news: a race of slaves is set free; a war has ended;
shiploads of grain have been sent to the starving; a good man has been
made ruler; these are good tidings--gospels."

After dwelling on this first, simplest idea of the word, until every one
of her hearers had begun to think vividly of all the good tidings
journeying in words back and forth between heart and heart, continent and
continent, she spoke of the good news which nature tells without words.
Here she was eloquent. Subtle as the ideas were, they were yet clothed in
the plain speech which the plain people understood: the tidings of the
spring, of the winter, of the river, of the mountain; of gold, of silver,
of electric fire; of blossom and fruit; of seed-time and harvest; of suns
and stars and waters,--these were the "speech" which "day uttered unto
day."

But "knowledge was greater" than speech: night in her silence "showed"
what day could not tell. Here the faces of the people grew fixed and
earnest. In any other hands than Draxy's the thought would have been too
deep for them, and they would have turned from it wearily. But her
simplicity controlled them always. "Stand on your door-steps on a dark
night," she said,--"a night so dark that you can see nothing: looking out
into this silent darkness, you will presently feel a far greater sense of
how vast the world is, than you do in broad noon-day, when you can see up
to the very sun himself."

More than one young face in the congregation showed that this sentence
struck home and threw light on hitherto unexplained emotions. "This is
like what I mean," continued Draxy, "by the Gospel of Mystery, the good
tidings of the things we cannot understand. This gospel is everywhere. Not
the wisest man that has ever lived can fully understand the smallest
created thing: a drop of water, a grain of dust, a beam of light, can
baffle his utmost research. So with our own lives, with our own hearts;
every day brings a mystery--sin and grief and death: all these are
mysteries; gospels of mystery, good tidings of mystery; yes, good tidings!
These are what prove that God means to take us into another world after
this one; into a world where all things which perplexed us here will be
explained.... O my dear friends!" she exclaimed at last, clasping her
hands tightly, "thank God for the things which we cannot understand:
except for them, how should we ever be sure of immortality?"

Then she read them a hymn called "The Gospel