154 IRature StuMes in Berksbire* 



cause the moral crusade of Francis Murphy or of 

 Dr. Parkhurst is ''only a wave," they forget that 

 ''waves" are all that clear our atmospheres, and 

 that all great changes in the world move in just this 

 way. What else but successive, wave-like epochs 

 of heat and cold, upheaval and subsidence, have 

 made the world what it is to-day ? How has intel- 

 lectual life grown but by periodic intensifying of its 

 activities, — now in the decadence of the Egyptians ; 

 after a long depression, rising in the philosophy of 

 the Greeks ; in the revival of learning in Europe ; in 

 the scientific wakening of the eighteenth century ? 



How else has civilisation advanced ? We see the 

 Indians disappearing before the march of an enlight- 

 ened race. It is an old story. Wave after wave of 

 tribes and races has rolled westward from Asia's 

 heart to the Golden Gate ; kingdom after kingdom, — 

 Assyria, Nineveh, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, 

 the mighty children of the North, the Teutons and 

 the English. Who knows what mightier, better, 

 holier race shall whelm our own, and teach a nobler 

 civilisation ? Even the kingdom of the Christ is to 

 give place to that other, — when "God shall be all and 

 in all." 



So when the wave of storm and rain blows down 

 upon you in the wings of the east wind, or of the 

 wind of the south-west, and then the "cold wave," 

 the great undulation of clear weather follows after, 

 bare your brow reverently. You are witness to a 

 mighty pulse-beat of that endless rhythm which be- 



