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Show 312 'fll J<: 1,1 Blml'\'" IJEI,I •• so long as patl·iots sleep an<l bad men rule and the cries of the oppressed ascend to God, -however long. And then let all Bells ring for joy tbnt the State is safe, that men arc free, that God has saYcd the world and the kingdom of Heaven has appeared. This is tho nge of Iron it is true, but it is also the age of Bells. Never were so many cast, hot from the furnace of God's Love to Man, with great \'Oicos, sweetened with Gospel sih•cr. Silver?Yes, that also is a mystic word. It is the rcrcrsc of Iron, which in the language of tho Jews is called V crsiL Silver ? Pity that our Liberty Bell were not all Silver! Not yet. No : in an iron age the bell to ring the tocsin for the world must be strong iron or rude brass, yet sweetened with Silver, prophetic of a silver age. There is often violence in love ; there is oven a look of rudeness, sometimes, in the perfect Christ ; it is but the strain of tho muscles in flight or fight. We must not be over careful of clega.ncc when 'l"IH: IH~ I.L. 313 there i:; more work to do than workmen to do it. Diomelle and Glaucus exchange panoplies without thinking which ig iron and which i:; giJld. Thunder doc~ not ~elect its h·ec~. 1'herc n1·c wayf.l on which it Lecome:! anlichrbt to salute a mnn. Silvc1· bells arc for tcn·tablcs. It is tho boll that sounds loud· est and fullest, not just that which i~ most mu~ical, that is most useful in a. London. Better be stunned than not hca1·, when the worltl is on fire. I passed one CYening, in my ram Lies years ngu, the ancient Abbey of J umiCgcs, a solemn ruin, in an angle of the river Seine. '1\vo gigantic Uoman towers comfort each other :1till with mutual love and holy contemplations above a wide..sp1·ead wreck of choir walls and broken corridors. Trees have grown up in the aisles. Nature like Eternity is swallowing up the remnants of Art; but those two wondrous towers stand like tJ1e angels of two milleniums, revolving the ways of God, neither sad nor rebcllous, but venerable and wiser than the present. 27 |