Year: 1874

No wonder that the II. bile, the holy liter
ature Of that little Asian tribe, is still ho-
" book for Europe and America, the
length and breadth of continents. Its Wis
ion of the God in Nature is still the vision
which righteousness confesses. And as one
likes to meet man more aeigious than
himself ard bows before him, even if sim
pie and ignorant and queer, because the re-
hgion makes his queerness poetry, and his
simpleness kind of greatness we feel
strengthened and upborne by thinking
about our Blue Hills as "hills OF the Lord"
about our apple trees as his trees, shout his
liphtnings in the skies and his locusts in
the humming fields OF our New England
summer, though the phrase is odd as well
holy to nineteenth century ears. Not so
odd to the heart, amer all, and not so very
odd 10 the head either, save in those mid
de moods between a deep thought and
shallow thought The deepest and the
lightest thinking seem to agree in refer
ring all TO "God." Neither the savage nor
the man Of ripest life and science is apt to
fancy himself an atheist. Eastern travel
ers tell us that the Arabs, who are modern
cousins of the Hebrews, still talk in the
Old Testament style of their race. II a
pestilence comes among them, or if their
crops prosper or fail above the common
measure, if the storm is very violent, or
the rain comes out of season, the out
stretched hand of God is in it. One dreams
a dream. In the morning he tells his
friends that & God spoke to him in vision
Of the night, saying, "Do thus and So"
And an Arab historian still would fill his
book with tales like those In Joshua, of
God helping Israel to win battla-tields.
Are ioe not Arabs yet among ourselves?
What ardent belief in miracle, and special
providence, and private inspiration still |!
Men pray yet for rain. Men pray yet that
heretics may be silenced. In war both
armies pray for victory, and King William
would give the glory to the God who has
prospered German soldiers. Perhaps we
would neither pray nor send such tele-
grams. But when the sudden joy, the
sudden woe-a baby's birth, a death
comes into the life of any of US; when 1t is
our boy who goes to battle, and stays there;
or when we suddenly see great beauty in
lace OF III MOUNTAIN view Ut Wueu We
hear of some vast law discovered to be
playing out its eternal life through the
| spaces of the universe-dOes not every one
know how the instinct hidden in the heart
leaps in the old way to his lips, and words
the words my God r'-wOrds them, be-
cause that names not the feeling only but
the flash Of conviction. The One Life IL
in it, the One viii is somehow working
there. Theodore Parker was accounted a
nationalist; but they say who know him
| that he never saw a new thing striking to
his sense, but the thought my Father in
Heaven" was his greeting to it. Diderot
was called the French atheist, and proba-
bly, did not object to the name. But one
day, walking in the fields with a friend


he plucked an ear OF corn, and fell anus
ing over it. "What are you doing1 ask
ed the friend. Listening" WAS the reply


"who is speaking to you ?" "God." "Well


what does He say HE speaks IN Hebrew


The heart comp ehends, but the under


standing is at fault" 1t was the old He


brew in these men, or rather il is the din
child-of-God sense in them, and in the He


brew, and in us all.-AddreSS Of Wiihdn
| ~ (y0n0PH