Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/400

374 power was so great a proof of Immanuel and the realism of Christianity, that it caused even the publicans to justify God. Although clad in panoply of power, the Pharisees scorned the spirit of Christ in most of its varied manifestations. To them it was cant and caricature, — always the opposite of what it was. Keen and alert was their indignation at whatever rebuked hypocrisy and demanded Christianity in life and religion. In view of this, Jesus said, “Wisdom is justified of all her children.”

Above the fogs of sense and storms of passion, Christian Science and its art will rise triumphant; ignorance, envy, and hatred — earth's harmless thunder — pluck not their heaven-born wings. Angels, with overtures, hold charge over both, and announce their Principle and idea.

It is most fitting that Christian Scientists memorize the nativity of Jesus. To him who brought a great light to all ages, and named his burdens light, homage is indeed due, — but is bankrupt. I never looked on my ideal of the face of the Nazarite Prophet; but the one illustrating my poem approximates it.

Extremists in every age either doggedly deny or frantically affirm what is what: one renders not unto Cæsar “the things that are Cæsar's;” the other sees “Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.”

Pictures are portions of one's ideal, but this ideal is not one's personality. Looking behind the veil, he that perceives a semblance between the thinker and his thought on canvas, blames him not.

Because my ideal of an angel is a woman without feathers on her wings, — is it less artistic or less