d not cling to his guiding hand
If the way were always bright;
And you would not care to walk by faith
Could you always walk by sight.

'Tis true he has many an anguish
For your sorrowful heart to bear,
And many a cruel thorn-crown
For your tired head to wear:
He knows how few would reach heaven at all
If pain did not guide them there.

So he sends you the blinding darkness,
And the furnace of seven-fold heat.
'Tis the only way, believe me,
To keep you close to his feet,
For 'tis always so easy to wander
When our lives are glad and sweet.

Then nestle your hand in your Father's
And sing, if you can, as you go;
Your song may cheer some one behind you
Whose courage is sinking low.
And--well--if your lips do quiver--
God will love you better so.

A LITTLE PARABLE

I made the cross myself whose weight
Was later laid on me.
This thought is torture as I toil
Up life's steep Calvary.

To think mine own hands drove the nails!
I sang a merry song,
And chose the heaviest wood I had
To build it firm and strong.

If I had guessed--if I had dreamed--
Its weight was meant for me,
I should have made a lighter cross
To bear up Calvary.

--Anne Reeve Aldrich.

The unpolished pearl can never shine--
'Tis sorrow makes the soul divine.

--From the Japanese, tr. by Frederic Rowland Marvin.

THE SOWER

I

A Sower went forth to sow;
His eyes were dark with woe;
He crushed the flowers beneath his feet,
Nor smelt the perfume, warm and sweet,
That prayed for pity everywhere.
He came to a field that was harried
By iron, and to heaven laid bare;
He shook the seed that he carried
O'er that brown and bladeless place.
He shook it, as God shakes hail
Over a doomed land.
When lightnings interlace
The sky and the earth, and his wand
Of love is a thunder-flail.
Thus did that Sower sow;
His seed was human blood,
And tears of women and men.
And I, who near him stood,
Said: When the crop comes, then
There will be sobbing and sighing,
Weeping and wailing and crying,
Flame, and ashes, and woe.

II

It was an autumn day
When next I went that way.
And what, think you, did I say,
What was it that I heard,
What music was in the