while the ages roll, 
 Couldst prove to man that out of faith in Christ 
 
 *"A11 thought begins in feeling, wide 
 
 In the great mass its base is hid, 
 And narrowing up to thought, stands glorified, 
 A moveless pyramid." 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL
 
 50 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 There springs not up, within his conscious soul, 
 A joy and hope, immeasurable, divine ; 
 Of earth the comfort, prophecy of heaven ! 
 How, Science, can it be that waters rise 
 So far above their source, if it be true 
 That He who doth inspire such blissful hope, 
 Who is the source of such impassioned zeal, 
 In whose name modern miracles more great 
 Than those of ancient times are daily wrought 
 Through those humanities, from Christian root, 
 That spring and flower and yield their fruit to him, 
 Is an impostor, as thou say st he is?" 
 
 " Delusion " 
 
 " Then delusion hath the power, 
 Within itself, of working miracles." 
 
 " Thy premise is a blind, unreasoning faith; 
 On it thou dost but speculate, at best. 
 I see thou wilt not yield thy Savior myth ; 
 As for thy heaven, it is a harmless hope ; 
 But Science doth earth s history backward read, 
 From last to first, as ancient Hebrews did
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 51 
 
 The lettered words of sacred parchment rolls ; 
 
 And there has never come from death s yon side 
 
 Returning mortal to declare that life 
 
 Is carried over and beyond that gulf 
 
 Of blank extinction which doth swallow it." 
 
 " One stemmed the outward current and came 
 
 back 
 
 But He was more than mortal to declare 
 That as he lived, so man should live again." 
 
 " That resurrection miracle s a dream. 
 Dost thou, too, look for life beyond the grave ?" 
 
 " O, with what joy, because He lives again ! 
 Come, tell me, Science, dost thou never ask, 
 As, delving midst God s works, thine eyes behold 
 The wondrous evidences of His power, 
 Wherefore its exercise, and what its aim ? 
 Dost thou not ever query, why put forth, 
 If but for a few ages to exist, 
 Only to crumble and to disappear, 
 Unless it be to man to minister,
 
 52 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Heir of salvation, and a heavenly home? 
 Why given these capacities in man 
 If soon his mind to death must be allied, 
 And never nearer than conjecture come 
 To all that underlies life s mysteries ? 
 Reason, O Science, give me reason why 
 Man was created, if t were but to die !" 
 
 " Against that question is the answer writ : 
 Unknowable man s future destiny. " 
 
 The pilgrim smiled, and lifting up her eyes, 
 Which bitter tears had washed to clearest sight, 
 Said: "Wondrous knowledge from the prudent hid, 
 And wise, has God unto his babes revealed ! 
 I thank him more than ever, now, for this; 
 For present mercy and for grace bestowed ; 
 For life immortal yet to be disclosed ; 
 For hope of heaven and Jesus ; that, at last, 
 Redeemed, restored, my loved ones I shall clasp. 
 O, there are tablets in the human heart 
 He graveth deeper than the granite rock ! 
 On these I read his records, and I know
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 53 
 
 The revelation there inscribed, is truth. 
 
 Tell me, O Science, whence thy comfort comes, 
 
 And from what source thy pleasure doth arise." 
 
 Then Science pointed to the mountain fronts 
 On which the diagrams and figures were, 
 And to the earth and rocks, and far away 
 To a blue glacier s peak, that coldly rose, 
 In steely splendor, over its moraines. 
 "My pleasure is the riddle of the earth, 
 And all that in it is to read aright ; 
 Discover whence the species it supports, 
 And link them each to each, successively, 
 As life s great structure to completeness grows." 
 
 "But man? Hast thou discovered whence he 
 came?" 
 
 "There is a link, as yet established not, 
 Connecting him with anthropoidal apes." 
 
 "And yet, thou dost assume this link exists?" 
 
 "O yes; there is no possible mistake. 
 The chain of evolution so complete
 
 54 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Would not break here, and Nature retrovert 
 
 Her process, to this point well carried on. 
 
 Cast thou away thy fond and foolish dreams 
 
 Of God and heaven and immortality, 
 
 Which, of fulfillment, such slight prospect have, 
 
 And I will teach thine intellect to read 
 
 The backward-reaching history of time ; 
 
 Resolve things to their primal elements, 
 
 And, using thine own speech, declare to thee 
 
 How worlds were made from what doth not appear. 
 
 It is a grand and glorious pursuit, 
 
 And it will show thee with what unwise air 
 
 Thy bigotry to Science condescends, 
 
 From stand-point of the Christian miracles. " * 
 
 "And having cast these foolish dreams away, 
 When I am sad what shall my sadness soothe?" 
 
 " Earth s study, up from the azoic age." 
 
 "A mighty consolation! When my tears 
 Will not be banished, and my memories 
 *Mrs. Humphrey Ward, in "Robert Blsmere."
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 55 
 
 A sorrow s crown of sorrows for my brow, 
 Weave in a wreath of mingled flower and thorn; 
 When life has lost its savor, and to die 
 And flee from all its burdens, seemeth best, 
 What shall uplift and strengthen me once more 
 To act responsively, when duty calls?" 
 
 " Examination of primordial germs." 
 
 "And when I long, with longing uncontrolled, 
 For sympathy and love and tender speech, 
 Such as the Savior on the soul bestows 
 In the still hour it lingereth at his feet ; 
 When for dead faces, and for voices gone, 
 And touch of precious hands that mold in clay, 
 My heart grows sick with anguish, tell me, 
 
 pray, 
 
 Where shall I seek, not the narcotic spell 
 Of poppied calm that brings forgetfulness, 
 But vigor-giving draught that strength imparts 
 To triumph of endurance in each ill, 
 And ointment that shall ease its bitter smarts 
 To resignation s restful calm and peace?"
 
 56 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 " Read Darwin on relations that exist 
 Between Lumbricidce and humid soil ; 
 Or Huxley s lecture on the horse s hoof." 
 
 "And when death comes at last, and on mine 
 
 eyes 
 
 His icy finger presses, and I know 
 That life is slipping from me, and I go 
 To that long sleep from which men do not wake 
 Until the angel sounds his thrilling trump, 
 And greedy earth disgorges what she held?" 
 
 "Think thou on Spencer and Persistent Force. " 
 
 Then spake the pilgrim, and a music sweet 
 Trilled in her voice, like ripple of the brook 
 That hastes to fling its little babbling life 
 Into the deeper stream that waits its gift: 
 " Go, read the backward riddle of the earth, 
 And hunt thy missing link of lower life 
 Conjoining brutes to the immortal man. 
 To me, it matters not from whence I sprang, 
 But whither I am tending, where I go.
 
 APPROACH OF SCIENCE. 57 
 
 Yet were thy faith repulsive history proved, 
 
 T would not revoke creative energy ; 
 
 Great power hath He, from low evolving high, 
 
 And from the ape the soul s immensity. 
 
 A truthful impress much that thou hast said 
 
 Doth bear ; but truth that can not comfort me 
 
 Nor dry one tear, nor yet one hope inspire. 
 
 Not one immortal promise it conveys, 
 
 To strengthen me to battle with this life, 
 
 Or forward look to one more fair than this, 
 
 Beyond that awful change that comes to all. 
 
 I better love that spiritual truth, 
 
 Conformable to loftier lineage, 
 
 On page of inspiration here made known, 
 
 Which richly blossoms and bears luscious fruit 
 
 That shames thy barrenness ; and I will die, 
 
 If need be, ere I will relinquish it." 
 
 Then Science smiled upon her, as at first, 
 A smile all passionless, and turned away, 
 And moved with stately calmness from her sight.
 
 IV. 
 
 ^pirtf af
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION.
 
 /^ ND as she vanished, all the scene was 
 
 changed. 
 
 The rocks and mountains fleetly disappeared, 
 And the earth s surface like a parchment 
 
 seemed, 
 
 Old and discolored, and of wrinkled lines, 
 As if in ridge and furrow it were plowed. 
 And from the ridges there grew up strange plants, 
 Unlike to any she had ever seen, 
 On which was man) a gnarled and thorny branch ; 
 And, in a furrow kneeling, she beheld, 
 In cap and gown such as the student wears, 
 
 Another female figure, which did dig, 
 
 61
 
 62 THE PILGRIM s VISION. 
 
 With implement of modern husbandry, 
 
 And patient toil, to bring some tuber forth. 
 
