For a moment he experienced that sense of rebellion which in a supreme moment of their lives--the moment preceding a great achievement for the benefit of the world--takes possession of so many of the world's greatest, and which has its origin in a feeling of humility. It lasted but for a moment. Then he found that every thought of his mind--every sense of his soul--was absorbed by another and greater force. He had a consciousness of being possessed by a Power that dominated every sensation of his existence. That Power had thrust him out from himself as it were, and he felt that he was standing by wondering while a voice that he did not know to be his own went forth, and he knew that it reached the most remote of the people before him. It was like his own voice heard in a dream. For days there had been before his eyes the vision that had come to the prophet--the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. He had seemed to stand by the side of the man to whom it had been revealed. He had always felt that the scene was one of the most striking that had ever been depicted; but during the week it was not merely its mysticism that had possessed him. He felt that it was a real occurrence taking place before his very eyes. And now he was standing on his rock looking all through that long valley, and he saw--not the thousands of people who looked up to him, but ranks upon ranks and range upon range of dead men's bones, bleaching in the sunshine--filling up all the hollows of the valley forsaken of life, overhung by that dread legend of a battle fought so long ago that its details had vanished. There they stretched, hillocks of white bones--ridges of white bones--heaps upon heaps. The winds of a thousand years had wailed and shrieked and whistled, sweeping through the valley, the rains of a thousand years had been down upon them--hail and snow had flung their pall of white over the whiteness of the things that lay there, the lightnings had made lurid the hollow places in the rocks, and had rent in sunder the overhanging cliffs--there was the sign of such a storm--the tumbled tons of black basalt that lay athwart one of the white hillocks--and on nights of fierce tempest the white foam from the distant sea had been borne through the air and flung in quivering flakes over cliffs and into chasm--upon coarse herbage and the blue rock flowers. But some nights were still. The valley was canopied with stars. And there were nights of vast moonlight, and the white moonlight spread itself like a great translucent lake over the white deadness of that dreary place.... The man saw scene after scene in that valley as in a dream. And then there came a long silence, and out of that silence he heard the voice that said: “Can these dead bones live?” There was another silence before the awful voice spoke the command: “Let these bones live!”