eing boxed
up and under the ground have the range of as many rooms as there are
worlds, and welcome everywhere, for it is the Father's house, in which
there are many mansions! Oh, Lord God of the Seven Stars and Orion,
how can I endure the transport, the ecstasy, of such a vision! I must
obey my text and seek Him. I will seek Him. I seek Him now, for I call
to mind that it is not the material universe that is most valuable,
but the spiritual, and that each of us has a soul worth more than all
the worlds which the inspired herdsman saw from his booth on the hills
of Tekoa.

I had studied it before, but the Cathedral of Cologne, Germany, never
impressed me as it did this summer. It is admittedly the grandest
Gothic structure in the world, its foundation laid in 1248, only two
or three years ago completed. More than six hundred years in building.
All Europe taxed for its construction. Its chapel of the Magi with
precious stones enough to purchase a kingdom. Its chapel of St. Agnes
with masterpieces of painting. Its spire springing five hundred and
eleven feet into the heavens. Its stained glass the chorus of all rich
colors. Statues encircling the pillars and encircling all. Statues
above statues, until sculpture can do no more, but faints and falls
back against carved stalls and down on pavements over which the kings
and queens of the earth have walked to confession. Nave and aisles and
transept and portals combining the splendors of sunrise. Interlaced,
interfoliated, intercolumned grandeur. As I stood outside, looking at
the double range of flying buttresses and the forest of pinnacles,
higher and higher and higher, until I almost reeled from dizziness, I
exclaimed; "Great doxology in stone! Frozen prayer of many nations!"

But while standing there I saw a poor man enter and put down his pack
and kneel beside his burden on the hard floor of that cathedral. And
tears of deep emotion came into my eyes, as I said to myself: "There
is a soul worth more than all the material surroundings. That man will
live after the last pinnacle has fallen, and not one stone of all that
cathedral glory shall remain uncrumbled. He is now a Lazarus in rags
and poverty and weariness, but immortal, and a son of the Lord God
Almighty; and the prayer he now offers, though amid many
superstitions, I believe God will hear; and among the Apostles whose
sculptured forms stand in the surrounding niches he will at last be
lifted, and into the presen