at
early morn, at burning noon and when the dew of eve is on the flowers,
has coursed its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark
dell, over the burning plain, and up the mountain side--_up_, ever UP it
rises into the beautiful blue--up along the cloudy corridors of the day,
up along the misty pathway to the skies till it touches the beautiful
shore and mingles with the breath of angels."

Hardly was there a dissenting voice in all St. Antipas that Sabbath upon
the proposal that this powerful young preacher be called to its pulpit.
The few who warily suggested that he might be too visionary, not
sufficiently in touch with the present day, were quieted the following
Sabbath by a very different sermon on certain flaws in the fashionable
drama.

The one and only possible immorality in this world, contended the
speaker, was untruth. A sermon was as immoral as any stage play if the
soul of it was not Truth; and a stage play became as moral as a sermon
if its soul was truth. The special form of untruth he attacked was what
he styled "the drama of the glorified wanton." Warmly and ably did he
denounce the pernicious effect of those plays, that take the wanton for
a heroine and sentimentalise her into a morbid attractiveness. The stage
should show life, and the wanton, being of life, might be portrayed; but
let it be with ruthless fidelity. She must not be falsified into a
creature of fine sensibilities and lofty emotions--a thing of dangerous
plausibility to the innocent.

The last doubter succumbed on the third Sabbath, when he preached from
the warning of Jesus that many would come after him, performing in his
name wonders that might deceive, were it possible, even the very elect.
The sermon likened this generation to the people Paul found in Athens,
running curiously after any new god; after Christian Science--which he
took the liberty of remarking was neither Christian nor scientific--or
mental science, spiritism, theosophy, clairvoyance, all black arts,
straying from the fold of truth into outer darkness--forgetting that
"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believed therein might not perish, but have everlasting life."
As this was the sole means of salvation that God had provided, the time
was, obviously, one fraught with vital interest to every thinking man.

As a sagacious member of the Board of Trustees remarked, it would hardly
have been possible to preach three s