Beyond these stretched near fields green with maize,
and cabins embosomed in orchards and gardens. Once a far-off band of
children rushed across his field of vision, playing at Indian warfare and
leaving in the bright air a cloud of dust from an old Indian war trail.
As he observed it all--this singularly mixed concourse of God-fearing men
and women and of men and women who feared neither God nor man nor devil--as
he beheld the young fields and the young children and the sweet transition
of the whole land from bloodshed to innocence, the recollection of his
mission in it and of the message of his Master brough out upon his cold,
bleak, beautiful face the light of the Divine: so from a dark valley one may
sometime have seen a snow-clad peak of the Alps lit up with the rays of the
hidden sun.
He had chosen for his text the words "My peace I give unto you," and long
before the closing sentences were reached, his voice was floating out with
silvery, flute-like clearness on the still air of the summer morning,
holding every soul, however unreclaimed, to intense and reverential silence:
"It is now twenty years since you scaled the mountains and hewed your path
into this wilderness, never again to leave it.
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