University of Virginia Library

Sabbath upon the river and the hills!
And Sabbath-rest among the weary wheels,
That ceased their groaning with a conscious hush.
Sabbath to lives unwound from labor's coil;
One welcome pause between dull sentences
Of week-long prose.
That Sabbath in the air
Which made New England as old Palestine,—
An Olivet of every green ascent,
With Kedron or Siloam flowing past,
In windings of familiar streams,—how vast
Its depth and height of stillness! Every leaf
Of every tree seemed whispering reverently
Some Hebrew tale or parable. The sky
Came close to earth, as bending to let down
The glory of the New Jerusalem.
That sweet, old-fashioned day has left us now,
With inspirations and with presences
Which never can return. It is a part
Of our lost Puritan inheritance.
Whatever better this new time has brought,
Never again the land shall know that rest,
That inexpressible calm.
Together walked,
Under May's fragrant sunshine, Eleanor Gray
And Esther Hale, amid the churchward crowd
That filled brick-paven streets and sandy roads
With pleasant color. Maidens robed in white,
With gypsy-hats blue-ribboned; maidens gay
In silk attire; and maidens Quaker-prim,
With gingham gowns, straw bonnets, and smooth hair,—
Girl Baptists, Universalists, Methodists,
Girl Unitarians and Orthodox,—
Sought each their separate temple, while a few
Entered the green enclosure of Saint Ann's,
Still left, an oasis of vine-wreathed stones,
Amid the city's dust.
Here, close on Ruth,
Isabel followed, all in rosy haste,
Saying, “Let me go with you to-day; I like
Your church, Ruth Woodburn,”—though it was her wont
To sit with Eleanor in the singing-seats
Where Pastor Alwyn preached; a steeple-house,
Barn-like, brick-red, and angular, and yet
To those who worshipped there, a gate of heaven.
For the good pastor's most unworldly soul,
While all alive to solemn harmonies
Of heavenly truth, quivered through every chord
With sympathy intense: a tenderness
As of some grief divine was in his voice,
Picturing man's loss through sin; but when his theme
Was sin's immortal Conqueror, the Lord
Of Love, the Life and Light of men,
It was as if the Master had himself
Entered in, with his beautiful “All Hail!”
And “I am with you alway.” So the house
Was like some common face irradiate
With inward nobleness, fairer than fair.

And Pastor Alwyn's manly lineaments
To-day caught radiance from his text, the words
“As seeing Him who is invisible.”

The sermon was as fresh as springtide air
Whispering through trees in bloom outside. He held
His Bible as a living book, not dry,
Dead leaves of Judæan growth, whose preciousness
Was in their sacred legendary scent,
But a perennial plant, acclimated
Wherever any flower of heaven can breathe.
And words like these he spoke, remembered well
By more than two girls into after years.

“As seeing Thee! And must we turn from earth
To find Thee, Lord? ‘No,’ Thou dost answer us
From Cana, where thy touch of miracle
Made marriage-mirth flow free with the new wine.
‘No,’ from the inn-seat, where thou joinedst in talk
With loitering fisherman and publican.
‘No,’ from the market-place, where children danced
And piped amid their elders' wearier game
Of usury and barter. Thou didst blame,
More than all other sin, the Pharisee's,
Shutting his sanctimonious eyelids close
In on himself, a whited sepulchre
Opaque, that hid from sight the present God,
Made manifest by little children's lips,
And bird-songs, and the speechless lily's breath.

“Dear Lord, the nearer we approach to Thee,
We find that thou wert with us all the while
In common things; for every innocent sport,
The blameless thought that bubbles in a laugh,
No less than visions awful and sublime,
Thine image and thy superscription wear.
How shall we ever know thee, knowing not
Thou dwellest with us in clay tabernacles,
And beckonest upward through beseeching eyes
Of men who struggle and aspire toward thee?

“‘Blessed are the pure in heart; they shall see God.’
And as thou clearest our soul's sight, we behold
The Infinite where we little thought him hid.
The clod a diamond flashes. Our dim earth
Holds the sun's elements, and by a touch
Like that which swung it forth in space, might be
Transmuted into pure, impalpable light.
Empty of thee is nothing thou hast made.

“This, Lord, is life: to know thee in thy gifts,
And in thy messengers; to recognize
In all things visible, thee, the Invisible God,
The Soul that lives in human souls, the Friend
Whose hint and shadow earthly friendship is.
“And have we dreamed the Christ of God could die
When the man Jesus passed from sight? He lives,
Eternal as the Father. Through all years
The Love which is both human and divine
Stoops to our scarred, sick race, to lift it up
Unto the stature of the Perfect Man.
His breath is in us, as the breath of May
Is in the happy flowers. Sin is sole death.
If our life bloom, it is because He lives
Who is the Resurrection and the Life.”

