The heart of man hears the call and feels the attraction of life
beyond, as the woodland brook hears the call of the distant sea
and hastens on to meet it.
(1533)
* * * * *
The fadeless hope of everlasting life is thus exprest by St. John
Adcock:
I, that had life ere I was born
Into this world of dark and light,
Waking as one who wakes at morn
From dreams of night.
I am as old as heaven and earth;
But sleep is death without decay,
And since each morn renews my birth
I am no older than the day.
Old tho my outward form appears,
Tho it at last outworn shall lie,
This that is servile to the years,
This is not I.
I, who outwear the form I take,
When I put off this garb of flesh,
Still in immortal youth shall wake
And somewhere clothe my life afresh.
(Text.)--_The Monthly Review._
(1534)
* * * * *
When the late Dr. Reese, of Swansea, preached the last time in
North Wales, a friend said to him--one of those who are always
reminding people that they are getting old: “You are whitening
fast, Dr. Reese.” The old gentleman did not say anything then,
but when he got to the pulpit he referred to it and said:
“There is a wee white flower that comes up through the earth
at this season of the year. Sometimes it comes up through the
snow and frost; but we are glad to see the snow-drop, because
it proclaims that the winter is over and that the summer is at
hand. A friend reminded me last night that I was whitening fast.
But heed not that, brother; it is to me proof that my winter
will soon be over; that I shall have done presently with the
cold east winds and the frosts of earth, and that my summer, my
eternal summer, is at hand.” (Text.)--VYRNWY MORGAN,
“The Cambro-American Pulpit.”
(1535)
* * * * *
James T. White is the author of the following lines, entitled “A Sea
Shell.” They appeared in the New York _Tribune_:
Imprisoned in the shell
Are echoes of the far-off ocean’s roar.
May not our hopes of immortality,
That deep within us dwell--
Instinctive to the soul, and more and more
Insistent to the heart--may not they be
Soul-echoes of the swell
That ceaseless beats on an eternal shore?
(1536)