and quaint, and weary but stout-hearted church, we went that bright
winter morning, to hear about a baby. My heart was full enough before
I left it.

Old Mr. Venables read the service with a voice and manner far more
memorial of departed dinners than of joys to come; but I sat--little
heeding the service, I confess--with my mind full of thoughts that
made me glad.

Now all my glad thoughts came to me through a hole in the
tower-door. For the door was far in a shadowy retreat, and in the
irregular lozenge-shaped hole in it, there was a piece of coarse thick
glass of a deep yellow. And through this yellow glass the sun
shone. And the cold shine of the winter sun was changed into the warm
glory of summer by the magic of that bit of glass.

Now when I saw the glow first, I thought without thinking, that it
came from some inner place, some shrine of old, or some ancient tomb
in the chancel of the church--forgetting the points of the
compass--where one might pray as in the _penetralia_ of the temple;
and I gazed on it as the pilgrim might gaze upon the lamp-light oozing
from the cavern of the Holy Sepulchre. But some one opened the door,
and the clear light of the Christmas morn broke upon the pavement, and
swept away the summer splendour.--The door was to the outside.--And I
said to myself: All the doors that lead inwards to the secret place of
the Most High, are doors outwards--out of self--out of smallness--out
of wrong. And these were some of the thoughts that came to me through
the hole in the door, and made me forget the service, which
Mr. Venables mumbled like a nicely cooked sweetbread.