Page:Orange Grove.djvu/352

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CHAPTER XXXIII.

"Get but the Truth once uttered, and 'tis like
A star new-born, that drops into its place,
And which, once circling in its placid round,
Not all the tumults of the earth can shake."

Unable to sleep any more, Mrs. Claremont arose very early the next morning. She was impatient to see Walter, and yet scarcely knew how to meet him. She wished to atone for her lack of sympathy at the moment he most needed it, not knowing that the joy of his new-born faith was greater than he could derive from any favor this world could dispense, yet so softening in its tenderness as to be doubly appreciative of the faintest ray of human cheer.

He had reached that spiritual height where commiseration for the blindness of those who sought to imprison an idea swept away every other feeling; and for them, not for himself, he breathed in earnest prayer that the divine effulgence of infinite Love might penetrate the darkness and lead them unto that peace which would make them one with God, filling their souls with the heavenly manna which Cometh from above and is sufficient for all things. Then would they see the folly as well as the impotence of every attempt to roll back the onward march of human progress, whether in the intellectual achievements of science or the moral influences at work for the elevation of humanity.