To issue from some Egyptian temple and echo along
the shore of the Nile, right opposite to Pharaoh's palace and
Moses in the bulrushes, startling a multitude of storks and
alligators basking in the sun.
Everywhere "good men" sound a retreat, and the word has gone
forth to fall back on innocence. Fall forward rather on to
whatever there is there. Christianity only hopes. It has hung
its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange
land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the
morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child,
but, thank Heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent's
shadow. Our mother's faith has not grown with her experience.
Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was
too hard for her to learn.
It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel it to
be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to acknowledge
the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it
better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a
sad mistake. In reading a work on agriculture, we have to skip
the author's moral reflections, and the words "Providence" and
"He" scattered along the page, to come at the profitable level of
what he has to say.
