d touching
mute viols into mystic melodies which are lost to us. So thin has the
material veil grown under the touch of modern science that everywhere
the spiritual breaks through. Often in that nameless discouragement
before unfinished tasks, unfulfilled aims, and broken efforts, I have
thought of how the creative Word has fashioned the opal, made it of the
same stuff as desert sands, mere silica--not a crystallized stone like a
diamond, but rather a stone with a broken heart, traversed by hundreds
of small fissures which let in the air, the breath, as the Spirit is
called in the Greek of our New Testament; and through these two
transparent mediums of such different density it is enabled to refract
the light and reflect every lovely hue of heaven, while at its heart
burns a mysterious spot of fire. When we feel, therefore, as I have
often done, nothing but cracks and desert dust, we can say, "So God
maketh his precious opal." Our very sense of brokenness and failure
makes room for the Spirit to enter in, and through His strength made
perfect in human weakness we are made able to reflect every tender hue
of the eternal Loveliness and break up the white light of His truth into
those rays which are fittest for different natures; while that hidden
lamp of the sanctuary will burn in your heart of hearts for ever a guide
to your boy's feet in the devious ways of life.

In conclusion, I should like to record an incident full of encouragement
to mothers. A young fellow of eighteen or nineteen, whom his widowed
mother had brought up on the principles which I have been advocating,
said to her one day, "Mother, you know that men don't always think like
you about poor girls." "Alas!" she replied, "I know that but too well;
but what makes you say so?" "Well, mother, I was with a lot of college
fellows yesterday, and they were giving one another the best addresses
in the West End to go to." "But didn't you say anything?" "No, I only
kept silence. Had I said anything, they would only have called me a
confounded prig. There were three other fellows who kept silence, and I
could see they did not approve, but we none of us spoke up." "Oh, my
son," exclaimed his mother in great distress, "how are we to help you
young fellows? Do you think if the clergy were more faithful, they could
help you more than they do?" "I don't think they would listen to what a
parson says." "Then if doctors were to warn you more plainly than they
do?" "I don't