“My friends and fellow-lovers of God, and seekers for his law in our common life, this is for me an end and a beginning. As I live, it is for me the end of the thing that long has irked me, that irks us all, that we are clinging to nobody can tell why, or of whose will. I mean the division of unreason in the household of love. For me the folly and the waste and the loss of efficiency of denominationalism have forever ceased. In this hour begins for me a new day: The day when I stand with all men who strive to know God, and call myself by no name save the name which we all bear: Children of the Father, and brothers to Man.” I don’t know what else he said--I heard, but I heard it in something that wasn’t words, but that was nearer, and closer up to, and clearer in my ears than any words. And I knew that what he was saying had been sounding in my heart for long; and that I had heard it trying to speak from the hearts of others; and that it wasn’t only in Friendship Village, but it was all over the world that people are ready and waiting for the coming of the way that had been shown to us that day. Who knows how it will come at last,--or what form it will take? But we do know that the breaking down of the meaningless barriers must come first. When the young minister had finished, we stood for a moment in silent prayer. You can _not_ stand still in the woods and empty out your own will, without prayer being there instead, quiet, like love. Then all together, and as if a good many of us had thought of it first, we began to sing: “There’s a wideness in God’s loving Like the wideness of the sea....” No sooner had we begun than deep in the wood, clear and sweet above the other singing, there came a voice that we all knew. It was Lavvy--I stood where I could see her coming. She was in a cotton dress, and she had done as she had said--gone into the wood--“where better things are.” And there we had come to find them too. She came down the green aisles, singing; and we were all singing--I wish I might have been where I could hear that singing mount. But I was, and we all were, where we could look into one another’s hearts and read there the common longing to draw near unto God. And the great common God was in our midst. THE FACE OF FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE The day that they denominated Threat Hubbelthwait for mayor of Friendship Village was band-concert night. It’s real back-aching work to go to our band concerts, because we ain’t no seats--nothing but a bandstand in the middle of the market square; but yet we all of us do go, because it’s something to do. And you die--you _die_ for some place to go to see folks and to move around among them, elbow near. I was resting on the bottom step of the bandstand between tunes, when Mis’ Timothy Toplady come by.