The Life Radiant

Not only verses, but lives, are "winnowed through and through," and time and tide reveal their faults and their virtues. In the history of the State of Colorado there is one man whose life and work stand out in noble pre-eminence; whose character is one to inspire and to reward study as an example of intellectual and moral greatness. This man is Nathan Cook Meeker, the founder of the town of Greeley, Colorado; the founder and for many years the editor of the Greeley "Tribune;" later appointed by President Hayes, in a somewhat confidential capacity, the Indian Commissioner at White River, where he died the death of a hero, and where, marking the spot of the tragic massacre, the town of Meeker now stands, among the mountains of the Snowy Range.

Mr. Meeker, who is one of the heroes of pioneer civilization, founded this town in the very desert of sand and sage-brush. Its first inception is a wonderful idyl of the extension of progress into the unknown West. The vision of the bands of singing angels in the air that fell upon the shepherds in the Judean plains was hardly more wonderful than the vision out of which the town of Greeley arose from the desert. On a December night in the late sixties Mr. Meeker found himself one evening standing under the brilliant starry skies of Colorado near the foot of Pike's Peak. The marvellous splendor of the scene filled his mind with sublime picturings. In the very air before him he seemed to see a city arise in the desert—a city of beautiful ideals, of high purposes, of temperance, education, culture, and religion. The vision made upon him that permanent impression which the heavenly vision, revealed for one instant to a life, forever makes, however swiftly it may be withdrawn; however deep and dark the eclipse into which it fades and seems forever lost.

To Mr. Meeker had been granted the angelic vision. The ideal had been revealed, and it was revealed in order that it might be realized in the outer and actual world. He felt the power, the nameless thrill of enchantment that pervades this wonderful country. One who is a poet in heart and soul has said of this Pike's Peak region:—

This indescribable ecstasy of the Colorado air communicated itself to Mr. Meeker. He went home to New York; he called a meeting in Cooper Institute; Horace Greeley presided, and Mr. Meeker outlined his plans to the large audience. He presented them, also, in full detail in the columns of the "Tribune," and the result was that in 1870 he led a colony of some seven hundred to this most favorable site—now mid-way between two state capitols—fifty miles north of Denver and fifty miles south of Cheyenne; he laid out the town with broad boulevards and double rows of shade-trees while yet they lived in tents, and the shade-trees seen in his imagination are now an established fact. Greeley is to-day a town embowered in trees. The first work was to dig a canal at a cost of sixty thousand dollars, this being the initial experiment of upland irrigation. Such is, in outline, the history of Greeley, which the colony desired to name Meeker—for its founder—but which Horace Greeley's friend and associate editor insisted should bear its present name. Greeley is known as the "garden city" of Colorado, and that it was founded in faith and in ideals has been a determining fact in its quality of life and its phenomenal progress.

Nathan Cook Meeker was born in the "Western Reserve," in Ohio, in 1814, coming of the order of people whom Emerson characterized as those "who go without the new carpet and send the boy to college." Behind him were a long list of distinguished ancestry, men who through successive generations had stood for achievements. Mr. Meeker in his youth taught school, went into journalism, was connected with the New York "Mirror," and later was associated with George D. Prentice on the Louisville "Journal," now the "Courier-Journal," edited by the brilliant Henry Watterson. A versatile writer in both prose and verse, he wrote two or three books, one of which he dedicated to President Pierce. He married a woman of great force and exaltation of character, a native of Connecticut, and a descendant of Elder Brewster. She shared his aims and ideals.

In the decade of 1860-70 Horace Greeley, who was always waving his divining rod to see if it indicated the proximity of genius, discovered Mr. Meeker, and invited him to become the agricultural editor of the "Tribune," succeeding Solon Robinson. Mr. Meeker's work made a strong impression on the reading public of the day, and even Emerson inquired as to the authorship of some of Mr. Meeker's editorial work, which won the appreciation of the Concord seer.

