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Sir A. Helps (Companions of my Solitude).

’Tis an old theme, this Divine Love, and it cannot be exhausted. Men have not outlived it, angels cannot outlearn it. It swayed the ancient world by many a fair god and goddess; its light has been cast over ages of Christian controversy and warfare; it is still the guiding Star of the Sea to each voyager after the nobler faith. The youth leaves the old shore of belief, only because love has left it. His starved affections will no longer accept stone, though pulverized flour-like and artfully kneaded, for bread. Their white sails fill the purple and the sombre seas, and they hail each other to ask for the summer-land, where faith climbs to beauty, and the lost bowers of childhood’s trust may be found again.

Moncure Daniel Conway (1832-1907).

This fine writer was a Unitarian minister, but afterwards became a “Free-thinker.”

There are in this loud stunning tide

Of human care and crime,

With whom the melodies abide

Of th’ everlasting chime;

Who carry music in their heart