his task; for perhaps there is not a single act in the whole
economy of life better calculated to stir a thoughtful mind to its
profoundest depths than the sowing of those golden grains which have
within them the promise and potency of life. Year after year, century
after century, millions of men have gone forth in the light of the
all-beholding and life-giving sun to cast into the bosom of the earth
the sustenance of their children! It is a sublime act of faith, and this
sacrifice of a present for a future good, an actual for a potential
blessing, is no less beautiful and holy because familiar and old. The
Divine Master himself could not contemplate it without emotion and was
inspired by it to the utterance of one of his grandest parables.

And then the field itself inspired solemn reflections and noble pride in
the mind of the sower. It was his own! He had carved it out of a
wilderness! Here was soil which had never been opened to the daylight.
Here was ground which perhaps for a thousand, and not unlikely for ten
thousand years, should bring forth seed to the sower; and he had cleared
it with his own hands! Generations and centuries after he should have
died and been forgotten, men would go forth into this field as he was
doing to-day, to sow their seed and reap their harvests.

He slung his bag of grain over his shoulder and stepped forth from his
cabin at the dawn of day. The clearing he had made was an almost perfect
circle. All around it were the green walls of the forest with the great
trunks of the beeches, white and symmetrical, standing like vast
Corinthian columns supporting a green frieze upon which rested the lofty
roof of the immense cathedral. From the organ-loft the music of the
morning breeze resounded, and from the choirs the sweet antiphonals of
birds. Odors of pine, of balsam, of violets, of peppermint, of
fresh-plowed earth, of bursting life, were wafted across the vast nave
from transept to transept, and floated like incense up to heaven.

The priest, about to offer his sacrifice, the sacrifice of a broken
heart and contrite spirit, about to confess his faith; in the beautiful
and symbolic act of sacrificing the present for the future, stepped
forth into the open furrow.

His open countenance, bronzed with the sun, was lighted with love and
adoration; his lips smiled; his eyes glowed; he lifted them to the
heavens in an unspoken prayer for the benediction of the great
life-giver; he drew into