" DEVIL'S WOOD."
TO those who passed through the hell of it I suppose it will always be the Devil's Wood ; but to one at least it will be a memory of grandeur and of glory. He had lost a son there, and he had gone to search amid the rack and ruin of blasted Nature for the poor remains. He had lost a son there (two of his three had been claimed in ten short days), and the blow had stunned him. His mind stood still, and within his heart he found a bitter- ness against the cruelty of it. It was utterly impossible that Love ruled from Heaven over our human destinies I And when he thought of her who had passed through the storm of travail into the quiet haven of motherhood wherein she had nurtured them and watched them grow, the bitterness increased. . . . It was a pitiful errand, this search among the reek of the corrupting dead for a shattered remnant of one's flesh and blood : pitiful and terrible. From what he told me afterwards, I have pictured him set in face and hard. of heart as he passed up the trench into the little tract of splintered stumps that still went by the name of Delville Wood.. There were corpses everywhere, in every conceivable position. Many had gone beyond the " four days " of Lazarus of Bethany. He stopped and looked at them, and there was no horror in his look. Amid such surroundings an overstrung mind might well have given way. Death was supreme. Death had gotten the victory. Hell was in power, and Life and Heaven were but the fantasies of a deluding dream Then suddenly as he passed on with unflinching eyes and a heavy-burdened heart there came. unseen a messenger that put out a healing hand and touched his souL Was it a hand, or a breath of Heaven, or the Spirit of Life and Love that came to vindicate-the God of Love amid all the ghastly tokens of Hate and Death ? From his own words I lmow that his eyes were healed as surely as ever were those of Bartimaeus when the Christ made clay and anointed them therewith. They were opened to a vision as wonderful to him as had been the trans- figuration to the three upon the Mount, for as he passed the stricken corpses he looked at them and saw that they were not dead. No ; they were not dead, but sleeping a quiet sleep ; resting beside the way; and he watched them with the eyes of fatherly concern and care. Their death was only sleep, and the horrid reek of it became an incense that rose silently to Heaven. They were at rest and waiting for the Day to break; and he trod softly as he passed down the shapeless ruin of the trench.
He stopped and bent over one of them, and took from his pocket the few things it contained, to send them to the waiting ones at home : a photograph, a letter-card, a pocket-knife.... He tied them up and labelled them; and tenderly as a mother arranges
the bedclothes around her babe at night so he closed up the stiffened jacket, stiffened with the sleeper's blood.
He found no trace of the one he sought, and I think that it was better so. At any rate he knew that he was there among the 'harvest, waiting to be gathered in. And as he stood in the stricken wood of Death he saw the glory of Life spread over it and found himself uplifting a thankful heart that his boy lay there, a sharer in the Offering.
The pride and prejudice of position and authority ; the narrow thoughts of life as pivoting about oneself ; the wholeness of heart and spirit ; the little idol self 1 What but the breath of God can shatter these and make its bow before the splendour of the Sacrifice. And in the greater _fight still the old truth stands : " Neither by power nor by might, but by my spirit, saith the Lord."
" The little hopes I deemed so great !
The plans I looked upon as Life!"
What could they be to one who sought his dead in the horrors of Delville Wood, and who, seeking the dead, unexpectedly found, instead of a miasma of misery and woe arising from that swamp of blood, the incense of accepted sacrifice, and heard the Call of God !
Now this is not a " action" parable but fact. To some, still wise in their own conceit, it may seem but worthless imagery, but to me it leaves a deeper impress upon-the seal of Christ, and is a sealing of His words, ". . so is every one that is born of
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