ike St. Dorothea, she had worn in her bosom,
invisibly, the celestial roses of paradise. He recorded honestly in his
diary what marvellous freshness of spirit the Lord had given him, and
how he seemed to be uplifted in his communings with heaven, without once
thinking from the robes of what angel this sweetness had exhaled.

On Sundays, when he saw good Mrs. Jones asleep, and Simon Brown's hard,
sharp eyes, and Deacon Twitchel mournfully rocking to and fro, and his
wife handing fennel to keep the children awake, his eye glanced across
to the front gallery, where one earnest young face, ever kindling with
feeling and bright with intellect, followed on his way, and he felt
uplifted and comforted. On Sunday mornings, when Mary came out of her
little room, in clean white dress, with her singing-book and psalm-book
in her hands, her deep eyes solemn from recent prayer, he thought of
that fair and mystical bride, the Lamb's wife, whose union with her
Divine Redeemer in a future millennial age was a frequent and favorite
subject of his musings; yet he knew not that this celestial bride,
clothed in fine linen, clean and white, veiled in humility and meekness,
bore in his mind those earthly features. No, he never had dreamed of
that! But only after she had passed by, that mystical vision seemed to
him more radiant, more easy to be conceived.

It is said, that, if a grape-vine be planted in the neighborhood of a
well, its roots, running silently underground, wreathe themselves in
a net-work around the cold, clear waters, and the vine's putting on
outward greenness and unwonted clusters and fruit is all that tells
where every root and fibre of its being has been silently stealing. So
those loves are most fatal, most absorbing, in which, with unheeded
quietness, every thought and fibre of our life twines gradually around
some human soul, to us the unsuspected wellspring of our being. Fearful
it is, because so often the vine must be uprooted, and all its fibres
wrenched away; but till the hour of discovery comes, how is it
transfigured by a new and beautiful life!

There is nothing in life more beautiful than that trancelike quiet dawn
which precedes the rising of love in the soul. When the whole being
is pervaded imperceptibly and tranquilly by another being, and we are
happy, we know not and ask not why, the soul is then receiving all and
asking nothing. At a later day she becomes self-conscious, and then come
craving exactions,