Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/90

 80 he yearned to hear that music of the heavenly spheres, hymning divine truth, to which most mortal ears are ever deaf; and from then until his end, amid the din of terrestrial turmoil, he was hearkening for the voice of God. Thus inspired, he has ever revived those who have learned to resort to him, sending each forth with a braver heart, a serener mind, and a reawakened conscience. Wordsworth, sadly observing the worshipers of earthly idols, exclaimed:

and the best in succeeding generations have echoed the sentiment. Sceptics may question parts of Milton's doctrine; but they will not easily shake its center, for that is embedded in the pertinacious moral convictions of the English peoples. The noblest American tradition, which founded the New England commonwealths, and from which to depart is a kind of betrayal of our inmost selves, is precisely that ideal of freedom from man's dominion and conscientious obedience to God's stern will, which is the very spirit of Milton. To commune with him is therefore to gain patriotic enlightenment as well as religious insight and poetical culture.