The heaven was of that enchanting mild grey-blue of the
early morn.
A still clear light began to fall, and the trees on the
hillside were outlined sharply against the sky. The wind had veered more
to the north, and no longer reached me in the glen; but as I was going on
with my preparations, it drove a white cloud very swiftly over the hill-
top; and looking up, I was surprised to see the cloud dyed with gold. In
these high regions of the air, the sun was already shining as at noon. If
only the clouds travelled high enough, we should see the same thing all
night long. For it is always daylight in the fields of space.
As I began to go up the valley, a draught of wind came down it out of the
seat of the sunrise, although the clouds continued to run overhead in an
almost contrary direction. A few steps farther, and I saw a whole
hillside gilded with the sun; and still a little beyond, between two
peaks, a centre of dazzling brilliancy appeared floating in the sky, and
I was once more face to face with the big bonfire that occupies the
kernel of our system.
I met but one human being that forenoon, a dark military-looking
wayfarer, who carried a game-bag on a baldric; but he made a remark that
seems worthy of record. For when I asked him if he were Protestant or
Catholic -
'Oh,' said he, 'I make no shame of my religion. I am a Catholic.'
He made no shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural statistics; for
it is the language of one in a minority. I thought with a smile of
Bavile and his dragoons, and how you may ride rough-shod over a religion
for a century, and leave it only the more lively for the friction.
Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still Protestant. It is not a
basketful of law-papers, nor the hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of
horse, that can change one tittle of a ploughman's thoughts. Outdoor
rustic people have not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy
plants, and thrive flourishingly in persecution. One who has grown a
long while in the sweat of laborious noons, and under the stars at night,
a frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest countryman, has, in the
end, a sense of communion with the powers of the universe, and amicable
relations towards his God. Like my mountain Plymouth Brother, he knows
the Lord. His religion does not repose upon a choice of logic; it is the
poetry of the man's experience, the philosophy of the history of his
life. God, like a great power, like a great shining sun, has appeared to
this simple fellow in the course of years, and become the ground and
essence of his least reflections; and you may change creeds and dogmas by
authority, or proclaim a new religion with the sound of trumpets, if you
will; but here is a man who has his own thoughts, and will stubbornly
adhere to them in good and evil.
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