In 1868 Mr. Meeker made a trip to the West for the "Tribune," writing a series of valuable letters embodying his observations of the country. It was during this journey that the night came which lends itself to imaginative picturing with dramatic vividness when, just after Christmas, he stood in the Garden of the Gods near the foot of Pike's Peak, while the stars of the Colorado skies blazed above him, and, as if by a flash of vision saw a town arise in the desert. The vision fell upon him like an inspiration. Founding towns seemed, indeed, to run in the family, as one of his ancestors had founded the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, naming it after his wife.

Mr. Meeker returned to the Tribune office with his dream of a beautiful city to arise out of the sand and sage-brush of the desert. An idealist himself, Mr. Meeker had also the good fortune of having married a woman capable of sharing ideal dreams and of rising to the heights of sacrifice, and she, too, embraced his new enthusiasm.

"Go ahead," replied Mr. Greeley, when Mr. Meeker mentioned his new project, "the 'Tribune' will back you."

A meeting was then called in Cooper Institute, as before stated, Horace Greeley presiding, and John Russell Young entering into the idea with sympathy. Mr. Meeker presented his project of a Union colony to establish itself in Colorado. Of the conditions he said:—

"The persons with whom I would be willing to associate must be temperance men and ambitious to establish good society, and among as many as fifty, ten should have as much as ten thousand dollars each, or twenty should have five thousand dollars each, while others may have from two thousand to one thousand dollars and upward. For many to go so far without means could only result in disaster."

The members were to each contribute one hundred and fifty-five dollars to a fund to purchase and prepare the land. It was in April of 1869 that the committee made the purchase of forty thousand acres, located between the Cache la Poudre and the South Platte rivers, twenty-five miles from the Rocky Mountains and in full sight of Long's Peak. Greeley has a beautiful situation, and a perfection of climate that perhaps exists hardly anywhere else in all Colorado. Whatever the heat of the day, the nights are cool. The days are so bright, so beautiful, that they seem a very foretaste of paradise.

In the spring of 1870 the seven hundred members of Union Colony, with their families, arrived.

Mr. Meeker further stipulated:—

"In particular should moral and religious sentiments prevail, for without these qualities man is nothing. At the same time tolerance and liberality should also prevail. One thing more is equally important. Happiness, wealth, and the glory of a state spring from the family, and it should be our aim and a high ambition to preserve the family pure in all its relations, and to labor with the best efforts life and strength can give to make the home comfortable, to beautify and to adorn it, and to supply it with whatever will make it attractive and loved."

He added: "I make the point that two important objects will be gained by such a colony. First, schools, refined society, and all the advantages of life in an old country; while, on the contrary, where settlements are made by the old method, people are obliged to wait twenty, forty, or more years. Second, with free homesteads as a basis, with the sale of reserved lots for the general good, the greatly increased value of real estate will be for the benefit of all the people, and not for schemers and speculators. In the success of this colony a model will be presented for settling the remainder of the vast territory of our country."

Every deed granted forbade the sale of intoxicating liquors. The town was founded in the purest moral ideals of education, culture, faith, and prayer, and Greeley is everywhere pointed out to the tourist in Colorado as one of the most interesting features of the Centennial state.

Of the town Mr. Meeker himself said in one of his letters to the "Tribune": "Individuals may rise or fall, may live or die; property may be lost or gained; but the colony as a whole will prosper, and the spot on which we labor so long as the world stands will be a centre of intelligence and activity."

In 1876 Mr. Meeker was appointed commissioner from Colorado to the Centennial Exposition. He was strongly talked of for Congress, but his destiny led elsewhere.

Early in the seventies he founded "The Greeley Tribune," which he edited with conspicuous ability, making it the leading country paper of that part of the state.

