disturb men, until at length society will make
all its activities without correspond to the heavenly vision within.

The tradition tells us that when the young ruler who made the "great
refusal" had returned home he found the old zest of life had gone.
Gone forever his contentment in fields and flocks, in houses and
horses and goods; in books and pictures! He himself seemed but a
shadow moving through a phantom world. Struggle as he would, he could
not forget the new vision, nor find the old joy. At last he ceased
struggling, and, fulfilling his vision, he found the cross was the
magic key that opened the door of happiness.

And to the youth of this far-off day, the vision splendid doth come
again. In strange ways come these luminous hours and exalted moods.
Sometimes they come through memory, and then the tones of a voice long
still fall softly upon the ear like celestial bells calling us
heavenward. Sometimes these luminous hours come through the
affections, when anticipations of joy are so bright that it seems as
if the youth reaching forward had plucked beforehand the fruit from
the very tree of life. For some they come through sorrow, when the
soul stands dissolved in tears, even as some perfumed shrub stands in
the June morning making the very ground wet with falling raindrops.
Then the soul wanders here and there, all dumb with grief, seeking
comfort, yet finding none. Then sitting near the much-loved grave, the
soul hears the night winds whispering, "Not here, not here!" to which
the murmuring sea replies, "Not here," while the weeping vines and the
mournful pines ever answer, "Not here, not here!" But softly falling
through the pathless air comes a voice murmuring, "Here! Here! Come
up hither!"

Oh, these luminous hours! These hours of deeper conviction are life's
real hours! Summer is sunshine and beauty, not storm and snow. There
are dark and wintry days in March, when spring seems a delusion. There
are days in April so cold that summer seems a snare. But between the
storms there are brief warm intervals when the sun falls soft on the
south hillsides, and the roots begin to stir and the seeds to ache
with harvests, and all the air is vocal. The fitful snows in April are
but reminders of what the dying winter was; but these occasional sunny
days are prophecies of what summer hath accomplished in its full
ministry upon the fields and forests.

And after long periods of sodden selfishness and clouded sin, s