The sun shone down, as it had done for six thousand years; it
shone on open problems in the lives of these men and women, of
these dogs and horses who walked the streets, problems whose end
and beginning no eye could read. There were places where it did
not shine: down in the fetid cellars, in the slimy cells of the
prison yonder: what riddles of life lay there he dared not think
of. God knows how the man groped for the light,--for any voice
to make earth and heaven clear to him.

There was another light by which the world was seen that day,
rarer than the sunshine, and purer. It fell on the dense
crowds,--upon the just and the unjust. It went into the fogs of
the fetid dens from which the coarser light was barred, into the
deepest mires of body where a soul could wallow, and made them
clear. It lighted the depths of the hearts whose outer pain and
passion men were keen to read in the unpitying sunshine, and
bared in those depths the feeble gropings for the right, the
loving hope, the unuttered prayer. No kind thought, no pure
desire, no weakest faith in a God and heaven somewhere, could be
so smothered under guilt that this subtile light did not search
it out, glow about it, shine under it, hold it up in full view of
God and the angels,--lighting the world other than the sun had
done for six thousand years. I have no name for the light: it
has a name,--yonder. Not many eyes were clear to see
its--shining that day; and if they did, it was as through a
glass, darkly. Yet it belonged to us also, in the old time, the
time when men could "hear the voice of the Lord God in the garden
in the cool of the day." It is God's light now alone.