Then, with a prayer which gathered into one
All hearts, and laid them on the Eternal Heart;
With the doxology, all voices blent
In grand “Old Hundred's” firm uplift of praise;
The benediction, “Peace be with you all,
Now and forever,”—forth into the air,
Sweet as Eve's garden breathed, the people passed.

And is there any climate, any land,
More beautiful than our New England is,
This blossom-week of May, when east-winds pause,
Relenting, dying down to whispers light
As Zephyr's own, along the rosy leagues
Of orchard-skirting roads, through village lanes
And over cottage gardens? Can the air
Have wandered with as delicate a breath
Through famed Hesperides? In rose-lined flakes
The apple-petals dropped, as Eleanor Gray
And Esther lengthened out their homeward walk,—
A perfumed snow-fall; and from Eleanor's lips
There fell a gentle, rhythmic murmuring:—

“Isabel, Isabel! Oh, where have you been?
The sermon was like poetry.”
“Poh! child!”
I'm glad I did not hear it, then; I like
Plain prose much better! Truth is, Eleanor,
I'm sick of Sunday doings.” And she threw
Gay scarf and veil and parasol aside,
And yawned: “You know I am a heathen, dear,
And good folks bore me. Esther now, and you,
I can endure; I know your weaknesses;
You are not saints yet, will not be, while I
Am here to thorn you!”
“Now, dear Isabel,
What has gone wrong?”
“Ah, well! not anything
Except myself, a ‘wretched child of wrath,’
So Sister Sterne says. She has called me names
All the way home; she must ‘take up her cross,’
She told me,—and she made me cross enough!
I'd rather be a Patagonian
Than such a Christian!”
“Well, but at Saint Ann's
Nobody vexed you?”
“No; the ups and downs
Just suit my restlessness. The prayer-book place,—
That bothers me, though!”
“Ah, now, Isabel,
Who was the gentleman that handed you
His velvet prayer-book over the pew back?
I thought he knew you—”
Ruth looked up dismayed
At Isabel's gesture.
“Why should you think that?
Any one finds the place, and hands the book,
In your church, Ruth.”
Then, seeing Eleanor
Gaze at her with sad wonder, turned at bay,
And asked, “Hem! Eleanor, was young Doctor Mann
In the pastor's pew to-day? And did he look
Impressed as usual, at you in the choir?
If he called on you once when you were out,
I think he'll call again; don't you?”
They laughed,—
All the girls now; for Esther had come in
With Minta Summerfield, and to fling hints
At Eleanor about sweethearts, seemed absurd
As striking matches in a lily's cup.

With the new-comers the talk changed, for this
Was Esther's hour, the after-service hour,
When each spoke her free word, her deepest thought
Or lightest doubt, and Esther, as she could,
Suggested answer.
O, what questionings
Of fate and freedom, of how evil came,
And what death is, and what the life to come,
Passed to and fro among these girls! For all
But Ruth and Minta were from childhood bred
On the tough meat of Calvin's doctrines; food
For logical digestion, given to babes
By Pilgrim nursing-fathers.
Now their speech
Was of a lecture heard the bygone week
By Esther and by Minta; a grand theme,—
“Law,”—and its treatment philosophical,
By a great thinker. When he boldly said,
“What use in prayer? No beggar shall change Law,—
Law, which is God himself made known to man.
What use in prayer? Are not the laws of God,
Even as His nature is, unalterable?”
The two girls exchanged glances with amaze;
And Minta said, at closing, “Esther Hale,
Tell us, next Sunday, what you think of this.”
So now again she spoke: “Esther, you know
I am a Methodist, and praying is
Two thirds of our religion; yet I felt
Stirred strangely, half convinced by that man's words.
Our preacher spoke of them to-day; declared
Philosophy is of the Devil; but that—
My own sect I may judge—is ignorance.”

“Your sect!” said Isabel, breaking in, with heat.
“I wish it were a little more polite,
Less noisy, too. What right has Sister Sterne
To quiz me all about my ‘state of mind,’
Ask if I read my Bible, if I pray,
If I am fit for heaven?—no! not for hers,
Nor would be, if I could! The other day
She held a meeting, when the looms were still,
Just before bell-time, in the window-seat.
O, how they sung and shouted! I cried out,—
I had a dreadful headache,—‘Do, do be
A little quieter!’ Then Sister Sterne
Groaned, ‘Isabel! if you ever get to heaven,
You'll have to hear a much worse noise than this!’”