The Indian troubles became a prominent problem of the government in the decade of the seventies, and this question deeply engaged Mr. Meeker's attention. He had his own theories regarding their treatment—ideas much in advance of his time, and which in some respects have been adopted in the best Indian legislation in Washington within the past two years. One point in Mr. Meeker's policy was that "work should go hand in hand and to some extent precede school education"—an insight comprising much of the truth taught to-day by the more eminent leaders of industrial education, and one which the recent Indian legislation, during the fifty-seventh Congress, has recognized. Mr. Meeker believed that the Indian could be advanced into the peaceful arts of civilized life, and this aim he held with conspicuous courage and fidelity.

With a desire to carry out these theories, Mr. Meeker applied for and received, under President Hayes, the post of commissioner to the Utes on White River in Colorado, his appointment being, as before stated, of a somewhat confidential nature, and charged with more important responsibilities than are usually included in this office. Mr. Meeker entered on the duties of this position with much that same high and noble purpose that inspired General Armstrong in his work at Hampton.

General Hall of Colorado, who is said to be the most authoritative historian of that state, thus wrote of Mr. Meeker's entrance on the agency at White River.

The Honorable Alva Adams of Pueblo, Colorado, ex-Governor of the state, writing of Nathan Cook Meeker, said:—

Mrs. Meeker entered into the views and the work of her husband in this new field with sympathetic comprehension and sustaining aid. Their youngest daughter, Josephine, who shared the idealism of the family, opened a free school for the Indians.

Mr. Meeker encountered peculiar difficulties over a period of several months, during which he appealed, unsuccessfully, for government aid and protection. General William T. Sherman, in his report (1879) to the Secretary of War, alludes to these troubles; General Pope was familiar with the situation, and Major Thornburg, at Fort Steele, held himself ready to send protection to Mr. Meeker at a day's notice; but the government failed to give that notice.

The tragedy came swiftly and suddenly, like the fates in a Greek drama, and on September 29, 1879, Mr. Meeker was brutally massacred, his wife and daughter were taken into captivity, where, for twenty-three days, until rescued by General Adams, they endured unspeakable sufferings, and the agency buildings and their contents were burned.

To the awful spectacle of her husband's mutilated body, his wife—a woman of gentle birth and breeding—was led by the Indians, in their savage cruelty, to thus first learn of the tragedy. Through her agony of tears she pleaded to be allowed to stop and kiss the cold lips of him whose faithful, tender companion and wife she had been for thirty-five years. This last sacred consolation was denied her. With diabolical glee they reviled her tears and her prayers.

Her daughter Josephine, a girl of twenty, with the Evangeline type of face, was torn from her arms and hurried away into a deep, lonely cañon, which is now called "Josephine Valley." Mrs. Meeker herself was shot in her hip and left lame for life. She was thrust on a horse without even a saddle and carried off into the lonely mountains in this terrible captivity. Yet so sublime is the character of Mrs. Meeker in her deep religious feeling that in this moment of supreme desolation,—her husband's murdered body left alone on the ground; her daughter snatched from her arms; her home in smoking ruins behind her,—so remarkable is her character in its religious exaltation, that even in this hour of supreme agony she could say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him!"

A little mountain town of some five hundred inhabitants, named Meeker, for the heroic man who there met his tragic death, now marks the site of the massacre. Even at this day it is forty-five miles from the nearest railroad station, Rifle, on the Denver and Rio Grand scenic route. The little town reminds one of Florence, Italy, in the way it is surrounded by amethyst mountains, and the White River on which it is located is far more beautiful than the turbid Arno. The name of Nathan Cook Meeker is held in the greatest reverence by the people of the entire region.

On an August afternoon more than twenty years after this tragedy a visitor to Colorado stood on the site of the massacre under a sky whose intense blue rivalled that of Italy. With the peaceful flow of the river murmuring in the air and the hum of insects in the purple-flowered alfalfa, the tragic scene seemed to rise again and impressed its lesson,—the ethical lesson of apparent defeat, disaster, and death in the outer and temporal world, while, on the spiritual side, it was triumph and glory and the entrance to the life more abundant. The man might be massacred,—the idea for which he stood cannot die. It rises from the apparent death and is resurrected in the form of new and nobler and more widely pervading ideals which communicate their inspiration to all humanity.