 And as, from time to time, reluctantly, 
 
 Earth s hardened crust released the treasure sought, 
 
 She held it up to her myopic view, 
 
 That through two crystal lenses closely peered. 
 
 The curious pilgrim to her nearer drew, 
 And downward bent to see the things exhumed. 
 Their semblance varied, but they all were roots ; 
 Cadaverous was their color, as of things 
 Long dead; and powerful odor that they bore 
 Of must and mold, as from the earth they came, 
 Was that of air from antique sepulchers. 
 And with the odor mingled voices three, 
 Each speaking language that she did not know ; 
 But one had sound of ancient Aryan speech, 
 That jostled words of strange Semitic birth 
 Such as old Father Heber may have used 
 Beyond the far. Euphrates, where he dwelt 
 With dialect Chaldaic deftly mixed. 
 
 Perceiving that the pilgrim by her stood, 
 The youthful scholar (for she was not old)
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 63 
 
 Arose, and lifted her exploring eyes 
 
 To read the meaning of the pilgrim s face. 
 
 And, as she stood, the growths within her hands, 
 
 Grotesque^ branching in their radicles, 
 
 In odd, fantastic lines their shapes revealed. 
 
 " What succulent juices in these rootlets lie 
 For use as food or medicine, that thou 
 Dost labor with such zeal to bring them forth ? 
 And what are they that have not human life, 
 Yet speak, as men at Babel, many tongues?" 
 
 The scholar held out both her burdened hands, 
 And fondly gazed upon the spoils they bore. 
 " This is the pastime of my leisure hours, 
 Though they, of late, have been but few and fleet. 
 As men of years to childhood s sports return, 
 In their diversions cast aside their cares, 
 So I, to that which pleased my earlier youth. 
 These are the roots of Hebrew and of Greek, 
 And ancient Aramaic, Hebrew s source." 
 
 She placed them carefully upon the ground, 
 And in her hands, as if by magic brought,
 
 64 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 The pilgrim saw an ancient parchment scroll, 
 
 Shaven and pumiced in an age long gone ; 
 
 Of mellowed tint that had with passing years 
 
 Grown like stigmata of the crocus flower 
 
 That hue of archaeologists delight. 
 
 She gave it to the pilgrim, with command : 
 
 " Unroll and look, and read the script it bears!" 
 
 And on its yellow surface was inscribed, 
 In backward-written words of Hebrew speech, 
 And gnarled characters of ancient Greek, 
 Forms like the ones the scholar laid aside. 
 And while she gazed in wonder and amaze, 
 With eager glances did interrogate, 
 The fair gowned scholar, slightly smiling, said : 
 "Burning inquiries in thine eyes I read 
 As readily as if they had been traced 
 On ancient papyrus, for mine to scan. 
 Not from those roots are yielded remedies 
 That medicine the old mistakes of men, 
 But virtues that I from this scroll express, 
 With reason mixed, set right the theories 
 Unauthorized tradition brought to birth ;
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 65 
 
 A bastard brood, unfathered by the truth. 
 
 Think st thou no succulence therein abides? 
 
 So thought Ezekiel, in the valley s midst, 
 
 As over its dry bones his glances roved ; 
 
 But voice of prophecy brought bone to bone, 
 
 Flesh, sinew, breath, and, lo, they lived again! 
 
 So resurrect I forms of ancient thought 
 
 That bear the standards by the which I set 
 
 At rest vexed questions of old literatures ; 
 
 Teach through their matter how to learn their age ; 
 
 Decide their authorship, assign their worth; 
 
 Explode opinions that encompass them, 
 
 And, till of late, considered of themselves 
 
 As part and parcel ; likewise comprehend 
 
 Analysis which leads through lingual types, 
 
 And illustration s multifarious forms, 
 
 Back to the schools and ages giving bent 
 
 And marked propulsion to the written word." 
 
 "And wherefore unto manuscripts like these, 
 In modern times, apply these searching tests? 
 Did not contemporaneous people know, 
 
 And, knowing, ancient authorship decide, 
 
 6
 
 66 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 E er since, with putting off of flowing verse, 
 
 The long robes of historic infancy, 
 
 And girding up in prose the loins of thought, 
 
 Its spirit crystallized in written words? 
 
 For there were giants in those days, incised 
 
 With powerful stylus on their age, as well 
 
 As metal tables that the burin traced, 
 
 The types which framed the texture of their 
 
 thoughts, 
 
 Whose classic styles of grand simplicity 
 Have served as patterns never rivaled yet 
 In the aesthetic judgment of mankind. 
 How comes it that a people then far off, 
 Whose century was a future yet unborn, 
 Can thus determine, in their arrogance, 
 Decisions that contrariwise do tend? 
 Did they not know the thunders of their gods, 
 Whose grand reverberations shook the world? 
 A world too narrow in those earlier days 
 For men of weight to tarry long unknown. 
 And as we recognize by sound of voice 
 And facial likeness, children of our friends, 
 Arrangement of archaic thought and phrase
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 67 
 
 On Hebrew marbles, by their strokes disclosed, 
 
 Vellum, and parchment, too, the hand that wrought. 
 
 Are not traditions if thou call st them so 
 
 That, rising in the era of a deed, 
 
 (Or period that approximating stands,) 
 
 Whose marvelous execution has been wrought 
 
 With mighty sword, or with still mightier pen, 
 
 A cloud of witnesses that testify, 
 
 T was he! of value that by far exceeds 
 
 This analytic acumen that comes 
 
 With lagging pace, so many centuries late ? 
 
 Is modern man of so much subtler mind 
 
 Than poet, sage, historian, and scribe, 
 
 Who read these annals in those earlier times, 
 
 That what they failed to see his thought can grasp 
 
 Concerning their own age, and boldly use 
 
 As lever to o erturn their chroniclers, 
 
 And cast discredit on their chronicles? 
 
 Thou sittest far away, methinks, to call 
 
 Thy judgment seat the court of last appeal." 
 
 I 
 
 " How strange it is that when I strive to teach 
 This generation knowledge of a type
 
 68 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 It least doth know, and is not competent, 
 
 Unhelped by me, its mysteries to acquire, 
 
 Its stolid mind advices doth reject 
 
 That to its information much would add. 
 
 And further, in the rage of ignorance, 
 
 Its puny arm, grown like L,sestrigons strong, 
 
 Would fain the rocks of L,amos on me cast ; 
 
 Or those with which the Olympian deities 
 
 With outcast Titans courtesies exchanged; 
 
 Ossa and Pelion tumble round mine ears." 
 
 "Of what unwelcome type that knowledge, pray?" 
 
 "I think I see the text-book in thine hand; 
 Is t not the Bible that thou holdest there?" 
 
 "Yes, friend, and if thy wisdom clearer makes 
 Its mystery-bearing meanings to my soul, 
 Be sure I 11 thank thee from a grateful heart, 
 And not reward thee with a Titan s rock." 
 
 So saying, she held forth her little Book. 
 The scholar took and turned it, leaf by leaf; 
 Read here and there a sentence or a verse;
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 69 
 
 Then to the pilgrim looking up, she said : 
 " I leave its meanings for thyself to find, 
 For such interpretations lie beyond 
 The mission wherunto my labor tends. 
 I 11 tell thee, though, the legislator meek, 
 The son of Pharaoh s daughter, never wrote 
 These first five books the world ascribes to him ; 
 Nor David all the music-ringing Psalms, 
 Unless he had a thousand lives or so ; 
 For over all of Hebrew history s plains, 
 And touching each event within its range, 
 Go plaint and paean of the Psalter s strains. 
 And Solomon, though wise, the wisdom lacked 
 For all the Proverbs that are here set down. 
 Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs 
 Were penned by authors in oblivion lost. 
 Though Jeremiah voiced enough laments, 
 The Lamentations had a different source. 
 And there were two Isaiahs, you must know, 
 Or two who wrote the poems in his name, 
 Whose prophecies to different times belong. 
 And Paul, the great apostle, made mistakes 
 Which prove he never could have been inspired;
 
 70 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Else he would ne er the people s faith have taught 
 
 To look expectant for the Lord s return 
 
 In the same generation he went hence. 
 
