ng lambs is known,
Grant us Thy love that wearieth not, nor faileth;
Grant us to seek Thy wayward sheep that roam
Far on the fell, until we find and fold them
Safe in the love of Thee, their own true home.

CHAPTER XXXVI

"Thy Sweet Original Joy"

Beacons of hope, ye appear!
Languor is not in your heart,
Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow.

WITHIN the last few months a friend, a lover of books, sent me _The
Trial and Death of Socrates_, translated into English by F. J. Church.
Opening it for the first time, I came upon this passage:--

_Socrates:_ "Does a man who is in training, and who is in earnest about
it, attend to the praise and blame of all men, or of the one man who is
doctor or trainer?"

_Crito:_ "He attends only to the opinion of the one man."

_Socrates:_ "Then he ought to fear the blame and welcome the praise of
the one man, not the many?"

_Crito:_ "Clearly."

And Socrates sums the argument thus: "To be brief; is it not the same in
everything?"

Surely the wise man spoke the truth: it is the same in everything. The
one thing that matters is the opinion of the One. If He is satisfied,
all is well. If He is dissatisfied, the commendation of the many is as
froth. "Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall have much peace."

But Nature is full of pictures of bright companionship in service; the
very stars shine in constellations. This book of the skies has been
opening up to us of late. Who, to whom the experience is new, will
forget the first evenings spent with even a small telescope, but
powerful enough to distinguish double stars and unveil nebulae? You look
and see a single point of light, and you look again and twin suns float
like globes of fire on a midnight sea; and sometimes one flashes golden
yellow and the other blue, each the complement of the other, like two
perfectly responsive friends. You look and see a little lonely cloud, a
breath of transparent mist; you look and see spaces sprinkled with
diamond dust, or something even more awesome, reaches of radiance that
seem to lie on the borderland of Eternity.

And the shining glory lingers and lights up the common day, for the
story of the sky is the story of life.

Far was the Call, and farther as I followed
Grew there a silence round my Lord and me--

is for ever the inner story, as for ever