d serenity. One is not absorbed by the glory of the morning,
but set free by it. There are times when Nature permits no rivalry;
she claims every thought and gives herself to us only as we give
ourselves to her. She effaces us and takes complete possession of our
souls. Not so, however, does she usurp the throne of our own personal
life in those early hours when the sun, the master artist, whose touch
has coloured every leaf and tinted every flower, demands her adoration.
Then it is, perhaps, that she turns her thoughts from all lesser
companionships and, rapt in universal worship, suffers us to pass and
repass as unnoticed as the idlers in the cathedral by those who kneel
at the chancel rail.

I confess I never find myself quite unmoved in this sacred hour,
announced only by the stars veiling their faces and the birds breaking
the silence with their tumultuous song. The universal faith becomes
mine also, and from the common worship I am not debarred. My thought
rises whither the mists, parted from the unseen censers, are rising: I
feel within me the revival of aspirations and faiths that were fast
overclouding; the stir of old hopes is in my heart; the thrill of old
purposes is in my soul. Once more Nature is serving me in an hour of
need; serving me not by drawing me to herself, but by setting me free
from a world that was beginning to master and make me its slave.

Now all that insensibly growing servitude slips from me; once more I am
free and my own. The inexhaustible life that is behind all visible
things, constantly flowing in upon us when we keep the channels open,
recreates whatever was noblest and truest in me. With Nature, I
believe; and believing, I also share in the universal worship.

Emerson somewhere says, writing about the most difficult of Plato's
dialogues, that one must often wait long for the hour when one is
strong enough to grapple with and master it, but sooner or later the
fitting morning will come. It is the morning which gives us faith in
the most arduous achievements, and invigorates us to undertake them.
In the morning all things are possible because the heavens and the
earth are so visibly united in the fellowship of common life; the one
pouring down a measureless and penetrating tide of vitality, the other
eagerly, worshipfully receptive. Nature has no more inspiring truth
for us than this constant and complete enfolding of our life by a
higher and vaster life, this unbroken p