So far as its
authority is of the heart only, so far as it has organized the religious
life itself without regard to other ends and free from intellectual,
historical, and governmental entanglements that are supplementary at
most, he needs no formal act to be one with its spirit; and, however
much he may deny himself by his self-limitation, he remains a
Christian."
* * * * *
There was no doubt about it; we were lost. The faint tracks in the soil
had long ago disappeared, and we followed, as was natural, the draws
between the slopes; and now, for the last quarter-hour, the grass had
deepened till it was above the wheels and to the shoulders of the
ponies. They did not mind; they were born to it. What solitude there was
in it, as we pulled up and came to a stand! What wildness was there!
Only the great blue sky, with a westward dropping sun of lonely
splendour, and green horizons, broken and nigh, of the waving prairie,
whispering with the high wind,--and no life but ours shut in among the
group of low, close hills all about, in that grassy gulf! The earth
seemed near, waiting for us; in such places, just like this, men lost
had died and none knew it; half-unconsciously I found myself thinking of
Childe Roland's Tower,--
"those two hills on the right
Couched,"--
and the reality of crossing the prairie in old days came back on me.
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