"You may remember," says Farrar, in his Silence and Voices of God, "how, in the old legend, St. Brendan, in his northward voyage, saw a man sitting upon an iceberg, and with horror recognized him as the traitor Judas Iscariot; and the traitor told him how, at Christmas time, amid the drench of the burning lake, an angel had touched his arm, and bidden him for one hour to cool his agony on an iceberg in the Arctic sea; and when he asked the cause of this mercy, bade him recognize in him a leper to whom in Joppa streets he had given a cloak to shelter him from the wind; and how for that one kind deed this respite was allotted him. Let us reject the ghastly side of the legend, and accept its truth. Yes, charity,--love to God as shown in love to man--is better than all burnt-offering and sacrifice." "In thy face," said the dying Bunsen to the wife of his heart, bending over him, "in thy face have I seen the Eternal." When Abraham, according to another old legend, sat at his tent door, as was his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied coming toward him an old man, stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travail, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man eat, and prayed not, nor begged for blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshiped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was. He replied, "I thrust him away because he did not worship Thee." God answered him, "I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonored me; and couldst not thou endure him one night?" "Ah! poor things that we are. We are all sore with many bruises and wounds. The marvel is that our own tenderness does not make us tender to all others." "He shall be immortal who liveth till he be stoned by one without fault." "I saw in Rome, once, Anstiss," said Hope, "an old coin,--a silver denarius,--all coated and crusted with green and purple rust. I called it rust; but Aleck told me it was copper; the alloy thrown out from the silver, until there was none left. Within, it was all pure. It takes ages to do it; but it does get done. Souls are like that, Anstiss. Something moves in them, slowly, till the debasement is all thrown out. Sometime, the very varnish shall be taken off." "Day by day I think I read more plain, This crowning truth, that, spite of sin and pain, No life that God has given is lived in vain; But each poor, weak, and sin-polluted soul Shall struggle free at last, and reach its goal,-- A perfect part of God's great perfect whole." INDEX