FOOTNOTES:

[3] Thorns are abortive leaf-buds. Spines are the lower leaves of plants metamorphosed into bristles, to guard the young tree from the attacks of cattle. This little parable was suggested by a passage in "Modern Painters."

Parables in Household Things.

The sick girl lay in her shaded room, in the street of a great city, and thought, "If I could only leave this prison of mine, and look at the beautiful world, I know I should grow happier and holier with every breath I drew. The thorny buds on the brown branches in spring would give me promise of resurrection; every butterfly would tell me of life through death; every flower would lift my heart to Him who cares for our little pleasures; every bubbling spring would murmur to me of the living water; every corn-field and garden would repeat the sacred parables. But here I can see nothing of God's making but the sky, and that is too high and far. I want some steps to take my feeble thoughts gently up to heaven. But around me are only manufactured things, which speak to me only of earth, and time, and man."

She leant back listlessly on her couch. Twilight came over the room, the glowing coals stirred quietly as they burned away, and then it seemed as if an angel's hand touched her ears and opened them, for the dark and silent room became full of soft and soothing harmonies. All the mute and inanimate things about her found voices and spoke comfort to her heart.

Together they said,—"It is true we are only manufactured things; but do not despise us for that! We came originally, as much as you yourself, or the flowers, and the trees, and the sunbeams, from one Divine Hand. It is only that we have been trained and moulded by human hands to be what we are. And just so are you; God creates you, but life moulds you. Your trial and your training come like ours, mostly through human hands, although you are destined for higher places and more blessed services. Listen to us, for we have messages for you, each one of us."

Then the stones from the wall said,—"We come from the mountains far away, from the sides of the craggy hills. Fire and water worked on us for ages, but only made us crags. Human hands have made us into a dwelling where the children of your immortal race are born, and suffer, and rejoice, and find rest and shelter, and learn the lessons set them by our Maker and yours. But we have passed through much to fit us for this. Gunpowder has rent our very heart; pick-axes have cleaved and broken us, it seemed to us often without design or meaning, as we lay misshapen stones in the quarry; but gradually we were cut into blocks, and some of us were chiselled with finer instruments to a sharper edge. But we are complete now, and are in our places, and are of service. You are in the quarry still, and not complete, and therefore to you, as once to us, much is inexplicable. But you are destined for a higher building, and one day you will be placed in it by hands not human; a living stone in a heavenly temple."

Then the glass water-beaker said,—"I was hard flint and waste sand on the desolate sea-shore once; but human hands gathered me, and fused me in furnaces heated seven times, and took me out to let me cool, and cast me in again, and shaped and cut me, till at last I carry your water from the spring, and am pressed with many a thankful glance to your parched lips. I am complete. But you, when you have passed through your fires, will be a vessel of living water in a better hand, and bear many a draught of refreshment to weary and thirsty hearts."

"I also have been in many furnaces," said the china flower-vase. "The colours you so often admire in me have been burnt in slowly, stage by stage, every fresh colour requiring a fresh fusing in the furnace. But you, when your trial is over, shall carry flowers of Paradise and leaves from the tree of life for the healing of the nations."

"And I," said the clock, "am scarcely an individual being. I am a little world in myself—a wondrous combination of mechanism. Each of my wheels and springs, with my unwearied pendulum, has its own history of fires, and blows, and ruthless instruments. None of us could form the slightest idea, as we lay dismembered in our various workshops, what we were designed for. Only in combination with every other part, has any part of us any meaning. You are not a little world like me, but a fragment of a great world. When all that belong to you are gathered together, you will understand it all as we do now. And your voice will mark with joyous music the flight of blessed ages, which only lead to others more and more blessed throughout eternity."

"And I," said the bronze pastil-burner, "came from ages of darkness in the depths of the earth. Human hands brought me to the light, moulded and sculptured me, and set me here to burn sweet perfumes, and diffuse fragrance around me. But you will be an incense-bearer in a Temple by-and-by, and from you shall stream a fragrance of love and praise acceptable to God."

"The quarries were my birth-place also," said the alabaster night-lamp; "but you shall be a light-bearer, when your training is complete, of a light which is life, and which has no need of night, like my dim flame, to make it visible."