In the cemetery of Greeley lie buried the body of Mr. Meeker and of his daughter Josephine, whose early death followed close upon the tragedy. The aged widow, now in her eighty-ninth year, still survives, occupying her home in this Colorado town. Mrs. Meeker retains all her clearness of intellect; all her keen interest in the affairs of the day. She reads her daily newspapers, writes letters that are models of beautiful thought and exquisite feeling, and still continues to write the verse which through life has been the natural expression of her poetic nature. Mrs. Meeker writes verses as a bird sings—with a natural gift full of spontaneous music.

The work of Nathan Cook Meeker in all that makes for industrial and social progress and moral ideals contributed incalculable aid to Colorado. All over the state the tourist is asked, "Have you seen Greeley? That is our ideal town."

During all the years of Mr. Meeker's residence in Colorado he remained a staff correspondent of the "Tribune." Horace Greeley went to the West and visited the Colony; and in the fine high school building of Greeley to-day, there hang, side by side, the portraits of Horace Greeley and Nathan Cook Meeker.

In this world in which we live events are not finished when they have receded into the past. They persist in the texture of life. They stand for certain fulfilments, and, like Banquo's ghost, they will "not down" until their complete significance is worked out to its final conclusion.

"Say not the struggle naught availeth."

It always avails. It matters little as to amassing of possessions; but it matters greatly as to the purity of a man's motives and the degree to which he keeps faith with his ideals. Unfalteringly, even unto death, did Nathan Cook Meeker keep faith with those ideals that revealed themselves to him.

A noble work like that of Mr. Meeker is like the seed sown which is not quickened except it die. Sown in weakness, it is raised in power; sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. The three years of the ministry of Jesus on earth ended in defeat, disaster, and death. Was his life thereby a failure? Who has won the triumph's evidence—Pilate or Christ? Lincoln had to die that the nation might live. Heroism is forever being crowned with martyrdom.

All life is better to-day for every noble individual life that has been lived in the world. Nathan Cook Meeker was one who literally gave his life to lofty ideals, and this hero whom the Silver State holds in honor and reverence merits the recognition of the nation.

Since the days of Jacob Behmen there have been no such remarkable series of mystic writings as are contained in the two volumes called "The Perfect Way" and "Clothed with the Sun," by Doctor Anna Kingsford. Her belief and her illuminations were crystallized in the affirmation, "Life is the elaboration of soul through the varied transformations of matter." She saw the entire purpose of creation to be the evolution and elaboration of the soul. Very little is generally known of Doctor Kingsford. She was descended from an old Italian family, one of whom had been the architect of the Vatican, and, on her mother's side, from mingled German and Irish ancestry. She was the daughter of John Bonus, born in England in 1846, and she married, in 1867, Algernon Godfrey Kingsford, who subsequently took orders in the English Church. Three years later Mrs. Kingsford entered the Catholic communion, and some years afterward she studied medicine in Paris and received her degree. She is said to have been very beautiful, with great talent in painting and in music, a poet of lyric gifts, and from her childhood she saw visions and dreamed dreams. She died in 1888, and is buried in Atcham, near Shrewsbury, where her husband had his parish.

In 1881 Doctor Kingsford delivered in London, before drawing-room audiences, comprising representatives of literature, art, fashion, and the peerage,—audiences inclusive of the most notable people in London, the nine lectures that are published under the title of "The Perfect Way," and at the time these lectures inspired a profound interest. Their central theme is the Pre-existence and Perfectibility of the soul. "The intuition," she says, "is that portion of the mind whereby we are enabled to gain access to the interior and permanent region of our nature, and there to possess ourselves of the knowledge which in the long ages of her past existence the soul has made her own. For that in us which perceives and permanently remembers is the soul. And all that she has once learned is at the service of those who duly cultivate relations with her." And those relations, she taught, are cultivated by living so purely in thought and deed as to prevent the interposition of any barrier between the phenomenal (or the outer) and the substantial (or the inner) self; and by steadfastly cultivating harmonious relations between those two, by subordinating the whole system to the Divine will,—thus does one gain full access to the stores of knowledge in the soul. Doctor Kingsford further explains:—