 Then, too, the Messianic prophecies, 
 
 In greater part, have never been fulfilled, 
 
 And can not be, as their specific time 
 
 Has passed and left them but as idle dreams. 
 
 The Gospels many errors have therein, 
 
 And the beloved disciple you believe 
 
 The writer of that strange Apocalypse 
 
 Which has been named a literature of dreams, 
 
 And Gospel and Epistles by his name, 
 
 May ne er have set his hand to one of them ; 
 
 For those traditions which affirm he did, 
 
 Are met by views of critics, who assign 
 
 Dates thereunto which fail to correspond 
 
 With those of men who argue for St. John." 
 
 "Assurance of these ancient worthies deeds 
 Gives tripping fleetness to thy sure address. 
 Have they, in rehabilitating dust, 
 From crypt and charnel of the ages gone, 
 Arisen out of rest to counsel thee?"
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 71 
 
 " Rock first ! My prescience told me thou wouldst 
 
 throw. 
 
 I know it by the rules delivered thee, 
 Deploring, as I did, thy piteous state 
 Of blind enslavement unto false ideas, 
 Applying to this work of human hands 
 As fully as to aught they e er achieved. 
 
 "And dost thou wholly man s accomplishment 
 Reckon that labor, unto which, constrained, 
 Men were, as instruments of Power divine, 
 Incited, spurred, and gloriously compelled 
 By inspiration of the Holy Ghost?" 
 
 "Thou speak st of inspiration ; dost thou think 
 By verbal inspiration, then, they wrote?" 
 
 "What else? A formless idea, wholly vague? 
 A floating shapelessness of general thought? 
 The Word of God would be but word of man, 
 Thus energized, thus hazily inspired." 
 
 " Thou thinkest, then, he made its authors scribes, 
 To write his meanings out in clerkly hand?"
 
 72 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 " I think, if t is God s letter to mankind, 
 T is his dictation, whoe er held the pen. 
 Thy secretary s letter is his own, 
 Unless his pen to thy dictation glides. 
 He may, I own, correct thy lapsing phrase, 
 If, of the two, he have the better taste, 
 Or finer thought, or comelier form of speech. 
 But thou, I think, wilt scarcely care to claim 
 The Holy Ghost required such exercise 
 Of human agency, when thus employed, 
 Transmitting holy truths by man to men. 
 But ere we into deeper waters step, 
 L/et us go back to where we entered in ! 
 If these same books, whose authorship thou 
 
 touch st 
 
 With Presto, change! of thy magician s wand, 
 Are still God s word, and credence from mankind 
 Deserve as such, is it not strange, in truth, 
 Admitting what thou say st, that all of these 
 Who bear such shining names this galaxy 
 Of bright and lofty ones, mong whom were God s 
 Effectual working men, among the Jews, 
 And later in the Apostolic Church
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 73 
 
 Should have been put aside and overlooked, 
 When He had honors to bestow like this ? 
 And is t not stranger still, that men unknown, 
 Unnamed, unheard of, could so well have worn 
 Throughout so many ages, tunics made 
 To fit such grand Colossi ; could bestride 
 With attitude august, and kingly might, 
 The centuries that erstwhile have elapsed 
 In sacred history s records until now ; 
 And never had their borrowed garments stripped 
 From off their shoulders till that hand of thine 
 Laid rending touch upon their purple fringe? 
 It may be thou wilt tell me what thy name !" 
 
 " The Spirit of Investigation, I ! 
 In different generations, divers names 
 Have unto me and to my work attached; 
 A work that varies, likewise, with the times, 
 Although its spirit ever is the same ; 
 And narrow-minded men of every age 
 Have voiced their venom in the titles used. 
 They call me Higher Criticism now 
 My friends, at least ; my enemies declare
 
 74 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 I m but a phase of rationalistic thought, 
 
 Such as in varied guises has disturbed, 
 
 And under different forms, the Christian Church 
 
 E er since it was established, to this date. 
 
 I differentiate the false and true, 
 
 Which in men s thoughts identical are held 
 
 For lack of knowledge to distinguish them, 
 
 And their specific differences declare. 
 
 My appellations are ephemeral things, 
 
 Appropriate only to the passing hour ; 
 
 But though they alter, I am still the same ; 
 
 With Time s cessation, only, ends my life." 
 
 "As criticism is thy mission now, 
 Pray tell what thy critiques would fain destroy." 
 
 "False theories, unwarranted to live, 
 Anent the book thou boldest in thine hand ; 
 Its verbal inspiration, also false; 
 Assumption, likewise, of inerrancy, 
 And doctrine that man may not be inspired, 
 Unless he be a man of lofty name, 
 Transcendent virtue and assertive fame."
 
 THE SPIRIJ OF INVESTIGATION. 75 
 "Inerrancy? I do not understand." 
 
 " I mean that Scripture, like all work of man, 
 Has errors in t ; is not infallible." 
 
 "Then, wonder-worker, wouldst thou overthrow 
 The Word of God, the only hope of man ; 
 The chart by which the voyager would sail 
 To reach the better land that s far away ? 
 Concerning errors of the which thou speak st, 
 That seem, I sorrowing say, to give thee joy, 
 Dost thou refer to scientific thought, 
 Whose greatest triumph our own age has seen 
 Wherein a blunder easily had been, 
 Or incidental circumstance aside 
 From the grand current of the purposed flow 
 Of history both human and divine ? 
 If neath the apostolic garmentings, 
 In which their mission stood approved of God, 
 Thy criticism strikes to find the man, 
 I doubt not thou wilt find him fallible 
 In speech and thought, and in conception oft ; 
 In every thew and sinew vulnerable.
 
 76 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Of mortal creatures the restrictions are 
 
 Such as to make their labors ofttimes seem 
 
 L,ike to the strata of the valued quartz, 
 
 Which, though they hold the veinings of the 
 
 gold, 
 
 Are to be found with granite intermixed, 
 And colored by the iron or the clay. 
 Count not thiese truths as errors of the Word, 
 But simply limitations of the man. 
 I knew not that it was considered fact 
 By thinkers of discriminating mind, 
 That as concerneth aught of Bible lore, 
 Not an essential to eternal life, 
 Nor to the history that it may comprise, 
 Nor utterance of the word of prophecy, 
 The inspiration of the Holy Ghost 
 Illuminated any phase of truth." 
 
 "Long as thou dost admit the fact I claim, 
 Thy weak distinction without difference is. 
 Not Bibliolatry, but Christ should be 
 Thy constant end and aim in worshiping. 
 And if within a doctrine lies the truth,
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 77 
 
 It needs no lofty name to bolster it, 
 No Church infallible to authorize." 
 
 "7f, sayest thou? How know men of the truth 
 In things where human judgment goes astray 
 And is not competent, untaught, to speak, 
 Save from the records of this little Book? 
 And if tis not infallible and true 
 Beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt, 
 How know I, then, that in the very phrase 
 Which makes Him King of kings and Lord of 
 
 lords, 
 
 Hope of the soul and Savior of the lost, 
 I do not stumble on some error there, 
 And, in believing, run the awful risk 
 Of building all my faith upon mistake? 
 How know we, either one, of truth divine, 
 If there be not one record which mistake 
 And error have not ventured to approach, 
 Kept back from sullying its stainless page 
 By an almighty Power they dared not cross?" 
 
 "The doctrines of the faith I leave untouched."
 
