I have a little kinsman
Whose earthly summers are but three,
And yet a voyager is he
Greater than Drake or Frobisher,
Than all their peers together!
He is a brave discoverer,
And, far beyond the tether
Of them who seek the frozen pole,
Has sailed where the noiseless surges roll.
Ay, he has travelled whither
A winged pilot steered his bark
Through the portals of the dark,
Past hoary Mimir's well and tree,
Across the unknown sea.
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 53
Suddenly, in his fair young hour, Came one who bore a flower, And laid it in his dimpled hand
With this command: "Henceforth thou art a rover! Thou must make a voyage far, Sail beneath the evening star, And a wondrous land discover." With his sweet smile innocent Our little kinsman went.
Since that time no word
From the absent has been heard.
Who can tell How he fares, or answer well What the little one has found Since he left us, outward bound ? Would that he might return! Then should we learn From the pricking of his chart How the skyey roadways part. Hush ! does not the baby this way bring, To lay beside this severed curl, Some starry offering Of chrysolite or pearl ?
Ah, no ! not so !
We may follow on his track,
But he comes not back.
And yet I dare aver He is a brave discoverer Of climes his elders do not know. He has more learning than appears On the scroll of twice three thousand years, More than in the groves is taught, Or from furthest Indies brought; He knows, perchance, how spirits fare — What shapes the angels wear, What is their guise and speech In those lands beyond our reach — And his eyes behold
Things that shall never, never be to mortal hearers told.1
1 Edmund Clarence Stednian.
54 THINGS PREPARED FOR LOVE
iii. The Heart. " Which entered not into the heart of man."
Eternal truth is not discoverable by the heart of man, with all its powers of imagination and all its powers of affection.
1. Great thoughts originate from a large heart. — It is a grand thing when, in the stillness of the soul, thought bursts into flame, and the intuitive vision comes like an inspiration ; when breathing thoughts clothe themselves in burning words, winged as it were with lightning ; or when a great law of the universe reveals itself to the mind of Genius, and where all was darkness, his single word bids Light be, and all is Order where chaos and confusion were before; or when the truths of human nature shape themselves forth in the creative fancies of one like the myriad-minded Poet, and you recognize the rare power of heart which sympathizes with and can reproduce all that is found in man. But all this is nothing more than what the material man can achieve. The most ethereal creations of fantastic fancy were shaped by a mind that could read the life of Christ, and then blaspheme the Adorable. The highest astronomer of this age, before whose clear eye Creation lay revealed in all its perfect order, was one whose spirit refused to recognize the Cause of Causes. The mighty heart of Genius had failed to reach the things which God imparts to a humble spirit.
2. The heart has the power of affection. — To love is the purest, the serenest ecstasy of the merely human — more blessed than any sight that can be presented to the eye, or any sound that can be given to the ear ; more sublime than the sublimest dream ever conceived by genius in its most gifted hour, when the freest way was given to tne shaping spirit of imagination. This has entered into the heart of man, yet this is of tne lower still. It attains not to the things prepared by God ; it dimly shadows them. Human love is but the faint type of that surpassing blessedness which belongs to those who love God.
TJ There are unexhausted possibilities in our lives, and our human hearts are conscious of unrest. Have you never stood in the presence of a commanding and lovely landscape and had the thought come to you that you could conceive a landscape of infinitely greater loveliness than that which unrolled before your eyes ? Have you never, if you are a lover of music, been in the
i CORINTHIANS n. 9 55
midst of great music and had the thought visit you that you could conceive of harmonies greater and more majestic than the ear of man ever heard ? Have you not, although surrounded by many of the joys of life, had thrilling moments visit you, when it seemed to you that you could realize a happiness that was infinite and perfect in its fulness ? And so, on the other hand, have not the possibilities of suffering sometimes shot across your conscious- ness with almost awful force ? As the traveller climbing the mountain sometimes comes upon the deep and dark crevice opening at his very foot, so has there not sometimes come to you in the mysterious journey of life a realization of the potential ability of your nature to suffer miserably ? It is the sense of unexhausted possibility, the yearning of the heart towards something beyond itself, towards the things which " eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man." 1