ed to me I was awaking for a moment out of slumber.
Hands are holding and calming me; they draw my shroud about me and
enclose me.

It seems to me that a shape has leaned over me, quite near, so near;
that a loving voice has said something to me; and then it seems to me
that I have listened to fond accents whose caress came from a great way
off:

"Why shouldn't _you_ be one of them, my lad,--one of those great
prophets?"

I don't understand. I? How could I be?

All my thoughts go blurred. I am falling again. But I bear away in my
eyes the picture of an iron bed where lay a rigid shape. Around it
other forms were drooping, and one stood and officiated. But the
curtain of that vision is drawn. A great plain opens the room, which
had closed for a moment on me, and obliterates it.

Which way may I look? God? "_Miserere_----" The vibrating fragment
of the Litany has reminded me of God.

* * * * * *

I had seen Jesus Christ on the margin of the lake. He came like an
ordinary man along the path. There is no halo round his head. He is
only disclosed by his pallor and his gentleness. Planes of light draw
near and mass themselves and fade away around him. He shines in the
sky, as he shone on the water. As they have told of him, his beard and
hair are the color of wine. He looks upon the immense stain made by
Christians on the world, a stain confused and dark, whose edge alone,
down on His bare feet, has human shape and crimson color. In the
middle of it are anthems and burnt sacrifices, files of hooded cloaks,
and of torturers, armed with battle-axes, halberds and bayonets; and
among long clouds and thickets of armies, the opposing clash of two
crosses which have not quite the same shape. Close to him, too, on a
canvas wall, again I see the cross that bleeds. There are populations,
too, tearing themselves in twain that they may tear themselves the
better; there is the ceremonious alliance, "turning the needy out of
the way," of those who wear three crowns and those who wear one; and,
whispering in the ear of Kings, there are gray-haired Eminences, and
cunning monks, whose hue is of darkness.

I saw the man of light and simplicity bow his head; and I feel his
wonderful voice saying:

"I did not deserve the evil they have done unto me."

Robbed reformer, he is a witness of his name's ferocious glory. The
greed-impassioned money-changers have long since chased Him