From
contact with it we rise healed of our hurts and strengthened for the
fight.
Amid the babel of the schools we stand bewildered and affrighted.
Silence gives us peace and hope. Silence teaches us no creed, only
that God's arms are around the universe.
How small and unimportant seem all our fretful troubles and
ambitions when we stand with them in our hand before the great calm
face of Silence! We smile at them ourselves, and are ashamed.
Silence teaches us how little we are - how great we are. In the
world's market-places we are tinkers, tailors, apothecaries,
thieves - respectable or otherwise, as the case may be - mere atoms of
a mighty machine - mere insects in a vast hive.
It is only in Silence that it comes home to us that we are something
much greater than this - that we are MEN, with all the universe and
all eternity before us.
It is in Silence we hear the voice of Truth. The temples and the
marts of men echo all night and day to the clamour of lies and shams
and quackeries. But in Silence falsehood cannot live. You cannot
float a lie on Silence. A lie has to be puffed aloft, and kept from
falling by men's breath. Leave a lie on the bosom of Silence, and
it sinks. A truth floats there fair and stately, like some stout
ship upon a deep ocean. Silence buoys her up lovingly for all men
to see. Not until she has grown worn-out and rotten, and is no
longer a truth, will the waters of Silence close over her.
Silence is the only real thing we can lay hold of in this world of
passing dreams. Time is a shadow that will vanish with the twilight
of humanity; but Silence is a part of the eternal. All things that
are true and lasting have been taught to men's hearts by Silence.
Among all nations, there should be vast temples raised where the
people might worship Silence and listen to it, for it is the voice
of God.
These fair churches and cathedrals that men have reared around them
throughout the world, have been built as homes for mere creeds - this
one for Protestantism, that one for Romanism, another for
Mahomedanism. But God's Silence dwells in all alike, only driven
forth at times by the tinkling of bells and the mumbling of prayers;
and, in them, it is good to sit awhile and have communion with her.
We strolled round, before we came out. Just by the entrance to the
choir an official stopped me, and asked me if I wanted to go and see
a lot of fal-lal things he had got on show - relics and bones, and
old masters, and such-like Wardour-street rubbish.
I told him, "No"; and attempted to pass on, but he said:
