Or, if it be Thy sacred will
    That I may go and stroke her hand,
  Just let me say, “I’m living still! 
    And in a brighter, better land.” 
  One word from me will cheer her so,
    O Lord, if you will let me go!

  I know her eyes with tears will blind,
    I think I hear her choking cry,
  When in the list my name she’ll find—­
    Oh, let me—­let me—­let me try
  To somehow make her understand
    That it is not so hard to die!

  She’s thinking of the thirst and pain;
    She’s thinking of the saddest things;
  She does not know an angel came
    And led me to the water-springs,
  She does not know the quiet peace
    That fell upon my heart like rain,
  When something sounded my release,
    And something eased the scorching pain. 
  She does not know, I gladly went
  And am with Death, content, content.

    I want to say I played the game—­
  I played the game right to the end—­
    I did not shrink at shot or flame,
  But when at last the good old friend,
  That some call Death, came beckoning me,
  I went with him, quite willingly! 
  Just let me tell her—­let her know—­
  It really was not hard to go!

CHAPTER XIII

THE BELIEVING CHURCH

The gates of heaven are swinging open so often these days, as the brave ones pass in, that it would be a wonder if some gleams of celestial brightness did not come down to us.

We get it unexpectedly in the roar of the street; in the quiet of the midnight; in the sun-spattered aisles of the forest; in the faces of our friends; in the turbid stream of our poor burdened humanity.  They shine out and are gone—­these flashes of eternal truth.  The two worlds cannot be far apart when the travel from one to the other is so heavy!  No, I do not know what heaven is like, but it could not seem strange to me, for I know so many people now who are there!  Sometimes I feel like the old lady who went back to Ontario to visit, and who said she felt more at home in the cemetery than anywhere else, for that is where most of her friends had gone!

These heavenly gleams have shown us new things in our civilization and in our social life, and most of all in our own hearts.  Above all other lessons we have learned, or will learn, is the fallacy of hatred.  Hatred weakens, destroys, disintegrates, scatters.  The world’s disease to-day is the withering, blighting, wasting malady of hatred, which has its roots in the narrow patriotism which teaches people to love their own country and despise all others.  The superiority bug which enters the brain and teaches a nation that they are God’s chosen people, and that all other nations must some day bow in obeisance to them, is the microbe which has poisoned the world.  We must love our own country best, of course, just as we love our own children best; but it is a poor mother who does not desire the highest good for every other woman’s child.