"My soul is clouded. Help me."
"I wonder," he smiled with his old kind eyes. "Have you a sense of humor? Ah,—there. Then you need never worry, or run away. As sunshine and rain are to the dear earth, so are laughter and tears to every living soul. Humor, dear, is the weather in which the spirit lives."
"But sorrow and tears?"
"Why, how can the sun make rainbows without rain?"
"You'll praise pain next!"
"That is a sacrament," he answered gravely, "the outward sign of inward grace. For how else can God reach through selfishness down to the soul in need?"
My pain had come back, but it was welcome now.
On the left were the solemn pines, and at their feet white flowers; on the right were my fair birch trees; and the glade between lay in warm sunshine.
"Lift up your hearts," whispered the priest, and I saw my trees, which in winter storm and summer sun alike show their brave faces to the changing sky.
"We lift them up unto the Lord," they seemed to answer.