s heard in prayer.
That there was a chapel in the house I knew, and that a brief morning
prayer was read there. But I could not help wondering at the
remarkable distinctness with which I heard the words--they seemed close
to my ear in the air beside me. I got up, and drawing my curtains
found that it was day; and then I saw that a tiny window in the corner
of my room, that gave on the gallery of the chapel, had been left open,
by accident or design, and that thus I had been an auditor of the
service.

I found myself pondering over the words of the hymn, which was familiar
to me, though strangely enough is to be found in but few collections.
It is a perfect lyric, both in its grave language and its beautiful
balance; and it is too, so far as such a composition can be, or ought
to be, intensely dramatic. The thought is just touched, and stated
with exquisite brevity and restraint; there is not a word too much or
too little; the image is swiftly presented, the inner meaning flashed
upon the mind. It seemed to me, too, a beautiful and desirable thing
to begin the day thus, with a delicate hallowing of the hours; to put
one gentle thought into the heart, perfumed by the sweet music. But
then my reflections took a further drift; beautiful as the little
ceremony was, noble and refined as the thought of the tender hymn was,
I began to wonder whether we do well to confine our religious life to
so restricted a range of ideas. It seemed almost ungrateful to
entertain the thought, but I felt a certain bewilderment as to whether
this remote image, drawn from the ancient sacrificial ceremony, was not
even too definite a thought to feed the heart upon. For strip the idea
of its fair accessories, its delicate art, and what have we but the sad
belief, drawn from the dark ages of the world, that the wrathful
Creator of men, full of gloomy indignation at their perverseness and
wilfulness, needs the constant intercession of the Eternal Son, who is
too, in a sense, Himself, to appease the anger with which he regards
the sheep of his hand. I cannot really in the depths of my heart echo
that dark belief. I do not indeed know why God permits such blindness
and sinfulness among men, and why he allows suffering to cloud and
darken the world. But it would cause me to despair of God and man
alike, if I felt that he had flung our pitiful race into the world,
surrounded by temptation both within and without, and then abandoned
himself to