world depends upon the belief that, set free from the
bonds of the flesh, the spirit will rest and recollect. But is that
more than a hope? Is it more than the passionate instinct of the heart
that cannot bear the thought that it may cease to be?

I seem to have travelled far away from the hymn that sounded so sweetly
in my ears; but I return to the thought; is not, I will ask, the poet's
reverie--the child with his wet hair floating in the sea-breeze, the
wailing of the deserted bird, the waves that murmur that death is
beautiful--is not this all more truly and deeply religious than the
hymn which speaks of things, that not only I cannot affirm to be true,
but which, if true, would plunge me into a deeper and darker
hopelessness even than that in which my ignorance condemns me to live?
Ought we not, in fact, to try and make our religion a much wider,
quieter thing? Are we not exchanging the melodies of the free birds
that sing in the forest glade, for the melancholy chirping of the caged
linnet? It seems to me often as though we had captured our religion
from a multitude of fair hovering presences, that would speak to us of
the things of God, caged it in a tiny prison, and closed our ears to
the larger and wider voices?

I walked to-day in sheltered wooded valleys; and at one point, in a
very lonely and secluded lane, leant long upon a gate that led into a
little forest clearing, to watch the busy and intent life of the wood.
There were the trees extending their fresh leaves to the rain; the
birds slipped from tree to tree; a mouse frisked about the grassy road;
a hundred flowers raised their bright heads. None of these little
lives have, I suppose, any conception of the extent of life that lies
about them; each of them knows the secrets and instincts of its own
tiny brain, and guesses perhaps at the thoughts of the little lives
akin to it. Yet every tiniest, shortest, most insignificant life has
its place in the mind of God. It seemed to me then such an amazing,
such an arrogant thing to define, to describe, to limit the awful
mystery of the Creator and his purpose. Even to think of him, as he is
spoken of in the Old Testament, with fierce and vindictive schemes,
with flagrant partialities, seemed to me nothing but a dreadful
profanation. And yet these old writings do, in a degree, from old
association, colour my thoughts about him.

And then all these anxious visions left me; and I felt for awhile like
a