Yet to rail against it is as idle as to quarrel with any other force of
nature. For myself, I can hold apart, and see as little as possible of
the thing I deem accursed. But I think of some who are dear to me, whose
life will be lived in the hard and fierce new age. The roaring "Jubilee"
of last summer was for me an occasion of sadness; it meant that so much
was over and gone--so much of good and noble, the like of which the world
will not see again, and that a new time of which only the perils are
clearly visible, is rushing upon us. Oh, the generous hopes and
aspirations of forty years ago! Science, then, was seen as the
deliverer; only a few could prophesy its tyranny, could foresee that it
would revive old evils and trample on the promises of its beginning. This
is the course of things; we must accept it. But it is some comfort to me
that I--poor little mortal--have had no part in bringing the tyrant to
his throne.

XIX.

The Christmas bells drew me forth this morning. With but half-formed
purpose, I walked through soft, hazy sunshine towards the city, and came
into the Cathedral Close, and, after lingering awhile, heard the first
notes of the organ, and so entered. I believe it is more than thirty
years since I was in an English church on Christmas Day. The old time
and the old faces lived again for me; I saw myself on the far side of the
abyss of years--that self which is not myself at all, though I mark
points of kindred between the beings of then and now. He who in that
other world sat to hear the Christmas gospel, either heeded it not at
all--rapt in his own visions--or listened only as one in whose blood was
heresy. He loved the notes of the organ, but, even in his childish mind,
distinguished clearly between the music and its local motive. More than
that, he could separate the melody of word and of thought from their
dogmatic significance, enjoying the one whilst wholly rejecting the
other. "On earth peace, good-will to men"--already that line was among
the treasures of his intellect, but only, no doubt, because of its
rhythm, its sonority. Life, to him, was a half-conscious striving for
the harmonic in thought and speech--and through what a tumult of
unmelodious circumstance was he beginning to fight his way!

To-day, I listen with no heretical promptings. The music, whether of
organ or of word, is more to me than ever; the literal meaning causes me
no restiveness. I felt only glad t