 78 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 "O, generous soul! Thy desecrating hand 
 Would but disturb the faith men have therein. 
 Shake the foundations on the which they rest, 
 And of themselves they totter to a fall 
 In the esteem of those who held them dear. 
 I am not skilled in thine analysis ; 
 I can not speak for Moses nor Isaiah, 
 Nor when, nor how they wrote, or not at all; 
 Though Jesus said that Moses wrote of him.* 
 If not, by forecast, in the Pentateuch, 
 In what forgotten record did he write? 
 Perhaps the Son of the Almighty erred; 
 A God might make mistakes in authorship 
 Where sage philologists would never trip. 
 Magnanimous to leave the doctrines there, 
 Yet claim pens uninspired have written them ! 
 The Christian knows inherent is their truth; 
 They who obey the will, the doctrines know, 
 But by external evidence, as well, 
 And outward proof hath God the Father meant 
 To draw new converts to his holy Son. 
 The unbeliever, justified, may say, 
 
 *S. John v, 46.
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 79 
 
 When, to the end designed, thy mission draws, 
 
 What warrant find I on thy Bible s page 
 
 For confident assurance of its truth ? 
 
 If uninspired, how know I Christ is God, 
 
 Or am I bound unto him to submit? 
 
 Mahomet s, Buddha s, any moral code 
 
 Comes with authority that equals his, 
 
 If inspiration hath not framed his Word. " 
 
 "I said not, pilgrim, it was uninspired, 
 
 % 
 
 For by thy garb I see that such thou art." 
 
 "Thou didst but intimate some hazy truth 
 
 Of general application, creeping in, 
 
 Impressed the thoughts of some unheard-of 
 men; 
 
 Somebody, somewhere, who they were, un 
 known ; 
 
 And yet, contending as thou dost for proof, 
 
 Thou canst accept as genuine their words. 
 
 So wise and yet so credulous art thou ! 
 
 So doubtful, yet so child-like is thy faith, 
 
 Thou dost receive, not questioning the source."
 
 8o THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 The scholar s shapely shoulders shrugged them 
 selves 
 Neath the straight folds of her scholastic gown. 
 
 "Authority is not synonymous 
 With that which is itself infallible; 
 And your Book s value does not rest upon 
 Who wrote it, nor inerrant text therein ; 
 But in its power to rouse and waken souls 
 And lead them to attempt the Christian life. 
 It has been said, and I believe it true, 
 No human words, of howe er subtle shade 
 Or graduated meaning, can express 
 The smallest part of one divine idea. 
 That, for its import, we must grope and search 
 Beneath, above, within, without the text, 
 Till, in the ultimate, to which doth tend 
 Train of that search s progress, we shall find, 
 At limit line of all analysis, 
 Best indications of the thing God meant. 
 If this be so, and so I argue tis, 
 Why whimper after inspiration blent 
 With such elusive subtilties as words,
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 81 
 
 Of which the spirit only hath true life ; 
 And that, to different ages in their turn, 
 Must be progressively interpreted? 
 Use thou the reason God on man bestowed; 
 Authority that, with the Church itself, 
 And with the Scripture is co-ordinate." 
 
 "Whose reason shall be drawn on thine or mine, 
 Or that of minds unlike to either one? 
 What reason human training biases, 
 Or that the heart s affection doth control, 
 Or circumstances cause to deviate, 
 As education or as interest wills, 
 Is clear, impartial, great, and strong enough 
 To be unto the world of craving hearts 
 What Atlas was unto the globe itself; 
 And rest on the conclusions of a brain 
 In perfect equipoise, that weighs the claims 
 Of truth and falsehood evenly and well, 
 The arbitrated destinies of men? 
 We read there is a part of the Azores, 
 The waters of the North Atlantic bathe, 
 Where the magnetic needle never strays,
 
 82 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Nor dips, nor is deflected in its course. 
 But reason never yet, in human mind, 
 And limitations that restrict it here, 
 Could rise superior to the mind itself, 
 Cramped and confined by its environments, 
 And act as loyal and unswerving guide 
 To the meridian of hidden truth, 
 Which He, of whom it is essential part, 
 Alone hath power to hide or to reveal. 
 No gimbals, holding it in free suspense, 
 Of independent thought s unfettered hold, 
 Can perfect equilibrium bestow, 
 All unaffected by external things 
 Attractive to man s fancies and his hopes, 
 And to the motions of the world and time. 
 
 "But, speaking without figures, I would say, 
 Concerning qualities that do inhere 
 In human reason, thou hast made mistake. 
 Thou think st it the determiner that finds 
 Within all base alloys, in its assay, 
 The one pure metal that its search rewards. 
 Thou think st it is the magic glass, wherein
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 83 
 
 The Persian poet tells us Solomon, 
 
 To magnify the wisdom he possessed, 
 
 Beheld the cause of all things when he gazed. 
 
 Like quicksilver, it runs to find the gold 
 
 And separate its wealth from worthless ore ; 
 
 Yet, unlike this, it often fails to make 
 
 Amalgam that proclaims successful test. 
 
 Though reason is a gem of matchless worth, 
 
 It is not flawless in its brilliancy, 
 
 And though, like the king s mirror, it reflects 
 
 The pictured truth in bright inerrancy, 
 
 With figured causes of the things that be, 
 
 As oft, like troubled pool, it fails to glass 
 
 Correct proportions it should reproduce, 
 
 And, all distorted in its lines and curves, 
 
 Unlikeness hideous it delineates. 
 
 But hast thou pushed to such exhaustive end 
 
 Pursuit of meaning that in words is hid, 
 
 To limit line of all analysis/ 
 
 Bre boldly thou proclaimest prophecies 
 
 Referring to Messiah, unfulfilled, 
 
 And such as in their nature e er must be, 
 
 Because the limit of their time is past?
 
 84 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 A little longer con thine alphabet, 
 
 And search for hidden purport, ere thou speak st 
 
 To such discredit of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 I would not contradict thy postulate 
 
 Concerning words that play hide-and-go-seek ; 
 
 The lesson only thou wouldst from it draw. 
 
 If t be that human words so lacking are 
 
 In spiritual force, to represent 
 
 That thought to us that higher than our own 
 
 Is, as the heaven is higher than the earth, 
 
 (As one may well consider them to be,) 
 
 In making portraitures for minds of men 
 
 Which through the words alone the concepts 
 
 grasp, 
 
 Would not the Spirit careful searching make 
 For those which best unfolded every shade 
 Of purpose and design embodied there ; 
 Gave hint and color of His meaning forth ? 
 Since that which best shall represent the thought, 
 Evades and baffles oft the mind s pursuit, 
 And leads it far afield to compass truth ; 
 Depicted only in a general way, 
 And left to word devices of man s own,
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 85 
 
 What devious deflections of that thought 
 
 Through roving, rambling, and discursive speech, 
 
 Would fail its heaven-sent mission to complete ; 
 
 To be a lamp unto the pilgrim s feet. 
 
 Thou claimest, virtually, that this is so ; 
 
 On such supposed deflections base thy plea; 
 
 Thy witness gainst the Word s inerrancy. 
 
 But human nature, erring at the best, 
 
 When called to treat on subjects so sublime, 
 
 Needs unction greater than to mirror forth 
 
 The customs of the people and the times, 
 
 And the enlightenment that marks the age, 
 
 As chroniclers of less importance do ; 
 
 Plenary inspiration that uplifts 
 
 Above the level thoughts of common life, 
 
 And with the temple veil asunder rent, 
 
 Accepts the word from Him who sits within. 
 
 Unless men guidance had, determinate, 
 
 As certain as was Ariadne s thread 
 
 To Theseus mid the Cretan labyrintfi s maze, 
 
 To words of which no jot or tittle moves, 
 
 No matter what the progress of the times, 
 
 Can we believe the labors of their hands
 
 86 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Are worthy of the credence of our souls, 
 
 Or stake our every hope upon their truth? 
 
 For if the Bible be but history, 
 
 A literature of peoples and of times 
 
 When theocratic rule inflamed men s zeal, 
 
 It sinks to history s level, and henceforth 
 
 No longer doth it holy sacredness 
 
 Nor high significance for man possess. 
 
 How higher than the Veda doth it stand 
 
 The sacred literature Hindoos revered ? 
 
 Or venerated Persian writing old 
 
 Of the Avesta ; like to it, in this, 
 
 Men have disputed o er its authorship ? 
 
 If t were man s book, thy premise I might grant 
 
 For spite its errors, here and there might shine 
 
 Some gem of value, or the truth s pure gold ; 
 
 But, being God s instead, it must not err. 
 
