thing--and doing it
better than before; leaped the more eagerly if Robert called him,
spoke the more gently to Oscar, turned the sheep more careful not to
scare them--as if by instinct he perceived that the only hope of
understanding lies in doing. He would cleave to the skirt when the
hand seemed withdrawn; he would run to do the thing he had learned
yesterday, when as yet he could find no answer to the question of
to-day. Thus, as the weeks of solitude and love and thought and
obedience glided by, the reality of Christ grew upon him, till he
saw the very rocks and heather and the faces of the sheep like him,
and felt his presence everywhere, and ever coming nearer. Nor did
his imagination aid only a little in the growth of his being. He
would dream waking dreams about Jesus, gloriously childlike. He
fancied he came down every now and then to see how things were going
in the lower part of his kingdom; and that when he did so, he made
use of Glashgar and its rocks for his stair, coming down its granite
scale in the morning, and again, when he had ended his visit, going
up in the evening by the same steps. Then high and fast would his
heart beat at the thought that some day he might come upon his path
just when he had passed, see the heather lifting its head from the
trail of his garment, or more slowly out of the prints left by his
feet, as he walked up the stairs of heaven, going back to his
Father. Sometimes, when a sheep stopped feeding and looked up
suddenly, he would fancy that Jesus had laid his hand on its head,
and was now telling it that it must not mind being killed; for he
had been killed, and it was all right.

Although he could read the New Testament for himself now, he always
preferred making acquaintance with any new portion of it first from
the mouth of Janet. Her voice made the word more of a word to him.
But the next time he read, it was sure to be what she had then
read. She was his priestess; the opening of her Bible was the
opening of a window in heaven; her cottage was the porter's lodge to
the temple; his very sheep were feeding on the temple-stairs. Smile
at such fancies if you will, but think also whether they may not be
within sight of the greatest of facts. Of all teachings that which
presents a far distant God is the nearest to absurdity. Either
there is none, or he is nearer to every one of us than our nearest
consciousness of self. An unapproachable divinity is the veriest of