But the whole suggested something
true about my own heart and that of my fellows, if not about the church:
Revelation is not enough, the open trap-door is not enough, if the door of
the heart is not open likewise.
As soon, however, as I stepped out upon the roof of the tower, I forgot
again all that had thus passed through my mind, swift as a dream. For,
filling the west, lay the ocean beneath, with a dark curtain of storm
hanging in perpendicular lines over part of its horizon, and on the other
side was the peaceful solid land, with its numberless shades of green,
its heights and hollows, its farms and wooded vales--there was not much
wood--its scattered villages and country dwellings, lighted and shadowed by
the sun and the clouds. Beyond lay the blue heights of Dartmoor. And over
all, bathing us as it passed, moved the wind, the life-bearing spirit of
the whole, the servant of the sun. The old woman stood beside me, silently
enjoying my enjoyment, with a still smile that seemed to say in kindly
triumph, "Was I not right about the tower and the wind that dwells among
its pinnacles?" I drank deep of the universal flood, the outspread peace,
the glory of the sun, and the haunting shadow of the sea that lay beyond
like the visual image of the eternal silence--as it looks to us--that
rounds our little earthly life.
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