My smile is bright, my glance is free,
My voice is calm and clear; Dear friend, I seem a type to thee
Of holy love and fear.
But I am scann'd by eyes unseen,
And these no saint surround ; They mete what is by what has been,
And joy the lost is found.
356 HIDDEN FAULTS
Erst my good Angel shrank to see
My thoughts and ways of ill ; And now he scarce dare gaze on me,
Scar-seam'd and crippled stilU
•[[ When in 1896 the engineers were planning the foundations for the Williamsburg Bridge, New York, the deepest of their twenty-two borings was a hundred and twelve feet below high water. Steel drills had indicated bed-rock from twelve to twenty feet higher than was the actual case ; the diamond drill, however, showed the supposed bed-rock to be merely a deposit of boulders. So the diamond drill of God pierces our self-delusions, detects the fallacy of our assumptions, proves what we thought sterling to be only stones of emptiness, discloses the very truth of things far down the secret places of the soul.'^
^ So rapidly can the human body be radiographed that snapshots can be taken with the rays, and Dr. Eosenthal, of Munich, has photographed the heart of a living person in one- tenth of a second. Now, this lightning picture of a human heart fairly represents those flashes of insight we occasionally get into our essential self, of which the physical organ is a metaphor. At the back of our reasonings, feelings, and volitions is a world unknown, except as it is revealed by glimpses and expressed in guesses. But He who made us in the lowest parts of the earth comprehends us and knows us altogether. " For thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men." As the whole physical universe is known to the Almighty Spirit, as He calls every star by name, and inhabits every province ; so the rational universe is dis]jlayed to the Divine gaze, and there is no mystery of body, brain, or spirit to Him. "There is no creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him with whom we have to do." 3
2. We must welcome the light of His presence. — The spaces between the windows of one of the rooms of a famous palace are hung with mirrors, and by this device the walls are made just as luminous as the windows through which the sunshine streams. Every square inch of surface seems to reflect the light. Let our natures be like that, no point of darkness anywhere, the whole
^ Cardinal Newman, Verses on Various Occasions, 68.
2 W. L. Watkinsou, The Fatal Barter, 103.
3 Ibid. 98.
PSALM XIX. 12 357
realm of the inward life an uuchequered blaze of moral illumination.
^ It is said that all organic germs found in the atmosphere cease a few miles out at sea. Air taken from the streets or the warehouses of the city yields large numbers of these germs. The air circulating through the ship in dock is charged with them. After the shore has been left behind, the air taken from the deck is pure, but they are still found in air taken from the hold. After a few days at sea the air on deck and in the hold alike yields no trace of these microscopic spores that are closely connected with disease. Let us be ever breathing the spirit of God's love. Let us get away from the din and dust and turmoil of life, out upon that infinite sea of love that is without length or breadth or depth, and our secret faults will vanish away, and we shall by and by stand without offence in the presence of God's glory.^
3. We must educate the conscience. — One of the surest ways of making conscience more sensitive is always to consult it and always to obey it. If you neglect it, and let it prophesy to the wind, it will stop speaking before long. Herod could not get a word out of Christ when he " asked him many questions " because for years he had not cared to hear His voice. And conscience, like the Lord of conscience, will hold its peace after men have neglected its speech. You can pull the clapper out of the bell upon the rock, and then, though the waves may dash, there will not be a sound, and the vessel will drive straight on to the black teeth that are w^aiting for it. Educate your conscience by obeying it, and by getting into the habit of bringing everything to its bar.
^ Within recent times we have heard of the elaboration of instruments that may reveal new worlds of sound to us, as marvellous as the worlds of form revealed by the microscope. It is said that no man ever knows what his own voice is like till he hears it in Mr. Edison's phonograph. We are told of another instrument by which the breathings of insects are made audible. The medical expert may yet be able to detect the faintest murmur of abnormal sound in the system that indicates the approach of disease. Ingenious appliances will register for us variations of temperature that are too fine for our dull senses to perceive. We have stepped from time to time into new realms of interest and knowledge and sensation, and undiscovered realms yet lie before 1 T. G. Selby, The Imjicrfcct Angel, 157.