The Choir Invisible

"But, O my brethren, while your land is now at peace, are you at peace? In

the name of my Master, look each of you into his heart and answer: Is it not

still a wilderness? full of the wild beasts of the appetites? the favourite

hunting-ground of the passions? And is each of you, tried and faithful and

fearless soldier that he may be on every other field, is each of you doing

anything to conquer this?"

"My cry to-day then is the war-cry of the spirit. 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.

But even as he stood thus, the white splendour faded from his countenance,

leaving it shadowed with care. In one corner of the room, against the wall,

shielding his face from the light of the window with his big black hat and

the palm of his hand, sat the school-master. He was violently flushed, his

eyes swollen and cloudy, his hair tossed, his linen rumpled, his posture

bespeaking wretchedness and self-abandonment. Always in preaching the

parson had looked for the face of his friend; always it had been his

mainstay, interpreter, steadfast advocate in every plea for perfection of

life. But to-day it had been kept concealed from him; nor until he had

reached his closing exhortation, had the school-master once looked him in

the eye, and he had done so then in a most remarkable manner: snatching the

hat from before his face, straightening his big body up, and transfixing him

with an expression of such resentment and reproach, that among all the wild

faces before him, he could see none to match this one for disordered and

evil passion. If he could have harboured a conviction so monstrous, he would

have said that his words had pierced the owner of that face like a spear and

that he was writhing under the torture.