BIRTH 7 



rhythmic rapture of sucking, there is still little to diiTeren- 

 tiate one young mammal from another, save, perhaps, their 

 bodily form ; and even there a general superfluity of 

 stomach and a lack of limb make for resemblance. 



More or less blind, more or less deaf, more or less bald, 

 more or less helpless, the outward difference, even to the 

 eye of affection, is surely one of degree only, not one 

 of kind. 



And for the inw^ard or spiritual grace .? We know^ little 

 of this. It must perforce be guesswork. 



" Our birth," says Wordsworth, " is a sleep and a for- 

 getting .... Life's star, hath had elsewhere its setting 

 and Cometh from afar." 



Has humanity any monopoly of this unfathomable 

 mystery of Life .? Surely not ! 



Of all Birth, all Death — those twin pivots of the Cease- 

 less Wheel — we know — we can know but this — That 

 they are but the apparent beginning, the apparent end of 

 Something which — since it came — must have come from 

 somewhere, which — since it goes — must go somewhither. 

 Other thought than this is unthinkable by the human brain. 



As the Indian sage wrote thousands of years ago in the 

 Song Celestial, " That which is can never cease to be. That 

 which is not cannot exist. Indestructible the Life is 

 spreading Life through all." 



Thus — soul or no soul — the " trailing clouds of glory " 

 from the unseen sunrising, the unseen sunsetting of an 

 unknown life come not with the birth of man only, but 

 with the birth of all God's Creatures of a Day. Thus 

 every birth-chamber is a Bethlehem indeed, because it is 

 the coming of Life to conquer Death, because it is the 



