It did
me good, that talk; it helped me with a sense of sweet and tender
fellowship; and I had no doubt that God was teaching my friend in
His own fatherly way, even as He was teaching me, and all of us.
July 19, 1891.
In one of the great windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge,
there is a panel the beauty of which used to strike me even as a
boy. I used to wonder what further thing it meant.
It was, I believe--I may be wholly wrong--a picture of Reuben,
looking in an agony of unavailing sorrow into the pit from which
his brothers had drawn the boy they hated to sell him to the
Midianites. I cannot recollect the details plainly, and little
remains but a memory of dim-lit azure and glowing scarlet. Even
though the pit was quaintly depicted as a draw-well, with a solid
stone coping, the pretty absurdity of the thought only made one
love the fancy better. But the figure of Reuben!--even through an
obscuring mist of crossing leads and window-bars and weather
stains, there was a poignant agony wrought into the pose of the
figure, with its clasped hands and strained gaze.
I used to wonder, I say, what further thing it meant. For the deep
spell of art is that it holds an intenser, a wider significance
beneath its symbols than the mere figure, the mere action it
displays.
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