There is
no angel now with flaming sword to keep the way of the Tree of
Life, but tapers alight morning by morning in the Hostel of God to
point us to it; and we, who are as gods knowing good and evil,
partake of that fruit "whereof whoso eateth shall never die"; the
greatest gift or the most awful penalty--Eternal Life.
I then, with my craving for tree and sky, held that a great capital
with its stir of life and death, of toil and strife and pleasure,
was an ill place for a sick man to wait in; a place to shrink from
as a child shrinks from the rude blow of one out of authority. Yet
here, far from moor and forest, hillside and hedgerow, in the
family sitting-room of the English-speaking peoples, the London
much misunderstood, I find the fulfilment by antithesis of all
desire. For the loneliness of the moorland, there is the warmth
and companionship of London's swift beating heart. For silence
there is sound--the sound and stir of service--for the most part
far in excess of its earthly equivalent. Against the fragrant
incense of the pines I set the honest sweat of the man whose
lifetime is the measure of his working day. "He that loveth not
his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath
not seen?" wrote Blessed John, who himself loved so much that he
beheld the Lamb as it had been slain from the beginning when Adam
fell, and the City of God with light most precious. The burden of
corporate sin, the sword of corporate sorrow, the joy of corporate
righteousness; thus we become citizens in the Kingdom of God, and
companions of all his creatures.
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