lestine and the clothing of its hills. As I lay and
listened to the deep, serious, yet soft and welcome sound of those pines
by the lake shore, I thought of the inspiration of old which had wakened
such lasting and wonderful music from the great souls of Israel. When
we want knowledge or the quickening of intellect, we enter the groves of
Greece; when we would find quickening, when we would feel the deeps
of the soul appealed to, we enter the deeper and more sombre woods
of Palestine. The voice of the pine helps us to interpret the Hebrew
genius. Its range of expression is not so great as that of the oak or
the elm or the willow or the beech, but how much richer it is and more
welcome in its monotony! How much more profoundly our souls echo it! How
much more deeply does it seem to be in harmony with the spirit of
the air! What grandeur, what tenderness, what pathos, what
heart-searchingness in the swells and cadences of its 'Andante
Maestoso,' when the wind wrestles with it and brings out all its soul."

To the graces and gifts we have mentioned it is but necessary to add
that King's gospel of religion was in itself a veritable glad tidings to
the people. Not a mere deliverance of doubt, or morality veneered
with icy culture, but faith clear, strong and radiantly beautiful.
His thought of God, of Man, of Immortality, was full of comfort and
inspiration. "God is the infinite Christ," he was wont to say. "Jesus
revealed under human limitations the mercy and love of the Father."

King rivalled Theodore Parker in the strength and tenderness of his
faith that "man is the child of God." Saint and sinner, master and
slave, learned and ignorant, rich and poor, all are children of the
Infinite God,--born of His love ere the world was, certain of His love
when the world shall have passed away. He felt that if this is not true,
there is not enough left of religion to so much as interest an earnest
soul. Religion is everything,--the sun in the heavens,--or it is a
star too distant, faint and cold, to cast upon our path a single ray of
light.

And the unseen world! How very real it was to this man of faith and
prayer. The immortal life is the life. These earthly years but lead us
thither. Such was his faith. In excess of world-wisdom we say,
"Eternity is here and now." Well and good. But if we lose for a kind of
technicality the dear old trust in a higher and nobler life beyond
the swift-coming night of death, what have we gained?