 One error trips more than ten thousand faiths, 
 
 And turns from righteousness ten thousand souls. 
 
 Hast thou not heard of rift within the lute, 
 
 That, by and by, will make its music mute ? 
 
 If inspiration of the sacred page 
 
 So variable and uncertain is,
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 87 
 
 It leaves men free to form such theories 
 As please their fancies best regarding it ; 
 Then, as a rule of conduct and of life, 
 It ceases to command respect of them ; 
 Becomes a theme whereon to speculate, 
 For dilettante and for sage, alike ; 
 But never from the one who demonstrates 
 Nor him who listens with judicial mind 
 Henceforth the text obedience demands." 
 
 "No matter what objections thou dost urge, 
 These are the facts my study has revealed ; 
 My truths must stand." 
 
 "And God s go to the wall? 
 What fair sophistic reasoning can avail 
 To hold men s reverence for a partial truth, 
 Or lead them to a Christ who must partake 
 Of the uncertain nature of the book 
 Wherein his advocacy strongest stands ? 
 I know upon the older Testament 
 Most fiercely doth thy criticism turn ; 
 But each to each is linked with silver ties
 
 88 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Of a relationship so close and strong 
 
 That blow which maims or injures either one 
 
 Must to the other s detriment recoil. 
 
 The evolution of God s love to man, 
 
 (Or its expression mine is human speech), 
 
 Which comes to its perfected fruit in Christ, 
 
 From stage to stage of that old history 
 
 Developed to this consummation sweet ; 
 
 Beginning with the Kden prophecy, 
 
 The woman s seed shall bruise the serpent s head. 
 
 What verbal inspiration greater power 
 
 Of nice discrimination could possess, 
 
 To words more crystalline of sense to move, 
 
 Viewed in the light that Jesus mission throws? 
 
 But as concerns thy plea of doctrines left 
 
 Uninjured by thy decimating touch, 
 
 Skeptic and infidel may rightly jeer 
 
 At such authority as will remain 
 
 When thy bold hand, with sacrilegious touch, 
 
 Its inspiration and its faultless truth 
 
 Has torn away and trampled in the dust. 
 
 Or has essayed to ; for I do not fear 
 
 That, through thine efforts, such may be its fate."
 
 THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION. 
 
 "Thy pious ignorance my scorn doth wake. 
 I know the thing concerning which I speak." 
 
 "Thou say st thy criticism touches not 
 The central doctrines that the book enshrines, 
 Or God, his Fatherhood, and Jesus Christ. 
 But if, to me, its tendency should be, 
 As to full many surely it will prove, 
 To trouble and distress and sadden me, 
 And raise up questions that no answers find, 
 Better for me my pious ignorance 
 That deems the Word of God unsullied truth, 
 Than erudition that destroys belief, 
 And leaves the soul an aimless, drifting barque, 
 No compass, chart, no Father at the helm ; 
 No Pilot through life s dangers guiding it ; 
 No beacon-light to warn it from the rocks; 
 No haven waiting at the journey s end ! 
 
 " I care not for thy wisdom and thy skill ; 
 I turn my back on thy disturbing claims, 
 And clasp unto my heart this precious Book, 
 
 To have, to hold, to trust in, cherish, keep, 
 
 8
 
 90 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Till death unfolds or life, on death s yon side 
 
 Fulfillment of each blissful prophecy 
 
 Its words have pictured, and my soul received : 
 
 Perhaps behold them, like the butterfly, 
 
 That crawls the earth a homely common worm, 
 
 Develop charms of hidden symmetry, 
 
 And fan, with gofden wings, the airs of heaven ; 
 
 While, yet again, these words shall Jesus speak, 
 
 That to my spirit herald rapture sweet, 
 
 In accents soft and tender: Blessed they 
 
 Who never having seen, have yet believed. " 
 
 And in a transport, clasping close the book 
 Unto her heart that o er it pulsed and yearned, 
 With lifted face that on it bore a light 
 That from within was kindled and did grow, 
 She turned, and from the scholar passed away ; 
 And heard, in passing, her low, scornful laugh.
 
 V. 
 
 pilgrim anb
 
 AS she went forth, the landscape altered was; 
 The hard, seamed, wrinkled furrows were 
 
 I \J no more, 
 
 *jfp 
 
 And, in their stead, a tender herbage grew. 
 
 Unto the north a chain of mountains rose, 
 Whose lofty peaks, that soared to meet the clouds, 
 Were hooded as with silvered ermine cowls, 
 That did proclaim them as the "the home of snow."* 
 And in the valley where she walked were wells 
 And fountains to keep moist and cool the air. 
 Here all the charms that grace a beauteous clime, 
 Neath her admiring eyes concentered were. 
 
 * Himalayas.
 
 94 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 A banyan-tree, whose drooping arms embraced 
 The soil, and sprang anew in long arcades 
 And cloisters, still, inviting, green, and cool, 
 Did woo the pilgrim to lie down and rest 
 Within the compass of its grateful shade. 
 And tall and haughty stood the leafy palms, 
 That under the close chaplet of their crowns 
 Were weighted with the milk-filled cocoanuts. 
 The brooding air held aromatic scent 
 And fragrance, that it bore from spices sweet, 
 And sandal-wood that in the hedge-rows grew, 
 And piquant perfume that the zephyrs caught 
 From creamy umbels of the anise-flower, 
 Exotic from the land of pyramids. 
 And gorgeous birds, at her approach, up-flew, 
 With whir of wings and chatter of strange speech 
 Those spots of light that feed upon the flowers, 
 And, in. their flight, metallic lusters show; 
 Gold pheasants, feathered as from paradise, 
 And paroquets, in varied tints bedecked ; 
 And peacocks, pompous splendor of whose tails 
 Was eyed, like Argus, in each feathery plume. 
 Swift blendings of chameleon surprise
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 95 
 
 Touched crest and pinion in each changing light, 
 The while they flashed from branch of tree to 
 
 shrub, 
 
 Or in their stately beauty walked the earth, 
 And nipped the fruit, or on the legumes fed. 
 And there were gardens where the roving breeze 
 Was faint and languid with the slumberous breath 
 The heavy-headed poppy flowers exhaled, 
 (Those blossoms the wise goddess strews for sleep,) 
 Or richer grew with sweets he filched away 
 From panicles of snowy jessamine. 
 And mid the flowers the stealthy serpents crawled, 
 As sins and sorrows trail amid our joys. 
 And pranked with purple, rose, and tender blue, 
 Or snowy in their colorless racemes, 
 On thickly-growing plants in stretching fields, 
 Sprang the long blossoms of the indigo. 
 A witchery of color thralled the air, 
 L,ike to a cloud on which the setting sun 
 Throws back enchantment of his latest rays 
 That stain its nebula with rosy tones, 
 That on its breaking edges turn to gold ; 
 The mango-branches pinkish-yellow flowers,
 
 96 . THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 That yield such lovely promises of fruit. 
 
 And, not far off, were murmurs as of streams, 
 
 And liquid monotones that did not change 
 
 Of backward-falling jets, which, to the air, 
 
 In prodigal delight their white sprays cast, 
 
 But ever to the marble did return 
 
 Which walled the hidden source from whence they 
 
 sprang, 
 
 As hopes, that fail to reach where they aspire, 
 Beat back in monotone of weak despair 
 Against the walls that seem to bound their 
 
 power. 
 
 Save that the voice of Nature never falls 
 In cadences so sad as voice of man, 
 Who from her patience should the lesson learn 
 That everything for God s own time must wait, 
 And to the soul that waiteth, comes no loss. 
 And on the basins edges lilies grew, 
 In blue and purple, and of hueless white, 
 As if by impact with the waters struck 
 From out the bowl that held the crystal pool, 
 That, by their beauty, would console its grief. 
 Thus from the soul of man, in bitterest hour,
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 97 
 
 Ofttimes upspring most beauteous flowers of 
 
 faith. 
 
