It would be a grateful task to make extended record of the service
rendered to religion by the great choir of singers whose names appear
upon the pages of this book. To Elizabeth Barrett Browning our debt is
large, though her note is oftenest plaintive and the faith which she
illustrates is that by which suffering is turned to strength. Our own
New England psalmist, also, has been to great multitudes a revealer
and a comforter; few in any age have seen the central truths of
Christianity more clearly, or felt them more deeply, or uttered them
more convincingly. In such poems as "My Soul and I," "My Psalm," "Our
Master," "The Eternal Goodness," "The Brewing of Soma," and "Andrew
Ryckman's Prayer," Whittier has made the whole religious world his
debtor.

How many more there are--of those whom the world reckons as the
greater bards, and of those whom it assigns to lower places--to whom
we have found ourselves indebted for the clearing of our vision or the
quickening of our pulses, in our studies or our meditations upon the
deepest questions of life! How many there are, whose faces we
never saw, but who by some luminous word, some strain vibrant with
tenderness, some flash of insight, have endeared themselves to us
forever! They are the friends of our spirits, ministers to us of the
holiest things. They have clothed for us the highest truth in forms of
beauty; they have made it winsome and real and dear and memorable. Is
there anything better than this, that one man can do for another?

Washington Gladden

[Footnote A: "The Great Poets and their Theology."]