rom time to time, men have arisen of
such intense nature, so sensitive to religious emotions, so developed in
religious experience, through instinct, circumstance, and power, that
they can aid us by the example and precept of their lives. To them
belongs a respect similar to that paid to poets and thinkers. Yet it is
because they tell us what they have seen and touched, not what they have
heard,--what they have lived and shown forth in acts that bear testimony
to their words, that they have this power. Such were St. Augustine, St.
Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas a Kempis, and many a humbler name whose
life's story has come into our hands; such were the Apostles, and,
preeminently, Christ. It is the reality of the life in them, personal,
direct, fundamental, that preserves their influence in other lives. They
help us by opening and directing the spiritual powers we have in common;
and beyond our own experience we believe in their counsels as leading to
what we in our turn may somewhat attain to in the life they followed. It
is not what they believed of God, but what God accomplished in them,
that holds our attention; and we interpret it only by what ourselves
have known of his dealing with us. It is life, and the revelation of God
there contained, that in others or ourselves is the root of the
matter--God in us. This is the corner stone."

* * * * *

The sun was high in the heavens when we ceased talking of these matters
and saw in a lowland before us a farmhouse, where we stopped. It was a
humble dwelling--almost the humblest--partly built of sod, with a barn
near by, and nothing to distinguish it except the sign, "Post Office,"
which showed it was the centre of this neighborhood, if "the blank miles
round about" could be so called. We were made welcome, and, the ponies
being fed and cared for, we sat down with the farmer and his wife and
the small brood of young children, sharing their noonday meal. It was a
rude table and a lowly roof; but, when I arose, I was glad to have been
at such a board, taking a stranger's portion, but not like a stranger.
It was to be near the common lot, and the sense of it was as primitive
as the smell of the upturned earth in spring; it had the wholesomeness
of life in it. Going out, I lay down on the ground and talked with the
little boy, some ten years old, to whom our coming was evidently an
event of importance; and I remember asking him if he ever saw a cit