It came to the stern old Roman with his Saturnalia, when for once in all
the year the slave and the plebeian might speak their minds without
fear.

It came to the dark-eyed Hebrew with his feasts of tabernacles, his
feast of the harvest and the vintage, and over his joyaunce a sacred
shadow rested, as of One who was over these things, who both made and
consecrated the joy.

Spirit of joy! Wide as the world! Offspring of heaven! That descendest
with airs redolent of thy native home, and comest to give to the
toil-worn brickmakers of the earth a little rest! Forgive us, foolish
dwellers in the clay, if ofttimes we take thy festal garlands, and drag
them in the mire! drunk with the wine of thy pleasures, we turn thy
gifts to ashes and to mourning. Come thou, nevertheless! and stay not,
turn not away for our folly, come with thy love-light, and smile-light,
and make the whole earth green with thy summer of delight.

It were a theme worthy of the place and time, if we could sketch out the
progress of mankind; to show how God laid the foundations of the human
race in the barbaric ages, strong, savage human bodies being the stones
thereof; how in due order, order as sure and stately as that of the
geologic eras, arose the Roman and the Greek, the types of full
developed body and mind together: how in the fullness of time
Christianity revealed the mighty powers of heart, conscience and soul,
which before were lying dormant in the human race; so that now at last
upon us has fallen the task of developing the whole of man,--body, mind,
heart, conscience and soul.

But my time, if not your patience, fails me: so I leave it as a hint for