"I," sang the guitar, with the wooden frame and metallic strings, "am a twofold being. I lived and waved in the forest once; and then the woodman's axe was laid on me, and I fell—I fell, and the life departed from me; and from a living, life-bearing tree, I became mere inanimate timber. More blows, more tearing with saws, more sharp cutting with knife and chisel, and I became melodious again, simply from being united with these metallic strings, which never had life, but lay silent in mines, till the hand of man woke them into music. And thus together we respond to your gentle touch, and soothe for you many a lonely hour. Life from death, music through fires of trial: this is also your destiny. Hereafter every nerve of your tried and perfected being shall respond to the slightest touch of the Hand you love, filling heaven with happy music."

"As for me," said the pages of the hymn-book, "my discipline has, perhaps, been the severest of all. Once rustling in the flax-field, rejoicing in the dews and sunshine, I was torn, racked, twisted, and woven by many iron hands into linen. Then, for a time, treated carefully, decorated and treasured, and washed and perfumed, I was afterwards thrown scornfully away. Yet, even in that low estate, I found comfort. Even as a rag I bound up the wounds of suffering soldiers in a military hospital. But I was to sink lower yet. I was thrown into a mill, and pounded, crushed, and torn, till I was a mere shapeless pulp. Yet from those depths my true life began. Process after process succeeded, till here, at last, I am to speak to you undying words of hope and love. And you also, one day, shall shine forth a living epistle, proclaiming to angels and to men for ever and for ever such words as speak to you from my pages now!"

The sick girl smiled, and was comforted. "Yet," she said, "the fires are fierce, the blows are heavy, the trial is long. The end is, indeed, well worth them all; but sometimes the end seems distant."

"Yes," responded the hymn-book; "my history resembles yours in one happy feature more than that of any of us besides. For even in your days of training you are of service. You may clothe cold limbs, and bind up many wounds even now, as I did when I was a poor linen-rag. And, more than that, even now, in your time of trial, the ministries you are destined for at last may be begun. Even now you may be a living epistle, a book wherein many may read lessons of hope and patience, and sing praises, as they look on you, as you do when you look on me."

"Yes," responded the stones; "even now you are a living stone. The temple you are to form is building even now."

And the pastil-burner:—"Even now your prayers and praises may rise like sweet incense."

And the water-glass:—"Many a draught of living water may you carry, even now, in the dry and thirsty land, to hearts that need it."

And the night-lamp:—"Even now in the night, thou, child of the day, sheddest light around thee—a little light, it may be, in a narrow circle, yet though, thou mayest not know it, cheering and guiding not a few, even now."

And the guitar:—"Many a strain of thankful song has come from the depths of your heart, even now, in these your days of trial, to blend with my harmonies, and to soar to regions which my poor metallic music can never reach!"

And all the mute things sang together—"We are complete, and rejoice to serve you, vessels meet for your using. One day you also shall be perfected, a vessel meet for the Master's use. And then He will take you into His house, unto the temple which is a home, and your home for ever. Like us, when you are perfected, you shall serve; but, unlike us, even whilst you are being perfected, you may serve!"

Then the sufferer turned over the leaves of another Book, and saw how the Master had written His parables, not in streams and corn-fields, and birds and flowers, and fruitful earth, and starry sky alone, but in common household things, and common human ties. And henceforth, not nature only, but every-day cares, and duties, and relationships, and all things around her, became for her illuminated with the lessons of His love.

"Things Using Us."

It was my first visit from a home full of children, and not too full of Things, to a house where there were no children, and where the Things were in the greatest abundance and the completest preservation. Gardens and hot-houses without a broken stem; flowers evidently never gathered except by strictly authorized hands. Rooms studded fearlessly with ornaments from all ends of the earth and all kingdoms of nature; stuffed birds in domed glass sepulchres, wonderful to me, and unlife-like as the Tomb cities of Egypt; delicate fragile porcelain, and exquisite statuettes, evidently needing no protection from little investigating fingers; carpets needing no protection from little stirring feet. Gradually there settled down on me an awe-stricken sense of being perpetually watched with anxious solicitude, and of having to walk mentally, morally, and corporeally quite upright in the middle of all clear spaces, so as not to interfere with any of the sacred Things wherewith I was surrounded; until, finally, came the retiring to rest on an ancient damask-curtained bed, in a stately, solemn chamber, with a heavy consciousness of being like an insignificant, and, at the same time, rather dangerous fly in a world constructed with no reference to flies,—a crushing conviction of having nothing, and consequently being nothing in a universe of Things,—a mingled feeling of responsibility and insignificance culminating in a depressed apprehension of accountability to the lords and possessors of this universe of possessions, who thus graciously suffered an extraneous atom endowed with a perilous power of motion to enter it.

