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It leads us back to another Birth-hour, in a still meaner environment, Eighteen Hundred years ago, of which it is fit that we say nothing, that we think only in silence; for what words are there! The Age of Miracles past? The Age of Miracles is forever here !
Snow-rain and ice-rain; frost-formed snow-granules, driven along like shot, stinging and rattling against the tent-cloth, hissing in the fire; roar and groan of the great wind among the oaks of the forest. No kindness to man, from birth-hour to ending; neither earth, sky, nor gods care for him, innocent at the mother's breast. Nothing good to man but man.
I a man of thought the book-worm of great libraries a man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledge what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine own? Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy? Men call me wise.
Just as, too, there come times of momentous progress in the physical world; the establishment of the Copernican theory, the discovery of a new continent, the mastering of electricity, so there are periods of swift advance and discovery in the spiritual life, and such a birth-hour, of travail and of joy, comes in our own day.
The magic of Nationality is the feeling of oneness, and the use of Nationality is to serve the world in the particular way for which its type fits it. This is what Mazzini called "its special mission," the duty given to it by God in its birth-hour. Thus India had the duty of spreading the idea of Dharma, Persia that of Purity, Egypt that of Science, Greece that of Beauty, Rome that of Law.
Now, the sons and daughters of men are used to celebrate the days of their birth with gifts and rejoicings, but I could only celebrate that day which delivered me from death into the hands of Ravaloke, as none knew my birth-hour.
I,—a man of thought,—the bookworm of great libraries,—a man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledge,—what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy! Men call me wise.
The spirit of a great awe stilled the souls of these men, every one, because added to the monotone of the landscape they must heed the demands for endurance, for it was again “a land where no water is.” Memory is at times the birth-hour of prophecy, but here memory clothes the present with pain and loss, and for them prophecy died yesterday and the despair of a to-morrow writes its gloomy headlines upon every advance step of their journey.
To-day we have been listening again, as it were, to the voice of Arnold, the great leader whom the Liberals lost in '42, Arnold was a devoutly orthodox believer, snatched from life in the very birth-hour of that New Learning of which we claim to be the children.
How much has to be done before it is ready for the birth-hour, that yet is at a measurable distance from the moment that the germ is planted in the womb of time.
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