Doctor Kingsford was an evolutionist, holding that development along evolutionary lines is a true doctrine, but she held that this development was not of the original substance, because that, being infinite and eternal, is always perfect; and that the development lay in the manifestation of the qualities of that substance, in the individual. "The highest product, man," she said, "is the result of the spirit working intelligently within. But man attains his highest and becomes perfect only through his own voluntary co-operation with the Spirit."

Doctor Kingsford regarded Jesus as a spiritual Ideal and an Eternal Verity, and Religion as an ever-present actuality.

We find her saying:—

The entire interpretation of life, as given by Doctor Kingsford in these books, is remarkable, and is one of singular clearness in tracing the law of cause and effect.

The Rev. Doctor Alexander Whyte of Edinborough, one of the few greatest and most celebrated preachers in Europe, said, in a sermon recently delivered in London, that the spiritual, like the physical life, required constant sustenance. Doctor Whyte dwelt with marked emphasis on the important truth that no one who does not give at least one hour of the day to the concentration of thought on the higher purposes of life, and devote himself, essentially and especially, to aspiration and prayer, can live aright, and live up to his higher possibilities. Doctor Whyte especially recommended the last hour before sleep as the best season for this uplift of the soul to its native atmosphere. "It is not necessary," he said, "that one should be kneeling, in the attitude of prayer, all the time. Walk about. Go out and look at the stars. Read, if you prefer, some ennobling book. But, in whatever form thought and meditation may take, keep the key held to the divinest melody of life. In that way shall the spiritual life gather its rich strength and infinite energy." The principle is one that every life which has given to the world noble results, has acted upon, consciously or unconsciously, as may be. No one can live, in the sense of that life which is alone worth the living, without definite and constant periods of seeking that refreshment which is found in communion with God, and in setting one's spiritual forces in touch anew with the infinite spiritual energy. Poet and prophet have emphasized this truth. Stephen Phillips, in his poem of "The Dead Soul," touches it most impressively. Without its own sustenance from the spiritual world, how could it survive?

"She felt it die a little every day,
Flutter more wildly and more feebly pray."

The soul is ever "imploring dimly something beautiful," and it must have this or its powers remain latent and undeveloped. "Not in dead matter do we live," said Lord Kelvin, in his recent address before the British scientists, "but we live and move in the creative and directing power that science compels to be accepted as an article of faith. We are forced to believe, with absolute confidence, in a directive power,—in an influence other than the physical, dynamic, and electric powers. Science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to religion," he added; "science positively affirms creative power, and makes every one feel a miracle in himself."

The soul has certainly a door into infinite beauty, and through the portals must it fare forth to renew its activities in its own atmosphere. The question as to whether the individual survives bodily death is one that the Twentieth Century will answer with no unmistakable reply. The investigation into the very nature of man is one possible on strictly scientific lines, whose results agree with and confirm all that Faith has intuitively divined.

This investigation—pursued in many ways—is best of all pursued in keeping some hour apart, each day, for absolute reunion and communion with the Holy Spirit. To lift up the heart to God in deepest aspiration and prayer is to come into an increasing knowledge of one's own spiritual self, and into increasing harmony with the divine world in whose atmosphere, alone, we live and breathe and have our being. In love and sympathy lie the daily solution of all the problems of the spiritual life.

These are the divine attributes, and they are as indispensable to life to-day as they were when Christ walked in Galilee. Compassion and love are the handmaids of hope and faith and joy. The heart to sympathize, the love to aid, lead on to the radiant atmosphere of happiness.

