Adela Cathcart, vol 1 | Page 8

Hymn of the Nativity--Crashaw, who always suggested to me Shelley turned a Catholic Priest:
"I saw the curled drops, soft and slow, Come hovering o'er the place's head, Offering their whitest sheets of snow, To furnish the fair infant's bed. Forbear, said I, be not too bold: Your fleece is white, but 'tis too cold."
And as the sun shone rosy with mist, I naturally thought of the next following stanza of the same hymn:
"I saw the obsequious seraphim Their rosy fleece of fire bestow; For well they now can spare their wings, Since Heaven itself lies here below. Well done! said I; but are you sure Your down, so warm, will pass for pure?"
Adela, pale face and all, was down in time for church; and she and the colonel and I walked to it together by the meadow path, where, on each side, the green grass was peeping up through the glittering frost. For the colonel, notwithstanding his last night's outbreak upon the clergy, had a profound respect for them, and considered church-going one of those military duties which belonged to every honest soldier and gentleman. Percy had found employment elsewhere.
It was a blessed little church that, standing in a little meadow church-yard, with a low strong ancient tower, and great buttresses that put one in mind of the rock of ages, and a mighty still river that flowed past the tower end, and a picturesque, straggling, well-to-do parsonage at the chancel end. The church was nearly covered with ivy, and looked as if it had grown out of the churchyard, to be ready for the poor folks, as soon as they got up again, to praise God in. But it had stood a long time, and none of them came, and the praise of the living must be a poor thing to the praise of the dead, notwithstanding all that the Psalmist says. So the church got disheartened, and drooped, and now looked very old and grey-headed. It could not get itself filled with praise enough.--And into this old, and quaint, and weary but stout-hearted church, we went that bright winter morning, to hear about a baby. My heart was full enough before I left it.
Old Mr. Venables read the service with a voice and manner far more memorial of departed dinners than of joys to come; but I sat--little heeding the service, I confess--with my mind full of thoughts that made me glad.
Now all my glad thoughts came to me through a hole in the tower-door. For the door was far in a shadowy retreat, and in the irregular lozenge-shaped hole in it, there was a piece of coarse thick glass of a deep yellow. And through this yellow glass the sun shone. And the cold shine of the winter sun was changed into the warm glory of summer by the magic of that bit of glass.
Now when I saw the glow first, I thought without thinking, that it came from some inner place, some shrine of old, or some ancient tomb in the chancel of the church--forgetting the points of the compass--where one might pray as in the penetralia of the temple; and I gazed on it as the pilgrim might gaze upon the lamp-light oozing from the cavern of the Holy Sepulchre. But some one opened the door, and the clear light of the Christmas morn broke upon the pavement, and swept away the summer splendour.--The door was to the outside.--And I said to myself: All the doors that lead inwards to the secret place of the Most High, are doors outwards--out of self--out of smallness--out of wrong. And these were some of the thoughts that came to me through the hole in the door, and made me forget the service, which Mr. Venables mumbled like a nicely cooked sweetbread.
But another voice broke the film that shrouded the ears of my brain, and the words became inspired and alive, and I forgot my own thoughts in listening to the Holy Book. For is not the voice of every loving spirit a fresh inspiration to the dead letter? With a voice other than this, does it not kill? And I thought I had heard the voice before, but where I sat I could not see the Communion Table.--At length the preacher ascended the pulpit stairs, and, to my delight and the rousing of an altogether unwonted expectation, who should it be but my fellow-traveller of last night!
He had a look of having something to say; and I immediately felt that I had something to hear. Having read his text, which I forget, the broad-browed man began with something like this:
"It is not the high summer alone that is God's. The winter also is His. And into His winter He came to visit us. And all man's winters are