| "Replete with joy and wonder thus replied. |
| O goodness infinite, goodness immense! |
| That all this good of evil shall produce, |
| And evil turn to good; more wonderful |
| Than that which by creation first brought forth |
| Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand, |
| Whether I should repent me now of sin |
| By me done and occasioned or rejoice |
| Much more that much more good thereof shall spring." |
That Adam should treat the loss of Eden in such a casual manner, and that he should express a doubt as to whether the estate into which his fall plunged the race was not better than one in which no moral struggle was necessary, was not characteristic of seventeenth-century theology,—but it was just like Milton.
There is no knowledge so intimate as that possessed by the reader of one book. It is an esoteric joy. The wisdom of the ages concentrated into one personality and then graciously communicated to the disciple has a flavor of which the multitudes of mere scholars know nothing. To them Wisdom is a public character.
| "Doth not Wisdom cry, |
| And understanding put forth her voice? |
| In the top of high places |
| Where the paths meet she standeth." |
But the disciple is not content with such publicity. He shuns the crowded highways, and delights to hear wisdom speaking in confidential tones.
In a little settlement in the far West I once met a somewhat depressed-looking man who remained silent till a chance remark brought a glow of enthusiasm to his eyes.
"Oh," he cried, "you have been reading the Ruins."
My remark had been of a kind that needed no special reading to account for it. It merely expressed one of those obvious truths which are likely to occur to the majority of persons. But to him it seemed so reasonable that it could only come from the one source of wise thought with which he was acquainted.
"The Ruins" proved to be a translation of Volney's "Ruins of Empire." I fear that I must have given the impression of greater familiarity with that work than was warranted by the facts, for my new-found friend received me as a member of the true brotherhood. His tongue was unloosed, and his intellectual passions, so long pent up, were freed. Had we not both read "The Ruins"! It was to him more than a book; it was a symbol of the unutterable things of the mind. It was a passionate protest against the narrow opinions of his neighbors. It stood for all that was lifted above the petty gossip of the little community, and for all that united him to an intellectual world of which he dreamed.
As we talked I marveled at the amount of sound philosophy this lonely reader had extracted from "The Ruins." Or had it been that he had brought the wisdom from his own meditation and deposited it at this shrine? One can never be sure whether a text has suggested the thought or the thought has illuminated the text.