There is a deep and impressive significance in the lesson of the music-drama of "Parsifal." "Only those of pure heart can be strong." And that "the Knights in the play were saved by Parsifal who was willing to encounter anything." This alone is the diviner quality of love,—to be willing to "encounter anything;"—to meet pain, disaster, defeat, if so it be the appointed way to serve. There is a consecration in pain that purifies and refines and exalts all effort. It may be the very divine sign and seal of approval when the way leads to personal sacrifice rather than to personal joy.

"The Magi," it is said, "have but to follow their Star in peace.... The Divine action marvellously adjusts all things. The order of God sends each moment the appropriate instrument for its work, and the soul, enlightened by faith, finds all things good, desiring neither more nor less than she possesses."

One may tread,—not the "whole round of creation," as Browning phrases it, but a minor segment of it, at least, and come back with added and more profound conviction that happiness is a condition of the spirit; that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful"; that the incidents and accidents of the outward life cannot mar nor lessen that sense of higher peace and joy and harmony which is the atmosphere of any true spiritual life. One may recognize and affirm this truth by spiritual intuition, and he may then be led through many phases of actual tests in actual life; he may, for a time, lose his hold on it and come to say that happiness is a thing that depends on so many causes outside one's own control; that illness, death, loss of friends, adverse circumstances, failures and trials of all kinds may come into his experience, and that one is at the mercy of all these vicissitudes. Can the individual be happy, he will ask, when all that made happiness is taken away? Can he be happy if he has lost all his worldly goods? or if death has taken those nearest and dearest to him? or if the separations of life, far harder to bear than those of death, have come into his experience with their almost hopeless sense of desolation? And yet, until he has learned to answer these questions with the most triumphant affirmative, he has not learned the measure nor sounded the depth of a true and noble order of Happiness. The difference is that of being safely on board a great steamer when wind and wave are tempest-tossed, or of being helpless in the raging waters. The storm may be precisely the same; the tempest may rage as it will, but safe and secure in the cabin or stateroom, the voyager does not mind its fury. Truly may this analogy be held in life. It is possible to emerge from the winds and waves; to enter so entirely into the sense of security in the Divine; to hold so absolutely the faith in the Divine leading, that even in the midst of trial and loss and deprivation and sorrow, one shall come to know, through his own experience, that "the soul is ceaselessly joyful." For it is one thing to accept a truth theoretically, to believe it intuitively, and another to prove it through experience that shall test the quality of faith and conviction. Learning this supreme truth of life through outward experiences as well as though inner revelation, is a victory of the will that may even make itself an epoch, a landmark, in spiritual progress.

One of the great discourses of Phillips Brooks had for its theme the lesson of not laying too much stress on the recognition of one's motives or on any return of sympathetic consideration. "Let me not think," said Bishop Brooks, "that I get nothing from the man who misunderstands all my attempts to serve him and who scorns me when I know that I deserve his sympathy. Ah! it would be sad enough if only the men who understood us and were grateful to us when we gave ourselves to them had help to give us in return. The good reformer whom you try to help in his reform, and who turns off from you contemptuously because he distrusts you, seeing that your ways are different from his, does not make you happy,—he makes you unhappy; but he makes you good, he leads you to a truer insight, a more profound unselfishness. And so (it is the old lesson), not until goodness becomes the one thing that you desire, not until you gauge all growth and gain by that, not until then can you really know that the law has worked, the promise has been fulfilled. With what measure you gave yourself to him, he has given himself—the heart of himself, which is not his favor, not his love, but his goodness, the real heart of himself to you. For the rest you can easily wait until you both come to the better world, where misconceptions shall have passed away and the outward forms and envelopes of things shall correspond perfectly with their inner substances forever."

In the last analysis one comes to realize that happiness is a condition depending solely on the relation of his soul to God; that neither life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any living creature can separate him from it, because happiness and the love of God are one and identical, and it is not in the power of this world to give, or to take away, this sense of absolute oneness with the Divine life that comes when man gives himself, his soul and body, his hopes and aspirations and ideals, in complete consecration to the will of God.