All this came to a climax when the housekeeper, who had herself, in some dim traditional past, watched over the slumbers of children now developed into the guardians of similar shrines, "tucked me up" and left me alone with the Things.

Ah, the mockery of that "tucking up" in the vast spaces of a bed which reckoned its chronology by centuries! She might as well have talked of "tucking up" a mouse under the dome of St. Paul's.

Visions of a cozy crib at home, flanked by sundry other cribs and cradles, and soothed by a dim murmur of nurses' voices through the half-open door, came tenderly over me, with a wonder how it looked that evening to the two loving faces which bent over it every night. But the very thought of those faces broke the icy spell which had been freezing me, and seemed to fold me up to sleep.

Then, all at once, from all corners of the antique room, came the strangest chucklings and gurglings of half-suppressed laughter; and the fire in the vast old chimney began to make the most uncouth caperings and flickerings, as if it were dancing to some wild elfish music.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the little Dresden china Cupids around the toilet-glass (and that they should laugh might not seem so strange); but the solemn old bed itself chuckled a fat "Ho! ho! ho!" until its heavy draperies shook again; the very tongs held its sides for laughing; and the little modern poker, which did all the work, screamed a plebeian "He! he! he!" in response.

"We shall never recover it!" they all laughed in chorus. "This child is making the old mistake! She thinks we belong to the people of the house! She thinks it is they who use us, instead of their belonging to us, and our using them!"

"As if we had not sheltered generation after generation of them," creaked the bed.

"As if we had not seen face after face change and grow wrinkled," smiled the Cupids, "while we keep our bloom and smoothness undiminished."

"As if only last week," said the steel tongs, "a young woman had not been dismissed for leaving a spot of rust on me."

So they went on, until really I could stand it no longer. It seemed to me so very unbecoming and treasonable in these possessions to speak in so sarcastic and disrespectful a way of their possessors, that at length, with a great effort, I sat up in bed and remonstrated.

"I cannot let you talk so," I said, in a voice trembling at once with indignation and awe. "You are forgetting yourselves altogether. You are nothing but Things, any of you. And we are Persons. It says so in the Grammar. We are Persons, the least of us, even a little child like me! What would become of any of you, I should like to know, if some of us did not take care of you?"

"Things and Persons indeed!" they all said, in a very unpleasant and satirical tone. "We know nothing of such philosophical distinctions. But who ever said you or your kind were Things? We paid you no such honour. Who ever said we could get on unless you took care of us? You are not Things indeed! You are servants of Things. We possess you, use you, and outlast you. Who stays in the house—the owner, or the servants? If you were the owners, you would stay. But it is we who stay. We outstay you, generation after generation. Doubtless, therefore, this is our world, and you are merely our slaves—sojourning here for our service, and at our pleasure."

It was useless arguing any further with such obstinate, impenetrable Things. But when, on my return home, I told my mother what they had said, to my surprise she said they were not altogether wrong.

"For," said she, "if we do not use and distribute our possessions, we do not merely sink to their level, but below it. If we are not truly the masters of our Things, we become their slaves."

This set me thinking of my own tiny hoard of treasures, and it occurred to me how disagreeable it would be if at that moment they were talking in any such sarcastic and disrespectful way of me!

How was I to show myself truly the possessor and mistress of those cherished Things of my own?

At last I propounded the question to my mother.

"I know no way," she said, "but to get Love to be lord and possessor of you and of them. For while Selfishness sinks us below the very Things we are supposed to possess, making us fade, and rust, and perish like them, Love lifts these very perishing things themselves into our higher world, transfiguring them into ladders on which angels go up and down, and into keys of the kingdom of heaven."