 And midst this scene, enchanting and serene, 
 Neath canopy of arborescent bloom, 
 In loose and flowing robe, an image sat, 
 Of one with tender eyes, who mildly mused. 
 But, as the sound of footsteps reached his ear, 
 And, on the form advancing, fell his eye, 
 He rose, performed a courteous salaam, 
 And bade her welcome to the Eastern world. 
 
 " Tis a fair world," said she; "the hand that 
 
 made, 
 
 Must well have loved its work, and lovingly 
 Have molded it/to shape, in forming it." 
 
 " It doth, indeed, stand for a grand idea ; 
 For things we see are but reflected shape, 
 Or shadow cast by things intangible." 
 
 " From thy grave words and meditative mien, 
 I see that thine appreciative thought 
 Doth trench upon the serious side of life."
 
 98 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 " Hath it another, then? Its lightest froth 
 Is but the topmost crest of waves below, 
 Whose depths man s longest plummet can not 
 sound." 
 
 "Thy speech s deep thoughtfulness proclaims 
 the sage." 
 
 " If study of the causes which do make 
 Conditions of this life what they now are, 
 And perfect insight as to remedies, 
 Which on them act as alteratives to change, 
 Shall serve to give me title to the name 
 Thou speakest, then to me that name belongs. 
 For I have sat and brooded day and night 
 Upon man s mission and his destiny 
 Whence doth he come and whither doth he go; 
 What influence, malign, doth hold him bound, 
 And what, beneficent, must set him free; 
 How evil s reign may best abolished be ; 
 What cardinal virtue has its exercise, 
 And grows and gains new vigor in such act. 
 If it be possible to reconcile
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 99 
 
 The due rewards attending right and wrong 
 
 With any substituted sacrifice. 
 
 And musing thus, I have solution found 
 
 To questions hitherto insoluble. 
 
 I know, now, whence he comes and where he 
 
 goes; 
 
 That many repetitions life requires 
 For perfect and complete development; 
 Know hpw to read disclosures of his past 
 In words his present speaks, and presage make 
 Of that which in the future lies, as well." 
 
 " How, to thee, in thy meditative mood, 
 Came there convictions of such portent, friend?" 
 
 "From the Enlightener of the human mind." 
 
 "What medium used he in this ministry? 
 Came this enlightenment through church of his, 
 Or book inspired, or other auspices?" 
 
 "Thy question doth betray that thou hast come 
 From schools of men upholding church and creed,
 
 ioo THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Which, as abaters of our sins, or yet 
 As solacers of woes, fail utterly. 
 I doubt not thou art one who doth believe 
 Doctrine impractical which they have taught 
 Regarding a vicarious offering ; 
 Accepting or rejecting which, to live 
 Or die, man may determine by a choice. 
 But to your question : this enlightenment 
 Came to my mind direct from Him who gaj^e. 
 None mediates between my soul and Him ; 
 Exists there no mechanical device 
 Conveyancing the thought from Mind Supreme 
 To me, an emanation from himself; 
 Not a creation that his hand has made, 
 But an emission from himself thrown off, 
 To be once more absorbed and swallowed up, 
 When many incarnations are fulfilled, 
 And they have wrought their aim, and made me 
 pure." 
 
 " That Mind Supreme hath a familiar sound. 
 Is He who bears the title likewise Brahm? 
 Good friend, if thou be part of Deity ?
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 101 
 
 However small, how can it e er have chanced 
 
 That to impurity may be allied 
 
 Or sin, or moral blindness, what thou art? 
 
 A house or kingdom that divided is 
 
 Against itself, is destined to its fall; 
 
 And spark from God emitted that doth tend 
 
 To light the fires of sin, hath ceased to be, 
 
 In its deep degradation, part of Him. 
 
 He can not sin ; He can not be impure ; 
 
 And any emanation that from Him 
 
 Comes forth, must be, in nature, like its source. 
 
 O, what a spectacle : the mighty God 
 
 Engaged throughout the ages of all time, 
 
 Re-incarnations ever multiplied, 
 
 To discipline, refine, and cleanse himself ! 
 
 Of all his millions of emitted sparks, 
 
 Not one true to its origin himself! 
 
 Surely this is a wonderful belief, 
 
 Surpassing, in its inconsistency, 
 
 All inconsistencies aforetime known ! 
 
 My curious ear is listening for thy name." 
 
 " That name epitomizes what I claim."
 
 102 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 "What name can mean so much?" 
 
 " Theosophy." 
 
 " Thy face hath not a wrinkle, but thy name 
 Proclaims the many centuries thou hast lived." 
 
 "Not I. I am descended from the Buddh, 
 But changed in many a feature as the child 
 Of later generations often is. 
 The superstitious thoughts that, hand in hand, 
 Beneath these skies in early days were linked 
 With faith in theosophic truth, are gone; 
 With growing light, my wisdom lopped away. 
 And more especially in other climes; 
 For what was once religion of the East, 
 And for its devotees a thing apart, 
 Now gains new converts from the growing West 
 That in it see a practical escape 
 From the vexed doctrines that the priests espouse." 
 
 "What superstitions hast thou lopped away? 
 Dost thou not still in Lamaism trust? 
 Sequential line of purely virtuous souls
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 103 
 
 In which divinity its temple rears? 
 Which, when the bodies framing, fall to dust, 
 Take on new forms, with eyes that ever see 
 The inmost secrets of all human hearts? 
 But well thy doctrine holds these virtuous ones 
 Can be discovered but by favored priests, 
 Who to the rank and file of worshipers 
 Declare that the succession onward moves. 
 Well for thy creed; for average human minds 
 Would scarce select as of desert so high 
 Weak mortal creatures, subject to the faults 
 And vanities and greeds of common life, 
 To set them up as priests and priestesses 
 Possessing some occult and mystic power. 
 And is it thou who speak st of doctrines vexed, 
 Whose bonnet-bee doth so absurdly buzz ?" 
 Then from her tone the momentary scorn, 
 Which unto shrillness had its music keyed, 
 Departed, and inflections sweet returned. 
 "I read a doctrine here," she gently said, 
 As to the image s sight she held her book, 
 "So simple that it can not be called vexed; 
 So practical no superstitious shoots
 
 104 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Require to be lopped off ere proselytes 
 And converts may be made of thinking minds. 
 Its tenet is, that God created souls, 
 Not threw thein out from his supreme repose, 
 And gave them choice of evil or of good. 
 They chose the evil, and He, loving them, 
 With gracious Father-hand did interpose 
 To rescue from their own untoward choice. 
 One spark, one glorious spark, emitted He ; 
 A sinless Savior from himself sent forth 
 To die for man that he through Him might be 
 Received, accepted, saved eternally." 
 
 "But due reward each act must ever bring, 
 Of good or evil, as its nature is; 
 How, then, could any ever interpose 
 To keep effect from following on cause?" 
 
 "Effect did follow, but on Him it fell, 
 This Savior sinless, that our love, as well, 
 Might turn to him, whose love for us did save 
 From death and ruin. T is a blessed thing 
 To know sin s debt has all been paid in Him,
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 105 
 
 And all required of us is to believe, 
 
 And follow in the path where he has walked. 
 
 An onerous task thou layest on mankind 
 
 Of self-purgation from all dross and sin ; 
 
 Of ceaseless struggle, with no hand to help. 
 
 It is a monstrous thing to vindicate 
 
 The agony of death which brings not rest, 
 
 But added pains of life again renewed, 
 
 In which the consequence of former deeds, 
 
 With their long train of misery entailed, 
 
 Is such no soul can bear it and be saved. 
 
 Thou scorn st atonement by vicarious means; 
 
 Yet what is this that dooms a later life, 
 
 Unconscious of a life e er lived before, 
 
 Or deeds demanding sacrifice therein, 
 
 Its antecedents guilt and crime to bear, 
 
 The burden of the old sin s penalty? 
 
 Tis the same meaning with a different name, 
 
 And hard upon the generations wears. 
 
 Not once for all, as in the Christian s faith, 
 
 But, evermore, throughout all time, goes on 
 
 The expiation of unending sin. 
 
 Especially" and here the pilgrim smiled
 
 106 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 "Must it be burdensome to spirit life 
 
 That hath no certain form as reads thy faith. 
 
