“Fear not! Her story is a poem, a picture, a tragedy; it’s one long delight.”
“Then tell it to me, I pray you.”
So the priest proceeded:
“When the world was very wicked, and therefore very sad, God in His goodness was drawn to send from heaven a light-bearer—some one to tell man his duty and able to win back to the Great Father mankind’s straying affections. Thou dost know this much, and hast read in thy sacred Scriptures how God called to the universe, all chaotic and dark, to come forth into beautiful form; how he said to the darkness, ‘Let there be light.’ That history bears within it a fine sermon. It’s a picture of God’s. Out of sin, darkness, confusion, there emerged a perfect man in a Paradisiacal home, with a perfect, beautiful woman as a help-mate by his side. That was God’s ideal of perfection and happiness. It delighted the Father of Joys to make it. This is ever true; behind all clouds in God’s Providence is sunshine, and beyond all disorders somewhere at last will walk forth unalloyed pleasure, a Sabbath-like rest, and fullness of harmony.”
“Oh, can you make me believe and feel this?”
“Wait patiently.”
“I try to do so; but I’m discouraged by the present miseries in my family and in all our nation.”
“God mourns over all our sorrows before they or we are born, but His wisdom and power of cure are faultless. Wait. Times are mending, and the moral sphere is dipping into the rim of light’s oceans. I think the angels perceive the world now, as thou perceivest the new moon.”
“The poetry of the words I can not interpret.”
“The moon’s a dark globe, with a ribbon of silver across it.”