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The Roadmender by Michael Fairless
page 37 of 88 (42%)


QUAEQUE SUB OBSCURIS DE CRISTO DICTA FIGURIS HIS APERIRE DATUR ET
IN HIS, DEUS IPSE NOTATUR.


"Thou shalt have none other gods but me." If man had been able to
keep this one commandment perfectly the other nine would never have
been written; instead he has comprehensively disregarded it, and
perhaps never more than now in the twentieth century. Ah, well!
this world, in spite of all its sinning, is still the Garden of
Eden where the Lord walked with man, not in the cool of evening,
but in the heat and stress of the immediate working day. There is
no angel now with flaming sword to keep the way of the Tree of
Life, but tapers alight morning by morning in the Hostel of God to
point us to it; and we, who are as gods knowing good and evil,
partake of that fruit "whereof whoso eateth shall never die"; the
greatest gift or the most awful penalty--Eternal Life.

I then, with my craving for tree and sky, held that a great capital
with its stir of life and death, of toil and strife and pleasure,
was an ill place for a sick man to wait in; a place to shrink from
as a child shrinks from the rude blow of one out of authority. Yet
here, far from moor and forest, hillside and hedgerow, in the
family sitting-room of the English-speaking peoples, the London
much misunderstood, I find the fulfilment by antithesis of all
desire. For the loneliness of the moorland, there is the warmth
and companionship of London's swift beating heart. For silence
there is sound--the sound and stir of service--for the most part
far in excess of its earthly equivalent. Against the fragrant
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