The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
"O yes!--my cathedral, yes. When my stocks in cloud-land rise, I'll
build a cathedral larger than Milan's; and the men, but more
particularly the _women_, thereon shall be those who have done even more
than St. Paul tells of in the saints of old, who 'subdued kingdoms,
wrought righteousness, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge
of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight,
turned to flight the armies of the aliens.' I am not now thinking of
Florence Nightingale, nor of the host of women who have been walking
worthily in her footsteps, but of nameless saints of more retired and
private state,--domestic saints, who have tended children not their own
through whooping-cough and measles, and borne the unruly whims of
fretful invalids,--stocking-darning, shirt-making saints,--saints who
wore no visible garment of hair-cloth, bound themselves with no belts of
spikes and nails, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with
the red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice,--saints for whom the
mystical terms _self-annihilation_ and _self-crucifixion_ had a real and
tangible meaning, all the stronger because their daily death was marked
by no outward sign. No mystical rites consecrated them; no organ-music
burst forth in solemn rapture to welcome them; no habit of their order
proclaimed to themselves and the world that they were the elect of
Christ, the brides of another life: but small eating cares, daily
prosaic duties, the petty friction of all the littleness and all the
inglorious annoyances of every day, were as dust that hid the beauty and
grandeur of their calling even from themselves; they walked unknown even
to their households, unknown even to their own souls; but when the Lord
comes to build his New Jerusalem, we shall find many a white stone with
a new name thereon, and the record of deeds and words which only He that
seeth in secret knows. Many a humble soul will be amazed to find that
the seed it sowed in such weakness, in the dust of daily life, has
blossomed into immortal flowers under the eye of the Lord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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