 Does God so little care, believest thou, 
 
 For sparks from his own being earthward cast, 
 
 That he can sit serenely on his throne 
 
 And see the ceaseless round of endless pain 
 
 Re-birth attaches to successive life?" 
 
 "Not endless. Present life alone decides 
 The destiny the future hath in store. 
 Its habits and ambitions, and its hopes, 
 Furnish the forming power lodged in ourselves. 
 And not alone for penalty, birth s use, 
 But gain of purity through discipline; 
 The transient and material to subdue, 
 And in its place establish the ideal. 
 Thus doth life alternate with death give time 
 Ere yet the tabernacle s quite destroyed, 
 Its ridge-pole sundered and its rafters broke, 
 To yield submission to the Karmic law, 
 (The doctrine thou would st strictest justice call,) 
 Defeat re-birth, gain credit for the soul, 
 And reach Nirvana s peace. Not Deity
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 107 
 
 Nor Devil, as thou thinkest, but thyself, 
 And thou alone, art thine own. providence." 
 
 "Thou claimest man shall be absorbed in God, 
 But ar guest God shall be absorbed in man, 
 In making self his only providence. 
 The Deity sits on the heavenly throne, 
 But gives his scepter into human hands ! 
 The perfect God emits imperfect life, 
 And leaves it, unassisted, to work out 
 A perfect and ideal destiny ; 
 Emits a life with bias toward the wrong, 
 And no propulsion save its own ideals, 
 Imperfect and confused toward the right, 
 And then, when after ages strife of lives 
 Unnumbered, said by thee to be the same, 
 The man appears who yields to Karinic law, 
 And leaves the lower for the high ideal, 
 With what reward doth gracious Deity 
 Approve the victory generations wrought? 
 Nirvana; simply he doth cease to be, 
 To know, to feel, enjoy ; is swallowed up 
 In Mind Supreme ; his little spark o erwhelmed,
 
 io8 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 And all that made him man o erwhelmed as well. 
 
 No fond reunion in a happier world 
 
 With dear ones death has parted from us here; 
 
 No conscious union with that Mind himself. 
 
 For this oblivion hath he lived and striven; 
 
 For this obliteration, self denied ; 
 
 To this extinction, tended all his hopes. 
 
 Thou hast a trifle higher risen, friend, 
 
 In reverence for thy lofty origin, 
 
 Than antecedents of thy nation born, 
 
 Who to account for pre-existent life 
 
 And to provide a punishment for sin, 
 
 Believed the Brahm his human offspring doomed 
 
 To transmigrate to flesh of brute and beast; 
 
 But higher yet in spiritual truth, 
 
 To finished work of Jesus lift thine eyes, 
 
 Ere thou canst know what happiness inheres 
 
 Within the true believer s paradise." 
 
 "Thou touchest on a point important, here, 
 And knowest not that, in that loss of Self, 
 For which thou dost commiserate the soul 
 That life s afflictive bonds can bind no more,
 
 THE P-ILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 109 
 
 Lies all the secret of its ecstasy. 
 
 Is life foregone its separate life and thought, 
 
 In which the pang did overcrowd the joy, 
 
 And disappointment blight the springing hope, 
 
 Evil defile the purpose willed to good, 
 
 And vile expediency did prostitute 
 
 Its highest faculties to ways of men 
 
 So great a boon it should be carried on, 
 
 Perpetuated through eternity? 
 
 Its vast capacity for anguish deep, 
 
 Imperious loves, that satisfaction cloys, 
 
 But that denial into frenzy turns, 
 
 And that bereavement into hopelessness 
 
 And blank despair, a cataclysm, sweeps; 
 
 Its stormy passions, its illusive hopes, 
 
 Its yearnings, that fulfillment never reach, 
 
 Are wires that keep from home the captive 
 
 soul, 
 
 In durance held to Self s propensities. 
 Ambitions gild and expectations deck, 
 I/ike gold that in its thinnest leaf is spread, 
 And some flamboyant ribbon that doth wave 
 Its gaudy pennant from the metal thread
 
 no . THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Life s draw-plate forms to bound its prison cell ; 
 
 But spite these gauds, it is a prison still. 
 
 And would st thou ever, like the helpless bird, 
 
 Swing td and fro within the vibrant ring 
 
 That from joy gravitates again to grief; 
 
 Tenure to loss, and mirth to misery ; 
 
 From bliss to woe, the sport of circumstance? 
 
 O, kingdom of the blest, that moveth not 
 
 To sight or sound that this discursive life 
 
 But shows to flatter, utters to distract, 
 
 I fain would hasten up, from height to height 
 
 That ever rises to a loftier plane 
 
 Of increased power that from experience grows 
 
 To put Self s requisitions under foot; 
 
 Resist, and long not, while I yet resist, 
 
 For crown that their indulgence ofFereth; 
 
 Climb, climb o er death and its recurrent life, 
 
 (My own and that of all unto me dear,) 
 
 Until with pulse becalmed I enter in 
 
 To where no trasport e er can quicken it, 
 
 And no distress can slow its measured throb; 
 
 Where no desire that hath an earthly strain 
 
 Hath power to make its paltry presence felt ;
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. in 
 
 Hath speech to urge unrest upon the soul, 
 Nirvana bathes in a complete repose." 
 
 "And dost thou call the thing thou namest, Life? 
 The gilded cage that holds the captive bird? 
 That is the wire-hedged school of discipline 
 In which his fretted search for liberty 
 Through love, and hope, and pleasure, doth increase, 
 As disappointment on it follows close, 
 The sweetness of the melody he sings; 
 Brings in the minor chord of higher hope, 
 Whose very longing as a surety stands, 
 That when, with chill white hand, the messenger 
 Of death shall touch and set the bars apart, 
 His upward course shall soar amid the stars, 
 And the wide fields of ether be his home. 
 The wing was made to beat the boundless air; 
 Its quill and covert for a purposed flight; 
 And every frantic longing of man s soul 
 That goads him on, some promised goal to reach, 
 His hopes have whispered shall with sweet reward 
 Of lasting satisfaction crown his quest, 
 Which, having reached, of narrow scope he finds,
 
 ii2 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 And joy too poor its depths to satisfy, 
 
 Is frame of wing that yet shall be unfurled 
 
 To waft him to delights unchangeable. 
 
 Like Iris is the mission of his want 
 
 And colors of the rainbow it combines ; 
 
 It sets a promise in life s clouded sky 
 
 Of life to come that shall not know a cloud. 
 
 The darkest shadow witnesses of light ; 
 
 Woe testifies felicity supreme ; 
 
 And Christ through his triumphant death has 
 
 brought 
 
 To light true life and immortality. 
 This beautiful and bright antithesis 
 Against thy theory of good I set. 
 Thy Mind Supreme doth by destruction bless ; 
 My Savior purifies to holiness ! 
 Thou dost with stoic will thy thirst repress ; 
 Mine shall be quenched in the broad boundlessness 
 Of life s refreshing stream, which, unconfined, 
 Flows o er the plains of everlasting bliss. 
 Thy loves are slain to bring thy spirit peace, 
 But mine unto His bosom with me go ; 
 Of all their pangs and stings there dispossessed,
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 113 
 
 Shall on me look with eyes in which I see 
 The tender light of human memory. 
 Not famine weakens power of sin to slay, 
 But full experience of diviner joy. 
 Thy nature s worthy of a loftier hope ; 
 Thy morals seem to have a wholesome look; 
 Thy meek endurance speaks of fortitude ; 
 But thou dost need to study God anew, 
 And to him higher attributes ascribe." 
 
 "Give space a moment! Let me know the name 
 By which to call thee." 
 
 " T is enough to know 
 I but a weary earthly pilgrim am." 
 
 " Then, pilgrim, there is mystery in thy creed, 
 By which the one pure spark of which thou 
 
 speak st 
 
 Was made to bear man s penalty for sins, 
 And through whose substitution for himself 
 Man shall be blest. Explain it, thou this plan 
 By which to dodge a punishment deserved, 
 
 And to thyself an unearned bliss secure." 
 