Sunshine, Daylight, and the Rock.

Sunshine and Daylight had one day a serious difference of opinion about a rocky waste, over which their course led them.

"I am not severe," said Daylight, fixing her clear, generalizing gray eyes on the Rock. "If I cannot, like some people, see nothing but what I wish to see, no one ever accused me of blackening any one's character. I have known that old Rock more years than I care to mention; not a jagged edge nor a whimsical cranny but I am intimately acquainted with; and I do not hesitate to say, that a more barren, unmitigated rock I seldom meet with. I do not slander it. I only say, it is nothing more or less than a rock."

Sunshine said nothing, but peeped round the shoulder of her cousin's gray cloak, until the smile of her soft eye met the eye of a little blue violet, which, by dint of hard living, had contrived to obtain a secure footing in a crevice of the old rock; and a flutter of joy passed through the blossoms and leaves of the violet, and communicated itself to a tuft of dry short grass, which had ensconced itself behind. The red and gray cups of some tiny moss and lichens, which had crept into corners here and there, next drank in her kind glances, and fancied themselves wine-cups at a feast. Here and there specks of colour and points of life revealed themselves, and, as they looked, expanded.

By this time Sunshine had folded Daylight to sleep on her warm breast. Many weeks had passed, when, one quiet afternoon, Daylight again came that way, and glancing critically around, she murmured to Sunshine, "Where is the old gray Rock you were so sanguine about?"

Sunshine was silent; her motto being, "Not in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth;" and at length Daylight's quiet eyes awoke to the fact, that the grassy knoll where flowers—tiny rock-plants indeed, but still flowers—and mosses lay dozing, unawakened by her sober tread, was none other than the Rock she had known of old. And she said meekly, "Truly I find that one way to create beauty is to perceive it."

Then an angel, who was hovering near, on his way back from some message of mercy (for the angels never linger till their messages are given), sang softly, "Love veileth a multitude of sins." And the old Rock answered in a chorus, through its moss-threads, and lichen-cups, and leaves, and blossoms, "And under the warm veil spring a multitude of flowers."

Wanderers and Pilgrims.

A large tract of country lay spread before me; upland and lowland, hill and plain. The whole land seemed stirring with perpetual movement, all in one direction;—from the bright hills at its commencement, to the dark mountains at the end. Earth and sky seemed moving, as when an enormous flight of migratory birds is passing by; but earth and sky were really stationary. This movement was one constant tide of human life, ceaselessly streaming across the land.

It began on a range of wooded hills, with their sunny southern slopes, forests and flowery banks, and grassy and golden fields. Down these slopes joyous bands ran fast. As I looked closer, I saw the movement was not incessant in the case of each individual; only the ceaseless passing of the great tide of life made it seem so. Merry groups paused on the hill-sides, and made fairy gardens, and twined leafy tents where they would sit a little while and sing and dance. But only a little while! No hand seemed driving them on; it appeared only an inward irresistible instinct. Yet soon the bright groups were scattered, and moved down again over the hills, often never joining more.

"Why do you hasten away from these sunny slopes?" I said. "There seems nothing so pleasant in all the land besides."

"Perhaps not," the travellers replied, with a slight sigh; but it ended in a snatch of song as they danced gaily on. "Perhaps not, but we are a race of Wanderers! We cannot stay; and perhaps better things await us in the plain."

"Whither are you going?" I asked.

"We know not," was the answer; "only onwards, onwards!"

In the plain were buildings of more solid construction, houses and cities. And here I observed many of the travellers would have gladly lingered, but it could not be. Homesteads, and corn-fields, and vineyards, all had to be left; and still the tide of life streamed on and on.

"Why?" I asked.

"It is the doom of our race," they said, sorrowfully; "we are a people of Wanderers."

"Whither?" I inquired.

"We do not know," was the reply; "only onwards and onwards, to the dark mountains!"

Slower and slower grew the footsteps of the Wanderers, more and more regretful the glances they cast behind. Slower, yet with fewer pauses. The strange restless impulse drove them steadily on, until, wearied and tottering, they began the ascent of the dark mountains.

