ncy, like every other heaven
of which men have dreamed, lies mainly within us; it is the heaven of
fresh instincts, of unworn receptivity, of expanding intelligence. It
is a heaven of faith and wonder, as every heaven must be; it is a
heaven of recurring miracle, of renewing freshness, of deepening
interest. Into such a heaven every child is born who brings into life
that leaven of the imagination which later on is to penetrate the
universe and make it one in the sublime order of truth and of beauty.

As I write, the merry shouts of children come through the open window,
and seem part of that universal sound in which the stir of leaves, the
faint, far song of birds, and the note of insect life are blended.
When I came across the field a few moments ago, a voice called me from
under the apple trees, and a little figure, with a flush of joy on her
face and the fadeless light of love in her eyes, came running with
uneven pace to meet me. How slight and frail was that vision of
childhood to the thought which saw the awful forces of nature at work,
or rather at play, about her! And yet how serene was her look upon the
great world dropping its fruit at her feet; how familiar and at ease
her attitude in the presence of these sublime mysteries! She is at one
with the hour and the scene; she has not begun to think of herself as
apart from the things which surround her; that strange and sudden sense
of unreality which makes me at times an alien and a stranger in the
presence of Nature, "moving about in world not realised," is still far
off. For her the sun shines and the winds blow, the flowers bloom and
the stars glisten, the trees hold out their protecting arms and the
grass waves its soft garment, and she accepts them without a thought of
what is behind them or shall follow them; the painful process of
thought, which is first to separate her from Nature and then to reunite
her to it in a higher and more spiritual fellowship, has hardly begun.
She still walks in the soft light of faith, and drinks in the immortal
beauty, as the flower at her side drinks in the dew and the light. It
is she, after all, who is right as she plays, joyously and at home, on
the ground which the earthquake may rock, and under the sky which
storms will darken and rend. The far-brought instinct of childhood
accepts without a question that great truth of unity and fellowship to
which knowledge comes only after long and agonising quest. Between th