He stood on the highest step of the stairs leading up to the colonnaded piazza in front of the house, so facing his audience. He was a man of colossal stature, with the shoulders of Hercules and the beauty of Apollo. His face was of the pure Grecian type, and his countenance was full of intellect, majesty and tenderness. The top of his head was high, spherical and perfectly bald, but a fringe of golden hair at the back of his neck came around and almost touched the flow of golden beard that fell from chin to bosom. His eyes were blue, large, full, clear and wonderfully brilliant and mobile! He was dressed in a white linen coat and white duck trousers, and wore white morocco slippers on his feet. He stood by a great white marble vase, from which an almond tree grew, and he rested his left hand upon the vase. That was the only support he had. With parted lips, suspended breath and rapt attention Em. gazed on the stranger. She had never seen so god-like a man. That the magnificent form should have been struck with paralysis seemed incredible; that those splendid, radiant, soaring eyes, with their flying glances and rapt gaze, should be blind seemed impossible. Em. could scarcely believe it. “I should think they had light enough _within_ them to see in the dark; that they would never need the sun as we do,” she whispered in awe-struck tones. “That’s what we all say, honey. He has the light _inside_ of his eyes. But he is stone blind for all that, honey.” “Hush! hush! Let me hear _him_,” said Em., as she bent her whole attention upon the preacher. He had evidently got well on in his sermon before the late arrival of these last comers. They had not heard his text, but they soon comprehended his subject. It was threefold— Faith, Love, Works. I shall not risk spoiling the blind preacher’s sermon by attempting any report of it here. I will only say that in simple, eloquent words, which went directly to every heart, he explained to them— How Faith without Love was cold, and either, or both, without Works, dead. How Faith and Love must go forth in good uses; must go forth, through brain, heart and hand in good thoughts, good feelings and good deeds to all. He told them it was not enough we should cease to _do_ ill to our neighbor, but we should cease to _speak_ ill, or even to _think_ ill of him. We should do good to him or do nothing; speak well of him or be silent; think the best of him or not at all; that thus, by the Lord’s help, we should come into the life of Faith, Hope and Charity—the life of love to the Lord and the neighbor, in which all men should live in this world, and in which all should wish to enter the world beyond. He told them the vast significance of this word “neighbor”; how it had reached from the highest created being to the lowest; how he who “needlessly set foot upon a worm,” sinned in the same manner, if not in the same degree, as he who tortured or sacrificed a hero or a martyr.