ce again. So we shall grow
at home amid these grandeurs, and with that All-Presence about us may
cry in our hearts, "At last is our meeting, Immortal. O starry one, now
is our rest!"

Come away, oh, come away;
We will quench the heart's desire
Past the gateways of the day
In the rapture of the fire.

1896

THE HERO IN MAN

I.

There sometimes comes on us a mood of strange reverence for people and
things which in less contemplative hours we hold to be unworthy; and in
such moments we may set side by side the head of the Christ and the head
of an outcast, and there is an equal radiance around each, which makes
of the darker face a shadow and is itself a shadow around the head of
light. We feel a fundamental unity of purpose in their presence here,
and would as willingly pay homage to the one who has fallen as to him
who has become a master of life. I know that immemorial order decrees
that the laurel crown be given only to the victor, but in these moments
I speak of a profound intuition changes the decree and sets the aureole
on both alike.

We feel such deep pity for the fallen that there must needs be a justice
in it, for these diviner feelings are wiser in themselves and do not
vaguely arise. They are lights from the Father. A justice lies in
uttermost pity and forgiveness, even when we seem to ourselves to be
most deeply wronged, or why is it that the awakening of resentment or
hate brings such swift contrition? We are ever self-condemned, and the
dark thought which went forth in us brooding revenge, when suddenly
smitten by the light, withdraws and hides within itself in awful
penitence. In asking myself why is it that the meanest are safe from our
condemnation when we sit on the true seat of judgment in the heart,
it seemed to me that their shield was the sense we have of a nobility
hidden in them under the cover of ignoble things; that their present
darkness was the result of some too weighty heroic labor undertaken long
ago by the human spirit, that it was the consecration of past purpose
which played with such a tender light about their ruined lives, and it
was more pathetic because this nobleness was all unknown to the
fallen, and the heroic cause of so much pain was forgotten in life's
prison-house.

While feeling the service to us of the great ethical ideal which have
been formulated by men I think that the idea of justice intellectually
conceived tends to be