§ 16. So far as _they_ are concerned, I do not fear for them;--there being one Priest who never passes by. The longer I live, the more clearly I see how all souls are in His hand--the mean and the great. Fallen on the earth in their baseness, or fading as the mist of morning in their goodness; still in the hand of the potter as the clay, and in the temple of their master as the cloud. It was not the mere bodily death that He conquered--that death had no sting. It was this spiritual death which He conquered, so that at last it should be swallowed up--mark the word--not in life; but in victory. As the dead body shall be raised to life, so also the defeated soul to victory, if only it has been fighting on its Master's side, has made no covenant with death; nor itself bowed its forehead for his seal. Blind from the prison-house, maimed from the battle, or mad from the tombs, their souls shall surely yet sit, astonished, at His feet who giveth peace. § 17. Who _giveth_ peace? Many a peace we have made and named for ourselves, but the falsest is in that marvellous thought that we, of all generations of the earth, only know the right; and that to us, at last,--and us alone,--all the scheme of God, about the salvation of men, has been shown. "This is the light in which _we_ are walking, Those vain Greeks are gone down to their Persephone for ever--Egypt and Assyria, Elam and her multitude,--uncircumcised, their graves are round about them--Pathros and careless Ethiopia--filled with the slain. Rome, with her thirsty sword, and poison wine, how did she walk in her darkness! We only have no idolatries--ours are the seeing eyes; in our pure hands at last, the seven-sealed book is laid; to our true tongues entrusted the preaching of a perfect gospel. Who shall come after us? Is it not peace? The poor Jew, Zimri, who slew his master, there is no peace for him: but, for us? tiara on head, may we not look out of the windows of heaven?" § 18. Another kind of peace I look for than this, though I hear it said of me that I am hopeless. I am not hopeless, though my hope may be as Veronese's, the dark-veiled. Veiled, not because sorrowful, but because blind. I do not know what my England desires, or how long she will choose to do as she is doing now;--with her right hand casting away the souls of men, and with her left the gifts of God.