“Now, now!” cried Eleanor, “such a Methodist
Is no fair specimen. Does Minta stun
Us with her shouts? And Pastor Alwyn says
He thanks God for John Wesley, and would like
To cry ‘Amen!’ to every earnest prayer.”

“Enough!” laughed Minta. “Now I'll hold my tongue
About the stiff-necked, straight-laced Orthodox,—
My dearest friends, for all that! But I wish—
Esther, what paper is that in your hand?
I 've seen you scribbling something all the week
On torn leaves, wrappings,—here, there, everywhere!
Is it not something for us?”
“Yes, it is.
That lecture sent me back through all the years
That I have lived. I know I have believed
God listens for our thoughts, and answers us;
But how much asking is sincere, and what
The real prayer is, and what it seeks and finds,
I have been querying. Now shall I read
What I have written?”
Then even Isabel
Settled herself against the sofa's arm
In listening posture; and the other girls
Cried eagerly, “Do!” and this is what she read:—

It was a meeting-going world wherein
My childhood found itself. The Sabbath sun
Warmed palsied footsteps up the windy slope,
Where rosy weanlings toddled breathlessly
In prints of patriarchal feet. It shone
Through lattice-work of apple-boughs in spring
Stained with pink glory of bloom, on silver hair
And flaxen baby-ringlets, on the heads
Of youngsters awkward with strange consciousness
Of smoothness, and on brows demure
Of arch girls Sunday-prim.
The sun himself
Lost in the pews the look of every day,—
His frolic look,—was cool, sedate, and blank.
In the tall pulpit rose the minister,
And talked of dispensations and decrees,
Of covenants, purposes, and ordinances,
Saints' perseverance, the church-militant,
Till to my vague child-thought the way to heaven
Seemed somehow built of sounding sentences
That went up through the roof, and shaped themselves
Like rafters, beams, and rafters, endlessly.
Alas! I knew I should lose footing there!
The men and women, with grown minds, could climb;
But I, poor fledgling, fallen on the pew-floor
Helpless and weak, the sky so very far,
And all that Babel-staging raised between,—
What would become of me?
(Nay, do not laugh!
To me all this was real.)
My young thoughts caught,
From tone and gesture, something earnest meant
For all of us; there would be some mishap,
Unless we all did something. Restlessly
My small life fluttered in its vast, bare cage,
Yet feared the terror hinted at outside.

And then they sung a hymn, that sometimes was
Squared to the preaching, like a scaffold-stair;
But sometimes lifted up my baby-soul,
And took it heavenward through the apple-bloom,
With birds and winds, and all the free, glad things
That worshipped in unconscious unrestraint,—
As in Thorwaldsen's sculpture, where the babes
Are borne through kingdoms of the Night and Day,
In mighty, motherly embrace.
But when
The words came, “Let us pray!” something in me
Awoke, and understood, and said, “Amen!”
But O the weary failure! That long prayer
Was like a toilsome journey round the world,
By Cathay and the Mountains of the Moon,
To come at our own door-stone, where He stood
Waiting to speak to us, the Father dear,
Who is not far from any one of us.

And yet, though baby-feet flagged in the way,
The hard, cold way of prayer those stern men chose,
Not for one moment did one thought in me
Doubt that there was a way, some path of prayer
By which I, too, could reach Him. And perhaps
The men and women standing up so straight,
With set, unwinking eyes, perhaps their thoughts
Stumbled like mine, sometimes. How could they go,
Step after measured step, as they were led,
Shaping their asking to the preacher's plan,
Without a side-flight of their own?
God hears
The prayer the good man means, the soul's desire,
Under whatever rubbish of vain speech.
And prayer is, must be, each man's deepest word.
He who denies its power still uses it
Whenever he names God or thinks of Him.

If there be Better,—and the dream of it,
The longing for it, shows that there must be,—
It is not in ourselves; it is the God
Beyond, whom our souls seek; the search is prayer.
More life we ask, of Him who is the Life:
The reason why we pray is this: we must.

Therefore the breeze of memory brings to me
No sweeter echo than that Sabbath word
From pew and pulpit hid by apple-boughs
Among the years of childhood, “Let us pray!”
And therefore, though Philosophy forbid,—
Philosophy, the soul of whose germ-thought
Is God, the thought-inspirer;—therefore, though
Science forbid, closing the inward eye
To make the outward keener; putting Law,
God's vast, revealing shadow, for himself,—
Still let the instinct of his presence speak,
That will take no denial; still let heart
Respond to heart,—deep calling unto deep,
The voice of many waters,—“Let us pray!”