CHAPTER V.

THE LIGHT THAT LIES

"Oh! why did God create at last
This novelty on earth, this fair defect
Of nature, and not till the world at once
With men as angels, without feminine?"

--Paradise Lost.


On the following morning the preacher-plowman was afield at break of
day. The horses, refreshed and rested by food and sleep, dragged the
gleaming plowshare through the heavy sod as if it were light snow, and
the farmer exulted behind them.

That universal life which coursed through all the various forms of being
around him, bounded in tides through his own veins. The fresh morning
air, the tender light of dawning day, the odors of plants and songs of
birds, filled his sensitive soul with unutterable delight.

In the midst of all these beauties and wonders, he existed without
self-consciousness and labored without effort. His heart was pure and
his oneness with the natural world was complete. Whatever was beautiful
and gentle in the manifold operations of the Divine Spirit in the world
around him, he saw and felt. To all that was horrible and ferocious, he
was blind as a child in Paradise. He did not notice the hawk sweeping
upon the dove, the swallow darting upon the moth, nor the lizard lying