the Bedford tinker and made him king in English
literature.

Here also is the carpenter's Son rising before each earthly pilgrim
like a star in the night. A man of truly colossal intellect,
incomparable as He strides across the realms and ages, yet always
thinking the gentlest, kindliest thoughts; thoughts of mildness as
well as of majesty; thoughts of humanity as well as divinity. His
thoughts were medicines for hurt hearts; His thoughts were wings to
all the low-flying; His thoughts freed those who had been snared in
the thickets; His thoughts set an angel down beside each cradle; His
thoughts of the incarnation rendered the human body forever sacred;
His thoughts of the grave sanctified the tomb. Dying and rising, His
thoughts clove an open pathway through the sky. Taught by Him, the
people have learned to think--not only great thoughts, but good ones,
and also how to turn thoughts into life.

Bringing their thoughts to God, God has turned thinking into
character. Each spinner who in modesty and fidelity tends his loom,
spins indeed, garments for others, but also weaves himself invisible
garments of everlasting life. Each shipbuilder fastening his timbers
together with honest thoughts will find that his thoughts have become
ships carrying him over the sea to the harbor of God. Each worker
putting integrity into gold and silver will find that he has carved
his own character into a beauty beyond that of gems and sapphires. For
his thoughts drag into futurity after them. So deeply was St. George
Mivart impressed by this that he said: "The old pauper woman whom I
saw to-day in the poorhouse, in her hunger saving her apple to give to
the little orphan just brought in, and unraveling her stocking and
bending her twisted old fingers to knit its yarn into socks for the
blue feet of the child will, I verily believe, begin her life at death
with more intellectual genius--mark the words, intellectual
genius--than will begin that second life any statesman or prime
minister or man famed in our day. For I know of none who hath been
faithful in his much after the fashion of the pauper woman's fidelity
with her little."

For intellect weighs light as punk against the gold of character.
Should God give us to choose between goodness and genius, we may well
say, "Give genius to Lucifer, let mine be the better part." Intellect
is cold as the ice-palace in Quebec. Heart-broken and weary-worn by
life's battle, men draw near to some g