It
fell on the dense crowds,--upon the just and the unjust. It went into
the fogs of the fetid dens from which the coarser light was barred, into
the deepest mires where a human soul could wallow, and made them clear.
It lighted the depths of the hearts whose outer pain and passion men
were keen to read in the unpitying sunshine, and bared in those depths
the feeble gropings for the right, the loving hope, the unuttered
prayer. No kindly thought, no pure desire, no weakest faith in a God and
heaven somewhere could be so smothered under guilt that this subtile
light did not search it out, glow about it, shine through it, hold it up
in full view of God and the angels,--lighting the world other than the
sun had done for six thousand years. We have no name for the light: it
has a name,--yonder. Not many eyes were clear to see its shining that
day; and if they did, it was as through a glass, darkly. Yet it belonged
to us also, in the old time, the time when men could "hear the voice of
the Lord God in the garden in the cool of the day." It is God's light
now alone.
Yet poor Lois caught faint glimpses, I think, sometimes, of its heavenly
clearness. I think it was this light that made the burning of Christmas
fires warmer for her than for others, that showed her all the love and
outspoken honesty and hearty frolic which her eyes saw perpetually in
the old warm-hearted world.
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