In the earliest
days of my lonely childhood I used to lie chin on hand amid the
milkmaids, red sorrel, and heavy spear-grass listening to her many
voices, and above all to the voice of the little brook which ran
through the meadows where I used to play: I think it has run
through my whole life also, to lose itself at last, not in the
great sea but in the river that maketh glad the City of God.
Valley and plain, mountain and fruitful field; the lark's song and
the speedwell in the grass; surely a man need not sigh for greater
loveliness until he has read something more of this living letter,
and knelt before that earth of which he is the only confusion.
It is a grave matter that the word religion holds such away among
us, making the very gap seem to yawn again which the Incarnation
once and for ever filled full. We have banished the protecting
gods that ruled in river and mountain, tree and grove; we have
gainsayed for the most part folk-lore and myth, superstition and
fairy-tale, evil only in their abuse. We have done away with
mystery, or named it deceit. All this we have done in an
enlightened age, but despite this policy of destruction we have
left ourselves a belief, the grandest and most simple the world has
ever known, which sanctifies the water that is shed by every
passing cloud; and gathers up in its great central act vineyard and
cornfield, proclaiming them to be that Life of the world without
which a man is dead while he liveth.
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