shall live when we are dead may tell their children, perhaps,
how, out of anguish and darkness such as the world seldom has
borne, the enduring morning evolved of the true world and the
true man. It is not clear to us. Hands wet with a brother's
blood for the Right, a slavery of intolerance, the hackneyed cant
of men, or the blood-thirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to
us of the great To-Morrow of content and right that holds the
world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if God lives, it is there.
The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we have deafened down as
ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of the hour, renews the
quiet promise of its coming in simple, humble things. Let us go
down and look for it. There is no need that we should feebly
vaunt and madden ourselves over our self-seen rights, whatever
they may be, forgetting what broken shadows they are of eternal
truths in that calm where He sits and with His quiet hand
controls us.

Patriotism and Chivalry are powers in the tranquil, unlimited
lives to come, as well as here, I know; but there are less
partial truths, higher hierarchies who serve the God-man, that do
not speak to us in bayonets and victories,-- Mercy and Love. Let
us not quite neglect them, unpopular angels though they be. Very
humble their voices are, just now: yet not altogether dead, I
think. Why, the very low glow of the fire upon the hearth tells
me something of recompense coming in the hereafter,--
Christmas-days, and heartsome warmth; in these bare hills
trampled down by armed men, the yellow clay is quick with pulsing
fibres, hints of the great heart of life and love throbbing
within; slanted sunlight would show me, in these sullen
smoke-clouds from the camp, walls of amethyst and jasper, outer