Subdue the wilderness
within you! Step by step, little by little, as you have fought your way
across this land from the Eastern mountains to the Western river, driven out
every enemy and now hold it as your own, begin likewise to take possession
of the other until in the end you may rule it also. If you are feeble; if
fainthearted; if you do not bring into your lonely, silent, unwitnessed
battles every virtue that you have relied on in this outward warfare of
twenty years, you may never hope to come forth conquerors. By your strength,
your courage, patience, watchfulness, constancy,--by the in-most will and
beholden face of victory you are to overmaster the evil within yourselves as
you have overmastered the peril in Kentucky."
"Then in truth you may dwell in green and tranquil pastures, where the will
of God broods like summer light. Then you may come to realize the meaning of
this promise of our Lord, 'My peace I give unto you': it is the gift of His
peace to those alone who have learned to hold in quietness their land of the
spirit."
White, cold, aflame with holiness, he stood before them; and every beholder,
awe-stricken by the vision of that face, of a surety was thinking that this
man's life was behind his speech: whether in ease or agony, he had found for
his nature that victory of rest that was never to be taken from him.
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