inished story, and walked absorbed in his thoughts, immersed
in his own mind, till he had reached the crest of the next hill and was
within some hundred yards of the brook. It was then that he remembered
he had left them abruptly in the middle of a half-finished relation, and
he stopped to consider if he should return to them and ask for the end
of the story. But fearing they would think he was making a mocking-stock
of them, he sighed, and was vexed that they had parted on a seeming lack
of courtesy: on no seeming lack, on a very clear lack, he said to
himself; but it would be useless to return to them; they would not
understand, and a man had always better return to his own thoughts.
Repent, repent, he said, picking up the thread of his thoughts, but
acknowledgment comes before repentance, and of what help will repentance
be, for repentance changes nothing, it brings nothing unless grief
peradventure. I was in the hands of God then just as I am now, and
everything within and without us is in his hands. The things that we
look upon as evil and the things that we look upon as good. Our sight is
not his sight, our hearing is not his hearing, we must despise nothing,
for all things come from him, and return to him. I used, he said, to
despise the air I breathed, and long for the airs of paradise, but what
did these longings bring me?--grief. God bade us live on earth and we
bring unhappiness upon ourselves by desiring heaven. Jesus stopped, and
looking through the blue air of evening, he could see the shepherds
eating their bread and garlic on the hillside. Folding-time is near, he
said to himself, but I shall never fold a flock again....

His thoughts began again, flowing like a wind, as mysteriously, arising
he knew not whence, nor how, his mind holding him as fast as if he were
in chains, and he heard from within that he had passed through two
stages--the first was in Jerusalem, when he preached against the priests
and their sacrifices. God does not desire the blood of sheep, but our
love, and all ritual comes between us and God ... God is in the heart,
he had said, and he had spoken as truly as a man may speak of the
journey that lies before him on the morning of the first day.

In the desert he had looked for God in the flowers that the sun called
forth and in the clouds that the wind shepherded, and he had learnt to
prize the earth and live content among his sheep, all things being
the gift of God and his holy will.