An Illumined Text.
The gray monk, rising, with a loving pride
Laid the long task of patient months aside,
The simple story of the gospels told
In lettering of crimson and of gold;
On its rich pages streamed the setting sun,
And now his life waned and his work was done.
He pushed away the heavy oaken door,
And stood within the sunset calm once more.
Above the narrowing round of life he knew
A sense of beauty and of wonder grew.
The text his art had copied, “God is Love,”
Came to him like the home-returning dove.
As the wind whistled in the bearded grain;
The tender words made music in his brain;
The green leaves whispered of it, everywhere
He read it on the blue scroll of the air,
As if more clearly and in fairer guise
The Lord Himself inscribed it for men’s eyes!
Christian at Work.
Older than all preached gospels was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, for-ever-enduring gospel: work, and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a spirit of active method, a force for work;—and burns like a painfully smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent facts around thee? What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable, obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest disorder, there is thy eternal enemy: attack him swiftly, subdue him; make order of him, the subject not of chaos, but of intelligence, divinity, and thee! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered.—Thomas Carlyle.