The Reign of Law

pened wide its harmonious doo

nd from other states. Some boys out of his own neighborhood had started that morning, old schoolfellows. He had gone to say good-by; had sat on the bed and watched them pack their fine new trunks-cramming these with fond maternal gifts and the

ore this day; and more than once he stopped short in his work (the cutting of briers along a fence), arrested by the temptation to throw down his hook and go. The sacred arguments were on his side. Without choice or search of his they clamored and battered at his

e world, sure he felt of this: that for young Elijahs at the university there were no ravens; no

ugh to find out what, on its first appearance, is so terrible a discovery to the young, straining against restraint: that just the lack of a coarse garment or two-of a little money for a little plain food-of a few c

hardening of all that is soft within, the softening of all that is hard: until out of the hardening and the softening results the better tempering of the soul's metal, and higher development of those two qualities which are best in man and best in his ideal of his Maker-strength and kindness, power and mercy. With an added reward also, if the struggle lead you

on to make fresh reading. He toiled direfully, economized direfully, to get to his college, but in this showed only the heroism too ordinary among Amer

once to take many of its places. But meantime the slaves had been set free: where before ordered, they must now be hired. A difficult agreement to effect at all times, because will and word and bond were of no account. Most difficult when the breaking of hemp was t

rtunity-and seized it. When the hemp-breaking season opened that winter, he made his

t, maybe, on the coals of a stump set on fire near his brake; to bale his hemp at nightfall and follow the slide or wagon to the barn; there to wait with the negroes till it was we

r slaves. The preexisting order had indeed rolled away like a scroll; and there was the strange fresh universal stir of humanity over the land like the stir of natu

cres for himself-sowed it, watched it, prayed for it; in summer cut it; with hired help stacked it in autumn; bro

; and when, autumn once more advanced with her days of shadow and thoughtfulness-two years having now pass

ing for the university-very solemn tender da

and what so incredibly befell him afterward, an attempt must be made to reveal somewhat of h

illiant one of the Christian era. He had few other books, none important; he knew nothing of modern theology or modern science. Thus he was brought wholly under the influence of that view

up, as the dwelling-place of Man. Land, ocean, mountain-range, desert, valley-these were designed alike for Man. The sun-it was for him; and the moon; and the stars, hung about the earth as its lights-guides to the mariner, reminders to the landsman of the Eye that never slumbered. The clouds-shade and shower-they were mercifully for Man. Nothing had meaning, possessed value, save as it derived meaning and value from him. The great laws of Nature-they, too, were ordered for Man's s

uct of the race, running with endless applications throughout the spheres of practical life and vibrating away to the extremities of the imagination. In the case of this poor, devout, high-minded Kentucky boy, at work on a farm in the

ays of his Bible and his Bible college. Let it be remembered that he had an eye which was not merely an opening and closing but a seeing eye-full of health and of enjoyment of the pageantry of things; and that behind this eye, looki

e, guardian in the darkness, watched the moon, pouring its searching beams upon every roof, around every entrance, on kennel and fold, sty and barn-with light not enough to awaken but enough to protect: how he worshipped toward that lamp tended by the Sleepless! There were summer noons when he would be lying under a solitary tree in a field-in the edge of its shade, resting; his face turned toward the sky. This would be one over-bending vault of serenest blue, save for a distant flight of snow-white clouds, making him

he knew not how; if too much rain fell, so that his grain rotted, this again was from some fault of his or for his good; or perhaps it was the evil work of the prince of the pow

rough the laws of nature to some benevolent purpose of the Ruler. And ever before his eyes also he kept that spotless Figure which once walked among men on earth-that Saviour of the w

octors of divinity. When the long-looked-for day arrived for him to throw his arms around his father and mother and bid them good-by, he