As we entered the cathedral a mingled feeling of awe and devotion came over us. But it was not the blazing shrine of the eleven thousand Virgins, the magnificent windows through which the morning sunbeams filtered, nor yet the choir, perhaps the most wonderful in the world, that produced this feeling of reverence. "We remembered that this glorious structure had been erected to the 'God of Peace' in the midst of strife and bitterness, and by men estranged by the first principle of the Gospel." But here we beheld French officers, Scotch Highlanders, English and American soldiers, scattered among the Germans, reverently kneeling, devout and hushed at the Consecration. Then we thought how "notwithstanding the passions of men and wickedness of rulers, the building up of the Church of God and of the Christian faith, goes steadily on, unrecorded but continuous." But here among these lovely Ohio hills, where the Master Architect erected and is still building these wonderful temples that never decay, we were more impressed by their solemn grandeur than any work of man could inspire. Here long before the cathedrals of Europe were thought of, a primitive people erected their altars and offered up their sacrifice to their gods. Here as the rays of the sun filtered through the leafy windows of the trees falling upon the richly wrought mosaic of ferns and flowers, where the gorgeous cardinal blossoms flamed from a hundred altars and the bell-like song of the wood thrush rang through all the dim aisles, these ancient people felt the presence of a higher power, and not yet knowing that their god required the sacrifice of noble lives and loving hearts, brought to the altar the best gifts they knew. Standing alone in this fair solitude, as much alone as if we had been on some fairy isle of a distant sea, we felt that we were surrounded by a strange, mysterious presence, and thoughts and fancies, like weird articulate voices of those ancient people, filled the solemn place. The aged trees sighed in the evening wind, telling over and over their mournful legends, lest they forget. The storm-swept maples repeated their "rhythmical runes of these unremembered ages." We allowed ourselves to sink soothingly beneath deep waves of primitive emotions until we seemed to perceive the sagas that the maples told the elms of a more remote history than that of the Pharaohs or storied Greece.