For this alone is happiness. It may not be ease nor pleasure, but it is that ceaseless joy of the soul that may be the daily experience of every human being. And to gain the deep inner conviction of this sublime truth is worth whatever it may cost of tears or trial or desolation of spirit. It is the threshold of joy. It is the initiation into a higher spiritual state which one may gain during his progress on earth as well as in heaven. In fact, no one is really fitted for the highest privileges and sweetness he may crave, until he has learned to live well, to live joyfully, without these. No one is fitted for joy until he can live well without joy. It is the law and the prophets.

THE NECTAR OF THE HOUR.

I share the good with every flower,
I drink the nectar of the hour.

—Emerson.

What though the bough beneath thee break?
Remember, thou hast wings.

—Victor Hugo.

To enter into the will of God is an initiation of such power and beauty that language falters in any effort to interpret this supreme experience. It can be indicated only in the words of the poet:—

"I share the good with every flower,
I drink the nectar of the hour."

That wonderful test of seeing every event of life from the point of view of the will of God simply transforms and revolutionizes the entire scale of human experience. It simplifies all perplexities, it offers the solution for all problems. It illuminates the small and the apparently insignificant occurrences which, nevertheless, contrive to play so large and often so determining a part in our days, as well as places in high relief the great questions that beset one in his varied round.

The little book from which the extract on the preceding page is taken—a Catholic book of devotion—is one of the most illuminating in all spiritual literature. It offers to one instruction and guidance in that life which alone is progress, peace, and joy,—and one who comes to use it daily will place it almost next to the Bible in its practical and almost miraculous helpfulness. Catholic or Protestant,—what matters it so that one who listens may hear the word? It is in no wise necessary to embrace Catholicism in order to concede that some of the most vital literature of the spiritual life is written by the priests and thinkers of that communion; and it is good to take help wherever one can find it,—regardless of sect or creed.

A French priest, preaching in an impassioned and sublime abandon of enthusiasm; caught up in a rapture of the heavenly life, poured out these wonderful words to audiences that thronged the dim shades of Saint Sulpice, in Paris. His theme was the consecration of life to the divine will. He called upon all humanity to recognize that this divine will is revealed,—not exclusively in the cloister or the silence, but in the common trend of daily life. "The field is the world." "All things," said this priest, "may further the soul's union with God; all things perfect it, save sin, and that which is contrary to duty;" and he added: "When God thus gives Himself to a soul, all that is ordinary becomes extraordinary; therefore it is that nothing appears of the great work which is going on in the soul; the way itself is so marvellous that it needs not the embellishment of marvels which belong not to it. It is a miracle, a revelation, a continuous enjoyment of God, interrupted only by little faults; but in itself it is characterized by the absence of anything remarkable, while it renders marvellous all ordinary and sensible things."

The entire discourse was a fervent and illuminating illustration of how God's will reveals itself through the most common things. "O Divine Action," Père De Caussade exclaims, "I will cease to prescribe to Thee hours or methods; Thou shalt be ever welcome. O Divine Action, Thou seemest to have revealed to me Thy immensity. I will walk henceforth in Thy infinity. No longer will I seek Thee within the narrow limits of a book, or the life of a saint, or a sublime thought. No longer will I seek Thy action alone in spiritual intercourse. For since the divine life labors incessantly and by means of all things for our advancement, I would draw my life from this boundless reservoir. The will of God imparts to its every instrument an original and incomparable action. We do not sufficiently regard things in the supernatural light which the divine action gives them. We must always receive and worthily meet the divine action with an open heart, full confidence and generosity: for to those who thus receive it, it can work no ill. The divine action killeth while it quickeneth; the more we feel death, the firmer our faith that it will give life."