 10
 
 ii4 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 " Yes ; there is mystery. This book proclaims 
 Of godliness the mystery is great. 
 Thou say st well when thou stoutly dost declare 
 Effect of good or evil follows cause. 
 Christ s substitution satisfies God s law, 
 And takes away the penalty it claims 
 From man for disobedience thereto. 
 Results that follow sin in sequent chain 
 Of earthly evils, must, as such, be borne. 
 But if, through faith, acceptance has been made 
 Of that he wrought to free us from the sin, 
 Then from our souls its soil is washed away, 
 And in God s sight we have been justified. 
 No Savior having thou, the sin remains ; 
 Not only such results as touch the world, 
 But those that do affect the spirit life. 
 For, if imperfect, and no help thou hast, 
 Not Deity, nor Demon, but thyself 
 Thy sole and only Providence, how hope 
 To satisfy a law which doth demand 
 Compliance so complete, a perfect man 
 With its conditions only can comply ? 
 I know not how the matter thou explain st,
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 115 
 
 But thou dost know at variance man stands 
 With every high ideal perfection hath; 
 And save that his infirmities have help, 
 How shall his wayward spirit e er espouse 
 Or e en desire that they become his own? 
 Thou speak st of struggle gainst the lower life, 
 But what shall gird to conflict and give strength, 
 To worst the enemy his own soul loves, 
 If from some influence higher than himself, 
 The courage comes not ; if himself alone, 
 Not Deity, nor Demon, but himself, 
 Doth constitute his only Providence?" 
 
 "His will" 
 
 "Alas ! what s weaker than man s will ?" 
 
 "But pilgrim, if award that is not thine 
 Be, from thy substitute, to thee transferred, 
 Thy duties thou may st claim in him fulfilled, 
 And moral chaos whelm the universe." 
 
 " There art thou wrong. He only doth perform 
 The thing I could not do; but having done,
 
 n6 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 He does demand of me, in the new strength 
 His grace and mercy to my soul impart, 
 Fulfillment of each duty life declares. 
 But to what virtue did thy words allude 
 As that which overcometh evil s reign?" 
 
 "Unselfishness; that virtue which o ercomes 
 The baser passions of the human heart, 
 Obliterating envy, malice, pride, 
 And all uncharitable thought, whence springs 
 Forth peculation, murder, every crime 
 Dishonoring and disgracing human kind; 
 An altruism not of name, but deed." 
 
 "Nay, now thou speak st a language that I know. 
 Christian commandment runs to this effect, 
 That thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
 The Being I adore, himself did die 
 For love of them that shed his sacred blood, 
 And from the cross in dying accents cried, 
 Forgive them, for they know not what they do. 
 Had thy progenitor such gift for man? 
 Such pure unselfish love did he display?
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 117 
 
 Ransom for many was his life laid down? 
 
 There is a virtue in my Savior s blood 
 
 That cleanseth whatsoe er its flow doth touch; 
 
 Evokes a sweet and stainless purity, 
 
 L,ike the white flower by crimson juices fed 
 
 That springs from Sanguinaria s bloody root. 
 
 Nay, let me tell thee that there can not be 
 
 An altruistic sacrifice, like his, 
 
 Of pure unselfishness, from lives forlorn 
 
 Revolving ever round their own weak selves; 
 
 Forever struggling with inherent sins 
 
 And striving, ceaselessly, escape to make 
 
 From pits of clay whose mire still holds them fast, 
 
 With no God reaching down to set them free." 
 
 "Dost thou delight to think man, then, so weak, 
 He has within him no o ercoming power?" 
 
 "I do delight to think he is God s child, 
 Forgotten never in the sorry strife 
 With misery and with sin he s called to wage. 
 For I do know delight it me or not 
 That human nature can not overcome
 
 u8 THE PILGRIM S VISION. 
 
 Save He doth help to make the victory sure. 
 How canst thou glory in a God like thine, 
 Who throws thee off and leaves thee to thyself, 
 Not pure and strong like him emitting thee, 
 But somehow, in the process, changed, made vile? 
 Leaves thee to life and death that follows it, 
 And life that reappears, with death in turn, 
 Through ages, thy perfection to attain? 
 If thy beginning thou couldst have obtained 
 From other source, then would thy fate proceed 
 All independent of that Mind Supreme, 
 From first to last; but as it comes to thee 
 Alone through him, far better had it been 
 If from himself he d ne er emitted thee. 
 Supreme and glorious thou may st call his name, 
 But He I worship has a title sweet 
 
 Father holy; Elder Brother dear! 
 
 And blest, on which his children rest their hopes, 
 Of help on earth, through one brief being here, 
 And then immortal bliss beyond the tomb. 
 
 1 joy to think that I created was, 
 And that my life in Him, eternally, 
 Will be that of an entity that lives
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 119 
 
 And loves, and follows out the loftiest trend 
 Of individual hope, desire, and will. 
 Leave thy communings with thyself, and look 
 To Him who can a happier prospect show! 
 Thy theories are false, and all the light 
 That in thee is, is darkness most profound. 
 Theosophy, to thy high name look up ! 
 For he alone is wise in things of God, 
 Who cometh humbly as a little child, 
 And casts the sins and burdens of his life, 
 And all things that perplex or make afraid, 
 On Jesus, who has died that he might live." 
 
 And, as she spake, before her growing dim, 
 And dimmer, as she gazed, the sage s face 
 She, in amazement, saw fade from her sight; 
 Merge in a vaporous cloud of golden haze, 
 That seemed to spread and deepened as it grew. 
 All things receded, vanished in its glow, 
 Which wrapped the universe, and held it bound 
 In radiant encompassing embrace; 
 So radiant that it touched the pilgrim s eyes 
 With sense of an excess that smote with pain.
 
 120 THE PILGRIM s VISION. 
 
 She moved, put up her hands, and lo, behold ! 
 
 Twas but the sunlight on her eyelids fell, 
 
 As, by Auroral messengers proclaimed, 
 
 And heralded along the eastern skies, 
 
 Up steeps of pearly gray with pink o erflushed, 
 
 Came Phoebus forth, to steer his chariot s course, 
 
 And shed effulgence on another day. 
 
 Upon the grass the dew still glittering lay ; 
 The birds sang morning carols in the trees. 
 Before her stretched the pilgrim s thoroughfare, 
 As barren, blank, and drear as yesterday ; 
 But to her dazzled eyes the way seemed changed. 
 They viewed it not as road for a forced march, 
 But avenue of opportunity, 
 
 Where, on the pilgrimage, her lips might speak, 
 Perchance, to counteract some grave mistake 
 Of fellow-pilgrim on the toilsome route. 
 The vanished vision of the night was sent, 
 Through Dreams and Fancies, angels in disguise, 
 She mused, to show her mission and her work, 
 And why, though desolate, she yet remained, 
 A lonely pilgrim, on the journey home.
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THEOSOPHY. 121 
 
 O, that she might be worthy, in His name, 
 To guide some soul from error to the right ! 
 She clasped the Bible to her throbbing breast, 
 Turned from life s flowery uplands with no sigh, 
 Thought not of graves, the long green graves she 
 
 loved, 
 
 But of their tenants heavenly ecstasy. 
 And forth she stepped into the weary way, 
 Her footsteps keeping measure with the strain 
 Of joy so sweetly singing through her heart. 
 " O, Christ ! Dear Christ ! I cast my all on thee ! 
 O bliss ! O bliss ! I do believe on thee ! 
 Of whate er else deprived my life may be, 
 It hath this blessedness of faith in thee !" 
 
 And on she went beneath the beating sun, 
 And the great cross its shadow o er her flung, 
 Its scarlet lilies dropping ruddy dews 
 That soothedand cooled and strengthened all her soul. 
 She raised to heaven eyes patient and serene, 
 Filled with the restful light of chastened trust, 
 And with her trembling lips she murmured low, 
 "I am so glad to serve another day!"
 
 from which it was borrowed 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF CALIlt*MA 
 
 ANGMLJBS
 
 PS 
 
 Baines - 
 
 3^03 The pilgrim s 
 Bl6lp vision. 
 
 SEP ? 4 1953 
 
 Iff 
 
 A 000 918 U D