t
her with the sort of scandalized sunsmile Moses must have worn the
first time he caught sight of the golden calf.

"Madam," he exclaimed after a dreadful inquisitive silence, "I can see
no signs of an aura, either blue or otherwise; but if you actually did
try to steal another woman's child with your thoughts you have been
guilty of an unimaginable meanness, and you should go down on your
knees to Almighty God for forgiveness!"

But William was never at his best when he was brought into contrast
morally or intellectually with the temporary illusions of modern times.
They cast him "out of drawing" and gave him a look of the grotesque, as
a great and solemn figure on a vaudeville stage suggests the comical.
He belonged to a time when the scriptures of men's hearts had not
suffered the moderation and sacrilege of the sense of humor. He had a
mind illumined with the old Eden figures of speech, and loved to refer
to the "thick bosses of Jehovah's buckler."

There were occasions, indeed, when I could not preserve a proper inner
reverence for his favorite hymns, as, for example, when he would be
standing during a revival season behind an altar heavily laden with
"dying souls" who had come up for prayers. In order to interpret for
them a proper frame of mind he would sometimes choose one of Watts'
famous hymns. He would stand with his feet wide apart, his fingers
interlaced, palms downward, eyes lifted in anguished supplication and
sing in his great organ bass:

"Inspire a feeble worm to rush into Thy Kingdom, Lord,
And take it as by storm!"

Still, if you do not dwell upon the vision of the suddenly valorous
worm, the words express a higher form of courage than that denoted in
Matthew Arnold's famous poem, "The Last Word;" and I have seen many a
"worm" rise shouting from the altar rail under their inspired meaning.
The sense of humor has, in my opinion, very little to do with poetry or
salvation. It belongs entirely to the critical human faculties, and I
have found it one of the greatest limitations in my own spiritual
development. And as time went on I was more and more convinced that
this was an evidence of a lower imaginative faculty in me rather than
in him. He had less humor, but he had infinitely more of the grace
that belongs to immortality. He had a spirit that withstood adversity,
hardship, failure, with a sort of ancient dignity and that could face
tragedy with Promethean fortitude. And I love