BENEDICITE 157 



BENEDICITE. 



I wonder what any fairly orthodox suburban 

 worshipper would do if, at dawn of a Sabbath 

 morning late in April, the four o'clock sun, perceiving 

 a bedroom window left wide open to the east, should 

 look in upon him with mildly secular ray. For, the 

 sun, be it noted, before the stroke of church-going 

 bell, is frankly a heathen. Sunday it may be, but he 

 comes in no studied garb ; the day of rest, but he 

 makes not of this a pretext for sloth. 



If this imaginary earliest worshipper is drawn to 

 put his tousled head through the window, he will 

 probably find an ungodly rout of Sparrows in the ivy, 

 and Starlings from the silent church-tower flinging 

 crackling profanities broadcast on the morning air. 

 And if, beneath the finer influences of the hour, 

 sight and hearing recover for a time something of that 

 old keenness that now, like an all but obsolete 

 faculty, resides in the senses of children only, he may 

 catch the beat of the feet of the " little people" on the 

 grass, and know who it is that, swaying in the 

 shadow and shine of the poplar, makes the leaves 

 clatter so widely in so light a breeze. 



For the hordes of heathenesse are abroad. It is 

 the last rally before day of the ''little folk," man's 

 intimates ere he became estranged from himself. For 



