It lighted the depths of the hearts whose outer pain and
passion men were keen to read in the unpitying sunshine, and
bared in those depths the feeble gropings for the right, the
loving hope, the unuttered prayer. No kind thought, no pure
desire, no weakest faith in a God and heaven somewhere, could be
so smothered under guilt that this subtile light did not search
it out, glow about it, shine under it, hold it up in full view of
God and the angels,--lighting the world other than the sun had
done for six thousand years. I have no name for the light: it
has a name,--yonder. Not many eyes were clear to see
its--shining that day; and if they did, it was as through a
glass, darkly. Yet it belonged to us also, in the old time, the
time when men could "hear the voice of the Lord God in the garden
in the cool of the day." It is God's light now alone.
Yet Lois caught faint glimpses, I think, sometimes, of its
heavenly clearness. I think it was this light that made the
burning of Christmas fires warmer for her than for others, that
showed her all the love and outspoken honesty and hearty frolic
which her eyes saw perpetually in the old warm-hearted world.
That evening, as she sat on the step of her frame-shanty,
knitting at a great blue stocking, her scarred face and misshapen
body very pitiful to the passers-by, it was this that gave to her
face its homely, cheery smile. It made her eyes quick to know
the message in the depths of colour in the evening sky, or even
the flickering tints of the green creeper on the wall with its
crimson cornucopias filled with hot shining.
Pages:
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90