“And not for me!” she exulted. It was not a question. She saw that in him was no doubt, no quandary, no struggle between faith and disbelief.
“I see my way clearly,” he smiled down at her; “and there are no thorns to cut for me. I shall never change.”
“And we shall walk hand in hand about the greatest work in the world,” she softly reminded him, and there were tears in her eyes. “But what work shall that be, Tod?” She looked up at him for guidance, now.
“To shed into other lives some of the beauty which blossoms in our own,” he replied, walking with her into the great dim nave, where the shadows still quivered with the under-echoes of the mighty Bach prelude. “I have been thinking much of the many things you have said to me,” he told her, “and particularly of the need, not for a new religion, but for a re-birth of the old; that same new impulse towards the better and the higher life which Christ brought into the world. I have been thinking on the mission of Him, and it was the very mission to the need of which you have held so firmly. He came to clear away the thorns of creed which had grown up between the human heart and God! The brambles have grown again. The time is almost ripe, Gail, for a new quickening of the spirit; for the Second Coming.”
She glanced at him, startled.
“For a new voice in the wilderness,” she wondered.
“Not yet,” he answered. “We have signs in the hearts of men, for there is a great awakening of the public conscience throughout the world; but before the day of harvest arrives, we must have a sign in the sky. No great spiritual revival has ever swept the world without its attendant supernatural phenomena, for mysticism is a part of religion, and will be to the end of time. Reason, by the very nature of itself, realises its own limitations, and demands something beyond its understanding upon which to hang its faith. It is the need of faith which distinguishes the soul from the mind.”
“A sign,” mused Gail, her eyes aglow with the majesty of the thought.
“It will come,” he assured her, with the calm prescience of prophecy itself. “As no great spiritual revival has ever swept the world without its attendant supernatural phenomena, so no great spiritual revival has ever swept the world without its concreted symbol which men might wear upon their breasts. The cross! What shall be its successor? A ball of fire in the sky? Who knows! If that symbol of man’s spiritual rejuvenation, of his renewed nearness to God, were, in reality, a ball of fire, Gail, I would hold it up in the sight of all mankind though it shrivelled my arm!”
The thin treble note stole out of the organ loft, pulsing its timid way among the high, dim arches, as if seeking a lodgment where it might fasten its tiny thread of harmony, and grow into a song of new glory, the glory which had been born that day in the two earnest hearts beneath in the avenue of slender columns. The soft light from one of the clerestory windows flooded in on the compassionate Son of Man above the altar. The very air seemed to vibrate with the new inspiration which had been voiced in the old Market Square Church. Gail gazed up at Smith Boyd, with the first content her heart had ever known; content in which there was both earnestness and serenity, to replace all her groping. He met her gaze with eyes in which there glowed the endless love which it is beyond the power of speech to tell. There was a moment of ecstasy, of complete understanding, of the perfect unity which should last throughout their lives. In that harmony, they walked from the canopy of dim arches, out through the vestry, and beneath the door above which perched the two grey doves, cooing. For an instant Gail looked back into the solemn depths, and a wistfulness came into her eyes.