ar haunts--so far from his
old-world wisdom!

A surer omen would have come to Eve had she listened to the plaintive
notes of the bewildered Dove that in his downward flutterings had begun
to divine what the Serpent had come to forget, and to confess what he
had come to deny.

For already was beginning to be felt "the season's difference," and the
grave mystery, without which Paradise itself could not have been, was
about to be unveiled,--the background of the picture becoming its
foreground. The fond hands plucking the rose had found the thorn. Evil
was known as something by itself, apart from Good, and Eden was left
behind, as one steps out of infancy.

From that hour have the eyes of the children of men been turned from the
accursed earth, looking into the blue above, straining their vision for
a glimpse of white-robed angels.

Yet it was the Serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness; and when He
who "became sin for us" was being bruised in the heel by the old enemy,
the Dove descended upon Him at His baptism. He united the wisdom of the
Serpent with the harmlessness of the Dove. Thus in Him were bound
together and reconciled the elements which in human thought had been put
asunder. In Him, Evil is overcome of Good, as, in Him, Death is
swallowed up of Life; and with His eyes we see that the robes of angels
are white, because they have been washed in blood.

From 'A Study of Death,' copyright 1895, by Harper and Brothers

DEATH AND SLEEP

The Angel of Death is the invisible Angel of Life. While the organism is
alive as a human embodiment, death is present, having the same human
distinction as the life, from which it is inseparable, being, indeed,
the better half of living,--its winged half, its rest and inspiration,
its secret spring of elasticity, and quickness. Life came upon the wings
of Death, and so departs.

If we think of life apart from death our thought is partial, as if we
would give flight to the arrow without bending the bow. No living
movement either begins or is completed save through death. If the
shuttle return not there is no web; and the texture of life is woven
through this tropic movement.

It is a commonly accepted scientific truth that the continuance of life
in any living thing depends upon death. But there are two ways of
expressing this truth: one, regarding merely the outward fact, as when
we say that animal or vegetable tissue is renewed through decay; the
other, regarding t