We can bear the pain in silence, if our hearts
are strong enough, while the nations of the earth stand afar off.
I have no word of this To-Day to speak. I write from the border
of the battlefield, and I find in it no theme for shallow
argument or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of death has fallen on us;
it chills the very heaven. No child laughs in my face as I pass
down the street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten to pray;
only in the bitterness of endurance, they say "in the morning,
`Would God it were even!' and in the evening, `Would God it were
morning!'" Neither I nor you have the prophet's vision to see
the age as its meaning stands written before God. Those who
shall live when we are dead may tell their children, perhaps,
how, out of anguish and darkness such as the world seldom has
borne, the enduring morning evolved of the true world and the
true man. It is not clear to us. Hands wet with a brother's
blood for the Right, a slavery of intolerance, the hackneyed cant
of men, or the blood-thirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to
us of the great To-Morrow of content and right that holds the
world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if God lives, it is there.
The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we have deafened down as
ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of the hour, renews the
quiet promise of its coming in simple, humble things. Let us go
down and look for it. There is no need that we should feebly
vaunt and madden ourselves over our self-seen rights, whatever
they may be, forgetting what broken shadows they are of eternal
truths in that calm where He sits and with His quiet hand
controls us.
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