"What is on the other side?" I asked.

"The sea," they said, "the Great Sea."

"How will you cross it? And what is beyond?"

"We know not," they said, with bitter tears. "But we are a doomed race of Wanderers—onwards, onwards; we may not stay!"

Then first I perceived that, among these multitudes of aimless Wanderers, there was one band who kept close together, and moved with a freedom and a purpose, as if they journeyed on not from a blind, irresistible impulse, but from choice. Their looks were seldom turned regretfully behind them, or only on the dark mountains. They looked to something higher.

I asked them—"Why are you thus hastening on?"

"We are Pilgrims," they replied; "we would not linger here."

"Whither are you going?" I inquired.

"Home!" they answered joyfully—"to a Holy City which is our Home."

"But how do you know the way?" I asked; for no barriers seemed to limit their path, so that any of the Wanderers might join it at any point.

"We know it by two marks," they answered;—"by the footsteps of One who trod it once, and left indelible footprints wherever He stepped; and we know it also by the goal to which it tends!"

Then looking up, I saw resting on the mountains where this path ended, a bridge like a rainbow, and beyond it, in the sky, a range of towers and walls, pearl and opal, ruby and golden, such as in a summer evening is sometimes faintly pictured on the clouds, when the setting sun shines through them. And the little band chanted as they went, "The doom of our race is reversed for us. We are not Wanderers; we are Pilgrims. We would not linger here; this is not our rest. Onwards, upwards, to the City!—to the Home!"

The Ark and the Fortress.

One day, I had been thinking about the terrors of the Great Flood, when it seemed to me that I saw back through the long ages to that distant day, as you look with a night-glass through the night to an illuminated planet. I saw an old man, venerable with the centuries by which we count the lives of nations, not of men, yet vigorous with the vitality of one who had still centuries to live. He stood on an inland plain, far from any sea; yet above him rose the sides of a large ship. It had been finished that day. Once more the old man warned the laughing crowds around of the waters which would surely come and float the vessel high above the submerged world. He had told them the same truth for a hundred and twenty years. There had been no indefiniteness about his prophecy. As, since then, men have been warned by the uncertainty of a doom which may come at any moment; then, they were warned by the certainty of a period definitely fixed. Every fall of the leaf had brought it precisely a year nearer. And now the last evening of the last year had come, and once more the patient preacher of righteousness stood and warned them to forsake the sin which must bring the doom.

But in vain. There was no persecution; perhaps some mockery, as they pointed to the cloudless sky, and the fields and forests growing daily greener in the spring-tide sunshine; but for the most part simply unbelief and indifference. "They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage." And so the last warning was finished, and the last evening closed.

But one little group seemed to me to detach itself from the rest with a bolder confidence. They pointed to a fortress on the highest summit of the mountain-range above them, and said: "If what you say is true, surely we shall be safer there than in a floating ark like yours. In the rushing of the great water-floods you speak of, and the beating of the storms, our mountain fortress will serve us better, at least, than your wooden walls. We shall look down from our height on your waters, and, perchance, see the wreck of your vessel drifted to our feet!"

The patriarch and his family were shut in the ark. Before the next morning, the day of doom had set in. Not a break in the pitiless roof of clouds. Steadily the torrents poured from the opened flood-gates of heaven, whilst the waters from beneath broke their barriers, and the reservoirs under the hills burst forth in sudden rivers.

The flood had begun. The valleys became lakes, the plains seas; but the builders of the mountain fortress had fled to it, and looked triumphantly down on the waves.

Higher and higher they rose. The lower hills were covered. The mountain range was isolated. But the dwellers in the fortress thought, "We are well provisioned. This cannot last for ever!"

The waters rose. Peak after peak became an island. And at last, the highest peak, on which the fortress stood, looked out alone upon the waste of waters, and the floating ark buoyed up securely on them.

They looked still down on the waters, but with trembling hearts. The wild waves dashed furiously against this one remaining obstacle. The firmest human masonry cannot stand like the everlasting rocks. The strong foundations gave way, and with a crash, and a wail of anguish, the fortress fell, and nothing rose above the waters but the floating ark. For nothing that is founded on earth can escape the doom of earth. But

"Planted Paradise was not so firm
As was, and is, Thy floating ark; whose stay
And anchor Thou art only."

