e--it reflects the blue of
heaven--it sweeps superbly with unsullied current past every
obstacle, and bursts through every barrier:

at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.

Yes, the Nile, the Ganges, the Rhine, the Thames, and a
thousand other rivers of renown have had, and still have, their
part to play in the cosmic drama and in the development of
man's spiritual nature. Generation after generation has found
them to be capable of stirring peculiar emotions, and of
stimulating profound thoughts on the mystery of life. And all
these powers are concentrated and sublimated in this glorious
vision of "the river of water of life that flows from the throne
of God."

CHAPTER XXI

RIVERS AND DEATH

The world of fact, no less than the world of abstract thought, is
full of contradictions and unsolved antinomies. Here is one such
contradiction or antinomy. Moving water, it has been shown, is
suggestive of life. But over against it we find a suggestion of
death. Indeed there has been a widely diffused belief in a river
of death--a striking foil to the inspiring mysticism of the river of
life. The old-world mythology taught, in varying forms, but
with underlying unity of concept, that there is a river, or gulf,
which must be crossed by the departing soul on its way to the
land of the departed. Evidently the extension of the original
thought to cover its seeming opposite has a basis in the nature
of things. Its most elaborate presentment is in the ancient myths
of the nether regions and of the seven streams that watered
them--from Styx that with nine-fold weary wanderings bounded
Tartarus, to where

"Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the river of oblivion runs."

Nor has Christianity disdained to adapt the idea. Bunyan, for
example, brings his two pilgrims within sight of the heavenly
City. "Now I saw further that between them and the gate was a
river; but there was no bridge, and the river was very deep. At
the sight therefore of this river, the pilgrims were much stunned;
but the men that went with them said, you must go through or
you cannot come at the gate."

What suggestive power has the river to induce this more sombre
train of reflection? Surely that embodied in the old proverb--
Follow the river and you will come to the sea. Clough, in his
little poem, "The Stream of Life," concludes with a note of
sadness, almost of despair:

"O end to which al