for guidance; but that I did not understand the love of the Mother, and
that, although few, there is no decaying of her heroic brood; for, as
the seer of old caught at the mantle of him who went up in the fiery
chariot, so another took up the burden and gathered the shining strands
together: and of this sequence of spiritual guides there is no ending.

Here I may say that the love of the Mother, which, acting through
the burnished will of the hero, is wrought to its highest uses, is
in reality everywhere, and pervades with profoundest tenderness the
homeliest circumstance of daily life, and there is not lacking, even
among the humblest, an understanding of the spiritual tragedy which
follows upon every effort of the divine nature, bowing itself down in
pity to our shadowy sphere, an understanding where the nature of the
love is gauged through the extent of the sacrifice and the pain which is
overcome. I recall the instance of an old Irish peasant, who, as he lay
in hospital wakeful from a grinding pain in the leg, forgot himself in
making drawings, rude, yet reverently done, of incidents in the life of
the Galilean Teacher. One of these which he showed me was a crucifixion,
where, amidst much grotesque symbolism, were some tracings which
indicated a purely beautiful intuition; the heart of this crucified
figure, no less than the brow, was wreathed about with thorns and
radiant with light: "For that," said he, "was where he really suffered."
When I think of this old man, bringing forgetfulness of his own bodily
pain through contemplation of the spiritual suffering of his Master, my
memory of him shines with something of the transcendent light he himself
perceived, for I feel that some suffering of his own, nobly undergone,
had given him understanding, and he had laid his heart in love against
the Heart of Many Sorrows, seeing it wounded by unnumbered spears, yet
burning with undying love.

Though much may be learned by observance of the superficial life
and actions of a spiritual teacher, it is only in the deeper life of
meditation and imagination that it can be truly realized; for the soul
is a midnight blossom which opens its leaves in dream, and its perfect
bloom is unfolded only where another sun shines in another heaven; there
it feels what celestial dews descend on it and what influences draw it
up to its divine archetype. Here in the shadow of earth root intercoils
with root, and the finer distinctions of the blos