I had a strange experience to-day, Sunday. I went into a church, and high up by the altar, dressed in solemn garb and offering prayers to God--I saw an infidel! He preached a sermon. The theme of his sermon was “Liberalism.” “These men,” cried the preacher, “are blinding our eyes to our salvation, they are undermining, day by day, our faith! They tell us that the sacred word of God is 'literature'! And they show us more 'literature'; but oh, my friends, what new _Bible_ have they shown us!” As I got up and went out of that church, I whispered: “What a dreadful thing it is to be an infidel!” Oh Dante and Goethe and Shakespeare--oh Wordsworth and Shelley and Emerson! Oh thrice-anointed and holy spirits! What a dreadful thing it is to be an infidel! What a dreadful thing it is to believe in a Bible, and not to believe in literature--to believe in a Bible and not to believe in a God! You think that this world lives upon the revelation of two thousand years ago! Fool--this world lives as your body lives by the beating of its heart--upon the revelation and the effort of each instant of its life. And to-day or to-morrow the great Revealer might send to some lonely thinker in his garret a new word that would scatter to dust and ashes all laws and all duties that now are known to men. * * * * * There are many ways to look at the world, and always a deeper one. I see it as a fearful thing, towering, expanding, upheld by the toil and the agony of millions. Who will bring us the new hope, the new song of courage, that it go not down into the dust to-day? To do that there is the poet; to live and to die unheeded, and to feed for ages upon ages the hungry souls of men--that is to be a poet. Therefore will he sing, and sing ever, and die in the sweetness of his song. When I think of that--not now as I write it here in bare words--but in quivering reality, it is a hand upon my forehead, and a presence in the room. * * * * * May 6th. Chiefest of all I think of my country! Passionately, more than words can utter, I love this land of mine. If I tear my heart till it bleeds and pour out the tears of my spirit, it is for this consecration and this hope--it is for this land of Washington and Lincoln. There never was any land like it--there may never be any like it again; and Freedom watches from her mountains, trembling. --It is a song that it needs, a song and a singer; to point it to its high design, to thrill it with the music of its message, to shake the heart of every man in it, and make him burn and dare! For the first time there is Liberty; for the first time there is Truth, and no shams and no lies, enthroned. The news of it has gone forth like the sound of thunder, and has shaken all the earth: that man at last may live, may do what he can and will!