e only a few square inches--of cells and things, no one quite
knows what--on a human face, but a man can see more of the world in
those few inches, and understand more of the meaning of the world in
them, put the world together better there, than in any other few inches
that God has made. Even one or two faces do it, for a man, for most of
us, when we have seen them through and through. Not a face anywhere--no
one has ever seen one that was not a mirror of a whole world, a poor and
twisted one perhaps, but a great one. The man that goes with it may not
know it, may not have much to do with it. While he is waiting to die,
God writes on him; but however it is, every man's face (I cannot help
feeling it when I really look at it) is helplessly great. It is one
man's portrait of the universe as he has found it--his portrait of a
Whole. I have caught myself looking at crowds of faces as if they were
rows of worlds. Is not everything I can know or guess or cry or sing
written on faces? An audience is a kind of universe by itself. I could
pray to one--when once the soul is hushed before it. If there were any
necessity to select one place rather than another, any particular place
to address a God in, I think I would choose an audience. Praying for it
instead of to it is a mere matter of form. I cannot find a face in it
that does not lead to a God, that does not gather a God in for me out of
all space, that is not one of His assembling places. Many and many a
time when heads were being bowed have I caught a face in a congregation
and prayed to it and with it. Every man's face is a kind of prayer he
carries around with him. One can hardly help joining in it. It is
sacrament to look at his face, if only to take sides in it, join with
the God-self in it and help against the others. Whoever or Whatever He
is, up there across all heaven, He is a God to me because He can be
infinitely small or infinitely great as He likes. I will not have a God
that can be shut up into any horizon or shut out of any face. When I
have stood before audiences, have really realised faces, felt the still
and awful thronging of them through my soul, it has seemed to me as if
some great miracle were happening. It's as if--but who shall say
it?--Have you never stood, Gentle Reader, alone at night on the frail
rim of the earth--spread your heart out wide upon the dark, and let it
lie there,--let it be flocked on by stars? It is like that when
Something is lifted