of the Christian faith, goes steadily on, unrecorded but
continuous."

But here among these lovely Ohio hills, where the Master
Architect erected and is still building these wonderful temples
that never decay, we were more impressed by their solemn
grandeur than any work of man could inspire. Here long before
the cathedrals of Europe were thought of, a primitive people
erected their altars and offered up their sacrifice to their
gods. Here as the rays of the sun filtered through the leafy
windows of the trees falling upon the richly wrought mosaic of
ferns and flowers, where the gorgeous cardinal blossoms flamed
from a hundred altars and the bell-like song of the wood thrush
rang through all the dim aisles, these ancient people felt the
presence of a higher power, and not yet knowing that their god
required the sacrifice of noble lives and loving hearts, brought
to the altar the best gifts they knew.

Standing alone in this fair solitude, as much alone as if we had
been on some fairy isle of a distant sea, we felt that we were
surrounded by a strange, mysterious presence, and thoughts and
fancies, like weird articulate voices of those ancient people,
filled the solemn place. The aged trees sighed in the evening
wind, telling over and over their mournful legends, lest they
forget. The storm-swept maples repeated their "rhythmical runes
of these unremembered ages." We allowed ourselves to sink
soothingly beneath deep waves of primitive emotions until we
seemed to perceive the sagas that the maples told the elms of a
more remote history than that of the Pharaohs or storied Greece.