The mists have duties up the skies,

The skies have duties with the morn;

While all the world is full of earnest care

To make the fair world still more wondrous fair.

In one of his poems, one of our great poets tells the story of a number of poor people who came to see their king who was to approach with his gayly dressed bands of music and all the pomp and ceremony attendant upon kingship. The story goes, however, that the Captain of the Province drove the poor people away and refused to allow them to be present when the king passed through. Let the poet now tell his own story:

Lo, then a soft-voiced stranger said:
"Come ye with me a little space.

I know where torches gold and red
Gleam down a peaceful, ample place;

Where song and perfume fill the restful air,

And men speak scarce at all. The King is there."

They passed; they sat a grass-set hill-
What king hath carpets like to this?
What king hath music like the thrill
Of crickets 'mid these silences

These perfumed silences, that rest upon
The soul like sunlight on a hill at dawn?

Behold what blessings in the air!

What benedictions in the dew!

These olives lift their arms in prayer;

They turn their leaves, God reads them through;

Yon lilies where the falling water sings

Are fairer-robed than choristers of kings.

Lift now your heads! yon golden bars
That build the porch of heaven, seas
Of silver-sailing golden stars

Yea, these are yours, and all of these!
For yonder king hath never yet been told
Of silver seas that sail these ships of gold.

They turned, they raised their heads on high;
They saw, the first time saw and knew,
The awful glories of the sky,

The benedictions of the dew;

And from that day His poor were richer far
Than all such kings as keep where follies are.

Have you experienced these blessings in the air? Have you felt these benedictions in the dew? Have you seen the exquisite robes of the lilies? Have you seen the ships of gold sailing through the silver seas? And the bars of gold that build the porch of heaven?

You have rushed to see the pomp of kings. You have rushed to see the glitter and tinsel of the circus procession. You have struggled with desperation that you and your wife might mingle with the gayly dressed throng at some fanciful revel. Why be so eager for these vain shows and yet not see the true beauty, real gorgeousness, undying splendor of these other outward manifestations of the thoughts of God?

Eager desire for the vain pomp and circumstance of things reveals the abnormal and depraved appetite just the same as the glutton's and drunk

ard's cravings do. The more they are fed the more fiercely their fires rage and the less satisfied one becomes. It is only real things that will satisfy the hunger of the immortal soul, and then one of the remarkable things is how the trivial and small things will produce satisfaction.

As George Macdonald says in his fascinating story, Sir Gibbie:

It is wonderful upon how little those rare natures capable of making the most of things will live and thrive. There is a great deal more to be got out of things than is generally got out of them, whether the thing be a chapter of the Bible or a yellow turnip, and the marvel is that those who use the most material should so often be those that show the least result in strength or character.

CHAPTER XXIII

RADIANCIES OF DEATH

FOR centuries the human mind has been afraid,

disturbed, distressed, at the thought of death; the uncertainty of the beyond; "shall we know each other there?" and the thousand and one questions that have arisen as to what life, if any, there is beyond the grave. Years ago, in my own innerness, all sense of fear, of disturbance, of distress at the thought of death vanished, never again to appear. I have no resentment at the thought of death, either for myself, or those I love. I expect it for us all, and am neither surprised nor hurt when it comes. There may be the sense of physical loss, but that is all. There is no sense of real loss of anything except the temporal, the physical, that which, in the very course of Nature, must pass through the change we call Death.

Hence I feel I have definite and positive radiancies upon this subject, which I am assured will bring comfort and peace to those who can enter into the spirit of them, and accept the same assurances that have come to me.

The first of these that I would radiate with clearness and fullness is that man is a spiritual being and not physical. Much of the fear, dread, distress, pain of death has come from the mistaken belief that man is physical. Death has come and robbed us of the life of the physical. The flesh has become cold, inanimate, lifeless, therefore dead and lost to us. The mother has grieved herself into sickness and a ruined life because of the death of her babe. Husbands have wept long for the wives they thought they had lost. Sorrow, grief, sadness, woe these seem the natural accompaniments of death. Our customs, our language, our literature, our poetry, our art, are full of the expressions of this thought the trappings of woe, the solemn countenance, the hushed voice, the somber garments, the widow's weeds, the black band of bereavement, the hearse, the funeral marches, the watch of the dead, the lighted candles, the solemn funeral addresses, the tears, the grief that will not be comforted, all speak of the sadness attributed to death. Tennyson's In Memoriam, Browning's La Saziaz, and hundreds, thousands, of lesser poems have been written on the woe, the grief, the cruelty of death.

While I long for the physical presence of my beloved ones as much as do other men, I would radiate my belief, my restful assurance, in the love that exists, persists, lives, after what we call the