' They were words he had
known from the earliest memorial time. He had heard them in
infancy, in childhood, in boyhood, in youth: now first in manhood it
flashed upon him that the Lord did really mean that the peace of his
soul should be the peace of their souls; that the peace wherewith
his own soul was quiet, the peace at the very heart of the universe,
was henceforth theirs--open to them, to all the world, to enter and
be still. He fell upon his knees, bowed down in the birth of a
great hope, held up his hands towards heaven, and cried, 'Lord
Christ, give me thy peace.'
He said no more, but rose, caught up his stick, and strode forward,
thinking.
He had learned what the sentence meant; what that was of which it
spoke he had not yet learned. The peace he had once sought, the
peace that lay in the smiles and tenderness of a woman, had
'overcome him like a summer cloud,' and had passed away. There was
surely a deeper, a wider, a grander peace for him than that, if
indeed it was the same peace wherewith the king of men regarded his
approaching end, that he had left as a heritage to his brothers.
Suddenly he was aware that the earth had begun to live again. The
hum of insects arose from the heath around him; the odour of its
flowers entered his dulled sense; the wind kissed him on the
forehead; the sky domed up over his head; and the clouds veiled the
distant mountain tops like the smoke of incense ascending from the
altars of the worshipping earth.
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