The Three Dreams.

I had once three dreams in close succession, which I will relate to you.

In the first, I saw a magnificent palace, a little world of gardens and buildings, a city in itself. All was enclosed within a high wall, so that from outside you could see nothing of it except the fairy white minarets pencilled delicately against the blue sky, some lofty battlemented watch-towers, and several graceful campaniles, with the tops of a few of the highest trees. But a delicious blending of the fragrance of a thousand flowers came thence in summer evenings; and every night, bell-tower, watch-tower, spire, and dome, and minaret were illuminated with innumerable starry lamps, as if every day within the palace were a festival.

Around the palace were the lanes and alleys of the city—scenes of poverty and squalor—which contrasted strangely with it; and wretched, half-starved-looking creatures, with tattered garments and faces worn with deep marks of want and woe, lingered round the gates. Outside the gates!—and this was one strange incongruity of my dream, for on the gates were emblazoned in golden letters, which were illuminated into transparencies at night, the words—

"KNOCK, AND IT SHALL BE OPENED UNTO YOU."

The gates were solid, and enormously massive, like blocks of black marble. No violence could have forced them. There was no crevice at which any one could get a glimpse of what was within. But the golden knocker, underneath those golden words, was so low as to be within reach of the youngest children. Indeed, I noticed that none tried it so often as little children; and whenever any one knocked with the very feeblest sound, in time, and often immediately, the stately portals opened from within, turning on their massive hinges with a sound like the music of many choirs, and the applicant was quietly drawn inside. Then I saw that the inside of the gates was of translucent pearl. A stream of light and fragrance for a moment came through, and induced others afterwards to knock. But immediately the gates were closed, and stood a wall of impenetrable marble as before.

I awoke, and whilst meditating on my dream fell asleep again.

In my second dream, I saw the same palace as in my first, but the massive doors were gone, and in their place stood the form of One whom, although I had never seen Him, I had heard so often described, and so faithfully, by those who had seen Him, that I knew Him at once. The same wretched beings were cowering round; but the massive barriers were gone, and in their place He stood, and said, in tones that every one could hear—"I am the Door. By Me if any man enter he shall be saved."

One wretched and woe-worn woman gave a trembling glance at His face, and then listening again to those tones, not welcoming merely, but pleading and persuasively tender, she ventured close to Him, and fell on her knees to kiss the hem of His garment. But He stooped, and stretched out His hand, and took her hand, and led her in. Then I understood what His words had meant;—that by saying, "I am the door," He must have meant that there was no barrier, no impenetrable gate, but that in the doorway, where the door had been, He stood, and, instead of the lifeless knocker, stretched out His living hands to aid and welcome all who came.

And I awoke from my second dream.

Before long I fell asleep again, and then again I saw the same palace, with the massive portals flung open wide, but that gracious princely form stood in them no more. Among the most wretched of that crowd He went—among the maimed, the halt, and the blind. They thronged around Him, yet many of them scarcely seemed to heed, they were so intent on their own sordid pursuits. Some were crowding with sharp, eager faces round a rag merchant, bargaining with the most absorbing passion for his wretched wares, and then separating to quarrel and fight over their purchases, or bartering their rags again as eagerly for a draught of the intoxicating drinks which had made so many of them the lost creatures they were. Not a rag or a burning drop was to be had except for money, and often for a price which to them was life itself. And He came to them from the palace, and offered them the palace freely; yet few listened! But with that strange absence of the sense of incongruity and the emotion of surprise characteristic of dreams, I did not wonder. Patiently He went in and out among them, pleading with one and another, often encountering rough words and blows; yet still His words were—"I come to seek and save that which was lost." And some even of the most wretched listened, and returned with Him, and were welcomed inside.

As if "Knock, and it shall be opened!" were not free enough, the gates were thrown open wide, and He stood there, the outstretched hand, instead of the door; the living friend, instead of the written words of welcome. And as if that were not enough, instead of saying, "Come to Me!" He came Himself—He "came to seek and to save that which was lost."