sterious,
delicious cadence.

"Oil and wine:" the oil poured on the wounds to soothe and heal, the wine
drunk to revive and hearten with cordial life. The Hebrew symbolism has
its roots in strong material soil: its imagery is vigorous and
ruddy,--"wine of gladness," "oil of joy," "wine that maketh glad the
heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which
strengtheneth man's heart." A modern psalmist might add, "and coffee
which uplifts his spirit, and tobacco which soothes his cares."

Jesus chose, as the two symbols by which he would be remembered, bread
and wine. Bread stands for nourishment and substantial support, wine for
exhilaration and joy. When his disciples were full of the sorrow of
approaching parting, he showed them that the loss was only in semblance:
the reality was to be a higher energy, a purer joy,--bread to eat, wine
to drink,--not death, but life. The sorrow attendant on death and loss
is to be esteemed but the pangs that usher in life. "A woman when she is
in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is
delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that
a man is born into the world."

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach
the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to
preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of
the Lord." What a key-note is that,--how jubilant, tender, strong!

As the earth revolving passes alternately into light and shadow, so human
life in its divine appointment moves by turns through sorrow and through
joy. Each has its service for the soul, as for the earth has day and
night each its ministry and message. Of pain come hardihood and strength
and sympathy. What a sapless, fibreless thing is a man untrained by
endurance and untaught by suffering! How flaccid in muscle, how narrow
in intelligence, how shallow in affection!

Yet, as to an all-beholding eye the sun pours light through all the
planetary spaces, and the night, which to us on the world's darkened side
seems all-enfolding, is in truth but a shadowy fleck in the vast
sun-steeped sphere: so, of the soul's universe, the native, all-pervasive
element is conscious good. Gladness is man's proper atmosphere. It is
by the impulse of his deepest nature that he seeks joy, it is by the
force