These words invest the truth of the constant revelation of God's will through ordinary events, with a burning intensity and vividness that can hardly fail to leave a permanent impress upon the reader.

There is probably no thoughtful observer of the phenomena of life with whom spiritual aspiration is ever present, who is not often honestly puzzled as to what extent the ordinary tide of events that attend him must be accepted as the will of God, and to what degree he should modify these by his own power of will in selection and grouping. He is engaged, for instance, in important work. To what extent should he yield to the "devastator of the day"? To what extent should he allow his general onward course of pursuits and interests to be deflected or changed by the unforeseen events that attend his pathway?

It may be accepted as a fundamental truth that good sense, good judgment, discretion, poise, are not unworthy to be ranked among the Christian virtues. Jesus was eminently sane. He was no fanatic. He gave both by precept and example the ideal of a rational and reasonable life. The individual has no right to rush off and kill himself because his dearest hope is denied or his most cherished purpose defeated. Nor has he any more right to commit what may be called intellectual suicide, by relinquishing his aspirations and endeavors, merely because things go wrong, or because he thinks they are wrong. The conditions of life are not necessarily wrong because contrary to what one might desire. Perhaps it is the desire itself which was wrong, and the conditions which are right; and which are the expression of God's will and are thus to be joyfully accepted. The test of all circumstances and influence lies in unchanging fidelity, in unswerving allegiance to the divine ideal of life. The "devastator of a day" need not be welcomed to make unlimited waste of time and energy that have their due channels, but the interruption may be met with patience and sweetness, as well as with firmness of purpose in declining to be turned aside from the duty in hand. The adverse circumstances of life,—loss of money, of friends, disaster in one way or another, that may come without visible relation to any error on one's own part,—shall not such adverse conditions teach a divine lesson of patience and incite new springs of energy to overcome trial, and to gain by it a higher spiritual vantage-ground on which to live? Cannot even denial and defeat be held as developing qualities that might otherwise lie latent? May they not teach the divinest lesson of all,—the one most invaluable to human life,—absolute trust in God?

Gaining this, the soul really gains all that it was sent on earth to learn through all the varied phenomena of joy and sorrow, of triumph and failure. There is a common expression of one's "embracing religion and turning away from the world." It is a contradiction of terms. The world is the place in which any real religion is tested and proved, and it is there that the soul must recognize and receive the Divine Action.

In the marvellous sermons of Père Lacordaire are found suggestions that might well serve as a daily manual on this sublime and vital truth of the relation between the will of God and the daily experience. These sermons are among the world's treasures of help toward a higher spirituality. The argument of Père De Caussade—one equally entitled to consideration—is that God reveals himself to us now, in ordinary events, as mysteriously and as adorably and with as much reality as in the great events of history or in the Holy Scriptures. "When the will of God reveals itself to a soul manifesting a desire to wholly possess her," says Père De Caussade, "if the soul freely gives herself in return, she experiences most powerful assistance in all difficulties; she then tastes by experience the happiness of that coming of the Lord, and her enjoyment is in proportion to the degree in which she has learned to practice that self-abandonment which must bring her at all moments face to face with this ever adorable will."

The entire philosophy of this is that the events of life are the language in which God speaks to us. The thought is as simple as it is impressive, and it is yet so great as to be fairly epoch-making in its complete realization. And it is more than an open question whether, even to a large majority of the most prayerful and ardent of Christian believers, there is not still a new aspect of life revealed in this simple acceptance of the common details of the day, the events of the hour, as the divine language which is to be read and followed.

Because there is a more or less widespread conviction that events, circumstances, conditions are things to be battled with, in case they are not agreeable, and that there is a signal virtue in overcoming them. Nor is this conviction without value, too, and a large measure of truth, for aspiration and achievement must always be among the vital forces in creating the immediate future; and we must create the future as well as accept the present.

"Thou speakest, Lord, to all mankind by general events.
Thou speakest to each one in particular by the events of his
every moment."

Père De Caussade proceeds to say:—