ields, with the aspects
of land and sky ever before him; that he was much alone; that his
thinking was nearly always of his Bible and his Bible college. Let it
be remembered that he had an eye which was not merely an opening and
closing but a seeing eye--full of health and of enjoyment of the
pageantry of things; and that behind this eye, looking through it as
through its window, stood the dim soul of the lad, itself in a temple
of perpetual worship: these are some of the conditions which yielded
him during these two years the intense, exalted realities of his inner
life.

When of morning he stepped out of the plain farm-house with its rotting
doors and leaking roof and started off joyously to his day's work, at
the sight of the great sun just rising above the low dew-wet hills, his
soul would go soaring away to heaven's gate. Sometimes he would be
abroad late at night, summoning the doctor for his father or returning
from a visit to another neighborhood. In every farmhouse that he passed
on the country road the people were asleep--over all the shadowy land
they were asleep. And everywhere, guardian in the darkness, watched the
moon, pouring its searching beams upon every roof, around every
entrance, on kennel and fold, sty and barn--with light not enough to
awaken but enough to protect: how he worshipped toward that lamp tended
by the Sleepless! There were summer noons when he would be lying under
a solitary tree in a field--in the edge of its shade, resting; his face
turned toward the sky. This would be one over-bending vault of serenest
blue, save for a distant flight of snow-white clouds, making him think
of some earthward-wandering company of angels. He would lie motionless,
scarce breathing, in that peace of the earth, that smile of the Father.
Or if this same vault remained serene too long; if the soil of the
fields became dusty to his boots and his young grain began to wither,
when at last, in response to his prayer, the clouds were brought
directly over them and emptied down, as he stepped forth into the
cooled, dripping, soaking green, how his heart blessed the Power that
reigned above and did all things well!

It was always praise, gratitude, thanks-giving, whatever happened. If
he prayed for rain for his crops and none was sent, then he thought his
prayer lacked faith or was unwise, he knew not how; if too much rain
fell, so that his grain rotted, this again was from some fault of his
or for his good; or p