Not in myself--unholy too, without and within--seeming
to myself sometimes the very worst company of all the bad company I meet,
because it is the only bad company from which I cannot escape. Oh, is
there a Holy One, whom I may contemplate with utter delight? and if so,
where is He? Oh, that I might behold, if but for a moment, His perfect
beauty, even though, as in the fable of Semele of old, the lightning of
His glance were death. Nay, more, has it not happened to some here--to
clergyman, lawyer, physician, perhaps, alas! to some pure-minded, noble-
hearted woman--to be brought in contact perforce with that which truly
sickens them--with some case of human folly, baseness, foulness--which,
however much their soul revolts from it, they must handle, they must toil
over many weeks and months, in hope that that which is crooked may be
made somewhat straight, till their whole soul was distempered, all but
degraded, by the continual sight of sin, till their eyes seemed full of
nothing but the dance of death, and their ears of the gibbering of
madmen, and their nostrils with the odours of the charnel house, and they
longed for one breath of pure air, one gleam of pure light, one strain of
pure music, to wash their spirits clean from those foul elements into
which their duty had thrust them down perforce?
And then, oh then, has there not come to such an one--I know that it has
come--that for which his spirit was athirst, the very breath of pure air,
the very gleam of pure light, the very strain of pure music, for it is
the very music of the spheres, in those same words, "Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come;" and he has
answered, with a flush of keenest joy, Yes.
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