In such mood one day in the garden room the talk led up to the story of Lazarus and Dives, to the selfish luxury in which the latter had lived, his hard-heartedness, his terrible punishment, and in Hades his cry for mercy, if not for himself, yet for his brothers. After uttering many things of deepest interest, the poet sat silent with head bent and eyes upon the flower flame which he loved so well, and which in some way seemed to inspire him. Suddenly, he turned upon his hearer, his eyes kindled into splendor by the glow of his thought which flashed upon him and burst into instant speech. “He would not stay there long,” he said of Dives; “he had begun to think of his brothers!” * * * * * Two visitors came to the poet’s house one day and while waiting for him to appear, one of them picked up the poem, “The Eternal Goodness,” then just published, and reading it aloud remarked, “Whittier could not have written that thirty years ago.” It was true. As Whittier’s feet had climbed the steeps of self-sacrifice, the horizon of the Eternal had ever widened before his eyes. Many men has he trained in faith and leadership. For while men’s minds struggled with questions as to the mind and methods of God, Whittier from the Spirit within him sang of the heart of God. Neither mete nor bound of creed could hold him whose communion was with the Spirit itself. His last message--“Love to all the world,” was the seal of those years of spiritual communion with Him who came to save the world. In recalling those inspired poems, “The Eternal Goodness,” and “Our Master,” the remark he made one day to the writer becomes of especial interest. “I asked Emerson,” said Whittier, as he sat talking beside the flower-filled hearth in the garden room, “doesn’t thee believe that Christ was more than other men--than mere human?” “Yes,” Emerson answered. “Then I said to him,” continued Whittier, “If thee does, thee ought to confess it in thy writings.” “His eye was beauty’s powerless slave,” Whittier most truly sings of himself. For never a fair and beautiful thing of earth in his pathway was unseen by him; and never one did he pass by, save at the command which led him to higher beauty. No indifference or coldness, no lack of fervor or of sympathy marred his high nature. His poems are full of belief in the immanence of the Spirit that to him was no vague and distant Effulgence, but a present Companion. This vision of Reality through the mists which clothe the seeming real was so vivid that to him every mountain was a possible Mount of Transfiguration needing but the revelation of the One always present to show forth its splendor. * * * * *