The door was wide open, and my eyes often strayed to it before the service began, for it framed a picture of yellow meadows and waving trees, of brown moorland and ultramarine sky, with drowsy cattle in the pastures a hundred feet below, which seemed strangely unfamiliar, and rather reminiscent of something I had once seen or dreamed of, than of what I looked upon every day of my life. The explanation is simple enough, of course. I saw just a panel of the landscape, and with limited vision the eye observed more clearly and found the beauty of the scene intensified.
But when the prayer was ended—a rather long and wearisome one, to my thinking, on such a fine day, when all nature was offering praise so cheerily—the children's part began.
They sang children's hymns, the simple hymns I had sung myself as a child, which I hope all English-speaking Christian children sing: the hymns which belong to the English language and to no one church, but are broad enough to embrace all creeds, and tender enough to move all hearts, and which must find an echo in the Higher Temple, where thousands of children stand around the throne of God.
A wee lassie of five stood up to sing alone. As the thin, childish voice rose and fell my heart began to beat fast, and I looked at the fair little head through a veil of tears. They made an aureole which transformed Roger Treffit's firstborn into a heavenly cherub, and I was carried into that exalted state when imperfect speech and neglected aspirates are forgotten:
"Jesus, tender Shep'erd 'ear me:
Bless Thy little lamb to-night;
Through the darkness be Thou near me;
Keep me safe till mornin' light."
Was there one present who did not at that moment feel very near to the sheep-fold of the Good Shepherd? I am a Churchwoman, and by training and association inclined to look distrustfully upon Dissent, but that child's lispingly tuneful prayer taught me that I was in the House of God; for surely I know at the heart of me that neither in the Catholic mountain nor the Anglican Jerusalem is God solely to be worshipped, but wherever men seek Him in spirit and in truth; and this afternoon a little child was leading us.
"All this day Thy 'and has led me.
And I thank Thee for Thy care;
Thou 'ast clothed me, warmed an' fed me;
Listen to my evenin' prayer."
It was not evening, for the sun was still high in the heavens and the shadows short upon the earth; but He with whom the night and the morning are one day heard and understood, I do not doubt.
Without a pause the sweet voice went on:
"Let my sins be all forgiven;
Bless the friends I love so well;
Take me, when I die, to 'eaven,
'Appy there with Thee to dwell."