For, grasping at the highest, we lose the lowest, our surest stepping-stones to higher things—as if for heaven we needed no education, but jumped to it as children born with wings. What lie more fraudulent was e’er invented, braying the word of Love into the infant mind? As lief begin to teach the classics, and _make_ them learn it at the age of five. We teach the babies in our infant standards to pry into the agony of Christ. What do they understand about it? The hardest lesson we cram in at the beginning and say, “He suffered that for you and me.” And one is sucking sweets, and one has got a marble, and some few good ones think they understand—and little know the error they have made. Perhaps if we left Christ out of it, and let them find by instinct what they miss, we should have nobler men and purer women, learning by many a fall to ask for something higher than themselves and earth. Were they but taught morality from the cradle, and trained to esteem their neighbour as themselves, the road to Christ would lead more purely onward, and He Himself would be the great reward. But no, no, we are all so wise in our own pet religion; we “hem” and “haw” at this and that, our babies must be baptized so as they’ll go to heaven and must be introduced post haste to God for fear they get left out. Surely the prayer of the serious mother for pure wisdom for herself and her child must far outweigh the formal genuflections and harsh screamings of the afflicted infant. May we then pray with all true humility, like those poor prisoners bound in hell, but we with hope, they almost lacking in it, “Give us light—light—more light.” CHAPTER II To this dawn at the close of day I too had come. In weariness and weakness I had fallen down, unable of myself to reach that which I saw before me. I had remembrance of nothing more; I fell, and the blank rest of sleep, or death, sank numbly on the silent path. To sleep—to rise; to die—to live again, so came this life to me, falling in pain, in weakness, in dull doubt, inwoven with one silver thread—the joining link to heaven. But what a sweet awakening! Never rose skylark in the summer air so free of care and pain as I—every hanging weight of hell had fallen like death’s bands, snapped by a living power. Soft, gentle, thrilling life was round me, busy and free from every worrying thought, and though I heard no music the very air was filled with hidden sound of life and love and freedom, true music of the soul and surest balm. Still, from an adjoining chamber came the dreamy hum of the busy spinning-wheel, but because I was tired my eyes were closed, and I lay listening to the soothing sound. I felt no wish to stir, since weakness was being repaired by strength, which had in it nothing but life and purity, the strongest framework ever built. So I lay, half sleeping, half awake, till roused by a voice speaking in the room without.