160 BENEDICITE 



is that it cost no seal its life ; the hands but a 

 truce to this bill of parcels. 



Wherefore, if any will be of good report among 

 his fellows, let him hie back to his own house, and 

 having arrayed himself as may seem fit, go praise his 

 Maker in the congregation. 



But there must always be some for whom the older 

 voices cease not to call in the earth ; in whom the 

 old Adam will be stirring while sun shines and winds 

 blow. Need there because of this be bitterness 

 between the many and the few ? I trust not. Let 

 the many decide. Time was the heathen was but he 

 who lived on the ''heath," in the wild; and by 

 extension, a dweller in the Gentile waste. Nature, as 

 comprisingthat waste, and therefore unreclaimed, came 

 under the ban of the bigot. But the ban is passing 

 with the bigot who framed it. For clearer eyes have 

 sought out that upon which the bigot looked askance ; 

 and out of the wilderness is come a new gospel, the 

 gospel of the fellowship of all Being, the Scripture of 

 the rocks, the Evangel of the Upward Way. 



But if any, for the sake of old days and ways, and 

 being averse from that spirit of aloofness that comes 

 perhaps of overmuch pondering, should need to 

 justify to himself a truant impulse, why, I am with 

 him, even more than with myself. I would have 

 him come on such an April morning when the day 

 is but begun ; when the light of the sun, the rarer 

 air, the sight and scent of blossoming tree and 

 flower, the sounds of jubilant bird-song assail all 

 doors of sense at once, until, as from some inner 

 spiritual generator, the full current of life strikes 

 along the nerves, and a man breaks out into 



